Giles Blunt - The Delicate Storm

Catherine was saying something to him, but Cardinal couldn’t quite focus. His mind was fixed on the events of more than a decade ago, the single biggest mistake of his career – of his life, really. It had cast a pall over every moment since, and now, even though he had tried to rectify it, it was presenting a threat to his home. His refuge, yes; but between his wife’s emotional fragility and the demands of his profession, not an impregnable one.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘What were you saying?’

‘I said Kelly called a while ago. Are you sure you’re all right? What was that card about?’

Cardinal stuffed the card in his pocket. ‘Nothing. Garbage. Funny how Kelly always manages to call when I’m out. She must have someone watching the house.’

‘Don’t say that, John. She asked after you. I really don’t think Kelly’s capable of holding a grudge. Not against you, anyway.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘She’s found a new place. Sharing an apartment in the East Village. She says it’s very funky but liveable.’

‘God knows why she wants to live in New York in the first place. You couldn’t pay me enough money to live there. Toronto was bad enough.’

Cardinal went into the bathroom and ran the shower as hot as he could stand it, then turned it gradually colder. The sting of the water restored his spirits a little, but his mind still kept going back to the events of a dozen years ago. He had crossed a line, and when he tried to go back – back to the last point where he had been his real self, his full self – it turned out not to be a line at all, but a chasm.

Cardinal forced himself to think of the present, of the farce at Loon Lodge. He remembered that just before he had been attacked, a thought had been forming in his mind. Then, as he was rinsing off, the thought came back to him. It had been about Wudky.

He dried off, wrapped himself in a thick dressing gown and went out into the living room to use the phone.

‘Delorme? It’s Cardinal.’

‘Cardinal, do you know what time it is? Believe it or not, I do have a life.’

‘No, you don’t. I’ve been thinking about Wudky. You know he told us Paul Bressard got himself murdered and buried in the woods?’

‘Wudky is retarded. Everybody knows he’s retarded. I’m surprised you bothered to check his story out.’

‘But look at what we’ve got. We’ve got an American chewed up in the woods, right? Near an old trapper’s shack, right? And Paul Bressard is a trapper.’

‘Right. And Wudky said Paul Bressard got murdered, and Wudky was wrong.’

‘And why? Because Wudky is the world’s dumbest criminal. And why else? Because Wudky had had a lot to drink the night he heard that story. But suppose Wudky got it backwards? Suppose Paul Bressard killed a tourist and did away with him in the woods? That would make more sense, wouldn’t it? Maybe he even killed him accidentally and tried to cover it up.’

‘Me, I don’t think feeding a guy to the bears is accidental. Even just to cover up.’

‘But it’s the sort of thing that would occur to a trapper. Someone who knows exactly where the bears are.’

‘I guess. Yeah, you could be on to something.’

‘Are you just saying that to get me off the phone?’

‘No. But I thought you already talked to Bressard.’

‘I did. And he seemed completely innocent. But then, I was just checking to see if he was alive.’

‘Maybe we should talk to him again. Oh, sorry – maybe you and Malcolm Musgrave should talk to him. Matlock was American. That means working with the Horsemen.’

‘Don’t remind me.’

Cardinal went back to the bathroom and dried his hair. He had an idea now. A direction. When he went into the bedroom, Catherine was under the covers, fast asleep. Beside her, an oversize library book called New York and New Yorkers lay open to a picture of the East Village.

Cardinal got into bed beside her and turned out the light. He listened to the rhythm of her breathing, the sound of peace, love and security. And then he thought again about the card.

Detective Sergeant Daniel Chouinard was still trying to rid his office of his predecessor’s ghost. D.S. Dyson, aside from being a crook, had been a supernaturally neat man, and so Chouinard felt it necessary to keep his office in a state of turmoil. Half-installed blinds hung from the windows at alarming angles, law books and procedural manuals tilted in precarious towers on the floor, and the bookshelves formed a lean-to against the wall. On his desk lay a hammer, a variety of screwdrivers and a tablet of white foolscap on which it was his habit to take illegible notes.

When the position of detective sergeant had become available, it had been offered to Cardinal. He was one of the more senior detectives, after all, and had cleared some of the highest-profile cases in Algonquin Bay’s history. But Cardinal had turned the job down, even though it would have meant more money and regular hours. At the time, he had been on the brink of quitting the force – Delorme had stopped him at the last minute – and felt he didn’t deserve any promotion. Also, there was the undeniable fact that being detective sergeant was a desk job. Cardinal just couldn’t see it. Being out on the street, dealing with real people, was the best thing about police work, the only thing that made him feel useful.

The only factor that made Cardinal hesitate at all was fear that the job would go to Ian McLeod. McLeod, who was away on vacation at the moment, had a knack for sowing discord that would have made him an out-and-out disaster. In the end Chief Kendall had offered the job to Daniel Chouinard, who had been a detective long enough to understand the needs of the CID staff. He had suffered along with the rest of the squad under the unpredictable D.S. Dyson, and he had solid organizational skills. Most important of all, he knew every one of the eight detectives well enough to know whose strengths would balance out whose weaknesses.

When he’d heard about the appointment, McLeod had declared it was simply because Chouinard was French Canadian: it made the department look strongly bilingual, which it was not. But nobody else found any reason to be upset with Daniel Chouinard. The worst that could be said of him was that he was bland – especially for a French Canadian. All right, he was boring. He was so boring you could really only define him by what he lacked – such as any sense of irony or for that matter any sense of humour. He had no axe to grind, no political ambitions and no major psychological problems. He was given neither to tantrums nor to vendettas. The man didn’t even have an accent. Despite the messy office, the new D.S. was just, well, reasonable. Sometimes unbearably reasonable.

‘Let me sum things up,’ Chouinard said. Delorme and Cardinal were on their feet in the at-ease position, owing to Chouinard’s chairs being covered with stacks of acoustic tile. ‘We have an American male in his late fifties or early sixties found in the woods where he was eaten by a bear.’

‘Murdered by persons unknown and then eaten by a bear,’ Delorme corrected him.

‘The fact that he’s American means we have to bring in the Mounties; anything international is their turf. Which means we’ll be working with Malcolm Musgrave. So, I don’t think we need Delorme on this just now.’

‘Actually,’ Cardinal said, ‘Delorme’s the best possible person to work with Musgrave. They’ve worked together before and they get along fine. That’s bound to speed things up.’

‘Maybe,’ Chouinard said. ‘But I don’t want too many cooks on this.’

‘D.S., I want to be in on it,’ Delorme said. ‘I’d be happy to work with Musgrave.’