Until the Night

3

ASSISTANT CROWN ATTORNEY GARTH ROMNEY took a stack of files from a cabinet and put them into a cardboard box that was open on his chair. After eight years as a prosecutor, he was being elevated to the bench of the Superior Court. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to transfer these cases to someone else. Two more weeks here and then I have a month in Tuscany,” he told them. “And next time you see me I’ll be on the bench, with a very good tan.”

Cardinal told him why they were there.

“You’re nowhere near a subpoena. The fact that you had a date a year ago with a woman who is now missing does not make you a suspect, even if you’re Leonard Priest.”

“The missing woman looks a lot like Régine Choquette.”

“Ah, yes. Régine Choquette.” Romney moved the box of files to the floor and sat at his desk. He opened a manila folder and quickly closed it again. “Régine Choquette broke my heart. I would’ve loved to nail Leonard Priest for that—if we’d had the evidence.”

“I thought we did,” Cardinal said.

“I know you did. But you’re not the one whose ass is in a sling if the judge decides the Crown has brought a meritless charge.”

“We had an eyewitness who put Priest at the scene. He saw Priest and Reicher coming down the path to the boathouse just as he was leaving.”

“You’re referring to Thomas Waite. But Thomas Waite did not see Régine Choquette. He claimed he saw Leonard Priest and Fritz Reicher. And then his memory got mysteriously foggy.”

“Yes, because a few weeks earlier, Leonard Priest had Reicher dress up like a Nazi and tie the guy up and beat him within an inch of his life. Priest’s idea of foreplay. Waite was convinced he’d be dead if he hadn’t managed to escape.”

“Prior action. Not admissible unless the defence brought it up, and Priest’s lawyers were far too smart for that. Plus Waite did not report the incident when it occurred.”

“That’s not unusual for victims of sex crimes,” Delorme said.

“Look, the guy changed his mind and there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s irrelevant now anyway, seeing as he’s dead.”

“What? When did this happen?” Cardinal said.

“I don’t know, six months ago. Blood clot, apparently.”

“But there was Fritz Reicher,” Delorme said. “In his statements to us he said the whole thing was Priest’s idea. Priest ordered him to shoot.”

“Courts are extremely reluctant to convict where the sole evidence is the testimony of an accomplice—especially a murdering accomplice. And that’s when they’re under oath. Fritz Reicher was not under oath when he made those statements, and you seem to forget that he recanted and then refused to ever open his mouth against Priest again.”

“We had Priest’s prints at the scene,” Cardinal said. “That alone—”

“From a previous occasion,” Romney said. “Priest never denied being there. Never denied having sex in that horrible place. He just denied being there on the night in question.”

“We could have gotten Reicher to turn,” Delorme said. “To go back to his initial statement. You could have offered him a better deal.”

Romney laughed. “Did you ever meet Reicher?”

“Once in chambers for depositions, that’s all.”

“Fritz Reicher—aside from having a remarkably low IQ—was a known fantasist, and that’s putting it kindly. All sorts of claims about his background and huge ideas about the future, both unencumbered by any connection to reality. He would have made the world’s worst witness—he had the affect of a zombie and an accent right out of the Berlin bunker.”

“The Luger was found at one of Priest’s sex clubs,” Cardinal pointed out.

“A club where Reicher was employed. He had twenty-four-hour access to the Ottawa club. And they were Reicher’s prints on that gun, not Priest’s. Please. I know you both as first-rate investigators, but it was a weak case against Priest two years ago and it’s a lot weaker now.” Romney stood up and transferred the cardboard box back to his chair. “I frankly don’t even know why you’re here.”

“Because you and I have presented a lot of cases together,” Cardinal said, “and we usually see eye to eye. It wasn’t like you to give Priest a free pass.”

Romney slammed a stack of files into the box. “The Charter of Rights and Freedoms gave him the free pass. The facts gave him the free pass. Do you seriously think I’d not press charges if I thought we had a case? You think the guy paid me off or something?”

“I might,” Cardinal said, “if it was somebody else. But you enjoy winning too much.”

“Exactly. And now I get to enjoy judging.”

Delorme had been in front of the mirror for more than half an hour, going systematically through the work side of her wardrobe. She pulled out one of her more sober ensembles. Grey suit, white open-collar blouse—probably the most unsexy outfit in her possession. She had worn it to court more than once.

She considered the effect.

She took off the jacket and exchanged the blouse for a silky dark top. Still prim, but with a lot more neck and throat. She changed her mind again and went for severe.

Leonard Priest was mostly known for his former association with an English fusion band called Ward Nine. He was not the front man—that honour had belonged to a berserker named Patch who had died of a heart attack at the age of thirty-two—but Priest had been a solid rhythm guitarist and the only member with the slightest head for business. Ward Nine’s flame had burned but briefly, and once Patch was gone the flame expired and the fans went home.

After Priest moved back to Canada, he turned his business acumen and entertainment know-how to the creation of a series of highly successful nightclubs in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. Other types of clubs followed, and one or two restaurants. His business presence in Algonquin Bay amounted to a single enterprise, a modest English-style pub called the Quiet Pint. The local paper had interviewed him when it opened and asked him why a nightclub mogul—a man with flourishing enterprises in big cities—would choose to come back to the north, even if he was from there originally. He wanted a refuge, he had said. He loved the quiet of the north. It reminded him of his childhood.

The pub was on a side street, a few doors from the public library. The small parking lot was empty and Delorme parked right by the building, under a sign that promised No Television!

She had come to the Quiet Pint once in the course of the Choquette investigation, never as a patron. It hadn’t changed: dark wooden booths along one wall, scattered tables in the centre and a couple of plush banquettes at the front. A gas fireplace put out considerable heat. Two young couples were giggling in one of the booths and a middle-aged man sat at a centre table, but the only other people in the place were the bartender and a waitress crisply turned out in a white blouse and a very short plaid skirt. A jukebox was playing Blue Rodeo at low volume. Quiet pint indeed.

Delorme sat toward one end of the bar under a hanging light and ordered a glass of red wine. She pulled a sheaf of papers from her briefcase. She read a memo on staff parking, another on cubicle decoration, and an office circular, impossibly prolix, concerning a New Year’s charity event.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

It was the man from the centre table. He had an elongated, hound-dog face, with the eyes of one who expects rejection.

“No, thank you,” Delorme said, and patted her papers. “I really have to read this stuff.”

“Why would anyone try to work in a pub?”

“It’s where I want to work.”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

The man went away and Delorme watched in the bartender’s mirror as he left the pub. Another couple joined the four in front and the noise level went up a notch. The music had switched to Sarah McLachlan and Delorme was on her second glass of wine when Priest came in. She remembered this about his routine from two years ago: nine o’clock he would come in and sit at the end of the bar for an hour.

She didn’t look up as he greeted the bartender and ordered a Guinness. Cold air wafted from his coat as he removed it and hung it on a hook under the bar. The bartender brought his beer and they talked about the day’s receipts and some inventory issues. Then the bartender went to make drinks for the waitress, and Delorme, although she was half turned away from him, sensed that Priest was looking at her.

She took a sip of her wine and turned a page. She reached for her briefcase and pulled out a ballpoint and made a note on the paper.

Priest came over and stood beside her. “What are you doing in my pub?”

“I thought pub was short for public.”

“You’re not public, you’re police. What are you doing here?”

“I’m not on duty, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Bollocks. The briefcase? The don’t-fuck-with-me suit? You look like you’re about to tell a lot of lies under oath and sell some poor sod down the river.”

“That isn’t what I do for a living.”

“You going to harass me at my place of work? Is that your plan?”

“At the moment, I’d say it’s the other way around. I don’t see you cross-examining the group up front.”

“They’re not the Old Bill, are they. You’ve never set foot in here before. What are you doing here now?”

Delorme lifted her papers. “I’m reading some stuff I’ve been putting off for weeks and I’m having a glass of wine. I was actually enjoying it until you came along—the wine, anyway.”

Priest folded his arms and went completely still, looking at her. His eyes scanning Delorme’s face, the topography of her deception. Priest’s own face was angular, expressionist: twin deltas for eyebrows, architectural cheekbones, his eyes high-intensity blue.

Delorme turned to her papers again and reread a memo on the protocol of assisting the Children’s Aid Society in the removal of children from abusive homes.

Priest pointed at Delorme’s wineglass and said to the bartender, “On me, Tommy.”

“No, no.” Delorme’s hand automatically covered her glass. “That’s all right.”

“Thought you were off-duty.”

“I am. I just prefer to buy my own drinks.”

“Course you do. Evidence is useless if you’ve been accepting favours. Otherwise, why turn down a friendly gesture?”

“It isn’t friendly.”

He turned his face to the bartender again. “On me, Tommy. Anything she leaves is yours.”

He went back to his Guinness at the end of the bar.

Delorme shook her head at the bartender and he shrugged. He was just a kid. College age.

Delorme stared at her papers a while longer, and came to the conclusion that coming to Leonard Priest’s bar was one of the most boneheaded ideas she’d ever had. She took out her wallet and asked for the check.

The bartender smiled and shook his head.

Delorme put fifteen dollars on the bar and pushed it toward him. She put her papers in the briefcase and reached for her coat and put it on. When she turned around, Priest was in front of her.

“You want to talk about Laura Lacroix?”

“Like I said, I’m not on duty …”

“You want to talk about Laura Lacroix, we’ll sit at that table and do it right now.” He pointed to a small table beside the gas fireplace.

“All right.”

Priest went to the table and pulled out a chair for her. Delorme took off her coat again and sat down. Priest gestured to the bartender for drinks and sat down.

“I don’t need any more wine,” Delorme said.

Priest paid no attention. “I know very little about Laura Lacroix. I saw her exactly four times. What do you want to know?”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“I’d have to look up the exact date, but it was about a year ago, maybe a little less. At Club Risqué in Ottawa.”

“Your sex club.”

“One of them.” The bartender brought their drinks and put them on the table. “Thanks, Tommy.”

“Did she go there with you?”

“Get your hand off my cock.”

“Pardon me?”

“Get your hand off my cock, you trollop.”

“You think I’m wearing a wire?”

Priest smiled and folded his arms, muscles at ease under a tight ribbed sweater. Delorme could see why women went for him. He was a compelling presence.

“As far as I know, Laura arrived on her own—unaccompanied women have no trouble getting into the club. I had already told her I didn’t want to see her again. I don’t have sex with the patrons of my clubs—not at the clubs, not when they’re paying. It’s too complex legally.” He took a sip of his beer and placed it back on its Guinness coaster. “She arrived alone. I did not expect to see her there and I was not happy about it. She wanted to talk, but I said no, I’d made my position clear and I had work to do. Have you been to the club?”

“I’ve seen it,” Delorme said. “Not when there were people there.”

“Had to add that, did you? Case I might think you actually had sex?”

“To let you know I haven’t seen your club in operation.”

“What did you think?”

Delorme shrugged. “It was nicer than I expected. Physically.”

“Morally, of course, you found it repugnant, good Catholic girl like you.”

Delorme shook her head and took a sip of her wine before she remembered she wasn’t going to drink any more. “Did you ever play with magnets as a kid? You know that feeling when you try to put two positive poles together? Or two negatives? You can’t make them quite meet? That’s how it felt.”

“I think that’s called nerves.”

“It’s called knowing who you are.”

He lifted his glass, as if to toast self-knowledge. “So I made myself busy in the office for a while. I avoided the woman for the next couple of hours, all right? She had a bit to drink, but we do not let our patrons get drunk. We don’t want people passing out or claiming they weren’t in a position to consent.

“Next time I saw her, she was in the Tudor Room with one guy fucking her from behind while she sucked the guy in front of her. There were three other fellas all stroking themselves, and two or three couples on the sidelines who stopped every once in a while to watch. Have you ever watched people having sex up close?”

“Let’s stick to Laura Lacroix.”

“You’re asking me about sex. Why can’t I ask you?”

“You did ask, and I answered.”

“You’ve wanted to. You’ve thought about it. Probably dreamed about it. Maybe listened to another couple at one time or another. You do admit to being human, right?”

“My ideas on what’s human are probably different from yours. Are you going to finish telling me what happened? Because it’s getting late and I do have to work tomorrow.”

“You’re joking. You wouldn’t miss this for anything. Because I’ll tell you something, darlin’, you may not be wearing any perfume, and you do a reasonable pretence of being totally unacquainted with sexual desire, but you absolutely reek of ambition. It comes off you like a pheromone.” He raised his chin and closed his eyes as if sampling the nose of a fine Bordeaux, nostrils flaring. “Yes—ambition. Definitely. Lusting to trap the big bad wolf, protect the innocent little virgins of this world. Admit it.”

“It’s my job. I try to be good at it.”

“I enjoy my work too.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “The men took their turns. Each one would fuck her for a while, then they’d move around, so she must have been tasting a good deal of herself on those men—that’s a turn-on for a lot of women, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. And then eventually she sat back in a receptive position and they gave her the seminal equivalent of a tickertape parade.”

Delorme rested her forearm on the table and leaned forward. She spoke quietly, evenly, trying to say only what she intended and nothing more. “This person you’re talking about, Laura Lacroix? She’s missing. There’s good reason to think she has been murdered or soon will be, and I have to ask you to please—please—not dishonour whatever small part of yourself may still be at risk of such a thing by lying about her.”

Priest’s eyebrows shot up. “Lying? This was a year ago, nigh on—there’s no reason to lie.”

“I’m just asking you not to exaggerate for effect. You’re obviously enjoying trying to make me uncomfortable.”

“The subject matter does that all by itself. You can’t blame me.”

“Were you surprised by her behaviour?”

“Totally. I had sex with her exactly twice. Plain vanilla. But she started making a pest of herself, phoning me, showing up here—I didn’t like it.

“As for her performance at the club—maybe she thought she would make me jealous? Or maybe it was just that once she started fucking around on her husband, she couldn’t stop? Or maybe she thought she could pique my interest with a display of virtuosity? You’re a woman, you tell me.”

“Can you give me the names of the men who had sex with her?”

“You’re clinically insane, you are. People who come to the Risqué clubs do not expect to have their names bandied about in a cavalier manner. I didn’t recognize any of the men involved, I’ve no idea if they arrived in a group or separately, and I wouldn’t give you their names if I knew them. You think some stranger who fucked her in a club a year ago suddenly decides to come up north and carry her off? You’re not getting any names from me, sunshine. End of story.”

Delorme held up her hands in a “stop” gesture. “Off-duty, remember? I didn’t ask you to talk to me. You offered.”

“Because I don’t want junior detectives hanging round my bloody pub, do I? Or did you think I just fancied your gorgeous arse?” Priest dipped his head slightly, flecks of firelight in his eyes. “D’you like it up the arse, by the way?”

“Did Laura ever mention a guy named Mark Trent?”

“French-Canadian girls love it, in my observation. Legacy of the Vatican. Nothing like a taboo to get people hot and bothered. And you do have a gorgeous arse, must be said.”

“Pretty childish, talking dirty all the time.”

Priest leaned forward and spoke in the urgent whisper of one imparting confidential information. “It won’t be gorgeous forever, will it? So may as well make the best of it while you can. My official diagnosis? ODD. Orgasm Deficit Disorder. Left untreated, it’ll only get worse. You’ll end up a bad-tempered old crone reeking of mothballs and cat’s piss.”

“Are you going to tell me how you met Laura Lacroix?”

“Sorry.” Priest stood up and turned to the bartender. “If she tries to pay, smack her.”

“Tell me something,” Ronnie Babstock said, pouring more wine into Cardinal’s glass. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“No. I don’t believe Elvis is alive, either.”

Babstock turned his glass, as if considering all the colours in the burgundy spectrum. “But don’t you ever think about it? I never did until Evelyn died, but I do now. I sometimes wonder if she’s … I don’t know. Don’t you wonder about your wife?”

Cardinal and Babstock had been friends in high school—always on good terms, although never close. They had lost touch for many years. Cardinal became a cop in Toronto and later in Algonquin Bay, and Babstock had gone on to a glorious career in industry, eventually founding a robotics company that had been a prime contributor to the space shuttle programme and the exploration of Mars. It was one of the few companies in Ontario that still actually employed people to make things.

Cardinal was once again struck by the variegated nature of those people who chose to come back to Algonquin Bay. In fact, Cardinal’s own decision to return, after ten years with the Toronto police, had surprised him. And who would have expected the likes of Leonard Priest or Ronnie Babstock?

Babstock had stunned the high-tech world by moving his company to this pocket of the near north, more than ten years ago now. He hadn’t got in touch with Cardinal at the time, and Cardinal didn’t even consider contacting him’ his old schoolmate had moved into a different class.

But then they both became widowers within months of each other, and Cardinal had been surprised—and touched—to receive a sympathy card signed your old friend, Ronnie Babstock. A couple of months later, Babstock had called him at work and they went out for a beer and a burger.

Cardinal didn’t expect much’ they’d led such different lives. But they were both newly widowed, both with grown daughters, both in their late fifties—and they discovered they enjoyed one another’s company. They found they could even talk politics, something Cardinal avoided with pretty much everyone.

“You know, you’re amazingly liberal for a cop,” Babstock had said.

“And you’re amazingly liberal for a businessman.”

“That’s Evelyn’s influence. And Hayley’s—my overeducated daughter. I’d probably be a lot richer if I never listened to them, but I’d’ve been a lot more miserable too.”

Babstock had become known as a philanthropist and had put his money behind major international initiatives as well as local improvements to the main street and the waterfront. Cardinal had come to have tremendous respect for him.

“I’m glad you called me, Ronnie,” Cardinal had said when they were parting that first time. “Why did you?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Suddenly you’re fifty-eight and you haven’t paid any attention to friendships for thirty, forty years and you wake up in the bloody Yukon—psychologically, I mean. That’s probably why I called you, to be honest. Gets fucking lonely.”

It sent a chill through Cardinal to hear a man admit to loneliness. He never used the word about himself. But he knew what Ronnie meant. Friendships suddenly matter a lot more when you live alone. He didn’t know what he would have done if Delorme hadn’t somehow managed to become his buddy over the past two years.

“You’re ignoring the question,” Ronnie was saying now. “If I tell you I sometimes think Evelyn’s trying to contact me, you just think that’s nuts, right? You never wonder that way about …?”

“I miss Catherine. I miss her every day. I don’t suppose that’ll ever stop. But we had our life together and now it’s over and …”

“And what?”

A pretty young woman came into the dining room and asked if they would like more dessert.

“No thanks, Esmé. That was delicious. Just clear everything away and you can be off.”

Cardinal had been having dinner at Babstock’s place once a month for going on a year, and he still wasn’t sure if Esmé was a maid or a caterer or a niece. Babstock always treated her with respect but betrayed no interest beyond that. Caterer, Cardinal decided. The meals were always perfect, and he enjoyed their quiet conversations before the others—one the architect who had designed Babstock’s house, the other a major at the local radar installation—arrived after dinner and proceeded to beat both of them at stud poker.

“Fabulous meal,” Cardinal said. He tapped his wineglass with a fingernail. “Wine too.”

“You never thought Catherine might be trying to get in touch with you?”

“No, Ron. Why, has Evelyn been phoning you?”

“Phoning, no. But I hear her voice sometimes. I think I do. I mean, it’s bad enough I even saw a doctor about it.”

“What did he say?”

“Stress, of course. Overwork.”

“Well?”

“Okay, I’ll stop. I’m being silly. Let’s move.”

Cardinal followed him into the game room. Babstock’s house was a series of rectangles, mostly glass, overlooking Lake Nipissing. The lights of Algonquin Bay glittered across the frozen lake, making it look a much larger city than it was. Babstock had another house in town, but Cardinal had never visited him there.

They sat at the poker table and Babstock patted his pockets for his reading glasses. “Oh, listen—before I forget—I want you to come to my party.”

“It’s nice of you to ask, but I’m really not a party person.”

“I don’t want party people. I want real people. Feel free to bring someone, of course. Are you seeing anyone?”

“Not just at the moment.”

“What about that detective colleague you told me about? Why not bring her? You said you like her.”

“Lise is even less of a party person than I am.”

“All the better. Be good for both of you. Listen, what did you make of that case in California? That little girl missing for eight years.”

Babstock made a charming effort to be up on crimes Cardinal might be interested in—no matter how far afield they had occurred. This was a California case in which a child had been abducted at age two. Her mother recognized her eight years later, now age ten, at a playground in a different city. DNA tests confirmed her identity, and the couple who had stolen her were now in federal prison. Cardinal hadn’t paid much attention.

“Of course, what I really want to ask you about is this motel murder. But I know you can’t talk about it.”

“ ‘Fraid not. Ongoing investigation.”

“I know, I know. There’s the doorbell. Come to my party, John. Meanwhile, get ready to part with a serious amount of cash.”