“He’s keen on the case. He wants to be up to speed when he gets back.”
The phone on Laurent’s desk rang. He picked it up and listened.
“OK. Thanks.”
He replaced the receiver and looked up at Vanier.
“Father Drouin is downstairs. He showed up at the front desk and said that you had been looking for him.”
“Have them put him in Interview Room 2. I’ll talk to him. You watch from outside. Make sure that we get it all on tape. I want a transcript. Let’s go.”
They took the elevator down to the basement. The building was quiet. Headquarters was on minimal staff, with officers taking a short break from the madness, trying to build family as kids laughed and friends told stories. Vanier wondered why Fletcher couldn’t let go. Why was he calling for updates?
10.30 AM
Interview Room 2 was designed to elicit the kind of communication that occurs between doomed miners trapped hundreds of feet below ground, intimate, and of no consequence to the outside world. It was a stark, windowless box, empty except for a table and two chairs, with a two-way mirror built into one wall. The mirror encouraged introspection. Father Henri Drouin sat on one of the flimsy plastic chairs, his shoulders sagging and his eyes staring at the floor. Vanier walked in carrying a yellow note-pad and a brown envelope, nodding at Drouin without saying anything. Drouin half rose from his seat and returned to his sitting position. Vanier reached out his hand, and Drouin stood again to shake it, looking like he hadn’t laughed in twenty years, like he was carrying an invisible weight.
“I’m Detective Inspector Vanier, Major Crime Squad. I was looking for you last night at the Cathedral. The priest who answered the door said that you disappeared after lunch and nobody knew where you were.”
“It’s a problem that I have, Inspector. Every Christmas it’s the same thing. The priestly equivalent of post- partum depression, I suppose.”
Vanier thought that was an attempt at humour, but checked himself. Drouin was serious. “Are you depressed?”
Drouin sat up. “Advent is such a wonderful time in the Church, building up inexorably to that glorious moment when our Saviour is born. The churches gradually fill with the faithful until Christmas morning, when it’s standing room only for the flock adoring their Creator. And then, the next moment, it’s empty again. They’re only there for the show. When I look at the packed church at Christmas, I can’t help thinking how empty it will be after the last service, and how it will stay empty for most of the year.”
“The three Bs, I suppose,” said Vanier.
“What?”
“Baptism, bondage and burial. Most people only want the church to be there for the baptism, the wedding and to see them off in style at the end.”
“Something like that, Inspector. It’s the church as theatre, and Christmas is a perennial favourite. It’s always a shock, and I’ve never learned to deal with it. I get angry. Then I get sad and question myself. Then I question the faithful. Then I question the church itself. With experience, I have found that the best thing to do is to just get away.”
“So where did you go yesterday?”
“I went to my family, to my sister and her husband in Dorval. That was a mistake. They have their children and their Christmas is for the children, you know, presents first, video games and toys, then a feast and as little thought about Our Lord as they can manage. I’m an embarrassment to her.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” said Vanier.
“Oh, she loves me, in her own way, but she thinks that I’ve wasted my life.”
“And what do you think?”
The priest looked up at Vanier, but didn’t answer.
“So how long did you stay?”
“They had guests, and I saw I was holding them back. My presence seemed to remind them of what Christmas was supposed to be. I was making everyone uncomfortable. So I stayed for an hour, perhaps an hour and a half, and then I left. I drove back to town and parked at the Cathedral.”
“So what time did you get back to the Cathedral?”
“Around 5.30, maybe six o’clock, I suppose. But I didn’t want to go in. I decided to go for a walk. Around Old Montreal mostly, it was beautiful, very quiet and peaceful. There was hardly any traffic. Walking through the old streets I felt that I was back in a Quebec of the past. In a Quebec that still believed in Christ. It was comforting.” The priest drifted off, remembering his walk, Vanier waited for him to come back.
“So what did you want to see me about, Inspector?”
“I am investigating the deaths of five homeless people on Christmas Eve. Your name came up as someone who might know the victims.”
“I’ve seen the newspapers. You think they were killed, Inspector?”
“I didn’t say that. Right now, I don’t think anything. I just want to find out who these people were. We’ve got their names, but we don’t know anything about them. I thought you could give us some information about who they were.”
Vanier sat back into the chair like someone with nowhere to go, but desperately in need of a rest. He stared at the wall, giving Drouin room to talk.
Drouin waited.
Vanier barely stirred. “I’m tired. Maybe it’s the season,” he said, almost to himself. “This time of the year is difficult for many people, isn’t it, Father?”
Drouin was lost in thought and didn’t respond immediately. Finally he said, “It should be a time of rejoicing.”
“I haven’t been rejoicing. You know what I have been doing? I’ve been pulling corpses out of holes. At this time of year, who wants to do that? But you know what keeps me going? These people were daughters and sons, maybe sisters or brothers. Maybe they even had children, grown children. Grown children celebrating Christmas in their own families while their mother or father slept on the street. Did anyone spend a few seconds this Christmas wondering where any of these people were? Christmas is a time for families isn’t it, Father Drouin? No matter how dysfunctional. And yet they all died alone. I suppose that’s what hit me the most. Five deaths in one night, and they all died alone. That shouldn’t happen at Christmas.”
Vanier sat up and pulled the pack of photographs out of the envelope. He laid each of them out on the table in front of Drouin.
“Do you recognize any of these people?”
Drouin leaned over and examined each photo carefully. “Yes, Inspector. I know all of them.” He began pointing to each photograph. “Celine, Joe Yeoman, Madame Latendresse, Pierre Brun, and George Morissette. They were all what we call clients. I ministered to them. It’s hard to believe they are all dead in one night.”
“You don’t seem shocked.”
“I am beyond shock, Inspector. When I saw the reports in the newspapers I knew that I would probably know some of them. I don’t know what’s happening. I have to believe that God is at work. But He knows so many ways to test us poor humans.”
Vanier pulled a pen out of his pocket and began writing as Drouin talked, scribbling bits and pieces of information of the lives of the unknown. Even though the interview was being taped, he felt compelled to take notes, to write things down. Scribbling scraps of information in an effort to create individuals where before there had been only empty space, to make people out of corpses.
Laurent watched through the two-way mirror as Drouin released every scrap of information he had on the five. Vanier slouched in his chair but he was listening intently, for similarities and for differences, to hear what connected them, other than their common status at the bottom of the pile. Drouin talked of people who used drugs and alcohol to feel nothing, and of the more effective disconnection of mental illness. He talked of diets of hostel meals and rotten food scavenged from dumpsters at the back of restaurants, clothes picked from piles of cast-offs with nothing ever fitting or doing the job of keeping you warm or your feet dry. And he talked of the terror of street life in the winter, when the choice was between a quiet, dark corner where you might never wake up or a single bed
