Chapter 16

Sanders swept aside all the accumulated memos, reports, coffee cups, and general debris on his desk with his elbow and carefully set down the notebook and the slim black leather briefcase. Gently, he sprung open its two silver fastenings and raised the top. Inside lay a modest pile of photocopied legal-size documents. Dubinsky peered over his shoulder as he lifted out the first one. It was on letterhead of the Pag-Jan Construction Company, and was headed “Tender no. 107593, Ontario Central Detention Centre.” Sanders’ eyes glittered as he leafed through the pages of figures and handed it to Dubinsky. He picked up the next one. Satisfaction twitched at the corners of his mouth—Beck Construction, same project. The next was from Jamieson Construction; below that, from Del-Fram Construction. Seven in all, from some of the largest and most solidly based firms in the area. “If you owned a construction company, Dubinsky, wouldn’t you be happy if someone gave you all this material? I wonder when the deadline for tendering is. In two days, I’ll bet; just enough time for someone to adjust a few of his figures after looking at these.” Sanders put them all carefully back in the briefcase. “This will have to go to Fraud. My God.” He sounded awestruck. “That detention center is a huge project. No wonder he was a little disturbed to see us with the briefcase. Let’s have a look at the book.”

His train of thought was interrupted by Collins bursting through the door, his normally stolid features pink with excitement. “We got him,” he announced. “There’s enough coke in that apartment to make trafficking stick tighter than. . . .” Comparisons failed him.

“Where is he?”

“Downstairs, with Wilson, keeping his mouth shut.” Sanders started for the door. “But that’s not all we found,” said Collins following after him. “I found a”—he pulled his notebook out—“pair of women’s lounging pyjamas, silk, purple in colour, size five. Could have belonged to the Conway woman.” He looked like a bird dog with a fat pheasant in his mouth. “They’d been worn, too. Smelled of perfume and were kind of wrinkled a bit.”

Grant Keswick was sitting on a straight-backed chair looking coldly angry when the two men were let in to the interview room. He gave no sign of recognition or acknowledgement, but said in clear and clipped tones, “I would like to speak to my lawyer. Until then, I have nothing to say.”

“Come off it, Keswick. You lawyer isn’t going to be able to talk away four or five thousand bucks worth of coke. Not very bright of you to leave it lying around like that. Besides, that’s not what we want to talk to you about, is it? Whose purple silk whatevers are those? Size five. Not many women around that small.”

“Maybe not in your circles, pal, but there are in mine. I know a lot of very classy-looking ladies.” He smirked in an irritating way, and Sanders stifled a flash of anger as he recollected that Keswick probably considered Eleanor to be one of them. His voice became silky and confidential.

“You have quite a temper, don’t you, Keswick? Probably you’d think nothing at all of bashing someone’s head in if you discovered she’d been sleeping around. You don’t look like someone who’d appreciate that sort of thing from your women. Those silk things were Jane Conway’s, weren’t they? Someone will be able to identify them, you know. She had friends.”

“So what you if they were? We used to see a lot of each other, back before we split up. Last October. That’s a long time ago.” Keswick laughed casually, but the sweat stood out on his forehead and darkened his shirt in patches; his clothes seemed tight, barely able to contain his stocky frame.

“Then why in hell did you get so mad at her the night before she was killed if you were all through with her? And why hang onto stuff of hers all that time? You don’t strike me as the sentimental type, Keswick. What did you do when she told you she was pregnant? Was she trying to make trouble for you? That must have upset you.” He drawled out the words.

Keswick froze into silence. “Pregnant?” he said cautiously. “What in hell are you talking about?” Then he pulled his indignation around him again. “I have friends who might have something to say about evidence being planted in my apartment, and about harassment of people in the arts, constant harassment.” He attempted to drape his arm carelessly along the back of the chair. “You can’t hang this on me, Sanders.”

“If you’re talking about your pal Wilcox—we’ve got him too. There are at least fifty men out there looking for him. I wouldn’t count on his support right now. He has enough troubles of his own.”

Keswick abandoned his efforts to appear casual. “I’m not saying a word until I see my lawyer.” His mouth closed in a thin line, then he spat out, suddenly and spitefully, “and if you’re looking for someone to hang Jane’s murder on, try her husband. He had a reason.”

Sanders shook his head gently. “I don’t think we need go that far, Mr. Keswick. Her husband was working in a lab with ten other people while you were smashing Jane’s skull in. You should learn to control that temper of yours.” He smiled and turned to the other men in the room. “For now, you can book Mr. Keswick for trafficking, Wilson. But be sure you let him call his lawyer.”

“Do you think we can get him for the Conway woman?” asked Dubinsky as they walked briskly back to their own corner of the building.

“I don’t know,” said Sanders, looking gloomily at the squalor they had left behind them. “Probably not. I’m not even sure he did it.” He shook his head and reached for the briefcase, still sitting in the middle of his desk. “Has anyone checked Wilcox’s house?” he said suddenly. “We’re going to look pretty goddamn stupid if he’s at home, all quiet and cosy.”

Dubinsky reached for the phone, and carried on a hasty muttered conversation. “Not yet. They’ve established that he’s left Queen’s Park—they think, although they’re a little worried he’s found himself a hole there somewhere. They’ve got Avenue Road pretty well covered, with all the adjacent streets, and there’s someone out at the airport by now—and the bus depot and Union Station, just in case. I said we’d send Collins over to his law office and that we’d check out his house.”

“Did you put someone else on the sightings and reports coming in on the van?” asked Sanders suddenly.

“Yeah,” said Dubinsky. “McNeil. It’s going to need more than one guy, though.”

Glenn Morrison twitched back the floor-length curtains in his living room and looked carefully out at the sky. The everlasting spring twilight had finally given way to dark, or at least as much dark as one was likely to get in a fifty-mile radius of the city. Now he would be safe. There was no one to ask him where he was going. The brand on his face would disappear in the darkness. The only problem was that they were always on their guard at night. He sat and thought, drew up plans, rejected them; considered, reconsidered. It was the only way. One last successful raid and he would stop for now.

He stepped out of the shower and scrubbed himself dry. Sitting in the drawer were one last clean shirt, one last clean set of underwear, saved for this particular occasion. He shaved with particular care, avoiding the wounds on his face, and then gently patted some beige liquid from an old bottle that Ginny had left behind over the scratches. The odd scent of the make-up stirred him with excitement. Not bad, he thought. It would look all right under street lights. His hair was getting a little long, but still looked respectable enough. With new jeans and a matching jacket he looked believable enough as an emergency troubleshooter—maybe from Hydro or the phone company. Confidence surged back through his veins. Those last three misses were just temporary setbacks. That was it. Every good campaigner has to expect setbacks; the great ones don’t let them distract them from their larger plans of action. It was time to get started. He straightened his back, squared his shoulders; and started down the stairs to the garage.