The young woman who had built her whole life on pride and forced her family to accept the choices she had made, who had taught herself, with the help of only a clueless uncle and a couple of unreliable deckhands, to fish for lobster, to dive to retrieve her sabotaged traps and to sell her catches; she who had stubbornly pursued this tough profession to live life immersed in the beauty of a sunrise over the sea, had suddenly had enough. Without even changing her clothes – because she didn’t care anymore, because she loved that dress or because she wanted to make her husband feel guilty – she staggered out of the house and into her car and drove down to the wharf. There, she clambered aboard her trusty lobster trawler, started the engine, cast off her moorings and motored out to sea, where she decided to put an end to it all, her relationship and her life, in the middle of the night of the equinox. She’d just let the boat drift in the ocean she called home. Because it was her boat and hers alone, and she’d rather leave it adrift in the gulf than have it commandeered by a man.
Moralès looked at Clément Cyr. Usually, it was the parents of missing children who made confessions like this. They were haunted by their pain, by the shock of the grief, and when they realised they were powerless to save their offspring from their fate, they convinced themselves they were to blame. I thought he was at his friend’s house. I got home five minutes late. I let her walk home from school alone. So many ordinary sentences and turns of phrase that belonged in every family’s everyday life when conjugated in the present tense. But in the past tense, in a detective’s office, these words spoke of personal trials, unforgivable mistakes and consciences wrecked for nothing.
The fisherman sitting in front of Moralès was almost begging to be found guilty. But how could any man know his wife has gone missing before it’s been discovered? Moralès cast a glance at the two-way mirror. He suspected Lefebvre would be drawing the same conclusion he was.
‘As soon as I woke up, I tried to call her, but her phone was off. She didn’t answer the landline at home either. I thought she was still mad at me, because I’d turned my own phone off the night before, you see? I got home around ten the next morning. That was when I found her note. She’d put two kisses at the end, so I thought she’d calmed down. I thought everything was all right. But it was a farewell note and I didn’t even understand.’
His gaze drifted around the room, as if he were recreating her in every corner, and recreating the spaces she used to fill.
She’s there, standing at the kitchen counter, leaning over a drawer that’s ajar, sitting in the armchair by the window. She’s everywhere. She’s chopping vegetables, drinking a beer, laughing out loud.
The more Angel filled the room with her presence, her voice, her jokes, the smaller the room became, and Moralès understood that. The void of this woman he had never met was taking up all the space.
‘Angel’s dead because of me.’
Moralès shook his head. ‘No.’
But he didn’t say anything else. He’d let social services do their job.
‘If it weren’t for my new doctor, I think I’d take up smoking.’ Constable Érik Lefebvre was visibly shaken. He collapsed into the chair behind his desk. ‘I hate that.’
Moralès pushed a box out of the way, closed the door, moved two thick files to one side and freed an old armchair for himself. ‘You hate what?’
‘Working on the front lines!’
Moralès smiled in spite of himself. ‘Have you ever had to draw your weapon, Lefebvre?’
‘My weapon?’ He looked left, then right, to make sure the walls hadn’t sprouted ears. Then he leaned towards Moralès secretively. ‘It’s not loaded.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘I’m a bad shot.’
‘That’s not a reason.’
‘Yes, it is. If I fire an unloaded weapon, there’s no way I can shoot an innocent person. Anyway I figure my weapon can have a persuasive power or a destructive power. I like to rely on the power of persuasion.’ He leaned back in his chair.
‘I think it’s time to call the medical examiner for the autopsy results,’ Moralès said.
Lefebvre looked at his watch. ‘You’re right!’
He put his desk phone on speaker and dialled a number. A monotonous doctor engaged Lefebvre in conversation before filling him and Moralès in on Angel Roberts’ autopsy results.
‘The external examination tells us lots of things. There are no marks of violence, other than some slight bruising at the nape of the neck. Nothing that would have caused unconsciousness or a fall. No dirt or flesh under the nails either.’
‘That doesn’t tell us much,’ Moralès replied.
‘If you say so. The official cause of death is drowning. The lungs are full of saltwater.’
‘Would you be able to estimate the time of death?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what time would that be?’
‘Hard to say.’
‘But you said it was possible.’
‘Do you know what time she had dinner?’
Moralès reflected for a moment before he answered. ‘Between six and seven.’
‘She died about ten hours later.’
‘Around four-thirty in the morning?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Do you have the blood-test results?’
‘Not yet.’
‘When will they be ready?’
The medical examiner marked a pause. ‘It’s Sunday tomorrow. I’ll ask if the lab can get the results to you this afternoon. I imagine I can email them to you?’
‘If you say so,’ Lefebvre smirked. He hung up and whistled between his teeth. ‘Four-thirty in the morning. That means there’s going to be a whole bunch of people with no alibi.’
Moralès stared at him blankly. ‘What time did the party at Corine’s wind down?’
Lefebvre shrugged. ‘Late, I imagine. We’re meeting the forensics guys at one. Time for lunch?’
Sebastien drove into the parking area at Grande-Grave. He had been awake half the night. He still hadn’t talked to his father, but he wasn’t avoiding it – or so he told himself. He just needed some time. Plus, he found fishing very calming. It was helping to give him the distance he needed before he broached that kind of topic. He got out of the car. Another angler’s truck was abandoned in the far corner, between a kayak rental shack that was closed for the season and the trees at the foot of the bluff.
The horizon drew its gloomy curtains as the sky turned to rain. The angler who’d told him yesterday that Grande-Grave was the place to fish was standing alone at the end of the wharf, with a bucket at his feet and a rod and line in his hand. He was dressed head to toe in green waterproofs. The man cast his line in one swift, assertive movement.
The boat belonging to the woman in the wedding dress was still moored at the dock. Sébastien shivered. He thought about Maude and tried to snap himself out of the nauseating melancholy that still smothered him. It was Saturday, and he was hoping to find somewhere to go dancing that night. He wondered if he should invite Kimo. He reached for his phone and texted Corine.
Suddenly, Sébastien saw the angler’s line tighten. He had a bite! Sébastien was rooted to the spot. He was torn between getting his own equipment and going over to help the angler reel the fish in. Too late. The angler had reeled the line in quickly, and the fish was hooked good and proper, but all its writhing had attracted the seals. As soon as the fish was above the surface, one of the hungry mammals leaped out of the water, swallowed the fish whole, snapping the line in the process, and plunged beneath the sea again with a satisfied splash.