was an idiot, who would never spot a suspicious coincidence through the film of booze and prejudice with which he viewed the world. Patricia had scraped together a meagre existence for ten years since her fiancé’s death, without even escaping the town in which the trauma had occurred. Then suddenly she buys a ticket to Ottawa fifteen hundred kilometres away, and less than two weeks later, she’s dead. It could be simple bad luck, but the odds were long.
“She witnessed her fiancé’s death, right?” he said. “She saw the man who punched him?”
“Yes, but she didn’t know him. She would have given anything to see him caught, believe me.”
“Then maybe something happened recently, to give her a lead on him. Someone told her something, or she discovered something.” He had been sifting idly through the files, and now he glanced up, excited. “And that trail brought her to Ottawa. Either to meet the man or to find out more about him. Whatever she stirred up, someone wanted her silenced.”
McGrath looked thoughtful. “If she was naïve enough to confront the murderer, it’s a good bet he’d kill her to protect himself. He must have thought he was home free after ten years.”
Green nodded. He could feel the adrenaline of the hunt begin to race. It was only a theory, but it fit a lot of the facts. She had met the killer for a drink and had confronted him, maybe to ask for money or simply for her own satisfaction. Desperate to silence her, he’d suggested an evening stroll and led her to an isolated spot, where he’d strangled her. Green pondered the scenario. It explained the brute force and apparent ruthlessness of the murder. This killer was not only a very strong man, but he was frantic to protect his secret. Perhaps he’d decided the body was too easy to find, so he’d later dragged her as far as he could to the secluded aqueduct. It wasn’t a perfect explanation, but it was the best Green could do with the facts he had.
“We’re looking for a powerful, physical man,” he said. “Someone Daniel Oliver knew from the past and who’d betrayed him in some way. Was Daniel involved in criminal activity? Drug dealing?”
McGrath shook her head. “He was a mechanic, although he’d been on the skids for a few months, lost his job and was on unemployment insurance. He was doing some fairly heavy drinking, but no drugs. The friends we interviewed said he was basically a decent guy.”
“But his life had been on the skids, despite having a woman he planned to marry.”
“Yes, that was slowly bringing him out of it. Plus the baby on the way.”
Green thought about the findings of the autopsy. “What happened to the baby?”
McGrath made a sympathetic face. “It was a little boy, born early because of all the stress. He had some health problems, I think, and she had trouble coping. When I last had contact with her, the Children’s Aid was taking measures to remove him from the home. I think that last loss just about destroyed her. That’s why when Inspector Norrich talks about Patti’s lifestyle . . .” She broke off, pressing her lips together as if to censor herself.
“Yeah.” Green let the contempt hang in the air, then resumed a safer line of inquiry. “So what happened to send Oliver’s life into a tailspin?”
McGrath seemed to pull herself from the memories with an effort. “According to Patti, his best friend was shot in a freak hunting accident about six months earlier, and Daniel blamed himself because he hadn’t kept in close enough touch. They’d been in the reserves together and served six months of peacekeeping duty overseas. They’d always been very close, but when they got back to Nova Scotia, the friend turned his back on his plans and retreated into himself.”
Green’s instincts went on full alert. He’d known police officers who’d done UN duty in Yugoslavia, and he knew the stresses and dangers they had faced. He knew that stress could bond a group of men more strongly that ten years together on a normal job. It could also create some bitter enemies.
“Did you interview any of their army mates? Especially those who were overseas with them?”
“Norrich did.”
Green’s eyes widened. “Norrich? He was on the case?”
“He was lead.” She hesitated. “Technically. He was sergeant at the time, and I was a constable. I worked most of the case, but Norrich took the trip down the valley to talk to Daniel Oliver’s regiment. He figured . . .” She hesitated again, and Green could almost see her wrestling with propriety. “Being a sergeant . . .”
“And a man.”
She inclined her head slightly in agreement. “He’d get further.”
“And did he?”
“No. I guess military buddies close ranks even tighter than drinking buddies. All they said was that Daniel had been an excellent soldier in Yugoslavia, even got a promotion in the field, and everyone was very proud of him. But . . .” She reached for a file that lay on top of the stack. At a glance, Green could see Norrich’s name at the bottom of the report. “There was something I thought didn’t quite add up. Oliver had been on track for making sergeant, and moving up the ladder as an NCO. But two years after he got back from overseas, he quit the reserves. So things can’t have been as rosy as they painted it.”
“Not to mention the strange behaviour of his friend when he returned from overseas.” Green stopped abruptly as a thought struck him. McGrath had said the friend’s accident was six months earlier. Daniel Oliver had been killed in April 1996. Counting back six months yielded the fall of 1995. He sucked in his breath as another coincidence hit him between the eyes. “What was the friend’s name?”
She rummaged through the files, scanning rapidly. “I know I’ve got it in one of my interviews with Patti. I’m sure I wrote it— Ah-hah! Ian MacDonald. Corporal Ian MacDonald.”
EIGHT
May 28, 1993. Sector West, Croatia.
Dear Kit . . . The APC broke down again this morning and Danny spent half the day tying the fuel pump together with wire. He’s a wizard under the hood, which you have to be with some of the equipment we got. The tracks belong in the war museum! Whenever anyone in the platoon has a problem, they send for Danny. He jokes he’ll be good enough to get his mechanics papers when he gets back to civvie street.
So we had a day around camp instead of going on patrol, which was a nice break. Peacekeeping is a lot different here on the ground than the politicians think. Neither side trusts the other, and they sure as hell don’t trust the UN to protect them. Our platoon commander says that’s because other UN battalions haven’t done their job. Some of the third world ones are so poorly paid they take bribes from both sides and turn a blind eye when Serbs or Croats sneak weapons in or cleanse a village or whatever. Besides even when we find weapons, all we’re supposed to do is turn them over to the local police, who probably hid them in the first place.
Don’t get the Hammer started on the UN rules, because the bureaucrats have no idea how the militias, the police, and the locals are in it together. Both sides trust their own militias way more than they do UNPROFOR or any fancy ceasefire plan dreamed up in Zagreb. And each local militia’s got its own commander who thinks he’s the boss and he doesn’t have to obey orders from his own command, let alone us. So every day we catch guys sneaking behind the lines to lay mines, and every night the two sides shell each other back and forth over our heads.
Anyway,
