"Yes," Genevieve said.
6:55 p.m.
"What time is the seminar?" he asked.
"Seven-thirty," she said.
"Where is it?"
"In North Vancouver. Just off the Upper Levels Highway."
"What's it about?"
"I haven't decided yet." Then Genevieve's eyes fell upon the open book on the living room coffee table. She walked over and picked up Albert Camus' The Fall."Do you mind if I take this?" she asked. "I'll find a topic in here."
"By all means," DeClercq said. "Perhaps you should look at I, I, I — the extension of the self. Or at The Little-ease — the dungeon of man's guilt."
For a moment Genevieve watched him with sadness in her eyes. Again she wished with all her heart that she could give him a child. For she knew that when Janie had died, a part of Robert had died with her too. Sometimes just the fact that she would never have a son or daughter affected her as well. It was almost as though the future could hold no hope, as though without the innocence of childhood the cancer of experience would eat up all that ever had been.
Genevieve crossed to the liquor cabinet and removed an unopened bottle of port. Five minutes later with bottle and book in hand she left by the front door.
With one last look at her husband she thought, What a time for Robert to meet his daughter's ghost.
7:06 p.m.
She came out of the house and into the downpour, the rain pounding against her umbrella and the wind that blew through the high trees threatening to turn it inside out. As she climbed the driveway up to where her TR 7 was parked beside Robert's Citroen the tarmac beneath her feet had become a rushing river. About her branches tossed wildly in the storm as the lights from the front porch of the house threw convulsing shadows across the wooded lot. Reaching the car she unlocked it, climbed in, put the book on the dash and wedged the bottle of port between the bucket seats, then she started the engine, and pulled out onto Marine Drive.
Fifty feet down the road there was another car parked at the curb. It pulled out behind her and followed at a distance.
Sparky was at the wheel.
The Fall
7:07 p.m.
Once Robert DeClercq heard the car pull away he went to the liquor cabinet and removed a bottle of Scotch. He took the cap off the top and swallowed a slug straight. Within seconds he could feel the liquor ignite the lining of his stomach, the glow of its heat radiating out to the rest of his body.
After a minute he put the bottle down and crossed over to a bookcase against one of the walls. From a lower drawer that he had not opened for several years he removed a picture that was lying face down.
The photograph was of a little girl, maybe four years old, sitting in a pile of maple leaves colored gold and amber and red and orange and brown. She was laughing, her blond hair in curls thrown back to catch the glint of the sun.
DeClercq carried the picture over to a table and set it against a lamp. Then he pulled a chair across to face it, retrieved the open bottle of Scotch, and sat down to stare at the photo.
From the liquor bottle he took another slug.
Then with words so soft that they seemed to tiptoe around the room, he touched the picture lightly and said: "Princess, this is your father. I want to talk to you."
8:03 p.m.
The cutlass was two feet long. It was similar to the sort of machete used for hacking sugar cane, except for one difference. Down the back of the knife, along the spine opposite the razor-sharp cutting edge, ran a rounded ridge jutting out to both sides. Close to the handle and clamped loosely like fingers around and under both sides of this ridge was a sliding six-ounce weight. When the cutlass was swung in a wide arc, the weight would slip down to the end of the blade to increase the centrifugal force of the blow by arithmetical proportions.
One cut from the knife in Sparky's hand would slice a head clean away.
From the shadows beside the driveway and hidden behind a tree, Sparky could watch the front of the house into which Genevieve DeClercq had disappeared. Already the driveway was filled with cars. The TR 7 was eight feet away. The rain had died down to a drizzle, almost a mist hanging in the air.
Sparky settled down to wait and pass the time with talk.
For there was talk in Sparky's mind.
Lots of talk with Mother.
8:16 p.m.
Joseph Avacomovitch was too tired to sleep. For a while he had watched the lights on English Bay from the window of his room in the Sylvia Hotel, then he had plugged in his Chess Challenger computer and set up a board.
Avacomovitch moved the black queen to put the white king in check.
8:31 p.m.
The woman emerged from the front of the house and approached the TR 7.
Sparky moved back in the shadows and watched her come up the driveway, knife in hand.
The rain had now stopped and her black hair was blowing wildly in the wind, whipping strands about her face and shoulders and high into the air. She was thinking about Camus. I, I, I. the woman thought, nodding to herself. If no man or woman is innocent, then no man or woman may judge others from a standpoint of righteousness.
When she reached the car she inserted a key into the driver's door, opened it and bent in to retrieve the bottle of port from between the bucket seats. The sucking sound of her rubber soles on the tarmac made her once more think: I, I, I.
As the woman eased her body back out of the car and began to straighten up, Sparky left the shadows of the trees and crossed the distance between them.
As the woman turned the knife began its sweeping diagonal descent, the whickering sound of the blade lost in the wind among the trees.
Then suddenly her world was turning over and over and over again, her vision spinning madly until with an abrupt jar her horizontal slammed to a halt on the perpendicular.
Oh God!she thought, I see my body!For there on the ground not ten feet away her headless form had hit the tarmac, spurting blood in all directions as it twitched in the death-throe spasms.
I've lost my head! her mind screamed with terror, but no sound came from her lips.
Then her eyes saw feet and legs approaching, a human figure walking toward her on the horizontal, crouching, reaching down, one gloved hand gripping a bloodstained cutlass, the other entangling its fingers within her hair, as her mind thought I, I, I, I, and then died because the oxygen in the blood within her severed head had all of a sudden run out.
Sparky picked up the head, bagged it and ran off into the mist.
9:03 p.m.
Not ten minutes after the report of the killing came into Headhunter Headquarters the Prime Minister called. Chartrand picked up the receiver in DeClercq's office and thought: So we have a spy in our midst.
"Chartrand?"
"Yes, sir."
"The Solicitor General is with me. In fifteen minutes we're telling the Commons that you have personally assumed command of the Headhunter investigation."
"Yes, sir."
"This man DeClercq, the one in charge. I want him pulled right now."
"Yes, sir," Chartrand sighed.
I'm sorry, Robert, he thought.
9:06 p.m.
It was the final turn of the screw. No sooner had Robert DeClercq put down the phone than he grabbed the instrument violently and heaved it across the room. The telephone line was wrenched out of the wall. In the process the remains of the bottle of Scotch smashed all over the floor.