Murder in a Cold Climate: An Inspector Matteesie Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

mitts to reveal a black-barrelled automatic pistol. Without a moment’s pause, he fired three rapid shots point blank into Morton Cavendish’s head.
    As I flung myself at him, he straight-armed the little stewardess flat on her back across the screaming nurse, both blocking the aisle in front of me. I jumped onto the seat behind mine and used its back to swing myself over the two women, then leaped down the steps, too late.

 
Chapter Two
    Corporal Charlie Paterson of the Norman Wells detachment was a big guy, towering over me. And right now he was extremely agitated. The two of us were in the mildly graffiti-scarred men’s can at the terminal building. The corporal had locked the door behind us. “It’s the only goddamn private place short of kicking the airline people out of their effing office,” he said. He knew my face and name from when I had been full-time RCMP but thought when I went to Northern Affairs it was final. To him I was a civilian again. No doubt that made him feel free to act naturally, such as swearing a blue streak in a way he normally would not have in the presence of a superior, even one with brown skin and almond-shaped eyes, five feet six of sheer Native guile.
    What I knew about him was that he was an officer on the way up, having been commended during his previous posting at Fort Simpson, especially for community work at the time of the Pope’s visit there. I can only assume that the Pope never heard Charlie let fly when he was mad. He’d seen Morton’s body. He knew how the murderer had gotten away. Charlie had been no more than a few hundred yards from the airport “and driving like a mad bastard,” according to his own testimony, when the fatal shots were fired. I could see he felt sure that without those few hundred yards he might instantly have taken his place among the storied Mounties who always got their man.
    His luck had been all bad. An Ottawa call instructing him to meet me at the airport had come in while he was out hunting rabbits. “Every effing Tuesday we go out, me and the doctor and a guy from the oil company, hunting, fishing, having a few drinks, whatever!”
    He looked defiant. “It’s community effing relations, you know!” But he didn’t even like that excuse himself. Furiously, as if looking for something to punch, he flushed both toilets with a crash and gurgle unparalleled in the history of plumbing.
    â€œA really bad break,” I said, trying to soothe him.
    â€œThat’s not all! My effing duty constable left word with Nancy to tell me to call the office but she didn’t.”
    â€œNancy?”
    â€œMy wife. Of course, she didn’t know what the call was about, but anyway I got home and was cleaning the rabbits in the sink when right away she came into the kitchen and started yelling she’d just cleaned the sink, and I yelled did she think I was going out into minus thirty-five weather to clean some effing rabbits and she forgot the call, and . . .”

    I’ll summarize the remainder. When the rabbits were bagged and in the freezer the corporal and his wife went to a choir practice adjudged to be urgently needed because of special Easter services some weeks away. The practice had been called for 5:30 p.m., with potluck supper and euchre afterwards. They were just warming up in the joyful, “Christ is Risen!” when Constable Ned Hoare appeared at the back of the church and without waiting for a break in the music roared, “Charlie! Call from Ottawa! You’re supposed to meet the plane! It’s coming in right now!” and Nancy said, “Oh, God, Charlie. I was supposed to tell you to call the office.”
    â€œGod damn it all to fucking hell,” the corporal groaned, apparently having forgotten to use the more genteel “effing.” “If I’d been here I might have been able to do something. Chase him, shoot him, whatever. The one day