Peter May: Entry Island

‘Good.’ Marie-Ange turned toward Kirsty Cowell. ‘I want you to come with me to the medical centre. We’ll take some photographs, the nurse will conduct a physical examination, and then you can get cleaned up.’ She looked at Sime, but he avoided her eye and she turned back to the widow. ‘I’ll wait for you outside.’ She let the door swing closed and was gone. Sime glanced towards the hallway, but Blanc had returned to the bedroom.

Kirsty stood up, fixing him with a strange, knowing look. ‘Simon, she called you. You told me your name was Sheem.’

He felt unaccountably embarrassed. ‘It is. The Scots Gaelic for Simon. Spelt S-I-M-E. At least, that was my father’s spelling of it. It’s what everyone calls me.’

‘Except her.’

He felt the colour rising on his cheeks and he shrugged.

‘Lovers?’

‘My private life has no relevance here.’

‘Ex-lovers, then.’

Perhaps, he thought, fatigue and stress were simply making her blunt. She didn’t even look interested. But still he felt compelled to respond. ‘Married.’ Then he added quickly, ‘Past tense.’ And finally, ‘This interview’s not over. I’ll want you back after your medical exam.’ She held him in her gaze for a long moment before turning to push through the screen door and out on to the porch.

Sime followed a few moments later to find Marie-Ange waiting for him. The murdered man’s widow had climbed into the back of the minibus, Lapointe at the wheel, engine idling, the purr of its motor carried away on the wind. Marie-Ange stepped close to Sime in a gesture that might almost have seemed intimate had her body language been less hostile. She lowered her voice. ‘Let’s just get the ground rules straight right now.’

He looked at her with incredulity. ‘What rules?’

‘It’s simple, Simon.’ She had reverted to his formal name since the break-up. ‘You do your job, I’ll do mine. Except for when there’s a cross-over we have nothing to talk about.’

‘We’ve had nothing to talk about for months.’

Her voice reduced itself to a hiss barely audible above the wind. ‘I don’t want us getting into any fights. Not in front of my team.’

Her team. A reminder, if he needed it, that he was the outsider here. Her eyes were so cold he almost recoiled and he remembered how she had loved him once.

‘There won’t be any fighting.’

‘Good.’

‘But you can come and get the rest of your stuff any time you like. I really don’t want it lying around the apartment.’

‘I’m surprised you noticed. You hardly ever noticed me when I was there.’

‘Maybe because you never were.’

She let that one go. ‘You know what’s interesting? I don’t want the stuff. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss us. Why don’t you chuck it in the trash?’

‘Like you did with our marriage.’

‘Don’t give me that. You’re a cold fish, Simon. You know? Got nothing to give. My only regret is it took me so long to realise it. Leaving you was the best thing I ever did. You have no idea how free I feel.’

All his hurt and betrayal was evident in the sad brown eyes that held her in his gaze. Although he had often wondered if there was someone else, she had always denied it. Everything was his fault. The fights, the silences, the lack of sex. And now it was he who was paying the price of her freedom. ‘I hope you enjoy it, then,’ is all he said.

She held his eye for just a moment before turning to hurry down the steps to the waiting minibus, and he saw Kirsty looking at him from beyond the reflections on the window.

It had been only too easy for him to lose confidence in himself after a series of relationship failures. The point had been reached when he had begun to believe that he was the problem.

And that was the place he had been in when Marie-Ange came into his life.

A painful, lonely place. Approaching thirty years of age he had a handful of clumsy relationships behind him, and saw only a long succession of empty nights stretching ahead. It was clear to him then that his job was going to be his life, his future. And that he would become so impossibly set in his ways that in the end sharing it would cease to be an option.

He had always been self-sufficient, even as a child. He’d had few friends and no inclination to share, even then.

His apartment before meeting Marie-Ange had been a joyless place. He had never taken the time to decorate or furnish it beyond basic requirements. The only picture that hung on the wall was a landscape painted five generations earlier by an ancestor who had come to Canada and made something of a reputation for himself as an artist. Not that Sime was particularly attached to it. It had come from his parents’ house after their accident. His sister had taken most of their stuff, but thought that Sime should have the painting. Hanging it on the wall had seemed like the best way of keeping it out from under his feet. Marie-Ange had never liked it.

For a time she had tried to turn the place into a home. Nest-building. But each of them made so many compromises, that in the end neither felt comfortable in it.

The condo was on the third floor of an apartment block in St Lambert. It had three bedrooms, and would have made an ideal first home for a couple wanting to start a family. That thought had always been in the back of Sime’s mind when he took it on. He had been in a relationship then that had lasted nearly a year, a record for him, and they had been going to move in together.

Then suddenly she was gone. Without a word. And Sime never did know why. Which is when the self-doubt had started creeping in.

Meeting people had never been easy for him. A policeman’s hours, almost by definition, are antisocial. Even harder was maintaining a relationship, because there was never any guarantee what time you would be home, or sometimes what day. Sime had never really got involved in the social life of the Sûreté, like so many of his colleagues. It had just seemed too incestuous. So the dating agency had been something like the last hope of a desperate man.

It was a friend from his academy days who first suggested it, and at first Sime had been violently opposed to the idea. But it worked away at his subconscious over several weeks, slowly breaking down all his arguments against it. And finally his resolve faltered.

It was an online agency. He had to verify for them who he was, of course, but beyond that complete anonymity was guaranteed. They provided him with a fictitious dating name that he could choose to dispense with, or not, after their first meeting.

Sime spent a whole evening filling in the questionnaire on the website, trying to answer as honestly as he could. And then when he reviewed his answers decided nobody in their right mind would want to date him. So he was both surprised and a little shocked when the agency said they had come up with a match, and that if he wanted, she would be happy to meet him.

Sime had faced down murderers, been shot at, disarmed a man with an automatic rifle on a killing spree, but he had never felt as nervous as he did the night of his first date.

They had arranged to meet in a Starbucks on Avenue du Mont-Royal Est. Sime arrived early, afraid that he would get snarled up in traffic and be late. The place was quiet when he got there and ordered a grande caramel macchiato. He sat near the window so he could see customers come and go.

Which is when he saw Marie-Ange crossing the street outside. He knew her, of course. She was one of the department’s crime scene specialists, though they had never actually worked together. Sime turned away so that she wouldn’t see him sitting in the window, but was horrified when she pushed open the door and headed for the counter. He almost cringed with embarrassment at the thought she might discover that he was there on a blind date set up by an internet dating agency. It would have been all over the division the next day. He fervently hoped that she was just in for a take-out and wouldn’t notice him.