The Last Witness

TWENTY-SEVEN

‘Sorry, Georges. Roman wanted us to tell you that he never liked you. Always thought you were a smarmy shit. He said it would give him great satisfaction to know that was the last thing you were thinking about. But for us, Georges, it’s nothing personal. Just sorry.’

Georges felt everything tilt and slip away into darkness. He wasn’t sure initially how long he’d blacked-out, the first thing he was aware of was the rapid shuffling of footsteps — then as two bangs sounded, he jolted for a second that that was the shots he’d been expecting before realizing it was the sound of the Econoline’s doors closing. He’d probably lost less than a minute. The engine was revved high and there was a sharp squeal of tyres as they sped away. Then the sound of another engine, headlamps playing for a second across his body — the approaching vehicle had obviously disturbed his two abductors.

The sharp slam of two more car doors, then after a second the sound of another car pulling up, and more lights: the stark beam of a torch swung haphazardly on the ground close-by before finally settling on his body. And voices: frantic, jumbled, he found it hard to pick out what was said at first, but as they came close he recognized Chenouda’s voice.

‘Is he okay? Did we make it in time?’

Georges was given fresh coffee and donuts and left for almost two hours to rest before his first de-briefing by Chenouda, which lasted only forty minutes. Georges discovered in that session that Chenouda knew from a contact close to the Lacailles — Chenouda didn’t elaborate who — about him being lured away the night before by one of the Sherbrooke club girls, Viana. They suspected a likely set-up by Roman, so started closely following his movements. Two of his men saw the abduction go down and radioed straight through to Chenouda. They lost the van at one point and there was a scramble to catch up, which was why Chenouda arrived almost at the same time as them.

‘And none too soon by the looks of it. Thirty seconds more and we wouldn’t be sitting here talking now. Your body would be being tagged in the morgue.’

Michel Chenouda made no demands on him that first session, asked no questions: he ran through the events of the past twenty-four hours almost dispassionately, except for that final stress that Georges was lucky, very lucky, to still be alive, and he had the RCMP to thank for that. Then he was left alone for the night to sleep. Chac, one of the men from the lead car tailing his abductors, stayed to keep guard. That was the first thing to strike Georges as strange: they were in some nondescript three-star hotel near Dorval Airport, not at Dorchester Boulevard or another police station. Chenouda instructed no calls, strictly no calls, upon leaving, and Chac reminded him just before they bedded down for the night.

‘If room service calls or the phone goes at all — let me get it. You’re incommunicado, for the moment don’t exist.’

The session with Chenouda the next day was more intensive and lasted over two hours. Chenouda made it clear within the first minutes that he wanted Georges to testify against the Lacailles. Georges refused, stuck to his ground from their last confrontation, that despite what Roman might have done, he wouldn’t betray Jean-Paul. Chenouda fired back with just who did he think ordered that little number last night?

‘…Because if you think Roman acted on his own, think again. He went to the trouble of setting you up with the girl purely to get Jean-Paul’s final go ahead. If he was going to take you out on his own, he’d have done it weeks back.’

It made sense, Georges knew it, but still he refused to accept that Jean-Paul, who he so admired and trusted and looked up to almost like a father, would have ordered his death.

Michel paced, cajoled and waved his arms as he threw across every possible rationale in his armoury, and at one point his patience finally ran out. ‘Fine. Okay — you go back out there and take your chances. Let’s see how long Roman is willing to let you live. I won’t have to waste my time beating my head against a brick wall with you — and we can even have some fun in the squad room making bets on just how long you’d last. Three days, a week maybe?’

Finally, after almost an hour, they reached the bones of a deal. Georges agreed to testify against Roman about that night with Leduc, but nothing beyond that. He wouldn’t talk about any of the inner financial workings of the Lacaille family’s enterprises; besides, they’d just support what he’d been saying all along, that Jean-Paul had moved away from crime these past few years. And he could only comment that Jean-Paul had sanctioned the meeting with Leduc, not that he might have arranged or had prior knowledge that Leduc was to be murdered — because Georges himself hadn’t known, the attack on Leduc had come as a complete surprise, looked at first to be an attempt at self-defence gone wrong. Georges ran through the mix-up with the notebook and the gun and then Roman flipping his own second gun onto the floor before Savard reached the car.

‘…But that’s as far as I’ll go. If you want to get some sharp Prosecutor to fill in the gaps and try and show a link to Jean-Paul, then that’s up to you. But I’m not testifying directly against him — because there’s nothing I really can say. That’s it, take it or leave it.’

Michel spent another twenty minutes fleshing out the details, and took it. With Savard’s murder and now the attempt on Donatien’s life, a pattern could be shown. Donatiens confirmed that he’d obviously open up as well about his abduction and the set-up the night before with the girl, and Michel’s mind went for a moment on overdrive: hopefully with some persuasion he could get Azy to spill about the girl being Roman’s pet favourite, and maybe even something from the girl herself. But when he pushed his luck with whether Donatiens thought that night with Leduc had also been a set-up by Roman — ‘He probably knew damn well Leduc didn’t have a gun, but he needed it to look like self-defence for your benefit, and maybe for Jean-Paul’s too, if he wasn’t already in on it’ — George’s reluctance resurfaced.

‘With what’s happened since, I can see how that probably makes sense. But I can’t really say beyond what I saw that night. Again, that’s going to be down to your Prosecutor earning his pay by trying to make the connections.’

Michel quit while he was ahead. He spent the remaining time going back over and making notes on what they’d agreed, skeleton structure for Donatiens’ later statement — then called S-18 straight after and explained his dilemma: a hot informant in his grasp and concerns about leaks within his own department.

Each RCMP regional office had their own section operating a WPP* and Internal Affairs for investigating police corruption. But when that corruption could lead to a leak and endanger the person in the programme, S-18 had been set up in Ottawa.

The next morning he was sat before an S-18 review board chaired by Superintendent Neil Mundy, and from there everything moved rapidly: that same night, Donatiens was escorted by two S-18 officers out of Montreal to a safe-house, where he would stay until the trial. Then he would go fully into the Witness Protection Programme and be given a new identity. Chenouda himself didn’t even have the location of the safe-house, only Donatiens’ escorting officers and an ‘eyes only’ handful within S-18 had the details. At 11 am the following morning, by which time Donatiens had already been ensconced in the safe-house for over twelve hours, Mundy called a press conference to announce their breakthrough with the Lacaille investigation, with Inspector Pelletier also present to dampen any speculation about inter-departmental wrangling. It was hailed as a joint operation between Montreal’s Criminal Intelligence division and S-18.

The whole process from Donatiens’ abduction to final announcement had taken two and a half days. For that time Donatiens’ whereabouts had been a complete mystery; and now with him at a safe-house until the trial, six or seven months of the same lay ahead. Then he would disappear completely, never to resurface again as Georges Donatiens.

*Witness Protection Programme.