The Last Witness

at Lorena gently sleeping was that she was sorry, so sorry for ever having doubted her.

THIRTY

Funicelli located a telephone junction box in a service slip-way fifteen yards along from the Hotel Montclaire, the hotel where the English woman was staying. The box also appeared to service three or four other buildings in the first stretch of Rue Berri.

He picked through and found the wires and switches for the Montclaire, then started making the connections. Four minutes, five tops, he estimated. But four or five minutes in the open by a busy street was a lifetime. He’d been uneasy just in the couple of minutes up the telegraph pole outside the Donatiens. But that had been Beaconsfield, peaceful suburbia; now he was in one of the busiest parts of Montreal. The hustle, bustle and the sheer number of things he had to keep a watch out for made it an entirely different proposition.

He’d chosen to do it early: 8.08 am. Telephone engineers often started at 8.00 am, but by the time their rosters were done and they were clear of the depots, the earliest calls were usually after 8.30 am. So he shouldn’t have to worry about a Bell Canada engineer passing and asking what he was doing.

But the rest of the city was coming rapidly to life: the flow of traffic and people passing was increasing, the occasional passer-by throwing him a glance. An East Indian by the deppaneur on the corner, possibly its owner, studied him thoughtfully for almost thirty seconds before going back inside the shop.

Funicelli was sweating cobs, his hands trembling on the wires within the first two minutes. This was a nightmare. But Roman had been insistent that they get a bug on the woman’s line.

‘We’ve got to know what progress she makes with Chenouda. If anything’s going down, it’ll probably be decided within the next few days.’

That was the other thing Funicelli had to worry about. That no faults were reported on any lines within that time to make engineers open up the junction box and discover his bug. They couldn’t risk leaving something like that inside the box for any length of time.

For the last minute he hardly paid attention to who might be passing or looking at him, his concentration was fixed intently on securing the last few wires in place.

He glanced at his watch as he slammed shut and locked the box. Four minutes twenty-two. Not bad. He let out a slow sigh as he walked down to his white van parked round the corner, but still his hands were shaking slightly as he opened its back doors and threw his tools inside.

He nodded briefly to Frank Massenat parked ten yards back on the far side as he jumped in the driver’s seat. Funicelli had kept look-out on the hotel until 10 pm, then Massenat had taken over for overnight.

Take the van back, change, breakfast, coffee, and check his cousin hadn’t burnt down his shop while he was away, then he’d return to take over again from Massenat at 10 am.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ Massenat commented as they changed over. ‘Except that at half-three she suddenly comes out and makes a call from that booth over there. Then she paces up and down as if her ass was on fire before making another call. Then back to the excitement of watching people sleep.’ Massenat shrugged. ‘And no signs of life yet this morning.’

But just over an hour later that changed as Funicelli watched her leave the hotel, girl in tow. She made a quick call from the same booth Massenat saw her use, then hailed a taxi. Funicelli followed through the mid- morning traffic two or three cars behind. A light drizzle started falling halfway along Rene Levesque and he put the wipers on intermittent. He’d already phoned Roman two hours ago to tell him that the bug had been successfully placed, but as he saw the taxi pull up outside RCMP HQ on Dorchester Boulevard, he took out his mobile to call again. Roman would want to know this news straight away.

The first half-hour of questioning was mostly fact-finding and low key. Apart from a couple of jump-backs to fill in small details at first overlooked, Elena ran through everything in historical and hopefully — to Staff Sergeant Michel Chenouda patiently listening — logical sequence: her father, Dr Maniatis with the birth certificate, the Stephanous, the orphanage at Baie du Febvre, and finally the Donatiens.

Michel Chenouda sat directly opposite her at an oval table and the papers she’d produced were spread between them. At the end of the table a tape ran while another officer at its side made brief notes. For the most part Chenouda stayed silent with the occasional thoughtful nod as she ran through the background, appeared on the surface at least to accept her story. But she couldn’t help sensing that underneath he was uneasy, harboured underlying doubt. And then the questions started to reflect that doubt, become more intent; the pressure was turned up a notch.

Chenouda shook his head. ‘But what I don’t understand is why you left it until now to try and make contact?’

‘Well, for a long while I blanked it from my mind. Then I adopted two children of my own and I started working with children in need in orphanages in Eastern Europe, mainly Romania. I think part of that was to push away the guilt that I’d given away my own child.’ Elena looked down, then towards the corridor outside. Three doors along Lorena, aka Katine, waited in an open RCMP general office. ‘It was in fact a problem with one of the Romanian children, not much older than my own daughter, Katine, that started me thinking again about my son. I’d told myself all along that he’d have been alright, he’d have gone to a good home somewhere. And suddenly it hit me that that wasn’t always true.’

‘What sort of problems?’ Chenouda looked at her keenly.

Elena felt the intensity of his stare like a blowtorch on her cheek, and her heart skipped. They’d probably known all along, and the chain of seemingly standard questions had all been leading to this coupe de grace now. She tried to cling again to the steely nerve that had made her able to walk in here in the first place. She’d paused just before the building’s wide glass doors, taking a deep breath. She thought she was okay, but walking along all she’d been able to hear was the pounding of her heart; she couldn’t even hear her own footsteps or any of the movement or activity around. Now, again, it was drowning out all else: the officer at the end was scrawling in his notepad, but she couldn’t hear it. She swallowed hard in an attempt to clear her ears. Perhaps Chenouda was just being thorough, didn’t know anything after all.

‘Well, it turns out her father was molesting her.’

‘I see.’ Michel eyes flickered down awkwardly for a second and he pursed his lips. ‘And what happened to the girl in the end?’

Elena watched Chenouda’s gaze slowly rise to meet hers, and again her resolve slipped away. They’d probably found her on the computer hours ago, and were now busily matching Lorena on screen in the office down the corridor. Her left hand on the table started to shake and she pulled it down and clenched it tight in her lap. The officer at the end looked up keenly from his notes for a moment; she hoped he hadn’t noticed.

‘She, uh… she’s gone to a foster home while the court case is pending. And at the same time she’s undergoing psychiatric assessment.’ Pretty much the scenario she anticipated with Lorena moving things on a couple of months. She’d phoned Lowndes to try and get an early morning appointment, but the closest he could fit in was 2 pm. She’d called Gordon upon leaving to see if he could delay Crowley’s alert; otherwise it would be going out about now. Maybe Chenouda’s people hadn’t found anything yet on the computer, but someone would walk in at any second. Or Lorena would slip up and forget that her name was meant to be Katine. Too many possibilities. She felt them tugging her in all directions at the same time. She must have been crazy to walk in here, crazy.

‘Right.’ Chenouda’s gaze stayed on her steadily, and for a moment she half expected him to suddenly stand up and announce: ‘But that’s not what we in fact know to be the case, Mrs Waldren.’ And signal his assistant to handcuff her. But in the end all he said was, ‘It must have been very tough on you.’

‘Yes… yes, it was.’ She let out a tired breath. As quickly as the pressure had been turned on, it was off again.

Michel contemplated the papers on the table. It would have made everything so much easier if this was a hoax, a predictable try-on from Roman. But it all seemed so real, far too intricate and detailed to be a scam: the English connection, the court order and birth certificate… the orphanage. Roman was devious, but even he couldn’t