slip-up, maybe? But it was still going on when you went to Kathmandu. Otherwise, David would have postponed the trip till after Montreal.”
Max heard a murmur behind him and turned to see two security agents blend into the crowd. Don Miguel was already hurrying over to them, his hair flying. Max couldn’t hear what they said to him, but he could guess: they couldn’t have been admitted without his government’s permission. They were explaining to him while sweeping the room with their eyes. There was no doubt about what they were looking for. Max. He grabbed Vandana’s arm and rushed her out to the garden.
“I want to know what happened between you and David in Kathmandu.”
“Nothing happened … nothing at all.”
“Look, David’s dead, so please stop lying to me, okay? I’m not here to preach at you.”
By now, the Indian police were being accompanied by embassy employees, as they jostled their way through the crowd, which was intrigued and entertained by it all. In a few seconds, they’d be here.
“What happened in Kathmandu?” he repeated.
Vandana stared fixedly at him and appeared to hesitate. He’d been right to insist.
“I went by myself,” she confessed after a long pause. “David didn’t come with me.”
“He stayed in Delhi?”
“I don’t know, but after the bombing, when Juliette started saying he’d changed after Nepal, I realized he hadn’t been with her as I thought.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“No. I didn’t want Juliette to get involved.”
“Another woman?”
She shook her head. “Juliette and David were in love. He’d never do that. Never. Not with me or anyone else.”
Max looked at her for a long time. He felt sorry he’d accused her.
“Does the name Tourigny mean anything to you?”
“No, nothing. Who’s that?”
Loud voices emerged from the crowd as three policemen joined the others to everyone’s delight.
“You haven’t a hope of getting out of here,” Vandana said, but Max just smiled.
“Don’t worry. I’m used to this.” And he snaked through the guests at the bottom of the garden and out to the alley by an opening he’d spotted in his previous reconnaissance. It was deserted and dark, and though he wanted to run, he settled into a brisk walk and never looked back. At the corner, he wondered which way to go, but then his attention was caught by the coughing of a rickshaw motor drawn to its potential customer.
“Aray! Rickshaw, sahib? Rickshaw?”
Max climbed inside and sat down without even dickering about the fare, something the Lonely Planet he bought at Heathrow had expressly told him never to do.
No way Max was going back to the Oberoi, of course. The cops were certainly sitting on it. It was by showing his photo to taxi drivers that they had probably traced him to the Spanish ambassador. The rickshaw skirted India Gate and headed for Tilak Marg.
“Do you want to stay at my place?” asked Jayesh over the phone. That could work, but it would compromise the young Indian. He’d thought about hiding out at the inn on Akbar Road, if it still existed, but the police would certainly check there.
“Some place discreet, Jayesh. Better if it’s one where Westerners hang out.”
After a moment’s silence, Jayesh said, “Ask the driver to let you off near the Jama Mosque. Facing it is a small alley leading to the Chawri Bazaar.”
Max relayed the address to the driver, who then branched off onto a side road. Suddenly the landscape was different, as Embassy Row and the Ministerial Quarter yielded to a true Indian city, offhand and neglected, a sort of random set of building blocks that, by some miracle, barely held together. Here, unlike the new city, the people were in control of the streets, families sleeping outdoors on charpai, a sort of bed they put away in the daytime. Then the avenue narrowed imperceptibly and became a long and winding thread of mud past the shops all barred up for the night. Occasionally they encountered a beggar, one of those who slept in the train station until the police turfed them out to wander the streets in search of shelter. This city was the complete opposite of what one saw in the daytime, astonishingly silent and tranquil, and it would stay that way until the mosques called the faithful to prayer just before dawn: “Never forget, neighbours, that Delhi, Old Delhi is, above all, Muslim!”
Max pictured Bhargava, the “James Bond of Hinduness,” dreaming that he could silence these muezzins forever. Send these circumcisees packing to their brothers and accomplices in Pakistan, or anywhere!
There was no missing the red door, Jayesh told him. Behind it was a bright — too bright — illumination, probably neon, and a hand-painted sign announced LIVERPOOL GUEST HOUSE: CLEAN SHEETS. CLEAN SHOWERS. The night watchman was napping on a worn-out mattress behind the reception counter, an older man with ruffled hair and teeth reddened with betel juice. Max signed the tea-stained register but didn’t even have to present his passport. The porter showed no surprise that this guest looked utterly unlike his usual customers, whom Max saw early next morning on the sun-flooded terrace. The hotel was a refuge for hippies in wraparound longyis and oversized pyjamas — escapees from the West, bigger than life, hairy, and probably fried, smoking bidis and nodding incessantly. Max smiled. Jayesh was right. The police couldn’t even imagine this place.
18
“Rodger Morency?” wondered Sergeant Demers in amazement. Juliette felt like an idiot. What was she doing at Montreal Police Headquarters? Shouldn’t she be holed up at her place, veiled with black lace instead?
“It wasn’t his intention to go after your husband. I mean, Morency and Al-Qaeda are not exactly in the same ballpark, are they?”
Still …
He was right, Al-Qaeda and Rodger were worlds apart. Rodger’s file was that of a petty delinquent with a monotonous train of police reports that nevertheless became weightier as time went on. He’d woken up one morning as a child who decided he didn’t want to be an astronaut or a star hockey player, just a public pain in the ass. His special talent was an alarming ability to get himself into trouble with the justice system, the kind that spared no effort to get nailed by the police: Getting caught at the wheel of a stolen car with a six-months’-expired licence, for instance: “I was just on my way to get it renewed, Your Honour.” Then an arrest for being found in the basement of an underground parking lot in the company of a minor: “She showed me her papers. I was sure everything was okay, Judge.” There was also a failed attempt at loan-sharking with Haitian drivers at Lasalle Taxi: “Honest, I’m not racist, Your Honour.” Little jobs and misdemeanours here and there, none of them worth bothering about.
A very small-time crook with small-time ambitions: corner stores, service stations, metro wickets … and what about the hospital? Well, sure, he was there to do the rooms, and he admitted it freely: “Cardiology, now, that’s my fetish floor.”
Something didn’t sit right in this story for Juliette, but what? The admission was weird coming from someone who always had an excuse for everything, but none for this. He was practically glad to confess for once: “Sure, I went there to steal.”
“Can we talk to this Rodger Morency?” she asked.
“Between now and his trial in July …” Demers shaped his fingers to form a bird in flight.
“I thought he was in jail.”
“Out on bail, angel that he is.”
“But …”
“His mother came to the rescue, as usual.”
Without a word to Béatrice, and especially not to Patterson, Juliette