he’s on?”
“Outlook, yeah.”
Jerry told them Outlook, hung up and ordered everyone to head over to the fire.
Ronnie Babstock answered Cardinal’s call and Cardinal asked him to hold on. He covered the mouthpiece. “Jerry, he’s probably trying to draw us away.”
“I know that. But we have to respond. She could be in that fire.”
Cardinal stepped away and covered one ear to block out the mayhem around him. “Ron. No, we haven’t found her yet. But I have a question for you.”
“What’s going on there? What’s all that noise? Have you got the guy?”
“No. Listen, Ron. That day you were up in the Arctic. The flare. How far would you say you were from where that flare went up?”
“What? I don’t get you.”
“How far were you? Best guess.”
“I don’t know. More than four kilometres. Less than six.”
Delorme grabbed his arm. “Are you coming?”
“Go with Jerry. I’ll be over in a minute.”
Delorme looked at him and he couldn’t read her expression, this woman he thought he knew so well now an unknown quantity. She turned from him and followed the others.
“Why are you asking this, John? What’s going on?”
“Karson Durie was aiming for some kind of symmetry. Wanted to take Hayley to the exact spot he nearly died, but got stopped. Four to six kilometres is your best guess? What kind of angle was it?”
“What?”
“From where you stood. You were on a ridge, right? From where you stood on that ridge to where that flare went up.”
“You know about the ridge? I didn’t tell you about the ridge.”
“The angle, Ron. The angle. Now.”
“It was about two o’clock from where I stood.”
“Two o’clock. So you’d say about ten degrees?”
“Two o’clock would be seven point five-but look, I didn’t do a compass reading.”
“Understood. Another question for you-is there anyone at your lakeside house right now? Cleaning lady? Caterer? Anyone like that?”
“No, I don’t go out there when it’s this cold. Why?”
Cardinal went to the nearest neighbour’s place and banged on the door and yelled “Police.” There were two cars in the driveway, one snowmobile trailer. Someone was home.
A man came to the door in his bathrobe.
“What the hell’s going on? I was in the shower, for God’s sake.”
“I believe you own a snowmobile.”
“Yeah. So?”
“The sooner you hand me the keys, the sooner you can get back to that shower.”
Smoke was still unfurling in fat black thunderclouds from where Ronnie Babstock’s house used to be. Cardinal was no master of snowmobiles, but he knew enough to get it moving in the right direction and at a speed that felt insane after the car.
The cold scorched his face, and by the time he’d got himself in line with the fire he was wishing he had a balaclava. He’d dropped his woollen cap in the cottage or somewhere else and his ears were already beginning to go numb.
At this moment, he was the only thing moving across the ice, the only thing making a racket. He cut across a rocky point and got within two hundred metres of the smoke. The fire trucks were there, but it was a question how well their pumps would work in this deep-freeze.
He spun the machine around to face south across the lake. He had to thumb the fog off his sunglasses to see. The shadowy humps of the Manitou Islands, the random fishing huts. With his back to Ron’s house, two o’clock put him in line with the smallest of the islands. Five kilometres would definitely put him on the island. But there were a lot of huts in between.
He gunned it and the machine leapt forward. There were patches where the winds of the past week had blown the surface completely clean. It flashed beneath him in a jittery blur of black and silver.
Not all the fishing huts that had been blown from their original locations by the freak wind had been dragged back. Orange warning signs were posted near the exposed holes. The holes had frozen over again, but they would not be ready to hold the weight of a person, let alone a snow machine.
A slim, dark object off to one side caught Cardinal’s eye, and he slowed and stopped. He got off the machine and went to the object and knelt over it. A small video camera, still fixed into its tripod. A smear of blood across the brand name.
You aren’t carrying anybody to those islands, Cardinal said. You aren’t anywhere far.
He left the camera where it was and got back on the snowmobile, heading for the huts that lay between him and the nearest island. He had to veer around exposed fishing holes. The cold sank hooks into his face. It’ll be even worse, he thought, if that pain disappears.
Usually there was smoke curling from the roof pipes of the huts. Not today. He counted only three with smoke. Those he ruled out right away. If Hayley was in a hut, it would be one without heat, and if she was dressed like the other victims, she’d be dead or right next door to dead.
Cardinal had heard that the RCMP-or was it the military? — were developing a stealth snowmobile, and he was wishing he had one now. If Durie was in any one of these cabins, he was going to hear him coming. And he would hear that he was alone.
Sometimes, Cardinal thought, you have to pretend you don’t know something. I’m not making a sound. Invisible, too.
He drove right up to the door of the first hut. There was no snow machine nearby’ there wouldn’t be if Hayley was alone. The hut was a crooked wreck not much bigger than a garden shed, but he came off the machine with his Beretta in hand and kicked the door open. Coleman stove, empty Labatt cases, porn magazines.
The next hut had windows blinded with frost. He broke one with his elbow and saw at a glance the place was empty.
He moved to the next one. His fingers were barely working and he had to put his hand with the Beretta in his pocket. Again no snowmobile. Windows opaque. Drag marks where the hut had slid out of position. An unmarked fishing hole nearby, the danger sign flat on the ice.
This cabin was bigger than the others and there was blood on the doorsill. Cardinal took his gun out and checked that the safety was off. The padlock on the door was big, but it didn’t matter. Two kicks tore the hasp from the frame. He pushed the door open.
Hayley Babstock lay half-curled on a bench. Blue down jacket like the others. New boots.
“I have a Glock. 45 pointed at your spine.” The voice came from behind him. “Place the gun on the ice and kick it back here.”
“Just let me help the girl,” Cardinal said.
“Gun on the ice, Detective. You’re not rescuing anyone today.” It was a dry voice, an exhausted voice. The voice of a ghost.
“Look at her, Durie. She’s young. A teacher, but practically a kid herself.”
The shot ripped into the door frame.
“Gun on the ice.”
Cardinal lowered the gun and kicked it back. He heard the man gasp as he picked it up.
Cardinal turned around. Durie’s face was a perfect match with his voice-grey, drawn, desiccated-the face of the walking dead. “Let’s at least get inside,” Cardinal said.
“Not that one,” Durie said. He gestured with the gun at the cabin behind him.
“I think we should go in here with Hayley. You should see exactly what you’re doing. Exactly who you’re killing.”
“I’ve seen it before.”
