Deadline (5 page)

“Mr. Mowat,” said Simms. “Will you be a candidate to succeed Mr. Stevens?”

Mowat frowned at the camera. Sophie stepped behind him, so that she would stay out of the shot, and held her digital recorder over Mowat’s shoulder. She was pretty – with a pixie face and spiky brown hair – too pretty to be in the shot with the minister.

“If we’re discussing Mr. Stevens’s future I think the first thing we should do is look at what he’s done for the country,” said Mowat, looking at Ellen with sadness, his eyes searching. “Under his leadership we have run a scandal-free government. We’ve cut taxes, rebuilt the military, got tough on criminals, managed the economy through a very challenging time, and made life better for Canadian families.”

As Mowat spoke, reporters started to fill the foyer, rushing down to get in on the action. Jack sidled up as a scrum formed around Mowat, reporters wedging in with their digital recorders outstretched.

Behind Mowat, Sophie pulled her phone out of her holster. The last half-hour had been so frantic, as she and Mowat had worked out his lines, that she hadn’t had a chance to look at it. With one hand, she flicked through her messages, holding the phone down at her hip.

“I’m very proud to have worked for Mr. Stevens,” Mowat said. “He is an inspiration to us, personally and professionally. If he has, as you say, decided to step down, I think this is a good time to reflect on all he has done for the country, and not a time for personal ambition.”

He smiled a sad smile at the camera and turned to go, ignoring the shouted questions.

Sophie was distracted as Mowat stepped toward the chamber, and for a moment she was on camera. She was looking down at her phone, reading a message.

Sujet:
URGENT!!!


De:
Marie-Hélène Bourassa


A:
Sophie Fortin


La police d’Ottawa a besoin de te parler, à propos de ton chum. Il a été gravement blessé. Tu dois appeler la Detective Mallorie Ashton le plus rapidement que possible au 613 555 0376. C’EST TRÈS IMPORTANT!!!


Sophie suddenly felt terribly weak. She hadn’t eaten a thing all day, and she’d had too much coffee. The news that Ed had been badly hurt sent her reeling. She took a step back from the minister. Her knees went wobbly. Her vision got dark. Her hands released her phone and digital recorder, and they clattered on the marble floor. Mowat turned at the sound just as she collapsed. Jack was standing behind her, and as she slumped, he caught her under her arms. The camera, which had turned to Simms, swung back a moment too late to catch the fleeting scowl on Mowat’s face, but caught him showing concern, rushing back to take one of her arms from Jack and lift her up. Together they dragged her to a bench.

The camera zoomed in on the odd scene just as Sophie’s eyes fluttered open, catching her eyes wildly searching around her.

“Tabernac,” she said.

Jim Godin’s heart sank when his boss, Liberal Leader Evan Pinsent, pushed his bespectacled face through the mustard curtains that separate the House of Commons from the lobby.

Godin, director of communications to the Liberal leader, was bent over his laptop in a corner of the lobby, his narrow shoulders hunched, jabbing at the keyboard as he caught up on emails. He glanced up occasionally at a closed-circuit TV that showed the feed from the House.

Godin was a veteran researcher and spinner, a servant to three Liberal leaders, each less successful than the last. A professional with a modest ego, good judgement and a boundless appetite for work, he had stayed scrupulously neutral in the internecine battles that heralded the coming and going of leaders and their chiefs of staff, and he had risen steadily as others came and went in waves of purges, becoming an increasingly powerful figure in an increasingly ineffective political organization.

While Pinsent’s eyes darted around the lobby, casting about for his director of communications, Godin fought the urge to duck out. Pinsent had spied him and strode toward him now, trailed by Liberal House Leader Wayne Dumaresque, who was holding his cell phone up like an exhibit at a trial.

Godin sat up straight and arranged his angular features to show alert curiosity as the two politicians walked up to him.

“Stevens is announcing his resignation,” said Pinsent. “The news just leaked.”

Dumaresque was holding up his phone, Godin supposed, to show how they had learned the news.

“Stevens is out?” said Godin.

“We need to rewrite the questions,” said Dumaresque.

“This is great news,” said Pinsent. “This changes everything.”

“Yes sir,” said Godin. “It does.”

“We need to rewrite the opening questions,” said Dumaresque.

“When is he going to announce it?” asked Godin.

“NTV says he’s going to hold a news conference after Question Period,” said Dumaresque.

“Well that’s ridiculous,” said Pinsent. “He should announce it to Parliament first.”

Dumaresque nodded.

“We should hit him on that.”

“I don’t know,” said Godin. “I’m not sure we should hit him today, not personally. His supporters are going to be sad to see him go. Our supporters are going to be glad to see the back of him. No point hitting a sour note.”

Pinsent shook his head, blinking his eyes rapidly. His cheeks coloured.

“This fits into the pattern of his disdain for Parliament,” he said. “Even now, when he’s announcing his departure, he shows his lack of respect for this chamber. It goes to his hidden agenda.”

Pinsent looked from Godin to Dumaresque and back.

“Can you bang out something like that?” he asked.

Godin sucked hard at his cheeks. “Sure,” he said. “But I’ll have to be fast. We haven’t got much time.”

Sophie Fortin was waiting on the steps under the Peace Tower when Ashton pulled up in an unmarked police cruiser. Ashton could tell it was Sophie because of her pale face and anxious look.
Jesus
, Ashton thought.
So young and vulnerable
. She had to be twenty-five, but she looked twelve, a tiny girl in heavy makeup, high-heeled boots, a fashionably tailored winter coat, looked like it was from Montreal, and a laptop bag slung from her shoulder.

Ashton got out of the car.

“Sophie?” she said. “I’m Detective Sergeant Ashton.”

Sophie stepped down to the car and Ashton opened the passenger door for her.

“I’m so sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” she said as Sophie settled into the passenger’s seat.

“How is he? How’s Ed?” said Sophie, looking straight ahead. “I want to see him.”

“I’m going to take you there now,” said Ashton, putting the car into gear. “It’s probably better that the doctor explain the situation to you. Ed was pulled from the Rideau Canal early this morning. We don’t know how he ended up in the water, but I can tell you that he nearly died and he hasn’t regained consciousness.”

Sophie started to cry, her face crumpling in sorrow, tears dripping off her nose, her makeup running as she dug through her purse for a tissue.

Ashton drove in silence for a moment then pulled over in front of the West Block, just before the security checkpoint.

Sophie was weeping into her tissue, hunched over, her tiny shoulders shaking.

Ashton put her hand on her shoulder.

“I know this is hard,” she said.

Sophie choked and sputtered and pulled the tissue away from her nose, trailing a long string of snot.

“I’m so scared,” she said.

“I know,” said Ashton, thinking, Jesus, this never gets easier. Then she remembered, it does get easier. During her first nights, years ago, walking a beat in the Byward Market, she’d often hauled hopeless drunks and addicts to the drunk tank, so pained by their misery that she had to struggle to let go at the end of a shift. To survive in the job, she had had to grow thicker skin, and she now observed the pain of others with professional detachment. Aware of her detachment now, with a crying girl in the car next to her, made her feel a pang of guilt, as though she had somehow let Sophie down. She squeezed Sophie’s shoulder again.

“You’ve got to be strong right now, though, OK? For Ed. He’d want you to help the police. We’ve got to find out what happened. OK?”

Sophie nodded and Ashton took another tissue from the package in the girl’s bag. She thought about wiping her nose, but couldn’t manage that level of intimacy. She handed Sophie the tissue.

“I want to go to the hospital,” Sophie said, drying her eyes and sitting up straight. “I want to see him.”

Ashton put the car in gear. As they turned from the Hill onto Wellington Street, Sophie was staring ahead, her face rigid.

“When is the last time you saw Ed?”

“Last night. We had dinner at the pub, at D’Arcy McGee’s. I had work to do, so I went home, but he stayed on with a friend for more drinks.”

“Who was the friend?” asked Ashton.

“Jack Macdonald,” Sophie said. “A reporter.”

“Were you expecting him home last night?”

“Yes, of course,” said Sophie. “But I expected him late. When he goes out with Jack, they usually stay out late. When he wasn’t home this morning, I thought he’d crashed at Jack’s.”

“Do you have contact information for Macdonald?”

Sophie pulled out her phone. “What’s your email?” she asked, and sent the officer Jack’s co-ordinates.

“Sophie, would you say Ed was a binge drinker?” asked Ashton.

Sophie started crying again. “You said ‘was’ like he’s dead.”

Ashton grimaced. “I’m sorry, Sophie,” she said. “I spend a lot of time investigating homicides, so it’s a bad habit. But no. Ed is alive. You’re going to see him soon.”

Sophie choked back her tears. “He is a drinker,” she said. “He likes to drink. Yes. And sometimes he gets drunk. Yes.”

“I don’t want to upset you,” said Ashton. “But we have reason to believe somebody might have tried to drown him. We can’t be sure of that, but it’s possible. Can you think of anybody who would want to kill him?”

Sophie shook her head vehemently. “No. Everybody likes him. Nobody would want to kill him.”

“Okay,” said Ashton. “I suspect he had too much to drink and fell in the canal, but we have to check out all the possibilities.”

They were getting close to the hospital.

“I have one more question,” she said. “When he was pulled out of the canal, his BlackBerry was missing. Did he have it with him when you saw him at D’Arcy’s?”

“Yes,” said Sophie, “and I know that he had it with him later because he used it to send me PINs.”

“PINs?” said Ashton.

“Private BlackBerry messages,” said Sophie. “We exchanged PINs all night.”

Ashton pulled up in front of the hospital.

“I need you to send me a copy of all the PINs he sent,” she said. “Okay?”

Jack ignored the vibration in his phone holster as he made his way to his seat in the jammed gallery overlooking the House of Commons. Thanks to the leaked news, there was a full house of reporters today – rumpled print and radio reporters, carefully groomed TV reporters, freelancers and oddballs from strange newsletters – all waiting, pens poised, earpieces plugged in, as the prime minister strolled to his seat just as the Speaker, in his black robe and tri-cornered hat, rose to his feet.