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‘I’ll drive you to the terminal,’ she said, in a quiet but authoritative tone, combing her hair. ‘Then you must take a bus in. I want to be discreet about this.’

‘Agreed.’ Ventnor levered himself out of bed.

‘Take the thirteen bus out to Cundles East and get off at Zehrs. It’s a flat fare but you’ll need the exact money in coins, already.’

Ventnor walked across the carpet to the shower.

‘I don’t eat breakfast, already,’ she called after him, ‘but if you want I can maybe do you an egg on toast. . or something quick like that?’

‘No. . no. .’ Ventnor replied as the hot water drove into the sweat clogged pores of his flesh, ‘whatever you do normally is good with me.’

Later, whilst waiting for the number thirteen bus at the Maple Avenue bus stop, Ventnor was amused to watch a group of young boys play soccer in blazing sunshine, dressed in tee shirt and shorts, in the road between two massive and stubborn snowdrifts, Canada in the spring. Later still he sat opposite Marianne Auphan as she pressed a mug of hot coffee into his hands and held up a manila folder. ‘Nathan Fisco,’ she said. ‘Do you want to read it, or shall I give you the gist of it, already?’

‘Oh. . the gist, please.’ Ventnor sipped lovingly on the coffee.

‘OK. . but listen, within these four walls we’re on the clock now, so we’re cops. . and nothing else. . understood?’

‘Clear as a bell, and agreed.’

‘OK, good. So, Nathan Fisco, he died in a house fire about seven years ago.’

‘Seven.’

‘Yes, Jordana Hoskins was out by a few years but the drink does that to you, already.’

‘I have noticed.’

‘He died in a house fire, like I said.’

‘Witnesses?’

‘None. He was drunk according to the file, dropped a lighted cigarette on an alcohol soaked carpet and. . woosh. . but his lover at the time was. .’ Marianne Auphan let her voice fade to silence.

‘Heather Ossetti. . the fell Heather Ossetti.’ Ventnor sipped his coffee.

‘Yes,’ she nodded, ‘got it in one.’

‘Hardly a difficult question.’

‘So we’ll pay a call on his nearest surviving relative. I have phoned him, he is expecting us.’

‘OK, I’ll finish this first, if you don’t mind,’ Ventnor held up his mug of coffee, ‘can’t function without it.’

The young woman knelt and picked up the book of matches. It had, she thought, an interesting cover. She resisted the impulse to throw it into the refuse bag. Given what her employer had told her about the recent police visit she wondered whether it might have some significance.

The man parked his small van on the concrete apron and once again, being irresistibly drawn to the location, he looked over the blue and white police tape at the small workshop. He once again thrilled to the isolation of the vicinity; he savoured the location as he once again felt the power surge. He thought it was wrong, what he had read about why rapists most often let their victims live, because you cannot have a power disparity with a corpse. ‘Oh but you can’, he said to himself as the wind tugged at his coat collar, ‘you so, so can’.

Kenneth Fisco lived in what Ventnor thought was a modest home in North Barrie, wholly brick built of light shaded material with a darker grey tiled roof. A Humvee stood solidly in the driveway and, being a fawn colour, blended sensitively, thought Ventnor, with the house bricks and the colour of the bricks of neighbouring houses. Kenneth Fisco showed himself to be a slightly built, clean shaven, warm of manner individual. His handshake Ventnor found to be light but not overly so, not a ‘wet lettuce’ shake, and his eye contact seemed to be genuine. It was, he thought, as if Marianne Auphan was introducing one of her friends to another. ‘Have you met Thomson? Thomson, this is Kenneth.’ It was, Ventnor felt, that sort of meeting. The interior of the house revealed itself to be similar to the outside: neat and clean and well ordered. A photograph of the Queen hung on the wall of the entrance halclass="underline" no Roman Catholic French Canadian he.

‘So, my father.’ Fisco settled back into an armchair after both Marianne Auphan and Ventnor had, at his invitation, taken a seat on the settee. ‘After all these years, finally there is some police interest. Has new evidence come to light?’

‘Probably,’ Marianne Auphan replied, ‘but more in the manner of a possible connection with other. . other incidents. We have in fact become very interested in Heather Ossetti.’

‘Oh,’ Fisco groaned and looked upwards at the ceiling, ‘that woman. . that. . female,’ pronouncing ‘female’ with a great and clear and distinct anger.

‘You didn’t like her?’

‘Oh. . it shows? No we didn’t. . not me, or my brother. . or my sisters. She was such a deeply unpleasant and dangerous woman and we were children then, we couldn’t defend ourselves and dad was always out of it with the drink.’

‘She was violent?’

‘More verbally than physically but we still had to learn how to duck.’

‘What happened?’ Marianne Auphan conducted the interview; Ventnor was content to remain silent.

‘Well, dad was a good man but only so far as his lights shone and unfortunately for his children they didn’t shine very far.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, he was an adequate provider, can’t fault him there, but he did take a good drink. He was also very needy, emotionally speaking. . I got that impression. I still have it really; I think that mother was a woman with five children, one of whom was her husband.’

‘I have come across similar, already.’ Marianne Auphan spoke with a low, knowledgeable tone. ‘It happens. . or husbands with wives who are more akin to daughters. . very stressful and causes dysfunction in the family.’

‘Yes, well mother died in a car wreck. She was a passenger, wholly the fault of the driver of the other car. After that dad lost the plot, really lost it, found it difficult to hold down a job. . really started drinking very heavily and began to bring all sorts of women home, one being Heather Ossetti. . but unlike the others she hung around, she stayed for months. For some reason our chaotic rundown old house was good enough for her to call home.’

‘Hiding, do you think?’

Fisco paused. ‘No, no I wouldn’t say that. I think, looking back, that it was more in the manner of somebody taking the rough with the smooth.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning she put up with our messy household because it was a meal ticket. Father had a lot of money from mother’s life insurance payout. When Heather left, he had nothing. He, stupid man that he was, that needy little boy inside him, had allowed her to be a co-signatory on his checking account. There were weekly withdrawals, all made out to cash. It was also our inheritance. I admit it would not have gone far between the four of us. . what would have been left when father died, but it would have been something. She kept him well supplied with booze until his account was empty and it was then that he died in a house fire.’

‘What do you remember about the fire?’

‘Nothing at all about the fire itself, we were not there. We returned to a burnt out shell. It’s still there, the burnt timbers. . damn well planned though, the fire I mean.’

‘Oh?’ Ventnor sat forward. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You English?’ Fisco asked, pleasantly.