Dale threw open the lid of the cooler. “Time for a beer, I’d say.”

“A bit early for a brew, isn’t it?” Gus said, laughing.

Dale cracked two big cold ones and tossed one of them to his son. “The fish’ll know if you’re not drinking, kid.”

The two men tipped their cans back into their throats and drank thirstily. Gus finished his in one long gulp. If Dale ever wanted proof that he really was Gus’s dad, he’d need no more than the sudsy smile on that kid’s face to have it.

“Well, if it’s the writer’s body down there, there might be just cause,” said Wingate. “So this is him?” he said, indicating the picture of the man in the parking lot. “He looks like a piece of work.”

“Who the hell fishes muskie with a fly? Who is this idiot?” said Hazel. They read on. At the end of the first section, which had been printed in Monday’s paper, Gus’d had a heavy bite, but when he tried to reel the fish in, his line snapped. The chapter ended with father and son staring at each other in wonderment, and Dale saying: “The fish of our lives is down there, Gus, waiting for us to catch it!”

In the second instalment, the two determined fishermen had rerigged with heavier line and this time, when Gus felt his rod bend against the force of something big, he and his father reeled it in together. The story ended with a shocker.

The big fish – and goddamn if it wasn’t going to be at least a fifty-pounder – had given up the fight. Dale held the net at the ready and said to Gus, “Easy, there, easy, he’ll wake up when he realizes what’s happening.”

It was murky in the water, and father and son looked over into it, anticipating the lunker of all time. But then they saw it, and what they saw stopped them cold.

“Oh god -” said Gus.

The hook was in a torso. A human body. Dale was speechless.

The terrifying vision hung in the water like it was floating in mid-air. Gus saw the body had no head.

“Great,” said Wingate. “I guess we better call the Marine Unit?”

She looked at her watch. It was already seven-thirty. “It’s going to be too dark to look tonight. Get someone up here for first thing and send Barlow home. Tell her we’ll see her in the morning. And hope to hell this thing doesn’t wash up somewhere before we find it.”

4

Charter Anglers operated out of a shack on the shore of Gannon Lake. A couple of white wooden hulls with peeling paint lay on their sides in front of the shop, and below it, at the bottom of a short slope, was the Charter Angler dock with its sign on a post at the end of it. They had a single pontoon boat tied up, big enough for five adults. It was rigged for a trip, with three rods leaning against the back railing. “I thought they were expecting us,” said Hazel.

“I’ll go see what’s happening,” said Wingate. They parked the car on the grass halfway between the dock and the shack. Wingate knocked on the door and went in. A moment later, he was leading a man toward the car.

“This is Calvin Jellinek,” Wingate said, leaning in the driver’s side window. “He says Ms. Barlow called about an hour ago and is feeling too nauseous to come in.”

“You’re going to fuck up my ten a.m., aren’t you?” Jellinek said. The muscles on his arms stood out like cables. He was a strong-looking, squat man with a face ravaged by acne scars.

“Your partner was supposed to take us out.”

“She was, eh? Why do I think that honour’s going to fall to me?”

“Do you know where Ms. Barlow found the… um?”

“I know this lake,” he said. “I can take you anywhere. But why don’t you folks come back at noon? It’s the Saturday of the long weekend. I have customers. Look -” He waved behind Wingate, and Wingate turned to see a woman and two little boys coming down toward them. The boys were wearing one-piece, full-body swimsuits that looked like diving costumes. Overtop of these suits they wore enormous, blocky red life-jackets. “They drove up from Mayfair. It wouldn’t be right -”

“What we’re here for is a little more urgent than catching bass, I think.”

The woman and her kids were standing slightly behind him. The boys were excited. One of them said, “Can I kill them?”

“Be quiet, Tom. You can see Mr. Jellinek is busy.”

Jellinek leaned forward with a pleading look on his face. It was a mean look. “Come on, Officer. Three hours. It means a hundred and fifty in my pocket, and whatever it is you’re looking for, it’ll be there at lunchtime.” He turned to his customers. “You folks just head on down to the dock. I’ll be two minutes.”

“You’re going to have to cancel this expedition, Mr. Jellinek,” said Wingate. “I’m sorry. We’ve got a marine unit coming up from Mayfair – they’re going to be here in about an hour.”

“You going to reimburse me for my lost income?”

“I’m sure these folks’ll make it up to you. Those boys aren’t going to let their mother off the hook.” He immediately regretted his choice of words, thinking of what was lying out there in ten metres of water. “This is more important.”

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. He turned angrily and went down to join his customers. Wingate watched the boys’ faces fall in unison. The littler one started to cry and the mother looked up toward him where he stood on the gravel, her face set in an expression of profound disappointment. He hoped Jellinek wasn’t telling them why the police needed to go fishing. The family walked back up the slope, the boys both with slumped shoulders. The elder murmured “Thanks for nothing,” as he passed.

“I’ll be waiting in my shop,” said Jellinek. “I have another group at two. I hope to hell you’re not going to need more time than that.”

Wingate found a couple of vending machines a few hundred metres down the shore, standing outside a kind of corner store that was closed. He brought back two bags of tortilla chips and two bottles of water, and they sat in the car waiting for the Marine Unit. “My mother’s going to kill you for this,” Hazel said, crunching the chips. It hurt to lean back against the seat, so she was bending forward a little, as if she was expecting Wingate to put a pillow behind her. He had the radio dialled to a local classical music station and inoffensive orchestral music played quietly.

“She’s gotta catch me first,” he said.

“Oh, she’ll catch you,” said Hazel.

Wingate wagged a finger at the radio. “I played sax, you know. I played seriously. I was in my corps’ marching band.”

“I admire that. I don’t have any talents at all.”

“You don’t have musical talent, but that’s probably because you just don’t have room for it given your other talents.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, raising one eyebrow. “You don’t have to butter me up, James. You already have my job.”

“You can have it back, Skip,” he muttered. “Just tell me when.”

The Mayfair cops arrived at ten-fifteen. Jellinek was staring at his watch. One of the cops was wearing a wetsuit under his uniform and as he stripped down to it in the van, his partner, PC Tate, leaned over into Hazel’s window and got caught up. “Buddy’s going to take us out then?” he said.

“Not willingly from the sounds of it. But you take whatever time you need out there.”

“Water’s going to be cold.”

She looked out toward the van where the other cop was transforming himself into a diver. He looked like a larger version of one of the kids who’d come down with their mother. “You guys get much call?”

“Not this time of year,” said Tate. “Mostly it’s going down to hook up a Sea-Doo or a smashed-up motorboat, but that’s in June or July. Over-exuberance, you know, summer arrives and every idiot’s out there gunning it. Once in a while, it’s sad, you know, there’s a real accident, and we get called out to recuperate. But rarely in May.” He lowered himself to see Wingate. “I got a handtruck in the van, but I’m going to need some help getting the winch on it.”