This Thingof Darkness
An Inspector Green Mystery
BARBARA FRADKIN
Text © 2009 by Barbara Fradkin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior consent of the publisher.
Cover design: Emma Dolan
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts
for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry
Development Program for our publishing activities.
RendezVous Crime
an imprint of Napoleon & Company
Toronto, Ontario, Canada www.napoleonandcompany.com
Printed in Canada
13 12 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Fradkin, Barbara Fraser, date-
This thing of darkness / Barbara Fradkin.
(An Inspector Green mystery)
ISBN 978-1-894917-85-8
I. Title. II. Series: Fradkin, Barbara Fraser, date- . Inspector
Green mystery.
PS8561.R233T45 2009 C813'.6 C2009-904767-5
To my mother, Katharine Mary Currie, for letting my spirit roam free
Contents
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Pumpkins!” Tony shrieked, his dark eyes dancing as he struggled to get out of his bike trailer. “Daddy, look at all the pumpkins! Can we buy three?”
Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green leaned on his handlebars, red-faced and gasping for breath. Sweat poured into his eyes and soaked through his Bagelshop T-shirt. The mere thought of lugging three huge pumpkins all the way back home in the bike trailer alongside his four-year-old son exhausted him. The Sunday morning bike excursion to the Byward Market had been his wife’s idea. He’d been angling for the car, but Sharon had ladled on the guilt. The environment, fitness, family togetherness. “How many more gorgeous sunny days will we have before the snow falls?” she’d said. “Besides, we’d never find a parking place.”
Looking out over the crowded streets, he privately admitted she was right. September was the peak time for local fruits and vegetables, and people fought their way along the street stalls looking for the best bargains in brightly-coloured sweet peppers, fragrant apples and cauliflower so huge, it would take all winter to eat one. Street buskers cashed in on the crowds, playing everything from classical flute to African drums, and the musical chaos rose up over the roar of engines and the chatter of farmers hawking their goods.
Green had grown up in the heart of old Bytown, and twice a year he liked to bring his son down to the inner city to experience the authentic old farmers’ market. Once in the spring, when the maple syrup and flower vendors first brought the market back to life, then again at harvest time. In these brief visits, he saw it once more as a source of life and colour, and not as a dishevelled, dissolute playground of drunks, hookers and predators. It took a conscious effort to set aside the twenty-five soul-battering years in the trenches and to reclaim the innocence he’d felt as a youth, but his own son’s joy was the only reminder he needed.
“Gelatos first, honey,” Sharon said with a laugh. A mango gelato from Piccolo Grande had been the bribe she’d offered Green to tip the scales. They navigated their bikes cautiously down the busy street that bordered the market, past the hideous barricades of the new American embassy and down a street of limestone heritage buildings, formerly nuns’ cloisters but now converted into trendy shops. Inside the gelato shop, it took ten minutes to debate the choices, but they finally emerged with mango, chocolate and strawberry.
As they sat on the bench to eat their cones, Green found his cop’s gaze roving, picking out the darker parallel world beneath the bustle and cheer of the marketplace. The bearded pan-handler on the corner, the tiny, almost prepubescent sex trade worker advertising her wares at the traffic light, two skinheads in leather and chains swaggering down the street with a muzzled pit bull tightly held in hand. Perhaps the two were innocent, but more likely they were looking for sport. A solitary black, or a woman in a hijab. I have my eye on you punks, he thought, as his son chattered excitedly beside him.
Green claimed it was a curse, but in truth, the menace of the streets set his pulse racing. Here, amid the diesel fumes and crumbling streets, the eclipsed dreams and discarded hopes, he’d first felt his calling. He thought ahead to his week of meetings within the corporate walls of the Elgin Street mothership. Meetings with the RCMP, with his NCOs, with his boss, Superintendent Barbara Devine, who was shoring up her bid for the vacant Deputy Chief’s job. Would he even survive?
“Daddy, listen!” Tony cried, jumping off the bench. “A police car! Maybe it’s an accident.”
Green grabbed his hand to restrain him. There was no sign of cruisers,