Seaweed in the Soup (25 page)

Biedel was about my height. Six-foot four or so, and built like a bull. But Biedal, nearly as old as Lightning Bradley, was slowing down and running to fat. Breathing heavily, he said, “Great weather for ducks, Silas. How's tricks?”

“Okay, Harry. What's up?”

“Lightning Manners is hot to trot. How come you're not answering your cellphone?”

“I've been walking. Sometimes I turn my cellphone off, but who cares? I'm not on parade twenty-four seven, Harry.”

Harry's voice was jovial, but he looked uneasy. He faked a smile. “Yeah, right. We're not all married to the job.”

“Is Manners at headquarters?”

“He's on his way. He wants to meet you here.”

Biedel walked alongside me, and his partner trailed behind as we went inside my building. I was in the corridor reaching into my pockets for a key before I noticed that two uniformed RCMP constables were guarding the door to my office. When I went to put my key into the lock, one of the Mounties raised his hands. He said, “Sorry, sir. All due respect, but you can't go in just yet. No offence. Our instructions are to restrict you to this corridor until Inspector Manners arrives.”

According to the name tag pinned to his chest, the speaker's name was Madison. I didn't know him. I said, “Do you have a warrant for my arrest, Madison?”

“No, sir.”

“Step aside. If there's no warrant you have no authority, and I'm going in.”

Madison flushed, but he didn't budge till Biedel said, “You heard the sergeant, Madison. Let him by.”

The Mountie held his ground for a moment, and then reluctantly moved aside.

I keyed my way into the office, trailed by the others. The four of us stood calmly, avoiding each others' eyes and not speaking, our wet clothes dripping onto the linoleum for a couple of minutes before Manners' car pulled up outside.

I was behind my desk when he strode in dramatically, his face like thunder, wearing a rat catcher's hat, a blue Burberry raincoat, a taupe-coloured suit, and, unless I'm very much mistaken, Ferragamo shoes. I briefly wondered how he could afford such a wardrobe on an inspector's salary. I didn't greet him or speak.

Red in the face, shaking with indignation, Manners pointed a finger at Madison and shouted, “I gave you clear instructions to keep Seaweed out of this office until I arrived.”

PC—who doesn't like loud noises and has the gift of being the centre of attention wherever she goes—chose that moment to leave the scrap of carpet behind a filing cabinet where she had been napping. Tail erect, she meandered towards the cat flap.

“What's that animal doing here? Is this a bloody menagerie?” Manners yelled, taking a step towards the cat. With the toe of his right Ferragamo, he booted PC across the room. She flew through the air, hit a wall and was still sliding down it when, wild-eyed with rage, veins bulging in my neck, I went for Manners. He was backing away and I was halfway around the desk when Biedel grabbed me. He had played rugby for the Crimson Tide, and tackling skills were entrenched in his long-term memory. By then, Manners had taken refuge behind the Mounties.

Biedel's powerful arms held me, and he was quivering. I thought he was reacting to the effort of holding me, but he was actually shaking with suppressed amusement. Nobody else had moved.

PC was tough—cats bend instead of breaking; she was all right. She slid to the floor in one piece, squeezed meowing through the door's cat flap and went out. My reptile-brain fight-or-flight response faded; I stopped struggling.

“It's not worth it, Silas,” Biedel murmured into my ear. “Hit him after you've got your pension.”

I nodded. He let me go. I sat in the swiveller behind my desk, leaned back, folded my arms and waited for Manners to make the next move.

He was dabbing his face with a handkerchief that matched his shirt. Nobody spoke, the silence was deafening. After a while, Manners crooked a finger at Biedel, who went across to see what he wanted.

Manners whispered something in Biedel's ear and offered him a pair of latex gloves.

Biedel took his uniform jacket off, rolled up his shirtsleeves, put the latex gloves on, and then he got stiffly down on his knees in front of the fireplace. He reached up into the chimney flue and brought out a small cardboard box that had been lying out of sight on the fireplace damper. His face grave, Biedel followed Manner's instructions and put the box on my desk.

Looking at me directly for the first time, Manners said, “Open it.”

After pondering that order for a moment, I opened a drawer and rummaged among the tea bags, packages of coffee whitener, old socks and paper clips until I found one latex glove. I was still looking for another when Manners snarled, “I am ordering you to open that box. Just do it.”

“No chance, Nice. No way. Not without gloves. I'm not gonna put my prints on it.”

“I've told you a thousand times! I'm Inspector Manners, I'm not Nice!”

“You said it, Inspector.”

“Seaweed. You are under arrest!”

Manners ordered Biedel to put me in handcuffs.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I arrived at headquarters in leg irons, with both hands cuffed behind my back. It must have been about two in the morning by then. The only witness to my indignity was Sergeant Darcy Clough, on duty at the desk. A woman cleaner, mopping the floor, didn't even glance up from her work.

They shoved me in one of the first-floor interview rooms. Manners ordered Biedel to stay with me in case I tried to commit suicide or defaced the walls with nasty felt-pen drawings. The minute Manners left, Biedel took my cuffs and leg irons off.

A few minutes later, Darcy came in with coffee and doughnuts. “Nice is upstairs with the Mounties,” he said. “He's helping them to compose their statements.”

“The statements ought to be good, then,” Biedel said. “Nice has been taking creative writing courses at night. Pretentious poetry for mature students.”

By then I was too weary to care. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Biedel drank both of the coffees, ate my doughnut and tried to keep himself awake playing iPhone games. We were both asleep when Darcy came back at 8:30.

“CDI Tapp got here ten minutes ago,” Darcy told me. “He went ape shit when he found out you'd been locked up. He's as hot as a two-dollar pistol. Reaming Nice's ass for not calling him last night. He's upstairs in his office waiting for you.”

Bernie was alone, looking at Victoria from his window with his back towards me.

“Sit down,” he said, without turning.

I sat down in a chair, leaned back, put my hands in my pockets and stretched my legs.

Bernie sat behind his desk, put his hands behind his head and gave me a penetrating look from beneath his heavy dark brows. “Have you had any breakfast?”

“Not yet.”

Bernie picked up the phone and spoke to Mrs. Nairn.

Bernie put the phone down and rubbed a thumb across his forehead. He said sombrely, “Superintendent Mallory will be talking to you in a little while. Me and Manners will be there as well. Would you like me to call the union rep?”

“Do I need a union rep?”

“Only if you want to keep your job.”

“In that case I won't be needing her.”

“Pissed off, are you?” Bernie asked, grinning like a hungry hound. “A little emotional because Nice Manners slapped you around last night.”

“Is that what he said?”

“He said something like that. He told me that he treated you like a common hoodlum because in his opinion that's what you are. Manners is saying that you tried to attack him.”

“Manners is right,” I said. “I would have attacked him, but for Harry Biedel. I'd have put him in hospital.”

“So you agree that Manners was acting rationally when he ordered you placed in restraints and held in custody overnight? It wasn't just pure unreasoning vindictiveness against a pain-in-the-ass junior officer?”

For a fraction of a nanosecond I thought about bringing Manners' Ferragamo shoe and PC's involuntary flight across my office into the conversation, till I thought better of it and kept my big mouth shut.

Bernie said, “That box they dragged out of your chimney last night. Is it connected in some way with the Raymond Cho case?”

“I don't know. I don't know what was in the box.”

“You don't know what was in the box?” Bernie's eyebrows climbed his forehead. “Would you care to make a guess what was in the box?”

“No thanks. My brain is tired.”

Bernie raised his hands in a kind of acquiescent apathy. “Well, just so you know, I do have a better opinion of you than Manners, only my brain is tired too. It's been working overtime since I came to work this morning and found my old buddy up to his ass in alligators again.
Again
, pal. I think we should call Guinness. A French Foreign Legionnaire holds the current world record for insubordination, but I think you might have him beat.”

A couple of pigeons flapped in and perched on the windowsill. When Bernie turned in his chair to look at them, his face softened.

“Tell me, Bernie. Do you know what's in the box?”

“Yeah, I know. Superintendent Mallory knows too. Manners knows. For a while, Manners wondered if it might contain an explosive, so he very wisely took it down to Forensics. Forensics was even wiser. They called the bomb squad. Instead of destroying it, the bomb squad took the box outdoors into the police yard, put it in a cage, and opened it with a remote control device. It wasn't a bomb.”

“What was it?”

“Ah, that would be telling, Silas.”

“You mentioned the Raymond Cho case?”

“That's right, I did. Raymond Cho, alias Ronnie Chew. Big Circle Boy, cocaine addict, womanizer, amateur pornographer. Cho came to a bad end in a case that's all part of a big humungous mess. A case with more tentacles than an octopus.”

Mrs. Nairn came in with a tray, put it on Bernie's desk and went out.

Bernie helped himself to a cup of coffee. I helped myself to an Egg McMuffin.

I was chowing down when Bernie went on, “An octopus, Silas, a humongous great big octopus. Raymond Cho dies. Maggie Bradley dies. Then there's an arson fire at Nanaimo's, and Larry Cooley dies.”

“You're certain that it was Cooley we dragged out of Sumatch Creek?”

Bernie nodded. “Larry has a brother, we took DNA samples and got a match. It was Larry, no question.”

Bernie paused for another sip of coffee. “Then Tubby Gonzales dies. What these murders have in common is an open question, but recent evidence would suggest that cocaine trafficking might be a factor.”

I finished the first McMuffin. There was one left. I said, “Do you want that, Bernie?”

Bernie was talked out and shook his head. I picked it up and ate in silence.

Bernie's desk phone rang. Bernie pushed a button. Mrs. Nairn said, “Superintendent Mallory will be ready for you and Sergeant Seaweed in fifteen minutes, sir.”

“Let's get you cleaned up,” Bernie said.

We went downstairs to the duty change room, where I washed and shaved, took a sergeant's uniform from my locker, put it on and checked myself in a mirror.

“All finished admiring yourself?” Bernie asked, as I adjusted my necktie. “We'd better not keep the old man waiting.”

≈  ≈  ≈

They kept me waiting in the corridor outside Superintendent Mallory's office for half an hour, pacing back and forth with a uniform cap tucked beneath my arm. Eventually the police chief's door opened. Nice Manners emerged and ordered me to go in.

Manners stamped with impatience while I put my cap on, adjusted it to a rakish tilt, and then strode past him. I came to a stop in front of Superintendent Mallory's desk and gave him a smart salute. Manners came in and stood beside me. Bernie Tapp, who was standing to one side, gave me a surreptitious wink.

The chief of police was seated. Holding himself with the full gravitas of his office, ramrod straight, Superintendent Mallory was a big white-haired man kitted in full-dress regalia with medals pinned to his chest.

After a stern warning and the usual procedural palaver, Mallory made a noise in his throat, examined me thoroughly with his glittering blue eyes and asked me if I had anything to say for myself.

“A little,” I said unwisely. “Frankly, sir, I'm disappointed. I thought people had a better estimation of my abilities. I thought my colleagues would know that if I had a box to hide, I wouldn't put it where any half-smart jerk with a mission could find it. Sir.”

“Half-smart jerk with a mission?” Mallory repeated with asperity. “Watch your tongue. I won't tolerate such language. Who do you think you are?”

“Sir?”

“If you are under the impression that there's a witch hunt in progress, you are very much mistaken,” Mallory said. “This is serious business just the same. You are charged with threatening Inspector Manners, a senior officer. You are also charged with the possession of one kilogram of cocaine. Do the charges have merit?”

“It's true that I threatened Inspector Manners. It is also true that Inspector Manners found a cardboard box that was hidden in my office. As to what was inside the box, or who put it there, I have no idea. If the box contained cocaine, so be it. To repeat, sir: I don't know how the box came to be there. I wish I did know. I would be interested to hear how Inspector Manners came to find out about it.”

Superintendent Mallory looked at Manners.

“From information received,” Manners said, his voice stony with dislike. “We had an anonymous tip. Somebody told us that Seaweed has been trafficking cocaine.”

“Trafficking! And you took this tip seriously, Inspector? Before you say any more, be mindful that Sergeant Seaweed has served this police force with distinction for many years.”

“If I didn't take the tip seriously then, I do now. As you are aware, sir, we get much of our information from informants,” Manners replied. “Here's the deal as I see it: The present street value of a kilogram of cocaine is a quarter of a million dollars. If this is a setup, as Seaweed implies, there would be much cheaper ways of arranging it.”