Officer Lord went out on deck in a diving suit, accompanied by another diver. She pointed to the place with a tip of her chin. ‘There she is.’
The captain veered to one side and slowed the boat as much as possible.
Suddenly, Moralès saw her. And froze.
‘En la madre…’
Sébastien was surprised to hear his father speaking Spanish. He leaned over the side to see. The woman was floating in midwater, a metre and a half below the surface, with her arms wide open and palms turned to the sky as if waiting to take flight. Her face was cupped by a halo of hair that swayed in the swell like Medusa’s mane. Against the transparent darkness of the water, her white dress fanned out around her, concealing her legs and feet. She looked like an angel rising from the watery depths.
Moralès turned his gaze to Simone Lord. She swallowed, clearly shaken by the strange apparition as well, then gave a sigh and turned to the captain.
‘We’re going to dive from here.’
Not that the captain cared. He and his two crew members thought the whole thing was ridiculous. They’d made that clear on the way here. They had a rescue basket. That’s what they’d told the detective. Just cut the line, hook the body, pull it into the basket, and bring it ashore like that. Just think how gross it’ll be, they had added. All crab-eaten and stinky. They’d even cracked jokes along the lines of ‘remember that time when…’. Officer Lord had told them to shut up. She was diving, no matter what.
‘We’re going down with cameras to take photos and see how she’s anchored. Then we’ll decide how we bring her home.’
The men had rolled their eyes; Moralès had frowned at them. There was no way he was going to let those coast-guard comedians make lame jokes at Angel’s expense. He’d had to put his foot down – ‘Is that really any skin off your noses?’ – to shut them up. No, no, of course not, they’d replied. Anyway, it was their investigation. They could figure it out themselves. Simone Lord hadn’t thanked Moralès for standing up for her, or at least leaning the same way. She had simply gone to put her diving suit on. Earlier, she had taken the initiative to call a diver she knew. A guy who took photos for the police sometimes.
She and the other diver adjusted their suits, masks, air tanks and gloves. Then they tipped themselves overboard, about three metres away from Angel Roberts.
Moralès went out onto the deck. One of the crewmen leaned out towards the divers and passed them the end of a steel cable with a hook, then winched it out to give them some slack. He and Moralès watched the divers descend beneath the surface, circle the body and take some pictures before turning a light on and plunging to darker depths. Soon the detective lost sight of them and could only follow the fading beam of light so far. He waited. His son stood a few steps away, not moving a muscle. The crewman felt two tugs on the cable. He turned on the winch to reel it in.
Suddenly, something in the water caught Moralès’s attention. The bride had moved. She was floating closer to the surface. The divers had freed the rope and whatever was tethering Angel Roberts to the seabed. The other crewman lowered a cradle into the water beside the hull. The second diver lined the body up over it and gave the signal to winch it up. Slowly, the cradle rose. When Angel’s body reached the surface, Simone Lord motioned for the crewman to stop the winch. They stabilised the body against the hull. The dead woman’s tangle of hair was wrapped around her face like a net.
The second diver resurfaced. Something was attached to the rope. A red box. No, it wasn’t a box. It was a trap, painted red. An old, wooden lobster-fishing trap. It had been filled with things to make it heavier. A block of cement and a pile of wet blankets. When they brought it up, a flood of water came pouring out. The crewman waited until most of it had drained away before swinging the trap on board. There was a chain attached to it. He set the winch going again to haul up the chain, which was connected to an anchor line. Meanwhile, Simone Lord clambered up the ladder, followed by the other diver. Moralès watched patiently. The cradle swung over the deck and Angel Roberts was finally on board.
Simone Lord approached the detective and spoke without looking at him – helping her colleague take off his diving gear as she did so.
‘The trap was snagged on a bunch of half-sunken logs that were slowly drifting offshore. If the seas had been any rougher, the logs would have carried her further out and we’d never have spotted her.’
She stopped, rattled that her superior officer had turned his back on her. Then she saw it was because he was moving closer to the body, crouching beside the cage-like structure they had lowered the cradle into when they carried Angel Roberts to the surface.
Moralès had heard what Simone said, but had nothing to reply.
‘Well, she’s all yours now,’ she mumbled, shrugging her shoulders and leaving the deck.
Sébastien had observed the whole procedure. Now he watched Joaquin lean over the mesh that separated him from the dead woman. He thought about everything his father must have bottled up over the years as he investigated. He wondered if he was anything like a detective in a crime novel – haunted by the evil in the world. The crimes, the screams, the cruelty of the killers, the blank stares of the victims, the gallows humour of the other cops. It struck him that his father must have seen so much and tried, not to repair, but to understand and cast light on the things others had done that ultimately solved nothing. He thought about everything the man never talked about. His father was a vault of silence that never opened more than a narrow crack.
But now here he was, talking to her. Standing beside the cage, leaning over the bride inside. He was wearing gloves, but he couldn’t touch her. She was too far away through the mesh. So he did what he could. He looked at her. And said something to her. Her name, Sébastien deduced. He was calling her by her name.
Angel Roberts.
She wasn’t much older than his sons. Moralès looked up and saw Sébastien watching him. He waved and asked if he was all right. Yes, Sébastien replied. That was a lie. Moralès knew his son was lying. Out of pride, or just so his father could get on with his work. And his son knew that his father knew it. They were united by a kind of loyalty in spite of everything, a silent pact they kept renewing.
The captain was heading for a wharf somewhere down the end of Gaspé Bay. Where exactly, Moralès didn’t know. The captain had slowed the boat with a shrug, seeing how insistent the detective was to linger on the port side, leaning over the corpse. He’d heard the guy’s name earlier. Moralès. Another Mexican who’d come over here to take a local’s job, he figured. A Latino who was doing some weird Day of the Dead stuff with the body of a girl from the Gaspé. Maybe the guy was a necrophile. In any case, he wouldn’t have hired the guy. Not him, and not that Simone woman either. When she’d been with the coast guard, she’d done nothing but get a bee in her bonnet. Plenty were happy she’d gone off to play at being the fishing police. Wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up the same way as that fisherwoman. The sea was no place for a woman. No. Not for a Mexican, either.
Moralès was still leaning over her. This was all the time he was going to get with Angel. As soon as they went ashore, she would be in the hands of the medical examiner, autopsy technicians and undertakers. They would examine her, cut her and reduce her to ashes. And she would elude him once more. Under the water, she had looked like she was flying. Now, her dress clung to her skin like long, slimy fronds of seaweed. Under the water, she could have turned to coral. Someday, her bones might have made some pretty jewellery. But she had decided to float to the surface. Why? Joaquin Moralès was profoundly shaken.