Death of a Raven (14 page)

We took the Fredericton road and then branched left towards Tracy, crossing by a quirk of topography from King’s County, across part of Queen’s, nipping a corner of Charlotte and then into Sunbury. I didn’t need a map to know this. I had memorised the countryside around Port Charles in a radius of a hundred miles.

Two miles after Blissville, Hurley swung the wheel and we entered a long driveway that wound for about two miles through the trees. Always the trees. In every direction, everywhere one looked, were trees. And on the coast, where they grew with precarious hold on eroded cliff edges, it seemed that they only gave way reluctantly to the ocean.

We drew up at a house clad in the familiar white weather boarding. I opened the door of the car myself and stepped out. If I was to be delivered like a parcel then I would walk in front and Hurley could follow. He did nothing to prevent me.

I went straight in without knocking and felt a glimmer of satisfaction when my sudden ingress caused a man standing in the hallway to start violently. He began to smile at me but changed his mind when he saw Hurley, thought about shaking hands and then chickened out on that as well.

The ground floor seemed to be an office of sorts; phones rang, people wandered around with files tucked under their arms, through an open doorway near where I stood I could see a woman typing. The general aura of the place was pleasant enough, a lot of white paint, prints on the walls, a few expensive house plants well looked after. It was a bit like the reception area of a secure mental hospital I had once visited.

Inspector Le Blek came down the staircase directly in front of me, not at all surprised to see me, obviously having watched my arrival courtesy of security cameras.

I said, “I take it you’re a visitor too.”

He smiled politely at me and gave an envelope he was holding to Hurley. He didn’t confirm what I already knew, that we weren’t at the local headquarters of the RCMP. He didn’t say anything, just regarded Hurley in hostile fashion.

Hurley slit the envelope open and walked away a few paces to read what it contained. “Nothing else?”

“That’s all,” Le Blek replied grittily.

Hurley screwed the sheet of paper into a ball. “You’d better take her up.”

“I think I’d rather you brought Patrick down,” I said.

“He’s sleeping,” said Le Blek. 

“What would you do if I walked right out of here again?”

“Nothing. You’re free to do as you like.”

I turned to Hurley. “Would you drive me back to Port Charles if I asked you?”

“I’ll take you both back when he wakes up.” Hurley wasn’t really listening to me, frowning to himself, still kneading the ball of paper in one hand.

The three of us went up the stairs, Le Blek leading, then me and Hurley bringing up the rear. They had been honest with me. In a front bedroom Patrick was asleep on a double bed, fully dressed. I heard the door close and lock behind me but paid no attention.

He had been laid down in the first aid recovery position, on his stomach, left knee drawn up slightly, his head on one side. A towel had been placed beneath his head. I removed it and folded it so that the patch of vomit was inside, cleaning his face with tissues from my bag before I put it back.

I was sitting on the bed when the door opened. I didn’t look up. It didn’t take much intelligence to realize that they were about to do the same to me.

Chapter 15

“Have you any idea,” I said to Leander Hurley, “of the effect of this stuff on an unborn child?” He was, for the first time, looking slightly out of his depth.

“Not very original,” commented the female paramedic, the needle almost touching my arm. “They all try that one.”

“Are you pregnant?” Le Blek asked.

“Yes,” I replied and wrenched my arm from the woman’s grip. Her nails raked my wrist. “Not beyond the wit of the Canadian Army Medical Corps to check, surely?”

She straightened up and glared at me. “It’ll take ten minutes, that’s all — you’ll have gained nothing.”

“There could be one hell of a row,” mused Hurley, gazing down at Patrick.

The woman hooted in derision. “She’s his trollop? Not a chance. Didn’t you read Doctor Reid’s report? He only has half a testicle.”

And with that she repossessed my arm and banged in the hypodermic.

My free hand connected with her head, a real sideswipe with my arm straight and rigid. She lost her balance and toppled sideways. The pain was so bad when the needle was dragged out that I screamed. I really saw red then, thought about how my wedding ring was there as large as life for the bitch to see and kicked her on the side of the jaw when she tried to stand up. This time she stayed down. 

“Is that it?” I yelled at Hurley. “I’m a criminal? An undesirable alien to be filled up with your filthy drugs? And I suppose that afterwards you’ll deny having brought us here, so that Canada and Great Britain can carry on being buddies for ever and ever. Until the next time MI5 sends someone who just happens to be able to arm wrestle you to the floor and doesn’t have to rely on screwing and drugging women as his sole source of information.”

While all this had been going on Le Blek had been lounging against the wall by the window.

“Perhaps you’d better check,” he said.

“What exactly did Gillard say?” Hurley barked.

“I gave you the report.”

“All three lines of it. People talk when they’ve been given the truth drug. What did the guy actually say?”

Le Blek levered himself off the wall. “We asked him all the usual questions. He said who he was and who he was working for, just what he told me when we first met. He said why he was here and who his wife was and when it was her birthday and what he was going to buy her. Then we lost him for a bit — he’s a very bad subject — didn’t listen, kept singing to himself and trying to go to sleep. I told you, if you remember, that I thought he was too tired.

“Then he came on stream again and sang a bit more. Rather good. I should imagine he used to be in a choir. Said that his Dad was a priest and how he was thinking of doing the same one day. We asked him about Fraser and he said that the man was a part-time soldier. Gillard didn’t sound as though he trusted him all that much. I wrote that down. It is the only really interesting thing as far as you’re concerned. Listen to the tapes if you want to, there’s a hell of a lot more — about the army, how he’s meaning to collect all the Beethoven symphonies, all sorts of stuff. They’re in the next room with the recorder.”

“God damn,” said Hurley softly through his teeth.

“You can forget any other methods too.”

“I’m not stupid!” Hurley snarled. “For Chrissake get her out of here!”

“Which one?” Le Blek enquired, straight-faced.

The moaning paramedic was carried out by two men, with no more ado than if they had entered to empty the wastepaper basket. I made a pad of my handkerchief to stem the bleeding from my arm.

“Did you ask him about her?” Hurley persisted, jerking a thumb in my direction.

“Listen to the damn tapes!” Le Blek said, voice rising. “The answer’s right under your nose. She writes. She goes with him sometimes as company when the job isn’t expected to get too close to the coalface. I imagine she’s been given a little basic tuition in self-defence in case there’s trouble. Why should she be lying about being pregnant?”

“According to —” Hurley started to say but I cut in, addressing Le Blek.

“We’ve been trying for ages,” I said, and such was the pain in my arm that my voice sounded strange in my own ears. After my burst of anger I felt weak and tired. I hadn’t had any sleep the previous night either.

“There’s no security clearance for them,” Hurley shouted. “For all we know they might be a plant by the bloody Communists to disrupt the frigate programme.”

Le Blek’s lip curled. “Oh sure. As soon as the first boat drops into the Saint John river Moscow waves the white flag. Do you really think,” he went on and it seemed to me that as his temper rose the less Canadian and the more Irish his accent became, “that the KGB employs a couple who are trying to start a family? Thought about seriously, would they be permitted to go all out for babies if they were working as a team?” He noticed the blood-stained handkerchief. “This is all the support you can get from me. Call a car and I’ll take them home.”

“The Mounties always get their man,” said Hurley in a dead quiet voice. “I can just picture you standing on a bloody mountain top dressed in your red jacket and fancy pants hollerin’ for Rose Marie.”

What happened next startled me greatly and woke Patrick. Quite cold-bloodedly Le Blek drew his gun from a shoulder holster and put three shots in the floor at Hurley’s feet. The result of this was Hurley going through the door at some speed, somehow preventing an armed inrush, and five minutes later Patrick, Le Blek and I were in a car and speeding down the drive, Le Blek driving as though all the fiends of hell were after him.

“I don’t give a damn if you’re the fairy on the KGB’s Christmas tree,” he said, choking with anger. “When you said you were pregnant back there, the fear of death was in your eyes.”

“Please slow down just a little,” I urged.

“Janice and I have been trying for fifteen years for kids,” he continued, but heeding the plea, “And that stupid bastard behaves as though everyone but Canadians are reds. It’s the brainwashing they give them. Trouble is, they forgot to give him his back after it went in the tub.”

“Will you get into trouble?”

After he had straightened the car when it had slewed round a sharp corner Le Blek glanced sideways at me. “I guess not. My boss calls the security boys hickory heads. Besides, the Major is my responsibility.”

“Then either slow down some more or give me a brown paper bag,” Patrick said weakly from the back seat.

Le Blek lifted his foot off the accelerator and switched off the ignition so that the vehicle rolled to a standstill. Then he got out, opened both rear doors and laid the pliant passenger on his side, ordering him to take deep breaths of fresh air. When Patrick felt better he closed the doors and opened the windows.

“Gets to you, doesn’t it?” Le Blek muttered. “They tried it out on me once during training.” He got back behind the wheel and twisted round with his arms on the back of the seat. “Is Daws someone important?”

Patrick swore fluently.

“It’s important that he stays unmentioned,” I said, wondering with a sinking feeling how much damage had been done by blowing Colonel Richard’s cover in Canada. Enough, probably.

Le Blek faced front again and re-started the engine. “That’s what I thought. I’m not convinced that a lot of stuff doesn’t get to the ears of the Yanks via the likes of Hurley just to show the CIA that they aren’t all horns and balls. That’s why I scrubbed the tapes.”

“But there were others present,” I said, refraining from hugging him.

“Only the medic and right then she was listening to someone give her orders over the radio.”

A few miles further on towards Port Charles we pulled into a lane that led to a group of houses, a new development set in a copse of white birch and beech trees. At the house nearest the road we stopped and two women came out into the garden. The youngest was Le Blek’s wife, Janice, surprised to see him home so early from work; the second his mother who looked as though nothing concerning her son would surprise her.

Patrick was beyond caring if the distaff side of Le Blek’s family assumed him to be inebriated. Once out of the car he leaned on a handy tree, still taking deep breaths. I went to him but was beaten by a short head by the elder Mrs. Le Blek. With bright blue eyes she gave Patrick a long, penetrating appraisal.

“Steve is a very bad driver,” she announced at last. “But to be sure you aren’t the type of person to make a fuss so it must be something else.”

“It is herself of the Irish,” murmured Patrick, kissing her hand. “So help me I’ve been felled not by his driving but the poteen he brews up in the garage. If you have another drop of the same …” He gave her a wan smile.

“I’ll get it,” Janice said, eyes on my makeshift bandage. “You all look as though you could do with some.”

In the end I had real English tea and drank it sitting on a seat in the garden. Patrick had by this time slid to the grass and was leaning on his tree, sipping from the Waterford crystal tumbler that had contained at least a triple of Irish whisky.

They left us alone in the sunlit garden.

“Come and sit over here,” I suggested after a while.

“You’ll have to provide a crane.”

Between the two of us, the tree and I got him to his feet and I steered him to where I had been sitting. There was a reason for moving him. I didn’t want him to fall asleep again outside. There are notes in Patrick’s file in red letters an inch high emphasising that under no circumstances is he to be given drugs during training or for any other reason. Since the Falklands and the resulting two years in and out of hospital, his constitution overreacts to alien substances.

Patrick broke the silence first. “Don’t blame Hurley too much.”

“Ladies don’t spit,” I said.

He took my hand.

“Ever get the notion we’ve been set up?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“What else can I say? If it is like that then I’m sure Daws doesn’t know.”

“Despite the fact that there’s supposed to be co-operation, Six didn’t clear the way for us. Hurley said so and the way he worded that to me suggested that people have been checking. You’re always so sure of Daws but we didn’t ask. Aren’t we supposed to be grown up now and think for ourselves?”

“No, no and yes,” Patrick replied absently, lifting the stained handkerchief from my arm. “How did this happen?” 

I told him, not giving the real reason for my resistance.

“Ingrid one, paramedic nil,” he said. “They waited until I nodded off before giving me the works. I must be losing my grip.”

Some time later Janice took us both indoors where we showered and rested and then were invited to sit down to dinner. Through the window the sun was setting in a magnificent sky of orange, pale pink, translucent aquamarine and blue, tiny clouds looking as though they were floating on a lake of colour. In the garden crickets zithered frenziedly.

“Wishing you’d never come to Canada?” enquired Le Blek, but his wife silenced him with a look and asked Patrick to say grace. Clearly, there had been some feed-back.

*

“Red herrings everywhere,” Patrick said suddenly, getting into bed that night.

Le Blek had driven us back to Ravenscliff where we had met several local newspaper reporters, and found a large pile of cash in coins and notes that Terry had tipped into an antique chamber pot. Patrick’s winnings.

“I think I’m going out of my mind,” I said. “Everything’s either black tragedy or pure farce. One minute the third degree the next a pot full of money.”

“Blood money at that.”

“You mustn’t —” I said, and then stopped for he was smiling at me, untroubled. No, the killing of two armed thugs holding your wife hostage was not murder.

“Your father could find a use for it,” I said lightly. “Organ fund, dry rot, rising damp.”

“I’ll have to see what else I can get up to,” Patrick interrupted. And he lay down on the bed and laughed, slightly hysterically, winding down like a clock. “Oh God,” he muttered. “Am I going mad too?”

I sat on the bed with him. “Patrick, do Five check up on Six?”

We had said nothing of what had transpired, not even to Terry. As far as he was concerned it was unnecessary. Anyone with service insight looking at Patrick could see that he had been drugged. I was fairly certain that he had been given a shot of LSD as well to hurry the process.

“What did you say? Hell, Ingrid, am I really as high as a kite?”

“I was just thinking the same,” I told him. “Yes, and I asked you if Five check up on Six, to try to bring you down to earth.”

He frowned ferociously, thinking. “No, not really. You know our Richard. If he got even a sniff of a rumour he’d be on to it. But you can say what you like — if he had had suspicions he would have warned us. My bet is that it’s nothing more than incompetence — someone in Six overlooked getting us cleared.”

“Here’s another red herring for you then,” I said, and told him what Carol had related to me the previous evening.

“Sherlock Holmes where are you?” Patrick said with feeling when I’d finished. “According to the boffin it was shellfish poisoning but the report was very vague in places. I’m not keen on questioning Margaret Howard until we get more from Daws on her East German boyfriend. Now I’ve a red herring for you — when I went down to the airport to check on Fraser’s plane, I discovered that he’d had a three-hour wait in Halifax to get the Port Charles connection. But he could just as easily have got off a plane from Montreal that arrived an hour after the one he was supposed to have come on from Heathrow.”