‘What are you doing here?’
Sébastien was just as startled to hear his father’s voice and turned around. He thought Joaquin must have still been asleep, knocked out by the painkillers he’d been taking. He hadn’t dared to make a sound for fear of waking him.
‘I’m just getting up. Why?’
‘Your car isn’t parked out front.’
‘I had a bit to drink last night. With a friend, next door. I walked back. You know, Dad, it’s not a good idea to drive when you’ve had a drink or two.’
Sébastien tiptoed his way down her driveway. In shame. He didn’t knock at the door. He wanted to steal away undetected. Now he turned onto the road towards Barachois, put his foot down and turned up the music. The sound of Macaco filled the car, the bass so loud he could feel the rhythm pounding into his back through the driver’s seat.
What did it take to be happy?
Since he’d been out here on the Gaspé Peninsula, he had danced, drunk until he couldn’t see straight, felt his body swaying in time with the waves – and last night, he had tugged a knot undone. The sun-kissed horizon of a woman’s body had opened up before him like the secret space he had already entered with just his hand. But he had pulled away.
Why? What had happened? He couldn’t wrap his head around it. If he had the words to express what he was feeling, surely he could set himself free. Something was burning in his throat. Suffocating him. The music kept pounding at his back.
He had come here with his hands full of resolutions. He had wanted to confront his father in order to find a sense of freedom, but he hadn’t found the right time. Had he really tried, though? He yanked the wheel to the side as he saw the turnoff to Haldimand Beach coming up. This wasn’t the place he’d been heading to, but he needed some air.
He had always hated discussions that went on for hours and explanations that dissolved into chit-chat. Still, he felt he had to express his discomfort – to himself at least – before he drowned in the sea of his confused emotions. Perhaps he could condense all his malaise into just one word, then pull it out of his mouth like an uprooted weed.
He drove to the end of the road and parked facing the sea. He turned off the engine and the music, and in the silence inside the car, he could hear the voice of his father. He no longer spoke Spanish. And Sébastien thought that perhaps he too was losing his tongue, his language, his ease of expression and his capacity to define himself and make sense of what he was feeling. He swallowed, and suddenly he felt the word rising in his chest, emerging at last in a bubble of bitterness on his lips.
Loyalty.
If there was one person Moralès had little desire to see again, it was the tall, forlorn Clément Cyr, a man haunted by his own ghosts, guilt and yearning to be held responsible. The widower was understandably confused and distressed, and even Moralès had sensed the shadows lurking in his messy shambles of a home.
He rang the doorbell. The giant of a man answered the door and invited him in. Moralès followed him and couldn’t help but notice how much tidier the hallway, dining room and kitchen were. The house looked as if Angel had somehow ordered it to be kept spick and span. Moralès found this reassuring. Lefebvre had told him that social services had taken Cyr under their wing, but sometimes the damage caused by a violent death was irreparable. Now, though, even the man’s voice was bright and shiny.
‘The Close Call II? Leeroy’s probably going to sell it. He’s retired now, and Bruce has got his own fishing operation.’
‘But you’re the one who inherits all your wife’s assets. The same goes for her fishing operation.’
Cyr turned his gaze to Moralès and the detective could see him slipping away again, drifting somewhere without an anchor, like an abandoned buoy bobbing atop the waves. But the man didn’t let himself get swept out of his depth. He stood and walked over to a large desk in the corner of the living room and opened a drawer.
‘I suppose it’s inevitable for the husband to be considered a potential suspect in his wife’s death.’
He plucked a document from a folder, returned to the dining area and slid it across the table to Moralès. ‘I get everything, except the boat and the fishing licence.’
Moralès frowned as he peered at the paper in front of him.
Clément summarised the contents as he sat down again. ‘It’s an agreement entered into by Angel and her old man, witnessed by me and Bruce Roberts.’
As Moralès read the contract, Clément leaned back in his chair.
Angel’s looking over the detective’s shoulder now.
‘Leeroy Roberts is a penny-pincher. That’s common knowledge around here. He’s got money. He was the one who stumped up the cash for Angel’s fishing, you know. Fishing grounds, licences, boats and all that often come as a job lot, and it costs an arm and a leg. Angel never wanted to fish with me. She wanted her own boat. But the lobster trawler that came with her territory was a rustbucket. You’d have needed deep pockets to buy a money pit like that. Angel’s old man agreed to bankroll the whole purchase, but on one condition.’
‘Let me guess: that everything reverted to him if she died?’
‘For ten years. For the first ten years of his loan, if anything happened to Angel, Leeroy Roberts would inherit all of it, as if she’d never paid him a penny of what she owed. After that, if she died, then it would go to her legal heirs.’
Moralès scanned the document, looking for the expiry date. ‘And when would the ten years have been up?’
‘The ten years was up on Wednesday last week, the day of our wedding anniversary. Angel insisted on signing the two biggest contracts of her life on the same day. As soon as he found out she’d died, in the early hours of Sunday morning, Leeroy filled out the paperwork for the deed of ownership – to be transferred immediately. The notary told me it’ll be a done deal as soon as Angel’s assets are released.’
The detective pondered why Leeroy Roberts hadn’t volunteered this information.
‘Do you plan to contest the validity of the contract?’ he asked.
Clément Cyr’s gaze grew distant. ‘Why would I do that? I haven’t set foot on my wife’s boat since she died. I don’t want anything to do with it. I inherited my old man’s fishing operation, you know. I had to invest in another shrimp trawler, because his old one sank, but it feels like it’s his boat I’m working on.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this when I came to see you before?’
Cyr shrugged. ‘My wife had just died, detective. You’ll have to excuse me if I had other things on my mind.’
The man was right. Moralès should have thought to ask. After all, he was the one leading the investigation.
‘Do you think Jimmy’s going to want to buy the Close Call II now?’
‘I haven’t the foggiest. He’s always been jealous of Angel. Plus, she was one of the lobster fishers who went around buying up all the scallop fishermen’s licences. He thought he’d struck it rich when he sold, but he got screwed over. Angel ended up asking him if he wanted to work with her. He threw the offer right back in her face. She loved him, even though he wasn’t the nicest to her. He was just unlucky, she used to say. I don’t think Jimmy’s old man would fall over himself to help Jimmy buy that boat. In fact, I’d be surprised if he did.’
‘What happened between your father and your father-in-law when the moratorium was introduced?’
All the expression drained from Cyr’s face. ‘The same things as everywhere else up and down the coast. The rich got richer, and the poor kept their mouths shut.’