When the Killing Starts Read Online Free

in without hindrance. Stuck in Fred's Toronto apartment, I did the next best thing, pulling a chair out onto the balcony, opening a Labatt's Blue, and sitting looking down on the treetops of the quiet streets below me.
    Fred has a portable phone, so I took it with me and called the detective agency. I reached the answering service, and a woman told me she would give Mr. Broadhurst my message. Fine. So I wouldn't be able to save any steps. I'd have to go the whole distance on my own steam. Question: How?
    The next thing I did was to start making like a policeman. Our national police force, the RCMP, has split off a security force, mostly ex-Mounties but some new men, including a detective I knew faintly when I was a detective myself with the Metro Toronto police. I dug out the little phone book I usually kept in my desk at Murphy's Harbour and rang his office number.
    "Inspector Lenchak here," he said. Bingo. Fate was smiling.
    He sounded laid back. I guessed the long-term pressures of keeping Canada safe from subversion were lighter than the old grind of robberies and homicides he'd worked on in the Metro department. I introduced myself, and he said, "Hey, Reid, nice to hear from you. You're a big deal in the papers."
    "Great," I said. "Maybe I can get my old job back in Fifty-two Division."
    "You wouldn't like it," he promised. "All those old slums have been painted pink and filled up with yuppies. The only excitement you ever get is domestics, some trendy whacking his boyfriend with a squash racket."
    We laughed and reminisced, dredging up the few cases in which we'd both been involved. Then I put my question to him. "In your new job, do you keep tabs on mercenary outfits?"
    "Sure," he said. "Thinking of heading down to Nicaragua or somewhere for some fun in the sun with a gun?"  
    "Nah, but I'm trying to do a favor for some woman. Apparently her kid's joined up with some bunch of Limeys call themselves Freedom for Hire. That ring any bells?"
    "Y'ask me, that's a scam," he said. "Yeah, they popped up about a year ago. Their spiel is they train you, then send you on an assignment. Only thing is, they take the price of your training out of your pay, which comes to them, anyway, not to you. Kind of like being in hock to the Mob. You never get out of debt, the way I hear it. Only you don't know until you come back from getting your ass shot off and find you still owe them money. They pay your airfare and maybe give you a week's training. Then they keep your ten grand or whatever. Big profit margin."
    "And it's running out of Toronto?"  
    "Not exactly. We're just one of their fishing holes. We don't like it, you can guess, but there isn't anything illegal, as you know. They just assemble a bunch of misfits and ship them out. Personally, I think it sucks, but since when did a copper have any say in the way things are run?"
    We agreed on that one, but I had other questions to ask. "Any idea where I can find them?"
    "We don't have an address. The guy in charge, he usually calls himself the Colonel, by the way, his name is George Dunphy. He was a sergeant with the British paras one time. A sergeant, not a colonel. They court-martialed him for brutality to a guy in his outfit. I don't have the details, only that he got a year in the brig, or whatever they call it over there, then he was dishonorably discharged."
    "Sounds like a rounder," I said.
    "For sure. We saw a psychological profile on him. He's a head case. Sadistic, ugly. But he's also cute as hell. Never takes a permanent address. When he's in town, which he is maybe every two months, he moves to a different hotel every day, no forwarding address. Checks in at night so we can't search his room while he's out or anything sneaky. Carries his gear with him."  
    "A moving target. The Brits train their guys well. Tell me, does he have any kind of circuit, any pattern?"
    "It's not a circuit," Lenchak said. "He hits the bars, loser's bars mostly. You won't find him at any