Entry Island Page 36

  He had been preoccupied on the drive south by thoughts of the Briands, but as he approached La Grave, at the southeastern end of Havre Aubert, he forced himself to refocus.

  Jack Aitkens’s house was a stone’s throw from the Palais de Justice, where only a few hours earlier Kirsty had made her first court appearance. It was a typical maroon and cream island home with a steeply pitched roof and overhanging eaves. A covered veranda ran around the front and south side to an entry porch at the south-east corner. Unlike most of the other houses dotted around, it looked in need of fresh paint. The garden, such as it was, had been allowed to go to seed. There was an air of neglect about the place.

  Sime parked on the road and hurried up the path to the shelter of the veranda. He couldn’t find a doorbell and knocked several times. Nothing stirred inside. There were no lights on, and as he looked around Sime could see no sign of Aitkens’s car. It seemed like he was out of luck and that Aitkens had come off nights and was on the day shift.

  ‘Are you looking for Jack?’

  Sime spun around to see a middle-aged man working on the engine of an old truck in the shelter of a carport attached to the neighbouring house. ‘Yes. I guess he must be at the mine.’

  ‘No, he’s on night shift just now. He went down to the marina to secure his boat. Can’t take too many precautions with this storm on the way.’

  *

  The main street ran along a spit of land that curved around to a tiny harbour sheltered by the crook of the bony finger that was Sandy Hook. A collection of wooden and brick buildings lined each side of the street. Stores, bars, restaurants, a museum, holiday lets. Just behind it, in the shelter of La Petite Baie, lay a tiny marina that played host to a collection of fishing and sail boats. They were tied up along either side of a long pontoon that rose and fell on the troubled water.

  Aitkens was securing his boat front and rear to an access pontoon. It was a twenty-five-foot fishing boat with an inboard motor and a small wheelhouse that afforded at least some protection from the elements. It had seen better days.

  He was crouched by a capstan and looked up from his ropes as Sime approached. He seemed startled to see him and stood up immediately. ‘What’s wrong? Has something happened to Kirsty?’ He had to raise his voice above the wind, and the clatter of steel cables on metal masts.

  ‘No, she’s fine.’

  Aitkens frowned. ‘I thought you people had gone home.’

  ‘We had,’ Sime said. ‘But I’m not done here yet.’

  ‘They’re sending her to Montreal,’ Aitkens said, as if Sime wouldn’t know.

  ‘Were you in court?’

  ‘Of course. It’s just two minutes from my door.’ He paused. ‘There’s not much evidence against her, you know.’

  Sime nodded. ‘I know that.’

  Aitkens was taken aback. ‘Really?’

  ‘I need to talk to you, Monsieur Aitkens.’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t really have time.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d make some.’ Sime’s tone conveyed the strong impression that it was more than a request. But, all the same, he wondered why Aitkens’s first response had not been to ask what Sime wanted to talk to him about. Almost as if he already knew.

  Aitkens said, ‘Well, not out here. Let’s get a coffee.’

  *

  Most of the shops and restaurants on the main street were closed for the season, but the Café de la Grave was open, yellow light spilling out into the sulphurous afternoon. There were no customers. Just rows of polished wooden tables and painted chairs, wood-panelled walls peppered with colourful childlike paintings of fish and flowers. A menu chalked up on a blackboard had earlier offered Quiche à la Poulet or Penne sauce bolognese à la merguez for lunch. Sime and Aitkens sat by an old upright piano and ordered coffees. Aitkens was ill-at-ease and fidgeted with his fingers on the table in front of him.

  ‘So what do you want to talk to me about?’ At last the question.

  ‘Your family history.’

  Aitkens swung his head towards Sime, frowning. He thought about it for a moment. ‘Is this an official line of enquiry?’ His tone was hostile. Sime, after all, was the man who had arrested his cousin for murder.

  Sime was caught momentarily off-balance, but couldn’t lie. ‘My interest is more personal than professional.’

  Now Aitkens tilted his head and squinted at Sime with both suspicion and confusion. ‘What? About my family history?’

  ‘Well, it’s Kirsty’s more than yours that interests me. But I guess much of it will be shared. She told me that genealogy was something of an obsession of yours.’

  ‘Not an obsession,’ Aitkens said defensively. ‘A hobby. What the hell else does a man do with his life when he’s not working? The hours I work, and a geriatric father in the hospital, I’m not exactly an eligible bachelor, am I? Winters here aren’t only hard, they’re long and damn lonely.’

  ‘So how far back have you been able to trace your lineage?’

  Aitkens shrugged. ‘Far enough.’

  ‘As far back as your great-great-great-grandmother?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The one buried in the cemetery on Entry Island. Kirsty McKay.’

  Aitkens frowned darkly and examined Sime’s face for a long time, until the silence became almost embarrassing. Finally he said, ‘What about her?’

  ‘What do you know of her origins?’

  He smiled now. ‘Well that wasn’t easy, Monsieur Mackenzie. When people have been shipwrecked and start a new life, the past can be pretty damned difficult to uncover.’

  Sime felt his heart rate quicken. ‘But you did?’

  He nodded. ‘Her ship went down just off Entry Island in the spring of 1848. Driven on to the rocks in a storm. The boat had come from Scotland and was bound for Quebec City. She was the only survivor, pulled out of the water by a family living on the cliffs at the south end of the island. There was no lighthouse back then. Seems she was in a bit of a state. They took her in and nursed her back to health, and in the end she stayed with them, almost like a kind of adopted daughter. In fact, she never left the island and five years later married their son, William.’

  Sime said, ‘Which is how she ended up with the name McKay, the same as her parents. Only they weren’t really her parents.’

  ‘Parents-in-law. But since she had no parents of her own, she was kind of like a real daughter to them.’

  Which explained the inscription on the headstone. ‘What happened to her real parents? Did they go down with the boat?’

  ‘No, she was travelling alone. Apparently she had some kind of short-term memory loss as a result of the trauma, and no real idea at first who she was or where she’d come from. But her memory did eventually come back. In fragments at first. She used to write things down in a notebook as she remembered them. A kind of way of keeping them real. That notebook came all the way down through the family. I found it in a trunk of memorabilia that my father kept in the attic. I’d no idea it was there until after they’d taken him into hospital.’

  Sime was having difficulty keeping his breathing under control and the excitement out of his voice. ‘So who was she?’

  Aitkens pulled a face and exhaled deeply. ‘What the hell does any of this have to do with Kirsty’s arrest?’

  ‘Just tell me.’ Sime’s tone was imperative.

  Aitkens sighed. ‘Seems she was the daughter of the laird of some estate in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Fell in love with the son of a crofter, which was completely taboo in those days. The father opposed the relationship, and when the crofter’s boy killed her brother in a fight he fled to Canada. She followed, hoping to find him, and of course never did.’

  ‘Kirsty Guthrie,’ Sime said.

  Aitkens clenched his jaw and looked at him. ‘You knew all along.’

  But Sime shook his head. ‘No. But a lot of things have just dropped into place.’

  Aitkens had returned to fidgeting with his fin
gers on the table in front of him. ‘I’ve been trying to patch in more detail. Kirsty has a lot of stuff passed down to her by her mother. Stored somewhere down in the basement of the house that Cowell built. I’ve been at her for ages to let me see it.’ He pulled a face filled with resentment. ‘But it was never convenient. God knows what’ll happen to it now.’

  Suddenly Sime said, ‘Could you take me over to Entry Island in your boat?’

  Aitkens looked at him in surprise. ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Man, are you crazy? There’s a storm on the way.’

  ‘It won’t be here for an hour or two yet.’

  But Aitkens just shook his head. ‘It’s way too rough out there.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘And anyway, I’ve got to go shortly. I’m still working the night shift at the mine.’

  ‘Well, do you know someone who could take me?’

  ‘What in the name of God do you want to go there for right now?’

  ‘A couple of things.’ Sime was forcing himself to stay calm. ‘I’d like to cast eyes on that stuff she keeps in the basement. And …’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t think Kirsty killed her husband.’

  ‘Jesus! It was you that arrested her!’

  ‘I know. But I was wrong. We were all wrong. We’re just missing something. Something that’s probably been staring us in the face all along. I want to take a look at the house again.’

  Aitkens stood up, and his chair scraped the floor in the quiet of the café. ‘Up to you. But if you’re really determined to go out there tonight, Gaston Boudreau might be persuaded to take you. If you cross his palm with silver.’

  ‘And he is …?’

  ‘The guy whose boat you requisitioned during the investigation.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Sime braced himself against one side of the wheelhouse as Gaston Boudreau’s fishing vessel rose and fell on a swell that was heavy, even within the harbour wall.

  Boudreau stood in the doorway unconcerned, it seemed, at the prospect of taking Sime over to Entry Island with the storm so close. But he was perplexed. ‘Why can’t you just wait till morning, monsieur? The storm’ll have blown itself out by then and you can get the ferry over.’

  But Sime wanted to be on the plane with Kirsty when it flew out at midday. Tonight would be his last chance to take another look at the house, and to go through the family papers stored in the basement. Besides which, he knew that sleep would probably escape him, and he would be unable to contain himself during the long waking hours of darkness. ‘How much will it take?’ is all he said.

  ‘How much are you offering?’

  Sime’s opening gambit of two hundred dollars drew a laugh from the fisherman. ‘Take away the cost of the fuel and there’s bugger all left for me,’ he said. ‘Five hundred.’

  ‘Done.’ Sime would have paid double. And something about the speed with which he agreed conveyed that to Boudreau. The fisherman pulled a face, realising he could have negotiated more.

  ‘Give me a minute.’

  Boudreau stepped inside his wheelhouse and slid the door shut. Sime could see him inside making a call on his cellphone. He had an exchange with someone at the other end that lasted around thirty seconds, then he hung up and slipped the phone back in his pocket. He slid open the door.

  ‘Okay, we’ve got the green light. Let’s get going.’

  He turned back inside to start the motor and Sime followed him in. ‘Who were you phoning?’

  ‘The owner, of course.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you owned the boat yourself.’

  ‘Hah!’ Boudreau smiled wryly. ‘I wish.’

  ‘Who’s the owner, then?’

  GPS and sonar monitors flickered into life. ‘Mayor Briand.’

  *

  Within fifteen minutes of leaving the harbour, any thoughts that Sime might have had about Briand had deserted him. The commanding sensation of seasickness drove everything from his mind, and by the time they were halfway across the bay he was regretting his foolishness in making the crossing at all.

  Boudreau himself stood easily at the wheel, legs apart, somehow moving in time with the boat. Sime took comfort from the fact that he seemed so relaxed. The light was fading fast, the sky ominously black overhead. It wasn’t until they were close to Entry Island that he actually saw it, emerging out of the spray and spume to take dark shape and fill their eyes.

  The sea was less turbulent in the lee of the island, and they motored easily into the comparative calm of the little harbour as the sea vented its wrath against the concrete breakwaters that protected it.

  Boudreau eased his vessel up to the quayside with all the skill of a practised boatman and leaped out to secure it with a rope. He took Sime’s hand to steady him as he jumped across the gap between heaving boat and dry land. He grinned happily. ‘You want me to stay and take you back?’ he shouted above the howl of the wind.

  ‘Good God no, man,’ Sime shouted back at him. ‘Get home before the storm breaks. I’ll take the ferry back in the morning.’

  It was only when Boudreau was gone, the lights of his fishing boat devoured by darkness, that Sime was able to take stock for the first time. His entire focus had been on getting here, and now that he was, a flood of emotions drowned all coherent thought. He had forced himself not to think about what Aitkens had told him until this moment, almost afraid to face the implications of what he now knew.

  Kirsty Cowell was the great-great-great-granddaughter of Kirsty Guthrie, who had come looking for her Simon and ended up shipwrecked here on this tiny island in the middle of the Gulf of St Lawrence. And she had waited, and waited. Because he had promised, no matter where she was, he would find her. But he never did. And in the end she had married another, as he had. And all that had survived both the time and the generations in between were the ring that she had given his ancestor and the pendant she had kept for herself.

  The rain whipped into Sime’s face as he stood on the quayside trying to come to terms with the bizarre quirk of fate that had somehow brought him and Kirsty Cowell together.

  A group of fisherman securing boats against the storm had stopped what they were doing and gathered now in a knot to stand and watch him from a distance. Aware of them suddenly, Sime became self-conscious and turned to hurry away through the rain-streaked pools of light that lay all along the length of the harbour. A lamp burning in the wheelhouse of the last of the fishing boats caught his eye. A figure stepped out into the stern of the boat as he passed. The face turned towards him and was momentarily caught in the light. A face he knew at once. Owen Clarke. Sime pulled his hood up over his head and lowered it into the wind as he hurried away, following the road up to Main Street.

  The thrum of the generators at the top of the road was barely audible above the roar of the wind that he fought against all the way up the hill until he reached the church. A couple of pickups passed him on the road, bumping and lurching through the puddles. Headlights picking him out against the black of the night, then passing with the growl of an engine to be swallowed by the dark. Lights shone in the windows of the few houses dotted around the hillside, but there was not a soul in sight. Sime opened the gate of the church and by the light of his cellphone found his way back to the grave of Kirsty McKay, whom he now knew to be Kirsty Guthrie.

  He stood in the wind and rain looking down at her headstone, knowing that her bones lay beneath his feet.

  Just as he had done that morning, Sime knelt in front of the stone and laid both hands upon it. The wet of the earth soaked into the knees of his trousers. The stone felt cold and rough in his hands. And he had a powerful sense of somehow bridging the gap between these ill-fated lovers, bringing them together at last after all these years.

  He felt, too, a strong sense of grief. He had lived through passionate moments in the skin of his ancestor. In his dream he had sacrificed everything to try to be with his Ciorstaidh. And here she lay, dead in the earth, as she had done for a very, very long time. He stood up qu
ickly.

  Impossible, he knew, to tell tears from rain.

  The hoarse revving of a motor reached him above the howl of the wind, and he turned in time to see the shadow of a figure on a quad bike vanishing over the lip of the hill.

  *

  By the time he got to the big yellow house on the cliffs it was pitch-dark. He had struggled all the way against the wind, stumbling through the potholes that pitted the road. His clothes were soaked through and he was shivering from the cold.

  But he did not go in straight away. He circled the big house and crossed the grass to the summerhouse, the house which had originally belonged to the McKays. The house where Kirsty Guthrie had grown up and in all probability later lived with her husband. The house where, several generations later, Kirsty Cowell had been born and raised. Walking in the footsteps of her ancestor, seeing all the same things that she had seen. Entry Island, almost unchanged in two hundred years. The sun coruscating across the bay towards the other islands of the archipelago stretched out along the horizon. She would have felt the same wind in her face, picked the same flowers from the same hills.

  The front door was not locked, and Sime let himself in. He switched on a table lamp and wandered around in the half-dark just touching things. Things that belonged to Kirsty Cowell. An ornamental owl sculpted out of a piece of coal, an old clock that ticked slowly on the mantel. A book she had been reading, laid aside on a coffee table. A mug of tea never returned to the kitchen. And with every touch, the connection between them seemed to grow stronger until he could hardly bear it.

  He pushed through the screen door and back out onto the porch, and ran across to the house that James Cowell had built. The last shredded remnants of crime scene tape clung to a wooden stake, fluttering wildly in the wind. The door to the conservatory was not locked and he slid it open to step inside and fumble for a light switch.

  Lighting concealed around the conservatory and up into the living area and kitchen flickered and cast warm light among the shadows. Dried blood still stained the floor, and Marie-Ange had stuck down white tape to trace the outline of where the body had lain.