The Delicate Storm. Giles Blunt

      Although it should have been first on his agenda, Cardinal put off calling Musgrave. Instead, he called the Toronto Centre for Forensic Sciences, where he spoke to Vlatko Setevic in Chemistry. Two things about Vlatko you could count on. He was an absolute workaholic, first into the office, last out, and never happy unless he had cleared his desk. The other thing was his unpredictable moods. Vlatko had been in Canada since the sixties and had been an even-tempered sort until Yugoslavia came apart in the nineties. Since that time his disposition had taken a decided turn toward the stormy. Sometimes he could be funny, other times he could be a bastard; you just never knew what you were going to get. Cardinal asked him about the paint sample they had sent and braced himself for heavy weather.

      ‘Paint sample? I didn’t get any paint sample. Not from Algonquin Bay.’

      ‘You better have or there’s going to be serious trouble. Are you telling me you guys never—’

      A big Slavic laugh blew over the line from Toronto. ‘Relax, detective. I was joking. I got your precious paint sample right here.’

      ‘Hilarious, Vlatko. Sense of humour like that, you could be on Royal Canadian Air Farce.’

      ‘So tense, you northern guys. Take up yoga, maybe – you’ll get centred, feel calmer, be one with the universe.’

      ‘My wife says the same thing. What have you got for us?’

      ‘It’s kind of lucky, actually. The paint matches so-called walnut brown that Ford started using on its Explorers last year. New batch. So you’re looking for this year’s Explorer – Explorer with bad scratch.’

      ‘You’re doing my heart good, Vlatko. Keep going.’

      ‘In another way, you’re also unlucky. In Canada alone? Ford sold thirty-five thousand Explorers, give or take.’

      ‘Let me guess. The most popular colour?’

      ‘Of course. Walnut brown.’

      When it couldn’t be put off any longer, Cardinal called the Sudbury detachment. The civilian who answered informed him that Musgrave was out of town. Cardinal put down the phone with relief, only to have it ring in his hand. It was Musgrave.

      ‘You and I have to talk,’ the sergeant said without preliminaries. ‘About a certain individual named Howard Matlock.’

      It turned out he was already in Algonquin Bay, at the Federal Building a few blocks away on MacPherson. At one time the RCMP had maintained a detachment there, but the Mounties lived in the age of cutbacks like everyone else and now their closest headquarters was in Sudbury, eighty miles away.

      Cardinal drove over to the Federal Building and parked in a space marked Post Office Vehicles Only. He found Musgrave in an office furnished with nothing but a metal desk, a phone and three plastic chairs in primary colours.

      The sergeant had the self-confidence of a man who can rely on always being the biggest, toughest male in the room. He was V-shaped, and looked like he’d been carved out of the Precambrian Shield. Throw a rock at him, Cardinal figured, and there was a good chance the rock would shatter.

      ‘Sit,’ Musgrave said, gesturing at the chairs. ‘I want you to know I have no bad feelings about last year.’

      ‘That’s big of you. Considering you nearly screwed me out of my job.’

      ‘Look at it objectively. I was just following procedure.’

      ‘I’ll tell you something about procedure.’ Cardinal had been rehearsing in the car. ‘The murder of a foreign citizen on Canadian soil may fall under the jurisdiction of the RCMP, but that doesn’t give you carte blanche to trample over a local investigation. If you want to examine a crime scene in my bailiwick, you call me. If you want background on the case, ask me. Don’t send your flunkies unannounced into my turf or next time they’ll end up in my jail.’

      Musgrave regarded him with a cool blue gaze. ‘I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.’

      ‘I think you do.’

      ‘Listen, Cardinal. You have a dead American citizen. An American. As you say, that makes it an RCMP matter. How long were you going to wait before you told me about it?’

      ‘If I had my way, I’d never tell you. You’re an unpleasant person. But the law being what it is, I called you this morning, just before you called me.’

      ‘Uh-huh. Then why do I hear about it from our Ottawa division first?’ Musgrave threw a copy of the fax at him. It was just a small item, one of a number in a bulleted list. American Howard Matlock found murdered in Algonquin Bay.

      Cardinal stared at the page. How could Mountie headquarters have got hold of it so fast? And if the kid who had taken his gun away wasn’t with Musgrave, who was he?

      There was a rap on the door.

      Musgrave nodded at it. ‘Someone you’re going to want to meet.’

      Cardinal looked up from the fax.

      ‘Detective John Cardinal, this is Calvin Squier. Detective Cardinal is with Algonquin Bay police. Mr Squier is an intelligence officer with CSIS.’

      Standing in the doorway in a sport coat and tie, the blond young man looked like a teenager trying on his father’s clothes. Nothing about him indicated he could take your gun away from you in a darkened cabin.

      ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Squier said, and put out a hand that was pale as a veal chop.

      ‘Likewise,’ Cardinal managed to say. He felt a blush rising from under his collar and travelling up his neck.

      ‘Great job you did on the Windigo killer,’ Squier said. ‘Read up on you this morning.’

      ‘You’re with CSIS?’

      ‘Canadian Security Intelligence Service,’ Musgrave said.

      ‘I know who they are, thanks.’

      ‘That’s right. I’ve been with them five years.’

      ‘They must have hired you when you were nine.’ Cardinal sat down on a sky-blue chair that creaked like a new shoe. He turned to Musgrave. ‘What’s the deal here?’

      ‘I’ll let him tell you.’

      Squier opened his briefcase and set a silvery laptop on the desk. He unfolded it so that the screen was visible to all of them and pushed a button; it sprang to life with a chime. He pulled a small object the size of a lipstick from his pocket and pointed. A graphic appeared, showing the command structure of NORAD – North American Aerospace Defence.

      ‘As you may know,’ Squier said, ‘NORAD is a joint operation of the U.S. and Canada that was developed during the Cold War to keep us safe from Russian invaders.’ He clicked his remote and the graphic changed to Joint Command Installations. ‘Each country built what they called a ground environment – basically a three-storey office building inside a mountain. The Americans have theirs at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. We have ours in Algonquin Bay, out by Trout Lake.’

      ‘I grew up here,’ Cardinal said. ‘You really don’t need to be telling me this.’

      ‘I’d like to do this right, if you’ll just be patient,’ Squier said. ‘Besides, Sergeant Musgrave didn’t grow up here.’

      ‘Sergeant Musgrave would like to get on with it,’ Musgrave said. ‘Assume we know about the CADS base.’

      ‘Okay. The Cold War may be over, but the Canadian Air Defence System is still in place. There are still a hundred and fifty people inside that mountain. They still have their eyes on radar screens. And those radar screens still light up with any object coming into Canadian airspace.’

      ‘They’re closing the place down, I heard,’ Cardinal put in. ‘Algonquin Bay doesn’t even have an air base any more.’