LITMIR.BIZ

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to Ottawa, she’d embarked on the next step in her quest, a date with a mystery man. Shortly after which, she was dead.

      “What’s the other interesting thing?”

      “Remember the phone call the bartender says he received from someone claiming to be Peters’ partner? Well, turns out he did receive a call at approximately the right time, which came from a local cellphone.”

      Green sucked in his breath. “Did you trace it?”

      “Dead end. It’s a new line registered to a company called BA Securities, but its owner is well buried. The credit card is a numbered account.”

      “Did the OPP request the phone’s logs?”

      “Yeah, they know a thing or two about investigation up here, Green.”

      Green ignored the bait. “Have you got the phone number? I’ll give it to our tech guys.”

      It was a local 613 area code and as Green scribbled it down, he thought it looked familiar. After signing off, he scrolled through the reports Gibbs and the other officers had entered on Patricia Ross’s activities until he found the record of calls made to the payphone in the lobby of her Vanier hotel during the week before her death. Detectives had traced all the numbers, including one made by a cellphone with a 613 area code just the day before her death. Detectives had been unable to track down either the owner’s name or the address, but the cellphone was registered to a BA Securities.

      Bingo. The dots were connecting.

      But what the hell did they form? And what, after days of intensive search and tons of shoe leather, did they really know for sure? He had a few suspicious names, a hint of conspiracy and cover-up, but the theory holding it all together was as flimsy and insubstantial as ever. Not one witness had seen Patricia Ross sharing a drink the night of her death. Not one witness had seen a suspicious man leaving the scene of Peters’ assault. Not a single fingerprint or shoe impression had been found to tie the killer to either attack. And as for motives, the speculation about war crimes was about as improbable as blue moons.

      He sat behind his desk, staring at the little piles of notes and messages that were scattered about in disarray. Had he missed something? All the crucial reports pertinent to the investigation were on computer, in a properly organized and managed case file. Yet maybe he had forgotten a little aside, not knowing its significance at the time.

      He began moving the notes around, rearranging piles and discarding irrelevant notes. Suddenly at the edge of a pile, half hidden by his phone, he spotted a note he’d never seen before. It was a scrawl on a phone message slip.

      “A friend called, said to tell ‘Mr. G’ to meet her at her art gallery at sunset.”

      Green stared at the message in disbelief. It was dated April 28 at four o’clock. Yesterday. “Jesus Christ!” He slammed out of his office, prepared to demand which incompetent idiot had taken it, when he realized that just after four o’clock yesterday, Weiss had called in Sue Peters’ attack, and everything else had gone out the window. It felt like a lifetime ago.

      Mollified, he glanced outside and saw the late afternoon sun slanting off the windshields of the cars crawling west along the Queensway. He was a day too late, but maybe Twiggy was the patient type. If she had something to tell him, she might keep going back to the aqueduct until he turned up.

      * * *

      Some day at end of July, 1993. Maslenica Bridge, Sector South.

      Our section just had our first night at the OP , sitting up on the top of this hill. Man, was it freaky! We’re supposed to be watching this bridge to count and identify each vehicle thatcrosses. Now this is not a real bridge, because the Serbs blewthat up when the Croats invaded, so now it’s just a pontoonbridge that the Serbs lob artillery at all the time. We canhardly see it with binoculars, let alone ID the vehicle type.

      Anyway, there are Serbs in the hills behind us and Croatsin the valley below, and they’re firing away at each other andthe shells are whizzing right over our heads. Multiple rocketlaunchers. Whup, whup, whup when they launch. Kaboom,kaboom, kaboom a few seconds later when they land. Andwe’re going Holy Shit! And Sarge is on the radio, screaming tothe Hammer, and the Hammer’s screaming to the OC , who’sdown on the beach, to get us out of here. It’s a miracle we allsurvived. On the way down, the mountain was littered withcorpses. You couldn’t even tell which side they were on, becausethey had no uniforms. We had to bag them and bring themdown. I can still smell the stink on me.

      * * *

      It was past seven o’clock, and the last rays of sunlight burnished the tree tops as Green headed west along Albert Street towards the aqueduct. The police tape had been removed from the crime scene, and every single piece of trash had been picked up by the Ident officers, leaving the little hideaway unnaturally pristine. The wall paintings glinted bold red and blue in the sun, but the place was empty. Not even the stoned teens or wasted drunks had returned, as if Patricia’s death still hung like a pall overhead.

      Green searched for telltale signs of Twiggy’s presence, but her garbage bag and her tattered pile of newspaper were nowhere to be seen. His shouts went unanswered. He climbed back into his car and tried to remember where she hung out. In the early days of her exile, she’d sometimes gone to the women’s shelters or the “Y”, but she’d resented their attempts to fix her life and preferred to take her chances on the open streets. She said shelters were for people who were trying to put their lives together. She had none left to put together.

      Nonetheless, he phoned around. The women’s shelters had not seen her, nor had the food bank or drop-in centres. With a growing sense of unease, he phoned the hospitals. It took a lot of wheedling and pulling rank, but eventually he got his answer. None of the hospitals had admitted a street woman fitting her description. It was small comfort that, had she turned up at the morgue, he would already have been informed.

      The sun was just below the horizon and the streets were sinking into shadow when he remembered her reference to the Tim Hortons on Bank Street. The manager there gave her coffee, she said, better than anything the police had on offer.

      Starting the car, he shoved it into gear and shot out of the parking lot through the traffic. He raced back towards downtown, did an illegal left turn onto Bank Street and parked in front of the modest coffee shop tucked between a magazine store and a shwarma take-out. The closed sign was up, but he could see someone sweeping inside. He hammered on the door and plastered his badge against the glass. The man’s scowl turned to consternation as he hustled forward to unlock the door. He had a Middle Eastern complexion with a heavy five o’clock shadow and the most mournful black eyes Green had ever seen.

      “I was just closing,” he said without a trace of an accent. “Is there a problem?”

      “Do you know a fat woman named Twiggy? She comes to your store for coffee.”

      “Yes.” The man’s eyes slitted warily. “Why? Is that a problem?” Why did the man assume a police officer always meant trouble? Even as he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. The world had changed for this man since September 11.

      Green found himself apologizing. “I’m sorry. No problem, I’m just concerned. She’s a witness, and I’m trying to locate her.” Belatedly he offered his hand. “I’m Inspector Michael Green.”

      The man stared at Green’s hand, then reached forward to take it cautiously in his. When Green didn’t bite, he seemed to relax. “Hassim Mohammed. And I haven’t seen her today. I’ve been worried, because she’s not a very healthy woman.”

      Green recorded his name and address. “When did you last see her?”

      “Two days ago? Thursday. She came for her coffee, then went off. She said she had a call to make. But there was a—” Alarm widened his melancholy eyes. “Oh, no.”

      “What?”

      “I told her about a man who was asking about her. She asked me a whole lot of questions about him—like what name he called her—and I know she didn’t

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