‘You can leave Jimmy Roberts alone. The Fisheries and Oceans Canada officers are already—’
Moralès whirled around to face Simone Lord. He’d had enough. ‘I have to wonder why you keep swooping to the rescue of Jimmy Roberts, Officer Lord.’
That seemed to knock the wind from her sails. It took her a moment to find her voice.
‘I’m not swooping to—’
‘Do you have an interest in protecting these poachers?’
She paled.
‘Officer Lord, you have two options. Either you assist this investigation by telling me what you know, or I will consider that you have been obstructing our enquiries by covering up the poachers’ activities, which, in this particular case, might make you an accessory to murder.’
Simone Lord had turned as white as a sheet.
‘I’ll be expecting you to fill me in tomorrow. Don’t stand me up.’
He left her there, speechless and motionless, and got into his car. He could feel his migraine coming back and hoped his son had kept his promise to make something for dinner.
Monday 1st October
Joaquin Moralès had slept enough to get back on his feet. But despite using painkillers, he was still struggling to control his persistent headache, so he was taking things slowly. He was looking at the photos on the walls in Jacques Forest’s living room while Jacques made a pot of coffee.
The fisherman saw him peer at one of the frames for a closer look. ‘Are you looking at the shark? That was a rare catch.’
‘You’ve been shark fishing?’
‘As little as possible.’
‘But you still caught one?’
Forest poured the coffee and put their mugs on the table, by Moralès’s case file.
‘Only by chance. A couple of years ago, I went fishing for halibut around the Magdalen Islands. And we ended up hooking that little monster. At first we thought it was a seal, but it was fighting much too hard. It was the skipper who first realised it was a shark on the hook. Not a massive one, but still big enough to do some damage. When we came to land the sucker, he got really nasty. You should have seen the size of his mouth, full of razor-sharp teeth. We put a .22 bullet in his head. That’ll calm a fish down fast, believe me.’
‘Do all fisherman carry rifles on board?’
They sat at the table. The inside of Forest’s home was a treasure trove of souvenirs from the sea, photos from his time working the lifeboats and snapshots of him and Angel aboard the Close Call II. They were a record of the various refits and upgrades – from the practical to the cosmetic – the young fisherwoman had made to her lobster trawler over the years.
‘Some do, but not all. We’re allowed to shoot a seal if it’s swum too close to the boat and got itself mangled up in the propeller, that kind of thing. To put an end to its suffering, you know. But that doesn’t happen much anymore. On the shrimp trawlers, when the whole moratorium thing happened, all the fishermen had one. Well, almost all of them did.’
Moralès tasted the coffee. It was good. The house was well kept, too. This was a man who liked to keep things in order.
‘Why?’
Forest took his time and chose his words carefully. The detective thought this must be an important story for him to tell.
‘When the government closed the cod fishery, half the fishermen in the area lost their only source of income. The boat, the licence, the equipment, none of that comes cheap. When you work your socks off like your father, your grandfather and your great-grandfather did, and you’ve been poor for so many generations you can trace your misery back to the first boat that landed in North America, when you’ve just mortgaged your house to the hilt and your boat to the top of the rigging and your dog to the tip of his tail just to keep your livelihood afloat, you’re desperate for the season to start. Just imagine, you’re up to your eyes in debt, the bank’s chasing you and all you’re waiting for is the fishery to open. But then it doesn’t.’
‘What happened?’
‘The fishermen asked the government for help. And do you know what the ministry of fisheries did? They gave them shrimp quotas instead.’
‘So the cod fishermen had to change all their equipment?’
‘That wasn’t the biggest problem. There were boats fishing for cod, and others catching shrimp in the same fishing grounds. From one day to the next, you tell all them fishing for cod to start catching shrimp like the others, what do you think’s going to happen on the water? The sea turned into the Wild West. I threw in the towel and went down to the States to work search and rescue. But there were plenty of others who took rifles aboard with them.’
‘Was that when your brother-in-law bought himself a new boat?’
That seemed to strike a nerve for Forest. ‘Like a bloody hypocrite!’
‘Why do you say that? Because he was fishing on a boat paid for by his wife?’
‘No, everyone knew about that.’ Forest leaned back in his chair. Took a swig of coffee. ‘You’ve met Roberts. He went down to work in the States because people here wanted nothing to do with him. When he came back, he said he knew how to fish better than everyone else. He married Irène, then used her money to buy himself a shiny new boat and said the sea was a gold mine, if you knew how to work it.
‘It’s true, he’s always worked hard. But Roberts had an advantage. His brothers worked at the ministry and they gave him the inside scoop. He always knew which way the regulations were going before anyone else. And that gave him a head start. When he found out there was a moratorium coming, he kept it to himself and let all the others go out and spend money on new nets. Meanwhile, he was plotting his future. The summer before the moratorium came, he filled his wooden boat to the nines with fireworks and burnt it to a crisp out in the estuary. You’re going to tell me that wasn’t staged, and he could have just sold his boat to someone else. But who would have bought it? Leeroy knew that no one from the States all the way up to Labrador could have gone fishing with that gear anymore. And getting his hands on that insurance money a season early meant that he could get himself a fancy new shrimp trawler, built in New Brunswick. He found a naval architect to design a high-tech boat like nothing anyone here had ever seen, with a net that came back up over the stern on a winch that ran on engine power. Here, everyone still had nets that went out to the sides, and they had to haul them in by hand. So here was Leeroy, with a boat that could bring in more shrimp than all the others combined. He had a better boat, better gear, a better engine, and he had sonar. Can you imagine?’
Forest came up for breath.
‘Then he went and cast his brand-new nets out at Firmin’s spot.
‘Firmin’s spot?’
‘Firmin Cyr.’
‘Cyr?’
‘Yes. Clément’s father.’
Moralès was thunderstruck.
‘Firmin was a shrimp fisherman. He was forced to split his fishing grounds with Leeroy Roberts.’
‘And that caused friction, I presume?’
‘No. Firmin had always said he’d never get worked up over money, and there were plenty of shrimp for everyone. Leeroy was lucky to end up with him and not someone else.’
‘What happened to Firmin?’
‘Drowned. Clément took over his dad’s fishing operation. That was when I was in the States.’
‘So, Leeroy Roberts and his son-in-law fish for shrimp in the same area?’
‘They used to. Bruce took over his dad’s licence. And he changed boats. Meanwhile, Leeroy, he bought all the cod licences that were still around, all those no one else wanted anymore. Believe me, if ever the ministry reopens the cod fishery, Roberts is going to sell those for a pretty penny.’