Sébastien Moralès was transfixed by the sight. He was overwhelmed by something welling up inside him. A desire to be swallowed up by the horizon. The clouds scudded away, the sky turned blue and the entire Atlantic Ocean opened up before his eyes. It took his breath away. As Sébastien ventured to the handrail, a wisp of cloud veiled the sun and cast a shadow on the shimmering swell. It wasn’t a carpet, and there was nothing golden about it, he realised. With a pounding heart, he backed sharply away from the edge to the safety of the path. The ocean was making his head spin.
Walking up to the Ange-Irène, the detective was impressed by the sheer size of her hull. She cut an imposing silhouette above the waterline, but loomed even taller and broader in her winter cradle. A pickup truck was parked alongside. Moralès deduced that Bruce Roberts was inside this behemoth of the seas. Reluctantly he set foot on the stepladder on wheels the crew had installed when they took the boat out of the water. Even though the steps were securely attached to the deck, Moralès found the vibrations beneath his feet disquieting. The ladder wasn’t just steep, it must have been at least ten metres high. At last, he was standing on the deck.
He hated these kinds of heights at the best of times, but especially now, with the mild dizziness he had been experiencing since his Saturday-night concussion. Looking over the railing of the shrimp trawler, he couldn’t see a thing below, other than the hard ground his body would smash into if he were to fall. He had seen that sort of thing before, men who had fallen or been pushed from heights lower than this and ended up as flat as a pancake with their skull caved in. Sights like that were enough to make you want to keep your feet firmly on the ground.
He ducked into the wheelhouse. Had it really been ten days since he was last here? There was no one in sight. He descended the steep, narrow staircase at the centre of the wheelhouse into the bowels of the boat. For a second, it occurred to him that he should call Lefebvre, then he thought better of it. This was just going to be an informal chat. Plus, even if he did reach out, his colleague would probably find an excuse not to leave his office.
The stairs turned ninety degrees, releasing Moralès on the port side. He ventured towards the bow and found a kitchenette equipped with a fridge, one of those pivoting stoves that were made to stay upright at sea, and built-in bench seating around a table, all awash with fluorescent light. Further still, a door opened into a six-berth forecabin, three bunks stacked on either side of the bow. There were still sleeping bags in the bunks, and coats hanging from hooks on the wall. Between the kitchenette and the forecabin, two doors stood across from one another, one revealing a toilet, and the other, a shower. There was no one there either.
Moralès retraced his steps to the bottom of the stairs and hesitated, unsure which way to turn. A strong smell of oil, melted ice, fish guts and salt hung in the air. He turned towards the stern and saw a corridor leading to the tween deck. Suddenly he heard a noise beneath his feet. He made his way to the starboard side and discovered another flight of stairs below those he had followed a moment ago. Setting foot on the first step, he was struck by the uncomfortable sense that this mechanical beast could swallow him whole as he descended into its belly. A glass globe on the ceiling cast a harsh light around the steel-girder-framed space, exposing all its flaking paint, salt residue and muddy boot prints.
Unlike the first, this staircase descended in a straight line across the entire width of the trawler. Again, Moralès emerged on the port side. He sneaked a glance towards the stern. The layout looked similar to the level above, with closed doors at the end of a narrow corridor that probably opened onto a shrimp-loading area.
A bright-yellow electrical cable ran down the stairs and snaked through a door located at the bow. A red metal toolbox plastered with stickers from Newfoundland sat open on the threshold. The top layer of tools had been removed and placed on the floor alongside. Moralès walked slowly towards the open door. As he approached, he could see an engine, or generator – he couldn’t tell – under a fluorescent strip light just like the one in the kitchenette. To the left of the engine, he saw a pair of boots. There was a man there, lying on his stomach. Moralès froze in alarm, reached a hand to his holster and glanced around warily.
Bruce Roberts straightened himself up and turned his head. He was wearing overalls and holding a blue rag. He looked at Moralès and seeing the detective’s palm resting on his revolver, he slowly raised his hands in the air.
‘Easy there, I’m just doing an oil change.’
Feeling like he’d overreacted, Moralès let his guard down and tried to relax. ‘I’m sorry. You were face down and I thought you were in trouble. Can’t be too careful.’
‘These contraptions aren’t exactly designed to be ergonomically accessible for mechanics. If you don’t mind, I just have to put a plug back in. I’d rather you didn’t shoot me.’
Moralès nodded and backed his way out into the corridor to leave the man to finish his job. He stood outside the door for a moment, feeling nauseous and ill at ease, then realised he didn’t have to stay right there.
‘I’ll wait upstairs, all right?’ he called.
‘OK.’ Bruce Roberts’ voice was barely audible amidst the metallic tapping of the tools against the engine.
Moralès went up the first flight of stairs, hesitated, then continued all the way up to the wheelhouse. He avoided going too close to the windows and looking down at the ground far below. Being up here did nothing to ease his discomfort. He sat on the bench that stretched along the port side of the bow, with his back to the window. Staring at the floor, he waited, mulling over what he was going to ask the fisherman.
Minutes later, Bruce Roberts tramped up the stairs. He stopped two steps from the top and rested his forearms on the wooden handrail, using the rag in one hand to rub the grease off his fingers. He didn’t look particularly happy to see the detective.
‘What do you want from me?’
‘About fifteen years ago, you were a deckhand for Firmin Cyr, aboard the Midday Girl,’ Moralès said.
Bruce Roberts took the statement like a punch in the face. He recoiled, then recovered quickly from the blow, but didn’t answer. It wasn’t technically a question.
‘With Réginald Morin and Daniel Cotton,’ Moralès pressed.
Still the man expressed no acknowledgement of these affirmations.
Moralès changed tack. ‘Have you been working aboard this boat for long?’
‘Two years.’
‘Didn’t you want to go fishing with your father?’
‘He never hired his own kids. He preferred to take on strangers.’
Moralès nodded. ‘What happened that day, when the shrimp boat went down?’
Bruce Roberts was really on his guard now. Moralès wouldn’t have been surprised if the man asked him to leave. Roberts pressed his lips together and squinted like he was looking for a buoy on the water, a speck on the horizon. Then, as if he’d found the answer out there, he turned his gaze back to the detective.
‘All you have to do is read the investigation report.’
‘I’ve read it.’
‘How come you’re here asking me questions, then? Why are you stirring all this up? Isn’t it enough that my sister’s dead?’
He paused, took a step backward on the second-to-last step of the stairs and leaned against the handrail behind him. Then he hung his head in his hands and started to rub his fingers again absentmindedly.
‘What do you want me to say? Firmin was drunk. He was always hitting the bottle. He’d filled the starboard ballast tanks and forgotten to empty them. That’s why the boat capsized. The boat had paravanes for stabilisers. You must have seen those before. They’re like two big triangular ladders with anchors on the ends. You lift them upright when you’re docked and lower them at sea to keep the boat level. He hadn’t lowered them. So anyway, when he turned the wheel sharply, the weight of the ballast heeled us to starboard and the weight of the stabilisers tipped us over. We weren’t even that far out. Around Cap-des-Rosiers. I was thrown into the water. I lost my boots. I took off my overalls and I swam. It was so fucking cold out there. The waves washed me ashore and I went into hypothermia just before the ambulance arrived.