Mr. MacDonald surged to his feet, bristling. “I don’t want you putting my wife through this! What do the damn details matter? He was duck hunting down by the creek, just like he loved to do, and the gun misfired. Danny wasn’t with him, if that’s what you’re getting at. Danny hadn’t been near the place in over a year, and if that was eating him up, it damn well should have!” He was hunched in the doorway.
His wife looked up at him, her cheeks flaming. “Angus, the detectives are just doing their job.”
“And it shouldn’t involve stirring up Ian’s death, which was a pointless accident. The boy runs through bullets to rescue a bunch of bloody foreigners, and he ends up getting shot with his own rifle in his own backyard!”
Unexpectedly, Kate McGrath stood up and reached out a soothing hand. “Mr. MacDonald, I’m sorry to put you both through this again. To spare your wife, perhaps you and I can go outside, and you can show me where it happened.”
MacDonald hesitated, scowling dubiously at Green from under a bristly black eyebrow. “I don’t see any reason for him to be staying in here—”
“He can keep me company while you’re out,” his wife interjected, collecting her husband’s tea. The cup was untouched, and a faint tremor in her hands sloshed tea into the saucer. “Since Ian’s death, it’s been hard for me...to be alone.”
MacDonald took some convincing, but finally he snatched a sheepskin jacket off its peg, shoved his feet into massive work boots and jerked his head to summon McGrath outside. In the living room, Mrs. MacDonald sank back onto the sofa as if relieved to be rid of him and reached for the teapot.
“More tea, Inspector?”
He rose to take the chair closer to her and held out his cup. “Thank you, it’s delicious.”
She fussed over the cup and added a square of cake to the saucer. A frown pinched her brow, and her eyes avoided his. Green waited, sensing she was building up to something.
“That’s a terrible thing about the Ross girl,” she said finally. “I remember her. She came to Ian’s funeral with Danny, was a big help to him. Poor lad.”
“I gather the boys had a pretty rough time in Yugoslavia.”
“More than many of them bargained for, that’s sure.”
“Did Ian talk about those times? About what went on, or about the soldiers he was with?”
“We got letters from many of them when he died. They were so proud of him.” A tremulous smile played across her lips. She thrust aside her tea and struggled to her feet. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
He followed her through a low doorway and up a steep, narrow, wooden staircase to the upstairs hall. The ancient floorboards creaked as she led the way down a dim hall to a door at the end. When she opened it, light flooded a room barely larger than a closet. Dust motes danced in the shaft of sunlight from a gabled window overlooking the pasture. It was clearly a young man’s room, with a single bed neatly made under the window and an array of homemade shelves along the opposite wall, on which were orderly stacks of clothes,books, CD s and computer equipment. On a dresser by the bed sat a large studio portrait of a young man in a dress suit. He had his father’s blue eyes, poorly tamed brown hair, and a lean hatchet face that he had yet to grow into.
“That’s his high school prom, the first real photo we ever had taken of him. We never dreamed it would be the last.” Her eyes welled. She tugged open a dresser drawer and bent over it. Inside, he could see piles of cards bound together with elastics.
“We didn’t want too many people at the funeral,” she said. “Some of his reservists came, but we got cards from all across the country from men in his peacekeeping battalion.”
His interest piqued, Green came to look over her shoulder.“What did they write?”
“Mostly about his bravery. Some about his way with the local people, and about how he would always lend a helping hand or a listening ear. Also his gentleness with the animals. Ian always had a way with animals. Those two duck tollers outside, Rob and Roy, he got them as pups when he came back from Yugoslavia, and he trained them completely on his own. Hours, he’d spend with them out in the field. They’re old now, but they still miss him.”
She picked up one of the letters, opened it, and slid out a simple sympathy card with a long note scrawled on the inside page. “From his first section commander over there, Sergeant Sawranchuk. Ian was as steady and courageous a soldier as anycommander could hope for,” she read, “and he was the glue of thesection. He took on all tasks, small or large, and endured the manyhardships and personal discomforts without a word of complaint.He preferred talk to fighting, but he was as good with his weaponas any man, and in a crisis he could always be relied on to be in thethick of things. He believed in our mission, and he hoped we weremaking a difference in the lives of the people over there. He willreally be missed.”
She slid the card back into the envelope and replaced it carefully into the drawer. “The sergeant was sent back home on medical leave before Ian got his medal, but at least he was kind enough to write. Oh, here’s a picture of them all — his friends and the men he worked with.”
She drew out a photo of a group of soldiers posing around a large armoured vehicle.They were grinning and hamming it up.Green took the photo for a closer look. The sun was bright and the shadows sharp, making it difficult to distinguish facial features, but a lab technician could probably make them recognizable.
“Do you know who they are?” he asked.
“Other than Ian and Danny, no. There’s Ian...” She pointed to a young man in the middle with his arms slung around two others. “Always surrounded by friends. He touched so many people.”
“May I borrow this? I’ll reproduce it and send it back, I promise.”
“Oh...it’s just sitting in a drawer now. Those days changed him so much—they aren’t how I want to remember him.” She stared out the window for a moment with sadness in her eyes, before she seemed to pull herself back from the brink of memory. Delving deeper into the pile, she pulled out a small, austere card without the purple roses and embossed script that adorned most of the others.
“Even months later we still got cards. This was from his platoon commander Richard Hamm, promoted to major by then and stationed out in Edmonton, so it took him a while to get the news, I suppose.” Her hands trembled slightly as she opened the card and held it out to Green. “He’s not much for words, but what he said about our Ian...it says a lot.”
Green glanced at the card, which contained two lines of terse prose in a brusque, heavy hand. Dear Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald, my condolences on your loss. Ian was a tireless and committed soldier whose bravery saved many lives.
“Tireless, committed, that was our Ian. If he believed in something, he’d give it his heart and soul.” Her chin quivered, and she dropped her gaze. “Nice of the major, don’t you think?”
Green studied the card with a nagging unease. He’d heard many expressions of condolence in his time. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he sensed the major’s choice of words was important not for what they said, but what they didn’t say. No mention of a pleasure to have under my command, or an example to his fellow soldiers. These words were carefully chosen to comfort the bereaved without eulogizing the dead man. There was no warmth in the sentiment expressed; on the contrary, Green sensed a chill in his words. Yet Ian was a soldier who’d received a rare medal of bravery under the man’s command.
“Was this the man who recommended Ian for his medal?”
Her gaze flickered for only an instant before she shook her head. “That was Danny. It was when the company moved down to Sector South in Croatia, and conditions were much more dangerous for them. There wasn’t much peace to be kept, truth be told, and Danny had to take over