‘Did you notice any marks on the side of the hull?’
‘Hmm.’
‘There are some traces of red paint.’ The technician pointed to a part of the hull near the stern on the starboard side.
‘Anything else?’
‘We’re going to analyse the paint to see what kind of vessel it might have come from. We’re also going to pay her deckhands a visit and examine the woman’s house. Take some hair samples and fingerprints. Not just hers, the people close to her too. We’re going to need permissions for that.’
‘Constable Lefebvre is back at the station. He’ll arrange all that for you. Let him know when you’ve got the results of your analysis.’
The forensics technicians nodded. Moralès turned to Simone Lord, but she was already halfway back to her truck. He watched her walk away. In spite of her temperament, he couldn’t help but think about that intriguing little vertebra at the nape of her neck. Moralès skirted around the coast-guard building and walked back to his car. Then he drove away from the wharf.
Before he went into the auberge, Joaquin paused to look out at the sea. And breathe. Angel Roberts must be out there, he thought. Somewhere in that breezy expanse of blue. In her wedding dress, sinking into the seaweed and silt. If the search turned up nothing, she would slip away into stillness, leaving him on shore to get to the bottom of the turbulent mystery of her death.
According to Cyrille Bernard, there was no better place to die than the sea. Especially for someone like him, who had spent his whole life loving and fishing its depths. That was how he wanted to die, Cyrille said. The sea would turn his body to sediment and coral. And that coral would be fashioned into magnificent, illicit jewellery, almost like something a bride wears on her wedding day.
The wind was easing with the setting sun, as if it were feeling the fatigue of a hard day’s work lashing the sea, whipping the whitecaps, keeping the waves alive. Moralès could feel the sea spray’s salty residue lingering in his hair and on his skin. He was damp and sticky, and not just where his wet trouser bottoms were clinging to his ankles.
In the city, everything he had seen was clearly defined. The contours of the buildings, the files on the desk in front of him. There, he’d had to make the facts fit together, shuffle them around until he found the right order and the pieces of the puzzle started to resemble a picture of the truth. What it had been, or what it would be. Here, things seemed to take on another dimension. Another rhythm. Things emerged as specks on the horizon, imprinted themselves like transparencies on the seascape, and were filed in order by the precise, calculated movements of the tides. Rarely was there any sense in rushing. Bruce Roberts had proved that earlier, by calculating the flow of the current and orienting the search in its direction.
Joaquin shook his head. The sea had been seeping into his veins since the day he arrived on the Gaspé Peninsula. Cold and harsh, but also spectacular in all its northern beauty. Joaquin fished his phone from his pocket. Two missed calls from his son. Sébastien could wait. He called Cyrille’s sister’s number. No answer. He walked towards the auberge, where he’d parked his car on the street outside about half an hour earlier. Before long, he was walking through the door.
If anyone had asked him how he had imagined Corine, when Clément Cyr had told him about the auberge, he’d probably have said she was a woman of a certain age – a world-weary tavern owner who smoked, had a hacking cough and gave sailors what for when they puked in her bar. But in truth, Moralès hadn’t given her a thought.
Her slippers were what first caught his eye. Not that he had a fetish for slippers or anything. He just happened to be looking down just as she breezed towards the reception desk and turned to greet him. And there they were. Leather slippers, open in the back like clogs. And in those slippers, her sprightly young feet. Moralès didn’t have a thing for women’s feet either. But sometimes, something strange just happened. Something incomprehensible. That concave curve between the end of the heel and the beginning of the ankle, those mere centimetres of perfection, showing between the rolled-up leg of a pair of faded jeans and the top of a mule slipper, were sometimes enough to get a man’s blood pumping and make his heart skip a beat.
Corine smiled and offered her hand. ‘Moralès, that’s Mexican, isn’t it? Can I call you by your first name? Do you pronounce it Hwa-keen or Zho-a-keen?’
Inside, the auberge was divided in two. To the right of the entrance was an informal dining area, with red leather bench seats and wooden chairs. The kitchen door was at the back of this room. To the left was the pub side of the auberge, with its square tables and dozens of bottles of spirits racked up behind the bar. Both rooms had floor-to-ceiling windows on the far wall offering a spectacular view of the water.
Corine had officially closed her doors the previous day. ‘Business is slow this time of year. Not much point staying open,’ she said, beckoning him to take a seat at the bar and pouring them each a glass of white wine.
Moralès didn’t even think to decline her offer. He was going with the flow, in keeping with the rhythm of the afternoon. Corine joined Moralès at the bar, leaving a stool’s distance between them. He resisted the foolish urge to sneak a downward peek, but as she sat, he could imagine the slipper dangling from her toes, the curve of her heel tightening.
‘So…’ She smiled and nodded, as if she were a teacher encouraging a child to speak.
‘I hear you had a party here on Saturday?’ Moralès felt ridiculous asking the question. So he tried to relax and let the interview flow like a conversation, taking small sips of his wine as he listened.
‘Yes, I saw Angel. She was with Clément. She’s been married ten years, and she puts her wedding dress on for every anniversary. If you want my opinion, it’s more a pretty white dress than a bridal gown tarted up with lace and frills. No one blinks an eye anymore. Clément was all dressed up as well, but not in his wedding suit. It doesn’t fit him anymore. But I imagine that’s not what you came here to find out.’
She took a sip of wine and thought hard. It looked like she was trying to remember an important detail. When did women start having this kind of effect on him? Was it when he met Catherine?
‘They had a drink, but they didn’t stay long. Angel was tired. She said she was asleep on her feet. It’s true, she was pale. I was so busy, I didn’t really have the chance to worry about her, though.’
Was it when he stopped hearing from Sarah?
She took another sip without breaking the rhythm of her story. ‘Clément went to drive her home, maybe around midnight, and he came back an hour later, I’d say. He wasn’t away for long. Then he was here until about nine the next morning. He slept in room two.’
‘Who came to the party?’
‘It wasn’t a private party, but not far off. Only fishermen. No tourists. Between you and me, tourists like fishermen when they’re down on the wharf. They think they’re exotic, with all their talk of quotas, longlines, zones and groundfish, but the shine wears off after half an hour. The rest of the time, the tourists keep to themselves and chat about their favourite camping spots and spout on about seeing whales in Percé.’
She extended a mocking pinkie as she raised her glass to her lips. ‘They just want their perfect holiday photo – eating their lobster dinner and drinking their glass of French wine in front of a warm red sunset.’ She gave him a knowing wink. Joaquin lowered his gaze and took a quick sip of his wine. ‘Propping up the bar with fifty-odd fishermen isn’t quite their thing.’
‘Would you write me a list of the people who were here that night?’
‘The fishermen?’
‘Yes. And their guests, wives…’