Deadline (16 page)

He found another rumpled suit on the back of the bathroom door and after he’d changed into it, leaving the stained suit on his bedroom floor, he went into his living room to go online.

While he was waiting, his new BlackBerry rang.

“Jack Macdonald.
Telegram
,” he said.

“Mr. Macdonald, this is Detective Sergeant Devon Flanagan here,” said the cop. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you most of this morning.”

“Uh, I was having a problem with my phone,” said Jack. “What can I do for you?”

He scrambled to find his digital recorder under a newspaper on the coffee table. He hit the button and held it up to his phone to record the call.

“I have a follow-up question or two for you,” said Flanagan.

“Do you want me to come in again?”

“Is your office on the Hill?”

“Yes but I’m still at home, in Sandy Hill,” said Jack. “What’s going on anyway? If Ed fell into the canal because he was drunk why are you investigating me?”

“Do you know that that’s what happened?”

“Well, no. But isn’t that what you guys think?”

“I don’t want to get into that, but we’re investigating. We have a lot of questions still.”

“Well, if you have more questions you must think he didn’t fall in by accident. That’s scary and weird. You think someone tried to drown him? Why would anyone want to drown Ed?”

“That’s why we’re asking questions,” said Flanagan. “Can you think of any reason why anyone would wish him harm?”

“No. I have no idea. Everybody I know liked him. No idea.”

“Do you know what happened to his BlackBerry?”

Jack felt stuck. If he told Flanagan where the phone was, and it got back to Sophie, she’d know that he’d lied to her.

“No, I don’t,” he said. “Sophie told me that Ed sent her a message saying he gave it to me, but I don’t remember that. I was hammered.”

Now that he had lied to Flanagan, Jack felt he’d done something bad and stupid. What if the phone were the key to the whole thing, and he was keeping it from the police? Then again, he’d just lied to the police. Best to shut up about the damn thing, maybe go back to Chez Lucien, wipe his prints off it and call in an anonymous tip from a pay phone.

“So you remember what you talked about?” Flanagan said. “When I talked to you yesterday you said you had the feeling Ed said something to you, but you couldn’t remember what.”

“Yeah,” said Jack. “I do remember. We went out for a smoke on the patio at Pigale. He said that he expected to make a move soon. That was the exact phrase. ‘Make a move.’ He didn’t explain what he meant, but I had the idea that he meant a new job, a better job.”

“What do you think he meant?” said Flanagan.

“He said he would end up at the right hand of the prime minister,” said Jack. “I’ve been thinking about it. It looks like Donahoe is going to take a run for the leadership. Maybe he figured he’d end up with a better job if Donahoe takes the prize. He likely would. Anyway, that’s only a guess, and my memory isn’t too good. We were full of beer.”

“I’m sitting in the parking lot of Pigale right now,” said Flanagan. “I’m about to go in, show your picture, Ed’s picture, see if anybody remembers anything about you two. Are you sure there’s nothing else you want to tell me before I do that? Maybe you two argued? There’s no point hiding the truth, because if I find out you’ve been lying to me it won’t go well for you.”

“Why do you keep trying that shit with me? I didn’t argue with him, or fight with him and I don’t have any idea how he ended up in the canal.”

“Tell me,” said Flanagan. “Do you own a set of handcuffs?”

“No. I don’t. Christ. Did Ed have handcuffs on him when he was pulled from the water?”

“No, he didn’t, but we think he may have had cuffs on him earlier. There are bruises on his wrists. You two didn’t get into a tussle with the Gatineau cops or anything?”

“No. We were happy drunks.”

“All right,” said Flanagan. “That’s all I’ve got for you now, but I think we’re going to have to have another sit-down soon.”

“Is there any chance that this could be connected to Ed’s work?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, I don’t know that much about his job, but there’d be a lot of money riding on some of his files,” said Jack. “And his boss is probably going to run for the Conservative leadership. That’s what the gossip is. I don’t know how any of that could be connected, but it’s worth looking into.”

“You got any specific ideas?”

“No.”

“My partner’s looking into that stuff. She’s on the Hill now, talking to the people in his office. You sure you don’t have any specific ideas, anything he ever talked about?”

“Nope,” said Jack.

“Okay,” said Flanagan. “Stay in touch. We get uneasy when we can’t get in touch with you, and when I get uneasy I get grumpy. You haven’t seen my grumpy side but you wouldn’t like it.”

“I hear you loud and clear.”

After he hung up, Jack checked his email and then scanned the
Citizen
. The front page was dedicated to Stevens’s surprise announcement.

Jack found a short piece in the local briefs at the back of the first section.

Man Rescued From Rideau Canal

A young Ottawa man was pulled from the Rideau Canal early Tuesday morning after nearly drowning.

Edward Sawatski, 28, was rescued by a jogger, who spotted him in the water next to the locks where the canal enters the Ottawa River, and dove in to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, police said.

“If it wasn’t for the quick thinking of the jogger, who dove into the freezing water, the young man might have lost his life,” said Ottawa Police Service spokesman Dwayne Enright.

Enright said the heroic jogger didn’t want to be publicly identified.

Sawatski is being treated at Ottawa Hospital.

Jack was glad there were no more details. Whoever rewrote the police news release obviously didn’t know Sawatski was a Hill staffer, or hadn’t bothered to Google his name. Other reporters might notice the name in the paper, and put two and two together, but Jack had to be way ahead of them. He had a great story on his hands, and he grinned as he bent to look through the rest of the paper.

His grin disappeared when he read the next item in the column of briefs.

Two Killed In Single-Car Crash

Ottawa taxi driver Abdullah Arar and his passenger, Winnipeg man Duncan Powers, were killed Tuesday night in a single-car crash on the Airport Parkway.

The Ottawa Police Service said the men were killed instantly when the taxi crashed into the concrete overpass at about 8 p.m.

A witness in another vehicle said the taxi driver appeared to swerve to avoid a black sedan that lost control in fresh snow and entered the taxi’s lane.

Police are seeking more witnesses.

Claude Bouchard hadn’t bothered putting on his hat for the short walk from Centre Block to Langevin, and he was regretting it. The freezing wind felt like it was trying to rip the skin off his forehead, and he had to fight the urge to clamp his hands over his burning ears.

He wasn’t having a good morning.

He had spent years quietly planning for Greg Mowat to take over from Bruce Stevens, discreetly putting together a network of organizers and supporters across the country, and he was sure that Donahoe’s people had no idea how far behind they were. The race was Mowat’s to lose, but there was a last tricky bit of road to cover before Bouchard and his guy got to the finish line, and Balusi and Knowles were in a position to put blocks in his path.

The thought put a knot in his guts. But he had the inside track with Balusi, who, unlike Knowles, hoped to stay in Langevin after Stevens’ exit, and thus had good reasons to make himself useful to the likely next occupant of Knowles’ office. But Balusi had given him no indication of the subject of today’s meeting when he had summoned him by email early this morning, and he had ignored Bouchard’s messages and calls since then, which wasn’t a good sign.

Balusi still gave no hint of what was up when Bouchard got off the elevator on the fourth floor of Langevin. He led him straight him to Knowles’s office.

Knowles, looking cool and bloodless in his blue suit, shook hands with him, thanked him for coming and invited him to sit down at the end of the coffee table.

There was a document on the table in front of each man. Knowles and Balusi both had marked up copies, with colour-coded plastic tabs sticking out the side. Bouchard’s copy was crisp and new.

“You want some coffee?” asked Knowles.

“Sure,” said Bouchard. “Cream and sugar.”

Knowles glanced at Balusi, who went for the coffee. Bouchard picked up the document.

It was thin, with a cover of thick white stock.

The coat of arms of the Auditor General was in the middle of the cover. It was titled:
An Audit of the Correctional Infrastructure Renewal Program
.

This can’t be good, thought Bouchard. The Auditor General, Adam Duncan, was a hard ass, with a long record of delivering blunt, harsh reports without regard to the political consequences for the party in power.

Bouchard looked at Knowles, who was regarding him with a thin smile.

“The AG is releasing this today,” he said.

Knowles nodded. “The journalists are in the lockup now. They’ll be out just before Question Period.”

“I understand it’s not a, um, positive report,” said Bouchard.

“That’s right,” said Knowles. He turned to look as Balusi came into the room with Bouchard’s coffee.

“Ismael, Claude wants to know if the report is positive?” Knowles said. “What would you say?”

Balusi put down the coffee in front of Bouchard. “I’d say Duncan’s fucking us in the ass today. And he’s not using any lube.”

Bouchard exhaled. “And you want Donahoe to carry this?”

“It’s not what we want,” said Knowles. “It’s what the boss wants.”

“You have lines for us?” said Bouchard.

“Well, that’s the good news,” said Knowles. “We do have lines. And the boss is quite particular about them. We’ve worked out a two-part communications strategy. The boss will reply in Question Period to the first questions from Pinsent. From there on, he wants the minister of public safety to take all the questions on the file. And he wants the minister to stick very closely to the script.”

Bouchard opened the document in front of him and glanced at the executive summary.

“Well, the boss wants what the boss wants, but I’m sure you know that the request for proposals for CIRP was set up by Donahoe when he was at Public Safety, and administered by Public Works,” he said. “Our department had nothing to do with handling the contracts. We’ve been completely out of the loop. Wouldn’t it make more sense for De Grandpré to handle the questions, since his department is actually the one that fucked this up? They have had this report for months. They’ve worked with that cocksucker Duncan on this!”

“As you say,” said Knowles. “The boss wants what the boss wants.”

Balusi cleared his throat. “Just between us, not to be repeated outside this room, the boss was upset about the leak yesterday. Until then, the plan was for De Grandpré to handle the questions today. This morning, the boss decided he wants your guy to carry the ball.”

Bouchard looked back and forth at the two men. “Okay. Fair enough. But at least put on some romantic music before we get started here.”

Jack was filled with dread as he approached Ed’s hospital room. He was afraid of hospitals, and afraid at how he would react when he saw his old friend comatose. He felt a little better when he heard a familiar tune: “Gotta Get Me Moose, B’y,” by Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers, wafting from Ed’s room. He paused in the doorway, and saw that the music was coming from a portable stereo on a table near the bed on which his old friend was lying flat on his back, staring vacantly at the ceiling, his parents and Sophie clustered around him.

Sophie jumped up and hugged him when he arrived, and introduced him to Ed’s parents.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t visit yesterday,” he said.

Sophie said, “Mrs. Sawatski has been talking to Ed and she thinks he understands what she’s saying.”