City of Ice (4 page)

“My walk’s dorky. That’s what you’re really trying to tell me. Don’t sweat it, Selwyn. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”

The man’s name was Norris—Selwyn Emerson Norris—and the young woman had not known him long. He had lovely eyes in her estimation and a decent manner and an intriguing air about him. Always impeccably groomed, he was so damned handsome. He had old-fashioned manners, always seemed interested in what she had to say, and loved conversation. She had little more to go on than that and no sound reason to be keeping his company.

“There’s a name for it, you know,” she said.

“For what?”

“My walk.”

“Really?”

“But I’m not telling! It’s way too demeaning. Wild horses! My walk is physiological so don’t try changing it. It’s not in your domain.
Yikes,
I’m stiff. I’m so
cold.
” She bobbed at the knees to keep herself in motion.

Norris placed her boots on the ice as she stooped to untie the laces on her high-top skates. Unable to manage while wearing mittens, Julia pulled them off between her teeth and attacked the knots with fingers numb from the cold. Supporting her weight against him, one hand in his, mitts in her mouth, she kicked a skate loose and tucked her foot into the frigid boot.

“Sel!” Her shout was muffled. Extracting the mittens from between her teeth, Julia put them on again. “Why’s it so freezing out? This has got to be the coldest Christmastime ever ever
ever.
”

“How does a bowl of hot soup sound to you?”

“Like the sound of one hand clapping, I guess.” She pried the second skate off and pulled on her boot.

“Snoop—”

“You don’t mean here. You can’t mean
here.
” Julia abhorred the public chalet where children retreated for
poutine
and warmth and the familiar comfort of their own racket.

“I think not.”

Which had to be considered also—the drive in the Infiniti, the food of fine restaurants—although she did not dwell on such ancillary offerings for long.

“Let’s run,” she said.

“You go. I’ll catch up.”

Hugging herself, Julia Murdick ran, disappearing along the path through the woods. Selwyn Norris next saw her in the parking lot jumping in place by his car. He walked across the hardened snow, and the crunch of his boots was clear and sharp in the night air. He unlocked the doors of the Q45 from a distance. Julia heard the gay electronic
blip!
of the locks releasing, opened her door, and bounced in. She watched Norris carry her skates around to the trunk and deposit them there, then come back and slide in behind the wheel.

“Start her up, Selwyn. It’s so cold!”

She got a kick out of saying his name. The oddity of it spoke of a class distinction, of a cultural epoch not her own, of a boundary she was being invited to cross. Each time she spoke his name she wondered if it was for real, or fabricated, and if his true identity would ever be disclosed.

“You’re the one who wanted to skate, Snoop.”

“So press charges.”

He fastened the seat belt.

Charmed by the self-mockery of her youthful conceit, he smiled. The quality endeared her to him always and Norris mulled over how the attribute could be used to advantage and under what circumstances the virtue might prove a liability. He started the car, and the engine purred confidently in the cold.

“What was the first thing you noticed about me?” she asked.

“Good work, Jul! Well done. Nicely underplayed. Always delay the question. Allow time, enough for the person with the answer to choose to want to talk. Diminish the tenor of your interest. Make it sound as
though you’re engaged in idle conversation, nothing more. You carried that off exceptionally well.”

“Bugger off, Selwyn.”

“You’re right. We’ll discuss this another time. A cup of hot soup,” he said. “Coming up.”

The Infiniti tagged on to the end of a short line of cars traversing the mountain. The road turned and cut through a blasted trench of rock, and soon the vast eastern expanse of the city was revealed on their right. Norris turned into the overlook alongside lovers in their cars. Before them lay the great glacial plateau of the city, lights twinkling, chimneys smoking.

“Consider,” he said, as though he was offering her all that she surveyed, “the world.”

“Okay,” she consented, “let’s.”

“The former Soviet Union has been ground to dust. Republics mutate and subdivide quicker than anyone can redraw the map.”

“The place is a shambles, Selwyn,” Julia agreed, and shivered even as she was warming up. “What’s your point?”

“A superpower has re-created itself as a crime state. Dweeb bureaucrats make tens of millions of dollars. Bankers are billionaires, and fifty a year die gruesome deaths. It’s astonishing. For so many criminals to flourish, extraordinary organization has been necessary, with a plan that includes intimate and ever-expanding contacts with the West. The roots and tentacles of crime are growing together to span the globe.”

Julia listened, skeptically, as she surveyed the city from the precipice. “Come on, Sel,” she argued, “we’ve always had crime.” She was irritated by his condescending, smug air, as if he had all the answers while she still struggled to ask the right questions.

“Out there,” he said, and nodded to the city lights, “the Hell’s Angels and the Rock Machine are in a fight to the finish. Bombings. Murders. They use chain saws
as weapons. Now imagine this, Snoop. These bikers are fighting to side with foreign gangs operated by displaced members of the KGB. It boggles the mind. The illicit enterprises still flourish, but now the opportunity has emerged to broker the world’s merchandise. Never mind drugs, although drugs remain big. But CDs. Jeans. Condoms. Cars. High fashion. Gasoline. There’s a market opening up more huge than the USA. Russia wants it all and needs it all at bargain basement prices. It’s made crime the true growth industry of the next century and, for what it’s worth, crime fighting the most beleaguered profession.”

“But this is where you come in, right, Selwyn? You’ll keep us safe from harm? Put on your Superman cape and fly around the room, do something?”

“Actually,” he whispered, “I was hoping that this might be where you come in.”

“Me?”

“You, Snoop.”

“Don’t think so, Selwyn. I have no inclination whatsoever to hang out with fat sweaty bikers.”

“Fat and sweaty is only for show these days. The upper echelon is groomed, scented, jauntily attired. They work out at sports clubs.”

“Still not interested.”

Together, they stared across the broad plateau of the city where rival gangs vied for a chunk of floating ice. In the dark of winter, the peace of the season was disrupted by the periodic detonation of dynamite in unsuspecting neighborhoods.

Norris backed out and changed gear and drove slowly through the parking lot. “Suit yourself,” he advised. “It’s your world, Jul, spread out before you. Your generation. You’ll have to live with the consequences.”

He scared her sometimes. Selwyn Norris gave off the air that he knew more than he was willing to say,
that he knew how things were meant to be and how they would evolve. She hadn’t yet determined if this had to do with an acuity in him or a deficiency on her part. She hadn’t learned how to think around him. Julia knew that she was slipping, but she remained determined not to fall.

The investigating detectives rummaged through the contents of Santa’s sack, which lay on the wooden table dominating the unfurnished room. The bag contained a collection of empty shoe boxes adorned in Christmas wrapping, a light load for any erstwhile Claus. Nothing would be found, Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars believed. The bag had been part of the uniform, part of the ruse. He leaned against the wall by the window, at times gazing idly upon the street three stories below, at other times staring off into space. The snow had stopped now, the soft powder that had cleansed the city in time for Christmas sparkling in light cast by streetlamps.

From the room, from the kitchen, from the corridor beyond the apartment the familiar sounds of investigation wandered through to him, the muted voices, the hushed commands and desultory responses. Sounds echoed in the abject emptiness of the room, off the hardwood floors and vacant walls. A sensation impressed him. He was weary of being at the scene of a crime. Ever closer, retirement loomed as an antidote to the barbarism that had occurred within these walls.

Strange that only two pieces of furniture occupied the apartment—the table, on which lay the spoils of Santa’s largesse, and the wardrobe, in which Father Christmas hung like a rack of beef. A meat hook, they’d determined, administered with high velocity and strength, had entered through the back and pierced the heart. The instrument remained embedded in the dead young man, and the round handgrip hung him
from the rod across the wardrobe. Blood had run down the youth’s back to the floor of the cabinet.

Detective Bill Mathers wandered in from outside carrying two cups of coffee. He came straight through to Cinq-Mars and handed him one. “Drink up. It’ll help bring you around.”

The older man scarcely acknowledged him but received the coffee and pried open the plastic lid with expert fingers. He sipped, and gazed back into the room. “Where the”—and he swore, rare for him—“is forensics?”

“It’s Christmas Eve. We had to get them from home. Not that they’ll have much to tell us.”

“You’re the expert?”

“Get off my case, Émile. The man was killed with a meat hook.”

“When?”

“When?”

“Is there an echo in here?” Cinq-Mars chided.

“We know when he was killed, Émile. We watched Santa enter the building. We were inside within a minute and a half, two minutes. That’s when he got whacked.”

“Think so?”

“I know so,” Mathers claimed. He was frowning. The old man was treating him like a child, it seemed to him. He was sensitive about it because he often had that problem with tough city cops. The baby-face thing again. His looks caused cops, and the bad guys, too, to underestimate him.

“Good for you. I’m not so sure. I guess senility comes with old age.”

“You’re making no sense, Émile. Do dead men walk?”

“Do the dead go cold in two minutes?” Cinq-Mars asked him in return.

“Listen, after coming in here and opening that door
and looking at that mess, I’m in no mood for your riddles.” Flustered, Mathers angled his back to his superior.

“Do the dead go cold in two minutes? Answer the question.”

“I was outside just now. Feel my hand. It’s still cold.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

Forensics arrived at that instant, a studious young intern leading a senior colleague to the deceased. For the first time since they had opened the cabinet, Cinq-Mars emerged from his funk, moving across to watch the men work. He stood to one side of the closet to spare himself further visual discomfort.

“Time of death?” he asked.

Below a shock of untamed white hair the pathologist’s thin, angular face appeared quaintly academic. He acknowledged the policeman’s query with a nod and continued his ministrations, staying at the work for ten minutes without speaking. He examined under the Santa suit for other injuries after his junior had stepped back with nothing more to do.

“Can I see what he looks like again?”

The pathologist slipped off the fake beard and pushed back the Santa hair. Removing his gloves, the senior pathologist commanded, “Bag him. If he’s riding back to the North Pole tonight, it’s in a hearse.”

The detective raised a hand, and two uniformed officers entered from the hall with a gurney and body bag. The officers struggled with the dead man’s weight to get him down, unsure what to do about the meat hook.

“Take it out of him if you’ve a mind to,” the pathologist suggested. “Spare me the trouble.” The officers looked from one to the other, hoping the doctor was kidding. The physician let them stew before he added, “Otherwise bag him as is.” The uniforms chose the latter option.

“Can you take that sign off him?” Cinq-Mars requested. “It’s sacrilegious.” In an English scrawl, the sign, written on cardboard torn from the side of the box in the kitchen, declared,
Merry Xmas, M5
.

The intern held open a plastic bag, and the senior physician tossed his latex gloves inside. He looked up at Cinq-Mars. “Personal, is it?”

“Doesn’t fit the season.”

“That may be true, Émile, but the sign stays on him.”

The detective conceded to the doctor’s jurisdiction.

“You got here quickly.”

“Not quick enough,” Mathers offered.

“Marc, how long has he been dead?” Cinq-Mars wanted to know.

“Since when do you do homicide, Émile? Who’s the IO?”

“LaPierre. He’s in the crapper. Flu, he says. His partner’s in the building somewhere—what’s his name, Bill?”

“Alain Déguire.”

“That’s it. He’s talking to the other tenants. How long, Doc?”

“Three hours, three and a half, four,” the pathologist told him.

“Hey,” Mathers objected. “That’s not possible. That means he died two or three hours before we got here.”

“You have a problem with that?” the physician inquired.

“Could be. You’re telling me that this man died two, maybe three hours before I saw him walk down the street and enter the building.”

“Now that’s a feat,” the doctor marveled.

“I’d say so.”

“Thanks, Marc.” Cinq-Mars took the physician’s elbow in his hand and turned him toward the door. “You didn’t have to come out tonight. We appreciate
the exception. One more favor—will you copy me the full report?”

Mathers leaned into the physician as he went by. “Here’s a tip. Death by meat hook. Natural causes won’t wash in this case.”

The doctor freed his arm from the detective’s grip to take up the younger man’s challenge. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Mathers, sir.”

“I’m Dr. Wynett. I make it a point to give my students one tip a day, Detective Mathers. Here’s yours.”

“I’m not one of your students, sir.”

“Maybe you should be. Listen to what you hear, Mathers. Not to what you want or expect to hear. This man was not killed by a meat hook but by having his neck broken three to four hours ago. The neck break preceded the meat hook.”