Until the Night

8

THE GROUNDS OF SENATOR FLINT’S estate were beautiful even in the sombre light of mid-afternoon. The air smelled of wet snow and woodsmoke, and among the old oaks and maples there was a rustle and click of bare branches. Now, in the dimming of the day, the windows of the house were dark.

The garage, with its former chauffeur’s apartment, now a storage area, was a likely vantage point, but the family had noticed no unexplained footprints in the snow, and Ottawa detectives had found the alarm in working order, the locks untouched, the dust undisturbed. Cardinal had no reason to suspect them of incompetence.

The patio at the back of the house was partially cleared off. Cardinal stood between the recycling bins and the ambiguous shapes of furniture shrouded with snow. The property extended some five hundred metres, the rolling landscape interrupted by outcroppings of granite and stands of pine, the entire vista surrounded by a two-metre stone wall. To see over it, you’d have to be in a tree or a lineman’s cherry picker—distinctly uncomfortable prospects in the middle of an Ottawa winter. There were no houses close by. Through the trees beyond the garage he could make out just a single gable.

He went out through a side gate and walked along a winding road under a tracery of black branches. School was out, and the sounds of children and barking dogs carried over the stone fences, the wet roads. He rounded a curve and saw that the structure he had mistaken for the gable of a neighbouring house was actually an elaborate tree house, or rather what remained of one. The children for whom the structure had been built had no doubt long since gone away to distant schools, distant cities. He thought about his own daughter, pursuing an art career in New York, and the kinds of distance you can’t measure in miles.

He climbed up on the low stone fence. There were depressions at the base of the tree, foot tracks, since snowed over and rained over, that could be from the Ottawa police, or from someone else. There was no tree house mentioned in the scene reports they’d showed him. He hopped down and cursed as snow slithered into his galoshes.

From the far side, the tree house looked even more decrepit. One whole wall was gone, another sagged almost forty-five degrees away from the frame. The frame itself, at least from below, looked solid and well made. Access consisted of a series of wood blocks attached to the tree trunk with rusted spikes. Some of the lower ones were missing.

Galoshes proved to be less than ideal climbing footwear, and Cardinal had to take it slow. He paused on each block, hugging the wet tree. It was only when his head was just below the tree-house floor that he could see over the senator’s stone wall. Even then, the back of the garage blocked any view of the house.

Cardinal pulled himself up, the edge of a one-by-eight digging into his knee, and then he was kneeling on the floor. No sway, no creak. A couple of floor planks were missing, and he got to his feet and tested the others before putting his full weight on them.

There was no view of the Flint residence. It was blocked by the one wall of this spavined structure that remained completely solid. Off in the opposite direction, where the wall was missing, he could see a mansion of brick and stone. Cardinal was not a man who nursed any interest in how the wealthy lived, but he was—or had been for many years—a man with a passion for woodworking and cabinetry. After Catherine’s death, with the move from their house to an apartment, he had put his tools in storage, unable to part with them for good. Well-made things spoke to him, and he allowed himself a moment of envy of whoever lived in such a beautifully constructed house.

A piece of tarp hung from a small hook that had been screwed into the old four-by-four of the frame. The hook looked new, as did the tarp when Cardinal lifted it up. Matching hooks, three of them, had been screwed into the opposite post. He stretched out the tarp and hung it by a corner grommet from the top hook. It made a makeshift fourth wall that hid him from view. He was now the sole tenant of six square feet of country property. Handyman’s dream, as the real estate ads liked to put it. Amenities included a two-plank “table” supported by two diagonal planks underneath and a crippled chair with a rush seat, usable in an emergency but badly in need of more rushes.

The winter light was draining away and with it Cardinal’s interest. Whether standing or sitting—gingerly—he could see nothing of the Flint residence. He could peer over the tarp if he wished. And through the sagging wall on his right he could watch the headlights on Rockcliffe Road. The solid wall was covered with childish drawings and lettering. ALEX, HELP! MARNIE WAS HERE. It was hard to make out the smaller scribbles.

He unhooked the tarp so he could see better. Pictures of Charlie Brown and Lucy and Snoopy and Garfield and many highly active stick figures. Charlie Brown looked as if he had just had brain surgery and the cap of his skull had been reset a half-inch off-kilter. Same with Lucy’s haircut.

Cardinal touched the board second from the top. It was loose. A slight nudge to the left rendered Charlie and Lucy whole. He pulled the board right out and put it on the table. Through the space where it had been, he now had a clear view of the senator’s house. He could see one whole side of the house as well as the front entrance. Beyond the top of the garage, the iron gates were just swinging open in front of the senator’s car as it rolled down the drive away from the house. Cardinal watched the gates close behind him.

A box seat. Best view in the house.

Cardinal leaned close to the slot where the board had been. There was something written on the exposed wood of the frame. He pulled out his cellphone and held the screen close. In the pale glow he could see the number 25. There were no numbers on the other exposed struts, nor on the back of the removed plank. He snapped several pictures of it and of the tree house itself, then dialed the Ottawa squad and Delorme.

Delorme had arranged to meet Cardinal at Café Max, a small Parisian-style bistro just off Rideau. She ordered a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and a basket of bread and sat back on the banquette reading the menu. Some of the dishes were French Canadian, but she didn’t recognize a lot of the others. Parisian dishes, she supposed. She had never travelled to France, let alone Paris. At one time, in her late teens, she had been keen on the idea, but over the years the urge had faded.

Cardinal came in and sat down and she poured him a glass of wine. He put on his glasses to read the menu.

“What do you think?” Delorme said. “Too rich for expenses?”

“It’s fine.”

“My mom used to bring me here when I was going to Ottawa U. I asked them to bring you an English menu, but they seem to have forgotten.”

“I’ll manage. The wine’s good.”

The waiter came and told them the specials in French. A Québécois, Delorme noted with pleasure. Waiters who considered themselves vrai français always asked her to repeat everything.

Cardinal surprised her by ordering in French as well. Beet salad and the steak frites. He did very well, even managing the French usage of entrée for appetizer, but then the waiter posed a supplementary question. How would monsieur like his steak prepared? Cardinal was decisive: he would like his steak half-baked.

The waiter smiled and said in English, “Did you mean medium?”

“Medium, yes.” And when the waiter was gone, “Isn’t that what I said?”

“It’s médium, not mi-cuit. But I’m impressed you’ve even heard of mi-cuit. Have you been reading Julia Child?”

Cardinal muttered something unintelligible and asked about her afternoon.

“Oh, it was exhilarating. I read the entire case file, all their reports, from end to end. Police are not great writers, you ever notice? Doesn’t look like they were getting anywhere, but they’ve saved us a lot of work.”

“Well, they should have their scene men all over that tree house by now. If there’s anything there, they’ll find it. What do you make of the number 25?”

Delorme suddenly felt a little oppressed, she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t want to talk about the case, but Cardinal was bright-eyed and eager. Of course, that was one of the reasons she and all the other detectives liked to work with him: it just never occurred to him to get tired of a case. “There wasn’t anything in the reports about ‘25,’ ” she said. “Guess you’ll have to take it to a numerologist.”

“It might be nothing. On the other hand, there were no other marks like it. The scene guys should be able to tell how recent it is. What’s up? Are you pissed off with me for some reason?”

“Where’s our food, for God’s sake?”

Cardinal looked down at the table and tapped his fork on the checkered cloth. He always turned away when she was upset, as if she was just too pathetic to contemplate. The guy lives with a wife who was in and out of psychiatric wards all her life and he doesn’t bat an eye. Me, I get a little annoyed and he can’t take it. Of course, Catherine had been beautiful and talented and not his boring colleague.

“So, one of us had a productive afternoon,” she said. “Must be nice.”

Cardinal looked up. The little-boy eagerness all gone, replaced by Mr. Calm and Inscrutable.

“John, did you ever think for a moment that I might have liked to be in on the interesting stuff? Why do I get sent to the file cabinet while you get to take a close look at the killer’s possible hideaway?”

“Hey, careful.” Cardinal looked around to see if anyone was within earshot.

“You agree with Chouinard, is that it? Anybody—even a guy like Loach—is preferable to having me on a case?”

“What’s Loach got to do with anything? We had to split up the work, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting to find anything at the Flint property. It may still turn out to be nothing.”

The waiter brought their food and Delorme observed her own transformation into a normal, polite human being. She even offered a few unnecessary pleasantries in French. When he was gone, she said, “Don’t shut me out of the interesting stuff, that’s all I ask.”

“That’s it,” Cardinal said. “From now on, you’re McLeod to me.”

“McLeod. Really. Now I’m fat and racist?”

“Prickly and unpredictable.”

“That’s not fair. McLeod is completely predictable.”

They ate in silence for a while. The food was good, but Delorme couldn’t bring herself to say so. She wished, as she did all too often around Cardinal, that she wasn’t so childish.

When they got to the hotel, Cardinal went to his room on the fifth floor and Delorme went to hers on the seventh. She took off her coat and boots and got undressed and put on the extra-large T-shirt that was her nightgown. She sat on the end of one of the double beds and thought about calling Cardinal’s room and inviting him to watch a movie.

She contemplated her reflection, a grey wraith in the television screen. “I don’t want to watch a movie,” she said.