Crossing the street, he skirted the side of the scrum where Hobbes was berating the crowd. Jinnah had had more than one visit from the Reverend over the years. His very first week at the paper he’d made the mistake of writing an article about Hobbes’s unceasing campaign against Lionel Simons, a former shock-rocker turned cult leader. Hobbes claimed that Simons was really a Satanist. Lionel Simons was no saint, but you certainly couldn’t prove he was a Satanist. Not with his legal team. Jinnah still winced when he remembered the crawling retraction he’d had to write to avoid a lawsuit. He’d been wary of Hobbes ever since, but the Reverend was nothing if not dogged in his crusade against Simons, aka “The Rock Messiah!”
Jinnah squeezed through the crowd, taking care not to step in anything that would irreparably soil his new Gucci loafers. He peered past the tape into the centre of the crime scene and saw the sad ritual following a violent murder being performed by a full complement of death’s acolytes: the CSU guys in their white suits; the coroner, the only guy wearing street clothes besides Graham; uniforms, looking bored and apprehensive, holding the crowd back and taking considerable abuse from the street people. He caught Graham’s eye and waved.
Craig walked over to the edge of the tape. “About time, Hakeem.”
“Traffic was murder. Pun intended,” said Jinnah. “What’cha got, buddy?”
Graham looked pointedly at several street people who were standing against the tape beside Jinnah. “Beat it,” he said.
One, a short but muscular, bare-chested young man drinking a beer for his breakfast, glared belligerently. “Free country, man. Make us,” he said, mulish.
“Want me to check and see if there are any outstanding warrants for you and your pals?”
The dissipated muscleman snorted, belched, threw his beer can at Graham’s feet, and stalked off with his buddies. Jinnah and Graham had near privacy for their chat. Jinnah took out his notebook and looked at his contact expectantly.
Graham spoke in his clipped, curt manner. “One victim. Male, aged twenty. Name, Thad Golway.”
“So? What makes this special? Guys get knifed down here all the time,” said Jinnah.
“They don’t often get their heads severed, then placed carefully on their shoulders, Hakeem,” said Graham, a shade peevishly in Jinnah’s opinion.
“You’re kidding!”
“No. I figure he was killed somewhere else, cleaned up. Even dressed in fresh clothes. Then placed here, under a tree, with his kangaroo hood pulled over his head.”
Jinnah shuddered. His mind instantly tried to reconstruct the crime. He could see a Dark Figure bending over a kneeling Thad, a sword raised over his head. The blade flashed downwards and … Jinnah’s legendary weak stomach skipped the gruesome details. But he did imagine Main and Terminal at night. With everyone asleep or stoned, the Figure, having arranged Thad’s body to look as if he was sleeping, would stuff the body bag he’d carried the boy’s corpse in back into a knapsack and walk away, unquestioned, into the darkness. It was terrible.
“Sonofabitch,” said Jinnah. “Who found him?”
Graham pointed to a young woman sobbing uncontrollably a few metres from the tree, her face obscured by a Victim Services officer trying to calm her down. Good luck, thought Jinnah.
“She says she knows him. But that’s all I’ve been able to get out of her. She was with another kid. An Andy Gill. Know him?”
Jinnah shrugged, irked. “How should I know? There are thousands of Gills in the Indo-community, for God’s sake. Even after all these years, you still seem to think I know every damned person with brown skin in B.C.”
Before Graham could apologize, a strident, amplified voice suddenly sounded close behind them. Jinnah flinched.
“The wages of sin is death! But the gift of God is eternal life through Christ our Lord!” bawled the Reverend Peter Hobbes.
“Jesus, that guy!” cursed Graham. “I’ve already got a bastard of a headache!”
Jinnah shifted himself slightly so Graham was between him and Hobbes. The last thing he needed was to have Hobbes make a beeline for him and demand to be interviewed. He need not have worried. Graham grabbed Jinnah’s arm and swung him around. He started marching across the park towards the bus station.
“Come on, we need to talk.”
“I thought that’s what we were doing.”
Jinnah allowed himself to be led, a little concerned at Graham’s behaviour. He’d never seen him on edge like this before.
“I just wish that goddamn born-again would let me get on with my job,” the sergeant said vehemently.
“He means well,” said Jinnah. “He’s fought a lonely war on drugs for years —”
“Well, he’s losing!”
They stepped over the concrete curbing, which marked the edge of the bus station’s parking area, in silence. Jinnah ransacked his memory, trying to guess what was eating his friend. The violence of the murder? He’d seen worse — just. The kid’s age? Graham had handled cases involving infants. The macabre nature, maybe? It was, in a way, a ritualistic killing. Maybe that was it. Jinnah suddenly realized he had no idea what religion Graham was, or if indeed he had any. Graham took Jinnah over towards the deserted arrivals area and turned abruptly.
“Look, Jinnah, I gotta tell you something off the record.”
“Is that off the record as in, ‘Confirm it somewhere else and run with it’ off the record or ‘If this gets out I’ll kill you?’ off the record?” asked Jinnah.
“It’s ‘breathe a damn word and my careers over’ off the record.”
Jinnah whistled and closed his notebook as a show of good faith. This was serious. “Okay. My lips are sealed. So is my pen. And my keyboard.”
“It’s like this: Thad Golway was a good kid. He got caught up in the rave scene and started dealing. But he had a change of heart. Remember that bust I engineered down here last month?”
Jinnah nodded. It hadn’t been a front page key story. He’d managed to get a page top on five out of it. Twenty dealers, mostly squeegee kids, busted. More important, their supplier had been nailed and his operation shut down. A rare victory in the war on drugs.
“Well, Thad was one of my informants. He and two of his buddies, they helped me get the warrants.”
“Oh, shit,” said Jinnah with feeling. “Craig, I’m sorry.”
“It gets worse,” said Graham. “I wanted to put Thad into Witness Protection. Move him outta town with his two friends, right? Only they wouldn’t go. Dropped outta sight on their own. So now …” Graham trailed off.
Jinnah read his thoughts. “Now you have one dead and two missing, both possible targets — or victims. Right?”
Graham forced a wretched smile out of his facial muscles. “Yeah. Jinnah, about the informant angle — how long do you think I can keep
