Ice Lake (34 page)

“I can’t take this!” she finally blurted out. “Not again. This is not a life.”

“Donna, come on, I’m a cop.”

“You’re a cop. Fine. I signed on for that.
But you
signed on to be Émile’s partner, and nobody said that
that
was for life. You can get a new partner and give yourself back a normal cop’s life. God knows that’s bad enough.”

Mathers still held the coffee cup in his hand and he took a second sip. He exhaled with exasperation. “Donna, you know I can’t bail out on him now.”

“That’s the difference between me and you, Bill. Because I can.”

She hung up.

He stood there, beat, and wondered why in the movies when someone suddenly hung up the other person would keep on talking. “Hello? Hello?” the actor would say into the phone. Who would do that? Who would talk to that persistent buzz which told anyone with a brain a fraction the size of a pea that he’d been disconnected? Mathers gave her a minute, sipped his coffee, then dialled again.

“Donna, don’t do this.”

She didn’t speak for awhile, and he hoped that what he detected in her breathing was resignation. “All right. I’ll take Kit to Janice’s. But you and I have to talk, Bill.”

“Good. Take the bare minimum with you. I’ll pass by later to pick up what you need. Now listen. When you go, take a cab to the shopping centre. Step inside for a few minutes. Go out a different exit and grab a cab to Janice’s from there. Okay?”

He heard the intake of breath, the dawning awareness of danger. “All right,” she consented.

“Good girl. Don’t worry. Things will be okay.”

“Things have to change, Bill.”

“Just let me get through this case.”

“Émile’s been saying that to Sandra for as long as they’ve been married. During every slam case he says it.”

“Donna, we’ll talk it through when we’re out of this one. I promise.”

“Think hard about leaving Emile, Bill. Don’t think you’re going to wriggle out of our talk. Now, goodbye, and please, please, take care of yourself.”

He waited. She didn’t hang up on him this time. “Bye for now. Take care. I’ll be in touch.”

“Good thinking. You do that.”

As he hung up the phone, he noticed his cup trembling in its saucer.

The feet of thirty cops thundered on the hardwood floors as uniforms, detectives and
SWAT
moved on the double. The all-clear had sounded, but no one dared trust the news, so cops were checking doorways and swarming apartments, confirming “Clear!” as they shunted through rooms previously gone through by the
swat,
up stairwells and along corridors.

By the time he reached the top floor, Emile Cinq-Mars, like anyone else over thirty, was puffing, running on the memory of an athletic youth.

Wearing a vest and hoisting an automatic rifle, a cop gestured him down to an end room on the fourth floor and Cinq-Mars walked over with Tremblay and Mathers in tow and stepped inside. The office space was bare and dusty, with an atmosphere of long-term abandonment. The air tasted stale on his lips and the corners of the room were propped up by cobwebs. Windows wore the oily grime of the city as a second skin. A kitchenette, an area that now interested those cops first on the scene, was separated from the expansive main room by an island counter. The new arrivals quickly discerned the attraction. The sink and counter-top showed fresh bloodstains, and bloody balls of gauze and cotton batting littered the floor. Mathers pointed with his toe to a syringe. Tossed against the radiator lay an empty IV bag.

“Some of it’s recent, some of it’s old,” a
SWAT
sergeant offered.

“An operating table,” a second officer confirmed.

“Check this out,” the
SWAT
guy said. “It’s definitely recent.” Each man, including Cinq-Mars, Tremblay and Mathers, bent over the countertop to closely eyeball an unusual pattern. A semicircle and, off to one side, a burned splotch marred the surface.

“What do you make of it?” Tremblay inquired.

“Acid,” an officer replied. “Burned right though to the wood.”

The room grew quiet with the news.

“Blood’s caked,” Cinq-Mars mentioned. “They got out before we got in.”

“Forensics?” Tremblay called out.

“On the way!” brayed a uniform from the doorway.

“Emile?” the Lieutenant-Detective asked quietly.

Cinq-Mars shook his head, despairing. “They want her alive, that’s the good news. The bad news is, they’ve got her alive and we don’t know why, we don’t have a clue what they’re after. The acid—I don’t want to contemplate what that means. We have to find out what she knows that others want to know so much. We have to do it sometime soon.”

“All right,” Tremblay decided. More detectives were coming into the room and awaiting orders. “Canvass the neighbourhood for anybody who saw that van arrive or depart, or for anybody who noticed a young woman walking away in the company of men. We need to run down possible physicians, starting with any sawbones connected to a gang. Filter through the usual hacks after that. Then think about legitimate doctors, maybe in the neighbourhood. There might’ve been a few vehicles coming and going—ask if anybody noticed traffic. Emile?”

“She lost blood. They might be wanting some.”

“Bikers have their own supply.” Worried about
AIDS,
the warring gangs maintained private stocks.

“Doesn’t matter. They still need a lab to make the match. Nobody knows for sure that it’s a biker action anyway. Run down the hospitals and the labs, look for emergency requests.”

“Done. Get on it,” Tremblay told his men, and as they were rushing out he moved across with Mathers
and Cinq-Mars to the broad windows for a private chat. “Do we have a next move?”

“Her name is Lucy Gabriel,” Cinq-Mars told him. “She’s native, from Oka. We know next to nothing about her, except that she works at a pharmaceutical company called Hillier-Largent Global. Bill and I are heading there now. I’d like background information on her and on the dead man, Andrew Stettler. Can you put some people on that? I’d really appreciate it, because after we do this interview, Bill and I will need personal time. I’m whacked. Last night was no accident, Remi. The bull’s-eye on my forehead might not scrub off anytime soon.”

Nodding, Lieutenant-Detective Remi Tremblay placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder and left it there a moment. “Go,” he said. “I’ll have the background checks done. You take care.” He nodded deliberately at Mathers to include him, and the partners left the room, their footsteps echoing off the stained oak flooring.

Mathers hurried ahead at a fair clip down the stairwell until Cinq-Mars called him back. He was moving stiffly now, his calves and thighs having knotted following the sprint up the stairs. “Is there a horse race I don’t know about?”

“Sorry, Emile. I’m pent up.”

“Not enough gunfights for one day? You’re hoping to take somebody out?”

Cinq-Mars was leaning to one side and holding the banister as he stepped down on one foot, tilting in the opposite direction for the other, as though his knees and hips were locking up. Lack of sleep sometimes did that to him, old horse-riding injuries acting up in his joints. As he moved, though, his muscles slowly relaxed again and he began to find his rhythm.

“That’s not it. I talked to Donna. She’s not too happy.”

“Did you wish her a Happy Valentine’s Day?”

“What? No.”

“There you go. That’s half your problem right there. You can’t continue to make these huge blunders in life, Bill. They’ll cost you.”

“I don’t think candy and flowers will cover this one.” As Cinq-Mars reached him, he turned and they walked down together.

“Maybe not, but it won’t hurt. This isn’t easy for her.”

“How do you handle Sandra, Emile?”

The Sergeant-Detective’s short burst of laughter was so loud that it echoed down the stairwell. “That’s a good one, Bill. Me—handling Sandra. Thank you for that. I needed a good laugh right about now.”

The two men descended the stairs and returned to the street. To anyone watching, the elder appeared amused, the young one glum, so that no bystander could ascertain whether the raid had gone poorly or well. Cinq-Mars carried on as though he had places to go and people to contact. He acted as if he might be onto something new, on the chance that among those looking down from their windows or from behind police barricades were people with a vested interest in having him fail. The way the investigation had gone so far, he wouldn’t discount the possibility that a spy had him in his sights.

Dressed in a brown habit, the cowl lying loosely around his neck, a monk used a plastic ladle to transfer soup from a stainless-steel pot to a heavy porcelain bowl. He repeated the action twice, filling the bowl, pouring with extreme care. With each scoop he swilled the soup around, sure to catch a rich complement of vegetables and lentils. He placed the bowl upon a tray. Alongside the steaming broth, the monk arranged an assortment of cheeses and bread. He poured hot water into a small
green teapot and dropped in a single bag, leaving its string to dangle on the outside. Then he sliced thin squares of butter and placed them delicately upon a plate, and added a napkin and cutlery. The monk picked up the tray in both hands and departed the broad kitchen with the high ceilings and old, chipped enamel sinks, and started on his trek.

Officially, this wing of the monastery was vacant.

The monk walked down a sombre, cave-like corridor, his soft steps creating a trace of an echo off the stone walls. Forty yards along he was bathed in refracted sunlight angling through the high window. When he reached the end of the corridor, he placed the tray on a shelf while he opened the doors to a dumb waiter. The monk then placed the tray inside and pulled a rope with both hands, which lifted the tray to the floors above. As the counterweight for the dumb waiter descended on its rope, it signalled what floors the rising tray had attained with old, hand-drawn signs. The numeral nine appeared, indicating that the tray had reached that floor, and the monk fastened his rope with a quick and expert hitch.

Then he commenced to trudge up the stairs himself.

He was not an old man, despite the weariness of his walk and the ample streaks of grey throughout his wavy hair. He had to lug a considerable paunch around with him, and so he paced himself, stopping briefly on the third and fifth floors before climbing higher. At each level he was washed anew with sunlight.

At the ninth floor, the monk removed the tray from the dumb waiter and shuffled on down that corridor, away from the window light, toward the gloomy interior.

Eleven doors down, he balanced the tray in one hand and knocked.

“Come in,” a woman’s voice responded.

The monk opened the door and entered.

“Hey, Brother Tom, how are you?” Lucy Gabriel inquired brightly. She wanted him as a friend.

Brother Tom smiled, nodded, and placed the lunch on the simple wooden desk beneath the room’s window. This was a spartan enclosure, with a cot for a bed, the mattress no more than two inches thick. Next to it stood a table and two ladderback chairs.

“Beautiful day,” Lucy offered.

Mute, Brother Tom nodded, and bowed slightly on his way out.

“Have a great day, Brother Tommy!” she called as he was closing the door.

Lucy did not immediately fall upon her food. She stood by the window next to her desk, the steam of the soup bowl rising to touch her wrists and the bandage on her upper arm, then lifting higher, to touch her chin. She gazed out the tall, narrow, castle-like window, with a view of the blue winter sky, and if she stood on tiptoe and angled herself over the desk she could look left, south, to the Lake of Two Mountains, where the snow-covered ice reflected the sun.

She sat down, and in the austere quiet of the monastery’s empty wing Lucy began to eat her lunch, her first as a secret novitiate. Her first meal, she thought, as a damsel in distress tucked away in what might as well be a medieval turret.

Before heading to Hillier-Largent Global, Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars and Detective Bill Mathers commandeered an unmarked cruiser. Emile’s Pathfinder, pressed into service the night before as an ambulance, had been returned to the station, and Mathers parked his Ford alongside it.

They made their way up the Décarie Expressway trench. The highway was dug deep below ground level, with ramps ascending and descending, and few drivers
heeded the speed limit of forty-five miles an hour unless forced to do so by heavy traffic. Mathers was doing sixty-five and still waiting for a chance to slip into the fast lane when a call came over the two-way radio.

SQ, Sergeant Charles Painchaud had left an
ASAP
call-back request and a number where he could be reached.

“Morning, Charles,” Cinq-Mars said into his cellphone. “Are you living on coffee too?”

“Slept like a child, sir. But, unlike you, nobody took a shot at me earlier in the evening. Don’t have your celebrity status, I guess.”