Entry Island (4 page)

‘And that’s when you ran to the neighbours’ house?’

‘Yes. I think I must have been pretty hysterical. Cut my feet on broken glass on the way out. Couldn’t tell which was his blood or mine. I think I scared the McLeans half to death.’

The tears in her eyes spilled as she blinked, and rolled down her face in the tracks of their predecessors. And she sat staring at Sime as if waiting for the next question, or perhaps daring him to contradict her. But he simply returned her stare, half lost in the visualisation of her account, part of him in conflict with the scepticism his experience and training as a policeman engendered, part of him lost in human empathy. And still he was gripped by the compelling and discomposing sense of knowing her. He had no idea for how long they sat in silence.

‘Am I disturbing something here, Simon?’ Marie-Ange’s voice dispelled the moment, and Sime turned, startled, towards the door. ‘I mean, is the interview over, or what?’ She spoke in English, standing with the screen door half open and looking at him curiously.

Sime got to his feet. He felt disorientated, confused, as if he had somehow lost consciousness for a moment. His eye was drawn by a movement in the hallway beyond the stairs, and he saw Thomas Blanc standing there, an odd look in his eyes. He nodded mutely, and Sime said, ‘Yes, we’re finished for now.’

‘Good.’ Marie-Ange turned toward Kirsty Cowell. ‘I want you to come with me to the medical centre. We’ll take some photographs, the nurse will conduct a physical examination, and then you can get cleaned up.’ She looked at Sime, but he avoided her eye and she turned back to the widow. ‘I’ll wait for you outside.’ She let the door swing closed and was gone.
Sime glanced towards the hallway, but Blanc had returned to the bedroom.

Kirsty stood up, fixing him with a strange, knowing look. ‘Simon, she called you. You told me your name was Sheem.’

He felt unaccountably embarrassed. ‘It is. The Scots Gaelic for Simon. Spelt S-I-M-E. At least, that was my father’s spelling of it. It’s what everyone calls me.’

‘Except her.’

He felt the colour rising on his cheeks and he shrugged.

‘Lovers?’

‘My private life has no relevance here.’

‘Ex-lovers, then.’

Perhaps, he thought, fatigue and stress were simply making her blunt. She didn’t even look interested. But still he felt compelled to respond. ‘Married.’ Then he added quickly, ‘Past tense.’ And finally, ‘This interview’s not over. I’ll want you back after your medical exam.’ She held him in her gaze for a long moment before turning to push through the screen door and out on to the porch.

*

Sime followed a few moments later to find Marie-Ange waiting for him. The murdered man’s widow had climbed into the back of the minibus, Lapointe at the wheel, engine idling, the purr of its motor carried away on the wind. Marie-Ange stepped close to Sime in a gesture that might almost have seemed intimate had her body language been less hostile. She lowered her voice. ‘Let’s just get the ground rules straight right now.’

He looked at her with incredulity. ‘What rules?’

‘It’s simple, Simon.’ She had reverted to his formal name since the break-up. ‘You do your job, I’ll do mine. Except for when there’s a cross-over we have nothing to talk about.’

‘We’ve had nothing to talk about for months.’

Her voice reduced itself to a hiss barely audible above the wind. ‘I don’t want us getting into any fights. Not in front of my team.’

Her team. A reminder, if he needed it, that he was the outsider here. Her eyes were so cold he almost recoiled and he remembered how she had loved him once.

‘There won’t be any fighting.’

‘Good.’

‘But you can come and get the rest of your stuff any time you like. I really don’t want it lying around the apartment.’

‘I’m surprised you noticed. You hardly ever noticed me when I was there.’

‘Maybe because you never were.’

She let that one go. ‘You know what’s interesting? I don’t want the stuff. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss us. Why don’t you chuck it in the trash?’

‘Like you did with our marriage.’

‘Don’t give me that. You’re a cold fish, Simon. You know? Got nothing to give. My only regret is it took me so long to realise it. Leaving you was the best thing I ever did. You have no idea how free I feel.’

All his hurt and betrayal was evident in the sad brown eyes that held her in his gaze. Although he had often
wondered if there was someone else, she had always denied it. Everything was his fault. The fights, the silences, the lack of sex. And now it was he who was paying the price of her freedom. ‘I hope you enjoy it, then,’ is all he said.

She held his eye for just a moment before turning to hurry down the steps to the waiting minibus, and he saw Kirsty looking at him from beyond the reflections on the window.

It had been only too easy for him to lose confidence in himself after a series of relationship failures. The point had been reached when he had begun to believe that he was the problem.

And that was the place he had been in when Marie-Ange came into his life.

A painful, lonely place. Approaching thirty years of age he had a handful of clumsy relationships behind him, and saw only a long succession of empty nights stretching ahead. It was clear to him then that his job was going to be his life, his future. And that he would become so impossibly set in his ways that in the end sharing it would cease to be an option.

He had always been self-sufficient, even as a child. He’d had few friends and no inclination to share, even then.

His apartment before meeting Marie-Ange had been a joyless place. He had never taken the time to decorate or furnish it beyond basic requirements. The only picture that hung on the wall was a landscape painted five generations earlier by an ancestor who had come to Canada and made something
of a reputation for himself as an artist. Not that Sime was particularly attached to it. It had come from his parents’ house after their accident. His sister had taken most of their stuff, but thought that Sime should have the painting. Hanging it on the wall had seemed like the best way of keeping it out from under his feet. Marie-Ange had never liked it.

For a time she had tried to turn the place into a home. Nest-building. But each of them made so many compromises, that in the end neither felt comfortable in it.

The condo was on the third floor of an apartment block in St Lambert. It had three bedrooms, and would have made an ideal first home for a couple wanting to start a family. That thought had always been in the back of Sime’s mind when he took it on. He had been in a relationship then that had lasted nearly a year, a record for him, and they had been going to move in together.

Then suddenly she was gone. Without a word. And Sime never did know why. Which is when the self-doubt had started creeping in.

Meeting people had never been easy for him. A policeman’s hours, almost by definition, are antisocial. Even harder was maintaining a relationship, because there was never any guarantee what time you would be home, or sometimes what day. Sime had never really got involved in the social life of the Sûreté, like so many of his colleagues. It had just seemed too incestuous. So the dating agency had been something like the last hope of a desperate man.

It was a friend from his academy days who first suggested it, and at first Sime had been violently opposed to the idea. But it worked away at his subconscious over several weeks, slowly breaking down all his arguments against it. And finally his resolve faltered.

It was an online agency. He had to verify for them who he was, of course, but beyond that complete anonymity was guaranteed. They provided him with a fictitious dating name that he could choose to dispense with, or not, after their first meeting.

Sime spent a whole evening filling in the questionnaire on the website, trying to answer as honestly as he could. And then when he reviewed his answers decided nobody in their right mind would want to date him. So he was both surprised and a little shocked when the agency said they had come up with a match, and that if he wanted, she would be happy to meet him.

Sime had faced down murderers, been shot at, disarmed a man with an automatic rifle on a killing spree, but he had never felt as nervous as he did the night of his first date.

They had arranged to meet in a Starbucks on Avenue du Mont-Royal Est. Sime arrived early, afraid that he would get snarled up in traffic and be late. The place was quiet when he got there and ordered a grande caramel macchiato. He sat near the window so he could see customers come and go.

Which is when he saw Marie-Ange crossing the street outside. He knew her, of course. She was one of the department’s
crime scene specialists, though they had never actually worked together. Sime turned away so that she wouldn’t see him sitting in the window, but was horrified when she pushed open the door and headed for the counter. He almost cringed with embarrassment at the thought she might discover that he was there on a blind date set up by an internet dating agency. It would have been all over the division the next day. He fervently hoped that she was just in for a take-out and wouldn’t notice him.

But he had no such luck. She picked up her skinny latte from the barista and turned to look straight at him. Sime wanted the ground to swallow him up. She seemed almost startled, but there was no way of avoiding the fact that they had seen each other. So she smiled and came over to sit down at his table. Sime did his best to return her smile, but felt it was more like a grimace.

‘Hi, Sime. Fancy meeting you here.’

He blurted, ‘I’m waiting for someone.’

‘Oh?’ A wry smile spread itself across her face and she pushed up one eyebrow. ‘Hot date?’ In contrast to his agitation she seemed unnaturally relaxed.

‘Sort of.’

‘Anyone I’d know?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘Can’t be anyone in the force, then. I only seem to know cops these days.’

‘Yeah, me too.’

‘Except for your date.’

Sime tried to seem amused. ‘Yeah. Except for my date.’

A silence settled awkwardly between them and they sipped on their respective plastic lids. She glanced at her watch and Sime stole a look at her. He had never really paid her much attention before. She was just one of the guys, the short hair and boyish figure contributing to that sense of her. But he saw now that there was a wonderful depth to the green of her eyes, a finely angled jawline and rather full lips. At second glance she was really quite attractive. She looked up and caught him watching at her.

‘What time’s your date?’

‘Seven.’

She sighed. ‘Pity. You could have taken me to dinner. I’ve got nothing else to do tonight.’

And suddenly he thought, yes! I would much rather have dinner with you. With someone I didn’t have to pretend with. Someone who already knows me. Who knows I’m a cop, and what that means. He raised his eyes towards the clock on the wall. It was still only 6.55. He stood up. ‘Let’s do that.’

She frowned. ‘Do what?’

‘Have dinner?’

She laughed. ‘What about your date?’

Sime shook his head and glanced nervously towards the door in case she would suddenly turn up. ‘Never liked her much anyway.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come on.’

She laughed again and took it and stood up. ‘Where are we going?’

‘I know a great little place over on Rue Jeanne-Mance.’

*

They sat and talked that night in a way they never did again. In some strange sense Sime felt suddenly unchained. The wine helped loosen ingrained inhibitions, and he found himself sharing all those little fears and foibles that he had kept locked away from the world, guarding them carefully, because sharing your weaknesses makes you vulnerable. But he didn’t feel at risk, because she unburdened herself too. Told him all about her failed teenage marriage, the uncle who liked to stroke her budding breasts when she was just thirteen, her mother’s battle with alcohol and then breast cancer.

Sime told her about his parents dying when a bridge over the Salmon River collapsed as they were driving across it. About his difficulty socialising with other kids at school. His ineptitude with girls.

All of which, in retrospect, seemed pretty depressing. But they laughed a lot as well. Funny stories accumulated over nearly ten years in the force, and it was late by the time they were on their second digestifs. Sime was feeling mellow, and the alcohol made him bold enough to confess finally that the real reason he had been at Starbucks that night was to meet a woman found by an online dating agency.

Marie-Ange’s smile faded and she looked at him with curious eyes. ‘Seriously?’

He immediately regretted telling her.

‘And you stood the poor woman up without even giving her a chance?’

Sime had a rush of guilt that made it hard to meet her eye. ‘Was that really bad of me?’

She pursed her lips and nodded. ‘I gotta tell you, Sime, it was pretty mean. Especially since I was the woman you stood up.’

Sime’s jaw dropped, and he must have presented such a look of shock that she laughed so much the tears ran down her cheeks. It took him only a moment to realise the truth. That each of them had stood up their blind dates in favour of someone they already knew. And that the someone they already knew had, in fact, been their blind date.

In the end their laughter had forced the owner of the restaurant to ask them to leave. They were annoying the other customers.

They had gone back to Sime’s apartment, and that night had the best sex of their future relationship. Pure lust, like Sime had never known before. They had been married within six months.

But the truth he had learned since then was that you can’t build a whole relationship on the basis of one night. And that what might seem like a good match to a computer doesn’t always work in life.

The wind was gathering strength out of the south-west, sweeping up over the clifftops and flattening every growing thing in its path. The sun, veiled at first by high cloud, had now been swallowed by storm clouds rapidly approaching across the slate-grey swell of the ocean. But the air was warm, soft on the skin, and Sime sat among the tall grasses bowing all around him, just metres from the edge of the cliff. He could hear the waves breaking below, and had a sense of being fully exposed to the power of nature. Both at one with it, and completely at its mercy. He felt almost ghostlike, insubstantial, lost somewhere in a life gone wrong.