The Delicate Storm by Giles Blunt Read Free Book Online Page A

things done.”
    “You look a little upset,” Catherine said. “Are you all right?”
    “Bad day at work, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”
    “You want to tell me about it?”
    “Nope.” He rarely did. None of the detectives on the squad talked to their wives about what happened at work. “Misguided chivalry,” a friend had told Cardinal once, and maybe he was right, but he probably didn’t live with a manic-depressive. Cardinal was not about to add to his wife’s burdens. Besides, he was still too embarrassed about having given up his gun. He flopped down on the couch and breathed in the scent of sandalwood. Very high vibrations, Catherine had assured him.
    The house was beautifully quiet. His refuge. The last embers of a fire in the wood stove cast a warm glow.
    “This came for you,” Catherine said, handing him a square envelope. “Very messy handwriting.”
    No return address, either, Cardinal noticed. He tore it open and pulled out a card decorated with a big red heart. Embossed on the front: It’s been twelve years, honey … And on the inside: … but I still love you like the day we met! Underneath this, someone had written, “See you soon.”
    It was unsigned, of course, they always were, but Cardinal knew who it was from. Twelve years ago he had helped put a man in prison; that man would be out soon. But the crucial message was not on the card, it was on the envelope, inscribed between the lines of Cardinal’s home address: We know where you live.
    Catherine was saying something to him, but Cardinal couldn’t quite focus. His mind was fixed on the events of more than a decade ago, the single biggest mistake of his career—of his life, really. It had cast a pall over every moment since, and now, even though he had tried to rectify it, it was presenting a threat to his home. His refuge, yes; but between his wife’s emotional fragility and the demands of his profession, not an impregnable one.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “What were you saying?”
    “I said Kelly called a while ago. Are you sure you’re all right? What was that card about?”
    Cardinal stuffed the card in his pocket. “Nothing. Garbage. Funny how Kelly always manages to call when I’m out. She must have someone watching the house.”
    “Don’t say that, John. She asked after you. I really don’t think Kelly’s capable of holding a grudge. Not against you, anyway.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “She’s found a new place. Sharing an apartment in the East Village. She says it’s very funky but livable.”
    “God knows why she wants to live in New York in the first place. You couldn’t pay me enough money to live there. Toronto was bad enough.”
    Cardinal went into the bathroom and ran the shower as hot as he could stand it, then turned it gradually colder. The sting of the water restored his spirits a little, but his mind still kept going back to the events of a dozen years ago. He had crossed a line, and when he tried to go back—back to the last point where he had been his real self, his full self—it turned out not to be a line at all, but a chasm.
    Cardinal forced himself to think of the present, of the farce at Loon Lodge. He remembered that just before he had been attacked, a thought had been forming in his mind. Then, as he was rinsing off, the thought came back to him. It had been about Wudky.
    He dried off, wrapped himself in a thick dressing gown and went out into the living room to use the phone.
    “Delorme? It’s Cardinal.”
    “Cardinal, do you know what time it is? Believe it or not, I do have a life.”
    “No, you don’t. I’ve been thinking about Wudky. You know he told us Paul Bressard got himself murdered and buried in the woods?”
    “Wudky is retarded. Everybody knows he’s retarded. I’m surprised you bothered to check his story out.”
    “But look at what we’ve got. We’ve got an American chewed up in the woods, right? Near an old trapper’s shack, right? And Paul Bressard is a