A Cloud of Suspects Read online

  A Cloud of Suspects

  Laurence Gough

  © Laurence Gough 2003

  Laurence Gough has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2003 by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  This book is dedicated to the ones I love. My family, my friends. You know who you are. I hope you know how much you mean to me.

  Death is … the sure extinction that we travel to and shall be lost in always.

  - Philip Larkin

  *

  Seize the moment. Just remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the pudding trolley.

  - Erma Bombeck

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 1

  Nothing but blue skies

  The alarm was set for 6:00 a.m. Colin awoke from a dreamless sleep at 5:55. He rolled over on his back and stared up at the ceiling, focusing his energy and collecting his thoughts. He’d had a woman friend over. It had been a long and exhausting night. He smiled, remembering just how exhausting it had been.

  At 5:59, he reached out and blindly turned off the alarm. It was a ritual he had followed, day in and day out, seven days a week, for more years than he could remember. He rolled out of his king-size bed and padded, naked except for his black silk boxer shorts, across the carpet to the massive wall of green-tinted glass that overlooked False Creek. He pressed a button in the wall. An electric motor hummed quietly. The drapes twitched and then split in two and retreated towards the end walls, flooding the room with dappled light. Colin unlocked the pair of triple-glazed, ten-foot wide glass doors and pressed a silver button. Another motor hummed. Despite their mammoth size and weight, the twin panels of glass slid easily aside on their metal tracks and nylon rollers.

  Colin stepped outside, onto the fifty-foot-long balcony that ran the entire length of his apartment. The sun was just coming up, and the ornate Italian-marble tiles were pleasantly cool to the touch. He wriggled his toes and spread his arms wide, and took a deep breath. From the balcony he had a view of the width and breadth of False Creek, the broad pedestrian walkway almost directly below him, and the long, graceful sweep of his classic wooden schooner, Gull He’d bought Gull at the beginning of the summer. The thrill of ownership hadn’t yet begun to fade, and he still felt a soaring in his heart when he gazed down at her flowing lines, varnished wood, and glinting brass work. The boat was moored at a prime slip in the condominium complex’s private marina. She wasn’t the biggest boat in the marina, but Colin was damn sure she was the prettiest.

  The sky was blue everywhere he looked, and the temperature was already twenty-five degrees Celsius. The city had been sweating through a week-long heat wave. Today looked like more of the same. Colin wasn’t complaining. He reached down inside the silk boxers and gave himself a scratch, and then turned and went back inside the apartment. He had a 7:30 breakfast meeting set up with a couple of guys who’d flown in from Calgary looking for an investment opportunity. The way Colin saw it, he was their man.

  He was in the shower in the ensuite bathroom, shampooing his hair, when the Barenaked Ladies’ latest hit suddenly blasted at him over the wall-mounted speakers. The stereo wasn’t on a timer. An electrical surge wouldn’t make it come on … would it?

  He was rinsing the shampoo out of his hair when the bathroom door swung open and someone walked into the room. The shower had clear glass walls, but they were steamed up, and the streams of soapy water running into his eyes didn’t help. Colin said, “Who’s there?”

  There was no answer. The roar of the pressurized water from the shower’s several nozzles was suddenly deafeningly loud.

  He wasn’t worried. He’d given his new endless love a key to the apartment. Sometimes he lost track of what day and time his housekeeper, Mrs. Rubie, was due to come by to do the housework.

  He peered into the steamy, swirling mist. “Mrs. Rubie? Is that you?”

  Maybe he’d imagined it. He must have imagined it. Had he left the sliding glass door leading to the balcony open? He didn’t think so but wasn’t sure. He rinsed the last of the shampoo out of his hair. His eyes stung. As he reached to turn off the water, something very, very fast moved in his peripheral vision. He spun around. He must have hit the cold water tap, because the blast of water from the half-dozen wall-mounted nozzles was suddenly scalding hot. He cried out. The water beat at him, turning his skin bright red. He fell backwards, against the glass wall.

  From the other side of the glass came a low, guttural moan. Colin yelled, “Who is that? Gimme a break, I’m freaking out in here!” The water was unendurably hot; so hot he couldn’t get at the taps to turn them off. The shower and bathroom rapidly filled with steam, dense and impenetrable as heavy fog.

  He shouted, “Who’s there! Get out! Take what you want and get out! Just take everything and get out!” The music pounded at him. The water beat down. He screamed, “Get out! The police are coming!”

  Christ, if he didn’t get out of the shower he was going to be boiled alive, like a fucking lobster. He pushed open the glass door, stepped out of the shower, and was immediately knocked down from behind, hitting his head. A darkly malevolent eye stared down at him. An arc of white-hot pain screamed across the back of his neck at the base of his skull. Hurrying steps padded into silence.

  He simply could not believe this was happening to him. It was so exactly like every ridiculous, B-movie horror flick he’d ever seen that it didn’t seem real. He sat up and stared blankly at the thin trickle of blood that flowed down his shoulder and heaving chest. He reached behind him. His probing fingers explored the slippery wound. He was shocked and frightened by the depth of the puncture, the ragged edges of his violently torn flesh. He glanced around the overblown bathroom and took heart in the false belief that, because he saw everything in so much detail, with such enormous clarity, he must surely be caught up in a nightmare.

  Then the blood welled up, and poured over him in a hot red flood.

  He looked around as whoever had attacked him moaned again, a gut-shuddering animal sound that made his heart lurch. Something moved in the fog. A dark shape. He shouted, “Don’t hurt me!” His assailant smashed him against the wall. He felt a sharply burning pain in his side. A piece of skin as large as the palm of his hand flapped against his hip. A rack of thin white bones gleamed in a bubbling sea of red. He scrambled backwards against the glass wall of the shower, and was attacked again. He put up his arm to defend himself. A fan of blood vanished into the fog. The tiles were slippery with blood. His arms flailed wildly. Distorted Hula Hoops of blood splattered on the walls.

  He lay in a fetal position on the tiles, alternately squealing with horror and blubbering with fear. When he finally stopped screaming, it was only because he was too exhausted to continue. The steady roar of the shower reasserted itself. The music had stopped. He cocked his head, listening. The seconds crawled by, and then sped up, tearing past him at breakneck speed, in a blur of fear and tick of blood, before once again slowing down to a crawl. After a few moments he managed to stand up. Hi
s naked body shook as if he dangled from a thousand wires. He snatched a towel from the rack and pressed it against his side. The floor was pink with diluted blood.

  The bathroom had two doors. One led to the master bedroom; the other opened into the apartment s central hallway. The door to the hallway was ajar. Colin hobbled stealthily over to it, opened it a crack and cautiously looked out. Behind him, clouds of steam billowed silently out of the shower. The hallway was empty. The thick off-white carpet was marked by blobs of pink that faded as they moved away from the bedroom door and towards the kitchen and entry hall.

  Colin stood there for a moment, leaning against the door frame, lightheaded from shock and loss of blood, weirdly proud of himself for knowing that it was important for him to think straight, horribly conscious of his blood weighing down the towel pressed against his ribs. He told himself he was going to be okay. The cut in his side looked like hell but it was nothing serious, only a flesh wound. Spill a cup of coffee, and what a mess; it looked like the cup had held a couple of gallons. A paper cut on the ball of his thumb could make his desk look like a slaughterhouse.

  There was a phone in the bathroom. He turned and looked behind him. He couldn’t see anything because of the steam. There was a phone in the living room, and another in the kitchen, but no way would he follow in the path of those gruesome stains on the carpet.

  He’d use the phone in the bedroom. If the line had been cut he could use his cellphone, which should be in the charger on his night table, beside the bed. If he couldn’t find the cellphone, it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to the balcony. If he went out there and screamed bloody murder, somebody was bound to hear him. The way he looked, nobody in his right mind would think he was kidding. The cops would be pounding on his door before he had time to draw his next breath.

  Colin shut the door to the hallway by leaning against it. This door, like every other interior door in his apartment, was oversized, intricately carved, and crafted of solid oak. The doors had been salvaged from a doomed Shaughnessy mansion. Colin had paid a thousand dollars each for eight of them. The hardware he’d had fitted was solid brass and of the finest quality. Unfortunately, the doors leading to the bathroom had simple passage locks that were easily bypassed by anyone armed with a flathead screwdriver or a credit card. He locked the hallway door anyway, knowing that every pinch of time he could buy himself might save his life.

  The music started up again. Jann Arden’s “Sleepless.”

  Colin cracked open the door to the bedroom and looked out. The bedroom door to the hall was wide open. The walk-in closet’s mirrored doors were shut. He opened the door a little wider, until he could see his unmade bed. His cordless telephone stood upright on the night table beside it. The cellular was in its docking station.

  He gripped the doorknob tightly and pushed open the door a few more inches, muscles tensed.

  The bedroom was empty.

  He hurried to the bed, snatched up the cordless phone, and dialled 911. A huge silence yawned into his ear. He dialled the number again. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t think what it was. Then it hit him: the phone’s dial pad hadn’t lit up. He turned the phone over. The battery compartment’s plastic cover was missing and the battery had been removed. He stood there by the side of the bed, staring blankly down at the useless phone as if hypnotized. He dropped the cordless. The towel slipped as he snatched up the cellphone. A fresh wash of blood poured down his belly and curled into his genitals. Groaning, he pressed the bunched-up towel against his wound. Blood from the saturated cotton splattered on his leg, and on the bed, and carpet.

  The cellphone felt wrong. He turned it over. The battery was gone.

  Colin shrieked in rage and fear as a heavy weight smashed into him. He spun around so fast he overbalanced and toppled sideways. The muscles and tendons of his wrist were laid bare. Blood spurted from the gaping wounds. His fingers were limp and useless. The phone thudded on the carpet. His assailant was somewhere behind him. Something tore fiercely into the small of his back. He shrieked for mercy. His knees buckled. The pain was unbearable, as if a burning hot wire embedded deep in his spine had been forcibly uprooted, torn from his flesh. A waterfall of blood filled his eyes, blinding him. He tried to wipe the blood away, but there was too much of it. He rolled across the bed and fell clumsily to the carpet. Whimpering in fear and pain, he crawled through a sea of red towards the balcony.

  It took him almost a full minute to cross the twenty feet of carpet to the huge wall of glass overlooking the south shore of False Creek. He sensed, rather than saw, the summer light streaming in through the window. His heart pounded in his chest. He was terrified, and was having difficulty getting enough air into his lungs because his nostrils were clogged with blood. Blood from a gash in his forehead ran down into his mouth, making it difficult to breath. Blood filled his throat, choking him. He spat clots of blood, and coughed a fine red mist.

  He sobbed with relief when his splayed outstretched hand touched the cool panel of glass. The pair of sliding doors leading to the balcony was to his left, only a few feet away. He crawled along the base of the wall, his fingers groping at the metal track. It wasn’t until his blindly questing hand bumped up against an unyielding wall of polished concrete that he realized the doors were closed.

  He struggled to sit up. He got to his knees and slapped at the door, leaving a random pattern of bloody handprints on the glass. After a few moments he fell back, exhausted. He was very sleepy. The pain was fading, and he had almost stopped bleeding. He shut his eyes. His breathing had been fast and shallow. Now it slowed.

  The glass door slid open, gliding silently on its nylon runners, until there was an opening barely wide enough for Colin to pass through.

  Colin imagined he heard the thin keening of a strong wind flailing a barbed-wire fence.

  Something that felt like a pad of wet sandpaper slithered across his face. He made a clotted gurgling sound that might have been a plea for mercy. He felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, and then his heart stopped beating, and he died.

  He was rolled over onto his back.

  A blade ripped into him, savaging him.

  When it was over, the sliding glass door was shut and locked, and the curtains were drawn.

  Colin McDonald was going to miss his appointment with the wealthy oilmen from Calgary. He would also miss a date with his dentist, and another date with several minor business associates. The oilmen shrugged off their disappointment and hit the hotel bar. Colin’s business associates were accustomed to being treated with disdain, and thought nothing of his absence. The dentist managed to fit someone into the half-hour he’d scheduled with Colin, but instructed his receptionist to bill him for the missed appointment all the same.

  More than twenty-four crucial hours would pass before Colin’s housekeeper, Mrs. Rubie, entered his apartment and found his body.

  In the meantime, Gull lay quietly at her slip, and Jann Arden s “Sleepless” played over and over and over again.

  Chapter 2

  The needle and the damage done

  Jan had outlined the fist, changed colours, and started filling in the knife that the fist was tightly grasping when the bead curtain rattled and Harvey pushed his way into her tattoo studio and back into her life. There was just enough room for him to pull up a chair and thump his skinny ass down on it. Jan’s customer crossed and uncrossed his legs, and was still. Harvey rolled and lit a cigarette, glanced around for something he could use for an ashtray. Jan gave him a warning look. Her customer cleared his throat. Harvey was five-six and weighed a hundred and thirty pounds fully dressed in a thunderstorm. He shoved the smoking match into his ponytailed hair, and grinned up at her. He’d always had a great smile, despite a brutal overbite. During the time he’d been gone, the prison dentist had worked wonders on his alignment. Jan almost smiled back.

  She said, “Learn anything?”

  “About what?”

  “Like, how to stay out of jail?”
r />   “Let’s hope so.” He tilted his head and exhaled a chain of smoke rings straight at her.

  Jan said, “You just get out?”

  “Couple weeks ago.”

  She smiled. “Got something you want me to get rid of?”

  Harvey said, “Aren’t you smart.”

  “Smart enough.”

  The guy in the chair was listening with both ears and everything in between, trying his best to make sense of the conversation, break the code. Harvey tagged him at about three hundred pounds. Bordering on enormous, and clearly blissfully unaware that he was a decade past his prime. Harvey sure did admire the guy’s Harley, though. He looked the guy square in the eye, and reached out his hand. “I’m Harvey. Jan’s old man. I used to be a criminal, but now I’m reformed, on parole, and totally harmless.”

  “Toby,” the biker said. He let Harvey take his paw.

  Harvey said, “That your panhead?”

  Toby nodded. He pointed at the lurid jailhouse tattoo on the back of Harvey’s hand, then jerked his head towards Jan. “She do that?”

  Harvey laughed. He said, “You better hope not.”

  Jan said, “Stay still, please.”

  Toby wore oil-stained Dayton black leather motorcycle boots that weighed about five pounds apiece, a pair of black Levi’s riddled with battery-acid holes, and a sleeveless Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt, Ozzy’s smirk lost behind a mouthful of live bat. Toby had hair all over every visible inch of him except for the palms of his hands and his shaved skull and the rectangle Jan had clear-cut on his biceps, for the tattoo.

  Harvey sized him up. Somebody’s sweet baby turned to somebody’s bone-cruncher, now run to fat. The T-shirt didn’t have any food stains on it. Toby probably thought he was all dressed up, totally irresistible. Sweat poured off him, but the look on his face told Harvey he was enjoying the pain.