After lunch, Cinq-Mars chose to handle the driving and stopped at an address on Durocher Street, corner of Saint Roch. A narrow white brick walk-up with a semi-subterranean flat and a TV repair shop elevated above the pavement. An exterior staircase served the shop and an interior one continued to a third-floor flat. Homes for the working poor. Cinq-Mars seemed reluctant to be stopping there.
Henri Casgrain double-checked their service pad. ‘Not on the list,’ he pointed out.
‘Different list,’ Cinq-Mars murmured under his breath. ‘I’ll do this one on my own.’
‘You don’t need a photographer, or don’t like my pictures?’ Casgrain was hamming it up.
‘No pictures,’ Cinq-Mars said. He took a deeper breath. He might as well explain. ‘This is a side adventure. A sorrowful one. I promised to look into this for … Well, for a friend.’
‘A friend you’re not sure is a friend.’
‘Professional contact, let’s say. A minister. Not government. Church. Protestant.’
‘OK. We’ve got time. What’s the sorrow part?’ Casgrain had cottoned on to his partner’s mood. He was clearly apprehensive. They had done a good job of covering their list. At one stop, they were guided to a backyard by the mother of a brawler where they found four of the boys they were looking for. Two were brothers. That saved time. The boys put up no resistance to the camera and politely answered questions.
Cinq-Mars and Casgrain reviewed the fight in the lane with them and queried their whereabouts on the night of the break-ins. Each boy stood in as another’s alibi, and in that sense their responses held up. Cinq-Mars had no mind to push. Not yet. No youth claimed to be home in bed, and they admitted to being together. Significant details. None confessed to being out on the town stealing toasters.
If these boys were forming the next ruthless gang, the city was not in urgent peril.
‘A young woman’s gone missing,’ Cinq-Mars explained, answering Casgrain’s question. ‘Her clothes were found by the side of the river, down where the current is quick.’
‘You think she was dumped? Not with her clothes onshore.’
‘She’s a floater. That part I don’t doubt. Most likely, she did it on her own. A couple of possibilities. I’m told that swimmers go down there, especially in the spring when the water’s frigid and the ice is breaking up or has recently melted. It’s a new kick, to swim nude in ice water. The kids feel alive. A good swimmer can make it in and out if he – or she – doesn’t succumb to hypothermia. The further out you go, the stronger the current, by a knot. Wander too far out and alone, people will call it suicide. We might never know for sure. In this case, did she get caught in the current? Did she plan to get caught? Or did she overestimate her strength? Did the cold get to her? Without a note, who can say?’
‘No note. This house?’
‘Her folks.’
‘Jesus, Émile.’
‘Like I said, I can do this one on my own.’
‘Nope. Coming with.’
Although the men had plied coffee into their veins over lunch, they accepted the tea offered by the young woman’s mother. Too polite to decline. The drowned girl – Debra – fit the mold Cinq-Mars anticipated. An adventurer. An interest in art; she had created a number of murals around town.
‘What kind of murals?’ Casgrain asked.
Cinq-Mars wished he hadn’t.
‘I choose to call them that,’ the mother said. She pulled in her chin. A gesture of defiance. ‘Some call them graffiti. I do not. Her walls are beautiful.’
Saying that evoked an emotional crunch. She gave it time to pass and the men waited. She was alone, her husband at work. Immigrants, they had been in their new country long enough to see their daughter integrate into a different culture. The mother’s accent was distinctly British, specifically Liverpudlian, although she’d been born in Burma before being raised for most of her early life in Liverpool. Her husband in the merchant marine before settling in Canada. The daughter had bright and expressive, mischievous eyes, Cinq-Mars observed, according to the forest of photographs that lined the mantelpiece.
‘Tell me where I can find the murals,’ Cinq-Mars requested, and he copied a list of the streets where the illicit artwork might be viewed. He wanted to establish a sense of the girl. He also assured the mother that the search was continuing. Not that it was. The river was too massive, the current too swift, no one had a clue where to dredge. What he meant was that people lived, fished and worked on the river and alongside it; sooner or later the submerged corpse was likely to surface. In the sense that the police department was passively expecting a call someday, they were still looking for her.
While he could offer no comfort, a visit from a policeman seemed respectful in regard to her daughter. The mother dried her eyes and thanked them for their sympathy.
Outside, Cinq-Mars leaned up against the hood of their Ford, subdued.
‘You helped, Émile,’ Casgrain told him. ‘You’re good at this.’
‘Not something I want to be good at.’
‘It’s the priest in you. Comes through.’
For a moment, it seemed that Cinq-Mars wasn’t listening. He was following a girls’ game of hopscotch kitty-corner from them.
Then he declared, ‘The priest thing gets around. It was a long time ago.’
‘Why didn’t it happen?’
‘Can you hack celibacy? Not me. The sad irony of it, Henri, is here I am, still without a lady in my life.’
‘You thought wearing the uniform would get you a date?’
‘I’m a country boy. I might have been that naive. First, I pursued becoming a veterinarian. Then didn’t. When police work came along, I snapped it up.’
They both remained still, leaning on the car, immersed in the despondency of the moment.
‘This girl,’ Cinq-Mars mused. ‘Debra. Creative. Artistic. An adventurer. A bit wild. I bet she preferred her work described as graffiti. Not as wall murals. Tough combination: creative like that and looking for action.’
‘Why tough?’
He rocked his head from side to side a moment. ‘Some kids who aren’t hard enough for this world are still compelled to take it on. They won’t hide. They won’t run from risk. That’s tough.’ He took another deep inhale. ‘We should get a move on.’
Casgrain patted down his mustache. He said, ‘Celibacy didn’t keep you from the priesthood, Émile.’
‘Yes it did. I should know.’ He tried to make light. ‘If I knew it would be inflicted on me anyway, I might be a priest today.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Don’t tell me you couldn’t pass muster on celibacy. I don’t know you, but I know you. Give you a challenge, you come through. Celibacy is the excuse you used to quit the priesthood. Something else drove you out.’
‘Borderline heretic, I admit.’
‘That’s not it, either.’
These pronouncements, unprovoked, driven and forceful, caught Cinq-Mars off-guard.
‘Why then, smartass? Why am I a cop, not a priest? Trust me, celibacy was a deal-breaker.’
Casgrain stood up as straight as he could with his warped posture. He looked at him briefly, then cast his gaze elsewhere. ‘There’s a reason you don’t have a girlfriend, Émile. You didn’t choose to be celibate, but you are. The priesthood still has a hold on you. I saw that inside. Upstairs, you weren’t a cop, you were a priest.’
Cinq-Mars made a motion with his shoulders as though squirming through an invisible crowd. He went around to get in their car. In a way, his partner kept him on his feet by declining to follow suit. Casgrain leaned his elbows on the roofline of the car instead and kept talking.
‘I’ll tell you something for free, Émile. When you figure out why you left the priesthood, that’s when you’ll find a girlfriend. Not until. For now, you’re out of luck, because you never owned up to why you’re not a priest. That’s why you’re still a priest, and celibate.’
Cinq-Mars opened the driver’s side door. ‘It might be easier to go find a girlfriend than have this talk with you.’
‘You tried it, Émile. How did that work out?’
‘Will you knock it off?’
Henri laughed, freely, easily. He opened the passenger door finally. ‘I’m curious. You were a young man in the sixties. What did you do during the crazy days?’
‘I was a beat cop in the sixties. What do you think I did? I busted hippies.’
‘I guess hippies weren’t that much into cops.’
‘I had a girlfriend, if that’s what you’re dying to find out. In fact, I busted my girlfriend back then.’ The moment the words were out, Cinq-Mars regretted telling him that. A chapter he’d rather keep closed. Mentioning the episode rushed everything back to mind.
‘You busted your girlfriend? You really are some kind of saint. An idiot, but a saint.’
‘She wasn’t my girlfriend when I busted her. She threw a rock at the Prime Minister during a demonstration. Remember the St Jean Baptiste Day riot? I chased her down. That’s how we met. Later, we hit it off.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘We broke up. Politics did us in, maybe. Not meant to be.’
‘A broken heart. I see that. That’s all right. Better than not living. Since then? Do you still date the women you bust? Maybe that’s your problem. Maybe you should date them first and then bust them. Keep them under arrest.’
‘Funny. Haha. Nothing’s worked out, that’s all.’
‘Instead, you live alone in a little monk’s cell in Park Extension. That’s how you described it to me. You can’t get a new life because you’re stuck in your old one. Figure it out, Cinq-Mars.’ They both clambered into the car. Cinq-Mars started the engine, hoping it would silence his partner. It didn’t. ‘Do your future girlfriend a favor, Émile.’
‘Will you shut up? Thank you.’
‘My advice? Don’t bust the first woman you’re attracted to. What did you do? Crack her head open then drag her away by the hair, caveman-style? Don’t do that. Instead, go deep, figure out what your problem is. A man like you, smart, handsome, with only one major liability, being a cop – OK, two, your nose – the point is, you shouldn’t have a hard time. You should be dating up a storm.’
‘I see I’m going to regret having you as partner.’ He turned the car off the curb, driving on.
‘Yeah,’ Casgrain said. ‘Don’t get comfortable with me around. Soon as we’re done with this case, I want back on nights.’ He said this kindly, a twinkle in his eye. Cinq-Mars gathered that he said everything with kindly intention.
‘Soon as we’re done here, I’m shipping you out,’ Cinq-Mars confirmed, both in jest and somewhat seriously. Having a personal shrink on the job was not something he’d bargained on. Especially not someone who came across as half-assed good at it.