Fire on the Runway Read online

  For dearest Carol

  We live in a fireproof house,

  far from inflammable materials.

  A vast ocean separates us from Europe.

  — Senator Raoul Dandurand,

  Canadian delegate to the League of Nations

  Thirty-three kills.

  Eight years after the Armistice, thousands of vets — even police officers like myself, who still had charge of firearms — were able to go weeks or months at a time without thinking about soldiering. There were so many newer things to think about — sheiks and flappers, insulin and contract bridge, the radio-relayed voices of Al Jolson and Binnie Hale. Not to mention feats of aviation. Alcock and Brown’s crossing of the Atlantic, Alan Cobham’s flight to Australia, and the exploits of Christopher “Kip” Whitehead.

  But for me, with Kip it was different. He hadn’t let his war record define him, but even to say as much was to bring that record to mind.

  Unlike so many ace fighter pilots, Whitehead hadn’t let peace throw him into a tailspin. Not that I was on intimate terms with the man. I’d only met him at Remembrance Day observances — plus that one time when as investigating officer I’d helped him recover a rather costly stolen car. But as far as I could see he’d mastered the art of taking orders from bureaucrats untried in battle. No one who’d partied with him suggested he was either boozy or quarrelsome. Much as he’d taken to combat, Kip appeared not to have brought back to this side of the Atlantic any surplus aggressive spirit that could injure his countrymen, his loved ones, or himself.

  Aggressive spirit he’d had in spades in wartime, the measure of it trumpeted in every news story. Thirty-three Austro-Hungarian pilots machine-gunned or driven down out of control. Or burned alive in their machines. Even allowing for some padding of the numbers, that’s a toll to make you think. In peacetime, the only man to match it would be the public hangman. I’m not calling Whitehead an executioner. He was a pilot; we were at war. Where he sat, it was kill or be killed. But to wear that number for the rest of your life...? I’m not sure how I’d have borne up.

  We in the infantry didn’t especially keep track, neither I nor the soldiers I led. Sometimes you just didn’t know if the bullet or bomb you sent off found its man. And then the targets were less valuable. In the air, every kill meant the destruction of a plane worth upwards of £5,000. Every enemy pilot was an officer, an asset in whom specialized training had been invested. Can you compare those prizes with the conscript private in his first trench, his few, cheap weapons to be stripped from his corpse for reuse by the next to die?

  I’m not saying Kip’s conquests were any cause for regret. I admired them. As a fighter on the same side (albeit on a different front), I was grateful for them. At the same time, mention of his name tended to prepare my ear for sounds of battle.

  Be they ever so faint.

  I felt like the only witness. Lifting my eyes from the Examiner, I looked out of the Queen streetcar just in time to see a window blown out of the end of the Beaconsfield Hotel. No one else seemed to notice. The accompanying blast, I’ll give you, was muffled — not crisp like an engine backfiring in the street or one of the pyrotechnic bangs in the sky on Victoria Day. Still, it surprised me that no other passengers reacted. Perhaps they were preoccupied with the September heat wave, or the jobs they were rolling towards for the last time before the Labour Day long weekend, or what appliances were on sale at Eaton’s department store. My own thoughts were running along less tranquil lines. I’d just been reading an article about one of our war heroes.

  Christopher “Kip” Whitehead had just completed the first non-stop solo flight from Calgary to Toronto. Or was it the fastest? Aeronautical records were being set monthly, and it was hard even for newsmen to keep up. Either way, the dashing RCAF wing commander and former fighter ace was adding to the prestige of his country’s spanking new air force. Fret as the brass might about the leave he required for his “stunts,” the public loved him — loved him all the more for the easy way he bore their attention. Take this day’s page-one photo of him standing in front of the confection of wires and wooden struts that made up his Curtiss Canuck biplane. His hair’s still tousled from the leather flying helmet he’s just peeled off. You can see it dangling from his left hand. His right arm is squeezing the waist of his young wife, and they’re grinning at each other like a couple of dizzy kids. At the same time, you can tell she’s a postwar, modern woman: her no-nonsense grip on the wrench in her right hand shows that, like her sisters that kept the munitions factories running, she’s ready for man’s work — specifically for work on her man’s machines. Envious? Let’s just say my own social calendar for the holiday weekend still had a few blanks.

  I was happy for him. Kip Whitehead was on top of the world, even before his next announced venture: a flight to the North Pole. A story of high spirits and adventure — danger, but not combat. And yet I never forgot that Kip’s first fame and achievement was as a warrior.

  That’s where my mind was when at 8:45 on a Friday morning — with no more than a dull thump and a tinkle — glass from one of the hotel’s second-storey windows burst out in shards to fall onto the roof of the butcher shop adjoining. Dark smoke puffed from the opening, smudging the cloudless blue sky.

  I was on my way to work, late. What awaited me at police headquarters was a desk piled with reports of traffic fatalities. The city had few more roads than when I’d joined the force, but there were six times as many cars negotiating them. To keep things moving, the speed limit had been raised from fifteen to twenty miles an hour, which meant carelessness more often resulted in death. My current assignment was to recommend whether manslaughter charges should be laid against any of the drivers. As such charges rarely resulted in convictions, it seemed like futile bother. Here, in contrast, was a situation requiring immediate action. This was more like the work I’d signed on for. I showed my badge to the conductor, who signalled the motorman to stop the car and let me out.

  The unscheduled halt attracted more passenger attention than the explosion itself.

  “What’s wrong? What’s the trouble?” A woman seated by the rear doors tugged at my sleeve while pinning a squirming child to her lap with her other hand.

  “Nothing to worry about,” I assured her as the doors closed behind me.

  Traffic was heavy but slow, and my raised palm — police training, day one — persuaded drivers to let me cross the street.

  As far as I was concerned, there was plenty to worry about. First, the possibility of life-threatening injuries, which counselled a speedy inspection of the site. Second, the possibility of further explosions, which counselled caution. I was hoping whatever else was involved that nothing had caught fire; happily, when I got my nose through the door, no whiff of smoke reached it.

  The Beaconsfield, located on that stretch of Queen between the Parkdale railway station and the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, looked to be a second-rate hotel on its way to third-rate. I’d lived in worse. The deskman was no more alert than you’d expect. He knew nothing of an explosion. He knew of nothing on the second floor capable of exploding. I got him to call Police Station Number Six for a couple of constables, but didn’t wait for them before climbing the stairs. The elevator was signed “Out of Order.”

  Cursing the regulations that forced me to wear a wool suit in this heat, I went up at a run.

  The second floor corridor was empty at the stairwell end. But when I looked left, at the farther, eastern end, I made out a man lying on the floor and another standing over him. I couldn’t see a weapon in the standing man’s hands. You can bet, though, I watched them closely as I walked towards him. My own service revolver was in my desk at City Hall, more than two miles down the street.

  The
combination of hard shoe leather and carpetless floor made stealth impossible. The standing man turned at the sound of my footsteps.

  “Police,” I called. “Step back, please.”

  The standing man turned a pale, shocked face my way. He looked about ten years my junior, no more than twenty-four or -five. He didn’t move.

  At the same time, a door to my right opened, hinged ahead of me so I couldn’t see in.

  “What is it, Floyd?” a high, anxious voice called from the room.

  “Stay inside, Jenny. Shut the door, and go back inside, there’s my girl.”

  The door closed partway.

  “Do as he says, ma’am.” I had come level now with the doorknob. I pulled it till the door clicked shut, then took a step back. “Now, Floyd, walk towards me.”

  He did so, looking grateful for direction.

  “Good. Do you have any weapons, Floyd?”

  “Weapons? No. Oh God, he’s a mess. I can’t tell you. He’s just ...”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m going to have a look. Go back in your room and stay there with Jenny. Shut the door and wait until someone comes to question you. Will you do that?”

  “Are you really police?”

  “Detective Sergeant Paul Shenstone.”

  He went into his room and shut the door.

  I watched to see it didn’t open again as I approached the man on the floor, although I was pretty sure by now that Floyd and Jenny were innocent honeymooners and that simple curiosity had brought Floyd into the hall when he heard the explosion.

  I walked around the man on the floor and crouched down. He was a smallish man, narrow shouldered and not more than five foot five or six inches tall. He looked as if he’d been caught holding a grenade. His right hand and wrist were gone, the arm partially severed at the shoulder. Shrapnel had shattered his lower jaw and left his grey shirt front a bloody mess. Once convinced that the compression of the blast had flattened his lungs for good, I lost interest in his lesser wounds and turned my attention to his surroundings. Only half the glass of the hall window had been blown out, that mainly at chest level and to the side away from Queen Street. The door of the end room on that side of the hall had been knocked off its hinges and lay not quite flat inside the room. At the end farthest from me, something was propping it up. I stood and stepped closer to have a look. What I saw restored my sense of urgency. Bare legs and the lower part of a body skirted in rust-coloured fabric were sticking out from under the door.

  I grabbed the bottom of the door and, twisting to the right, leaned it up against the jamb, uncovering the rest of the woman. She lay on her stomach, her left cheek to the floor, her left arm bent above her head as if to fend off the falling door. I didn’t see any blood or feel any dampness beyond perspiration when I ran my hands underneath her. But her skin from ankles to eyelids was the colour of mashed potatoes. Her eyes remained closed when I turned her over. She was breathing, at least. Shallowly, but breathing.

  I glanced down the empty hall and listened. Traffic noise drifted up from Queen Street; no sound of movement came from the building. More men with explosives might be lurking behind closed doors, but I shoved that risk to the back of my mind as I tried to coax the casualty back to consciousness.

  “Open your eyes now.” I cradled her face between my hands and turned it towards me. While nothing could feel cool at this day’s temperatures, her skin lacked any animal warmth. “Can you hear me? Miss! What are we going to call you?”

  No answer. I remembered the number I’d seen on the door.

  “Knock, knock, Room 29. Time to wake up in there.”

  Not even a flicker of the shades.

  I let her head settle back onto the floor and picked up her left wrist. Her arm was loose and limp. “Or I could call you Raggedy Ann,” I said. “Do you have a pulse?” I groped for what I thought was the radial artery. Nothing. Anxiously, I pressed harder, hard enough to obliterate any pulse there was. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and tried again. There — a feeble excuse for a pulse. “That’s it, miss,” I urged. “Keep pumping.”

  I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. Reassuring to me at least; she didn’t give any sign one way or the other. She was breathing; she had a heartbeat. Still, we didn’t want her slipping deeper into coma. I gave the flesh on the inside of her left forearm a pretty hard pinch. Her arm pulled away. I pinched again. This time, besides pulling away, she rubbed the place with her right hand.

  A plaintive string of syllables came from her mouth. I couldn’t make anything of them. They were either a foreign language or disoriented gibberish. We were getting somewhere, though. I guess I was feeling less apprehensive about her, because I took half a second to notice that it was a sweet mouth, with a slight peak in the middle of the upper lip.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked her. “I’m betting your eyes are blue.”

  Miss 29’s eyes opened. They were grey, without a trace of blue, a grey I’d never seen in eyes before; they looked like they came from a hundred million miles away. They weren’t focusing yet.

  I moved my hand from side to side in front of her face. “Try to follow my finger with your eyes,” I said.

  She said something I couldn’t get. Her eyes didn’t move.

  “What’s all this?” A gruff, none too happy voice behind me.

  I turned to see the broad figure of a uniformed policeman looming over me, with the less substantial desk clerk hovering in the background.

  I showed the copper my badge, which transformed his demeanour from scowling to deferential. “Looks like a Mills bomb killed one, concussed another,” I said, judging from the lines in his forehead he was old enough to know what a Mills bomb was. “And you are?”

  “Constable Rutherford, sir.”

  “Did you hear what language this woman was speaking?”

  “Could it have been French? Or possibly Eyetie?”

  “Français?” I asked her. “Italiano?”

  She stared blankly.

  “Didn’t think so. You come alone, Rutherford?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m all Parkdale could spare till they knew what the situation was.”

  “The situation is I have to get this woman to medical attention, so you’re taking over here. Call for what reinforcements you need. Notify HQ. Try to get a police photographer to record the position of the body. Don’t let it be moved till he’s done. I don’t want guests from any of the rooms on this floor leaving the building till they’ve been identified and questioned. There’s a young couple in number 26; the clerk will tell you which of the other rooms are rented out. Get him to open up the vacant ones too so you can sniff around. Then get everything you can out of the clerk himself. You there?”

  “Me?” The clerk had a foolish Kaiser Wilhelm style moustache turned up at the corners of his mouth and a crusted-over cold sore on his upper lip.

  “You rent a room to the man lying there? Don’t look at his mouth; focus on his nose, eyes, forehead, hair, build.”

  The clerk looked at the corpse, then looked away and made a choking sound.

  “All right, don’t upchuck on my brogues. Go call me a taxi, then come back for another look. And don’t let anyone check out of the hotel till they’ve seen me or this constable.”

  The Kaiser beat a retreat to the ground floor.

  “While he’s on the phone, Rutherford, you go through the deceased’s pockets to see what we can learn about him. Now, miss. How about trying to sit up?”

  I had no confidence that my words meant a thing to her, but my arm under her shoulders gave her the idea, and she managed it. Her expression was vacant, and her legs stuck straight out in front of her — an improvement on her previous posture even if now she looked more like a doll than ever. Relief made me smile. While her head was clearing, I took my first good, long look at her.

  Her hair was dark, wavy, and medium short. An arrow-shaped nose ran straight and strong down the middle of an oval face to that arresting upper lip. Her arms and leg
s appeared capable and sturdy. There was nothing frail about her.

  She looked, however, as if she’d been through it. Her complexion was rough, her cheeks deeply pitted. Dark circles, accentuated by her pallor, hung beneath those distant eyes. Creases bracketed her mouth. I had called her miss because she wore no jewellery on her ring finger, but she had evidently lived years beyond girlhood. Years without pampering. While I’m no expert on women’s clothes, hers looked as if they’d been bought at deep discount from a department store basement. Her short-sleeved dress of thin, rust-coloured rayon had a fashionable low waist and sailor collar with matching tie, but was sloppily stitched at the shoulders. She wore no stockings, and her flimsy black T-strap shoes were mended with polish-blacked sticking plaster.

  “What are you finding, Constable?” I asked over my shoulder.

  The constable was plodding through every pocket of the deceased man’s leatherette billfold. “Forty dollars and seventy-eight cents, sir.”

  “No driver’s licence, passport, business cards, receipts, or train tickets? No scribbled notes of names, addresses, telephone numbers? No snaps of loved ones?”

  “None of ’em.”

  “No army discharge papers? Looks like he could have used a refresher course in grenade throwing.”

  Rutherford held the empty wallet out to me. “See for yourself, sir.”

  “Get started on the other jobs then — and wish me better luck with the foreign lady’s handbag.”

  “Think he meant to heave the egg over the transom, sir, and hung on too long?”

  I looked above the door opening. A rectangular window, hinged along the bottom edge, stood open at a forty-five degree angle into the room. Evidently the glass had been sheltered from the blast and remained intact.

  “That’s as good a theory as any until we find out what she knows about it.”

  On the dresser in her room, I found a cloche hat in grey felt. Beneath it lay a small beaded handbag — containing only her room key and even less cash than the dead man’s wallet. A twenty-four inch brown fibre suitcase stood in a corner. I was just about to try the catches when the case’s owner made a protesting noise.