Kroop, though, is not in the loop, and his baleful glare tells Arthur he doesn’t want him continuing his smear campaign against a veteran officer. But his Lordship has returned to court armed with only his top teeth, as evinced by a wobbly lower lip, so his nuisance value may be limited.
Lotis is still outside on the phone. Faloon, who’s quietly enjoying his redemption, has almost become the forgotten man of this trial. He could casually walk out and no one notice. Flynn is still declining to sit, though he seems tense and shaky. He’s expressionless, looking straight ahead, though seemingly at nothing.
“I was pleased to hear, officer, that there’s a pleasure we share. Fishing. Trolling for salmon. You do that out in the Alberni Inlet, I suppose. Barkley Sound.”
“The boys and I, sometimes their friends. When I get a day off.”
“A basic runabout, that’s my rig. I imagine you have something snappier. With power.”
“A Cormoran 850 inboard inflatable, it can get around.”
“What sort of dinghy?”
“A small Zodiac.”
“You have all the latest, I suppose. Up-to-date GPS. Sonar.”
“That’s right. I don’t believe in risking lives.”
“Where do you keep her?”
“Small marina just down our road.”
“Hockey is another favourite sport? You’re a proud hockey dad.”
“The boys are pretty good at all sports.”
“I’ll bet they have a proud mother too.”
“Well, I guess so, yes.”
“But she’s not at home with you.”
“We’re separated.”
“And in the process of divorcing, I understand.”
“Mr. Svabo!” Kroop cries out, demanding that this lifeless prosecutor get on the ball. Buddy complies by objecting to these personal matters, but without much heart.
Arthur reminds the court that Flynn was introduced as a man of integrity. “The Crown has put Flynn’s character in issue. And with all due respect to the court, I intend to test it.”
Kroop has no answer. “Please don’t be all day.”
“Am I right, sergeant? You’re being divorced?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nothing to be ashamed of, it happens to the best of us. When did your marriage start falling into trouble?”
“It hadn’t been working well for a few years. We stuck it out for the boys. It, ah, got worse last summer.”
“Were you seeking help for it?”
Flynn has been holding himself from playing with his moustache-Arthur once kidded him about it during a break-but gives in, working it, buying time, as if any response might imperil him. “Frankly, I felt the problems were hers.”
“Were either of you seeking help last summer?”
“Not me. I can’t speak for her. Don’t know what she did with her day, except she worked part-time at a drugstore.”
“Ah, and where would that be?”
“I don’t know. Down on Marine Drive.”
Lotis is back, at Arthur’s ear. “Still waiting for Daisy’s lawyer to phone. I’ll get a list of Marine Drive pharmacies.” And she’s gone again.
“You were posted to Alberni about mid-October?”
“Yes.”
“What about your family?”
“I encouraged the boys to come with me, and they did. Switched schools.”
“And your wife?”
“She, ah, no, she stayed in Vancouver.”
“Desiree.” The name hangs there, in large letters, like a lurid movie poster. Arthur is on overdrive, focused, his personal concerns stowed safely away, no longer rubbing at him. “Desiree, that’s her name? Desiree Flynn?”
Flynn fingers the moustache. “Right.”
“But everyone called her Daisy.” Pens working at the press table, a rustling in the back.
“I called her Desi.”
“But she didn’t like that name either, did she?” This is a calculated guess, but Flynn seems taken aback, as if Arthur has insider knowledge. Maybe he called her Dizzy.
Flynn looks at the visiting RCMP inspector, then quickly away, and amends, “A couple of her friends called her Daisy.”
“That’s what she preferred?”
“Maybe, we didn’t discuss it.”
“Dear Daisy. That’s whom we’re talking about, isn’t it? The diamond in the rough with the abusive husband.”
“That…I’m sorry, but that’s total nonsense, sir.” It’s all or nothing for Jasper now, and he rises to the occasion with dramatics, with sputtering astonishment. “I am grossly offended, sir, if you’re suggesting I had something to do with the death of Dr. Winters. I didn’t know the woman. I had no reason to dislike her.”
“Surely you were aware your wife was receiving counselling from her?”
“I don’t know what Desi was doing.”
A noisy stirring in the back, as Ruth Delvechio shuffles past her seatmates and out the door, in obvious distress. Buddy is staring at Flynn with concern, fighting the realization that all along he’s been running a bogus prosecution. The jury seems to be falling out of love with Flynn too. But Kroop’s in denial, making sulky faces, unable to entertain the notion that a stalwart veteran of a cherished institution has committed an unpardonably evil act.
Arthur confronts the witness with Eve’s old appointments calendar, the name Desiree written in twice for July. A tussle with Kroop follows over whether it can be filed as an exhibit, but the defanged jurist relents when Arthur offers to call the deceased’s secretary.
He leads Flynn through the chronology: his visit to Faloon, his return to Vancouver to pilfer an exhibit that would falsely incriminate him. Flynn claims not to remember seeing a notice to conclude the old Faloon case. If there was one, the exhibit custodian would have acted on it. Documents would be on file in his office.
A switch, back to Flynn’s sports boat. “Did you take your Cormoran inboard for a spin on the night of March 31?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
“Where were your two boys that night?”
“They were, ah, in Vancouver for the weekend. I sent them off with tickets for a Canucks game.”
“They were with their mother?”
“I assume. She has them a weekend a month. The lawyers work it out.”
“You don’t talk to Daisy?”
“Desiree and I do not communicate, haven’t for months.”
“When did you finish work on that Friday?”
“Close on to eighteen hours.”
“Six p.m., then? Some of us old-timers have an aversion to the twenty-four-hour clock.”
“Five-thirty, six. I had a drink with a female member, and later that evening I popped into the detachment.”
“What time was that?”
“About eight.”
“So maybe you had a couple of drinks with this female member.”
“Okay, two drinks.”
Three or four, probably. To sedate him, lower tension, give him courage, the balls to go through with his plan. “And then you went home.”
“Yes.”
“And how long does it take, going all out, for a fleet craft like yours to get from Alberni to Bamfield?”
“Ninety minutes. I would never run her all out at night, Mr. Beauchamp.”
Arthur is working at a fast rhythm, allegro vivace, snapping each question after the last answer. Flynn is finding little room to sulk, to play at being wrongly accused, but he is far from being broken. Arthur has spun a sticky web, but is it enough? The jury may see this as just another example of a counsel’s shifting tactics, accusing almost every witness of being Dr. Eve’s assassin.
The clock nears 12:30. Arthur has more punches to throw, but no knockout blow-unless Daisy comes out of hiding. But he’ll leave the jury with something to chew on over lunch.
“Officer, help me out with this difficulty. When you and Constable Beasely attended at the crime scene, you went directly to the bedroom.”
“Yes, initially we saw the deceased through the window and so…yes, we went right to the bedroom.”
“The first thing you did after looking for vital signs was to put on latex gloves?”
“That’s standard, sir.”
“And you kept them on as you did a cursory check of the cottage?”