Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“Cigarette, Mr. Frolick?”

“No thank you.”

Bradley lights up and inhales. The man is clearly agitated; his son was detained for hours, then sent home hungry and scared — he’s bound to be irate. Bradley is prepared to be patient.

Henry is sitting at attention. “Inspector Bradley, I come because I have information about a murderer in this area.”

Bradley blinks. “In connection with what, sir?”

“In …? In this, this, the child, Claire.”

“You think she was murdered?” Froelich is taken aback. He starts to answer but Bradley asks, “Did your son tell you that?”

Froelich hesitates. “He found her in the field, yes? The police—”

“We haven’t got the coroner’s report yet.”

“… You think it was an accident?” The inspector says nothing. Henry nods. “I understand, you cannot tell me. Who am I? But I am telling you of a murderer in this area, I have seen him.”

Bradley resists the urge to lean forward. “Who have you seen?”

“A Nazi, a — war criminal.”

“A war criminal?” Bradley reaches for a pen. “What’s his name, sir?”

Froelich’s tone implies that the answer is self-evident. “I don’t know his name.”

“How do you know he’s a war criminal?”

“Because I am a — I was a prisoner!”

“Where was this?”

“First Auschwitz, then Dora—”

“I’m not familiar with Dora.”

“It was a factory—”

“You say you saw this man in the area?”

“Yes, yes, this is what I am saying.” Froelich leans in now, trembling. He tells the inspector about the man he saw getting into the blue Ford Galaxy outside the marketplace in London; of seeing him back into a parking meter, then speed off. He tells of the yellow sticker, of the partial plate number, and pauses for breath as the inspector writes it down. “And this is the same car that my son sees on this afternoon, on that afternoon that the child is — that she becomes lost.” He is having difficulty keeping hold of his English. “ 1st klar now, ja?”

“Your son said that an air force man was behind the wheel. He saw the hat.”

“Yes, this I don’t understand, he could … it could be another kind of hat, no?”

“Your son seemed pretty sure. And he said the man waved.”

“Maybe … there are two men.”

“An air force man and a Nazi with the same car?”

Froelich shakes his head, his eyes straying down to the desk.

“What’s this war criminal doing in Canada in the first place?”

“Ach, there are thousands here,” says Froelich with a wave of his hand.

Bradley licks his lower lip and puts down his pencil. Froelich alters his tone. He doesn’t want to discredit his information by impugning the Canadian government and its law enforcement agencies. “In some cases, perhaps, a war record is overlooked because we need scientists.”

“What kind of scientists?”

“Atomic or rocket, for instance, this man—”

“I didn’t know we had a space program here.”

“We have nuclear power, weapons-grade uranium—”

“Why didn’t you report this at the time, sir?”

Froelich chooses his words carefully. “Because I think maybe he is like … some others. A Canadian citizen now. So what is the point? And it’s the past. I”—he finds the expression—“press on.”

Bradley watches the man, pale behind his shaggy beard. His eyes are bloodshot, clothing rumpled. Has he been drinking?

Henry’s hands are like ice, but he is heartened. The policeman is interested, and the possible involvement of an air force man is starting to make more, not less sense of the situation. “The British and Americans, they have often screened refugees for Canada, in DP camps, Displaced Persons, ja? Many of refugees have committed crimes but are valuable with information — intelligence — or many only are young and strong, these are rewarded with coming to Canada.”

“How do you know this, sir?”

Henry tries to keep the emotion from his voice. “I also was a refugee, I also try to immigrate and am not permitted.”

“Why not?”

Henry shrugs. “I am a Jew. I am too old, too educated, I cannot cut wood, I cannot operate sewing machine, I have no family any more and the authorities want only anti-Communists—”

“Are you pro-Communist?”

“Nein, nein , I am Canadian, I mean only to say the authorities prefer sometimes a fascist background instead of socialist—”

“Do you have a socialist background?”

“This is a socialist country.”

Bradley doesn’t smile.

Henry says, “The Communists were the only ones to stand up to Hitler when—”

“And Canada. We stood up.”

“Ja, genau , Canada, natürlich , but at first — Inspector Bradley, were you in the war?”

“I most certainly was, sir.”

“Then we both understand to take nothing for granted.”

Bradley is silent. Spittle has collected at the ends of the man’s moustache. Bradley can smell his breath — corrosive. Finally, he asks, “What does this man look like, sir?”

“Ordinary. Brown suit.” The inspector’s pen is still. Froelich searches for something concrete. “Glasses. Pale. Perhaps sixty, not too tall. Grey hair. Ja , grey. And thin. Thin hair as well.”

“Eyes?”

“Pale … perhaps blue.”

“Thank you for coming in, sir.”

Froelich gets up reluctantly. “Inspector Bradley, you must ask the commander — Woodley is a good man — you must find if the air force knows this man. He is a sadist, he enjoys, you see. I feel sick that I have not come sooner to tell you.”

After Bradley has seen the man to the door, he finishes writing his notes on the interview with — he checks the spelling on the typed report — Henry Froelich. He lights another Player’s and ponders his next step. He has already ordered a check on all ’63 Ford Galaxys with Ontario plates, and now he can narrow it, thanks to the numbers provided by Froelich. Bradley will have the medical examiner’s report tomorrow, but the pathologist has already estimated time of death as between four and five P.M. last Wednesday. The time the boy claims to have seen the car.

There are three possibilities. Froelich is telling the truth and an air force man is, knowingly or not, involved with a war criminal whose car was seen around the time and in the vicinity of the murder. Or Froelich is mistaken — he is Jewish, he was in a concentration camp, this may not be the first time he’s convinced himself that he’s seen a face from the past, and exaggerated the horrors associated with that face. Or he’s lying.

If the first is correct, what should Bradley do? War crimes are an RCMP matter, he could simply pick up the phone. But this murder is in his jurisdiction; he’s not about to pass the buck, nor does he relish the thought of muddying the waters by inviting another organization on board before he has to. He could talk to Group Captain Woodley, ask him straight out if he knows of any air force involvement with a German scientist. But what if the government has indeed knowingly recruited a war criminal for some highly classified purpose? Is Woodley likely to admit it? In which case the RCMP may also be in the know — so much for calling on them. Bradley couldn’t care less about stepping on toes; if Froelich’s war criminal is out there, then he’s a suspect, and Bradley intends to track him down; for, much as he dismisses Froelich’s extravagant claim of “thousands,” he knows it’s inevitable that a few Nazis did slip through the net. There was a recent sighting just down the road here in Oxford County: Josef Mengele picking tobacco. And, whether Mengele has since fled or was never here to begin with, his case is not unique. There are still many of them on the run. Bradley smokes and leans back. He needs to figure out how to broach the subject with Woodley without tipping him off….