Honour Among Men. Barbara Fradkin

the two detectives had walked back to the elevator together, Green glanced at his watch and cursed. Sharon was working the evening shift again, which meant that Hannah had been in charge of the household for three hours now. Dinner was going to be very late, even if he picked up something easy from the Bagelshop again on his way home, and Tony would be apoplectic with hunger.

      He locked his drawer, logged off his computer, and was just grabbing his jacket when his phone rang. He considered letting it go to voice mail, but thought it might be Captain Ulrich.

      Instead, a familiar, manic voice came through the line over the background of chatter and office machines. “Mike!” The man hailed him like a long lost friend. “Glad I caught you. These murders are keeping us both hopping.”

      Green muttered a soft oath. This is what voice mail was for—to intercept unwanted calls from the press at the worst possible moments. Frank Corelli was the crime reporter for the Ottawa Sun and, as crime reporters go, he was smart and reliable. They’d known each other for four years and had helped each other out when Green needed a certain spin put out on a case and Frank needed a story. But no publicity was going to be good publicity in the Byward murders.

      So he dusted off the classic departmental evasion. “Frank, you know I can’t comment on the Byward case at this time. Superintendent Devine has scheduled a press conference for—”

      “I know, I know. And I’ll be there, duly copying down the party line. But this is the other case, and I’ve got something for you for a change.”

      Green perked up. “The aqueduct case?”

      “The very one. Now you know I always play straight with you guys. You don’t want something reported, I keep it under wraps. I learn something, I pass it on. Right?”

      “Frank, spit it out.”

      There was a pause, during which Green could hear a phone ringing. “I got a call from a woman. She wouldn’t give her name, just said she knew who killed the prostitute in the aqueduct, and was I interested. I played dumb, what do you mean am I interested? Well, she says, how much is it worth? Nothing, I said, that’s obstructing a police investigation. You call in the cops, she says, and I’ll take it to the competition. I says nobody will touch it, and she says you got no imagination. Anyway, I thought you should know you got information out there somewhere.”

      “Or maybe not.” Whenever a major crime occurred in the city, the wackos and the wheeler dealers came out of the woodwork.

      “Maybe not, but she sounded like she was holding some good cards. Not a wingnut, clear, calm, seemed intelligent. She knew the body had been moved after death. That true?”

      Green said nothing. Inwardly, his thoughts raced over the scene at the aqueduct. How many people knew that detail, which had been held back from all press reports. He tried to sound disinterested. “So what did you tell her?”

      Frank chuckled knowingly. “I told her to give me a day to set it up and to call me back. She wasn’t happy about that, but I told her I had to get the money approved. We gotta figure out how you want to play this.”

      “Did you record the phone number?”

      Corelli read it out, and Green put him on hold while he logged back onto his computer and searched the phone number database. His momentary excitement faded. The call had come from a payphone on Bank Street near Wellington, which was the major intersection almost opposite Parliament Hill. Thousands of people, tourists and government workers alike, passed by it every day. Green weighed his options.

      “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. When she calls back, set up a meeting to see what she’s got. I’ll have someone nearby, and we’ll pick her up.”

      When Green finally escaped the office, his spirits were greatly buoyed and his headache gone. The case was breaking open, with new leads unfolding in all directions. He held fast to his good mood throughout yet another hectic evening as sole cook, babysitter and dog walker, and poured himself a well-deserved shot of single malt as he settled down to the eleven o’clock news. Only as he sat through the usual stories of global carnage and the endless spats on the federal campaign trail did his mood begin to sag.

      Politics. It was a game too often won by opportunists and manipulators, who mouthed platitudes about the public good, but whose real passion was power. The Liberal Party, having been ousted from power after years of corruption, was pulling out all the stops to reverse the Conservative backlash. High-profile candidates for both parties were being bribed with promises of cabinet posts and plum appointments. Jubilant reporters were crisscrossing the country, stoking the flames of division in key ridings where election races were most heated. The real losers, Green thought, were the genuine good guy candidates who wanted to make a difference for their country. And the country itself.

      It was no different in policing, where, once in the public spotlight, who you knew and how well you could play the game were often more important than what was right. A victory of form over substance. And we have only ourselves to blame, Green thought as he groped sleepily for the remote to shut off the latest Conservative rant. Because people like him refused even to get in the game.

      Unexpectedly, the phone rang, sending a spike of fear and excitement racing through him. At this hour, a phone call almost always meant trouble.

      “Inspector Green?” It was a woman’s voice, curt and authoritative. “This is Sergeant McGrath of the Halifax Regional Police. Sorry to disturb you at home, but the detective down at your headquarters insisted you’d want to be informed.”

      Green bolted upright, wide awake and rooting on the side table for a pen. Years of hounding the duty desk had paid off. “Yes, Sergeant?”

      “Good news. I believe we’ve identified your Jane Doe.”

      SEVEN

      The next morning Green waylaid Barbara Devine the moment she arrived at her office.

      “Good timing,” she said as she swept past him through her door, her plaid cloak trailing. She headed for her closet. “You were the first item on my agenda.”

      “I need to go to Halifax.”

      She whirled around, her cloak in hand. “Why?”

      “Because Halifax has a tentative ID on our aqueduct murder, and it may be connected to a cold case of their own.”

      “So get them to fax the file.”

      “It’s several boxes. And I want to re-interview the witnesses myself, in light of our case.”

      She finally hung up her cloak, then paused to look at herself in the mirror. She patted her helmet of hair, denting it slightly, then moved behind her desk with exaggerated calm. Only then did she meet his gaze. “Well, you can’t. You’re needed here. Send Detective Gibbs, he’s the lead investigator.”

      “Gibbs has to stay here to coordinate things at this end. Besides, he hasn’t the experience to handle this on his own, and I can’t spare two officers.”

      “Then get the Halifax detective to do the interviews for you.”

      “It’s our case, Barbara.” He restrained his irritation with an effort. Like it or not, he needed her cooperation. He held out the travel requisition. “I’ll be there and back in forty-eight hours, guaranteed, and I’ll keep in constant touch by phone and email.”

      He’d already packed and tentatively booked himself on the eleven a.m. flight to Halifax, but by the time he emerged from her office with her signature on the requisition, he had little more than an hour to make the plane. Barely time to brief Gibbs on the newest development in the case and to tell Frank Corelli that if his mystery woman phoned, he was to work through Bob Gibbs on the meeting.

      Only once he was up in the air, heading east over the farmland of Quebec, did he have a chance to reflect. The truth was, he should have given the trip to Gibbs. It was his case, his chance for glory, but the lure of an unsolved homicide had proved too strong for Green. He