Entry Island

Crozes was sitting in the breakfast room on his own, nursing a coffee. Two slices of hot buttered toast lay on the plate in front of him, a single bite taken. But he was no longer chewing when Sime came in, and he didn’t appear to have an appetite for the remainder.

Sime poured himself a coffee and sat down opposite, placing his mug on the stained expanse of white melamine that lay between them. Crozes looked up from his silent thoughts. ‘Jesus, man, did you sleep at all?’

Sime shrugged. ‘A bit.’

Crozes scrutinised him carefully for some moments. ‘You should see a doctor.’

Sime took a sip of his coffee. ‘Already have. He gave me some pills. But they just make me drowsy during the day, and don’t help me sleep at night.’

‘Didn’t sleep much myself last night. With all that damned noise. I thought the roof was going to lift off the hotel, or the windows were going to come in. They were creaking like they were ready to shatter.’ He took a mouthful of coffee. ‘I got a call about fifteen minutes ago. The King Air got struck by debris on the apron at the airport during the night. Damage to the windshield, apparently. If they can’t fix it here, they’re going to have to send over a replacement aircraft with the parts. Upshot is, we ain’t getting off the islands today. So the body and all the other evidence is going to have to sit on ice till we can get us back in the air.’

‘Tough break.’

Black eyes darted quickly in Sime’s direction, as if perhaps Crozes suspected sarcasm. Both men knew it would reflect badly on Crozes if their investigation dragged on beyond a day or two. He delved into his pocket to retrieve a set of car keys and tossed them across the table. ‘Lapointe has rented us a couple of vehicles. Those are for the Chevy. It’s out front. Take it and go talk to Kirsty Cowell’s cousin, Jack Aitkens. If you think it’s worthwhile, bring him back to the station here on Cap aux Meules and we’ll video a formal interview.’

‘What do you think he might be able to tell us?’

Crozes tossed a frustrated hand into the air. ‘Who the hell knows? But I’ve been looking at the tapes. She’s a weirdo, right? The Cowell woman. Maybe he can give us some insight into her personality, her relationship with the husband. Anything that’ll give us something more than we have.’

‘You’ve reviewed the interview tapes already?’ Sime was surprised.

‘What else was I going to do? Couldn’t sleep and it seemed like the best use of the time. I got Blanc out of his bed to set it up for me.’ He glanced a little self-consciously at his junior officer. ‘Guess I’m beginning to learn how it feels to be an insomniac like you.’

Sime lifted the keys from the table and stood up. He drained his mug of coffee. ‘Do you have an address for the cousin?’

‘He lives at a place called La Grave, on the next island down. Île du Havre Aubert. But he’s not there right now.’

Sime cocked an eyebrow. ‘You have been busy.’

‘I want this done and dusted, Sime. And I want us out of here by tomorrow, at the latest.’

‘So if he’s not at home where will I find him?’

‘He’s working the night shift in the salt-mines at the north end of the islands. He’s off at eight.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘If you hurry you should be just in time to catch him.’

II

The road to Havre aux Maisons took a diversion to avoid roadworks where they were building a sleek new bridge to link it to Cap aux Meules. Sime drove through water-filled potholes, past shacks that advertised themselves as restaurants, or bars, or nightclubs. Flimsy, storm-battered structures painted in garish colours that belied the seedy night-time entertainment they offered the youth of the islands.

As he drove north through Havre aux Maisons, the land levelled off and the pine plantations and all signs of human habitation disappeared. Roadside reeds were flattened by the wind, and sand from the long, narrow strip of dunes on his right blew in swirls and eddies across the surface of the road. And all the time, sitting out across the bay, the shadow of Entry Island lurked in his peripheral vision.

The sky, at last, was beginning to break up, shredded by the wind to reveal torn strips of blue, and release patches of unusually golden, shallow-angled sunlight to fan out across the islands from the east.

The sea vented its wrath all along the shore, breaking in spume-filled spray over the causeway that linked Cap aux Meules and Île de Point-aux-Loups. Wolf Island was, in fact, a small cluster of islands in the middle of a long sandbar that linked the southern isles with a loop of three large islands at the north end of the archipelago. On his left the gulf stretched away to the unseen North American continent. On his right, the emerald-green waters of the Lagune de la Grande-Entrée were calmer, protected from the surging waters of the storm by a sandbar that ran parallel to the one on which they had built the road.