Free Lake on the Mountain: A Dan Sharp Mystery by Jeffrey Round Page B

noticed — who knows, maybe the former hustler had gone undercover after all these years — then left, heading for his counselling session.
    Dan’s work offered the weekly sessions to help employees deal with the supposed stress of their jobs. His employer was considered progressive. Words like “wellness” and “holistic” were floated freely around the office. Currently, however, Dan’s counselling had also become “compulsory” after he dented a filing cabinet with his fist.
    Two days before that incident, he’d successfully tracked down the spouse of a client who warned him that her husband, a manic-depressive, had left home without his meds. Twelve hours after being freed from a rehab centre, the man turned up a suicide in a west end back alley. It came as a complete shock to himself and everyone else when Dan spun around and slugged the cabinet.
    A superior with fifties hair, a Father-Knows-Best attitude, and a pro-counselling bias decided to make Dan an example. “You’re letting this get to you,” he said from the far side of the room where Dan stood nursing his knuckles.
    Dan was livid. “You’re goddamn right I’m letting it get to me! This should never have happened. Who ordered this man released?”
    “Calm down, Daniel.”
    “Fucking hell I’ll calm down!” This time he kicked the cabinet, caving in one of the lower drawer fronts as though it had been to blame.
    The others moved away, leaving him alone to carve out his self-destruction.
    “It’s unfortunate, I agree. But these things happen.” The supervisor moved in on Dan as though he were a dangerous psychopath he intended to disarm.
    “That’s bullshit! Anyone with a history of mental illness is a critical case. This is a fucking tragedy. He should never have been let go without someone telling me or his wife!”
    All his years of service would not buy his way out. The die had been cast, the hammer set to fall with a resounding crash. The incident got him six months’ mandatory counselling and replacement costs for the cabinet. He’d resisted the counselling but, faced with the alternative of suspension, he relented. At least they were paying for the sessions. Reluctantly, he attended the weekly meetings, though it was seldom his work Dan wanted to talk about.
    He approached Queen’s Park, a miniature forest in the city’s heart. A mounted statue of Edward VII towered over crisscrossing paths, transported from Delhi when India left the Commonwealth, like the prize in a prolonged custody dispute from a messy divorce settlement.
    It was here that Dan had slept on the hard benches his first night in the city, while crepuscular figures flitted like moths in the dark. It wasn’t till later he’d learned the intent of the men prowling the darkened pathways like vampires, but in search of a different kind of life-giving fluid.
    Through the trees the sky was a honed blue, a nice ending to the day if you had nothing troubling you, but Dan knew by the time he finished his counselling session it would be dark, in keeping with his mood. After his hour with Martin, he’d walk back across Wellesley to the bars on Church Street and show them the picture of the young runaway. After an hour with Martin, he’d need to spend time in a bar.
    He passed the brown brick residence at Whitney Hall where he’d met Arman and Kendra. After all this time the apple tree outside the porter’s office still flourished in the back courtyard. A few crabbed globes clung to its scaly branches. It felt strange to look up at the corner window and know his son had been conceived there out of his own macho drunkenness.
    Arman was currently in Dubai. A brilliant IT worker, he was shipped from port to port at great expense. He’d slipped out of Dan’s world completely and married a woman chosen by his family, though by all accounts they were happy. Unlike his renegade sister, Arman had no compunction about doing what tradition expected of him. If things had been