The dogs had now sniffed around all the potholes full of water and came back to sit at their master’s feet.
Leeroy took the photograph back from Moralès and looked at it. ‘It was a blessing in disguise, though, that boat going up in smoke.’
‘Who set fire to it?’
‘It was an accident. We were out at sea, me, my boy and my two deckhands. Not far, mind you, but there was a pea soup of a fog that meant we couldn’t see a thing. On our way back to shore, we must have hit a rock lurking under the surface and bent the propeller shaft or something. Not that we noticed. We were out on deck sorting the fish. Unbeknownst to us, the engine had started to labour and it ended up catching fire. When we saw and tried to put it out, it was already too late. The whole stern was ablaze. We sent a distress call to the coast guard, launched the life raft and jumped aboard. At first, we wanted to stay close to the fire so it’d be easier for the rescue boat to locate us. With that fog though, it took a while for them to find us. It was dead calm out there, and all you could smell was barbecued fish.’
The two men from the pickup truck moved to the front of the Ange-Irène now and started to stack wooden chocks to support the bow.
‘It all went south from there. My wooden boat was full of distress flares, you see. You have to buy new ones every year; that’s the law. I never used to throw out the old ones, so I had a big box full of them. When the flames caught that box, boy, did we ever know it! The flares started to explode, and they were shooting out all over the place! My deckhands were scared a spark might catch the life raft. It was inflatable and made of rubber, you see, so we’d have sunk. So anyway, one of the guys took the little oar that was in there and started to row with all his strength to get us away from the fishing boat. But it was one of those circular rafts with a roof and just a little door on one side. And all we had was one little oar. What do you think happened? We just turned around in circles like a bloody spinning top!’
Now the chocks were in place, the man manoeuvring the lift started to release the tension on the straps cradling the shrimp trawler.
‘The coast guard found us in the end, but my wooden boat sank. I ended up missing the rest of the season. It was hard because the cod-fishing moratorium was brought in around that time. You must have heard about that, I imagine?’
Moralès was reluctant to say no.
‘From one day to the next, the government closed the cod fishery. Just like that, it was all over. Because my boat had just gone up in smoke, I had another one built, especially for shrimp, with a winch in the back.’
The warning sound stopped. The men unhooked the straps and let them fall to the ground.
‘Some spiteful tongues went around saying I’d set fire to my wooden boat on purpose. It’s not true. I’d never have risked my life, and especially not my son’s and my deckhands’. But when the stars align like that, there’ll always be a few jealous folk who make up untruths.’
These were bitter memories for Leeroy to recall. In his mind, he had always been a cod fisherman.
‘When the moratorium came, our hands were forced. There was no arguing with the biologists and the government pen-pushers. Every last cod fisherman had no choice but to switch over to shrimp.’
He told Moralès how, the first time he moored his new boat at the big wharf, the others had come out to spit on it and had called him a shrimp thief. It seemed that Leeroy had earned his success the hard way.
Slowly, the boat lift backed away from the trawler. The men picked up the straps.
‘It’s easy to badmouth people who’ve been successful, but I’ve had to work hard for what I’ve achieved. Damn hard. And my boy Bruce has too. It’s no coincidence he’s got himself a fine boat like that.’
The two men hooked a metal stepladder on wheels to their truck and towed it over to the shrimp trawler while the boat lift, freed of its load, zoomed by them on its way to park in its usual spot over the loading basin.
‘I ran into your son Jimmy before you got here…’
Leeroy motioned for Moralès to stop. He was expecting to hear that his youngest had slung mud at him. But he wasn’t going to stand for his whining. Leeroy had raised all his children to work hard and hold their heads high; he had never had any time for leeches.
‘Jimmy never stops complaining. He got a girl pregnant at seventeen. He married her at eighteen and before he was nineteen he wanted his own fishing boat. His mum and me, we told him he was too young, but he wouldn’t hear a word of it. You must know, kids won’t do anything unless it’s their idea. Then afterwards, when it’s all gone belly up, they come and blame us for it. Jimmy went through some hard times. He ended up selling his fishing operation. We all have to live with the consequences of our own lives, don’t we?’
Leeroy Roberts tipped his chin and crossed his arms over his chest, becoming the proud man in the black-and-white photograph again.
‘Was it you who asked your son to bring the Close Call II back to the Grande-Grave wharf the other night?’
‘Yes. That boat’s worth money, you know. We can’t leave her just anywhere. We have to get her ready for the winter. Jimmy’s taking care of it.’ Leeroy shook his head in distaste. ‘I told Angel she should choose another way to make a living, that fishing wasn’t a woman’s job. She wouldn’t hear a word of it. Stubborn as a mule, she was. I’d never have thought she’d take her own life. But what do we really know about our kids?’
Leeroy Roberts turned and walked away with a weary step. He opened the back door of his pickup. The dogs bounded in and curled up obediently on the blanket covering the backseat. He closed the door. In the yard, dozens of boats were waiting for some end-of-season TLC. Their sides were streaked with wings of rust. They’d have to be repainted, again, to ward off the insatiable appetite of the salt and the sea in which they immersed themselves, such tiny hulls atop the infinite murky depths.
The fisherman trudged back over to the detective.
‘Mr Roberts, last Saturday, your daughter Angel and her husband had dinner at your house. Who made the food?’
‘The caterers. Corine took care of it, with the Morin girl.’
The answer came mechanically.
‘Are you talking about Kim Morin, who teaches yoga?’
‘Yes.’
Leeroy Roberts looked up and for the first time Moralès saw the grief that haunted him.
‘I’ve been feeling like this since yesterday. The same way I did when my wooden boat went down. I’m spinning around in circles with my little oar on the life raft and all the distress flares are trying to shoot out of my body.’
He nodded goodbye to the detective, then sloped off towards the stepladder on wheels that was now docked alongside the shrimp trawler. Resting on her wooden chocks, a steady stream of seawater trickled off the Ange-Irène as she settled into dry dock for the winter.
Corine had tied her hair in a topknot and was just about to take stock of her freezers when he came into the kitchen. ‘Are you heading out to investigate with your dad again?’ she asked. She was holding a notepad, pen and marker.
‘No. It’s not really my place. I went down to the wharf yesterday and watched people fishing. I think I’d like to give that a go.’
Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘Have you never fished?’
‘Once or twice, when I was a boy. It looks pretty easy. Hold the rod to one side, cast the line, reel it in. How hard can it be?’ Sébastien mimed the action of winding a little handle.