Murder in Focus (8 page)

Sanders stood for a moment where he was and watched her make her way toward the door, before heading after her into the cold spring air.

There was still a hint of twilight in the sky to the west beyond Parliament Hill, and in the soft light Harriet Jeffries looked startlingly lovely. She had traded her jeans for a dress of gray, loose-waisted, full-skirted, and cut high to the neck. It had the paradoxical effect of making her look more desirable than the acres of semi-exposed bosoms in the lobby. Sanders sat down on the edge of a concrete planter to look at her. She walked back and forth restlessly in front of him, talking ceaselessly and with earnest intensity about the music, until she leaned over him to point out something on the program, which he still held in his hand. Her faintly perfumed hair fell down over his cheek, and her breast brushed against his shoulder. He looked irritably at the crowds of people who had poured out of the lobby with them and tried to keep his mind on talk of music.

Karl Lang was making his way slowly across the lobby in the general direction of the crowd from the Austrian embassy who were circling the prime minister like a flock of tugboats, nudging him toward the room set aside for his intermission refreshment. He bumped into the tall and pretty girl from External Affairs and changed course abruptly. “Miss Henderson,” he said with pleasure in his voice, “so delighted to see you.”

“Hello, Herr Lang.” Her cheeks were pink with excitement, making her eyes look brighter and livelier than ever. “Isn't it a magnificent concert? I've never been to anything so wonderful.”

Herr Lang smiled indulgently. He wouldn't have placed it quite at that level—in fact, he thought Anna Maria was a little off her stride tonight—but the child was young, no doubt, and unused to live performances. “Where are you sitting?” he asked. “I hope you have a good view.”

“It's not bad,” she said. “Up there.” And she waved vaguely in the direction of the doors that led to farthest corners in the hall. “I can hear really well.”

“Are you by yourself?” She nodded. “Look, I have two tickets. They're splendid seats, center front. I was supposed to be bringing a business acquaintance, but he developed some sort of late-blooming spring cold. Actually, I suspect that he couldn't face an entire evening of unrelieved good music. But I would be charmed if you would take the other seat. If you don't mind sitting beside a sentimental Viennese,” he added disarmingly.

She hesitated a moment and blushed slightly. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Lang,” she said at last. “I'd love to. Everyone's being so nice to me.”

“Anyone likes to see these things go to someone who really enjoys them,” he said, a trifle sententiously. “Shall we go and investigate the seating?”

“I must run and get my coat,” she said. “I left it up there.”

“Well, well,” said Toni Bleibtreu to his friend Hal Metcalfe. “Look at that devious fox.” They were standing indecisively in front of the room where the prime minister had just been berthed.

“Who?” said Hal. “Oh, him. And, Toni, foxes are wily, not devious. If you're going to be colourful and colloquial, try to get it right.”

“This one is devious.”

“Why do you call him that?” said a third voice from the doorway. “It is not the term I would have thought to apply to him.” The English was accented, but careful.

“Oh, good evening,” said Bleibtreu, drawing the speaker invisibly into the group. “Hal Metcalfe. Carlo Hoffel, our . . .” He looked over and caught the slight frown. “One of our early-arriving delegates. And it's very obvious. Karl Lang, everybody's pal, the kind you trust with your wife or your mistress. He has captured Sarah Henderson, that pretty creature from External who was at last night's party, and seems to be carrying her off to the empty seat beside him. Do you suppose he always buys two tickets so he can seduce pretty girls in the cheap seats?” Hoffel smiled gently and shifted position enough to follow their progress through the lobby.

“Perhaps.” Hal stared at her in turn, trying to remember what was significant about her besides her long legs and sweet face, but last night's alcoholic haze dropped a curtain down on whatever it was. Probably nothing. “Are you both going to the reception after the concert?”

“
Nat
ü
rlich
. And so are you, I hope.”

“I shouldn't. My boss would like me to be in and functioning by six a.m. tomorrow. But I shall. Has Lang invited that little creature?”

Toni shook his head. “I don't know. But if he can lure her down in amongst the snoring contingent from the diplomatic, he can certainly lure her to a free booze-up. And if he can't, I will. She's almost as delicious as the
artiste
.”

“Booze-up! Delicious! My God, Toni, where are you picking these things up?”

Bleibtreu winked and headed in the direction of a pretty redhead who was standing, looking mildly bewildered, in the middle of the lobby.

“Are you here on business?” said a voice behind him. “Or on a cultural mission?”

Metcalfe whirled around, startled, and found himself looking up at the gloomy visage of Inspector Charles Higgs. “A little of both, actually,” Metcalfe said. “I mean, I had no choice, but on the other hand, I would have come anyway.” He frowned. These goddamn security people always afflicted him with a need to maintain a constant line of foolish chatter. “Not much doing, though,” he added. “The Austrian P.M. looks to be pretty thoroughly walled in there. And none of the other big shots seems to be here yet.”

“Mmm,” said Higgs non-committedly. “Arriving Thursday, most of them.”

“I wonder what the Austrians are gearing up for, though,” added Metcalfe brightly.

“Gearing up? What in hell do you mean by that?” said Higgs.

“Well, they seem to have brought Hoffel along,” he said, nodding in the direction of the broad shoulders and stocky frame of the Austrian delegate they had been talking to. “You know, their deputy security head. Rather large cannon for a conference like this, I would say.” Metcalfe glanced around him with a somewhat desperate look on his face. “Jesus,” he said with relief, “there's my boss over there glaring viciously at me. If I don't move I'll be on the Pago Pago desk tomorrow.”

Higgs looked long and intently over at the burly Austrian. At last he took out his notebook and scribbled down a few words as the lowered lights began to chase patrons back to their seats.

“Where would you like to eat?” asked Harriet. They had broken away from the crowds milling about in front of the Arts Centre and had started walking slowly down Elgin. “But that's not really fair, is it? Not when you don't know what there is. What kind of food do you feel like?”

“Oddly enough,” said Sanders, looking down at her in the light of a street lamp, and feeling another sort of emptiness, “I am not particularly hungry.”

They were walking down from the Arts Centre, roughly following the path of the canal. “Look at that,” said Harriet, grabbing his arm and pointing over to the left. “Isn't it gorgeous? It's my favorite building in the entire city, though I wouldn't want you to tell the architect who hired me that, and it isn't even made of stone, so I can't include it in my book.”

“What is it?” asked Sanders.

“It's the old Drill Hall.” She dropped his arm and walked slowly on. “It's funny, but I'm not hungry either. How about a drink somewhere?”

“Sure,” he said. “Good idea. Anywhere in particular?” he asked lightly.

She stopped, frowning. “What about there?” she said, with a wave in the direction of any one of a number of establishments across the street.

Without waiting for a reply she stepped out onto the road. Almost at once Sanders grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back. She stumbled and fell against his chest; he encircled her with his other arm to steady her. “Hey!” she snapped, shaking herself free. “What in hell do you think you're doing?”

“Just trying to keep you alive long enough to get that drink,” he said calmly. “There was a bus coming.”

“Oh,” she said, her voice trembling. She stood absolutely still, staring after the retreating bus until he took her by the arm again and steered her firmly through the traffic.

“What do you do when the sun isn't just at the right angle?” asked Sanders, after they had settled into a corner of the first bar they came to, in that pause before their drinks arrived.

“Oh, this and that,” she said vaguely. “I do a fair amount of darkroom work—it can be time-consuming when you're using a lot of black-and-white film. But otherwise I walk around and look at things. And take pictures. Just for me, sometimes. I like it—it's a marvelous way to spend your time,” she said defensively. “Although I have to admit it's even better when you get paid for it.”

“That's it? You walk around and take pictures? Don't you ever talk to people?”

“Sometimes. A friend of mine was supposed to be coming up yesterday and staying for a week, but she couldn't make it. That's why I had two tickets to the concert tonight. In case you were wondering.” She twirled the cocktail napkin in meaningless patterns around the small surface of the table.

“I was,” he said, putting a fingertip on the napkin close to her hand to stop its gyrations. “But I was beginning to hope you had picked them up recently, like maybe today.” He moved his arm onto the back of the bench until it brushed lightly against her shoulder; he bent his head closer, drawn by her perfume, the light playing on her hair, and the soft movement of the material of her dress. She stiffened at his touch and pulled her hand away, then edged farther down along the padded bench.

“Here come our drinks at last,” she said, smiling brightly at him.

He moved back, puzzled, and started to talk about the odd collection of people at his seminar: the brash rookie from Halifax, two depressed French-speaking constables from Sherbrooke who probably found Higgs's clipped speech incomprehensible, and, of course, Higgs himself. Sanders heard himself speaking without having any clear idea of what he was saying; he was too busy watching her gazing at him as if every nonsensical word were desperately important. What in hell was she thinking about behind that facade of rapt attention? When the waitress tried to get her another drink, she jumped, startled, shook her head, and began to gather herself together.

“Thank you for the drink,” she said, heading for the door and looking suddenly miserable. “I'm parked just over there. You can find your own way home, can't you?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I, too, have been looking after myself for some time now.” He turned north and began walking back toward his motel.

Hal Metcalfe pulled up in front of a brightly lit Georgian house on Echo Drive. “Are you sure this is it?” he asked. “Didn't you say he lived by himself? That looks as though it has a helluva lot of bedrooms for one guy.”

Toni Bleibtreu leaned forward into the front seat. “Well, I suppose he has some faithful slaves in there, too. The man is sickeningly rich.”

Sarah Henderson turned from contemplation of the house and stared past Metcalfe down at the canal, rippling in the dim half-light cast up by the city. “What I wouldn't give to have a place like this,” she said. Her voice was flat. “You should see my apartment.”

Bleibtreu dropped a hand on her shoulder. “Who knows, someday you might—no, someday you will.”

“Sure, and I'm the Princess of Wales,” she said. “But I really don't think I should come. I'll get a cab. I wasn't invited, and it's supper—”

“Of course you were invited,” said Bleibtreu. “Lang expects you. We promised to bring you along. Anyway, he's not going to have to add water to the soup and run out for another loaf of bread because you're there. The place will be drowning in food and drink. Come on, and after the party we'll go for a stroll along the canal.”

“And just who are those two guys in uniform at the door?” said Miss Henderson suspiciously. “They look like Mounties to me. Guess whose name isn't on the guest list. Or shouldn't be.”

“Well, if they won't let you in, we'll sacrifice this intensely exciting evening and not go in ourselves. Right, Toni?”

“Right.”

“And then we'll all go for a walk along the canal.”

Wednesday, May 17

Superintendent Deschenes walked into the restaurant and looked around. That erect back in the booth on his right he recognized as Charlie Higgs; Deschenes dodged the hostess and headed straight for him. “Good morning,” he murmured. “And I appreciate your coming out this early. Were you late last night?”

Higgs shook his head and stifled a yawn. “Not very. I think the prime minister has jet lag. He was crumbling by eleven o'clock and left before midnight.” Higgs dropped his voice suddenly and began speaking rapidly. “He brought top-level security with him. A man named Hoffel, Carlo Hoffel. Metcalfe from External seems to know him.”

“Not surprising,” said Deschenes. “He was posted in Vienna.”

“Anyway, I don't like it when they bring someone that big. It means the Austrians are expecting something to happen. Listen,” Higgs said earnestly, “they're bloody nervous about this visit. And whatever they've heard isn't filtering through to us. Maybe our surveillance on the Austrian contingent ought to be upped to a more adequate level.”

Ian MacMillan slipped onto the seat next to Charlie Higgs and dropped his folded newspaper between them on the table. “What's this about adequate surveillance? When does anyone ever have adequate surveillance, I'd like to know?” He stopped speaking as the waitress leaned over the booth to take their orders.

Higgs ordered bacon and eggs and stared patiently out the window while the others were deciding. “They seem to be expecting something close to home,” he said as soon as they had ordered.

“Close to home?” asked Deschenes.

“Hoffel's edgy. And he has his eye on that violinist. Strelitsch. He spent all his time at the reception trying to monitor all her conversations.”

“Maybe he has a letch for her,” said MacMillan. “I hear she's pretty spectacular.”

“I didn't know you followed the world of classical music, Ian,” said Deschenes.

Higgs paid no attention to Deschenes. “Could be, but he's also suspicious as hell of her—there's a difference. He wasn't behaving like a jealous boyfriend, he was behaving like a security man on a live trail. Of course, I could be wrong. I didn't talk to the guy, I was just watching him.” Apparently offended, Higgs opened up his newspaper as he waited for his breakfast to arrive. Almost immediately he put it down again, pushed aside the coffee cups, and spread it out on the table. “Look,” he said in a quiet voice.

He had placed the paper so his superior officer could read it; Deschenes pulled his reading glasses out of his breast pocket and bent over the first page. There, in the bottom right-hand corner, was a picture of “Don Bartholomew,” accompanying what appeared to be a lengthy story on the murder.

Henri Deschenes shoved the paper away, leaving MacMillan to pick it up and read the text. “Where did they get the picture?” Deschenes asked.

Charlie Higgs shook his head. “Not from us,” he said. “And I don't suppose he passed around snapshots of himself to all the boys on the crew.”

“Driver's license?” said MacMillan. “Some helpful bastard at Regional must have passed it on.”

“So much for keeping the whole thing low-profile,” said Higgs. “Somebody's always got to be the clever bastard and screw everything up.”

“I wonder,” said Deschenes. “That's a pretty high-grade picture of him to be from his driver's license, wouldn't you say?” Higgs leaned over and looked again. He nodded. “CSIS has to be investigating. Maybe it's their file picture of him. Charlie, see what in hell they think they're doing right now, will you? Send that class of yours off to a spy movie or something and have a look. And, Ian, find out what the regional police have picked up. See if they gave the picture to the papers. I had better talk to Austrian security.” He ran his hand over his forehead. “As my father used to say, “
Il ne me manque que ça
.”
[1]

“To you?” asked Higgs.

“No,” said Deschenes. “To my mother.”

“And what did she say?”

“She pretended she couldn't understand him.”

Wednesday morning's lecture was on interpretation of intelligence reports—not something, thought Sanders, that anyone in this room was likely to have to do. So Higgs had either run out of useful things to say or he was showing off. Or, most likely, both. But Sanders flipped through his scribbled-on notebook looking for a clean page and waited for the man to say something worth committing to paper. He had begun to feel sorry for Higgs. He knew he was not the only person in the room who failed to find the lectures riveting, and his sketches were a mild protest compared to some of the ways people had chosen to pass the time. So this morning he was going to take some notes—real notes—and try to look at least vaguely interested.

At the mid-morning break it was evident that the instructor had noticed Sanders's newly awakened interest.

The enforced camaraderie of occasions like this brought out all of Sanders's latent misanthropy, and he had found himself a corner table where he was unlikely to be disturbed. He had barely had time to pull a book out of his pocket as insulation against the world when he felt someone looming over him. “May I join you?” The voice was sharp, unpleasant, and familiar.

“Certainly, Inspector Higgs,” said Sanders, putting aside the paperback with a scarcely audible sigh.

“Sanders, isn't it?” Higgs asked. “Toronto. We were surprised Toronto would send someone of your rank. We expected a retired sergeant when we heard Flanagan couldn't come.”

No, thought Sanders, it took Maritimers to have the guts to do something like that. “We are always ready to improve our techniques,” he said. “And it's an interesting subject.”

“You seem to find intelligence work more interesting than most of the people here. The response is rather disappointing,” Higgs said bitterly.

“I take it that intelligence is your specialty,” said Sanders, and then wished he hadn't.

“I've been in intelligence for twenty-two years, one way or another,” Higgs said. “Here and in the army. Not that there's much use for an intelligence officer here these days.” He stared bleakly into his coffee, as if he had reliable information that it contained cyanide but he was going to drink it anyway.

“I'm surprised you didn't move over to Intelligence at CSIS, then. When it split off. So you could continue in the same area.”

“Surprised, eh?” Higgs gave Sanders a speculative look. “Can't desert the old service,” he said. “Not after all these years. Let the younger men start off there. Good training for them, off on their own.” He pushed his half-full cup away. “No offense, but I was sorry not to see Flanagan come up from Toronto.”

“Oh, do you know Flanagan?” said Sanders, who was also pretty sorry Flanagan hadn't come.

“Flanagan and I go way back,” said Higgs, staring at the concrete block walls of the cafeteria as though the lost years were floating behind them somewhere. “We were in the Mediterranean together. Then he went off to Toronto, and I ended up here. Why did they send you? Do you do intelligence work?”

Sanders shook his head. “Homicide. I once tried going under cover but, you know, no matter how you dress, if you're my size people take one look at you and say ‘cop' and that's it. I walk into a poolroom and in five minutes there's no one there but me and the cockroaches. Not even the owner. So I went into Homicide, where people expect cops to look like cops.”

Inspector Higgs appeared not to be listening. “Then why send you?”

Sanders shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “Maybe they were expecting a few bodies to float up.”

“You're joking,” Higgs said. “Aren't you? Nobody's really expecting any trouble this week, are they?” His look of pop-eyed nervous anger had altered in some way in the last few minutes, and if Sanders hadn't known that they were sitting in one of the most secure places in the civilized world, he would have said that it had been replaced by fear.

“I wouldn't know,” Sanders said casually. “You're the specialist.”

Sylvia looked up as Ian MacMillan walked into the office escorting a dark-brewed, fierce-looking man whose eyes were hollow with fatigue. In spite of his relative lack of height, he made MacMillan look pallid and effete. Sylvia smiled briskly, pushed a button on her telephone, and stood up. “He's waiting for you,” she said. “Coffee?”

“Please,” said the stranger. The voice arising from that broad chest was unexpectedly muted.

Deschenes appeared in the doorway to his office. “I would like to thank you for coming all the way out here on such short notice.” He held out his hand. “It is
Mr.
Hoffel, is it not?”

“Mister will do, Superintendent,” he said. “And Inspector MacMillan was a most efficient chauffeur. It was no trouble.” As they were speaking, MacMillan herded them unobtrusively into the office, sat down behind them, and took his notebook from his pocket. Hoffel glanced rapidly back and frowned.

“What we're interested in, Mr. Hoffel—” Sylvia's entrance with the coffee interrupted Deschenes. He sat back and waited for her to pass cups around.

MacMillan's voice cut through the rattle of china. “What we're interested in,
Mr.
Hoffel, is finding out what in hell you're doing here—why your government decided to send you instead of the usual bodyguard types. I mean, why the whole bloody Austrian secret service, or whatever you call it, here in Ottawa?” MacMillan waved Sylvia out of his way with an angry gesture.

Hoffel pivoted slowly around in his chair and looked at MacMillan before turning to speak to Deschenes. “We had hoped to make my arrival appear unobtrusive,” he said. “I had not really expected to be recognized.”

“Our Mr. Metcalfe from External Affairs was posted in Vienna last year,” said Deschenes.

“Ah. I see. Well, why am I here? Just as a precaution, of course. Our prime minister has become—what can I call it?—a target recently of some unpleasant attacks, most of them merely verbal. But there have been threats of violence. You know what these things are. One must pay attention to them even though it is very rare that anything happens as a result of them.” He smiled and spooned sugar into his coffee.

“Why would your prime minister be subject to threats?” asked Deschenes.

“Why? All politicians, all famous people, receive threats,” said Hoffel. His face had arranged itself into an expression of great sweetness.

“Indeed,” said Deschenes. “But people like you are not sent out to hold their hands, are they?”

“Perhaps not.” Hoffel paused, his head to one side, appearing to weigh Deschenes's usefulness and reliability. “We have a particular group of rightist fanatics who are convinced that our government is swinging dangerously to the left once more.” His dark eyes danced with amusement. “I am sure that you Canadians think that we are all disturbingly right-wing, but on the whole we are really quite centrist, although we have our share of people on both sides of the political sea. This particular group seems to feel that a little destabilization would help to bring them to power. They are probably wrong, but we do not care to have them try.”

“Especially if their destabilization techniques consist of killing off the members of your government?”

“If they tried that, it would be most unfortunate, yes,” said Hoffel. “It is, of course, a remote threat, but one that must be taken into account.”

“Why over here?” said MacMillan suddenly.

“Why not?” said Hoffel. “But we are investigating every area that the prime minister and other members of the government must visit. We are not more suspicious of your peaceful and well-guarded country than of any other place.” He smiled again and put down his coffee cup. “I must return to the embassy, I'm afraid. I have a meeting there in a few minutes. If I could prevail upon you to—”

“Of course,” said Deschenes. “Inspector MacMillan will arrange for you to be taken back downtown.”

MacMillan followed Hoffel in the direction of Sylvia's office, stopped at the door, and then walked back to Deschenes's desk. “A helluva lot of good that did us,” he hissed. “I've had more information out of the Mafia on a bad day. ‘Ve are not bloody vell suspicious of your country,'” he mimicked in a harsh, badly rendered German accent. “The hell they aren't. They know something—and I'm going to find out what it is.”

“Thank you, Ian,” said Deschenes coldly, and picked up his telephone receiver.

“What I don't understand,” said Harriet Jeffries, “is why you're here. Aren't you supposed to be communing with your fellows all day? What's happened to your meeting?”

“What meeting?” asked Sanders lazily. He drained off his beer and looked over at Harriet. “Our leader, the inestimable Higgs himself, declared that he had other duties and ordered us to go sightseeing. That's what I'm doing, obeying orders. An excellent quality in a police officer, the ability to obey orders.” He pushed aside his glass. “But what is more important now,” he said, “is lunch. Do we take risks and eat here—I think I smell something that might be food—or do we go elsewhere?”

“Elsewhere,” said Harriet. “Where's your car?”

“At the motel. Why?”

“Excellent.” She leaned back and raised her hands expansively in the air. “We will go in mine, which has a cooler in the backseat filled with things to eat and drink. When you called, I decided that I was in the mood for a picnic. I can find you a place both quiet and pleasantly sheltered from the wind. How does that sound?”

“Terrific,” said Sanders. As they stood up to go, the person at the back table slipped his book into his pocket and set out after them.

“This is terrific,” said Sanders. He was lying on his back on the grass, staring up at a small tree that had grown green and luxuriant in the protected environment of the city, and trying to figure out what kind of bird was darting around in it, singing furiously. “I do believe that some of my fellow officers have joined a tour of the city, poor suckers. They don't know the half of it.”