TELEPHONE

CAREENING OUT OF A SIDE street, the Chevrolet braked sharply with a loud screeching of tires. When René pressed down on the brake pedal, Gode, sitting in the back seat, was propelled forward, his knee coming into contact with a mass of known but still complex consistency, neither soft nor hard, but which still gave a little, then resisted, emitting a sort of sigh or groan. René could feel it moving under him.

“Shut up!”

“Let’s go!”

He opened the door, disengaged his knee, and jumped out into the street. Slammed the door as he turned, catching in the corner of his eye the image of a dark spot formed by the raincoat between the seats. Then the door shut heavily. The car had already turned right and was moving south along boulevard Taschereau.

Disoriented for a moment, Gode stood still, getting his bearings. The orange ball of the sun was low on the horizon, and the late afternoon light advanced over the river, the unreal green phosphorescence of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge. Still bothered by the unwelcome intimacy of the contact of his knee with the back of the man stretched out on the floor of the car, he started looking for a taxi.

Marie-France and Nicole watched the news of the abduction of the Minister of Public Works on television. Journalists clustered on the lawns and in the street, before a large, bungalow-style house with a steep roof, in a residential district on the South Shore. There were neighbours, gawkers, camera crews, microphones, cameras, flash bulbs, electric cables, police guarding the entrance, people going in, coming out, escorting family members, political colleagues, close friends, the family doctor with his nerve pills. They saw Paul Lavoie’s old mother, wide-eyed and deflated, looking like a shot barn owl, uniformed officers with orders to treat those closest to the victim with respect, inspectors in raincoats coming and going and more of them arriving all the time, Saturday night, madness.

Close-up of the metal plaque screwed to the wall beside the door:

PAUL LAVOIE, BARRISTER

The phone rang. It was Gode. The last they’d heard, he was in the States.

“I’m in the area . . .”

“You can come over if you want,” said Marie-France.

The women were living at 3730 Queen-Mary Road, on the mountain, apartment number 6. Marie-France unlocked the door remotely. His footsteps on the stairs. She was in front of him, watched him pass her without looking up or meeting her eyes and go into the living room. He sat down in front of the television.

“Has anyone claimed responsibility?”

“No. But you must know who it is, right?”

“Me? No . . .” he said, nodding his head without taking his eyes off the screen.

Nicole asked him where René was.

“Dunno. If I see him, I’ll tell him to give you a call.”

Sometime later, Gode left to make a phone call.

“Why not call from here?”

He shrugged.

“I need some fresh air.”

Then, after patting his pockets:

“I’m out of cigarettes . . . I’ll be back in a few minutes.”