‘Part of it?’
‘Yes. Going on the payments he’s been making into his old man’s account, I’d say Leeroy Roberts is bankrolling the Ange-Irène just like he did his other two kids’ boats.’
‘At an exorbitant rate of interest.’
‘Not hard to believe, not easy to prove.’
‘Is Bruce Roberts managing to make ends meet, then?’
‘Well, he’s paying his debts and I imagine he can afford to treat himself to sushi for dinner once in a while.’
Moralès smiled and opened the clear plastic container. His colleague jumped at the chance to grab three or four pieces and wolf them down.
‘It could use a dash of soy sauce.’
‘And I need you to look for something else.’
‘I’m your man.’
‘I’d like you to find me the report on the investigation into Firmin Cyr’s death.’
‘What year?’
‘The year after the moratorium came in.’
‘The nineties; all that’s in the paper archives. You’re just trying to butter me up, aren’t you? I love digging around in there.’
‘How long will that take you?’
Lefebvre looked at his watch. ‘Those archives are in Rimouski. I’ll get on the phone to a colleague and ask him to email me a photocopy of the file. If you’ve got half an hour now, I’m sure we can find a few newspaper articles about the accident.’
Without waiting for an answer, Lefebvre turned his screen for Moralès to see, and initiated a search in a media database. A series of titles and dates appeared.
‘These are all local newspapers. Follow me.’
Érik Lefebvre got up and left the room without bothering to check that Moralès was behind him. It occurred to the detective that his colleague was acting with the same air of preoccupation as he did when he gathered random objects from his surroundings during their conversations. They went down the corridor and turned right into the open-plan area, where Lefebvre opened the door to the archives room. He went straight to the far corner and plucked eight newspapers from three different drawers, piled them into Moralès’s arms and led the way to the photocopier, next to which an empty table was conveniently placed.
Lefebvre took the newspapers from Moralès one at a time and opened them in turn, flipping straight to the page pertaining to Firmin Cyr’s accident, as if he had memorised the page numbers from his computer in the blink of an eye. Lefebvre spread the papers out on the table and scanned them all remarkably quickly. He turned to Moralès before the detective had even finished reading the first article.
‘Firmin Cyr died by drowning. It was an accident. Witnesses stated that his boat had capsized after a sudden change of direction. It seems that the skipper of the shrimp trawler the Midday Girl was trapped inside the wheelhouse and drowned. The investigation report will tell us more about that. His two deckhands were Réginald Morin and Daniel Cotton, of Cloridorme, and – wait for it – Bruce Roberts, of Rivière-au-Renard. Neither Morin nor Cotton knew how to swim. Bruce Roberts was the only one who managed to make it back to shore.’
On his way back to the auberge, Moralès noticed Leeroy Roberts’ truck parked outside the fish market. He turned off towards the wharf, parked his car a little further away and pretended he was surprised to see the old fisherman coming out of the building carrying a plastic bag. He waved and made his way over.
‘Ah, Mr Roberts, I’m glad I’ve run into you. I wanted to apologise for yesterday. You see, we just can’t leave anything to chance in a case like this.’
Leeroy pursed his lips. ‘It’s all right.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’
The old fisherman wasn’t the type to shy away. ‘Go on.’
‘I’ve been told that during the cod moratorium, you went shrimp fishing in Firmin Cyr’s zone and he was reasonably tolerant.’
Leeroy hesitated. He should have smelled a rat. ‘That’s true.’
‘I’m finding it hard to grasp why you seem to have harboured so much animosity…’
The silence left a long wake. Leeroy weighed up the pros and cons and concluded he had nothing to lose by telling the story. Since day one, he’d told himself the detective would understand, because he had children of his own.
‘Ever since Bruce was a young lad, he always wanted to come fishing with me. The day my wooden boat burned, he was on board with us. He was twenty-two. He was studying marine biology at university, and he came home for the summer holidays. When the boat caught fire, it gave me the fright of my life. I was afraid for my boy, not for myself. After that, I never took any of my kids to sea again. But they wanted to stay on the water whatever the cost. The season was over, anyway, so you know what Bruce did? He went to see Firmin. They didn’t need another deckhand on the Midday Girl, but her skipper still took my son aboard. In the autumn I said to Bruce, finish your studies, find a career for yourself and forget about fishing. He spent the winter in the city, but he came back here in the spring. And he went back aboard the Midday Girl.’ Leeroy sneered in disgust, as if replaying the scene in his mind. ‘I might have been taking away some of his shrimp, but Firmin Cyr took my boy away from me. And later on, his Clément married my Angel.’
He shook his head, as if that could erase the episode from his memory.
‘I didn’t want my kids to get caught up in a life of fishing. I did everything I could to discourage them. You can ask them yourself. They’ll tell you I charged them a hefty whack of interest, but I told them they could go to university for free if they wanted to study something else. And after you’ve spoken to them, have a look at my will. All the money they gave me is going right back to them.’
He took a few steps towards his pickup. Moralès turned on his heel to follow. Leeroy Roberts rested a hand on the roof of the truck and rubbed at the metal absentmindedly.
‘I don’t trust Jimmy’s ex-wife. If I gave my son his money back, she’d drag him back to court to make him hand it over. But she can’t get her mitts on his inheritance; that’s protected by law. I had my eye on Clément too. I wanted to make sure he didn’t end up with Angel’s boat.’
He opened the driver’s door.
‘When we found the Close Call II, I didn’t go out to sea to find a boat. It was my daughter I was looking for. When it dawned on me I’d never see her alive again, I said to my boys, I don’t want to see your names dragged through the mud. Because they don’t deserve that, and I don’t want either of them behind bars.’
Roberts senior got behind the wheel and put his bag on the passenger seat.
‘I’m the one who gets to inherit my daughter’s boat. I know what that looks like, but would you let her husband have it, if you were in my boots?’
Moralès didn’t answer. Leeroy Roberts slammed the door, started the engine and lowered the window.
‘I’ve never hated the Cyrs, but I’ve never liked them either,’ he said, before shifting into gear and driving away from the fish market.
Before he went up to his room, Moralès took a moment to go into the kitchen and put the cod fillets he had just bought at the fish market in the fridge. He placed some green onions, a red cabbage, peppers and a jalapeño on the counter and pushed aside two kiwis Corine had left there. He had all the fixings for tacos, and everything he needed to make the dough for the tortillas too. He thought about Leeroy and his sons, Clément and his mother, the Babin brothers, the men who had cut Angel’s lines and the women who envied her spirit of adventure. He took off his jacket and holster, and went up to his room. He had noticed Sébastien’s car parked out front, so he thought he would invite his son to join him for dinner.