Yves Lamontagne

Yves Lamontagne is 61 and owns the warehouse the federation rents, in rural Quebec, where he was born and where he intends to be buried. The son of a lumberman, he helped his father fell trees until he was 30, when an accident cost him two fingers of his left hand and his taste for the axe. He bought the warehouse with a family loan, rented it to the federation and has lived since then on the rent, when it arrives.

He likes to spend his afternoons in his sugar shack, at the back of the property, a dark wooden shed with a wide chimney, firewood stacked to the ceiling and a ribbon of steam rising from the vent on spring mornings. Inside, an enormous iron pan, a rustic wooden bench and an old radio that picks up only one station. He goes there when he wants to think, or when he wants not to think.

He is a man with a full gray beard, a face reddened by the cold and large, calloused hands. He wears a red wool cap and a green plaid flannel shirt under suspenders, and carries an enormous key ring at his waist that jingles when he walks. Talkative and good-natured, he jokes to avoid answering and distrusts city people.

About the warehouse, his account is that of a relaxed owner: the ones with keys are he and the hauler, two keys, not one more. Here, he says, you only hear rats and wind, and his back creaking in the morning. The federation pays little and six months late, but it is sure money, and at his age sure money is the only kind that matters.

Yves laughs at everything and interrupts himself with a remark about the weather before reaching an answer that would incriminate him. It may be the humor of a country man who finds the police's interest odd. It may be the habit of someone who learned to change the subject at the right moment. The detective will have to decide which.