Giles Blunt - Until the Night

Sometimes, Cardinal thought, you have to pretend you don’t know something. I’m not making a sound. Invisible, too.

He drove right up to the door of the first hut. There was no snow machine nearby’ there wouldn’t be if Hayley was alone. The hut was a crooked wreck not much bigger than a garden shed, but he came off the machine with his Beretta in hand and kicked the door open. Coleman stove, empty Labatt cases, porn magazines.

The next hut had windows blinded with frost. He broke one with his elbow and saw at a glance the place was empty.

He moved to the next one. His fingers were barely working and he had to put his hand with the Beretta in his pocket. Again no snowmobile. Windows opaque. Drag marks where the hut had slid out of position. An unmarked fishing hole nearby, the danger sign flat on the ice.

This cabin was bigger than the others and there was blood on the doorsill. Cardinal took his gun out and checked that the safety was off. The padlock on the door was big, but it didn’t matter. Two kicks tore the hasp from the frame. He pushed the door open.

Hayley Babstock lay half-curled on a bench. Blue down jacket like the others. New boots.

“I have a Glock. 45 pointed at your spine.” The voice came from behind him. “Place the gun on the ice and kick it back here.”

“Just let me help the girl,” Cardinal said.

“Gun on the ice, Detective. You’re not rescuing anyone today.” It was a dry voice, an exhausted voice. The voice of a ghost.

“Look at her, Durie. She’s young. A teacher, but practically a kid herself.”

The shot ripped into the door frame.

“Gun on the ice.”

Cardinal lowered the gun and kicked it back. He heard the man gasp as he picked it up.

Cardinal turned around. Durie’s face was a perfect match with his voice-grey, drawn, desiccated-the face of the walking dead. “Let’s at least get inside,” Cardinal said.

“Not that one,” Durie said. He gestured with the gun at the cabin behind him.

“I think we should go in here with Hayley. You should see exactly what you’re doing. Exactly who you’re killing.”

“I’ve seen it before.”

“You mean Rebecca.”

The man flinched. Black spark in the hollow of his eyes.

“I’ve read your notebook. I know you had to watch her die. But I don’t think you watched Marjorie Flint or Laura Lacroix or Brenda Gauthier.”

“Ronald Babstock is the one who should be watching. Unfortunately… technical difficulties.”

Cardinal pointed inside the hut. “Hate Ron Babstock all you want. He and his daughter are not the same person. Hayley never harmed you in any way.”

“Everyone’s accusing me of hate. Hate is not required.”

“You’re not like this. This isn’t you. It’s obvious from your diary-your blue notebook. You’re an intelligent man, a passionate man. A man capable of love. A man who recognizes the good qualities in others. A scientist. Observant. Curious. You loved someone, remember?”

“That was in another country.” The dry voice. A whisper among reeds. “You flip that switch, push that button. Love turns into something else, but it isn’t hate.”

“I also know-”

“You don’t know anything.”

“From your notebook. Rebecca was also passionate, loving, a scientist-curious, rational, brave. She loved you. Loved her husband too, I think. But she saw the good qualities in you.”

“I frightened her.”

“From what you wrote, I think it was her own feelings that scared her.”

Durie shook his head.

“I believe every word you wrote. What I don’t understand is why the jury didn’t believe you. Why did they think you killed the others?”

“I was holding the murder weapon when they found me.”

“There’s plenty of reason for that.”

“If you’ve read to the end of my notebook, you know her husband testified against me. Told them I’d gone on a rampage in a desperate attempt to steal his wife. Now there’s hate for you. Odd thing is, I don’t even blame Kurt, really. I didn’t even at the time. I understood it completely. I’d like to tell him so, but he died of natural causes before I got the chance.”

“You got a bad deal.”

“Eighteen years for four murders. The judge was marvellously impartial, considering. Took Arctic stresses into account.”

“The woman you loved died too young. Hayley doesn’t have to.”

“Nor did Rebecca.”

“Honour the person she was, then. She would beg you to stop. It’s there, in everything you write about her.”

“Rebecca can’t care anymore. Being dead.”

“Durie, listen. Here we are in the exact same circumstances you were in twenty years ago. A young woman is about to freeze to death, only this time it doesn’t have to happen. This time you can save her. In some ways, I think that’s why you’ve been doing this-hoping that somehow, against all odds, this time it would turn out right. Well, it can. This time you can save her.”

“And what about me?”

“You’ll probably die in prison.”

“I was joking.”

“But you’ll be a better man. A better human being. The one that young woman loved so long ago.”

“Karson Durie died twenty years ago, Detective. I’m just a ghost.”

“Fine. At least they have heating in prison.”

“You imagine I’m afraid of the cold.”

“I don’t think you’re afraid of anything.”

“I’m made of cold.”

Durie opened his parka. He shifted the gun from one hand to the other and back, letting the coat drop from his shoulders to the ice. Underneath, he was wearing a dark sweater, khaki pants.

“It’s what I was wearing that day. You believe that? They actually gave them back to me in a parcel the day I was released. They’re a little big on me now. Would’ve been nice if they’d given me back my toes and fingers.”

Cardinal took a step toward him. A searing pain like a scalpel across his arm before he even heard the shot.

Durie took two steps to the side, his limp severe. Then he stepped onto the fishing hole as if he were stepping onto the down escalator, both feet firmly in the circle.

The briefest pause.

Over the course of the next month, Cardinal would have to explain many times why he thought Durie would suddenly choose this course of action. He said, every time, that he did not know. Durie could have killed Cardinal, and the girl would have died the way he had intended. Maybe his thirst for revenge had been slaked sooner than he expected. Maybe he was just tired of killing. His own injuries were life-threatening-the autopsy showed deep cuts, seven fractured ribs, a punctured lung, and a torn spleen-and he must have known at this point he was unlikely to survive them. Or maybe it was that Hayley Babstock was too much like the woman he had loved so long ago, and he couldn’t, in the end, bear to take her life. Or maybe it was as he had said, maybe Karson Durie had really died all those years ago.

The ice gave way beneath him and he vanished. Cardinal crawled to the hole but could see nothing beyond shards of ice. Water like ink. He plunged his arm in up to the shoulder and the pain made him shout. He rolled back from the edge, gasping.

Durie appeared under the ice a short distance away. The surface was not perfectly clear, but the face, stunned and incredulous, was vivid, as were the gloved hands that pressed so uselessly against the ice.

Hayley was still breathing, her pulse faint. Cardinal called for paramedics-they would not have far to come from Babstock’s house. He gave them the same directions Ronnie Babstock had given him. Then he called Ronnie.

“Oh, dear God. Tell me she’s all right.”

“She’s hypothermic, Ron. Pretty bad, I’d say, but the medics are on their way. She’ll be warm soon.”