Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (211 page)

“I should be getting paid. Police consultant,” he laughed, wiping his greasy hands on a rag hanging on the handlebar. “Any word on who killed Sam?”

Green shook his head and chose his words carefully. Tolner had a love of gossip and far too much time on his hands. For someone as energetic and outgoing as him, it was a dangerous combination. Green erected the standard police stonewall.

“We’re pursuing a number of leads. But so far we haven’t been able to connect with his son.”

Tolner’s eyebrows arched. “He’s a suspect?”

Green shook his head again, intrigued that should be Tolner’s first thought. “He’s next of kin.”

He thought the man looked faintly disappointed. “Well, I haven’t seen the son in years. Not since the wife’s funeral.”

“And how were things between father and son then?”

“Tense.” Tolner hesitated. “I don’t think it’s easy growing up with a psychiatrist for a father. Especially one who specializes in young people. And Sam—may he rest in peace —Sam could be arrogant.”

“Know-it-all?”

Tolner rolled his eyes. “And how. But David was no pushover either. Wore blinkers his whole life through so he would see only what he wanted to. Nearly killed the family dog once, I remember, kicked it down the stairs in a fit of temper. The fights in that house must have been stupendous. Poor Evie was the glue who kept that family together.”

And when she was gone, it flew apart, Green thought. However, that was no reason for murder years later, and that line of speculation was better saved until Levesque’s team had located the son. He switched gears, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Do you know if there have been any threats or attacks around the neighbourhood against elderly people? Or Jews?”

Tolner’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Attacks against Jews? You think it was a hate crime?”

“No, we don’t,” Green said, moving quickly to squelch Tolner’s overactive imagination. “I’m casting a broad net, looking at all possibilities. You hear things. Anyone had a minor attack or threat?”

“What’s an attack? ‘Hitler should have finished the job, pig’? We get a few of those, mostly those of us who wear a
yarmulke
or other visible sign.”

“Anything worse? Intimidation? Physical threats?”

Tolner bent over his bike and spun the wheel, watching its alignment. “Nothing much. Every time Israel does something not so nice to the Palestinians, we feel it on the streets. Mostly a glare here, a slur there.” He raised his head thoughtfully to study Green. “Intimidation is a subtle thing, Mike. A group of youths come the other way down the street, black kids swaggering along, or Arabs talking loud and excitedly, and I feel afraid. They stare me down, and I want to take my
kippeh
off, cross the street and keep my eyes on the ground. I don’t. I force myself to walk towards them, and in my head I pretend they’re a group of chattering school girls. I smile at them, and I step out of their way. So far nothing has ever happened to me. Not even a muttered racial slur. But they own that little strip of street that we’re on, and boy, you feel it.”

“What if you didn’t step aside? What if you tried to stare them down?”

“I’m not fool enough to test the idea. You’re a cop, you know all about this top dog game. They don’t want to beat you up, they just want you under their heel. All the rest—the Swastikas on the graves, the eggs on the synagogue door—is designed to further put you down. So they can build themselves up.”

Green nodded. He was very familiar with the psyche of the bully and the street punk, who used the only tools at hand —their size, numbers and body language— to capture some of the power that belonged to others. It was primitive, caveman psychology, but on a dark street corner, all of us were hardwired to respond. Fight or flight.

Green could almost hear Sharon shaking her head and muttering “you men”. Since the caveman days, men had banded together, puffed up their team and strutted in front of the other side, testing their power and comparing their strength. Society was more complex now, and power was measured not just in brute strength but in money, possessions, jobs and trophy women, but that basic instinct still lay just below the surface. How did a man feel when his power faded? When he was alone, old and frail, no longer with the job and status he had enjoyed? How would he respond to a group of young men swaggering down the street as if they owned it all? Flight, like Tolner?

Not Rosenthal.

Eight

Look, Daddy! I tied my new shoes all by myself!” Green bolted awake just in time to intercept his son, who was making a flying leap into the middle of his parents’ bed. Grey daylight was barely peeking around the edges of the blinds, and Green shivered as he groped his way to peer out the window. Wednesday morning looked blustery and raw, an early hint of the winter to come. Charcoal storm clouds were billowing in from the west, scattering dry leaves along the street. Overhead a horde of Canada geese honked southward.

Sharon was still fast asleep, and with her stretch of evening shifts, he knew she needed all the sleep she could manage. In the background, he could hear the sound of the shower running. Miraculously, Hannah was up.

Tony talked in dramatic stage whispers as Green led him back into his own room and helped him select some of his brand new X-Games clothes for school. The choice proved so difficult that they had no time for breakfast, and Green ended up piling Tony into the car with only a bagel and juice box. His protest was loud enough to wake the neighbourhood until Green threw in a bribe of two Oreo cookies for snack. Sharon would not be impressed. It was Green’s turn to do the school car pool, and by the time he had delivered all three chattering five-year-olds to the school yard, his head felt as if it had been jackhammered.

As abruptly as the chaos had begun, it was quiet again. Heading in to work, Green slipped in a Sarah Slean CD and balanced his bagel on the steering wheel as he savoured his coffee with his free hand. Thank God for solitude, he thought, letting the gentle lyrics wash over him.

He was anxious to get to the station before Brian Sullivan did his morning parade. Whenever there was a major new homicide investigation, Green liked to attend the briefings. However, by the time he’d delivered the children to school and fought his way past all the downtown construction, the preliminaries were over and Sergeant Levesque was just getting up to summarize the Rosenthal case to date. She used the most modern computer software and entered the updates on a smart board as they came along.

“The dentist has confirmed our
ID
of the victim. And we have identified two of the four men on the pawn shop video. One’s a frequent flyer—our good buddy Nadif Hassan, currently out on bail in the Rideau Centre assault, and the second is a YO named Yusuf Abdi. Both of these men had preliminary interviews on Monday as part of our canvass of known gang members in the area. Nadif Hassan claimed he was home all Saturday night, and his mother corroborated that.”

Eyes rolled. Mothers and their little darlings. Levesque smiled and flicked her ponytail to show she wasn’t duped. “Since there are eight children in that household, I’m not sure she’d even notice. We will interview him again.”

“This morning?” Sullivan asked.

She shook her head. “I want to get some leverage on him first, so I asked Detective Jones to get warrants for a wiretap and a search of his residence. We’re looking for a bat or some other long, round weapon, bloodstained clothes, plus the items stolen from the victim—his shoes, watch, rings.” She nodded towards the unit’s warrant drafting wizard, who had just rushed into the room clutching some papers. “Any luck, Detective?”

Jones waved the papers, grinning. “I got Judge Olds. I knew he’d just bought a retirement condo for himself and his wife in that upscale new high-rise in the Byward Market.”

Appreciative laughter rippled through the room. While Levesque lined up the logistics and personnel for the search, Green leaned in close to Sullivan. “Who’s feeding the media, by the way?”

Levesque swung around from the smart board screen on which she’d been writing assignments. It was her first notice of him, and she didn’t miss a beat. “I am, Inspector Green. I wanted to shake the gangs up, see who panics.”

After yesterday’s headlines, the mayor and city council are the most likely to panic, he thought, but he said nothing. From Levesque’s point of view, it was the right thing to do, and it might even net them more resources for the fight against street gangs. She clicked, and a mug shot flashed up on the screen. The man had skin as smooth as polished ebony and large eyes fringed by long, almost delicate lashes, but those eyes were cold as they stared at the camera. Marie Claire Levesque tapped the screen.

“Nadif Hassan is our number one guy right now. He lives and operates in the area, and he does not hesitate to use violence. So I also want a canvass of the whole neighbourhood. Find someone he bragged to, find some place he tried to fence the proceeds.”

Green could stand it no longer. “Hassan is a businessman. He commits crimes to settle a score or send a message. He doesn’t beat an old man twelve times with a baseball bat, adding one for good luck at the back of the neck, just to make sure he’s dead.”

She was ready even for that. “He’s also a hothead, and he’s under a lot of pressure right now. The old man fought back, maybe challenged him to the very end. And Hassan knows any more felonies while he’s on trial for the Rideau Centre knifing will make things much worse for him. He probably realized the old man could identify him, so what started as a mugging finished with this. Twelve hits with a baseball bat. And...” Levesque glanced at him with the merest hint of a smile, “there is also the anti-Zionist feelings. Hassan is a Muslim, Rosenthal was a Jew. A supporter of Israel. The destruction of the Star of David suggests that Hassan was angry at that.”

Green nodded. She hadn’t thrown out his wild speculation. Sullivan was right; she was good. Nadif Hassan was not going to know what happened to him once Marie Claire Levesque got him by the balls. Nonetheless, Green didn’t expect the house search to bear much fruit. At twenty-three, Nadif was a wily veteran of numerous police raids, which began with schoolyard assaults at age ten, and he would have learned to keep his premises clean.

Green had barely worked his way through his morning’s emails, however, when his phone rang.

Sullivan was chuckling. “Never underestimate the stupidity—or greed—of your average bad guy.”

“Levesque found something on the warrant?”

“Not much. Our boy Nadif thought he’d covered his tracks. Not a trace of bloody clothes or sneakers, not even in the trash out back. No weapon longer than a six-inch paring knife.”

That’s because his father had confiscated all the knives after the stabbing incident, Green recalled. As if that would somehow keep his son in check. Green remembered the tall, slender, dignified man who rarely spoke above a soft murmur. He drove a taxi and was an elder in the Somali Community Association, helping his fellow immigrants adjust to Canadian life. He had been ashamed of his own son’s behaviour and made constant attempts to steer the boy back on the right path. The efforts had merely driven the young punk deeper underground. He became more adept at lying, crying racism and mistranslating official documents brought to his parents’ attention.

“To judge from the sports equipment in the basement,” Sullivan was saying, “the kid’s never heard of baseball. Just basketball. His room was clean—too clean if you ask me— and he’s got no visible scratches or bruises.”

Green had been waiting impatiently for the “but”. Finally he supplied it himself.

“There were fresh ashes in the fireplace,” Sullivan replied.

Green perked up. In September, when the city had been enjoying glorious, sunny summer weather, people were putting on shorts and sandals, not lighting fireplaces. “Any trace evidence?”

“Nothing visible to the naked eye, but Ident has swept it clean and taken every last ash for analysis. We may get lucky.”

“Fireplaces aren’t great for burning clothes,” Green observed. Or anything else, he thought, remembering his dismal efforts to start or sustain a decent fire in his own living room. Of course, what did he know from fires, Sharon would say, laughing from the sidelines. He refocused. “Not unless the guy got it burning full tilt. And that presumably would attract his parents’ attention.”

“Doesn’t really matter,” Sullivan said. “He doesn’t have to know what we managed to find in the ashes.”

“No, could be the thin edge we need.”

“It could.” Now Green could hear the merriment in Sullivan’s voice. “But we’ve got something even better. Down in the basement, hidden in a box behind the furnace in among the spider webs, where he thought we wouldn’t find them, was a nice shiny pair of black Gucci dress shoes. Now, if we can tie them to Rosenthal, I’d say the little prick is toast.”

Levesque did not bring Nadif in for questioning right away. She knew there was not enough to tie him to the murder itself—no blood on his clothes, no murder weapon—and that even a semi-competent newbie legal aid lawyer could walk right through the holes in the police case. Instead she let him stew while she waited for the preliminary results from Ident.

The scales tipped in her favour late that afternoon. Sullivan was in the field checking out a call, and Green was just returning from a meeting with the
RCMP
. He spotted Levesque on the phone and could tell from the glow in her eyes that something had broken. After she hung up, she pumped the air with her fist. At the sight of him, she cut the celebration short.

He grinned. “News, Sergeant?”

She didn’t hesitate. No suspicion of his motive, no jealous guarding of her turf. “The shoes, sir. The bastard tried to clean them up, but he couldn’t get into the cracks and the stitching around the sole. Ident found traces of blood. It still has to be analyzed at the lab, but—”

“Our suspect doesn’t have to know that. The fact we can
ID
it as blood should be enough to rattle him. What about the ash?”