Downfall Read online

  Praise for Downfall

  “A suspenseful descent into a seldom-examined underworld… Well written and fast-paced.”

  Beverley McLachlin, former Chief Justice and #1 bestselling author of Full Disclosure

  “A well-crafted tale, alive with real characters and a riveting plot, making for another thoroughly compelling read.”

  Rick Mofina, USA Today bestselling author of Search for Her

  “An unsparing exploration of the hostility between those who have it all, the members of an elite golf club, and those who’ve lost it all, the squatters who make the ravine near the club their home. When two of the homeless are murdered, Ari Greene, the new head of the homicide squad, wads up the banal public relations statement he’s been handed and sets out to learn the truth. Rotenberg gets everything right in this stellar novel, but the scene in which ‘The Three Amigas,’ friends since they articled at the same law firm, have a late-night meeting in the firm’s washroom is such a tender evocation of female solidarity that it brought me to tears.”

  Gail Bowen, author of the Joanne Kilbourn Shreve mystery series

  “A riveting read that fired my conscience as well as my imagination.”

  Ian Hamilton, author of the bestselling Ava Lee series

  “Downfall is so much more than a murder-mystery, opening our eyes to what lies in the ravines of our cities and our souls.”

  Norman Bacal, bestselling author of Breakdown and Odell’s Fall

  “There has never been a better time to be swept up in a new novel by Robert Rotenberg. His characters are as real as the city streets they live in: a perfect antidote to a digital world. Leave it to his imagination to spark yours.”

  Dalton McGuinty, former Premier of Ontario

  Praise for Heart of the City

  “The only complaint I ever have about Robert Rotenberg’s novels is that he takes too long between books.… [Rotenberg] makes his legal-cop dramas spot-on for details, along with terrific plots and characters that evolve.”

  The Globe and Mail

  “Pleasantly loaded with [complications], each one delivered in Rotenberg’s swift and sure brand of prose.”

  Toronto Star

  “Rotenberg has created believable and likeable characters, put them into a fast-paced story and sprinkled the mix with astute observations of contemporary urban life. What more can we ask for?”

  Maureen Jennings, author of the Murdoch Mysteries series

  Praise for Stranglehold

  “His fourth and best.”

  The Globe and Mail

  “Readers of all descriptions will get off on Stranglehold’s courtroom drama.… The action is authoritatively presented… and as twisty as anything from Perry Mason’s worst nightmares.”

  Toronto Star

  “Rotenberg was in the business of turning Toronto into fiction before Toronto became stranger than fiction.”

  Metro News

  Praise for The Guilty Plea

  “Not since Anatomy of a Murder has a novel so vividly captured the real life of criminal lawyers in the midst of a high-stakes trial. This is a book that every lawyer, law student, and law professor should, no must, read.”

  Edward L. Greenspan, QC

  “A few lawyers are really expert in managing cases—especially criminal cases—in the courtroom. A small percentage of these are very good at making trials come alive. Robert Rotenberg is one of the few, along with Scott Turow, David Baldacci, John Lescroart. His Guilty Plea is a crackling good read. Plan to keep turning pages late into the night!”

  F. Lee Bailey

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  For my lifelong friends Dr. Cynthia Lazar and Justice Marvin Kurz Generous and caring beyond all measure

  Outside the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto there is a memorial to all the homeless people who have died in the city. Frontline workers and friends have been counting for at least twenty years. The list now has one thousand names. One thousand siblings, parents, children, lovers, friends, many of whom spent the final days of their lives huddled on sidewalks as commuters stepped around them on their way to work. They died in a city awash in money with a skyline dominated by skyscrapers, where condos crowd out more of the daylight with each passing year. There are more than a million empty homes in this country, and on any given night at least thirty-five thousand Canadians are homeless. They pack into overflowing, often dangerous shelters, or they hunker down outside, hoping the elements will be kinder to them than the conditions indoors. Some of them never wake up. Most politicians treat urban homelessness as a permanent and intractable tragedy. They speculate and ring their hands while men and women freeze to death.

  Michael Enright

  Sunday Morning

  CBC Radio

  January 26, 2020

  MONDAY

  1

  Because the subways in Toronto didn’t run early enough, Jember Roshan had no choice but to ride his bicycle to work. His wife, Babita, was not pleased. “In Canada it is dark in November, and you don’t even have a light,” she’d said when he was getting dressed to leave. She was right, of course, but what else could he do? They needed to buy diapers for the twins, and the rent on their one-bedroom apartment was due in a week. “I promise that I will be careful,” he’d told her as he was rushing out the door, but she’d refused to kiss him goodbye. In seven years of marriage, she’d never done that before.

  A week earlier, the weather had turned from breezy fall temperatures to freezing cold. Yesterday, there’d even been a heavy early snowfall that had blanketed the city and closed the airport. Last winter, when he’d felt this kind of chill for the first time, Roshan had rushed out to the Variety Village at the nearby plaza and bought a used ski jacket. It wasn’t warm enough, and now he wore as many layers underneath it as he could.

  He didn’t have gloves, and as he began his thirty-minute ride his hands stiffened on the icy bicycle handlebars. He pedalled hard. This would get his heart rate up and blood flowing to his fingers. Roshan had bought the bicycle at a yard sale for twenty dollars—the man wanted thirty—stripped it down, and rebuilt it from the ball bearings up. He liked to joke with his Somali friends that it was the only engineering work he’d done since coming to Canada.

  It was quiet on the streets of the public housing complex where they lived, but once he got to the main road, the traffic picked up. This was the most treacherous part of his route, with noisy transport trucks whizzing past, leaving little space for a man on a bicycle, the acrid smell of their exhaust filling his nostrils. There were streetlights, but they were wide apart. He kept riding from light to dark and back into the light, the white steam of his breath appearing and disappearing in front of his face, like some kind of magic act at the circus.

  Since his jacket was black, Babita had used her sewing machine to make him a special white T-shirt with reflecting tape sewn onto it. She insisted that he wear it on top of his jacket to make himself more visible, but in his haste this morning, and after their fight, he’d forgotten it. She would be angry with him about that when he got home.

  He waved his left arm in the air as he passed through the dark patches of the road, not that it would do any good. The trucks were driving faster and coming closer, spitting up pebbles that pinged against his bicycle wheels.

  At last he could see the final light stand before the turn onto the smaller, safer road, the next leg of his journey. A
big transport whooshed by and barely missed him. He had become invisible. He had to get to the turn. He pedalled harder. He was heating up. Despite the cold, even his fingers were warming.

  Finally he made the turn. Within seconds, the noise and the smell of the big road fell away. The only sounds were the meshing of his bike gears and the heaving of his breath. There were houses on one side of the road, and he could smell the sweet scent of smoke from a fireplace. He could relax. He felt the tension ease out of his body. He looked up and saw there was a hint of light in the dark sky. Allah had given him another day.

  He always enjoyed this section of the ride. There was almost no traffic. The road curled along the edge of a riverbank, and now he could hear the rushing sound of the water coming up from the valley below.

  In the late spring and early summer, when the sun was up early, he loved the scent of the trees in bloom, the singsong of the morning birds, and the warmth of the humid air. One weekend in July, he and Babita had hiked down to the river with the babies and made a lovely picnic on one of the big flat boulders that lined the shore. They’d had a fine afternoon until a group of homeless men and women showed up on the other side of the river, drinking liquor from open bottles, shouting and fighting amongst themselves.

  Babita insisted they leave right away. As they climbed up the steep path carrying their two crying babies, she fell and scraped her leg. By the time they got home she was exhausted.

  “Why in Canada, where there is so much money,” Babita asked him as she unpacked their uneaten picnic meal, “do people live this way?”

  “There are shelters, but many of these people won’t go,” he told her.

  “Shelters? Where are their families? At home we have poverty, but not like this. Shameful.”

  She was right. He’d had no answer for her. These were the type of troublemakers he had to keep out of the golf club, where he worked as a security guard. Two days ago, one of them had been found dead at the edge of the property. Roshan heard that the man had had his head bashed in by a liquor bottle. Roshan’s boss, Mr. Waterbridge, said it was probably a drunken brawl between two homeless people.

  Roshan was interviewed by a polite young detective named Kennicott. He seemed to be the only person who really cared.

  A car came up behind Roshan and whizzed past, almost hitting him. He tried to steer his bike farther off the road, but there was no curb or sidewalk, only a few inches of gravel, and then the steep riverbank.

  It grew quiet again. He kept pedalling, anxious to get off his bike. In a few minutes he’d be at the club.

  The silence was shattered by a loud rumbling behind him. He swivelled his head to look. A black SUV with large wheels and the driver’s seat high up was bearing down on him. Speeding. It seemed to take up most of the road.

  He waved his arm, but it was still too dark out. Why hadn’t he worn Babita’s white T-shirt? The car’s front window was tinted, and he couldn’t see the driver. As it got closer it passed under a street lamp, and Roshan caught a glimpse of a man driving. He wasn’t looking at the road, but at a cell phone in his hand.

  Roshan waved again. Frantically. He tried to hug the edge of the road and keep his bike straight without wobbling.

  Bang.

  He felt the impact as the vehicle smacked him from behind. The back wheel of his bike popped up and, swoosh, he was thrown off his seat toward the river, like a rock jettisoned from a catapult. In the scant light he spotted a massive tree straight ahead. He hadn’t been able to afford a helmet, so he threw his hands over his face and twisted his body in mid-flight.

  Now he was rolling downhill. The grade was so steep that it was impossible to stop his freefall. In desperation he grabbed a low-hanging branch and tried to hold on to it, but the force of his descent tore him away.

  The sound of the rushing water below grew louder as he plunged down. It was hopeless. In seconds he’d smash onto one of those rocks by the riverside, which would surely crush his head in.

  With one final lunge he kicked out at a tree stump. Crack. His kneecap smashed against it. Pain shot through him like a dagger. “Ahh!” he screamed, even though there was no one to hear him.

  The move slowed his fall. He grabbed for another branch. Please, Allah, please, he prayed as he wrapped his hands around it. For my children, please let me live. He pressed his fingers together to form a grip. Perhaps it was better after all that he wasn’t wearing gloves. But his arms weren’t strong enough. His knee was screaming in pain. He peered down at the unbroken row of boulders below him. He was slipping.

  To one side he could make out something dark and soft-looking. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it didn’t matter. It was his only hope. With one last effort, he swung himself toward it as his fingers peeled away from the branch.

  “Babita!” he yelled as his body flew in the air, as helpless as a parachutist whose chute had refused to open. He closed his eyes, waiting for contact.

  Thud. He landed.

  Not on a rock, but on the dark object. It was spongy, like a heavy pillow. He lay still. Breathing. Listening to the river. Feeling the wind on his skin. A faint smell of alcohol hung in the air.

  He could hear. He could feel the pain searing through his leg. He could see the brightening sky. He could smell.

  Alive. He was alive.

  Clutching his knee, he rolled off the thing he had landed on and swivelled around to look at it.

  “Oh no,” he whispered, a scramble of thoughts and fears rushing through his mind. Although his leg was weak, he willed himself to stand and cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Help!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

  It was useless down here deep in the river valley, the sound of the rushing water drowning out all hope. His leg buckled underneath him. Still he had to try.

  “Please, someone help!” he cried out as he crumbled to the ground. “There is a dead woman down here.”

  2

  Roshan rolled onto his back, raised his knee, and massaged it with both hands. It didn’t help. The pain kept getting worse. The rock he was lying on was covered with shards of broken glass that looked as if they came from a smashed liquor bottle. One piece had cut into the back of his neck.

  What was he going to do? Stuck here, lying next to a dead woman. By the rags she was wearing for clothes and her long, unkempt hair, she appeared to be one of the people who camped out here in the valley. Blood had leaked out from the back of her head. Another broken liquor bottle, he thought. Was this a second homeless person killed in the same way near the golf course?

  He looked around, afraid. Was the killer nearby? But there was no one, just the river, the trees, and the coming light.

  His only hope was that his employer would call Babita to ask her why he was not at work. She would be frantic with fear. Perhaps someone would notice his crumpled bicycle by the side of the road and eventually—who knows how long it would take—find him.

  He laid his head back on the hard rock and closed his eyes. Why had he not worn Babita’s reflecting shirt? Why had he taken this job with such terrible hours? Why had he moved his family to this frigid, remote country? The only thing he wanted in life was to see his wife, hold his children.

  He felt a ray of sunshine on his cheek and opened his eyes. Straight above him he saw a bird flying across the sky, the sunlight illuminating the white underside of its beating wings, flashing on and off like a rotating beacon in the night. How lucky to be a bird, he thought, free to scavenge for food and return home to his family in its nest.

  A light breeze carried with it the foul smell of alcohol coming from the dead body. He tried to ignore it. Instead he listened to the sound of the rushing water behind him. It was hypnotic. Maybe he could fall asleep and this nightmare would end. He started to shiver.

  Through the noise, he heard something else. What was it? Footsteps?

  He pushed himself up to look. A woman was kneeling beside the dead body. Her hair was frazzled. She wore an unbuttoned co
at that looked as if it had once been quite expensive, and many layers of thin shirts underneath that seemed to hang off her like the old clothes his mother used to put on the clothesline back home. Despite her unkempt appearance, the woman had a calm confidence about her. He watched her hold the dead woman’s hand and feel for a pulse, then without hesitation lift her closed eyelids, as if she’d done this many times.

  Where had this woman come from?

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, his voice weak.

  The woman didn’t seem to hear him. She put her ear to the dead woman’s mouth, and then flexed her arm. She lifted the dead woman’s head and examined the back of it. Roshan could see it had been bashed in. She put her ear to the woman’s nose then shook her head.

  “Ma’am,” he said again. Louder.

  She looked back at him.

  “Body is still warm. Rigor hasn’t set in yet,” the woman said. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Roshan. I was riding my bicycle to work. A car knocked me off and I tumbled down the hill.”

  She listened intently. Didn’t move.

  “I thought I was going to die. At the last moment I saw her,” he said pointing to the corpse. “I did not know it was a dead person. I landed on her. I think she saved my life.”

  Without taking her eyes off Roshan, the woman ran her hand over the dead woman’s chest. She nodded.

  Roshan didn’t know what else to say.

  “What happened to your leg?” the woman asked.

  “I hurt my knee when I fell down here. I cannot stand.”

  “Don’t move.”

  Before he could react, the woman skipped toward him, navigating the boulders with speed.

  “Lie back,” she said. She took off her long coat and draped it over him. There was matted fur on the collar and she tucked it under his chin. It felt nice.

  “Try to straighten your leg,” she said, rubbing her hands down his thigh.