Arthur guessed Brian had hidden the ring and forgotten where. He did his own desultory search, room to room. These quarters were far grander and more tasteful than the spare, cell-like rooms at the Alcohol Addiction Centre, in which he’d gone fairly mad himself. A balcony view of dark forest, pelting rain. Camera, cellphone, computer, printer, a few paragraphs of foolscap in the tray, proof of some productivity.
Here were the bound transcripts of Regina v. Gilbert F. Gilbert, presumably research material. Encouragingly, there was evidence of rehabilitative effort: an addiction manual lying open on the desk, a fifteen-step course book. Even some psychiatric texts. The Diagnostic Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. He was seeking answers-an interesting task given his delusional state.
“They’re connected, you know.”
“Who?”
“Those two pricks. Darrel Naught and Whynet-Moir. Everything is connected, but they’re especially connected. Not the way you think, not in an obvious way. You have to dig deep for this one.”
Arthur quit the hunt. “Brian, we found a seemingly errant page from your manuscript.” He read from it: “‘He and Florenza were in her sitting room with Heathcliff, the Doberman.’”
“That was Lance. You’re too late, you’re not going to get anything from him. He’s dead.” He pulled a page from his printer. “His secret died with him.”
Arthur perused a long paragraph in which Lance Valentine met his bloody end, torn apart by a junkyard pit bull.
“I warned Wentworth this was going to happen.”
Someone else is going to die.
“I’m finally free of him.”
22
“Surely, doctor, the presence of trace amounts of diometamicrobials in the bloodstream, despite the Category Three oxidation rate, proves that deceased had inhaled a lethal dicyanogen at least ninety minutes prior to his body being discovered. I take it you’ve read Clark and Tree’s definitive study, ‘Parameters of Cyanogen Oxidation Rates.’” As the so-called expert bowed his head in defeat, Wentworth turned to see his leader smiling with pride…
How unlikely that scenario seemed in the cold light of dawn as, on a drizzly Tuesday, Wentworth Chance wearily pedalled his aluminum-frame click-transmission Outback 310 past CN’s sprawling railway yards, past the train station, up into the old city, Chinatown, skid road, Gastown. He had dug all night into forensics manuals, autopsy procedures, bodily fluids analyses, studied with morbid fascination the police close-ups, the body in the tidal wash, naked on a morgue slab, awaiting the knife. He’d slept only three hours, a sleep disturbed by gory dreams.
He’d compiled sixty legal-size pages of notes for his cross of the pathologist and serologist. He’ll prove…well, he’s not sure what he wants to prove. Maybe that because Whynet-Moir landed on his head, he must have intended suicide. He has a list of poisons, he’ll ask if they tested for them.
He locked his bike in the rack outside Club d’Jazz. Or what was Club d’Jazz-workers were dismantling the sign. Pasted inside the door was a notice: “The Gastown Riot-Opening Soon.” What kind of deal was this? “Heavy metal is BACK! Opening Wednesday, Blood’n’Guts!” He assumed these new tenants would be even louder than the brass sextet that was going all hours last night, probably their eviction party.
In the waiting room, the frazzled receptionist was fending off a pair of sports-jacketed thugs demanding to see “a goddamn lawyer, any lawyer.” Macarthur was in Holland; Sage in Thailand; Brovak in a week-long appeal; Pomeroy in a ding ward; and Wentworth, still in helmet and rain gear, looked like a courier, so they paid him no attention.
He escaped to his office, changed into his suit, twisted the cap from a bottle of Zap energy juice, and began a final read-through of his cross-exam notes. He hasn’t even started ploughing through the eight hundred pages of transcript the old rancher gave him. He hasn’t had a chance to track down Carlos the Mexican. Now the boss wants him to interview a guy named Rashid, the guard at 2 Lighthouse Lane. He’s also supposed to spend time with the client, prepping him for the stand. Junioring his god has not become the glorious lifetime experience he’d anticipated.
Arthur came to his door looking dead serious.
“I am going to have Hank Chekoff busted from the force. Come with me.”
He joined him in Pomeroy’s office, where April Wu was seated stiffly on a chair. Brian’s cellphone records were on the desk, a January 9 call circled with a marker.
“Let’s go over this again. Brian called you from Ms. LeGrand’s house.” She didn’t respond. “You spoke to her, to confirm Brian’s identity.”
“Very well, yes, I remember.” Wentworth was blown away, this sounded grave.
“Bad chi, Ms. Wu. You might not have been caught had you not left this behind in the copy machine.” Flourishing the page of manuscript, the unfinished scene with Pomeroy, Florenza, and Heathcliff the Doberman. “A little carelessness can make for great undoing.” That fetched a resentful look; she’d been out-maxim-ized.
“I had no intention of stealing it. I was simply making a copy.”
“For whom?” Met again with silence. “Whom do you report to? Sergeant Chekoff?”
She looked at Wentworth as if for help. He shuffled uncomfortably, embarrassed for her. She picked up her handbag, made as if to leave. “I presume you won’t be wanting my services any longer.”
“Ms. Wu, you have committed a criminal offence. Close the door, Wentworth.” He stood against it with arms folded, feeling foolish. April gave him a look he’d never seen before, cold, as if measuring him for a karate kick to the groin.
Arthur read from the Criminal Code: “‘Anyone who wilfully attempts to obstruct, pervert, or defeat the course of justice is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years.’ I can’t imagine you want to do penitentiary time, Ms. Wu.” The boss softened his tone, that’s how he does it, tough, then cool and confiding. “I suspect you’d rather come clean with us.”
She whirled to say something to him, thought better of it, sat again, and muttered something in Cantonese. “You will allow me to walk out of here if I…”
“If you’re truthful about what you’ve been up to. You can walk out of this office with a head start but I intend to raise the matter in court. Wentworth, make notes. Oh, first call the Registry and let them know we may be late.”
He connected with Kroop’s clerk, explained something had come up, something he couldn’t discuss. Which was that the firm had been infiltrated by an enemy agent. She’d been hired just before Christmas, after phoning to ask if there was an opening. Wentworth began to pace. Despite his exhaustion, he was thrilled, this was scandalous, heads will roll in the West Van cop shop, it could even abort the trial.
“Please settle down, Wentworth.”
“I’m not a police agent.” April drew a wallet from her bag, and a card from that. Ace Private Investigation Services, an address in Kowloon. “I’ve been with them only a few months. Before that I was a legal secretary. I was retained by Florenza’s parents to find out if Mr. Pomeroy knew anything incriminating about her.”
Arthur raised his eyebrows. “I should like proof of that.”
“There’s nothing in writing.”
“There’s always something. How do they pay you?”
“Cash in advance.”
“In thousand-dollar bills, I suppose.”
“They pay very handsomely.”
“How was your ticket from Hong Kong paid?”
“In U.S. dollars.”
“How do you deliver your reports, the documents you copy?”
“To a lawyer’s office.”
“Shawn Hamilton’s?”
“I believe so. I know it as Viglio, Hamilton, and Prescott.”
“Is anyone there privy to this?”
“I don’t know. I drop them off with the receptionist.” This was coming rapid-fire. Wentworth wished he had April’s shorthand skills.