Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (165 page)

Green remembered Hamm that morning, slipping silently through the trailers like a cougar stalking its prey. Undeterred by police, unflinching in his goal. Green didn’t want to believe Weiss; he wanted instead to despise the man for his treachery and his self-serving cowardice, but in truth he might be right. Maybe Twiggy’s fate was sealed the moment she first laid eyes on Blakeley talking to Patricia at the hotel that night.

Whether it justified Weiss’s actions in spiriting her away was a question for the courts to decide.

THIRTY-ONE

 T
uesday morning Green awoke to the steady drum of rain upon the roof. He opened one eye to squint at the clock radio by the bed. 11:45. Half the day was over, but every muscle in his body refused to move. Mentally he reviewed his schedule, which had been shot to hell in the past week.

Blakeley was awaiting the paperwork on his transfer to Halifax, Weiss was facing arraignment on the one criminal charge they’d decided to fling at him—obstructing a police investigation—but Professional Standards would handle that. Green suspected Weiss would plead to something even more innocuous in exchange for giving them Hamm. The real villain in the piece was still on the Quebec side while the two provinces squabbled about who should have first go at him.

Green also had a routine committee meeting on the
RCMP
’s new information sharing system and a long-overdue briefing with Gaetan Larocque about what had been happening in the rest of his department in the past week. And there was also a meeting with Devine, about the inter-provincial mess he’d embroiled her in.

All of it was expendable, all of it deadly dull. Downstairs he could hear Sharon humming a Raffi tune and laughing at some antic their son was performing. Without a second thought, he rolled over, reached for the phone, and called in sick.

Wednesday morning, he was back at his desk, sorting through the extraordinary backlog of messages, memos and emails that had accumulated in his absence, when a bulky package arrived in the mail. It was bound completely in scotch tape and addressed only to “Detective Green, Homicide Department, Ottawa Police”. By some miracle it had survived Canada Post.

There was no return address. Curious, he unwrapped it carefully so as to preserve the packaging as much as possible, and extracted a well-worn student notebook. On the cover was the name “Corporal Ian MacDonald, West Nova Scotia Regiment” and attached to it with a paper clip was a simple note.

Dear detective, Danny sent this back to me before he died,
and I decided you should have it after all. If it can help save
other people’s lives, I think Ian would have wanted it. Please
don’t judge my boy too harshly.

Sincerely, Mary MacDonald

Green opened the notebook. Tight, spiky handwriting crammed every wrinkled page. With a racing heart, he began to read.

Two hours later, Green closed the notebook and sat staring into space, fighting a sense of overwhelming defeat. He still hadn’t moved when Sullivan stuck his head into his office.

“Richard Hamm is on his way over from Gatineau. Do you want a go at him?”

Anger and disgust swept through Green, chasing out the despair. He picked up the notebook and jumped to his feet. “You bet I do.”

Richard Hamm looked none the worse for wear, in body or spirit, for his flesh wound and his short stint in the Gatineau jail. He strode into the interview room two hours later with his shoulders squared, his head high and his gaze sharp with defiant pride. Green half expected him to salute as if he were greeting a fellow officer on the battle front.

“Sit down, Mr. Hamm,” Green said brusquely, to disabuse the man of any notion that he was among equals. Hamm perched on the edge of the plastic chair, poised and alert. Green let a full fifteen seconds elapse while he pretended to study the notebook.

“You’re in serious trouble here,” he said finally.

“I am aware of that.”

“You are charged with two counts of premeditated murder in the deaths of Patricia Ross and Jean Calderone, and one of attempted murder of Detective Susan Peters. You’re going to prison for a long, long time.”

Impatience flickered across Hamm’s face. “Inspector, I’ve been in theatres of war all over the world. Death was always a stray bullet away, but it was a risk I embraced without hesitation.”

“This was not a theatre of war, Hamm. Two innocent civilians were killed.”

“Innocence and guilt are all in the breadth of your vision, sir. I don’t expect you to understand. Those people were threats to the future of our country.”

Good God, Green thought with disbelief. The man is delusional, like the
SS
commanders who went to their executions steadfastly defending the necessity of their actions for the good of the Reich. Green had a sudden fear that Hamm’s lawyers would defend him on the basis of Not Criminally Responsible for his actions. But on second thought, he realized that Hamm would never permit it. He believed himself blessed not with madness but with an intellect and vision far greater than ordinary mortals.

Green wondered if it was even worthwhile asking the man about the death of one lowly, expendable corporal in his command, but before he could broach the subject of Daniel Oliver, Hamm gave a tight, patronizing smile.

“I’m not crazy, Inspector. Merely trained to accept that every mission worth achieving may require casualties along the way.”

“The mission being the election of John Blakeley?”

“No. The mission being to place a spokesman for the Canadian military and for the defence of this country into the chambers of government.”

“Even though that spokesman was himself guilty of murder?”

Hamm splayed his fingers on the table and aligned them in a perfect arc. “Blakeley made one mistake that was at worst unintentional homicide. His potential for good far outweighed that.”

“Just as Ian MacDonald made one mistake? A mistake for which he had a good deal more provocation, but for which neither you nor Blakeley were prepared to excuse him.”

“MacDonald was reckless, not heroic.”

Green tossed Ian MacDonald’s diary down on the table. “I’m referring to the time he shot two Croatian soldiers six times in the head.”

For the first time Hamm looked off-balance. He drew his elbows in as if to protect his flank and pursed his lips mutely.

“I see John Blakeley didn’t even tell you,” Green said. “Yet it’s the root of all this, Hamm. All this started with MacDonald’s momentary lapse and Blakeley’s unwillingness to forgive it.”

Hamm’s lips tightened further. “Forgiveness has no part in the military, Inspector, except in the chaplaincy.”

“On the contrary, it underlies everything. When we ask our soldiers to take a human life, there has to be a tacit recognition that the killing, although regrettable, is forgivable. Not just sanctioned, but forgiven. Otherwise, as in MacDonald’s case, it would haunt the soldiers for years afterwards.”

“Riddles!” Hamm replied shortly. “If MacDonald shot Croatian combatants after the ceasefire, he deserved whatever discipline Blakeley chose to impose. There are rules which form the basis of any military engagement, and they determine whether a killing is sanctioned, as you put it.”

“Blakeley’s punishment was to tell a young man who’d been pushed beyond his limit that he was a disgrace to the uniform, and that if news of his actions ever leaked out, it might cripple the military. He sentenced the boy to keeping the shameful secret inside for the rest of his life, with no hope of resolution or understanding.”

Hamm smiled, a tight, humourless smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You’ve obviously never heard a regimental sergeant major at morning parade. As reprimands go, that was pretty mild, and hardly justification for taking the coward’s way out at the end of the day.”

Green wanted to beat the arrogant self-assurance from his face. Did nothing touch the man? “Perhaps. But you may find living with murder a great deal more difficult than you think.”

Hamm looked straight at him. “This isn’t about me, Inspector. This is about the future defence of our country. I admit the killings I carried out were regrettable and personally distasteful, but they were undertaken with that greater goal in mind. As an officer, I am prepared to accept the full consequences for my part in the mission.”

As he absorbed the colonel’s words, Green had an eerie feeling that a deeper meaning lay hidden beneath.
His part in
the mission...
As if the elimination of witnesses had been a covert operation complete with orders, rules of engagement, and a proper chain of command.

Jesus, he thought, are we still missing something?

In ten seconds, Green was down the hall, sticking his head into the recording room. On the video, he could see Hamm still sitting in the interview room with his arms crossed and his eyes closed, trying to look bored. Tension radiated from every carefully controlled muscle.

“Brian, do we have the records of that secret cellphone yet?”

Sullivan swung around in surprise. “Yeah. The
OPP
sent it yesterday. What’s up?”

Green was already heading further down the hall, leaving Sullivan scrambling to catch up. “I have a hunch.”

In the situation room, they found Gibbs painstakingly inputting information into the major case file. The bags beneath his eyes were gone, and he sat upright, smelling of lime aftershave and fresh clothes. He abandoned his data the moment he heard Green’s request. It took him less than a minute to locate the printout of phone calls made to Hamm’s covert cellphone. All three detectives bent over it eagerly.

There were only a handful of calls made or received over the past ten days, supporting the theory that it was only used for clandestine communication. Hamm likely used his official cell or land line for normal calls. Green scanned the dates back to April 23rd, and his heart leaped in triumph as he found what he wanted. He stabbed an entry near the top of the page.

“I thought so! Hamm received a phone call at 11:03 Sunday night. That’s about half an hour after Blakeley claims he left Patricia Ross getting into a cab.” He traced his finger down the column. “The next call was one he placed at 7:04 a.m. That would be the one Weiss says he received.” Green spoke more to himself than to the others as he wrestled with the implications. “So Hamm communicated with no one between eleven p.m. and seven a.m.. If I’m right, this eleven p.m. call is the crucial call. Bob, find out whose number it is.”

While Gibbs clicked through computer links, Sullivan looked at Green questioningly. “What are we looking for?”

“The mastermind. It was staring us in the face all along. Hamm is a soldier; he’s not a lone wolf or a psychopath. He’s a little warped, a little obsessed—”

“A little!”

Green hesitated. “Okay, a lot. But his assignment was security. I don’t think he would expand his operation to include murder without an order from above.”

Sullivan stared at him in bewilderment while he traced Green’s logic. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! You think it was Blakeley after all?”

“We should know soon enough.” Green nodded towards Gibbs as new text filled the screen. “Is it one of Blakeley’s numbers?”

“No, sir,” Gibbs said. “It’s a payphone in a bistro on the corner of Laurier and Bay.”

“That’s only a two-minute walk from Blakeley’s condo,” Sullivan exclaimed. “Holy Fuck! Blakeley ordered the hit after all!”

Green’s mind was racing. Half an hour. It would have taken Blakeley a mere five minutes to walk home from the Delta Hotel, where he’d left Patricia Ross, and at most two minutes to walk from the condo to this bistro. That left more than twenty minutes unaccounted for. What had he been doing for that time? Pacing in panicky circles? Figuring out what to do? Kate McGrath’s words came back to him. She’d said Blakeley had been talking to his wife. The rock of his life, the woman who stepped in to rescue him every time he floundered.

“Not Blakeley,” he said. “His wife Leanne.”

Both detectives stared at him. Gibbs looked utterly baffled, but Sullivan’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He hasn’t lost his instincts, Green thought. He’s met the woman too.

“Why her and not him?” Sullivan challenged, testing the theory. “I’m not sure Hamm would take orders from a woman.”

“Not just any woman, Blakeley’s wife. Perhaps even more importantly, the daughter of Jack Neuss, Liberal backroom kingmaker.” Green rose to scribble his points on the blackboard. “Look at the evidence. She’s fiercely protective, and she doesn’t hesitate to run interference. Blakeley talked to her after his meeting with Patricia Ross; he himself was afraid she was the killer, and who knows better than him what his own wife is capable of?”

“Just because she’s capable doesn’t mean—”

“The call was made from a payphone away from the condo. Why?”

“So no one could trace it back to him.” “Possibly,” Green said. “But at that point neither of them knew we’d ever latch on to this phone number. I think it was made from the bistro so that Blakeley wouldn’t overhear the conversation. He knew Leanne went out shortly after he told her, and that’s why he was so afraid she was guilty.”

Silence fell in the room as the detectives considered the points on the board. Gibbs had flushed with anger, and finally he spoke. “Are we ever going to be able to get her? Blakeley will never give her up.”

Sullivan nodded gravely. “Neither will Hamm.”

“We can try,” Green said. “We should be able to connect her to the bistro and the phone call to Hamm.”

Sullivan shook his head. “She’ll just say that she phoned him to discuss the Patricia Ross situation and to get his advice. That she never, ever dreamed he would take the action he did. Which could be true, Mike.”

“It could be, but I’d bet my whole career it’s not. In fact, I bet if we check the payphone records for the time just before that 11:03 call, we might find an outgoing call to Daddy Dearest to get his advice. Leanne learned power politics at her father’s knee. She learned about ruthlessness and determination when most girls were still playing with Barbies. Blakeley is not only her whole life but the future of the Party she loves. Patricia Ross threatened to destroy them both.”