Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

Rick keeps jogging, “No thanks, I’m in training.”

“Get in the car,” says the one behind the wheel.

Rick stops. “Why? What’s happened?” His parents, the kids. Is Elizabeth okay?

The cop in the driver’s seat says, “Get in the goddamn car.”

Rick hesitates. The passenger door opens and his friend emerges like a bull from a pen. Rick turns and runs. Into the field, obeying an ancient reflex. It’s crazy, he hasn’t done anything, but he’s running like hell across newly sprouted rows of beets, over ridges of earth hardening in the sun, books slamming his back, shoes whacking his side, throat burning. The cop is way behind, Rick can see that with a glance over his shoulder. He keeps pelting, there’s a woodlot up ahead, if he can make it to the trees — another shoulder check reveals the big cop hunched over, hands on his knees, winded — an old glee pulls at the corners of Rick’s mouth, unreasonable surge of triumph, “Try and catch me, maudi batars!” He starts to laugh, chin up, chest out, not tired, never tired, could run forever — another glance, the cruiser is rocking toward him over the furrows, tearing up a dirt cloud in its wake. It picks up speed, coming straight at him. He stops.

Jack pays the cab driver and gets out in front of the cenotaph in Exeter at 7:20. There is still light in the sky when he makes his way on foot to the staff car waiting for him behind the old train station.

He has never felt so comfortable behind the wheel of any car, relieved to be off the pins and needles that seemed to upholster the Ford Galaxy. He got a couple of Aspirin from the cabbie who drove him here from the Hertz drop-off in London, and now, as he cruises south, he feels his headache draining away and settles back to enjoy the cushioned suspension and the clean sense of having accomplished something — despite the grease under his nails. His hands look like Henry Froelich’s.

The blue Ford was the only thing the police had to tie Oskar Fried to the area. Soon it will be no more than a metal envelope. Jack has done his bit for Queen and country, and now he analyzes in his mind the benefit versus the cost. The benefit: Oskar Fried is safe and free to contribute his expertise to the West’s fight for military and scientific supremacy. The costs: the police have been allowed to waste precious time in the hunt for a child-killer, and Jack has lied to his wife. The latter need never be repeated. The former doesn’t sit well with him, but he reminds himself that maybe Simon can pull strings from his end and get the authorities back on track.

He turns in at the gates, eager to ditch the staff car, wash up, then dash home. He phoned Mimi from Windsor, telling her he was stuck at a meeting in London. The last lie.

“I have to call my parents sir,” Rick says again.

The inspector says, “I’ll get someone to phone them for you. What’s the number?”

Rick’s stomach growls. He is in the same green concrete room, seated at a wooden table. The inspector sits across from him. Rick is cold. They took his knapsack with his windbreaker in it and have yet to give it back.

The inspector asks, “Why did you do it, son?”

“Do what?”

Rick is not all that aware of the attention he pays kids. They hang around him, like birds. He doesn’t always notice, but when he does he may acknowledge them. A push on the swing if he happens to be in the schoolyard and a little kid says, “Push me, Ricky.” A couple of shots on goal, sure, you can try on my jacket if you want to. He is like the person who happens to have a bag of popcorn when the pigeons land. So he doesn’t know what Inspector Bradley means when he says, “You like ’em young, eh Rick?”

Jack heads down Canada Avenue, the white buildings of the station shining under the street lights. The air is as fresh as if it had just gone through the wash and Jack feels lighter than he has in days. He skipped lunch and he’s looking forward to whatever Mimi will give him, eager to see his kids.

High pale clouds reflect the moon; it’s possible we’ll get one more snowfall this year, but it will be old man winter’s last gasp. Soon it will be time to trade in his dress blues for the light khaki uniform of summer. He finds himself looking forward to New Brunswick this August — time Mimi saw her mother again, and Jack could use a good game of Deux-Cents, a real wingding with his brothers-in-law.

He passes the message centre on his left — had he not popped in there yesterday for Sharon McCarroll’s boarding pass, had he not delivered it personally, he would never have found out about Froelich spotting Fried. So much of this game is about chance and making the most of it. Human intelligence. Humint . Simon is right, it’s vastly underrated.

When a U-2 spy plane is shot down, when an Igor Gouzenko surfaces, the public gets a glimpse behind the veil. But hundreds of men like Simon are working around the clock, fighting invisible battles, scoring silent victories, so that each morning the world can look the same as it did the day before. And we can continue to take it all for granted, and to have faith: the sun will rise, the sky will not be full of airplanes, will not be obliterated by an air-raid siren.

He passes the intrepid Spitfire, its nose tilted toward the stars, and crosses the Huron County road. He is among a quiet handful of people who know how precious and fragile it all is. Behind the tranquility of everyday life, something unstable is multiplying; something that wants to assert the primacy of chaos. Jack has, very briefly and quite unremarkably, worked behind the scenes so that his family and millions of others never have to find out. He enters the PMQs with an expansive feeling in his chest.

“Then why didn’t your air force man come forward, if he saw you?”

“Maybe he got posted.”

Rick is past hunger, feeling sick now, what time is it? They think I strangled Claire McCarroll. “Maybe he’s not from the station, maybe he was just here on course and he left the next day.”

“What servicemen do you know who have recently left the station?”

“I don’t know.”

“But he knew you — he waved, according to you — how do you explain that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know much,” says Rick’s friend from the passenger side — the one who punched him in the gut when he stopped running. He is sitting on a chair tilted against the wall, taking notes.

“I want to call my dad.”

“Trouble is, buddy,” says the big cop, “there were no departures from the station that week. No courses finishing, no postings, no one away on leave. We checked, eh?”

Rick stares at the scarred tabletop.

“How do you explain that, young man?” asks Bradley.

“I can’t.”

“I can.” Rick waits. Bradley says, “It never happened.”

A bad dream. “I want my mother,” says Rick and bites his lip, feeling himself redden with the approach of tears, ambushed by the potency of the universal phrase. He looks up. The big cop is grinning at him.

Jack runs up the steps and into his house. “What’s for supper, I’m starved”—but the kitchen is empty. No dinner smells, the table not set. “Mimi? … Kids?” What’s happened? I went away and something happened . The cuckoo clock startles him; he reaches for the phone, for Mimi’s pop-up tin address book — although he hasn’t a clue how to decode her filing system — and catches sight of the note on the fridge, “We’re across the street at the Froelichs’.” He breathes again. He wants a beer. Maybe Henry’s got a good Löwenbräu on ice.

He is about to knock on the Froelichs’ door when the bejesus police dog lunges at him through the screen—“Rex!” Colleen seizes his collar. “He thought you were another cop.” She turns and disappears down the hall, and Jack enters. A record is blaring on the hi-fi. Bambi .