‘No,’ she replied.
‘But when you saw how drunk I was getting, you felt obligated to stay here with me.’
‘It’s all right, it’s good for me too to take a bit of a break.’
He took an embarrassed sip of coffee. ‘The day we met, you asked me if I was a decent man, a loyal man, and I didn’t give you an answer.’
She turned away from him. She’d had enough of men who didn’t care about her, who courted her only to engage in cockfights on the wharves and indulge in petty acts of vengeance. A craving for liberation was what had drawn her to him. She wanted to be free to think of nothing but her own desire.
‘I invented a way to love that wasn’t right. I’m sorry,’ Sébastien continued.
She felt awkward as she led him back to the cabin. She had never liked that kind of conversation. ‘Come and eat while it’s still hot.’
He kept on talking as they walked, as if he needed to vent all his frustrations at once. ‘My dad always says criminals make up their own truths to believe in.’
‘We all do that to some extent. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’
They went inside and she sat beside him.
‘You were right the other day when you said I manipulated people.’
‘That’s not what I said.’ She reached for her coffee.
‘I did exactly that with my dad. The other day, I told him I was all messed up because of him. I accused him of ruining my life.’
Suddenly, she frowned. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I did some stupid things. Cruel things that messed up my relationship. And I found it hard to admit to myself what I’d done, so I pointed the finger at my dad instead. I told him I had acted the way I did because of him and the way he always behaved.’
Sébastien leaned over his plate of scrambled eggs and picked up his fork. He took a mouthful and turned to Kimo. She was staring at him.
‘Out of loyalty to him?’
‘Yes. That was exactly the word I used. But it’s not true. What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry, Kimo.’
She wasn’t listening to him anymore.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘It’s just that when you brought up loyalty, it reminded me of a conversation I had…’ She froze and slowly shook her head as her words tapered into an eerie silence, as if she had just seen a ghost.
‘What’s wrong?’
Kimo sprang to her feet.
‘I know who killed Angel!’
At the winter mooring yard, the detective wove his way between the shrimp trawlers and pickup trucks, found a spot to park and got out of his car.
The Close Call II, relieved of her skipper and engine power, had glided away towards the horizon. Twenty-four hours later, Leeroy Roberts and his sons, Bruce and Jimmy, had found the boat by following an approximate trajectory Bruce had calculated based on the current and the tide.
Moralès hated these rickety metal stairs. He climbed up to the deck, very carefully. He was kicking himself for not having given more thought to the currents earlier in the investigation. When he had first gone aboard the Ange-Irène, Leeroy Roberts had mentioned his son’s calculations and the detective should have caught on that this was a key clue.
Instead of feeling relief when he set foot on the deck, he felt an unpleasant sensation of dizziness and nausea. He opened the door to the wheelhouse and stepped over the threshold, trying to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Did all shrimp trawlers have a similar layout? he wondered as he descended the interior staircase that turned ninety degrees and released him on the port side of the vessel.
He continued into the kitchenette with its harsh overhead lights and cast a glance into the berth at the bow. This part of the boat was eerily silent. He retraced his steps, turned left at the staircase and continued down the starboard side of the vessel. His eyes fell on the gaping mouth descending to the deck below, and he paused. He should really go back above deck, call Lefebvre and wait for backup. No, there was no danger, he reasoned with himself. The fisherman had never shown himself to be threatening, so there was no cause for concern. Besides, he had no proof to support his theory, not yet. Before making any formal accusations, he would have to wait until Lefebvre had checked what he had asked him to.
Moralès descended the second staircase in silence. The overheads cast a severe light on the rust-streaked walls and the salt-encrusted treads of the metal steps. The doors leading to the hold were closed, and the lights along this side of the vessel were off. He shivered. It was damp and cold down here. Turning towards the bow he saw the door to the engine room was ajar. He was drawn towards it like a moth to a flame. As he inched closer, he heard the fisherman’s voice ring out through the silence.
‘It’s all right, Dad. It’s all taken care of now. Let’s just think about next season.’
Moralès froze. He could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. He shuffled two steps back towards the stairs.
Simone Lord backtracked the video recording as quickly as she could. If the figure they had seen was who she thought it was, that person would have gone there early in the morning, or the previous evening, at a time when no one would have been around to see. When the recording from the early hours of Saturday morning appeared on the screen, she pressed the play button.
It wasn’t long before a figure appeared in the camera’s field of vision. On the screen, Simone saw a man pushing the bike, then casting a furtive glance around. She froze the image when the camera captured his face.
‘I know who it is!’ Lefebvre cried, barrelling into the room.
Simone one-upped him. ‘I’ve got him on video.’
‘Let me see.’
‘Here…’
He peered at the screen and gave a nod. ‘My doctor’s just confirmed there’s a history of mental illness in his family.’ He reached for his phone. ‘We have to let Moralès know!’
He entered the digits to unlock the screen, his fingers poised over each of the keys as if they formed a secret code to remote-detonate an explosive device.
Moralès froze as the ringtone erupted in his pocket. He gulped. He knew the fisherman had heard the phone too, because he had stopped talking.
‘Who’s there?’ the fisherman called.
Moralès grabbed his phone and turned the ringer off. When he saw the name flashing on the screen, he drew his weapon. The fisherman emerged from the engine room and stood in the doorway. He squinted, then frowned.
‘What are you doing here, Detective Moralès?’
Before he could reply, the man saw the weapon in his hand and understood. He nodded and went back into the engine room. Moralès followed him towards the open door.
Sébastien and Kimo threw open the car doors and started running. They had been trying to call Joaquin, but he hadn’t picked up. They dashed into the police station and came to a standstill in front of the receptionist, whose hands were flying across the computer keyboard so quickly, she couldn’t possibly risk a glance in their direction.
‘Excuse me, officer, we need to speak urgently with Detective Sergeant Moralès … Please,’ Sébastien added.
The sentry threw them a scathing glance. ‘And who informed you of the presence of DS Moralès in this police station, may I ask?’
‘Please, I have to speak to him. I’m his son, Sébastien Moralès.’
‘Can you prove it?
He pulled his wallet from his pocket, deftly plucked out his driver’s licence and passed it to Thérèse Roch through the slot at the bottom of the bulletproof screen. She scrutinised it carefully and looked him up and down.