Maid of the Mist (13 page)

The voice said, 'Inspector, how are you?' and his eyes snapped open.

The Barracuda. Vincenzi. All tan and leer.

'What the fuck do you want?'

'You asked for a lawyer.'

'I asked for a lawyer. Not a fish.'

'Come, come, Inspector. Please. You need a lawyer. I'm the best in the business. Let me help.' He crossed the cell and put his immaculate leather briefcase down on the table. He flashed pearly- white teeth at Corrigan. 'The first thing we do is get you out of here.'

'The first thing we do,' Corrigan responded, 'is you tell me why you're really here. Court-appointed lawyers don't wear suits like that.'

'No, of course they don't.' He removed a yellow legal pad from his briefcase and a fountain pen from inside his jacket pocket. 'Let's just say I like to do charity cases from time to time. It keeps my feet on the ground.'

'You haven't got a charitable bone in your body. Try again.'

'OK, Inspector, you got me. Let's just say that a friend has asked me to represent you in this matter.' His pen hovered above the first page. 'Your full name . . . ?'

'A friend of yours or a friend of mine?'

'A friend.'

'Must be yours, because I think I'm seriously short of friends right now.'

'Your full name?'

'Just tell me,' Corrigan said, 'who the fuck it is?'

'Your friend, and mine, prefers to remain anonymous. Now . . .'

Corrigan sighed. 'OK. Have it your way. It's still no go. Look, Vincenzi, we know each other. We know the kind of people you represent, and there's a world of difference between them and me. For a start, I'm innocent.'

'I don't doubt that. But it's not me you have to convince.'

'Do you think for one moment that being tied up with you is going to help my case?'

'It can't make it any worse, Inspector. You hear that sound?'

Corrigan listened. 'What sound?'

'Vultures, circling. They're out to get you, Corrigan; you should take help where it's offered.'

'I haven't done anything.'

'That's what Joan of Arc said. Corrigan, your wife and her boyfriend are dead. You threatened him with a gun yesterday. You are a close acquaintance of the woman arrested at the murder scene.'

Corrigan nodded at the wall. 'Lelewala. She's an Indian Princess,' he said, somewhat hopefully.

'Her name is Solyakhov. Gretchin. She's from Georgia – that's Russia, not the States. Naturalized Canadian. Been here five years. Three convictions for prostitution, one for possession of cocaine. When she's not too stressed out she speaks perfect English. She didn't pull the trigger, either, Corrigan. Forensics cleared her. They have nothing on you, and nothing much on her. There is
no
evidence. So it's not going to take very much for me to get you out of here – if you just give me a little co-operation. Fire me by all means once you've got your freedom, but just let me get you out of here first, OK?'

Corrigan looked at him, confused still by his apparent enthusiasm. Then suddenly it came to him and he lay back on the bed and laughed.

'What's so funny?' the Barracuda asked.

'Tell me, Mr Vincenzi,' Corrigan asked, 'do you often beat your wife up?'

They released him shortly after breakfast. Theirs, not his.

It was a long, silent walk up the stairs and through the station, his cops,
his
cops, averting their eyes all the way. He picked up his watch. Somebody had brought him a suit from his apartment and a pair of shoes. He signed papers wordlessly, he listened while a detective he didn't know told him to stay in town. He was to report to the station daily. They were holding on to his passport. And his badge. And his gun. He was suspended on full pay.

At the doorway he stopped and looked back, looked at them all. Still, their eyes went to desks, to windows, to anywhere but him.

'Thanks,' he said quietly.

There were reporters outside. Camera crews. He hesitated. He could go back and ask about the rear exit. But no, he wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. He stepped forward and was instantly enveloped. He said nothing. He pushed through. A taxi had stopped to watch the commotion. He pushed through the throng to it and pulled open the door. He climbed into the back seat. The cameramen bustled around. The reporters shouted questions he ignored. The taxi did not move, even after he said, 'The morgue.'

'What're you doing?' Corrigan asked.

'Milking the publicity,' said the driver, and sat for a further minute. Then he nodded. 'That ought to do it. Morgue you say?'

Morgue.
Morgue.

Cold.

Slab.

The attendant pulled her out. Autopsy stitches and pale, pallid, deathly skin.

But beautiful, still.

'Can you leave me with her?'

'No.'

Corrigan nodded. He put his fingers on her brow and ran them down her face. He touched her lips.

'She was shot three times,' Corrigan said.

The attendant nodded. He'd worked with him before. But he'd been a policeman then, not a murder suspect, and the difference in attitude wasn't subtle.

He kissed her on the forehead. Then he turned to the attendant and said: 'Thanks.'

The attendant nodded, then pushed her back in.

He walked to Turner House. With his collar up and the rain on his face so that you couldn't tell it from the tears. He had seen bodies before. He had killed people before. But never his own. She had no longer been his, but she would always be his. Sense and non-sensibility.

He was a cop; his first thought should have been: who?

But instead he stopped at Whiskey Nick's. It was on the way. He ordered a whisky. The octogenarian jocks were there, still, or returned. They looked at him, then they looked at the TV screen and they saw him there again. He sipped his whisky. He was coming out of the courthouse looking pale and disorientated. And then there was a reporter speaking to camera and it was Madeline. Madeline Hume. From Channel . . . whatever. The sound was turned down. He could not read her lips. But he could watch them: red, full of life, not blue, full of
nothing.
His hand shook, he dropped his glass. It shattered on the floor. The barman looked at him. Corrigan said sorry again and hurried out of the door.

He rang the bell at Turner House and a spindly woman in a turquoise jumpsuit answered the door with a reassuring smile that fell away the instant she twigged him. He asked to see Annie and she shut the door. He stood for several minutes, giving her the benefit of the doubt. Then the door opened and Annie was there looking out at him.

'Hi,' Corrigan said.

'Hi,' said Annie.

There was no invitation. He shivered. 'I'd like to see my daughter.'

After a little bit Annie nodded. 'Sure,' she said, 'come on through.'

He walked through the door. The woman from before with the shotgun was standing in exactly the same spot. 'Try anything funny,' she said, 'I'll blow your head clean off.'

'I don't do funny,' Corrigan said, and followed Annie through the house and into the kitchen. The house felt curiously empty. Quiet.

The kitchen was big in every way. Big workbenches and a cooker you could launch rockets from. Lots of catering-sized pots and pans and boxes and tins. 'You could feed the five thousand,' Corrigan said as they passed.

'Sometimes we have to,’ Annie said, without a trace of anything.

'But not today,' Corrigan said. 'It's very quiet.'

'Quiet as a morgue,' said Annie.

She took him into the backyard. It had been turned into a playground. Swings. Roundabout. Slide. It was partially covered against the elements by a wooden extension. Aimie was swinging. Singing happily. She wore a red-and-blue anorak and a smile as wide as the Niagara as she saw her daddy approaching.

'She doesn't know,' Annie said.

There was a picnic table. Corrigan sat on the table with his feet on the seat while Annie went and got some coffee and juice for Aimie. He watched her swing and joked with her. Annie came back with the coffee and set it down.

'It is quiet,' Annie said, 'and I'm sorry. For saying that.'

'It's OK,' said Corrigan.

'We go through quiet periods. Sometimes it's the weather. Sometimes it's a sad film on TV. Or a happy one. Sometimes it's the news. Day Princess Diana died, they all shipped back to their hubbies.' She shrugged.

Corrigan, looking at his daughter, said: 'What do I say? How do I tell her?'

'I usually find the truth is best.'

He shook his head. 'She's five and I'm the chief suspect. I think not.'

Steady gaze. 'Did you do it?' To the point.

'No. Of course not.'

Annie nodded slowly. 'I liked Nicola,' she said. 'But she had a lot of problems.'

'A big fat one in particular.' He swallowed. He looked away. 'I think she still loved me. I think she wanted to get back with me.' He looked back. Annie was looking at him strangely. He gave a short little laugh. 'Eternal optimist.'

'I don't think she did.'

'She
told
me she still loved me.'

'She felt guilty about what she'd done to you. But she didn't love you.'

'Excuse me?'

'We talked a lot over the past few months, Corrigan. It's what
I do.'

Corrigan took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He faked a reassuring smile for Aimie, then turned back to Annie. 'What are you trying to say?'

'I'm trying to say . . . I try to sort these women out. Whatever their problem is. Put their lives back together, or sort out a new one.'

'And?'

'She didn't love the fat guy either, if that's any consolation. She was going to take Aimie and move south. New York. Only she wasn't that strong, she needed an excuse to get out. Getting him jealous was one way, getting smoochie with you again so that he'd hit her and she'd be forced to move out. It happens a lot, Corrigan.'

'She
told
you this?' Annie nodded. 'She
used
me?'

Annie shrugged. 'We all use each other.'

'The conniving little . . .'

She dropped her voice so Aimie wouldn't hear. 'They're burying her, Corrigan.'

'Deep enough, I hope.'

'You don't mean that.'

'I fucking do.'

'No you don't.'

Aimie jumped off the swing and came running. 'Will you stop fucking cursing, Daddy?' she said.

Corrigan's jaw dropped. Annie Spitz guffawed.

A flustered Corrigan said: 'Where'd you learn that word, Aimie?'

'What word, Daddy?' She smiled as innocently and as knowingly as . . .
her mother,
and for a moment his heart stopped.

Corrigan shook his head. 'Doesn't matter, love,' he said, and stroked her hair. She ran to the roundabout and shouted: 'Push it, Daddy, push it!'

'Can you believe that?' he said to Annie.

'Heard worse from a lot younger.'

He smiled too then and crossed to give the roundabout a push. 'I wanted to thank you,' Corrigan said to Annie, 'for arranging the Barracuda.'

Annie nodded without thinking. Then she said, 'What barracuda?'

'Sorry,' said Corrigan, giving another push, Aimie shrieking as it speeded up, 'Vincenzi. The lawyer.'

'What lawyer?'

'The one that got me out. I presume he owes . . .'

'Sorry, Corrigan, but you've lost me.'

'You didn't organize a lawyer for me?'

Annie cleared her throat. 'No offence, but you may have murdered one of my girls. I'm not about to go arranging a lawyer for you.'

'Oh,' said Corrigan. 'Right.'

Annie was OK. She agreed to look after Aimie. At least until after the funeral. He had no idea when that would be. He had to pick out a coffin. Contact relatives. Explain. And all the while them thinking:
You did it.

No, I didn't.

Well who did? Your girlfriend? The Indian?

She's not an Indian. And she's not my girlfriend.

Oh yeah?

She's a Russian hooker with a conviction for coke.

Coke.

Pongo.

The convention.

Tenuous.

He tramped home towards his apartment. It started to pelt with rain. He sought shelter under a tree and watched as lightning split the sky. It probably wasn't the best place to stand. But he didn't care. If he'd had an aerial he would have lifted it up above his head and challenged Mother Nature to strike him dead. But he didn't. He rarely carried an aerial with him.

Across the road a car stopped and a window zipped down. A woman shouted something.

He peered through the curtain of rain like a nosey relative. He splashed through the puddles and peered into the car.

'I said, can I give you a lift.' Madeline.

'Oh. Sorry. I thought you were looking for directions.'

'A cop to the end.'

'This is the end.'

'I know. Get in. I'll give you a lift. Where are you going?'

He hesitated. He wanted to say, no, fuck away off, leave me alone, but he also wanted to say yes, get me out of here, take me away. Keep driving. Keep driving till the sun gets his hat out and puts it on. 'I'm torn between killing myself, picking out a coffin for my wife or solving this dastardly crime.'

She smiled. 'I don't think I've ever heard anyone say dastardly before. Not out loud.'

'I think Sherlock Holmes did. Or if he didn't Watson certainly did.'

'Is that what you're going to do, solve the crime?'

Corrigan shrugged. 'The alternatives are too depressing. And try as I can, I just can't get very excited about killing myself.'

'Get in.'

He got in. She looked sympathetically at him. 'Thanks for the piece on the TV,' he said. Her smile faded. 'It looked really good, but I couldn't hear a word of it.'

'I'm sorry,' she said, 'it's my job.'

'I know.'

A car gave her a blast from behind. Madeline started to drive. 'Were you seeing your daughter?'

Corrigan nodded.

'How's she taking it?'

'She's not. Yet. I can tell her when I can look her in the eye and say I caught the fella that did it.'

'You think it was a guy?'

'You mean, do I not think it was Lelewala?'