Balsam Sirens Page 9

  “What are you going to do tomorrow?” she asked, suppressing a yawn.

  “Well, I can help you, but if you’re happy working alone I could also do an inspection of the area where George’s brother’s body was found.”

  “You don’t think the police would have covered everything well enough?”

  “Probably, yes. But I’d still like to make sure, check for myself.”

  “Okay. Go. I can manage fine on my own. And I think, actually, that this sort of work is easier for one person than two.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. Go.”

  “All right. I’ll have my cellphone with me, so just call if you need help.”

  “Thanks”, Andrea said, stifling another yawn.

  “Go to bed”, I said, putting an arm around her shoulders.

  “The dishes –”

  “Are my job”, I said, completing her sentence. “Go. You’ve had a longish day.”

  Andrea gave me a tired peck on the cheek and headed off to the bedroom.

  Being addicted to playing in water from the age of two, I spurned the dishwasher and did the few dinner things by hand, dried them, put them away, and hung up the tea towel.

  Now, I said to myself, taking a seat in the den, it’s time to walk through this whole business right from the start. I lined up the points in my mind, jotting them down on a notepad as I went.

  First point. The starting event was that first discussion with Cromarty. If he had asked me why I had reservations about Harold’s death being an “accident”, I would have told him, but I was damned if I was going do his job for him. The propeller marks on Harold’s back told me what was likely the real story. A power boat passing over someone at speed would have left gashes in the body separated much more widely than was the case for Harold’s body. In fact, his back looked more like badly made hamburger meat. Something that I would expect if the boat had been positioned over the body, then accelerated away from a standing start. Deliberately. In other words, murder. Well, maybe. Might the intention have been not to kill Harold, but to take him alive and then grind out of him what his attackers were after? In trying to immobilize him, did somebody use too much force, recognize that Harold’s injury was mortal, that he was not going to recover, and then try to cover up by making it look like a boating accident?

  Second point. One of the blows to Harold’s head could have occurred as a result of the body being pushed against the rocks by waves, and here I recalled the note e-mailed to me by Cromarty. But to me that seemed unlikely because of its location on his head and more probably resulted from a blow delivered by hand. At that stage, the poor bugger would have been unconscious and easy to line up with the propeller when and if they found they had to improvise.

  Third point. The canoe Kate and I found was in a very odd location, separated from Harold’s body by almost two kilometres of Indian Point shoreline. Suppose first that the canoe had started off somewhere near where Harold’s body had been found. There was no way it could have drifted to where it ended up, given the currents in the lake. Suppose that whatever Harold had been doing, he was doing it near where we found the canoe. But then, once again given the lake currents, there’s no way that his body could have ended up where it was found. Was it Harold who took the canoe to the spot where we found it? There was no reason I could see why Harold would park his car where he did, then lug a canoe more than a kilometre overland, or take it somewhere close to where his body was eventually found and then paddle the canoe two kilometres to where we found it, from where he would then have to walk back or swim back. If the “accident” occurred reasonably close to where his body had been found, a simpler explanation was that the canoe was originally there too, and somebody had tried to hide it, probably to delay the time until Harold’s body came to light. An empty drifting canoe would be spotted and reported quickly. It might be days before a body, partly submerged along a remote piece of shoreline, would be found.

  Fourth point. Cromarty was probably wondering whether there really was any connection between Harold’s death and the break-in at his place, but he wasn’t going to face the displeasure of his superiors by raising that speculation as an excuse to spend more time on the closed Harold Barbour case. No. He wanted to see whether I had anything that he didn’t, and that’s why he called me earlier in the day, but I wasn’t going to take that bait.

  Fifth point. The break-in at Harold’s place was very unlikely to have been just coincidence. Somebody was looking for something, and it might well have been something connected to Harold being present in the lake off Indian Point.

  Sixth point. It appears that Harold was indeed looking for something in the lake. Cromarty’s note indicated that he was found wearing one diver’s fin, a good quality one. But he was found along an unused stretch of Indian Point: no cottages, no campsites, no fire pits, nothing.

  Seventh point. It appears as though whoever interrupted Harold would not assume that he had come there by car, given the canoe nearby. According to information obtained from the police, the marks on the ground indicated that only one person had passed between the car and the shore, a distance of about two hundred metres. Given where the police said they found Harold’s car, I confirmed that it wouldn’t have been visible from the shore. If Harold’s attackers had found his car, what would they have been likely to do? I could think of a few possibilities, but just leaving it where it was is an option that’s hard to explain. So I concluded that they didn’t see it.

  Eighth point. And this is the strongest and most tantalizing piece of information: the sheet that Harold passed to George via the attorney Hawley. On that sheet was information that had led Kate and me, independently of any other information, to a spot very close to where Harold’s body had been found. There were three other locations given by that sheet, and I had still to try to find out what significance those locations had, if any. It also occurred to me that George should take steps to engage Hawley as his lawyer to keep all this confidential.

  I sat pondering this, looking over the page of notes I had made, trying to see whether I had missed anything, had misrepresented anything. It might have seemed to some that this could be considered evidence, that some theory might be built based on it and then tested. But I was convinced that these pieces of information covered too wide a canvas, that they didn’t point unambiguously to just one theory, but hinted vaguely at two, three, or more possible theories.

  There were still several avenues left to travel, but given all this material, it now seemed prudent to go down any of those avenues very carefully. Something was afoot out there.

  I’m not sure how or why it came to me, but I became aware that I had indeed missed something. On the face of it, Harold Barbour was a total unknown. And yet he had become involved in something that was neither simple nor easily explained, nor, it seemed, had well-defined boundaries.

  So.

  Just who was Harold Barbour?

  Time to find out.

  A quick e-mail to my long-standing contact James Hazlitt got the ball rolling.

  Sixteen

  Saturday was a blur when I looked back on it. We all had an early breakfast. George was looking more relaxed than I had seen him so far. He came close to saying that he was really enjoying his stay with us and said he was more than happy just to rest in the back garden again.

  We left him to it. Andrea and I went off to look at Poplar Street and spent another hour at the building supplies merchant, then went our separate ways for a short time – Andrea back to Poplar Street, me back to our house. As expected, James Hazlitt, who sported the nickname “Jocko” for no reason that anyone could remember, had e-mailed back a number of questions. I called him.

  “Jocko, got a few minutes to talk?”

  “Make it snappy”, he barked. “I’ve got a full order book, creditors that were Komodo dragons before someone tamed them, a case of head yeast, and a rumbly gut. I’ve got –”

  “Jocko! It’s me, Whelan. I’ve h
eard it all before. Let me get a word in edgewise.”

  Like distant thunder, the moaning faded but never really ceased. I explained what I wanted.

  “How much time you want to spend on it?”

  “I think it won’t be complicated, Jocko. Give it a day, and then let me know what you’ve got. We’ll take it from there.”

  The rumbling surged a bit, then faded once more. I had used Jocko quite a few times before. He was tenacious to a fault, and I was pretty sure that I would have a much clearer picture of just who Harold was by Monday afternoon.

  “Thanks, Jocko.”

  “Yeah, yeah”, he muttered dismissively, sneezed wetly, declared “Fuck!” to whatever miscreant had given him this snotty horror and broke the connection.

  Nice to know that there remain some constants in the world.

  Those arrangements completed, I hurried back to Poplar Street, helped Andrea with the window and electrical inspection, and then we returned to White Pine Lane. On entering, I stopped and looked around. Cut planks were stacked against one wall in an order that obviously matched how they would be set in place. Offcuts were piled neatly against another wall.

  “Andrea, dearest! Look what thou hast wrought! Fantastic!”

  She blushed in pleasure, but also gave me a shoulder push, implying that I should stop this foolishness. Over her objections, I set aside my plan for a close quartering of the suspect area on Indian Point, and decided then and there that we would complete this job together.

  We worked until almost six, finishing laying the planks that replaced the rotted section of underfloor we had removed earlier. They fitted like a glove, and when the last piece slid neatly into place and was nailed down, I gave my wife a huge hug. We briefly discussed next steps for this cottage. Our plan was to have the floor finished in hardwood, but we would use a flooring company to complete that part of the job. Drywall needed replacing in a couple of areas, and we estimated that three panels of drywall would be enough. An examination of the toilet bowl and tank revealed chipping and incipient cracks that would only become worse, leading to the conclusion that both tank and bowl should be retired to that great WC in the sky. We made it back to the building supplies place just before it closed to order the sheets of drywall and a new toilet.

  Having skipped lunch, we were ready for something quick but substantial, so we dropped in to Wally’s place. Wally greeted us, Pickwickian cheeks aglow. He made a pitch for virtually everything in his food counter, but laughed happily when we chose three generous steaks and some nice crispy broccoli, and he gave a broad smile of approval upon learning that to accompany his comestibles I planned to whip up portions of penne in oil, garlic, and a pinch of chili flakes.

  Over dinner, I raised with George the arrangements for taking him back to Toronto on Monday, and saw a cloud pass over his features. I said nothing, recognizing that he knew his stay here really was an evasive manoeuvre and that there was still psychological music to be faced. But I hoped that at least those few days had given him some additional reserves to draw on during the coming week.

  Once again, George excused himself at nine thirty, saying he felt tired. Andrea and I wished him a pleasant night, said that the agenda for tomorrow was wide open, and that we would see him at breakfast. George slunk away, and as I followed his retreating back I had to acknowledge his acutely painful current plight, his chronically out-of-focus life, and my long-standing sympathy for people like him.

  “Armagnac?” I suggested to Andrea.

  “You’ve read my mind”, she said, sliding down into the sofa, feet up on our coffee table, which was made by Jimmy from a section through a huge elm log and bearing all the character of its origins.

  Interesting comment, because I always felt that Andrea was the only mind reader in the family. (But then for anyone having antennae as good as Andrea has, I might as well be a large-print book.) I passed her the globe of amber liquid and then settled down with my own portion in the big plush armchair, which was my favourite seat in our “cottage” living area. Glancing surreptitiously at Andrea, I recognized, once again, what I hoped I would keep on seeing for the rest of our lives: a complex girl-woman. She gazed at the glass, and the picture before me was the look of a young girl seeing a perfectly formed daisy for the first time, but also a mature woman recalling the experience of many past social occasions infused by Armagnac and trying to make this one do more than any of its predecessors: draw that extra bit of essence out of the moment. Was she thinking about the work done today? About the dinner we had just finished? About some past event? About her work?

  “You’re looking pretty smug”, she said, bringing me roughly out of my reverie.

  “I admit”, I began, “that my expressions of dreaminess and stupidity are almost identical.”

  “Never mind”, she said, dismissing my frivolity, “I used to marvel at how keen you were to come up here, but the work that I’ve done, that we’ve done, over the past two days gives me a new perspective on why this village is so attractive.”

  I took a slow sip of Armagnac. “I feel we made good progress today. What do you think? I was thinking also that we’ll need to revisit our projections of cost and income from Largs soon. I think both will jump next year.”

  From her expression, Andrea wasn’t quite sure how I managed that topic switch, but we spent the next few minutes talking about what we could accomplish during the coming week. Even looking at it from the slightly pessimistic side of realistic, it seemed to me that we would be able to lift three cottages to the point where Jimmy could complete all the final cosmetic touches on them by the end of September. Thanksgiving sometimes produced a nice spike in demand, and maybe we could have three more units in place ready to meet a similar spike this year.

  There was a long pleasant silence, then Andrea drained her glass, gave a sigh of approval, and placed the glass silently on the coffee table. Mine was also empty, and I moved to collect hers and take them to the kitchen.

  “That can wait”, Andrea said.

  I knew that languid look.

  On Sunday mornings at Largs, I have a ritual. First thing, I let myself into the little church and just spend some time sitting and thinking. Then I do a complete circuit of all the streets in the village. I did these as usual, waving at the few people who were out and about early. Andrea said she wanted to sleep in late, so I dusted off my plan to take a look at Indian Point. Cellphone (for its camera), notebook, and pen went into a heavy-duty sealable and waterproof plastic bag that had a strap I could use to lash it to a thwart of my canoe. I also collected fins, mask, snorkel, sheath knife, a length of plastic rope, and a two-holed structural brick, having made a last-minute decision to take a look, while I was over there, at the green flash I had seen from Kate’s plane.

  The morning was warm, so I set off in my canoe wearing just my swimming trunks, a T-shirt, and a pair of rubber sandals. It took little time to reach Indian Point. I pulled my canoe up onto the shore, and then walked back and forth along the shore until I found the spot where somebody had been walking toward or away from the water’s edge. The way the grass and weeds were broken down indicated clearly that there really had been just a single person who had moved one way – toward the shore. That must have been Harold. To one side, a couple of metres away, there was an area where the grass was more trampled than broken down. This had probably been done by the police, and I recalled the notes in Cromarty’s e-mailed report. I then took a close look at the bottom near the shoreline. Nothing. Finally, I spent about twenty minutes examining all the rocks that were just out of the water along the shore. What I found was one small shred of black plastic foam hooked onto a sharp edge of rock, and I put this piece of foam into the sealed plastic bag that held phone, notebook, and pen.

  I tied the brick to one end of the rope, tied the other end of the rope to the front thwart, dragged the canoe back into the water, climbed in, and set off. It took me almost half an hour to find the underwater rock formation I had seen from
the plane, and once I had done that, I dropped the brick into the water as an anchor. Looking at the shore of Indian Point, and at the little church on the opposite shore to make sure of my bearings, I noticed also a power boat carrying three or four fishermen that had parked a few hundred metres to the north of me, just off shore. The water lapped happily. The sun shone benevolently. It was just another lazy Sunday. I slithered over the stern of the canoe into the water, then put on fins, mask, and snorkel.

  Four dives gave me a good picture of the size and shape of the reef. I did a complete tour around the reef, snorkelling on the surface, and then I saw the green flash again. It was to the Indian Point side of the reef, in somewhat deeper water, beside what seemed to be a jumble of largish boulders. Diving down once more, I aimed at the green flash, and when I was about a couple of metres from it, I recognized that it was a diver’s fin partly covered in silt. I was pretty sure that this would prove to be Harold’s other fin.

  There have been a few times in my life when a sixth sense spoke to me. It spoke to me now. I was swimming close to the bottom, countering the buoyancy that would have carried me up naturally, and I turned to look up just in time to see a scuba diver, about five feet away, coming quickly toward me. I headed off as fast as I could at right angles to his direction, but then found my legs clamped in a tight grip. I struggled but couldn’t free either of my feet. There was a moment of confusion. This must be a mistake, a misunderstanding. But then I came to the cold realization that there was no misunderstanding. Someone was doing this quite deliberately. He was simply going to hang onto me until I had to breathe. He was trying to drown me.