Forty Words for Sorrow Read Online Free PDF Page B

small stature (Delorme was a head taller than the chief), and a big laugh that he used all the time, often accented with a backslap. He laughed too much, in Delorme’s opinion; it made him seem nervous, which perhaps he was, but she had also seen that genial manner vanish in an instant. When angered, which was thankfully not often, R.J. Kendall was a shouter and a curser. The whole department had heard him tear up one side of Adonis Dyson and down the other for undermanning the winter fur carnival, with the result that it became a noisy, rowdy affair that made the front page of the Lode for all the wrong reasons.
    And yet Dyson still spoke highly of Kendall, as did most people who carried shrapnel wounds from one of his explosions. Once his anger was over, it was really over, and he usually made a gesture or two to soothe ruffled feathers. In Dyson’s case he’d gone out of his way—on TV—to give Dyson credit for downturns in robberies and assaults. It was far more than his predecessor would have done.
    Dyson himself was in one of the red leather armchairs talking to someone Delorme couldn’t see. He waved a languid hand in her direction, as if midnight meetings were routine with him.
    The chief jumped up to shake Delorme’s hand. He must have been in his late fifties, but he affected a boyish air, the way some powerful men do. “Sergeant Delorme. Thanks for getting here so fast. And on such short notice. Can I get you a drink? Off-hours, I think we can afford to relax a little.”
    “No, thank you, sir. This time of night, it would just knock me out.”
    “We’ll get right down to it, then. Someone I want you to meet. Corporal Malcolm Musgrave, RCMP.”
    Watching Corporal Malcolm Musgrave emerge from the red leather chair was like watching a mountain emerge from the plains. He had his back to Delorme, so the granite block of head emerged first, pale hair trimmed to no more than a sandy bristle, then the escarpment of shoulders, vast cliff-face of chest as he turned toward her, and finally the rock formation of his handshake, dry and cool as shale. “Heard about you,” he said to Delorme. “Nice job on the mayor.”
    “I’ve heard about you, too,” Delorme told him, and Dyson shot her a dark glance. Musgrave had killed two men in the line of duty. Both times there had been hearings about the use of excessive force, and both times he had got off. Delorme thought, We really get our man.
    “Corporal Musgrave is with the Sudbury detachment. He’s their number two man in commercial crime.”
    Delorme knew that, of course. The RCMP no longer maintained a local detachment, so Algonquin Bay fell within Sudbury’s jurisdiction. As federal police, the RCMP worked any crimes of national import: drugs at a national level, counterfeiting, commercial crime. Now and again the Algonquin Bay police would work with them on major drug busts, but as far as Delorme knew, Musgrave himself never put in an appearance.
    “Corporal Musgrave has a little bedtime story for us,” the chief said. “You won’t like it.”
    “Have you heard of Kyle Corbett?” Musgrave’s eyes were the palest blue Delorme had ever seen, almost transparent. It was like being scrutinized by a husky.
    Yes, she had heard of Kyle Corbett. Everyone had heard of Kyle Corbett. “Big drug dealer, no? Doesn’t he control everything north of Toronto?”
    “Obviously, Special Investigations keeps you off the street. Kyle Corbett cleaned up his act at least three years ago, when he discovered counterfeiting. You’re surprised. You thought when Ottawa changed to coloured bills we stumped the counterfeiters, right? Bad guys all moved on to those oh-so-boring and oh-so-easy-to-copy American bills. You’re absolutely right, they did. Then a small thing came along called a colour copier. And another little item called a scanner. And now every Tom, Dick and Harry’s going into the office on Saturday morning and printing himself a batch of phony twenties. Major