Peter May - Entry Island

He took a long pull from the neck of his bottle.

‘When the spring comes you gotta prep the boat, then you’re out fishing. Short lobster season here, too. Two months only, from May first. Out at 5 a.m. for the flare going up, and then you’re off. Long hard days, and dangerous too. When those creels leave the boat they’re linked by rope. Long damn coils of the stuff. Get your feet tangled up in that and you’re in the water in a heartbeat. Those things are heavy, and they pull you right down. Man, you’re drowned before you know it.’ For a moment he couldn’t meet their gaze. ‘Brother went that way. There one minute, gone the next. Not a damn thing I could do about it.’

And Sime saw in shining eyes a hint of tears that were quickly blinked away.

‘We spend three, four months up in Nova Scotia most years. See, it’s a small window of earning opportunity we got, and you have to make it last through long idle winters. That’s why it was important to my old man to have his own boat. To work for himself. Sell at the best price. He spent his whole damn life out there fishing, just so he could pass that boat on to me.’ He paused. ‘Well, me and Josh. Only Josh is gone. Near broke my old man’s heart, too. So it was just me. And I was everything to him, you know? I was the reason he did it. Then Cowell goes and takes it all from him. In the blink of an eye.’ His lips curled as he spoke, as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.

‘How did he do that?’ Sime said.

Clarke thrust out his bristled jaw defiantly, as if challenging them to contradict him. ‘You have bad years, you know? It happens. And we had two of them. One after the other. No way to make it through the next winter. So the old man borrows money from Cowell. The boat’s his security. But he knows he’ll pay it off next season. Trouble is Cowell charged twice as much as the banks.’

‘Why didn’t he just borrow from the bank, then?’

Clarke scowled. ‘Bad risk. No choice. Cowell or nothing. Then just before the spring season my old man goes and has a heart attack. Doc tells him he can’t go to sea, so it’s just me. And I can’t bring in as much as we did together. So we don’t have enough to pay off the loan and Cowell calls it in. And when we can’t cough up he takes the boat. Thinks he’s doing me a favour by letting me skipper it, too.’ He blew his contempt through loosely puckered lips. ‘Took away everything my old man worked for all his days. That boat was his pride and joy. And he wanted it to be mine.’ He pulled up phlegm from his throat to his mouth and spat it on to the floor. ‘He was dead within the month.’

He drained his bottle and then stared at it, as if seeking inspiration in its emptiness.

‘If that boat was mine now, I’d have something to hand on to my own son. And maybe he wouldn’t want to leave.’

A long silence hung as heavy as the smoke that moved in slow, shifting strands around the light bulb. Finally Sime said, ‘Where were you last night, Mr Clarke?’

Clarke raised dangerous eyes to fix Sime in their glare. He spoke slowly, suppressing his anger. ‘I was at home. All night. You can ask my wife, or my mother.’

‘We will.’

He pushed himself back from the bench and sat up straight. ‘I guess the good thing is that when you people go, you’ll take Cowell with you, and he won’t be back. See, I really don’t care who killed him. As long as he’s dead.’ He smiled grimly at the expression on the faces of the detectives. ‘There’s no law nor nothing on this island. People make their own justice. We’re free.’ He took a roll-up from a tin and lit it. ‘This our place. And you can all go to hell.’

Old Mrs Clarke sat at the dining-room table, her downturned mouth and sad eyes reflected in its polished surface. Entering the Clarke household had been like stepping back in time. Frilly yellow net curtains gathered around the windows. Floral striped wallpaper covering the walls above dark wood panelling. The floor laid with a dull green linoleum. Plastic ivy with red flowers draped around a profusion of mirrors that somehow seemed to light the room even in the fading afternoon. Every surface and every shelf groaned with ornaments and framed family photos.

The old lady herself wore a long red blouse over a straight blue skirt that modestly covered her knees. Bloated feet at the end of corned-beef legs were squeezed into shoes that must once have fitted but now looked painfully small. Her face behind thick round glasses was pale, almost grey, and looked as if it had been moulded from putty.

‘I was just making up the message list,’ she said, indicating a printed sheet of grocery items and a scrap of lined paper covered with shaky scribbles. The wind outside whistled around the windows and door frames.

‘Message list?’ Sime said.

The old lady chuckled. ‘Messages we call them. Shopping you would say. I phone in my grocery list to the Co-op on Grindstone every two weeks and they send them over on the ferry next day. That’s my job. Chuck’s job is to go and fetch them. Not much to ask a grown boy, but it doesn’t stop him complaining.’

‘You live here with your son and daughter-in-law then?’

‘No. They live here with me. Though you’d not know it to hear the way her ladyship calls the shots around the place. Not that I pay a blind bit of notice. They’ll get the house soon enough. I’m not long for this world.’

Sime glanced at Blanc, who seemed confused. ‘You look well enough to me, Mrs Clarke.’

‘Appearances can be deceptive, son. Don’t believe everything you see.’

The door from the hall flew open and a small, square woman in her forties with cropped, red-dyed hair stood glaring at them. Sime glanced from the window and saw a car at the gate where there hadn’t been one earlier. They had not heard it arrive above the clatter of the wind. Mary-Anne Clarke, he presumed.

‘What the hell do you want?’ she said.

‘Mrs Clarke?’

‘My house, I’ll ask the questions.’

Sime began to understand why Owen Clarke hated the winters. He showed her his Sûreté ID and said, ‘Detectives Mackenzie and Blanc. Just trying to establish the where abouts of your husband yesterday evening.’

‘He didn’t kill that weasel Cowell, if that’s what you’re thinking. Wouldn’t have the balls for it unless he had half a pint of whisky in him. And then he wouldn’t be capable of it.’

‘Do you know where he was?’

‘He was right here at home. All night.’ She glanced at her mother-in-law. ‘That right, Mrs Clarke?’

‘If you say so, dear.’

Mary-Anne swung her gaze back towards the two policemen. ‘Satisfied?’

‘Jesus, Sime,’ Blanc said as they closed the garden gate behind them. ‘If I was Clarke I wouldn’t be able to wait till that flare went up on May first.’

Sime grinned. ‘Are you married, Thomas?’

Blanc cupped his hands around the end of a cigarette to light it, and Sime saw the smoke whipped away from his mouth as he lifted his head. ‘Tried it once and didn’t like it.’ He paused. ‘Didn’t learn my lesson, though. Second time I got snared. Three teenage kids now.’ He took another pull on his cigarette. ‘Guess there’s not much point in pulling him in for a formal interview.’

Sime shrugged, disappointed somehow. ‘Guess not. For the moment anyway.’

Blanc looked at his watch. ‘Probably just got time to interview the Cowell woman again before the ferry leaves.’ He raised his eyes to the sky. ‘If it leaves.’

They were upwind of the quad bikes and so didn’t hear them until they swung into view. Five of them, engines screaming. Sime and Blanc turned, startled at the sound of throttles opening up to give vent to pent-up horsepower. They came, almost from nowhere it seemed, up over the brow of the hill, one after the other to start circling the two police officers.