Deadly Jewels (30 page)

“So you can keep him thinking about murders and missing diamonds, when he has his family to think about, his business?”

“We want to keep him safe, Mrs. Kaspi, that's all.”

She started pacing again before we'd even left the room. Julian didn't say anything until we were back in the car. “Avner,” he said, “is unhappy with us.”

“Why?”

A quick glance. “Not happy to be on the periphery of the investigation. He's been making Loïc crazy with questions.”

“Loïc?”

“Officer in charge back there who lost him.”

“Oh, right.” I thought for a moment. We'd taken a left on Saint-Laurent and were starting to pick up downtown traffic. “He
must
be scared,” I said. “He gets a credible death threat and gets assigned a kid to babysit him and has no idea how close or far we are from making him safe again.”

“First of all,” said Julian, “that kid is a crack shot. He's young, and maybe he's not too articulate, but he's good. We gave Avner the absolute best we had to offer. We're taking this very seriously. And you know that Marcus's been working round the clock.”

“Marcus,” I said. “We keep coming back to Marcus.”

He leveled a glance at me. “What are you saying?”

“I don't know.” I shrugged. “No, don't look at me like that. I still think it's Aleister Brand who killed Patricia, who took the diamond. I
think
so. But Marcus … there's something going on with Marcus.”

“Brand's alibi checks out,” Julian said, his voice neutral.

“So what is it you're saying now?” I demanded.

He shrugged. “Maybe we're not casting a wide enough net, is all,” he said. “But, sure, his guys would give him an alibi in a second, so we're probably right.”

“Marcus is in a wheelchair,” I said.

“And he's a decorated police officer,” Julian agreed.

I didn't like where this was going. “What about Avner?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “What about Avner?”

*   *   *

We pulled up and did what Ivan calls movie parking—that is, finding an empty space directly in front of wherever one is going—in front of the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours chapel, part of the city's patrimony that we're always talking about. Or, at least, that my office is always talking about. The chapel, these days, houses a museum dedicated to Marguerite Bourgeoys, our own French missionary saint; but it's also long been known as the sailors' chapel where mariners expressed their thanks to Our Lady of Good Hope for seeing them through another perilous journey. She was Leonard Cohen's “lady of the harbor” in his song about Suzanne.

Julian was, surprisingly, heading into the church. “Where are you going?”

“Patricia wasn't the only one who knew her way around underground,” he said cheerfully. “Come on, LeDuc. I want to show you something.”

I followed.

He flipped his badge at the woman selling tickets and included me with a sweep of his arm, and I trailed obediently along in his wake. Part of this museum was underground, accessible through the crypt (of course), and the carefully placed lights threw dramatic shadows up over the roughly excavated walls, making it feel a little like a stage set. It's an ongoing archaeological site where the remains of Marguerite's first church can be seen as well as a First Nations settlement that dates back 2,400 years, one of the oldest in the city.

I informed Julian of all this. He seemed unimpressed. “Come on,” he said impatiently.

Through a door hidden behind a statue. And down some stairs into a lower section still, with a dark archway gaping black. “Used to be one of the tributaries of the Little Saint-Marie River,” he told me.

Another one of them. “You've been doing your homework.”

“Turns out there's a veritable warren of tunnels crisscrossing the city,” Julian said.

“I knew that,” I said. “Not sure why
you
do.”

He was opening a wooden storage crate bolted to the wall. “Put these on. It's wet down here.” He pulled out some rubber boots, putting a pair on over his own expensive shoes. “I never really got it myself,” he confessed. “All this digging around. Even all the urban exploration that you said Patricia was into. I know people who do it, sure, it's actually pretty hip, but it all seemed like a kid's pastime, and I had important things to think about. You know, this case, how to catch her killer, all that. But yesterday I got one of the city engineers to take me through the architectural drawings of the tunnels, the maps, and what's inside them … and, well, you can't help but get excited. This is the real city, Martine.”

“You're feeling okay, right?” I took the massive flashlight he handed me.

“Of course I am.” He moved his own flashlight around the tunnel entrance. “I never realized it, most people don't even think about what's under their feet unless they see repairs going on … but everything that makes the city actually run is underground. Everything's down here. The energy. The sewage. The ways that we connect with each other. The whole infrastructure is buzzing along under the streets and the buildings all the time and we don't know anything about it.”

“Julian, what has this to do with—”

He reached for my hand and helped me up onto the lip of the passageway. “Come on,” he said gently. “You'll see.”

We dropped down a couple of levels—Julian jumped first and helped me down, I had no idea how we were going to get back up—and then we were in a stone-walled tunnel, this one higher and broader than the ones I'd traversed with Patricia. The thought of her, not so long ago, suddenly brought a lump to my throat. She should have written her dissertation, got the recognition she'd worked so hard for. She should still be living and breathing and … “How did Aleister know where she lived?” I asked suddenly.

Julian stopped and I bumped into his back. “What's that?”

“How did he find her? You said it yourself, the apartment isn't even in her name. For that matter, how did he know she had the diamond? How did he know she even existed?” Something skittered off to my right, something high up, and I swung around to look. Bats?
Really
?

“It wouldn't have been that difficult to find the apartment, all you'd need was a contact at McGill,” said Julian. “One of his group could be there, could have contacts. Marcus isn't the only one who sees himself at the center of a spider web.”

“And the diamond?”

“Secrets are never secrets,” he responded. “Listen, back during the war, someone found out about the jewels, right? And then Patricia found out, she brought a stolen one to Avner; who knows who he told? That's juicy information to sit on. Aleister could have found out easily enough.”

“Marcus knew,” I said.

There was a silence, water dripping dramatically in the background. “Marcus is a cop,” said Julian.

“Yes.”

“Marcus is in a wheelchair.”

“Yes.”

“Marcus hasn't got a motive, damn it!” He was visibly upset; Marcus was, after all, a fellow officer.

“No,” I conceded. “Probably not.” But isn't greed one of the major motivators for murder? I thought I'd read that somewhere.

“I still think it's Brand. I think you really think so, too. Listen to me.” He turned and his Maglite swept across me. “Whoever pulled the trigger on Patricia, that isn't the guy we want. The police'll find him, all right: they're actually very good at what they do. And when they do find him, what are they going to find? Some kid. Some skinhead kid who will say he did it as a rite of initiation into a skinhead club and will go off to prison and join the Aryan Nation there or some such group and sublimate his anger and hatred there. He's not the one who matters.”

I stood still, waiting for it.

“You know who matters,” Julian said. “They're getting the kid. If I have anything to say about it,
we're
taking down the New Order of the Black Sun.”

“And Aleister Brand,” I said.

“And Aleister Brand. In fact, most especially Aleister Brand.”

“I wondered what was going on there,” I confessed, “with all your talk about him not having broken any laws. It sounded like you weren't interested in going after him at all.”

“We just,” said Julian, “need to go after him in a different way. Now—is it okay for us to move on? It's cold down here.”

He was right about that. It was a damp cold, the kind that we'd be experiencing soon enough on the surface, the kind that seeps into you and makes you feel that you'll never really be warm again. I pulled my light jacket closer around myself. “Where are we going?”

“Wait and see.”

I was grateful for the cold and the damp, actually. Last year I'd spent some very tense moments underground, in the dry air of steam tunnels under an old asylum with someone who wished me very ill indeed, and it wasn't a feeling I was eager to get back anytime soon. I'd been suffering from mild claustrophobia ever since, and had been rather surprised I'd been able to tolerate my adventure with Patricia last week.

But this was different: damp, actually dripping in places, water inching down the walls, with a smell I couldn't identify but somehow—fancifully, no doubt—associated with the grave.

Well, and why not? For all of Julian's steampunk excitement about the inner workings of the city underground, these tunnels, the rooms they opened into or closed off, were no doubt the final resting place for hundreds of Montréalers, some marked, most unmarked.

I shivered and looked at Julian's rapidly retreating back. “Wait for me!”

*   *   *

Once Hans had decided what to do, there was no turning back.

He stood in Livia's cramped room with the table in front of him spread with fresh white linen, and watched her as she lit two candles and spoke words in a language he had never heard before.

She was curious about his lack of experience. “But surely, when you were small, your parents observed the shabbat! Your father must have taught you the prayer over the wine, over the challah?”

“I cannot remember,” Hans said. “I think—so much of my childhood was filled with grief, there is much I cannot remember of it. I think I have forgotten everything that was important.”

She took his hand. “Then I will help you,” she said softly. “I will help you to remember.”

Now, when he went alone to the Hebrew Delicatessen, Bernie was all smiles. “Well, you are a man of your word, I will say that for you.”

“Why? What are you talking about?”

“Livia Rosen,” he replied. “In all the years I have known her—and I have known her for many, many years!—I have never seen her happy like this. She is a new woman.” He tossed the dishrag over his shoulder, planted his elbows on the counter, and leaned in to Hans. “So when is it you will be popping the question?”

“The question?” Hans looked at him blankly.

Bernie guffawed. “To marry her, of course! It is what people do when they are in love, no? So when is this going to happen?”

“There's a war on,” Hans reminded him.

“There is always a war, somewhere. That is why you do it! You take your happiness while you can! You start your family!”

He was right, of course. If things had been different … Hans slowed his thoughts down. Not if things had been different: if
he
had been different. Not a German soldier. Not a member of the Nazi Party. Not a spy.

“We will see,” he told Bernie, put some coins on the counter, and left.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

After that, the tunnels were, surprisingly, lighted. And, apparently, used: we passed large pieces of equipment whose use was mysterious, large looming metal artifacts that just increased the whole steampunk feeling. I almost expected a Dr. Who impersonator in a top hat to step out in front of us at any moment.

Julian had been here before: that was clear. He didn't hesitate, striding past forks in the way, large inviting passageways that were better lit and bigger than the one we were in. “What are these places?” I asked.

He glanced at me. “Was going to be part of the Métro system,” he said. “Private company's exploring the option of running tours down here. You know, like the sewer tours of Paris. Could be pretty fantastic, actually, can you imagine? Rats and all…”

“Why don't I know about that?”

He grinned, suddenly, vividly. “Probably because I just made it up,” he said. “But hell, it
would
be a great idea, wouldn't it?”

It would. Just not at this precise moment. I cleared my throat. “Part of the old Métro?”

“Following a river course,” he said. “That's what all the underground network is about, anyway: they just dropped the waterways.”

“Some of them are still running,” I said, vaguely remembering Patricia's voice in the mayor's office, talking about the hidden underground metropolis, the one that shoppers and commuters in the interior city never saw. It felt like it had been months ago, not less than a week, that conversation. A sense of inexpressible sadness closed around me. “The waterways, I mean.”

“A whole network, crisscrossing the city,” Julian said. He hadn't lost his enthusiasm for his new urban exploration discoveries. “Waterways, sunken streets, even buildings down here. And all out of view. Every Montréaler thinks they know the underground, and they don't know anything.”

“Don't get too smug,” I said. “You'll trip over your ego. How do you know where you're going?”

“There's a map,” he said, surprised. “Who knew? Some of it's a grid, like the Métro tunnels, and some of it just meanders, all crisscrossing each other at different levels, different depths, and not knowing that right behind a wall there's another set of tunnels.”