This Thing of Darkness. Barbara Fradkin

      

       This Thingof 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,