think about it? I never did until Evelyn died, but I do now. I sometimes wonder if she’s… I don’t know. Don’t you wonder about your wife?”
Cardinal and Babstock had been friends in high school-always on good terms, although never close. They had lost touch for many years. Cardinal became a cop in Toronto and later in Algonquin Bay, and Babstock had gone on to a glorious career in industry, eventually founding a robotics company that had been a prime contributor to the space shuttle programme and the exploration of Mars. It was one of the few companies in Ontario that still actually employed people to make things.
Cardinal was once again struck by the variegated nature of those people who chose to come back to Algonquin Bay. In fact, Cardinal’s own decision to return, after ten years with the Toronto police, had surprised him. And who would have expected the likes of Leonard Priest or Ronnie Babstock?
Babstock had stunned the high-tech world by moving his company to this pocket of the near north, more than ten years ago now. He hadn’t got in touch with Cardinal at the time, and Cardinal didn’t even consider contacting him’ his old schoolmate had moved into a different class.
But then they both became widowers within months of each other, and Cardinal had been surprised-and touched-to receive a sympathy card signed your old friend, Ronnie Babstock. A couple of months later, Babstock had called him at work and they went out for a beer and a burger.
Cardinal didn’t expect much’ they’d led such different lives. But they were both newly widowed, both with grown daughters, both in their late fifties-and they discovered they enjoyed one another’s company. They found they could even talk politics, something Cardinal avoided with pretty much everyone.
“You know, you’re amazingly liberal for a cop,” Babstock had said.
“And you’re amazingly liberal for a businessman.”
“That’s Evelyn’s influence. And Hayley’s-my overeducated daughter. I’d probably be a lot richer if I never listened to them, but I’d’ve been a lot more miserable too.”
Babstock had become known as a philanthropist and had put his money behind major international initiatives as well as local improvements to the main street and the waterfront. Cardinal had come to have tremendous respect for him.
“I’m glad you called me, Ronnie,” Cardinal had said when they were parting that first time. “Why did you?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Suddenly you’re fifty-eight and you haven’t paid any attention to friendships for thirty, forty years and you wake up in the bloody Yukon-psychologically, I mean. That’s probably why I called you, to be honest. Gets fucking lonely.”
It sent a chill through Cardinal to hear a man admit to loneliness. He never used the word about himself. But he knew what Ronnie meant. Friendships suddenly matter a lot more when you live alone. He didn’t know what he would have done if Delorme hadn’t somehow managed to become his buddy over the past two years.
“You’re ignoring the question,” Ronnie was saying now. “If I tell you I sometimes think Evelyn’s trying to contact me, you just think that’s nuts, right? You never wonder that way about…?”
“I miss Catherine. I miss her every day. I don’t suppose that’ll ever stop. But we had our life together and now it’s over and…”
“And what?”
A pretty young woman came into the dining room and asked if they would like more dessert.
“No thanks, Esme. That was delicious. Just clear everything away and you can be off.”
Cardinal had been having dinner at Babstock’s place once a month for going on a year, and he still wasn’t sure if Esme was a maid or a caterer or a niece. Babstock always treated her with respect but betrayed no interest beyond that. Caterer, Cardinal decided. The meals were always perfect, and he enjoyed their quiet conversations before the others-one the architect who had designed Babstock’s house, the other a major at the local radar installation-arrived after dinner and proceeded to beat both of them at stud poker.
“Fabulous meal,” Cardinal said. He tapped his wineglass with a fingernail. “Wine too.”
“You never thought Catherine might be trying to get in touch with you?”
“No, Ron. Why, has Evelyn been phoning you?”
“Phoning, no. But I hear her voice sometimes. I think I do. I mean, it’s bad enough I even saw a doctor about it.”
“What did he say?”
“Stress, of course. Overwork.”
“Well?”
“Okay, I’ll stop. I’m being silly. Let’s move.”
Cardinal followed him into the game room. Babstock’s house was a series of rectangles, mostly glass, overlooking Lake Nipissing. The lights of Algonquin Bay glittered across the frozen lake, making it look a much larger city than it was. Babstock had another house in town, but Cardinal had never visited him there.
They sat at the poker table and Babstock patted his pockets for his reading glasses. “Oh, listen-before I forget-I want you to come to my party.”
“It’s nice of you to ask, but I’m really not a party person.”
“I don’t want party people. I want real people. Feel free to bring someone, of course. Are you seeing anyone?”
“Not just at the moment.”
“What about that detective colleague you told me about? Why not bring her? You said you like her.”
“Lise is even less of a party person than I am.”
“All the better. Be good for both of you. Listen, what did you make of that case in California? That little girl missing for eight years.”
Babstock made a charming effort to be up on crimes Cardinal might be interested in-no matter how far afield they had occurred. This was a California case in which a child had been abducted at age two. Her mother recognized her eight years later, now age ten, at a playground in a different city. DNA tests confirmed her identity, and the couple who had stolen her were now in federal prison. Cardinal hadn’t paid much attention.
“Of course, what I really want to ask you about is this motel murder. But I know you can’t talk about it.”
“ ‘Fraid not. Ongoing investigation.”
“I know, I know. There’s the doorbell. Come to my party, John. Meanwhile, get ready to part with a serious amount of cash.”
Giles Blunt
Until the Night
From the Blue Notebook
Back in the winter, when the plane deposited Wyndham and me and the construction crew on T-6, we had somehow contrived in that polar darkness to assemble the prefabricated structure of the mess hall in such a way that it ended up with an extra stub of a room, a kind of alcove. I had dragged one of the more comfortable chairs into it and stacked some of my books around it. I liked to sit there at night and read.
Rebecca (this was weeks later) was doing a crossword in the mess. Of all of us, Rebecca was the one most able to keep to a regular schedule despite the unending twilight. When she was finished recording and sorting her data for the day, she devoted her evenings to crosswords, board games or reading. I was in my alcove, from where I could see Wyndham but not Rebecca. He was tinkering with his laptop, trying to improve the insulation pack around his jerry-rigged car battery. We weren’t supposed to do such things in the mess, but Wyndham always did.
I don’t know which of them started it-probably Wyndham, who was always good for a philosophical ramble- but they were talking about different kinds of cold. For some reason their easy conversation put me in a sneering mood and I couldn’t focus on my book. Rebecca told a story about a young monk who travelled thousands of miles to study under a great Zen master.
Rebecca’s voice in the twilight:
The master told the student to sit still and meditate. Told him to meditate every day. Told him to meditate his every waking hour, to ignore everything else in the world except for the demands of nourishment and sleep.
I couldn’t see her, but I pictured her face, her mouth. Full lips forming the words.
So the student meditated for months on end-until he was exhausted, wasting away. Time and again he would
