by Peter May
Aitkens made a noise somewhere between a spit and a grunt to express his contempt. ‘Never liked the man. And never could figure out what it was he saw in her.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, no harm to Kirsty. I mean, she’s a good-looking woman, and all. But weird, you know?’
And Sime remembered Crozes’s description of her – She’s a weirdo, right?
‘Weird in what way?’
‘This fixation she has with staying put. Never leaving the island. Not Cowell’s thing at all. He was all fancy cars and airplanes, big houses and expensive restaurants. I was at the wedding. He had a big marquee erected over on the island, a company brought in from Montreal to do the catering. As much champagne as you could drink. Flash bastard! More fucking money than sense. Full of himself, too. Thought he was better than the rest of us because he’d made a pile. But he was just another islander. A fucking fisherman who got lucky.’
‘Looks like his luck ran out.’
Aitkens inclined his head a little. ‘How did he die?’
‘According to Kirsty she was attacked by an intruder at the house. When Cowell intervened he got stabbed to death.’
Aitkens seemed shocked. ‘Jesus! An intruder? On Entry Island?’ Then he had a further thought. ‘What was Cowell doing there, anyway? I heard he’d left her.’
‘What, exactly, did you hear?’
‘Well, it was pretty much common knowledge. Whatever his obsession was with Kirsty it seemed to have burned itself out, and he’d found somebody else to lavish his millions on. Ariane Briand, wife of the mayor here on Cap aux Meules. It’s been quite a scandal!’
‘You know her?’
‘Hell, yeah. I was at school with her. A few years older, but I didn’t know a boy then who didn’t have the hots for her. I mean, a real looker she was. Still is. And much more Cowell’s style than Kirsty. Kicked the mayor out, apparently, and Cowell moved in.’ He snorted his derision. ‘But just a temporary arrangement for sure. You can bet your bottom dollar that Cowell would have had plans for something much bigger than the Briands’ little house in the woods.’
Sime nodded. ‘Like the house he built on Entry Island.’
‘Something even flashier, I would have thought. You set the bar that high, you can hardly start lowering it.’
Sime stroked his chin thoughtfully and realised he hadn’t shaved that morning. ‘I suppose she’ll inherit,’ he said.
Aitkens cocked his head and frowned at Sime. ‘You don’t think she did it?’
‘We don’t think anything yet.’
‘Well, you’re wrong if you do. I mean, she wouldn’t kill him for his house or his wealth. She’d have got the house and half his money in any divorce settlement anyway. Cowell could hardly have taken the house with him, and no way would he have wanted to stay in it.’ He spread his big hands out wide. ‘And anyway, what would she do with all that cash? There’s nothing to spend it on over there on Entry.’ His eyes suddenly strayed towards Sime’s right hand resting on the table in front of him. ‘That’s an interesting ring. Can I see it?’
Surprised, Sime held out his hand for Aitkens to take a look.
The salt-miner nodded. ‘Beautiful. It’s carnelian, isn’t it? Had one similar once, only the stone was sardonyx. Kind of amber with white stripes. Nice phoenix engraved in it.’ His face clouded. ‘Left it in the washroom at the mine one time after washing my hands. Realised five minutes later and went back for it. Gone.’ His lips curled in contempt. ‘Some people are just dishonest.’
Sime said, ‘Is this one familiar to you?’
Aitkens frowned. ‘Yours? Should it be?’
‘Your cousin said she had a pendant. Same colour, same crest.’
‘Kirsty?’ His eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘And did she?’
‘I don’t know. She couldn’t find it.’
Aitkens frowned. ‘That’s weird.’ And it was the second time he’d used the word in connection with his cousin.
III
Sime and Thomas Blanc walked with Crozes across the car park behind the police station, towards the sentier littoral and the beach beyond. The wind had dropped considerably, but was still strong, snaking through their hair and tugging at their jackets and trousers. The sun formed a reflective bowl of golden light in the sea that cradled the silhouette of Entry Island across the bay. Everywhere Sim went on the Madeleine Isles, Entry Island was disconcertingly present. It seemed to follow him, like the eyes of the Mona Lisa.
‘Arseneau still hasn’t found Briand yet,’ Crozes said. He was anxious to rule him either in or out as a suspect and irritated by the delay. ‘And I’m not sure we’ve learned anything very much from Aitkens.’
‘Aitkens is right about the money, though, Lieutenant,’ Blanc said. ‘It doesn’t seem like much of a motive for the Cowell woman killing her husband.’
‘Yes, let’s not lose focus. We’re talking about someone whose husband had just left her for another woman. And you know what they say about a woman scorned …’ Crozes scratched his chin. ‘I don’t think money comes into it.’
As they reached the coastal path, they fell silent until a young female jogger had passed and was out of earshot.
Crozes turned and looked back towards the one-storey, red-brick building that housed the police station. ‘I’ve requisitioned a fishing boat to take us back and forth to Entry Island so we don’t have to rely on the ferry. I sent some of the guys over with the minibus on the Ivan-Quinn this morning. Marie-Ange needs to complete her examination of the crime scene, and I think we should talk to the widow again.’
Blanc said, ‘Do we have a new line of questioning?’
Crozes nodded, ‘What we talked about yesterday. If she’s speaking the truth, and she was the object of the attack rather than Cowell, then maybe she has some idea who might bear her a grudge.’
Sime said, ‘Aitkens will probably want to come with us.’
‘Then let him. Might be interesting to see if he provokes an emotional reaction.’
His cellphone warbled in his pocket. He fished it out and turned away to take the call. Blanc swivelled his back to the wind and cupped his hands around a cigarette to light it. Then he glanced at Sime. ‘So what do you reckon?’
‘About who killed Cowell?’
‘Yep.’
Sime shrugged. ‘Still wide open, I’d say. What about you?’
Blanc drew on his cigarette and let the wind draw the smoke from his mouth. ‘Well, the statistics tell us that more than half of all murders are committed by someone known to the victim. So if I was a betting man my money would be on her.’
‘Shit!’ Crozes’s voice cut across the wind and turned their heads towards him as he thrust his phone back in his pocket.
‘What’s up, Lieutenant?’ Blanc said.
‘Could be this is going to get more complicated than we thought.’ He pushed a pensive jaw out towards the silhouette of the island across the bay. ‘Seems some guy’s gone missing on Entry Island overnight.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I
The crossing from Cap aux Meules took well over an hour in the boat that Crozes had requisitioned. It stank of fish and afforded little protection from the elements.
The sea was still tormented, and the wind strong enough to make their passage across the bay unpleasantly slow. Sime and Blanc huddled in a dark, cramped space below deck, salt water sloshing around their feet, the perfume of putrefying fish filling their nostrils and making their stomachs heave with every lurch of the boat. Crozes seemed unaffected, sitting lost in thought alone on a rusted cross-beam at the stern. Jack Aitkens spent the crossing in the wheelhouse chatting to the boat’s owner as if he were out for a sail on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Arseneau met them at the harbour, and while Aitkens was sent to sit in the minibus the sergeant enquêteur briefed them on the missing man. They stood in a huddle at the end of the quay, braced against the wind, and Blanc made several attempts to light his ciga
rette before giving up.
‘His name’s Norman Morrison,’ Arseneau said. ‘Aged thirty-five. And …’ he hesitated, unsure of what was politically correct, ‘… well, a bit simple, if you know what I mean. One sausage short of a fry-up as my old man would have said.’
‘What’s the story?’ Sime asked.
‘He and his mother live alone up on the hill there. He went out after their evening meal last night to lash down some stuff in the yard. Or so he said. When he hadn’t come back in after half an hour, his mother went out with a flashlight in the dark to look for him. But he wasn’t there. And no one’s set eyes on him since.’
Crozes shrugged. ‘Anything could have happened to him in a storm like that. But what’s the connection? Why should we be interested?’
Sime could tell from Arseneau’s demeanour that he was about to drop a live grenade into the briefing. ‘Apparently he was obsessed by Kirsty Cowell, Lieutenant. Fixated on her. And if we’re to believe his mother, Cowell did more than just warn him off.’
Crozes did not take the news well. Sime watched as his jaw clenched and his mouth set in a grim line. But he wasn’t going to be deflected from his predetermined course. ‘Okay, we’ll take Aitkens up to the Cowell house first. I want to see how she reacts to him. Then you can take us on up to the Morrison place.’
*
She was waiting on the porch of the summerhouse watching as they drove up the hill. She wore a white blouse beneath a grey woollen shawl pulled tight around her shoulders, and pleated black jeans tucked into calf-length leather boots. Her hair was blowing out in a stream behind her, like a tattered black flag, furling and unfurling in the wind. It was the first time that Sime had set eyes on her since his dream, and against all of his instincts he felt himself unaccountably drawn to her.
Jack Aitkens was the first out of the vehicle as they pulled up, and he ran across the lawn to take his cousin in his arms. Watching from a distance Sime felt the oddest twinge of jealousy. He saw tears glistening on Kirsty Cowell’s face and after a brief conversation with her Aitkens came back to the minibus.
He lowered his voice, and it carried more than the hint of a threat in it. ‘She tells me you’ve already grilled her twice.’
‘Interviewed her,’ Sime corrected him. ‘And I’d like to talk to her again.’
‘Is she a suspect or not? Because if she is, she’s entitled to an attorney.’
Crozes said, ‘As of this moment she is a material witness, that’s all.’
Then Aitkens swung hostile eyes in Sime’s direction. ‘In that case your interview can wait. I’d like some time with my cousin, if that’s all right with you.’
He didn’t wait for their permission, but turned and went back to the house, taking his cousin’s hand and leading her down the steps from the porch in a wash of watery sunlight that suddenly played itself out across the cliffs,
The four policemen watched them start up off the slope together and Crozes said, ‘I don’t like that man.’
But Sime knew that Crozes wouldn’t like anyone who stood in the way of a speedy resolution to their investigation.
II
The Morrison family home stood at the end of a gravel track that turned left off Main Street before the church and followed the contours of the island through the valley to the high ground below Big Hill. It was years since it had been painted, and its clapboard siding was a pale bleached grey. The shingles on its Dutch gambrel roof were only slightly darker. A number of outbuildings stood in various states of disrepair, and a rusted old tractor was canted at an odd angle in the backyard, one of its wheels missing.
A cultivated area of land behind the house ran down the slope of the hill, and a handful of sheep stood grazing among the long grass. From its elevated position it commanded a spectacular view south and west towards Havre Aubert and Cap aux Meules, and Sime thought it must have taken some battering from the storm during the night.
He let his eyes wander across the ravaged slopes below him. Some of the hay bales they had seen on their first visit were gone, shredded by the storm. But there didn’t appear to be much damage to property. Flimsy though these brightly painted houses looked, they had clearly stood the test of time in a climate that was seldom forgiving. They ranged in silhouette along the rise, showing the same defiance as owners who stood firm in defence of their language and culture, determined to stay put at all costs. But with a dwindling school population and lack of jobs, it was clear the island was dying. It made it all the more inexplicable that a young woman like Kirsty Cowell should choose to stay when most of her generation had already gone.
Sergeant Aucoin and half a dozen patrolmen from Cap aux Meules, along with a group of islanders, stood in a knot on a gravel turning area just beyond the house. They shuffled impatiently in the wind, anxious to get their search under way. Morrison had been missing for more than sixteen hours now. But Crozes didn’t want them trampling over what might be evidence until he’d had a chance to assess the situation.
‘Sime!’ On hearing his name Sime turned to see Crozes approaching with Blanc in tow. ‘We’re getting conflicting stories about this guy.’ He nodded towards a blue-and-cream house about fifty metres away along a pebble track. ‘The neighbours have been telling the local cops one thing, the mother something quite different. You’d better talk to them.’
*
‘Only reason we stayed was to raise the kids here.’ Jackie Patton ran dishwater-red hands over her apron and caught a stray strand of hair with her little finger to loop it back behind her ear. She left a powdering of flour on her cheek and on the soft brown hair at her temple. She had a square face, fair skin splattered with freckles, and there was a weary acceptance in her eyes that life had not gone as planned. She was not ugly, but neither was she attractive. ‘Soon as it was time for the big school, we was gonna be up and away. Figured we owed it to the kids to give them the kind of upbringing we had on the island. Nothing better.’ She sprinkled more flour on the dough on her worktop and flattened it out again with her rolling pin. ‘Now they’re gone, and we’re still here.’
Crozes, Blanc and Sime were squeezed into her tiny kitchen, standing around a small table at its centre. They very nearly filled it. Mrs Patton’s focus was on the short pastry she was preparing for her meat pie.
‘We lost count of the number of jobs Jim applied for. Trouble is, twenty years of fishing for lobster only qualifies you to fish for lobster. So he’s still out every May first on the boat and I’m stuck here counting the days till the kids get back for the holidays.’ She looked up suddenly. ‘They should have locked him up years ago.’
‘Who?’ Sime said.
‘Norman Morrison. He’s not right in the head. The kids used to go over there when they was younger. He was like one of them, you know, a big kid himself. Then he starts making this city on the ceiling.’
Sime frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, you’ll see it for yourselves when you go over to the house. I figure it’s probably still there. See, his bedroom’s right up in the roof. Low ceiling and all. And with him being tall like that he could stretch up and reach it.’
She stopped to gaze out the window. The Morrison house stood at a respectful distance in stark profile against the water of the bay and the islands of the archipelago beyond.
‘It was quite something. Took talent to do that. And some imagination. I mean, damn near the whole island has traipsed in there to see it at one time or another. Amazing what a simple mind can make of not very much.’
She returned to her pastry.
‘Anyways, in the end we figured he’d only done it so he’d have a reason for taking the kids up to his bedroom.’
‘Do you mean he molested the children?’ Crozes said.
‘No sir,’ she said. ‘I can’t say he did. But my Angela came back one time and said he touched her funny. And for the life of us we couldn’t get her to tell us how.’
Sime said, ‘Was she upset?’
Mrs Patton stopped rolling out her dough and raised her head thoughtfully to gaze into the middle distance. ‘No, she wasn’t. That’s the funny thing, I guess. She really liked Norman. Cried for close on a week when we banned the kids from ever going back to the Morrison house.’
‘Why did you do that?’
She wheeled around defensively. ‘’Cos he touched her funny. That’s what she said, and I don’t know what she meant by it, but I wasn’t taking no chances. He’s not right in the head, and he was far too old to be playing with children.’
There was an awkward silence, then, and she turned back to her pastry.
‘Anyways, someone like that should be in a home or a hospital. Not in the community.’
‘You think he was dangerous?’ Blanc asked.
She shrugged. ‘Who knows. He’s got a temper on him, I can tell you that. Like a kid throwing a tantrum sometimes. When his mother would call him in at mealtimes and he wasn’t ready to go. Or if something didn’t just go his way.’
‘What about Kirsty Cowell?’ Sime said.
She flicked a wary glance in his direction. ‘What about her?’
‘You told Sergeant Aucoin that Norman was obsessed with her.’
‘Well, everyone knew that. When we had summer parties, or dances in the winter, he used to follow her around like a puppy dog. It might have been funny if it wasn’t so sad.’
‘Used to?’
‘Yes …’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It all seemed to stop about six months ago.’
‘How did Mrs Cowell react to him?’
‘Oh, she humoured him, I guess. There’s not a bad bone in that woman’s body. She just married the wrong man.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, it was obvious, wasn’t it? He was never right for her. Or she for him. A marriage made in hell, if you ask me. Only one way it was ever going to end.’
‘In murder?’
Her eyes lifted sharply towards Sime. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘How did Cowell react to Norman Morrison’s interest in his wife?’