Entry Island

I

‘Are you the cop?’ The voice startled Sime out of his recollections, and it took a moment to clear the confusion that fogged the transition in his mind from a nineteenth-century Hebridean winter to this salt-mine halfway across the world on the Îles de la Madeleine.

He turned to see a man stooped by the open window, peering in at him, a long face shaded by the peak of a baseball cap.

Almost at the same moment, the ground shook beneath them. A rumbling vibration, like a series of palpitating heartbeats. ‘What in God’s name is that?’ Sime said, alarmed.

The man was unconcerned. ‘It’s the blasting. Takes place fifteen minutes after the end of each shift. They leave it to clear for two hours before the next shift moves in.’

Sime nodded. ‘The answer to your question is yes.’

The man ran a big hand over a day’s growth on his jaw. ‘What the hell do you want to talk to me for?’ His brows knitted beneath the skip of his cap as he glared in at Sime.

‘I take it you’re Jack Aitkens?’

‘What if I am?’

‘Your cousin Kirsty’s husband has been murdered on Entry Island.’

For a moment it seemed as if the wind had stopped and that for a split second Aitkens’s world had stood still. Sime watched his expression dissolve from hostility to surprise, then give way to concern. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘I need to get over there straight away.’

‘Sure,’ Sime said. ‘But first we need to talk.’

II

The walls of Room 115 in the police station of the Sûreté de Québec on Cap aux Meules were painted canary-yellow. A white melamine table and two chairs facing each other across it were pushed against one wall. Built-in cameras and a microphone fed proceedings to Thomas Blanc in the detectives’ room next door. A plaque on the wall outside read Salle d’interrogatoire.

Jack Aitkens sat opposite Sime at the table. Big hands engrained with oil were interlinked on the surface in front of him. His zip-up fleece jacket was open and hung loose from his shoulders. He wore torn jeans and big boots encrusted with salt.

He had removed his baseball cap to reveal a pale, almost grey, face, with dark, thinning hair that was oiled and scraped back across a broad, flat skull. He nodded towards a black poster pinned to the wall behind Sime.

‘Any reason I might need a lawyer?’

‘None that I can think of. How about you?’

Aitkens shrugged. ‘So what do you want to know?’

Sime stood up and closed the door. The noise from the incident room along the hall was a distraction. He sat down again. ‘You can start by telling me about what it’s like to work in a salt-mine.’

Aitkens seemed surprised. Then he puffed up his cheeks and blew contempt through his lips. ‘It’s a job.’

‘What kind of hours do you work?’

‘Twelve-hour shifts. Four days a week. Been doing it for ten years now, so I don’t think much about it anymore. In winter, on the day shift, it’s dark when you get there, it’s dark when you leave. And there’s precious little light underground. So you spend half your life in the dark, Monsieur … Mackenzie, you said?’

Sime nodded.

‘Depressing. Gets you down sometimes.’

‘I can imagine.’ And Sime could hardly imagine anything worse. ‘What size of workforce is there?’

‘A hundred and sixteen. Miners, that is. I have no idea how many work in administration.’

Sime was surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have guessed from the surface there were that many men down there.’

Aitkens’s smile was almost condescending. ‘You couldn’t begin to guess what’s down there from the surface, Monsieur Mackenzie. The whole archipelago of the Madeleine islands sits on columns of salt that have pushed up through the earth’s crust. So far we have dug down 440 metres into one of them, with another eight or ten kilometres to go. The mine is on five levels and extends well beneath the surface of the sea on either side of the island.’

Sime returned the smile. ‘You’re right, Mr Aitkens, I would never have guessed that.’ He paused. ‘Where were you on the night of the murder?’

Aitkens didn’t blink. ‘What night was that exactly?’

‘The night before last.’

‘I was on night shift. Like I’ve been all week. You can check the records if you like.’

Sime nodded. ‘We will.’ He sat back in his seat. ‘What kind of salt is it you mine?’

Aitkens laughed. ‘Not table salt, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s salt for the roads. About 1.7 million tons of it a year. Most of it for use in Quebec or Newfoundland. The rest goes to the States.’

‘Can’t be very healthy, down there twelve hours a day breathing in all that salt.’

‘Who knows?’ Aitkens shrugged. ‘I’ve not died of it yet, anyway.’ He chuckled. ‘They say that salt-mines create their own microclimate. In some Eastern European countries they send people down the mines as a cure for asthma.’

Sime watched his smile fade and waited while Aitkens grew slowly impatient.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened out on Entry Island or not?’

But Sime was not ready to go there yet. He said, ‘I want you to tell me about your cousin.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Anything. And everything.’

‘We’re not close.’

‘So I gather.’

Aitkens gave him a look, and Sime could see the calculation in his eyes. Had Kirsty told him that? ‘My father’s sister was Kirsty’s mother. But my father fell for a French-speaking girl from Havre Aubert and left Entry Island to marry her when he was barely out of his teens.’

‘You don’t speak English, then?’

‘I grew up speaking French at school. But my father always spoke English to me in the house, so it’s not bad.’

‘And your parents are still alive?’

He pressed his lips together in a grim line. ‘My mother died some years ago. My father’s in the geriatric ward of the hospital. Doesn’t even know me when I go to see him. I have full power of attorney.’

Sime nodded. ‘So basically you and Kirsty grew up in two very different linguistic communities.’

‘We did. But the differences aren’t just linguistic. They’re cultural, too. Most of the French-speakers here are descended from the original seventeenth-century settlers of Acadia. When the British defeated the French and created Canada, the Acadians got kicked out, and a lot of them ended up here.’ He grunted, unimpressed. ‘Most of my neighbours still think of themselves as Acadians rather than Quebecois.’ He started picking the grime from beneath his fingernails. ‘A lot of the English-speakers got shipwrecked here on the way to the colonies, and never left. That’s why the two communities have never mixed.’

‘So you didn’t have much contact with Kirsty when you were growing up?’

‘Hardly any. I mean, I can see Entry Island from my house at La Grave. Sometimes you feel you could almost reach out and touch it. But it was never somewhere you would drop by casually. Of course, there were occasional family gatherings. Christmas, funerals, that sort of thing. But the English-speakers are Presbyterian, and the French mostly Catholic. Oil and water. So, no, I never really knew Kirsty that well.’ He stopped picking at his nails and stared at his hands. ‘In recent years I’ve hardly seen her at all.’ He looked up. ‘If I didn’t go to see her, then she certainly wouldn’t come and see me.’

Sime wondered if he detected a hint of bitterness in that. But there was nothing in Aitkens’s demeanour to suggest it. ‘From what you know of her, then, how would you describe her?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What sort of person is she?’

There seemed to be a fondness in his smile. ‘You’d be hard pushed to find a more gentle person on this earth, Monsieur Mackenzie,’ he said. ‘Almost … what’s the word … serene. Like she had some kind of inner peace. If she has a temper, then I’ve never seen her lose it.’

‘But you said yourself, you haven’t really seen her that much over the years.’

Which irritated him. ‘Well, why the hell are you asking me, then?’

‘It’s my job, Monsieur Aitkens.’ Sime sat back and folded his arms. ‘What do you know about her relationship with James Cowell?’

Aitkens made a noise somewhere between a spit and a grunt to express his contempt. ‘Never liked the man. And never could figure out what it was he saw in her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, no harm to Kirsty. I mean, she’s a good-looking woman, and all. But weird, you know?’

And Sime remembered Crozes’s description of her — She’s a weirdo, right?

‘Weird in what way?’

‘This fixation she has with staying put. Never leaving the island. Not Cowell’s thing at all. He was all fancy cars and airplanes, big houses and expensive restaurants. I was at the wedding. He had a big marquee erected over on the island, a company brought in from Montreal to do the catering. As much champagne as you could drink. Flash bastard! More fucking money than sense. Full of himself, too. Thought he was better than the rest of us because he’d made a pile. But he was just another islander. A fucking fisherman who got lucky.’

‘Looks like his luck ran out.’

Aitkens inclined his head a little. ‘How did he die?’

‘According to Kirsty she was attacked by an intruder at the house. When Cowell intervened he got stabbed to death.’

Aitkens seemed shocked. ‘Jesus! An intruder? On Entry Island?’ Then he had a further thought. ‘What was Cowell doing there, anyway? I heard he’d left her.’

‘What, exactly, did you hear?’

‘Well, it was pretty much common knowledge. Whatever his obsession was with Kirsty it seemed to have burned itself out, and he’d found somebody else to lavish his millions on. Ariane Briand, wife of the mayor here on Cap aux Meules. It’s been quite a scandal!’

‘You know her?’

‘Hell, yeah. I was at school with her. A few years older, but I didn’t know a boy then who didn’t have the hots for her. I mean, a real looker she was. Still is. And much more Cowell’s style than Kirsty. Kicked the mayor out, apparently, and Cowell moved in.’ He snorted his derision. ‘But just a temporary arrangement for sure. You can bet your bottom dollar that Cowell would have had plans for something much bigger than the Briands’ little house in the woods.’

Sime nodded. ‘Like the house he built on Entry Island.’

‘Something even flashier, I would have thought. You set the bar that high, you can hardly start lowering it.’

Sime stroked his chin thoughtfully and realised he hadn’t shaved that morning. ‘I suppose she’ll inherit,’ he said.

Aitkens cocked his head and frowned at Sime. ‘You don’t think she did it?’

‘We don’t think anything yet.’

‘Well, you’re wrong if you do. I mean, she wouldn’t kill him for his house or his wealth. She’d have got the house and half his money in any divorce settlement anyway. Cowell could hardly have taken the house with him, and no way would he have wanted to stay in it.’ He spread his big hands out wide. ‘And anyway, what would she do with all that cash? There’s nothing to spend it on over there on Entry.’ His eyes suddenly strayed towards Sime’s right hand resting on the table in front of him. ‘That’s an interesting ring. Can I see it?’

Surprised, Sime held out his hand for Aitkens to take a look.

The salt-miner nodded. ‘Beautiful. It’s carnelian, isn’t it? Had one similar once, only the stone was sardonyx. Kind of amber with white stripes. Nice phoenix engraved in it.’ His face clouded. ‘Left it in the washroom at the mine one time after washing my hands. Realised five minutes later and went back for it. Gone.’ His lips curled in contempt. ‘Some people are just dishonest.’

Sime said, ‘Is this one familiar to you?’

Aitkens frowned. ‘Yours? Should it be?’

‘Your cousin said she had a pendant. Same colour, same crest.’

‘Kirsty?’ His eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘And did she?’

‘I don’t know. She couldn’t find it.’

Aitkens frowned. ‘That’s weird.’ And it was the second time he’d used the word in connection with his cousin.

III

Sime and Thomas Blanc walked with Crozes across the car park behind the police station, towards the sentier littoral and the beach beyond. The wind had dropped considerably, but was still strong, snaking through their hair and tugging at their jackets and trousers. The sun formed a reflective bowl of golden light in the sea that cradled the silhouette of Entry Island across the bay. Everywhere Sim went on the Madeleine Isles, Entry Island was disconcertingly present. It seemed to follow him, like the eyes of the Mona Lisa.

‘Arseneau still hasn’t found Briand yet,’ Crozes said. He was anxious to rule him either in or out as a suspect and irritated by the delay. ‘And I’m not sure we’ve learned anything very much from Aitkens.’

‘Aitkens is right about the money, though, Lieutenant,’ Blanc said. ‘It doesn’t seem like much of a motive for the Cowell woman killing her husband.’

‘Yes, let’s not lose focus. We’re talking about someone whose husband had just left her for another woman. And you know what they say about a woman scorned …’ Crozes scratched his chin. ‘I don’t think money comes into it.’

As they reached the coastal path, they fell silent until a young female jogger had passed and was out of earshot.

Crozes turned and looked back towards the one-storey, red-brick building that housed the police station. ‘I’ve requisitioned a fishing boat to take us back and forth to Entry Island so we don’t have to rely on the ferry. I sent some of the guys over with the minibus on the Ivan-Quinn this morning. Marie-Ange needs to complete her examination of the crime scene, and I think we should talk to the widow again.’

Blanc said, ‘Do we have a new line of questioning?’

Crozes nodded, ‘What we talked about yesterday. If she’s speaking the truth, and she was the object of the attack rather than Cowell, then maybe she has some idea who might bear her a grudge.’

Sime said, ‘Aitkens will probably want to come with us.’

‘Then let him. Might be interesting to see if he provokes an emotional reaction.’

His cellphone warbled in his pocket. He fished it out and turned away to take the call. Blanc swivelled his back to the wind and cupped his hands around a cigarette to light it. Then he glanced at Sime. ‘So what do you reckon?’

‘About who killed Cowell?’

‘Yep.’

Sime shrugged. ‘Still wide open, I’d say. What about you?’

Blanc drew on his cigarette and let the wind draw the smoke from his mouth. ‘Well, the statistics tell us that more than half of all murders are committed by someone known to the victim. So if I was a betting man my money would be on her.’

‘Shit!’ Crozes’s voice cut across the wind and turned their heads towards him as he thrust his phone back in his pocket.

‘What’s up, Lieutenant?’ Blanc said.

‘Could be this is going to get more complicated than we thought.’ He pushed a pensive jaw out towards the silhouette of the island across the bay. ‘Seems some guy’s gone missing on Entry Island overnight.’