She let Ferguson lead her up to their bedroom for a “cuddle.” It was all she could do anymore, in her state of health. It was all he could manage to do with her to keep the marriage alive and her money in his life.
He didn’t know why he had let her gain the upper hand. She was so weak and vulnerable. But the money made her strong. She knew it, and he knew it. The money. How much stronger he would be if it were his.
Chapter 22
While Gus puzzled over her patches, Ian, Hy, and Jamieson were crowded into the tiny back room. Ian got on the iMac and began to fiddle around, clicking and scrolling, emitting the occasional “Hmmm.” Every time he did it, Hy and Jamieson thought he might have found something. They’d lean forward over his shoulders and peer at an always-blank screen.
After a while, Hy became fed up and was about to slump down on the daybed along the inside wall with its faded white shingles. It had once been the outside wall of the built-in back porch. The day bed was piled high with patches, plastic bags full of folded material, thick rolls of cotton lining and baskets of thread. She began clearing herself a space when her hand struck something hard. She drew the hand up to her mouth and pressed on it to diffuse the pain. She looked down. A piece of black plastic or metal was sticking out from under a half-pieced quilt top. She reached down and grabbed it.
Her brow wrinkled. She turned the object over. Her face cleared. She addressed the backs of Jamieson and Ian.
“Look what I have here.”
Ian and Jamieson spun around. As soon as he saw it, Ian grabbed at it. Hy pulled back playfully, keeping the treasure out of reach, teasing him. Jamieson looked bewildered.
Hy let Ian have the box.
“The back-up,” he explained to Jamieson. “The files may be on this.”
“Or there may be nothing.” Hy grinned as Ian shot her a hard look.
There was a lot more than nothing. There was what appeared to be everything. Files from Dot, Finn, and Abel.
Ian went straight for Abel’s email. Jamieson turned her head away. She didn’t want to be an accomplice to someone hacking an email account.
She might not have to worry about that. Ian wasn’t having any luck.
***
When Seamus opened the apartment door, he was shocked to see no one in the room. No one in the bathroom either. Panicking, he looked under the sofa, under the bed. He even checked the side of the bed, but all he saw were sheets.
Then he heard a groan – coming from under the sheets. He flipped them up, and found the old man lifeless on the floor.
Lifeless? Dead? Please, God, no. He had wished it more than once. Thought about how he’d do it, even. It wasn’t conscience stopping him. He had too much on his hands already. Now this.
Another groan. A good sign? His mind raced briefly with the idea of concealment if the old man died, but it would never work. He’d be in enough trouble already when what he’d been up to at fisheries was revealed. He couldn’t conceal a dead man.
He pulled out his cellphone and called 911.
***
Having no luck in busting into Abel’s email, Ian followed his tracks elsewhere on the computer. Abel could be seen more clearly here than in any other part of the house, his land, or the village. Here he was…ninety-two…and exploring…what exactly was he exploring, and would it help them find him?
“What is this?”
Ian had opened a file dedicated to the most unusual sea creatures in the world. It contained a stunning series of photographs of unimaginable creatures, like bizarre inhabitants of a future underwater world. If the site was to be believed, and it certainly looked authentic, these creatures existed here on earth…or, rather, in its waters.
The three gazed, transfixed, as a slideshow of the creatures filled the screen.
“The polychaete worm,” Ian was reading, part skimming the article as all three gazed transfixed at the ugly creature – pink, reflecting rainbows off a shiny slippery skin. “A relentless predator, able to turn itself inside out to grab its prey.”
“Yech.” Hy shuddered. Jamieson struggled to maintain her composure. As a police officer, she’d run into a number of ugly sights, but nothing like this. Carnivorous coral, vampire squid from hell.
There was a long list of links… Biggest Cod Ever Caught in Germany… Biggest Cod Ever Caught in England… Biggest Cod Ever Caught in Norway.
A big hole in Abel’s life. He might have caught the biggest cod ever in North America, in the world, but he hadn’t. It had got away.
“Do you think Abel’s left the island?” Ian was scanning the list of places big cod had been seen. Red Island wasn’t one of them.
“Where would he go?” Hy was reading over Ian’s shoulder. “How would he get there?”
“The same as anyone else…car, boat, train, and plane.”
“Not plane,” Gus interrupted, drawn to the back room in search of thread. “Abel never went on a plane and never planned to.”
“Might he…maybe with Dot?” The idea came on Hy suddenly. It leapt from her mouth.
“You think Dot is part of this?” Jamieson’s interest was piqued.
“I think we should consider it. They disappeared at the same time.”
“She left afore. And she said goodbye.”
“Not to Finn.” Hy thought Finn might have seen through that goodbye. Asked questions.
“We’d have heard.” Ian was still working the keyboard. “She’d have let us know something. She wouldn’t leave us to worry over Abel, over something as stupid as a big fish.”
“Now don’t you let him hear you say that,” Gus cautioned.
How could he hear? If the clues were any indication, he was miles from here.
“Anyway, you better get that machine back in the kitchen and give me back my aquarium and my Skype. I’ll be wanting to hear from Dot whenever she gets where she’s going. I can look at all the pretty fish while I wait.”
Hy had tried to contact Dot, to tell her that her father was missing, but she’d had no luck. No answers to text messages. Voice mail full up and not recording any more. Jamieson had checked the airlines and car rentals. No one had a record of Dot. She might have paid with cash, thought Hy. She did know that if Dot wanted to reach her, she would. She hadn’t. That silence might be a clue that she was with Abel, a possibility Hy hadn’t considered until now.
When Ian had set up the computer in the kitchen, he tried to Skype. Dot was on the contact list. It wasn’t a list. She was the only one on it. But she was offline.
“I know. Why didn’t I think of it?” Ian clicked to Abel’s email account and typed in the password, “Abel Mack.”
The account opened. He shook his head. “As simple as that.”
There were a few junk mails, accumulated since Abel’s disappearance – and one from the Department of Fisheries. He opened it.
“Hi, Sir,” it began.
“Hi, Sir?” Hy groaned. “Give me a break.” She hated the “Hi” salutation anyway. Thought it ridiculous. But “Hi, Sir?” Even more so.
“The Department of Fisheries is interested in your experience with a large cod thirty years ago. Could you please inform us as to the location of your catch?”
Hy leaned in to look at it. Jamieson was tempted but still wasn’t sure the role she should play, whether she should sanction hacking.
“I bet he didn’t answer it,” said Hy.
“He didn’t.” Ian made a check of Sent Mail. “He’s never sent anything, or else he erased it all.”
“The sender?” Hy asked.
“Seamus O’Malley.”
Hy looked surprised. “Seamus O’Malley?”
“You know him?”
“A bit.” There was a lot of Seamus O’Malley to know, she thought.
O’Malley was looking for the fish – through Abel Ma
ck. It occurred to Hy that Ferguson had been looking for Abel, too, at the hall that day.
Were they all after the fish?
***
Seamus paced back and forth between the door of the apartment and the old man lying on the floor behind the bed. He considered pulling him out by the feet but didn’t. If the man were dead or dying, whatever he did might be incriminating.
He felt helpless. The helplessness was chased away by panic when the sound of the ambulance siren pierced the air and came closer, more insistent with every second.
What should he say? What was this man doing here, unconscious or worse, in the government hospitality suite?
He took several long, deep breaths to calm himself. He couldn’t possibly answer all these questions. Start with the most important, the most immediate.
Who was the man? What had happened to him? When had he found him? What had he eaten or had to drink?
The questions kept piling up. All this trouble, and he had no idea yet whether he was going to get his cod or not.
The alarm came screaming through the screen window. Still, The Hat Man did not budge. Deeply unconscious, he must be. Either that or dead.
***
Germaine always moaned after one of Estelle’s “stick to your ribs” meals – in this case, macaroni and cheese, neither of which, as a heart patient, he should have been having. Estelle said she didn’t “hold with that.” The entire village had been brought up on macaroni. The good stuff. Not that stuff in a box the kids all wanted today.
So there they were, Germaine and Estelle, sitting as they did every night; he was moaning and occasionally burping and farting his appreciation of a fine meal. They were watching television, a local reality show. It was called Who’s Your Father? It was the first question strangers asked when they met on Red Island. A first salvo. If you knew who someone’s father was, you likely knew who they were, or someone who knew who they were, or someone they knew who knew their father – or maybe you actually knew them. Something like that.
The TV show brought together complete strangers, one an islander, the other a former islander or someone descended from an islander living away. The one who made the connection first was the winner and went on to challenge another stranger. In the final fifteen minutes of the show, if neither contestant had found the link between them, the game was thrown open to the audience, to phone in or tweet. The show catered to an aging population. They were more likely to call than to tweet.
“I know, I know, I know.” Estelle bounced in her seat. Germaine paid her no attention. She always did that at this point in the show. She never knew but always claimed she had known, that it was “on the tip of her tongue.” She’d pout at the contestant who, unfairly she felt, had stolen her victory by shouting out the right answer.
“I knew those Beirstos, father and son, cousins of my uncle’s mother, well, her that was married to the other side of the fambly…” Estelle muttered as she stood up to turn off the television, when a moan came from Germaine that sounded like something more than appreciation of a fine meal. She looked over at him. His face was red, his hand on his heart. She leapt out of her chair and swooped down on him.
He was having palpitations.
Germaine had undergone a quadruple bypass a couple of years before.
Estelle knew paramedic Nathan Mack’s phone number by heart. If she could stop her hands from shaking, she’d get through in no time.
***
It wasn’t until he heard the creak of the elevator door and the pounding of the paramedics’ feet coming up the stairs that Seamus realized his man could be identified. With hands trembling, he searched in the bright yellow jacket for a wallet. It wasn’t hard to find. A wallet fat with bills. Thousand dollar bills. No longer minted, but still good currency.
How many thousands?
Pounding footsteps.
Trembling fingers, tearing at a bill. Just a few. In a wad that thick, they wouldn’t be missed.
If the man could even remember he had them at all.
Seamus took some more.
Footsteps coming closer. He stuffed the bills in his pocket and fumbled through the rest of the wallet. No health card. No driver’s license. No ID of any kind.
He slipped the wallet back in the jacket pocket as the knock came on the door.
On an impulse, he hid in the large antique wardrobe, just managing to squeeze in. He didn’t want this sticking to him. The walls of the wardrobe already were.
***
Jamieson had tried to track down O’Malley through the fisheries department with no luck.
“Not here,” the receptionist told her, blowing up a big bubble with her gum and popping it in Jamieson’s ear.
“Do you know when he will be there?”
“He’s in and out.” Pop. “In and out.”
Jamieson didn’t leave her name. She didn’t want to scare him off.
***
The paramedics looked around for the person who had phoned, but there was nowhere much to look, except the bathroom. Puzzled and with no time to waste, they left with the old man on a stretcher.
Seamus stayed in the wardrobe longer than he needed to, afraid they might come back to make one last check, and also unsure how he was ever going to get himself out of this tight spot. When he finally did, most of him ached, his legs were like rubber, and he had to sit on the couch to recover.
Not for long. He realized he had to get on the move, get hold of the old man again or disappear himself. Along with all his hopes of catching the big fish. The image of his father, hanging at the end of that rope in the barn, galvanized him into a sort of action. He must find the old man again and go with him to catch the fish. Or convince Ferguson to do it his way.
Meantime, he could hide out at The Shores. He wouldn’t be the first person who’d gone there to lie low from the law or a spouse or a bothersome relative.
Law enforcement barely existed there, he thought. Except in the form of Jane Jamieson, whom he didn’t know.
It was all or nothing now. He’d be leaving his job and his tip of a house and be heading soon, hopefully, for home. The island. Not Red Island. The real island of Newfoundland.
Where he hoped to help cod make a big comeback.
Chapter 23
The three ducky mugs were still sitting on Jamieson’s kitchen counter. She’d become tired of them staring at her, so she had turned their faces to the wall. Now she had three ducky bums greeting her whenever she went into the kitchen.
She had begun to use them. Was it right to use evidence? Were they evidence? Of what exactly? They were tricky to drink from. She had several episodes of what she called “missing the mandible,” before she got the hang of it.
She was priding herself on the accomplishment, knocking back a big slug of coffee, when Finn came in the door without knocking, and, in an excess of familiarity he couldn’t have explained, squeezed her waist from behind. Coffee came shooting out of her mouth, and, like a tsunami, reeled back on itself and surged down a reluctant throat. She began coughing and gasping, and Finn, thinking she was choking, began to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre.
Fists to the gut made Jamieson drop the ducky cup, and it crashed to pieces on the floor.
No longer a piece of evidence. Pieces of evidence?
Gasping, she fought to find her voice, prepared to be angry. But when she saw Finn’s face, a mix of concern and apology, she burst out laughing. Looking at her, coffee wetting her chin and stains on her shirt, he started to laugh, too.
That’s how Superintendent Constable found them. He stared at them and then at the ducky mugs on the counter.
Were things getting out of hand again at The Shores?
He had her report in his hand. A missing man. A death. Or two? It didn’t look good. That’s why he was here. He wanted to clear things up before h
is golf game this afternoon. Didn’t want police matters affecting his stroke.
What he was seeing now didn’t inspire him with confidence that it would work out that way.
***
“I’m ordering you to call off the search.”
Jamieson immediately regretted having told Superintendent Constable her doubts. Doubts about Gus and her mental state. Abel and his. Her growing belief that he didn’t exist at all, that he had died long ago, that the records had disappeared, just like Abel.
Jamieson had been thinking it was time to call off the search but had been reluctant to do it. She frowned at the complexity of community policing – it got you all tangled up with people, emotions, friendships. She’d never had friends before. Had she been better off without them? As a police officer, certainly yes.
She resented the order from her superior. It was random officiousness, as all his pronouncements were. Still she had to admit it would make it easier for her if she could blame it on him.
***
“What right does he have to call off the search?”
Jamieson could see the accusation in Hy’s eyes. They said coward.
Jamieson had confided in Hy before she made it public.
“He’s my superior officer.”
Hy snorted. “Superior. Puh-leez.”
Jamieson frowned. She couldn’t be chummy with Hy on this point, even though she silently agreed with her.
“It’s the villagers who are searching. He’s not the boss of them.”
“But he is my boss. And Murdo’s boss.”
Hy snorted again. Murdo did so little police work in the village, people had forgotten he was a Mountie. They never saw him in uniform…or on the beat, although he and April and the flock of little Deweys had been everywhere searching for Abel. April had even gone out, white cake in hand, trying to tempt Abel out of wherever it was that he was hidden. Like shaking a bag of treats to get the cat to come in from the cold. So far the only taker had been Murdo, slice after slice disappearing as they searched The Shores, until the cake was all gone, and they went home.
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