Detective Émile Cinq-Mars would not acknowledge even to himself that he chose his motel due to its proximity to a liquor store, but upon spotting the outlet he booked into the first accommodations that came up along an industrial and retail strip. Set back from the road, frontage for the premises included a communal porch, each unit outfitted with a pair of plastic Adirondacks. He could see himself taking his ease in the evening – and a good whisky, sipped slowly, might help the time slip away. A Laphroaig, being on sale, was selected. He was not always one for peaty, yet the peat-smoke of the brand suited his loner’s mood. A wee dram in the cooling night air was a welcome companion in this far-flung town called Joliette where he knew no one, and where he wanted to keep it that way.
Company arrived despite his wish. Uninvited. Unwanted.
A biker roared in, the so-called muffler on his hog calibrated to awaken the comatose. In case anyone had hit the sack early, he gunned it repeatedly after coming to a stop, then finally shut the motor and dismounted. He looked the part of an incendiary figure, beaded, bearded and shaggy-haired, large of belly and littered with metal. Cinq-Mars had a mind to go over and kick in his testicles, to see how much he enjoyed having a peaceful evening disrupted. Merely an idle fantasy, of course, as he’d not do that under any circumstance – a good thing, as another four bikers arrived out of a cloud of dust a short while behind the first.
This second wave was either less loud or the first guy had deafened him. As the bikes went silent the riders slapped each other’s paws and beer appeared out of their saddlebags. One in their number lumbered over to the office to book rooms.
Not next door, Cinq-Mars was thinking. He might revive his thought about kicking testicles if that happened.
Like a hefty rock rolled down a hilltop into a pond, the bikers’ arrival produced a swift rippling effect. Others who’d been out on the porch returned indoors. Lights went off in at least three rooms, the curtains closed. Teens smoking between this property and the next chose to split. Cinq-Mars remained seated, and four of the five bikers, just one with a girlfriend, tramped past him after their rooms were acquired. The clerk apparently had a brain, sending them down to the far end of the building. In a mood, the policeman expected a confrontation, however mild; surprised, then, when the group proved courteous. One excused himself as he went around the seated man.
‘No problem,’ Cinq-Mars replied, and pulled his feet in.
‘That’s good shit,’ the lanky biker added, indicating the bottle and raising his own. He walked on.
Perhaps they were happy not to have been treated as vermin. Yet these few were not benign. Their colors declared them to be members of a criminal gang, a Hells Angels satellite. Their turf was outside Montreal; Cinq-Mars knew of their violent reputation.
Which signaled that their good manners might be fleeting.
The fifth, the guy with the outrageously loud Harley, sauntered by, his steps heavy and jangly on the porch wood. Chains on his boots. He nodded as he went by, yet something in the exchange alerted him. He stopped, came back. Leaned against the porch rail. It noticeably yielded to his weight. He put his beer bottle down, stuck one hand into the front of his jeans, and buried the other in an armpit. Overall, not a menacing pose, which belied his general look and attitude.
‘How’s it hanging?’ he inquired in French. He had a tiny mouth, virtually invisible under facial hair.
Cinq-Mars found the accent difficult to distinguish, new to his ear. ‘Not so bad. Nice evening.’
‘What I thought,’ the biker said.
‘What? That it’s a nice evening?’
‘That you’re doing good. You look it. You with that bottle.’ He took out the paw from under his belt to lift his beer and enjoy a thirsty swig. ‘From around here?’
‘What do you think? It’s a motel.’
‘Yeah. Me, too. On the move. You got a big nose, anybody ever tell you that?’
‘Nope. No one. I never noticed.’
‘That’s a lie and a half. I got a nose on me, too.’
Cinq-Mars looked more closely. If anything, it was diminutive for the scale of his visage. ‘Looks normal to me,’ he said.
‘Looks normal, you bet. But it don’t smell normal.’
‘Oh no? How’s that?’
‘I can smell a cop a mile away.’ The man was pleased that he got him to walk into that one. He added, ‘No offense.’
‘None taken,’ Cinq-Mars said right back, ‘given that you’re rather odiferous yourself.’
Cinq-Mars let his left arm fall to his side and found the neck of the Laphroaig bottle. He lifted it off the floor of the porch and shifted it to his right hand to be in his swinging arm and lowered it along his right side. The biker, after all, stood above him, and that beer bottle looked dangerous.
Whether or not the biker noticed or cared could not be discerned, but a chuckling emerged from deep within him, rising up through his chest to finally be emitted along with a smile.
‘Like I said, no offense.’
‘We both know it’s how I signed in,’ Cinq-Mars pointed out. Weary, he hadn’t been thinking, and had inscribed his name in the register the same way he signed in at the penitentiary. Sgt.-Det. É. Cinq-Mars. ‘Nothing to do with scent.’
The man chuckled some more. He seemed to genuinely be enjoying himself. ‘I’ll see you around,’ he said.
The old comeback, not if I see you first, was considered, then rejected. ‘Have a good evening.’
‘Always do, Sergeant-Detective. Count on that.’
‘You don’t mind,’ Cinq-Mars spoke up after the man had turned and walked several paces, which caused him to stop and return once more, ‘if I check out how you guys signed in.’
The biker seemed to think it over, perhaps casting his mind to the names he’d scribbled down. Having done his mental tally, he said, ‘Feel free, man. That ain’t no sweat off my balls.’
He should kick them in anyway, Cinq-Mars mused. Curious, he thought, how that was a thing with him this evening. Perhaps it stemmed from some reflex, or weariness of mind, or an intuitive response to danger beyond his knowing.
He might choose to sleep lightly, just in case.
Before contemplating dinner, Cinq-Mars telephoned Sandra Lowndes in New Hampshire. Younger than him by nineteen years, the woman was the apple of his eye these days and he’d been alone in the orchard for some time. He’d fallen in love with the lady, instantly and perilously, which he recognized as a hopeless venture. He shouldn’t bother. Yet his customary discipline had deserted him around her.
‘Are you in your tiny monk’s cell?’ Sandra inquired, teasing. He had told her that that’s how he’d been living for years now, in a miniature Montreal apartment. If he considered his digs to be some kind of penance, he didn’t know what for. Unless it was for becoming a cop when he thought he’d be a priest. He’d revealed all that to her. With her voice on the phone in his ear, her eyes, her lips, her hair, her sensible nose – their children might stand a chance at normalcy – formed in his head. He’d called with nothing to say and now the news of the motel’s biker inhabitants and charm-free rooms gave him something to relate. Which led to the obvious question of what he was doing there.
‘I’m spending my working hours in prison.’ More news to relate. Sandra was eager to learn about the women in the Joliette Institution and Cinq-Mars obliged her curiosity. Grand to be talking to her.
‘Who do you think did it? Do you have a suspicion?’
Normally he’d curtail such talk. Not now. This was a woman for whom he’d taken a major tumble. He’d been out in the desert so long that an oasis – perhaps real, perhaps a mirage – exploded across his senses.
‘Way too soon to say. I have about half the suspects still to meet.’ That was too dull a comment to offer up to the woman who enchanted him, so he carried on. ‘It’s a David and Goliath thing, in reverse, in a way.’
‘No David. No Goliath,’ she pointed out. ‘They’re all women.’
‘A few, shall we say, are larger and more physically endowed than others. The dead woman, Florence, she was powerful. Thick. Very muscular and imposing. Tough and rough by all accounts.’
‘A Goliath.’
‘That’s it. So far, anyone who identifies as a David – small, frail in comparison to Flo – plays that card. The improbability of taking down a Goliath. But David had his slingshot, didn’t he? Florence’s killer used a strangulation wire. A wire around a neck can incapacitate a victim very quickly. If the victim tries only to defeat the wire, which is a typical reaction, if she doesn’t strike an effective blow or kick behind her back, she dies. That’s my only conclusion so far. Essentially, anyone could have done it.’
Time flew by. The long-distance charges would be something, probably eclipse the room fee. The two had met in New Hampshire when Cinq-Mars was taking time off to run an errand for his dad. His father raised horses and relied upon his son’s expert eye to select new ponies when demand eclipsed what his mares produced. He had stepped into a barn and seen her – had she been shoeing a horse or merely cleaning its hoof? He couldn’t recall, so taken was he by the image of her in a sliver of natural light through a notch in the barn’s wood. Nothing could remedy a sudden swerve off his axis.
She had looked back at him. Swiped the back of her hand across her cheek, muddying it. Which only enchanted him more.
Sandra caught his awkwardness in the moment and sensed its provenance. She put him at ease, helping him land gently. They discussed horses. Including their purchase. While he was seeing her for the first time, he had evaluated her animals earlier and ably wheeled off a comprehensive summary of their merits and demerits. She disputed none of his opinions, only what value he assigned to each horse. A discussion, Cinq-Mars suggested, that might best be resolved over dinner. Sandra emitted then a ghost of a smile, which indicated that she knew what was going on but also that she did not mind. ‘I could eat,’ she said.
The subject of food came up again over the telephone. Both admitted to being famished; they’d need to break off for dinner, and finally said goodnight. Cinq-Mars walked down the road to a restaurant he’d noticed, his spirits buoyed, his pulse quick. He didn’t know how a relationship with Sandra could ever evolve but at the same time he had no idea how it could not. Even the realization that he had selected the same restaurant as the bikers he’d met earlier failed to undercut his upbeat mood.
He was falling in love.
Fallen, he corrected himself, over dessert.
Once he got the proper tense in his head, he knew what he should do.