Accusation (30 page)

No. I wrote what they told me. About your clients being unhappy and wanting more money. That the new circus director discredits the allegations.

Frustration rang from him, and she knew why: dead, Raymond Renaud was of no use, or was nearly useless to him in making an argument that his clients should be granted asylum. He could not argue that Raymond posed a threat if they were returned to Ethiopia. Alive and hidden he’d been not much of a threat but dead he was no threat at all, unless Sem Le could prove that he was part of a larger ring of pedophiles threatening vulnerable young people in Ethiopia, or Sem Le might argue that in speaking out about their abuse, the runaways had made themselves too vulnerable to return. In Sem Le’s eyes, she’d had a hand in Renaud’s death and in weakening his clients’ case, and whether he’d admit to it or not, she presumed that he was furious about it.

Mr. Le, are your clients aware of Renaud’s death?

I’ve told them.

And?

They’re shocked. They wanted justice, but they did not want him dead. It is a very unfortunate turn of events.

And they haven’t changed their story in any way.

Changed it? They have not. Why would they do that?

Mr. Le, I know I’ve asked this before, but I would dearly love to speak to one, to any of them. Even briefly.

Why?

To hear their account of what happened to them.

Are you planning to write more about all this?

Maybe. I don’t know yet. In part that depends if —

They do not wish to tell their story to the press.

And if I don’t write about it? How can I know until I speak to them? If I don’t write, can I speak to them?

It was impossible to keep the pleading out of her voice, whisky carrying it forward, out of the dark room and across the world to a Sydney morning where a man whose body she imagined tilted back in his chair seemed intent on rebuffing her.

I do not see how it’s in their best interest to speak to you.

The next morning, Friday, Sara tried calling Addis Ababa from work, wanting to hear how people there were taking the news. Elsa Larsen first because she also hoped to ask Elsa for help finding out what would happen to Yitbarek Abera and his aunt now that Raymond Renaud was no longer paying their rent. She couldn’t reach Elsa. Elsa might be able to reach phoneless Alazar. In an email, she told Elsa that she’d be happy to pay Alazar for his aid in contacting Yitbarek. Nor could she get through to Tamrat Asfaw, whom she tried a little hopelessly at the circus number, then by email. She had little hope that Tamrat would want to speak to her. Raymond’s colleague, or colleague and friend. Ed Levoix was very cool, all bureaucrat, unwilling to allude in any way to his small but influential part in Renaud’s fate by having introduced her to Gerard Loftus. Nor was he going to offer sympathy or acknowledge her feelings of responsibility, presumably because this would mean touching on his own. He said he’d heard the news from the Larsens. Word was going around. Everyone here is just so terribly, terribly saddened by the whole chain of events, and yet, I suppose, there’s closure, if the worst sort of closure for some.

He must have known, Sara thought, that in introducing her to Gerard, things would not go well for Raymond. If Gerard was obvious in his desire to bring abuse to light and punish its perpetrators, Ed’s intentions remained clouded — Make up your own mind, he’d shouted.

Have you heard from Gerard in the past couple of weeks? Sara asked. Or do you have any idea where he is now? He’s apparently left Calgary.

No. No. We’re not friends, Gerard and I. I don’t want you to get any kind of idea we’re in regular touch. Anyway, I’ve been upcountry and I’m going south in a couple of days.

She had been surprised to hear nothing from Gerard Loftus since Raymond’s death, no crowing or gloating call, and so the day before she had called his Calgary number. He isn’t here, his father had said. He won’t get any message.

Can you tell me where he is? Or when he left?

Not if you’re that woman journalist. Better he stay clear of the likes of you.

Has he gone back to Ethiopia, to Africa?

Did you hear what I said? He doesn’t need to be messed up in this business.

On the Monday, which marked a week since word of Raymond Renaud’s death had come over the wire, Sheila insisted on taking Sara to lunch, waiting until they’d exited the parking lot on foot before asking, How are you doing?

Fine, I’m fine. Actually, she needed two hundred more words to finish up a piece about two Sikh Canadians in Gambia who had set up a racketeering ring to take money from Gambians and stuff them into a shipping container with promises that they would be carried to Canada, only the plan had been intercepted, luckily before the Gambians had been sealed into their metal tomb. She’d been trying to finish the piece all morning; Nuala was waiting for it. Once that was filed, and edited, it would be time to move on to the piece about the Sikh community of Surrey, BC, where one group of worshippers had attacked another group with swords because the former wished to eat on chairs at tables at the gurdwara, and the others on mats on the floor. Sara had been calling around for someone to explain the conflict’s religious intricacies to her. There was comfort in work’s self-obliterating concentrations.

As they made their way through an alley between warehouses, their voices funnelled upward by the brick walls to either side, Sheila pressed, What about the other one, the former orphanage director, Templeton, any chance of following up on him? Obviously, to Sheila, the time for mourning and sympathetic restraint had passed and she could return to being what she really was: a hound on the crest of a hill, scenting.

I don’t think he wants to speak.

Well, he may not want to speak. The question is whether you can get him to speak, the way you did with the first one. Or can you dig up something more about his past behaviour?

The first one, Sara thought, but said, I’m the multiculturalism and immigration reporter, aren’t I? Pedophiles aren’t my regular beat.

Sheila darted her a quick look. I thought you’d want to follow up. You broke the story.

I’m not sure I want to. Which drew another sharp glance from Sheila.

On the south side of King Street, down a set of stairs, they entered a wine bar and stood waiting for a table, the man behind them bringing a cold wind in with him, the hubbub of voices around them as thick as steak. The closure that Sara wanted was not the closure that Sheila wanted, if Sheila wanted closure at all, not being interested in the dead as much as the living.

Above all, Sara thought at the end of lunch, she needed to find a way to his accusers, to hear from them, for they seemed the best route to further knowledge if not truth. She told Sheila she had to run an errand before returning to work, and it was an errand of a sort as well as an escape from Sheila: ducking into a café on the far side of King Street for an espresso. Everything in her felt on edge. And another espresso would help? Anywhere we can get a good cup of coffee, Raymond Renaud had asked as they’d set out that July night. And she had laughed. And here, and now: the ghost of him.

A hole had opened in her, into which grief poured: work and more knowledge and a dark, syrupy stream of caffeine seemed the best way she could think to fill it.

In the past couple of weeks, she had made a few attempts to contact settlement and Ethiopian cultural organizations in Melbourne and Sydney without making any progress in reaching the runaways. Sem Le seemed a dead end. Maybe someone in a similar organization in Toronto had contacts in Melbourne, or Sydney, knew someone who was in contact with the teenagers.

There was also Rafael Nardi, freelance journalist based in Melbourne, who’d been part of the team Sara had travelled with on her second Iraq trip. He lived in Melbourne but freelanced for the Sydney paper. She’d sent him an email at the beginning of the fall when she’d first heard about the allegations. And not heard back. Which likely meant he was busy and on the road. She took the espresso in the paper cup that the café cashier handed her.

Would Rafael Nardi help? They’d been through a lot together. On the way into Najaf, they’d been stuck at an army roadblock until she, swathed in scarf and long black coat, and Raed, their fixer, had managed to talk their way through it, while Rafael and the American and Norwegian cameramen waited in the van. That night, Rafael had interposed himself between her and the crazed Norwegian who’d insisted on stripping naked to sleep, the four of them in the same hotel room in the previously bombed hotel, squashed like maggots head to toe on the same mattress, the only mattress available to them. The next day, as they were eating a meal in the small restaurant attached to the hotel, Rafael had leaped up and saved an Iraqi man from choking, which was the day before they were held up at gunpoint and almost killed.

Back in the newsroom, the espresso roiling through her, she began to type:

Mark Templeton’s phone number in Sweetwater, Florida, was disconnected, Sara discovered when she tried it. She did that much. Others would be on to him, and if someone else dug up something about him, so be it. It was the teenagers who held her attention, out there somewhere.

The photograph of Raymond Renaud lay on her desk. Once more she picked it up. Altered, hopeful, Raymond in his striped T-shirt smiled at her. Just because it had been mailed in America did not rule out its having originated in Haiti. Whoever had sent it could have lucked into someone returning to the United States and asked this person to drop it in the mail, knowing that this way it stood a better chance of reaching its destination dependably and sooner. The postmark from a week ago: in New York. Mailed a week after his death. Did whoever had put the envelope in the mail know that he was dead? Someone wanted her to see him smiling and transformed, wanted her to confront the possibility of his happiness.

Tant a minit, tant a minit, said the same woman who’d answered the first time that Sara had called the Maison des Enfants de Beau Soleil. In French, Sara asked to speak to Monsieur le directeur de l’orphelinat.

And he, Monsieur Dieufort Alexis, guarded and guttural, children’s voices audible behind him, a baby wailing somewhere. In English: What is it you want?

Did you by any chance send me a photograph of Raymond Renaud, the man who was teaching for you and —

You say I what?

Someone sent me a photograph of Raymond Renaud, who was teaching for you. I called and spoke to you, then him a few weeks ago. Then he committed suicide. I called you after that to —

I don’t know what to say to you. If this is a good thing that has happened, that you have done, or a terrible thing. I cannot know. For the children what happened is a small disaster. The police told me about this, what they say in Australia, and now I must ask the children questions, delicately, you know, but maybe we are and they are saved from a bigger disaster.

But you didn’t send me a photograph. Addressed to me at the newspaper where I work. Mailed in the US.

No, I did not send a photograph to you.

Is there anyone who might have done? He’s with children, outside, in front of a wall. I thought maybe it was taken at the orphanage.

Maybe it is one Frédeline, she is one of our instructrices, took? But you know, this photograph, it is the least of my worries.

Did you speak to him, that day, after he got off the phone with me? Or do you know anyone who did?

No, no, and maybe, you know, I know even less about what happened than you do.

Do you know people he was friendly with or people he might have confided in?

He was friendly. My first impression was, I liked him. He had good credentials. But he was here only one month. He joined us for dinner. Already he was working with us on a soccer program for orphans and street children. Now —

Did he juggle?

What?

Did you ever see him juggle — jonglait, ou c’est avec les enfants qu’il faisait ça?

Two women were conversing very close to him in French or Creole, closer than the swallowlike swoops of children’s voices.

No, no.

Did he say anything to you about the circus?

He said it was time it is run by an Ethiopian. Thank you. There is someone here for me in the office.

She had suggested to David that they meet at a restaurant, as they had done more frequently in the past and hadn’t for a while: her house felt overrun with Raymond Renaud’s voice and presence and her internal disarray and actual disarray and her failure to do anything to tidy it. There were Polish and Indian restaurants not far off, places where they were unlikely to run into people they knew. Or people they both knew. They tried to avoid running into friends when out together yet had never pretended not to know each other. Why not Indian, David had said, by which he meant the restaurant where he’d once made the wild claim to the men at the next table that the two of them were Russian journalists or Canadian journalists living in Russia who happened to be in Toronto on vacation. I’ll meet you there, okay? Even though they were both coming from downtown, their offices not far from each other, it had always been their habit to travel separately, or to arrive separately, David likely by car, in his old green Saab.