Deadline (3 page)

Sawatski’s cell phone rang again while Jack was brushing the snow off his dented Ford Focus, but he didn’t answer it and he ignored it when it rang twice more as he drove. He had a potentially career-jeopardizing hangover, he was going to be an hour late for work, and he didn’t need to jeopardize public safety or waste time taking messages for Sawatski as he drove, shivering, through the snowy streets, to the parking lot below Parliament Hill.

Once inside the Hot Room, a bullpen full of reporters from different news organizations, down the hall from the House of Commons he hung up his coat, grunted hello to his colleagues, took the elevator upstairs to the cafeteria to get a coffee, and was finally behind his desk and ready to work by 10:30. He booted up his laptop and was checking the headlines on Twitter when Sawatski’s phone rang in his pocket again.

His friend would have to be half mad without his Berry, he thought. They had spent the previous night drinking hard, and Ed likely thought he had left it in some sleazy bar, which wasn’t the kind of thing political staffers wanted to have to tell their bosses.

He picked up his desk phone and called Ed’s office. The receptionist told him Ed was away from his desk. Jack left a message asking Ed to call as soon as possible.

As soon as he hung up, the phone rang.

“Jack Macdonald, Telegram,” he said.

It was Kevin Brandt, the city editor of the Newfoundland daily, and his boss.

“How’s she going?” said Brandt. “I been trying to get you for an hour now. What? You just getting in?”

“No, b’y,” said Jack, trying to sound nonchalant. “I was on my way in this morning when a buddy from home called me about a story, so we met in coffee shop for a little chat.”

“Did he give you anything good?”

Jack’s head was throbbing and he was sweating. He bent his head, which set off a painful spasm in his neck.

“Something to look into,” he said. “Rumour about the search and rescue helicopter contract.”

“You b’ys must have talked about the Len Ramia story, eh?” said Brandt. “What’s the gossip about that?”

“Yes,” he said. “We did chat about it.”

As he spoke, he frantically typed “Len Ramia” into Google News. The first hit was a story from the
Globe and Mail
: Liberal Senator Charged With Expense Fraud.

He scanned the story. The RCMP had charged Senator Len Ramia, a Liberal appointed by Jean Chretien in 1998, with misusing Senate property. He was accused of taking furniture, art and computer equipment to his home.

“This is a good story,” said Brandt. “Guy’s been sitting on his arse up there, making $130,000 a year for twelve years, doing sweet fuck all, without anyone ever voting for him, and now we find out he’s been stealing.”

Brandt hated the Senate in general, and Ramia in particular. Since his appointment, he had done nothing of note, dodging committee work and public appearances, showing up dutifully when the Senate was sitting, but only because he had to do so to collect his paycheques. He would sit there until the day he turned 75, living the high life, a reward for some long-forgotten partisan service.

“Yes b’y,” said Jack. “It’s shocking. I wonder who tipped off the
Globe
.”

“I’d like to know that meself,” said Brandt. “That’s the kind of thing we sent you up to get.”

Jack winced. His editors complained whenever anybody scooped him on a Newfoundland story, something that happened more often than he liked, and he knew that others in the newsroom were not convinced having him in Ottawa was worth the expense. Brandt was his defender, but even he wasn’t always happy with Jack.

“I want you to go after the Liberal MPs on this,” said Brandt. “See if they’ll defend him, attack him. It’d be good if they stick up for him. Liberal MPs Stick Up for Accused Senate Fraudster. Could be A1. Should be.”

“Yes,” said Jack. “I’ll do a little digging, and then try to get the boys on the way into Question Period. They might want to dodge me, though.”

“Will Ramia keep picking up his paycheques while he’s up on charges?” Brandt asked.

“I think so,” said Jack. “I think he’d have to be convicted before they could boot him out of the Senate.”

“There’s your angle, b’y,” said Brandt. “Liberal MPs Don’t Want Accused Senate Fraudster’s Pay Stopped. Get me that.”

When Claude Bouchard passed through the gate in the stone and wrought iron wall that surrounds Parliament Hill, he had to step back to make room for a group of men and women in expensive wool overcoats headed the opposite way. A pleasant thought struck him as he waited for them to pass, and a smile stole across his face as he strode through the falling snow up the broad walkway toward the Peace Tower, swinging his briefcase, a spring in his step. In a few months, he thought, the lobbyists and political staffers who now ignored him would make impressive efforts to get close to him. After twenty years in politics, beginning as a volunteer on a chaotic, unsuccessful campaign for the mayoralty of Montreal, his patience and experience were finally about to pay off. As the cabinet meeting ended, his boss, Public Safety Minister Greg Mowat, had emailed him the news that Stevens was resigning, and Bouchard was excited. There was every reason to think that Mowat would be prime minister within a few months, and he would be there with him, in a senior role in Langevin, at the heart of the office that runs the country. There’s an old saying in politics: The people who get you there aren’t always the ones who can keep you there. Too often, Bouchard had been the guy who got someone there, only to be pushed aside. But now it was he who had the sharpest elbows on the Hill and the best connection to Mowat, and he was finding it hard to stop smiling.

Bouchard paused to kick the snow off his shoes under the stone arch below the Peace Tower, walked up the carpeted steps and took the elevator up one storey to the ambulatory that runs largely unnoticed below the arched ceiling of Confederation Hall. He dipped out of sight around the corner, bent his salt-and-pepper head to his BlackBerry and sent a private message to Ismael Balusi, the prime minister’s director of communications.

Bouchard viewed most young Conservative staffers with affectionate condescension, relishing their simple-minded loyalty to the boss and their idealistic naiveté, which made them predictable. In Balusi, though, he had found a young man with a clear-eyed perception of the currents of power and the cunning and courage to manipulate them.

At first, Bouchard saw him as a dangerous threat, an ideological purist who understood but disapproved of backroom power plays, but the middle-aged French Canadian backroom warrior and the media-savvy young Toronto South Asian became allies when they were thrown together to contain a potentially damaging scandal. Mowat’s office had asked for PMO help to plan for the release of access-to-information documents that showed that senior RCMP officers had ignored sexual harassment in the force. While their colleagues worked on a plan to minimize the damage, Balusi and Bouchard found a way to convince the access-to-info office to “unrelease” the most damaging sections of the documents, and together they snuffed out the story, and developed a personal alliance that Bouchard was counting on now.

Bouchard looked up from his phone when Balusi stepped into the ambulatory

“Game on,” said Balusi.

“It hasn’t leaked yet?” Bouchard asked.

“No. And I don’t think it will. Nobody wants to piss off Stevens today, or take away his moment in the sun. They all looked shell-shocked coming out. I don’t think any of them saw this coming.”

“How did Donahoe look?” asked Bouchard.

“Preoccupied,” said Balusi. “I don’t think this was in his plan. I think he wanted more time at Justice, raise his profile with the crime bills.”

“Too bad he wasn’t still in Foreign Affairs,” said Bouchard.

“Yeah,” said Balusi. “It would be a good time to send him to Africa for a review of our aid policy.”

They chuckled.

As they spoke the Speaker’s Parade entered the hall, and both men watched the sergeant-at-arms bearing the enormous gold mace walk past below them, followed by the Speaker and his clerks, all of them in tri-cornered hats and long black robes. Security guards in blue shirts kept the way clear for the somber procession to the House, where the Speaker would begin the day’s sitting.

“Look,” said Balusi. “If this leaks just as Question Period is about to start, when they’re all on the way into the House, it’ll be a feeding frenzy, a good old-fashioned pig fuck. They’ll all look flat-footed in front of the cameras.”

Bouchard looked at him. “Except my guy.”

“Yeah,” said Balusi. “That’s what I’m thinking. You have to give him some lines, tell him to be ready for it.”

“And you’ll take care of the leak?”

“And I’ll take care of the leak.”

It was getting to be lunchtime by the time Flanagan made his way back from the Ottawa Hospital to the concrete bunker on Elgin that housed the Ottawa Police Service, so he picked up sandwiches and coffee on the way.

Ashton was on the phone when he came into the office. “I don’t care,” she was saying. “I don’t care at all. You have to understand me. This is police business. We are investigating a very serious crime, and I need to talk to Ms. Fortin, like right now.” She smiled at Flanagan. “No, I don’t want to leave a message. I want to talk to her right now. I know that you are important. I know that the minister of public safety and his staff are very important. All right? I get it. But, right now, I am more important. And you are going to be in a lot of trouble unless you locate Sophie Fortin for me, immediately, and get her on the phone. Okay?”

Ashton sighed and recited her name and phone number.

“Now,” she said. “Listen to me, Ms. Bourassa. If you don’t get me Sophie Fortin on the phone very, very soon, I am going to do everything I can to get you fired. Est-que tu me comprends bien? Je vais te faire perdre ta job, osti! This is a police investigation and I’m tired of fucking around with you.”

She hung up and turned her smiling face to Flanagan. “I’ve informed the kid’s parents, but I still haven’t managed to get the girlfriend on the line,” she said. “She is the, uh –” she glanced at her notes “-- press secretary to Public Safety Minister Greg Mowat. And apparently she’s with the minister and is very, very busy.”

Flanagan laughed and set the food down on her desk. “I have a feeling you’ll be hearing from her soon.”

Ashton reached for a sandwich. “So what have you got?”

“Well,” he said, popping the top off of one of the coffees. “I don’t think we have an accident here. The kid has handcuff bruises on his wrists.” He turned on the camera and flipped through the images, showing a closeup to Ashton. “I checked with the boys, and none of our guys – or the Gatineau cops – picked this guy up last night.”

“Could be recreational,” said Ashton.

Flanagan smirked. “Could be you got a different idea of recreation than I do, detective. If this kid had the cuffs on tight enough to bruise him, I doubt it was sex play.”

“Seems unlikely,” she said, “But you never know. In the height of passion, people can be hard to distract.”

“Something to ask the girlfriend.”

“If she ever answers my call. Any chance Sawatski will be talking soon, can tell us who put the cuffs on him?”

“Not much chance, no,” said Flanagan. “The doctor is not optimistic. Kid likely suffered brain damage from the lack of oxygen, but maybe. That’s what she said. Maybe. On the other hand, he could die. It could turn into a homicide.”

“So could she tell how long he was in the water?”

“No more than thirty minutes. Probably less. What time did the call come in?”

“5:25. Took the guy maybe two minutes to run over to the Chateau Laurier and call 911.”

“So he went into the canal between, what, 4:53 and 5:10, that’s our window?”

“That’s what I figure,” said Ashton and waved him over to her computer. She had it open to an aerial view of the Rideau Canal.

“After you left, I walked up to the National Arts Centre and threw a life jacket into the canal and timed it going down. It took thirty-five minutes to reach the locks. I think a body would be slower.”

“I suspect that whatever happened, happened right there.” Flanagan pointed at the four-lane bridge just above the locks. “That’s where I’d go if I wanted to drown somebody in the canal.”