Brovak looked over the several faces uplifted in inquiry. “Bail has been set, gentlemen. Five hundred kilos for Senor Morgan, smaller change for the peons. Please proceed to my office so we may discuss my own financial needs.”
He sent them down the hall with their valises, grinned at Wentworth, as if to say, This is how it’s done, kid. He gave April a head-shaking appraisal before following them. “What a waste.”
The bumface stayed in his chair, unsmiling, flipping through New Yorker cartoons. Wentworth said, “Excuse me, are you here to see someone?”
“I was hoping to catch Mr. Beauchamp.”
“He won’t be in today. Can I help?”
“Yes, well…You must be Mr. Chance? Can we talk?”
“About what exactly?”
He rose, extended a perspiring palm. “Thomas Drew. Tom to my friends. Her Majesty’s Service.” He produced a card embossed with the Canadian crest. Office of the Prime Minister. Just his name, no title. “I may have some useful information.” Close to his ear: “About someone you may wish to add to your list of suspects.”
Wentworth blinked. This was too eerie. It is time to meet our final suspect.
He deposited Tom Drew in his cramped office (incorrect feng shui, according to April, poorly designed). He held his curiosity in check long enough to pop across the hall to greet Augustina Sage, who was sipping herbal tea and going through her backlog in a dreamy, desultory way. A touch of grey in that curly mat of hair. Still pretty in her forties, thinner, cut off from the world at her Buddhist retreat-yet another effort to figure out why she was prone to self-destructive relationships.
“I don’t want to hear about Brian’s problems, Wentworth. I don’t want to discuss him at all. I don’t want to hear about dead judges, either, and I don’t want to hear about your lurid trial.”
“Okay, well, welcome back.”
“I have achieved a level of holiness that I intend to maintain as long as I can, despite knowing it will all go to shit after five days in this madhouse. At which point I will completely fall apart, join a lonely hearts club, and try to get laid.”
“Good luck.”
“Bless you. Peace.” A bowed head, a Buddhist salute, palms pressed together.
Tom Drew was standing by a window, examining the fire escape, as if calculating a means of escape.
“So, Mr. Drew, what exactly do you do for the prime minister?”
“Let’s say I look after certain security issues.”
Wentworth could smell his sweat. He didn’t think a high-level cop should sweat. “You’ve come from Ottawa to tell us something?”
“I thought we might share some information.”
“Don’t expect many answers from me.” Wentworth was emboldened by the man’s nervousness.
Drew sat, contemplated, then bluntly asked. “Who do you think murdered Rafael Whynet-Moir?”
“Who do you think?”
“Can I have your undertaking that this is off the record, Mr. Chance?”
An undertaking-a very solemn matter for a lawyer. How would Arthur respond? Wentworth decided to play along. “Okay, but I have to share this with Mr. Beauchamp.”
“Understood. Whynet-Moir served as Jack Boynton’s parliamentary aide some years ago.”
“We know that.”
“Yes, and in return for a judgeship, he paid a substantial bribe to Jack Boynton. No question. Can we put that to rest?”
“Okay.”
“Our information is that an intermediary was involved. Have you considered that?”
Wentworth nodded.
“And have you considered that this party might have a motive for murder, to cover up his corrupt role?”
Wentworth was chafing at the way this Tom Drew was giving information under the guise of interrogating him. “Okay, I assume we’re talking about some bureaucrat?”
“I’m afraid that’s not the case. In fact…well, I may as well tell you that our investigation has been seriously compromised by such rumours.”
“Compromised in what way?”
Drew cleared his throat. “Frankly it would help us get to the bottom of this if, ah, certain persons refrained from making allegations that the go-between was in government service.”
“Certain persons like Mr. Beauchamp?” Drew winced, as if in affirmation. “Who was the go-between?”
“Perhaps the deal was brokered by a certain solicitor-have you considered that? Someone not unknown to the LeGrand family?”
Again, this clumsy interrogative phrasing. Wentworth waited him out.
“There may be evidence to suggest this solicitor accepted a substantial broker’s fee. Do you have any idea whom I might be referring to?”
Wentworth wondered if Tom was secretly recording this. “You tell me.”
“Maybe a lawyer representing a member of the LeGrand family?” The list had just been narrowed to Silent Shawn Hamilton. “Would you care to guess the amount of the fee?”
“Well, no, I’d like you to tell me.”
“Would you be surprised if it’s in the high six figures?”
“How high?”
“Three quarters of a million has been mentioned.”
“By whom?”
“We are acting on information, Mr. Chance.”
“From whom?”
“A person of high repute in the, ah, court system. I can say no more.”
Judge Dalgleish Ebbe? That would add a touch of plausibility, but it didn’t make Wentworth any less skeptical.
“Can you see, Mr. Chance, why this lawyer might want to do away with Judge Whynet-Moir?”
“Are you a cop?”
“Let’s say I’m close to important people, for whom I handle sensitive issues.” He began to talk rapidly, heightened colour showing in his round pink face. “Let us hypothesize that after Jack Boynton died of a stroke, Whynet-Moir was the only person who knew of the go-between. Let us assume Whynet-Moir was under suspicion and that we were about to question him. His obvious tactic would have been to deflect blame by denouncing the intermediary. And…you can figure out the rest.”
This stank. Who in high places was he protecting?
Drew rose. “I’m afraid that’s all I’m permitted to say. I have to catch a plane. Pleasure to meet you.” Once again he proffered a damp, soft hand, then departed.
Wentworth figured he’d heard a lot of bullshit. In which case, maybe he’d just met someone involved in the murder.
31
Arthur lowered himself with a comfortable grunt into his preferred chair, a wingback facing away from the bar’s distracting offerings. After a week at the Confederation Club, he’d finally staked a claim to this chair, a claim recognized by members and enforced by staff.
The maitre d’hotel, who liked to fuss over him, set out linen, cutlery, and his regular welcome basket: tea, menu, and newspapers. “The garden salad and the lamb stew, please, Manfred.” That should satisfy Margaret, the rich food critic, when she cross-examined him tonight from…where will she be? Moose Hills, Mosquito Flats, Mud Creek, maybe one of those logging camps where they heckle her.
“The trial goes well, sir?”
“Ups and downs.” He wasn’t in the mood for small talk, preferred to wallow in his resentment at Kroop, the Grinch who stole Saturday. “I need you,” Margaret had said. “I’ll be there,” he’d assured her.
But maybe Florenza LeGrand won’t fill the day. Maybe she’ll be mute on the stand, be cited for contempt, the trial aborted. Maybe she’ll claim to have been asleep or passed out, a witness to nothing. But the more he thought about it, the more unlikely that seemed. Had she been insensible, Silent Shawn would not have issued a gag order.
From somewhere, tinnily, came a familiar Bach fugue. When those bars repeated, he realized it was his cellphone, and he went salvaging in the wilderness of his cluttered briefcase.
Wentworth, with an excited, disjointed account of an off-the-record dialogue with a “spook from Ottawa,” keen on fingering Shawn Hamilton. Arthur made him start from the top, coherently.