“I wondered if you guys would even show up. We got orders to call you guys with every death on the street, even the accidents and natural causes. So that’s what we did.”
Vanier looked up at the dangling arm. “Doesn’t look like natural causes.”
“No, but I don’t think anyone threw him in front of the blower either. He probably collapsed in the snow bank during the storm and got covered up. With any luck he was dead before the plow came along; I wouldn’t like to think of anyone going through one of those things alive.”
“Who noticed?” asked Vanier
“We had a car out working with the crew, and all of a sudden the driver of the blower was screaming. Seems there was an explosion of blood and body parts over his windshield and he lost it. That’s him over there.”
Gamache pointed to a man sitting in the back of a cruiser. The door was open and the man sat immobile, staring straight ahead with a blanket around his shoulders, steam rising from a coffee in his hand.
Gamache continued, “So my guy looks up and sees the arm hanging there and stops the work. We’re waiting for the Coroner to come and tell us what to do with the truck. Maybe he’ll have us get into the back with shovels. Who knows?”
Vanier looked around. Other than the blood and some bits of flesh, there was little to see. He kicked into the snow where the plow had stopped. There was about two foot of loose, grimy snow, freshly ploughed from the street, and below it the older snow was hard as concrete. It hadn’t been ploughed from the last storm. It had been dark and snowing since five o’clock, so it was possible that it happened just as Gamache described: the guy collapsed, was covered and disappeared until the plough came along.
Vanier bent to look at the business end of the blower. There was a four-foot hole behind the huge screw, but no screen over it. He turned back to Gamache. “Aren’t these things supposed to have screens on them?”
“Yes. It’s a city regulation. But when the snow is hard packed it slows down the work, everything gets clogged up. So the driver takes off the screen, and everyone’s happy.”
“Till something like this happens.”
“The screen wouldn’t have saved him,” said Gamache. “He might have taken a few more turns in the grinder but he would still have gone through.”
Just then, an Urgel Bourgie van arrived to pick up the body, causing murmurs of gallows humour; nobody had told them they would need a sieve. Vanier called Dr. Segal for a suggestion, and she arranged to have the truck parked outside the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de medecine legale for the night. Given the temperature, leaving the truck outside the Laboratoire was as good as putting it in a refrigerator. Vanier arranged to have a squad car watch it overnight, and they could figure out what to do in the morning.
10.30 PM
From the street, the Blue Angel looked like a dive, the kind most people avoid. It was Vanier’s oasis. It was run by Jan and Pavlov, two Polish brothers who came to Montreal on a freighter in 1976 and never left. One of them married the beautiful Gisele, and all three moved into an apartment over the bar. No one knew for sure which brother was Gisele’s husband. It was a delicate question to ask directly, and you couldn’t tell by the way she treated either of them; she had no obvious favourite and was loving and caustic to both in equal measure, complaining to either about the other and praising the absent one to the chagrin of the present. Vanier had long since given up trying to figure it out, putting it down to a simple menage a trois.
A long mahogany counter dominated one side of the room with wooden stools lined up in front. The wall behind the bar was lined with fridges topped with shelves of back-lit liquor bottles and a 1960s cash register. A single television screen sat on a shelf suspended from the roof. The rest of the room was lined by a Naugahyde- upholstered bench along the length of the back wall and filled with tables and chairs for those wanting a more intimate evening. There was even a postage-stamp dance floor with music from a jukebox that got stuck in 1986, the year the service company went out of business. It worked fine but didn’t play anything released after 1986. The walls were decorated with neon beer signs, with their cords descending to electrical sockets. One advertised Dow, a Montreal beer that killed sixteen people in 1966 without denting its popularity. It was twenty years before the brewery finally pulled the plug on it.
People didn’t go to the Blue Angel for the atmosphere; they went for the psychic and physical space to drink. No rubbing shoulders in crowds trying to catch the eye of an overworked bartender. No hustlers and preening hunters. When your glass was empty, someone would show up to fill it. If you wanted to talk, you could, and if you didn’t, you could sit in silence.
The New Year’s Eve trade was brisk, but nobody was rushed. The hockey game was on the TV, and the Canadiens were up 3 to 1 against Pittsburgh, so all was right with the world. Vanier was watching the game and listening to Van Morrison on the jukebox, drinking Jameson with the occasional beer when he got thirsty. He was thinking about Elise and Alex. Elise would be out with friends at some party in Toronto. There would be the inevitable boyfriend that she changed like library books. There would be the promise of a new beginning. On New Year’s Eve, everything is possible, even love. And Alex? Vanier wasn’t sure. Would he be on duty or celebrating in the comfort of camp?
He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“I thought I would find you here, Inspector.”
He turned to see Dr. Anjili Segal standing behind him, not sure how he could have missed her entrance. He broke into a smile. “There’s nowhere to hide, is there?”
“Not when you’re so predictable, Luc,” she said, lifting herself onto the barstool beside him. “It’s a hell of an evening to be alone.”
“Who said I’m alone?”
She raised an eyebrow as she settled onto the stool beside him, not even bothering to see if some woman was walking back from the Ladies.
“You never change, Luc.”
Vanier grinned. “What are you having, Anjili?”
“White wine.”
“White wine it is.”
Jan had been watching from a discreet distance, waiting to see how the meeting would play out. Now he approached with a broad grin, his arms outstretched as though he could hug her over the bar.
“Dr. Segal. How wonderful to see you again. I am thrilled. Thrilled and prepared!” He reached deep into the fridge on the back wall and pulled out a bottle of white wine. “This is just for you. It has been waiting, what, six months for you come back. Cloudy Bay, a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.”
Anjili examined the label and beamed.
“I can’t wait to taste it.”
Jan made a show of uncorking it, and Anjili made a show of tasting it; swilling it in the glass, admiring its clear pale green-gold colour, smelling the bouquet, and finally tasting a sip, inhaling air through her lips. Her eyes flashed.
“Jan, it’s wonderful, I hope you have a case of it back there, but only for me. Luc couldn’t appreciate a thing of this much beauty.”
“Then Luc is a retard.”
“I’ll have a Jameson, Jan. That is if you serve retards in here.”
“Of course we do,” he said, without taking his eyes off Anjili. “We serve almost anyone.”
A bottle of Jameson was in his hands as if by magic, and he poured a glass. And then, like all great bartenders, he faded into the background, leaving only goodwill behind.
“So how have you been, Luc?”
“I’ve had better times, Anjili. But I am glad to see you. And you?”
“I’m on the brink of a new year. What’s not to like about that? The past is packed away, and I’m off to the future with a smile. This is a great night. Tomorrow is day one. The key is to make sure that it’s not like day 365. And it’s all in here, Luc,” she said, touching her head with her finger, “and in here,” touching her heart.
“Turn the page and everything changes. If only it were that easy.”
“It’s not that easy, but you have to make the effort to break with the past and embrace the future.”
“Yeah.”
“Here’s to the future, Inspector.”
