The Taken Read online

  He was standing over her, blocking the light now, his huge face in darkness, his eyes shining darkly as marble, and she pushed back along the floor, striking objects with her elbows and legs. In her mind’s eye, she saw the little backflipping man and his head popping off. He loomed down and said, “You find what you’re looking for?” and the light played over the surface of his teeth like sparks were coming from inside his mouth. She flicked the baton out in the air beside her to extend it, but before she could swing it, he had that arm tightly in his grip and he was pulling her up.

  “Hey -” she shouted.

  He brushed the dust off her arm. “You okay?” he said. “I told you to watch your step.”

  She had the baton cocked, but she held it still. The bare bulb hanging from the ceiling was almost as bright as a headlight. She could see his face now, as friendly as it had been at his front door. “I’m fine,” she said, “I landed on something soft.”

  “It has its benefits, doesn’t it?”

  She blinked at him, breathing heavily, still unable to chase the feeling that she was in danger. But she wasn’t: her imagination had run away with her, and Bellocque was just standing there, his hands in his pockets. They were in the midst of the rich vein of garbage from which Bellocque had mined the main floor’s disorder. Bike wheels, boxes of equipment, reels of wire, flattened cardboard boxes, and many piles of vaguely related things, such as a pile of metal pipe and ductwork arranged into something like a tower. Her lower back was throbbing, but there was no pain in her leg. She’d been lucky.

  “If you can find a man down here, I suppose he’ll be grateful to be freed from this chaos. I could probably build you a robot if you’re desperate, but maybe you’d better conduct your search first.”

  “That’s fine,” she said, pushing the end of the baton against her knee to collapse it.

  “I’m guessing now there’s more on your mind than a drowned mannequin.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Well, you have my attention. If there’s anything I can do to help, any other details from our afternoon on the lake that might help…”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think Pat Barlow wanted one of you to find that mannequin?”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” he said, and he pushed his glasses up his nose. “But if she did, that means she’s mixed up in whatever else this is, right? And what the hell would one thing have to do with the other?”

  “It all has to do with something the Westmuir Record is running right now. A story.”

  “About what?”

  “A short story.”

  “That Pat wrote?”

  “No. A man named Colin Eldwin.”

  He breathed out dramatically. “Look, you’ve really got my head spinning now,” he said. “I’m going to leave you down here and you can open any box or drawer you want to, okay? Move things around. And when you’re satisfied that there’s nothing of interest down here, I’ll have a fresh pot of coffee done. There’s even pie if you want it.”

  “I don’t need to look around, Mr. Bellocque.”

  He held his palms out to her. “Nope, you stay here and do whatever it is you folks do when you’re hot on the trail of something. I want you to be able to say, when you leave here, that the most remarkable thing about my house was the pie.”

  She watched his face for a moment. Not a twitch. “What kind of pie?”

  “Blueberry.”

  “I’ll be up in five minutes.”

  She did as she was invited to do. Rickety shelves against the back wall were piled high with boxes of miscellanies: index cards in one, bits of screen rolled up in another. Taxonomies of innards: rubber washers, small motors with the wires hanging off forlornly, discarded bits of leather. Some mysterious machine with an as yet undiscovered purpose could be made from all of this, some huge, marauding, clanking thing of metal, polished to a shine and puffing smoke. A mechanical Dean Bellocque. She grimaced at the thought.

  She cleared one of the shelves to look at the bare wall behind. It was concrete, as in the video sequence, but a thick coat of anti-mould paint had been applied over its surface. She touched a fingertip to it: it was dry and even cracking in places. It had been applied years ago.

  The floor itself was bare, which means, strictly speaking, a carpet could have been laid down here and removed, but the state of the wall argued against such a masking and unmasking, and anyway, the shape of the room was wrong: the room in the video sequence had been long enough to permit an uninterrupted pan from one extreme to the other; this basement was made of discontinuous shapes, one small square space opening into another. There was no wall long enough, without a passage into another room, for this basement to have been used for the purposes they’d witnessed.

  She stood alone under the single bright light and noted, as well, that the light in the video had been dimmer. In all, she was satisfied that this was not the site of the captivity and attack they’d seen. She was grateful for Bellocque’s suggestion that she take her time. She’d made progress, the kind that limits possibilities, but progress just the same.

  Upstairs, Bellocque was bent over the reel-to-reel, pulling a belt over a couple of rollers. He’d slipped the wing of the loupe with the magnifying glass in it behind his reading glasses, and closed one eye as he used a thick finger to thread the belt into place. He looked up at her and pulled the loupe out. “Pie is ready,” he said.

  “Actually, I’ll pass. I’ve got some work I’d better get back to in Port Dundas.”

  “Oh, that’s a pity,” he said, and he got up from his tabletop, wiping his hands. “Do you know, you never actually told me your name.”

  “Ah, yes. I’m supposed to do that, aren’t I? Hazel Micallef. Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef.”

  He held out his hand and she shook it. “What did you find down there?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, isn’t that a good outcome for us both?”

  “It is for you, Mr. Bellocque,” she said, and she offered him a smile. “Look, thanks for the coffee, but I should be on my way.”

  He held a finger up in the air, his eyebrows raised. “Hold on, hold on,” he said. He rushed behind the table and snapped a couple of levers on the old tape machine.

  “I should be on my way,” she heard herself say. Clear as a bell, as good as any digital recorder. She was impressed.

  “Saved from obsolescence,” she said. “That’s a good trick. I don’t suppose you can do it for people?”

  Dean Bellocque smiled. “There’s a difference between skill and magic.”

  11

  It had been four days since the mannequin had been found in Gannon Lake, and so far, the meaning of what they’d learned was still far from clear. Hazel disliked the sense that someone else was in control here, was doling out the information at a pace that suited them. The case was like a dark wave forming in the distance and they couldn’t be sure when it would crash at their feet. She had to consider that there was no proof that the man in the internet sequence was actually being attacked, or that the images they had seen were anything more than a bad short film concocted by someone to make them look. But the connection of the mannequin to the internet address; the black photographs and the dirty shadowy wall in the film; Eldwin unreachable in Toronto, and Bellocque and Paritas at large for the whole weekend… it was a strain to think nothing was going on. But it was also a kind of law in policework that the most innocent things often turned out to have malevolent cores, and complex sets of interlocking clues just as often blew apart to vapour. What you learned was to pay attention to everything, presume nothing, and never be surprised. Her vigilance would not wane, but it felt like an impotent readiness, like she had her gun drawn on fog.

  It was midday Tuesday and all was quiet in the detachment. Apart from the ongoing intrigue concerning the trapped man, there was nothing of interest to report. A couple of traffic tickets wa
s all. The cityfolk had returned to their city, and the locals were sweeping up. Summer, with all its danger and amusement, was soon to be upon them. It was time for a coat of paint and a restocking of shelves.

  PC Bail had been keeping an eye on the internet film. It was running in a window on her desktop, like an unimportant conference call. “Nothing,” she said when Hazel asked. “Just the same two minutes of depravity over and over.”

  Hazel thanked her and went into her office. She opened the laptop there and confirmed what Bail had said: the film sequence had not changed. It made almost twenty-four hours of the same loop playing over and over. She would have to keep herself occupied with about three weeks of daily reports piled on her desk for her perusal. Most of these she’d seen already -Wingate had brought them to the house in dribs and drabs, but evidently, he wasn’t confident enough to have them filed with only his initials on them. There was still nothing more interesting than a stolen iPod in week one, and week two had a complaint from a Mr. Stoneham about a scratch on his car. The current week’s files, which she hadn’t seen, were three strong: a domestic, a stolen bicycle, a beef in a café that escalated into someone throwing a teacup. That might be the quintessential Port Dundas crime, she thought. A fight that ends with someone getting scalded by Darjeeling.

  Wingate knocked. “Come,” she said.

  “Are you busy?”

  She screwed her mouth up at him. “Are you for real?”

  “How’d your visit to Bellocque go?”

  “It was fine. Better than fine. Too bad he’s not single.”

  Wingate gave her a crooked smile. “I gather nothing has changed onscreen.”

  “No. Every hour that passes though, I feel more and more the victim of a prank. What’s the deal with Eldwin?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Claire Eldwin promised she’d call the second he turned up.”

  “She sure didn’t sound like she was baking him a Welcome Home cake. You kind of got the feeling she’d be happy if he stayed away as long as he liked.”

  “You starting to think he’s tied to a chair in his own basement?”

  “Can’t rule it out,” said Hazel. “He doesn’t sound like the kind of guy a lot of people would miss.”

  “Well, the mannequin came up on Friday,” said Wingate, “which means whoever put that video on the net had it ready to go from that point, and that’s the day Eldwin went to Toronto.”

  “Hmm,” said Hazel. “Where’s the loose thread here, Wingate? What about Jellinek? Do we know where he is?”

  “We can find out.” He opened his notebook and flipped a couple of pages, then picked up the phone on her desk and dialled. “Is this Cal Jellinek?” He listened for a moment, then cupped the phone. “Do you want me to ask him if he’s currently being held in a basement and/or being threatened with a knife?”

  “Ask him if Pat Barlow is there.”

  Wingate did, and then passed Hazel the phone when she gestured for it. “Ms. Barlow?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know where that mannequin was?”

  Wingate creased his eyes at her. “What?” said Barlow.

  “You must have known exactly where it was if you drove your customers right to it.”

  “Jesus Christ! Are you kidding me?”

  “Well?”

  “It’s bad enough the lake is full of fry this year, Detective Inspector. You really think I make up for bad fishing with jokes?”

  “So you just happened upon that thing.”

  There was a pause. “I had no idea what was down there,” Barlow said slowly. “I’m not lying.”

  “If you were, that’s what you’d say anyway.”

  “If you want to arrest me for something, do it,” said Barlow angrily. “But if you just want to blow smoke up my ass, leave a message next time.” She slammed the phone down and Hazel pulled her head back smartly. Wingate was looking at her with an unimpressed look on his face.

  “It was worth a try,” she said.

  “Was it?”

  “Look, something has to give here! Someone is waving their hand in front of our face: hey! look here, look here! But what are we supposed to be doing?”

  “What can we do?” he asked. “We can’t inspect every basement in the county.”

  “It would be better than sitting on our rear ends.”

  “I’m frustrated too,” he said.

  She held up the last folder she’d been reading. “I’m starting to think I’ve got a better chance of clearing the Darjeeling Caper than making heads or tails of what turned up in Gannon Lake. Maybe there’s a next move, but I don’t know what it is. All I can think of is Eldwin now. You keep on his wife and try to nail down where her husband is.”

  “Will do,” said Wingate.

  She closed the files that were in front of her and pushed them to him across the desk. “I’m done with these.”

  Wingate was about to leave the paperwork when there was a knock at the door, and Cartwright pushed it open partway. “Busy?”

  “I was just leaving,” said Wingate, and he slipped past her in the doorway. Cartwright came in with a coffee and a giant chocolate muffin, both of which she put down on Hazel’s desk.

  “Early birthday present,” she said.

  Wingate bent back into the doorway. “Your birthday?”

  “Thursday,” said Hazel. “I’m going to be thirty-nine again.” He looked blankly at her. No one had got her Jack Benny joke in ten years. It was sad how things kept changing.

  She was aware of the shadows of her personnel sliding by in the frosted window in the door, but for almost an hour, no one had disturbed her. She watched numbly the endless attack on the unknown victim unspooling on her laptop. It was like a song she couldn’t get out of her head, a song without lyrics, although the more she watched the sequence, the more she became aware of the dreadful music in it. The Percocet she’d taken before leaving the house had peaked and was wearing off: it made the footage seem more raw to her, it hurt more to watch it, and she thought of the other pill, the one wrapped in tinfoil, in her pants pocket, which she wasn’t going to touch unless she really needed it. She’d taken the morning pill as a precaution, although if she were being entirely honest with herself she’d admit she’d taken it because she wanted to. In general, she could feel various aches reasserting themselves at various times, but the truth was she was beginning to feel certain that she could get through the day on her own. She could keep the bottle of pills – and the one in her pocket – as a promise of comfort if she needed it. Needed it, she told herself.

  She got out a scrap of paper from a drawer and wrote down in point form some of the things she thought she should bring up with Willan tomorrow morning. She’d try at first to focus on what they were actually doing in Port Dundas before he trotted out his ratios and his per-capitas. She wanted him to hear what they were dealing with, especially now, and how important the police department was in the community. Willan was going to use the word catchment and talk about efficiencies. He was going to tell her Port Dundas would take on the mantle of county HQ, and she’d be in charge of more people than she was now: it was going to be a challenge and he knew she could rise to it. And when she told him it would mean lost jobs and fewer services and maybe not being able to solve crimes like the one they were working on right now, he was going to shrug and tell her redistribution of employees would amount to a couple of lucrative early retirements, a couple of redeployments, no one was getting fired, and all they’d have to do after the rearranging would be to stay on top of their game… just like they are now! She’d never met this man – apart from the letter that had been sent around to her beat cops, she didn’t know a thing about him – and already she didn’t like him.

  She let Melanie bring her a late lunch of a club sandwich and a Diet Coke, and stayed at her desk writing out facts and figures as they pertained to Port Dundas. While she wrote, she kept the laptop screen tilted discree
tly away so as not to be distracted by it. But she saw the loop repeat and repeat in the corner of her eye.

  She saw their detachment’s case clearly, but she knew he’d only hear her trying to save their own bacon. What did OPSC know about Westmuir? When did those clowns ever leave their desks and come and see the policing realities up here? Anything north of Central was a pin on one of their maps, a line on a graph. She hoped she wouldn’t be reduced to shouting.

  Melanie knocked again about half an hour later, and Hazel didn’t look up from her notes, just told her she was done lunch and thanks, but Melanie was standing in the doorway. “What is it?”

  “Surprise!” she said.

  Hazel put down her pen. Cartwright was holding up a large box wrapped in bright paper. It seemed half the detachment was standing in the hallway behind her. “Come on, now,” said Hazel. “You guys are too much.”

  Cartwright pushed the door fully open and came in to put the box down on her desk. Windemere, Bail, Wilton, Wingate, and Forbes followed her in with big grins on their faces. It was one of those department-store wrapping jobs: hospital corners, ribbon, and a rosette. “This better not be another cellphone,” she said, and they all laughed. She turned it around. “You all tossed five bucks into a hat, but you couldn’t manage a card?”

  Cartwright turned on the officers and gave them an exasperated look. “You guys raised by wolves, or what?” “Hey, don’t look at me,” said Forbes.

  “Never mind,” said Hazel, and she began to tear at the paper. Within was a child’s toy, a game called Mouse Trap. Everyone laughed and clapped, and someone said it was a very clever gift. Hazel remembered the game from Martha’s childhood: you won by building a Rube Goldberg machine that dropped a plastic net on top of a mouse. She looked up grinning at the officers. “Absolutely fitting,” she said. “Whose idea was this?”