A Three Day Event (27 page)

“Oh, absolutely. Not a
word.
”

Jocelyne’s eyes followed Polo’s as he stared down at the box. She now saw what he meant. That they were almost all French–language comic books. He bent quickly to riffle through them. They were a random mixture of action, kidstuff,
Archie et Veronica
, and love comics. Only two or three were in English. The box was a foot deep, room enough for hundreds of them.

Polo was by now deeply suspicious. No kid he’d ever known read
all
kinds. And this particular kid wouldn’t have been able to read
any
of these. And yet if the students and staff and boarders were all bringing stuff to the lounge, then there would have been a good choice of English–language comics as well.

These weren’t for reading. They must be for camouflage! With a quickening pulse Polo started to dig, and in a few seconds he had found it. Liam’s stash of hate ammunition.

Instinctively he blocked Jocelyne’s view. She flopped back down on the bed, incurious. He riffled through it, taking a quick inventory. Cartoons, tracts, newspaper clippings in English and German, neo–nazi medallions and promotional kitsch, photos of parades, all manner of war memorabilia, Holocaust hoax argument summaries, a few books by David Irving and other Holocaust deniers (he’d learned a lot just listening at those Friday night dinners at the Jacobsons, and holocaust denial was high on their list of interests). Accounts of the Zundel trial in Ontario. Pictures, lots of pictures, some Heritage Front role models, skinheads on parade, some of Hitler giving pep talks to the
Volk
. The English stuff was printed in Flesherton, Ontario, the German material came from Passau, Bavaria.

“Joc,” he said, keeping his voice level and reassuring, “I’d like to take a closer look at this stuff. Could I have a few minutes alone here?”

“Yeah, sure, Polo,” she said, swung off the bed and left. Polo realized that she didn’t have any idea what she’d seen.

“
Hostie toastée!
” he whispered softly as he began to spread the stuff out on the bed. “It’s one up for you, Ruthie. And I take back what I said. These are
not
just High Class Worries, lady.”

* * *

Sue and Michel had ordered coffee to justify their use of a table, but neither had any intention of drinking it when it came. It was warm in the restaurant. As soon as Caroline had put the cups down and walked away, Michel took off his jacket, hanging it neatly over the chair back, then turned back to see Sue drawing out her steno pad and pen. Michel immediately stiffened and leaned back in his chair with both hands gripping its arms.

“Relax, Michel,” Sue said kindly. “I’m not the police. You’re not making a statement. But I have to get things straight. I can’t rely on remembering everything.”

“I don’t want my name on this,” Michel muttered.

He looked ill, Sue thought worriedly. She hoped he didn’t barf or anything before she found out what she wanted.

“Listen, Michel,” she said firmly and reassuringly. “It’s like this. You tell me stuff and I take it down. You’re what’s called my source. If I use this stuff, it’s going to say ‘from a reliable source.’ I promise you I will not reveal who told me. And nobody is allowed to make me tell. Unless of course someday you want me to.”

He shook his head rapidly in a full range of motion like a child refusing medicine.

“Okay, Michel,” Sue said, her pen poised. “Let’s get started. I’m going to ask you questions and you just tell me what you know. What you
know.
If it’s what you
think,
you gotta tell me that. Okay?”

He nodded and leaned forward, elbows on the table and hands clasped in the air.
Portrait of the penitent rider at prayer,
Sue thought irreverently.

“Let’s start with Mr. Lullabye, Michel. His real name is Tim Brill, is that right?”

Michel nodded. “I
think
so, anyway. It’s what he said it was.”

Sue beamed at him. “You’re a quick study, Michel. It could very well be an alias.” She made a note to check for a.k.a’s. “And they call him Mr. Lullabye because he puts horses to sleep, right?” Michel nodded again, but he was looking at the table and muscles were jumping up and down his arms.

“For the insurance money, am I right?” Michel nodded. His knuckles were turning an alarming white, Sue noted. She jotted down a few lines.

“He did the Panaiotti girl’s horse, didn’t he? What was its name, Urban Cowboy or something–”

“City Slicker.”

“City Slicker, yeah. Yeah, but he didn’t do it in the usual way this time. This time he decided to make it look like the leg got broken in a pothole or something, like the horse escaped and ran into a field. But he screwed up, and there were witnesses who saw him with the crowbar, right?”

“Yes.”

“Were you there, Michel? Did you see it happen?”

“I–I–”

Take your time, handsome. I got all the time in the world for this.

“I saw him take the horse out of the stall, but I–I–”

“You didn’t want to see where he took him maybe, or what he was going to do?”

“No, because I–I–”

“Knew why he was there?”

“I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t the usual–he usually didn’t–”

“Why wasn’t it the usual way, Michel?”
Calm down, Sue. Stop leading him. Let him tell it.
Sue was trying very hard to keep her voice neutral and pleasant, but she was trembling all over with excitement. She had to hide this and act professional, she knew, or he would bolt. She wished she had about twenty years’ experience on her. She was too raw for a story this powerful.

“The horse–City Slicker–he had had an operation for colic before she bought him,” he said, and sat silent again as if this were sufficient explanation.

“Sorry?” Sue didn’t have any idea what he meant by this. She wished she were more familiar with horse terminology and diseases and stuff. She knew colic was a common problem with horses, that they couldn’t throw up, so their insides got all knotted up and they therefore sometimes died from it, but that was all.

He looked at her in surprise. “Well, that meant he had an exclusion in his insurance policy. He couldn’t be insured for colic attacks. He was too high risk.”

“But the horses Brill killed didn’t die of colic,” Sue said, puzzled.

Michel was frowning suspiciously. “I thought you knew all about this stuff,” he said. His eyes flicked to the door.

Oh no you don’t, friend. You’re in for the count.

Quickly she said, “I know that the guy has been killing horses for insurance money. I know he has some way to do it so the vets never figured out what was going on when they examined the horses. I just don’t know the details.” She paused and sipped at the cooling coffee to look relaxed. “Come on, Michel,” she urged finally, “help me out here.”

His hands were playing with the paper place mat, pleating and unpleating the corners. His eyes stayed down, but he began to speak, and without hesitation, as though he’d come to the end of some occluded patch of highway in his mind and the road now stretched clear before him.

“Colic is one of the most common problems with horses, and nobody knows a whole lot about why it happens. I mean, it happens sometimes when a horse changes barn and starts on new feed. Or if he’s overworked or drinks a lot when he’s too hot or gets stressed in some other way. Some horses get it a lot, some never. Some just get a passing little attack and you walk them out and it’s gone, others die from it no matter what you do.”

“So you mean there’s ways to give a horse colic?” Sue asked. “It sounds chancy, if you don’t know how serious it will be from horse to horse.”

Michel shook his head. “No, he didn’t give them colic. He just made it seem like they died from colic–or a heart attack.”

“How, then?”

“He–uh–
comment dit–on–
he electrified them.” The place mat was now an accordion. Michel passed a hand across his mouth, and beads of sweat were forming on his brow.

“Electrified?” This was a word Sue associated with great performances by rock bands. What did he mean? Michel was looking distressed at her lack of comprehension.

Agitated, he pressed, “You know, an electric current–like when you get the death
peine.
” In a remote corner of her mind, Sue noticed that stress was bringing out more of a French accent in him and a slight loss of English vocabulary. Interesting.

“
Electrocuted!”
Sue had a crazy image of a horse sitting up in an electric chair. “Wha–how?”

Michel took a deep breath. His eyes were glued to the table. “It was like a simple thing. He had two–ah–
ces trucs–là”–
he made pinching gestures in the air–“at the end of wires–like jumper cables, split, and together at the top, and he put one on the ear and one on the ass of the horse. Then he–ah–plugged in the other end, in a light bulb
récepteur
.” He swiped at his gleaming forehead and gulped at the coffee. “Then the horse just dropped dead, in a second.”

Sue shivered and wrote. She felt a bit sick herself. “Go on, Michel.”

“He kept his stuff in a little black bag. Like a doctor’s bag. When we saw him at the shows with the bag, we knew a horse would be dead the next day. It was so simple. Two very little burn marks. But the vets never looked at the ears or the ass. What for? They always said it must be a heart attack–or a colic in the night. A bad one that went fast.”

‘
When we saw him at the shows’…Oh Michel, how many of you knew? Why didn’t you do something? There’re so many of you, only one of him. You’re so strong…

“So this happened a lot? For a long time?”

“A few years, maybe,” he whispered.

“Were there any Canadian riders involved?”

“I don’t know.”
Too quick, love, much too quick. But we’ll let it pass for now.

“Is this why you didn’t go to Cedar Meadows? Because you didn’t want to see the Panaiotti girl there? And maybe Brill too?”

“Wha–uh, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I thought it would be better if I didn’t go this time, that’s right–”

Nosy Parker, you stupid, stupid woman. That’s what comes from leading the subject. You just blew it, babe. He didn’t go to Cedar Meadows for some other reason and now you’ll never know. Idiot!

“Michel, this Panaiotti girl, I hear she’s from the cellular phone fortune, I mean, she’s a rich girl, isn’t she? Like a kazillionaire, I heard.”

He nodded. Colour, too much now, was flooding up his neck and jaw.

“How much was the horse insured for?”

“A hundred thousand…” Sue could barely hear, he spoke so low.

Sue couldn’t help herself. She cried, “Oh Michel, for a lousy hundred grand, she had a beautiful horse killed!”

He was very red in the face and his chin crept lower and lower. “She bought him to win. He wasn’t winning. She wasn’t–such a great rider. It didn’t look so good in front of the other riders.”

“But she could have sold him for
something
, surely!”

“She maybe was afraid a new rider might start winning. He was quite a good horse, you know.”

* * *

Polo had almost finished replacing everything in the cardboard box–he had spent about a half an hour looking at everything–when a voice beside him made him jump. Roch’s voice, and it was as clear and loud as if he were standing beside him.

“Claude, You’re going to have to come get some of that hay you brought last week. There’s mould …yeah, about forty bales…yeah, and listen…”

As Roch continued talking to Claude Lafrenière about the hay and grain situation at the barn, Polo looked wonderingly in the direction of his voice. This cubicle abutted the barn office, but surely the walls weren’t that thin? He crossed noiselessly to the wall. There was a small fragment of mirror hanging there on a nail, just big enough to see his face. Why over here where you had to kneel on the bed to use it? Unless–

Gently sliding the mirror over a bit, he had his answer. There was a hole under it, a small, but perfectly round man–made hole, and through it he saw Roch’s hand on the receiver, so close he could count the hairs on his knuckles. Roch finished speaking and hung up. Polo heard his footsteps receding briskly down the corridor.

Polo sat down to consider the various possibilities this new piece of information offered. Liam must have overheard hundreds of phone calls this way. This telephone was–ostensibly–in the most private and isolated part of the barn. People who wouldn’t want to make a personal call from the restaurant or the pay phone in the public corridor, or from Roch’s office where Marie–France and visitors could overhear, would come here.

God alone knew what secrets the boy had picked up this way. He looked around himself at the monkish cell. Once, when he was very young, he had gone to church with his mother when she said her confession. He had been fascinated by the sight of her troubled face and the whispered secrets she was confiding to the grille, behind which, he knew, a mysterious judge–like figure sat in ominous silence. With his ear to that hole in the wall, listening to the revelations not meant for him, Liam had been a kind of…anti–priest, offering the opposite of absolution. And in his own way he had ended up acting as a judge, hadn’t he, conferring on himself the right to decide the fate of others? Talk about poetic justice, then.

It was probably just luck that Jocelyne had not yet gotten clued in. She had only moved in yesterday. She left the barn at lunchtime, and probably never went to the room until after hours when the barn was empty. He would have to seal the hole right away. And then borrow a bag to put all this crap into.

Just as he was about to leave he heard the receiver picked up again. This near to the wall he could hear the individual sounds of the push tones. Child’s play to figure out even the numbers being called if you wanted to. He was about to make his presence known, to forestall embarrassment on both sides, when a low voice said
“
Claude
?
Can you talk?”

It was Michel’s voice, intimate, conspiratorial and tender. For a crazy second Polo thought,
Michel and Claude Lafrenière, the grain merchant?
Then he realized it must be some other Claude. Not a huge coincidence. Claude was probably the single most common name in all of Quebec. But there was no mistaking, as Michel went on, the lovesick quality of his voice.
So Liam was right. And this is how he knew.