Murder in Focus by Medora Sale

again, pushed aside the coffee cups, and spread it out on the table. “Look,” he said in a quiet voice.
    He had placed the paper so his superior officer could read it; Deschenes pulled his reading glasses out of his breast pocket and bent over the first page. There, in the bottom right-hand corner, was a picture of “Don Bartholomew,” accompanying what appeared to be a lengthy story on the murder.
    Henri Deschenes shoved the paper away, leaving MacMillan to pick it up and read the text. “Where did they get the picture?” Deschenes asked.
    Charlie Higgs shook his head. “Not from us,” he said. “And I don’t suppose he passed around snapshots of himself to all the boys on the crew.”
    â€œDriver’s license?” said MacMillan. “Some helpful bastard at Regional must have passed it on.”
    â€œSo much for keeping the whole thing low-profile,” said Higgs. “Somebody’s always got to be the clever bastard and screw everything up.”
    â€œI wonder,” said Deschenes. “That’s a pretty high-grade picture of him to be from his driver’s license, wouldn’t you say?” Higgs leaned over and looked again. He nodded. “CSIS has to be investigating. Maybe it’s their file picture of him. Charlie, see what in hell they think they’re doing right now, will you? Send that class of yours off to a spy movie or something and have a look. And, Ian, find out what the regional police have picked up. See if they gave the picture to the papers. I had better talk to Austrian security.” He ran his hand over his forehead. “As my father used to say, “
Il ne me manque que ça
.” [1]
    â€œTo you?” asked Higgs.
    â€œNo,” said Deschenes. “To my mother.”
    â€œAnd what did she say?”
    â€œShe pretended she couldn’t understand him.”
    Wednesday morning’s lecture was on interpretation of intelligence reports—not something, thought Sanders, that anyone in this room was likely to have to do. So Higgs had either run out of useful things to say or he was showing off. Or, most likely, both. But Sanders flipped through his scribbled-on notebook looking for a clean page and waited for the man to say something worth committing to paper. He had begun to feel sorry for Higgs. He knew he was not the only person in the room who failed to find the lectures riveting, and his sketches were a mild protest compared to some of the ways people had chosen to pass the time. So this morning he was going to take some notes—real notes—and try to look at least vaguely interested.
    At the mid-morning break it was evident that the instructor had noticed Sanders’s newly awakened interest.
    The enforced camaraderie of occasions like this brought out all of Sanders’s latent misanthropy, and he had found himself a corner table where he was unlikely to be disturbed. He had barely had time to pull a book out of his pocket as insulation against the world when he felt someone looming over him. “May I join you?” The voice was sharp, unpleasant, and familiar.
    â€œCertainly, Inspector Higgs,” said Sanders, putting aside the paperback with a scarcely audible sigh.
    â€œSanders, isn’t it?” Higgs asked. “Toronto. We were surprised Toronto would send someone of your rank. We expected a retired sergeant when we heard Flanagan couldn’t come.”
    No, thought Sanders, it took Maritimers to have the guts to do something like that. “We are always ready to improve our techniques,” he said. “And it’s an interesting subject.”
    â€œYou seem to find intelligence work more interesting than most of the people here. The response is rather disappointing,” Higgs said bitterly.
    â€œI take it that intelligence is your specialty,” said Sanders, and then wished he hadn’t.
    â€œI’ve been in intelligence for twenty-two