by Peter May
‘You’re not under arrest, if that’s what you mean. The officer will be there to maintain the integrity of the crime scene.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you have any friends, or relatives, that you’d like to come and stay with you?’
She shook her head. ‘I have plenty of acquaintances, Mr Mackenzie, but I have never made friends easily. And my only surviving relative is my cousin Jack. But he lives over on Havre Aubert and works shifts in the salt-mine up north. We really have very little contact, and almost nothing in common.’
Again she turned her gaze on him, and he found it hard to stop himself feeling some kind of emotional response.
‘I’m not going to leave the island, if that’s what you’re worried about. I haven’t left it in more than ten years, and I have no intention of leaving it now.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why won’t you leave the island?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I had to, of course, when I was younger. When my parents sent to me secondary school on Prince Edward Island. And then again when I went to university in Lennoxville. Which was fine, as long as my folks were still here. But my mom died during my final year. Cancer. And my dad went not long after. Just couldn’t face life without her, and gave up the fight. I haven’t been off the island since I buried him back there in the churchyard.’
She smiled. The first one Sime had seen. But it was sad.
‘It used to drive James mad. Oh, in the beginning he thought it was delightfully eccentric. Exotic, even. The two of us holed up here together, him flying off to conduct his business wherever it took him, then returning to this love nest he had built for us.’ She glanced wistfully towards the big house. ‘Where his love would always be waiting. The one constant he could always rely on.’ She turned her back on the weather and leaned against the rail, gazing up at the house where she had been born. ‘What he didn’t know was that when he was gone I hardly ever slept in his bed. I came over here. Like coming back to the womb. There is comfort and love in this house, Mr Mackenzie. The house that James built is cold and empty. Which is how it made me feel.’
She sighed deeply and turned to look at Sime once more.
‘Of course, he tired of my eccentricity soon enough. It frustrated him, became a source of friction. He liked to travel, you see. To dine in fine restaurants. And he had always wanted to go to Europe. None of which was possible with a stupid wife who wouldn’t leave a tiny island in the middle of the Gulf of St Lawrence.’
She stopped now, searching his face, a slightly puzzled look creasing around her eyes.
‘Why is it so easy to talk to you?’
Sime smiled. ‘That’s my job.’
‘And that’s why I am telling you things I’ve never told anyone in my life?’
His eyes never wavered from hers. ‘You still haven’t told me why you won’t leave the island.’
Her eyes drifted away then, to find focus somewhere in her thoughts. ‘Maybe that’s because I can’t.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
‘Can’t, Mr Mackenzie. You see, I have no real idea why. It’s just a feeling I have. Very powerful. Something inside me that I can’t explain. My mother was the same. Hated to leave the island. And it killed her in the end. She wouldn’t go over to Cap aux Meules to see the doctor, so they didn’t find the cancer until it was much too late.’ She refocused on her interrogator. ‘It’s like …’ she searched for words to give form to the thought, ‘… like I’m waiting for something. And if I leave I might miss it.’
He raised his right hand to sweep wet hair back from his forehead and saw more than heard her gasp. She reached out to take his hand in both of hers and turn the back of it towards her. She canted her head to one side and a frown formed between her brows.
‘Where did you get this?’
Sime took his hand away from her and looked at the gold signet ring on his third finger. He had been wearing it for so long he had almost forgotten it was there. ‘Why?’
She took his hand back and ran her thumb over the engraved surface of the oval red stone set into the gold. ‘It’s carnelian.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A semi-precious stone. Very hard. Ideal for engraving.’ She glanced up, the strangest look in her eyes. Confusion. Even fear. ‘You know what the engraving is?’
She was still holding his hand. He looked at the ring again. ‘To be honest, I’ve never really thought about it. Looks like a crooked arm holding a sword.’
‘Where did you get it?’ she asked again. More insistent this time.
He pulled his hand away. ‘It was my father’s. Passed down through the family, I guess. I got it when he died.’
She stared at him for a long time with a strange, silent intensity, then looked down again at his hand. ‘I have a pendant,’ she said. ‘Bigger. But oval, and set in gold, with exactly the same symbol engraved in the carnelian. I’d swear it was identical.’
Sime shrugged. ‘It was probably fashionable at some time in history. I bet there’s thousands of them out there.’
‘No.’ Her contradiction was sharp and its vehemence startled him. ‘It really is identical. A family crest of some sort. I’ve looked at it hundreds of times. I can show you it.’
In spite of his curiosity, Sime was wary of indulging her in this bizarre turn of events. ‘I don’t think that would serve any purpose. And, anyway, you can’t go back into the big house for the moment. Not while it’s still a crime scene under investigation.’
‘I don’t need to. The pendant’s here. I brought most of my personal stuff back into the summerhouse after James left. Including my jewellery box.’ She turned and hurried into the house. Sime stood for a moment with the rain whipping in under the eaves, and felt infused by the oddest sense of uncertainty. He had already been unsettled by his sense of knowing her. Now this. He looked at the engraving on the ring. It could only be some kind of bizarre coincidence. He pushed through the screen door back into the sitting room as Blanc brought the flight cases containing the monitors through from the bedroom.
Kirsty ran down the stairs holding a polished wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She set it on the coffee table in front of the fireplace and knelt to open the lid. Blanc glanced from Sime to Kirsty and back again, the almost imperceptible raising of one eyebrow asking his silent question. Sime’s response was the merest of shrugs. Both men turned their heads at the sound of her gasp of frustration.
‘It’s not here.’
The curiosity that Sime had felt out on the porch was replaced now by a burgeoning cynicism. He walked over to the coffee table and stood above her as she knelt in front of it, searching through the clutter of jewellery inside the open box. Then in frustration she tipped its contents out on the glass tabletop. Rings and bracelets, necklaces and pendants, brooches, clasps, dress pins, all rattled across the glass. Silver, gold and platinum set with precious and semiprecious stones. Some of the items were modern, others clearly from a bygone age.
She tried to sort through them with clumsy, trembling fingers, until he saw her upturned face filled with confusion. ‘I don’t understand. I’ve always kept it in here. Always. And it’s gone.’
Sime was aware of Blanc looking at him. He said, ‘What you may or may not have done with an item of jewellery is of no concern here, Mrs Cowell. Murder is.’ He paused. ‘We’ll see you in the morning, weather permitting.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
I
There were fewer people on the quayside for the departure of the ferry that afternoon than had met it in the morning. But it was probable that the weather had more to do with it than any lack of curiosity on the part of the Entry islanders. The Ivan-Quinn was rising and falling dangerously, even in the sheltered waters of the harbour, and Lapointe had difficulty reversing their minibus up the ramp to the car deck.
James Cowell was zipped into a white plastic body bag and lay on the floor between the seats. Nobody had spoken a word on the drive across the
island to the harbour with his body lying among them like a ghost. And now everyone was keen to get into the bowels of the ferry and out of the rain. Except for Sime. His jacket already soaked through, he climbed slippery rusted steps to the upper deck and made his way along a narrow walkway to the stern of the boat. From there he could see over the interlocking concrete fingers that made up the breakwater, back across the bay towards Cap aux Meules. It was already almost lost in rain and low cloud. Just a sliver of blue and gold lay along the horizon behind it. The sea in between looked angry. Rising and falling in foaming slabs of grey water like molten lead.
A klaxon sounded as the ramp was raised, and the ferry slipped its mooring to round the breakwater and head out into the advance legions of the coming storm. Waves broke over the bow as soon as she escaped the comparative shelter of the island.
Sime held on to the white-painted rail and watched as Entry Island slowly receded behind them. Incongruously, the sun had slipped beneath the line of cloud in the west, sending out the last of its light to illuminate the contours of the island against the blue-black sky behind it. Before suddenly it was gone, and the island was swallowed by the rain and mist.
Sime let go of the rail with his right hand and lifted it to examine his ring. Its history went back several generations, he knew, but he had no idea of its original owner. He became aware of Lieutenant Crozes approaching, and grabbed hold of the rail again. Crozes stopped next to him, his waterproof jacket zipped up to the neck, a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets, and he was managing somehow, with feet planted wide, to move his body to the rhythm of the boat and stay balanced. An experienced sailor, Sime thought.
‘So what do you reckon?’ he shouted above the wind and the sea.
‘About the wife?’
Crozes nodded.
‘Hard to say, Lieutenant. She has motive, certainly. And she’s the only witness. Her scratches and bruising are compatible with the story she tells. But they could just as easily have been suffered during a struggle with her husband. Though he was a fit man by the look of him, and she’s slight built. An unequal struggle, you would have thought. Makes you wonder how she could have got the better of him.’
Crozes nodded again and seemed to thrust his hands even more deeply into his pockets.
‘But if we’re just looking at motive,’ Sime added, ‘then there’s also the cuckolded husband. Mayor Briand at Cap aux Meules. We’re going to have to talk to him.’
‘Yes, we are. I’ve already briefed Sergeant Arseneau to go find him as soon as we get back. We can interview him tonight or first thing tomorrow at the local Sûreté. But the minute the ferry has docked I want you and Blanc to go and talk to Madame Briand. The local boys have got an address for us.’
Sime glanced at him and saw that his face was set. Whether against the weather, or some other obstacle to their investigation it was impossible to tell. But his mood was clearly black.
Crozes said, ‘Trouble is, as Blanc pointed out, if we buy the wife’s story that she was the object of the attack, and not Cowell, why would either Briand or Clarke attack her?’
Sime nodded. ‘What does Marie-Ange say?’
‘That there’s no evidence of a third party at the crime scene. She’s collected blood samples from the broken glass in the conservatory, hair and fibres from the body and the surrounding floor. They’ll go back to Montreal with Lapointe and the body for analysis. But not tonight. And maybe not in the morning either. Everything’s being locked down tight for this storm. The airport’s been closed. It’s unlikely that anyone or anything’s going to get on or off the Madeleines in the next twenty-four hours. Including Cowell and our samples.’
They stood for a moment in silence watching how the boat carved a green channel that fanned out in their wake, rising and falling among the waves. Then Sime felt Crozes turn his face towards him. ‘Blanc said she was troubled by a piece of jewellery that’s gone missing.’
Sime nodded.
‘What’s all that about?’
Sime turned his head to look at him. ‘It’s the weirdest thing, Lieutenant. The moment I set eyes on her I could have sworn I knew her from somewhere.’
Crozes frowned. ‘And do you?’
Sime shrugged helplessly. ‘I can’t imagine how.’
‘And the jewellery?’
‘A pendant. An oval of red carnelian set in gold, and engraved with an arm holding a sword.’ He raised the back of his right hand so that Crozes could see his ring. ‘Exactly the same as this. So she said.’
Crozes examined it for a moment before Sime had to clutch the rail again to steady himself. ‘But she can’t find it?’ the lieutenant said.
‘No.’
Crozes was silent for several long moments. Then, ‘Seven billion people in the world, Sime. Everyone’s bound to look like someone. And don’t let her fuck with your mind. If she killed her husband it’s going to be hard enough to prove it as it is. She’s nobody’s fool, and who knows what kind of mind games she’s capable of. Just make sure you don’t lose your focus.’
II
The Briand house was set off the road in amongst woods a little over a kilometre south of the police station on Cap aux Meules. On the short drive down the Chemin de Gros-Cap coast road, with Thomas Blanc beside him in the passenger seat, Sime felt the pull of the steering wheel as the wind battered in off the Baie de Plaisance and buffeted the high side of the minibus. Entry Island was lost in the storm somewhere out there across the bay, hunkered down against the full force of it. He caught Blanc looking at him. ‘Are you okay?’ the older man asked.
‘I’m not going to fall asleep at the wheel if that’s what you’re worried about.’
Blanc grinned. ‘That’s not what I meant.’ He hesitated. ‘Just … you know … you and Marie-Ange.’
Sime’s smile faded. ‘I’m fine.’ Then, quickly changing the subject, ‘What’s Crozes like to work for?’
Blanc gazed thoughtfully through the rain-spattered windscreen. ‘He’s a good cop, Sime. But it’s all about him. He’s going places. You know,’ He lifted his eyes towards the heavens, ‘fast track to the top. Every case is important to him. Every conviction another step up the ladder. Do a good job and he’ll back you all the way. Screw it up and he’ll drop you right in it. Just don’t ever make the mistake of thinking he’s your friend. He’s not.’
Sime nodded. He knew the type. And he knew, too, that Crozes would want this particular case wrapped up as quickly as possible. It would be the view from Montreal that a murder on an island with a population of a hundred, more or less, should be a straightforward matter. Besides which, keeping a team of eight detectives for any length of time on the Madeleine islands would be a costly business. And these days the bottom line was all important. ‘I guess Ariane Briand will be a French-speaker,’ he said. ‘Maybe you should lead the interrogation.’
‘If you like.’ Blanc shrugged indifferently, but Sime knew it was what he wanted.
Sime spun the wheel and they turned into the Allée Robert-Vigneau, which developed into little more than a pot-holed track caught in their headlights as it cut into the pine plantation that stretched across this south-east corner of the island. A few hundred metres along it they turned right at a mail box into a short pebbled drive that led up to a house surrounded by tall trees that swayed dangerously in the wind. Sime pulled into a parking place out front and they stepped down from the vehicle.
The Briand house was impressive, not typical of the classical island house. It was wooden, of course, but the roof was steeply pitched in the Scandinavian style, and much of the front of the house was glass. A security light came on and Sime saw their reflections in the glass as they walked up to the front door. An odd couple. One tall, lean, a little stooped, the other small and rotund, with a mop of curly dark hair fringing his bald patch. Like cartoon characters out of a graphic novel, he thought.
Blanc rang the bell twice, and when there was no reply
knocked firmly on the glass. Sime stepped back and looked up at the house. There were no lights on anywhere. ‘No one home,’ he said. Through the trees, the lights of a neighbouring house twinkled in the gathering darkness. ‘Let’s see if the neighbours know where she is.’
Bracing themselves against the rain, the two men ran through the trees, following a path that took them into the neighbour’s garden. Another security light flooded the patio, and a black SUV stood in the drive, its engine ticking, still hot. Sime rang the bell and a middle-aged woman wearing a sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms opened the door, peering cautiously out at the two sodden strangers caught in the rain and the glare of her security lamp. Blanc fished out his ID and pushed it towards her. ‘Sûreté, madame. We’re looking for Madame Briand next door. Any idea where we can find her?’
‘Oh, she’s not at home,’ the woman said.
‘I think we’d already established that.’ Sime’s voice was laden with sarcasm, but it was lost on her. Dark eyes filled with intrigue opened wide. This could only be to do with the murder on Entry Island.
‘Ariane flew out this morning to the mainland,’ she said, as if imparting some important confidence. Then her face clouded. ‘Not sure where she went, though. Or when she’ll be back.’
Sime and Blanc exchanged looks.
III
The team was eating in the La Patio family restaurant next to the Auberge Madeli when Sergeant Enquêteur Jacques Arseneau returned with the news.
Two groups, four in one and three in the other, were squeezed into adjoining stalls. Sime and Marie-Ange sat in different groups, ostentatiously avoiding each other. The thirteen thousand inhabitants of the Madeleine Isles had been warned all evening in TV and radio broadcasts to stay indoors and the restaurant was empty, apart from one chef in the kitchen and a single server.
Arseneau came in dripping and battered, divesting himself of his jacket and baseball cap and cursing the weather. He squeezed into the end of one of the stalls.
Crozes looked at him. ‘So what did Mayor Briand have to say for himself?’