The Calling (29 page)

'Yes, Sweetie,' said Terry, and the girl bounded
from the table to the hall. One of the Renfrew
officers had to get out of her way. Hazel realized
they would have to get someone to make up the
girl, to take the colour out of her cheeks. Rose
came back with a sheet of paper rolled up into a
tube. It took the two women holding down both
edges of the drawing to keep it open. It showed
Rose walking a stairway that went high up into a
night sky, a stairway that vanished among the stars.
She was holding Simon in her arms. Terry let go of
her half and the paper snapped shut like a blind
rolling up into a ceiling. She rushed from the room.

'I want to do this,' said Rose, taking the paper
from Hazel.

'I know you do. But I want you to understand,
Rose, that when we take Simon from here, it won't
be to Heaven. He's going to jail.'

'I can write to him though, can't I?'

Hazel blinked twice at the girl. 'That's up to your
mother,' she said.

'You know what Terry's going to say about that.'

She took Rose gently by the upper arm. 'I bet
Terry would love to be called "Mummy". I bet she'd
really like that a lot.'

She seemed to think about that for a moment,
and then she said, 'He's sad.'

'Who?'

'Simon. His heart is broken.'

Hazel leaned forward and took both of the girl's
hands in hers. 'Rose, I want you to listen to me.
This man is very dangerous. No matter what he did
for you, he's still a man who's done very bad things,
and what we're doing here today is to make things
right. For all the people he's harmed.'

'He didn't harm me.'

'I know. What he did for you was wondrous, Rose.
But he's still a murderer.' Rose was smiling at her,
stroking the back of Hazel's hands with her thumbs.
'You're a marvellous little girl, you know that? You're
smarter than most of the adults I know. But don't
make the mistake of thinking that Simon is a good
man. Tell me you know what he's done is wrong.'

'Of course I know that, silly.'

'Good.'

'But he's not a bad man, Hazel. He's just sad.'

'Okay,' said Hazel, and she released the girl's
hands. 'Go give your mother a hug, would you?'

The girl tilted her head at her, as if Hazel were
from a different species, then skipped out of the
room. Hazel watched her go, and for a moment,
the thought appeared in her mind that the
Belladonna and his intended victim had access to a
dimension she could not begin to imagine. But it
was a place where death was somehow equivalent
to life, and the transition between the two was a
holy space. Perhaps, having peered into that space
herself, it seemed not so strange to Rose. Perhaps it
was even welcoming. She wondered for a moment
if they could trust the girl.

She left the house by the back door and stood in
the denuded garden under the bare trees and got
her cellphone out. Its little screen reflected the sky.
Spere was already on his way to the site when he
answered. 'Howard? We need someone who can
make this girl look like she's on death's door.'

'There's probably a funeral home in the town,'
he replied. 'They know how to do that kind of
thing.'

'How fitting,' she said. 'Listen, what's the chance
you can get Jack to call in a prescription for some
mild sedatives to the local pharmacy here?'

'You out of whiskey?'

'For Mrs Batten.'

'Ah,' he said.

She stood scuffing the dirt with her foot and
looking at the cellphone in her hand for a moment,
as if she might be able to discern Spere's facial
expression in it. She put it back against her ear.
'Howard?'

'Yeah.'

'How chummy are
you
with Gord Sunderland?'

'What?'

'Or Ian Mason for that matter.'

'If this is your way of asking me out on a date,
Hazel, it's not going to work.'

'I just want to know how some of my other
loyal associates are going to air their grievances.'

'Look, Hazel, you're a pain in the ass, but for the
most part, you're good people. Everyone knows
that.' He paused for a second. 'Almost everyone.'

'Uh-huh.'

'I'm sorry about Ray. I am. But what he did
doesn't make any of the rest of us assholes. At least
not for the same reasons. Okay?'

'Okay,' she said.

'Good. Now you want me to call Jack?'

'Yeah.'

'I can get you whiskey, too.'

'Fuck off, Howard,' she said, but he'd made her
smile. She erased it from her face immediately,
worried that someone might see her.

'I'll catch you there,' he said, his voice lifting at
the end, as if he wasn't sure if he actually would.
She hung up, feeling anew the stab of disbelief that
Ray had betrayed her. It came at her like that raw
sensation that visits you at unexpected times after
someone dies. When, for a moment, you've
stopped thinking about it and then suddenly it
comes at you, fresh and terrible, and you realize it's
still true. Someone you loved is gone for good.

She put the phone away and leaned backward to
stretch out the tightness in her lower back. This
almost never worked, but on a night when she was
determined not to indulge in any of her regular
painkillers, it was all she had.

At ten-thirty, she called muster in the house and
the ten men and women who made up her team
gathered in Terry Batten's living room and stood
around its perimeter. Hazel invited Terry to listen
in, but she would have none of it and stayed in the
kitchen. Hazel went over the final details. Wingate
would give the sign to the shooters to move into
their positions on the two rooftops near the Batten
house as soon as muster was over. The officers
assigned to the interior were not to leave the
house; the five rovers were to be in their cars doing
their circuits as of eleven o'clock.

Wingate was point man inside the house. Hazel
would take up a post one street over, listening on
an open channel for progress reports. She wanted
radio silence as of eleven o'clock; they were to go
fully dark unless something unexpected came up.

'Like what?' said Terry from the kitchen.

'We're going to be prepared for anything,' said
Hazel.

'Like if he's early?'

'No,' said Hazel. 'He's never early.'

Terry's gaze lingered on her a moment. 'Well, I
guess you have the plan.'

Wingate stepped forward. 'Mrs Batten, this is the
largest police presence I've ever seen at a stakeout,
and I worked for eight years out of
a station house in downtown Toronto. Every one of
us has your safety and Rose's safety at the front
of our minds.'

'Are your guns loaded?'

He looked at Hazel, whose mouth twitched. 'Yes,
they are.'

She looked around the room at the police
officers, and Hazel braced herself for another angry
outburst from Terry Batten. But instead she headed
back toward the kitchen. At the swinging door
that led into it, she turned to the gathered force in
her living room. 'I've got a pot of stew on and a
couple loaves of garlic bread. I want you people to
eat and then do your job and get out of my house.'

On her way out, Hazel took Wingate aside.
'Look. Get the rovers moving now.'

'It's only ten-forty.'

'Just in case,' she said.

At 10:55 p.m., standing out in the street again,
Hazel could see curls of steam coming from the
rooftops as the officers kept warm with flasks of
soup or coffee, but as soon as the clock struck
eleven, they were in lockdown. Hazel's cruiser was
at its post one street over. She'd said her goodbyes
after muster and sat with the child one more time,
to go over what Simon expected her to do and
what the Port Dundas PD needed her to do. Terry
had stood in the doorway to the girl's bedroom and
added her comments to Hazel's instructions when
she thought there was any chance that Rose might
forget who was really in charge under this roof.

'You don't say anything, Rose,' said Hazel. 'You
just do as he's asked you to do: you're to stand here
looking out. Your voice might give away that you're
not as sick as you've told him.'

'And you don't put any part of your body outside
of this house!' said Terry Batten.

'I won't,' said the girl. It had seemed to Hazel that
Rose was getting nervous as the time approached.
She wondered if she shouldn't dose her with a little
of what was keeping her mother level.

'I want to stay here with her until the last
possible moment,' Terry said.

'You can be in this room until midnight, Terry.
But after that, we have to clear the area. We don't
want him seeing shadows in Rose's room. He's got
to be certain that everything is as he's asked. Or he
could be gone before we even see him.'

'I'll lie in the bed with her. We'll be as still as the
grave.'

'I can't, Terry. The instant it's over, the two of
you will be together, I promise.'

Rose reached out and took her mother's hand.
'Mummy?' she said, and both of the women looked
at her with their eyes wide.

'Sweetie?'

'I'm going to be fine. I'm not scared at all.'

Terry scooped her daughter up in her arms and
pressed the girl's face against her shoulder. She
wept, holding Rose tightly against her. This is it,
thought Hazel. She's going to ask us to get out of
her house. But instead, Terry said, 'You're such a
big girl now, aren't you?'

'Do what the police officers say, okay, Mummy?
Tomorrow morning, this'll all be over and people
will thank us.'

'We thank you now,' said Hazel. 'But she's right.
There's no turning back.'

Hazel was in the car one block over, and the look
on Terry's face when she'd at last let go of the little
girl and agreed to leave the room was still branded
on her mind. They'd closed the door on Rose's
somewhat uneasy smile, and one of the Renfrew
cops led her lightly by the arm away from the room.
There were three officers in the house, two set up
on rooftops with clear views of the street, the front
of the house, and Rose's window. Hazel had linkup
on a single frequency, but it was radio silence after
eleven, and no one was to break silence unless it
was an emergency, or Simon Mallick was captured,
incapacitated, or dead.

At ten after eleven, Spere startled her by appearing
at the passenger door. He opened it and stepped
in. 'Forgot I was here?' he said.

'I thought you'd gone back to Mayfair.'

'Wouldn't miss this for anything. Plus, it sounds
like you need all the friends you can get these days.'

'We're friends?'

'You've made my life interesting again,' he said.
'I'm totally renaming all my goldfish "Hazel".' He
settled back in the passenger seat and rubbed the
tops of his legs. He eyed the ham sandwich
wrapped in wax paper that she'd brought from
home after making it secretly in the kitchen. After
staring at it five seconds too long, he looked up to
see her watching him. 'What?'

'Friends share?' she asked.

'If they're not going to eat it they do.'

'Go ahead,' she said, and he unwrapped it and
ate it in five bites. Spere ate like a camel, his
mouth slewing side to side. Hazel wondered how
anyone could stand him outside of a professional
context, and then she remembered that he was
married and had three kids, and that at the summer
fund-raising picnics, he was often the only cop in
the place whose family looked like they were
enjoying themselves. The whole world was stuffed
with crazy imbalances like this. Spere: a happily
married man.

'How's the back?' he said, making her jump a
little. She had to remind herself she'd only been
thinking her thoughts, not saying them.

'I'm ignoring it,' she said.

He crumpled up the wax paper and stuffed it into
the little plastic tub that was the garbage can. Then
he dug in his coat pocket and took out a single
white pill. He offered it to her. 'Jack's script was for
three pills. I held one back, thinking you might
want it.'

She looked at it, a single Valium. 'I bet Gord
Sunderland would love to have a photographer
here right about now.'

'I told you, I didn't—'

'I know you didn't,' she said. 'And this is very
kind of you, Howard, but I think I'd better live
with the discomfort tonight.'

He nodded at her, closing his fingers over the
pill. He was putting it back into his pocket when
he opened his hand in his lap and pushed a fingernail
into the pill. It snapped in half. He looked at
the two pieces lying there in his palm like he
was expecting them to do something magical.

Hazel reached over and took one of the halves.
'This'll just take the edge off.'

'That's what I'm thinking,' he said.

She swallowed it with a dry mouth. 'After this
night is over, Howard, you're going to go back to
being a thorn in my side, right?'

'I promise,' he said.

'Because too much has changed in my life lately
to take you transforming into a gentleman.'

'It won't happen,' he said. He settled back into
his seat and stared out the windshield.

She looked at the digital display on the dashboard.
It said 11:13. She looked at it ten minutes
later and it said 11:16. Howard had closed his eyes.
The wait was going to kill her. She got out her cell
and dialled the house.

'Paula?' said her mother.

'No, Mum, it's just me. I wanted to call and see
how you were.'

'Very full, a little drunk, and up sixteen dollars.'
She lowered her voice to a whisper. 'Sally Eaton
will call
anything
.'

'I'm sorry I lost my temper with you before.'

'You're under a lot of pressure, Hazel. You need a
vacation.'

'I do.'

There was laughter in the background. 'How's
your stakeout? Are you having fun?'

'You are drunk, aren't you?'

'Just a moment, dear.' Her mother held the
phone away from her mouth. 'Clara, will you get
that? It's Paula.' She came back to Hazel. 'Stupid
woman. She owes us twelve dollars in antes. I
better go. But if you catch your man, you can have
the last piece of pie, okay?'