Giles Blunt - Until the Night

“It was just the patrol, we told ourselves. Just an exercise. Although I’m sure the others did the same as me later on, and looked up where the sovereignty patrol had been. It had passed Axel Heiberg a month earlier and by now had to be near the northern tip of Ellesmere.

“We did the wrong thing, John. I did the wrong thing. We turned our backs on a man in distress, and now that man has come to balance the account. He has my daughter, John. He’s the one who has my daughter.”

Cardinal reached into his pocket and pulled out his notebook and started flipping through it. “Which parallel did you say you were at?”

“We were at seventy-nine degrees north. Ninety north is the pole.”

“Take a look at these.” Cardinal showed him the page with his various arrangements of the numbers found at the crime scenes. “What do they mean to you?”

“None of these are right,” Babstock said. “Hand me your pen.” He took Cardinal’s pen in his manicured fingers and copied out the figures in a different order. Then he tapped the page with the tip of the pen and read them aloud. “79 degrees, 25 minutes north, 95 degrees west. Add a few minutes west and you have the coordinates of our location. That’s where we found Rocky, and where we saw that man.”

Cardinal started the car, and while waiting for it to warm up he checked his phone. North Slave Correctional had sent the information he had requested. He forwarded it to Chouinard and Drexler, then phoned them both.

“And you think he’s headed up there?” Drexler said. “To the exact spot where it happened?”

“Why else would he leave those numbers at the scene? He knows how to fly a plane, and I think he gave us the coordinates so we could attempt to mount a rescue-a rescue that would arrive too late.”

“All right. I’ll call the Horsemen. They’ve got outposts way the hell up there. Somewhere.”

“We need people watching private airfields-the smaller the better. He’s travelling with a person who’s unconscious. He’s going to avoid security as much as possible.”

Cardinal drove over to Parliament Street and down to King, cursing streetcars the whole way. Then he had to fight a gauntlet of one-way streets, mostly grey with big-city snow, to find the address he was looking for. He parked on a filthy slag heap of old snow and walked up the front path of a red brick townhouse. In the front window, red curtains framed a grand piano.

Alison Durie was slim and elegant and not happy to be visited by an out-of-town detective. She looked about fifty-five-but still with a bloom in her cheeks and something regal about the way she carried herself, an easy grace. There was no wedding ring.

Cardinal asked if he could come in and ask a few questions.

“No, you may not. What’s this about?”

“Maybe you could just tell me if you’ve seen your brother recently.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but why should I answer that question?”

“He’s wanted for questioning in connection with a major crime.”

“Rubbish. What crime?”

“I’m sure you’ve read about the abduction and murder of Marjorie Flint and Laura Lacroix.”

Ms. Durie laughed. “That’s so preposterous I don’t even have any response to it. Really, you have to find something else to do with your time, Detective.”

“The man we’re looking for has a limp, and probably a prosthetic hand.”

The regal facade faltered. Alison Durie’s slender, ringless hand levitated toward her throat, pale fingers touching her collar. “Even if he was the murderous creature you take him for, why would he do these things? How could he? Why? Many people limp, and my brother has no connection to these women.” She started to close the door.

“Ms. Durie, wait. Did he ever talk to you about what took place up north? At the drift station?”

“Karson would never kill anyone. And if you think he would ever harm a woman, you’re grotesquely mistaken. When he first came here after his release from prison, our mother was living out the last months of her life. He could not have been more attentive, more tender. Even two decades in prison had failed to destroy that. In any case, I haven’t seen him for at least two months now, and I’ve no idea where he is.”

“I think you do. Tell me where to find him. If he’s innocent, that shouldn’t be hard to prove.”

“How dare you say that? We have no reason whatsoever to trust the justice system. My brother served eighteen years and was denied parole repeatedly. Repeatedly. Well, now he’s out, he’s a free man, and it’s nobody’s business-not yours, not anybody’s-where he might be.”

“He was denied parole because he showed no remorse.”

“He showed no remorse because he was innocent. He was innocent then and he’s innocent now.”

She closed the door and Cardinal stood there staring at it. He reached into his jacket and took out a business card and put it through the mail slot.

When she woke up again, Hayley had the idea that she was somewhere near a place that sold motorcycles. Every ten minutes or so, from somewhere in the distance, there would come that ragged, ripping sound of an inadequately muffled engine.

She was lying on her back on a sofa, too tired and dazed to move. She tried to turn her head, but a rush of nausea stopped her. The ceiling, country pine, was awash with light. It was light of a very particular softness combined with brightness, and it took her a while to register what it reminded her of. The ski chalet at Collingwood. The light was coming from snow. The motorcycles must be snowmobiles. She must be somewhere up north, perhaps near a lake, with the sunlight bouncing off the snow and filling this room.

The terror came back as the drug, whatever it was, wore off. She could turn her head now. The man limped by her, shirtless, with a makeshift bandage around his rib cage. He sat down with a grunt of pain. After a while his breathing became heavy and slow. Sleeping.

Her wrists, underneath her, were fastened together. Ankles too. The moment she worked at the bonds, a bolt of pain shot through her. Her wrists were already torn from trying to escape. She remembered the truck. She remembered the needle. Then nothing.

The man woke up and rose from his chair with a gasp. Had he been shot? Could that have happened without her being aware of it? She listened to him moving about the house, or cottage. A fridge opening. A cupboard. Running water. And then the smell of toast, the clack of the toaster, the rasp of a knife spreading butter or jam. She had the feeling he knew his way around this cottage, this house.

Hayley wasn’t sure if he could see her from wherever he stood at the moment. She worked at the gag with her tongue, strained her neck to stretch the fabric, worked at it again. It was the only thing that felt any looser.

Sound of a chair scraping. Something falling to the floor. A curse. Then footsteps and the sound of a bathroom cabinet opening. The rattle of a pill bottle, then water running.

She strained at the gag, lifted her head and turned her neck from side to side, forcing down nausea. Working at the fabric with her tongue, her chin, her jaw, she managed to get the gag out of her mouth. It was now tight against her lower lip. She would be able to scream.

A scream would likely go unheard. It would also bring what? The needle-or perhaps worse. She raised her head to look around. Large chalet-type room. Books everywhere. A baby grand piano.

The man came back, limping, slow. He came close, looking down at her. His eyes catching her gaze, moving to the gag. He leaned toward her, reaching for it.

Hayley shook her head. “Please. No.”

His eyes assessing her, the short chain of her potential moves, his face hawkish, weathered. A professor, perhaps. A judge. The eyes closed and the face paled, a hand clutching at the bandage. His limp worse as he moved to an armchair and sat down again, this time silently.