Nightshade. Tom Henighan

      “I have no financial interest in the company, except through my husband. I’m not really that interested in corporations, Mr. Montcalm — is that really your name, by the way? How terribly odd and charming. No, all I care about in that line is the prompt arrival of my monthly cheque from my trust fund.”

      “That’s all you’ve ever cared about, Mother,” her son said.

      Meg Ballard blanched a little, then with a laugh, strode across the room and threw her arms around her son. “You’re a wicked boy and you know it.”

      Paul caught Sam’s attention with a look that said let’s get out of here quickly and talk about this pair.

      Sam nodded.

      To Mrs. Ballard, Paul explained politely, “Well, we have a busy schedule, Madam. If you’ll excuse us. I want your husband to call me as soon as he returns. Here’s the number. Goodbye to both of you, and thanks.”

      “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Ballard,” Sam added. “You, too, Simon.”

      “Always nice to meet a famous name,” Simon said, and giggled a little. “And nice to meet you, Inspector. There must be a Berthelet in a battle, back in history somewhere.”

      “Lots of them,” Paul assured him.

      The door closed behind them. Paul gave Sam a sour look, and muttered, “Unless I’m overreacting, a very nasty little boy. Luckily, we’ve already put a watch on him.”

      “And a very cool and detached mama. Did you get the impression that she was trying to cover for him.”

      “Sure she was. She’s a cool one, as you say, and she likes his gay charm — if that’s what it is — but she disapproves of something else. Maybe his connection with Charlie Linton. Or maybe he’s an addict, and that would worry her for sure, since she’s so buttoned up. She wouldn’t like the chaos. I don’t care how cool she is, that would bother her. I think he’s into cocaine — discreet use, early stages. What do you think?”

      “Could be. He seemed very jumpy. And he did go a bit overboard on how wonderful Charlie Linton was. Come to think of it, Jane Linton didn’t like the Charlie–Simon axis either.”

      “You know, old friend, it’s getting a bit complicated,” Paul said. “We may be in for a few twists and turns before we’re through.” He stopped in the hallway, pulled out his cellphone, and smiled: “And of course we both like it that way.”

      Sam watched as Paul began to punch in numbers. One call, then another — conversations in rapid-fire sentences. Minutes later, he slipped the cell into his pocket and explained. “Listen, Sam, I should get over to headquarters. I’m curious to see what line McCarthy’s up to over there. He’ll probably already have complained about me having you on the case.” He laughed. “And by the way, I’ve just been told that Dr. Sergeant has gone over to the gallery. I guess nobody wants to wait around to talk to us. You were heading there to find Daniel, so you can take one of our cars. If you can find Dr. Sergeant, talk to her, size her up. I’ve read her statement, and I have a few questions, but I’ll wait for your take on her. And don’t forget that we have a dinner date with Ginette — it’ll be early, because of her concert. You’ve got my number if anything turns up.”

      Sam found the police car outside, greeted the driver, and settled down in comfort. They headed along the Avenue René Lévesque, past ordinary, rather anonymous city shops selling food, furniture, hardware, or technology, past office buildings and garages, apartment houses, and many solid dwellings, without any breath of history to bring them to life. It was a scruffy, lively street that evoked a thousand other North American streets, and the sight of it relaxed him.

      He thought of his father, who was such a typical Québécois in his love of the everyday modern pleasures: home gadgets, good cars, quick eats, travel, baseball and hockey, and who had at the same time a strong if repressed pride of language and race, a frank enjoyment of the senses, and a much-cherished private dream or vision.

      His father’s dream, though, had led him badly astray. It was the old dream of the bountiful West, of the perfect climate, ease beside the ocean, never-ending sunshine, the vision of El Dorado. And it had taken him straight into the heart of a well-heeled suburban hell.

      The police car came out on the Grand-Allée —broad, spacious, and confident, with its flashes of genteel tradition — and Sam thought, it’s summer now, and the weather is perfect, but the winter will come and scour the city. There will be Carnaval and warm feasts, and skating and skiing, but everyone will be aware of the bitter cold, of the relentless reality of the north. And maybe that’s good, our salvation even; maybe the dolce far niente is what kills you in the end.

      “I’ll get off at Cartier,” he told the driver in French, who glanced at him in the rearview mirror and nodded. A sallow-faced, homely cop with big bushy eyebrows.

      “Pardon, monsieur,” he said, as Sam opened the door and climbed out. “Is your name really Montcalm?”

      “Oui, c’est vrai.”

      “You should open a restaurant,” the cop said.

      “Montcalm vaincu,” Sam reminded him. “I’d lose my shirt.”

      Sam walked along the gravel path toward the museum. At the roundabout he took in the statue of General Wolfe, a sombre grey pile splattered with bird droppings. Not much of a memorial, Sam thought. History is a funny thing. Sometimes when you try too hard to celebrate it, you choke on it.

      He paid at the desk, inquired about Daniel’s exhibition, and took the elevator up to the gallery. Three Native artists were having shows there and Sam wandered among the mini-galleries set up between temporary partitions, stopping only where it seemed essential to do so.

      One artist had painted a large oil depicting a crazy, surreal dance of glue-sniffing children, and another evoking a beautiful northern wilderness, pristine except for a pile of wrecked and rusting machinery in the foreground. And there were several equally trenchant testimonials to the ruin of a culture: warrior’s shields made of old hubcaps, necklaces alternating beads and bottle caps, television aerials hung with imitations of sacred tribal symbols. Sam also recognized some Native images and icons: shamans, thunderbirds, magic animals, and sinister coiling serpents, some of these also compromised, and perhaps tarnished, by trivial objects that belonged to the modern world.

      This was all a kind of prelude, however, for when he came at last to the space set aside for Daniel’s work, he stopped in his tracks. Right before his eyes, on the opposite wall, he recognized Daniel’s Atropa Belladonna, the controversial work Clara had described for him.

      It was a huge construction, simple and bold, dominated by a giant nude female figure, a Caucasian woman whose effrontery made Sam think of a Helmut Newton power woman, or one of those late medieval German nude images, an Eve or a Magdalene who seemed to have been stripped by a Storm Trooper. This idea was reinforced by the skull she cradled against her belly and by the slightly torn academic gown that lay crumpled at her feet. Daniel’s nude was a bleached blonde with massive thighs, rough black pubic hair, big buttocks and breasts, and black boots — sexually appealing in the dominatrix mode, but hideously magnified and vulgarized. It seemed to Sam that he was looking at a kind of comic strip or caricature, influenced perhaps by some Diego Rivera mural, but without an equivalent subtlety.

      Around this central image, the artist had pasted oversized multicoloured labels identifying reputedly dangerous substances produced by some of the major chemical manufacturers around the world. The company logos were all clearly visible, and these had the curious effect of creating auras or emanations of light similar to those associated with saints and holy icons in traditional art.

      The whole construction was a fascinating death image, he decided, so good in its extreme way that it started a flicker of doubt in his mind about Daniel’s ultimate innocence.

      Did it really have much artistic value? Sam was unsure, but it seemed, in this case, hardly to matter, so shocking was the unconcealed insolence of Daniel’s artistic gesture.