Kendall was seated in his big leather chair now, the light from the window behind him turning his thinning silver hair into a dull halo. He had not asked Cardinal to sit down.

  “It’s not that I’m unsympathetic,” he said. “If my wife were to die in similar circumstances—God forbid—I would probably be tempted to do the same thing.”

  “Chief, I saw her just three hours before. She was fine. She was looking forward to working on her project. Not the kind of thing you expect from someone about to do herself in.”

  “We have a coroner’s finding of suicide.”

  “A young doctor. Inexperienced as a coroner.”

  “You read the note yourself. You identified the writing. I don’t think we have to go into her history, do we?”

  “She was doing fine, Chief. She was not in any emotional distress.”

  “Delorme, McLeod, Szelagy—all of them were there with the coroner. None of them found anything inconsistent with suicide. Nor did the pathologist. There is nothing to investigate. We have no case.”

  “Her note was written months ago. I had a guy in Documents confirm it.”

  “Which you should not have done,” the chief said, a warning flush of crimson forming at his jawline. “That’s called a misuse of police resources. We have no case.”

  “In order to believe it was suicide, you have to believe that she wrote a note three months ago. That she went on with her life as usual, giving no sign of her intentions. Then one night, in the middle of a photographic project, she takes along the note to leave at the scene before jumping off the roof.”

  “We have NO CASE.” Kendall was on his feet now, his face a brilliant cardiac red. He was not a tall man, but he made up in decibels what he lacked in centimetres. “You will not come in here and tell me how the entire law enforcement community is wrong and you are right. And you will refrain from cross-questioning the chair of a college department as if she was a member of the mob! Do I make myself clear?”

  “Chief, there are reasonable grounds to—”

  “You were not even on the job, Cardinal, you were on leave. And you interrogated this woman as if she was a suspect in a murder case. But there is NO SUCH CASE. Your behaviour would be out of line if she were a streetwalker, if she were a drug dealer. But Meredith Moore is chair of a college department, and you do not interrogate such people when you have no warrant, no justification and NO CASE!”

  Cardinal started to speak, but the chief raised a traffic-stopping hand.

  “I don’t want you to go out of here thinking this is going to be a matter where I’m going to give you second, third or fourth chances. It isn’t. You want to be back at work, fine, you’re back at work. But you are here to pursue cases that I and your detective sergeant approve. Everything else is unlawful use of police resources, and I will not tolerate it. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I hope this matter is now closed.”

  “I just have one question.”

  “What is it?”

  “What would it take to make you open a case on Catherine?”

  “More than you have.”

  When he returned to his desk, Cardinal found new e-mail waiting for him.

  To: parsenault, lburke, rcollingwood, ldelorme, imcleod, kszelagy

  From: rjk

  I know that you are all deeply saddened by John Cardinal’s tragic loss, and I share that sadness. However, I must remind you that there has been a finding of suicide in the matter and as a result no police file has been opened. Therefore there is no investigation. I repeat, there is no investigation. Anyone using police resources to pursue a different finding is in breach of The Police Services Act and will be dealt with accordingly.

  RJ Kendall

  Chief of Police

  Cardinal’s own name was conspicuously absent from the address list; the message had been forwarded to him by Arsenault. Arsenault was now waving him over to the hallway connecting CID to Ident.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the Zellers break-in,” Arsenault said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  Cardinal followed him into Ident. Collingwood was out, and except for the two of them the place was empty.

  “I ran the print,” Arsenault said.

  “Obviously we can’t talk about it right now.”

  “Why? The air belongs to Police Services?”

  “The time does.”

  “It’s okay. RJ has left the building.” He jerked a thumb toward the parking lot. “Just saw him take off in a limo.”

  “Thanks for forwarding the e-mail. I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble.”

  “Forget it. RJ’s a pussycat. Anyway, just wanted to let you know we came back negative on the thumbprint.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing local, nothing national. Total bust.”

  “All right. It was worth a try.”

  “I got a few more avenues I can explore. You want me to keep trying?”

  “Just make sure RJ doesn’t find out.”

  Cardinal picked up his mail and phone messages, and sat down at his desk. From the brass-framed photograph on his desk, Catherine smiled at him—the same smile that had sent his heart spinning way back when they had first met. Cardinal opened his middle drawer, put the picture inside and closed the drawer.

  He began sorting his inbox: notices to appear in court, office memos, notices of parole committee hearings, missives from his pension plan, the payroll department, and various unclassifiable material that went straight to the recycle bin.

  He opened the middle drawer, took out the photograph and set it once more in the corner.

  “Are you really here this time?”

  Delorme was dropping her briefcase onto her desk. She looked tired and frustrated, a slight pout forming on her mouth, but that was not unusual for Delorme.

  “I’m back,” Cardinal said. “At least physically.”

  Delorme sat down and rolled her chair up close. “Let me tell you about a case might take your mind off things.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  She began pulling file folders from her briefcase. “I’ve got a crime scene but no witnesses, no victim and no perpetrator. How familiar are you with child porn?”

  “Haven’t had that many cases. Keswick—remember him?”

  “Keswick was nothing. Get ready for a real stomach-turner.”

  35

  LEONARD KESWICK LEANS FORWARD on the couch, gripping and twisting a shredded Kleenex. He is a roughly spheroid man, and looks weak and dispirited, like a partially deflated soccer ball. His eyes are large and watery, slightly protuberant—a bloodhound’s eyes. He looks up mournfully at the unseen camera.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he says. “I don’t know where to turn with this problem.”

  “Well, you’ve turned here,” Dr. Bell says onscreen. “That’s a start, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I don’t seem to be getting over this. It’s been months now, and I’m not getting any better.”

  Dr. Bell, watching this a year later, nodded his agreement. “Because you don’t want to get better,” he said quietly, although not onscreen. “You just won’t admit it.”

  The office phone rang and Dr. Bell froze the image. He had set the voice mail to pick up on the first ring so he could monitor the message. He knew who it would be. She had already called twice, the second message considerably more distraught than the first.

  “Dr. Bell? It’s Melanie. Oh, God, you’re probably at the hospital or with another patient. Please call me as soon as you get this. I’m feeling really, really bad …”

  “Of course you feel bad,” Dr. Bell said to the room. “You always feel bad.”

  “I’m afraid I might really do it this time. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  Bell clasped his hands behind his head and spoke to the ceiling. “Sounds like real progress to me.”

  “Please call me when you get this. Please. I’m sorry. I just need—I just—please.”

  “Please-I just-Please-I just-Please-I just,” Bell mimicked her. “Gimme, gimme, gimme. I, I, I.”

  “Something about seeing my stepfather again really put me over the edge. Everything is just black. Absolutely black, and I can hardly breathe. Please give me a call when you get this.”

  There was a timid click as she hung up.

  Bell sat back and pressed Play.

  “What I can’t get over,” Keswick says, “is how helpless I am over this. And it came on so suddenly. I mean, I looked at porno magazines as a kid, same as everybody else. Looked at them right through college and even a little after. But magazines are different. Magazines, it’s just normal: adult women, adult guys. It’s not as if I went searching for the stuff I’m staring at these days!”

  “I believe you,” Dr. Bell says. “There are people addicted to eBay, to shopping online, gambling online— people who had no problems with these areas before the Internet came into their lives.”

  “Yes, because you used to have to go way out of your way to do them. Let’s face it, it used to be difficult to be a shopaholic in Algonquin Bay. What are you going to do, buy up the entire collection of ski pants? Same with gambling. There’s no casinos here. The most damage you could do to yourself was with the lottery. But this stuff is right in my home. It’s as if they filled my drawers and closets with an endless supply of pictures.”

  “Is it just pictures?” Dr. Bell says onscreen.

  “What?” Keswick looks bewildered, as if the doctor has suddenly addressed him in Farsi. “Well, yeah. I would never touch a kid. I never thought about kids sexually before. I still don’t—not actual kids I see on the street. And I know the damage sexual abuse can cause. I would never do that to a kid. Never.”

  “Well, let’s talk about exactly what it is you are doing.”

  “I’m looking at pictures. That’s all. I get them from file-sharing sites.”

  “Do you ever post any pictures yourself?”

  “God, no.”

  “Do you pay for the pictures you look at?”

  “No. And I never would. That would be encouraging the whole enterprise.”

  “All right. So tell me, what is it you do that’s so terrible? You haven’t molested any children. You haven’t taken pictures of any children. You haven’t paid anyone else to take them. You haven’t sent them to anyone.”

  “No! I just look at them! But it’s sick! It’s sick! I shouldn’t be looking at them! Oh, God, I’m so ashamed. So ashamed.”

  Keswick is weeping now, tears filming his cheeks. He takes his glasses off and tries to put them on the table but drops them. He doesn’t stoop to retrieve them, just sits there in a soggy, rumpled heap, crying.

  Finally, when he is able to speak again: “I have kids of my own, that’s the real kicker. Jenny and Rob. They’re three and five—younger than the pictures I’m looking at—but still, it makes me want to throw up. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I found out someone was taking pictures of my kids. I think I would even be able to kill someone in that situation.”

  “This has been going on how long? A year? Eighteen months?”

  “About eighteen months. It was like instantaneous with me. The minute I stumbled onto that site, it was like a lock turned inside me. Like these tumblers clanked into place and suddenly I go from being a more or less normal human being to being a sex fiend. A pervert.”

  He cries again, and Dr. Bell watches him in silence.

  “I’ve tried twelve-step, like you suggested. I found a site online. It’s better than nothing, I guess, but it’s only once a week and sometimes hardly anyone logs on. There’s no sex addiction groups here that I know of. And even if there were, I could never tell them what I’ve been looking at.”

  “You’ve told me. Why couldn’t you tell them?”

  “That’s different. You’re a doctor. Our conversations are privileged. There might be people I knew at the meetings. I would die if this ever got out. Literally. I would have to kill myself.”

  “Well, perhaps we should work on reducing some of this shame you’re suffering from.”

  “But it is shameful. What I do is shameful.”

  “Let me finish. With all addictions there’s a cycle of shame that seems to operate. Take heroin, for example. An addict has resolved to quit using, but he’s feeling a little nervous, a little jumpy. Eventually he goes out and buys some dope and shoots up. Magic. All that anxiety is gone. It’s a powerful thing. But it wears off, of course, and then the addict is left with his shame at having used the drug again. Then he needs something to counteract the shame—and what’s the first thing that comes to mind?”

  “More dope.”

  “More dope. Exactly. And that’s one of the reasons twelve-step programs enjoy some success. Being in a room full of people who accept you and your weakness, who even share it, is a powerful way to reduce shame. It’s certainly a pity, as you say, that there’s no such group here in town. Suppose we were to have a couple of sessions with your wife—”

  “Never. Don’t even think that. She doesn’t even know I’m seeing you.”

  “But you’ve said many times you have a loving relationship with your wife. Wouldn’t that love survive the possible disappointment of finding out you have an unfortunate weakness?”

  “She would hate me. She would dump me. She would take the kids away from me and I’d never get to see any of them again.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard her talk about it. You know, when there’s a story in the paper or on TV, about a teacher or a priest or whatever. She’s always completely disgusted. She says stuff like, ‘Oh, they should boil that guy in oil.’ ‘They ought to castrate that man.’”

  Dr. Bell is the calm voice of reason. “But priests, teachers—those are people who are responsible for lots of children. They’re in positions of trust.”

  “Look, I work for ComSoc. Social assistance. I’m surrounded by social workers. You think they’re going to tolerate having a child porno addict in their midst? I’d be out of there in five seconds.”

  “We were talking about your wife, not your colleagues. This would only be sharing the information with your wife. Is there not any possibility she was exaggerating her response to the stories you mentioned? One often says things like, ‘They ought to hang that man.’ But one doesn’t necessarily mean them.”

  “She may have been exaggerating. Meg isn’t one to hold back her feelings. She may have been exaggerating about the punishments, castration and so on, but she wasn’t exaggerating her disgust. I could hear contempt in every word. If she ever felt that kind of contempt toward me, I couldn’t live with it. I’d sooner die, I swear. I’d sooner die.”

  Bell froze the image, savouring his patient’s horrified gaze, his absolute helplessness, then hit the Off button. Keswick had been a lamb to the slaughter. A little too easy, really, to be completely satisfying. Still, there was a neatness about it, an almost Greek inevitability, that one could appreciate.

  The phone rang again.

  “Hello, Melanie,” Bell said without picking up. “Little distressed, are we? Lurching toward an actual decision?”

  “Dr. Bell, it’s Melanie again. I know you said you’d be unavailable this week, but I thought you’d be checking messages. This is pretty critical …”

  He could hear a sniffle, loud and wet. He got up and took the DVD out of the player, slipping it into a numbered sleeve.

  “Please call me back, Dr. Bell. My thinking gets so distorted. I think maybe I should go to the hospital. If you could just get me into the hospital. I actually have the pills. I have them in my room, and it just seems like the best thing to do, but I don’t know.”

  Dr. Bell took out a CD of Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ. Eli, Eli, why hast thou forsaken me? An agony of ropes and nails and abandonment.

  “Oh, God. I can’t stand this anymore. I don’t know why I’m alive, I truly don’t.” There was a messy disconnection as she had trouble hanging up.

  Bell pushed Play and lay back on the sofa.

  36

  CARDINAL WOKE UP THE next day, and Catherine’s absence sucked his breath away, as if his bedroom were adrift in space and someone had thrown open the airlock.

  As he stumbled through his morning routine—toast and coffee and the Globe and Mail—he forced his thoughts toward work, toward Delorme’s case of the child pornographer, Arsenault’s series of break-ins.

  At one point he looked up from his newspaper and stared into the emptiness across the table.

  “I don’t want to think about you,” he said. “I don’t want to think about you.”

  He went back to the Globe, but could not concentrate; his eyes were scratchy from a night of fitful sleep. The sooner he got into work, the better. He put his plate in the dishwasher and tossed the rest of his coffee down the kitchen sink. He rushed through his shower, threw on his clothes and headed out.

  The mornings were getting crisper now. There was a scent of winter, a hint of ice, even though there was not yet any ice on the lake, nor would be for another month or so. He shivered in his sports jacket. It would soon be time for a heavy coat. The sky was dazzling blue and he thought of how Catherine would have loved it. Her PT Cruiser sat empty in the driveway.

  “I don’t want to think about you,” he said again, and got into his Camry.

  He was backing out of the drive when a car pulled up and blocked his exit. Paul Arsenault rolled down the window and waved a gloved hand.

  “Morning!”

  Cardinal knew he must have something good. No way Arsenault would stop by before work unless he had something pretty tasty to share. Cardinal got out of his car and went over to Arsenault’s window.

  “Thought I’d stop by so we don’t use up any of that precious Police Services time.”

  “You get something interesting?”

  “Well, yes and no. I don’t know how you’re going to take it.”