Entry Island

‘Well, the way I see it, you’ve got two choices. You can hand over the money now, or I can take it off your dead bodies.’

‘We’ll be dead as soon as we hand it over,’ the other Irishman said.

The man with the gun grinned in the dark. ‘That’s a chance you’ll have to take.’

The swiftness with which the Irishman lunged at him took him by surprise. But as the two men went down, the gun went off, and the Irishman went limp on top of him. The other oarsman spun around, drawing a second pistol, and I barely saw the flash of Michaél’s blade before it slid up between the man’s ribs and into his heart.

Michaél stooped immediately to pick up his pistol, and as the first oarsman dragged himself free of the Irishman he had killed, Michaél shot him point-blank in the chest.

It had all happened so quickly, I had barely moved from the spot where I stepped ashore. And I stood now, gaping in horror and disbelief.

‘Fockers!’ Michaél said. Then, ‘Come on, Scotsman, help me go through their pockets. Get all the money you can and let’s get out of here.’

We tipped all the bodies into the water when we were finished, and Michaél crossed himself as he said farewell to his friends. Then we pushed the boat out into the river, and started scrambling up the embankment as the rain began to fall.

We have six gold sovereigns and ten Canadian dollars between us, and are lucky still to be in possession of our lives. I have no idea what the future holds, but it seems that mine is now inextricably linked with Michaél’s. I glance across the fire to see the flicker of its flames on his bloodless, bearded face. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be a dead man now.

Chapter twenty-nine

I

The atmosphere in the incident room at the Sûreté on Cap aux Meules was tense. The team sat around an oval table studiously avoiding eye contact with either Sime or Marie-Ange. A map of the Madeleine Isles was pasted across one wall, the yellow-and-green flag of the Sûreté draped in the opposite corner. A blackboard that nearly filled the end wall by the door was covered in chalk scribbles. Names, telephone numbers, dates, places.

Lapointe was back from Montreal, having attended the autopsy. He told them the pathologist had been unable to establish much more than cause of death. Any one of the stab wounds would have been fatal, even without the other two. The knife used had a narrow six-inch blade with serrations along the blunt edge. Possibly a fish-scaling knife, he had thought. Apart from some bruising, the only other injuries the pathologist could find were scratch marks on Cowell’s face. His assumption was that they had been made by fingernails during the course of a struggle.

Crozes took a duster and roughly cleared space for himself on the blackboard. At the top of it he chalked up the name of James Cowell, then drew a line from it straight down to the foot of the board. Branching off alternately left and right, he wrote down the names of the suspects.

He began at the bottom with Briand. ‘As we’ve established, Briand has strong motive. His wife had been having an affair with Cowell, and the two men were fierce business competitors. Briand actually had more to gain than any of the others from Cowell’s death. Even without taking account of the jealousy factor.’ He paused. ‘But he has a very solid alibi. He was at home with his wife.’ He glanced at Sime and Blanc. ‘While you guys were flying back from Quebec City Arseneau and Leblanc reinterviewed her. She confirmed his story.’

Sime found it hard to meet his eye. He said, ‘Well, of course she would. She has motive, too, Lieutenant. If we’re to believe the two of them, then she was keen to ditch Cowell, but didn’t know how to tell him. Her husband said she was actually afraid of him. It’s perfectly possible that they both conspired to murder him.’

Crozes nodded his agreement. But beneath his veneer of professionalism his discomfort was clear. ‘That’s true. But we have not one single scrap of evidence to put either of them at the scene.’

‘Then maybe we should be looking for some.’

Now Crozes concealed his irritation with difficulty. ‘People have been looking for extraterrestrial life for years, Sime. It doesn’t mean it exists. Without evidence to the contrary, and with each providing an alibi for the other, I think we have to rule them out.’

He took his chalk and drew a firm line through Briand’s name. The room was silent. Then he tapped the tip of the chalk on Morrison’s name.