‘Usually I was more on the ball. I knew we had to keep an eye on Firmin. He was drinking too much. And I should’ve seen this coming. Reg and Dan weren’t strong enough swimmers to make it to shore. Later, I found out that the wheelhouse door had slid shut and trapped Firmin inside. Firmin – what a bloody idiot. He’d had a patio door put in on the wheelhouse because he wanted to look out and see everything, all the shoals of fish, everything we caught and any storms that were coming in. And he capsized on a sunny day with an east wind blowing. Sometimes I think about that patio door of his sliding shut and the metal bar locking into place on the outside. Then the water rising all around and him knowing he was going to die, with his bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand.’ The fisherman looked up suddenly, his eyes filled with turmoil, not wariness. ‘This whole thing is a fucking human tragedy! The Cyrs had a gripe with my grandfather way back because he would never barter on anything when he worked at the old Hyman general store; my old man was pissed off at the Cyrs because Firmin took me on board; the Cyrs were up in arms at my old man because he muscled his way into their fishing grounds; Clément’s obviously got a grudge against me because he said I’d killed his old man; my old man was irked that Firmin’s son married his Angel … There’s no bloody end to the madness!’
‘The Cyrs think you killed Firmin?’
‘At one point, that’s what Fernand and Clément came out with. I was twenty-four years old, for fuck’s sake. Jeez, you’d have to be wrong in the head to think a young deckhand would want to bump off his crew over a few measly shrimp.’
He hung his head once more.
‘The Cyrs are a bunch of lunatics. All except Miss Gaétane; she was a good teacher when I was at school.’ He stopped rubbing his hands, though, leaving the imperfections the way they were.
‘Now look at me, dredging all that up again for you. Sometimes I wonder why the hell I went into fishing. They’ve all got me over a bloody barrel – the government that tells me what to do, the buyers who won’t put their hands in their pockets, the Cyrs who are still hot under the collar over a handful of measly shrimp, my old man, who won’t stop harping on about his bloody cod fifteen years after they shut the fishery down, my brother and all his secrets, poaching with those Babin lowlifes, and then my sister goes and kills herself! Look at me. I’ve got a degree in marine biology, but I’m swimming in debt like my ancestors and up to my elbows in grease, standing in front of a squeaky-clean detective who’s asking me how life made my hands so dirty.’
Now he turned to the horizon.
‘I’m in up to my neck, like the damned of the sea.’
Moralès climbed down the ladder very carefully and stood by his car for a long while, thinking about the net of misery this all seemed to be. Not wanting to rock the boat, so to speak, he hadn’t asked Bruce Roberts whether he was envious of his sister, who used to blast out reggae when she went to sea. He had also refrained from asking whether he had been keeping tabs on his brother-in-law that night at the bar, or followed Kimo home or somewhere else. The fisherman had stood there in silence for a moment before he turned his back and the stairs swallowed him into the belly of the hull again. That had suited Moralès. He’d had enough of their discussion, of the sense of confinement on board that made his head spin.
Now he was back on solid ground, he turned his thoughts to Gaétane Cloutier. She had said that Firmin’s death was an accident and insisted that never – not ever – had the father of her son harboured any frustration at sharing his fishing grounds. Bruce Roberts had stated precisely the opposite. Not just once, but twice.
Sébastien drove back to the auberge and was relieved to see Joaquin’s car wasn’t there. He didn’t want to run into him. He had come here to the Gaspé Peninsula to confront him, but he kept putting it off. It was slowly dawning on him that he was a younger version of his father, whether he liked it or not. He was about to turn the shower on when he heard the landline ringing in the room. It was Kimo.
‘My family’s got a little cabin by the river,’ she said. ‘If you feel like it, I could show you how to fly fish later this afternoon. The season’s over, but we can just pinch the hook closed and practise casting the line.’
He said yes without thinking, relieved to have something else to do, a project to look forward to, an escape from his own thoughts.
‘Would you like me to bring something to eat?’ he found himself asking.
‘Er … yes. All right.’
He hung up and hesitated for a second, then dialled the number for his voicemail. The handset wasn’t working since Joaquin had tossed it in the dishwater, but the line was still active and he could still receive messages. He entered his code and heard that he had two new messages. The first was from Maude.
‘Hi.’ She paused. ‘It’s all right, if you want to be the father.’
Sébastien bent double as if he had been punched in the stomach, and held the phone away from his ear. He didn’t listen to the rest of the message. He deleted it so he’d never have to hear it again. And took a deep breath. He straightened up and leaned on the bathroom sink for support. The second message played automatically.
‘Ah! Mr Sébastien, this is Renaud Boissonneau, calling to ask for help.’ An octave higher than usual, the voice was overflowing with tears and drama. ‘You’ll never believe it, but let me tell you, we’re all of a flummox here because of Cyrille Bernard.’ Renaud sounded breathless, as if he were trying to choke back the emotion. ‘He’s gone. Gone, let me tell you. He’s gone off in his boat, because it’s not at the wharf and his sister came and said he wasn’t in his room and now everyone’s wondering why he’s not come back.’ Renaud burst out sobbing. ‘Mr Sébastien, you have to tell your father to come home and investigate.’
Sébastien deleted the message and stepped into the shower.
Through the window of her dining room, Gaétane Cloutier watched the detective walk up to the house with her empty Tupperware container in one hand, and it occurred to her that she should have told him to keep it. She had given Moralès an excuse to come back, stick his foot in the door, and ask her to clarify this and that, and rub at the discoloured stains in the fabric of her memory.
She opened the door and forced a smile of resignation. Moralès nodded. He knew she hadn’t told him everything. She let him come in. There was no point resisting the rising tide.
‘Can I pour you a coffee?’ she asked.
‘Not today.’
She took that to mean that this would be a brief visit and pulled a chair out from the table, sitting down and inviting him to do the same with a wave of the hand. Moralès took a seat at the end of the table. He didn’t want to sit across from her and make her feel like she was in the interview room.
‘What do you want to know?’
He chose his words carefully. ‘Yesterday, I was led to believe that Leeroy Roberts bringing his shrimp trawler into the fishing grounds of your late husband, Firmin Cyr, hadn’t stirred up any trouble.’