Asylum Read online

  I was still not happy. When we drop the kids off at the airport on Sunday nights, all I can usually think of is a bubble bath and a brandy, and not necessarily in that order. “Ivan, what’s going on?”

  He went to the wall and flicked on the monitor affixed to it: standard casino issue, views of the poker tables, the image alternating from one section to the next. He fiddled with the controls and zoomed in on one of the players. “He’s here,” he said with satisfaction, and pressed a button on his desk. A woman’s voice floated out of the intercom. “Oui?”

  “Sylvie, would you ask Pierre Lambert to come see me when he has a minute, please?”

  “Bien sûr,” the faceless Sylvie responded and clicked off.

  Ivan grinned at me. “Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my mind. I thought of this today at the cemetery.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said slowly.

  He laughed. “Really. It’ll be worth it, I promise.”

  We watched the monitor as a young blonde woman dressed in elegant casino black approached the table and murmured something in the ear of one of the poker players. He glanced up at the camera, so that it seemed he was looking directly at Ivan and me, and nodded. Almost immediately after that he put his cards in and stood up. “Who is this?” I asked Ivan.

  “A regular.”

  “Yeah, I kind of figured that out already. You knowing his name, and all.” I smiled to take the bite out of the sarcasm.

  “Funny woman,” he said, not without appreciation.

  The door opened and the man from the monitor appeared. In his thirties, I’d guess; well dressed in a city that prides itself on dressing well, with a Gallic hooked nose and dark hair, dark eyes. “Salut, Ivan,” he said easily.

  “Salut, Pierre.” Ivan shook his hand perfunctorily and gestured in my direction. “This is my wife, Martine LeDuc. Martine, Pierre Lambert.”

  We shook hands, and Pierre sat down on Ivan’s office sofa, crossing one leg over the other, elegantly, completely at ease. “How can I help you?” he asked in accented English; if his name hadn’t given him away as a Francophone, his voice certainly would have.

  Ivan sat down also. “Martine is the directrice de publicité for the city. She has a project she’s working on, and she needs an introduction over at Lansbury Pharmaceuticals, and I remembered that your partner works there.”

  “Ah, yes.” He nodded. “For almost ten years now.”

  I was staring at Ivan. He’d pulled a rabbit out of a hat and was looking inordinately pleased with himself, though how he’d managed not to blurt it out and give the secret away was beyond me. Unplumbed depths, my husband has. Great self-restraint. He smiled innocently in my direction and addressed himself to Pierre. “So I was wondering…” He let his voice trail off expectantly.

  Pierre nodded. “Nothing is easier. We will speak of it when I go home tonight, and perhaps a meeting can be arranged.”

  I found my voice. “That would be most appreciated,” I said. “Um, monsieur—I need for it to be soon.”

  “If time is of the essence, then of course,” he said, nodding. “Perhaps tomorrow. I will see.” He stood up. “If that is all…”

  Ivan stood with him and held out his hand again. “Merci, Pierre.”

  “De rien, mon ami.” He turned to me. “Madame,” he said formally, shaking my hand. “We will call you tomorrow.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said again, and watched him exit and the door close behind him. “When were you going to tell me about Pierre?” I asked Ivan.

  He laughed. “I wouldn’t have lasted much longer,” he confessed. “Honestly, I only started thinking about who I might know when we were at the cemetery, and Pierre’s name came to me on the way to the airport. Pierre’s only here on weekends, mostly, except in the summertime when it’s pretty much any night. He’s good at getting the tourist trade to share some of their vacation dollars with him.”

  “He’s professional?”

  “One of the best.” Ivan was unperturbed.

  I knew about professionals. If you go to a casino and count cards at blackjack, you’ll be invited to leave pretty damned fast: you’re cheating the casino itself when you cheat at blackjack. But poker’s a different story. Poker is the only casino game where you don’t play against the house, so the house has no stakes in who wins and who loses. Professionals are ejected from every other game, but welcomed at the poker tables.

  There were always a few who were there hour after hour, winning a little, losing a little, then waiting and winning big when they’d finally landed a whale. It looked to me like an infinitely boring way of making a living, but then again, I didn’t make nearly as much as they did.

  And, some days, I could use a little boredom in my job.

  * * *

  The next morning I was at my desk early. There was a message from the mayor: the crown prosecutor was looking into the police’s suspect and, until a decision was made, I didn’t need to check in with the police director. The phone rang at half past eight—an unheard-of hour for normal people to be doing business in a city that stayed up late—and Chantal buzzed me. “It’s for you.”

  “Who is it?” I felt cross; I had a lot on my plate and my deputy was supposed to be fielding calls when he was there.

  “Asked for you specifically, not Richard. It’s someone called Jean-Louis Montrachet. Francophone.”

  “You think?” Then I shook my head: it wasn’t Chantal’s fault, and I had a feeling that she was coping with some of Richard’s load these days as well as her own. “Merci, Chantal, I’ll take it.” I pushed the appropriate button on the telephone. “Good morning, ici Martine LeDuc, how can I help you?”

  “Bonjour, madame. I understand that it is I who can help you.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for games. I’d slept badly, dreaming of long polished convent corridors and children crying in the dark. “Monsieur—er—Montrachet, that’s it? I don’t know—”

  He cut in briskly. “My partner is Pierre Lambert,” he said. “I work for Lansbury Pharmaceuticals. He told me that he spoke to you and your husband last night, and that you wished to speak to someone from my company.”

  Oh. That kind of partner. One never knew. I cleared my throat. “Monsieur Montrachet, forgive me. Yes. Thank you for calling.” I tried to gather my thoughts; I’d thought I’d have time to consult with Julian before speaking to him. Useless to ask for an introduction to the C-level suite; those people would as soon admit malfeasance as shoot themselves. “Forgive the intrusion, and my curiosity, but what is it that you do at the company?”

  If he thought the question odd he didn’t say so. “I am in the marketing department,” he said.

  That didn’t help, or really mean anything at all. I felt stuck: now that I had the fish on the line, so to speak, I had no idea what to do with it. There were probably clever questions to ask, but I didn’t know what they were. And without knowing what to ask … “Monsieur,” I said, finally, “may I take you to lunch today?” There was a silence, and I added quickly, “I would not ask, but it’s very important.”

  “Very well, madame. My partner respects your husband very much, and would like to do him a favor.” There was a slight pause. “Let us say one o’clock at l’Orignal. My secretary will make the reservation.”

  I swallowed hard: he’d just made sure I wasn’t wasting time by naming one of Montréal’s more expensive restaurants. “Bien,” I managed to croak. There was no way I could justify expensing this. “Please make it for three people.”

  “I will see you then,” Jean-Louis said and was gone.

  Okay. It doesn’t matter. You’re getting close. Maybe, I thought hopefully, I could get Julian to pick up the tab for lunch. I looked up his number and pressed the digits. Surprisingly, he answered. “We’re having lunch with someone from Lansbury’s marketing department,” I said cheerfully. “Aren’t you impressed?”

  “I am,” he said, sounding bemused.

  “One o’clock at l’Orignal,” I
said, trying to make it sound like I went there all the time. “Name of Montrachet.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me anything else about this?”

  I sighed. “Nothing more to tell, really,” I confessed. “He’s the partner of one of Ivan’s regulars—I mean, my husband. He’s the director of—”

  “I know who Ivan is,” Julian interrupted, amusement in his voice now.

  “Oh. Bien. So there’s this regular poker player, and he’s married to this other guy who works in marketing at Lansbury.” It didn’t sound like much when it was put that way.

  “Well done,” said Julian unexpectedly. “Is Lansbury paying for lunch?”

  “No,” I said. “You and I get to argue over the check.”

  He laughed. “See you then, Martine.”

  I should mention that the restaurant in question—whose name roughly translates as “the moose”—is probably worth every penny one spends there. It specializes in the freshest high-end game, fresh fish, and oysters, and if Jean-Louis could get a same-day reservation there for lunch, then he had some pull. I was beginning to feel more cheerful about the whole thing.

  Julian and I arrived at about the same time and were shown quickly to a table where a man was already seated. He rose to greet us, and I made the introductions. He dressed every bit as well and expensively as his husband, and even resembled him slightly; maybe that happens with couples who have been together a lot of years. We sat down and Jean-Louis turned to Julian. “Would you prefer that we speak in English, monsieur?”

  Julian said blandly and in French, “It doesn’t matter to me. If you are more comfortable in French, then allons-y.”

  I stared at him. He’d always made me speak English. He kicked me, almost gently, under the table, and I smiled at them both. “We wanted to ask you some questions about your company,” I began.

  Jean-Louis held up a hand. “Perhaps,” he said gently, “we can order first?”

  “Of course.” I was overeager and knew better than to be this rude: this whole situation was getting to me. Deep breath, Martine. I smiled blandly at the two men and for a few moments we all pored over our menus. They ordered the grilled venison steak; I settled for two appetizers—oysters and elk tartare. Lots of protein. I had a feeling I’d need to keep up my strength. We agreed on a bottle of wine and finally the niceties were finished.

  “So,” Jean-Louis said, “please tell me what this is about.”

  “It’s rather a long story,” I began, but Julian put up his hand. “I am with the service de police de la ville de Montréal,” he said, pulling out his credentials. “It is important that you understand that from the beginning.”

  He looked from one of us to the other. “Have I done something?”

  “No, not you,” I said quickly, though for all I knew perhaps he had. “It’s about the past, actually.”

  He was confused, and not hiding it too well. Julian cleared his throat and began. “We’ve learned that from the 1950s through the 1970s, Lansbury Pharmaceuticals was under contract to supply various drugs to a number of psychiatric facilities in the province,” he said, leaving out the fact that the company was also supplying drugs quite innocently to a whole lot of other hospitals. Maybe he just wanted to scare Jean-Louis. “These facilities included the Allan Institute and a psychiatric asylum called the Cité de Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, both of them here in Montréal.”

  I was watching Jean-Louis, and there was no reaction at all, no obvious change in blood pressure, no eye movement, no flush of recognition. If he knew anything about what Julian was saying, he was a better actor than most actors.

  Julian went on smoothly, “It has come to our attention that there is a possible link between what happened at those facilities and some more recent crimes in the city, and of course, we must follow up on these possibilities.” He accompanied the last bit with a hand gesture that said, it’s nothing, you know how these things are. Well done, Julian, I thought. He managed to do what the true bilingual does: adapt not only his words, but his means of expression, his gestures and facial expressions, to the pattern of the other language.

  He stopped to allow the server to put our plates in front of us and there were the usual few moments of confusion as the server asked if we wanted anything else and I wished he’d get the hell away and Julian gave him a Fletcher look and he did in fact go away. I needed to learn how to do that look.

  “Will you tell me the connection?” asked Jean-Louis.

  Julian didn’t hesitate. “I’m sorry, that’s impossible,” he said, with regret in his voice. “Police matters, you understand—”

  “Yet you expect me to understand enough to answer your questions.”

  “Look,” I said, urgently, ignoring Julian’s pained expression. These two could play mind games all day, and if I was paying for this lunch, I was going to get my money’s worth. “You’ve heard of the Duplessis orphans.” He nodded. “That’s what we’re talking about,” I said, drawing in a deep breath. “Lansbury was supplying the asylums, or at least one of them, that the children were sent to. No one’s innocent in this affair, not the government, not the Church, not the nuns, not the doctors; but it happened, and we think that someone’s trying to cover it up now.”

  “But, madame,” objected Jean-Louis, “that affair is resolved. The government settled with the Duplessis orphans. It was on the news, in the newspapers. It was some time ago—ten years maybe? Fifteen? More? I cannot remember.”

  “And then there’s the Allan Institute,” I went on doggedly. “Again, it was Lansbury that supplied the drugs for the CIA program MK-Ultra, for the experiments going on at the Allan. You’ve heard of MK-Ultra?”

  He nodded, his mouth full of venison.

  “We think that the two are connected. We think that orphans from the asylum were being used as subjects at the Allan. We think that Lansbury supplied the drugs in return for the asylum’s use as an experimental lab to see what worked and what didn’t … and in return received a hefty amount of what the CIA was spending on MK-Ultra. We think that the unifying factor was the money—and Lansbury Pharmaceuticals.”

  Jean-Louis took a sip of wine, swallowed, and shook his head. “Madame, even if your suppositions are correct, you are talking about events that took place sixty or seventy years ago,” he objected. “What possible interest could the company have in it now? And how does that relate to any crime committed in the present?”

  “Money,” said Julian. He wanted back in. Probably felt that my interrogation techniques left something to be desired. “The government settled with the survivors for a pittance. Everyone knows that. The living orphans were getting older, they didn’t have much time left, it was better than nothing, so they took what they could get and the government breathed a sigh of relief. But the orphans have heirs, and Lansbury has deeper pockets than the province and a reputation to uphold—and a lot more to lose if this thing ever came to trial.”

  “It wouldn’t come to trial,” said Jean-Louis, marketing expert.

  “Exactly,” Julian said and nodded. “And a settlement won’t make shareholders happy.”

  Montrachet shook his head and patted his lips with his napkin. “I must be honest with you, madame, monsieur,” he said. “I think this is a fantasy. We are involved in many projects in many countries. Had this sort of involvement been illegal, even if it did take place—and to be perfectly frank, I cannot speak to that, I know nothing about it—but had it happened, and had it been illegal, we would have heard of it by now. We have a legal department precisely for these reasons: to determine that what we are doing is legal. I am sorry if you feel you have wasted your time, but I see nothing here with which I can help you.”

  At least, I thought, the oysters were good.

  “Well, what did you expect?” Julian asked me later, as we walked down the cobbled streets of the Old City. “For him to say, yeah, sorry, mea culpa, I’ve been killing those people to save my company?”

  “I thought maybe he’d say
, okay, I’ll look into it, I’ll have you meet someone who can help you,” I said miserably, stopping and turning to face him. The afternoon sun was warm and mellow, whispering that it didn’t matter, that time had moved on. No, I thought. Not this time. “Julian, we’re getting nowhere.” I was feeling a little sick. “And if the crown prosecutor goes for this clochard, the homeless one your department has in custody, then that will be the end of it all. And they’ll all have suffered and died for nothing. Nothing!” I could feel the tears, then, pressing hot against the backs of my eyes. “They were scared and they were tortured and they were killed, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  But as it turned out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  My telephone rang later that afternoon. “Mrs. LeDuc?” An Anglophone voice, brisk and deep. “My name is Robert Carrigan. You may recall we met at the mayor’s office. I’m an attorney at Lansbury Pharmaceuticals.”

  Carrigan: that was the name that had eluded me when I’d had Julian on the phone. Robert Carrigan. The lobbyist, the one who supported the mayor’s political campaigns. And I’d been right, he wasn’t just in Big Pharma, he was at Lansbury. “Yes?” I said cautiously.

  “I understand that you had a conversation earlier today with someone—a Monsieur Jean-Louis Montrachet—from our marketing department.”

  “Yes?” I said again, trying to keep my voice even. Yes! The bait had been dangled and the fish had snapped it up. Montrachet obviously felt bothered enough by what we said to pass it along to somebody who could, presumably, do something about it. The legal department of which he’d spoken at lunch. And maybe, a small voice in the back of my head was exulting, Robert Carrigan would lead us to whomever had hired the killer, and then to the killer himself. I wasn’t interested in the killer himself per se, not if he was just a common or garden variety psycho.