“We’re looking for a powerful, physical man,” he said. “Someone Daniel Oliver knew from the past and who’d betrayed him in some way. Was Daniel involved in criminal activity? Drug dealing?”
McGrath shook her head. “He was a mechanic, although he’d been on the skids for a few months, lost his job and was on unemployment insurance. He was doing some fairly heavy drinking, but no drugs. The friends we interviewed said he was basically a decent guy.”
“But his life had been on the skids, despite having a woman he planned to marry.”
“Yes, that was slowly bringing him out of it. Plus the baby on the way.”
Green thought about the findings of the autopsy. “What happened to the baby?”
McGrath made a sympathetic face. “It was a little boy, born early because of all the stress. He had some health problems, I think, and she had trouble coping. When I last had contact with her, the Children’s Aid was taking measures to remove him from the home. I think that last loss just about destroyed her. That’s why when Inspector Norrich talks about Patti’s lifestyle . . .” She broke off, pressing her lips together as if to censor herself.
“Yeah.” Green let the contempt hang in the air, then resumed a safer line of inquiry. “So what happened to send Oliver’s life into a tailspin?”
McGrath seemed to pull herself from the memories with an effort. “According to Patti, his best friend was shot in a freak hunting accident about six months earlier, and Daniel blamed himself because he hadn’t kept in close enough touch. They’d been in the reserves together and served six months of peacekeeping duty overseas. They’d always been very close, but when they got back to Nova Scotia, the friend turned his back on his plans and retreated into himself.”
Green’s instincts went on full alert. He’d known police officers who’d done UN duty in Yugoslavia, and he knew the stresses and dangers they had faced. He knew that stress could bond a group of men more strongly that ten years together on a normal job. It could also create some bitter enemies.
“Did you interview any of their army mates? Especially those who were overseas with them?”
“Norrich did.”
Green’s eyes widened. “Norrich? He was on the case?”
“He was lead.” She hesitated. “Technically. He was sergeant at the time, and I was a constable. I worked most of the case, but Norrich took the trip down the valley to talk to Daniel Oliver’s regiment. He figured . . .” She hesitated again, and Green could almost see her wrestling with propriety. “Being a sergeant . . .”
“And a man.”
She inclined her head slightly in agreement. “He’d get further.”
“And did he?”
“No. I guess military buddies close ranks even tighter than drinking buddies. All they said was that Daniel had been an excellent soldier in Yugoslavia, even got a promotion in the field, and everyone was very proud of him. But . . .” She reached for a file that lay on top of the stack. At a glance, Green could see Norrich’s name at the bottom of the report. “There was something I thought didn’t quite add up. Oliver had been on track for making sergeant, and moving up the ladder as an NCO. But two years after he got back from overseas, he quit the reserves. So things can’t have been as rosy as they painted it.”
“Not to mention the strange behaviour of his friend when he returned from overseas.” Green stopped abruptly as a thought struck him. McGrath had said the friend’s accident was six months earlier. Daniel Oliver had been killed in April 1996. Counting back six months yielded the fall of 1995. He sucked in his breath as another coincidence hit him between the eyes. “What was the friend’s name?”
She rummaged through the files, scanning rapidly. “I know I’ve got it in one of my interviews with Patti. I’m sure I wrote it— Ah-hah! Ian MacDonald. Corporal Ian MacDonald.”
EIGHT
May 28, 1993. Sector West, Croatia.
Dear Kit . . . The APC broke down again this morning and Danny spent half the day tying the fuel pump together with wire. He’s a wizard under the hood, which you have to be with some of the equipment we got. The tracks belong in the war museum! Whenever anyone in the platoon has a problem, they send for Danny. He jokes he’ll be good enough to get his mechanics papers when he gets back to civvie street.
So we had a day around camp instead of going on patrol, which was a nice break. Peacekeeping is a lot different here on the ground than the politicians think. Neither side trusts the other, and they sure as hell don’t trust the UN to protect them. Our platoon commander says that’s because other UN battalions haven’t done their job. Some of the third world ones are so poorly paid they take bribes from both sides and turn a blind eye when Serbs or Croats sneak weapons in or cleanse a village or whatever. Besides even when we find weapons, all we’re supposed to do is turn them over to the local police, who probably hid them in the first place.
Don’t get the Hammer started on the UN rules, because the bureaucrats have no idea how the militias, the police, and the locals are in it together. Both sides trust their own militias way more than they do UNPROFOR or any fancy ceasefire plan dreamed up in Zagreb. And each local militia’s got its own commander who thinks he’s the boss and he doesn’t have to obey orders from his own command, let alone us. So every day we catch guys sneaking behind the lines to lay mines, and every night the two sides shell each other back and forth over our heads.
Anyway, the strategy of our battalion CO is to try to get the locals to trust us by building relationships with them, and helping them fix up their homes and roads after the bombings. Our section house is near a little village that used to be Serb but now it’s Croat, although there are two Muslim refugee families, like Mahir who escaped from Sarajevo with his mother. Sarge has kind of taken her and Mahir under our wing. The kid’s only fifteen, but he wants to practice his English so he does our translating. He hates the Serbs. He says when the Serbs ran away from the village, they burned their houses so the Croats couldn’t use them. But I’m not sure, I think maybe the Croats torched the village to chase the Serbs away.
Lots of our guys think the whole place is just nuts, but I’m trying to learn how all this started. It’s hundreds of years old and each side accuses the other of atrocities. The Serbs hate the Croats for collaborating with the Nazis to massacre thousands of them. The Croats say the Serbs took over their land and were the enforcers under the communists. And both of them have hated the Muslims since the Turks massacred and looted their way through the area during the Ottoman Empire. Five hundred fucking years ago, for crissakes. Nobody forgets.
I have to say it makes Canada look like heaven on earth. Most of our guys can’t believe the bitterness, even between neighbours who’ve known each other for generations. So like I said, we’re trying to get them to trust us at least. The Hammer thinks we have enough to do without wasting our time playing Pollyanna, but then he’s the guy who has to argue with both sides each time they try to show their muscle. But Sarge got our section to build a soccer field and a jungle gym for the school in the village, and it’s really great to watch the kids run around laughing. Like there’s not mines all around the town perimeter and mortar fire in the distance all night. The Sarge thinks kids are where we can make a difference.