a view of the Falls.
This was Max’s third day back from India, after a series of flights from Srinagar to Mumbai, to Frankfurt, to Detroit. He’d crossed into Canada at Windsor on a bus full of Midwestern American retirees on a trip that began with the Falls. Worn out by thirty-six hours of travel, he’d left them at the floral clock and gone into Hertz, then to the downtown Holiday Inn to change names again, and now India caught up with him in the form of newlyweds.
“Sorry, I’m late!”
Max turned to see Joan Tourigny standing next to his table between him and the Indians, hand held out. She was a determined young woman, confident in her charm, with magnificent blue eyes. Max shook her hand as Tourigny slid into the booth opposite him. A breath of perfume invaded the air.
“Is this your first time at the Falls, Sergeant Sasseville?”
“Call me André,” Max said. “No, my second time. The first was with my father and brother when I was ten.”
Tourigny smiled, put down her cellphone, then turned it off. This was a small tourist town with not much crime, so cops — especially perfumed ones — could permit themselves the luxury when dining with a colleague. Paradise.
“So you’re interested in Ahmed Zaheer?” She seemed genuinely amazed.
“Mysterious are the ways of the RCMP,” was Max’s answer. “A foreigner dying in strange circumstances, you understand.”
“Not really, I mean a run-of-the-mill accident. It happens more often than you think. I was talking to a colleague from the Grand Canyon, and you’d be amazed at the number of …”
“Where exactly did it happen?”
Joan Tourigny was taller than Max. She leaned over the rail that kept the reckless from breaking their necks or doing what couldn’t be undone out of desperation. Not Zaheer, though. He’d simply lost his footing and fractured his skull fifty metres below. Tourists made the macabre discovery the next morning and called the police. Next to the body were a camera and a laptop in a thousand pieces.
“Suicide maybe?” suggested Max.
She lifted her head. She’d had to yell above the noise of the Falls since they got there, and now, despite a clear sky, a mist of rain was wrecking her hair, but she gave no sign that it bothered her. Obviously, the young woman was used to life in Niagara.
“Depressives don’t usually jump with a camera round their necks and a laptop in their hands.”
“What if he were pushed?” yelled Max.
That surprised her. “What on earth for? If he had a record or was into organized crime, okay, maybe, but this isn’t that.”
On the way back to the car, she added, “His computer was finished, but by some miracle, the camera was practically intact. We developed the film — great pictures of Niagara. This guy had talent.”
“A photographer, then.”
“That’s what we thought at first till we got in touch with his paper in India.”
Tourigny and her team had found a hotel key on the body, so they went there to search for an address and phone number. What turned up was contact information for the Srinagar Reporter as well as drafts of articles on Niagara Falls as the new tourist hot-spot for Indians wanting a real change of scene. “It’s the Chinese thing all over again,” Tourigny continued, “all those years we thought they were starving and poor, then one day we woke to find they owned half the businesses in town.”
Max’s serious expression made her think she’d blundered, so she hastened to apologize. “Please understand. They’re fine people, and if they want to invest here, well, that’s just great!”
When they got back to town, her car slowed behind a dozen tourist buses and ground to a halt.
“Does the name David O’Brien ring any bells?” Max asked.
Tourigny’s mind was somewhere else, and she managed to slip between two huge trucks, then got back up to cruising speed.
“Yes?”
“O’Brien, David. He might have called you about Zaheer’s death.”
“Nope, the only person I talked to was his editor-in-chief.”
“Not family or friends, say, who might’ve come to claim the body?”
“No.”
A while later, Max asked, “Do you follow international politics?” — Tourigny registered surprise — “A car explosion in New Delhi last week with a Canadian diplomat in it?”
“Oh yeah, right, I heard about it.”
“That was David O’Brien. We found your name and number at his place.”
Now it was her turn to go quiet. “You think Ahmed Zaheer was involved?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Jordan Harbour, about twenty-five kilometres from Niagara Falls. A motel was situated on the edge of the highway, the kind of place one picks on the fly with no reservation. There weren’t many customers. It probably only filled up at peak season in July and August. There was only one car parked out front. Max figured Zaheer would have chosen isolation over proximity to tourist attractions, but, in fact, the journalist had really made his life complicated. Jordan Harbour was practically an hour’s drive from the Falls, and Max remarked on several places with vacancies along the way, all of them just as cut off as this one, so was Zaheer just a solitary soul, or was he in hiding? If so, from whom or what?
His room didn’t yield any clues. It was simple, anonymous, and hadn’t been occupied since his death, though his personal effects had been removed by the police and shipped to Srinagar, according to the owner. He was perplexed to see Tourigny again and answered Max’s questions politely and precisely. Zaheer had not received any visits or made any outside calls.
Nor had he been there long, barely two nights, and then was hardly ever seen.
“Was he driving a car?” asked Max.
“Oh yes.”
“Niagara Rent-A-Car,” Tourigny filled in. “It was parked not far from the accident, and we returned it to the agency.”
“Nothing in it?” Max asked. Tourigny shook her head.
Nothing at all, except Tourigny’s name and phone number at David’s, no connection between Zaheer and the young diplomat. In fact, everything so far put distance between them, except India itself, of course, but there had to be something. What was it?
That night, after saying goodbye to Tourigny, Max left the Holiday Inn and checked into Zaheer’s motel. He asked to have the same room, though he didn’t really know what he expected to find. He took a long, hot shower that numbed him, sat on the bed, and dialled the phone.
32
A gay Muslim and compulsive gambler …
