Way the Crow Flies (67 page)

In his office, Inspector Bradley writes a memo to his chief, requesting that the officer who struck Richard Froelich be transferred to another unit. Bradley is not the “beating with a rubber hose” type. His job is to serve the justice system. This is a delicate case. Richard Froelich is a juvenile but he has committed an adult crime. He should be tried as one. Allegations of police brutality against a “defenceless child” will not help.

Jack crosses the street for home, following his kids, who are racing each other to the TV.

“Dad, can we watch ‘The Flintstones’?” asks his daughter.

“Sure.”

The small picture is worse. But Simon has control over the big picture. Jack will have to phone him from home this time, and tell him to talk to someone right away.

“Dad, can we have orange pop?” his son asks.

“Go ahead,” says Jack and picks up the phone. Once Simon has adjusted the big picture, the small picture will come back into focus.

He goes to dial, then recalls that he will have to use the night number. It’s in his wallet. Along with the key to the Ford Galaxy. He meant to toss the key into the scrapyard. He unfolds the slip of paper from his wallet, dials the number and listens to the ringing at the other end. When Simon answers, he speaks quietly. It’s just as well the television is blaring in the next room.

“My neighbour’s son has been arrested for the murder of McCarroll’s daughter.”

“Good Lord.”

“Yeah. The police were never interested in Fried, it was the boy they were after.”

“That’s the boy you were mentioning,” says Simon. “The one you saw from the car?”

“That’s right.”

“How appalling. Well, they’ve got him now, I suppose that’s a relief.”

“What? No, Simon, the boy is innocent. I’m his alibi.”

The briefest pause, then “Oh.”

From the living room, Madeleine sees her father facing away and leaning against the fridge. His head is bowed and his free hand grips the back of his neck.

Jack speaks with his mouth close to the phone. “The police ought to be out finding this pervert, not wasting time with—”

“Quite.”

In the living room, the kids are squabbling. Jack moves farther into the kitchen, as far as the phone cord will allow. “The OPP need to know that I can vouch for the boy. We need to clear this whole thing up, discreetly, right away, Si. You’ll have to have a word with someone.”

“With whom?”

Jack feels faintly ridiculous. He licks his lips. “External Affairs; RCMP Security Service, whoever’s got a back channel to the police here.”

“The fact is, old friend, there is no one.”

“… What do you mean?”

“Just that,” says Simon, almost breezy. “I’ve closed the loop on this one. The Soviets think Fried is dead. I’ve had to keep the points of entry to a minimum. You’re the only Canadian directly involved. I told you that.”

You’re the only one who knows
. He had meant it literally. “What about—well, how did you—?” Jack shakes his head. “How in God’s name did you manage to get Fried a Canadian passport? How can you be operating here without Canadian authority?”

“Did you get rid of the car?”

“It’s scrap by now. Simon, I asked you a question.”

“We’re not doing anything that contradicts our obligations under NATO.”

“Bullshit. What’s going on?” He has sworn like a cadet, right in his own kitchen. He glances over his shoulder but his kids are fixated, blue shadows dancing on their faces, bathed in undifferentiated racket.

“It’s the truth,” Simon is saying. “Politicians may prefer either not to know, or not to be seen to know, the details, but their policies implicitly authorize this sort of work, and they expect it to be done, otherwise we’d be part of the U.S.S.R. by now.”

Is it legal? The job he’s doing for Simon? What does Jack really know about Oskar Fried?

“Who are you working for, Simon?”

“It’s time I bought you that drink.”

Oskar Fried is a Soviet citizen, for pity’s sake. And Jack has embraced him on the word of an old friend. A man he has seen once in twenty years. “You told me it was an American–Canadian–British operation.”

“I never specified. I can tell you it ain’t Soviet.”

“You know there’s a killer on the loose here, buddy?”

Jack’s knuckles are white around the receiver. But Simon’s voice, when he answers, is quiet. “Not a very happy place right now, eh? Centralia? I’m not keen on seeing an innocent boy punished, Jack. I’m not keen on child-killers going free.”

A burst of gunfire from the living room.

Simon says, “That’s not why I do my job.”

Jack waits.

“That’s not what we fought for, Jack.”
We
.

Jack hears a sigh on the other end of the line, and feels ashamed. He takes a breath finally. Simon is not the enemy. The enemy is out there. He looks at the black shine of the kitchen window and sees a man, head bowed, on the phone. He steps forward and draws the curtains—the ones Mimi sewed in Germany.

“Your police are putting on a pretty poor show,” says Simon. “They clearly haven’t a fucking clue who’s responsible.”

“I’m sick about it, Simon. I’ve sent the police on a goddamn wild goose chase.”

“Do you really think you’ve done that single-handedly?” Simon in the seat beside him. Asking the right questions. “We’re taking
some flak that’s all. We’ll ride it out. Don’t shake hands with the Devil before you meet him.”

Jack takes another deep breath, as quietly as possible, so as not to rouse his headache. Simon is right. They picked up Ricky Froelich because there are no other suspects. He wonders if there is any Aspirin in the house.

“What’s the situation on the ground there, Jack? Has your neighbour….”

“Froelich.”

“Has he spoken to anyone else, any mention of Dora in the press?”

“No. The arrest will be all over the papers, but…. If I were his lawyer, I’d tell him to keep his war criminal story to himself. Just makes the boy look guilty.”

“Good point.”

“Simon, if this goes any farther, I’ll have to come forward.”

“I don’t imagine it’ll come to that.”

An air-raid siren wails from the living room. Simon adds, almost as an afterthought, “Have you mentioned this to anyone at all? Fried? The fact you were in the car?”

“No—”

“To your wife—?”

“I’ve told no one.”

“Good. You did the right thing, mate.”

Jack’s headache blooms. His left eye pulses, he sees a diagonal silver flash and loses a patch of vision. “I’ll keep you posted.” He hangs up and pauses, his hand still on the receiver. In the next room his daughter sings along with a commercial, “‘You’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!’” Where does Mimi keep the Aspirin? He begins opening drawers. In the cupboard under the sink he finds a ragged old housedress, not anything Mimi wears, surely, what’s it doing here? Is it really possible that no one in the Canadian government is aware of Fried’s presence? Or is Canada in the habit of granting carte blanche to the Americans and Brits? A grenade explodes behind him; he turns and is in the living room in two steps. “Turn that godforsaken box down!”

Madeleine looks up. Her father is standing in the doorway, staring at her brother.

“But Dad, I can hardly hear it,” says Mike.

Her father looks strange. “What did you say, mister?”

“Nothing.”

Madeleine sits hugging a couch cushion, while Mike drags himself to the TV and lowers the volume. Dad doesn’t take his eyes from him. “What in the name of God are you watching, anyway?” Madeleine knew it was too good to be true—the half-naked Nazi, the chesty mademoiselle—

“Combat,”
says Mike.

“Why are you letting your sister watch that garbage?”

“It’s not garbage, it’s good.”

“American garbage.”

“Well, we don’t have our own garbage.”

Dad clips him on the side of the head.

“Ow,” cries Mike, and turns red.

Jack plants himself in front of the television. “I’ll tell you something: the Americans entered both wars late and they like to take the credit, but you know who was in the front lines both times from the very beginning?” It’s a question that requires no reply. “Canadians.” His lips are thin and shiny. Bluish. “Do you know how many Canadian aircrew died in the last war?”

Machine-gun fire from the television—“I’m hit!” cries Sarge. Mike reflexively tilts his head to see past his father, who turns and switches off the TV. Mike punches his couch cushion.

Madeleine says, “Two out of three aircrew never came back.”

Jack says, “That’s right.” He grabs Mike by the ear and yanks him from the couch.

Mike yelps.

“To bed!” he says through gritted teeth.

“Ow, Papa!”

Mike, following Dad’s grip on his ear, looks suddenly very small and pink in his hockey pajamas and bare feet. Dad’s neck has turned red. Mike is trying not to cry. Madeleine looks down.

“It’s not my bedtime, Daddy!”—the last syllables get away from him in a sob that he fights to snatch back.

Dad pushes him to the stairs, releasing his ear, and Mike stumbles up the first step. Dad follows and grabs a close handful of Mike’s brush cut, hauling him up. Mike is crying, “Daddy, please stop.”

Maman says from the kitchen doorway,
“Qu’est-ce qui se passe ici?”
and drops her purse to the floor. Dad lets go and Mike runs upstairs—Madeleine hears his door slam shut.

Dad lifts his hand to his forehead and says, “Mimi, I couldn’t find the uh”—he takes a deep breath and Madeleine hears a tremble in it. “Where’s the Aspirin?” She sits perfectly still, clutching her pillow. Have they forgotten that she is here?

Mimi looks up at him and says, “Jack, what’s wrong?”

“Headache,” he says mildly, trying to smile. It’s blinding him.

“Sit down a minute.”

Jack returns to the kitchen, finds a chair and sits while Mimi goes upstairs to the medicine cabinet. Madeleine can see that her father is not moving. His forehead rests lightly on his fingers.

Mimi comes back down the stairs.
“Tiens,”
she says, handing him the pills and water.

He puts them between his teeth and attempts a grin for her.
“Merci
,” he says, and swallows.

The pain is there to smack him across the forehead when he stands, but he doesn’t sit back down. The kitchen light trembles briefly above his head and he says, “I’m gonna go stretch my legs.”

He walks past her, down the three steps, which have begun to narrow and grow dim, is the light still on? He will feel more relaxed in the night air, where he knows it’s dark. He walks out the door, and the missing patch of vision is restored, replaced by a wavering arc, as though his eye were partially under water. It will pass. He wants only to walk out of the PMQs a ways, to where there are no street lights. Street lights burn, hard haloes expunging all other shapes, branding the insides of his closed lids, boring through to the back of his skull. The sun today on the drive, no sunglasses. No hat brim. No supper. It’s just a headache.

He experiences a sense of “coming to” in the black freshness of night as he looks back upon the lights of the houses and the station buildings scattered at a gentle distance now, a spangled square mile. At the far end, a red light flashes unhurriedly from the airport control tower. Jack
has walked north perhaps a mile. He smells the new fields. Earth and sky. Now that he is better, he realizes that he was close to keeling over as he left his house ten, twenty minutes ago. A slice of steel is wedged at an angle across the left side of his head, bisecting his eye. Soon it will begin to loosen, throb. He’s fine. Couple more Aspirins and a Scotch.

He turns for home. His eyes are watering. His throat is sore. Perhaps he is coming down with something. He stops, puts his hand out and rests it on a wooden fencepost soft with weather, he is weeping. It will help his headache. He is weeping and his nose is running.

It’s amazing how a headache can undo a man, it’s just as well he came out for a walk rather than inflict this on Mimi. She would ask him what’s wrong, and although things are getting more complicated with the job he is trying to do, there is nothing so wrong that it can’t be fixed.

Except that a little girl is dead.

Jack’s forehead rests on the back of his hand and he gives the weight of his head to the fencepost. A child has died. He sees in his mind’s eye a little girl with brown hair tousled around her head, lying on her back in a field. She has his daughter’s face. He cries. There is no one around. In his mind he hears his daughter’s voice,
Daddy
. He sobs into his arm.
Oh God
. A child has died. His face in both his hands—
dear God. A child
.

“Oh God,” he says, sniffing, wiping his nose with his forearm—the words coming up like crumpled paper. Breathing in through his mouth, both palms smearing his face. Not my little girl, but a dear child. Taken. Just like that. He slams his fist onto the fencepost,
Jesus
—and again,
Jesus
—let him alone with the likes of
that
, whatever it was that killed her—he wrenches the post in the earth like a bad tooth—
smash
him,
tear
him apart.
With my bare hands
.

He lets go of the smooth wood. His eyes still streaming, he starts for home, pulling his shirt out from his trousers to dry his face, blow his nose. His hanky is in his uniform jacket on the back of the kitchen chair at home, he has come out in his blue shirt-sleeves, and now he realizes that it’s cold, April’s sharp end.

He is grateful that no car has come along, for he is half out of uniform, no jacket, tie or hat.
LMF
. The initials come to mind—perhaps because he knows he is a poor sight at the moment.
Lack of
moral fibre
. When he was in training, he knew a man who was turfed from the air force for that. It could mean anything. Usually it meant cowardice. Failure of nerve. Breakdown after a bombing run or, during training, the inability to go back up.

Madeleine stands still as a statue outside Mike’s bedroom door. It is closed, but she can hear Maman softly singing. Her voice is muffled, but Madeleine recognizes the tune.
“Un Acadien errant.”
Mike’s favourite song. Maman has not sung to him in a long while, not since they moved here. He has not required songs, he has required privacy for himself and his sacred airplane models.