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  Sime shrugged. ‘Not really. There’s Norman Morrison, I suppose. If he was the one who attacked her.’

  ‘But as you say, why would he attack you?’ Crozes took off his baseball cap and scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘What about the fisherman you and Blanc interviewed?’

  ‘Owen Clarke?’

  Crozes nodded. ‘You give him any reason to be pissed off at you?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  Crozes dragged his cap firmly back on his head, pulled a gob of phlegm into his mouth and spat into the water. ‘Let’s go talk to him.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Are you okay?’

  Sime found it hard to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. ‘I’m fine, Lieutenant. Thanks for asking.’

  II

  Clarke was wearing an oil-stained blue boiler suit open halfway down his chest to reveal a tangle of wiry hair like silvered copper fusewire. The legs of his trousers gathered around a pair of dirty white trainers that were no longer able to contain his big feet and had burst open along either side. He was out with a strimmer, cutting down the long grass around the house. His face was red and beaded with sweat beneath the peak of his baseball cap. His habitual brown-stained roll-up issued smoke from the corner of his mouth. He saw them coming, but made no attempt to stop the motor until Crozes shouted at him and ran a finger across his throat.

  He flicked a switch to cut the fuel supply and turned towards them with a bad grace as the motor spun to a halt. ‘What do you people want now?’

  Sime looked at him carefully. He was a big man, which had not been immediately apparent when he and Blanc interviewed him seated at his workbench two days previously. He was certainly big enough to have been Sime’s attacker. Sime glanced at his hands and saw bruised and skinned knuckles, and he realised what had only registered in his subconscious until now. That his assailant had been gloved.

  Crozes said, ‘Where were you last night around midnight?’

  Clarke looked at Sime and flicked his head towards Crozes. ‘Do I get an introduction?’

  ‘Lieutenant Daniel Crozes.’ Crozes showed him his ID. ‘Will you answer the question, please?’

  Clarke leaned on his strimmer and leered at them. ‘I was screwing this amazing-looking blonde,’ he said. ‘Tits on her like this.’ And he raised his big-knuckled hands to his chest as if grasping imaginary breasts. Then he laughed at the expression on their faces. ‘In my fucking dreams! I was asleep. Home in bed. Ask my wife.’ He grinned to reveal the remaining handful of brown stumps that passed for teeth. ‘Only, don’t tell her about the blonde, okay?’

  Crozes leaned forward unexpectedly and whipped off the man’s baseball cap, exposing the swirls of hair that sweat had flattened to his skull, and a nasty bruise high on his left cheekbone.

  ‘Hey!’ Clarke grabbed for his hat, but Crozes held it out of reach.

  ‘Where’d you get the bruise, Mr Clarke?’

  Clarke’s fingers went automatically to the bruising on his face, and he touched it lightly. His smile had vanished. ‘Slipped on the boat and fell,’ he said defiantly, as if challenging them to contradict him. He swung his gaze towards Sime and the grin returned, ugly and without humour. ‘Where did you get yours?’

  *

  There seemed little point in asking Mary-Anne Clarke to confirm her husband’s whereabouts of the night before. Wherever he might have been she was going to tell them he was at home in bed with her. But Crozes said he would send someone to take a statement from her later. Just for the record. He was nothing if not punctilious.

  As they drove back along the track to Main Street, they could see groups of islanders in the distance, each led by a police officer, working their way methodically across the island in the hunt for Norman Morrison. More than thirty islanders had volunteered, and they were searching old barns and disused sheds, raking through overgrown gullies and creeks. The breeze was getting up now and blew among the long grasses, shifting them in waves and currents like wind on water. The cloud cover was high, allowing only a little hazy sunshine through to lift the brooding darkness of the ocean that moved in restless swells all around the island.

  Sime drove, and Crozes stared bleakly out of the window at the searchers. ‘I’m going to assign most of our team to help with the search,’ he said. ‘The sooner we find this guy and rule him either in or out the better. Then we can get back to bringing this investigation to a conclusion.’ He dipped his head to peer up towards the near horizon. ‘Who the hell’s that?’

  Sime craned to see, and caught sight of half a dozen quad bikes rising and falling with the contours of the island as they followed a parallel course to the minibus on Main Street. ‘Looks like the Clarke boy and his pals.’

  Crozes frowned. ‘Blanc said you had a run-in with some kids on quad bikes. He didn’t say one of them was Clarke’s boy.’

  ‘Damn near ran me down and managed to tip himself off in the process.’

  Crozes grunted. ‘Loss of face in front of his friends. Did you have words?’

  ‘He told us in no uncertain terms to leave his father alone.’

  Crozes sat up. ‘Let’s talk to him.’

  Sime swung left and took the road up towards the church, accelerating over ruts and potholes. The minibus rattled and juddered over the uneven surface, and it seemed to take some moments for the bikers to realise it was going to cut them off. Sime pulled the wheel hard left and the vehicle careened across the track to end up side-on to the approaching bikers. They immediately altered course, turning away towards Big Hill. Crozes jumped down and shouted at them to stop. The bikes drew to a reluctant halt in an idling knot of diesel fumes and revving motors. Crozes raised his ID above his head. ‘Police,’ he shouted. ‘Come here.’ And he waved them towards him. The kids exchanged glances, then one by one engaged gears and turned to motor slowly towards the minibus as Sime climbed out of it. At the last they fanned out to form a semicircle around the two policemen. ‘Which one of you’s Clarke?’ Crozes said.

  Chuck Clarke was in the middle of the group, clearly its leader. The spikes of his gelled hair stood firm against the breeze. ‘What do you want with me?’ he said.

  ‘Turn off those motors,’ Crozes instructed, and in the ensuing silence Sime heard the wind blowing through the grass, and the sound of the sea washing all along the southern shore. Crozes looked at Chuck. ‘Get off the bike, son.’

  The teenager thrust out a belligerent jaw. ‘And what if I don’t?’

  Crozes slowly removed his sunglasses. ‘I’m conducting a murder investigation here, kid. If you want to obstruct me in the course of that I’ll have you over on Cap aux Meules kicking your heels in a police cell before you can say quad bike.’ He replaced his shades on the bridge of his nose. ‘Now get off the fucking bike.’

  It was a further loss of face for the Clarke boy, but he had little alternative but to comply. He dismounted slowly and stood with his legs slightly apart, gloved hands on his hips, glaring at Crozes.

  The lad was built. Six feet or more, and Sime ran his eyes over the jeans and black leather jacket. He wore scuffed Doc Martens, and Sime thought that they could easily have been the boots that had bruised his ribs. His gaze fell on the expensive, hand-stitched leather gloves. Kirsty had spoken about the gloves of her attacker, and the stitching in the leather.

  ‘Where were you last night?’ Crozes said.

  Chuck glanced uneasily towards the others. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just answer the question, son.’

  One of the girls said, ‘We had a party last night. My dad’s got a barn over the far side of Cherry Hill. We can play music as loud as we like there and don’t disturb nobody.’

  ‘How long did that go on for?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know …’ she said. ‘Maybe till about three.’

  Crozes cocked his head. ‘And Chuck was with you the whole time.’

  ‘He was.’ This from one of the other boys. He leaned back on the comfortable leather seat behind him, lacing his fingers t
ogether at the back of his head and lifting his feet to cross them on the handlebars of his bike. ‘Any law against that?’

  ‘Not unless you were drinking. Or smoking dope.’

  An uneasiness stirred among them, and Crozes turned back to Chuck. ‘Where were you the night Mr Cowell was murdered?’

  Chuck gasped in disbelief and pulled a face. ‘You don’t think I had anything to do with that?’

  ‘I’m asking you a question.’

  ‘I woss at home wiss my parentss,’ Chuck said, mimicking Crozes’s strong French accent, and the other kids laughed.

  Crozes grinned as if amused. ‘That’s very good, Chuck. Now if you like, I can have every item of clothing you own confiscated for forensic examination. And I can arrest you and hold you in custody for forty-eight hours while a team of experts pulls your house apart piece by piece. Which I am sure will endear you to your parents.’

  Chuck’s pale skin darkened. ‘I was at home all night. Ask my mother.’

  And it seemed to Sime that Mary-Anne Clarke was providing alibis for the whole family.

  Crozes’s cellphone rang in his pocket and he turned away to fish it out and take the call. He put a finger in one ear and walked several paces away, listening for a moment then speaking rapidly before hanging up. He turned back to the kids and waved a hand toward the far distance. ‘Go,’ he shouted. ‘And if you want to do something useful, join the search for Norman Morrison.’

  The kids wasted no time in starting up their motors and wheeling off to snake in an undulating line away across the hillside. Crozes turned to Sime as the sound of the motors faded. ‘Ariane Briand just landed at the airport at Havre aux Maisons,’ he said. ‘You and Blanc take the boat and get over there. I want to hear what she’s got to say for herself.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I

  During the crossing to Cap aux Meules Blanc assiduously avoided asking him about the attack. They passed most of the fifty-five minutes it took to cross the bay in silence. But Sime caught him examining the bruising on the side of his face, and Blanc seemed embarrassed and compelled to say something.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Sime nodded. ‘I’ll live.’

  But there was a tension between them.

  They picked up the Chevy the team had left parked at the harbour, and Blanc drove them south on the Chemin Principal before turning off on to the coast road that they had driven two days earlier in the rain. This time there was a vehicle parked outside the Briand house. Ariane Briand was back in residence.

  As soon as she opened the door, Sime saw what Aitkens had meant about her. She was a real looker and still is, he’d said. I didn’t know a boy at school who didn’t have the hots for her.

  She was closer to forty than she would probably want to admit, and was still a good-looking woman. She wore a short-sleeved cut-off top revealing a taut, tanned belly above tight-fitting jeans that showed off her slim hips. Chestnut-brown hair with blonde streaks tumbled in big, loose, careless curls to her shoulders. She had soft brown eyes and fine, full lips, and a jawline that most women would require surgery to replicate.

  She wore very little make-up, and her age was only discernible in the finest of lines creasing the skin around her eyes and mouth. She was the kind of woman, Sime knew from experience, that you could only ever admire from afar, unless you happened to be rich, or powerful. Cowell had most certainly been rich. And her ex, he supposed, could be described as powerful. At the very least, a big fish in a small pond.

  She stepped back from the door, looking at them without curiosity, and Sime saw that she was barefoot. ‘Can I help you?’

  Blanc showed her his ID. ‘Sûreté, madame. We’re investigating the murder of James Cowell.’

  ‘Of course you are. You’d better come in.’ She stood aside to let them pass.

  They walked into a large dining room that extended up into the roof space where huge Velux windows set into the slope of the roof allowed light to cascade into the room. An arched opening led through to a big, square kitchen with an island set at its centre. They never got any further than the dining room. Ariane Briand stood, almost barring their way to the rest of the house, her arms folded, defensive verging on hostile.

  ‘So …’ Blanc said. ‘Would you like to tell us where you’ve been for the last two days?’

  ‘Well, maybe you’d like to tell me why that’s any of your business.’

  Blanc bristled. ‘Madame, you can answer my questions here or at the Sûreté. Your choice.’

  She pursed her lips pensively, but if she was ruffled showed no sign of it. ‘I went shopping in Quebec City. Is that against the law?’

  ‘Even although you knew your lover had just been murdered?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I had no idea until I flew into the Madeleines this morning.’

  Sime nodded towards an expensive oxblood leather suitcase sitting against the island on the floor of the kitchen. ‘Is that your suitcase?’

  She glanced over her shoulder, but her hostility remained intact. ‘That’s James’s. It’s the stuff he brought with him when he moved in.’

  ‘And when was that, exactly?’

  ‘Just over a week ago. The Thursday, or the Friday. I can’t remember.’

  Blanc said, ‘And he never unpacked?’

  She appeared momentarily discomposed. ‘I’ve just finished packing it. You can take it with you, if you like.’

  Blanc scratched the bald patch on his head. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Madame Briand, you don’t exactly sound like the grieving lover.’

  She set her fine jawline and thrust it in his direction. ‘Grief takes many forms, Sergeant.’

  During this exchange Sime let his eyes wander around the room. A man’s coat hung on the coatrack beside the front door. A big coat that seemed too large to be Cowell’s. But even if it was, why had she not packed it with the rest of his things? On the sideboard stood a large, framed colour photo of Ariane and a man whom he did not recognise. He had an arm around her waist, and both were laughing freely at the camera, sharing a joke with whoever was taking the picture.

  He heard Blanc ask, ‘Do you have any thoughts about who might have a motive for murdering Monsieur Cowell, madame?’

  She shrugged, her arms still folded. ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’ Sime said.

  ‘Of course it is. Kirsty Cowell, who else?’

  Blanc said, ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Because she as good as threatened it.’

  The ensuing seconds of silence seemed embarrassingly long, before Sime said, ‘Explain.’

  Ariane Briand set her feet slightly apart as if preparing to stand her ground and defy them to challenge her. ‘She turned up at my door the night before the murder.’

  Sime felt the shock of her words prickling across his scalp. ‘Kirsty did?’

  She looked at him, fleeting incomprehension in her eyes. The Kirsty had sounded too intimate ‘Yes.’

  Blanc said, ‘According to everyone we’ve spoken to she hasn’t been off the island in ten years.’

  ‘Well, she was off the island that night.’

  ‘How did she make the crossing?’

  ‘You’d have to ask her that. But I know that she and James kept a small boat at the jetty below their house. And there’s a tiny harbour just down the road at Gros-Cap. Presumably that’s where she berthed it. She must have walked up in the rain. She was soaked to the skin when I answered the door.’

  Sime pictured her standing in the dark at the door, hair wet and hanging in knots over her shoulders, just as he had seen her that first day after she came out of the shower. But it was not an image he wanted to contemplate.

  ‘What did she want?’ Blanc asked.

  ‘James.’

  Sime frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She was looking for her husband, that’s what I mean. Very nearly hysterical she was, too. And wouldn’t believe me
when I said he wasn’t here. She forced her way into the house and rampaged around the place shouting his name. There was nothing I could do to stop her, so I just stood here until she realised I was telling the truth.’

  Sime was shocked. This picture the Briand woman was painting of Kirsty conformed to none of his perceptions of her, or to any of the things she had told him during their several interviews. Nor to the impression that Jack Aitkens had given of her. Serene was the word he had used. Like she had some kind of inner peace. If she has a temper, then I’ve never seen her lose it, he’d said. But, then, he had also confessed to barely knowing her.

  ‘When she finally accepted that he wasn’t here she went dangerously quiet.’ Ariane Briand was lost in a moment of recollection. ‘Her eyes were quite mad. Staring. Her voice was little more than a whisper when she told me she had no intention of giving up James without a fight. And that if she couldn’t have him she was damned sure no one else would.’

  Sime caught sight of his reflection in the mirror above the sideboard and saw how pale he was. And for the first time he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that maybe Kirsty Cowell had killed her husband after all.

  ‘The night of the murder,’ Blanc said. ‘Did you know that Cowell was flying back to Entry Island?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. He was here earlier. But he took a call on his cellphone. I have no idea who the caller was, but it was a fractious call, and he hung up in quite a state of agitation. Said he had something to take care of and would be back in a couple of hours.’

  Blanc glanced at Sime, but Sime was lost in a confusion of thoughts. Blanc said, ‘You’ll have to come to the police station with us, Madame Briand, to make an official statement.’ He pushed past her to pick up Cowell’s suitcase. ‘And we’ll take this with us.’

  Sime turned to lift the coat from the hanger by the door. ‘And the coat?’

  Her hesitation was almost imperceptible. ‘No, that’s not his.’

  II

  Ariane Briand had repeated her version of events in the interrogation room at the police station. Thomas Blanc had conducted the interview while Sime watched on monitors in the office next door. Under Blanc’s forensic questioning she had provided further detail that painted an even more graphic picture of Kirsty’s unexpected visit.