The Delicate Storm. Giles Blunt

       5

      Detective Sergeant Daniel Chouinard was still trying to rid his office of his predecessor’s ghost. D.S. Dyson, aside from being a crook, had been a supernaturally neat man, and so Chouinard felt it necessary to keep his office in a state of turmoil. Half-installed blinds hung from the windows at alarming angles, law books and procedural manuals tilted in precarious towers on the floor, and the bookshelves formed a lean-to against the wall. On his desk lay a hammer, a variety of screwdrivers and a tablet of white foolscap on which it was his habit to take illegible notes.

      When the position of detective sergeant had become available, it had been offered to Cardinal. He was one of the more senior detectives, after all, and had cleared some of the highest-profile cases in Algonquin Bay’s history. But Cardinal had turned the job down, even though it would have meant more money and regular hours. At the time, he had been on the brink of quitting the force – Delorme had stopped him at the last minute – and felt he didn’t deserve any promotion. Also, there was the undeniable fact that being detective sergeant was a desk job. Cardinal just couldn’t see it. Being out on the street, dealing with real people, was the best thing about police work, the only thing that made him feel useful.

      The only factor that made Cardinal hesitate at all was fear that the job would go to Ian McLeod. McLeod, who was away on vacation at the moment, had a knack for sowing discord that would have made him an out-and-out disaster. In the end Chief Kendall had offered the job to Daniel Chouinard, who had been a detective long enough to understand the needs of the CID staff. He had suffered along with the rest of the squad under the unpredictable D.S. Dyson, and he had solid organizational skills. Most important of all, he knew every one of the eight detectives well enough to know whose strengths would balance out whose weaknesses.

      When he’d heard about the appointment, McLeod had declared it was simply because Chouinard was French Canadian: it made the department look strongly bilingual, which it was not. But nobody else found any reason to be upset with Daniel Chouinard. The worst that could be said of him was that he was bland – especially for a French Canadian. All right, he was boring. He was so boring you could really only define him by what he lacked – such as any sense of irony or for that matter any sense of humour. He had no axe to grind, no political ambitions and no major psychological problems. He was given neither to tantrums nor to vendettas. The man didn’t even have an accent. Despite the messy office, the new D.S. was just, well, reasonable. Sometimes unbearably reasonable.

      ‘Let me sum things up,’ Chouinard said. Delorme and Cardinal were on their feet in the at-ease position, owing to Chouinard’s chairs being covered with stacks of acoustic tile. ‘We have an American male in his late fifties or early sixties found in the woods where he was eaten by a bear.’

      ‘Murdered by persons unknown and then eaten by a bear,’ Delorme corrected him.

      ‘The fact that he’s American means we have to bring in the Mounties; anything international is their turf. Which means we’ll be working with Malcolm Musgrave. So, I don’t think we need Delorme on this just now.’

      ‘Actually,’ Cardinal said, ‘Delorme’s the best possible person to work with Musgrave. They’ve worked together before and they get along fine. That’s bound to speed things up.’

      ‘Maybe,’ Chouinard said. ‘But I don’t want too many cooks on this.’

      ‘D.S., I want to be in on it,’ Delorme said. ‘I’d be happy to work with Musgrave.’

      ‘Sorry. Cardinal, you’re the more senior officer and you should be the one to coordinate with the esteemed sergeant.’

      ‘Really, D.S., I don’t think I should be working with Musgrave right now.’

      ‘Why? Is he annoyed with you? Why would a Mountie stationed in Sudbury be annoyed with a detective in Algonquin Bay?’

      ‘You’re forgetting he sicced the entire department on me last year.’

      ‘Oh, now that’s not fair,’ Chouinard said in his reasonable way. ‘He had good grounds to think there was a leak in our department and it turned out he was right. He just had the wrong man, that’s all.’

      ‘A minor detail,’ Cardinal said. ‘Can’t imagine why it bothered me.’ What was bothering him even more, just then, was that a young Mountie had snatched his gun away the night before.

      Chouinard was silent for a few moments, his soft features moving ever so slightly, as if he were working out several equations. Then, as if the calculations had become a physical problem, he swivelled around in his chair and shifted several law books from one windowsill to another, carefully examining the spine of each before setting it down. When he turned around again, his expression was more cheerful.

      ‘So there’s bad blood between you and the Horsemen,’ he said. ‘That’s a shame. But the truth of the matter is that we’re never going to have a better opportunity to smooth things out with our colleagues in scarlet. So you work with the Mounties – make sure you give them everything, understand – and you and Musgrave will be on excellent terms in no time. That’ll be good for the case, and also for the long-term interests of the department.’

      ‘But, D.S.,