Entry Island

Sime nodded. He needed a break himself. A chance to escape the heat of the house and grab some air. As Kirsty went upstairs he went out on to the porch and stood holding the rail, breathing deeply. With all the local cops seconded to the search for Norman Morrison, only Arseneau and a young sergeant called Lapierre were left to continue the search of the area around the house. Sime watched them as they moved methodically through the longer grass with sticks. They were searching for anything that might throw illumination on a dark case. The sun was doing its best to help, sprinkling daubs of watery gold in fleeting patches all along the cliffs. A murder weapon would be good. But if Kirsty had murdered her husband, it seemed to Sime that the simplest thing would have been to throw the knife off the cliffs and into the sea. If Cowell had been murdered by the intruder Kirsty described, then he would almost certainly have taken the knife with him, perhaps thrown it in the sea himself. Marie-Ange’s examination of the kitchen had established that all sets of kitchen knives were complete.

Sime was finding it increasingly hard to accept, no matter how much evidence Marie-Ange might find, that Kirsty had murdered her husband. Yet it was his job to get to the truth, regardless. And while the evidence against her was purely circumstantial for the moment, he was in danger of being a minority of one when it came to believing she was innocent. And that in direct contradiction to all of his instincts as a criminal investigator. It was an impossible dichotomy. He turned to go back inside.

III

There was sunlight somewhere. It played in flickering moments of fancy through still air that hung heavy with dust suspended in sharply defined shafts. But there was fog, too, obscuring the light. Rolling in from the sea like a summer haar to obscure all illumination. He heard someone calling. Someone far away. A familiar voice, repeating the same word over and over.

‘Sime... Sime... Sime!’

He was startled awake, but realised that his eyes had not been shut.

‘Sime, are you all right?’

Sime turned his head to see Thomas Blanc standing near the foot of the stairs, the oddest expression on his face.

‘I’m fine,’ Sime said. But knew that he wasn’t. A polite cough made him turn to face front and see Kirsty sitting in the armchair opposite. Her head was tilted very slightly to one side, an expression of wary curiosity in her eyes.

‘If you want to continue this some other time...’

Continue? And it came to him that they had resumed the interview sometime earlier, and he had no idea for just how long he had been sitting in suspended animation. He was breathing heavily.

‘No. No, we should carry on.’ His disorientation was almost paralysing.

She shrugged. ‘Well, I’m waiting.’

Sime glanced at Blanc, who raised an eyebrow. An unspoken question. Sime nodded almost imperceptibly, and Blanc returned reluctantly to his monitors in the back room.

‘Where were we?’ he said to Kirsty.

‘You were asking how James and I met.’

He nodded. ‘Tell me.’

‘I already have.’

‘Then tell me again.’

Her sigh was laden with impatience and frustration. ‘James was a guest lecturer on business economics during my final year at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville.’

‘That’s an English-language university?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just the one lecture?’

‘Yes. He’d been invited to talk to us as a classic example of entrepreneurial achievement. A small local business transformed into a multi-million-dollar international success.’

‘And your subject was?’

‘Economics.’ She shrugged her shoulders, and her smile was sad and ironic. ‘Don’t ask me why. You’re forced to make decisions about these things when you’re still too young to know. I’d always been good with numbers, so...’ Her voice trailed away. ‘Anyway, there was a drinks reception held for him afterwards and I went along.’

‘Why? Were you attracted to him?’

She thought about it. ‘I suppose I was. But not in any conventional way. He was twelve years older than me, which is a lot when you are in your early twenties. He wasn’t what I would have described as good-looking, or handsome. But he had charm, and knew how to make his audience laugh. And I was impressed by his success, and his confidence, and everything he seemed to know about the world. But what I found, I suppose, most compelling about him was that he came from the Magdalen Islands, just like me. It made me see that no matter who you are, or where you come from, you can be anything you want. If you want it enough.’

‘Why would that interest you if your intention was never to leave Entry Island?’

‘I wasn’t set on that course, then, Mr Mackenzie. The instinct was there, perhaps, but my parents were still alive. They were my anchor. Even if I wasn’t there, they would be. So I still felt free at that time to do whatever I wanted. I never dreamt that within twelve months they would both be gone, and that my world would have narrowed to this tiny pinpoint of land in the Gulf of St Lawrence.’

‘Do you feel it like a prison?’