Harry One Sigh: The Fraud Murders

By Gar Mallinson

Harry Touchstone is nothing but a small-town detective who works mostly on insurance cases for local companies. Then, his friend dies, and Harrys life turns upside-down. His murdered pal was a graduate student writing her thesis on corruption in the building industry. Her researcher is found dead, too, and Harry makes it his business to solve the case.

The case leads him from Harbour City to Vancouver, from arson to more murders. Unbeknownst to him, Harry has gone from hunter to hunted. He makes a string of odd allies as he fights to stay alive, including a transvestite, a hacker, and the matriarch of Chinatown. He also makes a lot of enemies, but he cant nail down their identities.

Back home, Harrys secretary is raped, and one of his good friends is shot. The bad guys arent just after Harry anymoretheyre systematically attacking the people he loves most. Caught between the Hells Angels, unethical politicians, and a psychopath named Indian, Harry is on the run. The only way to solve this case is to expose about a million lies and stay alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491746684

Gar Mallinson

Gar Mallinson, a retired English professor, has been writing fiction for about ten years. He is an avid landscape and architecture photographer whose works are in private collections in New York, Sydney, London, Frankfurt, Toronto, and Vancouver. He and his wife Renee live with their cat, Oliver, and dog, Scarlett, in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.

Book preview

1

The library entrance was only fifty feet away when Jenny Durwent turned to the blonde standing a step below her. They were eye to eye now. Jenny was a short, dark Irish girl from the city, a little stout in that strong kind of way, and Lydia, the blonde, was six two, a tall lanky Scandinavian on a student visa to Vancouver Island University. Jenny had her arms full of books she was returning before hitting the stacks. Lydia had only a popsicle stuck in the corner of her mouth. Neither girl noticed the young man leaning against the cement post at the bottom of the stairs. He was dark-haired like Jenny and handsome, lean and chisel-faced. But the eyes, as he glanced up at them, held no warmth, not even the interest one would expect.

Lydia was here from Denmark to study Business Administration. The university had a graduate program leading to a doctorate in the subject and had advertised internationally for students. Texts and tuition she’d covered already, but accommodation had proven a little more expensive this year than anticipated, and besides, she wanted some spending money now she had some free time.

Lydia had met Jenny in the student union building where they’d both picked up some coffee and pizza slices and had ended up at the same table in the crowded cafeteria. It was supper time. Conversation around bites of pizza and later over coffee had brought up both girls’ current problems: money for Lydia and an assistant for Jenny who was finishing her thesis and had a serious deadline. Her subject wasn’t that far from the sort of stuff Lydia was interested in anyway, and corporate fraud sounded intriguing to the young foreigner. They had reached an agreement quickly, had started that very day.

Jenny grinned at her new friend, You gonna take that thing in with you? You won’t get far. The security’s pretty stiff and popsicles just don’t cut it.

Lydia popped the popsicle out, But it’s cherry, my fave, and if you’d stop running up these damn steps, I could finish it. With that, she stuck it back in her mouth and crunched down. Chewing rapidly, she finished off the whole thing, grinned back with her lips a vibrant red. Okay Jen, done. Lead on!

It was fairly early in the evening. The light was still pervasive, but the sun had fallen behind the inland mountains at least an hour before. The two of them finished the steps, pushed open the glass door, and dropped books off at the desk. Jenny waved to the security guard and hit the up button on the elevator. The elevator let them out on the top floor where the stacks were. They walked down the aisle, turned left between two rows of stacks, and went to the end where Jenny had her little cubby-hole. Here, they talked a bit about procedures, and Jenny sent Lydia off to search out a couple of fairly obscure sources. They spent most of the evening working, then took a break and talked about more personal stuff.

The dark-haired man had spent the previous two days on campus watching the activity. On the first day, he’d been a redhead with a neatly trimmed moustache. He’d spent the morning on stairs that led up and down the hill the university was built on. There were six levels. He’d checked buildings outside and in. He’d located both the library and the security office on the top level, and had watched the flow of uniformed men heading toward various areas of the campus. He’d followed along when two of the guards walked toward the library. He’d entered behind them and gone into the reading room beside the main desk. From that vantage point, he could easily study the guards’ schedule. It appeared random but wasn’t really. There was a pattern that stretched over a two-hour period and then got repeated. He’d sat quietly and watched. He’d done that for the afternoon and early evening of the first day.

The second day, he looked different. He was much stouter, and his dark hair was speckled with grey. He walked differently too. He still had a book bag slung over one shoulder as he had the first day, but it was a different style. He wore glasses with dark Banana Republic frames. He looked more like a young professor than a student. He’d followed one of the guards onto the elevator and into the stacks. He’d nodded to the guard as the two of them stepped off the elevator, had watched him start his route around the stacks, and then had spent an hour following along, well behind, to confirm that it wasn’t aimless wandering. The security guard had followed a predetermined route. As the man followed the guard, he’d checked for security cameras and had found none.

He’d left the library much later than the guard. And as he’d passed through the glass doors to the outside, he’d smiled to himself. In the two days he’d spent surveying the venue, the only security cameras he’d found had been around the security office itself. There was some irony in that.

Quite late, the dark-haired man passed the front desk, a rucksack in one hand, and took the same elevator the girls had to the stacks. He stepped off the elevator and turned left. As he approached the two girls he’d been watching from the bottom of the library steps, he stopped, reached up, and took a volume of Forensic Accounting from the shelf. He turned and smiled at them as they looked up. Then he raised his hand, pointed a 38 at them, and shot one after the other, the silenced gun making little more than a psst sound as the suppressor released its gasses. Neither girl had a chance. Jenny went first, and Lydia, staring in horror at the man, went next. It was over in seconds.

Jenny’s head, what was left of it, lay on the book she’d been reading. Blood ran down the spine and dripped off the edge into her lap. She’d been shot in the head just left of center above her eye. Lydia lay on the floor where she’d fallen. She too had been shot in the head, but she’d been standing, bending over the desk, her head close to Jenny’s. Her body had turned as she fell. Her hair covered part of the damage, but blood, bone fragments, and brain tissue were all visible and had left a long smear across Jenny’s side. The smell was intense, a mixture of blood, cordite, and the almost immediate soiling that occurred when the girls’ bowels released. The man replaced the book he’d been holding at his side, retraced his route, and took the elevator to the ground floor.

He left the building tugging his rucksack along in one hand, sauntered across the quadrangle to the parking lot, got in his car, a rusting, primer-coated Camry, and drove down the long hill away from the campus. By the time he cleared the city limits, he was his usual blond self. The wig he’d discarded in a city waste bin, the makeup he’d scrubbed off in a parking lot beside an office building. The gun went into the Mist River as he crossed over the big bridge on Highway 1.

2

The fifth floor of the Harding Building remained undeveloped. It was littered with construction debris, and dust covered everything, turning the whole floor a dull grey, and softening the piles of materials used in its construction. There was one roll of heavy plastic in a corner that had escaped the dust, however, and the odd construction light still working, glinted along its shiny length. It had a strange enlarged section in the middle as if, like a snake’s lunch, something was lodged part way down. Smudged footsteps in the dust on the floor led from that roll to the far side wall and to the black hole that was the elevator shaft attached to the side of the building. As well as these marks in the dust and the large hump in the middle of the roll, a dark stain had crept from one end and pooled in an indentation in the poorly finished cement floor.

It was quiet on the floor, the kind of quiet places have when they’ve been abandoned. The fifth floor was like all the others above the first, left to the elements months ago when the project suffered severe labour and financial problems.

The first floor, however, was still active. The construction company kept a large storage area there. There was also a room for the rotating guards who monitored the area. At the moment, besides the battered table and filthy coffee maker, it held three men: one in a dove grey Armani suit, a yellow tie with a barely discernible pattern, a crisp white shirt, and a pair of highly polished Italian loafers now streaked with dust from the floor. He was standing stiffly in the middle of the space next to the stained table, his grey eyes locked on the other two in the room. They too were dressed in suits, both black, both off the rack, and both ill fitting. They looked uncomfortable, and neither would meet the Grey Man’s eyes. The tension in the room was palpable and for long moments, remained unbroken.

You do realize, don’t you, the Grey Man said, that if this deal unravels, both you and others in the group will be financially ruined, and most of you will find yourselves charged with offences of which fraud will be the very least, given what’s upstairs. It would displease me greatly to have that happen. It would cause me some embarrassment in certain quarters as well. See that I am not placed in that position.

With those words, the Grey Man turned abruptly, crossed the raw cement floor, and passed through the plywood door held open by his driver, a black man also in a black suit. Smiling at the two men, the driver cocked a long black finger in their direction and said in a scratchy whisper, Bang! He left, closing the door quietly behind him.

The two men who remained glanced at each other, wiped their hands on their pants, sighed almost in unison, and disappeared back into the gloom of the first floor. They passed unseen through the fenced construction yard and lifted a sheet of ply in the hoardings at the end of the block. They ducked under it, and disappeared into the dark of the street.

The limo waiting down the block near the water moved slowly in their direction and stopped beside them. The two men did not immediately get in; instead, they leaned against the side of the car and talked. Eventually, both straightened, and the taller of the two walked off up the hill toward Stewart Street, blending quickly into the night. The other, shorter and much heavier, watched until he could no longer see his friend, then opened the rear door of the limo and disappeared inside. Almost soundlessly, the car pulled away and lost itself in the darkness, running quickly and silently up toward Terminal Avenue, the main drag through town.

The derelict construction site lay along the channel between the city’s two harbours on a narrow strip of land between the seawall and Stewart Street, the four-lane road that paralleled the channel and fed ferry traffic into downtown. The second harbour, the one toward which the limo was heading, had no industry, only another sea wall and a crescent pebble beach stretching along the far side. A federal biological station was farther down at the base of a hill. On the near side, lay thee three active ferry berths with a fourth under construction beside them. The one under construction was to house the new ferries being built in Germany. They were going to be the largest double-ended ferries in the world. Beside the ferry berths, two high cranes reached into the night sky, their red warning lights flashing. They were part of the construction of new ferry terminal buildings to take the extra traffic.

Unknown to anyone except the Grey Man and his cronies, both the derelict building and the ferry dock were worked by the same consortium. The first site wouldn’t pose a problem for long since the building was about to suffer a very hot fire that would leave only a shell of unstable concrete walls. The demolition of that site would, of course, be carried out by an arm of the construction company that had built it to begin with. Nothing much got built or demolished in Harbour City that didn’t involve the city’s primary construction company and its multitude of subsidiaries.

The only real fly in the ointment, if a very small one, was Harry, a local PI. The first attempt to discourage him had involved a researcher at the local university who had fed Harry a lot of information from her work about fraud in the construction industry. That had been taken care of, and there would be no leads. The press had gone wild, but the investigation had turned up nothing. Since local law enforcement was pretty inept, the case had been turned over to the RCMP and was still open. The clean-up of that ill-conceived attempt had resulted in the leaking roll of plastic, the anger of the Grey Man, and the planned destruction of the derelict building and its contents.

The Grey Man had come personally from his headquarters in New Westminster to raise hell. He was appalled at the senseless murders. The Grey Man normally concerned himself only with the management end, hence the talk with the other two. The warning would go up the chain of command and, he hoped, nip any overzealous reactions there. He had no need to do anything further; his security chief could handle the rest. He’d return by private jet to Vancouver immediately.

Harry had a late breakfast at the Modern, wondering over his toast and eggs what had happened on Victoria Road and the crescent. Not a single hooker or dealer strolled the blocks above and below the old fire hall where at the very least, a covey of the younger ones could always be counted on to add charm to the place. Harry wondered if the city fathers were once again trying to get rid of the stroll by either rounding up everybody or pushing the whole operation farther out past Milton. They’d tried both before and neither had worked for long. Everybody shifted for a few weeks, then drifted back. It was like one of those songs that went round and round. And besides, there was nothing much the city could do about the Sally Ann. They’d just built a new dorm on Terminal, and every morning and evening they serviced a congregation of the less desirable who made use of the same streets. The seedy flavour, Harry thought, was sort of appealing in a city a little too uptight about its tourist attractions.

Eggs pretty well blotted up with the last piece of toast, coffee cup drained of anything worth drinking, Harry sighed, raised himself off his seat reluctantly, strolled out the door, and stood undecided. A little early for the bar, he thought, and that left work. He sighed again and set off for the second-floor office and Willow, who was complaining about her brother again. That useless jerk was back with the Angels and getting into jams like before. Harry was determined not to help him again whatever Willow said. Waste of time, he thought, bailing him out. Waste of money too. Then there was Willow’s nagging about the office files. She’d started that once she’d finished the course at the college and thought she was getting a new computer. Bloody things were expensive, and work was a bit spotty these days.

Harry didn’t hurry. He thought about a cappuccino at Spenser’s on the corner, settled for a newspaper from the cigar store, and took his time wandering down the street to the office. He climbed the stairs to the second floor, peeked around the door, and let out his breath. Willow wasn’t in. Harry smiled. He’d had enough of her whining for a bit and sat back to enjoy the quiet.

The office was a second-storey walkup above an artsy new tapas bar called Glow for some reason no one understood. The building was only a couple of blocks away from downtown on the crescent. This was the south end, well, the beginning of it anyway, and the crescent here was usually full of hookers at night and always had a few during the day. Harry’s building was an old fire hall, from back when fire halls had steeples. The steeple on this one rose above one corner of Harry’s office. The old hole for the bell rope was still in Harry’s ceiling.

Most of the street girls who hung around the crescent were the tawny-skinned teenage Natives who’d been hooked on hard stuff by the local Hell’s Angels and worked the street to feed their habits. As long as they were beautiful enough, they were kept around, but when they began to show the inevitable dissolution, they were moved out to the lumber camps and the small towns crawling with guys who were happy with whatever came along. Occasionally, Harry ran into a blond in this stretch. He always appreciated them but wondered where they came from. They were never around for long. He sometimes thought that the pimps who ran the place had visions of a clientele that just didn’t exist, but might if the cruise ships kept coming and the guys from the Alberta oil patch kept buying up everything in sight.

He wondered if he’d get much on that derelict condo building even if he continued the search. What was going on there was anybody’s guess. It was bloody ugly, he thought, and just sitting there it cost money. But there was fraud involved, he was sure of that, and he’d try to find a way to nail the bastards. He had a lot in his files, but most of the important stuff the insurance company funding the investigation kept in its vault. His files were sort of messy anyway, even with Willow to straighten them up.

His thoughts and the quiet were interrupted by the clack of heels on the stairs and Willow’s voice bitching about the loose treads as usual. Harry straightened his chair and waited. Willow popped into the doorway and he grinned at her.

What’s so damned funny! she demanded and stood hip shot in a black skirt and blouse, hands on her hips balancing on one heel. An’ when are you gonna fix that damn stair thing, Jesus!

Harry kept on grinning and said, Willow, we just might be able to do something about that, my you do look nice!

Up went her eyebrows, her mouth scrunched to one side, and that look Harry so loved moved into the office. He said, If you get the filing done before noon, I might just spring for lunch and maybe a look in Joe’s place.

Willow’s face lit up, the scrunch gone in a microsecond, and she headed for the filing cabinets while Harry shuffled stuff on his desk and watched. That skirt covered an ass he had admired ever since she started.

Willow messed around with files while Harry thought about what he’d said. He hadn’t intended to encourage her. But then, if he got her what she wanted at Joe’s, she’d sure stop bitching about paper files and get working on stuff that she could keyboard in half the time. Why would anyone call a computer an apple, he thought, especially one with a bite out of it. That’s what they had on the lids of those things. He couldn’t see what gardens and original sin had to do with anything electronic. Still, it couldn’t hurt to look, and the apple thing was sort of right when he considered who was going to use it.

Lunch was good. Willow had insisted on going to Green’s, a self-important little room done up in greens and taupes with silly lamps in the shape of frogs on every table. But the food was better than anyone would expect, and Harry settled back after his steak with a sigh and a smile on his face.

Willow, however, wasn’t about to let the effects of the lunch go to waste. Over coffee, she demanded a walk to Joe’s place to look at the new models. She began to describe the latest innovations in that breathless way she had when she got excited, leaning over the small table. Harry, as always, took it all in with pleasure, ignoring the welter of words in favour of the vision she presented. She was quite a fine thing to have around, he decided for the umpteenth time, and if she really had her heart set on the damn thing, well, he’d come to some arrangement with Joe.

3

The day was stormy with dark cloud banks threatening heavy rain, unusual for this time of year on this part of the island. Summer had come a little later than normal, but the dry baking days had begun. However, this day was unusual. Harry watched the banks of clouds from the edge of the creek, wondering if he’d even bother fishing. This time of year, he usually had more time because jobs were fewer, and the days were sunny. Not this summer though.

He owned the land he was fishing on both up and down the stream for about a kilometer. That took in most of the little valley. The valley wasn’t easy to get to. There was no real road, just a trail good enough for a car if you were very careful and didn’t mind replacing the occasional muffler. The trail led through some pretty rough country before you ended up at the cabin, which was at the head of the valley looking downstream. He’d built it himself, and it looked it. It was a single-room place, clapboard sides, with a stove, a bed, and a couch. There was a small table he’d made out of an old door and some two-by-fours, and two wooden chairs that he’d bought. The john was out back hidden behind a couple of pines.

Harry’d walked the meadow to the stream early but hadn’t yet put his line in. He was thinking about MacMillan Insurance. The office was on Wallace just down the block from Tim Horton’s. The company had its own building and was the biggest insurance agency in town. Harry dealt with an old geezer in claims named Jebediah Perkins. The first time Harry’d heard that, he’d simply stared at the man in disbelief. That moment seemed to have been the measure of their relationship. He was a crusty old bastard and disliked Harry from the get-go. Harry had felt the same. Harry‘s name was no slouch either. His full one was Jonathon Hargreaves Touchstone. His mother had been a United Empire Loyalist who still believed the colonies were colonies about a century or so after the rest of the world had given up the idea. People didn’t normally use his name in any formal way, so he’d become just Harry. It fit him better anyway. He kept the Touchstone end for legal reasons and tried not to use it too much.

The rain wasn’t going to hold off, he knew, so he decided to try to reach the car before it came down. He wasn’t using the cabin much this summer, just coming out for the occasional day here and there. The car was up near the cabin, a good half kilometer away across the meadow that stretched along most of the little valley. He’d barely turned around before a great grumble of thunder and a bright flash gave notice, and down came the rain, hard and heavy. In moments, the valley was filled with the storm front, with wind and the roar of falling water. Harry cursed and began the journey back.

The meadow was a grass meadow, filled with great clumps of tall grass, waist high or more, with the valley floor below the humps. Walking through it was sort of like being in one of those bumper car rides at the amusement park except you couldn’t see where your feet were because of the grass fronds, so you really didn’t know where to step, and you tended to bounce off the root clumps. To make it worse, the wet fronds wrapped themselves around anything that moved, and the long leaves, if you called them that, could cut. The ground under foot quickly turned to mud and walking was more like sliding around from clump to clump, like the steel ball in one of those old pinball machines. Harry muttered to himself. I get to the damn car, I’ll be soaked, muddy, and pissed.

There was a diner in Coombs, a few miles south, and he knew he’d likely end up there, wet, dirty, and miserable. He’d be trying one of Alice’s lunch attempts again, which were usually a little weird. The coffee he didn’t want to think about. He only ate there because if he didn’t, he’d have to drive back to the city empty. That just made him grumpier, and when he got to the office, he’d grump at Willow, and Willow didn’t take any sort of crap from anyone, least of all Harry.

He thought about Willow. She was twenty-two or three, and tall, and stacked, and had lustrous dark hair. She was the kind of chick every guy built fantasies around. She dressed as she said, conservative, and maybe she did for the neighbourhood she lived in with her no-good brother. Harry had met her when she’d answered his ad in the local paper. She’d tromped up the office stairs and offered her services in return for getting her kid brother out of the local cop shop. Services, she’d said, meant typing and filing and not the other stuff ’cause she wasn’t no tramp. Anyway, to her, dressing conservative meant very nice short skirts, and blouses on which the top three buttons never seemed to work. Harry thought about her and how she made walking something special. When he was in the office, he usually just gave up whatever he was doing and watched.

When he got to the highway, it was full of big logging trucks spewing up a mix of rainwater and road muck that created a mist so thick the wipers couldn’t handle it. Harry was thankful just to get off the main road and onto the two-lane that led to Coombs and the restaurant.

He pulled into the gravel lot in front of Alice’s place, wiped the mud off his boots on the steps up to the door, and went in. Alice was about fifty or so. She’d been around. She was a brassy blond and had one of those rough voices that came from a lot of booze and cigarettes. She’d run this place forever all by herself. In spite of the food, she had a loyal following of locals, including Harry and the drivers of the trucks that took the road as a short cut to Harbour City.

Harry grabbed a stool, looked her in the eye, and said, What’s on for today?

She looked back and said, A special.

What kind of special? Harry asked.

I made it this morning. You’ll like it. she said.

What is it? Harry said.

Meat, she said and disappeared behind the kitchen’s swinging door.

There weren’t any windows in that door and no serving hatch. The kitchen was a mystery, and usually so was the food. Alice appeared holding a plate heaped with something brown and set it in front of Harry. He knew better than to ask again, so he just picked up his fork and ate. While he was stuffing down lunch, Alice banged a cup of coffee down in front of him and went back to her stool behind the counter and the fashion magazine she’d been reading.

Harry finished, looked suspiciously at the pie wedges in the round plastic thing, decided not to try, took a last sip of bitter coffee, and paid. The rain hadn’t stopped, but at least the car looked a little cleaner; most of the road crap had washed off. He got in, burped, and started up.

Harry parked the car on the street near the office so he could run in without getting wetter, not that it mattered much. He climbed the stairs, walked through the foyer, and peeked around the corner to get a look at Willow at her desk. He figured he needed at least that much to sort of balance the rest of the day. Except she wasn’t there.

She was on her knees, long dark hair hanging over her face, picking up papers from a floor covered in what was left of the office. And that wasn’t much. The two desks were on their backs, their contents spread over the carpet such as it was, and the filing cabinets leaned like drunks against the wall, their open drawers spilling papers everywhere. In spite of himself, Harry took a moment to eye the lovely creature crawling around on the floor before he asked what the hell had happened. If he expected an answer, he didn’t get it. What he did get was an armful of hysterical girl, hot, damp, and disheveled, who made no sense at all.

Harry righted a couple of chairs with one hand and finally got her to sit down. She took deep breaths and began to tell him what had happened in that rapid-fire way she had when things weren’t going well or she was excited.

I came in from my place as usual, you know, an’ I set up for the day, and sorted the mail, like. Then two guys came in. They didn’t say nothin’ Harry, they just looked at me. Then they grabbed me, pulled me out of my chair, and threw me against the wall. Then they pushed over the desks an’ trashed the office. They told me if I opened my mouth before they were finished, they’d mess me up too, real good.

Harry knew she was a smart kid, and he nodded when she told him she’d stayed where she was until the two of them had left. Then she’d started cleaning up.

I was getting the files together when you came in, Harry. But I couldn’t do nothin’ in that mess. She was still sniffling, but she was a lot better than she had been. I gotta go to the ladies and clean up some cause I’m a mess too, an’ these clothes are ruined. I got some stuff there so’s I can change when I need to.

While she was occupied doing that, Harry began to straighten up the place. He shoved the filing cabinets back where they had been, flipped the desks upright again, and began to pile papers on Willow’s desk for sorting and filing. His own desk had been rifled thoroughly, the bottom drawer forced, the bottle of scotch a puddle of liquid and broken glass. Harry sighed. It was a twenty-year old he’d kept to nibble on on those days when he needed more than Willow to get through them.

He heard her heels on the tile floor in the hall and pulled her chair over to his desk so they could talk some more. He also watched the door so he could see what she’d changed into. The blouse was one of her special ones and wearing it seemed to give her back some of her zip. Harry pointed to the chair, and they went over again what had happened. She couldn’t remember much she hadn’t told him before, but she was sure a lot more pissed, he thought. Her colour had risen and that blouse was moving in and out faster than normal.

I couldn’t do nothin’, Harry, she said. Those goons were big an’ they weren’t kidding about stayin’ still, you know. I didn’t even watch much, just stayed in the corner and kept still. One guy was big, though, I mean thick through, you know, and dark, the other guy was a skinny blond guy. I think the big guy was like me, you know, a Native, but he wasn’t from my people, not from around here, anyway. The other guy, the skinny one was like all those creeps on the crescent, you know, the ones hang out by the pool hall. I see ’em again, they’ll be sorry guys. I got friends’ll look after them.

You did the right thing, Willow, Harry said. But don’t ever tear into guys like that, don’t even get your friends to. You did just right doing what they said so you didn’t get hurt. You see ’em again, you tell me, okay?

You’re not mad? she asked.

I’m not mad. You did what you should have done. Now I think you should go home and let me figure out what’s going on here, okay? Come back in tomorrow, early, and I‘ll help you clean up. You can start in on the paperwork then.

Harry watched her leave, sighed again, looked around himself. Fuck it! he said and walked out, locking the door for what that was worth. He was about to go down the stairs when he noticed a piece of paper stuck in the frame. He yanked at it and turned it over. Written in block caps in pencil in two lines, it said, GIVE IT UP NOW. YOU DON’T THIS IS JUST A START. It had nothing else. Harry stood there staring at it for a long time, but nothing came to him.

Give up what, he thought. I haven’t been on anything but small stuff all summer except maybe the fire in that derelict mess on Stewart. But he hadn’t found anything Jebediah could use. It was arson, sure, but he couldn’t prove it. And the bone fragments they’d found didn’t amount to much. The coroner wasn’t sure what they were, they were so small and mostly brittle ashy stuff. And the town couldn’t afford an expensive analysis by one of the big city labs. Besides, no one cared about the bones, not even the insurance company. All MacMillan wanted was to get out of paying damages.

Harry climbed down the stairs. He wandered down the crescent watching what action there was. It had stopped raining, but there was still a lot of water around. He walked across Terminal to Commercial, walked slowly through most of the small downtown, and turned up the cobblestone roadway toward the old hotel that was now vacant except for the Red Brick Pub at street level. Inside, it was dim and quiet.

Sam was there, leaning on the bar as always. Harry swore he lived there. With a nod, Sam delivered his usual, a smoky single malt. Harry’d learned about single malts in London when he’d lived there for a couple of years working for his old mentor, Parker Greenfield. Sam had grown to like them as well, so Harry ordered in a few bottles occasionally, and Sam reserved them just for the two of them.

Harry climbed on his stool, leaned on the counter and said, Bitch of a day.

Sam looked at him expectantly and waited. He was a good listener, and Harry always used him as a kind of backboard for his own thinking.

You’re not going to believe this one, Harry said. A couple guys just tossed the office and scared the hell out of Willow.

What’d they want?

No bloody idea, but they left a note sayin’ Give it up’."

Give up what? asked Sam.

No idea, said Harry, but it’s kind a corny, don’t ya think? I mean who the hell leaves notes these days?"

What’s next, ya think? asked Sam.

Got me, said Harry, I got nothin’ on this one.

Have another, said Sam, and take a long walk. My ol’ man always swore by that.

Your ol’ man lived in this bar, same as you. Harry said. I never saw him walk anywhere.

I didn’t say he did it, only said it helped.

What the hell, can’t hurt, said Harry. He picked up the glass, downed the scotch, nodded to Sam, and walked out.

He ignored the crescent and walked down to the docks. He liked the sound of the rigging in the breeze, and he liked the seawall. But neither one helped. He still didn’t understand what had caused the attack at the office or what the note meant. He thought about his cases during the summer. Had to be that damn fire.

Harry leaned on the seawall and looked out over the marina at the long rows of sailboats, masts like long, thin, pointing fingers bobbing gently in the wash from the channel. Beyond them, he could see the end of Newcastle Island and the clapboard buildings used for picnics. The tide was mostly out, so the channel between that island and Protection Island was narrow and too shallow for anything, even motor launches.

Protection Island was smaller than Newcastle, but it wasn’t a park like the bigger island, and it had houses and a loop road that ran around the perimeter. And beyond that were the cliffs of the much larger Gabriola Island and the Salish Sea.

Harry watched the top of one of the new ferries that had only recently arrived from the German yards. It was on its way to the Duke Point terminal and passed behind Protection. The damn things were so big, even the island looked small, its trees barely reaching the superstructure. Harry watched until it disappeared behind the Duke Point promontory. Then he began walking again.

He ran out of seawall and wandered on into the south end. The shoreline here was mostly empty, the forest broken only by the occasional derelict building. There were fern groves along the shore. In places, they were almost as difficult to get through as the grassy meadow out by his cabin. But the shore provided a narrow, rock-strewn beach that skirted the ferns and the trees. It led to the massive trunk of a fallen Douglas fir that provided a place to sit.

Harry was sure he thought better in the quiet of the giant trees and the slick, smooth water. But today it didn’t help. He couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on, so he moved back along the beach to the seawall. He walked past the long lines of moored sailboats, his feet still damp from the earlier downpour. He followed the seawall, walking parallel to Stewart. His apartment was a short block up from the water part way down Stewart just before the bulk of Newport, a massive condo development. He had the entire second floor of another old building that had been converted to commercial space on the ground floor. The downstairs was now a hair salon run by a tall, blond Swedish girl with a Doberman and three assistants. Upstairs, Harry had a view of the harbour and a couple of the marinas.

He went around to the building’s front on Stewart and to the far side of the hair salon windows. There was a small, brick, arched vestibule and a thick wood door that opened onto the stairs. Harry unlocked the door and took the stairs two at a time thinking about another scotch and a hot tub as a kind of reward after a lousy day.

The stairwell had little narrow side windows of beveled glass with arched tops that threw interesting patterns on the treads and walls. There was a small landing in front of his loft door at the top of the stairs, but Harry didn’t see it. He didn’t even remember reaching the top step. Someone waiting in the shadow of the wall nailed him with something that felt like a Mac truck.

He was out for some time because it was dark when he came around. He dragged himself upright, fished out his keys, tried to fit one in the lock on the door and pushed it open.

He fell face down in the small entrance hall, splinters from the jimmied doorframe sticking through his shirt. His head hurt. He groaned a couple of times and tried to turn. He could see every stick of furniture he owned and all his books and the bookcases, none of them where they should be. One lit lamp lay on the floor beside what was left of his scotch, the best of three bottles making a large dark stain on a carpet covered in broken glass. The whole place had been tossed.

There was still some ice in the fridge. The contents had survived the search. If that’s what it was. Harry put a plastic bagful on the lump on the back of his head, filled a water glass one-handed from the faucet, and popped a few aspirins.

The kitchen drawers had been dumped on the hardwood floor, the sharp knives gouging the wood and ruining the finish. He slid the knives and cutlery aside with his foot, righted a chair, and sat.

What the hell was going on? Were they looking for something he was supposed to have? He couldn’t think of a single case sensitive enough or important enough to warrant trashing both the office and his home. The touchy stuff, had there been any, was in Macmillan’s files and locked away. He was too tired to think any more or to bother with the place other than righting the mattress in the front bedroom. He threw the bedding back on and fell into it clothes and all.

In the morning, the place looked worse. The sunlight was merciless. Glass shards glittered from the living room floor. Papers and books were strewn around and damaged furniture lay upended everywhere. It was like the aftermath of a riot. Harry didn’t feel any better than the