Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (163 page)

So this morning I’m covering the grid behind a burned outbarn, looking for bodies, and I find this pair of draught horses.One’s dead and just beginning to bloat, and its mate—a big baymare—bends over to nudge it. I get goosebumps all over. Finallya live animal. I’m going to get her to bring her back to campwhen suddenly I hear laughter and these two Croat soldiers stepout from the barn. One of them sees the horse and stops. Raiseshis brand new American-made assault rifle and shoots her fivetimes in the head. When she falls, the other one leans over tocheck if she’s dead, presses the muzzle to her head and fires again.

I tackle them. Smash the first guy in the face with my riflebutt, then rip the other one’s rifle from his hands and throw himto the ground. It’s like I have the strength of ten men, like thespirit of that mare poured into me. I shove the rifle in his face.The bastard’s so freaked I can see the whites of his eyes. I pumpsix rounds into each of them. Turn their heads into a bloody pulp.

TWENTY-NINE

 G
reen looked up through a mist of tears as Sullivan and his
SQ
sidekick burst onto the scene, guns ready. He struggled up from Twiggy’s side and raised his hand in a restraining gesture.

“It’s over.” He jerked his head at Weiss, who was sitting back on his heels in stunned disbelief. “Search him and cuff him.”

Sullivan waved his gun and pulled out his handcuffs. “Palms against the wall. You know the drill.” “I need to explain,” Weiss began.

Anger billowed up in Green’s throat like bile, burning him. “You bet you do, but not right now.”

Weiss stumbled to his feet, cast one last look at Twiggy and bowed his head in resignation. Once he was safely cuffed, Green turned his attention to Langlois, who was still bent over the gunman. To Green’s astonishment, the gunman was gasping for breath and struggling to sit up.

As Green drew closer, he saw some blood spreading from a wound on the man’s shoulder, but across his chest there were only a few telltale nicks in his flak jacket. The
SQ
constable had pulled the black cap from his head, revealing a bristly grey crew cut. As Green looked into the man’s blue eyes, defiant even in pain, he felt not the disgust or rage he’d expected, but sadness.

“So, Colonel,” he said. “I’d say the battle is over.”

Hamm fought back pain and snarled at him. “You don’t know what you’ve done!”

Green looked at the carnage. At Twiggy sprawled on the ground and Weiss slumped against the trailer. He shook his head in wonder. “Do you?”

“John Blakeley could have saved thousands, soldiers and civilians alike! He could have changed the face of peacekeeping across the globe!”

“You may be right. But he also killed a man.”

“An accident,” Hamm replied. “And in the scheme of things...”

Green had squatted down by Hamm’s side to check his injuries. Belatedly disgust and rage bubbled up inside him. Even now, the man didn’t grasp the significance of what he’d done! Green turned away to look at Langlois. Colour was beginning to return to the young officer’s face. It’s always nice to know you haven’t killed a man, Green thought, even one as inhuman as the one before us.

“Put the handcuffs on him and read him the Charter warning,” he said. “We have him dead to rights on Twiggy’s death at least.”

Fortin arrived when it was all over, strenuously rowing against the spring-swollen current of the river. So much for my carefully coordinated tactical response, Green thought in a moment of absurdity. He was grateful to hand over the operation to Fortin, who radioed his superiors to get the wheels of justice in motion. Since Weiss’s crimes, whatever they might prove to be, had occurred on the Ontario side of the river, Green and Sullivan were eventually able to bundle him into the back of the Malibu and head back to town, leaving Fortin to deal with the removal of Twiggy’s body, Hamm’s evacuation to hospital, and the mountain of paperwork facing them all regarding what had transpired.

Sitting in the back of the Malibu on the ride back, Weiss seemed to retreat into shock, and Green hadn’t the strength to browbeat him. All he wanted to do was crawl home to bed. Once they’d delivered Weiss into the duty sergeant’s custody, with a promise to return later to lay formal charges, he dragged his exhausted body toward the parking lot.

Where he ran smack into Kate McGrath, leaning against the side of his Subaru with a triumphant smile on her face and two steaming cups of Tim Hortons coffee in her hands.

“I heard a rumour you were in the building,” she said.

“A woman after my own heart.” He plucked the coffee from her hand and unlocked the car. “I thought you’d gone home.”

“I postponed my flight. After I heard the excitement you had this morning, I wanted another go at Blakeley.” She circled the car and slid gracefully into the passenger seat. Her triumphant smile broadened.

He put the keys in the ignition but didn’t turn it on. “And?”

“He didn’t know about Hamm. He suspected someone was committing murder in order to conceal his old crime, but he was afraid it was his wife.”

“Well, she was certainly high on our list, too. What made him think it was her?”

“Because she knew something was wrong that night when he came back from the meeting with Patricia, and he said he may have let something slip. The poor man’s been beside himself.”

“Poor man!” Green snorted as he ventured a cautious sip of the hot liquid. “The asshole started this whole damn mess.”

“Anyway, he finally sang like a bird when he realized it wasn’t her. Hamm always scared him a bit. Too dedicated a soldier, too determined to succeed. Not ambitious in the usual sense like mostup-and-coming commissioned officers, but for the good of the corps. Blakeley always figured that Hamm backed him up that night in the Lighthouse Tavern not so much because of their history together, but for the sake of the army’s reputation. Another Somalia-style scandal might have destroyed the entire force.”

Green thought of Hamm sitting in the grass that morning, ranting about the lives Blakeley could have saved. For Hamm,the army came before all else. “I wonder how much Hamm will be willing to talk once we finally get him into our custody.” He glanced across at her. In the confines of his little car, she seemed uncomfortably close. A mere finger touch away. “Are you going to stick around to talk to him?”

A faint pink tinged her cheeks before she shook her head.“No. The case is over. Blakeley’s given a formal confession, and I expect he’ll plead. I’m going to make arrangements to have him transferred to Halifax court. Less of a media circus for him to contend with.”

“Don’t count on it.” He paused. An unspoken feeling hung between them “I’m sorry I had to handle it the way I—”

“You were an asshole.” Her eyes twinkled as she looked at him. “But you were probably right, and in the end I did get the confession.” She glanced at her watch. “But now I’ve got to hightail it. My flight is in an hour.”

“Oh!” He was surprised at his disappointment. And his relief. He started the car. “Then let me drive you to the airport.”

“That was the general idea. And if you’re ever down east again...” She stole him a mischievous side glance. Despite his fatigue, his senses tingled. “I’ll take you to the Rock and treat you to the best cod tongues in the world, bar none.”

Then she laughed, a marvellous musical laugh that lingered in the silence as he accelerated out of the lot.

By the time Green arrived home, it was five o’clock in the afternoon and Sharon’s car was not in the driveway. He’d forgotten she was at work. He’d called her earlier in the day so that she wouldn’t panic when the news broke about a fatal shooting in the Patricia Ross case. But with a dozen officers milling around, he’d kept his personal comments to a minimum.

Now, the sight of the empty driveway filled him with gloom. So much had happened in the past week that it felt like a lifetime since he’d really talked to her. God, he needed to talk.

Hannah was sprawled on the living room sofa, ostensibly babysitting Tony, but she was deep in conversation on her cellphone, and Tony was fast asleep on the floor. A MuchMusic video of gyrating guitar players blared on the television.

She looked up at his entrance without the slightest hint of guilt. “Are you making dinner?”

He dumped his keys on the hall bookcase, too weary even to pick up the mail. “No, I’m not. I have to go back to the station to interview a prisoner soon.”

“Oh.” A faint scowl marred her innocent pixie face, and she returned to her phone conversation. His anger flared, and he opened his mouth to voice it, but stopped himself. Fighting with Hannah took far more energy and emotion than he could muster at the moment.

Instead, he dragged himself upstairs, stripped his clothes, and stood under the pulsing shower, hoping to gather strength from its heat. He emerged more depressed than ever. He’d experienced this feeling often enough in the past to recognize what was happening. After a week of subsisting on adrenaline and sheer force of will, he’d hit the wall at the end of the race. Usually he had enough elation and triumph to carry him through the aftermath, but today he had neither.

He crawled into bed and pulled the duvet up to his chin. Desperately he willed his body to relax and his mind to go blank. He had only two hours before all hell would break loose over Weiss’s detention, and he needed to wring the truth out of the man before the lawyers and the union threw half a dozen gag orders in his way.

There was a knock on the door, and to his astonishment Hannah appeared, carrying a tray with a pot of tea and some dubious-looking lumps of dough. An uncertain smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. “Tony and I baked peanut butter cookies. Since you have to go out again, I thought you might like some tea.”

He sat up in bed, surprised to find he couldn’t speak around the sudden lump in his throat. She laid the tray on the bed and stood over him, fiddling with his cup. “I guess you had quite a day, eh? I caught part of it on the news.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to deny it. To protect her—and himself—from the gruesome imagery of his job. But in the end he sank back among his pillows with a sigh. “Yes. I lost a friend today.”

“That homeless woman?”

He nodded. A facile platitude sprang to his thoughts, that maybe the homeless woman had finally found her home. She had clearly chosen her end, trading her life for Weiss’s, as if it somehow paid for the life she herself had taken years ago. Yet anger drove the easy answer from his mind. She had not deserved the murder of her children, nor the bullet at the hands of Hamm. It had all been a senseless, goddamn waste of one of the good souls in this world.

Hannah poured his tea and held it out. He looked at her veiled eyes. “Will you join me?”

She shot him a glance and edged to the door. “No, I...” She examined her painted toes, scarlet now instead of black. Progress. “Well, I guess maybe a minute. Then I got a call to make.”

A minute may be all either of us can handle, he thought as he shifted over to give her a place to sit. They could talk about rock music, and maybe that minute would give him the strength to go back into battle for the final round.

September 22, 1993. Medak, Sector South, Croatia.

It’s 2 a.m. and it feels too heavy to keep inside. I imagine
it growing and swelling ‘til I think maybe the only way to
relieve the pain is to plunge a knife in my gut and burst it.

Captain Blakeley came to me today and told me theconversation we were about to have didn’t happen. He told methe
OC
is recommending me for a Medal of Bravery for mycivilian rescue. Then he said he knew about the Croat soldiersand by all rights I should be thrown in detention or slapped inthe psych ward. I was a disgrace to the uniform, a traitor toCanada’s peacekeeping ideals and a menace to those we’re swornto protect. We’re not the judge, jury and executioner over here, hesaid. We don’t have any idea what these people have beenthrough and we have no right to play God with their lives.But the army really needs the morale boost of a successfulmission and the example of my medal, he said, so he wasn’tgoing to put anything on my record. It’s our secret, he said, andunless you want to see the whole Second Princess Patricia LightInfantry Battalion hung out to dry in the press, you’ll neverreveal it to a living soul.

Then he walks out. What the hell is this traitor and menacecrap? What ever happened to the guy who promised only threedays ago that we’d make the bastards pay?

THIRTY

 T
o his surprise, when Green arrived back at the station, Weiss was ignoring the advice of his lawyers and his association rep and was clamouring to talk to him. Sullivan had gone home to treat himself to a well-earned Senators playoff hockey game, but Gibbs had returned to the station, eager to get at the man who had betrayed Sue. When he came down to the video room, where Green was supervising the set-up, he was vibrating with an energy Green couldn’t quite interpret. Part rage, part triumph, part pure testosterone.

“I know you want this, Bob,” Green said, “but that’s a good reason for you to stay out of it.”

“I won’t interrupt, sir. I just want to be there, to watch you and—and to hear what the bastard has to say.”

“But Weiss knows how you feel. Having you there...” Staring him down, Green wanted to add, but thought better of it, “...is going to colour his statement. It may even shut him down.”

Gibbs took a deep breath, as if to galvanize himself. Anger glinted through his excitement, and for a moment Green thought he was actually going to lash back.

“You can watch from the video room,” he added, to forestall an outburst the usually diffident Gibbs would later regret. “Sue would appreciate that.”

The mention of Peters seemed to deflate Gibbs, and he looked at his feet awkwardly. “She doesn’t remember wh-what happened. I suppose that’s a good thing.”

“Probably,” Green said. On balance he thought so. Amnesia seemed to be nature’s way of shielding the mind from terrors too great to bear. Given the alternative—years of nightmares and flashbacks—he wished it was something he could invoke at will. “I heard she was talking today. I bet she’ll be back on the job in no time.”