Entry Island Page 21

  She let her head fall forward to stare in some distress at the items on the table that he had stolen from her to be a part of his secret world. ‘So sad.’

  Sime reset the camera to focus on Kirsty once more and sat down facing her in what had become his usual seat. It was raining outside now, and though not dark yet, there was very little light left in the day.

  She looked up with a weary expression of resignation on her face. ‘More questions?’

  He nodded and plunged straight in. ‘Why didn’t you tell us that you had paid a visit to the Briand home the night before the murder?’

  Colour rose on her cheeks and she took a moment to answer. ‘Because I knew it would influence your interpretation of events on the night of the murder itself.’

  ‘Your version of events.’

  She half-lifted an eyebrow. ‘See what I mean?’

  ‘And you didn’t think we would find out?’

  ‘I wasn’t exactly thinking straight about anything. To be honest it seemed irrelevant to me. All that mattered was what happened that night. Whatever had unravelled, or been said the night before, was beside the point.’

  ‘Unravelled?’ Sime frowned. ‘That seems a strange word to use.’

  ‘Does it?’ And she thought about it herself. ‘Maybe that’s because it describes the way I felt. Like I was unravelling.’

  ‘You told me that you were glad to discover James was having an affair. That it brought to an end a situation with which you were deeply unhappy.’

  ‘I know what I told you.’

  ‘But that wasn’t true.’

  ‘It was!’ Indignation flared briefly in her eyes.

  ‘Then how do you explain your behaviour? Turning up at Ariane Briand’s door, rampaging about her house looking for James?’

  ‘Rampaging? Is that how she described it?’

  ‘How would you describe it?’

  She let her eyes drop to her hands in her lap. ‘Pathetic,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s what it was. What I was. Sad and pathetic. Everything I told you about the way I felt was true. But I also felt hurt, and humiliated.’ She looked up again, and he thought he saw an appeal for understanding in her eyes. ‘I’d been drinking that night.’ And now he saw her shame. ‘It’s not something I’m in the habit of doing. So it didn’t take much to tip me over the edge. You know, sitting alone here in the dark, thinking about all the wasted years, remembering every little thing he’d said, all his grand gestures and promises, and wondering if Ariane Briand was the first, or just the latest in a long succession. All those business trips away. I wanted to know. I wanted to confront him.’

  ‘So you took the boat that you keep at the jetty below the cliffs?’

  She nodded. ‘It was pure madness. I’m not great with boats at the best of times. But the alcohol had me all fired up and I didn’t really care. If the weather had been worse I’d probably never have made it. James would still be alive, and my body would have been found washed up on a beach somewhere.’ She was looking in his direction, but he doubted that she saw him. She was somewhere else, reliving the madness. ‘I was, literally, unravelling.’ And suddenly she jumped focus and her eyes seared into him. ‘I’m not proud of myself, Mr Mackenzie. God knows what was going through my mind, or what kind of emotional state I was in. I just wanted to have it out with him. Face to face. Clear the air. I just wanted to know. Everything.’

  ‘And when he wasn’t there you turned on the next best thing. His lover.’

  ‘I didn’t turn on her!’

  ‘According to Madame Briand you said …’ Sime looked down to consult the notes taken during her formal interview, ‘I’m not giving him up without a fight. And if I can’t have him, neither you nor anyone else will.’ He looked up again. ‘Are those your words?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘So she paraphrased you?’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like me.’

  ‘But was that the sentiment you expressed?’

  Her embarrassment was clear. ‘Probably.’

  ‘Was it or wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes!’ she snapped at him. ‘Yes, yes, yes! I lost it, okay? Drink, emotion …’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘Whatever. I was coming apart at the seams. It felt like my life was over. Tied to this damned island. Alone. Almost nobody my own age left. No way I was ever going to meet someone else. All I could see stretching ahead of me were a lot of lonely years in an empty house.’

  Sime sat back and let a silence settle between them again, like dust after a fight. ‘You realise, Mrs Cowell, that what you said to Madame Briand could be construed as a threat to kill your husband.’

  ‘Well, of course, you’d just love to give it that construction, wouldn’t you?’ She imbued the word construction with all the sarcasm she could muster.

  ‘You told me that on the night of the murder you didn’t know that your husband was coming back to the island.’

  She gazed at her hands.

  Sime waited for several moments. ‘Are you going to respond or not?’

  She looked up. ‘You didn’t ask a question.’

  ‘All right, is it true that you didn’t know your husband was coming home that night?’

  Her eyes drifted away towards the window behind him, and the view out over the cliffs. And again she made no response.

  ‘According to Madame Briand he received a short, fractious call on his cellphone earlier in the evening and left immediately afterwards. Did you make that phone call?’

  Her eyes drifted back in his direction, but all the fight had gone out of them.

  ‘We can check the phone records, Mrs Cowell.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly, without further prompting.

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘I told him I wanted to talk to him.’

  ‘To say what?’

  ‘All the things I wanted to have out with him the night before. Only I wasn’t drunk anymore. Just kind of cold, you know. Angry. Wanting to know stuff that we’d never had the chance to talk about, so I wouldn’t be wondering about it for the rest of my life.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘That we’d talked enough, and he had no intention of coming to the island. At least, not then.’

  ‘So how did you persuade him?’

  ‘I told him that first I was going to gather together all his clothes and make a nice big bonfire of them on top of the cliffs. And if he still didn’t come I was going to set his precious house on fire, his computer and all of his business records with it.’ She almost smiled. ‘That seemed to do the trick.’

  He braced himself for a final onslaught. ‘So everything you told us about what happened that night was a lie.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘When you failed to confront him the night before at Ariane Briand’s house, you issued a veiled threat to kill him, and the following night lured him to the island by threatening to set his house on fire. When he arrived you fought, verbally at first, then physically.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Whether it was premeditated or not, you grabbed a knife and in a frenzy you stabbed him three times in the chest.’

  ‘That’s not what happened!’

  ‘You immediately regretted it and tried to revive him. And when that didn’t work you made up a story about some intruder and ran off to tell it to your neighbours.’

  ‘There was an intruder. I did not kill my husband!’ She glared at him, breathing heavily, and he sat back in his seat, aware that his hands were trembling. He didn’t dare pick up the papers on his knee for fear that it would show.

  She looked at him with hatred in her eyes. ‘I think the lion just got the gazelle.’

  ‘It’s only what you can expect from a prosecuting attorney if you ever go on the witness stand, Mrs Cowell.’ He knew that all the evidence was circumstantial, and accusations alone would not secure a conviction. But just one tiny piece of forensic evidence against her would be enough to tip the balance.r />
  Her face was flushed. Whether from fear, or guilt, or anger it was impossible to tell.

  ‘Are you charging me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’ She stood up. ‘Then this interview is over. And if you want to talk to me again you can do it in the presence of a lawyer.’ She strode past him, pushing the screen door open, and went out on to the porch. He got up to look from the window and watched as she ran down the steps and walked off along the edge of the cliffs. Her arms were folded, hair streaming out behind her, and it made him think of Ciorstaidh striding off across the machair after she had told his ancestor that she hated him.

  When Sime turned back to the room, Crozes was standing there. He looked exhilarated. ‘Just about nailed her,’ he said. ‘Great job, Sime.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I

  The bar shimmered in semi-darkness, light washing down across bottles and optics from hidden overhead lighting. Sime sat at the polished counter on his own, while a bored barman cleaned glasses to keep himself busy. He hadn’t felt much like eating with the others, and now they were all in the bowling alley. Friends and colleagues who had worked together on the same team for months, sharing friendship and downtime. Laughing. Cheering when someone made a strike, voices echoing around the cavernous bowling hall. There was a feeling that they were just one step away from cracking this case, and spirits were high. Norman Morrison had been dismissed as a red herring. At worst it seemed that his death had been nothing more than a tragic accident.

  Sime had his back to them, but couldn’t shut out the noise.

  He was on his third or fourth whisky and had begun to lose count. But the oblivion he had been hoping for seemed no nearer than it had when he first sat down. If the alcohol was having any effect on him he wasn’t aware of it.

  As hard as he tried he couldn’t banish from his mind the wounded animal look in Kirsty’s eyes when she’d told him that the lion had just got the gazelle. It had left him feeling ruthless and predatory.

  He no longer knew what to believe about her. But the fact that she had told him the truth about the pendant was no longer in any doubt, and it left him feeling hugely unsettled. How did they come to possess the same family crest engraved in the same semi-precious carnelian? One a ring, one a pendant. Clearly pieces of a matching set.

  Crozes had been dismissive. Nothing to do with the case, he’d said. And Sime was unable to find any grounds with which to challenge that assessment. There was no obvious link to the murder.

  And yet still Sime was haunted by that moment he’d first set eyes on the widow and been convinced he knew her. Somehow in that light the arm-and-sword crest seemed less of a coincidence. But he could not for the life of him imagine what it was that connected them.

  If there was a connection, and the matching ring and pendant had some significance beyond coincidence, then he could only think that the answer must lie in the diaries. Something in all of this had sparked his dreams and recollections of them. And Annie had thought there was some mention of the ring in them, though he had no memory of that himself. Of course, he knew that his grandmother had not read them everything from the journals. And he vaguely recalled his parents expressing concern about one of the stories. Not suitable for young children, they had said.

  He needed to get his hands on those diaries.

  ‘Another one of those, monsieur?’ The barman nodded towards his empty glass on the bar. But Sime couldn’t face another. He shook his head. It was time to face the night, with all its sleepless demons, and lie on his back to watch the TV screen send its shadow dancers around the walls.

  On the walk down the hall he felt as if he were pulling each foot free of treacle. He closed the door of his room behind him and leaned back against it. When he shut his eyes the ground shifted beneath his feet and for a moment he thought he was going to fall over. He opened them again quickly.

  He found the remote for the TV in the dark and turned it on. Better to have something meaningless to shut out, than to lie listening to reproachful silence. He kicked off his shoes and lay gingerly on the bed. His ribs were less painful than before. The nurse was right, he thought. Just bruised. And he wondered again who had attacked him the previous night. Not Norman Morrison. And certainly not Kirsty. So who? He spread his hands on the bed on either side of his hips, as if some unseen pressure were bearing down on him and pressing him into the mattress.

  His throat felt rough and his eyes were on fire. He closed them and saw flickering red light through the lids. His breathing was slow but laboured, as if each breath took a conscious effort. His whole body was screaming out for sleep.

  *

  The hours passed in an almost fevered delirium, not always fully conscious, but never quite asleep. The passage of time was punctuated by frequent, involuntary glances at the clock. The last time he’d looked it was 1.57. Now it was 2.11. The TV channel had reverted to its nightly diet of teleshopping special offers. Tonight, a kitchen device capable of chopping any vegetable into a dozen different shapes or sizes.

  Sime swung his legs off the bed and stood up. He walked stiffly into the bathroom, avoiding the mirror, and ran the cold tap. Cupped hands splashed icy water on to his face. The shock of it brought momentary relief from the fatigue that numbed him, and he rubbed himself vigorously dry with a towel. In the bedroom he slipped his feet back into their shoes.

  Beyond the curtain he slid open the inner glass door, then the fly screen, and unlocked the outer window, sliding it aside and slipping out into the darkness of the car park. The wind blew in across the bay in cold gusts. He zipped up his hoodie, pushed his hands deep into his pockets and started walking. Anything to avoid the excruciating boredom that came with insomnia.

  The yellow light of street lamps fell in gloomy patches on the tarmac, reflecting off the roofs of cars in the car park. The main north–south highway was deserted. Lights shining from the windows of the hospital across the way were the only sign of life. Lights that shone for the sick and the dead, and for those who had to deal with both.

  He had walked no more than fifty metres when he heard a woman cry out. And then a man’s voice. At first he thought that perhaps the woman was being attacked, and he spun around looking for the source of the voices. And then it came to him that these were the sounds of people making love. Voices that drifted out into the night from one of the hotel rooms, issuing from behind curtains drawn across doors left open for air.

  Sime closed his eyes. Other people’s lives, he thought, and felt the ache of lost love, of moments once shared and now misplaced. Although his marriage was dead and hopelessly beyond resuscitation, he missed the warmth and comfort that comes with being close to another human being.

  He stood for a self-conscious moment, listening to the shared experience of the strangers beyond the curtain, almost wallowing in his own misery. Before an ugly thought wormed its way through his self-pity. He looked back along the row of glass doors to his own and made a quick count. And then a moment of pure, incandescent jealousy seared his soul.

  Without even thinking, he strode towards the lovers’ room and slid the screen door roughly aside, dragging the curtains out of his way. Pale light washed into the room from the street lamps outside, spilling across the bed and startling the man and woman mid-passion. The man rolled to one side, and the woman sat up, wide-eyed and staring towards the figure who stood silhouetted in the doorway. The bedside light snapped on, and Sime gazed in disbelief at the dishevelled figures of Marie-Ange and Daniel Crozes, their nakedness only half hidden by a tangle of sheets.

  ‘Sime!’ There was both disbelief and alarm in Marie-Ange’s almost involuntary evocation of his name.

  So many things passed through his mind in a single moment that not one of them achieved any clarity. His wife and his boss were making love in her hotel room. Two people having sex. People he knew. One he respected, the other he used to love. And when suddenly the fog of confusion cleared he realised with a sickening sense
of betrayal that this was not a one-night stand. He saw the half-empty bottle of champagne that stood on the dresser, the two empty glasses. The clothes discarded carelessly on the floor.

  ‘How long?’ he said.

  Marie-Ange clutched the sheets to her chest to hide her breasts, as if he might never have seen them before. ‘It’s none of your business. We are no longer an item, Sime. Our marriage is over.’

  ‘How long?’

  But she could not maintain her facade of righteous indignation, and turned her head to avoid his eyes, the accusation in them and all his hurt.

  Sime switched his focus toward Crozes. ‘Lieutenant?’ he said, his voice laden with irony, and Crozes couldn’t look him in the eye.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sime,’ he said.

  And Sime went from stillness to fury before his brain could engage in reason. He crossed the room in several long strides and grabbed his superior officer by the shoulders, pulling him from the bed and slamming him hard back against the wall. All the air escaped Crozes’s lungs in a single breath, almost at the same moment as Sime’s bunched fist sank into his gut, causing him to double up. Without any predetermination, Sime’s knee came up into his face, bursting Crozes’s lip on his front teeth and spraying blood all over his naked chest and thighs. He heard Marie-Ange screaming, and Crozes’s voice gurgling through the blood in his mouth. But Sime was gripped by a rage that wouldn’t let him go and he swung Crozes through three hundred and sixty degrees to smash up against the wall again. A chair went flying. The champagne bottle toppled and smashed one of the glasses. Sime swung a fist and caught Crozes on the side of his head. The lieutenant fell to his knees, and only the low, threatening imperative in Marie-Ange’s voice stopped him from going for the kill.

  ‘Stop right now or you’re a fucking dead man!’

  He turned and saw her kneeling on the bed, the sheets and all modesty abandoned now, to be replaced by her standard-issue Glock 26 handgun, held in both hands and levelled at his head.

  There were voices outside the hotel room and a frantic banging on the door.