Crime Machine

9

CARDINAL AND DELORME LEFT THE ident team at the hotel and drove over to the Algonquin Bay Fur Harvesters’ warehouse, which was located on the edge of town between the city proper and the Nipissing First Nation reserve.

The warehouse consisted of a front office, a large, echoing showroom, and several smaller showrooms for the display of different lots. Cardinal and Delorme were shepherded around by manager Hank Stromberg, a man with a neatly trimmed grey beard and hair the colour of nicotine. He was treating them with courtesy, but it was the strained courtesy a car dealer shows to someone who is never going to buy.

The bears—their hides, that is—were spread out on a large table: black and brown and tan with legs outstretched and chins upraised, as if they were doing the breaststroke. A nearby table displayed a dozen polar bear hides.

“But they’re endangered,” Delorme said. “How can you still sell them?”

“The polar bear is not endangered,” he said. “Not in this country.”

“What can anybody do with a polar bear hide? Who buys them?”

“Russians, mostly. They stuff them. Put them in the office lobby. Make an impression.”

Men in white lab coats were moving from lot to lot, touching hides, making notes.

Cardinal pointed. “Who are the guys with the clipboards?”

“Buyers. They have until this evening to check out the merchandise. Friday was beaver. Bidding on the rest continues through tomorrow.”

“And Irena Bastov was a buyer?”

“She was.”

“For whom?”

“That I couldn’t tell you. You’ll have to ask our Russian agent. All I know is she bought a lot of fur.”

“Russian agent?”

“A woman on staff here who works with the foreign buyers. A lot of them don’t speak English. She translates for them—and for us, of course. These are the minks. Oh, and seal.”

Stromberg led them through the main showroom where mink pelts hung from display poles. The air was redolent with fresh hide.

“Eighty percent of these are farm raised,” Stromberg said. “You can feel the difference in the fur.” He held out a pelt of chestnut brown for them to touch. Cardinal had never felt anything so soft. “Amazing what good care and regular feeding will do for an animal. Far superior to trapped fur. Here’s the seal.”

Seal hides took up perhaps a quarter of the space, spread flat on tables and on the floor. Delorme pointed to a stack of small hides. “They’re so tiny. I thought it was illegal to kill baby seals.”

Stromberg shook his head. “You’re thinking of harp seals. These are ring seals. Not as photogenic.”

The next room was devoted to wolves. Hundreds of pelts hung from a rack that snaked around the warehouse like a vast coat check. The wolves were strung up by their snouts, fluorescent light gleaming through the holes where their eyes had been.

“Those weren’t farmed,” Cardinal said.

“No. Trapped.”

“If a buyer checked in Wednesday night, when would you expect to see him or her?”

“If they were interested in beaver, I’d expect to see them here for the preview Thursday afternoon, and Friday for the bidding. I saw the Bastovs here Thursday, but I didn’t talk to them other than to say hello. They seemed happy. Cheerful. They were shooting the breeze with people. Laughing. Scoping out the merchandise like everybody else. You can check the signin sheet for exact times.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about them? Anything at all?”

Stromberg stroked his beard for a moment and stared at the floor. “Nope. Strictly business as usual. Mind you, auction time, I’m rushed off my feet—I don’t stop moving from morning to night, so I wouldn’t be the best person to ask.”

“Is it weird to arrive on Wednesday for an auction that doesn’t start until Friday?”

“Depends what you want to get out of it. It’s called an auction, but in a way it’s kind of like a conference. People get the lowdown on what everyone else is up to. And they might combine the trip with a little vacation, who knows?”

“Did either of them have any enemies?”

“Not that I know of. Lev’s a pro, been in this game for decades. So, yeah, it’s possible he pissed some people off in his life. And they’re wealthy—people might be envious. But serious enemies? None that I know of.”

“You’ve been running this place eight years, you said?”

“That’s right.”

“And the Bastovs have been coming here all that time?”

“Irena’s been coming the past four years at least, Lev just the past two. But Lev’s not really a buyer at this point—he just comes to be with his wife. And for the skiing maybe.”

“If he’s not a buyer, what is he?”

“Lev is money. He’s a manufacturer. Plants all over Russia. He’d be selling to the big furriers—the designers, the big department stores. Lot of dough in that part of the trade.”

“How did you come to be running this place?” Cardinal said. “What were you doing before?”

“I was a trapper. Not full-time—nobody in this town’s full-time. But I’d been doing it a lot of years. Me and my partners took the place over when the last bunch went belly up. Figured we could do a better job. Believe me, a double murder is not going to help our balance sheet.”

“What happened to the former owners? Why did they fail?”

Stromberg shrugged. “You’d have to ask whatshisname—Don Rivard—he was the head guy. I’m guessing expenses outran revenues. We work strictly on a percent of sales. You have a few bad years, a few bad debts … It doesn’t take much. Ah, here’s the lady in question.”

A small blond woman with sharp features and a pixie haircut was standing by a set of glass doors, talking on a cellphone. She put it in her pocket and smiled at Stromberg.

“Nat, this is Detective Cardinal and Detective Delorme. They’re working on the Bastov thing.”

“Natalia Kuritsyn,” she said, shaking first Cardinal’s hand then Delorme’s.

“You’re the one who called in the missing persons?” Delorme asked her.

“I am.”

“Presumably you tried to call the Bastovs first. Do you have their cellphone numbers?”

“I do. Come. We can talk in cafeteria.” Her Russian accent was strong, as if she had strayed off the set of a Bond film.

“I’ll be on the floor if you need anything else,” Stromberg said.

The cafeteria consisted of a few tables in a chilly room. Coffee was available at a counter where a dark-eyed girl wearing a head scarf was arranging muffins on a tray. They got their coffees and sat at a table in the corner. The other tables were empty.

Cardinal decided to let Delorme handle Ms. Kuritsyn. He burned his tongue on his coffee and spent the rest of the interview surreptitiously sucking air between his teeth. Delorme got some general background first. Ms. Kuritsyn was a former fur buyer who had come to Algonquin Bay many times before deciding to make it her home. Immigration had not been a problem because she had fallen in love with a trapper and married him.

“Judging by the people on the floor,” Delorme said, “there aren’t a lot of women in this business.”

“Is true. Same in your business, I think.”

“I would have thought two women in the fur industry would gravitate toward one another. Especially since you were from the same country.”

“Same country? Irena Bastov is from Ukraine—born there, anyway. More important, she is Moscow. I am Kaliningrad. Not same country. Is like Paris and Marseilles, only worse. Someone like Irena Bastov is not going to spend time with someone like me. So, no, not friends. Not enemies.”

“What about other enemies? She was a beautiful woman. Maybe she caught the attentions of the wrong man?”

Ms. Kuritsyn shrugged. “Possible. I wouldn’t know.”

“You sound a little hostile.”

This elicited a big smile. “Not hostile. Russian.”

“What does that mean?”

“Always people misunderstand. Always they think we are with a problem. From television. From movies. They think we are Communist, they think we are gangsters, poets, dancers, drunks. Always they expect big emotion, big gesture. The truth is we are like Canadians—not so boring, maybe—but like you, we are wrapped up inside ourselves. Probably the winters cause this. We are slow to open. Slow to warm.”

“What about Irena Bastov? Was she—”

Ms. Kuritsyn pointed a slim finger at Delorme. “And I will tell you other thing. We don’t like questions. In my country, questions get you killed. Yes, still. And answering them …” She shook her head. “Not good.”

“Irena Bastov. Was she slow to warm up to Lev Bastov?”

Ms. Kuritsyn laughed. “Not at all. Was coup de foudre. Instant love. On both sides, I would say.”

“I can understand Lev Bastov falling for Irena. Irena was young and beautiful. But he—”

“He was rich. He adored her. Of course she loved him back. Who wouldn’t?” She leaned across the table. “Forgive me, but I think Russian women are a little more practical on this point. A little less romantic. A wealthy man in love with you? Is like winning lottery.”

“No guarantee of happiness then.”

“Please, if you know where to find this guarantee, tell me. I will divorce my husband and marry you.”

Cardinal laughed. Delorme did not look amused.

Ms. Kuritsyn leaned even closer and touched Delorme’s wrist. Not so slow to warm after all. “You are single, I think, Ms. Delorme. Can you honestly tell me you would turn down offer of marriage from a rich, handsome man just because you weren’t crazy-mad in love?”

“Let’s focus on the Bastovs, all right? Who is Anton Bastov?”

“Anton is Lev’s son from earlier marriage. He’s maybe early thirties. Used to be a buyer, now he’s in fashion industry—Donna Karan, I think. Nice guy, close to his father.”

“Okay, now please think about this: did the Bastovs have any enemies? They made a lot of money. Maybe somebody thought they didn’t deserve it. Maybe somebody felt cheated.”

Another shrug. “I heard Irena’s brother is not so crazy about Lev. At first he was all for this marriage. Totally excited. Telling whole world. Then, I don’t know, some business deal goes bad, something like that, and … not so happy. This is what I hear—I never met him.”

“What about jealousy? Maybe someone more romantic than yourself was in love with Irena Bastov.”

Ms. Kuritsyn turned to Cardinal but gestured toward Delorme with the slightest toss of the head. “She’s good cop, no?”

“You should just answer the question,” Cardinal said. He kept it deadpan. He seldom got to see Delorme wrangle with another woman and he was enjoying it.

“You two see each other outside of work?” Ms. Kuritsyn asked.

“Please focus on the question,” Delorme said.

“I think you do.” Ms. Kuritsyn sat back with the smile of one who has just won a hand of poker. “I didn’t really know Irena Bastov. I wasn’t interested in Irena Bastov. But I hear things. Things maybe true, things maybe not true.”

“Things like what?”

“A bush pilot, comes here a lot. Ron Larivière. Everybody in this business knows Ron. Supposedly he was fucking her. Why do you look like that? You don’t use this word? All right. Supposedly they were making love,” she said, giving it ridiculous emphasis. “You like better? Supposedly they were making love. If true, I think this would upset Lev. Who knows? Maybe he got upset and someone got upset back.”

“But why would he kill Irena too?”

“In your job I suppose you must try and understand people. Is necessary maybe. But for me?” Ms. Kuritsyn shook her head. “Waste of time.”