The Poisoned Pawn Read online

  “Come on, Andrew,” said Jones. “Mike was in a foreign country at the time. The Charter of Rights isn’t carried around the world with each Canadian citizen as part of their baggage. The court sees incomplete transcripts all the time. That’s not an admissibility issue. It only goes to weight.”

  “Courts are a crapshoot,” Britton replied. “You know that as well as I do. I’d be a lot more comfortable if Inspector Ramirez had asked Ellis if he wanted a lawyer before he spoke to him.”

  “That’s setting the bar too high,” Jones protested. “We can’t ask foreign law enforcement agents to apply Canadian laws. The most we can ask is that they apply their own properly.”

  “I’m not disagreeing with you, Celia,” Britton said, “but there is a difference here. We want to charge Ellis with a crime he committed in this country. Irv Birenbaum is going to say that if Mike Ellis had been given an opportunity to speak to a lawyer earlier, this statement would never have happened. Correct?”

  “If I had told him he had a right to a lawyer,” Ramirez acknowledged, “he would not have confessed to me, that’s true. I told him the truth. We don’t rely on confessions in Cuba as evidence. We consider them unreliable.”

  “Exactly my point, Inspector. That’s why he agreed to talk to you. And now we want to use his statement, which you told him was inadmissible, and which you agree is unreliable, as evidence against him. That’s a big problem under Canadian laws.”

  “But we weren’t in Canada.”

  Ramirez was confused. He wondered how Canadian police could ever get confessions if they told all suspects they had a right not to talk to them.

  “If I had told him that he had a right to counsel, Señor Britton, I would have been lying to him. Even Cuban nationals are not entitled to legal counsel before an indictment is filed.”

  “But Celia had come to Cuba to represent him before you questioned him about Sloan,” Britton said. “She could have advised him.”

  “Not really, Andrew,” Jones said, her voice rising. Ramirez could hear her mounting frustration. “I would have been in a gross conflict of interest. I’m the departmental lawyer, for Christ’s sake. O’Malley had told me to go after Mike if I found out he’d done anything wrong. I couldn’t have given Mike advice if I even suspected he’d murdered Steve Sloan.”

  “Were you Mike’s lawyer when you went down there or not?”

  “I suppose, technically, I was acting for the department.”

  “Great.” Britton threw his pen up in the air. “If we do arrest him, Ellis will be on the streets the moment Irv gets disclosure.”

  FORTY - SIX

  Mike Ellis stood in the kitchen and watched the snow fall. The trees in the backyard were covered with a thick layer already. He shook his head, his eyes wet.

  June 2, 2006. He had tried so hard to forget that night, it had become all he could think about. Most nights, he’d attempted to drink himself into oblivion. He’d failed at that. He’d sworn to quit drinking when he’d come home from Havana. And now he’d failed at that, too.

  He had told Inspector Ramirez everything in Havana. He had waited for retribution—for lightning to strike him dead. Or for heavily armed officers to carry him back to the same cramped cell where he had spent four long days locked up with Cuban dissidents.

  Absolutely nothing happened. No one arrested him. No one stopped him from catching his flight back to Canada. No police cars waited on the tarmac.

  Inspector Ramirez had given Ellis what he’d never expected. Not exactly absolution, but something close to it. Ramirez had listened, sympathized, and let him go.

  He gave me a second chance, thought Ellis. Maybe I owe it to Steve to take it, now that Hillary’s gone and I’m alone.

  He looked around the dirty kitchen. It was littered with empty bottles: beer, whisky, rum. For days, he hadn’t eaten much except stale crackers and yoghurt, afraid to go out in case the media ambushed him. He ran his fingers over the scruff on his face. He grimaced when his fingers felt the raised scars.

  Steve would have wanted him to live, to enjoy his remaining time on the planet. “Only comes around once, buddy,” he had said. “You can’t keep lying your whole life about what’s important to you. About who you are.”

  “Fuck, Steve, what were you thinking? Why did you sleep with her?” Ellis had wept as he held Sloan’s head in his hands and watched the light in his eyes fade. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “I don’t know. Just to know, I guess. I couldn’t figure out why you couldn’t just up and leave her. But we’re even, buddy. I can’t believe you just shot me either.”

  Sloan held up his fingers. They were covered with dark blood. Arterial blood. They both knew he was dying. “I guess I wanted to know why you wouldn’t leave her.”

  “For me” was left unspoken, and then Steve Sloan died.

  Ellis threw the empty bottles in the blue recycling bin. He gathered up the dishes and piled them in the dishwasher.

  He ran upstairs to the bedroom and pulled Hillary’s clothes out of the cupboard. He rummaged through the pockets before he threw them in a heap on the floor. He’d call Goodwill to pick them up. Someone would want them. They were expensive dresses with Holt Renfrew labels, dry-cleaned skirts, silk blouses.

  He found an empty condom package in the pocket of the navy blue dress Hillary wore each spring. He picked the dress up and recognized the smell of Steve’s aftershave.

  He buried his face in the soft fabric, inhaling the faint perfume. He finally put the garment down. He looked at the floor and slowly picked up the torn package.

  Tears spilled down his face as he realized that Steve would have used protection. Maybe Hillary never was pregnant, never miscarried at all. She could have said all that to get even with him once she suspected he’d had an affair of his own, to make him feel guilty. She could have lied.

  FORTY - SEVEN

  “Are you serious, Andrew?” said Celia Jones.

  “Absolutely. There are too many things wrong with this confession for it to be the only evidence in a murder case.”

  Andrew Britton began counting points on his fingers, the way he often did in court.

  “Mike Ellis was questioned after he was misled as to the use to be made of his statement. He wasn’t told that the interview was being taped surreptitiously. He was interrogated only days after another detective in the same police station, in the same section, framed him for a crime he didn’t commit. Inspector Ramirez here, made up expert evidence with the precise intent of persuading Ellis to confess to him. And Irv Birenbaum will argue that God only knows what was on the missing parts of that first tape. Any one of those amounts to ‘oppression’ under Oickle. Put them together, we’re screwed.”

  “That’s a Supreme Court of Canada decision,” Jones explained to Ramirez. “It says that evidence obtained by police trickery has to be excluded.”

  “The Crown can’t do indirectly what it can’t do directly. I don’t care what Cuban laws are, we can’t use information here that was gathered illegally there. We better hope we get more evidence than this. Maybe something proving that Ellis killed his wife.”

  There was a rap on Jones’s office door. “Come in,” she called.

  Miles O’Malley stood on the other side. He looked tired and disappointed.

  Andrew Britton continued. “Because if we don’t, Mike Ellis is going to walk.”

  “I’m afraid Michael won’t be walking anywhere, Andrew,” said O’Malley, shaking his head. “He’s in Emergency at the Civic. In critical condition. He may not make it through the night.”

  “What?” exclaimed Jones.

  “Tactical broke down the door when he didn’t respond to the doorbell. He was lying on the kitchen floor, unconscious. An overdose of that medication he was taking for his nerves. A suicide attempt, from the looks of it. Well, I guess that’s another sign of guilt, isn’t it? I’ll have to go over to the Kelly residence and tell Mrs. Kelly she was right. You know how much I’m
looking forward to doing that.”

  “Oh, shit,” Jones sighed. “She’ll just go running to the press. We’re still trying to figure all of this out. Let me deal with her.”

  “You’d best talk to her soon, then. I sent a patrolman over to the General to pick up her daughter’s belongings in case we needed them for the investigation. He’s just brought them back. There’s nothing in them. There’s no point dropping them off at Michael’s residence, after what’s happened. And it’s the mother who’s acted as the next-of-kin anyway. Can you return them to her? If we don’t, you know she’ll be screaming about a cover-up on the evening news.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Miles. I’ll drop them off on my way home tonight.”

  “There’s a box and a carry-on bag; they’re in my office. Thanks, Celia. My God, this is a year I’d already like to start over. It’s as if the universe has decided to play games with us. Every now and then, I think maybe God exists after all. And gets his fun kicking the shit out of us, one by one.”

  Jones looked out the window. “If I’m going to do that, I’d better go now. It’s getting late, and with the bad weather the traffic will be crazy. If I don’t leave soon, I’ll never get home tonight.”

  “Go ahead, Celia,” said Britton. “There’s nothing more you can do here. I’ll wait with the inspector and swear up that affidavit for him. Can we stay here and use your office?”

  “Of course. Thanks, Andrew.” She stood up and removed her parka from a hook. “Ricardo, it’s been really great to see you, despite everything that’s happened. I’m glad we had a chance to show you around Ottawa. Please don’t worry about these charges. It’s not your fault that the laws in your country are different from ours. We’ll work it out.”

  “Thank you, Celia, for all your courtesy. Please tell Alejandro how much I enjoyed meeting him. I hope the day will come when both of you can visit Cuba. When you do, we will break the law together: Francesca will cook you a private dinner in our home. And I promise, I will keep in touch about the other matter. As soon as we have a free moment, Hector and I will start working on it.”

  “Thank you for that,” Jones said, smiling. She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “We’ll keep our fingers tightly crossed. I’ll speak to you next week, Andrew. See you Monday, Miles. And for God’s sake, call me if anything else happens. I have my cell with me; it’s fully charged. Goodbye for now, Ricardo. Have a safe trip home.”

  “Tell me, Andrew,” Ramirez said to the prosecutor after Jones left. “If a child is adopted in this country, what are the legal implications for the biological family?”

  “I’m not a family lawyer, but from what I can remember, it’s as if they never existed. I think they issue a new birth certificate in the adopting family’s name. Why do you ask?”

  Before Ramirez could answer, someone knocked on the door. Charlie Pike stood on the other side with Corporal Tremblay and an elderly man. Under his heavy coat, the old man wore the black suit and white collar of a priest.

  He looked surprisingly ordinary, thought Ramirez. Nothing about him hinted at the terrible things he’d done. A small man with reddish skin, he appeared confident, relaxed. Not like a prisoner, but like a person one might trust.

  Tremblay walked in and handed a brown package to Ramirez.

  “The laptop, Inspector. I’ll need you to sign for it. And I have a statement for you to swear to as well. Mr. Britton said he would notarize it for you, is that right?”

  Andrew Britton nodded.

  “I’ll wait outside with Detective Pike and the prisoner while you do that. To avoid problems, our lawyer said I have to transfer custody of Rey Callendes to the Rideau Regional Police first. Then they’ll transfer him into your custody, Inspector.”

  More paperwork. To avoid liability, thought Ramirez. Everyone in this country was concerned about liability. It was the only advantage of living in Cuba, where people knew better than to use the courts.

  “I’ve got the transfer papers here,” said Charlie Pike.

  “Good. Here’s the affidavit,” said Tremblay, and handed it to the prosecutor.

  “Not a problem,” said Britton, looking at his watch impatiently. “That’s why we’ve been waiting.”

  FORTY - EIGHT

  Celia Jones stood on the doorstep of the big house. She tried to balance the large cardboard box on her knee with one hand. With the other, she had pulled Hillary Ellis’s heavy green Roots bag all the way behind her through the increasingly dense snow.

  She was trying to execute two contradictory actions: ringing the doorbell with one hand while holding a box that required two. She finally gave up and put the box down, keeping it off the wet snow by resting it on top of one of her boots.

  She rang the doorbell. The door had a knocker shaped like a mortar and pestle. Cute, she thought. She looked at the neighbouring homes as she waited. The Kellys lived in a nice part of the city, on a very good street.

  Island Park was full of stately older brick and stone homes. The adjacent areas, Wellington Village and Westboro, were rapidly changing. The turnover started after a Mountain Equipment Co-op store was built, and continued with the construction of the new Superstore. Nearby retail couldn’t easily compete. Mom-and-pop convenience stores were being rapidly replaced with yoga centres, condos, and trendy restaurants and bars.

  Even so, it was one of the prime locations to live in Ottawa. It was a neighbourhood of embassies and private mansions. Expensive real estate.

  It was a busy street, though, at this time of day. Island Park was a main artery between Ontario and Quebec. To the north, it led directly to the Champlain Bridge, which crossed the Ottawa River, linking the two provinces.

  Traffic was already building from the Queensway to the Ottawa River Parkway as thousands of public servants lined up to take the bridge home to Gatineau and Aylmer. With the falling snow, cars inched along, bumper to bumper.

  She rang the doorbell again and then hammered the pestle.

  When no one answered, she was tempted to leave the packages behind and run, the way she had when she was a teenager. She and her friends would leave paper bags full of dog shit on people’s front steps on Halloween night, set fire to them, and flee, giggling.

  She tried again one last time. The door finally swung open. A white-haired man with a sweet face looked out the door at her, puzzled. She struggled to keep the box upright as the carry-on bag tipped over.

  “Yes? Here, let me help you with that.”

  “Mr. Kelly? Thanks very much. My name is Celia Jones. I work with the Rideau Regional Police Force. Chief O’Malley asked me to drop these off for you. They have your daughter’s belongings in them. Her things from the flight. They were left behind at the hospital. We thought you might want to have them. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you for bringing them by,” Kelly said. “That was kind of you. You should be home with your family, getting ready for supper, this time of day. Particularly with that storm moving in. Thanks for doing this, young lady.”

  He reached for the cardboard box.

  “I’m sorry, I do have to go over a bit of paperwork with you before I can release them. To make sure everything is in there that should be. If that’s okay? It won’t take too long, I promise.”

  “Come on in. May I call you Celia?”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

  She was grateful to get out of the cold and snow.

  She hated snow, had hated it ever since she’d lost the man she tried to talk down from an icy ledge when she was a police negotiator. Not because he didn’t come down, but because he did. Just not the way he was supposed to.

  The mental image of the man, folded in half in the snow, the baby he’d been holding spiralling, head first, slipping from her grasp. It made Jones think of how close she came that day to dying. And then the hostage-taking in Cuba. She pushed these thoughts from her mind.

  Nothing to worry about here, anyway. And she’d be home soon. Alex probably h
ad dinner started. He loved to cook, and he was good at it. They would have fabada tonight, he had promised. A Cuban stew made with large white beans, fabes de la Granja. He had soaked them overnight and would fry them up with bacon, morcilla, and chorizo. She planned to stop at the LCBO on the way home and get a nice bottle of robust red wine.

  Walter Kelly picked up the carry-on. Jones lifted the box and carried it inside.

  She pulled off her high-heeled boots and left them on the mat in the foyer. She followed Kelly into the spacious designer kitchen. The grey quartz countertop, she noticed, was littered with empty bottles; they seemed out of place in the immaculate home. Some were Havana Club, but there were also some glass bottles with white labels and black print.

  “Please, Celia. Sit down.” He pointed to the wooden stools around the large kitchen island.

  “Your home is lovely. Someone has exquisite taste.” Jones put down the box.

  “Thanks very much. That’s my wife’s doing,” Kelly said.

  He pulled open a drawer and took out a linoleum knife. He cut through the tape on the lid of the box.

  Jones opened the flaps and took out a list of items from the brown envelope inside. She reached for a pencil in her purse. She removed each article from the box, marked it off the list of Hillary’s belongings, and placed it on the kitchen island.

  A woman’s leather billfold containing a driver’s licence, Ontario health-care card, Visa credit card, two hundred Canadian dollars in twenties, a taxi receipt, a Blockbuster movie rental card. A tube of red lipstick. A bottle of prescription medication in Mike Ellis’s name.

  She looked at the label on the bottle as she put it down. It was for diazepam, prescribed by Richard Mann.

  Jones wondered why Hillary Ellis had Mike’s pills. And then she noticed the dispensing information: Kelly’s Pharmacy on Wellington Street. The street bisected Island Park Drive; the drugstore was only a few blocks away. Well, that made sense, she thought. Mike would have called Walter Kelly if he needed any medication; he and Hillary lived close by.