Giles Blunt: Until the Night

There’s another one of Ray Deville, looking shaggy and unshaven in front of one of the AARI buoys. He’s going down on one knee, arms spread wide in the classic posture of the big Broadway number, huge grin on his face. Next to the buoy sits a Nansen sled loaded with crates of dynamite destined for the seismic ridge and a series of reflection experiments. The picture is the only instance I can think of where Ray is smiling.

Somewhere online there is a shot of the supply plane landing. Sky pale grey at the zenith, deeper grey at the horizon. The snow and ice scalloped and torn into strips of grey on grey, almost white in the foreground. The whitest object is a cloud hugging the NE horizon. It isn’t a cloud at all, of course, but a windstorm. Wyndham stands in the middle of the shot cradling a twelve-gauge. We were having a lot of trouble with bears at the time.

Rebecca. Seated in the pale wash of light from one of the porthole windows. It’s not a photograph-I was never a photographer and have frankly never understood shutterbugs-but the image is as fixed in my mind as a studio portrait: Rebecca in jeans and that ivory turtleneck, reading a volume of poems. I’m noodling calculations in my notebook. I’ve been growing increasingly alarmed at some of the findings, and I’m trying, not very hard at this moment, to find the errors.

I don’t know anyone who reads poems, I say.

She doesn’t respond. The place is silent except for the thrum of the generator. It’s early in a new six-week rotation and everyone is somewhere else, perhaps watching a video of a ball game that took place weeks ago. Perhaps working. People fall into odd patterns when there is no night. The first day there is a kind of exhilaration at the unlooked-for escape from the dark. Many stay up until fatigue finally drives them to bed and a fitful sleep. Scientists go out at all hours.

I put aside the notebook and stand before her and slip my hand into the masses of curls. The warmth of her face against my wrist. She doesn’t move. Doesn’t look up.

Do you always just take what you want?

I can’t, in this case. That would be your heart.

It’s taken.

That’s not how it looks.

Lots of things are more complicated than they look.

She has her finger under the next page, ready to turn. The paper trembling. There are pencil marks next to a couple of lines of verse: Let me break/Let me make/something ragged, something raw/Something difficult to take.

I remove my hand from her hair and lean down. So close I can smell her hair, her skin, the ghost of cedar from her sweater. I know she can feel my breath on her ear as I whisper one word.

Vostok.

Assistant Crown Attorney Garth Romney took a stack of files from a cabinet and put them into a cardboard box that was open on his chair. After eight years as a prosecutor, he was being elevated to the bench of the Superior Court. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to transfer these cases to someone else. Two more weeks here and then I have a month in Tuscany,” he told them. “And next time you see me I’ll be on the bench, with a very good tan.”

Cardinal told him why they were there.

“You’re nowhere near a subpoena. The fact that you had a date a year ago with a woman who is now missing does not make you a suspect, even if you’re Leonard Priest.”

“The missing woman looks a lot like Regine Choquette.”

“Ah, yes. Regine Choquette.” Romney moved the box of files to the floor and sat at his desk. He opened a manila folder and quickly closed it again. “Regine Choquette broke my heart. I would’ve loved to nail Leonard Priest for that-if we’d had the evidence.”

“I thought we did,” Cardinal said.

“I know you did. But you’re not the one whose ass is in a sling if the judge decides the Crown has brought a meritless charge.”

“We had an eyewitness who put Priest at the scene. He saw Priest and Reicher coming down the path to the boathouse just as he was leaving.”

“You’re referring to Thomas Waite. But Thomas Waite did not see Regine Choquette. He claimed he saw Leonard Priest and Fritz Reicher. And then his memory got mysteriously foggy.”

“Yes, because a few weeks earlier, Leonard Priest had Reicher dress up like a Nazi and tie the guy up and beat him within an inch of his life. Priest’s idea of foreplay. Waite was convinced he’d be dead if he hadn’t managed to escape.”

“Prior action. Not admissible unless the defence brought it up, and Priest’s lawyers were far too smart for that. Plus Waite did not report the incident when it occurred.”

“That’s not unusual for victims of sex crimes,” Delorme said.

“Look, the guy changed his mind and there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s irrelevant now anyway, seeing as he’s dead.”

“What? When did this happen?” Cardinal said.

“I don’t know, six months ago. Blood clot, apparently.”

“But there was Fritz Reicher,” Delorme said. “In his statements to us he said the whole thing was Priest’s idea. Priest ordered him to shoot.”

“Courts are extremely reluctant to convict where the sole evidence is the testimony of an accomplice-especially a murdering accomplice. And that’s when they’re under oath. Fritz Reicher was not under oath when he made those statements, and you seem to forget that he recanted and then refused to ever open his mouth against Priest again.”

“We had Priest’s prints at the scene,” Cardinal said. “That alone-”

“From a previous occasion,” Romney said. “Priest never denied being there. Never denied having sex in that horrible place. He just denied being there on the night in question.”

“We could have gotten Reicher to turn,” Delorme said. “To go back to his initial statement. You could have offered him a better deal.”

Romney laughed. “Did you ever meet Reicher?”

“Once in chambers for depositions, that’s all.”

“Fritz Reicher-aside from having a remarkably low IQ-was a known fantasist, and that’s putting it kindly. All sorts of claims about his background and huge ideas about the future, both unencumbered by any connection to reality. He would have made the world’s worst witness-he had the affect of a zombie and an accent right out of the Berlin bunker.”

“The Luger was found at one of Priest’s sex clubs,” Cardinal pointed out.

“A club where Reicher was employed. He had twenty-four-hour access to the Ottawa club. And they were Reicher’s prints on that gun, not Priest’s. Please. I know you both as first-rate investigators, but it was a weak case against Priest two years ago and it’s a lot weaker now.” Romney stood up and transferred the cardboard box back to his chair. “I frankly don’t even know why you’re here.”

“Because you and I have presented a lot of cases together,” Cardinal said, “and we usually see eye to eye. It wasn’t like you to give Priest a free pass.”

Romney slammed a stack of files into the box. “The Charter of Rights and Freedoms gave him the free pass. The facts gave him the free pass. Do you seriously think I’d not press charges if I thought we had a case? You think the guy paid me off or something?”

“I might,” Cardinal said, “if it was somebody else. But you enjoy winning too much.”

“Exactly. And now I get to enjoy judging.”

Delorme had been in front of the mirror for more than half an hour, going systematically through the work side of her wardrobe. She pulled out one of her more sober ensembles. Grey suit, white open-collar blouse-probably the most unsexy outfit in her possession. She had worn it to court more than once.

She considered the effect.

She took off the jacket and exchanged the blouse for a silky dark top. Still prim, but with a lot more neck and throat. She changed her mind again and went for severe.