Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (148 page)

“You could drop by the
OPP
to check on the progress of the Peters investigation.”

Sullivan chuckled. “Already done that. They haven’t made much headway, but they did uncover a couple of interesting things. You want to hear them?”

Green rolled his eyes. Sullivan had always been a tease, particularly when he knew Green was hot on the scent. Never had the teasing felt so good. “You want to direct traffic,
putz?”

Sullivan laughed. “First, the
OPP
turned up an old ex-army sergeant who says he was talking to Peters in the King’s Arms bar when she received the mysterious phone call. He claims he told her Patricia Ross had been asking questions in the same bar the week before.”

“He seems to be keeping a bar stool warm at the King’s Arms. Questions about what?”

“About the campaign, the people behind it, that sort of thing. He was a bit fuzzy. He apparently told Patricia Ross he didn’t know much except that Blakeley was some military hotshot who believed in a new approach to peacekeeping. Which the sergeant apparently agreed with.”

So, thought Green with a surge of satisfaction, we’re on the right track with this military angle. After Patricia Ross returned to Ottawa, she’d embarked on the next step in her quest, a date with a mystery man. Shortly after which, she was dead.

“What’s the other interesting thing?”

“Remember the phone call the bartender says he received from someone claiming to be Peters’ partner? Well, turns out he did receive a call at approximately the right time, which came from a local cellphone.”

Green sucked in his breath. “Did you trace it?”

“Dead end. It’s a new line registered to a company called BA Securities, but its owner is well buried. The credit card is a numbered account.”

“Did the
OPP
request the phone’s logs?”

“Yeah, they know a thing or two about investigation up here, Green.”

Green ignored the bait. “Have you got the phone number? I’ll give it to our tech guys.”

It was a local 613 area code and as Green scribbled it down, he thought it looked familiar. After signing off, he scrolled through the reports Gibbs and the other officers had entered on Patricia Ross’s activities until he found the record of calls made to the payphone in the lobby of her Vanier hotel during the week before her death. Detectives had traced all the numbers, including one made by a cellphone with a 613 area code just the day before her death. Detectives had been unable to track down either the owner’s name or the address, but the cellphone was registered to a BA Securities.

Bingo. The dots were connecting.

But what the hell did they form? And what, after days of intensive search and tons of shoe leather, did they really know for sure? He had a few suspicious names, a hint of conspiracy and cover-up, but the theory holding it all together was as flimsy and insubstantial as ever. Not one witness had seen Patricia Ross sharing a drink the night of her death. Not one witness had seen a suspicious man leaving the scene of Peters’ assault. Not a single fingerprint or shoe impression had been found to tie the killer to either attack. And as for motives, the speculation about war crimes was about as improbable as blue moons.

He sat behind his desk, staring at the little piles of notes and messages that were scattered about in disarray. Had he missed something? All the crucial reports pertinent to the investigation were on computer, in a properly organized and managed case file. Yet maybe he had forgotten a little aside, not knowing its significance at the time.

He began moving the notes around, rearranging piles and discarding irrelevant notes. Suddenly at the edge of a pile, half hidden by his phone, he spotted a note he’d never seen before. It was a scrawl on a phone message slip.

“A friend called, said to tell ‘Mr. G’ to meet her at her art gallery at sunset.”

Green stared at the message in disbelief. It was dated April 28 at four o’clock. Yesterday. “Jesus Christ!” He slammed out of his office, prepared to demand which incompetent idiot had taken it, when he realized that just after four o’clock yesterday, Weiss had called in Sue Peters’ attack, and everything else had gone out the window. It felt like a lifetime ago.

Mollified, he glanced outside and saw the late afternoon sun slanting off the windshields of the cars crawling west along the Queensway. He was a day too late, but maybe Twiggy was the patient type. If she had something to tell him, she might keep going back to the aqueduct until he turned up.

Some day at end of July, 1993. Maslenica Bridge, Sector South.

Our section just had our first night at the OP
, sitting up on
the top of this hill. Man, was it freaky! We’re supposed to be
watching this bridge to count and identify each vehicle that
crosses. Now this is not a real bridge, because the Serbs blew
that up when the Croats invaded, so now it’s just a pontoon
bridge that the Serbs lob artillery at all the time. We can
hardly see it with binoculars, let alone
ID
the vehicle type.

Anyway, there are Serbs in the hills behind us and Croats
in the valley below, and they’re firing away at each other and
the shells are whizzing right over our heads. Multiple rocket
launchers. Whup, whup, whup when they launch. Kaboom,
kaboom, kaboom a few seconds later when they land. And
we’re going Holy Shit! And Sarge is on the radio, screaming to
the Hammer, and the Hammer’s screaming to the
OC
, who’s
down on the beach, to get us out of here. It’s a miracle we all
survived. On the way down, the mountain was littered with
corpses. You couldn’t even tell which side they were on, because
they had no uniforms. We had to bag them and bring themdown. I can still smell the stink on me.

It was past seven o’clock, and the last rays of sunlight burnished the tree tops as Green headed west along Albert Street towards the aqueduct. The police tape had been removed from the crime scene, and every single piece of trash had been picked up by the Ident officers, leaving the little hideaway unnaturally pristine. The wall paintings glinted bold red and blue in the sun, but the place was empty. Not even the stoned teens or wasted drunks had returned, as if Patricia’s death still hung like a pall overhead.

Green searched for telltale signs of Twiggy’s presence, but her garbage bag and her tattered pile of newspaper were nowhere to be seen. His shouts went unanswered. He climbed back into his car and tried to remember where she hung out. In the early days of her exile, she’d sometimes gone to the women’s shelters or the “Y”, but she’d resented their attempts to fix her life and preferred to take her chances on the open streets. She said shelters were for people who were trying to put their lives together. She had none left to put together.

Nonetheless, he phoned around. The women’s shelters had not seen her, nor had the food bank or drop-in centres. With a growing sense of unease, he phoned the hospitals. It took a lot of wheedling and pulling rank, but eventually he got his answer. None of the hospitals had admitted a street woman fitting her description. It was small comfort that, had she turned up at the morgue, he would already have been informed.

The sun was just below the horizon and the streets were sinking into shadow when he remembered her reference to the Tim Hortons on Bank Street. The manager there gave her coffee, she said, better than anything the police had on offer.

Starting the car, he shoved it into gear and shot out of the parking lot through the traffic. He raced back towards downtown, did an illegal left turn onto Bank Street and parked in front of the modest coffee shop tucked between a magazine store and a shwarma take-out. The closed sign was up, but he could see someone sweeping inside. He hammered on the door and plastered his badge against the glass. The man’s scowl turned to consternation as he hustled forward to unlock the door. He had a Middle Eastern complexion with a heavy five o’clock shadow and the most mournful black eyes Green had ever seen.

“I was just closing,” he said without a trace of an accent. “Is there a problem?”

“Do you know a fat woman named Twiggy? She comes to your store for coffee.”

“Yes.” The man’s eyes slitted warily. “Why? Is that a problem?” Why did the man assume a police officer always meanttrouble? Even as he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. The world had changed for this man since September 11.

Green found himself apologizing. “I’m sorry. No problem, I’m just concerned. She’s a witness, and I’m trying to locate her.” Belatedly he offered his hand. “I’m Inspector Michael Green.”

The man stared at Green’s hand, then reached forward to take it cautiously in his. When Green didn’t bite, he seemed to relax. “Hassim Mohammed. And I haven’t seen her today. I’ve been worried, because she’s not a very healthy woman.”

Green recorded his name and address. “When did you last see her?”

“Two days ago? Thursday. She came for her coffee, then went off. She said she had a call to make. But there was a—” Alarm widened his melancholy eyes. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“I told her about a man who was asking about her. She asked me a whole lot of questions about him—like what name he called her—and I know she didn’t want him to find her.”

The first fingers of fear brushed Green’s spine. “Can you describe this man?”

“Dark business suit, Canadian.” He paused. “I mean white. He was wearing sunglasses, he had blond hair.

“Height and weight?”

“Taller than you. Maybe six feet. Well built but not heavy. One-eighty?”

“Age?” The man scrunched up his face and blew air into his cheeks.

“Thirties? Maybe more. It’s hard to tell with the sunglasses.”

Green probed with a few more questions, but the description did not improve. As it stood, it was too generic to be of much help and could apply to several of the men in the case. He suppressed his frustration with an effort.

“What questions did this man ask you?”

“Did I know her, where she usually stayed, when was she coming to my place again.”

“And what name did he call her?”

“None. He just called her the fat woman.” Hassim’s eyes had been growing larger with each question. “Is she all right? Has something happened to her?”

“At this point I just want to locate her.” Green held out his card. “If she shows up, or you remember anything else, call me at that number. And I’d like you to come down to the station tomorrow to work with our police artist. We’ll see if we can work up a sketch.”

“Oh!” Hassim’s eyes darted anxiously. “Well, the store...”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Mohammed. It won’t take long, and it might help us find Twiggy.”

He sighed with resignation as he took the card. “She was my teacher,you know. Grade Seven. But I don’t think she remembers me.”

Oh, I’m sure she does, Green thought grimly. A profound wave of sadness and anxiety swept through him. But for Twiggy, that teacher doesn’t exist any more.

NINETEEN

 G
reen hadn’t had the dream in years. It was a flashback more than a dream, so vivid that he often woke from it bathed in sweat. It began as it always did, with a call from dispatch about a reported domestic disturbance in Alta Vista, a quiet neighbourhood of winding crescents, leafy trees and sprawling bungalows. Professors, accountants and civil servants lived there, enjoying their perennial gardens and stone patios.

It was a peaceful, starlit night in May when the call came in, and the streets were deserted. Green was wrapping up a routine canvass in a nearby apartment building on Bank Street, and he was only a few minutes away. As he listened to the agitated radio chatter back and forth between the responding officers and dispatch, he could hear a woman screaming in the background. Dispatch sent more squad cars and contacted the Tactical Unit, so soon the howl of sirens filled the quiet night.

Green radioed in as he headed towards the scene. “I’m on my way in case they need
CID
.”

When he arrived, the street was a mob scene. Cruisers blocked off the street, neighbours were hovering on front porches, shivering in their night clothes, and a dozen uniforms were deployed around the perimeter of a yard in the middle of it all. Radios barked and emergency roof lights splashed the scene with surreal red and blue.

The house at the centre of the drama was eerily still. Light shone in the upstairs windows, but the screaming had stopped. An officer was training his binoculars on each window in turn. Green edged his way into earshot.

“No signs of activity, sir,” the officer said to his patrol sergeant, who had just arrived.

The sergeant swore softly. “Try phoning.”

The phone rang endlessly through the house without response. The Tactical Unit arrived and used a bullhorn to order everyone inside to come out. Still nothing. The unit huddled together, planning their entry as the sergeant tried to establish how many lived in the house and who slept where. He conferred in an inaudible whisper with a man Green took to be a neighbour.

Green wandered over to a group of neighbours clustered behind the barricades, who watched his approach with a mixture of excitement and shock.

“Who called 911?” he asked.

“Several of us did.” A tall, spindly man detached himself from the crowd. He was wearing striped pyjama bottoms and a terrycloth robe, which he hugged around himself. Despite it, he was trembling, and in the darkness his eyes were bright with fear. “I’ve already told the police what I know. Are you a reporter?”

Green shook his head. “I’m Sergeant Green with Major Crimes.”

“They’re a nice couple. He’s a professor, she’s a teacher. Never a loud word. Their boys are a handful, but they are so patient with them. Sweet Jesus, I hope nothing bad happened.”

“What made you call 911?”