Murder in Focus (12 page)

“Maybe you have me permanently at a disadvantage,” he said. “After throwing you on the concrete and manhandling you I feel I should be making amends.”

“Well, you can make them tomorrow night,” she said. “Besides, I want to get my equipment put together again, not spend the entire evening over a second-rate dinner.”

“Shut up and walk in there,” he replied, “before I knock you on the pavement again.”

“Now,” she said, as they handed their menus back to the waiter and started in on their bottle of wine, “what the hell was all that about? Do you realize that you were at RCMP headquarters for two hours? That is assuming that it took you no more than fifteen minutes to walk down to the car. And don't try to fob me off with that line about the Mounties being slow-moving again.”

“I would guess,” said Sanders, “that we have stumbled into the middle of something they would rather we were out of.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“It means that Bartholomew is involved—was involved—in something that the RCMP worries about. You know—terrorism, drugs, forgery, whatever. And since they're being so goddamned cute about him, I would guess that he was an informer. Poor bastard. And maybe they have other informers in place around the operation, or they're about to make a big pinch on his information. Anyway, they would just as soon we would keep our noses out of the whole mess.”

“Did they tell you this?”

“Hell no.”

“Then how can you tell?”

“Because they're lying their socks off, that's how.”

“John,” she said, very slowly, twirling her glass around. “Would they follow us—or you, I guess—because they were worried about what happened? Do they do things like that to other police forces?”

“I wouldn't put it past them,” said Sanders easily. “But I really don't see the point. Unless they have so much manpower around here no one has enough to do. Why? Are you seeing Mounties around every corner?”

She laughed. “Of course not. Ah, here comes the soup. It had better be edible, John Sanders, or I'll make you suffer for it.”

It was almost two hours later when the waiter arrived to clear away the remains of dinner and suggest dessert and coffee. Sanders looked speculatively across the table at Harriet. The wine had brought a slight flush to her cheeks and had softened her normally clipped and somewhat sarcastic tones. He was no longer paying attention to her words, just listening to the excitement in her voice as she tried to tell him about something terribly important. He picked up her hand from where it had dropped to rest for a second on the table and looked at it carefully. “Do you
want
coffee?” he asked, looking directly at the hand caught in his own.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, startled.

“That's what the waiter wanted to know before he gave up in despair. Do you want coffee?”

“I'm sorry.” Her cheeks reddened even more in confusion. “I don't know what got into me. I don't usually go on like that. It must have been the wine.” She looked up, leaving her hand where it was. “Do you want some?”

“I could do with some. Although it's getting hot and noisy in here.” The crowd had changed perceptibly in nature as the hour advanced. “So I could do just as easily without it.”

Harriet looked steadily at him for a moment or two, and then turned her head and stared in fascination at a poster of the Italian Alps, framed, hanging on the wall beside her. “You could,” she said, her voice almost lost in the Alpine scene, “come back to my place for coffee. I think I must have some.”

“Really?” he said. “Are you sure . . .” His words trailed off into nothing.

“Sure,” she said, almost nonchalantly. “Come on, before it gets too late.”

Sanders followed her up the stairs, still baffled. On the way back in the car, she had chattered ceaselessly about the essential differences between restaurants in Toronto and Ottawa. It had formed a wall between them—amusing, but impenetrable. Now he balanced on the second step, cautious about moving too close, while she struggled with her door key. “Goddamn,” she muttered. “I can't get this thing to turn. This is the last straw.”

“Here, let me,” said Sanders, reaching around her to try the key. It wouldn't budge.

“See?” she said bitterly. “It's not just because I'm a weak little woman. Don't break it. It's a new deadlock. I just had it put in.”

He didn't bother answering, but pushed her slightly to one side to look more closely at the mechanism. Then he grasped the door handle, gave it a turn, and pushed the door open an inch or two. “It's open. You forgot to lock it when we went out,” he said gently.

“The hell I did,” she said. “It's never unlocked.”

“Really?” he asked. “You're sure?” She nodded. He stood very still for a moment, then gestured for silence and pushed her firmly behind him. “Stay there,” he whispered. He flattened himself against the door, his right shoulder pressed close to the partially open side, and reached into his jacket. When he withdrew his hand, it contained a pistol. He eased the door farther and farther open, listening intently as he went, his eyes flickering over the shadowy kitchen. Light streaming in the window from the house behind them played on the green knapsack, lying empty in the doorway into the study; otherwise, as far as he could see, the room appeared normal. He held up a hand to forestall Harriet, and gave the door a steady shove until it rested against the wall. Nothing behind it. With his back against the wall, he moved sideways to the right until he came to the darkroom. He pushed that door open gradually with the toe of his shoe. By now his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and in the light of the open door he could just make out all the spaces in the room large enough to hold a man. It looked odd but empty. He drifted silently over to the open back door.

“Do you have a flashlight?” he asked softly.

Harriet moved into the kitchen, opened a drawer, and put a flashlight into his hand. He nodded and moved like a stalking cat over to the study. The light picked out a litter of empty boxes on the floor. Every drawer in the room had been pulled open, and the contents of some were spilled on the floor; otherwise the room was empty. He stepped sideways and shone the beam over the living room. It seemed untouched.

“What in hell is going on?” whispered Harriet.

“For chrissake, stay out of here,” he hissed back. “Whoever made that mess might not have left, and I don't care to have you run into him as he does. He might still be upstairs. There is an upstairs, isn't there?”

She nodded at a closed door in the corner, sitting on a broad, raised step. “Up there. Two bedrooms and a bath, but nothing to steal.”

“I don't think he's after the family silver,” said Sanders as he moved over to the door. “Does that other door lead to the front?” She nodded. “Then get out of the apartment. In fact, get right out of the house, in front, across the street by the canal, where there's lots of light and people,” he snapped. “I don't want to have to worry about you.” He eased the door open very quietly and peered up the narrow staircase. The hot, dusty smell of a thousand old attic rooms rushed down to greet him, but no noise. If there was anyone up there, he was remarkably silent. Sanders moved up the stairs, stepping close to the wall, one at a time. He paused at the landing and looked up. The flashlight picked out gray paint, wooden railings, sloping ceilings, dust, and silence. He ran swiftly up the last flight and glanced into each bedroom. One was empty, except for an old iron cot neatly made up; the other contained Harriet's carelessly made bed. No people, unless they were hiding in the closets. The bathroom echoed with solitude. He walked back into Harriet's bedroom, leaned out a window, and looked down. There in the light of a street lamp he could see her, beside a maple tree, looking up at the house with a frown on her face. But unmolested. He returned to his search. In each room and in the hall there were low, wide doors that gave onto the space beneath the eaves. He went from one to another, checking with the flashlight. In each one there was a riot of overturned boxes but no human inhabitant. He sighed, got up from his crouching position, and went back to the window. “Come on up,” he said.

Harriet stood in the door of the study with her hands on her hips, and stared. She moved a few paces in and picked up an empty box from the floor. She found its cover, put them together again, and set them on the desk. She moved back and forth, picking up more boxes, closing them, and piling them neatly with the first.

“What was in those boxes?” asked Sanders.

“Slides.” She looked around her. “I had three boxes of slides. Gone. And the bigger boxes held black-and-white negatives. That's even worse. All the material for the book. And everything for Wheeler and Shogatu except for what I've already sent them.”

“Wheeler and Shogatu?”

“The architects for that complex I'm doing.” Her voice was flat and expressionless. “It means that if they want copies of anything I just can't do it. You don't understand, John,” she said, and pushed her hair off her forehead. “That's six or seven weeks' work—hard work. And I lined up some smaller projects as well when I knew I was going to be up here.”

“Did they damage any of your equipment?”

She shook her head. “I don't know.” The camera case was lying open; the OM-3 body had been taken out of its foam nest and its back was not fastened down. She picked it up, looked at it, and closed it again. “I don't think so. They were looking for film in the camera, I suppose. Just a minute.” She walked across the room, shut the top drawer of a built-in cabinet in the wall, and pulled the second drawer out even farther. She took another camera body out of it, clicked its open back shut, and tried the rewinding mechanism. “No, they just opened it up. It's all right. This is my Canon F-1. I've had it since I first started. It was my first real working camera.” Tears began to pour silently down her cheeks as she stood staring at it.

Sanders walked across the room and looked helplessly down at her. He took the camera and set it back into its drawer, then gathered her awkwardly in his arms. It was like trying to comfort a store mannequin. She stood stiffly in his embrace, her arms at her sides. Tears splashed down on the lapels of his jacket. “Harriet,” he murmured in distress. “Please, Harriet, don't just cry like that. It's not that bad. It could have been worse.”

She pushed herself violently away. “How? Just tell me. How could it have been worse?” Her words erupted in strangled bursts, interrupted by hiccups of grief.

“You've lost a few weeks' work, okay. And you're upset. But they didn't break anything, at least not in here.”

“Oh, Jesus,” she muttered. “The darkroom. What's happened to it?”

“Wait,” he said. “Nothing, I think. They just pushed stuff around. It looked pretty much the same to me. There's nothing broken. Come here,” he said, pulling her back and holding her very tightly this time. “Don't be so damned difficult.”

She drew a deep breath and relaxed her taut shoulders slightly. “Why in hell shouldn't I?” she said angrily. “You haven't just had a whole project ruined.”

“Listen, you could have been here when they arrived,” he said. “Or you could have walked in on them without me right behind you.” He put his hand behind her head and drew it protectively toward his shoulder again. “You're more important than a few yards of film. Believe me, they were probably not very nice people.” She shuddered.

An hour later two detectives from the break-and-enter squad of the Ottawa police had come and gone. They had shaken their heads politely over the mess, and then congratulated Harriet on having escaped so lightly. The sergeant had declared it was difficult to believe that a few boxes of slides and some negatives had more than sentimental value, but he shrugged his shoulders and wrote down the figure she had given him. Hysterical citizens who had just been robbed tended to place an inflated worth on their missing possessions. He was used to it. His partner pointed out the futility of dusting for fingerprints in the apartment, since every ten-year-old apprentice hood in the city knew enough to wear gloves. Not to speak of the futility of installing a fancy new lock on the back door, when the front door could be opened with the equivalent of a paper clip. They both scoffed cheerfully at the possibility of the thieves returning, and prepared to leave. Besides, the sergeant had remarked with a leer as he headed out the door, with Inspector Sanders on the premises she should be pretty safe.

“One more comment like that,” said Sanders, listening to the two men clattering down the stairs, “and I would have smashed his ugly nose in for him. Stupid, incompetent sonuvabitch.”

“What's wrong with you?” asked Harriet as she walked back into the study. “It's not your apartment. They didn't just tell you how terribly considerate the bastards were.”

“I don't appreciate some goddamn sergeant looking at me like a john caught in a whorehouse.” He stalked back into the kitchen, then shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “I suppose I'm not used to being treated like a citizen,” he said ruefully.

“You mean you're used to people bowing and scraping to you,” she said, bending over and picking up more boxes from the floor.

“You're damned right I am.” He looked around him reflectively. “You'd better go upstairs and pack something,” he said. “Do you want to take your cameras and stuff as well?”

“What in hell are you talking about?” She spun around and looked at him.

“You're not sleeping in this apartment,” he said. “You can stay in my motel room where you'll be safe. Don't worry,” he added, “There are two beds. I'm not in the habit of attacking women. Especially unwilling ones. Besides, my car isn't here, remember? That way you can drive me back.”