Entry Island Read online

  There was a crowd on the jetty to meet the incoming ferry. Sime noticed Owen and Chuck Clarke among them, watching him with sullen eyes. And when the boat had unloaded its cargo of people and goods, they all watched silently as Sime reversed the minibus on to the car deck. Kirsty sat in plain view beside him with dead eyes, a face like stone turning to neither left nor right. This woman who had not left the island for ten years. It could only mean one thing.

  He sat with her in the vehicle until the ramp had been raised, hiding them from the view of curious eyes on the quayside. The boat pitched gently as it pulled away to round the breakwater and headed out across the bay. Without a word he reached into his pocket for a pair of handcuffs, and before she realised what was happening took her left wrist and cuffed it to the steering wheel. Her shock was patent, blue eyes blackened by dilating pupils and brimming with hurt and anger. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘I can’t risk letting you free on the boat in case you jump overboard.’

  She gazed at him in disbelief, her mouth half open. ‘You really think I’d commit suicide?’

  ‘It’s been known.’ He paused. ‘Unless you’d rather go up on deck handcuffed to me for all the passengers and crew to see.’

  Her jaw set and she turned to gaze sightlessly through the windshield. ‘I’ll stay in the van.’

  He nodded and slipped wearily out of the vehicle to climb the stairs to the top deck, and there make his way along to the prow of the boat. He closed aching, scratchy eyes, and felt the wind in his face like cold water, refreshing, bracing, but not enough to wash away his fatigue or his sense of guilt and betrayal.

  He turned to find his way unsteadily back to the stern, and stand holding the rail while he watched Entry Island receding into the gloom of approaching night. He remembered the touch of Kirsty’s fingers on his cheek. Could almost feel them still. And everything about what he was doing seemed wrong.

  II

  As they drove past the hospital and the Auberge Madeli, torn lumps of ragged black cloud blew across the island from the west, underlit by a fiery sunset that burned white hot along the horizon, turning to yellow and red, then purple, all across the underside of the clouds. It looked as if the sky were on fire, and Sime was not sure he had ever seen a sunset like it.

  But like all things that burn so brightly, it burned itself out all too fast, and by the time they reached the police station on the Chemin du Gros Cap the sun had gone, leaving behind it only a charred sky.

  There was still a little light left in it as Sime led Kirsty into the single-storey building. Yellow electric light fell out in oblongs from the glass doors, and as they pushed through them, heads swung in their direction. From the open door of the general office where secretaries watched wide-eyed. From the incident room next door, where several members of the investigation team were lounging around a table cluttered with papers and open laptops and telephones. They were relaxed now. Job done. Thomas Blanc fleetingly caught his eye then looked away.

  Crozes was standing at the end of the hall. He turned, and Sime saw the look of satisfaction on his face, a face still bruised from their encounter in the early hours. ‘This way,’ he called.

  He stood at the door to the cells to let them by. Inside, a uniformed female officer was waiting. Kirsty cast Crozes a dark look as she passed. Sime stopped her in front of the first of two cells and she turned to him. He saw in her expression the same contempt with which he had become so familiar in Marie-Ange. ‘So now we know who was screwing your wife,’ she said.

  Sime glanced at Crozes, whose eyes narrowed with incredulity, his head half cocked in disbelief. But Sime was past caring. He leaned into the cell to drop Kirsty’s bag on the floor by the cot bed set along the right-hand wall.

  She looked into it. ‘This is it?’ she said. ‘This is where you’re going to keep me?’

  ‘For the time being,’ Crozes said.

  The walls were painted a pale lemon, the same colour as the sheet on the bed. The vinyl floor was blue, as were the pillow and duvet. ‘Very Mediterranean,’ she said. ‘And colour-coordinated too. What more could a girl ask for?’

  There was no door on the cell. Only bars that slid shut on it, so there was no privacy. A stainless-steel unit incorporated a washbasin and toilet in one. Set into the far wall beyond the second cell was a tiled shower. Bleak and depressing. But however despondent she might have felt, Kirsty was determined not to show it.

  Crozes said, ‘Have you spoken to a lawyer?’

  ‘I don’t have one.’ And without looking at Sime, she said, ‘He told me I could call one from here.’

  Crozes nodded. ‘Next door.’ And he took her through to the interview room. ‘No doubt you’ll want your lawyer present at all future interviews.’

  Kirsty wheeled around, eyes flashing. ‘You bet your life I do.’ And she stabbed a finger towards Sime standing in the doorway. ‘But don’t expect me to say a single damned thing if he’s even in the building.’

  *

  The incident room was empty when they went in and Sime wondered where everyone had gone. It wasn’t long until he found out. Crozes closed the door behind them. His voice was low and threatening. ‘I’m not even going to ask what the hell you were doing on Entry Island. Or how she knew.’

  Sime looked at him disingenuously. ‘Knew what?’

  ‘About us.’

  Sime held up his fist. ‘Busted knuckles. Bruised face. Broken marriage. It doesn’t take much to put the pieces together.’

  It was impossible to tell from Crozes’s face what was going through his mind, but whatever thoughts they were never found voice. He said, ‘She’ll be charged and held here until a plea hearing can be set up at the courthouse on Havre Aubert. Any subsequent trial will held on the mainland.’ He stopped to draw a thoughtful breath. ‘Meantime, I’m taking the team back to Montreal first thing in the morning. And your part in this investigation is over.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean someone else will be taking over your role as interrogator.’

  Sime glared at him. ‘In other words you’re removing me from the case.’

  Crozes turned away to begin casually gathering together papers on the table. ‘Not me, Sime.’ He opened a briefcase and stuffed the paperwork inside before turning back to face him. ‘You’re not well. It’s been noted by the brass back at Rue Parthenais. People are concerned for your well-being.’ He paused before delivering his coup de grâce, barely able to mask his smirk. ‘They want you to take sick leave for medical evaluation. An appointment’s already been set up with a consultant.’

  And Sime realised just how Crozes had fucked him. Exactly as Thomas Blanc had predicted.

  III

  Sime sat alone in his room while the rest of the team ate in La Patio. All he could think of was Kirsty sitting forlornly on the edge of the cot bed in her cell at the Sûreté. He knew by now that he had lost all objectivity on her guilt or innocence. Though it hardly mattered. She had been charged with murder. And he had been instrumental in bringing the case to that conclusion.

  But he remained uneasy. Two nights ago he had lain on the ground in the dark, looking up into the masked face of a man who was about to kill him. A man who matched Kirsty’s description of the intruder who she claimed had murdered her husband. Crozes had dismissed it as a red herring. But he hadn’t seen the look in the attacker’s eyes and understood, as Sime had, that he meant to kill him. This was no kid trying to scare him off. Only fate and a light sleeper had saved Sime from certain death.

  More inexplicable still, was why this man should have wanted to kill him. As Crozes himself had pointed out. No matter how much he turned it over in his mind, none of it made sense.

  In normal circumstances he would have found it difficult to sleep tonight. But this was no normal circumstance. His bosses at the Sûreté were right. He wasn’t fit for duty. In fact he wasn’t fit for much of anything. It seemed to him that it wouldn’t be long before he was looki
ng for a new job. And washed-up former cops were not exactly the most eligible for employment.

  He dropped his face into his hands. The thought of his child that never was fought for space with his grief for the loss of Marie-Ange, and anger at what she had done. He wanted to weep. But tears wouldn’t come, and as he sat up again his eye alighted on the signet ring on his right hand. Red carnelian set in gold and engraved with an arm and sword. From the same set as Kirsty’s pendant.

  He remembered his sister’s words. I’m sure there’s something about the ring in the diaries themselves. Can’t remember what, though. And he was almost overwhelmed by the sense that in all his recollections of those stories from so many years before, he was missing something.

  Somehow, he knew, it was imperative that he got his hands on those diaries.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  There was none of the usual banter and celebration that accompany the successful conclusion of a case. The detectives assigned to the murder of James Cowell by the Sûreté de Québec at 19 Rue Parthenais in Montreal solemnly presented themselves the following morning at security in the small airport at Havre aux Maisons. They were waved through to the tarmac where their thirteen-seater King Air would take them on the three-hour flight back to the city.

  Equipment packed away in the hold, they squeezed themselves into the tiny passenger cabin. Sime once more sat on his own at the front, isolated from his colleagues. As on the flight out he avoided eye contact with Marie-Ange. The tension aboard the small aircraft was almost physical.

  They took off into the wind, and as they banked left Sime had a view out across the Baie de Plaisance. The sun was rising beyond Entry Island, casting its shadow long and dark across the bay towards Cap aux Meules. Like a clenched fist with a single finger pointing in accusation.

  Sime looked away. It was the last time he would set eyes on it. Just as, the day before, he had set eyes on Kirsty Cowell for the final time. She would be waking now to her first full day of incarceration, awaiting the hearing that would allow her officially to claim her innocence.

  He sighed and felt tired. So very, very tired.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I

  The insomnia clinic was located in the Behavioural Psychotherapy and Research Unit of the Jewish General Hospital on the Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, almost in the shadow of Mount Royal, and just a few streets away from the Jewish cemetery at the foot of it.

  There was still warmth in the sun, and leaves on the trees, but an autumn chill on the edge of the wind. The sky was well broken, and Montreal basked in the late September sunshine. From the office where he had sat patiently answering questions for the last half an hour, Sime could see the traffic heading south on the Rue Légaré. The office was warm, made warmer by the sun streaming in through the windows, and the stop–start movement of the cars below was almost hypnotic. Sime was finding it hard to concentrate.

  Catherine Li was, he guessed, in her early forties. She wore a white, open-necked blouse and black slacks, an attractive woman, slim, with short-cut black hair, and the beautifully slanted dark eyes of someone whose ancestral roots lay somewhere in Asia. Canada was such a melting-pot of different ethnicities, and although he considered himself a native French-speaker, it nevertheless seemed odd that this woman should speak to him in French.

  The plaque on her door had told him that she was a Ph.D. and Clinical Director of the unit.

  There had been no preamble. No chit-chat. She had asked him to sit, opened a file on the desk in front of her, and taken notes as he responded to her questions. Wide-ranging questions about his upbringing, his job, his marriage, his feelings on various topics, political and social. She had asked about his symptoms. When they had begun, what form they took, how often he slept. Did he dream?

  For the first time she sat back and looked at him. Examining his face, he thought. A face that had grown increasingly unfamiliar to him as he examined it himself in the mirror each morning. Eyes bloodshot, deeply shadowed. Sunken cheeks. He had shed weight, and his hair had lost its lustre. Every time he looked at his reflection he felt haunted by the ghost of himself.

  She smiled unexpectedly and he saw warmth and sympathy in her soft brown eyes. ‘You know, of course, why you are here,’ she said. It wasn’t a question. But he nodded all the same. ‘Your employers at the Sûreté have sent you to me because they fear that your condition is affecting your ability to do your job.’ She paused. ‘Do you think it is?’

  Again he nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Again she smiled. ‘Of course it is. In fact, it’s a given. The toxins that have accumulated in your body through lack of sleep are certain to have impaired both your physical and mental performance. As I’m sure you are aware, your concentration and memory will also have been affected. Tired during the day, irritable and fatigued, and yet unable to sleep at night.’

  He wondered why she was telling him what he already knew.

  She interlaced her fingers on the desk in front of her. ‘There are two kinds of insomnia, Monsieur Mackenzie. There is acute insomnia, which lasts for a short period, usually just a matter of days. And then there is the chronic variety, which can be defined as suffering sleep impairment for at least three or four nights a week for a month or longer.’ She stopped to draw breath. ‘Clearly you fall into the chronic category.’

  ‘Clearly.’ Sime was conscious of the sarcasm in his tone. She was still telling him nothing new. But if she was aware of it she gave no indication, perhaps writing it off to the irritability she had just described as one of his symptoms.

  ‘The cause of your condition can also be defined in one of two ways. As either primary or secondary insomnia.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Well, primary insomnia is unrelated to any other physical or mental conditions. It is simply a condition in itself. Secondary insomnia, however, means that your sleep problems are related to something else. There are many things that can affect your sleep. Arthritis, asthma, cancer. Pain of any kind. Or depression.’ She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Which is, I believe, your problem. Extreme depression brought on by the break-up of your marriage.’ She inclined her head slightly. ‘Are you aware of being depressed?’

  ‘I’m aware of being unhappy.’

  She nodded. ‘The vivid dreaming that you have described to me is frequently a symptom that accompanies anxiety or depression-induced insomnia.’

  In an odd way it was almost a relief to have his dreams explained to him in this way. As a symptom. A condition brought on by something outside of his control. But normal, if the symptom of a psychological problem could ever be described as normal.

  He became aware of Catherine Li watching him closely. ‘Are you still with me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is a school of thought which argues that dreams are actually a chemical event. That they are directly affected by modulations in the brain’s neurotransmitters. You know what REM is?’

  ‘R-E-M?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A band, weren’t they? Losing my religion?’

  Her smile indicated anything but amusement. ‘You know, I’ve never heard that one.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He lowered his eyes, embarrassed.

  ‘REM stands for rapid eye movement. It describes a phase of sleep that you go through, typically, four or five times a night, accounting for anything up to 120 minutes of a night’s sleep. It is also when most dreams occur. During REM sleep acetylcholine and its regulators normally dominate, while serotonin is depressed.’

  Sime shrugged, incomprehension written all over his face now. ‘Which means?’

  She laughed. ‘It means that I might recommend prescribing you SSRIs.’

  ‘Of course, why didn’t I think of that?’

  This time her smile was wry. She said, patiently, ‘Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. That would increase serotonin levels and elevate your mood.’

  Sime sighed now. ‘In other
words, an antidepressant.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not just any antidepressant. In fact, most popular antidepressants would probably only make your condition worse. I think this could help.’

  Sime was unaccountably disappointed. He wasn’t sure what he had expected. But another pill just didn’t seem like any kind of a solution to his problem.

  II

  The apartment seemed colder and emptier since his return. Even just a few days away had robbed it of its sense of being lived in. It smelled stale. Dirty dishes were piled up in the kitchen. There had been no chance to wash them before leaving. Or to empty the garbage. Something in the kitchen bin smelled like it was a long way past its sell-by. Unwashed laundry spilled over from the wicker basket in the bedroom. The bed was unmade, as it always was. Clothes lay on the floor where he had dropped them. Dust gathered in drifts along every surface in every room. Things he had almost stopped seeing. All classic symptoms of a mind kidnapped by de pression.

  He sat that night in the living room with the television on. But he wasn’t watching it. He was cold, but somehow it didn’t occur to him to switch on the heating.

  He remembered the advice of a lecturer at the academy. Sometimes you can think too much and do too little. And he looked around the apartment and saw the result of thinking too much and doing nothing at all. It was as if somewhere, somehow, he had just given up on life, become paralysed by inertia. He didn’t want this, any of it. And yet it was all he had. He was desperate to sleep, but not for the sake of sleeping. He wanted to escape. To be someone else in another place and time. He glanced at his ancestor’s painting on the wall. That bleak, dark landscape. And he wished he could just step into it.

  The pills they had prescribed were on the shelf above the sink in the bathroom. It was almost time to take them. But he was afraid of going to bed now, in case he still wouldn’t sleep. The doctor had said they would take time. But he couldn’t face another sleepless night.

  He stood up, fuelled by a sudden desire to take back his life. Right here, right now.