Entry Island

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?’

‘Not a thing, Lieutenant. He’s not in the islands. Flew out this morning, apparently, for a bunch of political meetings in Quebec City. His secretary doesn’t even know where he’s staying. Seems it was a last-minute decision to go, and he made his own reservations.’

Silence settled like dust on the group, and all faces turned towards Crozes. He seemed impassive, but Sime noticed that the skin had darkened around his eyes. Perhaps none of this was going to be as quickly and easily resolved as he might have hoped. He chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip. ‘Seems a bit strange, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘The... what was the phrase you used, Sime...? Cuckolded husband? And the other woman. Both leaving the islands the morning after the murder.’ He turned to Arseneau. ‘Get on to Quebec City. Tonight. I want Briand found.’

The meal passed in relative silence, Crozes’s mood transmitting itself and affecting the others.

After they had eaten they adjourned to the bar. A bowling alley that linked the hotel to the restaurant was closed because of the weather. From the bar they could see through windows to the empty aisles simmering silently under half-lighting. There was a spooky quality to the abandoned alleys, an almost ghostly quiet in the absence of players. By contrast, the noise outside was frightening. The wind was hurling bins and traffic signs across the car park with lethal force, and traffic lights swung violently on their overhead stanchions.

Sime excused himself and walked alone along the length of a deserted corridor to his room next to reception. His eyes were heavy and stinging. His mouth was dry again, and his tongue felt huge in it. Every muscle seemed to ache, as if stretched to breaking point. All he wanted to do was lie down and close his eyes.

In his room, sliding glass doors opened on to the car park at the front of the auberge. The wind was bowing the glass. He pulled heavy curtains across them to shut out the night, but it barely reduced the noise. If he wasn’t so tired he might have been apprehensive.

He sat in the dark for the next half-hour with his laptop open on the dresser, searching the internet for information about Entry Island. There wasn’t a lot out there. A dwindling population of just over a hundred at the last count, a school in danger of running out of pupils. There were two stores, a restaurant, an Anglican church, a museum, the school and a post office. It was just two kilometres wide, and three long. The winter was prolonged and brutal, and when the bay froze over as it often did, the ferry couldn’t sail and the islanders were cut off, sometimes for long periods. He closed the laptop and wondered why Kirsty Cowell was so determined to stay there. The explanation she had given him seemed less than convincing.

He turned on the TV and lay on the bed in the dark. Although he was desperate to sleep he had no expectation of it, and didn’t bother to undress.

He listened to the rain hammering against the sliding doors. It almost drowned out the frenetic commentary on an otherwise dull ice hockey match. He wondered how it must be for Kirsty Cowell alone out there in that clifftop house, fully exposed to the fury of the storm. While just fifty yards away the home she had shared with her obsessive husband stood empty. Except for the cop who kept guard over the scene of his murder. Sime wondered how many unhappy memories of the couple’s ill-fated marriage had been subsumed by that house, become a part of its fabric, like the grain in wood.

He supposed that the house would be hers now. A house in which she couldn’t bring herself to stay alone when Cowell was gone. And it occurred to him that she stood to inherit not just the house, but all of his wealth. The fifteen million a year in lobster income. The processing plant here on Cap aux Meules. As powerful a motive for murder, perhaps, as betrayal. There must surely be a will. Something else to check out tomorrow.