Giles Blunt - Until the Night

Not that he could worry about that now. He had McLeod and Szelagy at the ready behind a rock cut on the west side of the cottage. From there, they had a clear shot at the walkout on the lake side should anyone decide to make a run for it.

He and Delorme were taking the front, but OPP would be first in. Cardinal had briefed them thoroughly and he had no reason to fear they’d blow it.

“I think I saw a curtain move,” Delorme said.

“I didn’t.”

“I could be wrong. Staring too hard.”

The curtains had been drawn all morning as far as the drive-bys could ascertain. There was smoke coming from the chimney, but that meant nothing. All houses kept some degree of heat on throughout the winter to prevent pipes bursting.

Jerry Commanda’s voice over the radio. “Everyone in place?”

Cardinal told him they were ready.

“All right, then. Let’s hope she’s in there.”

Despite their vantage point halfway up the hill, he couldn’t see Jerry and the SWAT team until they emerged from the bush like so many ninjas-ninjas plump with parkas and weaponry. He saw the point team heave the boomer into the door and a split-second later heard the crash of it.

He and Delorme ran down the hill and into the house.

“They’re not here,” Jerry told them, “but it looks like they were.”

There were dishes in the sink, bloody bandages in the bathroom. They found a coat in a heap on the floor that Cardinal recognized from photos of Hayley Babstock. He went to the wide front window and looked out across the lake. To the north, the blocky outlines of fishing huts silhouetted against the sun. To the west, the reflected sun was almost as bright as the real thing. It was a moment before Cardinal realized the reflection was coming from Babstock’s lake house, those glass rectangles hurling the sun right back in bolts of fire.

“Do we have any idea where he might be headed next?” Jerry said.

“Somewhere cold.”

“That could be anywhere.”

“It could.”

“And we don’t know what he’s driving.”

“No.”

“You gonna order up your ident team?”

“They’re on the way,” Cardinal said.

“What’s wrong? What are you staring at?”

“Ronnie Babstock’s house. Glass one over there.”

“I thought he owned that huge place on MacClintock.”

Cardinal was about to answer when there was a flash followed by a tremendous bang. All those bright reflections vanished in billowing clouds of black and grey.

“My God,” Jerry said.

They both pulled out their phones. Jerry issued terse requests for fire and ambulance. “Is that Outlook Drive he’s on?”

“Outlook, yeah.”

Jerry told them Outlook, hung up and ordered everyone to head over to the fire.

Ronnie Babstock answered Cardinal’s call and Cardinal asked him to hold on. He covered the mouthpiece. “Jerry, he’s probably trying to draw us away.”

“I know that. But we have to respond. She could be in that fire.”

Cardinal stepped away and covered one ear to block out the mayhem around him. “Ron. No, we haven’t found her yet. But I have a question for you.”

“What’s going on there? What’s all that noise? Have you got the guy?”

“No. Listen, Ron. That day you were up in the Arctic. The flare. How far would you say you were from where that flare went up?”

“What? I don’t get you.”

“How far were you? Best guess.”

“I don’t know. More than four kilometres. Less than six.”

Delorme grabbed his arm. “Are you coming?”

“Go with Jerry. I’ll be over in a minute.”

Delorme looked at him and he couldn’t read her expression, this woman he thought he knew so well now an unknown quantity. She turned from him and followed the others.

“Why are you asking this, John? What’s going on?”

“Karson Durie was aiming for some kind of symmetry. Wanted to take Hayley to the exact spot he nearly died, but got stopped. Four to six kilometres is your best guess? What kind of angle was it?”

“What?”

“From where you stood. You were on a ridge, right? From where you stood on that ridge to where that flare went up.”

“You know about the ridge? I didn’t tell you about the ridge.”

“The angle, Ron. The angle. Now.”

“It was about two o’clock from where I stood.”

“Two o’clock. So you’d say about ten degrees?”

“Two o’clock would be seven point five-but look, I didn’t do a compass reading.”

“Understood. Another question for you-is there anyone at your lakeside house right now? Cleaning lady? Caterer? Anyone like that?”

“No, I don’t go out there when it’s this cold. Why?”

Cardinal went to the nearest neighbour’s place and banged on the door and yelled “Police.” There were two cars in the driveway, one snowmobile trailer. Someone was home.

A man came to the door in his bathrobe.

“What the hell’s going on? I was in the shower, for God’s sake.”

“I believe you own a snowmobile.”

“Yeah. So?”

“The sooner you hand me the keys, the sooner you can get back to that shower.”

Smoke was still unfurling in fat black thunderclouds from where Ronnie Babstock’s house used to be. Cardinal was no master of snowmobiles, but he knew enough to get it moving in the right direction and at a speed that felt insane after the car.

The cold scorched his face, and by the time he’d got himself in line with the fire he was wishing he had a balaclava. He’d dropped his woollen cap in the cottage or somewhere else and his ears were already beginning to go numb.

At this moment, he was the only thing moving across the ice, the only thing making a racket. He cut across a rocky point and got within two hundred metres of the smoke. The fire trucks were there, but it was a question how well their pumps would work in this deep-freeze.

He spun the machine around to face south across the lake. He had to thumb the fog off his sunglasses to see. The shadowy humps of the Manitou Islands, the random fishing huts. With his back to Ron’s house, two o’clock put him in line with the smallest of the islands. Five kilometres would definitely put him on the island. But there were a lot of huts in between.

He gunned it and the machine leapt forward. There were patches where the winds of the past week had blown the surface completely clean. It flashed beneath him in a jittery blur of black and silver.

Not all the fishing huts that had been blown from their original locations by the freak wind had been dragged back. Orange warning signs were posted near the exposed holes. The holes had frozen over again, but they would not be ready to hold the weight of a person, let alone a snow machine.

A slim, dark object off to one side caught Cardinal’s eye, and he slowed and stopped. He got off the machine and went to the object and knelt over it. A small video camera, still fixed into its tripod. A smear of blood across the brand name.

You aren’t carrying anybody to those islands, Cardinal said. You aren’t anywhere far.

He left the camera where it was and got back on the snowmobile, heading for the huts that lay between him and the nearest island. He had to veer around exposed fishing holes. The cold sank hooks into his face. It’ll be even worse, he thought, if that pain disappears.

Usually there was smoke curling from the roof pipes of the huts. Not today. He counted only three with smoke. Those he ruled out right away. If Hayley was in a hut, it would be one without heat, and if she was dressed like the other victims, she’d be dead or right next door to dead.

Cardinal had heard that the RCMP-or was it the military? — were developing a stealth snowmobile, and he was wishing he had one now. If Durie was in any one of these cabins, he was going to hear him coming. And he would hear that he was alone.