The Delicate Storm. Giles Blunt

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СКАЧАТЬ gave Cardinal a kick to see his father – tough, sinewy Stan Cardinal, with his muscular forearms and powerful chest – wearing an apron and wiping flour from his hands. Cookies were his specialty.

      ‘Did you see the cardiologist?’

      ‘Catherine drove me up this morning. Dr Cates irritated the hell out of me, but she knows how to get things done, I’ll say that for her.’

      ‘What’s the cardiologist say?’

      ‘He’s scheduling me for a bunch of tests up at the hospital. He thinks I have congestive heart failure.’

      ‘What? Dad, why didn’t you get this taken care of six months ago?’

      ‘It’s not a big deal, John. It’s just some tests. And he’s giving me tons of drugs. I think they’re working already.’

      ‘Heart failure, though. I wish you weren’t living out to hell and gone.’

      ‘Nonsense. Whole reason I moved in here was so you wouldn’t have to worry about me. Why the hell do you think I got a bungalow? No damn stairs to break my neck on, that’s why. This is the easiest place in the world to keep clean and get around in. I’ve got peace and quiet and fresh air. I’ve got my stereo and my VCR and the best microwave on the market. I’m telling you, I’m king of the castle, here.’

      ‘Well, if the fog gets any worse, you might want to think about moving in with us for the duration.’

      ‘Drop it, John.’

      Cardinal turned onto MacPherson, skirting a messy construction site.

      ‘They said on the news you found a chewed-up body in the woods?’ Stan said. ‘Sounds a little more interesting than the usual crap you get.’

      Great, Cardinal thought. Here we go.

      ‘Those trailer trash constantly shooting each other. Drug dealers. Robbers. Fat-assed drunkards. I don’t know why you didn’t go into a more interesting line of work. It’s not like you didn’t have the education. Your ma and I saw to it you and your brother got to college. You could have gone into any profession you wanted.’

      ‘That’s exactly what I did, Dad. I went into the profession I wanted. A line of work that can actually make a difference in people’s lives. A lot of my colleagues didn’t go to university – that doesn’t mean they’re stupid. Look at the people you worked with.’

      ‘Morons, the bunch of them! Except for Mark McCabe. Mark was the smartest guy I ever knew. Read more books than most college professors. Did long division in his head. But he was a union man through and through. And it was guys like you – your oh-so-brainy colleagues – that saw fit to bust his head open for having the guts to call a strike against the fat bastards that run this country. That nightstick came down on his head – and I heard it. It sounded like a plank dropping on a cement floor. That nightstick came down on Mark’s head and for the next three years he did nothing but drool, and then he died. A good, good man.’

      The line went quiet. Cardinal heard his father sniff and knew that he was crying. His dad, who for most of his long life had displayed few emotions other than irritation, now became teary when he talked of the past. It didn’t seem to be self-pity but some deeper, long-abiding sorrow. The tears would flow for a minute, then be gone.

      ‘You okay, Dad?’

      There was a loud sniff from the other end of the line. ‘Fog’s turning to rain,’ Stan said. ‘Maybe I’ll plant some zinnias in the spring.’

       7

      ‘Listen,’ Musgrave said. ‘I’ve gone over it with my regional commander. I’m not working with that laptop-toting twerp from CSIS. What we do is, I deal with you, you deal with him.’

      ‘Squier didn’t seem all that bad to me,’ Cardinal said.

      ‘You haven’t worked with CSIS before, have you.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘You poor bastard. Anyway,’ Musgrave said, looking at his watch, ‘this is forty-five minutes of my life we’ve wasted. Tell me again what we’re doing here.’

      They were parked in an unmarked on Main East. The fog had finally condensed into actual rain that was drumming on the roof.

      The moment Cardinal had hung up with his father, the cellphone had rung in his hand and Arsenault was on the line telling him they’d matched a print at the trapper’s shack to a name: Paul Bressard. Cardinal had driven straight out to the house. Bressard’s wife, who was already reeking of scotch at one-thirty in the afternoon, told him Paul would probably be at Duane’s Billiard Emporium. Cardinal didn’t mention that he was a cop, and she wasn’t sober enough to tell.

      Which was how he and Musgrave came to be sitting in the unmarked on Main East watching the decayed entrance to Duane’s Billiard Emporium.

      ‘Duane’s is a hangout for the guys who can’t quite make it to big-time crime,’ Cardinal said. ‘Bikers that failed the entrance exam to Satan’s Choice, Italian guys too dumb for the mob.’

      ‘And the wife just handed you this information? Why’d she take a shine to you?’

      ‘In Cutty Sark veritas.’

      ‘In Cutty Sark bullshit, it looks like.’

      ‘Tell me something, Musgrave. Does your wife know your every move?’

      ‘You could fill a mountain of CD-ROM with what my wife doesn’t know. It’s a point of pride with her.’

      ‘Fine. So let’s give it another half-hour.’

      They listened to the rain hammering down for another ten minutes, and then the Explorer came into view.

      ‘That’s him with the moustache?’

      ‘That’s him. The guy with him is Thierry Ferand, another trapper.’

      Bressard parked half a block away, then he and Ferand came slouching back toward the pool hall through the rain. Ferand was half the other man’s size and had to scuttle along beside him like a dachshund.

      ‘Bressard’s a dresser,’ Musgrave said. ‘Get a load of the coat.’

      ‘He better hope the anti-fur movement never hits Algonquin Bay.’

      Bressard and Ferand entered the building. Cardinal and Musgrave left the unmarked and went to examine the Explorer. A jagged line ran across two doors on the passenger side. ‘We’ll have to get our ident guys on it,’ Cardinal said, ‘but for now I’d say that looks fresh, wouldn’t you?’

      ‘I would. Is this guy going to be a problem?’

      ‘Bressard? No way. Bressard will come along voluntarily.’

      Musgrave laughed. ‘Christ, Cardinal. I’d never have pegged you for an optimist.’

      As СКАЧАТЬ