Entry Island (17 page)

She let go of my hand and jumped down into it. I followed suit and landed beside her. Beach grass grew in tussocks and clumps, binding the loose earth and pushing up between cracks in the rock. The wind blew overhead but the air here was quite still, and there was a wonderful sense of shelter and tranquillity. No one could see us, except perhaps from a boat out at sea.

Kirsty arranged her skirts to sit down in the grass and patted the place beside her. I saw her ankle-length black boots and a flash of white calf. I knew she was younger than
me, and yet she seemed possessed of so much more confidence. I did as I was bid and sat down next to her, self-conscious again, and a little scared by strange, unaccustomed feelings.

She said, ‘Sometimes I look out and wonder if on a clear day it might be possible to see America.’ She laughed. ‘Which is daft, I know. It’s far too far away. But it makes me think about all those folk who set off in boats not knowing what, if anything, lay at the end of their voyage.’

I loved to hear her talk like this, and I watched the light in her eyes as she looked out over the ocean.

‘I wonder what it’s like,’ she said.

‘America?’

She nodded.

I laughed. ‘We’ll never know.’

‘Probably not,’ she agreed. ‘But we shouldn’t limit our horizons to only what we can see. My father always says if you believe in something you can make it happen. And he should know. Everything we have, and are, is because of him. His vision.’

I gazed at her, filled for the first time with curiosity about her father and mother, the life she led, so different from mine. ‘How did your father get rich?’

‘Our family came from Glasgow originally. My great-grandfather made his fortune in the tobacco trade. But all that collapsed with the American war of independence, and it was my father who eventually restored the family’s fortunes
by getting us into the cotton and sugar trade with the West Indies.’

I listened to her with a sense of amazement, as well as inferiority, aware of all the things of which I was completely ignorant. ‘Is that still what he does?’

She laughed. ‘No, not now. He’s retired from business. Since he bought the Langadail estate and built the castle at Ard Mor that’s what takes up all his time. Even if it doesn’t make him any money.’ She turned the radiance of her smile on me. ‘Or so he’s always saying.’

I smiled back, engulfed somehow by her gaze, my eyes held by hers, and there was a long silence between us. I heard the wind and the gulls, and the sound of the ocean. I could feel the pounding of my heart like the waves beating on the shore. And without any conscious decision I reached out to run my fingers back through the silky softness of her hair and cradle the back of her head in my palm. I saw her pupils dilate and felt an ache of longing deep inside me.

I remembered the little girl I had lifted into my arms from the ditch and how, as I trotted the long wet mile to the castle, I would look down and see her gazing up at me.

I found her face with my other hand, tracing the line of her cheek so softly with the tips of my fingers, before leaning in to kiss her for the very first time, guided by some instinct which had been aeons in the making. Lips cool and soft and giving. And although I knew nothing of love, I knew that I had found it, and never wanted to lose it.

Sime returned from memories of his ancestor’s diaries to the realisation that he had been sitting staring all this time at the ghostly imprint left in the album by the missing photograph of Kirsty as a child. And he looked up, suddenly startled by the awareness of another presence in the room. Marie-Ange stood leaning against the door jamb watching him. He saw the usual contempt in her eyes, something which had become only too familiar. But there was something else. Concern? Guilt? It was hard to tell.

‘You look terrible,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’

‘When was the last time you slept properly?’

He felt grit scratching his eyes as he blinked. ‘Sometime before you left.’

She sighed. ‘Something else that’s my fault, no doubt.’ And she pushed herself away from the door and wandered over to the desk, turning her gaze on to the teenage pictures of Kirsty in the album. ‘Is that her? The Cowell woman?’

He nodded. ‘Aged about thirteen or fourteen I think.’

Marie-Ange leaned over him to flip forward through the pages, casting cold eyes over the growing Kirsty. She stopped at the final photograph. Kirsty with her mother and father, taken in bright sunlight somewhere along the cliffs. Kirsty, a young woman by then, smiling unreservedly at the camera, sandwiched between her mum and dad, an arm around each of them. As she had grown, so they had diminished somehow, and you could see that her mother was not well. ‘You’d never guess from this that she’d be capable of killing someone,’ Marie-Ange said.

Sime looked at her sharply. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘Looks more and more that way.’

‘And the evidence?’

‘Oh, that’ll come, for sure. There’s bound to be something to give her away. And you can bet I’ll find it.’ She looked around the study. ‘So what did you discover here that tells you about the Cowells?’

Sime thought about it. ‘Enough to know that they weren’t close. That it was a relationship without warmth. She sought comfort in her own company, her own interests. He found fulfilment elsewhere, and in the end with another woman.’

She gazed at him thoughtfully for a moment. ‘I wonder what conclusions someone might have come to about us if they had taken a tour through our apartment.’

‘Pretty much the same, I would have thought. Only, in reverse.’

She tutted her annoyance. ‘Same old broken record.’

‘You were never there, Marie. All those hours when I never knew where you were. And always the same old excuses. Work. A girls’ night out, a visit to your parents in Sherbrooke.’

‘You never wanted to come. Anywhere. Ever.’

‘And you never wanted me to. Always found a good reason why I shouldn’t join you. Then made it seem like my fault.’ He glared at her, remembering all the frustration and loneliness. ‘There was someone else, wasn’t there?’

‘Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? If I’d had an affair. Then it wouldn’t have been your fault. No guilt, no blame.’ She stabbed an angry finger at him. ‘But here’s the truth, Simon. If you need someone to blame for the break-up of our marriage, just look in the mirror.’

The clearing of a throat brought both their heads around. Crozes stood awkwardly in the doorway, his embarrassment clear. He chose to ignore whatever it was he might have overheard. ‘Just had a call from Lapointe,’ he said. ‘He’ll be taking off for Montreal with the body in about an hour.’ He paused. ‘The autopsy will take place first thing in the morning.’

‘Good,’ Marie-Ange said.

‘What about Morrison?’ Sime asked.

‘Still missing. But we’ll find him.’

‘Is he connected, do you think?’ Marie-Ange said. ‘To the murder?’

Crozes was non-committal. ‘We’ll know that better once we talk to him.’

Sime turned the photo album around on the desk so that the page with the missing photograph was facing his superior officer. ‘You’d better take a look at this, Lieutenant.’

Crozes stepped into the room and tilted his head to look at the photographs. For a moment he simply seemed puzzled. Then light dawned in his eyes. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘That’s the kid you found on the floor of Morrison’s room.’ He looked up. ‘Kirsty Cowell?’

Sime nodded. ‘Probably cut from the very print that’s been taken from this album.’

‘Well, how the hell did he get that?’

Marie-Ange looked from one to the other. ‘What am I missing here?’

But neither man paid her any attention. Sime said, ‘It’s the first thing we need to ask him when we find him.’

Crozes exhaled his frustration. ‘And maybe you’d better get over there and ask Mrs Cowell.’ He tipped his head towards the door. ‘She’s back.’

The heating in the summerhouse had been turned on after the storm and the air was stifling. Sime found himself distracted by Kirsty Cowell’s penetrating blue eyes, and an almost irresistible desire to close his own. Concentration was proving difficult in the warmth.

He sat once more with his back to the window, and she seemed cooler, more composed since her long walk with her cousin.

‘I want you to tell me about your relationship with Norman Morrison,’ he said. Which instantly shattered that composure.

‘What do you mean? I have no relationship with Norman Morrison.’

‘Are you aware that he went missing last night?’

Now her eyes opened wide. ‘No, I wasn’t. What happened?’

‘He went out after his evening meal and never came back.’

She paled visibly. ‘But what does that mean? Is he all right?’

‘We don’t know. There’s a search under way at the moment.’ He watched her closely as she tried to evaluate the information he had just given her. ‘We understand from more than one source that he was … somewhat obsessed by you, Mrs Cowell.’

Anger flashed in her eyes. ‘People say all sorts of things. And a place like this is like a hothouse, Mr Mackenzie. Plant a seed of truth and very quickly it grows into a profusion of lies.’

‘So what is the truth?’

‘The truth is that Norman Morrison is a lovely, gentle, kind man, who stopped growing any older when he was about twelve. And how many of us are there who wouldn’t trade all our growing old years to be young again?’

‘You had a soft spot for him?’

‘I did.’ She spoke almost defiantly. ‘We were at school
together, here on the island. He always had a crush on me when we were kids. And like everything else it was something he never grew out of.’

‘And you encouraged him?’

‘Of course not! But he was still a child, and he was still my friend. I could never have hurt him.’

‘Can you think of any reason he might have wanted to hurt you?’

She was shocked. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting that it was Norman who attacked me and killed James?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m asking you.’

‘No.’ She was adamant. ‘There’s no way Norman would ever have done something like that.’

‘Has he ever been in your house?’

She frowned. ‘Here?’

‘Here, or the big house.’

‘No, he hasn’t. At least, he hasn’t been here since we were both children.’

‘Can you explain, then, how he comes to have a photograph of you in his bedroom, almost certainly taken from the photo album in your study?’

Her mouth fell open slightly in disbelief. ‘That’s not possible.’

‘There is a print missing from your album. One taken of you at the age of about thirteen or fourteen. We found a photograph of you at the same age in his room, the head cut out from the rest of it.’

Her sense of shock was palpable. ‘He’s … he’s never been in that house.’

‘And you didn’t give him a photograph of yourself?’

‘Absolutely not.’

Sime drew a slow, deep breath. He wasn’t feeling good. ‘Are you aware, Mrs Cowell, of your husband’s jealousy towards Norman Morrison?’

She was utterly dismissive. ‘Jealous? James? I don’t think so.’

‘According to Norman’s mother your husband brought two men to the island to rough him up and warn him to stay away from you.’

‘That’s ridiculous! When?’

‘About six months ago. Early spring.’ He paused. ‘Have you seen Norman since then?’

She opened her mouth to respond, but stopped herself, and he could see that she was thinking. ‘I … I don’t know. I can’t remember.’

Which meant that she probably hadn’t, and was replaying events of the past in a new light. But whatever those might have been she wasn’t sharing them with him.

‘I need a comfort break,’ she said suddenly.

Sime nodded. He needed a break himself. A chance to escape the heat of the house and grab some air. As Kirsty went upstairs he went out on to the porch and stood holding the rail, breathing deeply. With all the local cops seconded to the search for Norman Morrison, only Arseneau
and a young sergeant called Lapierre were left to continue the search of the area around the house. Sime watched them as they moved methodically through the longer grass with sticks. They were searching for anything that might throw illumination on a dark case. The sun was doing its best to help, sprinkling daubs of watery gold in fleeting patches all along the cliffs. A murder weapon would be good. But if Kirsty had murdered her husband, it seemed to Sime that the simplest thing would have been to throw the knife off the cliffs and into the sea. If Cowell had been murdered by the intruder Kirsty described, then he would almost certainly have taken the knife with him, perhaps thrown it in the sea himself. Marie-Ange’s examination of the kitchen had established that all sets of kitchen knives were complete.

Sime was finding it increasingly hard to accept, no matter how much evidence Marie-Ange might find, that Kirsty had murdered her husband. Yet it was his job to get to the truth, regardless. And while the evidence against her was purely circumstantial for the moment, he was in danger of being a minority of one when it came to believing she was innocent. And that in direct contradiction to all of his instincts as a criminal investigator. It was an impossible dichotomy. He turned to go back inside.

There was sunlight somewhere. It played in flickering moments of fancy through still air that hung heavy with dust suspended in sharply defined shafts. But there was fog, too, obscuring the light. Rolling in from the sea like a summer haar to obscure all illumination. He heard someone calling. Someone far away. A familiar voice, repeating the same word over and over.

‘Sime … Sime … Sime!’

He was startled awake, but realised that his eyes had not been shut.

‘Sime, are you all right?’

Sime turned his head to see Thomas Blanc standing near the foot of the stairs, the oddest expression on his face.

‘I’m fine,’ Sime said. But knew that he wasn’t. A polite cough made him turn to face front and see Kirsty sitting in the armchair opposite. Her head was tilted very slightly to one side, an expression of wary curiosity in her eyes.