Murder in Focus
Authors: Medora Sale
A John Sanders/Harriet Jeffries Mystery
Medora Sale
To Denise,
a small return for all that she has done
Ottawa: Thursday, April 20
Superintendent Henri Deschenes of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Security ServiceâOperations) opened his car door and paused before getting out. The pause might have been for thought, or for sentimental appreciation of the beauty of the spring day, but it wasn't. Difficult as it was for him to admit, that pause was to gather enough strength to walk across the parking lot, into the building, and over to the elevator with an appearance of normality. This was his third morning at work after almost three months flat on his back, three months lost because he had tried to spend January working eighteen-hour days while incubating a case of pneumonia. It was the first sick leave he had ever taken, and now he felt aggrieved because he was even more tired this morning than he had been yesterday. What had been the point of all that rest? He got out of the car and straightened up. The cold wind whipped his clothes, all suddenly much too loose on his thin frame, and threatened to blow him over. He bent into it and marched, grimly, into the building.
Sylvia looked up from the morning's mail as he walked into the office. “You should be home in bed,” she said in greeting. “You look like hell.”
“I'm fine,” he said. His shoulders tightened in irritation.
“And that snotty-faced brat from External is in there already, waiting for you. Sorry. I told you to stay home today.”
“Metcalfe?”
“The one and only. Do you want coffee? Or should I just go in and tell him you aren't coming in? You can hide in Charlie Higgs's office. He won't mind.”
He smiled at his secretaryâa thin, weary smileâand shook his head. “Coffee, yes.” The smile vanished. “I have to deal with Metcalfe at some point, and it might as well be now. And for chrissake, stop fussing over me,” he added with a flash of anger. “I am not ill anymore.”
“And I'm the queen of Morocco,” said Sylvia, not at all cowed. “The bloody trade conference will go on even if you're not here, you know. And no one is going to get assassinated. This is Ottawa, for God's sake, not Beirut. Sir.” She stood up. “I'll get you your coffee. Do you suppose the Boy Wonder wants some cookies with his?”
Henri Deschenes took a deep breath, felt the familiar stab of pain under a lower right rib from the lingering effects of pleurisy, and squared his shoulders. He hadn't wasted a moment thinking about standing upright since he'd been a rookie. Until this week. He threw open his door in a parody of his old vigor, hung up his coat, and turned to face the overeducated junior would-be diplomat from External Affairs who was lounging at ease in the visitor's chair. On his knee there rested a large file ostentatiously labeled, in large white letters within a bright blue diagonal slash across its front cover, “Third International Conference on Tariffs and Trade.”
Twenty rambling minutes later, the atmosphere in Deschenes's office had become very tense. “What in hell are you talking aboutâthe tour of the countryside?” snapped Deschenes. “They fly into Uplands, Forces Base side, direct to Hangar Eleven. Guard of honor for heads of state. Then the army picks them up and drives them to their various embassiesâ”
“I'm beginning to think that's not such a good idea,” said Hal Metcalfe brightly. “It might have been better to whisk them off somewhere where they can be kept under guard all the time. We could still hold the conference in the Gatineauâ”
“It wasn't my idea to have the delegates scattered all over hell's half acre, Metcalfe.” Deschenes's words were being dragged painfully out through his tightened jaw. “Remember? Before I went on leave, this was just another international conference. That was before your boss and my deputy director general got their hands on it. At least you've put the top-level meetings into a secure area.” His hands lay clasped tightly together on his desk, and his entire body remained rigidly immobile. “I come back from three months' leave and I find that twenty senior officials and their aides, from twenty countries, are going to be staying in at least twentyâno, it's more like a hundredâdifferent places. And we have the same number of trained men we had three months ago, not twenty times as many. You might point that out to your minister nowâjust so he isn't surprised when some of them get blown into oblivion and come raining down all over Hull.” He unclenched his hands and reached into a drawer for his own file on the trade conference, marked “Sea Gull” in discreet red lettering. “But the program's been set for weeks.” He tapped the manila folder impatiently. “There's nothing here about a tour of the countryside. They're not supposed to have time to go sightseeing. This is a working conference, and don't let your minister get any crazy ideas about anything else.”
“It's too late.” Metcalfe's voice was flat and gloomy. “It seems when the minister was in Germany last week he got into discussions with industry and trade relations people there. They were talking about expanding facilities into Canadaâopening up new auto plants and kitchen gadget factories and I don't know what all kinds of crap like that. Anyway, he came up with this wonderful idea of a tour for anyone who wanted to come alongâyou know, possible sites for new industry, Halifax, St. John, Sherbrookeâ”
“Sherbrooke?” Deschenes's eyes appeared to glaze over as Metcalfe named his hometown.
“You know the drill; spread it around. The Maritimes, Quebec, then a couple of days in Torontoâ”
“All twenty groups?”
“I don't know.” Metcalfe shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe not. He wanted to take everybody out to Calgary and then Vancouver, but they don't have the time. He was disappointed.” He grinned. “He had been able to see himself in the news for at least five minutes every night for two weeks.”
“I see. And I am expected to supply security on that level for a tour of factories, building sites, industrial parks?” Deschenes's voice began to rise.
“They realized that might be a problem,” said Metcalfe apologetically.
“Oh, good.”
“And what they want you to do is organize a training seminar for local police forces in all the towns and cities where the officials might want to visit.” Metcalfe produced this statement as if it were the most natural thing in the world to suggest.
“Us? I see.” At moments like this Deschenes's sentences came out in clipped little bursts with significant pauses in between each. In a temper, he reverted to the speech patterns of his French father instead of his English mother. “Do you know,” he snapped, “what today's date is?” He pulled a desk calendar over in front of him. “It is the twentieth day of April. And do you know when the first delegates are supposed to arrive in Ottawa? The eighteenth day of May. The goddamn conference begins on the nineteenth. And just when am I supposed to train the police from God knows how many cities in the finer points of security? And who am I supposed to use to do the training?” He took a deep breath and surreptitiously pressed his hand over his lower right rib.
“Well . . .” Metcalfe hesitated. “The deputy minister thought that you could use the Special Emergency Response Team squad for trainingâafter all, they never have much to doâ”
“Holy Mary,” muttered Deschenes. “SERT? We're trying to protect the poor bastards, not massacre them ourselves. He's crazy,” he said, shaking his head. “You start teaching a bunch of untrained small-town cops how to rush a group of armed and dangerous menâin five or six days, or however much time they give usâand you'll end up with a lot of trigger-happy maniacs. They'd kill everyone in sight if trouble turned up. They're better off not knowing anything.”
Metcalfe paid no attention. “. . . and that each municipality would send you one representative, and that man could go back and explain what to do to everyone else. So you wouldn't need a whole lot of instructors.” Metcalfe tried to look Deschenes in the eye and failed. “Great idea, eh?”
The choking silence spread through the room. “Actually, that's not so bad.” Deschenes pulled thoughtfully at his mustache. “That means that we really wouldn't have to train anybody. We wouldn't use SERT, of course.” He stared off into a corner, counting off points on his fingers as he spoke, but muttering so softly that Metcalfe had to strain to hear him. “We just shoot the breeze about security problems and then pray. Besides, some of these cities do their own security as well as we would. We'll send our own people into the places that don't have enough manpower.” He turned back to Metcalfe, brisk and business-like once more. “Do you think your minister would let us vet the itinerary for this tour? We might be able to eliminate some of the more difficult locations. Before I resign?”
In Toronto a week later, a senior officer in the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force stood in his office with a memo in his hand and a look of outrage on his face. “What in hell do those bloody idiots in the Mounties think they are? Teach us how to manage security? When did we last lose someone?” His secretary waited patiently for the eruption to cease. “Papal visit,” he muttered, “royals, even Americans. Not a hitch.” His voice died away in a series of incoherent mumbles.
“Shall I tell them we don't need to send someone?”
“Oh, for God's sake, don't do that. They'll get offended, and there'll be hell to pay. And if anything goes wrong, it'll be our fault for not going. Tell them thatâuh, let's seeâTom Flanagan will be down. He has a pal in the RCMP. He won't mind. Call Flanagan, will you?”
“Inspector Flanagan has been off on sick leave recently.” Her voice was sweet but inflexible. “He's back on duty, but his ulcer is still bothering him.”
“Bloody hell. I'd better see how he is first. But then,” he said, brightening, “a week of sweet f.a. in Ottawa will do him no end of good.”
Wednesday, April 26
Superintendent Henri Deschenes was at his desk, experimenting with various postures, trying to find one that allowed him a certain air of authorityâor at least dignityâwithout putting stress on his aching ribcage. There didn't seem to be one. His door opened and Sylvia poked her head into the room. “My God, you look as if someone starched your underwear,” she said. “Are you all right?” He glared at her. “I see you are. Good. Charlie Higgs and Ian MacMillan are here. I'll send them in, shall I?” Her head disappeared before he had a chance to respond.
Two men walked into the room and Deschenes stood up. One was thin and gloomy, sunken-cheeked, and dark in hair and eyes; the other was fair and freckled, broad-shouldered, sandy-haired, and hearty in manner. Henri Deschenes was not a particularly small man, but these two filled the room on the other side of the desk. Deschenes sat down again, unperturbed. He was used to being dwarfed by his subordinates. There was a stack of files marked “Sea Gull” on one side of his desk and a single piece of paper in front of him.
“The training seminar for local police forces has been dumped back on us,” he said without preamble. The two men sat down. “I tried to push it off on someone who isn't as swamped right now as we are, but no luck.” He spoke without rancor. He picked up the memo from his desk. “This is my memo to the deputy director general. I thought you both ought to hear it before I send it on.”
He read in a flat, expressionless tone. “âRe: Security Seminar. Staffing in this department, as you are aware, is particularly tight at the moment and the trade conference is putting extra strain on the department, which is already below minimal strength. In addition, I have few men at my disposal whom I would choose to run an operation that is likely to become politically sensitive. Therefore I am relieving Inspector Charles Higgs of his duties as chief security officer for the conference's secure site and seconding him to this seminar. He understands the problems and will be able to communicate solutions effectively. I trust that the director general and the Department of External Affairs consider this duty to be worth the reduction in effectiveness at the site that it will cause.' That's a warning to the director and to the minister to stop buggering around with our arrangements,” he said with sudden ferocity and uncharacteristic crudeness. “Sylvia wrote it. She's good at these things.” He nodded and leaned back, looking from one to the other in turn.
“Politically sensitive?” said the dark man.
“When one of those delegates gets blown up in Sault Sainte Marie, ten feet away from the guy you trained, there's going to be a hell of a lot of fallout, Charlie. So be prepared.”
“Wonderful,” said Charlie Higgs, looking even gloomier than he had when he walked into the room.
“With luck we'll be able to blame it all on Deputy Minister bloody Gifford,” said Deschenes. “I'm sorry, Charlie. I really did think we were going to be able to push this thing off onto Training and Development and get rid of it, but Benton's smarter than I took him for. He dumped it right back on us.”
“It's going to take a long time to set all this up, you know,” said Higgs. His tone had shifted from gloomy to hostile. “Jesus, I'm going to have to find lecture rooms and accommodations and . . .” His voice trailed away hopelessly.
“Just as long as you've got rid of them all before the conference starts. Or at least before the delegates set out for their little tour, Charlie. That's all we need. To be able to say we did it. Okay?” He straightened up again to signal the end of the interview. They both stood up. “A word with you, Ian. Thanks, Charlie. Work out some sort of agenda and let me have a look at it, eh?” Higgs nodded and left the room in silence.
“A lousy job,” said Deschenes, shaking his head. “I hate giving it to anyone. But Charlie should be able to handle it. Sit down, Ian. This leaves us in something of a hole as far as the conference goes, of course.”
Inspector Ian MacMillan abandoned formality and settled himself down in the more comfortable of the two chairs in front of Deschenes's desk, stretching his legs out in front of him. “You want me to take over the secure site from Charlie?” he said. “Sounds kind of interesting. I haven't even been out there yet.”