Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (14 page)

“You have no idea how difficult it is, Inspector, to be trapped in this room with nothing to do but think about your dead son.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Blair. I was delayed interrogating a witness.” Blair had paced half way across the room, light and restless on his feet, and he swung back sharply.

“Any luck? Do you know who did it?”

Green could see the desperation in the man’s eyes and understood his need for answers, but he had handled enough grieving relatives over the years to know that false or premature answers, and the brief comfort they offered, were worse than no answers. And with all the people clamouring for answers in this case, he had to choose his confidants carefully. So with reluctance and regret, he trotted out his standard line. “My investigation reveals several leads. We’re pursuing them, I assure you.”

“When will you have a solution?”

“At this stage it’s too early to tell. It’s a very complex case.”

Blair had paused by a silver tray on which stood a bottle of Rémi Martin and two cognac glasses. “I’m finally going to allow myself one of these. I didn’t want to be incoherent by the time you arrived, but by God! if ever I needed a drink! Will you join me?”

When Green demurred, Blair poured himself a healthy dose of the amber liquid and picked up the glass in shaking hands. Green pictured the man under ordinary circumstances swirling the glass in his elegant, fine-boned hand, inhaling the vapours and only then taking a slow, appreciative sip. But tonight he clutched the glass and gulped at the cognac like a man just out of the desert. Green gave him a few seconds.

“When was the last time you saw or heard from your son, Mr. Blair?”

Blair slumped into a chair. “He was coming home to visit me for Father’s Day. Next Saturday, he would have arrived. He was going this weekend to buy the plane ticket. Said he’d been working too hard, wanted a break to get away from it all. University life can be claustrophobic, I know; too much inbreeding and jealousy. He sounded worn out and disillusioned, said he was thinking of transferring to the University of British Columbia. Myles Halton had been Marianne’s idea. She’d known him from her undergraduate days—we both had, actually, we were at Simon Fraser together—and she never could resist using her influence. Not that Halton needed much persuading. He was delighted to have Jonathan. Bright, articulate, hard-working and the son of an influential heiress who runs a granting agency. And to show her gratitude, Marianne is already underwriting half the cost of some new equipment he wants. I’d rather hoped Jonathan would come to graduate school in Vancouver and give just the
two of us a chance for once. But who am I, after all?” He smiled wanly and rose to replenish his cognac glass.

Green watched him splash half the cognac on the table trying to get it into the glass, but he resisted the urge to help. He knew that nothing he could do would ease the pain, and he had learned to watch and wait. Brian Sullivan had a strength and presence that was somehow comforting, but despite all the compassion Green felt, he’d never learned that skill. The best way he could help was to find the loved one’s killer, and he hoped that he could glean all the important information he needed before the poor man was reduced to incoherence.

As he had hoped, after a few gulps Blair returned to his seat and picked up the thread. “I’m not going to get cynical. I’m not a cynic. Some maniac comes out of the darkness and wipes out my only child, but I’m not going to be a cynic. My son was finally coming home to me, was talking of living with me, and…” Blair broke off, pressing his eyes shut. For a long moment he breathed raggedly, and Green prayed he would recover. Finally he placed the brandy shakily on the table beside him. “I’d better not have any more of that for a bit.”

“When did Jonathan tell you about his plans to come home?”

“Last Sunday.” Blair dried his eyes with a deep, shuddering sigh. “He always calls Sunday. He said he was almost finished a portion of his research, only a week or so to go. I’d even got as far as planning some of his favourite meals. Damn!” Blair clenched his fists. “This is so hard! Have you any leads, Inspector? Oh yes, you told me you had. But who would want to do this to Jonathan? Jonathan wasn’t like his mother, always centre stage and stirring up trouble. He didn’t make enemies. Do you have any idea why he was killed?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say at this time, sir.”

“But I suppose you’ll tell Marianne. I understand within the hour she had the three heads of the police department at her fingertips, whereas I had to wait eight hours to get an interview with one inspector.”

“I have revealed nothing to Mrs. Blair either, sir.”

The distraught man ran his hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I’m sounding petty and God knows, I’m way beyond petty. I don’t begrudge Marianne her influence; I just feel so damn impotent! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do while you people figure out what happened, and Marianne runs around pretending to be in charge.”

“I’d be happy to give you the same briefings I give her.”

“Oh!” Blair looked at Green, and his expression grew rueful. “That isn’t what I meant, but thank you. I appreciate that. I’m sorry, Inspector. I know I keep saying that, but I can’t seem to keep my thoughts in order. I hope you’ll treat our conversation tonight as confidential. I wouldn’t want Marianne to know what a mess I am.”

“I don’t think she’s feeling all that different from you at this moment. The murder of one’s child is probably the worst trauma a person ever has to survive.” Green winced even as he said the words. Sullivan would have managed to make them sound human. “I think you might find it helps to talk to her.”

“I called while I was waiting for you. I asked if she wanted to come here to meet you with me. She said she was expecting Myles Halton to come over.” His face twisted, and Green watched with alarm as he paced around the oriental carpet. Anxious to fend off an emotional scene, Green flipped quickly back through his notes. Blair seemed a sensitive and intelligent man, bound to his son by similar temperament as well as by blood. Beneath the scattered thoughts, he perhaps had some intuitive grasp of his son’s recent distress.

“You said Jonathan sounded disillusioned. Did he say with what?”

“He didn’t. He’s a private person, as I normally am, present circumstances excepted. But I had the impression it might have been with Myles Halton.”

“Halton?” Green kept his voice carefully neutral. “Can you recall exactly what he said?”

“It wasn’t anything he said—about Halton, that is. He said he’d been working really hard on this project but wasn’t sure he liked the way it was turning out. I said something about all scholarly work having its setbacks, and he said he wished that was all it was. I asked him what he meant, and he said he thought he needed to get away for a bit to get some perspective. Then he commented that while he was out in Vancouver, he might look up Professor George Lester at UBC. I took that to mean that perhaps everything wasn’t as rosy as when he had started with Halton. He began with such high hopes. I’d had my doubts from the beginning, but of course I kept them to myself. Marianne would not have regarded them as credible.”

“What doubts?”

“That working for Halton would prove to be the edifying experience everyone expected.”

“Why?”

Blair had returned to his armchair and had been quietly controlled as he reported his son’s conversation. Now he fidgeted and reached for his cognac. “I’m not sure any of this is relevant, and I’m also not sure I can be objective about Halton—” he stopped abruptly “—but I knew him at Simon Fraser, even before Marianne did, and I know his flaws go deeper than Marianne thinks they do. I was in my fourth year of economics, and Halton was a freshman trying to get into
our fraternity. He was brilliant and ambitious, but he was also an opinionated, loud-mouthed bully. He wanted in, and he didn’t care who he stepped on to get in. He’s acquired some social finesse since then and is probably more circumspect, but I imagine that ambitious bully is never far below the surface. I suspect he wouldn’t let too much stand in his way.”

Green let the man ramble on until the brandy and exhaustion had taken firm hold, and then he slipped quietly away. Driving back to the apartment to the soothing strains of Sting, he pondered what Henry Blair had said. The man was under extreme stress, his thoughts fragmented by shock and grief, and his judgment marred by resentment and envy. It was hard to know how much truth there was in his suspicions about Halton and about Jonathan’s disillusionment, and how much wishful thinking. Blair had lost his only son, and he was entitled to a lapse in realism. Green remembered how he had felt years ago when he came home to find his house empty and nothing but a cold note from his first wife: “I’ve taken Hannah. We’ve gone to Fred in Vancouver”. His daughter hadn’t died, just left his life, and yet the pain had been excruciating.

He shuddered as he entered the empty, too-quiet apartment, and he felt a powerful urge to go across and fetch Tony. But reason soon prevailed. Tony and Mrs. Louks were probably both fast asleep, and he was too exhausted to face night bottles and diapers. Self-preservation won and instead, he set the alarm for six-thirty and fell into bed. A night’s sleep would restore his equilibrium and as long as he picked up the baby before Sharon got home from the hospital at seven, he would be safe from her censure.

But when Sharon came home the next morning to find Tony in his high chair and pablum all over his face, she gave the baby a warm, knowing smile.

“So, pumpkin, did you have a good time sleeping over at Mrs. Louks?”

Green thought of protesting but decided against it. Somehow, she knew. The truth, humble and apologetic, was the wiser course.

“This case will take a lot of my time, Sharon. I can’t help that.”

Sharon kicked her shoes off, poured herself a cup of coffee, and reached over to wipe Tony’s chin. The baby responded by pounding his table with his spoon and laughing in delight.

Oh great, thought Green, the famous Levy silent treatment. He gritted his teeth. “It’s a mess, and there’s big pressure from on high.”

Sharon chucked the baby under the chin, picked up her coffee, and headed towards the bedroom, unbuttoning her cotton dress. Tony’s face fell as he stared at her retreating back, and in the next instant, he began to wail.

“Fuck it,” Green muttered and pulled him out of the high chair. He found her sitting on the bed in her underwear, massaging her swollen feet, and he sat the baby down beside her.

“I gotta go. Nice talking to you.”

He fumed all the way to the university. Maybe he was wrong, but she was barely cutting him any slack. Relationships were hard work, but you had to be willing to do the work. All right, he knew that she had a demanding job too, that wrestling with psychotics and talking down suicides could leave a person drained at the end of the day. But when would she understand that his wasn’t a job like any other, that he couldn’t just leave it behind at the end of an eight-hour shift? People’s futures, their freedom, sometimes their very lives depended on his being right. In his job, one slip-up could shatter a life.
He was acutely aware of this when he arrived at Halton’s laboratories to check further into Jonathan’s data and found David Miller already summoned to the great man’s office. The secretary had no idea how long he might be there, but Green had only waited five minutes before Halton’s door flung back and Miller blundered past him unseeing, his skin the colour of parchment.

Green sprang forward. “Dr. Miller, a word in your office, please.”

Trancelike, Miller turned towards the sound of his voice and stared uncomprehendingly.

“Inspector Green of the Ottawa Police. We spoke yesterday.”

“Oh…” Miller passed a hand over his eyes as if to clear them. “Ah…now is not a good time, Inspector.”

“This can’t wait, I’m afraid.” Green took his elbow and steered him bodily down the hall into his office. Once inside, Miller collapsed onto the swivel chair in front of his computer and plunged his head into his hands.

“What did Halton say?” Green began carefully.

Miller rocked his head back and forth. “I’m ruined. He cut off my fellowship, he’s throwing me out of the university. All my work, all my hopes…”

“Did he say why?”

“He says I sabotaged Joe’s work. I can’t believe it! He believes that putz over me! He thinks so little of me that he’d believe... Shit!” Miller broke off, sobbing. “Shit! Shit! Shit! It’s not fair! That guy has been out to get me ever since I got here and finally he’s succeeded. But how? That’s what doesn’t make any sense!”

“Did Halton tell you how he came to this conclusion?” Miller wiped tears from his eyes and tried for a deep, steadying breath. “I’m sorry. I’m not up to this right now. I can’t think straight. I need to get out of here and clear my head.”

Green rose to his feet. “I’ll buy you a coffee somewhere.”

Five minutes later, they were settled over coffee at a little sidewalk café across from the library. Although it was just after nine o’clock, the sun was harsh and the air already soggy. Traffic crawled by in front of them, exhaust fumes mingling with the heat off the asphalt, and Green felt sweat trickling down his back. He studied Miller surreptitiously. Something in the man’s initial raw shock touched a chord. It was hard to imagine that the anguish had been faked, and that the man was capable of the calculated betrayal of which he’d been accused.

The hot, bitter coffee seemed to steady Miller, drawing colour to his cheeks. Green took up the thread obliquely.

“This place hasn’t changed at all since I came here eight years ago. There’s still only one outdoor café on the whole campus.”

Miller frowned. “You went to university?”

“Masters in Criminology, piece by painful piece. Evenings, nights, weekends. Took forever!” He grinned. “You look surprised.”

“I am. I mean—a cop. I never expected...”

“I did research, I did a thesis. I know how you get to live the stuff day and night, how important it becomes to you.”

Miller shook his head. “Not enough to sabotage somebody else, if that’s what you’re suggesting. You see, I don’t view Joe’s work as competition. Joe does. His mind is full of dreams of a post-doc at Yale, and he thinks he has to be right. But that’s not how research works. I was really interested in whether his model would work. That’s what’s important, finding theories that work, building on them and chipping away bit by bit at the mystery of the brain. All our theories are wrong, Inspector. Mine is wrong, Joe’s is wrong. We’re still light years away from the truth. All we can do is find which is a little less wrong, so
we can keep expanding. Ten or twenty years down the road, scientists will look back on our work and shake their heads at the simple-mindedness of it all. Where would we be if Best had sabotaged Banting’s work? I thought Halton knew how I felt. I thought that’s one reason he took me on. I can’t believe Joe pulled it off.”