Peter Kirby - The Dead of Winter

“I racked my brains, trying to think of where he might be. Places he might be working, people he might have contacted. I went through every single possibility. Friends? There were none. He didn’t have friends. He wasn’t an ordinary child. He had an internal life. He was always thinking. We’d sit here at nights in silence, and he’d read his books and wouldn’t say a word for hours on end. We never argued. I used to think it was because he was spiritual, holy somehow.”

“Perhaps his father? Where is his father?” Vanier was pushing, and he knew it.

“I don’t know,” she said, her hands grasping into fists.

“Who is his father?”

“I don’t know,” she repeated.

“So, Madame Collins, just for the record, your son has not been in contact with you recently?”

“Inspector, one day the only person who mattered to me left without saying goodbye and never came back. I’ve spent ten years searching for him, and in all that time, not one call, no letter, not even a card at Christmas, or Mother’s Day, or even my birthday. Do you know what that’s like?”

“I can only imagine.”

“Imagine all you like. You can never know.”

They rose awkwardly to leave.

“Can I see him?”

“The body is badly burned.”

“I want to see him.”

“I’ll have someone contact you.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”

She walked past them and opened the door to let them out. No goodbyes.

11.30 AM

The Squad Room was quiet as Laurent walked in followed by Vanier. Faces looked up, then turned back to the desultory paperwork of closing the investigation: finishing reports and closing circles. There was none of the elation that follows a successful investigation. When you don’t have the suspect to deliver to the crowd, there is always the feeling of a job half done. All they had was an explanation and a charred corpse. There was still the question of why, but it was New Year’s Eve, and unanswered questions were losing ground to the prospect of forgetting all about it in a New Year’s celebration. Those who had been brought in to help were dumping piles of file folders on the desks of anyone who would still be there in January. People were tired and there wasn’t anything that wouldn’t keep until another day.

Vanier sat down heavily and began tapping out a summary of the meeting with Mme. Collins. Eventually, only he and Laurent remained. Vanier put his hand on Laurent’s shoulder.

“Why don’t you go home? You can finish that next year.”

Laurent leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply.

“It’s never the same when they kill themselves, is it?”

“No. We’re supposed to catch them and bring them in. If we don’t bring them in, we’ve failed.”

Laurent was standing, putting on his coat. “We didn’t fail. We got the right guy. It’s just that he was so used to killing that it seemed like a convenient way out. He had maybe an hour left before we got to him.”

“And that’s all he needed. Happy New Year, Laurent.”

“And the same to you, Chief,” said Laurent, putting on his coat.

Vanier sat down and started typing again. He was in no hurry to go anywhere. He hardly noticed as it gradually got dark. He was thinking about where he was going to eat supper when the call came in. Another homeless death. He grabbed his coat and headed down to the car.

Even with the siren going and his red dome light flashing, he made slow progress along boulevard Rene-Levesque. He pushed forward, trying to intimidate cars out of their lane, but Montreal drivers don’t intimidate easily. Eventually, he arrived outside the Forum, the former home of the Montreal Canadiens, once hockey’s greatest shrine and now a forlorn multiplex in a lost corner of the city. St Catherine Street was blocked and lit up like a movie set, with the lights from squad cars and snow removal trucks reflecting off the snow banks lining the street.

A uniform removed the barrier, and Vanier drove slowly into the cordoned-off area. He got out of the Volvo and walked towards a group of men who were staring up into the back of an eight-wheel snow removal truck. He followed their gazes to the edge of the dump box where an arm dangled over the side, as though its owner was sleeping peacefully on the snow in the back. A snow blower was parked beside the truck with its motor running, but without the driver. There was a dark fan-shaped stain in front of the blower, and Vanier wondered what it must be like to go through a snow blower and be spat into the back of a truck.

He walked up to the first uniform he saw and pulled out his badge.

“Who’s in charge here?”

The officer pointed to another uniform standing beside the blower with two city workers, “Sergeant Gamache.”

Gamache saw Vanier approach and eyed him suspiciously.

“D.I. Vanier, Major Crimes.”

“I wondered if you guys would even show up. We got orders to call you guys with every death on the street, even the accidents and natural causes. So that’s what we did.”

Vanier looked up at the dangling arm. “Doesn’t look like natural causes.”

“No, but I don’t think anyone threw him in front of the blower either. He probably collapsed in the snow bank during the storm and got covered up. With any luck he was dead before the plow came along; I wouldn’t like to think of anyone going through one of those things alive.”

“Who noticed?” asked Vanier

“We had a car out working with the crew, and all of a sudden the driver of the blower was screaming. Seems there was an explosion of blood and body parts over his windshield and he lost it. That’s him over there.”

Gamache pointed to a man sitting in the back of a cruiser. The door was open and the man sat immobile, staring straight ahead with a blanket around his shoulders, steam rising from a coffee in his hand.

Gamache continued, “So my guy looks up and sees the arm hanging there and stops the work. We’re waiting for the Coroner to come and tell us what to do with the truck. Maybe he’ll have us get into the back with shovels. Who knows?”

Vanier looked around. Other than the blood and some bits of flesh, there was little to see. He kicked into the snow where the plow had stopped. There was about two foot of loose, grimy snow, freshly ploughed from the street, and below it the older snow was hard as concrete. It hadn’t been ploughed from the last storm. It had been dark and snowing since five o’clock, so it was possible that it happened just as Gamache described: the guy collapsed, was covered and disappeared until the plough came along.

Vanier bent to look at the business end of the blower. There was a four-foot hole behind the huge screw, but no screen over it. He turned back to Gamache. “Aren’t these things supposed to have screens on them?”

“Yes. It’s a city regulation. But when the snow is hard packed it slows down the work, everything gets clogged up. So the driver takes off the screen, and everyone’s happy.”

“Till something like this happens.”

“The screen wouldn’t have saved him,” said Gamache. “He might have taken a few more turns in the grinder but he would still have gone through.”

Just then, an Urgel Bourgie van arrived to pick up the body, causing murmurs of gallows humour; nobody had told them they would need a sieve. Vanier called Dr. Segal for a suggestion, and she arranged to have the truck parked outside the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de medecine legale for the night. Given the temperature, leaving the truck outside the Laboratoire was as good as putting it in a refrigerator. Vanier arranged to have a squad car watch it overnight, and they could figure out what to do in the morning.

10.30 PM