‘Could you put the TV on?’ Sébastien asked.
‘For sure, but I’ll have to mute it.’ He grabbed the remote and a football match sparked to life on the screen.
Joaquin raised an eye to the match and his glass to his lips, took a sip, then lowered his beer. ‘That’s the unfortunate thing about normality: it’s just the ordinary spiced up with suffering.’
That was all he said, but it left him almost out of breath. At least he’d said something. When the incomprehensible squeezed you by the throat, you had to latch on to small talk about the weather, the sports scores, the ups and downs of fuel prices, your weekly chores and the daily grind to keep your head above water. His son nodded, and Joaquin felt a fleeting sense of relief.
The barman slid their plates of fish across the bar. A loud group came into the pub. Louis picked up a handful of menus and hurried over to greet them. The Moralès men ate their dinner, watched the match without seeing any of it, and then pushed their plates away. The barman cleared their places. Joaquin ordered another beer for his son and a coffee for himself. He still had work to do when they got back.
Suddenly, with his eyes glued to the screen, Sébastien dropped a question as naturally as a comment about the football match.
‘Do you miss Mum?’
Moralès struggled to catch his breath. Did he miss his wife? He kept seeing the tangled mat of hair that had brought Angel’s enamoured giant of a husband to his knees. He recalled Lefebvre’s comment about beauty: when it seemed to have flowed away somewhere, the well of love must be running dry. Try as he might, he couldn’t shake the images that had tempted him these last few days: the cascading of unbridled locks, the curve of a heel, a face shaped around a smile, the intriguing hint of vertebrae beneath the skin.
The barman put their drinks in front of them.
That morning, when he had seen Angel Roberts floating in the water, her arms wide open to the sky, her hair and her dress billowing around her, DS Joaquin Moralès had felt his heart pounding in his chest. He had stayed there for a while, kneeling over her, wondering why his heart was beating that way. Cyrille Bernard had told him many times that he was the kind of man who’d easily get carried out to sea – the kind who wanted to hold in his palm the infinite possibility of the world. Sitting in the bay window of his living room, Moralès had often wondered what the old fisherman meant. Tonight, staring at a soundless screen, it finally dawned on him what Cyrille had been trying to say.
What are you supposed to say to your thirty-year-old son? He hesitated. A moment too long. He took a deep breath, only to discover he had lost his voice. Again. Time to take a sip of coffee, he thought.
‘I went down to the wharf in Rivière-au-Renard today.’
It almost made him jump to hear Sébastien speaking again.
‘There were some people fishing. I stayed and watched them for a long time. All afternoon. I think I might take that up. Fishing, I mean.’
Louis brought the bill over. Joaquin placed his hand over it and finished his coffee.
‘Fishing, that’s a good idea.’
The two men stood. Joaquin wished he could wrap his arms around his son, reassure him, help him to make sense of the turmoil he could detect in his grown child’s mind. He wished he could answer Sébastien’s questions and talk to him about men casting off moorings, dispersing beauty at sea and holding the endless ever-after in their hands, but all he could bring himself to do was pick up the bill, pull out his credit card and pay for the meal.
Friday 28th September
Moralès had gone to bed late again. He had tried, in vain, to reach Cyrille Bernard. Then he had written up his report of the day on the kitchenette table and tidied away the random things Lefebvre had put there earlier. He had hesitated to do anything with the origami creation Simone Lord had left behind, and had held it in his hand for a long while as Sébastien contemplated the blurry horizon of a sea cast in the weak light from a moon caught in the clouds.
Now, as his son still slumbered, the detective decided to pay a visit to Jimmy Roberts. He drove down to the water and parked by the seafood-processing plant, where the end of the big wharf met the winter mooring yard.
A number of men were busy putting the Ange-Irène into dry dock. One of them was driving a huge winch on wheels that looked like a giant spider; he manoeuvred it over the rectangular loading basin that opened into the port.
Moralès got out of the car and walked over, staying close to the side of the processing plant so he’d be out of the wind. Two curious onlookers stood on the wharf commenting on the manoeuvre.
‘They’re going to slide those straps underneath to hoist ’er up.’
‘Aye, but they’ll have to be careful not to overload the lift like they did in the spring.’
They waved to Moralès.
‘Is that Bruce Roberts’ shrimp trawler?’ the detective asked.
They nodded.
‘Everyone here used to fish for cod, but since the moratorium, they’ve had to go after shrimp instead.’
‘What moratorium?’
The men looked at Moralès as if he was from another planet.
‘You must’ve come a long way to be asking questions like that.’
‘Aye, that’s proof no one in the city takes any interest in that sort of thing. They all want to eat fresh fish and juicy shrimp, but none of them’ll stand up for the fishermen.’
The Ange-Irène motored slowly towards the loading basin. The onlookers didn’t bother answering Moralès’s question. Two men were holding a strap in place, ready to slide it under the bow before doing the same at the stern once the engine was turned off.
‘You the one investigating the death of Leeroy’s girl, then?’
Moralès said yes.
‘What happened?’
The detective gave them a taste of their own gruff silence. Let them read into that whatever they would.
‘Aye, well, she’s not the first to kill herself around here.’
‘Remember Jean Bournival?’
‘Aye, but that wasn’t the same.’
‘What are you on about? Course it was!’
The man turned to Moralès. ‘Bournival, he climbed up on top of his boat, right here in the marina, and he yelled to God to send him some fish. Gave him proper grief, he did. And what do you think happened? He got struck by lightning. Right under all our noses.’
‘Aye, well like I said, that wasn’t suicide, was it?’
‘What do you call it, then? It wasn’t even stormy out.’
‘Course there was a storm brewing. It was cloudy and windy, it just hadn’t started to rain yet. That’s why he went up on top of his boat, remember. The wind was ripping his antenna off.’
‘Still, shouldn’t have summoned the man upstairs, should he?’
‘He was only messing around.’
‘That’s not something you joke about.’
‘Well, we know that now.’
Suddenly, the door at the back of the processing plant opened and a sea of employees flooded out. Moralès saw Jimmy Roberts and Guy Babin – he hadn’t realised he worked there too. As soon as they saw him, they turned and walked in the opposite direction.
Moralès hurried after them. ‘Jimmy Roberts, I’d like to—’
‘He doesn’t have time. We’re only on a fifteen-minute break.’ It was Babin who answered.
‘I could bring you down to the station for questioning. The whole village would get wind of that. Or we can have a nice informal chat here, just the two of us, shooting the breeze.’
‘Now you listen to me, the bloody police—’
Jimmy Roberts raised a hand to stop Babin from saying any more.
‘It’s all right, Ti-Guy. I’ll take care of this.’