The Dead of Winter

NINE

DECEMBER 31

8.30 AM

Everywhere Vanier looked in the Squad Room, there were pictures of John Collins staring back at him. The Journal de Montreal headline under the sketch read, Santa Claus? Other papers were lying on desks, and all had the sketch on the front page. Every TV channel had led with the story. For the press, he was still Pious John, the most famous face in Quebec, and nobody had seemed to pick up the connection with the fire yet. That was a good sign.

The leak of the sketch was probably inevitable, given the number of people it had been shown to. But Vanier still wanted to know who it came from. If the leak came from within, from Fletcher or someone else in the squad, he had a serious problem, but it would have to wait. John Collins’s files from human resources at Xeon included a passport-sized photograph that was a dead-on match for the sketch. It also had a next of kin and an address. Visiting the next of kin with news of death is one of a cop’s worst jobs, but if you know nothing about the corpse, it’s a good place to start.

“Let’s go,” said Vanier, gesturing to Laurent.

Mme. Collins’ apartment was on rue Masson in Rosemont, just south of avenue Jeanne d’Arc. The street was lined with identical two-storey duplexes, each featuring a curved iron staircase leading to the upper apartment. The outdoor staircases feature in Montreal postcards, and tourists think they’re quaint, but they were built for cheap, not picturesque. Given Montreal’s ferocious winters, it was madness to build curved, metal staircases outside, but they had become ubiquitous features of working-class housing.

The metal steps up to Mme. Collins’s apartment were covered in fresh snow that hid two inches of packed ice, and the handrail was encased in ice. Mme. Collins hadn’t shoveled the snow from the last storm or the one before, preferring to walk a path through it. The result was treacherous. Laurent, Sherpa-like, led the ascent, with both men clutching the railing as they found footholds.

The door opened a crack on the third ring, and a frail-looking woman peered out from behind a chain.

“Police?” she said.

“Yes, Madame. We would like to talk to you. Can we come in?” said Vanier.

She closed the door to remove the chain and opened it again, turning her back on them, and retreated down the hallway into the mid-morning darkness. They followed, and she was turning on the light as they followed her into the living room. She sat down in the only armchair and gestured with her hand to the sofa, where they sat, their bulk dwarfing the two-seater. Vanier wondered if she had been sitting in the dark before their arrival.

She was all grey and black. Her hair was cut short like a man’s and was the kind of grey that says I don’t care; not a shade you can buy at any hairdresser but a variety of greys that mirrored the gradual decay of age. Her face was colourless, just shadowy lines and folds, and she wore a black woollen skirt with a black cardigan buttoned to her neck.

The furniture was the discount living-room special, popular 30 years ago: a couch, an armchair, two side tables, a floor lamp, and a coffee table, all for one low price. What looked as though it should be made of wood was chipboard and veneer. The walls were bare, and there was no TV or radio. Every flat surface was covered in a film of dust except for the copy of the Journal de Montreal on the coffee table with the sketch of John Collins on the cover.

“It’s simple. It suits my needs,” she said, answering unasked questions.

“Madame, you are Yvette Collins?”

“Yes.”

“I am Detective Inspector Vanier and this is Detective Sergeant Laurent.”

She peered at them through lifeless eyes.

“We’re here about your son, John.”

“News?” she said, without enthusiasm.

“I’m afraid it’s not good news.”

She was holding herself in check but couldn’t stop a sudden intake of breath.

“He died last night in a fire.” Blunt and to the point. Vanier had done the same thing many times and knew you had to be direct. Get it out up front and don’t leave any hope, then deal with whatever happens. There is no typical reaction. Some break down loudly, and others implode silently. Sometimes they argue, as though logic could raise the dead. Mme. Collins blessed herself and looked off in the distance, as though seeking help. Finally she focused on Vanier.

“I always hoped I would see him again.”

“When was the last time you saw John?”

“It’s been ten years. But I never gave up hope.”

“Ten years? Did you have a fight?”

“No.”

“So, he disappeared ten years ago and you haven’t seen him since then. That’s it?” said Vanier.

She said nothing, and both officers let the silence hang in the room until it became palpable, like a fourth person. Finally she spoke, in a whisper that forced them to strain to hear.

“I brought him here as a newborn, and he and I lived together for eighteen years. For ten, he slept with me in the room behind you. Then he slept on the couch you are sitting on. He slept there for eight years. Then he left. That was almost ten years ago, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

“But you knew where he was?”

“I knew nothing,” she continued. “After he left, I searched for him. I had no idea where he might have gone, so I wandered the streets looking for him, hoping I might bump into him. I looked at every face I passed. I never stopped looking, in buses, in passing cars, in stores, on the metro, everywhere. I had a rule, always let the first bus or metro pass by and look at who was on it. If he wasn’t on that one, maybe he would be on the second, or would arrive to take it. Once, I was on a bus on Rachel, and I thought I saw him from the window. I got off and ran back to the spot, but he was gone. I went back to the same spot three, four times a week at the same time for months, but I never saw him again. For ten years, Inspector, I’ve prayed for just one glimpse, one sign that he was even alive. There was nothing. He vanished into thin air. Nothing, until I saw his picture in the newspaper this morning. I never buy a newspaper. If the picture had been inside, I would never have seen it, but it was on the front page. After searching for him for ten years, he was looking at me from a hundred different places, but I still didn’t know where he was. And now you tell me he’s dead.”

“I’m afraid so, Madame.”

“You are looking for him because you think he kills people.”

Vanier didn’t like that she was still using the present tense. She had to realize he was dead. “We want, I’m sorry, we wanted…” He waited for that to sink in. It didn’t seem to. “We wanted to talk to him about the deaths of these homeless people.”

“And now you can’t.”

“And now we can’t.”

“Well, at least I can see his body.”

Vanier thought of the pain of looking at the charcoal remains of her son.

“After he left, did you report him missing?”

“The police said there was nothing they could do. He was an adult. He chose to leave. I did what I could.”

“I’m sorry, Madame Collins. That was a terrible burden to carry.” Vanier meant it.

“How would you know, Inspector?”

Vanier didn’t answer. “Did he have any friends?”

She stared at him for a few moments. Laurent shifted uncomfortably.

“Do you think I might have overlooked something in the last ten years?”

“I have to ask, Madame Collins.”

“I racked my brains, trying to think of where he might be. Places he might be working, people he might have contacted. I went through every single possibility. Friends? There were none. He didn’t have friends. He wasn’t an ordinary child. He had an internal life. He was always thinking. We’d sit here at nights in silence, and he’d read his books and wouldn’t say a word for hours on end. We never argued. I used to think it was because he was spiritual, holy somehow.”

“Perhaps his father? Where is his father?” Vanier was pushing, and he knew it.

“I don’t know,” she said, her hands grasping into fists.

“Who is his father?”

“I don’t know,” she repeated.

“So, Madame Collins, just for the record, your son has not been in contact with you recently?”

“Inspector, one day the only person who mattered to me left without saying goodbye and never came back. I’ve spent ten years searching for him, and in all that time, not one call, no letter, not even a card at Christmas, or Mother’s Day, or even my birthday. Do you know what that’s like?”

“I can only imagine.”

“Imagine all you like. You can never know.”

They rose awkwardly to leave.

“Can I see him?”

“The body is badly burned.”

“I want to see him.”

“I’ll have someone contact you.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”

She walked past them and opened the door to let them out. No goodbyes.

11.30 AM

The Squad Room was quiet as Laurent walked in followed by Vanier. Faces looked up, then turned back to the desultory paperwork of closing the investigation: finishing reports and closing circles. There was none of the elation that follows a successful investigation. When you don’t have the suspect to deliver to the crowd, there is always the feeling of a job half done. All they had was an explanation and a charred corpse. There was still the question of why, but it was New Year’s Eve, and unanswered questions were losing ground to the prospect of forgetting all about it in a New Year’s celebration. Those who had been brought in to help were dumping piles of file folders on the desks of anyone who would still be there in January. People were tired and there wasn’t anything that wouldn’t keep until another day.

Vanier sat down heavily and began tapping out a summary of the meeting with Mme. Collins. Eventually, only he and Laurent remained. Vanier put his hand on Laurent’s shoulder.

“Why don’t you go home? You can finish that next year.”

Laurent leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply.

“It’s never the same when they kill themselves, is it?”

“No. We’re supposed to catch them and bring them in. If we don’t bring them in, we’ve failed.”

Laurent was standing, putting on his coat. “We didn’t fail. We got the right guy. It’s just that he was so used to killing that it seemed like a convenient way out. He had maybe an hour left before we got to him.”

“And that’s all he needed. Happy New Year, Laurent.”

“And the same to you, Chief,” said Laurent, putting on his coat.

Vanier sat down and started typing again. He was in no hurry to go anywhere. He hardly noticed as it gradually got dark. He was thinking about where he was going to eat supper when the call came in. Another homeless death. He grabbed his coat and headed down to the car.

Even with the siren going and his red dome light flashing, he made slow progress along boulevard Rene-Levesque. He pushed forward, trying to intimidate cars out of their lane, but Montreal drivers don’t intimidate easily. Eventually, he arrived outside the Forum, the former home of the Montreal Canadiens, once hockey’s greatest shrine and now a forlorn multiplex in a lost corner of the city. St Catherine Street was blocked and lit up like a movie set, with the lights from squad cars and snow removal trucks reflecting off the snow banks lining the street.

A uniform removed the barrier, and Vanier drove slowly into the cordoned-off area. He got out of the Volvo and walked towards a group of men who were staring up into the back of an eight-wheel snow removal truck. He followed their gazes to the edge of the dump box where an arm dangled over the side, as though its owner was sleeping peacefully on the snow in the back. A snow blower was parked beside the truck with its motor running, but without the driver. There was a dark fan-shaped stain in front of the blower, and Vanier wondered what it must be like to go through a snow blower and be spat into the back of a truck.

He walked up to the first uniform he saw and pulled out his badge.

“Who’s in charge here?”

The officer pointed to another uniform standing beside the blower with two city workers, “Sergeant Gamache.”

Gamache saw Vanier approach and eyed him suspiciously.

“D.I. Vanier, Major Crimes.”

“I wondered if you guys would even show up. We got orders to call you guys with every death on the street, even the accidents and natural causes. So that’s what we did.”

Vanier looked up at the dangling arm. “Doesn’t look like natural causes.”

“No, but I don’t think anyone threw him in front of the blower either. He probably collapsed in the snow bank during the storm and got covered up. With any luck he was dead before the plow came along; I wouldn’t like to think of anyone going through one of those things alive.”

“Who noticed?” asked Vanier

“We had a car out working with the crew, and all of a sudden the driver of the blower was screaming. Seems there was an explosion of blood and body parts over his windshield and he lost it. That’s him over there.”

Gamache pointed to a man sitting in the back of a cruiser. The door was open and the man sat immobile, staring straight ahead with a blanket around his shoulders, steam rising from a coffee in his hand.

Gamache continued, “So my guy looks up and sees the arm hanging there and stops the work. We’re waiting for the Coroner to come and tell us what to do with the truck. Maybe he’ll have us get into the back with shovels. Who knows?”

Vanier looked around. Other than the blood and some bits of flesh, there was little to see. He kicked into the snow where the plow had stopped. There was about two foot of loose, grimy snow, freshly ploughed from the street, and below it the older snow was hard as concrete. It hadn’t been ploughed from the last storm. It had been dark and snowing since five o’clock, so it was possible that it happened just as Gamache described: the guy collapsed, was covered and disappeared until the plough came along.

Vanier bent to look at the business end of the blower. There was a four-foot hole behind the huge screw, but no screen over it. He turned back to Gamache. “Aren’t these things supposed to have screens on them?”

“Yes. It’s a city regulation. But when the snow is hard packed it slows down the work, everything gets clogged up. So the driver takes off the screen, and everyone’s happy.”

“Till something like this happens.”

“The screen wouldn’t have saved him,” said Gamache. “He might have taken a few more turns in the grinder but he would still have gone through.”

Just then, an Urgel Bourgie van arrived to pick up the body, causing murmurs of gallows humour; nobody had told them they would need a sieve. Vanier called Dr. Segal for a suggestion, and she arranged to have the truck parked outside the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de medecine legale for the night. Given the temperature, leaving the truck outside the Laboratoire was as good as putting it in a refrigerator. Vanier arranged to have a squad car watch it overnight, and they could figure out what to do in the morning.

10.30 PM

From the street, the Blue Angel looked like a dive, the kind most people avoid. It was Vanier’s oasis. It was run by Jan and Pavlov, two Polish brothers who came to Montreal on a freighter in 1976 and never left. One of them married the beautiful Gisele, and all three moved into an apartment over the bar. No one knew for sure which brother was Gisele’s husband. It was a delicate question to ask directly, and you couldn’t tell by the way she treated either of them; she had no obvious favourite and was loving and caustic to both in equal measure, complaining to either about the other and praising the absent one to the chagrin of the present. Vanier had long since given up trying to figure it out, putting it down to a simple menage a trois.

A long mahogany counter dominated one side of the room with wooden stools lined up in front. The wall behind the bar was lined with fridges topped with shelves of back-lit liquor bottles and a 1960s cash register. A single television screen sat on a shelf suspended from the roof. The rest of the room was lined by a Naugahyde-upholstered bench along the length of the back wall and filled with tables and chairs for those wanting a more intimate evening. There was even a postage-stamp dance floor with music from a jukebox that got stuck in 1986, the year the service company went out of business. It worked fine but didn’t play anything released after 1986. The walls were decorated with neon beer signs, with their cords descending to electrical sockets. One advertised Dow, a Montreal beer that killed sixteen people in 1966 without denting its popularity. It was twenty years before the brewery finally pulled the plug on it.

People didn’t go to the Blue Angel for the atmosphere; they went for the psychic and physical space to drink. No rubbing shoulders in crowds trying to catch the eye of an overworked bartender. No hustlers and preening hunters. When your glass was empty, someone would show up to fill it. If you wanted to talk, you could, and if you didn’t, you could sit in silence.

The New Year’s Eve trade was brisk, but nobody was rushed. The hockey game was on the TV, and the Canadiens were up 3 to 1 against Pittsburgh, so all was right with the world. Vanier was watching the game and listening to Van Morrison on the jukebox, drinking Jameson with the occasional beer when he got thirsty. He was thinking about Elise and Alex. Elise would be out with friends at some party in Toronto. There would be the inevitable boyfriend that she changed like library books. There would be the promise of a new beginning. On New Year’s Eve, everything is possible, even love. And Alex? Vanier wasn’t sure. Would he be on duty or celebrating in the comfort of camp?

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“I thought I would find you here, Inspector.”

He turned to see Dr. Anjili Segal standing behind him, not sure how he could have missed her entrance. He broke into a smile. “There’s nowhere to hide, is there?”

“Not when you’re so predictable, Luc,” she said, lifting herself onto the barstool beside him. “It’s a hell of an evening to be alone.”

“Who said I’m alone?”

She raised an eyebrow as she settled onto the stool beside him, not even bothering to see if some woman was walking back from the Ladies.

“You never change, Luc.”

Vanier grinned. “What are you having, Anjili?”

“White wine.”

“White wine it is.”

Jan had been watching from a discreet distance, waiting to see how the meeting would play out. Now he approached with a broad grin, his arms outstretched as though he could hug her over the bar.

“Dr. Segal. How wonderful to see you again. I am thrilled. Thrilled and prepared!” He reached deep into the fridge on the back wall and pulled out a bottle of white wine. “This is just for you. It has been waiting, what, six months for you come back. Cloudy Bay, a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.”

Anjili examined the label and beamed.

“I can’t wait to taste it.”

Jan made a show of uncorking it, and Anjili made a show of tasting it; swilling it in the glass, admiring its clear pale green-gold colour, smelling the bouquet, and finally tasting a sip, inhaling air through her lips. Her eyes flashed.

“Jan, it’s wonderful, I hope you have a case of it back there, but only for me. Luc couldn’t appreciate a thing of this much beauty.”

“Then Luc is a retard.”

“I’ll have a Jameson, Jan. That is if you serve retards in here.”

“Of course we do,” he said, without taking his eyes off Anjili. “We serve almost anyone.”

A bottle of Jameson was in his hands as if by magic, and he poured a glass. And then, like all great bartenders, he faded into the background, leaving only goodwill behind.

“So how have you been, Luc?”

“I’ve had better times, Anjili. But I am glad to see you. And you?”

“I’m on the brink of a new year. What’s not to like about that? The past is packed away, and I’m off to the future with a smile. This is a great night. Tomorrow is day one. The key is to make sure that it’s not like day 365. And it’s all in here, Luc,” she said, touching her head with her finger, “and in here,” touching her heart.

“Turn the page and everything changes. If only it were that easy.”

“It’s not that easy, but you have to make the effort to break with the past and embrace the future.”

“Yeah.”

“Here’s to the future, Inspector.”

She held her glass up for a toast, and he clinked the whiskey against it.

Gisele appeared before them, dumping fistfuls of quarters on the bar.

“Do me a favour, Anjili,” she said, as though continuing an uninterrupted conversation, “fill that maudit jukebox up with some happy music. It’s a time to celebrate, no?”

“Yes.”

With the help of Gisele, she filled the jukebox with happy music, and as the music, the drink, and the company worked on their spirits, they danced. Vanier and Anjili; Vanier and Gisele; Gisele with the two Poles, separately and together; and the two Poles with Anjili. Midnight came and went. At two o’clock, they finished with hugs and tears, promises, resolutions, and Polish vodka.