Jimmy Roberts shook his head again.
‘I had no reason to kill her. I loved Angel. I did envy her, because she was successful. She had guts, she had charm, and she had her head screwed on the right way. Everything I don’t have. She was my little sister. I never told her, but I looked up to her. I’m no angel, but I’d never have done her any harm.’
He was driving, with the music shaking his car almost to bits, when his phone rang. He had caught as many fish as he was allowed to. A bucket full of fine striped bass was wedged tight in the backseat footwell, and he was salivating at the thought of cooking his catch.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Kimo.’
He braked and pulled over to the side of the road.
‘Corine gave me your number. She’s gone away for a couple of days, and she was worried I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.’
Sébastien was stunned, and didn’t know what to say.
‘Is this a bad time?’
‘Er … no. I’m just a bit surprised to … I’m on my way back from fishing.’
‘Oh, really? Where?’
‘Barachois.’
‘Ah, you caught some striped bass, then?’
‘Tons. A whole bucketful.’
‘Do you fancy coming over to my place? We can clean and cut them down by the water and cook them up outside. I’ve got the perfect setup. It’ll give you the chance to continue with your culinary experiments…’
He was hesitant, confused by these mixed messages.
As if she could hear the question he hadn’t voiced, she hurried to add that she wanted to apologise about the other night. ‘I know I’ve not been very nice to you. That’s partly why I want to invite you over, to have a beer and make peace. If you don’t want us to cook your bass together, it’s not a big deal.’
He smiled. ‘I love it when a woman tells me what to do in the kitchen. I’m on my way.’
He ended the call, turned the music up and put his foot down.
Joaquin closed the door to the observation room behind him. As Constable Lefebvre was escorting Jimmy Roberts out of the building, the detective had told his colleague he wouldn’t be needing him for the rest of the day. Simone Lord was still sitting behind the two-way mirror. Now that the light in the interview room was off, the glass was opaque and reflected the image of a defeated woman.
‘I need you, Officer Lord.’
She sighed as she saw his reflection approach. He found her reaction exasperating.
‘And why is that?’
‘To calculate how long it would have taken the Close Call II to travel from the Grande-Grave wharf to the place where Angel Roberts’ body was found.’
‘That’s not exactly a taxing question for someone with my expertise, is it?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Any fisherman worth his salt can figure that out.’
‘Very well. Don’t bother. I’ll ask a fisherman instead. And not only will I find out what I need to know, I won’t have to put up with being called a moron because I came from the big city, a pensioner because I’m fifty-two years old, a misogynist because I’m a man, and every name under the sun because I arrived fourteen hours late to this investigation.’
She all but cut him off. ‘About ten days ago, when I was out patrolling the inshore waters around the bay, it dawned on me that the Close Call II was being used by poachers.’
The words flooded out, as if she were delivering a practised spiel. Her gaze was floating in midair.
‘I had the same instinct as you. I went down to Grande-Grave one night to see what was going on. Except I had the code to the barrier and the men didn’t spot me. I saw what they were doing and I should have reported them straightaway. Fisheries and Oceans would have sent a boat, hauled up the traps, confiscated Angel’s trawler and slapped her with a hefty fine. That’s the procedure, and for any lowlife out there, I wouldn’t have thought twice.’
She was struggling to catch her breath.
‘But I’ve been immersed in these waters for a long time. I know what kind of guts it takes for a woman to hold her own in a sea of men. Angel and I were acquainted. I knew she worked hard and probably felt obliged to cut her brother some slack. So instead of calling in the cavalry, I went to see her.’
She lowered her head and Moralès, standing in the background, saw the alluring vertebra jut so prominently at the nape of her neck, it made him gasp.
‘Angel took what I said to heart. She went to see her brother and gave him four days to take all of his traps out of the water. She told him that if he didn’t, she’d report him and the Babin brothers because she wasn’t going to lose her livelihood for them.’ The rest was just a whisper. ‘Two nights later, she was dead.’
Simone sat up straight and found Joaquin’s gaze reflected in the glass.
‘I know I should have told you. But I’m a woman in a sea of men too, Detective Moralès. If my team and I had caught them red-handed out there on Saturday night, I would have come clean about it all the next day, I swear. But then you stuck your oar in and ended up pulling the plug on my plan. Don’t you worry, I’m going to get it in the neck for this. My boss is going to tell me I should have been more careful and that my actions led to the assault of a police officer. I’m sure he’ll be only too happy to throw the book at me and transfer me to somewhere even more remote than here. If he learns from you that I gave Angel a chance, he’ll show me the door. No one is ever going to see that I was standing up for another woman. They’ll just accuse me of protecting a poacher, like you did yesterday.’
Moralès was at a loss for words. He just looked at the sad, beautiful woman before him in the two-way glass.
‘Make of that what you will,’ she said. She lowered her eyes. ‘In any case, it’s true that I didn’t do my job properly. Angel is dead and I can’t forgive myself.’
Joaquin left the room in silence. He was exhausted, and the migraine still wasn’t letting up. He went out the back door of the station to avoid running into the receptionist. He got into his car, reached for his phone and dialled the number for Cyrille Bernard. No answer. He started the engine and set off back to the auberge. All he could think about were the women of the sea. Catherine, who had turned his heart upside down and set sail for the horizon. Angel, who had loved to cruise the coast. And Simone.
They could make love right here, he thought. Here on the shore.
She had been waiting for him when he got there. She had tied her hair up and slipped into a colourful jumpsuit that clung to her chest and showed off her taut tummy and toned hips. There was something almost unsettling or threatening about a firm, toned body like that for a man like him – who was in decent shape, but not exactly musclebound.
She had taken a knife and gutted the fish. He had tried to watch and learn from her technique, but his eyes had quickly wandered to her fingers, her hands, her wrists, lingering on the muscles of her forearms, rising past her elbows, to her shoulders, his gaze then falling almost naturally to her breasts, not that they were large, but they were suited to her athletic body. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
He had thought about Maude. She cooked like that sometimes, without her bra on. Now he was sharing that kind of intimacy with another woman. He had knocked back his first glass of wine in order to shake the image from his mind, only to choke on it. Kimo had ended up having to slap him on the back and offer him a sip of water. This she had done with a certain proximity, coming so close as to brush one of her small breasts against his arm, and making him wonder whether she’d done it deliberately, whether she’d invited him here just to make him uncomfortable. If she had, her plan was working. He was certainly ill at ease.