The Delicate Storm

23

CARDINAL AND DELORME stopped for lunch at a tiny roadside diner called Chez Marguerite. Cardinal had been mentally rehearsing his order in French, but when Marguerite—an enormous woman with glasses thick as ashtrays—took their orders, she actually laughed.

“Why did she laugh? I thought I got it right.”

Delorme shook her head. “It’s your accent. You think French Canadian accents are funny, but believe me, it doesn’t compare with an Anglo trying to speak French.”

“That’s it—I’m never speaking French again.”

“Don’t be silly. You did very well.”

“Bloody French. Then they wonder why the rest of the country gets fed up with them.”

“Stop it. You sound like McLeod.”

“I was kidding.”

Delorme looked out the window at the fields across the highway. The sun was still low in the sky, and the light caught coppery highlights in her hair. “You think Sauvé was telling the truth?” she said.

“He certainly had more to gain by telling the truth. And everything he said matched with what we’ve heard from others. I think that’s as much as we’re going to get out of Shackley’s phone contacts.”

The owner brought their food: burger for Cardinal and for Delorme a plate of poutine—a French Canadian concoction of fries, gravy and melted cheese curds.

“God, Delorme. How can you eat that?”

“Leave me alone. I only eat it when I’m in Quebec.”

“Ah, yes. Those subtle, sophisticated French Canadian tastes.”

Delorme levelled her earnest brown eyes at him. “You should say prendre,” she said. “When you’re ordering food? Je vais prendre.”

They were on Highway 20, just about back in town, when Cardinal’s cellphone rang. The voice on the other end was very cultured, very British. “Good afternoon. May I speak with Detective John Cardinal, please?”

“You’re speaking to him.”

“Ah. I believe you were trying to get hold of me. My name is Hawthorne. Stuart Hawthorne.”

Stuart Hawthorne looked to be in his late sixties, but trim and energetic. His hair, thick and silvery on top, retained traces of its former sandy colour at the back near the neck. It was combed away from his brow, forming two swept-back wings above the ears. Cardinal had been expecting a pinstripe suit, but of course Hawthorne was retired now, with no reason to dress up. He wore a soft white shirt with button-down collar, khakis without cuffs and a pair of Kodiak boots. He looked like a man who would be comfortable on safari, in a TV studio or doing a bit of gardening in the backyard.

“You know, Detective, CSIS called me,” he said when Cardinal and Delorme picked him up at his Westmount home. “They’re very anxious that I not talk to you.”

“CSIS doesn’t want anyone to talk to us,” Cardinal said. “There are aspects of this investigation that don’t reflect too well on their old guard.”

“Well, that’s fine with me. As far as I’m concerned, they made a complete dog’s breakfast of the October Crisis. If they’d handled it differently, Raoul Duquette might well be alive.”

“Did the person who called give a name?”

“He did not. Which immediately made me suspect his motives. He was an older man—well, he would be if he’s the old guard—possibly French Canadian. In any case, I’m not about to hinder a murder investigation on the basis of an anonymous call.”

They drove a short distance in silence. Then Hawthorne said, “You know, I used to get a lot of requests to do this sort of thing, but I stopped talking to the media more than a decade ago. Last time they contacted me was October 2000—thirtieth anniversary of the old business. I told them, No, no, no. Count me out. I just want to forget 1970—my part in it, anyway. On the other hand, there’s not a day goes by I don’t think of Raoul Duquette buried up there on Mount Royal.”

Delorme drove and Cardinal sat in back, an arrangement they had worked out ahead of time on the assumption that Delorme might present a more sympathetic, not to say more attractive, ear. And it worked. Once they were underway, Hawthorne went on without much prodding. “Bloody media,” he said. “I think the CBC people were hoping I’d say something terribly Christian and forgiving toward my kidnappers, but I’m sorry, I don’t forgive them. Aside from what it did to me, people forget what they put my family through. You know, at one point the media reported me dead—the same day Duquette was killed. Can you imagine what that did to my wife? I had a four-year-old boy, for God’s sake. Forgive them? Not bloody likely. Wife was never the same afterwards,” Hawthorne said. “Harder on her than it was on me. That’s what I can’t forgive.”

Delorme turned north onto a main thoroughfare, having worked out the most efficient route earlier.

Hawthorne watched the passing street life, which seemed to consist mostly of kids on skateboards and Arab women pushing prams. On the phone Hawthorne had not been at all receptive to their meeting. “Look,” he had said, “it was thirty years ago. One wants to get on with life.” And yet, curiously, Hawthorne had not left Canada after the kidnapping. Had not even left Quebec. When he had retired in 1988, he chose to retire in Montreal, the location of his ordeal. Cardinal asked him about that now.

“Well, I did actually try to go back to England, you know. Lived there for two years. But one gets used to different ways of thinking, different ways of living. To tell you the truth, I find Britain unbearably stodgy these days—despite the superficial modernism of Tony Blair. Place still has an air of time-delay about it—twenty years behind the rest of the world.”

He turned round to look at Cardinal. “Besides, despite what happened to me, I’ve always liked Canadians. The people who kidnapped me were extremists. I had, and to this day still have, many French Canadian friends. But Canadians in general are a happy medium between your hidebound Englishman and your brash American. That’s my experience, anyway. Perhaps you disagree.”

“I don’t know,” Delorme said. “Some of my relatives are disgustingly conservative. They scare me sometimes. They vote for guys like Geoff Mantis.”

“You notice I’m silent on the point. Diplomatic habits die hard.”

Cardinal found himself intrigued by Hawthorne’s accent. Oxford or Cambridge, Cardinal knew, but didn’t know how he knew. The most ordinary words sounded beautiful. It made Cardinal slightly envious, and he wondered if Delorme felt the same around people from France, assuming she ever met people from France. Hawthorne was smooth, polished, finished—these were the words that came to mind—in a way that Canadians never were. He calls us a happy medium between the Americans and the English, Cardinal thought, but the truth is, we’re intimidated by both.

“I’ve never been back,” Hawthorne said. “You know, to the house. The CBC asks me to visit. Every five years, like clockwork, some enterprising young producer—they’re always named Mindy if they’re Anglo and Lise if they’re French—”

“That’s my name,” Delorme put in.

“In that case,” Hawthorne said, “you should be working for the CBC.”

Delorme laughed.

“Anyway, as I say, the phone rings every five years and it’s Mindy or Lise wanting to know would I mind very much taking a trip down memory lane. Reminisce about my time among the terrorists, and perhaps a trip to the actual house. On camera, of course.

“‘Actually,’ I tell them, Bartleby-like, ‘I should prefer not to.’ This they take as great encouragement. They become smitten waifs whose ardour is only increased by rejection. For the next four weeks they call and call, ask me to lunch, ask me to dinner, suggest coming round to the house—as if that is a great inducement—and all but offer me their first-born child to give them an interview and go back to that blasted house. And I never do,” he added, lapsing into a silence as they turned onto Delavigne, a narrow street of bungalows. “I never do.”

“I’m sorry if it’s not comfortable for you,” Cardinal said. “But as I mentioned on the phone, we’re desperate for information. It’s not for entertainment, it’s to catch a murderer.”

“Yes, yes. Wouldn’t be here otherwise. Hang on, this is the actual street, isn’t it—Delavigne? Yes, the actual street. Of course, I never saw it at the time. Not the street.”

“You were blindfolded?” Delorme asked.

“In the car, yes. You know what they blindfolded me with? An old gas mask. Had the eyepieces blacked out. Couldn’t see a bloody thing. But I can tell you, it terrified me. Didn’t know it was a blindfold, did I? Thought they were going to gas me or something. I mean, they were shoving me down in the back seat, threatening me, and then they’ve got this stinking rubbery thing over my face. Doesn’t do much for one’s innate sense of optimism.”

“Here we are,” Delorme said. She pulled into the driveway of a small white bungalow behind a maroon minivan.

“Gosh,” Hawthorne said.

Cardinal started to get out of the car.

“Hang on a sec,” Hawthorne said. “Would you mind awfully if we just sat here for a minute? It’s all a bit of a …”

Cardinal closed the door.

“Gosh,” Hawthorne said again. “D’you know, if I’d walked by this place, I’d never have known it was the one. Never in a million years. Well, of course, I never saw it properly, being blindfolded. That is, I did and I didn’t. I caught glimpses of it through the edge of the mask that first day. And then on the last day, when they finally drove me out of here. I came out and got into the back of this old wreck of a car they had, and I saw it as we drove away. But it looked quite different somehow.”

“It’s the house, sir. The number’s the same. And I’ve looked at the old news photos. Only difference is they’ve added a carport.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure it’s the house. It’s just that, in my mind, in my memory, it’s become such a nightmarish thing. Not so much anymore, of course, more in the first five years or so, when I’d dream about it. Think about it. But the point is, that’s the real shape it took on for me, the shape in my mind. Not this place we’re looking at now.”

“I’m sorry to put you through this, sir.” Cardinal wasn’t sure why he kept calling him sir. There was hardly anyone he ever called sir. That damn accent.

“No, no. Not at all. It’s probably good for me, in fact. Slaying-the-dragon sort of thing. It’s just a little house on a quiet street. Not a torture chamber. No, no, I’m sure that’s good.” Hawthorne slapped his knees. “Righty-ho. Lead on.”

They were met at the door by Al Lamotte, the present owner of the house. Delorme had talked to him on the phone, making the arrangements. Like her, he was in his mid-thirties, and had no strong memories of the political events of 1970. The house had changed hands a dozen times since then; Lamotte had been living there with his wife and son for two years. The wife and son were out just now.

“Look,” he said after introductions were made, “I’ll just stay out of your way, all right? You just wander where you have to wander, and I’ll be in the kitchen.”

“Thanks, Mr. Lamotte,” Cardinal said. “It’s very kind of you.”

Lamotte made a deprecating gesture and went into the kitchen.

Hawthorne had been standing, hands jauntily on hips, surveying the place. Outside the living-room window, trees and a distant steeple glittered in the sunlight.

Cardinal looked at him expectantly.

“I never saw the living room till the end. It was almost totally bare. A few sleeping bags, a couple of hard chairs. They clearly hadn’t expected the thing to take more than a couple of days. I was kept in the bedroom the whole time. Always an armed guard by the door. Don’t remember much else about this room. Place was surrounded by police and about six thousand army troops. I just wanted to be out of here before the bullets started flying.” Hawthorne’s voice quavered a little. A crack in the smooth finish.

“They kept me in the bedroom at all times, except when I needed the bathroom. They even went in there with me, for God’s sake. That was depressing.” Hawthorne turned to face them. “Look, I really don’t think I’m going to have any great revelations. It’s all too long ago. And of course I haven’t wanted to remember, I’ve wanted to forget.”

“Can we take a look at the bedroom?” It was Delorme who spoke, and Cardinal was glad. It was hard to see a cool man like Hawthorne tremble.

The Englishman tucked his chin into his chest. It was as close as he came to a nod. Then Delorme turned, and he followed her down the dim corridor like a boy.

Cardinal stayed in the hallway where the light from the bedroom fell in a bright slant. Hawthorne hunched at the far side of the room, hands in pockets, chin tucked in as if he were standing in a high wind.

It was a child’s room now, the domain—to judge by the sports gear—of a ten- or eleven-year-old boy. An enormous teddy bear sat hunched in one corner. On the wall a colourful kite hung waiting for summer, a Montreal Canadiens poster beside it. A yellow dresser with several drawers hanging open was strewn with video games, comic books, and collectible cards with pictures of witches and wizards on them. There was a small desk with a computer. The screen saver showed a Tyrannosaurus rex in full roar. There was a faint smell of new sneakers.

“Oh my,” Hawthorne said quietly.

Cardinal and Delorme waited. Hawthorne shifted his weight, looking around.

“I’m glad it’s a child’s room,” he said, without explanation. Cardinal didn’t think he was talking to them, anyway. “It’s like revisiting a battlefield. Gettysburg or Poitiers. Ever been? A few quiet hills, flowers and grass waving in the wind. You’d never know what took place here.

“Of course, it seems so small now. Two kidnappings, one murder. A blip on the screen compared to September eleventh. But it’s a terrifying thing to be kidnapped.” He turned to Delorme. “Two months I spent in here. Two months.”

“It’s a long time.”

“It wasn’t so bad at first. After the initial shock, I mean. They were polite, made sure I was comfortable—or as comfortable as you can be with your ankles tied and a hood on your head. It was a pillowcase torn open along one seam. I could see straight ahead, but no peripheral vision. Had a marvellous view of that wall for two months. They kept reassuring me that they weren’t going to hurt me, that I was just a pawn, et cetera, something to trade. I suppose they were quite deferential, in their way.”

He turned to face the window. “That was boarded up. I fantasized about slowly loosening the board and one day jumping out, but there was always an armed guard watching me. They used to bring me books to read—political stuff at first, and later, paperback thrillers.” He sighed, and there was a shudder in his breath.

“How many were here?” Cardinal asked, but Hawthorne seemed not to hear. He continued with his muttered tour of the past, now pointing at a corner, now nodding toward a wall.

“The bed was a single cot. Comfortable enough, I suppose, but very narrow. Made it easier for them to tie me.”

A turn, a nod.

“Canvas chair by the door. Always someone in it, too. They were always armed but never flashed the weapon or anything. Having it was enough.”

A turn, a nod.

“Fold-out card table here. Two little fold-up chairs. Where I ate. Lot of takeout food, of course. But there was a woman who cooked occasionally. Madeleine, her name was. She made a good tourtière, other dishes. Even baked things sometimes. She seemed to feel guilty about the whole enterprise. ‘Don’t worry,’ she would whisper to me once in a while. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be all right.’”

The memory seemed to pluck some string of emotion in him that had been hitherto silent. He squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

“And you know—I was all right. I really was all right. They had the television or radio on all the time, so I was right up to date with the news. And it sounded as if the provincial government was doing everything it could to negotiate an end to the thing. But then Ottawa called out the army. The minute they declared the War Measures Act, the air was sucked right out of this place. The kidnappers weren’t expecting that, you see. They thought there were real negotiations going on. But once Ottawa took over …”

With the tip of his Kodiak boot Hawthorne traced the outline of a tiger in the rug at his feet. “Once they thought the negotiations were hopeless, they became frightened. Well, you saw what happened with the other cell. The day after war measures were declared, they killed Raoul Duquette …”

The tip of his boot traced the tiger’s muzzle, around to the ears, back down to the chin. “That poor man has been in his grave for thirty years. And it’s entirely a matter of luck. He got with the more violent group. People have suggested he argued with his kidnappers, but I’m sure he was not so foolish as to antagonize them. No, he just had the bad luck to be taken by people who were willing to kill. My kidnappers were not, and I don’t for one minute put it down to my diplomatic skills. Although I did joke with them and so on, as much as possible.

“The important thing was to humanize myself in their eyes, without in any way kowtowing. Just to keep them thinking of me as a person, not an object. Disposable. I remember once, one of them let out an enormous fart, and I said, ’Ah. Votre arme secrète—your secret weapon. They got a laugh out of that.”

“How many people held you?” Delorme said.

“Four. Jacques Savard, Robert Villeneuve, the girl, Madeleine, and a man who came and went named Yves. He was the only one who threatened me. ‘Don’t think we won’t do it,’ he’d say. ‘I could snap your neck like this!’ and he’d snap his fingers. Bloody brute. World’s full of people like him, unfortunately.”

“You never heard his last name?”

“Never. He insisted everyone just call him comrade or soldier, but the girl slipped once or twice, calling him Yves. He never stayed more than half an hour, thank God. I think he was mostly relaying messages.” Hawthorne suddenly swung round and strode toward the bedroom door. “I really can’t be in here anymore, it’s just too much.”

In the living room, he leaned against the back of an armchair, breathing heavily.

“Everything all right?” the owner called from the kitchen.

“Fine,” Cardinal said. “We’ll be gone in a minute.”

“Why don’t you sit down,” Delorme said. “Take a breather.”

“No, it’s all right. I’m fine. Sorry about the little display.” Hawthorne managed a smile, but sweat had beaded on his forehead.

Cardinal pulled out the photograph of Miles Shackley. “Do you recognize this man?”

“No. Should I?”

“Not necessarily. And these people?” Cardinal showed him the photo, four smiling terrorists with the window behind them.

“Well, Lemoyne and Theroux I recognize from the newspaper accounts. They were never here, as far as I know. They were busy killing Mr. Duquette. That’s Madeleine, the one who would occasionally cook.”

“And the man on the end?” Cardinal pointed to the man with the black curls, the striped T-shirt.

“I’m not likely to forget that man. He’s the one they called Yves. The bully of the group.”

“We believe his name is Yves Grenelle,” Cardinal said.

“May have been. Understand, I didn’t want to know anything. I wanted to be as little threat to them as possible. Didn’t want to give them any reason to kill me—other than the political one. You tell me that’s Yves Grenelle, I’ll believe you. I never heard the full name. I just knew him as a right bastard, if you’ll forgive the technical term.”

“How did you see his face?” Delorme said. “You were blindfolded, no?”

“That man didn’t care whether I saw his face. And that terrified me. One time he pulled my hood off, when Madeleine was in the room.”

“Did he come round throughout your time here? Were his visits regular?”

“Not at all. He came three or four times toward the beginning. After that, I never saw him again. Which doesn’t mean he didn’t come. I was locked away in the bedroom.”

“But you never saw him after the second week?”

“I don’t believe so. The news was on all the time, and I know he didn’t come round after they killed Duquette. I’d have remembered that, because he scared me bad before that. After Duquette was dead, they all scared me. I was terrified he would come round again and stir them up, but if he did come, I didn’t see him.” Hawthorne suddenly got to his feet. “Look, I think I’ve been all the help I can, Detective. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d very much like to go home.”

Cardinal went to the kitchen to thank the owner of the house.

“You’re welcome,” Lamotte said. “Hell of a thing that happened here. Hell of a thing. I’m glad it’s not, you know, the other house. The one where they …”

“Right,” said Cardinal. “Thanks again.”

“Was that the fellow they kidnapped? The diplomat?”

“I can’t tell you anything, I’m afraid. It’s an investigation in progress.”

“After thirty years? Doesn’t sound like much progress.”

“Well, you know,” Cardinal said, “slow but steady wins the race.”

“Yeah, right. And if you believe that … What’s wrong?”

“That window,” Cardinal said, speaking to himself, really. “That steeple in the distance.”

“Ste-Agathe. Still the tallest thing in the neighbourhood.”

The neo-Gothic lines of the steeple looked stagey against the heavy cloud. Cardinal pulled the photograph out of his pocket, the four grinning young terrorists. The view outside the window looked different. It had been summer, then; the trees were green and full. But the view across the street was otherwise the same: a brown wooden ranch house with a fat cedar outside, and off to the right, above distant rooftops, the steeple of Ste-Agathe. “It was taken here,” Cardinal said. “The picture was taken in this room.”

“For sure,” said Mr. Lamotte, who was peering over his shoulder. “That’s the house across the street. And there’s the church.”

Cardinal couldn’t wait to tell Delorme, but when he got into the car, he found Hawthorne sobbing in the front seat like a child, and Delorme looking for once at a loss.

They waited a couple of minutes. Hawthorne pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes, blew his nose thoroughly and then sat back, exhausted. “God,” he said, and shook his head slowly back and forth. “You want to know the truly stupid thing?”

“Sure,” Cardinal said.

“I told them this on the first day. They’d sat me down and got the hood on me and had my wrist manacled to the bed frame. They’d finished cheering each other for their wonderful victory, et cetera. And when it was quiet and there were just two of them in the room, I said to them, ‘Mes pauvres amis,’ I said. ‘I have some bad news for you, I’m afraid. The truth is, I’m not even English, you see. So if you think Her Majesty’s Government is going to lift a finger to save me, you’re sadly mistaken.’”

Delorme looked at him. “You’re not English?”

“No, madam. That’s the ridiculous thing.” Hawthorne shook his head in amazement at the scope of human folly, and his next statement came out in a tone of wonder. “I’m Irish.”