Coppermine (45 page)

“So where is MacKay?”

“I’ll send for him.”

“I would recommend discretion in this case. It would be a rare man not to attempt to run. Our orders call for lethal force if necessary.”

“I can’t imagine Jack Creed running.”

“Nevertheless … we’re counting on you.”

“Cowperthwaite!”

Outside the door, Corporal Cowperthwaite waited a moment then stepped into Worsley’s office.

“Yes, sir!”

“Would you send a couple of the lads out to find Creed, please.”

“Yes, sir. What shall I tell him?”

“Just tell him to report to me immediately. Try Justice Harvey’s office or his home, then Wallbridge’s office or the hotel.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Cowperthwaite, could you and … anyone else out there . keep this quiet?”

Cowperthwaite was wondering if anyone else knew that Creed was wearing Sedgewick’s clothes, civilian clothes. He didn’t think so, and he wasn’t telling.

“Yes, sir.”

When Cowperthwaite had left, Crosswell turned to the Superintendent. “I find it quite unnerving to see all of these fit young men out here when there’s a war on.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Why aren’t they in Europe, at the front?”

“Well, there are a few other things to look after, Captain.”

“Don’t you understand what’s going on in France? We are battling an evil menace. The future of the world hangs in the balance.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“Look at you, for example. You must have some skill at leading men, and here you are having tea, marching around in your red jacket, while others are doing the heavy work in Europe.”

Worsley stared at him, the blood rising to his face. He spoke calmly, evenly, over the fury he was feeling toward this man. “I had two brothers in France, Captain. One was killed at the Somme. The other is still fighting for the King, whatever that means in that stupid, murderous family squabble going on over there.”

“What did you just say?”

“Someone has to keep law and order in this country so my brother and his colleagues will have something to return home to.”

The captain was about to respond hotly but then thought twice. “I suppose.”

ANGITUK SAT BEFORE THE MIRROR
in her hotel room and stared at herself. For the first time since she was little, she was wearing a dress. On the trail she would often make skirts of leather or extra cloth while she washed and dried her trousers, but this was a real full-length cotton dress with a small floral print and lace at the neck like other women wore in this village. The lady in the shop had said the colour was good for her.

Angituk had taken some of her back pay and gone to the fashion stores on Jasper to become a real woman, like the white women, and the people she’d met there were very helpful. She had headed home with her arms full of parcels, studying the face and hair of each woman she passed so she’d know how to make herself look. First she had brushed her short hair and put it in small curlers like the other lady had shown her. She had powdered her face and rouged her cheeks and put the black stuff on her eyelashes and brows according to the instructions of the third, older lady, who had cautioned her toward subtlety with the makeup she had sold her.

So now she studied herself, unsure, so far, of the results. She reached for the heavy green bottle again and took a long pull of the sweet champagne. She was feeling better.

The curlers had been in for an hour and now she pulled them out impatiently. Her black hair still hung straight, but there was an appealing wave to it when she brushed it out. Yes, it was nice. A “smart” look. Now for the most important part: red for her lips. With a twist, she extended the stick of rouge from the little cylinder and pretended to kiss toward the mirror as she had been shown. She took another mouthful of the sparkly drink, wiped her mouth, and applied the lipstick. It looked pretty good, she thought, kissing at herself, admiring her bright red mouth.

She stood up, drained the bottle, touched up the rouge on her lips one more time, and set out to find a man to love.

Twenty-Four

At the telegraph office, Creed sent Justice Harvey’s cable to the Attorney General and paid for it himself. There was some relief that that was done. Returning to the hotel, Creed ducked past the lobby to Angi’s room. They would be watching his room but not Angituk’s around the corner. And Angituk was who he wanted to see. He tapped quietly and whispered her name. Two sets of heavy footsteps were coming around the corner. He tapped louder, then pressed the handle. It held fast, but then suddenly gave way. He stepped inside, closed the door, and waited. The heavy footsteps passed by.

Creed turned to find Angi’s usually tidy room in disarray. There were empty boxes and papers from a Jasper Avenue clothing store scattered on the bed and floor. Her clothing—her trousers and the flannel shirts she favoured, the suit she wore to court—was in piles on the rug where she’d shed it. He picked up her old discarded fedora and rotated the rim through his fingers. On the low dressing table, to his amazement, he found cosmetics containers, some spilled powder dusting the glass surface. His foot nudged something on the floor that rolled and clunked against the leg of the dresser. As he held up and inspected the empty champagne bottle, his alarm grew. He had to find her. Then his eye caught a piece of white paper on the floor crushed into a ball. He picked it up and spread it out on the dressing table and recognized Cowperthwaite’s careful handwriting. It was a list of three addresses for Angus McAndrew.

THE MAID AT THE McANDREW HOUSE
looked a little tentative until Creed identified himself as Inspector Creed of the Royal North West Mounted Police. He hoped to speak with Angus McAndrew. He was ushered into the parlour, where he remained standing despite the maid’s invitation to sit. McAndrew entered in his shirt sleeves and vest holding a snifter of cognac.

“Inspector. How do you do? You’re … you’re the one who captured those two Eskimos. I saw your picture in the papers. Wonderful work! You make us all proud. You know, I’ve spent a few seasons in the North myself, trapping and trading. In the delta. So I was following the trial rather closely.”

“Yes. I know. Around Paulatuk.”

“Yes! How did you know? They were good years. But it’s a young man’s game. These old bones couldn’t take it now. Anyway, how can I help you? Name it.”

“Have you had a visit from Angituk McAndrew?”

McAndrew was a little taken aback, then his eyes narrowed. “The little half-breed? Calling herself McAndrew, is she?”

“Then you have seen her.”

“Yes, last night. Came in here bold as brass claiming all kinds of things. I almost called you boys to take her away. She’s a fraud artist. She wanted money. Are you looking for her? What else has she done?”

“What did she say to you?”

“She was going on, claiming to be my long-lost daughter. Wanting money.”

“Then what happened?”

“She’s crazy. I wanted her out of the house. Away from my family. I took her out to the street.”

“Do you have any idea where she’d be?”

“No. But you should keep an eye on her. She’s dangerous.”

“I plan to. Tell me something, Mr. McAndrew. Do you have a mermaid on your left forearm?”

McAndrew looked at him in surprise. “Yeah. I do. But anybody could know that. That’s what I mean. She’s smart. Using that information.”

“Did you go with Eskimo women in the delta and over near Paulatuk?”

McAndrew glanced toward the door of the parlour, smiled, and dropped his voice to just above a whisper. “Sure,” he said quietly. “We all did. You know how long and cold those nights can be. You must have too, I’ll bet. We treated ’em well for the most part. Fed ’em. Gave ’em a little money. Sometimes they could be stubborn. Act up. A man has needs, as you know. But we never used a closed fist on them.”

“Did you ever consider the possibility that Angituk could be your daughter?”

“Or the daughter of a dozen others. Those squaws knew what they were doing. It was just business.”

Creed smiled at him, his eyes cold, furious. “I think Kunee was different.”

“Look, whatever happened, some lying little half-breed is no daughter of mine.”

Creed couldn’t hold himself back any longer. His fist caught McAndrew under the chin, sending the cognac to the ceiling and McAndrew falling backwards over a fainting couch and crashing down on a tea trolley, scattering fine china. Creed considered going after him over the couch—his face could use a little more of Creed’s fist—but McAndrew was smart enough not to get up. A moment later McAndrew’s children were in the doorway, George and Portia and Cleo. Creed looked at the three sets of Angi’s eyes and much of the anger drained out of him. He had to find her.

“If anything’s happened to her, I’m coming back.”

CREED SEARCHED SHOPS
and restaurants along 98th Street, working his way down toward the bars nearer the river. The warm summer night had enticed people to stroll the Edmonton streets and there were hundreds of faces to study. What would she look like in the makeup and dress of a city woman? He feared for her now after the scene Angus McAndrew had described, and there was a growing urgency in his hunting.

Creed knew Dooley’s Bar on 96th from foot patrols in the city. As he approached, he could hear fiddle music. He had helped break up a couple of fights there, the combatants usually too drunk to be of much danger to each other. He opened the door to the squawking fiddle, many drunken voices, and the familiar smell of sweat, tobacco, and beer.

The thin stratus of smoke floated just above their heads and glowed translucent from the ceiling lights. There was a commotion in a corner at the back, a sudden explosion of laughter. Creed moved through the smoke toward the sound. On the far side of the billiard table sat a circle of men taking turns tossing dice on the floor. If he had been in uniform, a lookout would have warned them and the dice and money would have disappeared long before. A heavy-set, older woman poured drinks at the table. Someone spanked her ass and she turned and slapped the man’s face. Everyone in the circle laughed. A young, thin girl with a black eye stared at her drink and the man with his arm around her shoulders sang drunkenly and watched the dice throwers.

Creed was turning to leave when he noticed the figure of a slender young woman in a floral dress. Her face was turned away and she sat on a big bearded man’s knee with her bare arms around the neck of another. The woman released him and sat back, taking a long drink from an open bottle of rum. She almost fell off the big man’s lap. His heart stopped. It was Angi.

The man she had been kissing rolled a three and a two and groaned with the loss. The big man laughed.

“I win! I claim my prize.” He stood up with an arm around Angituk’s waist to keep her from falling down, then buried his full beard between her cheek and shoulder to kiss her neck. “Come on, cutie. Upstairs.”

His big hand clamped onto Angituk’s wrist, and he headed for the staircase leading to the rooms. She staggered after him. Her acquiescence shocked and infuriated Creed. He moved forward and grabbed her other hand and she turned to look at him, trying to focus through her inebriated haze.

“Creed …?”

Feeling the resistance, the big man turned back too and snarled at Creed. “Let go, asshole. You can have her when I’m finished.”

“I’m taking her out of here.”

“Not till I’m done.”

“You’re done, you fat son of a bitch.”

The big man released Angituk’s wrist and stepped toward him. Two of the other gamblers came up on either side of him.

“You can’t talk to Clarence like that. He won the squaw fair and square.”

The bearded man ran his eyes up and down Angituk. “And we got more playing to do.”

They came at Creed.

Creed had felt a satisfying surge of dark, unrestrained fury when he struck the furrier. A similar impulse had overtaken him long before that, in the trench near Ypres when he had killed his commanding officer. In that moment at Dooley’s it came to him again, giving him speed and power. With his left hand he pulled Angituk back to safety and with his right he swung around at one of the gamblers and caught him in the side of the head. He went down.

The second gambler, his eyes wild, took a skinning knife from his boot, pointed it toward Creed’s throat, and lunged. Creed’s hand found a pool cue lying across the table behind him and swung it hard as the gambler came for him. It caught the man under the arm, cracking ribs and making him howl in pain. He dropped the knife and staggered away.

As big Clarence converged on him, Creed swung the cue again, but the backswing was limited. Clarence caught the cue in his meaty paw and easily pulled it away from Creed. He grabbed Creed by the throat, pulled him off his feet, and deposited him on the billiard table, where his immense belly pinned him. He pounded Creed twice in the face with his massive fist, bloodying his nose and tearing the skin from his cheek. His hands closed around Creed’s throat.

Creed’s vision of the ugly face in front of him was narrowing. He could feel the blood flowing down his neck and for a moment was idly concerned it would spoil the green felt on the table below. He was losing consciousness when he heard a little whack behind them. The whack came again, and again, developing into a steady rhythm. With each impact, a little of the anger left Clarence’s eyes and the pressure of the massive hands around Creed’s neck eased slightly. He looked up past Clarence to see the face of Angituk behind him with the cue ball in her hand, bringing it down hard in determined, repetitive, concentric arcs on the skin and bone of the big man’s head. The sickening whacks continued until Clarence’s eyes rolled up and his hands released. The big man slid off Creed and fell unconscious to the floor.

Angituk stood unsteadily with the bloody white cue ball still raised in her hand. The bar was deathly silent. Creed stood up and recovered quickly, picking up the pool cue again, looking warily around him among the circle of gawking faces for any other challengers. There was a large bartender with a hostile glare who came toward him, but he looked at the other damaged men and decided against it. There were no others.