Entry Island

I

The flight from Quebec City to the Madeleine Isles took just under two hours in the small commuter aircraft. Sime sat next to an island woman whose two teenage sons fidgeted in the seats in front. They wore baseball caps with upturned brims, listening to iPods and playing computer games. She raised semi-regretful eyebrows at Sime, as if apologising for the behaviour of all teenagers. As if he might have cared.

Some time into the flight he closed burning eyes and very nearly drifted off, before being startled awake by an announcement from the pilot. Above the roar of the engines Sime heard him apologising for any turbulence experienced, and informing passengers that there was a storm on the way. Not on the same scale as the remnants of Hurricane Jess, which had so marked Sime’s first visit. But it was likely to hit the islands, the pilot said, with strong to gale-force winds and high precipitation later in the day.

When the plane began its final descent towards Havre aux Maisons, it banked left and Sime saw the storm clouds accumulating in the south-west. And as it swung around for landing, he caught a glimpse once more of Entry Island standing sentinel at the far side of the bay. A dark, featureless shadow waiting for him in the grey, pre-storm light. He had thought, just a matter of days ago, that he had seen the last of it. But now he was back. To try to resolve what seemed like an insoluble mystery. To right what he believed to be a miscarriage of justice. Something that, in all likelihood, would lose him his job.

The thought filled him with the same frightening sense of destiny he had experienced on that first visit.

He picked up a rental car at the airport and as he drove along the Chemin de l’Aéroport to join Highway 199 South, the first drops of rain hit his windshield. Worn wipers smeared them across a greasy surface, and he blinked as if that might clear the glass. But he was just fatigued.

His car bumped and splashed through the potholes on the loop of road that bypassed the work on the new bridge, and he crossed over to Cap aux Meules on the old, rusted box-girder construction that had served the islanders for two generations.

By the time he got to the offices of the Sûreté de Police, the rain was blowing across the bay on the edge of a wind that was gaining in strength.

Sergeant Enquêteur Aucoin was surprised to see him. ‘She just got back half an hour ago from the Palais de Justice on Havre Aubert,’ he said as they walked down the hall. ‘The judge couldn’t make it, so it was all done with video cameras. She pled not guilty of course.’

‘And?’

‘She was remanded in custody for trial in Montreal. They’ll fly her out tomorrow to a remand prison on the mainland.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I don’t mind telling you, we’ll be glad to see the back of her. We were never designed to host long-term guests. Especially of the female variety.’ They stopped in front of the door to the cells. ‘What do you want to see her for anyway?’

Sime hesitated. He had no right to be here, no authority to question the accused. But no one in the Sûreté on Cap aux Meules had any reason to suspect that he didn’t. ‘New developments,’ he said. ‘I need to speak to her privately.’

Aucoin unlocked the door and let him in. He heard the key turn in the lock behind him. Both cells lay open. Kirsty turned wearily from where she sat cross-legged on her bunk surrounded by books and papers. She wore a simple T-shirt, jeans and white trainers. Her hair was drawn back from her face and tied in a loose ponytail. It had only been a few days, but already she had lost weight. Her skin was almost grey in colour.

Her initial expression of indifference gave way to anger as she realised who her visitor was. ‘Come to gloat?’

He shook his head and stepped into her cell. He cleared a space beside her on the bunk to sit down, and she turned to glare at him. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘I’ve got nothing to say.’

‘This isn’t an official visit.’

‘What is it, then?’

He drew a deep breath. ‘I saw a painting of you yesterday.’

A frown creased around her eyes. ‘No one’s ever painted me. At least not that I know of. Where did you see this picture?’

‘In the attic of my sister’s garage in the town of Bury in the Eastern Townships. It was painted by my great-great-great-grandfather, and it used to hang above the mantel in my grandmother’s house when she read us stories as children.’ He held up his right hand. ‘This was his ring.’

Kirsty exhaled her contempt. ‘If this is some kind of trick to get me to admit to murdering my husband, it’s not going to work.’

‘It’s no trick, Kirsty.’ And he took out his cellphone and tapped the screen to show her the picture he had taken in his sister’s attic the night before.

She turned sulky eyes to look at it, and he saw her expression change. Not in a moment, but gradually. As if the shock of seeing it was slow in penetrating her resistance. Her lips parted and her eyes grew imperceptibly larger. She reached over to take his phone and examine the photograph more closely. Then she looked up. ‘How did you do this?’

‘I didn’t do anything. That’s the painting that hung above my grandmother’s fireplace when I was a boy.’ He paused. ‘I knew I knew you. From the first moment I saw you.’

Her eyes searched his, and she was remembering perhaps that first encounter when she came down the stairs in the summerhouse to find him waiting to interview her. I know you, he had said.

She looked back at the phone. ‘Coincidence. Some weird kind of resemblance. But it’s not me.’

‘If I had just shown that to you and asked if it was you, what would you have said?’

‘You just did. And I’m telling you, it might look like me, but it’s not.’

‘Look again. She’s wearing a red pendant.’

Reluctantly she turned her eyes towards it once more. He saw the colour rise high on her cheeks, but her mouth set in a stubborn line. ‘That’s all it is. A red pendant. Nothing to say it’s mine.’

He took back his phone and switched it off, slipping it into his pocket. ‘You told me that your great-great-great-grandmother McKay was Scottish.’

‘I think I told you she was probably Scottish. I don’t know, I’ve never gone into it. As far as I know her parents came from Nova Scotia, almost certainly Scottish immigrants. But whether Kirsty herself was born in Scotland, Nova Scotia or here, I couldn’t tell you. I’ve never been interested enough to find out. If you want to know about my family history — though God knows why you would — you would need to ask Jack.’

‘Your cousin?’

‘He’s a fanatic on genealogy. Spends hours on the internet going through family records. Recently he was pestering me for access to papers that got handed down through my side of the family.’

‘I thought you didn’t see much of one another.’

‘We don’t. He hasn’t seen half the stuff I’ve got up at the house. Not that he really needs to. Apparently there’s not much that he doesn’t already know.’ She smiled sadly. ‘He never could understand my lack of interest.’

And Sime thought how she was just like he had been. Indifferent to her past, heedless of her roots. And just as he had done, she had struggled to find her place in a world that lives only for the present, where culture is a disposable commodity, no matter how many generations it has been in the making. ‘Where did this obsession with not leaving Entry Island come from?’

She turned her head sharply. ‘It’s not an obsession! It’s a feeling.’

‘You said your mother was reluctant to leave, too.’

‘As was her mother. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea.’ She was running out of patience with him. ‘Maybe it’s in the DNA.’

‘And your ancestor, Kirsty McKay?’

‘As far as I know, she never left the island once.’ She stood up. ‘Look, I’d like you to go. They’re sending me to prison on the mainland tomorrow. Who knows how long it will take to go to trial? But I can’t see any way I can prove my innocence, so I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life behind bars. Thanks to you.’

He wanted to tell her about Sime Mackenzie from Baile Mhanais, and the Ciorstaidh he fell in love with on a remote Hebridean island in another century. Of the struggles that brought him to Canada, and how all these generations later it had brought his great-great-great-grandson to Entry Island and a chance encounter with a woman called Kirsty who was almost identical in every way to the Ciorstaidh he had lost on a quayside in Glasgow.

But he knew how it would sound, and he had no rational way of explaining it to her. Even if she had been halfway receptive. Right now all he felt was her hostility. He stood up and looked into her eyes so directly that she had difficulty maintaining eye contact and looked away.

As a policeman, he knew that all the evidence in the murder of her husband had pointed towards her. But he also knew that most of it was circumstantial, and he had never really believed it. Instinct. Or perhaps something even less tangible. Deep down inside he felt as if he knew this woman, and that there was no way she was capable of murder. ‘Kirsty,’ he said. ‘How did you get your husband’s skin under your fingernails?’

‘I’ve no idea. I must have scratched him when I was fighting to pull his killer off him.’ She looked at the floor. ‘Just go.’

But to her surprise he took each of her hands in his, holding them tightly. ‘Kirsty, look at me.’

Her eyes flashed upwards to meet his.

‘Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t kill him.’

She pulled her hands away. ‘I didn’t kill him!’ she shouted, and her voice reverberated around the tiny cell.

He continued to stare at her. ‘I believe you.’

He saw her confusion.

‘I’ll fly back with you to Montreal tomorrow, and I’ll do whatever it takes to prove your innocence.’

II

The rain was battering his windshield as he turned back on to Highway 199 to head south. He had no idea if Jack Aitkens was still on night shift, but it was closer to drive to his home on Havre Aubert to find out than head north to the salt-mine. Besides which, if he was underground, then he wouldn’t be reachable until after six.

It was still just mid-afternoon, but the light was so poor that every car had turned on its headlights, a dazzle of red and yellow lights reflecting on a wet, black road surface.

Sime drove up over the hill, and saw power cables swinging overhead in the wind. He had no idea what drew his attention, but as he passed the car park of the Cooperative supermarket he glanced left and saw a face he recognised. A face caught in the momentary flash of a car’s headlights. Pale under a black umbrella, but lit up by a smile. And then it was gone as the umbrella dipped in the wind.

Ariane Briand. And she wasn’t alone. Richard Briand had his arm around her, sharing her umbrella.

Sime slammed on his brakes and took a hard left turn into the far entrance of the car park. Car horns sounded in the rain, and he caught the glimpse of an angry face behind flashing wipers. He slowed and cruised among the lines of cars towards where he had last seen the couple, peering past his own wipers through the rain.

There they were, still beneath the umbrella, putting a shopping basket in the trunk of a car, huddled together against the elements. At that final briefing, it was Crozes himself who’d said Briand actually had more to gain that any of the others from Cowell’s death. And yet he had never seriously been considered a suspect because his wife had provided his alibi. Even Sime had dismissed him, because on the night that Sime was attacked on Entry Island, Briand had been in Quebec City. Or so he said. No one had actually checked that. He and his wife claimed to have shut themselves away from the world in their hotel, but there was no proof that this was true. All the investigators had was their word for it. The focus had been so much on Kirsty that any other possibility had simply been ignored.

Sime ran through the sequence of events in his mind as the windows inside his car began to steam up. Arseneau had gone looking for Briand on the evening of their first day here. The start of the investigation. Briand’s secretary had told him that Briand had left for Quebec City that morning, but that he’d booked his own travel and accommodation, so no one knew where to find him. Had anyone even checked with the airline that Briand had actually left the island?

He wiped the mist from his windscreen in time to catch Ariane Briand and her husband laughing, caught unexpectedly in the rain as their umbrella blew inside out in the wind. Briand stooped to give her a quick kiss before they ran around opposite sides of the vehicle to jump in.

Sime took out his phone and tapped the name of Briand’s hotel in Quebec City into Google. Up came the website and a telephone number. He tapped dial, and sat listening as a phone rang somewhere 1,200 kilometres away.

‘Auberge Saint-Antoine. Reception. How may I help you?’

‘This is Sergeant Enquêteur Sime Mackenzie with the Sûreté in Montreal. You had a guest staying with you recently by the name of Richard Briand. I’d like to check his arrival date, please.’

‘One moment, Sergeant.’

Sime watched Briand’s car turn out of the car park into a side street and then drive up to the main highway.

‘Hello, Sergeant. Yes, Monsieur Briand checked in on the 28th. He left us yesterday.’

Sime hung up. The 28th was the day before he and Blanc had flown to Quebec City to interview him. Where had he and Ariane Briand been for the previous two days if not there? Had Briand left the islands at all before the 28th? Because if not, then he could just conceivably have been Sime’s attacker. His flights in and out of Havre aux Maisons could be checked with the airline. Sime would do that first thing in the morning before flying out with Kirsty.

The thought that the Briands might have been lying elevated his pulse rate. But that same old doubt still nagged at the back of his mind. Even if he wasn’t in Quebec City as he claimed, why would Briand attack Sime?

III

The rain had eased off a little by the time Sime found himself driving directly south along a narrow strip of land towards Havre Aubert. The sea was breaking all along the Plage de la Martinique on his left. On his right the wind rippled across the surface of the Baie du Havre aux Basques, which was protected from the full force of the storm surge by sand dunes all along its western perimeter. Kite surfers were out in force on this side, taking advantage of the powerful sou’westerly.

He had been preoccupied on the drive south by thoughts of the Briands, but as he approached La Grave, at the southeastern end of Havre Aubert, he forced himself to refocus.

Jack Aitkens’s house was a stone’s throw from the Palais de Justice, where only a few hours earlier Kirsty had made her first court appearance. It was a typical maroon and cream island home with a steeply pitched roof and overhanging eaves. A covered veranda ran around the front and south side to an entry porch at the south-east corner. Unlike most of the other houses dotted around, it looked in need of fresh paint. The garden, such as it was, had been allowed to go to seed. There was an air of neglect about the place.

Sime parked on the road and hurried up the path to the shelter of the veranda. He couldn’t find a doorbell and knocked several times. Nothing stirred inside. There were no lights on, and as he looked around Sime could see no sign of Aitkens’s car. It seemed like he was out of luck and that Aitkens had come off nights and was on the day shift.

‘Are you looking for Jack?’

Sime spun around to see a middle-aged man working on the engine of an old truck in the shelter of a carport attached to the neighbouring house. ‘Yes. I guess he must be at the mine.’

‘No, he’s on night shift just now. He went down to the marina to secure his boat. Can’t take too many precautions with this storm on the way.’

The main street ran along a spit of land that curved around to a tiny harbour sheltered by the crook of the bony finger that was Sandy Hook. A collection of wooden and brick buildings lined each side of the street. Stores, bars, restaurants, a museum, holiday lets. Just behind it, in the shelter of La Petite Baie, lay a tiny marina that played host to a collection of fishing and sail boats. They were tied up along either side of a long pontoon that rose and fell on the troubled water.

Aitkens was securing his boat front and rear to an access pontoon. It was a twenty-five-foot fishing boat with an inboard motor and a small wheelhouse that afforded at least some protection from the elements. It had seen better days.

He was crouched by a capstan and looked up from his ropes as Sime approached. He seemed startled to see him and stood up immediately. ‘What’s wrong? Has something happened to Kirsty?’ He had to raise his voice above the wind, and the clatter of steel cables on metal masts.

‘No, she’s fine.’

Aitkens frowned. ‘I thought you people had gone home.’

‘We had,’ Sime said. ‘But I’m not done here yet.’

‘They’re sending her to Montreal,’ Aitkens said, as if Sime wouldn’t know.

‘Were you in court?’

‘Of course. It’s just two minutes from my door.’ He paused. ‘There’s not much evidence against her, you know.’

Sime nodded. ‘I know that.’

Aitkens was taken aback. ‘Really?’

‘I need to talk to you, Monsieur Aitkens.’

He glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t really have time.’

‘I’d appreciate it if you’d make some.’ Sime’s tone conveyed the strong impression that it was more than a request. But, all the same, he wondered why Aitkens’s first response had not been to ask what Sime wanted to talk to him about. Almost as if he already knew.

Aitkens said, ‘Well, not out here. Let’s get a coffee.’

Most of the shops and restaurants on the main street were closed for the season, but the Café de la Grave was open, yellow light spilling out into the sulphurous afternoon. There were no customers. Just rows of polished wooden tables and painted chairs, wood-panelled walls peppered with colourful childlike paintings of fish and flowers. A menu chalked up on a blackboard had earlier offered Quiche à la Poulet or Penne sauce bolognese à la merguez for lunch. Sime and Aitkens sat by an old upright piano and ordered coffees. Aitkens was ill-at-ease and fidgeted with his fingers on the table in front of him.

‘So what do you want to talk to me about?’ At last the question.

‘Your family history.’

Aitkens swung his head towards Sime, frowning. He thought about it for a moment. ‘Is this an official line of enquiry?’ His tone was hostile. Sime, after all, was the man who had arrested his cousin for murder.

Sime was caught momentarily off-balance, but couldn’t lie. ‘My interest is more personal than professional.’

Now Aitkens tilted his head and squinted at Sime with both suspicion and confusion. ‘What? About my family history?’

‘Well, it’s Kirsty’s more than yours that interests me. But I guess much of it will be shared. She told me that genealogy was something of an obsession of yours.’

‘Not an obsession,’ Aitkens said defensively. ‘A hobby. What the hell else does a man do with his life when he’s not working? The hours I work, and a geriatric father in the hospital, I’m not exactly an eligible bachelor, am I? Winters here aren’t only hard, they’re long and damn lonely.’

‘So how far back have you been able to trace your lineage?’

Aitkens shrugged. ‘Far enough.’

‘As far back as your great-great-great-grandmother?’

‘Which one?’

‘The one buried in the cemetery on Entry Island. Kirsty McKay.’

Aitkens frowned darkly and examined Sime’s face for a long time, until the silence became almost embarrassing. Finally he said, ‘What about her?’

‘What do you know of her origins?’

He smiled now. ‘Well that wasn’t easy, Monsieur Mackenzie. When people have been shipwrecked and start a new life, the past can be pretty damned difficult to uncover.’

Sime felt his heart rate quicken. ‘But you did?’

He nodded. ‘Her ship went down just off Entry Island in the spring of 1848. Driven on to the rocks in a storm. The boat had come from Scotland and was bound for Quebec City. She was the only survivor, pulled out of the water by a family living on the cliffs at the south end of the island. There was no lighthouse back then. Seems she was in a bit of a state. They took her in and nursed her back to health, and in the end she stayed with them, almost like a kind of adopted daughter. In fact, she never left the island and five years later married their son, William.’

Sime said, ‘Which is how she ended up with the name McKay, the same as her parents. Only they weren’t really her parents.’

‘Parents-in-law. But since she had no parents of her own, she was kind of like a real daughter to them.’

Which explained the inscription on the headstone. ‘What happened to her real parents? Did they go down with the boat?’

‘No, she was travelling alone. Apparently she had some kind of short-term memory loss as a result of the trauma, and no real idea at first who she was or where she’d come from. But her memory did eventually come back. In fragments at first. She used to write things down in a notebook as she remembered them. A kind of way of keeping them real. That notebook came all the way down through the family. I found it in a trunk of memorabilia that my father kept in the attic. I’d no idea it was there until after they’d taken him into hospital.’

Sime was having difficulty keeping his breathing under control and the excitement out of his voice. ‘So who was she?’

Aitkens pulled a face and exhaled deeply. ‘What the hell does any of this have to do with Kirsty’s arrest?’

‘Just tell me.’ Sime’s tone was imperative.

Aitkens sighed. ‘Seems she was the daughter of the laird of some estate in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Fell in love with the son of a crofter, which was completely taboo in those days. The father opposed the relationship, and when the crofter’s boy killed her brother in a fight he fled to Canada. She followed, hoping to find him, and of course never did.’

‘Kirsty Guthrie,’ Sime said.

Aitkens clenched his jaw and looked at him. ‘You knew all along.’

But Sime shook his head. ‘No. But a lot of things have just dropped into place.’

Aitkens had returned to fidgeting with his fingers on the table in front of him. ‘I’ve been trying to patch in more detail. Kirsty has a lot of stuff passed down to her by her mother. Stored somewhere down in the basement of the house that Cowell built. I’ve been at her for ages to let me see it.’ He pulled a face filled with resentment. ‘But it was never convenient. God knows what’ll happen to it now.’

Suddenly Sime said, ‘Could you take me over to Entry Island in your boat?’

Aitkens looked at him in surprise. ‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘Man, are you crazy? There’s a storm on the way.’

‘It won’t be here for an hour or two yet.’

But Aitkens just shook his head. ‘It’s way too rough out there.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘And anyway, I’ve got to go shortly. I’m still working the night shift at the mine.’

‘Well, do you know someone who could take me?’

‘What in the name of God do you want to go there for right now?’

‘A couple of things.’ Sime was forcing himself to stay calm. ‘I’d like to cast eyes on that stuff she keeps in the basement. And …’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t think Kirsty killed her husband.’

‘Jesus! It was you that arrested her!’

‘I know. But I was wrong. We were all wrong. We’re just missing something. Something that’s probably been staring us in the face all along. I want to take a look at the house again.’

Aitkens stood up, and his chair scraped the floor in the quiet of the café. ‘Up to you. But if you’re really determined to go out there tonight, Gaston Boudreau might be persuaded to take you. If you cross his palm with silver.’

‘And he is …?’

‘The guy whose boat you requisitioned during the investigation.’