Seaweed in the Soup Read online

  Candace looked disappointed. I was too, in a bizarre way, because until things had cooled off between us recently, I’d been enjoying a very satisfactory love life with a woman called Felicity Exeter. But Felicity had ignored my last few calls, and I didn’t know why. Weeks had passed since we’d seen each other. But I don’t pay for sex. So I left Pinky’s, walked half a block and stood outside Peacock Billiards for a minute, trying to remember if I’d ever told Felicity that I loved her. Maybe when I was drunk, which wouldn’t count. Felicity had told me that she loved me, more than once. Perhaps she’d gotten over it, and I was no longer the person who used to matter to her.

  Looking north along Douglas Street, I pondered my next move, wondering whether it would be a good time for me to brace Twinner Scudd. I decided it wasn’t.

  The sky was clear. The city was hot, noisy, bright. Victoria is a port city and a favourite tourist destination, especially for Americans who love the usually cheap Canadian dollar. The downtown sidewalks were a blur of colour because a French aircraft carrier had just dropped its anchors in Royal Roads. Sailors on shore leave and local girls with sun-bleached hair strolled back and forth, flirting and enjoying themselves. Skateboard kids were doing crazy matador acts between moving cars and taxis. Street buskers and jugglers and ice-cream sellers were all cashing in.

  I spent the rest of the day snooping around, trying unsuccessfully to get a line on who Maria Alfred’s companion might have been. About nine PM I picked up my car from the lot and detoured through Chinatown, noticing its garish coloured lights, chop-suey cafes, and the gaudy imported wares displayed in shop windows. When a red light stopped me at Fisgard and Government I had time to notice a bicycle-rickshaw parked on the street outside Wong’s Cafe.

  I derailed thoughts of the rickshaw I’d seen in the Wasserstein house and began to wonder what secrets lay hidden behind the red-painted doors and silken curtains that abound in this ethnic neighbourhood. The rickshaw kid had legs like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He got on his bike and started pedalling before the light changed, slowing motor traffic down to Store Street. Where he turned right, I turned left. I winkled my way onto the Johnson Street Bridge, and went home.

  Instead of brushing my teeth and going to bed, I poured myself a drink, found a dead fly on my windowsill, took it outside and said hello to pine siskin. He seemed happy to see me, and hopped out of the escallonia bush onto my hand when I offered him the fly. Afterwards I sat in my garden, thinking about the secret life of birds, and Maggie Bradley, with the siskin’s background chatter a pleasing accompaniment to my ruminations.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A coroner’s inquest into Raymond Cho’s death opened at the Blanshard Street courthouse at 11:00 AM. After hearing about a hundred words from Detective Inspector Manners, the coroner adjourned the inquest pending further evidence, much to the dismay of the ink-stained wretches, the idlers, the pensioners and all of the other irregular sad sacks that fatten their shrunken lives on courthouse misery.

  Manners stood down from the witness box and exchanged a few private words with Bernie Tapp. Bernie and I then left the courthouse together and stood on the sidewalk. Dark thunderheads were massing over the Sooke Hills. A majestic bald eagle was devouring something small and feathery on the courthouse roof. In the sky above the eagle, a pair of bereft thrushes screeched piteously.

  Nice Manners came out of the courthouse, got into a waiting patrol car, and was driven off.

  Bernie is one of those fidgety pipe smokers constantly patting his pockets for matches or tobacco pouch or reaming dottle from the pipe’s bowl with a pocket knife. He was going through another pipe-filling, tobacco-fiddling routine when a taxi drew up nearby. Bernie and I watched as Terri Murnau got stiffly out of the taxi, paid the driver, and then limped slowly up the courthouse steps. Terri hadn’t been limping when she’d served Fred Halloran and me at Pinky’s Bar.

  Bernie said. “I’m going to grab a cup of coffee. You coming?”

  “Can’t, I’ve a couple of things to do.”

  “You do that, but don’t bully your expense account too much,” Bernie said amiably. Puffing smoke like a steam train, he began a slow locomotion towards the Fort Street Starbucks.

  I re-entered the courthouse. The corridors were jammed with conmen and crooks, and with their natural prey: the frightened, the cheated, the confused, the old. Barristers wearing black jackets and pants, white shirts with wingback collars and flapping white neckties, strode purposefully around at $500 an hour.

  Terri Murnau was leaning against the wall outside courtroom five with most of her weight supported on one leg. She was heavily made up, but not heavily enough to conceal the puffiness surrounding both of her eyes. She looked exactly what she was. An attractive middle-aged battered woman wearing a charcoal-grey pantsuit and black flat-heeled shoes. We exchanged smiles. Terri’s shoulders covered up the court calendar posted on a board behind her, preventing me from seeing what kind of legal or domestic trouble she might be embroiled in.

  I said, “Everything under control, Terri?”

  She regarded me contemplatively for an instant. “I’m getting a grip on it,” she said noncommittally.

  British Columbia courts go easy on wife beaters, unfortunately, and Terri probably knew it. I told her to give me a call if she needed anything, and continued along the marble corridors to the bc land registry office.

  Generally, the land registry office is busy; there’s usually a lineup. That morning, for a brief period, I was the only customer. I showed a woman behind the counter my police badge and asked to see the conveyance on Ernest Wasserstein’s Echo Bay property. A copy of that document arrived promptly. The deed was simple enough. Ten years earlier Ernest Wasserstein had purchased his house, fully furnished, for nine and a half million dollars. I also discovered that Collins Lane had been gazetted in 1873.

  Well, that was interesting.

  By the time I returned to courtroom five, Terri Murnau had gone. I examined the court calendar posted beside the courtroom door. Regina vs. Murnau was being heard before Judge Hilda at that very moment. By then, it was a little before noon.

  Something was nagging me. I went back to my office and ran a computer check on Ernest Wasserstein. He was a Swiss national with two convictions for fraud in Canada. Thoughtful, I locked up my office, strolled across to the Broughton Street parkade where I’d left the MG, fired it up and drove out to revisit the Echo Bay scene of incomprehensibly violent murder. Traffic alternately raced and crawled.

  Echo Bay’s village clock was striking two when I stopped at a corner grocery to buy myself a cold drink. Getting out of the car, I noticed the Mai Thai Restaurant. Forgetting my thirst, I went into the restaurant instead. Heavy cooking odours. A Help Wanted sign in the front window. The curtains were closed and the lights were off. After going in out of the day’s bright sunlight, it took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom.

  An agitated elderly Asian woman came fluttering out of the kitchen, waving her arms and trying to shoo me back outside. “Close till six please,” she said, speaking English in a heavily accented voice. “Restaurant close please, come back later please.”

  When I showed the woman my police badge, she gave a stifled cry and fled from sight through a bead-curtained doorway.

  I sat on a stool and gazed at the display of domestic wines and Thai beer stacked behind the counter. Silence reigned until another Asian woman appeared. She was about twenty, exuded tranquillity and looked like the first woman’s granddaughter. Her black hair had yellow streaks, and she was wearing a blue silk shirt and slim-fit jeans. She regarded me seriously, although her narrow gaze seemed slightly unfocussed. I thought, she’s worried.

  Smiling, she asked tentatively, “Is there something I can do for you, sir?”

  I asked her name.

  “Tania Sundaravej,” she answered. “That was Granny you were talking to just now. She said you’re a policeman. There’s nothing wrong, I hope?”

  Her voice was
well modulated, Canadian.

  “I’m looking for someone who lives nearby and might possibly be one of your customers.”

  “This business has been a going concern since I was five years old. We have thousands of customers.”

  I paused. The inquiry was in its early stages, and we were still playing things close to the chest. I wondered whether it was safe to use the dead man’s name. What was I going to say otherwise? That the man I was interested in was Chinese, about thirty? A man who dressed well, drove an expensive late-model German car? That description fitted thousands of people. I grinned at her. “This is confidential. His name is Ronnie Chew. A Chinese man, about thirty. He’s apparently well-to-do. Drives a nice Beemer, wears very good expensive clothes.”

  Her smile became radiant. “Oh Ronnie, sure. Ronnie was in here on Saturday night, late.”

  “Alone?”

  “He was with a couple of friends, I served them myself. Wait a minute.”

  Tania put on glasses with bottle-glass lenses, reached beneath the counter and brought out a register, but couldn’t find what she wanted. She said, “It’s crazy in here on Saturdays. Generally, Ronnie books a table when he’s coming.” She took her glasses off and turned the book 180 degrees so that I could read the page. Ronnie Chew’s name wasn’t there.

  “Ronnie must have just walked in at the last minute. It’s lucky we had a free table.” Tania pointed vaguely to a table in a far corner of the room. “Minnie was hostessing, she put him over there.”

  “What time would that be?”

  “It must have been close to eleven. We stop cooking at midnight, and the bar closes at one. Ronnie and his friends were among the last people to leave here.”

  “Do you know who Ronnie’s friends were?”

  “No, I’ve never seen them before. Two girls.”

  “Tell me about them?”

  “They were two Indian girls, yeah. A bit rough around the edges if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean. I’m an Indian too.”

  Tania’s face fell. She put her glasses on and saw me clearly for what was evidently the first time. “Oh hell,” she said. “No offence, but I’m blind as a bat when it’s shadowy like this, even when I’m wearing glasses.”

  “Were you wearing glasses on Saturday night?”

  “Sure, most of the time. I can’t function without them really, but I’m vain.”

  “As you were saying. Raymond’s friends were a couple of Native Indian women.”

  “Well, yes. One of them even asked me if there was a chance of a server’s job going. I tried to put her off. Maria, I think she called herself. I told her we didn’t need a server right now. In fact, we’re always on the lookout for staff, only Thai food is a specialty. We can’t use servers unless they know our menu and our way of doing business. She wouldn’t have been a good fit.” Tania smiled disarmingly. “I hope you’re not gonna put the thumbscrews on me for being honest.”

  “How did Maria handle rejection?”

  “She was okay with it. Told me she already had a job, but was looking for a change. She wrote her phone number down on a paper napkin and asked me to give her a call if something came up. Before you ask, I threw the napkin away. But I remember where she said she worked. It was the Ballard Diner.”

  It was a rarity, but for a change, Dr. Tarleton’s autopsy had been wrong. Ronnie Chew didn’t die with a belly full of half-digested Chinese food. It had been Thai food.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  I drove from the Echo Bay village to Collins Lane and came to a stop outside Tudor Collins’ wrought-iron gates. A long curving driveway ran from sight between glades of ornamental bushes and deciduous trees. I pushed an intercom button located on a stone gatepost. Before the intercom squawked, enough time passed for me to look around and notice a closed-circuit television camera aimed on the gates from a nearby tree. I told the intercom who I was and badged the camera. More time passed till there was a metallic click, and the remote-controlled gates swung wide. I had driven a hundred yards up the driveway when a man appeared with a spaniel at his heels. The Collins house wasn’t fully visible, but a couple of elaborate brick chimneys rose above the treetops. I got out of the car.

  The man was white-haired, of medium stature. I knew that he was over 70 years old, but he looked younger. His brown eyes were alert and direct. I badged him again and asked if he was Tudor Collins. He nodded. Before I could get a word in, he said categorically, “If you’re here to ask me more questions about those two girls I’ll tell you exactly what I told Inspector Manners,” he said, a slight note of irritation in his voice. “They were Native Indians, the same as you are. They weren’t Chinese, or Japs. They weren’t East Indians.”

  “How can you be so positive?”

  “Two reasons. First, because of the way the girls looked. Second, because of the way they spoke the English language. I’ve lived a long time. When I was a little boy before the war, Indians had a regular summer camp on the beach below Collins Lane. The women dug clams and picked berries while their men were out fishing in canoes. They were real canoes too. Carved cedar dugouts, not this plastic crap you see now. When the women weren’t busy with something else, they’d be weaving fancy baskets. They’d bring clams and baskets up to the house. My parents always bought something. I’ve still got some of those baskets. I showed ’em to a dealer one time. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on ’em, but I’ll never sell. They’re souvenirs of a vanished age, right?”

  “If you like that sort of thing.”

  Collins smiled at a memory. “Back then, English was the second language for many Natives and they had a peculiar way of pronouncing the English letter S. It’s hard to describe, but it sounded as if they’d sort of swallowed the word when it was halfway out of their mouths. Slurred it, kind of. The word ‘yes,’ for example, comes out sounding sort of like ‘yeshul.’ You don’t hear that peculiarity so much now as formerly. When you do hear it, you know that you’re listening to somebody who learned to speak English in a place where there were few White people. An isolated reserve, say.”

  “I was born on a reserve. Do I swallow my Ss?”

  “No you don’t, because I expect you live in town and were educated in White schools. Am I right?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s a relief, I’m glad somebody believes some of the things that I say, because I’ve been starting to wonder.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re the second policeman I’ve spoken to.”

  “You’re referring to Inspector Manners?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And before him there were those customs people.”

  Customs people?

  Instead of pursuing that topic immediately, I said, “Collins Lane was gazetted over a hundred years ago. You folks have been here a long time?”

  “We have. My ancestors bought this land from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1867. A hundred acres at ten shillings an acre. Shillings, mind you, not dollars. It should have cost us more, but the property wasn’t considered agricultural back then. Too many trees and rocks. We don’t own that much property now, worse luck. My dad managed to hang on to it all until the dirty thirties, when money became tight. Unfortunately, after all those years, Dad couldn’t come up with the taxes. In 1938, 90 acres reverted to the Crown.”

  “The Collinses must know all about that petroglyph, then. The one at the head of that ravine?”

  Collins’ eyes narrowed immediately. I knew that I’d broached an unwelcome topic. I also knew why he’d be anxious.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Is this a murder inquiry or a fishing expedition, because I thought it was already settled. Mrs. Milton let the cat out of the bag when I saw her on the lane yesterday. She told me that those two Native women cut that Chinaman’s throat,” Collins said, his face registering disapproval. “I knew there was something fishy about him, too. I mean, there he is, a gardener. Live-in help earning the minimum wage. The man can hardly
speak English, and yet there he is, driving around in a 60-thousand-dollar car. No wonder the customs people flagged him.”

  “Customs people? I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

  “Bureaucrats!” said Collins, with a disparaging snort. “Another case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. It’s less than a week ago since they were here. Customs and immigration inspectors. Two men. Standing where you are standing now, asking their nosy bloody questions. They were trying to trace a Chinaman. Wanted to know where he lived and so on. When they gave me his description, I told them that the man they wanted was probably Ernie Wasserstein’s gardener.”

  Collins gazed at me expectantly.

  I nodded. “Did they tell you why they wanted him?”

  “Of course they did, I would have kept my mouth shut otherwise. They told me he was one of those illegals. People who come out from China packed like sardines in fishing trawlers. Hundreds of ’em jammed below decks. The minute the trawler docks, the illegals clear off, disappear, clutter up the country. Why don’t you bureaucrats combine forces for a change? Work together instead of protecting your own turf?”

  I stared at him without speaking for a moment. By then Collins had begun to annoy me, and it probably showed. He went on lamely, “Actually, I wouldn’t want Wasserstein to know that I blew the whistle on his man. It would create bad blood between neighbours.”

  “You said there were two immigration inspectors. How did they identify themselves?”

  “They didn’t. But I know how to size people up. I took them at their word.”

  “What did these men look like?”

  “What did they look like? They looked ordinary.”

  “Mr. Collins, this might be very important, so I want you to think back carefully. Were these men tall, short, well-dressed, what?”

  Collins scowled at a memory. “They were a couple of functionaries in dark suits. One character was swarthy, short, as wide as a door. About fifty years old, with a ridiculous comb-over. He let his partner do the talking.”