Desperate Acts

Chapter Three

THREE

On the night-shift, Cobb rarely patrolled his assigned area in a set pattern. For one thing, he liked to spend some time in the several taverns and public houses en route - to lend his calming presence and slake his thirst, while picking up any news relevant to crimes committed or contemplated. For another, a repeated routine tended to bore him, and boredom tended to increase the desire to find a snug haven and snooze. But whatever route time and chance prompted, he always managed to pass by or near the two parliament buildings - coming and going. Parliament was due to open, he was told, in two or three weeks, and tensions in the capital between the "loyalists" and the "Durhamites" was already high. In addition to the irksome rash of burglaries along Front Street and elsewhere, veiled threats had been made against the property and sanctity of the Legislature. While Cobb placed no credence in them, he felt it would not hurt to have the uniform of the law be seen nearby with all its conspicuous authority.

The northern perimeter of his patrol did bring him across the street from Government House, but the police happily left the protection of His Excellency and his six-acre park to the regular army. Still, Cobb got a chuckle thinking about the demi-royal residence now being occupied by two bigwigs: Sir George Arthur, the little martinet calling himself Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, and the recently arrived Poulett Thomson, the supreme Governor of both the upper and the lower province. And since it was said the two men were on opposite sides of the Union Bill debate, he wondered what they found to chat about at teatime.

Cobb walked around both parliament buildings, not forgetting the extensive gardens behind them where enemy grenadiers or sappers (or, more likely, a pair of panting lovers) could be lurking, bombs at the ready. Back out on Front Street, he strolled west - wholly at ease and very much enjoying the sudden arrival of Venus and its retinue of stars in the south-western sky. On a whim, or perhaps to delay checking out The Sailor's Arms a block farther on, he swung north up John Street to Wellington. A woman smoking a clay pipe on her verandah waved to him, and he waved back. On Wellington he drifted westward again, thinking mostly about how well Delia was doing in her studies at Miss Tyson's Academy and just how he and Dora might manage her second-term fees.

"C-C-Cobb, come quick!"

Cobb snapped out of his reverie in time to catch young Squealer before the boy tumbled headlong into his robust, belted belly.

"Slow down, lad. You'll injure us both!"

"You gotta come, Cobb, right away," Squealer panted as he fought any breath left in his scrawny urchin's body. He was one of a dozen street kids who hung about the taverns, Court House, City Hall or market in hope of earning a penny running errands and delivering messages.

"Come where?" Cobb said patiently. He knew better than to take the boy's excitement at face value.

"To the Sailor's Arms!" The lad's voice began to rise and splinter (the source of his nickname).

God, Cobb thought, fingering his whistle, not a dust-up or a full-scale brawl this early in a fine Indian summer evening. "What's goin' on in that dive?"

Squealer's cry soared into falsetto: "M-murder! Somebody's gettin' murdered!"

***

Cobb followed Squealer in his best loping trot, constrained as always by the risk of his thick, muscled pot-belly becoming overbalanced and pitching the neighbouring parts in an unfriendly direction. They were rushing down Peter Street and were almost at Front when Squealer wheeled and darted into an alley. With just a second's hesitation, Cobb loped in after him. It was so dark now that Cobb could see only the thrashing of the boy's bare legs just ahead of him. Somehow they managed to avoid stumbling over the discarded crates and barrels that littered this and every other alley in town. Half a minute later Cobb pulled up beside Squealer, and followed his gaze up to a faint light in the second-storey window of a large building.