The Last Witness (49 page)

‘If room service calls or the phone goes at all – let me get it. You’re incommunicado, for the moment don’t exist.’

  The session with Chenouda the next day was more intensive and lasted over two hours. Chenouda made it clear within the first minutes that he wanted Georges to testify against the Lacailles. Georges refused, stuck to his ground from their last confrontation, that despite what Roman might have done, he wouldn’t betray Jean-Paul. Chenouda fired back with just who did he think ordered that little number last night?

  ‘…Because if you think Roman acted on his own, think again. He went to the trouble of setting you up with the girl purely to get Jean-Paul’s final go ahead. If he was going to take you out on his own, he’d have done it weeks back.’

  It made sense, Georges knew it, but still he refused to accept that Jean-Paul, who he so admired and trusted and looked up to almost like a father, would have ordered his death.

  Michel paced, cajoled and waved his arms as he threw across every possible rationale in his armoury, and at one point his patience finally ran out. ‘Fine. Okay – you go back out there and take your chances. Let’s see how long Roman is willing to let you live. I won’t have to waste my time beating my head against a brick wall with you – and we can even have some fun in the squad room making bets on just how long you’d last. Three days, a week maybe?’

  Finally, after almost an hour, they reached the bones of a deal. Georges agreed to testify against Roman about that night with Leduc, but nothing beyond that. He wouldn’t talk about any of the inner financial workings of the Lacaille family’s enterprises; besides, they’d just support what he’d been saying all along, that Jean-Paul had moved away from crime these past few years. And he could only comment that Jean-Paul had sanctioned the meeting with Leduc, not that he might have arranged or had prior knowledge that Leduc was to be murdered – because Georges himself hadn’t known, the attack on Leduc had come as a complete surprise, looked at first to be an attempt at self-defence gone wrong. Georges ran through the mix-up with the notebook and the gun and then Roman flipping his own second gun onto the floor before Savard reached the car.

  ‘…But that’s as far as I’ll go. If you want to get some sharp Prosecutor to fill in the gaps and try and show a link to Jean-Paul, then that’s up to you. But I’m not testifying directly against him – because there’s nothing I really
can
say. That’s it, take it or leave it.’

  Michel spent another twenty minutes fleshing out the details, and took it. With Savard’s murder and now the attempt on Donatien’s life, a pattern could be shown. Donatiens confirmed that he’d obviously open up as well about his abduction and the set-up the night before with the girl, and Michel’s mind went for a moment on overdrive: hopefully with some persuasion he could get Azy to spill about the girl being Roman’s pet favourite, and maybe even something from the girl herself. But when he pushed his luck with whether Donatiens thought that night with Leduc had also been a set-up by Roman – ‘He probably knew damn well Leduc didn’t have a gun, but he needed it to look like self-defence for your benefit, and maybe for Jean-Paul’s too,
if
he wasn’t already in on it’ – George’s reluctance resurfaced.

  ‘With what’s happened since, I can see how that probably makes sense. But I can’t really say beyond what I saw that night. Again, that’s going to be down to your Prosecutor earning his pay by trying to make the connections.’

  Michel quit while he was ahead. He spent the remaining time going back over and making notes on what they’d agreed, skeleton structure for Donatiens’ later statement – then called S-18 straight after and explained his dilemma: a hot informant in his grasp and concerns about leaks within his own department.

Each RCMP regional office had their own section operating a WPP* and Internal Affairs for investigating police corruption. But when that corruption could lead to a leak and endanger the person in the programme, S-18 had been set up in Ottawa.

The next morning he was sat before an S-18 review board chaired by Superintendent Neil Mundy, and from there everything moved rapidly: that same night, Donatiens was escorted by two S-18 officers out of Montreal to a safe-house, where he would stay until the trial. Then he would go fully into the Witness Protection Programme and be given a new identity. Chenouda himself didn’t even have the location of the safe-house, only Donatiens’ escorting officers and an ‘eyes only’  handful within S-18 had the details. At 11 am the following morning, by which time Donatiens had already been ensconced in the safe-house for over twelve hours, Mundy called a press conference to announce their breakthrough with the Lacaille investigation, with Inspector Pelletier also present to dampen any speculation about inter-departmental wrangling. It was hailed as a joint operation between Montreal’s Criminal Intelligence division and S-18.

The whole process from Donatiens’ abduction to final announcement had taken two and a half days. For that time Donatiens’ whereabouts had been a complete mystery; and now with him at a safe-house until the trial, six or seven months of the same lay ahead. Then he would disappear completely, never to resurface again as Georges Donatiens.

*Witness Protection Programme.

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘Witness Protection Programme… never to be seen again.’

Elena drove back from Beaconsfield in a daze. Claude Donatiens’ words spun through her head like some mad mantra; though he hadn’t directly said the second part, she’d extracted that from between the lines while he fluffed around and tried to soften the blow: ‘We’re not sure when even we might be able to see him… if at all. We’re going to phone later and find out. Maybe there’ll be a loophole by which we could see him and, if so, hopefully you’d be able to as well at some time.’

Loopholes. Hopefully. At some time.
Claude Donatiens just didn’t want to say it straight out – ‘Look – I just don’t think you’re going to be able to get to see him now’ – especially not right on the heels of her heartrending saga of ups and downs that had finally brought her to their door. It would have seemed cruel to push the trap-door lever straight away, much kinder to send her down in the express elevator: she’d get there almost as fast, but she’d hardly feel the motion and she could listen to piped music on the way. Sugar-coat the pill.

She’d spent over an hour at the Donatiens after the bombshell, getting all the background she’d hoped for originally: What was he like? Had they lived here long? Where did they live before? His general home-life, schooling… then later college, girlfriends and work. And every small trait and nuance and what he’d had for breakfast the past twenty-nine years – if she could have kept them on the subject long enough.

Odette brought out some photo albums as guide-posts to the passage of time and events since they’d taken Georges from St Marguerite’s.
Georges.
Odette explained that the minor name change was because they were a French-Canadian family, his school was Francophile, and they hadn’t wanted it too obvious that he was adopted.

Elena found herself reaching out and gently touching some of the photos as she leafed through: his ninth birthday party, a school photo from when he was twelve, throwing a Frisbee in a park for a red-setter, Odette with one arm around him at a woodland picnic table, a family group photo from a Florida holiday with Georges as a teenager against a marina backdrop… his twenty-first with some college friends spraying him with a shaken champagne bottle. She’d just felt numb, stripped of any emotion with the shock news, but in that moment the tears started to come – though she quickly wiped and sniffed them back, embarrassed. It wasn’t only from all those lost years coming home stronger with the sight and feel of something tangible, a face to finally put to him – but the sudden realization that this now might be as close as she’d
ever
get to him. 

It was all too much for her to bear at one point with Claude and Odette looking on concernedly and Lorena by that time back from playing in the garden to join them, and she got up and went over to the back window, looking out. She’d managed to control from bursting into sobs, but still her eyes were welling strongly and she was having trouble biting it back. The land sloped away at the back and there was a partial view of the lake two hundred yards away between the trees. Claude Donatiens left her alone for a moment before coming alongside to join her.

‘We used to bring Georges to the park by the lake to play when he was younger, and it became something of a dream for us to one day live in this area. We managed to grab one of the last plots going with a lake view.’ Claude was a builder and, reading between the lines, there had been a few ups and downs through the years, their previous homes hadn’t been quite as salubrious – though Claude was eager to point out that they had been comfortable, in good neighbourhoods, Georges’ schooling had been excellent, and he’d been well-provided and cared-for and always loved. But business had been good these past six or seven years, partly thanks to some money from Georges and his financial savvy, Claude conceded. ‘And so we finally built our dream home.’

Elena had the sense in that moment that Claude had somehow displeased Georges, or maybe it was just the awkwardness of their roles muddling: Georges suddenly grown-up, adult and organized, the hot-shot financier, and Claude then the errant dependant. It wasn’t in anything said directly, more in-between the lines or the timing of when Claude fell silent or quickly changed the subject. But perhaps, having spent a lifetime of shadow-dancing around the truth in her own life, that was where she saw everything now: in between the lines and in the silences.

Then came, inevitably, the even more awkward topic of just how Georges went from successful banker to involvement with a crime family. She never asked directly, but Claude seemed eager to make clear that Georges wasn’t in the least criminally inclined. ‘He had a good position, was very solid with Banque du Quebec before joining the Lacailles. That’s why I find this now so hard to take, let alone understand.’ He pointed accusingly to the TV, which had been off since she arrived. ‘He always said that the only reason he’d joined them was because they’d moved away from crime. And it was a challenge. He was very strict about things like that… strong principles. The only problem he ever hinted at was the two Lacaille brothers not always seeing eye to eye – but he said he worked only for Jean-Paul, who he insisted was clean as a whistle and equally as principled. Maybe it will all turn out to be nothing.’ Again he was back to trying to make light of it, lessen the blow that after a lifetime parted from her son, she might now never get to see him.

She shook her head, her eyes welling.
Never to be seen again…

The express elevator was still falling, an abyss of dark despair sucking her inexorably down since she’d left the Donatiens. She’d skirted dangerously around the edges at moments during her door-call vigil and at St Marguerite’s – but now the depths of that despair, the gut-wrenching emptiness she felt inside, was total. And after her battles of the past days, her diet of pills and whisky, her lack of sleep and her nerves almost constantly on a tight-rope – she felt completely drained, no reserves left to claw her way back up again.

Besides, it was all over…
never to be seen again.
What could she do? Claude Donatiens said he’d phone later when he’d spoken to the police – but what was the point of deluding herself by still clinging to hope? From what little she knew, the whole point of witness protection was to keep the subjects away from family and friends – because that was the first place criminals tried to track them.

Never to be seen again…

She gripped tight at the steering wheel and tensed her jaw against it, but still she was falling, the dark edges of the abyss washing in. Traffic was heavier now approaching the centre of Montreal and she had to concentrate. But her eyes were welling faster than she could blink them clear or dab away the tears with the back of one hand… and through her blurred, pastel-wash vision a car appeared out of nowhere and verged across her, or had she swung over slightly as she wiped at her tears? The car’s horn blared, and she braked and swung the wheel away… then suddenly a squeal of tyres and two sharp beeps from the other side, one after the other – and she realized that she’d cut in on something on the inside.

  ‘Elena… watch out!’ Lorena hit the stop button on her walkman, looking concernedly over her shoulder. ‘There’s a…’

 
Oh God. Oh God.
Elena was shaking uncontrollably, still falling, a kaleidoscope blur of cars and road and buildings, tilting, slipping sideways; she thought for a second she was going to black-out right there with the traffic streaming all around her. She slowed, waiting for the car on her inside to pass – its driver fired her a last stony look – then she pulled across and took the first turn on the left, stopping twenty yards in. 

  She gave into the abyss totally in that moment, sank down into its darkness as if it were a feather-down duvet. The near accident had jolted away her tears; all that remained was her shaking and a tight, aching knot in her stomach, the only sensation left amongst the overwhelming emptiness she felt.