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Ecw Press - William Deverell

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343 pages

English

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Award winning novelist William Deverell is back with a new Arthur Beauchamp legal thriller.Lawyer Arthur Beauchamp is facing the most explosive trial of his career: the defence of seven boisterous environmentalists accused of sabotaging an Ontario plant that pumps out a pesticide that has led to the mass death of honeybees. The story zigzags between Toronto, where the trial takes place, and Arthur's West Coast island home, where he finds himself arrested for fighting his own environmental cause: the threatened destruction of a popular park. The Toronto trial concludes with a tense, hang-by-the-fingernails jury verdict. Realistic and riveting, Stung is a propulsive legal thriller by a beloved author at the height of his powers.

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Thriller

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	30 mars 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781773057118
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0650€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Stung An Arthur Beauchamp Novel
William Deverell

Contents Dedication Epigraph Part One: Heat of Summer Chapter 1: Rivie Chapter 2: Arthur Chapter 3: Rivie Chapter 4: Arthur Chapter 5: Rivie Chapter 6: Maguire Chapter 7: Arthur Chapter 8: Maguire Chapter 9: Arthur Chapter 10: Maguire Chapter 11: Rivie Chapter 12: Arthur Part Two: Dead of Winter Chapter 13: Rivie Chapter 14: Arthur Chapter 15: Rivie Chapter 16: Arthur Chapter 17: Rivie Chapter 18: Arthur Part Three: Rites of Spring Chapter 19: Maguire Chapter 20: Rivie Chapter 21: Arthur Chapter 22: Maguire Chapter 23: Rivie Chapter 24: Arthur Chapter 25: Rivie Chapter 26: Arthur Chapter 27: Rivie Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright

Dedication
To Jan, in celebration of the love we share. Always, truly, believe . . .

Epigraph
Chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until they emerge and, through the alchemy of air and sunlight, combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells. As Albert Schweitzer has said, “Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.”
— Rachel Carson, Silent Spring , 1962

Part One Heat of Summer

Chapter 1: Rivie
1 Friday, August 10, 2018
So I’m in this gauche, fake-chichi pick-up bar on Queen West, all glass and glitter — it’s called (get ready to barf) the Beaver’s Tail. Five o’clock, and they’re streaming in, the lonely and the desperate, fleeing the cubicles and workstations of their corporate prisons. It’s a steamy mid-summer day, and the place already reeks of sweat and hastily applied deodorant.
Picture this, a kind of selfie: Our heroine commandeers two stools, one with my bag on it, the other propping up my fanny. I am nursing a vodka martini and am perched at an angle to the bar, arms bared to neck, and legs to mid-thigh, by sleeveless top and short skirt, strap-on heels, looking cool, in control, not too obviously hooky.
In a twenty-minute span I have sent off two applicants, slithering moves from snaky sales executives, calmly rebuffed with versions of I-am-waiting-for-a-friend.
Now enters a more interesting candidate for the ineffable charms of Rivie Levitsky — he’s about six-three, manicured beard, longish brownish hair, square of jaw and shoulders, tucking in the tummy as he leads in two male shiny bums: sycophants, by their vibes, underlings to my tummy-tucking target. His suit jacket slung over a shoulder, shirt hanging loose. Distressingly attractive. Mid-forties, that frantic, omnivorous age on the cusp of dwindling powers.
His pals find an empty table on the mezzanine, and he does a slow scan, then — no surprise here — targets my reserved stool on the pretext of ordering from the bar.
“Oh, sorry,” I say as I grab my bag. “I was saving it for a friend who didn’t show.”
And he goes, “He friend or she friend?” Giving me an up-and-down, all five feet, four inches.
“Former friend of the male persuasion.”
“He’s had rotten luck.”
“Why?”
“If he reneged on a date with you he either had a serious accident or a psychotic breakdown. Mind if I take up his empty space?” Deep baritone, suffused with sincerity, like a voice-over in a TV commercial for a pain ointment. “Your martini looks decidedly empty. My pleasure.”
“My mother told me never to accept drinks from strangers.” Says the compulsive flirt. Comes with being aesthetically pleasing like my gorgeous mom, you do it because it’s sort of expected, you learn to enjoy the power.
“Well, my mother taught me to respect the wishes of attractive young women who jump to the ridiculous conclusion I’m coming on to them.”
I laugh, extend a hand. “Hi, I’m Becky.”
“Howie. Howie Griffin. I come with a guarantee — I’m safe. I may be the safest guy in this room.” Loopy grin, minty breath, no wedding ring. Long, strong fingers, like muscular tentacles enclosing my hand. He’s really quite gorgeous, compared to the shots Doc took, mostly out of focus.
“And what makes you so safe, Howie?”
“I run security for a global. Canadian end of it, but they also send me on international troubleshoots.”
He flips me a card: Howell J. Griffin, Director of Security Operations, Chemican-International, Canadian Division, corporate offices in a Bay Street tower. You can reach Howell by phone, fax, text, email, Skype, FaceTime, no mention of carrier pigeons. “For a sustainable planet,” that’s Chemican’s hysterical motto.
I want this macher to think I’m in awe — wow, worldwide! — but I can’t pull it off. I tell him I’m Becky McLean, and I’m a pharmacist’s assistant. “It’s not very glamorous.” Nor is my real job, which doesn’t exist. My degree is in comparative literature, so of course I’m basically unemployed, except for ESL classes for Syrians.
“Not very glamorous?” A glance down, thigh-ward, at the bicycle queen’s legs of steel. “I don’t know — glamour is mostly surface, isn’t it? Hides natural beauty and good taste. I’ll shut up.”
I laugh. “Sure, I’ll have another one. It hasn’t been a good day.”
“Hold that thought, Becky.” He orders “the same for my friend,” a Glenlivet and rocks for himself, and one each for his gawping friends up there. “I’ll be back biggety bang.”
Biggety bang. Howie may not be radically hip, but he’s fairly smart and urbane. Unconsciously chill.
The Beaver’s Tail is crowded now, standing room only, and Howie has to weave and squeeze, holding the two whiskies aloft as he makes his way to the mezzanine to look after his mates.
They’re keen to exchange a few salacious sexisms about me, so his return is more biggety than bang. As he hoists himself up beside me, I can almost smell the testosterone. I hope he doesn’t entertain any antediluvian notions about the meaning of consent.
A little musical ding as he touches his glass to mine. “Your imperfect day, Becky . . . Don’t feel you have to talk about it.”
“You don’t want to hear.”
“The friend who didn’t show?” Looking into the fathomless depths of Agent Levitsky’s darkly brown eyes.
“Yeah, he . . .” I shake my head, look sad, flick back a strand of auburn hair. “How was your day, Howie?”
“Oppressive. Desk was piled a mile high — I just got back from Peru. I have my Spanish, get along in Portuguese, so Kansas City — that’s our head office — has me handling Latin America, putting out fires.”
My eyes widen, a low-key wow reaction. Ghastly.
“So, given that your evening didn’t work out . . . got any plans?”
“Not now.”
“I’m not prying, but . . . let me speculate. Dinner date. He blew you off.”
“You notched it — what am I, a crystal ball? Yeah, we were going to talk things out.”
“I’ve been there, if it’s any consolation. Got laid off in April by the significant other.”
Stage One done. Smooth.
2
So I’m twenty-three, half Howie’s age, but I’ve always had a thing about older men, maybe from my handsome hippie dad, but I got raped by a “mature” writer I used to admire, and . . . Let it go. Or it will eat you up. His next book bombed.
Then I had a bad rebound with a professor who’d taught me nineteenth-century French lit and who was unbearably in love with himself. I am currently without a male companion, and needy but not desperate . . . sorry, Howie.
He retains a gentlemanly aplomb through dinner: gracious, attentive, no flashes of masculine id. We’re in this nouveau Italian place he likes, on Bathurst. He does lamb chops and I stick to my casually observed green diet, a nutty salad. I keep it down to two glasses of Pinot Gris, he goes through the rest of the bottle. And talks. About himself.
He’s a cyberhead, has a master’s in business computing. A jockstrap, handball, basketball, works out at Molloy’s Gym on upper Yonge. Season passes to the Jays and the Chamber Music Society, which seems a weirdly unlikely combination. Keeps a sixty-horse launch at his cottage on Georgian Bay, near a town with a name that goes on forever: Penetanguishene.
His marriage bombed after fifteen years. A sports fan and a classical music enthusiast — sharing season tickets to the Jays and the Chamber Music Society wasn’t the answer to saving their marriage. No kids, but his ex has two grown boys from a previous relationship. He goes on at some length about missing them, seems sincere.
You worry about loosened inhibitions, loosened hands, but the Pinot merely makes Howie a little soppy, carrying on about the ex, Maxine, his failed, brave fight to save their marriage — she left him for a concert violinist. Maxine is a cellist. Thus the chamber music tickets, I guess. Turns out he doesn’t use them, he’s more into jazz and seventies rock — tastes, he’s pleased to learn, that I share.
I counter with my less intriguing ex-partner: a narcissistic doper who wrote cheesy pop songs.
He gives me his loopy, lopsided grin. Kind of cute.
Okay, that’s Stage Two, and now we’re off to his big apartment on Adelaide: uncoolly mannish, wood flooring that clacks under my heels, a honking big TV and stereo; CDs by Oscar Peterson, Django Reinhardt, Sarah Vaughan, and his 1970s rock, Stones, Pink Floyd, Santana, a lot of Dylan and some Cohen, whom I love.
A misty seascape dominates one wall, with breaching sperm whales — which is beyond hypocritical. A baseball in a glass case, signed by one of his heroes.
A big library dominates the opposite wall, adventure non-fiction but also spy no