Erasing Memory (17 page)

“Not for me it isn’t.”

“Perhaps not.… Yes, I can see that it isn’t.”

“Seeing the photo in London, though, I did wonder about the headscarf, and why you don’t wear one now.”

“I’m still devout but, paradoxically, I’ve chosen to ignore many of the outward signs of that belief—such as not eating pork, such as that headscarf. My family has an aversion to any kind of fundamentalism.” She looked over at the picture on the bookshelf and changed the subject. “Let’s look and see if my friend is online. Her name is Bozana Pietrowska; she’s got two passports, and one is Polish.”

The computer was on a small desk by the living room window. He pulled up one of the dining room chairs to sit next to her. Aziz logged on and fired off a message that showed up onscreen as a grey silhouette. With an electronic burp, a blonde woman with high cheekbones and a flashing smile replaced the silhouette. She was wearing a deep blue sweater that looked electric in the low-res image.

“What a lovely surprise, and how typically you, Fiz. I was just finishing notes from a meeting today and getting ready to shut down. How are you? And who’s that next to you? Ask him to slide into view.”

“It’s my boss, Bo. Meet Detective Superintendent MacNeice. Mac, this is my former roommate, Bozana Pietrowska.” To MacNeice she said, “You see this little window on the screen? You’ve got to get closer to see yourself and be seen.”

MacNeice shoved his chair over so it was touching hers. Suddenly he appeared beside her in the small frame above Bozana Pietrowska’s head. She smiled, smoothed her hair back with both hands and said, “Is this a business call?” Something in her voice suggested she was hoping it was otherwise.

“Yes, Bo. We’re dealing with the murder of a young woman here and there’s a connection to Romania.”

“Arggh—all roads these days are leading to Romania for me.” Bozana turned away for a moment, then came back into frame. “What is it?”

“A microbiologist specializing in infectious diseases. He’s a colonel in the Romanian army named Gregori Petrescu, stationed in Bucharest.”

Bozana had opened her laptop computer and was tapping in the information.

“He’s the brother of the deceased,” Aziz continued. “We’re interested in knowing his whereabouts and what exactly he’s working on.”

MacNeice moved slightly closer to Aziz and centred himself in the window on the screen before he spoke. “We also want to know anything about the father, who lives here but has ties there as well. His name is Antonin Petrescu. He deals in antique furniture and papers, documents and letters, and
he too appears to have a background in microbiology.”

“Why don’t you just ask him?” Bozana kept typing, though she did look up at the screen for his response.

“A good question. My only answer at the moment is that this killing seems to be some form of message to the father.”

“Fair enough. Anything else?”

After a quick nod from MacNeice, Aziz said, “That’s it for now. Sleep well, Bo, and thanks. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“You too, Fiz—you look tired. It’s Sunday over there; what are you doing working my friend on a Sunday, Detective MacNeice?”

Aziz jumped in before he could answer. “Totally my choice.”

“Lighten up, Fiz. Listen, I’ll have something for you when you wake up. Like I said, I’ve been a bit inundated with Romania, so you’ve lucked out—I’ve got three people dedicated to it on my team.
Dobranoc
, Fiza, and goodnight, Detective MacNeice.” The window went blank with another burp, and their images disappeared with it.

“What’s
dobranoc?”
MacNeice said, moving his chair away from her.

“It’s Polish for goodnight.” Aziz shut down the computer. “Right, let’s have our tea.”

MacNeice helped clear the lunch dishes, then she led him over to one of the two upholstered chairs adjacent to the sofa and sat on the sofa facing him. “I want to know more about what influences your work, Mac.”

“Influences.… It sounds so lofty. Almost everything, I guess.”

She could see that he was struggling to provide more of an answer, and waited patiently.

“I think what we do is intuitive, but it’s also essentially
about observation.” He was looking down at his cup as if he was reading the tea leaves. “If your work is about observation, then it seems only natural—to me at least—that you never stop observing. You observe obsessively … and minutely. You train yourself to look inside, outside, peripherally. You study art and music, the way people dance, walk, lie—and tell the truth. You record your dreams and you’re willing to learn from them.” He put the cup down on top of the circular end table next to him. “Am I making any sense?”

“I think so. Go on.” She looked at him over the rim of her cup.

“Sadly, I can’t. I only know that much. Everything influences my observation—absolutely everything.” He moved slightly, as if he was uncomfortable or about to stand up, but he didn’t. “Sitting at the computer just now, I noticed the wear on the desk where you put your hands every day. I noticed the imprint from a ballpoint pen where you’ve written letters and signed cheques on the soft wood—white pine, I think. Some keys on your computer are more worn than others, and there’s a slight whitening on the edge of the desk where I suspect you rub your right hand when it’s itchy or numb from working at the keyboard—but not your left, because you’re right-handed.”

Aziz looked nonplussed but said, “Anything else?”

“The stains on the right where you put your teacup—they’re all within an inch of each other, like a series of quarter-moons on the pine. Your attention is usually on the computer when you set the cup down—conveniently within reach, so you can pick it up without looking. I also noticed a bookmark in your criminology text that I think is a boarding pass—Lufthansa, 2006.”

He paused as if considering whether he should go on. “I noticed a scent about you that wasn’t there till you changed clothes—lavender, I think.” Until then he’d been looking at her feet, but now he met her gaze. “There’s a crumb on the left side of your mouth that’s been there since you took the second-to-last bite of your sandwich.” He smiled awkwardly and looked away. “All this while we were talking to someone who could really help in the case.”

Aziz set her cup down on the end table and wiped her mouth.

When MacNeice spoke next, he sounded apologetic. “It’s probably a clinical obsession. It’s not something I can turn off and it’s not necessarily something I think you should learn how to do.”

“My mother makes sachets of lavender from her garden. I have one in every drawer. I don’t notice it anymore.”

“I like it.” He stood up. She sat watching him as he moved towards the window and looked out over the rooftops to the forest. “I should go.”

“Okay. I’ll see you off then.” She stood up and went over to the door.

MacNeice came away from the window, walked over to her and shook her hand. “Thank you, Fiza, for the sandwich and tea, and also for the call to Bozana. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He was gone before she could say goodbye.

B
OZANA WAS PEERING THROUGH
both distance and time. For her it was one in the afternoon, for Fiza Aziz it was six a.m.

“Sorry, Bo, I stayed up late.…” She yawned and roughed up her sleep-flattened hair.

“Good for you! I thought there might be something between you two.” Bozana wagged a finger at the screen and laughed.

“What? No! It’s not like that. He’s my bloody boss—I mean, my superior officer. Can you hold on while I get a glass of water?” She didn’t wait for a reply but heard Bozana’s voice say, “Sure.”

As she slid back into the chair and into frame, Bozana said, “Okay, okay. Though you two do look good together.”

“Thank you, I think. What do you have?”

Aziz wiped the sleep from her eyes and tried to focus on what Bozana was saying, but her mind kept going back to MacNeice. After realizing she’d missed several seconds of what her friend was telling her, she held up a hand. “Sorry, Bo, I spaced out for a second. Could you tell me again? I promise I’ll pay attention.” She picked up a pad and made a show of being ready to write everything down.

“Okay, so listen this time. I’ve tracked down your Gregori Petrescu—well, at least to where he was a few days ago. I can also tell you that he is running the infectious diseases unit of the Romanian army.” She reached over, brought a folder into frame and opened it on her desk. “I haven’t found out exactly what he does, but I think he’s a spook. My suspicion is that his unit is developing infectious diseases, not ways to guard against them, though probably he’s doing that too.”

“Who have they got to use them against?”

“It’s hard to say. It might just be insurance. But when you consider that it’s Romania … Under that repressive, paranoid Stalinist Nicolae Ceausescu, who was extremely suspicious of Moscow, they probably got up to a lot of skulduggery. Then
pffft
, Ceausescu is deposed and the government falls. But old habits die hard. Most of these guys, including your Gregori—who was just a kid at the time—learned their trade in the Soviet bloc era.”

“But who are they afraid of now?”

“Well, they’re not Slavic and they’re virtually surrounded by Slavs they distrust. Adding to that, less than one percent of Romania is Muslim—”

“Thank goodness for that,” Aziz said wryly and took another sip of water.

“Well, sure, but right next to them, Bulgaria has a twelve percent Muslim population, and below them is Turkey, which is ninety-eight percent Muslim. And all around the Black Sea are people itching for a fight. Meanwhile, seventy percent of Romanians are Orthodox Christians.”

“I don’t get it. Are you talking the old orthodoxy rag?”

“Partly. But there’s an exodus of young people going to work in Italy and Germany and so on, and the folks who remain in Romania may be feeling threatened enough to shore up their borders and their defences.… But what all this geo-politicking has to do with a murdered girl from Dundurn is anybody’s guess.”

“The father? Anything turn up on him?”

“Your superior officer”—she paused cheekily for effect, which Fiza registered but ignored—“said he deals in papers and antiques.”

“Yes, he has a very exclusive shop full of beautiful odds and sods and he has a lovely house with a terrific garden.”

“Well, your MacNeice has a very refined nose. Antonin Petrescu was a minister in the Ceausescu government, and he is indeed—or was—a microbiologist. And can you guess what his area of interest was?” She crossed her arms and looked at her friend.

“Infectious diseases.”

“It’s a family affair. No information here about what Petrescu senior was doing, but it’s safe to say that Soviet-era
Romania had no shortage of enemies and none of the moralistic posturing of the West about engaging in bio-warfare. It’s cheap and effective—if you’re upwind. Petrescu got out just before the government fell. How did MacNeice pick up on that?”

“He’s an observationist, Bo. That may not be a word, but it does describe him. He spotted a row of microbiology books in Petrescu’s library.”

“Didn’t you?”

“No, I’m an observationist-in-training. When MacNeice was here yesterday, he gave me a tutorial on observation that was incredible—and a bit terrifying.”

“How so?”

“Well, I don’t know. But if everything that you see, feel, hear, touch, sense, imagine and even dream doesn’t just pass you by, but is observed and considered in some way before you move on—”

“It sounds exhausting.”

“Exactly.”

“But it also sounds like you’re training with the right boss. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be like that—or even particularly close to someone who is like that—but I’d want such a man investigating my murder. How was the girl killed?”

“By a needle through the left ear and into her brain. The syringe was loaded with battery acid. She was dissolved from the inside out.”

Bozana winced and instinctively cupped her ear. “Christ, I wish you hadn’t told me that!”

“It has us a bit freaked too, though each of us seems to deal with it differently. She was an up-and-coming violinist who had just graduated from the Conservatory. She was looking forward
to a wonderful career in which she would play her music dressed in beautiful gowns, taking bows and giving encores.”

“Fuck. Okay, I don’t know what else I can do from here, but if you make a request—not too many, mind you—I’ll do whatever I can. But if it goes too far, this will have to be a formal affair, and trust me, you don’t want to go there.” Bozana closed the file folder and shoved back her chair.

M
AC
N
EICE EASED HIMSELF BEHIND
the wheel of the Chevy at 7:34 a.m. He’d had too much grappa the night before, initially to help him sleep. When the second shot didn’t work, he went for a third. The room swam as he lay in bed, and when he finally did drop off, he was set upon by dreams he now couldn’t recall. He woke with a headache and the distinct impression that they had all been bad.

He’d felt deeply embarrassed by his ramblings to Aziz. He’d even felt some shame, as if he’d been caught showing off or looking through her underwear drawer. Her desk was just a desk, after all. Where she placed her coffee cup, whether her right palm was itchy … He considered the explanations or apologies he might offer and almost settled on “I have nothing to teach you that you cannot discover on your own.” But in the end he decided he’d said enough.

He reached over to the car’s CD player, hit the On button and immediately regretted it. Frank Zappa was into a second verse of brilliant lunacy: “Movin’ to Montana soon / Gonna be a dental floss tycoon.…” Zappa was the greatest thing for clearing his head but the worst thing for a massive headache. MacNeice turned him off and didn’t bother scanning the CDs for something more mellow.

He powered the Chevy down the hill and onto Mountain Road. The light slashed through the windshield and he saw flashing dots everywhere. He pulled over to the shoulder, found his sunglasses and put them on. Driving in the slow lane, MacNeice tried his deep-breathing exercises and before long was feeling light-headed. He turned west on King Street, determined not to think about anything else till he reached division headquarters.