Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (139 page)

“M-monday the 17th. Almost a week after she arrived.”

And almost a week before she died, Green thought. More and more he was convinced she’d been on the trail of someone, and had stirred up a hornet’s nest along the way.“Excellent work, Bob,” he said. “Once we know Daniel Oliver’s military associates, maybe we’ll be able to determine who she went to see. Anything else come up today?”

“That reporter from the
Sun
called, sir. Frank Corelli. His witness agreed to a meet. I wanted to wait to check in with you,but I figured it was more important to get her information, so we set it up for noon today over at Confederation Park. It’s a busy enough place, especially at lunch hour, that I figured our surveillance teams wouldn’t be obvious. Staff Sergeant Larocque gave me half a dozen patrol officers to cover it, and I figured we’d have no trouble picking her up.”

“After she talked to Frank, I hope. Otherwise, she’s likely to shut up like a clam.” Green glanced at his watch. Five thirty.Which meant it was four thirty in Ottawa, well past the rendezvous time. Something in Gibbs’s tone suggested trouble. “How did it go?”

“She didn’t show, sir. We waited a full hour, and Corelli satin plain view on a park bench with the
Sun
open in front of him.”

“Maybe the surveillance was too obvious.”

“Maybe, sir, but not a single woman came near him. Or even seemed to be watching him.”

“She was probably just testing his interest. Tell Frank to be ready, because I think she may call again, demanding a higher price.”

“Either that or she has nothing to sell,” Gibbs said. He sounded frustrated. “It may all have been just a bid for attention. She tied up a lot of resources today.”

Green thought it over. He was in the incident room Inspector Norrich had provided for him, and the files still lay strewn around the table where McGrath and he had left them. McGrath was flipping through a box for her interviews with the witness who’d given her the false
ID
. Her eyes were narrowed with a focussed excitement he knew so well. The feeling you get when a crucial detail in the case breaks loose.

With an effort he forced his thoughts back to Gibbs’s problem. Gibbs could be right; the woman could simply be a media-hungry crank. But on the other hand, she had known about the body being moved after death. To know that, she had to be one of the investigating professionals, or she had to have seen it being moved.

“I think she’ll call again,” he said. “So make sure Corelli’s prepared.”

“Will you be back tomorrow, sir?”

“Yes. My flight gets in at noon, and I’ll grab a cab straight to the office. I have something else I want you to do in the meantime.” Quickly he filled Gibbs in on Ian MacDonald’s death and its possible connection to Daniel Oliver’s murder and to their time together in Yugoslavia. He gave him Captain Ulrich’s contact information at
DND
and asked him to try to track down as many of the soldiers in the peacekeeping unit as possible. “Starting with Major—or possibly a higher rank—Richard Hamm, who was their platoon commander. He maybe out at
CFB
Edmonton. And Sergeant Sawranchuk, who was their section leader.”

“Ask him to get photos too,” McGrath interjected, looking up from her files. “And have him fax everything down here tome as well.”

Once Green had hung up, he filled McGrath in on Patricia Ross’s journey to Petawawa. By the time he finished, McGrath’s eyes were stormy. “Patricia was tracking the same story we are. Goddamn it, if it was this simple, if we missed anobvious line of inquiry because of Norrich’s stupid, macho incompetence, then I’m going to have his fucking balls for fish bait!”

June 18, Sector West, Croatia.

Dear Kit... I had an amazing experience yesterday. Three of us were on a foot patrol, checking the back country paths to
make sure no Serbs were sneaking weapons into the
UNPA
. TheSerbs don’t like our foot patrols because apparently the
UN
battalion before us just sat at their checkpoints and if theywanted to patrol, they had to ask the Serbs’ permission.Permission, for fuck’s sake.

So when we arrived in Sector West, our
CO
said no, it’s notgoing to work like that. Our mandate is to enforce the weaponsban, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. This part of thecountry is loaded with little off-the-map trails that only thelocals know about. So we set up observation posts to do footpatrols as well as the regular
APC
patrols on the main road.
OP
patrols are out for a week at a time, just a few guys against amess of belligerents, and I know Sarge isn’t happy with thedanger, but those were the orders.

So there we were, walking along, scanning the trail aheadfor mines, when around the corner comes these four Serb guys,loaded to the gills—
AK
47s, grenades, sniper rifles, claymoremines, the works. No hunting party for sure. We told them tohand over their weapons and instead they pointed their riflesat us. You have to show who’s boss with these guys or they’llwalk all over you. So we raised our rifles too. Now, our rulesof engagement are drilled into us. You can’t initiate fire, andwhen fired upon you can only respond in kind. So we couldn’tdo anything but stare at them and wait for them to shoot first.Like that makes any sense when you’re staring down the barrelof an
AK
47.

Anyway, Danny mutters fuck this and he shoots over theirheads. They shoot back and we take cover and everybody startsfiring. After about thirty seconds the Serbs turn around andrun away. I started to laugh, relief I guess, and Danny’schecking us out because the medic says sometimes when theadrenaline’s going, you don’t even know you’ve been hit. Butnone of us were hurt. I don’t know if we hit any Serbs.

I was proud of myself that day. You always wonder howyou’re going to hold up the first time you meet the real thing.You hope you’ll keep your cool and remember your training,but you don’t really know. Well, when it happened, I didn’thave time to be scared. I was pumped and I just acted oninstinct. And we got the job done. Afterwards my legs were likejelly and I downed two beers the minute I got back to camp,but it didn’t matter.

Green’s plans to hit the ground running in Ottawa by early afternoon were scuttled the moment he woke up the next morning to a fog so thick he couldn’t see the street from his second-storey window. As the taxi crept out to the airport, the cabbie kept shaking his head sagely.

“Waste of time, sir. The planes have been stacked up at the departure gates since six o’clock this morning. Not a thing flying in or out of this soup.”

“When is it likely to clear?” Green asked as they pulled up at the terminal, which was still cocooned in white.

“When it feels like it. You might get off today.” The cabbie’s laugh was the last thing Green heard before the cab was swallowed up by the fog. For a moment Green regretted declining Kate McGrath’s offer of a ride to the airport. He could have used the company, and they could have used the time to coordinate their plans of attack.

But the truth was, they had discussed everything to death already, and her company was proving a little too distracting for safety. And judging from the way her eyes had locked his when she’d dropped him off at the hotel the night before, the border into dangerous waters was very close indeed.

The airport was full of stranded passengers, but the pace of activity was leisurely. Who was going anywhere? He checked in and cleared security without difficulty. By ten o’clock he was settled at his departure gate with a coffee, trying to read the Halifax
Chronicle-Herald
. But thoughts of Kate McGrath kept drifting uninvited through his mind, crowding out the latest headlines. Her long legs, her smile that quivered ever so slightly at the edges when she’d said goodbye...

He pulled out his cellphone and called Sharon. She had the day off and sounded sleepy as she greeted him.

“Your son and I were sleeping in,” she said.

He glanced at his watch and did a quick calculation. Nine fifteen in Ottawa. “Sorry, honey, did I wake you?”

“Not really. I was just lying in bed thinking I should get up. I think the entire household is camped outside our bedroom door waiting for breakfast.” Her chuckle dissolved into a yawn. He pictured her in bed, her black curls tumbling in her eyes and her nightgown rumpled up around her thighs. He needed to get home.

“I don’t suppose you could hold that picture till I get home?”

“Which one? Me in bed, or the kids and the dog outside the door?” She chuckled again, this time with no trace of sleepiness. “You’d better hurry, baby. Neither one will keep.”

Mentally he checked off the “to-do” list ahead of him before he could cash in on the promise in her tone, but then he remembered it was Friday. “Damn, it’s Shabbat,” he said. He would have to pick up his father at his retirement home and bring him home again after dinner.

“Well, you know what the rabbis say. Even a quickie on the Sabbath is a mitzvah.”

“A quickie wasn’t what I had in mind,” he replied.

“Nor was a good deed, I bet.”

He was still laughing when he hung up. Their daily life was so hectic and their schedules so erratic that he sometimes feared their lives barely touched any more. The banter reminded him of old times, and even the long, tedious wait for his flight could not dampen his hopes. His father was elderly and frail and could usually manage no more than an hour’s visit for Friday dinner. The night would still be young once Green returned from driving him home.

The plane finally took off at one p.m. and touched down in Ottawa just after two in the afternoon local time. He phoned Gibbs on his way in from the airport, and by the time he arrived, the detective was waiting outside his office with his notebook and a sheaf of reports in his hands. He looked surprisingly calm and in command. This responsibility has been good for him, Green decided. That, and perhaps— amazingly—Detective Sue Peters.

“Any crises, Bob?” he asked as he dumped his suitcase in the corner of his office and looked at his desk in dismay. It was covered with memos and pink telephone slips, which would only tell a quarter of the story. The rest would be lurking in the furiously blinking telephone voicemail box and crowding the inbox of his computer.

“No, sir. Staff Sergeant Larocque reviewed the case with me this morning and made a couple of suggestions.”

“Oh good,” Green said, hoping it was. The Byward Market circus must have wound down enough to give Larocque time to do the rest of his job. He nodded to the papers in Gibbs’s hands. “So, can you give me the highlights?”

“Not much new from forensics yet, sir. We’re still waiting on the results of the toxicology. Fingerprinting of the victim’s hotel room confirmed she was there, but that’s no surprise. There were lots of other prints—Lou Paquette said the room probably hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned in a year—but he’s got no hits on
AFIS
.”

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Green said. “Our man’s not your ordinary bad guy who’s going to be in the system.”

“We’ve been canvassing restaurants, bars and pubs in the vicinity of her hotel in Vanier and the Byward Market to find a witness who saw her drinking with anyone the evening she died.”

“Good thinking.”

“It was Detective Peters’ idea.” Gibbs blushed and cleared his throat. “So far no luck, but there are a lot of bars to cover.”

“You’ve assigned some uniforms?”

“Yessir. And we’ve also got the regular neighbourhood officers checking the bars on their beat.”

“You may need to expand the canvass to include the centretown area too. Any place that’s along the route from her hotel to the aqueduct. The pathologist thought it was good quality scotch—and he’s the expert—so we may be looking for an upscale bar like the Chateau Laurier or one of the downtown hotels.”

Gibbs jotted a few notes in his book then flipped back, scanning as if to make sure he’d forgotten nothing. “I just called Frank Corelli from the
Sun
for an update before you arrived, sir. He hasn’t heard a word from his witness. I think it was just a crank.”

Green frowned. He was less convinced, but Gibbs already had enough leads to pursue without worrying about cagey media-seekers. “I’ll handle Frank. What have you got from the military?”

Gibbs paged through his notes again. “Some good, some bad. Captain Ulrich was not very forthcoming. He kept talking about fishing expeditions and protecting the privacy and safety of armed forces personnel. I asked for a list of soldiers in MacDonald’s and Oliver’s unit, and he stalled. That’s hundreds, he said, could take weeks to compile.”

Green snorted. “Their computers all broken suddenly?”

“I wasn’t sure how broad a net you wanted to cast, sir. Ian MacDonald and Daniel Oliver were both in the same section, which normally has around ten men in it, led by a sergeant. So I said I wanted contact info on all those men. But there are three or four sections in a platoon, and according to Ulrich,usually a platoon works as a unit performing particular duties,say guarding a checkpoint. That makes it thirty to forty men,led by a lieutenant or captain. So then I asked for the names of the platoon members and then everyone in the chain of command. He said it would take a long time, and he’d have to check with his superior, and...”

“Someone’s warned them we’re sniffing around,” Green grumbled. His thoughts were racing. Who? One of the bartenders in Halifax with close ties to the military? Inspector Norrich? Or the killer himself, who was well enough connected to the military to be able to pull some strings?

On the other hand, maybe the military was just being its usual paranoid self, and at the first hint of outside interference, it had thrown up the walls of secrecy. That was an equally plausible explanation.

“I did get a few bits of news out of them though, sir.” Gibbs was smiling now, no longer glued to his notes. “You asked about two specific men — Sawranchuk and Hamm? Gary Sawranchuk is no longer in the service; he got out in December 1995. It was a medical discharge, but Ulrich refused to provide details. Confidentiality. The man’s last posting was a training unit in Gagetown, New Brunswick. Ulrich wouldn’t give me his current address, but he’s originally from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, so he may have moved back there.”