Seven Days Dead (29 page)

The flat portion is wet, and he removes his shoes and socks to proceed, carrying a set in each hand. The sand is so cold he begins to hop along.

Water spilling from the Labrador Current chills this bay, and his feet redden quickly. He meets three children first, and perhaps they’re supposed to be working, but they are so obviously in a mood for play that no one seems to mind. He asks if they know where Aaron Roadcap is.

They look at him as though he just asked where to find the ocean.

One boy points in the general direction of eight men. Under the sun’s bright glare, and given the similarity of everyone’s clothing, recognition is difficult. Nor can he concentrate very well, his feet seizing up. He knows he didn’t plan this properly.

“Is he in the first group or the second? It’s much deeper, isn’t it, where they are?” He’s trying to be cheerful. The fact that he can’t recognize Roadcap even at a distance confirms the suspicions of each wild child. Here’s a man who can’t be trusted. Here’s a man who can’t stand in cold water without constantly raising one foot, then the other, to try and warm them on the opposite calf. Silly ninny. Here is someone we call a stranger. Someone we’ve been warned about. An evil outsider. So they clam up and Émile can’t really blame them. He asks again, with a bigger smile, but perhaps that broad grin kills his standing once and for all among these kids. Their defiance is as evident now as their pride. They stay glumly, emphatically silent.

It’s as if they are defying him to keep both feet in the water at the same moment.

He can’t. His feet are freezing. He says goodbye.

Walking on, he picks out Roadcap in the second group of dulse harvesters, and rolls up his pant legs to wade into deeper, colder water.

Now his calves scream back at him.

The working adults wear black hip waders, and he’s guessing that under them they have on multiple warm socks and cozy long johns. Approaching them, he must look like an idiot, an idiot who wants to holler.

He’s hoping either to go numb soon or perish.

Seeing him, Aaron Roadcap straightens up. His grin widens the closer the former cop gets to him. By the time Émile is at his side—off the sand now, in among the rocks, the frigid water is up to his knees—Roadcap is enjoying a good laugh.

“Ah, are your feet cold?”

“You mean these blocks of ice? Are they my feet?”

He holds one foot up to the warmer air, like herons do. Then, unlike any heron, he squeezes his shoes and socks under an armpit and, with his hands free, grabs the toes to pass along some warmth.

“Let’s get you back to shore. I presume you came out here to talk to me.”

“And to learn about cutting dulse, but maybe that can wait.”

“It can. Your feet? Maybe not so much.”

Over the last forty yards across the sand flats, Cinq-Mars excuses himself, dispenses with pride, and runs.

“Be careful,” Roadcap warns when he arrives back onshore himself. “Your feet might be mistaken for lobsters, they’re so red. They might end up in a pot.”

“At least they’d be warm. Somebody, please. Put them in a pot.”

Roadcap chuckles while he removes his hip waders. Not only does he have socks on, Cinq-Mars finds out, but shoes, which have a thick sole. Émile is thrilled to plop himself down on the sand and put his socks and shoes back on. Then in silence they walk off the beach. Where the forest meets the edge of the sea and climbs the face of a high, steep slope, Roadcap locates a trail invisible to the visitor. They enter into that darkly shaded enclave. The two clamber along a narrow trail, ascend a short wooden ladder at one point, and scramble on through the woods and across exposed mossy boulders until they land at Roadcap’s rough-hewn home.

What Margaret at the General Store termed a hovel. She was right, too.

They settle into chairs on the porch and the visitor scrunches his toes inside his shoes to try to warm them that way, grimacing.

“Coffee or whiskey?” Roadcap asks, and pops back up again.

“It’s so early,” Cinq-Mars objects.

“Single malt? There’s no clock on the good stuff.”

“I wonder if I might prevail upon your hospitality,” Cinq-Mars negotiates.

“Both? No problem.”

“One for my inner warmth. The other so I can press the cup against my toes before I drink from it.”

Roadcap laughs easily and goes inside while Cinq-Mars gazes out at the serene beauty of the ocean from this treetop aerie. A woodpecker lands on the banister and gives him the eye, as if to request his photo ID, then flies off, and in a moment Roadcap returns, the screen door banging shut behind him. He’s carrying the whiskey and four mugs. No glasses here. They’ll drink whiskey and coffee from tin mugs adorned with bright portraits of curious cows.

“Coffee’s perking. It’ll be a couple of minutes.”

“Sorry to impose.”

“I felt like a break. My head’s not in it today. Mr. Cinq-Mars, can we come to a mutual agreement?”

“Sure thing. On what?”

“I’m not going to prison for something I didn’t do.”

Cinq-Mars waits for him to pour, then takes a sip. Good whiskey. He thinks it might be impolite for him to check the label, but in any case it’s smooth. Irish, he thinks, and raises his glass in salute to the drink itself.

“How about,” Cinq-Mars responds, “you don’t get anywhere near a prison for something you didn’t do?”

“Sounds about right to me.”

“All this in deference to your father, I suppose.”

Roadcap makes a deflecting motion with his chin and shoulders.

“I agree,” Cinq-Mars says. “Let’s not repeat past mistakes.”

“Agreed. If you don’t mind, I’ll be skeptical about you to the same degree that you’re suspicious of me.”

“Am I? Suspicious?”

“Bound to be. It’s not a problem. I understand. But I need your assurance in principle.”

“Agreed. Tell me, Mr. Roadcap, where did you study?”

“Study what?”

“You tell me. You went to university. You grew up here, yet you talk as though you learned the language somewhere else, which suggests that you went away somewhere, at least for a spell. University is as good a guess as any. Makes sense. Other than your clothes, which are related to your occupation and this environment, you give off an educated air. Yet, you didn’t have a mother for most of your life and your father was in prison. University, then, from that point of view, seems unlikely. I’m not going to put you in jail for anything in your background, Mr. Roadcap, but you must admit, it’s intriguing. Where’d you go?”

Roadcap thinks about it, then decides to see to the coffee. Cinq-Mars hears wood crackling in the stove inside. No electricity here. No coffeemakers. This will be a cup made the old-fashioned way, and when it arrives, it’s all he can do not to forget the whiskey. The coffee is so good, he doesn’t use it on his toes.

“McGill,” Roadcap stipulates, after he settles into his chair again, stretching his legs out. “In Montreal. Your city. Most folks from here choose a school from the Maritimes. I went elsewhere.”

“Why?”

“I think you already explained why.” Roadcap sips the hot coffee, then washes it down with a whiskey chaser.

Cinq-Mars feels that he can get into this life, although realistically for no more than a day or two. Perched on a dark cliff overlooking the sea and living in a tree house, essentially, has its wild, organic appeal. Back to the primitive. More than anyplace he’s ever visited, he senses that here he’s on another planet. “How so?” he asks his host.

Roadcap displays a contemplative disposition when he sips. “I’m from Dark Harbour. If I’d gone to a Maritime school, which most do from this island, people from here would have let my story run loose. Dirt-poor dirt and a murderer’s son to boot. I wanted out from under that, let’s put it that way.”

“Yet you returned here after graduation, if you graduated.”

“Most of us do. Graduate and return. Look out to sea. You’ll spot a dozen boats at any one time and most of the men on board, skippers and crew both, have degrees in English literature. It’s just how it goes. There’s no work after we get those degrees. Anyway, we prefer the work we do, to the work we don’t have.”

Cinq-Mars believes that the coffee and the whiskey and, perhaps especially, the forest musk and the sea air are giving him a high. He could fall asleep and check himself off as being content in life.

Instead, he asks another question. “You mentioned the fishermen. Does that life not appeal? Hard work, certainly, but so is cutting dulse. If I was a young man on this island, I’d rather fish.”

“You’re fishing now, aren’t you?”

“Lifelong habit, asking questions. Pete Briscoe is a fisherman. He owns his own boat. Wouldn’t you aspire to do that work?”

“Pete Briscoe is not a fisherman.”

“Excuse me? How do you figure that? Are you saying he’s a bad fisherman?”

“He works the salmon farms. That’s not fishing. I know, a lot of money is changing hands. Most of it went into Orrock’s pocket, but still, it’s lucrative for everyone. I don’t get along with those guys. They don’t do much, really. Take amphetamines, fix a net, call it fishing. Fishing is dangerous, but what’s the main cause of death on the boats? Storms? Hazards on board? Nope. It’s crack cocaine, baby. Not the wild sea. Not the scary work. Just crack, that’s the number one killer in the modern age.”

Cinq-Mars needs time to absorb that opinion. He keeps falling into a fondness for this man who’s illusive and difficult to comprehend. Could he really be someone who doesn’t fish, or fish-farm, because he’s disappointed in the culture? If so, he’s a more complex individual than probably anybody knows.

“I still think it’s remarkable that you managed to do it, however you did it. Go to university, I mean. Who raised you?”

Roadcap seems reluctant to answer the question, as if hoping that Cinq-Mars will settle for a shrug. The detective can see why women make remarks. If he stares at him long enough, he feels as though he’s been lulled by the man’s beauty. It’s astonishing, the jawline and the intelligence embedded in his dark eyes, and the striking details of his eyebrows and chin and forehead. The strength of his perfect nose. Émile conjures what life must be like for this man. He himself has been stared at for his immense beak, but people stare at this man for his total lack of common imperfection. He should be on a billboard advertising cigarettes. Men and women both would find themselves taking up smoking again without knowing why. Émile gives himself an inner shake to overcome the lassitude he’s feeling in his bloodstream and doesn’t take his eyes off the handsome fellow until the other man relents.

“Did you see those kids out on the flats?” Roadcap asks him.

“We spoke.”

“Believe it or not, they’re picking dulse today. At the end of the day, they’ll make somewhere between fifty cents and a buck fifty. When I was their age, I also picked dulse. Except, even back then, when we made less per pound, I’d take home twenty to twenty-two bucks a day. If I was having a bad day, I’d stay out longer until I made quota, even if it meant swimming in that cold water to cut dulse. I saved up. Made money. In university, I came back here every summer and paid my own way. On fish boats, or working the weirs, or picking dulse. Those kids out there, officially they’re home-schooled. Unofficially…” He lets his voice trail off.

“I can’t imagine what that means,” Cinq-Mars admits. “Are you saying they’re not schooled at all?”

“Unofficially, you are sitting on the front porch of Dark Harbour Elementary School. They’re home-schooled, only it’s not at home. It’s by me, right here. In the off-season, I’m their teacher. I don’t get paid for that, but others schooled me and raised me. This whole community—this hamlet, if you want to call it that—parented me. We’ve developed the ways and means of living off the grid, you know? Not just the electrical grid. We slip through the cracks and sometimes it’s not by accident. So,” Roadcap concludes.

“So,” Cinq-Mars repeats.

“You have something on us now. We’ll find out what kind of cop you are.”

“Mmm.” Cinq-Mars understands, and resorts to the whiskey. Then he says, “I’m not sure what kind of cop I am. At least not anymore. But I’ve never been a truant officer and I don’t suppose I’m going to start today.”

“Good to know,” Roadcap states, and the two share a smile, then salute each other with their glasses, as though the day, and their talk, is as good as that.

Émile breaks the ambient quiet. “Two questions on the tip of my tongue. Perhaps your answers might alleviate my suspicions. Maybe not.”

“Ask.”

Cinq-Mars had talked to Margaret, down at the General Store, who knows things. He knows things, too, now, even before he asks his questions. “Who do you sell your dulse to? I mean, is it Orrock? Did he come here personally in a truck and hand out cash? Do you deliver it to him in a wheelbarrow? How does the system work?”

For the first time, Cinq-Mars notices that his host is uncomfortable.

“We dry the dulse in the sunlight, which lightens the load. Then we pack it and carry it up to our own vehicles, and drive it into his plant, where some of it is turned into chips, some is pulverized. Tourists pay more to have a nibble, but we don’t really have time to sell it ourselves. Orrock buys in bulk.”

“Not anymore. He’s dead. Is that an issue?”

Roadcap twists around in his chair a little. “We’re hoping the company keeps going somehow.”

“Any competition? Other buyers?”

This is a question Roadcap is apparently unwilling to answer. His protracted stare out to sea seems hard, unreasonable. He has literally to shake himself to return his attention to the porch. “Some say so. People have gone up against Orrock from time to time, but if someone controls the market, if someone has the foreign buyers in his hip pocket, then anybody else coming along doesn’t have much of a chance.”

“But others have tried.”

“It’s futile.”

“And others might seek to steal away the foreign buyers.”

“Anything’s possible. Not my lookout.”

He knows Roadcap is lying. “Interesting,” Cinq-Mars notes.

“What was the other question on your tongue?”

Cinq-Mars doesn’t want to lose this man’s confidence, such as it is. He’s glad that he does have a second question and that this one is less intrusive. “About your going up to the cliffs in a storm. Is that a secret? Or do others know that it’s a habit of yours?”