LITMIR.BIZ

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were the words out of his mouth than the press peppered him with questions. A reporter jostled another to get his own microphone closer, and cameras flashed. John Blakeley did not stay for questions; he took his wife’s hand and the two of them hustled out a door at the far side of the room, which Green recognized to be the marble lobby of the Chateau Laurier.

      Immediately, the CBC news commentators began scrambling to analyze the speech, which had apparently caught everyone by surprise. A spokesman for the Liberal Party, hastily reached on the Sunday, called the loss of John Blakeley’s candidacy regrettable but by no means insurmountable, as there were many other fine Liberal candidates in area ridings. Which translated, meant that the Party brass was already distancing itself from John Blakeley and whatever mud he might have stuck to him.

      Green listened impatiently for the crucial detail he had obviously missed—the connection between Blakeley’s withdrawal and the scrutiny of the military. What scrutiny? The analysts were asking that very question as well. Apparently, Blakeley was expecting an imminent revelation in the news that would put the military under scrutiny, but he’d given no specifics. Speculation ranged widely from more equipment failures in the aging naval fleet to mistreatment of Afghan prisoners by our troops in Kandahar. Only one reporter wondered whether the recent beating of an Ottawa police officer in Petawawa might be connected. Considering that Green had left an interview with the man less than three hours earlier, he thought that extremely likely.

      Green’s cellphone rang.

      “Did you see it?” Devine demanded.

      “Yes.” “So? Is it connected to the Ross case?”

      “I don’t know.” Strictly speaking, that was the truth.

      “I’m not a fool, Mike. In about two minutes flat, I expect the press to be on the phone, asking what the connection is and whether we’re investigating John Blakeley. Are we?”

      “Well...yes.”

      There was a brief pause. “My office, fifteen minutes. I want the media relations people there too.”

      He sensed she was about to hang up. “Barbara!”

      She came back on the line. “Damn it, Mike! The Chief is already on the other line. He’ll have to be included.”

      Green groaned. He knew she was right, but he felt the whole delicate investigation spinning out of his control. “Okay, but you and I need to meet privately first, so I can tell you where we really are and figure out what the hell to release for general consumption. Because it’s explosive, Barbara. Really explosive.”

      For the next fifteen minutes Green paced his office and jotted notes on a pad of paper. He was so busy figuring out exactly how much he was going to tell Devine that he had no chance to consider the significance of Blakeley’s announcement. He needed Devine’s cooperation to keep the investigation of Weiss under wraps, but when she finally summoned him upstairs, he discovered she had an entirely different concern.

      When he walked in, she was on the phone talking to the Chief himself. “Absolutely not, sir,” she was saying. “Inspector Green has just arrived, and I will keep you well apprised of any actions we plan to take... Of course, sir.”

      When she hung up, she pivoted on her stiletto heel and walked to the door to close it firmly behind him. Despite her haste, she’d managed to arrive at the office impeccably packaged in the latest spring colours. Her green linen suit hadn’t a single wrinkle in it, and every black hair on her head was lacquered into submission. She waved peach-tipped fingers at the group of chairs in front of her desk.

      “John Blakeley,” she announced without preamble. “I’ve just been on the phone with the Chief. You’re not to go near him again without our approval.”

      In his astonishment, he froze midway into his chair. “Barbara, that’s ridiculous. He’s a prime suspect—”

      “Do you have concrete evidence?”

      “Not yet, but—”

      “Then you won’t touch him. The media will be all over this. They’ll have a field day with his connections to the Liberal Party brass, and the opposition parties will grab any chance to smear the Liberal leadership. They’ll say it’s another example of their poor judgement, if not their outright criminal connections.”

      He thought about the call he’d overhead between her and the Chief. Who in the Liberal Party had the power to call in favours from the police? And why?

      “Is there something I don’t know?” he asked. “Some other player who has the ear of the Chief? Because I don’t want to be blindsided by someone’s secret agenda—”

      “Of course not, Mike. It’s just a media jackpot. Blakeley’s wife is the daughter of Jack Neuss, who’s been a senior policy advisor for the Liberals since the days of Trudeau. You know how it works, Mike. It’s two weeks to the election, and the public has never been more fickle.”

      He paced in outrage. “So you’re saying if I’m planning to arrest Blakeley, I should wait two weeks?”

      “Are you planning to arrest him?”

      He forced himself to slow down and think of how he might persuade her. “Not yet. But I will need to talk to him again, and you can’t seriously suggest we go easy on the guy when one of our officers is lying in the <span class=">ICU , possibly because of him.”

      She stared up at him unblinking for several seconds. “All right, tell me about it.”

      “If you promise not to interrupt. We have very little time to waste.”

      Her eyes narrowed at his bald insubordination and her mouth opened as if to protest, but in the end, she snapped it shut. “Go ahead. But for God’s sake, sit down.”

      He sat, and for fifteen minutes he gave her an executive summary of the case to date, starting with the suicide of Ian MacDonald and the fatal beating of his friend Daniel Oliver by a man he and MacDonald served with in Yugoslavia. He described Oliver’s fiancée’s arrival in Ottawa with a newspaper clipping about Blakeley and his campaign manager, who coincidentally just happened to have been a witness to Oliver’s death. He traced her movements in Ottawa as they knew them, from her trip to Petawawa to her date with a mystery man only hours before her death.

      Finally, with some trepidation, he broached the subject of Weiss, including his connection to MacDonald and Blakeley in Yugoslavia, his request to be put on the case, his inquiries about Twiggy, and most damning of all, his phone call from the convenience store that set up Peters up.

      Devine’s lips grew tighter as the evidence against Weiss added up. When Green mentioned Weiss’s recent disappearance along with Twiggy’s, she shook her head in outrage.

      “There’s more than enough there to bring him in.”

      “I agree. And we will, as soon as we can find him.”

      “I don’t see how you have a single thing on Blakeley, however.”

      “Only a theory—”

      “We can’t destroy a man’s reputation or torpedo an election on a theory.”

      Green clenched his teeth and prayed for patience. “Blakeley was MacDonald’s and Weiss’s superior officer. Whatever wrongdoing occurred in Yugoslavia, he had to have been involved. And I think the fact he withdrew today is the most damning evidence of all. It’s tantamount to admitting we’re going to turn up something rotten.”

      “But maybe nothing more than a poor judgement call or a superior officer’s desire to protect his men. That’s not a good enough reason to flush a man or the election down the toilet.”

      Green stared out the window, weighing his options. Devine’s office, like all the senior administration, had a spectacular view of the Museum of Nature, that sat like a Medieval Scottish Castle in the middle of the park across the road. Green had always found it soothing in an other-worldly way, but today he felt his blood pressure

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