Entry Island

I

‘Jesus!’ Blanc looked up from the folder on his knees. They were somewhere over the Gaspé Peninsula, probably less than an hour from Quebec City. The first hour of their flight had passed in a tense silence, and Blanc had buried his head in Arseneau’s briefing notes on Mayor Richard Briand. Now he looked at Sime, squeezed in beside him in the tiny nineteen-seater Jetstream commuter aircraft, unable to contain himself. ‘Have you read this stuff?’

Sime was miles away, turning over the traces of his ancestor in nineteenth-century Scotland, and if he thought about the present at all, picking at the scabs of his failed relationship with Marie-Ange. He glanced at his co-interrogator with a cold detachment. ‘No.’

Excitement coloured Blanc’s normally pale complexion and he flushed pink. ‘Everyone knows you don’t get to be top dog in politics without money behind you. And Briand’s no exception. Even if he is just an island mayor.’

‘He’s got money. So?’

‘It’s how he made his money that’s interesting.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Lobsters.’ He watched expectantly as Sime absorbed this.

‘He was in the same business as Cowell?’

‘Not just in the same business, Sime. They were competitors. The whole industry was pretty much sewn up between them. Cowell might have owned half the fishing fleet, but Briand owns the other half. And according to Arseneau’s notes the mayor was foiled in a major takeover attempt last year. It seems there was a big bust-up between the two men. No love lost.’

The significance of what Blanc was telling him was not lost on Sime. Dreams and diaries and failed marriages retreated into a distant corner of his mind. ‘So with Cowell dead, presumably the widow wouldn’t present much of an obstacle to his plans to expand his little empire.’

Blanc nodded. ‘Well, exactly. And it must have been a pretty bitter pill to swallow when Cowell moved in with his wife.’

Sime thought about it. ‘Which would provide Briand with a very strong double motive for murder.’

‘Casts everything in a different light, doesn’t it?’

‘Except for one little thing,’ Sime said.

‘What’s that?’

‘The same thing that’s always thrown doubt on Briand as a suspect. If it was Cowell he was after, why did he attack Kirsty?’

‘Maybe he wanted to kill them both. Then Cowell’s business would have had to be broken up for sure.’

‘So why didn’t he?’

Blanc frowned. ‘Why didn’t he what?’

‘Kill them both. He had the opportunity.’

Blanc was deflated. ‘Maybe he panicked.’

But Sime was shaking his head. ‘Having killed one, why wouldn’t he kill the other? And think on this. Briand flew to Quebec City the morning after the murder, so it wasn’t him who attacked me two nights ago. And the fact that I was attacked by a man in a ski mask would seem to bear out Kirsty Cowell’s story about an intruder on the night of the murder. Which would kind of let her off the hook, too.’

Blanc scratched the circle of bald, shiny skin on the crown of his head. ‘It also raises the question of why you were attacked at all.’

Sime nodded. ‘It does. But it doesn’t change the fact that I was.’ He paused, recalling only too clearly the moment that he thought he was going to die. He glanced at the file on Blanc’s knee. ‘Are you finished with that?’

‘Yes.’

Sime reached for it. ‘Well I guess I’d better read it for myself before we get to Quebec City.’ He flipped back through Arseneau’s printout and started reading. Only to become aware of Blanc still looking at him. He raised his head and saw embarrassment in the other man’s eyes. ‘What?’

Blanc said, ‘We’ve got to clear the air, Sime.’

‘About what?’

‘Last night.’

Sime looked back at the file on his knee. ‘Forget it.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I hate to think that you blame me for any of it.’

‘I don’t.’

‘That’s not the impression you gave at two o’clock this morning.’

Sime sighed and swung his gaze back towards Blanc. ‘Look Thomas, I was a bit emotional, okay? I’d just found out my wife and the lieutenant had been sleeping together behind my back for who knows how long. And if she hadn’t pointed a gun at my head I might just have killed him.’

Blanc stared at his hands as he wrung them in his lap. ‘But you were right, though. Everyone did know.’ He looked up earnestly. ‘No one thought it was okay. But you know, you were never that close to anyone, Sime, so no one really felt it was their business to tell you. I certainly didn’t think it was any of mine.’

Sime shook his head and almost laughed. How would any of them have phrased it? Hey, Sime, did you know that Lieutenant Crozes is screwing your wife? ‘If I’d been you I probably wouldn’t have said anything either. But it really doesn’t matter now. It’s done. Over. Time to move on.’

But Blanc clearly had something else on his mind. He said, ‘What did Crozes say when he came to your room this morning?’

Sime raised an eyebrow. ‘You know about that?’

‘Everyone knows about it, Sime.’

Sime sighed. ‘We agreed to put it behind us.’ And he turned back to the file.

There was a long silence before Blanc said, ‘Does that mean he’s not taking any action against you?’

‘It wouldn’t work out well for either of us if he did, Thomas. So, no, he’s not.’ Sime dragged his eyes away from Arseneau’s briefing notes and looked up to see Blanc shaking his head. ‘What?’

‘Doesn’t make any sense, Sime.’

‘You think he should have charged me?’ Sime couldn’t conceal his surprise.

‘I think he’s like a wounded animal. Bleeding and dangerous.’ Blanc fixed him with his small dark eyes. ‘You gave him a hell of a beating this morning, Sime. In front of his lover. And when you opened the door to that hotel room, there wasn’t a single member of the team who didn’t see him lying naked and bleeding on the floor. Serious humiliation. He’ll feel that for a lot longer than any physical pain you inflicted.’ He looked earnestly at the younger man. ‘If he says he wants to put it behind him, he’s lying. Whatever he said, whatever he promised you, don’t believe him. He’ll fuck you the first chance he gets.’

II

It took their taxi just under twenty minutes to get from the airport to the Auberge Saint-Antoine in the old port area of Quebec City. For all that he had been brought up in the Eastern Townships, it was Sime’s first visit to the provincial capital.

It was an impressive old town, with its walled castle towering over the port and the river, the jumble of ancient houses in narrow streets that clustered beneath the old city walls. Restored now as a tourist attraction and filled with restaurants and hotels.

The St Lawrence river was wide here, and they could see the ferry on its way over from the distant port of Levis on the far bank as their taxi drew up outside Briand’s hotel. Although many of its rooms looked out over the river, the entrance was up the narrow Rue Saint-Antoine, stone-built tenements rising all around, trees covering the hill at the top end of the street. Briand had an attic room on the fourth floor, a huge arched window opening on to a view of the river. A man used to getting his own way, he was in a foul mood when he let them into his room.

He closed the door behind them. ‘Am I under arrest or what?’

‘Of course not.’ Blanc’s voice was full of reassurance. But Briand was not mollified.

‘Well, it feels like it. I had a visit from the local Sûreté last night who told me not to leave my room until you people had spoken to me today. I feel like I’m under house arrest here. I’ve already missed one meeting this morning, and now I’m going to be late for another.’

‘A man is dead, Mayor Briand,’ Sime said. He looked thoughtfully at the mayor. He was a tall man, fit and good-looking. He had the sharp, wide-boy look of the politician, polished and well-manicured, but with the cultivated veneer of sophistication that only money can buy. His thick dark hair was gelled back from a tanned face, and Sime had recognised him the moment he opened his door as the man in the photograph with Ariane Briand that he had seen sitting on her sideboard. He wore dark slacks and a white shirt with carefully rolled-up sleeves.

‘I know that,’ he snapped. ‘But I don’t see what that has to do with me.’

Blanc said, ‘He was your main business competitor, and he was screwing your wife.’

Briand’s skin flushed dark beneath his tan. ‘Whatever may or may not have occurred between Cowell and my wife was over.’ He controlled the anger in his voice by clenching his teeth.

Blanc showed no surprise. ‘It is our understanding that Cowell was still living with your wife at the time of his murder. His belongings were still in her house.’

Sime remembered the man’s coat that seemed too big for Cowell hanging by her door.

‘If he’d come back that night he’d have found them on her doorstep.’

‘And how would you know that?’ Sime said.

‘Because I put them there.’

Both detectives were caught by surprise and there was a momentary hiatus. ‘You were at your wife’s house on the night of the murder?’ Blanc said.

‘I was.’

Sime said, ‘I think you’d better explain.’

Briand sighed heavily and crossed the room to open French windows on to the view of the river. He took a deep breath and turned to face them, his face semi-obscured by the light behind him. He was a man used to finding the power position in a room. ‘If you’ve never lived on an island,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t understand how rumours and half-truths grow into full-blown lies.’

‘Happens in any small community,’ Blanc said. ‘Which particular rumour or half-truth are we talking about here?’

Briand was unruffled. ‘Contrary to popular opinion, my wife did not kick me out. We had a bust-up, yes. It happens in marriage. We agreed a temporary separation. A sort of cooling-off period.’

‘And your wife’s affair with Cowell began when?’ Sime said.

‘After our separation. She’s since told me she only really did it to make me jealous.’

Blanc said, ‘So that was her only motivation in asking him to move in with her?’

‘She didn’t.’ Briand sounded defensive. ‘Cowell invited himself. Turned up one night on her doorstep with a suitcase and said his wife had found out about them.’ He ran a hand over the smoothly shaved contours of his jaw, clearly uncomfortable discussing what had undoubtedly been a humiliating experience for him. ‘Ariane and Cowell had a fling, yes, but she and I were in the process of making up. She’d been about to end it with him when he turned up that night with his suitcase. It caught her off balance. She didn’t know how to deal with it. He was obsessive, she said. Almost creepy. And it had got to the stage she was kind of scared of him. I persuaded her that she had to confront him with the truth. That she and I were getting back together and it was over with him. We were going to face him with it that night. The two of us. The night he was murdered. I came to the house after he left, and we waited and waited, but he never came back.’

Sime said, ‘You’re saying you spent all night at your wife’s house the night Cowell was murdered.’

‘Actually, it’s my house,’ Briand said, his voice tight with annoyance. ‘But yes, Ariane and I were home together all night.’

‘That’s a very convenient alibi,’ Blanc said. ‘I wonder why your wife never mentioned it to us.’

‘Maybe because you never asked her.’ His voice was laden now with sarcasm.

‘Oh, we will.’ Blanc’s tone betrayed his annoyance.

Sime said, ‘And you both, coincidentally, flew here the next morning.’

‘There was no coincidence about it,’ Briand said. ‘We left together. We’d already planned that, just so she could escape any heat from the break-up with Cowell. I booked the flights and hotel myself just to keep things discreet. I didn’t have any meetings until yesterday, so we knew we’d have a couple of days together before she went back.’

Sime was reluctant to admit to himself that there was a ring of truth to all this. The photograph of Ariane and Briand had probably been reinstated to its place on the sideboard the night they planned to break the news to Cowell. The coat left hanging by the door was Briand’s. And Ariane hadn’t packed Cowell’s suitcase on her return from the airport. It had been packed the night he was murdered. But in any event, husband and wife each provided an alibi for the other. And one thing was certain. As he had pointed out to Blanc, it wasn’t Briand who attacked Sime on Entry Island. He had been here in Quebec City when it happened.

‘When did you hear about Cowell’s murder?’ he asked.

‘Not until Ariane got home. She called to tell me.’

Blanc said, ‘It’s been all over the news.’

‘We weren’t watching the news, detective. We were putting our marriage back together. Finding ourselves again. No one knew where we were. We’d turned our cellphones off. It was just us. A hotel room, a couple of restaurants. The world didn’t exist.’

‘And how did you feel,’ Sime said, ‘when you heard that Cowell had been murdered?’

A sardonic little smile played about the mayor’s lips. ‘To be perfectly honest, I gave a little jump for joy. The man was fucking up my personal and business life. His poor wife deserves a medal.’

‘His wife?’ Blanc said, surprised.

‘Sure.’

‘Why?’

‘For killing him.’

The Château Frontenac with its towers and spires, its green copper roofs and orange brick, dominated the skyline above them. Built on the site of the old Château Haldimand, once home to a succession of British colonial governors, it was now a luxury hotel. Autumn colours on the hill below it painted the slope yellow and fiery red, and a constant traffic of tourists rode the funicular railway up and down to the old city walls.

Sime and Blanc sat in a café beneath yellow parasols watching passengers stream off and on the river ferries at the terminal across the road. An enormous luxury cruise liner, berthed at the dock, almost dwarfed the old port. Cannon that guarded what was once the most important deep-water port on the eastern seaboard of North America poked through the crenellations in the harbour wall, unused in nearly two centuries and painted lacquer-black.

Blanc was on his second coffee and his third cigarette as they sat waiting for their taxi to take them back to the airport. He had already briefed Crozes by telephone. ‘He seems happy,’ he said. ‘It pretty much puts Briand out of the picture and refocuses everything on the wife.’

‘But we still don’t have any evidence against her. Not real evidence,’ Sime said.

Blanc shrugged. ‘We should get the pathologist’s report sometime today, and early results on the forensics.’ He scrutinised Sime carefully. ‘What is it with you and her, Sime?’

He felt himself blushing. ‘What do you mean?’

‘All this stuff with the ring and the pendant, thinking that you knew her. I’ve seen how you look at her.’

‘How do I look at her?’ Sime was suddenly self-conscious.

‘I don’t know. It’s hard to say. But it’s not how a cop usually regards a suspect. There’s something personal there, and it’s not right. It’s not professional. You know that, Sime.’

Sime didn’t respond, and Blanc thought for a moment.

‘You asked her the other day about her Scottish roots.’

‘So?’

‘You’re Scottish, aren’t you? I mean, that’s where your ancestors came from.’

Sime thought about it. ‘You know it’s funny. When I was growing up I never wanted to be anything other than Canadian. Quebecois. Of course, I knew about my Scottish heritage. My ancestors arrived here speaking Gaelic. And my father was so proud of our Scottish roots. Insisted we spoke English at home. Well, I already told you that.’ He smiled. ‘He was sure he had a Scottish accent. But I doubt if he did.’ He glanced at Blanc. ‘Trouble is, I didn’t want to be Scottish. I didn’t want to be different. Most of the other kids in my class were of French descent. We all spoke French together. I just wanted to be one of them. I was almost in denial about being Scottish. I guess I must have been a real disappointment to my dad.’

Sime turned his gaze thoughtfully towards the port.

‘But if you go back five generations, my great-great-great-grandfather arrived here in Quebec City from Scotland without a penny to his name. He and his family had been cleared off their land in the Outer Hebrides, and he got separated from his mother and sisters.’

Blanc sucked a mouthful of smoke into his lungs. ‘What about his father?’

‘His father was shot dead trying to poach deer on the estate during the potato famine.’

‘I thought that was an Irish thing.’

Sime shook his head. ‘The famine was just as bad in parts of Scotland.’ He nodded towards the port. ‘When he got here he went searching records at the harbour master’s office, trying to establish when the boat his family came on had arrived. So he could try and find them. A boat called the Heather.’

‘And?’

‘There was no record of it. And he was told it was presumed lost at sea. In those days, if a boat went down no one ever knew.’ He recalled only too clearly his grandmother reading that passage from the diaries. How his ancestor had got drunk, and been rescued from the hands of unsavoury characters by an Irishman he’d met. He shook his head. ‘Hard to imagine what it must have been like. Thrown off your land and forced on to boats. Arriving in a strange land with nothing. No family, no friends.’

‘What happened to him?’

Sime shrugged. ‘He did all right for himself in the end. Ended up making a bit of a reputation as an artist, of all things.’

‘You got any of his paintings?’

‘Just the one. A landscape. I guess it must be the Hebrides. A pretty bleak-looking place. No trees, nothing.’ And it occurred to him that the imagery that coloured the backdrop to his dreams must have come from that painting hanging in his apartment. He turned to Blanc. ‘What about you? What are your roots?’

Blanc said, ‘I can trace my ancestry all the way back to the early Acadians who first settled in Canada. They came from a town in the Poitou-Charentes region of western France called Loudun.’ He grinned. ‘So I’m a real pure-blood Frenchy. I guess the difference between my people and yours is that mine came voluntarily. Pioneers.’

A taxi pulled up at the kerb and beeped its horn. Both men stood up quickly and Blanc left some coins on the table.

III

They were in the air shortly after midday and would be back on the islands by two. Crozes had told Blanc on the phone that he was calling a team meeting at the Sûreté to assess the evidence gathered to date and decide what further steps to take.

Sime let his head fall back in the seat and closed his eyes only to find Kirsty Cowell’s face there, waiting for him, somehow etched on his retinas. He thought about what Blanc had said to him at the café about the way he was with her. There’s something personal there, and it’s not right. It’s not professional. And he wondered if he was losing all objectivity in this case.

He felt the plane bank left as it circled over the city below to set a course that would follow the river north towards the Gulf. Blanc nudged his arm. He was in the window seat peering down on the landscape beneath them as they made the turn. It was a beautiful crisp, clear autumn day and the colours of the forest lining the banks of the river were spectacular in the sunlight, as if they had been enhanced by photo-manipulation software. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘See that string of islands in the river?’

Sime leaned over him to try to catch a glimpse. And there they were, standing out in sharp relief against the flow of dark water in the St Lawrence. Grey rock and fall foliage. Nine or ten of them, varying in size, stretched out along the course of the St Lawrence to the north-east of the city.

‘Third one up from the Île d’Orléans,’ Blanc said. ‘That’s Grosse Île. That’s where they had the quarantine station for immigrants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. You ever hear about it?’

Sime nodded grimly. ‘Yes.’

‘Poor bastards. It was sheer hell, they say.’

And Sime’s recollection of his ancestor’s experience there came flooding back.