This Thing of Darkness. Barbara Fradkin

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СКАЧАТЬ long has he been dead?”

      Sullivan turned to nod towards the white-suited officials clustered over the body. Two Ident officers, two morgue assistants, and in the middle, looming larger than any of them, the flamboyant, white-maned figure of Dr. Alexander MacPhail. Green could hear his booming Scottish brogue from a hundred feet away, admonishing Lyle Cunningham’s junior Ident assistant not to vomit on the hands.

      “Bag them, laddie! That’s all I asked!”

      Sullivan even managed a chuckle.“Lyle’s breaking in a new lad, but I don’t think he’ll last a week. He’s already puked in the corner twice.”

      “So they’re a bit behind schedule.”

      Sullivan shrugged. “MacPhail’s not giving us a thing yet, till he gets all his calculations in, but I did our usual simple test—”

      “The toe test?”

      Sullivan nodded. “He’s stiffened up nicely. Rigor’s pretty complete. With the cold last night, I’d guess he’s been dead eight to twelve hours.”

      Green considered the implications. Eight hours made it four o’clock in the morning, an unlikely time to be out for a stroll. It made more sense that the old man had been assaulted a couple of hours earlier than that, when innocent passersby were safely tucked into bed and the streets were overrun with punks. The question was—why hadn’t the old man been tucked into bed too?

      “What does he look like? Homeless?”

      Sullivan’s brows shot up. “Oh, no! He was wearing a three-piece suit, a tie and a nice camelhair overcoat. All about twenty years out of date, according to MacPhail, but in perfect shape. Expensive, MacPhail says, and he should know. Probably didn’t get stolen because it was covered in blood. His shoes are gone.”

      “Pricey Italian leather, I bet. A lowlife with taste?”

      “Well, they could have been stolen after the fact, by some street bum in need.”

      “For that matter,” Green said, “all the stuff could have been stolen after the fact by someone who stumbled upon the body.”

      “But then we don’t have a motive for the attack, do we?”

      Green shrugged. He wasn’t sure Italian shoes, some rings and a dress watch were motive enough to obliterate a man’s head. “Not till we find out who this guy was and what he was doing out that late.” He broke off as he watched a tall, slender woman stroll languidly towards them, flicking her cellphone shut. She was nicely packaged in a navy jacket and beige pants — or as Sharon would have scolded him, taupe—and a simple gold scarf at her neck. She wore no make-up that Green could detect, but her skin was like flawless cream. She had long legs, a straight back, and everything about her flowed, including her blonde hair, which was loosely clipped in a long ponytail down her back.

      Green shot Sullivan a look to see if he too was watching. Sullivan grinned.“Our new sergeant wanted to take the lead on this herself, so I figured why not? This will hit the media—are the elderly safe on their own streets?—and they’ll lap her up.”

      “Not to mention our new police chief. The Force’s ‘diversity in hiring’ program visible for all to see, and she’s fluently bilingual to boot.”

      Sergeant Marie Claire Levesque frowned fleetingly at the sight of Green before pasting a determined smile on her face. Green had met her only once, at her transfer interview the month before, but he’d analyzed her file and sought the opinion of colleagues. Determined was the word most frequently mentioned. Along with smart.

      “Good morning, Inspector,” Levesque said with a hint of French lilt. She extended her hand. “Nice to see you again.”

      Ambitious too, the file had said. Nothing wrong with ambition, as long as it was tempered by competence. At five- foot-ten, she matched him in height, yet with her high cheekbones and long, patrician nose, he almost felt as if she were looking down on him. Conscious of his sweaty T-shirt and bike-helmet hair, he drew himself up.

      “Your first case is a sad one.”

      She nodded. “And messy. Forensics says there is a lot of physical evidence, and they were able to lift some tissue from under the nails. It seems the victim fought back. His cane has a crack in it, and what looks like blood on the tip.”

      “Any leads from Missing Persons?” Sullivan asked her, nodding towards the cellphone in her hand.

      She shook her head. Her pony tail swished distractingly. “I just checked with them again. No one called in a missing senior.”

      Green wasn’t surprised. How long would it take before his own father was reported missing? Sid Green lived alone and rarely went outside any more. The circle of cronies he used to meet for card games had dwindled through illness and death. Green tried to phone him every day, but some days there weren’t enough hours in the day. If this old man had a wife or lived with someone, he would probably have been reported by Sunday morning, but if he lived alone, it might take days.

      “Do we have anything to go on?” he asked. “A monogram on a handkerchief, an ATM slip in a pocket?”

      Levesque nodded. “They may find more when they examine the clothes and the body, but we found one item in his coat pocket—a receipt from the Rideau Pharmacy from last April. I asked Detective Charbonneau to follow up with them. And...” She paused, then slipped her hand into her handbag and withdrew a plastic evidence bag. Inside, Green could make out an object on a gold chain.

      “We found this beside the body. It looks like gold.” She held out the bag. “It’s a Jewish star, right? What’s it called?”

      Sullivan cast Green a sharp look, but Green barely noticed as he took the bag and held it up to the sunlight. He twisted the piece this way and that. It was hammered gold, exquisitely delicate and old. Dread crawled down his spine.

      “A Magen David,” he said, then grimaced at the irony. “Literally, Shield of David. It’s meant to protect.”

      Mort Fine, the owner of Fine Antiques, was just flipping the sign in his shop window to “Open” when Green pushed through the door. He scowled as if a customer were an inconvenience, but then his pig-like eyes lit up at the sight of Green.

      “Mr. Yiddish Policeman!” he exclaimed, trundling his squat body along the narrow aisle of his shop. “More mysteries for me?”

      “You remember me?” A few years earlier Green had enlisted his help in identifying some old keys found at a crime, and since then Fine had provided the occasional tip about the fencing activities of his more dubious competitors.

      “How could I forget? I get so many customers here?”

      Green glanced around the shop. The place was a fire trap. Curios, figurines, tarnished silver and old lamps were still jumbled without apparent order on the shelving that crammed the aisles. Antique chandeliers covered the ceiling like stalactites in a cave. It didn’t look as if a dust mop had passed over anything since Green’s last visit. He could feel his bronchial tubes closing up at the mould and dust.

      “Business СКАЧАТЬ