“And what was that?”
Manjit raised her head and looked intently into her husband’s eyes.
“When I accused her of being a harlot, she laughed and said: ‘Come now, Manjit, honestly: which would Hakeem prefer? A chance at illicit, adulterous sex or a front page byline, hmm?’ And of course, I had to agree with her.”
Manjit laughed and giggled and nuzzled her face into Jinnah’s chest. Jinnah stared straight ahead.
“Are you angry, darling?” she asked after a moment.
“Not with you, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Not with you.”
Jinnah was looking at his own reflection in the leaded glass of the china cabinet. He saw a man who had been deceived, duped, and humiliated. And he had only himself to blame. He had been cruising, not giving this case his all. He had not seriously attempted to do his duty to the dead. Sam Schuster deserved to have his killer caught and his soul freed. Jinnah had reached a terrible conclusion and made a fearful vow to himself.
Sam Schuster’s death was now the subject of a full-fledged Jinnahad. He had sworn it.
Chapter Four
Grant loped into the office with a studied nonchalance, paper tucked under his arm, overcoat flapping slightly as he strode seemingly self-absorbed through the newsroom to the business department. The city desk reporters pointedly ignored him, but Grant was greeted by high-fives and smiles when he reached his own section.
“Well done, Mister Grant,” beamed Ring Kendal, the portly business editor who did not subscribe to Blacklock’s theory of negative energy. “You certainly showed up those lazy bastards on cityside.”
Grant, determined to suck up as much admiration as he could, affected an offhand easiness.
“It’s nothing,” he said modestly. “Nothing any award-winning business reporter working at the peak of his abilities couldn’t have done.”
Kendal laughed and heaped more praise on Grant in that twangy New Zealand accent he failed to lose entirely in over thirty years of residency in Vancouver. His business colleagues were equally effusive in their own ways.
“Adequate job, Grant. Something approaching a news story, that,” said Stone, the transportation reporter, in the scornful voice reserved by journalists when giving their co-workers the highest of compliments. “One day you might just become a reporter.”
Grant laughed, accepted the coffee purchased for him and sat at his desk, going through his voice messages. There were one or two crank calls from readers who saw Grant as being anti-business and one or two more compliments from contacts in the CDNX. Grant had spread the newspaper out before him on his desk and sipped his luke-warm coffee. The banner headline splashed across the front page looked great — not as great as his byline beneath it with the copyright symbol and the subhead: “A Tribune Exclusive Report,” but great nonetheless. Then he went through his press releases. Mostly routine stuff: an exciting new offering based on promising gold deposits by some Yukon firm was to be listed next week. Harmonia Inc. was resuming work on their downtown office tower after a three-year delay. (Grant laughed at the part that read: “new, off-shore financing and increased consumer confidence in the diversified portfolio of Harmonia has once again put the corporation at the forefront of mixed residential-commercial construction on the West Coast.”) And a Calgary-based pharmaceutical firm was about to open a subsidiary in Vancouver to market its new line of herbal remedies. Grant stood up and pretended to stretch, casting an eye over at the cityside section to see if Jinnah was in yet. He wasn’t. Sanderson was, however, interviewing some woman at his desk. Grant smirked. It was clear from Sanderson’s body language that he was terrified of the person sitting across from him. Probably some reformed junkie or a prostitute from the look of her, he thought. Wasn’t Sanderson doing some street-kid thing? Grant smiled and his gaze wandered over to the glass reception booth where Crystal was dealing with a courier. Perhaps he’d wander by. She hadn’t been impressed last night when he’d asked her for a date. Maybe now she’d be more amenable.
Grant had just taken a step away from his desk when his phone rang. He glanced at the call display to see if it was anyone worth interrupting his quest for. But the small, plastic window read “Number Restricted” in that awful, electronic-exosketch lettering. That meant the call was from a cellphone, likely, and Grant had plenty of friends and contacts with cellphones. He picked up the receiver, still smirking.
“Gerald Dixon Grant here,” he said.
“You filthy, lying son of a bitch. I’m gonna burn you like I burned Sam Schuster.”
The voice was deep, raw and evil-sounding. Grant’s sense of well-being and superiority vanished.
“What—” he began.
The phone went dead. So did Grant’s courage. The morning’s glow was gone. He sat there stunned for a moment, staring down at the now-blank call-display in horror. It was Stone who finally noticed him sitting slack-jawed.
“What’s the matter, Grant? Your dot-com RRSPs collapse?”
Grant looked at him, still in shock.
“I just got a death threat,” he said, voice shaky.
“Congratulations,” said Stone. “Welcome to the stock beat.”
Grant looked at Stone as if he had just made an improper sexual suggestion involving his mother. Grant had not been on the CDNX beat long and this was his first death threat. He’d known when he’d taken the job that they came with the territory and yet, he never really thought he’d write anything that would prompt such a call. He didn’t have the psychological armour that Jinnah had forged over the years, having had to deal with dozens of such threats and one or two actual attempts on his life. Grant stood up, slightly dazed.
“I’m not shitting you, Stone,” he said. “That last call — he said I’d burn like Sam Schuster did.”
“Don’t take it personally,” said Stone. “Probably just a pissed-off investor. You haven’t exactly done Schuster’s business empire any favours, you know.”
“But he said he’d burn me!”
“They always shoot the messenger, son.”
“Well, no one’s shooting this messenger,” said Grant.
His shock was now giving way to anger. He strode quickly over to the reception desk. Crystal had yet another courier waiting at her window while she dealt with someone on the phone, speaking quietly into her headset. To hell with the courier. To hell with Crystal, for that matter. Grant loomed over her.
“What number was that last call to me from?” he demanded.
“Just a sec, Grant,” Crystal said without looking up at him.
Grant grabbed her seat, twirled her around and tore the headset off her ears.
“I said what was the last number to call me!” said Grant, shaking.
Crystal looked at Grant as if he’d gone mad.
“Grant, I’m dealing with someone at the moment, if you don’t mind —” she began.
“I do mind! I mind very much when people call and threaten to kill me.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? I’m sorry, it’s just that this is the tenth damn courier I’ve had to deal with —”
“Make me feel special,” pouted the courier, a thin, spandexed creature with an over-sized bike helmet.
“I may need it for the police,” said Grant, calming down. “I’m sorry —”
“Hey, no biggee,” said Crystal.
Her fingers flew over the switchboard as Grant waited anxiously. In