Giles Blunt: Until the Night

“You know, you’re amazingly liberal for a cop,” Babstock had said.

“And you’re amazingly liberal for a businessman.”

“That’s Evelyn’s influence. And Hayley’s-my overeducated daughter. I’d probably be a lot richer if I never listened to them, but I’d’ve been a lot more miserable too.”

Babstock had become known as a philanthropist and had put his money behind major international initiatives as well as local improvements to the main street and the waterfront. Cardinal had come to have tremendous respect for him.

“I’m glad you called me, Ronnie,” Cardinal had said when they were parting that first time. “Why did you?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Suddenly you’re fifty-eight and you haven’t paid any attention to friendships for thirty, forty years and you wake up in the bloody Yukon-psychologically, I mean. That’s probably why I called you, to be honest. Gets fucking lonely.”

It sent a chill through Cardinal to hear a man admit to loneliness. He never used the word about himself. But he knew what Ronnie meant. Friendships suddenly matter a lot more when you live alone. He didn’t know what he would have done if Delorme hadn’t somehow managed to become his buddy over the past two years.

“You’re ignoring the question,” Ronnie was saying now. “If I tell you I sometimes think Evelyn’s trying to contact me, you just think that’s nuts, right? You never wonder that way about…?”

“I miss Catherine. I miss her every day. I don’t suppose that’ll ever stop. But we had our life together and now it’s over and…”

“And what?”

A pretty young woman came into the dining room and asked if they would like more dessert.

“No thanks, Esme. That was delicious. Just clear everything away and you can be off.”

Cardinal had been having dinner at Babstock’s place once a month for going on a year, and he still wasn’t sure if Esme was a maid or a caterer or a niece. Babstock always treated her with respect but betrayed no interest beyond that. Caterer, Cardinal decided. The meals were always perfect, and he enjoyed their quiet conversations before the others-one the architect who had designed Babstock’s house, the other a major at the local radar installation-arrived after dinner and proceeded to beat both of them at stud poker.

“Fabulous meal,” Cardinal said. He tapped his wineglass with a fingernail. “Wine too.”

“You never thought Catherine might be trying to get in touch with you?”

“No, Ron. Why, has Evelyn been phoning you?”

“Phoning, no. But I hear her voice sometimes. I think I do. I mean, it’s bad enough I even saw a doctor about it.”

“What did he say?”

“Stress, of course. Overwork.”

“Well?”

“Okay, I’ll stop. I’m being silly. Let’s move.”

Cardinal followed him into the game room. Babstock’s house was a series of rectangles, mostly glass, overlooking Lake Nipissing. The lights of Algonquin Bay glittered across the frozen lake, making it look a much larger city than it was. Babstock had another house in town, but Cardinal had never visited him there.

They sat at the poker table and Babstock patted his pockets for his reading glasses. “Oh, listen-before I forget-I want you to come to my party.”

“It’s nice of you to ask, but I’m really not a party person.”

“I don’t want party people. I want real people. Feel free to bring someone, of course. Are you seeing anyone?”

“Not just at the moment.”

“What about that detective colleague you told me about? Why not bring her? You said you like her.”

“Lise is even less of a party person than I am.”

“All the better. Be good for both of you. Listen, what did you make of that case in California? That little girl missing for eight years.”

Babstock made a charming effort to be up on crimes Cardinal might be interested in-no matter how far afield they had occurred. This was a California case in which a child had been abducted at age two. Her mother recognized her eight years later, now age ten, at a playground in a different city. DNA tests confirmed her identity, and the couple who had stolen her were now in federal prison. Cardinal hadn’t paid much attention.

“Of course, what I really want to ask you about is this motel murder. But I know you can’t talk about it.”

“ ‘Fraid not. Ongoing investigation.”

“I know, I know. There’s the doorbell. Come to my party, John. Meanwhile, get ready to part with a serious amount of cash.”

Giles Blunt

Until the Night

From the Blue Notebook

Back in the winter, when the plane deposited Wyndham and me and the construction crew on T-6, we had somehow contrived in that polar darkness to assemble the prefabricated structure of the mess hall in such a way that it ended up with an extra stub of a room, a kind of alcove. I had dragged one of the more comfortable chairs into it and stacked some of my books around it. I liked to sit there at night and read.

Rebecca (this was weeks later) was doing a crossword in the mess. Of all of us, Rebecca was the one most able to keep to a regular schedule despite the unending twilight. When she was finished recording and sorting her data for the day, she devoted her evenings to crosswords, board games or reading. I was in my alcove, from where I could see Wyndham but not Rebecca. He was tinkering with his laptop, trying to improve the insulation pack around his jerry-rigged car battery. We weren’t supposed to do such things in the mess, but Wyndham always did.

I don’t know which of them started it-probably Wyndham, who was always good for a philosophical ramble-but they were talking about different kinds of cold. For some reason their easy conversation put me in a sneering mood and I couldn’t focus on my book. Rebecca told a story about a young monk who travelled thousands of miles to study under a great Zen master.

Rebecca’s voice in the twilight:

The master told the student to sit still and meditate. Told him to meditate every day. Told him to meditate his every waking hour, to ignore everything else in the world except for the demands of nourishment and sleep.

I couldn’t see her, but I pictured her face, her mouth. Full lips forming the words.

So the student meditated for months on end-until he was exhausted, wasting away. Time and again he would go to the master and say, Why have I not attained enlightenment? I have done everything you say. The master grew angry and told him not to come bothering him with any more complaints. Not to come to him at all until he attained enlightenment.

I know how this ends, I thought. I was half tempted to heckle.

The student went away and managed to stick with it for another month. Then he climbed up the hill to the master once more, and all he wanted to ask was, Am I nearly there? Am I making any progress at all? Is there the slightest hope? But the moment he began to speak, the master pulled out his sword. With a single motion-it flashed just once in the sunlight-he cut off the student’s finger.

Stunned, howling, the student staggered back from the master, turned and stumbled down the hill. He hadn’t gone far when the master shouted his name. The student stopped, clutching his bleeding knuckle, and looked back up the hill. The master slowly raised his hand and, with a smile of utter bliss on his face, wagged his own index finger.

Rebecca paused, and I knew she was demonstrating to Wyndham. Wyndham looking up from his task to see her imperturbable face. Beautiful slender finger wagging at him.

And at that moment, she said, the student attained enlightenment.

Ah, yes, said Wyndham, a very different kind of cold.

My regard for religion, any religion, has always been low, but Zen Buddhism-perhaps because it is fashionable in those urban enclaves where fashion is everything-seemed to me particularly bogus, precious, its masters the spiritual equivalent of mimes. As for sub-zero pedagogy, the High Arctic is the coldest teacher of them all-I have lost far more than a finger under its instruction-but I have yet to attain even a modicum of wisdom, let alone enlightenment, for all its fabulous array of blades.