The Taken

of it, over the glass table, and into your lap.

Willan gestured to her to sit down and then he opened a wooden coffer on the desktop, taking a silver object from it, and pushed it over toward her. Were they going to smoke bloody cigars at seven-thirty in the morning? “Chocolate sardine?” he asked. She waved them off. “I’m an avid fisherman. And I have a sweet-tooth,” he said. “So I can’t resist them.” He unwrapped the fish and snapped it in half between his perfect teeth. “So, what a pleasure.”

“Is it?” she said.

“Absolutely. To meet the famous DI Micallef. I’m honoured.”

“Well, thank you,” she said. There hadn’t been a trace of irony in his voice. “I’m glad we’re getting a chance to talk.”

“Terrific,” he said. “So tell me what I can do for you.”

Maybe she wouldn’t have to charm this Chip Willan; he had enough charm for both of them. “Well, Commander Willan -”

“Good Lord,” he said, “it’s Chip, or you’re outta here.”

“Okay, then. Chip.”

“Hazel.”

“I’ve come to talk about the future of policing in Westmuir County.”

“Sweet.”

She rubbed her palms against the tops of her legs. “Chip… I know that there are fiscal issues the OPS needs to tackle, and of course, every detachment in this province needs to find efficiencies” – she cringed inwardly to use the word – “but I’m here today to say that I hope Central understands that it can use its voice within the provincial federation to protect its communities. Places like Westmuir, with its rural and small- town populations, can’t be policed the same way a big city is policed, and I’m a little anxious about the things I hear, about some of the changes being discussed.”

“Give me some specifics, Hazel. Specifics will help me see your issues more clearly.”

“Well, one specific is the questionnaire you – your office – sent my personnel recently. Asking them for, among other things, their redeployment choices. As in, should there come a time when they might be redeployed, what would their preferences be and so on. Before any kind of mission statement has even been issued by the OPS, to ask people where they want to go in case of clawbacks… well, I find that, with all due respect, to be a little underhanded.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” said Chip Willan. “I apologize for that. You have to understand, Hazel, I’m still cutting my teeth here.”

She felt herself relaxing into the chair. Thank God for new blood. Was this generation one that would actually allow itself to reason? “Okay, I’m glad you said that. Because I really feel we really need to sit down, all levels, and talk about what we need, and of course, keeping all of the fiscal issues in focus. But I think it would be educational, it would open your eyes, to see what we do with our resources, Chip. How well Westmuir’s detachments and community policing offices work and who they serve. And how, even though our police-to-population ratios seem high, they’re right for the places we work in. Hell, you know, we’re working on a case right now that couldn’t possibly be handled correctly if our detachments were centralized, or if there were fewer people to work on it. People’s lives depend on us being able to do the work we were trained to do, with the resources we need to do it with. It could be very bad for people if budget formulas invented for cities were applied willy-nilly to places like Westmuir County.”

He was holding his hand up, warding her off comically, as if she’d overwhelmed him. “You really need a chocolate sardine, Hazel!” He held the box to her, and now she gratefully took one and unwrapped it. It was excellent, toothsome chocolate. He watched her eat it. After a moment, he said, “Do you ever think about the dinosaurs?”

“The dinosaurs?”

“Yeah,” he said, and he leaned forward, that position that made it look like he might sail over the desk. “I mean, they were so successful. They had flying dinosaurs and dinosaurs that could eat the little leaves at the tops of ancient redwoods and dinosaurs the size of your pinkie. I just think about them sometimes, wonder who they were. Because they were everywhere and they, like, ruled the earth. But success has its costs, right? Too many dinosaur mouths, not enough trees or meat. Now, if only they’d had some smart dinosaur to tell them they had to change their ways before they screwed up all the good stuff, maybe this would still be a dinosaur planet instead of a people planet. But they didn’t have that smart dinosaur so instead the universe sent a meteorite to blow all their scaly behinds to kingdom come so the planet could start over.” Hazel chewed more slowly. He was smiling at her. “Dinosaur days are over. All the dinosaurs are gone. But we’re not going to wait for a meteor to sort us out, are we? Hell, no. We’re going to sort ourselves out. And – this is the thing, this is the hard thing even – though we want it to be about people, it isn’t. It’s about money. It’s always about money. You know that and I know that. So first we show the dinosaurs in charge that we can handle the money side of things. We take the meteor hit, you know? And after that, we make it work.”

She felt about as heavy as a brontosaurus. “Jesus,” she said. “You had me for a minute back there. I thought everything might be okay.”

“It’s all good,” he said.

“You’ll still be paid your salary, is what you mean.”

His eyes sparkled, as if he’d just fallen in love. “We need people like you, Hazel, people with a strong connection to the way we do things, so there’s continuity, you know?” He put both his palms down on his desk. His body language said they’d just solved all the world’s problems. “Change goes badly when systems fail to negotiate the transitions sensitively. We’re not going to make that mistake here. No meteorites, you know what I mean? It’s going to be more like a fine sandpaper, moving slowly over the rough patches.” He was practically beaming. “I have to say, I’m so glad we had a chance to meet, Hazel. I want you to know my door is open to you, any time, for any reason.”

She stood. “When’s it going to happen? Can you tell me that?”

“When’s what going to happen?”

“Amalgamation. Redeployments. Clawbacks.” She gripped the back of the seat she’d been sitting in, where she presumed she’d looked like a complete fool. “When are you going to start fucking us?”

“That’s salty,” he said. He stood up behind his desk, and his ergonomic little chair rolled back silently. “The needs and views of all our partners in policing will be solicited before anything happens.”

She went to the door and turned around. “I wonder how soon after policing standards go to hell up here you’ll be telling your bosses in Toronto that we’re not ‘managing our resources’ well. Because the blame for a fucked-up system always lands on the ones who have to live in it, not the ones who invent it.”

“Don’t fall for that kind of thinking,” said Willan. “You invent your own reality, Detective Inspector Micallef. And if you want it to be one in which your higher-ups are trying to suffocate you, you will wither away.”

“God, you sound like someone I know. She doesn’t live in the real world, either.”

“Happy birthday, by the way.”

“Yeah, thanks,” she said.

16

They’d put together a nice evening for her, something to mark her birthday and the beginning of a new chapter in her life, but none of it went the way they were planning. When Emily heard the door to the downstairs apartment slam shut, she knew Hazel wasn’t going to be the most receptive guest at the evening’s celebrations, and she put her hand on her granddaughter’s wrist and prevented her from opening the door to the basement. “Judging from the sound of your mother’s boots on the parquet, Martha, I’d give her a couple more minutes.”

“I can handle my own mother.”