Once Upon a Time by Barbara Fradkin Read Free Book Online Page B

that wasn’t falling apart. They’d acquired that, plus a fifty-minute commute across the cornfields of the Greenbelt, then along the congested Queensway that traversed the city.
    He hated it. Hated sitting in his car crawling from red light to red light. Hated living in a plastic cookie-cutter house on a postage-stamp sized lot with a few twigs for trees and endless acres of baby carriages as far as the eye could see. He was an inner city boy raised in the crumbling brick tenements of Lowertown. The rooftops had been his playground and the narrow alleys perfect for a pick-up game of hockey. Pick-up hockey was against the law on the back crescents of Barrhaven.
    His suburban neighbours were all ten years younger than him, fresh-faced high techies or junior company managers with their foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and their eyes on the top. Unlike him, they didn’t have ex-wives and hefty support payments for a teenager who’d been forced into every West Coast therapy her desperate mother could find. All for being the same type of ornery, restless teenager he’d been, Green suspected. No doubt his ex-wife was trying to eradicate even the remotest gene that tied the girl to him.
    That night it was brittly cold and the road was a icy sheet as he nudged his car into the traffic jam on the Queensway. Red tail lights danced in the swirls of exhaust that stretched ahead forever. With a sigh he slipped in a Tragically Hip CD and let his mind roam. Usually the Hip put his mind in a mellow, meandering mood. But not tonight. Tonight his mind was like a hound on the scent.
    It headed straight back to the case. What had really happened in that bar twenty years earlier? What foreigner had Walker talked to on the afternoon of his death? And were the two events linked? So many questions, and no one interested in the answers but Green.
    Saturday was his day off as well as Sullivan’s. Tony’s first birthday was coming up later in the week, and Green had been planning to spend the weekend getting ready for the big celebration, to which Sharon seemed to be inviting half the neighbourhood. The house sported a few pieces of furniture from their old one-bedroom apartment, but it was entirely without decor. Sharon had a long list of chores for him to perform, which included painting and picture hanging to be completed in time for the birthday party. He knew she was right, and he owed her that much, despite his aversion to the Dreaded Vinyl Cube. But given his facility and enthusiasm for household chores, he suspected Tony would be married and moved out before he made it to the bottom of the list.
    Given a choice between painting walls or chasing murder, if it were up to Green, there would be no contest. Renfrew beckoned. And the lure of a puzzle waiting to be solved.

Four
    February 10th, 1940
    In my mind the bayonet pricks me still.
    I’ve cleared rubble from the square for three days,
barehanded and hatless in the bloodied snow.
    German orders pummelled my ears, their bayonets spurred me on.
    As I lie against the soft swell of her belly,
her fingers probe, her tongue clucks.
    She will not lose me to German sport, she says.
    Already fear and death have taken half of us.
    Henryk arrives with bread stolen right off a Nazi truck.
    He roams everywhere, hears everything.
    As she feeds me, he smiles
And tells of a farm in the rolling hills far from town.
    The farmer reads the pain in my eyes, takes my hand gently.
    By planting time, he says, you’ll be strong again.
    At eight o’clock Saturday morning, Green and Sullivan were headed west along Highway 17 towards Renfrew. The sun lay pale and cold on the horizon behind them, and the rolling fields and scrub on either side were blanketed with snow.
    â€œI don’t believe I’m doing this,” Sullivan muttered as he accelerated around a slow-moving pick-up. “What the hell am I doing here with you, Green?”
    â€œThe valley’s your