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  Sime said, ‘You’re saying you spent all night at your wife’s house the night Cowell was murdered.’

  ‘Actually, it’s my house,’ Briand said, his voice tight with annoyance. ‘But yes, Ariane and I were home together all night.’

  ‘That’s a very convenient alibi,’ Blanc said. ‘I wonder why your wife never mentioned it to us.’

  ‘Maybe because you never asked her.’ His voice was laden now with sarcasm.

  ‘Oh, we will.’ Blanc’s tone betrayed his annoyance.

  Sime said, ‘And you both, coincidentally, flew here the next morning.’

  ‘There was no coincidence about it,’ Briand said. ‘We left together. We’d already planned that, just so she could escape any heat from the break-up with Cowell. I booked the flights and hotel myself just to keep things discreet. I didn’t have any meetings until yesterday, so we knew we’d have a couple of days together before she went back.’

  Sime was reluctant to admit to himself that there was a ring of truth to all this. The photograph of Ariane and Briand had probably been reinstated to its place on the sideboard the night they planned to break the news to Cowell. The coat left hanging by the door was Briand’s. And Ariane hadn’t packed Cowell’s suitcase on her return from the airport. It had been packed the night he was murdered. But in any event, husband and wife each provided an alibi for the other. And one thing was certain. As he had pointed out to Blanc, it wasn’t Briand who attacked Sime on Entry Island. He had been here in Quebec City when it happened.

  ‘When did you hear about Cowell’s murder?’ he asked.

  ‘Not until Ariane got home. She called to tell me.’

  Blanc said, ‘It’s been all over the news.’

  ‘We weren’t watching the news, detective. We were putting our marriage back together. Finding ourselves again. No one knew where we were. We’d turned our cellphones off. It was just us. A hotel room, a couple of restaurants. The world didn’t exist.’

  ‘And how did you feel,’ Sime said, ‘when you heard that Cowell had been murdered?’

  A sardonic little smile played about the mayor’s lips. ‘To be perfectly honest, I gave a little jump for joy. The man was fucking up my personal and business life. His poor wife deserves a medal.’

  ‘His wife?’ Blanc said, surprised.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For killing him.’

  *

  The Château Frontenac with its towers and spires, its green copper roofs and orange brick, dominated the skyline above them. Built on the site of the old Château Haldimand, once home to a succession of British colonial governors, it was now a luxury hotel. Autumn colours on the hill below it painted the slope yellow and fiery red, and a constant traffic of tourists rode the funicular railway up and down to the old city walls.

  Sime and Blanc sat in a café beneath yellow parasols watching passengers stream off and on the river ferries at the terminal across the road. An enormous luxury cruise liner, berthed at the dock, almost dwarfed the old port. Cannon that guarded what was once the most important deep-water port on the eastern seaboard of North America poked through the crenellations in the harbour wall, unused in nearly two centuries and painted lacquer-black.

  Blanc was on his second coffee and his third cigarette as they sat waiting for their taxi to take them back to the airport. He had already briefed Crozes by telephone. ‘He seems happy,’ he said. ‘It pretty much puts Briand out of the picture and refocuses everything on the wife.’

  ‘But we still don’t have any evidence against her. Not real evidence,’ Sime said.

  Blanc shrugged. ‘We should get the pathologist’s report sometime today, and early results on the forensics.’ He scrutinised Sime carefully. ‘What is it with you and her, Sime?’

  He felt himself blushing. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All this stuff with the ring and the pendant, thinking that you knew her. I’ve seen how you look at her.’

  ‘How do I look at her?’ Sime was suddenly self-conscious.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s hard to say. But it’s not how a cop usually regards a suspect. There’s something personal there, and it’s not right. It’s not professional. You know that, Sime.’

  Sime didn’t respond, and Blanc thought for a moment.

  ‘You asked her the other day about her Scottish roots.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You’re Scottish, aren’t you? I mean, that’s where your ancestors came from.’

  Sime thought about it. ‘You know it’s funny. When I was growing up I never wanted to be anything other than Canadian. Quebecois. Of course, I knew about my Scottish heritage. My ancestors arrived here speaking Gaelic. And my father was so proud of our Scottish roots. Insisted we spoke English at home. Well, I already told you that.’ He smiled. ‘He was sure he had a Scottish accent. But I doubt if he did.’ He glanced at Blanc. ‘Trouble is, I didn’t want to be Scottish. I didn’t want to be different. Most of the other kids in my class were of French descent. We all spoke French together. I just wanted to be one of them. I was almost in denial about being Scottish. I guess I must have been a real disappointment to my dad.’

  Sime turned his gaze thoughtfully towards the port.

  ‘But if you go back five generations, my great-great-great-grandfather arrived here in Quebec City from Scotland without a penny to his name. He and his family had been cleared off their land in the Outer Hebrides, and he got separated from his mother and sisters.’

  Blanc sucked a mouthful of smoke into his lungs. ‘What about his father?’

  ‘His father was shot dead trying to poach deer on the estate during the potato famine.’

  ‘I thought that was an Irish thing.’

  Sime shook his head. ‘The famine was just as bad in parts of Scotland.’ He nodded towards the port. ‘When he got here he went searching records at the harbour master’s office, trying to establish when the boat his family came on had arrived. So he could try and find them. A boat called the Heather.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘There was no record of it. And he was told it was presumed lost at sea. In those days, if a boat went down no one ever knew.’ He recalled only too clearly his grandmother reading that passage from the diaries. How his ancestor had got drunk, and been rescued from the hands of unsavoury characters by an Irishman he’d met. He shook his head. ‘Hard to imagine what it must have been like. Thrown off your land and forced on to boats. Arriving in a strange land with nothing. No family, no friends.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  Sime shrugged. ‘He did all right for himself in the end. Ended up making a bit of a reputation as an artist, of all things.’

  ‘You got any of his paintings?’

  ‘Just the one. A landscape. I guess it must be the Hebrides. A pretty bleak-looking place. No trees, nothing.’ And it occurred to him that the imagery that coloured the backdrop to his dreams must have come from that painting hanging in his apartment. He turned to Blanc. ‘What about you? What are your roots?’

  Blanc said, ‘I can trace my ancestry all the way back to the early Acadians who first settled in Canada. They came from a town in the Poitou-Charentes region of western France called Loudun.’ He grinned. ‘So I’m a real pure-blood Frenchy. I guess the difference between my people and yours is that mine came voluntarily. Pioneers.’

  A taxi pulled up at the kerb and beeped its horn. Both men stood up quickly and Blanc left some coins on the table.

  III

  They were in the air shortly after midday and would be back on the islands by two. Crozes had told Blanc on the phone that he was calling a team meeting at the Sûreté to assess the evidence gathered to date and decide what further steps to take.

  Sime let his head fall back in the seat and closed his eyes only to find Kirsty Cowell’s face there, waiting for him, somehow etched on his retinas. He thought about what Blanc had said to him at the café about the way he was with her. There’s something personal the
re, and it’s not right. It’s not professional. And he wondered if he was losing all objectivity in this case.

  He felt the plane bank left as it circled over the city below to set a course that would follow the river north towards the Gulf. Blanc nudged his arm. He was in the window seat peering down on the landscape beneath them as they made the turn. It was a beautiful crisp, clear autumn day and the colours of the forest lining the banks of the river were spectacular in the sunlight, as if they had been enhanced by photo-manipulation software. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘See that string of islands in the river?’

  Sime leaned over him to try to catch a glimpse. And there they were, standing out in sharp relief against the flow of dark water in the St Lawrence. Grey rock and fall foliage. Nine or ten of them, varying in size, stretched out along the course of the St Lawrence to the north-east of the city.

  ‘Third one up from the Île d’Orléans,’ Blanc said. ‘That’s Grosse Île. That’s where they had the quarantine station for immigrants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. You ever hear about it?’

  Sime nodded grimly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Poor bastards. It was sheer hell, they say.’

  And Sime’s recollection of his ancestor’s experience there came flooding back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  This voyage is a nightmare beyond anything I might ever have imagined. And it has only just begun! God only knows what miseries lie ahead.

  I have learned not to think about Ciorstaidh, for it brings only pain and increases my depression. Had she been aboard with me as planned, we would have been in one of the few passenger cabins above deck. She had our papers, and when it was discovered that I had none, and no proof that my passage had been paid for, I was told by the first mate that I would have to pay my way, and was assigned to the kitchen to cook for the passengers below deck, among whom I would have to find a place.

  The kitchen is really just a crude preparation area, and the three of us designated as cooks find it almost impossible to work when the seas are rough, as they have been since we left.

  The drinking water in the barrels provided is green. Almost undrinkable. And half the grain in the sacks is mouldy. There is precious little in the way of meat, and it won’t keep long anyway. I have no idea how we are going to eke out the potatoes and onions and turnips for the length of the journey.

  I have learned that most of the 269 folk in steerage are from the Isle of Skye. Cleared from their land and sent to Glasgow by their landlord, who has paid their passage to Canada. Most of them possess no more than they stand up in. They have no money, and no idea what will happen to them when they arrive at their destination.

  The Eliza was never intended as a passenger vessel. She is a cargo ship. She will return to the British Isles laden with goods from the New World, and the people in steerage on the way out are little more than paying ballast.

  What they call steerage is a cargo hold crudely adapted to take people. Stalls have been constructed along each side of the hull, and down the centre of the ship. The stalls are on two levels, squeezed between the upper and lower decks. They provide little more room on filthy, stained planking than you can lie down on.

  Families are squeezed in, eight or ten to a stall. There are no toilets. Just tin chanties that you have to carry, sloshing and spilling, up to the top deck to empty overboard. The air is thick with the stench of human waste and there is no water for washing.

  Neither is there privacy when you perform your toilet. Which is embarrassing for everyone, but for the women in particular. Most use blankets held up by family members to screen them.

  It is dark down here, and oppressive. In bad weather they batten down the hatches and we see no daylight for days on end. The only illumination comes from the oil lamps that swing overhead, releasing their fumes into already unbreathable air. There are times I cannot even see to write this account of my life, and when the boat yaws and pitches in a storm I am inclined to think that no one will ever get to read it. I have been fortunate to be taken under the wing of the captain’s wife, as almost the only passenger in steerage who speaks English. She has provided me with materials to write my journal and a place to keep it safe. The writing of it is the only thing that keeps my sanity intact during these interminable hours and days.

  The seasickness is bad, and the music of human misery that I am now used to hearing day and night is almost constantly punctuated by the sound of vomiting. I often think of my mother and sisters aboard the Heather, and how it must be for them, too. It is a thought I can hardly bear.

  There is another sickness as well. Not caused by the motion of the boat, but by some malady. There is one man, I have noticed, who seems sicker than the rest. A young man, fit and strong, maybe five or six years older than myself. His name is John Angus Macdonald, and he has two young children and a wife pregnant with a third. He has violent sickness and diarrhoea and has not eaten for two days now. And just tonight I noticed an eruption of red spots on his chest and abdomen.

  *

  We have been at sea for two weeks, and John Angus Macdonald is dead. He and his family were in the stall next to mine and I watched him wither in front of my eyes.

  We held a brief funeral service for him this morning. Just a handful of us allowed up on deck for the ceremony. I cannot describe how wonderful it was to breathe fresh air, although in the end it only made it harder to return below deck.

  John Angus was wrapped in the sheet he died in. Crudely sewn into it. I was only there because I am one of the few aboard who can read and write, and someone thrust the Gaelic bible in my hand and asked me to read from it. I remembered the passage old blind Calum had recited over my father’s coffin. Although it took some time, I found it eventually: John, chapter 11, verse 25. I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.

  And they slid his body over the rail. I saw the tiny splash it made in heaving seas, and realised, possibly for the first time in my life, how utterly insignificant we all are.

  I have no idea how many weeks his widow Catriona’s pregnancy has left to run, but her bulge is substantial, and it cannot be too long before she will give birth. A baby that will never know its father.

  Somehow I feel a responsibility for her now that her man is gone. I am right there in the next stall, and the closest thing to a father her children have. Even as I write this by the feeble light down here, the little boy and girl are curled up at my legs, sharing my sheet now that their father’s is gone. All that I can really do for them is try to make sure they each get a little extra food.

  *

  The weather continues to be abominable. The hatches have been shut for days to keep the weather out, and I feel that I could cut the air into slices with my knife.

  I spoke earlier today with a member of crew who told me the average sailing time is normally four to six weeks. But because of this weather we are already well behind schedule, and he thinks it could take up to two months. I took an immediate inventory of our larder, such as it is, and did a quick reckoning. It seems to me that we will run out of food and water long before we get to our destination.

  *

  John Angus Macdonald’s sickness has spread. Eleven people have now died and been dropped overboard. Many of my fellow passengers have relentless diarrhoea. It soils the boards we sleep on. It makes a porridge along with vomit to render the floorboards treacherous underfoot. We have no way of cleaning it up, and the stink is beyond unbearable.

  I am acutely aware of the symptoms of the sickness that stalks us in steerage, and watch keenly for any sign of it in myself. Thus far I have been spared the malady, but not the misery.

  *

  Tonight has been one of the most distressing of my life.

  Catrìona Macdonald finally went into labour. The ship was pitching violently, and shadows cast by the swinging oil lamps danced among us like demons. It was
well nigh impossible to see or focus clearly.

  The poor woman was in terrible distress, and the more experienced older women gathered round to help with the delivery. Catrìona’s screams rose above even the roar of the storm, and her terrified children clung to me in the stall next door.

  It quickly became clear that there was a problem. I led the children to the stall across the way so that they couldn’t see, although they could still hear well enough. But even in the semi-dark I could read the body language of the women gathered around the young widow. And their silent panic took me back to that day many years before when Annag and I crouched by the chicken wire at the door to the fire room of our blackhouse when my mother gave birth.

  I left the children in the care of a family in the neighbouring stall and went to see for myself. At first the older women pushed me away. This was no place for a man, they said. But I forced my way through, bracing myself against the upright to see poor Catrìona Macdonald lying on her back with her legs held apart. The baby was coming out the wrong way, just as Murdag had done.

  There was no experienced midwife on board, and the woman trying to help release the baby was hopelessly out of her depth. I closed my eyes and saw clearly through the smoke of the fire room how the midwife in Baile Mhanais had turned the baby. And when I opened them again it was even clearer to me that if I did not do something this child was going to die.

  I pushed the woman out of the way, and I heard the others gasp their surprise as I took her place. I braced my knees against the side of the stall to steady myself against the yaw of the ship so that I could take a hold of the baby. I had seen it done. I knew I could do it.

  It was coming arse first, arms and legs still inside. A little girl. I pictured what I had seen the midwife do, freeing the baby’s legs one by one, then gently turning and twisting to release first one arm, then the other. The mother’s screams very nearly unnerved me. As with my own mother there was a terrible amount of blood, and my confidence started to desert me. The whole body was free now, but the head still trapped inside. Suffocating. The baby was drowning in blood and fluid.