The city is white and cold and full of long shadows. The air is like ice. The heater is strong enough so only the edges of my windscreen have frosted over, but not strong enough to stop the middle of it from fogging. There are circular smear marks from where I’ve wiped it with my hand. My drink seems to be keeping the cold at bay much more effectively than the heater.
Winter hasn’t arrived yet, at least not technically, but that hasn’t stopped the grass becoming crisp with frost and cracking like glass underfoot. The shadows of the cement markers are longer than they were a month ago when I fell into the lake.
You just never know what you’re going to get with this city — one year the days don’t get cold until the middle of winter, another year you’ve got frosts in autumn. At the moment the air is deathly still. The trees are motionless, caught in a snapshot. Nothing out here is moving. The church looks uninviting, as if the desperately cold temperature inside has convinced even God to move out. But it’s not completely empty. Father Julian is in there. Somewhere.
I take another sip. My throat burns. I shiver.
The clock on my dashboard is out by an hour because I never got around to changing it when daylight saving ended. It says
169
9 a.m., and I know that means I have to add an hour or perhaps subtract one — I can’t remember which. Not that it matters.
I watch the police car in the rear-view mirror as it rolls to a stop behind me, the gravel twisting and grating beneath the wheels.
Nothing happens for about thirty seconds as the occupants wait in the warmth. Then the doors open. The two men approach. I roll down the window just enough to speak through. The winter morning seizes on the moment and floods the car with such savage cold air that every joint in my body starts to ache.
‘Morning, Tate,’ the taller of the men says, using just the right tone to suggest he’s ready to haul my arse down to the cinderblock hotel. His words form tiny pools of fog in the air.
“I thought it was afternoon.’
‘You can’t be here.’
‘My daughter is buried here. That gives me the right.’
“No it doesn’t.’ ‘This is public property.’
‘There’s a protection order against you, Tate. You know that.
You can’t come within one hundred metres of Father Julian.’
‘I’m not within a hundred metres of him.’
‘Yes you are.’
“I don’t see him.’
‘That’s because he’s inside.’
‘But it would’ve been illegal for me to go to check, don’t you think?’
‘What I think is that you’re doing your best to get arrested.’
‘Then you need better thoughts. Shit like that will only bring you down.’
‘Is that what I think it is?’ He’s looking down at my Styrofoam coffee cup that doesn’t have coffee in it.
‘Don’t know. It depends on what you’re thinking. You’re a whole lot more negative than I gave you credit for.’
He looks over at his partner, then back down at me. ‘Jesus, Tate, it’s a bit early to be drinking, isn’t it?’
‘It’s happy hour somewhere in the world.’
‘Then coming with us isn’t really going to set you back.’
They open the door for me and I step outside. My breath forms clouds in the air. The gravel crunches beneath my feet, tiny pieces of frost snapping between them, and the trees that were ever so still while I was sitting down seem to lunge towards me as I walk. The officers escort me to the back of their car, and I have to reach out and grab hold of it to stop from falling over. Then they take the bourbon off me. Christ, what next? First I lose my family, now I lose my ability to drink?
The police car is warmer than my own, and the view somewhat better since the windscreen isn’t iced over. The drive doesn’t include any conversation, and I pass the time by looking down at my feet and telling myself not to be sick, since the car seems to be swaying all over the place. At the station we ride up an elevator that seems to move way too fast and I have to grab a wall. Then the men march me past dozens of sets of curious eyes. I don’t meet any of them; I just glance at their looks of disappointment before reaching an interrogation room.
They sit me down in front of a desk that in another life I used to sit on the other side of. They close the door and I stand back up, only to find that it’s locked. I walk around for a bit before deciding I might as well sit back down. I know the procedure.
I know they’re going to make me wait before sending somebody in. I need to use the bathroom, and if they wait too long I have no reservations about pissing in the corner. Why should I? If I can kill people, I can do anything.
It takes forty minutes before Detective Inspector Landry comes in. He’s carrying only one cup of coffee that I know isn’t for me, and a folder that he sits on the desk but keeps closed.
He looks like he hasn’t slept in about a week, and there are dark smudges beneath his eyes. He still smells of cigarette smoke and coffee. He looks stressed. He’s been a busy man with all the rest of the bullshit that’s been going on in the city while he’s been trying to figure out how those bodies got in the water. Other murders, other cases.
He sits down and stares at me.
‘Explain this obsession to me once again?’ he asks.
‘It’s not an obsession.’