The Drowned Man (36 page)

But Peter saw that Seep, out of anger and avarice, changed everyone's plans by turning robbery into murder.

“We made a deal. My job was to get Johnny drunk. Not too hard to do. Seep said he had a drug we could mickey him with. He gave the dose to me but I didn't use it, since the booze seemed to be doing the trick, and the drug, in combination, might have killed him. We were celebrating in the market after the handoff and I led Johnny towards the dark place over here. He was stupendously drunk and fell behind. I had already handed Seep the rental keys. Seep was supposed to wait in the car and after Johnny passed out, he would collect his letter, while I would take the other two, and he would let me off at the hotel.”

Peter was wary of being too direct again but he asked, “Were you gone when Seep drove up?”

“I was almost at the tree over by the factory. I turned and saw Johnny fall down on the grass and then get to his feet. He staggered onto the road.”

“It's important for me to know what happened next with the car.”

“You want to know, Inspector? Something true and clear and simple in this mess? The professor saw him and deliberately accelerated. Sent him flying onto the grass. Johnny got partway up and crawled; got up, fell down, and crawled some more. I ran over to him. He was bleeding, dying. No one came out of the houses. Seep got out of the car and ran at me. Then he started to attack Johnny. I threw one of the packets at him to slow him down. Then he did something odd. He picked up the letter and read it and smiled.”

“Coincidentally,” said Peter, “it was the letter Seep wanted in the first place, the one with Williams's signature.”

“Yes. Seep would have killed me, too, but when I ran he didn't follow. I didn't see him throw Johnny into the water.”

“The car?”

“I ran all the way to Greenwell's place — and there was the car already outside. Seep was trying to set both of us up.”

“Seep abandoned the Ford to implicate you. The keys were in it?”

“Yes,” Alida said. “Leander thought it was me who had driven it to the store.”

Peter filled in the rest. Alida had threatened Leander and kept both remaining letters. With most of the cash as well, she took off for Annapolis.

He saw that she still wanted to talk. “Why me?” he said.

She looked down at the carpet. The distant furnace had run through one cycle and come on again. “I wanted you to know I didn't try to kill the kid in Buffalo.”

“Jeff? No, you didn't. He survived the drug you gave him.”

“Horniest kid I ever met.”

Her statement added up to a mix of irony, wonder, and a plea for credit for refraining from murder. Peter hadn't forgotten the prostitute, ravaged by jellyfish and lice, lying gutted in a D.C. morgue. He played along.

“You didn't kill anyone in Buffalo.”

Alida backed towards the corridor. He was talking to a shadow. It was the oddest confession he had ever heard.

“Why did you stop Dunning Malloway from shooting me?” she said.

“You saw that?”

“Oh, yes. He aimed right at me. I saw his eyes.”

“Not the right time and not the right move, Alida. What more can I say?”

“But there was more. I saw the look on his face, the shape of his mouth,” she said. “You also knew he would have fired until the gun was empty. Is the American policeman alive?”

“Mild heart attack. He'll be okay. His recovery will be steady.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.” The space around them had grown cool; Renaud's furnace did not seem very efficient.

Alida stepped back into the archway of the bedroom.

“One last thing you should know. Malloway works for the Sword. He's being paid to kill me.”

She became invisible.

Peter stared at the dark. He had been full of calculation, down to the feet and inches between them. She was a murderess, he reminded himself. Special pleading ultimately wasn't enough. He had tracked her from country to country, state to state and except for a glimpse in Buffalo hadn't come close to catching her. Now she had come to him, unarmed and desperate to explain. He had to decide whether to let her go.

And he was sure that there was something else she needed to tell him.

Her retreat into the hall was strategic, leaving him to make the next move. Should he follow? He stood for a full minute by the bed in the silence. His slippers were lined up on the floor, six feet away. The furnace had stopped. He heard a drunken shout from outside somewhere.

As he turned to the window, the girl walked back into the dimly lit room, completely naked.

She held a small gun in her right hand.

“Christ, Alida!” Peter said, jumping back. He hadn't heard any zippers opening, any clothes falling. She stopped, the gun angled away from him. “What are you doing?”

His words were preposterous, as if he were a father expressing opprobrium at finding his daughter
déshabillée
after a date with a boy. Fatherliness wouldn't have been a bad posture to adopt with the girl, he thought, had all else been equal. She was a killer, yet Peter had made his decision: at that moment he was prepared to let her run. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her perfection was a rebuke to an old man's sorry state.

She could have seduced him in a minute. For that first moment, his hopelessness matched hers. Her nakedness was her confession, telling him she had nothing more to hide. As the seconds passed, a distance began to grow between them; she felt it, too. He had Joan and his family. What did she have?

He stared back at her calmly, trying to ignore her gun. It was difficult to do. Her body was smooth, with perfectly moulded proportions. The flaw, the small burn marks under her breasts made the rest of her riper, and spoke of the strength of a survivor.

Peter's mobile rang. Absurdly, he was glad that he had changed to a sensible ring tone, not Big Ben. Was there a man in a thousand who would not have checked the display, even with a naked woman standing in front of him? It was Maddy. It was 9 a.m. in Leeds. He stabbed the button for his voicemail to kick in and turned to face Alida.

The mood was broken. He waited for the gun to move or for her to speak.

“I have the last two letters,” she stated. Her words held no hostility or defensiveness, certainly no hint that she wanted to return the documents.

Peter watched as Alida raised the gun and pointed it at him. He still wasn't afraid. He tracked her eyes and her measured movements as she checked the safety. He wasn't tempted to rush her, even as she glanced away.

She twitched.

Very slowly she lowered the small pistol to the carpet and placed it on its side. She stood straight and began to back out of the room. Without the gun and fully naked, she seemed neither lethal nor innocent. She disappeared into the corridor.

She had said, “I have the last two letters.” Peter had listened to her jumble of confessions, pleas, evasions, and prevarications. That last statement did not mean that she had only two letters. She had all three now.

He picked up the gun.

Peter dressed and rushed downstairs. He had little chance of finding Alida in the maze of suburban streets, and he wasn't going to try.

He knew where to go next.

He could have rationalized taking a minute to call Maddy but first he had to figure out where the hell Olivier Seep lived. The address wasn't in the phone directory. He booted up the computer and was searching the website for the Université de Montréal when Pascal came back in.

For the moment, Peter refrained from telling Pascal about Alida's ghostly manifestation in his townhouse. Pascal seemed alert and vigilant, and Peter looked at him with a degree of puzzlement. Why hadn't he spied Alida in the street?

His friend tossed his ring of keys on the credenza by the front door. “What are you doing up at this late hour, Peter?”

Peter tried the university online directory but no residential addresses came up. Pascal went into the kitchen. He seemed not to notice Peter's distress. Peter could see him from the computer station, and watched him consider pouring a glass of wine and then think better of it.

Peter jumped from his chair and reached for Renaud's keys.

“Where are we going?” Pascal said.

“Do you know where Olivier Seep lives?”

“Naturally. In Mount Royal. Imagine, here's this dyed-in-the-wool
indépendentiste
living with the English . . .”

While Renaud drove, Cammon peppered him with questions: How was Seep's house laid out? How many entrances? How was the exterior lighting positioned?

Pascal described what he could remember about the house, but turning onto Sherbrooke Street he pulled over to the roadside and demanded, “Who are we expecting to find there?”

“Seep himself. Hopefully alive.”

“The girl, too?” said Renaud.

Peter opened his phone and began to call up Maddy's message. While it kicked in, he turned back to Pascal. “I don't know. How far away are we? Let's move.”

Pascal pulled back onto the street. “I'm moving, I'm moving.”

Peter listened with growing dismay to Maddy's voice. “Peter, it's Maddy. Five minutes ago I received a call from Carole Carpenter. She was in a panic. Her brother, Joe, is on his way to Henley, she says. He's been talking about Alida and the lack of progress in finding her. He was extremely overwrought, she said. He thinks the sister, Avril, can be forced to tell where Alida is hiding. Michael and I are on our way. Should be there in three or four hours. Michael is driving and I'll try to reach the local police from the road.”

Peter tried Maddy's mobile but encountered a busy signal. A second call to the house in Leeds invoked their standard message.

Peter was wearing a black windshell over a T-shirt, and he was cold. Pascal ignored the weather. Relaxed by booze but stimulated by the night air rushing in through the driver's window, he launched a stream of questions back at Peter. “Do you know what a
monte-en-l'air
is?”

“A second-storey man?” Peter replied, struggling with his cell phone directory as they passed in and out of the glow of streetlights. “Very good! It is a cat burglar, yes.”

Peter stabbed at the speed dial. “Great. Does Seep's place have a second storey?”

“Oh, yes,” Pascal responded, but he noted Peter's preoccupation and backed off for the moment. Peter had no time to guess what point the professor was making.

Peter was desperate to reach his son and daughter-in-law but further calls to her mobile failed. He flashed on Malloway's image and the angry face both Peter and Alida had reacted to in Buffalo outside the Gorman. Malloway would do anything to get to her. If Joe Carpenter had the address of the home where Avril Nahri was living, Malloway had been the one to provide it, along with a not-too-subtle hint to seek revenge.

He tried Maddy's cell again, and this time her crackly voice responded. “Peter, we're only a few —” The signal abruptly faded.

Rather than fight through the ether to reach Maddy again, Peter called his oldest friend, Tommy Verden. He imagined Tommy drinking coffee over his crossword puzzle or on some errand for Sir Stephen.

“Verden.” The voice was distant but clear, and it warmed Peter.

“Tommy, it's Peter here, in Montreal. How fast can you get to Henley-on-Thames?”

No yachting jokes, no complaints about the hour. Tommy simply stated, “Two hours twenty.”

Peter filled in his old friend on the developments in the pursuit of Alida Nahvi, without describing her visit to the condo in detail. Tommy knew the basics of the manhunt from their mutual boss. He was all business. “A crucial decision has to be made. Carpenter might go after Nahvi's sister but Avril won't know anything. The mother, Mabel, is the more profitable target.”

“Agreed,” Peter said.

“He'll soon realize Avril knows zilch and he'll move on to the mother at the nursing home, though he might do harm to the sister first. I'll go to Avril first. I presume that is where Michael and Maddy will head.”

“Yes, I think so. Malloway has Joe pretty confused. Joe thinks he's helping to find the girl but he's got no patience. It's a short leap to retaliation for Johnny's death.”

Tommy and Peter hadn't worked hand-in-glove for nothing. Verden detected the
other
urgency in Peter's voice. “You wouldn't be on the girl's trail now, would you, Peter?”

“Something like that.”

“Malloway?”

“He's turned, Tommy. And he's after Alida.”

“You want me to mobilize our people?”

Peter hesitated. He wondered what instructions Bartleben might have already conveyed to Tommy or Frank Counter about Malloway. “It's complicated. I'm not keen to alert Frank to anything yet.”

“Don't worry about that part. I can call in anyone you want. We do have assets in Montreal outside formal channels, if that's your fancy.”

“I'll keep that in mind. Whatever you can find out about Malloway's itinerary would be useful. I've lost track of him here.”

“I'll talk to his secretary. Anything else?”

“What are you going to do, Tommy?”

“I'm trying to decide whether to take the Mercedes.”

“Stay safe.”

“You too, Peter. I was prepared to point a gun at Joe once. I guess I can do it a second time..” He hung up.

And just as he did, Renaud announced — for some reason, in a stage whisper — that they were one street away from Seep's house. Peter ordered him to park right where they were and turn off the motor. Pascal knew enough to defer to a professional policeman, but he watched in amazement as Peter confirmed his cat-burglar persona by taking out a pencil flashlight and holding it between his teeth while he examined Alida Nahvi's gun.

“
Câlice
. What are you going to do with that?”

“Very likely nothing,” Peter said. By the weight of it, he could tell that the cheap Lorcin pistol was fully loaded. He guessed that Alida Nahvi had taken it from the hooker, or perhaps bought it from a street dealer somewhere in the States. It was unlikely that Alida had done any maintenance, but nor were there signs that the gun had been dunked in the Anacostia River. Peter removed a round and saw that it contained a standard-calibre load. He did not like the fact that the pistol was chrome-plated and would reflect light. It would fire if he needed it to, but hitting anything vital with the .380 was sketchy beyond a few inches.

“What do you want
me
to do?” Pascal said.

The weapon excited the professor.
A good reason to keep civilians away from a potential crime scene
, Peter reflected.

“What's the address?”

“It's 336 Carleton Way. What can I do to help?”

Peter pocketed the gun and got out of the car. He ignored his friend's question and began ambling down the sidewalk. Pascal hissed, his voice loud enough to alarm any dog walker, “Should I lock the car?”

Peter spread his hands palms up; he had no time for rhetorical questions. Pascal clicked the locks with his remote and they walked in tandem along the street. Pascal might have been familiar with the house and the neighbourhood but he acted like an amateur. He looked around nervously, goofier than a lost tourist. Peter feared a patrolling police officer or private security guard noticing them. He picked up the pace.

As they arrived at the gate to the big house, which Peter judged to have been built in the early 1900s, Renaud faltered. “Shouldn't we wait for Deroche and his cavalry?”

In a flat voice Peter said, “I didn't call him. Between you and me, I'm not giving the inspector an excuse to shoot a separatist and then claim he thought he was a mafia hit man.” The last thing he wanted was Deroche's entire organized crime squad descending on Seep's home.

Pascal Renaud saw that his companion was determined to handle this situation solo, and that rescue by the local
gendarmes
was far from his mind. To his credit, Renaud suppressed his fear and merely said, “Is the girl in there?”

“I'm guessing not,” Peter replied. “She was there, for certain, but she would be crazy to stick around.”

“Do you think Seep is dead?” Renaud persisted. “Why did she come here at all?”

“For the third letter. And other reasons.”

Peter could make out Pascal's face by the diffuse glow of a street lamp and marked the concern and confusion in his eyes. Seep was his enemy but violence wasn't an acceptable tactic in academic wars.

He eased past the iron gate and started up the long path to the stone front steps.

“What do you want me to do?” Pascal whispered. Darkness veiled the professor's face but Peter sensed his rising panic.

“I'm going to try the front. If it's locked, I'll use the back. You stay here.”

Pascal's antennae were fully engaged and he understood immediately why Peter was taking the bold approach: he expected that Alida Nahvi had left the oak-and-iron front door unlocked.

They were on the top step now. “When we get inside,” Peter said, “point me to the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen. I need you to do that.”

Instead of responding with another stage whisper, or some hand signal, Renaud reached around Peter and turned the knob. The door swung inward.

Peter gestured to Pascal to take off his shoes. He did the same and they tiptoed down the hallway on the runner, Peter leading so that he could be the one to choose which of the several rooms to penetrate.

The house was what estate agents in Britain called a strict centre-hall plan: the corridor they were in ran almost to the kitchen at the back of the house; the living room waited on their right, the dining room on the left. Peter lingered, listened, heard nothing; he began to absorb the layout of the ground floor. Alida had left the front door unlocked. She had meant him to enter this way.

To the left or the right? The next provocation would come soon and he would have to be in position. Peter had no plan to use the gun. It had feeble stopping power at any distance. The girl had left it for him to show that she was
not
returning to Seep's mansion.

Yet the question still haunted him: could Alida be inside? How much danger waited in the farthest rooms? Peter's thoughts roiled in anticipation of what he might find. Did her gift of the gun mean that she wasn't leaving him a corpse? He kept the weapon in his pocket. Seep could be anywhere in the house, tied up in the master bedroom, perhaps, although Peter didn't think that was Alida's style. Alida Nahvi had a sadistic streak but sexual humiliation was not her way. A criminal psychologist, he knew, likely wouldn't have bought into that distinction.

Peter waited another minute. Pascal was no help, crouched on the hallway carpet behind him. Peter stared down the corridor and started to gain clarity. He projected his thoughts like tracers into each of the three rooms ahead and grew certain that he would find Seep tied up in one of them. Peter was seventy-one years old and had seen everything. He had killed men (about one-and-a-half per decade of service, Bartleben had once ventured). The moment he picked up the weapon from the rug in Pascal's bedroom, he admitted to himself that he would use the pistol if necessary tonight.

Either to save Professor Seep, or to kill him.

There in the cold hallway, protocol and jurisdiction — all the rules — faded to the background. Alida had savaged and executed another woman out of desperation. Unlike Maddy, who was loved and was about to have a child, Alida had lived her short life in a looking-glass world populated by men who wanted to exploit her and hunt her. By her standards, holding back on killing Seep was progress, however perverse the calculation. Peter did not forgive her, and did not conjure up a scenario of redemption, but for tonight he would let her run.

Peter concluded that the pencil torch would alert the neighbours faster than the regular lights in the mansion. As Peter, with Pascal right behind him, turned into the living room, he heard a moan from across the hall. They crossed back and Peter hit the first switch that his hand met. The central chandelier in the dining room flared on in full glory, illuminating a mahogany table and twelve chairs. Expensive flock wallpaper was almost obscured by dozens of paintings that reminded Peter of the chockablock displays in the Palazzo Pitti in Italy. There were precious works by Lemieux, Borduas, and Riopelle. Pretension was the aim but the blood-soaked fellow at the far end of the room tied to the immense mahogany sideboard destroyed the effect.

Olivier Seep sat with his back against one leg of the sideboard, to which he was tied by what appeared to be a dog leash wrapped several times around his torso; it was knotted where he could not reach. Darkening blood formed a long ‘V' down his torn shirtfront. He was missing several front teeth and it looked as though he had vomited the blood. A bruise had welled up on the right side of his forehead. He was semi-conscious and evidently had been drifting in and out. He could have snapped the leg of the sideboard with a forward lurch but the action would have brought the furniture and a hundred pounds of valuable china and flatware down on his trussed body.