Until the Night by Giles Blunt

this?”
    “As soon as I got home.”
    “And did you advise Mr. Priest of his rights?”
    “I was off-duty, D.S.”
    “Then why did you take notes?”
    “Because I didn’t want to forget, obviously.”
    “No, what you mean is, you took notes because it’s proper investigative procedure. And if you were investigating Mr. Priest, you were under an obligation to inform him of his Charter rights. You went to his home.” Chouinard shot a glance at Cardinal. “I assume you went with her?”
    “Yeah. But he hates me. He refused to talk to us.”
    “Help me out here, Delorme. Where exactly did you talk to this man?”
    “At a pub. The Quiet Pint.”
    “Oh, Jesus.”
    “I just stopped in for a glass of wine and—”
    “This just gets better and better. The Quiet Pint is not a pub, it’s his pub. You show up at the man’s place of work and you start firing questions at him and you don’t advise him of his rights?”
    “D.S., I wasn’t questioning him. He offered to talk to me. Was I supposed to say no, I’m not interested?”
    “No, you were supposed to Charterize him.”
    The D.S.’s voice had gone quiet. Cardinal began to count the seconds until the explosion.
    “It was a conversation . I was off-duty.”
    “And out of the blue he tells you he knows this great place to take abducted women.”
    “No,” Delorme said. “It wasn’t like that.”
    Don’t lose your cool, Cardinal thought. Don’t make things worse.
    “He was annoyed I was there,” Delorme said. “I said it’s a free country. He said, ‘If I tell you about Laura Lacroix, will you leave?’ And I said sure. We were joking, sort of. I thought we were joking. But he told me how he met Laura Lacroix and a bit about their relationship. This guy is totally wired to sex. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff he said to me. Sex with women, sex with men, sex in public, sex outdoors … So I said, ‘If you were going to abduct someone for sexual purposes and take her somewhere, where would it be?’ ”
    “And he said Deep Forest Lodge.”
    “Not exactly. What he said was, ‘I don’t abduct women, but if you want to have sex outdoors, there’s no place better.’ He said it was like being in a haunted house but outside at the same time. I said that sounds horrible and he said some women like horrible.”
    Chouinard was shaking his head.
    “Two years ago we thought we had him for Régine Choquette,” Delorme said. “Well, we thought he was worth checking out about Laura Lacroix. We can’t get a subpoena. I had the opportunity and I asked questions and now we’ve found Marjorie Flint, D.S. We’ve found Marjorie Flint . That’s more than the RCMP and the Ottawa police could do.”
    “And what’s your theory as to why he told you?”
    Delorme sat back. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”
    “It has nothing to do with, say, your physical appearance? Or how you were dressed, perhaps?”
    “What did you say to me? What are you—”
    “D.S.,” Cardinal said, “really.”
    “What really ? Don’t get all equity on me, I’m simply taking into account an officer’s appearance. A huge cop enters a room, it has an effect. A mousy cop enters a room, different effect. A highly attractive female—off-duty, at that—has another effect. Let’s not be stupid and ignore it.”
    “I was wearing a grey suit that I wear to court. Hardly provocative.”
    “That’s a matter of opinion. Some people find nuns pretty hot. Were you trying to turn his crank?”
    “I’m not even going to answer that, D.S. And frankly, you’d better not ask it again.”
    “You watch your tone, Sergeant. Don’t you try going head to head with me.”
    “Most likely just coincidence,” Cardinal put in. “Why Priest told her about the Ice Hotel? It had to be coincidence.”
    “Come again?” Chouinard said. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
    “Despite how it may look,” Cardinal said, “I don’t think Priest had anything to do with Marjorie Flint’s