Free Blood on a Saint by Anne Emery

for details.”
    “And you told this to the police.”
    “Yes.”
    “Have they contacted you again?”
    “No.”
    “They will. They’ll want you as a Crown witness for the preliminary inquiry and, if things go that far, for the trial.”
    “Crown witness! The British Crown.”
    “Well, even though the style of cause is Regina v. Podgis , it won’t be Her Majesty sailing over on the Royal Yacht Britannia in a wig and gown to prosecute the case. She has people who do that sort of thing for her. You are familiar with our Crown prosecutor service, I believe.”
    Brennan was all too familiar with it, from his own time in the dock. But that was in the past. Now the tables were turned. He could imagine the reaction he would get from his Irish Republican relations in Dublin, if they got word that he might be an informer for the peelers, for the Crown! It did not bear thinking about.
    He changed the subject and talked music with Collins until they got to the Athens for their dinner.
    Monty
    The Crown prosecutor would be busy trying to find out whatever he could about the accused, Pike Podgis. For his part, Monty had to find out whatever he could about the victim, Jordyn Snider. About the people in her life, about other possible suspects. Suspects he could dress up and parade before the jury, figuratively anyway, as people who might really have committed the murder, while poor Pike Podgis had to endure the slings and arrows of a miscarriage of justice. In the usual course of things, the first suspect in a killing of this kind was someone closely associated with the victim: husband, boyfriend, ex-boyfriend.
    If there was one part of his job Monty detested, it was knocking on doors interviewing witnesses, or informants, or gossips, about a case. It was something he seldom had to do, but this time it could not be avoided. He had had a brief appointment with Podgis, told him what he was going to do, then hustled Podgis out of the office, so he could get to work. He had to learn more about Jordyn Snider and her circle of acquaintances. It sounded mercenary to put it this way, but the more questionable the background, the bigger the pool of other suspects.
    Monty had put it off by starting with her teachers earlier in the day on Tuesday. But none of them seemed to know her well. She had moved to the Fairview area of Halifax just before high school. The principal of the school said the family had lived southwest of the city in Tantallon before that; if Monty did not get anywhere with her acquaintances from age fourteen to nineteen, he might go back to her time in Tantallon. But he hoped that would not be necessary. She had followed a patchwork program of studies in grades ten to twelve, with a few academic courses supplemented by offerings called Contemporary Life Issues and Diversity in Community. She graduated, but barely, with an average of fifty-four. Her highest mark was in Audiovisual Explorations, her lowest in Math Studies. That did not sound like real mathematics to Monty; did they just talk about math and not actually do it? She missed many, many days from school and did not spend much time in conversation with her teachers. She tended to sit in the back of the class when she was there, and fiddle with her hair and makeup. Her parents had never attended any of the parent-teacher nights or other school events, as far as anyone could recall.
    Now, on a long street of rental properties in Fairview, just off the Halifax peninsula, Monty was introducing himself to Rhonda Hillier, in the apartment next to that of the Sniders in their building. But Rhonda was not all that forthcoming.
    “I know you have a job to do, and you have to act for her killer, but — ”
    “I represent the person accused of the crime, but of course I believe the police arrested the wrong man. So anything I can learn about Jordyn might, I hope, lead to the real killer. The first place to look, of course, is boyfriends or old boyfriends.”
    “Oh, I