“It’s not allowed. No one brings weapons in this place. Not even the RCMP.”
Delorme put a hand inside her blazer. “Think about it, Fritz. Why would they take the manacles off if I wasn’t armed?” She pressed the buzzer again.
“He won’t come. It’s change of shift.”
Possible self-defence scenarios were flashing through Delorme’s mind. A leap to the table, kick to the head.
“Let’s get back to Laura Lacroix. She may still be alive. If you help us save her, that could look very good in your file.” Delorme opened her folder, pulled out a photograph and held it up.
“What could you do if I decide to hit you a few times, ruin that pretty face?”
Delorme sat forward and tried to look bigger. “And what are you going to do when I tell them you made repeated threats? That you refused to stay seated? How do you think that’s going to play at your parole hearing? I’ll tell you exactly how it’ll play: Petition denied. Shows no remorse. Still a danger.”
“I was not threatening.”
“Do it again and I’ll make sure you never get parole. I’ll devote my life to it.”
Reicher went to his chair and sat down.
“Press the buzzer, please. I don’t like you. I want to go back.”
“Tell me why Leonard Priest wanted Regine Choquette dead.”
“He didn’t. It wasn’t intentional. I told you. I did it. It was an accident. Call the guard, please.”
She pressed the buzzer yet again. Where the hell was he?
“Why are you protecting this killer, Fritz?”
“Leonard is not a killer. He is my friend. He looks after me. Takes care of me. Loves me, even.”
“You think Leonard Priest loves you?”
“Maybe he doesn’t say so in words, but I know he loves me. He gets me a lawyer I can’t afford. Sends me money, packages.”
“You think Leonard Priest loves you? He’s the one who got you into this mess, and he’s out there laughing.”
“Okay, you want to play the nasty bitch?” Reicher stood up, flexing his giant hands. “You want to play this game with me? Fucking cop bitch, I’ll-”
The clack of the lock.
Reicher lowered himself to the chair and put a benign expression on his face. Apparently the acting lessons had paid off’ the transformation was remarkable.
A guard entered. A different guard.
“Please take me first,” Reicher said. “I want to go back.”
“Yeah? You in a hurry to get back to your cell?”
“Yes, please.” He turned back to Delorme, suddenly chatty, friendly. “I don’t want to miss Days of Our Lives. It’s the best. There’s a dog-walker character sometimes. Celine? She’s going to turn out to be a blackmailer or an imposter or something, I just know it, but I like her a lot. She likes the dogs she’s walking. It’s not just a job, you know. It’s a profession. To be good at it takes a special person.”
“Nice talking to you, Fritz. I’ll send you a dog book.”
“Really? Ha ha. Games again. You’re worse than me, Detective.” He raised clasped hands for the guard.
“Jesus Christ,” the guard said. “What’d you do with the bling, Fritz?”
“Johnson removed them. It’s an error, obviously.”
“Up against that wall right now.”
Reicher got up and leaned against the wall.
“Make one move and I crack your skull wide open. Got that? One move and I turn you into an eggplant. Ma’am?” The guard jerked his head toward the door.
Delorme got up, cold with sweat, and went out.
The guard manacled Reicher to the chair, stepped into the hall behind her and locked the door.
“I’m glad it’s you,” Delorme said, “and not Johnson.”
“Oh, yeah? Why would that be?”
“Because I would have killed him right here.”
Giles Blunt
Until the Night
From the Blue Notebook
An evening lecture in the Arcosaur mess.
This was something we did twice a week. Partly it was a way of making our supply of VHS tapes last longer, and partly it was a way for us to keep each other apprised of progress on our various projects. The field of Arctic research is a small one and yet, within it, even within the same room at the same camp, it’s possible to have two scientists sitting next to each other in mutual incomprehension.
The evenings were informal and more for the benefit of the junior researchers than the old hands. It gave them a chance to practise their presentation skills in front of people who might have some influence on their future-a chance to display their private data hoard.
The wiring in the mess was unreliable, especially when the temperature got much below minus thirty, so these talks were often bathed in candlelight. I was being visited by an uncharacteristic fit of benevolence. The faces of my colleagues hovering and glowing in the half dark. The precariousness of our existence thrummed within me, the sense of how little stood between us and certain death should our generator fail entirely, say, or our supply lines be cut off for a serious length of time. Such a sense can drive a man sentimental.
Ray Deville stood in front of a whiteboard lit by two standing flashlights. His talk was rambling, repetitious, almost incoherent, but his accent was entertaining. Vanderbyl, Ray’s thesis supervisor, sank lower and lower in his chair, pressing his chin into his chest. He was possibly the worst adviser Deville could have had. A nervous soul like Ray needed the parental touch, motherly if possible. Rebecca would have brought out the best in him, but oceanography was not her field and her university was fifteen hundred miles distant from his.
Wyndham came up with a question for him, a kindness that got the young man on track for a few moments. His enthusiasm for his subject welled up and he spouted findings none of us would have been aware of.
I thought of the dead youth the Inuit “ghost” had brought us. We had heard back from researchers at Laval- terribly excited researchers-that they were pretty sure he was a member of the doomed Franklin expedition. The recent opening of three graves on Beechey Island had revealed that one of them, marked “Roger Arlington in his twenty-first year,” was in fact empty. Their theory: Young Arlington had been banished from the expedition- effectively executed-for some unknown crime. The empty grave was an effort to avoid uncomfortable questioning upon their return.
It was thought best not to mention any of this to young Deville, who was already spooked enough. In any case, for those few moments under Wyndham’s gentle prodding, the candlelight seemed to reach him, and he shone.
On clear nights such as this one, the stars were preternaturally bright, their ancient energy made new. When a few hours later I woke from a deep sleep, the walls of my cabin were glowing. I thought I was still dreaming, because my cabin seemed so absurdly colourful that it could occur only in a Disney film.
I sat up in my sleeping bag and looked out the porthole window. The night was awash with light. Some of the others were already outside: Rebecca and Vanderbyl, Wyndham and Dahlberg, four dark figures, faces to the sky in attitudes of amazement, as if all four were simultaneously receiving the stigmata.
High above, a waterfall of red poured down from the black heavens.
The next thing I remember, I was standing outside. The cold must have been blistering, but I have no memory of it. I stood like the others, drinking in the aurora. Red is the rarest, and this red was so brilliant and mobile it was as if an incision had been made in the exact centre of the sky and ruby light cascaded from the wound.
So incredibly red-I think it was Jens who spoke-I’ve never seen red before, never even heard of it.
It’s at least two hundred kilometres up, I said. Solar wind colliding with high-altitude oxygen. Green and yellow are generated at about sixty kilometres.
I saw a blue one once, Vanderbyl said. They think it’s caused by ionized nitrogen. I’ve only seen it that one time-in Svalbard. Our pilot actually wept.
