Babin glared at Moralès and sloped off reluctantly. The detective fell into step with Angel’s younger brother, who pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one as they crossed the paved road that led to the wharf.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘I hear you used to have a scallop trawler. I’d like to know why you sold it.’
Jimmy slowed his pace, raised an eyebrow. He had probably been expecting to be questioned about moving the lobster boat, his relationship with Angel and his comings and goings.
‘The lobster fishers banded together to buy all the scallop-fishing permits and tear them up. The biologists told them it was our fault there weren’t many lobsters in the Gaspé anymore. They offered us a good deal. So I sold, like everyone else.’
The two men stopped on the other side of the road, where the breakwater for the big wharf embedded itself into terra firma. The huge boulders were there to protect the road from the autumn high tides. Now, the retreating tide had exposed a broad strip of kelp. Mushy waves were licking the muddy foreshore.
‘And after that?’
Jimmy Roberts exhaled a breath of cigarette smoke full of contempt. ‘What do you mean, after that?’
An odour of sulphur and salt wafted towards them on the breeze. A flock of gulls swooped down with a shriek and landed on the muddy rocks, beaks to the wind.
‘What did you do with that money?’
Jimmy Roberts took a long drag of his cigarette. ‘I paid off my boat.’ He breathed a long breath out. ‘And I got divorced. Costs a lot of money, a divorce, when you’ve got young kids.’
The gulls were jerking their heads haphazardly, lifting their beaks to the sky with shrill little snickers and smirks.
‘I started work at the fish plant after that. Not as many responsibilities. The pay’s all right.’
Jimmy Roberts tried to squeeze one last drag out of his cigarette, only to realise he was already down to the filter. He let the end fall to the ground and crushed it with the toe of his boot.
‘Did you and your sister get on well?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Because Jean-Paul Babin went to work for her, but you didn’t.’
A refrigerated truck rolled by. Offended by the noise, the gulls took off with surly shrieks and whirled around overhead before swooping down again to take their places on the rocks and mounds of kelp.
‘My sister Angel asked me if I wanted to work for her two years ago, but I said no. She came with the other lobster fishers to tear up my licence, you know. I have a bad temper and it was her boat, so I didn’t exactly want to make her life miserable on board.’
The other employees were starting to file back in to work. Jimmy Roberts started back towards the processing plant. Moralès walked with him. The gulls looked like they were sleeping as the men left the boulders of the breakwater behind them and crossed the road.
‘Mr Roberts, are you or your friends, the Babin brothers, going to try and take over your sister’s boat and fishing licence?’
Jimmy Roberts barely broke his stride. ‘I’m going to be late.’ He had seen something in the corner of his eye that was turning left and accelerating towards the processing plant. ‘I don’t want them to dock an hour off my pay, OK?’
Moralès looked over his shoulder to see what had made Jimmy Roberts so quick to scarper. Jimmy’s father’s pickup truck was pulling in to park in the winter mooring yard. When the detective turned back, he saw the door to the building closing behind the youngest Roberts son. Moralès walked back towards the loading basin. The two onlookers were still there, watching the dry-docking manoeuvre in progress. ‘I still say fishing’s too hard a job for a woman. I mean, it’s hard enough for a man, so can you imagine?’ one said to the other.
As Leeroy Roberts let two big dogs out of the truck, the onlookers sidled over, took their caps off and shook hands with him. They were too far away for Moralès to hear what they were saying, but he understood they must be expressing their condolences.
The dogs ran towards the water and came to a stop near Moralès, who bent down to pet them. Leeroy Roberts bid farewell to the onlookers and walked over to the detective.
‘My daughter was allergic. I had to put them outside whenever she came over to the house, even though she always took her allergy pills. The last time, her pills didn’t work.’
Like the others, Moralès offered the man his condolences. Leeroy tightened his lips, because there was nothing more to say. None of these expressions of sympathy could bring the man’s daughter back. He turned to watch the gantry crane hoisting the Ange-Irène out of the water. It was no consolation to see a fine boat like that, but it did give him a sense of pride. Because Bruce was good at his fishing. He knew how to bring in a good haul.
‘They’re going to bring her in right there, on the slipway. They park the Ange-Irène near the water’s edge in the winter, because my Bruce’s boat’s the biggest. She’s a bit too heavy for the boat lift, tends to overload it if they’re not careful. So they don’t want to carry her too far.’
Now that he thought about it, Moralès could hear a warning bleep sounding on the breeze.
‘That’s why they bring Bruce’s out last. If the lift were to break down now, at least everyone else wouldn’t still be waiting to put their boats in dry dock while they got it fixed.’
The shrimp trawler was now suspended in midair. Leeroy Roberts wished the detective knew more about big mobile machinery so that he’d appreciate what an impressive piece of kit this was. The travel lift started to carry the big boat forward.
‘Do you often go aboard with your son?’
‘Never. Two skippers on a boat are never going to get along. And Bruce is better than me. He went to university to study marine biology, and to the Maritime Institute. He knows all the technology, computers, sonars, and electronic whatnot in the trawl nets to measure the catch. You went aboard the other day. You must have seen all the gear. It’s all lost on me.’
The travel lift was inching its way forward under the weight of the heavy trawler.
‘These days, you have to study to go out fishing. Back in my time, it was the opposite. Fishing was what you did if you wanted to stay out of the classroom. “You’re no good at school? Let’s sell you a boat nice and cheap and you can teach yourself how to fish.” It’s no wonder fishermen were poor, they didn’t have an education.’
A sporty-looking pickup truck drove up and parked. Two men got out and exchanged a discreet nod with Leeroy. The boat lift continued to inch towards its destination, warning sound and all.
‘I’ve always said the sea’s full of treasure; you just have to know how to find it.’
Moralès resisted the urge to ask Leeroy any more questions. He was worried he might put the man on his guard while he was still opening up.
‘I learned the ropes as a deckhand in New Brunswick, then I went down to Maine. When I came back up here, I got married and bought my first boat. An old wooden beauty, she was. I chose to fish for cod. It paid well, but it was hard work. Back then, we used to haul up the nets by hand, over the side of the boat.’
The travel lift arrived at its destination. The men from the sporty-looking pickup truck went around to either side of the stern and started to stack big wooden chocks under the hull. Caught in a wave of nostalgia, Angel’s father fished a crumpled black-and-white photograph from his wallet and handed it to Moralès. It was a picture of an old boat, on which a young, proud Leeroy stood facing the camera, arms folded across his chest.
‘But down in Maine, I’d seen boats that hauled the nets up at the stern, not over the side. It made more sense, but the boat had to be built differently so the nets wouldn’t get sucked into the propeller. And guess what, they pulled everything up with a winch! So when I came to buy my own boat, I found one with a winch in the back. It wasn’t cheap, but it was worth the money.’