The Last Witness

‘Attends! Something’s happening. Vehicle approaching… fast! But it’s not Lacaille’s Beamer, it’s a black van. Stopping. Back doors opening… two men getting out. Something’s wrong. They’re wearing ski masks!’ Chac, his closest aide in the RCMP, was main look-out. Chac moved quickly aside and let Michel Chenouda look through the binoculars.

Michel watched as a startled Tony Savard was bundled into the back of the van, looking sharply over his shoulder; a silent plea for help. Michel reached for the radio mike.

‘Move now! Two men have just grabbed Savard. Black Chevy Venture. No sign of Lacaille, and we’re not even sure it’s his men. So get close so that you’re ready to cut in on them when I say.’ Michel had switched to English for the command. The driver, Mark, was only three years up from Ottawa, and Michel liked to use English with those for whom, like him, French was a second language. Now more than ever: he couldn’t risk even a split- second delay for the driver to understand.

As the back-up car swung into view, a faint night mist swirling opaque in its beam, the van was already heading off. A gap of maybe eighty yards between them, Michel estimated, but closing quickly with the car having gained momentum. Sixty yards, fifty…

But as they came to the end of the warehouse block and the first inter-section, Michel watched in horror a large double trailer cut suddenly across just after the van had passed. The squad car braked hard and slued to an angle, stopping just yards short.

They beeped, flashed their lights and shouted furiously, but the truck driver simply lifted his palms and shouted back in defensive protest. Only when badges were frantically waved and their cherry siren was put on the roof and fired up, did he start moving; though even then only slowly. The van was long gone.

At that moment, Savard’s voice came over clearly on sound. ‘Jesus! What’s happening… what’s going on?’

Only silence returned. Nobody answered.

Michel watched the screen-finder dot recede rapidly out of the dockside, continuing straight for a moment before bleeping and flashing at a tangent. ‘They’ve turned off either at Lafontaine or Ontario, heading east,’ he hissed into the radio-mike. ‘Looks like they’re headed downtown. We’re going to cut across and back you up.’

Michel grabbed the screen-finder and directed two of his men to come with him, the other to stay with Chac. They took the stairs at a flying run, two and three at a time. Michel’s heart pounded hard and heavy, almost in time with the screen dot. His breath rasped short; he was heavier than he’d have liked, and at moments like this it told.

Michel took the passenger seat, and the youngest of them, a lanky, twenty-nine year old Montreal anglophile named Phil Reeves, drove. His heavier, twelve years older, bulldog-expressioned Quebecois partner, Maury Legault, sat in the back. In age, build and countenance, Michel was practically a hybrid between them. Except that in certain lights and at certain angles, his high cheekbones and the slight almond slope of his dark brown eyes gave away his part Mohawk ancestry. But now as they sped off and he caught his own reflection briefly in the side window, he looked as hangdog as Maury. Defeated. Three years work funnelled now into only frantic minutes, and it was all fast slipping away.

Michel watched the dot bleep deeper. As they approached Lafontaine, he could tell now that the van was on Ontario, the next cross street. He raised Chac on the radio-phone.

‘Anything on sound?’

‘Nothing significant. Some rustling and movement, traffic sounds in the background, but no voices. Nothing since Savard asked ‘what’s happ-’’

Even over the radio mike, Michel heard what had stopped Chac mid-sentence: a faint background crunching and a strangled, guttural ‘Maird!’ followed by some indiscernible mumbling from Savard. At that same instant, the screen-finder dot disappeared.

‘No, no… please no.’ Michel closed his eyes for a second as he made the breathless plea. He swallowed hard, fearing the worst with his next question. ‘Have you still got sound, Chac?’

‘Yeah… still there. Heavier rustling now, and Savard’s breathing’s more laboured. Now he’s coughing… or sounds like him. The others wouldn’t come over that clearly.’

Michel slowly let out his breath and opened his eyes again. Thank God at least they still had that. The directional signal had been in Savard’s watch, the wire — because they knew Savard would likely be searched vigorously by Lacaille — was sewn discreetly into his coat lapel.

‘They’ve obviously only smashed his watch. Let’s just pray they don’t find the sound bug.’ But he knew it was practically worthless unless Savard’s captor’s actually spoke, gave some clue of where they were headed. ‘Link me in directly to the wire, Chac. We’re running blind here. Maybe I’ll be able to pick up something from background traffic and city sounds.’

As soon as the wire feed came over the radio, Michel turned it up. The hiss of static and faint rustling filled the car. Michel immersed himself in it, blotting out completely the surrounding traffic noise as Phil sped along Rue Ontario. After a moment he could pick out the rise and fall of Tony Savard’s breathing. A faint cough, a swallow. Then a few seconds later Tony Savard’s voice came over, loud and distorted.

‘Where are we going? I can’t see nothing with this hood on?’

Michel clenched a fist tight. Savard was trying to tell them what he could. No answer returned. Michel honed in on background sounds beyond Savard’s breathing: traffic drone, a horn beeping, faint distant siren wail. Michel turned the radio down. He couldn’t hear the siren himself from outside, which worried him. It meant that they weren’t anywhere close to Savard.

Michel patched in to the other car. ‘Mark, can you hear a siren from where you are?’

Moment’s pause, then: ‘No, nothing here.’

‘We’ve lost directional, but we’ve still got wire sound. Any fix on where they’re headed from where you are?’

‘We followed what you last gave us, east on Ontario. But no sign of them. They gained a good half mile when the truck blocked us. They could be anywhere.’

‘Okay. I’ll let you know if we pick up anything useful on the wire.’

Back to Savard’s breathing. The siren had now faded from the background. Then after a moment in gruff Quebecois, the first comment from Savard’s captors.

‘Where’s our drugs money, Tony?’

‘Quoi?… What drugs money? I don’t know nothing about that. I was there for a meet with Roman Lacaille.’

‘Don’t know the man personally. Now, again — where’s our money, Tony?’

‘I don’t know… don’t know what you’re…’

Chac’s voice crashed in. ‘More action here. Roman Lacaille’s Beamer’s just rolled up. He’s getting out with another man, bold as you like… looking around.’

Michel’s stomach fell. Whatever was going to happen with Savard in the van, Lacaille was distancing himself from it. ‘I turned up as arranged, but he’d already gone. And half a dozen RCMPs know it couldn’t have been me, because they were watching me through binoculars.’

‘Now he’s lifting his arms in a “where is he?” gesture.’

Michel could picture Lacaille gloating as he made the gesture. He closed his eyes and solemnly nodded. ‘Okay. Nothing we can do with him, though. And he knows it. Put me back to the wire.’ Staying with Lacaille wasn’t productive.

‘…last time. Where is it, Tony?’

‘I told you… I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’

A heavy pause, background traffic drone returning, Savard’s breathing laboured, expectant. Then finally: ‘Well… if he’s not going to talk.’

Michel tried to discern what was happening from the next sounds: heavier rustling, movement closer to Savard, then a guttural ‘Espece d’encoule! What the fu… uuugh,’ receding quickly into two more grunts and heavier breathing from Savard, now raspier, more nasal. Michel guessed that Savard’s mouth had been bound. The rustling and movement receded, then after a second a fresh voice came from the front.

‘Bon. So, where are we going to do this?’