Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (19 page)

“No,” he gasped, pushing her away.

She reached for him. “Why not?”

He kept her at bay, shaking his head. “You want to.”

His denial stuck in his throat. His heart hammered, and his hands shook as he pulled his pants back up. “I’m a police officer. You’re a witness.”

She gripped his shirt, pulled him to her and kissed him. “When the case is over, then. You’re the sexiest man to come into my life in a long time!”

He felt her thigh on his, her warm breath on his cheek. Not daring to answer, he seized his jacket and fled.

He was still shaking when he arrived at his office, and he was sure his guilt was written all over his face. But the receptionist, upon seeing him, held up her hand as if nothing had changed.

“Oh, Inspector Green! A Mr. Peter Weiss is on the line.”

“Mike,” a detective called from across the room. “Sullivan gave up and went without you for the Haddad search. Took Watts and Charbonneau.”

Shaking his head towards the receptionist, he crossed the squad room, reaching to smooth his hair and straighten his tie. His hands closed on nothing. His tie was gone! Vaguely he remembered her yanking it off and tossing it on the floor
before reaching for his belt. Shit, he thought, as he realized that unless he wanted to write the tie off, he would have to return to her apartment to retrieve it. Oh God!

He was so shaken that he almost tripped over a roly-poly man in a black T-shirt and purple shorts sitting in a chair outside his office. Beside him was a leggy brunette in a flowing cotton dress. Beautiful women everywhere, he thought.

“What the hell do you want?” he snapped, more peevishly than necessary.

The man flushed. “I want nothing. You want me.”

Green hesitated, scrambling to reassemble his thoughts. The neuropsychology professor from McGill. “Dr. Baker?”

“Stan Baker. And this is my graduate student, Melanie Legault. I assume you’re Inspector Green?”

It was Green’s turn to redden. He shook their hands and ushered them into his office. “My apologies, Doctor. Things are moving very fast in this case, and I appreciate your agreeing to help us.”

“For a thousand dollars a day,” Baker reminded him. “Therefore, I suggest we get started, since having me wait half the day outside your office is hardly a good use of the law enforcement budget.”

“The computers and files are over at the university in a sealed room. For evidentiary purposes there must be an officer present at all times, but he won’t disturb you. Do you need anything? A secretary...?”

Baker was shaking his round head impatiently. “We need a ten-cup pot of black coffee, four cheese Danish and six hours of uninterrupted peace and quiet.”

When the little professor laid eyes on the massive computers and stacks of boxes which ringed Halton’s lab, Green felt a twinge of satisfaction. That ought to shut the
pompous twerp up for a day or two, he thought. Although perhaps being holed up with the luscious, long-limbed Melanie was just what the professor had hoped for. Such sweet distraction… Making his way back to the station, he tried to turn his mind to what he should do next. He needed to arrange protection for Carrie and then get to work putting Halton’s empire under a magnifying glass.

The sexiest man to come into her life in a long time, she had said! Me—skinny, freckled, big nose and all! He felt a new rush of desire at the heady thought of it and had to lean against the elevator wall. For some reason, women often found policemen attractive, and all his male colleagues had been targets of aggressive admirers, but such attention was rare for Green. Sometimes his boyish charm and air of vulnerability had worked, when that curious mix of sexual attraction and maternal instinct made them want to take care of him. But it usually took time and persistence, of which he used to have plenty, and he had never known it to happen without his trying.

Had maturity, fatherhood or four years with Sharon given him an extra edge? A confidence or authority? A certain mystique or unattainability? Had he been too anxious and eager before? He had succumbed to every shapely curve and sexy smile that came his way in the ten years between his marriages, and had become the laughingstock and the secret envy of half the Force. He was searching, he had told himself; he would know when he found her. And he thought he had, until now.

Goddamn it, enough of this, he thought, pushing himself off the elevator wall. The necktie had to stay where it was, and his mind had to stay on the job. When the door opened, he strode into the squad room prepared to order Carrie’s
protection and then get his mind firmly back on Halton’s past. But no sooner had he entered than all that was forgotten. The squad room buzzed with excitement, and at the centre was Brian Sullivan, triumphantly returned from his search.

“Mike! Paydirt! An absolute goddamn goldmine! In Pierre Haddad’s garage, stuffed in with a bunch of car cleaning equipment, we found a knife and a shirt. Jonathan Blair’s blood type is on both of them!”

“You’ve got to understand, Mike,” the serologist lectured. He was used to working with Green and was immune to his impatience. This cluttered, fluorescent-lit laboratory, lined with computers, scanners, microscopes and coloured bottles, was his turf. “You’re lucky I can give you anything from what I had to work with. It was hot in the garage. The knife was washed clean, and so was the shirt. If it weren’t for the engraving on the knife handle and the lousy job the guy did washing the shirt, I’d have nothing but blood, period. As it is, I can give you A positive. The victim’s blood type. As for more detailed subgrouping, forget it. The sample’s too broken down.”

Green picked up the clear plastic evidence bag containing the knife. It was a dagger with an eight-inch, double-edged steel blade and an ornate, jewel-encrusted silver handle. He turned it over in his hands. “Looks Arabic.”

“Certainly not your average Canadian hunting knife.”

“Anything on the shirt?”

The serologist shrugged. “Hair and Fibre’s got it now. Maybe they can tell you more.”

The technician from the Hair and Fibre Division of the RCMP Forensics Sciences Lab was just sealing a little box of
slides and labelling it when Green walked into the lab. He removed his thick bifocals to rub his eyes then gave Green a doleful smile.

“Fastest job I’ve ever done. Got a call from the Director himself telling me to move it.”

“What did you find out?”

“The shirt was spot-washed with Ivory bar soap. It left a lot of soap residue and didn’t get all the blood out. I’d say it was someone who didn’t know much about washing.”

“Like a man?”

Winkler shrugged. “Speak for yourself, Green. I’m a bachelor myself. To get blood out, you use cold water, not hot. Heat sets it, and that’s what happened here.”

“Well, that’s a big help. Odds are already 99 out of 100 it’s a man anyway.”

The elderly technician put his glasses back on, scratched his nose and fidgeted with his box of slides. “I do have something else.”

“What!”

“A hair, thick and wavy, dark brown. Found it stuck in the neckline of the shirt. I’ve sent it to DNA.”

Green searched through his memory of the photos. All three Haddads had dark hair, but the father’s was stranded with silver. The younger son Paul had black hair cropped close to his head, but Edward had a thick head of rich black curls.

“How curly? Like a black?”

Winkler shook his head. “Oh no. Caucasian—Italian, Greek maybe.”

“Lebanese?”

“Sure, any person with dark brown hair. The gene pool is all mixed up among those Mediterranean peoples anyway. The Greeks and Romans invaded the Arab peninsula, then—”

Green raised a hand to interrupt the history lesson. “Anything else you can tell me about our man from the hair? Is it enough to give us a match?”

“You bring me a suspect, and we’ll see.”

“I think it’s time to do just that.” Green picked up the phone, relieved to find Sullivan at the station. “Brian, get three teams together. I want all three Haddads picked up for questioning simultaneously, Pierre and his two sons. And don’t tell them a goddamn thing. I want them good and spooked.”

Ten

Two hours later,
Green found himself in a small beige interview room face to face with Pierre Haddad. Sullivan sat in the corner, discreetly taking notes. The fat man was stolidly planted at the table, and despite the icy climate control of the windowless room, he was sweating profusely.

“My apologies for keeping you waiting, Mr. Haddad, but this is a very complex case. I’m pursuing a lot of leads, and there’s only one of me. I think you can appreciate that, because of the sensitive nature of the case, I’m conducting all the interviews personally. I hope my men have made you comfortable. Would you like a drink or a snack?”

“Nothing,” Haddad snapped. He was trying to sound outraged, but Green sensed panic. He sat down across the table, set a brown paper bag unobtrusively at his feet, and calmly recited the caution. Sometimes that was enough to shake a blustering witness, but Haddad listened poker-faced and then declined a lawyer, saying that he’d done nothing wrong.

Green acknowledged the denial with a slight nod of the head. “Now, Mr. Haddad, in our first discussion yesterday, you indicated that you didn’t know the murdered man, Jonathan Blair, and that you knew little about your niece’s activities at university. I have evidence to the contrary.” Slowly, Green flipped open a thick notebook, one of his favourite dramatic props. “Is there anything you’d like to add now,
before I question you about that evidence?”

Haddad wiped the sweat which was trickling down his temples. “What evidence are you talking about?”

“Evidence that Raquel’s ticket to Beirut was booked at six o’clock on the evening Blair was murdered, not several weeks in advance, as holidays usually are.”

Haddad snorted. “So what?”

“Evidence that Raquel was Blair’s girlfriend and his lover for at least two weeks before his death.”

“I told you I never knew—”

“Evidence that you had an argument with Raquel on the steps of the science building at four o’clock, just hours before Blair was murdered. An eyewitness identified you both.”

For the first time, Haddad’s bluster faded. He glared at Green mutely.

Green flipped a page. “Evidence that your sons Edward and Paul forcibly took Raquel away from Jonathan at six-thirty, half an hour after you’d booked her plane ticket. They were in the student coffee shop, your sons argued with Blair, and when he tried to help Raquel, they assaulted him. Another student witnessed the whole thing.”

Haddad had turned from flushed to ashen. He seemed about to deny everything but checked himself. The silence lengthened, and Green let him stew. Finally, Haddad glowered.

“Is it against the law to talk to your niece? For her family to take her away from a boy they do not like?”

“Then you’re saying you knew about Jonathan Blair?”

Haddad nodded impatiently. “Yes, all right! I knew about him. Raquel is young. Canadian girls—they have more freedom than Lebanese girls. They don’t listen to their family. Raquel wanted to be like a Canadian girl, too wild. It’s no good.”

“So you forced her to go back to Lebanon?”

“Forced? No. She listened to her family. She knows it is best for her.”

“Mr. Haddad, she was screaming and crying. Your sons had to drag her away.”

“It was because of him! Because he was trying to control her mind. Later, after she talked to me, she knew I was right. I don’t care if you don’t understand this, sir. Or if you agree or not. Your way is for you. For me and my family, this way is right.”

“As simple as that? You talk to her and she forgets all about Jonathan Blair, her freedom, her future, her dreams?”

“She remembered our ways.”

“And just by chance, Jonathan Blair is stabbed to death a couple of hours later.”

“That has nothing to do with it! I took Raquel away from him. End of story!”

“We have a witness who saw your sons assault him. How do you know they didn’t return to finish the job?”

“Because they are good boys! They go to college, Eddie is going to be a lawyer.”

Reaching into the bag at his feet, Green withdrew the plastic bag containing a black shirt and laid it on the table between them. “Do you recognize this shirt, Mr. Haddad?”

Haddad began to shake his head.

“Check it very carefully, sir.”

Haddad turned the bag over, held it up and checked the label. Again he shook his head. “Not my size or my taste.”

“Your sons’, maybe?”

A veil of inscrutability descended, and Haddad said nothing for several seconds. Green waited patiently.

“My sons don’t wear such clothes.”

Green laid down the bag with the knife. In the silence,
Haddad sucked in his breath.

“Do you recognize this knife?”

“I saw knives like it, but not that one.”

“Where did you see them?”

Haddad recovered enough to snort with derision. “These knives are sold by the hundreds in the tourist shops in Beirut. Even here in Canada, in a Middle East bazaar.”

“So it’s a Middle Eastern knife?”

“Bedouin. Not real, of course. For show.”

“Do you own one?”

Haddad’s eyes met his coldly. “I do not own that one or any other one. What is this about?”

“Your sons? Surely one of you owns one if they’re so common.”

“Not in my family.”

“This knife was found hidden in your garage. It has Jonathan Blair’s blood on it.”

The fat man wheezed. “That…that’s not possible!”

Green shook his head. “We searched your house this morning. These are what we found.”

Haddad’s eyes darted back and forth between the knife and Green’s face. Green saw in them the dawning of panic.

“It’s a trick!” Haddad hissed. “You put them there!”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you need somebody to arrest. Why not a Lebanese?”

Green leaned back in his chair, quiet and firm. “I operate on facts, Mr. Haddad. Other people may get emotional and jump to conclusions, but I wait till all the facts are in. That’s what I’m doing here.” He held up his hand and began to check off on his fingers. “Fact one: this knife is the murder weapon. Fact two: it was found in your garage. I need an explanation.”