Entry Island Page 38

  Something had wakened him. Some noise. He struggled to remember how he had got here.

  The police had arrived from Cap aux Meules on the lifeboat with a doctor and a team of medics from the hospital. But in the end they had decided to make Aitkens comfortable where he lay, and wait until the wind dropped to bring in an air–sea rescue helicopter to get him off the cliffs.

  The doctor had disinfected and dressed the wound on Sime’s shoulder. Sime had been shivering, suffering from hypothermia and exposure, and they had wrapped him in a thermal blanket and laid him here on the settee.

  He remembered thinking, before he went to sleep, that just as Crozes had been fixated on Kirsty, he had been so focused on Briand it had blinded him to the possibility of Aitkens. But then they’d all been blind to that possibility. How could they ever have guessed at such a motive for wanting to kill his cousin?

  Sime realised that what had wakened him was the sound of laughter out on the porch, and in that same moment it came to him that he had been asleep. He was almost startled and looked at his watch. It was after 8 a.m. He must have been out for close on ten hours. The first time in weeks that he had slept properly. A long, deep, dreamless sleep.

  The door opened and Aucoin poked his head in. ‘Ah, you’re awake. Good. How are you feeling?’

  Sime nodded. ‘Okay.’ He wanted to shout I’ve been sleeping. I feel fucking great!

  ‘That’s the helicopter away with Aitkens now. They’ll probably medevac him out to Quebec City. Helluva job getting him off those cliffs in one piece.’

  ‘Is he …?’

  ‘He’s going to live, yes. Live to regret it, too.’

  ‘You got the knife? I laid it on a chair in the house.’

  Aucoin smiled. ‘Relax. We got the knife.’

  ‘The pathologist should be able to match it up to Cowell’s wounds. Might even still be traces of blood where the blade is sunk in the haft.’

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough. It’ll go off to Montreal this morning.’ He nodded towards a pile of clothes draped over an armchair. ‘The nurse put your stuff through her tumble-dryer.’ He grinned. ‘Even washed your boxers for you. I didn’t want to wake you before now. But the ferry leaves shortly.’

  When he went out again Sime sat up, and Aitkens’s words on the cliffs from the night before came back to him. He looked at his hand, then worked the signet ring over his swollen knuckle with some difficulty to turn it towards the light so that he could see inside it. And there, around the inside of the band, almost erased by more than a century and a half of wearing, were the words, Sto pro veritate: I stand for truth.

  *

  When he stepped out onto the porch he felt how the wind had dropped. The storm had passed, and a watery autumn sun played behind gold-lined cumulus that bubbled up across the sky, shining in patches of precious liquid across a sea that was only now beginning to calm itself after the rage of the night before.

  His legs felt shaky as he climbed down the steps and slipped into the back seat of the car that would drive them down to the harbour.

  As they drove down the hill the island seemed to unravel slowly on the other side of his window, like a reel of film. Past the épicerie, and the piles of lobster creels, and the church with its giant cross casting a long shadow over the graveyard. He thought he caught a glimpse of Kirsty Guthrie’s headstone, but wasn’t sure, and it was gone in a moment.

  On the ferry he climbed up on to the top deck and stood at the stern to watch Entry Island lose its features and turn to silhouette against the radiance of the sun rising behind it. Its shadow reached out across the water so that he felt he could almost touch it. His shoulder was aching, and would no doubt require further attention, but he was hardly aware of it.

  A patrol car met them at the quay on Cap aux Meules. It was less than a ten-minute drive to the Sûreté. The sun was higher in the sky now, and the wind had dropped to a whisper. It was going to be a fine fall day. When they stepped into the hall, Aucoin caught his arm. ‘I guess you’ll want to do this?’ he said. He was clearly embarrassed and wanted no part of it. Sime nodded.

  *

  Kirsty looked up as he came into her cell. She had a jacket on over her T-shirt, all her belongings packed into a sports holdall that someone in the station must have loaned her. Her hair was not dry yet after her shower, and hung in damp, dark strands over her shoulders. She stood up. ‘You’re early. I thought the flight wasn’t until midday.’

  He wanted to put his arms around her and tell her it was over. But all he said was, ‘They’re dropping the charges.’

  He saw the shock on her face. ‘How? Why?’

  ‘We’ve got your husband’s killer in custody.’

  She stared at him in disbelief, and it was several moments before she found her voice. ‘Who?’

  He hesitated. ‘Your cousin Jack.’

  She turned deathly pale. ‘Jack? Are you sure?’

  He nodded. ‘Let’s go and get a coffee, Kirsty. And if you’ll give me the time, I’ve got a very long story to tell you.’

  EPILOGUE

  Sime followed the path back up from the shingle shore, between the remains of the blackhouses that had once made up the village of Baile Mhanais.

  How foolish had Jack Aitkens been to imagine that he could inherit any of this? Not just the money, but the history, the lives lived and lost. Even had his claim for the inheritance been upheld, what might have seemed a fortune a hundred and fifty years ago was only worth a fraction of that now. Certainly not worth killing or dying for. Or spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair in a prison cell.

  The wind tugged at his hair, and sunlight spilled down the hillside, the shadows of clouds chasing it across the ruins of the old settlement. He wondered in which of these houses his ancestor had grown up. Where his mother had given birth to him and his sisters. Where his father had died, shot to death as he tried to feed them.

  It was hard to picture it the way it had been in his dream. As he had seen it in the paintings. Constables beating the villagers to the ground, men setting roofs on fire. All that remained were the ghosts of memories, and the endless wind whistling among the ruins.

  At the top of the village, he stopped and looked up. Kirsty was standing on the hill by the remains of the old sheep fank, just as Ciorstaidh had done before her. Her hair blowing out behind her in the wind. It was impossible now for him to separate the two. Almost equally difficult to draw a line between himself and his ancestor. This was not only a pilgrimage to their past, but a journey in search of a future. For him an escape from a life barely lived. For her, release from the prison that had been Entry Island.

  She waved, and he climbed the hill to feel the radiance of those blue eyes light up his life. She said, ‘The standing stones are over there. At the far side of the beach.’

  He smiled. ‘Let’s take a look, then.’ They began their descent towards the beach and he took her hand to steady her as she almost stumbled over the uneven ground.

  And he wondered if it had always been his destiny to keep the promise that the young Sime Mackenzie had made so long ago. And if he and Kirsty were somehow meant to fulfil the love that their ancestors never could. Only if you believed in destiny, he thought. Or fate. And Sime had never been quite sure that he believed in either.

  POSTSCRIPT

  What happened to Michaél

  EXTRACT FROM SIME’S DIARY

  March, 1848

  I sit writing this tonight with fear in my heart. It is my first entry since arriving at the lumber camp four months ago. There has been no time to keep a record. Even if there had been, there is no privacy here, and anyway I’ve had little inclination.

  We live in long sheds that make me think of the Lazarettos on Grosse Île, sleeping on two tiers of bunk beds that range along opposite walls. You can’t leave money or personal belongings here. Nothing is safe. You carry everything of value with you at all times.

  In the time we have been here we have worked, eaten
and slept. It is all we have done. Long, hard, ball-busting days felling and stripping trees, dragging them with teams of horses to the Gatineau River. For the moment the logs sit out on the ice. Great mountains of them. But in the spring the melting iceflows will carry them downstream to the big commercial sawmills at Quebec City.

  They feed us well enough, at long tables like animal troughs. They need to fill our bellies to fuel the work we do. It is relentless, and the only day we have to ourselves is the Sabbath. A few of us who hail from the islands gather round on Sundays while I read from the Gaelic bible and we sing our psalms. The French think we are mad. An irreligious lot, they are. Catholics, of course.

  The company provides alcohol, too. Their way of keeping us happy. But you daren’t drink too much during the week, or you’re not fit for working the next day. So Saturday night is the night for drinking. And pretty wild it can get sometimes, too.

  From time to time the Scots organise a ceilidh. We have a fiddler among us, and one of the fellas has a squeeze box. No women, of course. Just drinking and gambling and some mad dancing once the booze starts to flow. Which is when the French join in. They’re pretty reticent at first, but once they get a drink in them they’re worse than the Scots.

  There was a ceilidh earlier tonight, and I was sitting playing cards with a bunch of the boys in a corner of the recreation shed when I first became aware of the fight.

  The place was heaving, music ringing around the rafters. The bar had been doing a roaring trade, and most of the men had a skinful. But there were voices raised now above the melee, angry querulous voices that cut through the smoke and the noise. A circle had formed, and men were pushing back from the centre of it on all sides. Me and several of the others stood up on the tables to see what was happening.

  In the centre of the circle, two huge men were slugging it out. Big knuckled fists smashing into bloodied faces. One of them was Michaél. He’s developed a liking for the drink while we’ve been here, and after a few he gets argumentative, and violent sometimes. He has let his beard grow back, and his hair is longer again, and he presents a scary figure when he gets riled.

  But he picked a brute of a man to get into a fight with tonight. A Frenchman called The Bear. At least, that’s what we call him. L’ours is the French name for him. A giant of a man with more body hair than I’ve ever seen, a big beard and a shaven head. In a fight with a real bear you wouldn’t bet against him.

  I immediately jumped off the table and ploughed my way through the crowd. Me and several of the others grabbed Michaél and pulled him away from the swinging fists of The Bear, and the French did the same with their man, both combatants fighting against constraining arms.

  Finally the struggle subsided, and the two men stood glaring at each other across the circle at the centre of the storm, breathing like horses after a gallop, steam rising off both of them, and blood on the floor.

  ‘We’ll finish this tomorrow,’ The Bear growled in his thickly accented English.

  ‘Fockin’ right we will!’

  ‘It’s the sabbath tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Fock the sabbath. We’ll settle this like men. The clearing at the far side of the old camp. Midday.’

  ‘It doesn’t make you men to fight,’ I shouted at Michaél. ‘More like schoolboys!’

  ‘You keep the fuck out of this!’ The Bear glared at me. Then he turned his loathing back on Michaél. ‘Midi it is,’ he said. ‘And you’d better be there.’

  ‘You can fockin’ count on it!’

  *

  I have tried everything I can to dissuade him. It seems to me that The Bear is the bigger, stronger man, and that Michaél is going to take a beating. And when the blood is up, men like that have no idea when to stop. But honour is at stake, and Michaél won’t hear of backing out, though I’m sure he’ll regret it in the morning when he sobers up in the cold light of day.

  The truth is, I fear for his life.

  *

  The old camp is about a mile away from where they built the new one and there is a large cleared area on the far side of it. Just about every man jack of us was gathered there at midday on the sabbath. I went, not to watch the fight, but to look out for Michaél and try to prevent him from being too badly hurt. What a miserable bloody failure I was at it, too!

  God only knows what the temperature was. Well below freezing. But the sun was up in a clear sky, and both men stripped to the waist. If Michaél had one advantage over The Bear, it was his intelligence. The Bear was a big, lumbering idiot of a man. Michaél was blessed with a sharp mind, and native cunning. And while The Bear was stronger, Michaél was faster, lighter on his feet. With space around him he immediately darted in to land a blow on the big man’s nose and leap back again before The Bear could swing a fist. Blood spurted from his busted nose and The Bear roared. But Michaél was in again to land two quick blows to the solar plexus and a high kick that caught the bigger man full in the chest and sent him staggering backwards before dropping to his knees.

  The crowd was baying and shouting encouragement to both men and the clamour of it rose through the stillness of the trees.

  The Bear got to his feet again, breathing stertorously, and shook his head like an animal. Then he advanced on Michaél, arms at his side, eyes fixed like gimlets on his opponent. Michaél retreated, skipping around the circle created by the crowd, darting in to land occasional blows which just seemed to glance off The Bear like water off oiled wood. Until he ran out of space and The Bear closed in on him, oblivious to the punches and kicks being thrown at him.

  I barely even saw the glint of the blade as he slipped it from the belt behind his back. One arm closed around Michaél’s shoulder, pulling the Irishman towards him, and the other came up from his side in an arc and plunged the knife deep into his abdomen. I heard Michaél’s gasp, air escaping from his lungs in pain and surprise. He doubled over, and the crowd went suddenly silent as The Bear withdrew the blade before plunging it in again. Once, twice. Then he stood back as Michaél dropped to his knees, clutching his belly, blood oozing through his fingers, before he toppled forward, face-first into the dirt.

  Shock spread through the crowd like fire, dispersing them in silent panic like smoke in the wind. The Bear stood over Michaél’s body, breathing heavily, his lip curled in contempt, blood dripping from the knife in his hand. He pulled a gob of phlegm into his mouth and spat on him as he lay on the ground.

  His friends immediately grabbed him and pulled him quickly away as I ran to Michaél’s side. I crouched beside him and gently turned him over, to see the light dying in those pale-blue eyes I knew so well. ‘Focker!’ he whispered through the blood bubbling between his lips. His hand clutched my sleeve. ‘You owe me, Scotsman.’

  And he was gone. Just like that. All that life and energy and intelligence. Vanished in a moment. Stolen by a brute of a man who knew nothing of human dignity. Of Michaél’s generosity or his friendship or his courage. And I wept for him, just as I had wept for my father. And I am not sure I have ever felt quite so alone in this world.

  *

  It didn’t seem right that the sun should shine so brightly, falling through the windows of the foreman’s office across his desk, reflecting a dazzle of light in our faces while Michaél lay dead outside. The foreman was about forty, and had spent all of his adult life in the lumber business. His jaw was set, and his lips pressed together in a hard line.

  ‘I’m not bringing in the police,’ he said. ‘We’d have to call a halt to production while they had an investigation. And you can bet your bottom dollar there’s not a man in the camp who’ll say he saw what happened. Not even your precious Scots.’

  ‘I will,’ I said.

  He glared at me. ‘Don’t be a fucking idiot, man. You’d not live to testify.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t afford a war breaking out between the Scots and the French. Nor can I afford any more delays in production. We’re behind as it is.’

  He crossed the room to a small safe that stoo
d against the far wall and took out a pile of notes tied in a bundle he’d already prepared. He threw it down on the desk. That’s your money. Yours and O’Connor’s. You can have one of the horses. Just take the body and go.’

  So there was to be no justice. Not of the legal kind, anyway.

  *

  It was dark by the time I had sewn Michaél up in a canvas sheet and strapped his body to the back of the horse. The camp had been quiet all day, and no one said a word to me when I gathered together all our stuff, mine and Michaél’s, to pack into saddlebags. No one came out of the huts to shake my hand or say goodbye as I led the horse off along the lumber trail that tracked away from the river.

  Inside I was as icy as I was cold on the outside. But not so numb that I couldn’t sense the fear that still hung in a pall over the lumber camp. I didn’t go far before I pulled the horse off the track and into the woods to tie her up to a tree.

  I had thought long and hard about Michaél’s final words to me. You owe me, Scotsman. I owed him money, yes. The cash he had loaned me on Grosse Île to pay the keep of Catrìona Macdonald’s children. I had been going to pay it back out of my wages. But I knew that’s not what he meant. I knew, too, what I had to do. And I knew it was wrong. But Michaél was right. I owed him.

  *

  I suppose it must have been about midnight when I sneaked back into the camp. There was no light anywhere. Not a soul stirring. These men worked hard, played hard, and slept the sleep of the dead. There was a new moon in the sky, a sliver of light to guide me as I drifted like a ghost between the long sheds until I found the one where I knew the French slept. The doors were never locked, and the only fear I had was that this one would creak in the silence of the night and waken men from their slumbers. I needn’t have worried. It swung open soundlessly, and I slipped inside.

  It was profoundly dark here, and I had to wait until my eyes accustomed themselves to what little moonlight fell through the windows before I moved along between the rows of bunk beds looking for the big, bearded face of The Bear.