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

in the fucking week when for half an hour I’m away from the phone and this happens.”
    I was fresh out of appropriate responses. “What do you sing in the choir?” I asked.
    â€œLead tenor!” he snapped, and then, less forcefully, “Okay, now fill me in.”
    I told him what I knew. The murderer had used what looked to me like a Colt GM (for Government Model) .45, which in one form or another has been used in wars, revolutions, police actions and murders since about 1911. I own one myself. He had escaped on a Skidoo Elan, a machine I knew because it is a favorite among trappers—light, powerful, easy to handle and easy to fix. He (presumably he) had left it with the engine running on the tarmac about seventy-five feet from the aircraft steps and a little south of the terminal, toward the Okanagan Helicopters limited hangar. I’d seen the murderer running for the machine as I charged down the steps scrabbling for the gun that was at home in Ottawa in my bed-table drawer and which I hadn’t worn for two years. In seconds he was revving into high speed across the foot-deep snow, then across the main runway, last seen as a red tail-light dwindling to nothing in the dark and blowing snow. He’d been out of sight before anybody with a machine to make chase with could react, if that anybody had been of a mind to, which is never entirely certain when one man is armed and a prospective pursuer is not.
    Going back to the airport I’d pulled a blanket over Cavendish’s head (he was dead), told the pilot I was RCMP and would take charge for now (he seemed relieved), and told everybody to get off the plane but stay in the waiting room, which is where they were now.
    Or most of them, anyway. Someone was trying the door of the toilet and complaining pitiably about the desperate state of his bladder.
    The corporal barked, “Go outside and do it in a snowbank,” but the guy didn’t go away.
    Wishing him well, and knowing that at least he wasn’t a Native or he wouldn’t have had to be told to do it in a snowbank, I went on. Before I left the aircraft I’d questioned the nurse, whose name was Hilda. She didn’t know much so I summarized drastically for Charlie. But the full account of my couple of minutes with the nurse went like this:
    I’d asked, “When was it decided to fly him out?”
    â€œSometime yesterday. This was the first flight we could catch.”
    â€œDo you know what kind of shape his son was in when he brought his father in the night before?”
    â€œI don’t know. I’ve been on days.”
    Then I came to the important part. “Who knew that he was being flown out on this flight?”
    â€œOh, a lot of people. People at the hospital, and people from CBC news who checked every few hours, and the girl reporter for the paper, News North. She came around—I mean, she’s stationed in Inuvik by the paper and I guess she’d been phoning the story in, he was so well known. So there’d be people in the paper’s Yellowknife office who would know, plus everybody who heard it on the radio.”
    Her voice trailed off and she compressed her lips. I think delayed shock was hitting her. She faltered, “The doctors, you know, at the hospital, they said he was in and out of consciousness and tried to talk but couldn’t be understood, so even today when we were getting him ready, well, it was bad but certainly not hopeless.” She drew a deep breath, “Not like now.”
    I still didn’t have the answer I was looking for. “Did anybody call looking for details that made you wonder?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI mean, made you or anybody else suspicious about their questions? Like, exactly when he was being flown out?”
    â€œNot that I took. I wouldn’t know about calls last night or calls the doctor took.”
    It had been about that time in our conversation that