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  I see the quiet determination that sets the line of her jaw. ‘They’ll not catch you,’ she says, and she turns to the trap and opens the trunk at the rear of it. There are two small suitcases inside it. She pulls one out and opens it on the ground. ‘I brought some of George’s clothes for you, and a pair of his boots. They might be a little big, but they’ll do. You can’t travel looking the way you do.’

  I look at the folded trousers, and the jacket, and the pressed shirt in the case. And George’s shining black boots. And I can only imagine how he would have felt at the thought of me stepping into them. ‘I can’t travel at all,’ I tell her.

  Her face creases in a frown of incomprehension. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t leave my mother and my sisters.’

  ‘Simon, you told me yourself they are probably already on the boat. There’s nothing you can do.’

  I close my eyes and want to shout out loud. She is right, of course, but I find it next to impossible to accept.

  She grabs my arm and forces me to look at her. ‘Listen, Simon. The Heather is bound for a place called Quebec City. It’s somewhere on the eastern seaboard of Canada. If we can get to Glasgow, then I have more than enough money to pay our passage on the next boat to Quebec ourselves. Once we get there, there’s bound to be shipping records or something. You’re sure to be able to track them down. But we’ve got to go. Now. We need to be on a sailing to the mainland before the police come after you.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  He woke up startled, feelings of pain and regret following him from the dream to his waking consciousness like a hangover. The dream itself had unfolded just as he remembered the telling of the story, but his years of life experience since its reading had coloured it with images and emotions he could not have known as a young boy. And once again Kirsty Cowell had been Ciorstaidh, and he his own ancestor.

  Light leaked in all around the drawn curtains of his room and he checked the time. It was a little after seven, so he had not slept long.

  These events from his ancestor’s life were haunting him now with increasing frequency. When they weren’t consciously in his thoughts, his subconscious was dredging them up to fill brief moments of sleep. It seemed there was no escape.

  The clearing of Baile Mhanais and his running away with Ciorstaidh had somehow brought him full circle. Back to that first dream, and their separation on the quayside at Glasgow. And that’s what filled his mind now. But with a sense of something missing. Although he could not think what. He forced himself to replay the events of that fateful day when the Eliza had carried Simon off to the New World, leaving Ciorstaidh behind in the old. The promise his ancestor knew he could never keep. Just as he had dreamt it. Just as he remembered it in the telling from all those years before. And yet still, he knew, there was something he’d forgotten. Something lost in time and just out of reach.

  A knock on the door dispersed the dream and its afterthoughts, and his recollection of events the night before came flooding back to replace them. Depression fell on him like snow.

  The knock came again. More insistent this time.

  Sime felt battered, his eyes full of sleep and still barely focusing. He swung his legs out of bed, his clothes crumpled and damp with sweat, and slipped his feet into his shoes.

  ‘Okay!’ he shouted as the knocking started again. He swept his hair back out of his face and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands before opening the door.

  Crozes stood in the hall. For a moment Sime wondered if he was going to attack him. But he was a pool of dark stillness. The cut on his lip had scabbed over, and there was bruising all around his left eye and cheek. ‘Can I come in?’

  Sime stood back, holding the door wide, and Crozes pushed past him into the room. As Sime closed the door Crozes turned to face him. ‘We can play this one of two ways,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’ Sime could determine nothing from expressionless eyes. The pallor beneath Crozes’s tan turned his skin almost jaundice-yellow.

  ‘Either we behave as if nothing happened and we just get on with our lives.’ He hesitated. ‘Or I bring you up on a charge of assault which will see you immediately suspended, and almost certainly dismissed.’

  Sime looked at him thoughtfully, his brain slowly clearing. ‘Well, let me tell you why you’re not going to do that.’ Crozes waited. Impassive. ‘One, you’d have to admit that you’d been screwing the wife of a fellow officer. Two, you’d have to suffer the humiliation of every single person in the department knowing how I beat the shit out of you.’ Still Crozes waited. ‘End to both of our careers. And I don’t think either of us wants that.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying that we can play this one of two ways.’ He got an almost perverse pleasure from throwing Crozes’s words back in his face. ‘We can make like nothing happened.’

  Crozes contained his anger well. ‘Or?’

  ‘Or I can go upstairs with the fact that you’ve been sleeping with my wife for the last year and we’ll see how that plays out.’

  ‘Same result.’

  Sime shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ He was surprised himself just how cool and unemotional he felt. As if it was other people’s lives they were discussing. And he realised with something of a shock that he didn’t much care any more. About the Sûreté, about Marie-Ange, about Crozes. ‘Just depends which of us takes the initiative first.’

  ‘I could arrest you right now. It’s not as if there aren’t witnesses.’

  ‘And how do you know that I haven’t already called Captain McIvir with a full account of what happened. Including your infidelity with my wife?’ He saw Crozes stiffen.

  ‘Have you?’

  Sime let the question hang for a few long moments. ‘No,’ he said finally.

  Crozes’s relief was almost palpable. ‘So we’re agreed then?’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘Nothing happened last night. If Marie-Ange and I have a relationship it only began after your marriage broke up. We wrap up this investigation and spend the rest of our careers staying out of each other’s way.’

  Sime looked hard at the other man. ‘In other words you want me to keep my mouth shut.’ He could see by the movement of his jaw that Crozes was clenching his teeth.

  ‘You can interpret it any way you like. I’m just laying out the choices.’

  It was some time, with silence hanging heavy in the room, before Sime broke eye contact with the lieutenant and sat down on the edge of his bed. ‘Whatever you want,’ he said wearily.

  Crozes nodded, and his whole demeanour seemed to change in a heartbeat. Suddenly he was the lieutenant again, and it was back to business. The murder of James Cowell. As if nothing at all had passed between them he said, ‘The police in Quebec City have tracked down Mayor Briand finally. He’s staying at the Auberge Saint-Antoine.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘There’s a flight in forty-five minutes. I want you and Blanc on it.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  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 mon
ey 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.’