A Door in the River

He kept examining the steel lattice that held the pipe closed. It was level with the roof of the room. Why would they have put a grille on that pipe? He’d been worrying this question for an hour now. There was no way up the pipe, of course, but closing the bottom of it off could present the possibility that someone would drop something into it. They were meant to die slowly in here, but the pipe could ensure a quicker demise in an emergency. There would be no escape from water or gas, and an explosive tossed into the pipe would sit at the level of the ceiling and bring tons of earth down on them.

This case had gotten worse and worse. He’d heard of things like this happening, and there had certainly been cases like it in Toronto during his time there, but this operation had been so rustic that its cruelty and deviousness took his breath away. Literally. The illegal casinos were a fact of life everywhere, but to hide something else inside of one, like an afterthought? This was more than a sideline, though. It was the work of a person who could convince others to follow. Wingate wondered now if he would survive to learn if this case would be solved. It would be a pity to die in an unsolved case. Hazel would see to it, though, that his body was recovered and given a proper burial.

When he heard something land in the lattice with a dull clank, he realized, ruefully, that his surmise had been accurate. He’d been good at his job. It made him think ahead. He’d had about half an hour to prepare, but it wasn’t going to be enough. He’d used his belt buckle, but he was fairly sure, when he heard the fuse sizzling in the ceiling, that he was passing his last moments on earth. He thought of David.

Ray Greene had a force of ten men and two mechanical teams descend on the soy fields. Helicopter support had been ordered in from Mayfair, and he could hear them in the distance, closing. The incendiary team blew the door in the grove open and five men went in. The other mechanical, using the gridmap Howard Spere had created, brought an excavation digger to the place they believed the underground hold was. There was no need for Spere’s map: there was an indentation in the wave of soybeans and it led to a small cave-in about two by two metres and ten centimetres at its deepest point. A little scoop in the field. Dust and smoke was still floating up from a circular opening they found in the middle of the plants. Greene called in his other team and told them to collect evidence, but not to enter the tu

“Try to go easy,” Greene said, and the guy in the digger gestured at the giant metal scoop he was operating. “Well, try anyway!”

The man let down the head of the digger and scraped a groove in the dirt. Greene winced. When the operator dumped his load, it looked like a beach pail’s worth. Anyone who was down there had a long wait ahead of them, unless they were already dead.

LeJeune rang him on his cell. “Are we still radio silent?”

“As far as I know.”

“And is the detective inspector there?”

“No,” he said, “but your car is.”

“My car? Where is – ”

“She traded up. She’s in your colleague’s Mercedes. They’re headed north in it.”

“She dumped my cruiser?”

“Did you know Bellecourt drove a Mercedes?”

“No,” she said, after a moment.

He took a few steps toward the road, where he could see LeJeune’s car better. The two officers were circling it, and one of them was putting his firearm away. The other kneeled at the front of the crushed hood. “It seems to be shorter now.”

“What?”

“We’ll have to work this out later, Commander. I’m trying to dig a hole here.”

“Seems the one you are standing in is deep enough.”

The digger was down almost a quarter of a metre in the middle of the depression. It scraped something, and the operator came out onto his step. “Skip?”

Greene came back to the excavation. “What is it?”

“There’s a pipe down there.”

He waved the digger back as well as the two men returning to the middle of the field. He tested the surface of the indentation as he walked across it to where a plain five-inch pipe was bent against the dirt. He leaned down to it. “Fried banana.”

“Meaning?” asked one of the returning officers.

“Dynamite,” Greene said. He put his eye to the opening and then pulled back, blinking furiously. Before anyone could inquire what had happened, he’d put his face back down and was talking into the pipe. “My name is Superintendent Raymond Greene. Can anyone hear me?”

He turned his ear to the pipe. After a moment, he repeated his message.

There was a faint whisper in his ear. He bolted upright, then anxiously settled himself again. The voice was faint and weak. “My name … Katrina … Volkov.”

“Hello! Hello! Can you hear me?”

“I hear …”

“Are you injured?” he asked. “Can you see or hear anyone else down there?”

But there was no further reply. Greene stood and backed away from the opening. He waved the operator back into his cab. “Get going,” he said. “Do it as quickly and safely as possible.”

He made room and drew his other officers back with him. There were voices in the distance, men emerging from the stairway that led down under the grove.

Wingate had not been alone down there. He’d either been put with other prisoners or he’d been trying to effect a rescue when the place had been blasted. Either way, he was due for a commendation. Greene only hoped he wouldn’t be giving it to him posthumously.

] 34 [

Approaching dusk

Constable Lydia Bellecourt slumped in the passenger seat of her battered Mercedes. Hazel had thought of putting her in the back, but the woman was surely capable of doing something that might have killed them both. She wanted to keep an eye on her.

She alerted incoming cruisers not to go all the way to the house; she wanted to be left alone with Bellecourt as the sole bit of stimuli. But officers were to cut off every point of exit from the escarpment, including sideroads that led down and away from the lake. There were to be no sirens. She was relaying her play through Wilton, who conferenced in Ray Greene as well as five cars on each of her calls. She had entered the escarpment. Bellecourt, who had become moribund with defeat, now seemed to rouse, a faint but rapt look on her face. Hazel had never made a large-enough allowance for the madness of others. She had been subject to any number of moods in her life, but never had she been anything but bitterly sane. Surely there was a place in every person where the spark of their insight into what they really were was present, and viable.

“You need to face what’s happening,” Hazel said.

“Go left here,” said Bellecourt quietly.

The topmost road on the escarpment was Highland Crescent. Now Bellecourt sat up in her seat. She drew the back of her hand shakily over her lips and tucked a strand of hair over her ear. Hazel watched the house numbers go by. She stopped well short of number 175.

“I’m going to get out of the car now. You stay there until I open your door and then you get out. I have you in a beam of light right now, do you understand?”

Hazel got out, the gun trained continuously on her passenger, and she came around the front of the car. Bellecourt sat calmly, the eyes in her wrecked face tracking Hazel. She pulled the door open and shot a fast look down the street in case Lee Travers did have some powers she’d not yet encountered in another person, but the street was empty. Bellecourt slid out. She was holding her head at an angle, and the blood still seeped from her temple. Hazel marched her prisoner in front. “Don’t give me a reason to react quickly.”