Peter wasn’t psychic but this time the blinking red light on the bedside phone could only mean Nicola Hilfgott. He called up the message and deleted it without listening to the end. It was past 6 p.m. and he had planned to nap until eleven o’clock, then get up, shower, and be downstairs on time to meet Deroche. At that moment, his mobile chimed.
“Peter? It’s Maddy. I’m so glad I reached you.”
“Is everything all right? It can’t even be sunrise yet where you are.”
“I’m at home. Leeds. And Jasper’s fine.”
“She is?”
“She misses you. We just came back from our pre-dawn walk. Listen, shall I pick you up tomorrow?”
“It’ll actually be the following day, I leave tomorrow night my time and get in early, about 5:30 a.m.”
“It’s okay. Can we talk now?”
Peter luxuriated in her voice. Maddy represented youth and impulse and a connection to home. There was something else there too: she chased away the cobwebs from his old brain.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Peter, I’ve been doing some snooping. Only on the internet. Well, one or two phone calls. I think I’ve figured out where Alice Nahri’s from.”
“Does she Google any better this time?” he said.
“No. I tried every permutation of her name, augmented by ‘India’ and ‘Bihar.’ She simply refuses to pop up anywhere. There are ‘Nahri’ surnames in Bihar — Lordy, there are a hundred million people in that one jurisdiction and that may be one avenue you could pursue.”
Peter had contacts in the Indian State Police, and Bartleben surely had more. Peter also had an old friend he could call directly in the Research and Analysis Wing, the Indian spy agency.
She continued. “Often, British passports for Indian-born British nationals list the capital of the province where the applicant is from. The convention makes sense: birth registrations are centralized that way. Therefore, it was no surprise that Alice Ida Nahri was listed with Patna as her birth city. Patna is the provincial capital but she could easily have been born somewhere else. And I think I know where.”
Peter knew to be patient. He imagined Jasper sitting on Maddy and Michael’s kitchen rug, listening contentedly.
“All right, where was she born?”
“Trivia time, Peter. What famous person was born in Motihari, India?”
He indulged her. “Kipling?” He knew it wasn’t Kipling.
“Orwell.”
His brain spun out what he knew about George Orwell. Born in India but became a policeman in Burma for a time. Died young — forty-eight? forty-nine? Every schoolboy read his novels and he did write an approving article about Kipling. He also wrote “Decline of the English Murder.”
“Tell me,” he said. He was terrifically amused by his daughter-in-law, happy that she was so happy.
“I Googled every major city in Bihar and came across several Nahris in the directory for the city of Motihari, which is up near the border of Nepal. Every website for Motihari boasts about its connection to George Orwell’s birthplace. He was born Eric Blair, his father being Richard Blair, who worked in the Opium Department of the Government of India. Orwell’s mother’s maiden name was Ida Mabel Limouzin; Orwell also had a younger sister named Avril.”
Trying not to sound impatient, Peter interrupted. “Dear, is there a connection between Alice Nahri and George Orwell?”
“Alice’s middle name is Ida, just like Orwell’s mother. It’s a lead, at least. And Alice isn’t far from Avril. By the way, Orwell’s mother moved back to England when he was just a toddler. Henley-on-Thames.”
“Oxfordshire.”
“Yup. The husband joined her a while later. Avril was born in Henley. There you go.”
“That’s not quite enough,” Peter said.
“It’s a start. British mother, probably a governess, impressed by the only local British celebrity, clings to a famous name.”
“Keep looking. I’ll be back soon.”
“Peter?”
“What?”
“I’ve opened a file. It’s sitting here on the kitchen table. It contains over a hundred pages of research.”
“Now I’m in trouble.”
At five minutes to twelve, Peter was waiting in front of the Bonaventure. He had waved off the standing taxi and refused the doorman’s offer of directions. He felt foolish standing there alone and it was still possible that he would reject Deroche’s great adventure and refuse to get in the surveillance car.
Why had he accepted? From what Peter had seen, he might be getting in the car with a crazy man; he wasn’t fond of obsessive-compulsive cops. He couldn’t say that he was excited: he had endured many stakeouts, and they mixed tedium with too much coffee. And he had only agreed to “touch base” with the Sûreté on Frank Counter’s behalf. Midnight stakeouts were beyond the call of this duty.
Peter shivered against a gust of wind and sank his hands into the deep pockets of his coat. It was the letters. The letters and the girl. There’s irony for you, he thought. Deroche had shown no interest in either, and probably thought that the Booth documents and Alice Nahri didn’t exist. But Peter wanted to know what the inspector had learned from interviewing Leander Greenwell, the book dealer, on the night of the crime. It could be the key to learning why anyone would kill to get the letters.
Deroche arrived in front of the hotel at midnight sharp and hardly waited for Peter to open the door before saying, “Welcome to the Rizzuto tour, Chief Inspector.”
“You might as well call me Peter.”
“Call me Sylvain.”
The tour began at once, Deroche’s personal story intertwining with the saga of the Rizzutos as they swept through urban and suburban neighbourhoods at wild speeds. Deroche offered his philosophy without any prompting from Peter: he loved his hometown, and every day fought to protect it, but a policeman with ambition needed a career strategy, and organized crime quickly became his focus. His hatred of the mob and his commitment to anti-mob tactics — always willing to stay up all night on a stakeout — had won him notice. Montreal was an old city. The Montreal Calabrian-Sicilian gang had been around less than seventy years, the Rizzuto family less than fifty. They were arrivistes, in Deroche’s view, cancers to be excised.
The inspector had been born and raised in Point St. Charles. He had avoided cultural politics. Like Chicago, New York, or Boston, in Montreal your neighbourhood defined your youth but what turned you into a cosmopolitan adult was transcendence of the parochial and the tribal, he believed. For him, maturity for a Montrealer was achieved by giving loyalty to the city as a whole and suppressing neighbourhood affiliations. The mafia operated all across the town and respected few boundaries. He would do the same. Whoever was eradicating the Rizzutos was taking down opposing soldiers at will, often in public. Deroche wanted Peter to see the crime scenes in order to understand how abhorrent he found their heedless vendettas.
The black unmarked Chevy Malibu whirled out of the Square Mile and into a neighbourhood north of the core in only a few minutes. They soon emerged into an upscale streetscape, brightly lit, with large treed lots and mansions to match. Unlike traditional Westmount, this was a freshly built enclave for the nouveau riche, including local mafia, apparently. Deroche slowed to touring speed as they passed a particularly garish house.
“The Rizzutos have run organized crime in Montreal for three decades. Loan sharking, drug trafficking and especially protection money. They have been very successful in infiltrating the construction industry. The mafia competes in the narcotics trade with the biker gangs, in particular the Hells Angels and, until recently, the Rock Machine. Think of them as three generations of management: old Nicolo, the founder of the dynasty, Vito, his son and successor, and Nicolo, Junior. That’s the patriarchal home you’re looking at.”
Where are we headed next? Peter thought as Deroche hit the accelerator. He idly wondered how many guns Deroche had in the Malibu. Deroche’s driving called back the residue of vodka in his system and made him queasy. The inspector pulled away and they hurtled through more neighbourhoods, until Peter was completely confused about their location.
Deroche slowed down again unpredictably and jerked to a stop across the street from a small café, indistinguishable from a dozen others in a neighbourhood that possessed a distinctly Italian flavour.
“By the mid-seventies, Vic Cotroni, the boss of Montreal’s drug trade, was having legal troubles, not to mention he was ageing, and the question hung in the air. Who would take over the Montreal mob? There were two rivals to succeed Cotroni. Paolo Violi was his top lieutenant. He’d managed the gang when Cotroni went to jail for a couple of years. Vito Rizzuto had ambitions himself and he was not without supporters, even though he was Sicilian. You can guess how this all got settled.”
Peter played the willing acolyte. “A gang war?”
“Exactly. The bar across there? Used to be called the Reggio Bar. Coffee and ice cream. Violi liked to call himself the ‘ice cream king’ and ‘the godfather of Saint-Léonard.’ This was the seventies, remember, when The Godfather was popular. But Paolo was no Marlon Brando. A shotgun blew him apart one night in 1978 inside that bar. No one was convicted of the hit. Vito Rizzuto’s power in the city grew. Cotroni expired from cancer in ’84.”
They sped off again into the maze of streets. With the punctuation of each instalment by another headlong slalom through the city, Peter was becoming dizzy. The inspector lurched to a stop before an all-night American-style diner. Two men sat in a booth by the plate glass window but otherwise the diner appeared to be empty.
Deroche turned off the engine. “Peter, we should be getting in place soon.”
Peter looked at the nondescript restaurant. If the inspector was in a hurry to position them for the evening stakeout, why were they visiting the diner? They entered and took the booth farthest from the two men, whom Peter sized up as an alcoholic and his sponsor.
Old fluorescents created a parchment glow in the diner. In this glare Deroche’s face appeared older, the stress of long nights imprinted on his sallow cheeks. They knew him in the café and the waitress looked up as he signalled for his usual. The price paid by Inspector Deroche, Peter comprehended, the universal price of all zealots, was loneliness.
Deroche sat back against the corner of the booth. “It all came to shit for the Rizzutos in 2004. The RCMP and the Sûreté went after them with Opération Colisée and a hundred agents, while the Americans double-teamed them with RICO charges and prosecutions for murder in New York State. Some of the killings they investigated were mob hits allegedly committed by Vito Rizzuto in NYC years before. We nailed them with everything we had. Threw the book at them, is that the expression?”
“Why, yes,” Peter said, startled. He was always careful about patronizing any of the Montrealers he met and he was deeply impressed by the self-assuredness of the Québécois. He did his best to speak French whenever he could, yet he still did not fully grasp the sensitivities of bilingualism. Deroche was beyond fluent in both languages. Peter began to think that the key to the excitable inspector lay in this domain: he was the opposite of the pure laine Québécois, proud to occupy both worlds. He loved his community in all its diversity, and the city-wide infection of the gangs was his filter for surveying the state of his city. Peter decided to cut the inspector some slack.
The waitress brought bacon and eggs, but only to Deroche. Peter was still full from his Russian dinner and he nibbled on a bagel. The woman left a carafe of coffee on the table. Deroche continued his story, checking his BlackBerry as he narrated.
“Opération Colisée resulted in arrest warrants for both Vito and old Nick. First, we and the Americans collared Vito on racketeering charges, including conspiracy to commit the murder of two New York gangsters, and he was extradited two years later. He lost all his appeals and now he’s incarcerated in the maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.”
“The Supermax?” Peter said, surprised.
“That’s the one. He won’t be out for two more years. But that’s not the real story.”
Peter had to smile. “No? Somebody saw an opportunity?”
“Right.” Deroche held up his coffee cup in a dramatic toast. “We are celebrating, Peter. It is early September, perhaps time for the monthly payback for the Famille Rizzuto.”
Peter was alert to the fact that the decline of the Rizzutos was recent, and ongoing. “Monthly?”
“Absolutely. Almost every month over the last twelve someone has bumped off a Rizzuto or one of their close associates. It started in August a year ago with Frederico Del Peschio, a Rizzuto captain, getting himself shot to death in La Cantina, his own restaurant. I didn’t bother taking you there: shall we say, it would be an uncomfortable dining experience.”
Peter had to laugh again. At that moment, unprompted, the waitress delivered a stack of cinnamon toast to the table. It seemed that all of Montreal existed to punctuate Deroche’s protracted stories in the middle of the night.
The inspector enumerated the many assassinations and shootouts that were reducing the clan. He might have been dictating an affidavit. Peter waited for the final update on the Sophoclean tragedy of the Rizzuto organization.
“And just two weeks ago,” Deroche said, a touch of schadenfreude in his grin, “the U.S. courts turned down Vito’s appeal for early parole.”
The Rizzuto family remained under siege and Peter wondered if they had managed to strike back in any effective way. Such was the dynastic history of the mafia; regime change was vertiginous and peppered with public executions. Deroche was implying that the climax to the turf war in Montreal might not occur until Vito Rizzuto returned from prison. Meanwhile, it was clear, open shootings and strategic firebombings would continue. A September attack was to be expected but it was only the beginning of the month. Evidently, Deroche had inside information.The young policeman jumped up from the booth and announced, “I’m going to the toilet but when I get back I want to hear all about the Krays.”
Deroche’s bathroom break gave Peter time to think about the best way to relate the story of the Kray brothers. It was tit-for-tat: no discussion of the stolen letters until he told the story of the twins. The young inspector saw the battle with the Montreal mafia as a classic struggle and more important to the identity of his city than even the separatist movement. The war waged against the Kray gang by the Metropolitan Police Murder Squad had its classic elements too — Peter’s Oxford professors would have called it minor Greek tragedy — but was difficult to understand without knowing the bizarre culture of the East End of London.
Deroche returned with the same expectant smile on his face and repeated, “The Krays. Tell me.” But the command was ill-timed, for at that moment four men in dark clothes entered the diner. The waitress looked up but remained unperturbed, though Peter saw the pair in the corner booth cringe. It was evident that the four were policemen; they ignored the waitress and sized up the conversation in the other booth as innocent. They did check out Peter but, he judged, they were used to Deroche’s quirky methods and were not deterred. For his part, Peter, obviously not local or a francophone, knew to keep anonymous and silent.
Deroche spoke to the men in French. Peter grabbed a few words but they used a flowing joual that went over Peter’s head. He heard the words “cagoule” and “membre en règle,” and the Rizzutos were mentioned twice; he knew that “membre en règle” bespoke an initiate of the mob, a made man. The two diner patrons edged out the door. The conversation lasted several minutes, ending with Deroche issuing orders and his men nodding. After they left, the inspector slapped a ten-dollar bill on the table. They got up.
“I still want to hear about the Krays,” he said.
Peter had been inside dozens of stakeout vehicles during his career. That was mostly back in 1995 when the FBI, to whom Peter had been assigned that summer, went after the Unabomber, the scruffy Luddite who had attacked targets across the United States with a series of deadly home-made bombs in an almost random pattern. No one knew where or when the Unabomber would attack next, and the Quantico wonks identified more than ten potential targets in as many states. Peter had wasted many summer nights staring at the walls of university laboratories and corporate head offices from the passenger seat of an unmarked sedan. Every one of the stakeouts had been futile, although Peter had usefully employed the long, vacant hours to develop a theory on the Unabomber’s attack pattern that eventually helped the Bureau narrow down the manhunt.
As protocol for stakeouts seemed to require, the two detectives sat in silence for the first five minutes while they evaluated the sightlines and settled in for a long night. The two teams from the diner were out there somewhere, Peter assumed, with everyone focused on the Caparza funeral facility across the way, where pink and lavender spotlights lit up the façade in a kind of Bellagio-celebrates-Easter effect. This was the facility Réjean Parrish had pointed out to Peter. He turned in his seat to assess his companion’s mood, wondering if Deroche could sit still for the next several hours. Peter had reconciled himself to a night with no sleep, knowing he could nap on tomorrow’s plane ride.
He took care in delivering the saga of the Kray gang, aware that Deroche would draw parallels with the Montreal mafia. Peter also knew that the Kray story was bound to disappoint. There was a quicksilver quality to it. The true, factual story was strung through a thousand court documents, sentencing statements, the testimony of a hundred victims and a heap of prison evaluations. The public story, distorted by the tabloids, had long ago been encased in impenetrable clichés. Even the moral lesson — the Krays were born poor and found wealth only via the most brutal pathways of crime — had been undermined, rendered problematic, by their minor-key ending. Ronnie had died in prison of a shattering heart attack, while miles away in Norfolk, Reggie rotted away in Wayland Prison until, the evil and the malice sapped out of him, he was released in 2000. He died an enervated has-been.
The funeral home distracted Peter. Why would anyone attack a repository for the dead? Is there another Rizzuto in the basement? Perverse, unpoliceman-like thoughts ran riot. How precisely does one effect a breach in a funeral home? Do they leave night watchmen?
He ran through the sordid story of the identical twin brothers who, egged on by a wilful mother, brawled their way to dominance of the East End and expanded to the West End of London in the Swinging Sixties. Peter looked for points of resonance for Deroche. He knew nothing about growing up in Montreal but the saga of criminals fighting their way out of destitution was a universal one. The Krays had been evil, not lovable or benighted; the twins were destructive hoodlums and Peter said so. He spoke for thirty minutes while the young inspector listened raptly.
“The twins were eventually taken out of circulation by a team of Met officers who came to be known, mostly afterwards, as the Murder Squad. In truth, the Yard was pretty ineffective during much of the sixties, failing to nail the brothers on the usual organized crime fiddles like extortion, skimming of gambling proceeds, drug smuggling, gold smuggling, and so on. We eventually got them on a murder charge.”
“Were you a member of the Murder Squad?” Deroche asked.
“No, it was before my time,” Peter said. “I met Reggie much later, in prison. Ronnie was already dead. I interviewed Reggie about the money laundering trade run by his successors. You see, we hoped he would give us inside information. He refused to cooperate.”
Deroche leaned back in the driver’s seat “How long have you been a chief inspector, Peter?”“Forever” was the answer. Peter wanted to be honest but as usual with Deroche he found it hard to tell what direction the younger man was coming from. But they were only reminiscing.
“A long time, Sylvain. The ranks keep changing with Scotland Yard. They asked me to take the classification ‘superintendent’ a few years ago but I never felt like a superintendent.”
The Yard was constantly adjusting the senior grading of detectives, merging — and muddling — the detective function in with executive management. Peter wasn’t sure where the classifications stood presently but he was pretty certain that “chief inspector” would be revived on some future organization chart. Evolution in the Metropolitan Police was circular.
Deroche grew melancholy. The night had turned cold but he seemed unwilling to turn on the heater. “The next rank up in the Sûreté is chief inspector.”
“Of course, Sylvain, these days I have to add ‘retired’ to my stationery.”
Deroche evidently could not imagine the concept of retirement and he jumped to another topic. “You’re leaving for London tonight, Peter?”
“Yes, but I need more information from you. What happened when you questioned Greenwell the night of the killing? What did he say about the letters?”
“A colleague and I went to his shop in Old Montreal as soon as Mrs. Hilfgott informed us of the transaction. That was less than four hours after the incident. Greenwell owns the building that holds his bookstore. He sleeps in a room above the business. I agree, Chief Inspector, that Greenwell is our best suspect. But he had an alibi. When I knocked on the door of his bookshop, he came downstairs to meet me. He was not alone. We went inside. A younger man — his name is Georges — came out of his rooms upstairs. He claimed to have been there for several hours, and that earlier Greenwell was at the club where this boyfriend works.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Not sure,” Deroche said. “A cool customer, Georges. But Greenwell was upset.”
“He was nervous, you mean?” Peter said.
“Yes.”
“Did the transaction happen?” Peter said.
“According to Greenwell, it did. He met Carpenter downstairs in the store and they exchanged the money for the letters.”
“Did he have the ten thousand cash? Did you examine it?”
“He showed me the bills. He kept them in a cigar box, loose. But . . .”
“What?”
“The store was a mess. He had the cigar box just sitting on a shelf beside some dusty books. A bad way to do business.”
“Did you impound the money?”
“No.” Deroche hesitated — both detectives knew that he had made a mistake.
Peter persisted. “But Greenwell is your top suspect?”
“Yes, in the sense that he is one of the few we have to choose from. But Greenwell does not possess a driver’s licence, let alone a car.”
“Does Georges?”
“Driver’s licence, yes. Vehicle, no.”
“Where is Greenwell now, do you think?”
“He asked if he was under arrest. I had to say no but I told him not to leave town. He promptly fled Montreal later that day and we believe he is staying with his cousin in Halifax. His boyfriend did not go with him. We will arrest Greenwell when he returns. Second degree murder, at least.”
“What about the letters, Sylvain?”
“Greenwell swore the letters were authentic, and he never saw them again after Carpenter took them away.”
“This is important. Did Greenwell or Georges mention the girl?”
Deroche shook his head. “No. Not a word. but I confirmed with Frank Counter that her particulars have been added to Interpol’s database, as well as CPIC. And the rental car, too. A stolen car citation has been posted on CPIC and the FBI base, and I’ve notified Canadian Border Services.”
Peter knew that CPIC stood for the Canadian Police Information Centre, the national criminal database.
Incomprehensible static burst from the radio. It put Deroche into manic mode. Quickly, he leaned past Peter and opened the glove box, revealing a large revolver. Peter looked in astonishment at the .357 Smith & Wesson; it was a cowboy’s gun. Next to it sat a black, rectangular device with a pistol grip that Peter recognized as a Taser, a tool that he had never used or even trained to use.
“Peter, I trust you are up to date with your weapons!”
Peter said nothing.
Deroche reached in and with a flourish hefted the gun before Peter’s face. Peter did not visibly react, but he was certainly confounded. He wasn’t licensed to carry a firearm in Quebec. Here loomed disastrous consequences, he thought: any discharge of a gun this size in a quiet suburban neighbourhood would generate fierce outrage from the public and civic officials alike. The Sûreté hierarchy would come down hard on Deroche, and Peter had no intention of getting himself or the inspector in trouble. The weapon had a six-inch barrel and could not easily be concealed. But the most important consideration was Peter’s lack of local authorization to carry a gun at all. Peter was about to point out this fact but then Deroche restored the gun to the glove compartment. Peter diverted to a different subject.
“Who do you think is attacking the Rizzutos?”
Deroche shut the glove box, though not in an angry way. “Could be the Calabrese faction. Maybe the bikers. Never underestimate the Angels. They’re all over North America.”
Peter read his thinking. “But you don’t think so.”
“No. This is a real live gang war, Peter, but whoever it is knows they will need the approval of the mafia Commission in New York, or what passes for the Commission these days. That cuts out the Angels, at least in terms of directing crime in Montreal. I think it’s the ’Ndrangheta faction.”
Peter knew, if vaguely, that the ’Ndrangheta were an outgrowth of the Calabrese factions within the mob. They were known for their viciousness and for their impenetrable, cell-like structure. There would be no Joe Valachis ratting on them.
“They’re moving into Ontario,” Deroche said. “This group comes out of southern Calabria and are a cutting edge force to be reckoned with . . .”
His account was shut down by the buzzing squawk of his radio, which he extracted from his black leather jacket. He pressed a button on the front.
“Oui. Allo?”
Peter missed the entire blurred response in French, except for the one word, “camion.”
“Attendons. Deux minutes,” the inspector replied, and punched the red off button.
The inspector turned to his passenger. “They spotted a panel truck, no printing on the side, coming along the street behind Caparza’s. It paused two hundred yards away then drove off slowly.”
“It didn’t turn up our way,” Peter said. There had been no traffic in the entire time they had been stationed in the alley.
Deroche eased a .45 pistol out of the inside left pocket of his coat. Peter stared at it in dismay. One shot would send a victim straight into the basement of the mortuary across the way, and if mourners were needed, the gun report would wake up every snoring resident of the surrounding streets. Deroche placed the weapon delicately on the console between the front seats.
A blast of static and the same voice said, “The van is back. We can’t see it but it hasn’t come out the other side of the building.”
“Okay,” Deroche instructed. “Attendons.”
Deroche opened the glove box and considered the .357, then the pastel-lit façade.
A loud whump! came from the area behind the Caparza facility. It rippled through the building and underground across the road towards the two men in the car. A mushroom cloud of white smoke rose from the rear of the funeral home, and as the mist climbed it was highlighted by the pink and blue floodlights shining on the front windows. The plume dissipated within a few seconds but by this time Deroche had the .45 in his right hand. Peter noted that the inspector became completely calm. A grin was on his face as he called into the walkie-talkie, “Allez.”
Peter did not hesitate. He reached into the glove box and took hold of the awkward revolver, as well as the Taser, which he wasn’t sure how to activate. But Deroche had his door open now, and Peter, a weapon in each fist, awkwardly came out the passenger door. As he crossed the street he shoved a weapon into each pocket of his coat.
Deroche ran full tilt ahead across the empty avenue. Peter, who was fit from his expeditions with Jasper, soon caught up. He smelled fire and soot, although from his angle by the side wall of Caparza’s he could not see any flames. Peter was cued in for gunfire and secondary explosions, as well as the engine noise of the van that was supposed to be there. He was unsure whether the detective on the walkie-talkie had identified a sports utility vehicle, a small truck or a minivan but he told himself to be ready for whatever came out of the back parking lot.
Instead, the two detectives heard only shouting, which became screeches of human pain. Rounding the back corner of the home, they met a scene of fiery chaos. A storm of concentrated yellow, red, and orange flames shot out from a wide back window of the Caparza facility. A man, unidentifiable in the flames that rendered him a torch, flailed against the fiery backdrop. For some reason, he did not drop to the ground and roll; rather, he flailed uselessly against what Peter could see was a gasoline inferno. One of the black-clad detectives ran into the light with a puny fire extinguisher, from his surveillance vehicle no doubt, and sprayed foam retardant on the man, who then collapsed onto the paved parking lot. The detective emptied the canister onto the sizzling body.
His partner arrived with two plastic bottles of water and dumped them up and down along the unfortunate figure. A policeman from the second team was preoccupied with another assailant whom he had trapped face down some ten yards away on the edge of the firelight. He cuffed the man. His partner arrived at that moment, a large extinguisher in his arms, and they turned their attention to the main blaze, which roared out through the back door and the broken windows. Peter noted that the first attacker, though his clothing continued to give off acrid smoke, was no longer afire. All the policemen now faced the flames. The one with the large tank heaved it up with both hands and launched it right into the centre of the window opening.
“Baissez-vous!” he called, and all the policemen, Peter included, hit the ground. The projectile went off and somehow caused the raging flames to implode, contracting the fire, and perhaps slowing its revival and saving the building. Already Peter could hear a fire engine approaching down the avenue.
The two teams backed off from the building; they had no choice but to await the pompiers. They had enough to attend to with the two prisoners on the ground. Neither was going anywhere in the near future but the need to monitor the one in handcuffs and to minister to his scorched partner distracted the detectives from what should have been an obvious threat: a third villain.
Peter had remained close to Deroche, in part to avoid being mistaken for one of the funeral home attackers. The flames had died down, if temporarily, and he stood partly in darkness, a few steps back from the two groupings of men. Deroche had his .45 in his right hand and was barking orders into the radio held in his left.
The third assailant, big-bellied, wearing blue jeans and a dark jacket, emerged from the shadows at Peter’s back. Peter sensed his presence and pivoted that way. The man held a pistol levelled at Peter but was in the process of swinging his aim towards Deroche, who himself had begun to turn instinctively. The man should have seen that his options were minimal. Certainly he was not about to single-handedly rescue his accomplices from the array of armed cops in the parking lot, all of whom had started to raise their guns in his direction.
But Peter, his thinking sharp, understood that the scene of pandemonium escalated the risk of a shootout to a critical level. Panic was in the air. The third assailant was committed.
And Peter understood that the next move had to be his.
The shooter remained fixed in position, heavy-footed and uncertain about his targets. The pistol wavered in his hand. Peter was positioned at a sideways angle to the man. He had his right hand in his pocket wrapped around the Taser, out of the line of sight of the gunman. The revolver was in his left pocket but he knew that the long barrel would catch if he drew it out too fast. He was guaranteed to lose the gunfight. There was an even better reason for avoiding the gun, tempting as it was to cut down this bastard on the spot. If Peter succeeded in killing the man, he knew that he would be stuck in Montreal for days, perhaps a week, if he, an unlicensed foreign police detective, used a firearm against a Canadian citizen, however unsavoury a specimen.
Sylvain Deroche torqued to his left to bring his .45 to bear and as he caught Peter’s intentions, he gave one of his patented smiles. In some maniacal way, he was enjoying himself.
Peter grimaced back.
He guessed at the fat man’s next movement, but he guessed correctly. The gunman took one measured step towards Peter, who understood that his attacker had formed some demented plan to grab a hostage. The fellow planted himself less than three feet away, the gun rising towards Peter’s left temple. In a second he would be in a position to shoot both Deroche and Cammon. With no idea where the on switch was, Peter fished in his right pocket for the electronic device. From the weight of the thing, he guessed that this was one of the less powerful units. He hoped that its features would resemble those on a gun and that he could find the safety and the trigger.
But he wasn’t sure and so he took the time to look down at the black Taser as he turned. He saw the safety switch and disengaged it. Now only six feet from the man, he raised the Taser and pulled the trigger. The device sparked and buzzed, launching two steel-barbed wires into the assailant’s chest. The cops later told Peter it was a perfect strike.
At once, the atmosphere in the back lot changed in a strange way. Movement stopped as everyone gawked at the man on the ground. The crackling fire seemed to quiet and the fire engine siren held back for an extra few seconds in the distance. Deroche’s mania, for once, subsided. The Quebec cops, who until now had ignored the British interloper, gazed at Peter with something he hadn’t felt for a long time: professional respect.