This Thing of Darkness Read online

  This Thing

  of Darkness

  An Inspector Green Mystery

  BARBARA FRADKIN

  Text © 2009 by Barbara Fradkin

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

  in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

  electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without

  the prior consent of the publisher.

  Cover design: Emma Dolan

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts

  for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the

  Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry

  Development Program for our publishing activities.

  RendezVous Crime

  an imprint of Napoleon & Company

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada www.napoleonandcompany.com

  Printed in Canada

  13 12 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Fradkin, Barbara Fraser, date-

  This thing of darkness / Barbara Fradkin.

  (An Inspector Green mystery)

  ISBN 978-1-894917-85-8

  I. Title. II. Series: Fradkin, Barbara Fraser, date- . Inspector

  Green mystery.

  PS8561.R233T45 2009 C813'.6 C2009-904767-5

  To my mother, Katharine Mary Currie,

  for letting my spirit roam free

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  One

  Pumpkins!” Tony shrieked, his dark eyes dancing as he struggled to get out of his bike trailer. “Daddy, look at all the pumpkins! Can we buy three?”

  Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green leaned on his handlebars, red-faced and gasping for breath. Sweat poured into his eyes and soaked through his Bagelshop T-shirt. The mere thought of lugging three huge pumpkins all the way back home in the bike trailer alongside his four-year-old son exhausted him. The Sunday morning bike excursion to the Byward Market had been his wife’s idea. He’d been angling for the car, but Sharon had ladled on the guilt. The environment, fitness, family togetherness. “How many more gorgeous sunny days will we have before the snow falls?” she’d said. “Besides, we’d never find a parking place.”

  Looking out over the crowded streets, he privately admitted she was right. September was the peak time for local fruits and vegetables, and people fought their way along the street stalls looking for the best bargains in brightly-coloured sweet peppers, fragrant apples and cauliflower so huge, it would take all winter to eat one. Street buskers cashed in on the crowds, playing everything from classical flute to African drums, and the musical chaos rose up over the roar of engines and the chatter of farmers hawking their goods.

  Green had grown up in the heart of old Bytown, and twice a year he liked to bring his son down to the inner city to experience the authentic old farmers’ market. Once in the spring, when the maple syrup and flower vendors first brought the market back to life, then again at harvest time. In these brief visits, he saw it once more as a source of life and colour, and not as a dishevelled, dissolute playground of drunks, hookers and predators. It took a conscious effort to set aside the twenty-five soul-battering years in the trenches and to reclaim the innocence he’d felt as a youth, but his own son’s joy was the only reminder he needed.

  “Gelatos first, honey,” Sharon said with a laugh. A mango gelato from Piccolo Grande had been the bribe she’d offered Green to tip the scales. They navigated their bikes cautiously down the busy street that bordered the market, past the hideous barricades of the new American embassy and down a street of limestone heritage buildings, formerly nuns’ cloisters but now converted into trendy shops. Inside the gelato shop, it took ten minutes to debate the choices, but they finally emerged with mango, chocolate and strawberry.

  As they sat on the bench to eat their cones, Green found his cop’s gaze roving, picking out the darker parallel world beneath the bustle and cheer of the marketplace. The bearded pan-handler on the corner, the tiny, almost prepubescent sex trade worker advertising her wares at the traffic light, two skinheads in leather and chains swaggering down the street with a muzzled pit bull tightly held in hand. Perhaps the two were innocent, but more likely they were looking for sport. A solitary black, or a woman in a hijab. I have my eye on you punks, he thought, as his son chattered excitedly beside him.

  Green claimed it was a curse, but in truth, the menace of the streets set his pulse racing. Here, amid the diesel fumes and crumbling streets, the eclipsed dreams and discarded hopes, he’d first felt his calling. He thought ahead to his week of meetings within the corporate walls of the Elgin Street mothership. Meetings with the RCMP, with his NCOs, with his boss, Superintendent Barbara Devine, who was shoring up her bid for the vacant Deputy Chief’s job. Would he even survive?

  “Daddy, listen!” Tony cried, jumping off the bench. “A police car! Maybe it’s an accident.”

  Green grabbed his hand to restrain him. There was no sign of cruisers, but in the distance, he picked up the sound of sirens. One vehicle, then a second and a third. His own curiosity stirred.

  “Is it an accident, Daddy? Or a fire?”

  “Could be lots of things, buddy.” A collision, a fight, a brazen robbery at the height of weekend shopping? Green scanned the area, but business was continuing as usual. The sounds appeared to be concentrated farther east and south, perhaps on Rideau Street.

  “But we have to go see,” Tony insisted, his forgotten gelato dripping down his hand.

  Sharon drew her son to her and rescued the gelato. “Other police officers are taking care of it, honey.” She cast Green a wary look. Her dark curls had been whipped by the wind, and a smudge of strawberry gelato clung to her delicate chin. “Daddy is busy helping us today.”

  He reassured her with a sheepish grin. How well she knew him. He swooped his sticky son into his arms and turned to the bicycles. “Yes, we’re on the hunt for a pumpkin!”

  “Three pumpkins!”

  “Peppers and cauliflower too,” Sharon said, laughing. “Do you think we can fit everything in the trailer?”

  Green contemplated the long ride back along the Ottawa River bike path. The view was inspirational, the terrain gentle, and the breeze a mere whisper. It should be manageable, if only he weren’t in such abysmal shape. He uttered a small prayer of resolve to hit the running track more often. Let the guys laugh.

  As they walked their bikes along the crowded sidewalk stalls, Sharon gradually buried a gleeful Tony with brightly-coloured apples, peppers and squash. Between his knees, one long-faced, doleful pumpkin. The trailer grew heavier and heavier.

  Another siren went by.

  There was still no sign of the source of trouble, nor of public concern. No one was whispering or running to look. Green forced his thoughts back on track. Half an hour later, every cranny of the trailer and Sharon’s backpack was stuffed, and even she laughed ruefully about whether they were going to survive the rid
e home. She was barely five-foot two, and although she kept herself trim and fit, her fortieth birthday loomed.

  Two more sirens sounded up ahead, and now even Sharon noticed his distraction. They were stopping at a red light, waiting to cross over Confederation Bridge and down beside the locks to the river path. Green twisted around, trying to see down Rideau Street behind him. In the distance he could distinguish a forest of flashing red.

  “Not every emergency in the city is your responsibility,” she said.

  “I know. Occupational hazard. But it looks major. That’s at least six responders.”

  Tony was also craning his neck to see. “It must be a humongous fire, right, Daddy?”

  Sharon snorted. “I’ve known a police car, ambulance and two fire trucks to respond to a cat in a tree.”

  Green gave her an apologetic smile as he turned back to the light. Not in this neighbourhood, he thought. On his hip, his cellphone rang. He glanced at the ID. Ignoring Sharon’s warning scowl, he snatched it up. On a Sunday morning, a call from Staff Sergeant Brian Sullivan could only mean one thing.

  Screech had slept poorly, curled up in his usual spot behind the Rideau Street grocery store. He’d woken far earlier than he’d wanted, still awash in the vodka he’d bought the night before but freezing cold. His hand had groped around for his sleeping bag, but closed on empty air. He cursed. Some worthless bum had stolen it right off his back! He unfolded himself and struggled stiffly upright, supporting himself against the rough bricks of the store wall. The sun was climbing overhead, and it cut harsh lines through the buildings on Rideau Street. He squinted as he scanned the shadowy nooks and crannies where the traitor might have settled. Nothing.

  He limped to the sidewalk and headed up the block, dragging his left foot, which refused to obey him any more. He’d given up caring. Lots of things didn’t obey him any more, including his brain, which dropped things faster than he shoved them in, and his tongue which no longer formed the sounds he wanted. His fingers, frostbitten more times than he could remember, had trouble doing up zippers or opening bottles, so he never bothered to wrap himself properly in his sleeping bag. This wasn’t the first sleeping bag he’d lost, but it was the warmest. With the autumn frosts coming, he was damned if he would give it up without a fight.

  A little ways up, he spotted it in an alleyway, almost hidden in the window well of a building, like the bum had tried to get out of sight. Outrage propelled him forward, a string of insults already forming on his lips. The culprit was completely wrapped in the bag except for his stockinged feet. Not a single hole in those fancy socks, Screech thought, adding fuel to his outrage. He propped himself against the wall so he could aim a good kick. His foot connected with soft flesh, but there was no grunt. No recoil. Understanding penetrated Screech’s brain. He’d felt that dead weight before. Either the guy was totally wasted, or he was dead.

  Either way, it was not Screech’s business, but there was no point in a good sleeping bag going to waste. But when he leaned down to grab a corner, the bag felt crusty and damp. He snatched his hand away in disgust and stared at the red stains on it. Then he noticed the red all over the ground in half-dried streaks and pools spreading from beneath the body.

  Fuck! He reeled back and tripped on the curb, twisting his good ankle and landing hard on his rear. Crablike, he scuttled backwards into the middle of Rideau Street. Horns blared, tires squealed, and a car swerved by him so close he felt its heat. He scrambled back to the curb. Waved a hand to flag someone down. What was everybody’s goddamn hurry?

  Finally a car veered over to the curb, a door slammed and boots stomped around the car.

  “What the fuck, Screech?” A familiar voice shouted.

  Screech recognized a beat cop who brought him food and supplies when times were tough. Surprised at his relief, he tried to get his rattled brain in gear. “There’s a sleeping bag,” he said. “Bleeding. Dying.” Then he gave up and used his trembling finger to point.

  Two

  Green locked up the bikes and piled Sharon, Tony and the vegetables into a cab. Although her eyes were glum, Sharon hadn’t uttered a peep of reproach, but Tony had to be cajoled into the back seat, squirming and protesting that he wanted to see the fire trucks. He was slightly mollified by the promise of lunch with Zaydie later on, but Green could still see his face pressed against the rear window as the cab pulled away. Trying to push guilt out of his mind, he called for a cruiser to take him to the crime scene.

  There was a well-established protocol for homicide investigations, and Green knew it would be some time before he’d learn many details about the victim and the crime scene itself. But from the distraught patrolman who was first on the scene, Brian Sullivan had learned enough to make the call to Green. “It’s a homicide all right,” he’d said, “and not your usual homicide around here. An old man beaten beyond recognition. I thought under the circumstances, in this neighbourhood...”

  Sullivan hadn’t needed to say more. While Green waited for the cruiser, he phoned his father. When he heard the familiar, singsong Yiddish voice, he felt a wash of relief.

  “You okay, Dad?”

  “I shouldn’t be?”

  “You been outside today?”

  “I’m watching a black preacher cure a blind boy. Maybe when that’s over.”

  “Okay.” Green paused. No point in alarming his father, who lived with enough fears of his own making. Fears planted long ago, by jack boots and train whistles and the barking of guard dogs along the barb wire of the death camp. “I’m in town. How about we go to Nate’s for some cheese blintzes?”

  “Why?”

  Green kept his tone light. “I need a reason?”

  “No. Why are you in town? It’s Sunday.”

  “Business, Dad.”

  “Oy, Mishka. Always business.”

  The cruiser pulled up, leaving Green no time to counter the rebuke. By now, Rideau Street was in gridlock, and even the cruiser’s roof lights did little to speed them up. Curious pedestrians clogged the sidewalk as they tried to get a closer look. Cars jockeyed for space amid the rumbling trucks and buses that inched through the lights. Only the cyclists wove in and out, gleefully dodging potholes and cars on their way to the tree-lined bike paths along Ottawa’s river system. The eclectic jumble of shops that brought Rideau Street to life— the tattoo parlours and African restaurants next to dance clubs, bakeries and body piercing salons—were all wide open, their displays spilling onto the sidewalk before them.

  Some were new, catering to the tougher elements that had taken over the neighbourhood in recent decades, but others, like Nate’s Deli, clung stubbornly to their immigrant, working class glory days. When Green was a little boy growing up in one of the dilapidated Victorian redbrick townhouses just to the north, his mother had sent him to the Rideau Bakery for challah and to Nate’s for varenikes and white fish. Many of the tenements had been bulldozed to make room for the subsidized slums that masqueraded as urban renewal, but the shops were still there, familiar landmarks on the evolving street.

  Also familiar, unfortunately, was the scene that greeted him just a block from King Edward Avenue. Three police cruisers were flashing blue and red in the sunlight, and parked next to them was a white Forensic Identification van. Assaults, muggings, burglaries, drug disputes and booze-fuelled brawls were all common on the volatile bar strips of the Byward Market.

  This time, however, a black coroner’s van had joined the line of official vehicles.

  Green directed the cruiser to the curb behind the coroner’s van and scanned the officials gathered in the corner behind the yellow police tape. In their zeal to prevent scene contamination, the first responders had secured not only the alleyway but half a city block, and two uniforms had been deployed to conduct traffic in a vain attempt to ease the snarl. Green could see Brian Sullivan standing just outside the secured area, conferring with an Ident officer. Behind them, Green could see more officials in white Tyvek suits bent over something in the alley
. At the mouth of the alley, abandoned except for a numbered forensic marker, lay an old-fashioned wooden cane like the one Green’s father used. In spite of himself, his gut tightened.

  His father’s gentle rebuke came back to him now as he stood at the edge of the crime scene. He’d been investigating major crimes for nearly twenty years and had stood at the edge of countless crime scenes, waiting for the coroner’s report. The crime scene both repulsed and fascinated him, each one a new challenge, each one a clash with villainy. Now, as an inspector, he no longer attended crime scenes; Brian Sullivan and his major crimes detectives took the calls and worked the cases, while Green sat around committee tables, overseeing the broader picture, allocating resources and planning future initiatives. Even the catchwords irked him. Yet he also knew that after twenty soul-battering years on the front lines of rape and murder, he’d had no choice but to retreat.

  Standing outside the Rideau Street crime scene, however, he felt not exhilarated but slightly sick. In his mind was the image of an elderly man walking down the street, perhaps on his way home to some modest seniors’ residence in Sandy Hill, much like the one Sid Green lived in only a few blocks away. With his cane, he had probably walked slowly and stiffly, his head bent to watch his footing. He might even have been a little deaf, easy prey for the punk who’d crept up behind him. Not just knocked him down, which would have been appalling enough, but beat him to death. Green felt a tremor of rage at the affront.

  Brian Sullivan turned and glanced around the street thoughtfully, no doubt trying to judge where the killer had come from. Had he been lying in wait in the alleyway and somehow lured the victim into an ambush? The killer had chosen a particularly disreputable corner populated by street people, drug dealers and low-end hookers working the fringe of the club district. A corner decrepit by day, dangerous by night. Both a beer and a liquor store were within a couple of blocks, and desperation sometimes drove alcoholics to extreme actions. But no sooner had the thought crossed Green’s mind than he dismissed it. This was no simple mugging; from Sullivan’s description, it had been a rage out of control.