Flashback (2 page)

It was Gilles Perrault, the guy who runs the bait store on Main Street, reaching me through the phone line which kicks into my radio link. 'Reid. Gilles Perrault. Come quick. Kids been in, pushed the tank over, stole all kinds of stuff.'
 

'Be right there.' I took a moment to tell the crowd I'd be back with a tow truck. Then I told Ms Tracy, 'I have an emergency to attend to, could I come and talk to you later, please?'
 

'Of course. I'll be around until six.' She wanted to say more and I gave her a half-second before she blurted, 'I heard the radio. A swarming? Does that mean there are teen gangs in town?'
 

'I'm about to find out.' I inclined my head to her and left. On the way I called Fred and had her patch me through to Kinski's Garage. When they answered I told Paul about the submerged car and asked him to bring his tow truck up and start hauling it out. He swore when he heard it was under water, then grunted, so I guessed he'd find some way to get a chain on it. Then I put my foot down and picked up speed to Main Street.
 

The gang had really done a job on Perrault's store. His floor was awash with water and minnows wriggling every which way and muddy with a mixture of worms and moss. Gilles and an elderly customer were struggling to set the fish tank back on its base. It was a galvanized cattle trough but lined with bricks on the bottom and heavy.
 

He was swearing rapidly in French as he worked and he didn't stop until we had the tank back in place and he had run a hose into it. Then he thanked us and set about scooping up his stock. I hooked a pail off the wall and helped him. Sightseers crowded around the doorway, but none came in to help, they stood there drinking up the sight. It's the same at every kind of calamity. Some help, most watch.
 

It took us about five minutes to get most of the shiners back in the tank which was filling slowly. While Gilles hunted down the last of his minnows off the floor 1 asked him what had happened.
 

'Was kids. Couple big, maybe seventeen, eighteen. The rest younger. They came in, one came up to the counter an' then the rest ran wild, grabbin' stuff, tippin' the tank. I try to stop dem an' one big one push me over. Two, t'ree others was throwin' worms out of the fridge.'
 

'Did you see the bunch I had the heyrube with earlier?'

'No. I was busy an' it was over quick. Some customer tol' me. Said they was gonna kill a dog. But I never seen these kids before.' He found a dustpan and started sweeping up the worms, swearing again in his guttural Quebecois French.
 

It sounded like the return of the dog-bashers, looking to pay me back for chasing them off earlier, but I dug for details. 'Were they wearing any kind of uniform? The same baseball caps maybe or a handkerchief hanging out of their pockets, anything?'
 

'I never seen nothin',' Gilles said miserably. 'They took lures, couple rods, anythin' they could grab.'

I asked the customer, 'Were you in here, sir, when this happened?'

'No. I got here as they were running out of the place. About knocked me over.'

I washed my fishy hands, took the customer's name and address and told Gilles to make a list of what had been stolen while I tried to trace the kids, then I went outside, leaving the customer beating Gilles down on his bait purchase, claiming that the minnows were shocked and would go belly up in no time.
 

A couple of people claimed to have seen the kids leaving but no two of their descriptions jibed so I had nothing to go on. I gave up, going into each of the stores and telling each of the clerks to phone the moment they recognized any of the kids or if a bunch of youths came in at once, not to wait until they swarmed the place. Then I saw Kinski's tow truck heading north up the other side of the lake and I got back in the car and followed it up.
 

It turned off the roadway and backed down the rock through the crowd which had swelled since I left. When it stopped, just as I arrived. I saw it was Kinski himself, one of the hard-working Poles who got out of their country a year or two ago when Solidarity was making waves, and he had his son with him, a lean blond boy in jeans and a T-shirt which he shucked as soon as he got out of the car, revealing a swimsuit.
 

Paul waited for me to walk over, then said, 'Peter swims good. He come with me to put on the chain.'

'Good thinking. Don't try anything tricky, Peter, like getting yourself underneath the car, duck down and reach under, that's all.'
 

'No worries.' He grinned cheerfully while his father unhitched the hook and loosened the tow cable.

As we waited I asked him, 'Tell me, Pete, have you heard anything about any gangs around here?'

'Gangs?' I could tell he hadn't.

'Yeah, any bunch of losers hanging around together, maybe wearing something the same, same belt, same cap, same coloured shoe-laces, anything like that?'
 

He shrugged. 'I been workin' with Dad all summer, running the pumps an' that.'

'OK, thanks. If you hear anything, see a bunch of kids in a car together, make a note of the number, would you, and call me.'

'No worries,' he said again, then took the hook from his father and snapped on a scuba mask. He clambered down the rock and dropped neatly into the water, holding his mask on. His father let the hook loose and let it run down to water level where Peter took it. Then he took a couple of deep breaths and sank under the water. He came up once for more air, then the second time he gave us a thumbs-up.
 

'Out the way,' Paul called, and put the crane in gear. The truck lurched once, then locked, and the car came backwards out of the water with Peter treading water, clear of it. I saw that the driver's window was open. That was good. It probably meant the driver hadn't drowned. But I went to the left side of the car and checked anyway as the car cleared the water's edge. I'd already noted that it was the Honda that had been stolen from Parry Sound, a town half an hour north of here up the highway.
 

The crowd swarmed around it as it came out of the water and I had to tell them to back off, missing Sam; one hiss from me and he would have kept them back with no trouble.
 

When Paul had it up on the rock I took a better look inside. It was empty and the radio was missing and the seats had been slashed with a knife. Another act of gang mischief. Three in one day. If there was any truth to the old superstition, that was our quota for a while.
 

I opened the door to let the water out. The key was in the ignition, I noticed, a single key, not ring. Odd. Just about everybody keeps their keys together on a ring. Having it separated out like that looked deliberate.
 

Paul got down from the cab of his truck and came to tie off the wheel. He saw the slashed unholstery and spat angrily. 'Punks. Big tough guys with a knife, yeah?'
 

'Gutless,' I said automatically. 'Can you take it to your yard? I'd like to look it over before the owner has it picked up.'

He agreed and waited for Peter, who was towelling himself off and slipping his T-shirt back on, then drove off with the Honda trailing.
 

I took ten minutes to check with the neighbours, making sure nobody had heard anything. Nobody had. The only help I got was that there had been a ballgame on TV until close to eleven, after that all the residents had been asleep, except for Ms Tracy who had not got home until after twelve and had read for an hour or so before turning off the lights.
 

'You're sure you heard nothing?' I was a bit surprised that the noise hadn't woken her up. The splash would have been loud enough to have startled people. And if kids had done this, there could have been some yelling going on.
 

'I have an air-conditioner in the bedroom window,' she explained. 'It's pretty noisy.' Then, surprisingly, she added, 'Come and see for yourself.'
 

'OK.' I walked with her, weighing up the facts. Allowing that the noise might have reached her before she went to sleep, there were two windows of time in which someone could have driven the car into the lake, just around midnight or after two in the morning. The only snag was that if everyone within a couple of hundred yards had air-conditioning they would all have been deaf to the noise. Ah well, no big deal, the car was intact, more or less, my job was over when I'd reported it found.
 

I had an odd feeling about Ms Tracy. She was cool to the point of rudeness and I wondered why. She had never crossed my path before and had no cause for resentment. Maybe she had some old militant attitude towards the police. A lot of people got that way in the 'sixties. All I knew was that she owned the cottage and came up here on and off all summer. There didn't seem to be any men, or women for that matter, in her life. She seemed to be one of those people who pass through life without touching the sides.
 

Today she was wearing blue jeans and a cotton top knotted around her waist offering the occasional flash of firm brown belly. Not exactly erotic but attractive. And she wanted to help me. A minor mystery.
 

I followed her to the back of her cottage, the kind of winterized place that a lot of our long-time visitors build with plans for retiring here. Most don't. They stay in Toronto where the stores and their grandchildren make the winters more congenial.
 

The only concession to country living was a big screened verandah with comfortable chairs and a radio tuned to a classical music station. She opened the door and ushered me in. I stepped up on the porch and waited while she opened the main door of the house and said, 'Come on in, see for yourself.'
 

That was when my cop's instincts began to tickle. This was above and beyond the call of good citizenship. But I followed, keeping my hat on to show this wasn't a social call.
 

Her bedroom was comfortable, a queen-sized bed and a good shelf of books. There was a pile of bound typescripts on the side table. I'd seen my wife studying books like them. She's an actress.
 

The air-conditioner was running and it was as loud as she had suggested. She raised her voice slightly. 'See what I mean? I couldn't have heard a head-on crash.'
 

'True enough. Thank you.' I turned immediately and went back through to the porch. She followed. 'I love this heat, don't you?'
 

'It helps to make up for the winters.' I paused and she leaned on the doorjamb, on one foot, the other raised on tiptoe behind her, a dated pin-up shot. 'Would you like some iced tea?'
 

'No, thank you. I have to look in at home. My wife's expecting a baby just about any minute.' I smiled to show I wasn't being standoffish. 'Thanks anyway. The reason I came with you is that I thought you might have something you wanted to tell me without the neighbours hearing.'
 

'Oh?' she cocked her head. 'Like what, for instance?' She looked the way she might have done in her office in town, exercising good control of some subordinate.
 

I raised my hands. 'No idea. But people have funny ideas about the police. It's unfashionable to be any more helpful than is absolutely necessary.'
 

'And you have me pegged for a feminist, lesbian maybe, because I'm Ms Tracy, not Mrs.'

'I've been a policeman too long to generalize about anybody.'

'This place is my hideaway.' she said softly. 'In Toronto I work like a dog. I'm a feature film producer and I deal with every variety of bastard. Rich creeps who want to put money into movies so they can get next to the actresses, actors with egos the size of Czechoslovakia, unions, bitchy gay beauticians, every kind of headache you can imagine. But here I can be alone, be myself.'
 

It was more impassioned than I needed and I wondered why she was telling me. 'Well, thanks for the help. Enjoy your stay. When are you going back to town?'
 

'Next week sometime. When's the baby due?' Tit for tat. If I'd been exploring the possibility of a little dalliance she was carrying the ball.
 

'Any moment.'

'
Mazel tov
,' she said and smiled as if she meant it. 'Let me know when it happens. I don't always drink tea. We'll wet the baby's head.'
 

I didn't answer, just smiled and left, with the ripe summer warmth on my bare arms, feeling aroused. Chill out, I told myself. She was playing games.
 

I called in on Fred who was sitting on a chaise-longue by the back door, knitting. She got up when I arrived. 'Hi, honey. Like some iced tea?'
 

'You should be resting.' I wagged a finger at her. 'All this energy is getting me nervous. Sit still. I'll make it.'

'I phoned my mother this morning. She tells me the energy means today's the day,' she said cheerfully. 'Can't be soon enough for me, I'm tired of looking like the side of a house.'
 

'It's still the nicest-looking house in the neighbourhood, even with the bay window,' I said. She threw a cushion at me.

She likes an instant tea mix, so I chopped up a lemon and threw in the ice cubes and had the whole thing ready in a couple of minutes. She put her knitting down when I carried the tray out to the back yard and poured. She laid the cold glass against her cheek. 'Mmmm,' she said happily.
 

'Just had a lady make a veiled pass at me,' I said.

'Not surprising. You're almost attractive in a roughcast sort of way.' She sipped her tea. 'Who was it?'

'Woman called Tracy. Don't know her first name. She lives, summers anyway, across the lake, about half a mile south of the bridge. Says she's in the film business in Toronto.'
 

Fred frowned. 'Not an actress?'

'Production, she said. Was telling me this place is her hideaway, away from terrible people like actresses and people wishing to have their wicked way with them.'