Moralès couldn’t shake the sense he was going around in circles. He turned back and drove out of the national park again, hesitated about which way to turn when he got to the main road and ended up heading towards the cemetery in Gaspé. That was where Angel Roberts’ ashes had been interred.
He thought about his boss, Marlène Forest, who suspected her brother-in-law would be spending the rest of his life behind bars. Moralès had acted on her suggestion and looked into the inheritance as a potential motive. It was true that Leeroy Roberts would gain ownership of Angel’s lobster trawler, and the Roberts sons would one day inherit from their father, but there was nothing to suggest that any of these men, acting alone or together, had made an attempt on Angel’s life. It was also true that there was a history of bad blood between these men and the Cyr family, but nothing, at least in the detective’s eyes, that would warrant the murder of the fisherwoman.
Even if one of them had decided to kill Angel Roberts, how they had done it remained a complete mystery. The young skipper had been dragged into the water seventeen kilometres offshore, after three in the morning, with no marks suggesting she’d put up a fight. Even assuming she had been sufficiently drugged to remain unconscious while the murderer or murderers tied her up and sent her overboard without leaving any prints, how would they have made it back to shore?
Moralès parked in the street, got out of the car and walked towards the cemetery gate. He was hoping to find the right spot by looking for fresh flowers. As he made his way down the path between the grass verges, he noticed a man trudging towards him. A sad giant of a man.
Moralès said hello; Clément simply nodded.
‘Still haven’t found the killer, eh?’
Moralès cleared his throat, reluctant to voice the conclusion he might have to draw in this case. ‘I don’t think it was murder,’ he replied.
The giant of a man was trying to stop the images in his mind from losing their colour. If the memories turned to sepia, they would never come back to life. He remembered how happy they had been, camping together. She was going for a swim in the river. She was coming out of the water in her red swimsuit, her feet sinking into the sand. She was laughing as she walked towards him. The water was dripping from her body. Later that night, she was sitting by the fire and he saw her face lit up by the flickering glow of the flames. Every move she made was a grace and a blessing. Her laugh was a string of pearls in her throat.
He shook his head. ‘Angel didn’t commit suicide. She was far too happy a woman for that.’
He could see her running towards him now, a streak of light across the dreary autumn grass, only to lose her smile, fade to grey, dissolve before his eyes, disappear.
‘You miss her, I can tell,’ Moralès said.
‘So much, it’s making my head spin.’
The sea was a treasure chest for those who fished, brimming with the promise of full nets, heavy traps and sequins of sunlight shimmering on the water. For Clément Cyr, the sea was more than a source of wealth; it was a thing of beauty too, because when he raised his head, he would often see his wife’s boat on the horizon.
‘I was just at your mother’s house,’ Moralès added.
‘Oh, really?’ There was a hint of concern in Cyr’s voice.
‘Everything’s all right. I just had a few questions to ask her about your father’s death. You see, two deaths from drowning in the same family – I found that intriguing.’
‘You should have talked to me. I could have answered your questions. It was a stupid accident. The starboard ballast tanks didn’t empty and the boat capsized when my dad turned the wheel. According to the investigation, Bruce Roberts wasn’t to blame, even though he was the only one who survived.’
It wasn’t the first time Moralès had seen people deny the evidence. Clearly, Clément Cyr was struggling with his grief. As if someone were waiting for him, the man waved dismissively at Moralès. He was obviously in a hurry to leave, to flee the cemetery where he had just buried his wife.
Moralès took three steps forward, then stopped. Could the reason Bruce Roberts had stayed longer at the bar that night have been to make sure Clément didn’t go home too soon, while someone else was busy killing Angel? The Close Call II was full of Jimmy Roberts’ and the Babin brothers’ fingerprints, but because Jean-Paul Babin worked for Angel and the two others were using the lobster trawler for poaching, that wasn’t unusual. But still, the question remained: how would the killer or killers have made their way back to shore? If they had use of another vessel, they wouldn’t have needed Angel’s to go poaching, Moralès figured. He carried on along the path that led down the middle of the cemetery.
‘Oh, hello, Mr Moralès. Don’t be alarmed, we’ve met before, over Caplan way. Langevin Brothers. We’ve got branches all around the Gaspé Peninsula.’
It was the undertaker, the chatty one. Moralès said hello.
‘Are you here to visit Angel Roberts? Be careful not to get your feet dirty. Our columbarium in Gaspé is under construction. It’ll be far more practical for people who want to pay their loved ones a visit without getting their feet dirty. I said to Clément Cyr we could keep Angel’s ashes in storage until the columbarium’s finished, then he could put her in there afterwards. He wouldn’t hear of it. Oh, well. He still came to do his rounds.’
Standing on a small rectangle of freshly turned earth, he was busy tidying the flowers around a headstone which, Moralès read, bore Angel Roberts’ name.
‘His rounds?’ the detective asked.
‘Yes, he came to visit his wife’s grave and his father’s, just over there. Well, his wife’s is an urn in the ground, not a grave, but that sounds nicer than calling it a plot, doesn’t it?’
As he finished arranging the bouquets, the undertaker remarked that she’d received a lot of flowers. ‘This one here, in the shape of a boat, it’s nice and original, don’t you think? It’s one of our local florist’s specialities. She makes arrangements to order, you know. If ever you have the urge to send a lady flowers, just pick up the phone and I’ll give you her number.’
Moralès looked at the headstone, wishing it could tell him more than the dates carved in the granite: 1975–2007.
‘Still, it’s nicer when it’s the old folks who die, isn’t it? Seeing the young ones pass just tears our hearts out. I don’t know why, come to think of it, because we don’t know them as well as the old folks.’
The granite echoed the detective’s stony silence.
‘Mind you, the old folks do get some strange ideas in their heads sometimes. Did you know the old fisherman in Caplan, Cyrille Bernard, just went out to die at sea?’
Suddenly, it was as if something had knocked the wind out of Moralès’s chest.
‘What?’ he gasped, staggering back a couple of steps.
‘I know what you mean, that rubbed me up the wrong way too.’ the undertaker scoffed. ‘It’s not good for business and it’s not good for the loved ones, that kind of attitude. He went out to sea, threw himself overboard and made sure only his boat would drift back in on the tide. Crazy, isn’t it? Truth be told, I don’t know if it was just the tide. But word has it, his boat was back at the wharf this morning. Must be the sea that brought it back. No sign of the body, though. Strange thing is, Mr Bernard had a family plot in the cemetery right next door to his house; and I checked – there’s still plenty of room. Funny how some folks choose to die, isn’t it? I’d be surprised if he ever resurfaces. When fishermen decide to kill themselves, they know exactly where to go so their body won’t be carried back to shore.’