Whipped: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel(71)
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They met at a nearby coffee house, the Urban Bean, and settled down at a corner table with their roasts — light for Sierra, who seemed jolly; dark for Arthur, who worried that Frank was masking annoyance over having been denied an extra six months of sleuthing.
He obviously had news — Arthur could read it in his cherubic smile — but seemed in no hurry to divulge it, instead commending Arthur for his performance in court.
“I do not question your wisdom in pushing ahead with the trial, though like Minister Farquist I face extreme time pressure. Lou Sabatino, alias Robert O’Brien, remains an elusive figure. As a desperate effort, I have placed carefully worded ads, with my contact information, on select Kijiji and Craigslist websites.”
“I admit to some bravado in pressing for a quick trial. A calculated gamble, Frank.”
“Prompted, I assume, by the apparent disarray of the opposition.”
“They’re sweating. Farquist has a hotly contested campaign on his hands, and he doesn’t know what we have up our sleeve.”
Sierra sipped his coffee, mused. “Are you harbouring the hope that his leadership ambitions will trump his suit for damages, and that he will abandon it?”
“That might require more face-saving than Farquist is capable of. But we have to appear confident, and we do that by squeezing them. They are gambling that Lou won’t show up; we are betting everything on him. Now tell me what you’ve got.”
“I’ve been in the Calgary morgue, to wit, the records office.” Sierra tilted his cup again, dabbed his lips with a paper napkin, teasing Arthur, making him wait. “Lee Farquist, née Watters, was with child when she took her life.”
He savoured Arthur’s look of consternation for several beats, then reached into his briefcase and passed over a copy of an autopsy report by a Calgary pathologist, dated August, 1987.
There it was, a reference to the deceased carrying a foetus, estimated at four to five months post-conception. Farquist’s forty-year-old mother, the deserted, troubled wife of his faithless father, Sandor.
A light blinked on. “I was a bad boy, very bad! Please, Mother, I beg you!” Svetlana Glinka’s cryptic comment: “His mother. Never mind. As an ethical therapist I can’t repeat.”
Arthur was stunned. “Emil was sleeping with his mother?”
If so, the veils had fallen from the riddle that was Emil Farquist, a man buffeted since adolescence by deep, insurmountable forces, a man who had sought to atone for the sin of incest through the masochistic agency of a riding whip.
LANDSLIDE LLOYD
Corks popped from organically grown Prosecco as Lloyd Chalmers was prodded to the front of a room packed with aides and volunteers. Margaret joined in the applause as he turned to face his celebrants with an apologetic shrug. That disarming grin on his craggy mug. Margaret sensed a mass swooning of straight women and gay men.
The conference room at party HQ in Ottawa was the locale for this tribute to the Atlantic provinces’ first Green MP. Landslide Lloyd, they jokingly called him.
He riffed on that for a while, to laughter, then turned serious, emphatic, proclaiming his dedication to the program of his party: preserve Canada’s precious natural heritage, move from a carbon-based economy, ungag the scientists, all the right things.
None of which allayed Margaret’s niggle of doubt about Landslide Lloyd. One of her staff had spotted him Friday evening at Wilfrid’s in the Chateau sharing canapés and cocktails with an attractive Liberal backbencher. Just wolfing about, Margaret hoped.
As she downed her Prosecco, another bottle appeared, hovered over her plastic flute, and poured.
It was just after noon on Saturday, November 23, two days before the opening of the new Parliament and two weeks after the outgoing administration, having shredded about a ton of documents, turned over the reins to the Liberals.
Though he was short of a majority by one vote, Marcus Yates had yet to ask Margaret for a sit-down. That was annoying, but the Greens held the trump card, and Margaret wasn’t about to go crawling to him. Among the shiny new faces on the front bench would be a former marine biologist as environment minister. Other than protesting the previous government’s muzzling of scientists, she had no history of activism.
Chalmers raised his glass, fixing his gaze on Margaret. “Let me add only this, that I shall continue gladly to serve as a loyal foot soldier under the command of Margaret Blake. Let us salute our gifted, tireless, lovely leader.”
A scatter of cheers. Margaret grinned but felt uncomfortable. “Back at you, Lloyd,” she said, holding high her own plastic flute. “To you, to your amazing campaign team, and to all the dedicated workers in this room.” Hearty applause as she tilted the flute.
After mingling for a few minutes, she slipped into her office, needing time alone. She went to the window and studied the thick grey sky, the pelting rain, the splashing of tires on the busy street, oppressed Ottawans walking by, umbrellas braced against a sharp north wind. The soft, temperate clime of Garibaldi was calling again.
A man in a dark coat paused, glanced up, carried on. Tall, long-haired, unshaven — she’d seen him before, shadowing her. Presumably one of Farquist’s minions.
The dreaded examinations for discovery were looming, less than six weeks away. Farquist’s team didn’t need a spook on her tail — the discoveries would reveal how weak her defence was. Transparency would be demanded, their case stripped naked. She had not a smidgen of proof to corroborate what she’d seen on the copied video.