The Delicate Storm (23 page)

After the plates had been cleared away, the two of them sat quietly.

“You want another beer?” Cardinal said.

Delorme shrugged, breasts momentarily emphasized. She flagged the waitress across the room. “I’ll have another beer. And another Labatt’s for my father?”

When they got back to the hotel, one of the girls behind the front desk called them over. She spoke French.

“Ms. Delorme, I’m so sorry, but there has been a problem. A pipe has burst on the ground floor and flooded all the rooms. I’m afraid it won’t be possible for you to stay in that room.”

“That’s fine. Put me somewhere else.”

“That’s the problem. We are completely full. There are no other rooms.”

“Did you get that?” Delorme said to Cardinal.

“More or less.”

“I swear, next time I’m staying at the Queen Elizabeth.”

She turned back to the desk clerk, speaking once more in French. Cardinal didn’t catch all of it, but he noted with admiration that Delorme did not lose her temper or raise her voice, even when the bad news got worse.

She turned to Cardinal once more. “There’s a Holiday Inn about two kilometres from here. They’ll pay for me to stay there.”

“Are you sure you don’t have anything else?” Cardinal said to the receptionist. “Surely in the entire hotel …”

The girl’s reply was heavily accented. “Normally, yes, it would not be a problem. But tonight we have a high-school hockey team taking up an entire floor. I’m sorry.”

Cardinal’s heart went out to Delorme. Suddenly she was looking very small and tired.

“Why don’t you stay in my room?” he said. “I’ll go to the Holiday Inn.”

“No way. I’m not going to put you out.”

“Well, the other option is, we both stay in my room. It’s got two double beds in it.”

Delorme shook her head.

“We can be grown-ups about it,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to jump you.”

“And have the whole department making jokes? No, thank you.”

“Who’s going to know? I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“I should go somewhere else.”

“It’s been a long day. You’re tired. And we want to make an early start in the morning. Stay in my room.”

“So help me, John, if you tell anyone—and I mean
anyone
—I will never speak to you again.”

Cardinal got into bed while Delorme was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. He wanted to call Catherine but felt too weird with Delorme around. He pulled out a paperback and forced himself to read a few pages.

When the bathroom door opened, he kept his gaze firmly on the book, but he could see out of the corner of his eye that Delorme was still dressed. He rolled onto his side, facing away, and then there was the sound of her undressing, the zipper of her jeans.

A deep sigh as she got into bed. The room was overheated; what would she be wearing under those covers?

Cardinal turned once more onto his back and wondered what to say. He certainly didn’t want to say anything too personal, anything that might be construed as provocative, but he didn’t feel like going back to the case, either. Was Delorme experiencing anything remotely similar? Was she wondering what to say? Imagining things?

As if by way of answer, Delorme turned her back to him and switched off her light.

Of course, that could be open to interpretation. Was she hoping he would make a move? Lovely, the way her hair spilled in curls on the pillow behind her, the rise of her hip beneath the covers.

She’d called him her father at dinner. Put me in my place, Cardinal thought, reminding him of the twelve-odd years between them. He switched off his own light and resolved not to think about her anymore.

It didn’t work, and he lay awake for a long time.

Delorme was up and fully dressed before the wake-up call roused Cardinal.

“I’ll be in the coffee shop,” she said, and then she was gone.

They drove out to the Eastern Townships and down the corduroy road that led to Sauvé’s place. The sun had come out, and a stiff wind blew off the surrounding farmland. The fields resembled a swamp, glinting like metal in the sunlight. Cardinal made a couple of calls on his cellphone to the British consulate. An intensely polite young woman said she would make the necessary inquiries and someone would call him back shortly.

“You okay?” Delorme asked at one point. “You seem a little grumpy.”

“Tired,” Cardinal said. “I didn’t sleep well.”

“Really? I slept fine.”

Cardinal wondered if she was trying to rub it in, her complete physical indifference to him. But more likely she was just stating a fact: physical attraction had not entered her head.

They pulled into Sauvé’s drive, blocking Sauvé himself, who was just backing out. He leaned on his horn, sending crows and blue jays flapping from the trees. When Cardinal didn’t move, Sauvé threw open his truck door and came lurching toward them. “I told you, I’ve got nothing to say to the Mounties, the Sûreté, or any other police. Now get the hell out of my driveway.”

“Mr. Sauvé, do you have a VCR? We brought one along in case you don’t.”

The interior of Sauvé’s house was in even worse shape than its owner. Plastic sheeting flapped at the windows in a vain attempt to keep the Quebec winter outside. One wall of the living room was nothing more than struts. Bits of drywall were strewn across the hallway. In the living room there was a lumpy sofa covered with a woollen blanket, where Cardinal and Delorme sat. Sauvé occupied an armchair that spewed stuffing from one arm. A black cat with bald patches prowled around his feet.

Sauvé had a Molson in his hand, and sat crookedly in the chair so that he could focus on the television with his good eye. The tape had been shot at night, from several different angles in a parking lot. It showed Sauvé getting out of his truck and unloading boxes labelled
Department of Transport
. Two men got out of a van and examined the boxes before handing him an envelope. Sauvé drove off while they were loading the boxes into their van. When the tape was over, Sauvé hurled his beer across the room, shattering it against a wall. The smell of hops filled the air, mixing with the smell of mildew.

“Certain parties are willing to forget this episode,” Cardinal said, “provided you co-operate with our investigation. And of course provided you cease and desist selling explosives to the French Self-Defence League.”

Sauvé rubbed the bristles on his cheeks. Three fingers were missing from his hand. His eye was a drill hole of pure anger. “Tell me something, Detective. Do you really imagine there’s a lot of difference between the Mounties and the people you put behind bars?”

“So far, I don’t know any Mounties who have fed their murder victims to the bears. But I lead a sheltered life.”

“Miles Shackley came up to Algonquin Bay a few days ago,” Delorme said. “We think you might know why.”

“Well, guess what, sister? I don’t. I haven’t seen Miles Shackley in over thirty years.”

“And yet he called you three weeks ago. Why would that be?”

“He was an old spook and he didn’t take well to retirement, okay? He was feeling nostalgic, calling old friends. Going over old ground. Trading war stories. Why shouldn’t he call me?”

“You worked together at the
CAT
Squad, correct?”

“Yes. And our assignment was to cultivate informers in the FLQ. So we did.”

“And the two of you worked with Lieutenant Fougère?”

“Not at first. I worked with Fougère after he fucked up. Oh, excuse me, was I speaking ill of the dead? I’m so sorry. Lieutenant Fougère came up with the brilliant idea of Operation Coquette. Mostly because he was screwing the coquette.”

“You’re referring to Simone Rouault now?”

“Yeah. Complete slut. Fougère recruits his girlfriend to infiltrate the FLQ and spends the first three months getting her to cozy up to a guy named Claude Hibert. Only one problem: Claude Hibert happened to be my informer.”

“He was already working for the
CAT
Squad?”

“He was my informer—from before I joined the
CAT
Squad. He’d been mine for eighteen months. Fougère and his
putain
wasted months. So me and Shackley had to take him in hand. Shackley was CIA and a really stand-up guy. One of the few people in the world you could actually count on. When we formed the combined anti-terrorist force, he volunteered to join. Didn’t have to. He had a cushy assignment in New York before that.

“And resourceful, this guy. Not like Fougère. Shackley came to us, he already had an agent in place. CIA rules were, he wasn’t supposed to share with us exactly who it was or where it was. He could share the goods, and rate them for likely accuracy, but the rest was strictly need-to-know.”

“But you needed to know, obviously. Otherwise you risked making the same mistake as Fougère.”

“Tell it to Langley. In the end it didn’t matter, because Shackley and Langley didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. He told me who his man on the spot was: an individual named Yves Grenelle.”

“Did Yves Grenelle kill Raoul Duquette?”

“Read your files. Daniel Lemoyne and Bernard Theroux killed Raoul Duquette. They confessed to it.”

Cardinal stood up. “All right. You’re clearly in a hurry to go back to prison. Selling explosives to a terrorist group, that should be good for at least another eight years. And of course, as an ex-cop you’ll be popular in the cell block.”

“I’m telling you the truth. Lemoyne and Theroux—”

“Everyone knows they confessed to killing Duquette. We also know there was such a thing as cell solidarity. That whoever got caught would take the fall, and whoever got away got away. Yves Grenelle got away, right?”

“Yeah, he got away. So what?”

“And he was Shackley’s agent, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, he was Shackley’s. So what?”

“And he killed Duquette. Didn’t he?”

“If he did, I had nothing to do with it.”

“But maybe Shackley did. Suddenly, in the middle of the October Crisis, the entire
CAT
Squad was hot to find Shackley. Why?”

“Maybe because he played a rough game. He didn’t pussyfoot around.”

“Meaning what? That Grenelle was more than an informer? He was a provocateur, wasn’t he. Just like Simone Rouault. Committing more crimes than he was stopping?”