Peter May - Entry Island

Crozes was standing at the end of the hall. He turned, and Sime saw the look of satisfaction on his face, a face still bruised from their encounter in the early hours. ‘This way,’ he called.

He stood at the door to the cells to let them by. Inside, a uniformed female officer was waiting. Kirsty cast Crozes a dark look as she passed. Sime stopped her in front of the first of two cells and she turned to him. He saw in her expression the same contempt with which he had become so familiar in Marie-Ange. ‘So now we know who was screwing your wife,’ she said.

Sime glanced at Crozes, whose eyes narrowed with incredulity, his head half cocked in disbelief. But Sime was past caring. He leaned into the cell to drop Kirsty’s bag on the floor by the cot bed set along the right-hand wall.

She looked into it. ‘This is it?’ she said. ‘This is where you’re going to keep me?’

‘For the time being,’ Crozes said.

The walls were painted a pale lemon, the same colour as the sheet on the bed. The vinyl floor was blue, as were the pillow and duvet. ‘Very Mediterranean,’ she said. ‘And colour-coordinated too. What more could a girl ask for?’

There was no door on the cell. Only bars that slid shut on it, so there was no privacy. A stainless-steel unit incorporated a washbasin and toilet in one. Set into the far wall beyond the second cell was a tiled shower. Bleak and depressing. But however despondent she might have felt, Kirsty was determined not to show it.

Crozes said, ‘Have you spoken to a lawyer?’

‘I don’t have one.’ And without looking at Sime, she said, ‘He told me I could call one from here.’

Crozes nodded. ‘Next door.’ And he took her through to the interview room. ‘No doubt you’ll want your lawyer present at all future interviews.’

Kirsty wheeled around, eyes flashing. ‘You bet your life I do.’ And she stabbed a finger towards Sime standing in the doorway. ‘But don’t expect me to say a single damned thing if he’s even in the building.’

The incident room was empty when they went in and Sime wondered where everyone had gone. It wasn’t long until he found out. Crozes closed the door behind them. His voice was low and threatening. ‘I’m not even going to ask what the hell you were doing on Entry Island. Or how she knew.’

Sime looked at him disingenuously. ‘Knew what?’

‘About us.’

Sime held up his fist. ‘Busted knuckles. Bruised face. Broken marriage. It doesn’t take much to put the pieces together.’

It was impossible to tell from Crozes’s face what was going through his mind, but whatever thoughts they were never found voice. He said, ‘She’ll be charged and held here until a plea hearing can be set up at the courthouse on Havre Aubert. Any subsequent trial will held on the mainland.’ He stopped to draw a thoughtful breath. ‘Meantime, I’m taking the team back to Montreal first thing in the morning. And your part in this investigation is over.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean someone else will be taking over your role as interrogator.’

Sime glared at him. ‘In other words you’re removing me from the case.’

Crozes turned away to begin casually gathering together papers on the table. ‘Not me, Sime.’ He opened a briefcase and stuffed the paperwork inside before turning back to face him. ‘You’re not well. It’s been noted by the brass back at Rue Parthenais. People are concerned for your well-being.’ He paused before delivering his coup de grâce , barely able to mask his smirk. ‘They want you to take sick leave for medical evaluation. An appointment’s already been set up with a consultant.’

And Sime realised just how Crozes had fucked him. Exactly as Thomas Blanc had predicted.

Sime sat alone in his room while the rest of the team ate in La Patio. All he could think of was Kirsty sitting forlornly on the edge of the cot bed in her cell at the Sûreté. He knew by now that he had lost all objectivity on her guilt or innocence. Though it hardly mattered. She had been charged with murder. And he had been instrumental in bringing the case to that conclusion.

But he remained uneasy. Two nights ago he had lain on the ground in the dark, looking up into the masked face of a man who was about to kill him. A man who matched Kirsty’s description of the intruder who she claimed had murdered her husband. Crozes had dismissed it as a red herring. But he hadn’t seen the look in the attacker’s eyes and understood, as Sime had, that he meant to kill him. This was no kid trying to scare him off. Only fate and a light sleeper had saved Sime from certain death.

More inexplicable still, was why this man should have wanted to kill him. As Crozes himself had pointed out. No matter how much he turned it over in his mind, none of it made sense.

In normal circumstances he would have found it difficult to sleep tonight. But this was no normal circumstance. His bosses at the Sûreté were right. He wasn’t fit for duty. In fact he wasn’t fit for much of anything. It seemed to him that it wouldn’t be long before he was looking for a new job. And washed-up former cops were not exactly the most eligible for employment.

He dropped his face into his hands. The thought of his child that never was fought for space with his grief for the loss of Marie-Ange, and anger at what she had done. He wanted to weep. But tears wouldn’t come, and as he sat up again his eye alighted on the signet ring on his right hand. Red carnelian set in gold and engraved with an arm and sword. From the same set as Kirsty’s pendant.

He remembered his sister’s words. I’m sure there’s something about the ring in the diaries themselves. Can’t remember what, though . And he was almost overwhelmed by the sense that in all his recollections of those stories from so many years before, he was missing something.

Somehow, he knew, it was imperative that he got his hands on those diaries.

There was none of the usual banter and celebration that accompany the successful conclusion of a case. The detectives assigned to the murder of James Cowell by the Sûreté de Québec at 19 Rue Parthenais in Montreal solemnly presented themselves the following morning at security in the small airport at Havre aux Maisons. They were waved through to the tarmac where their thirteen-seater King Air would take them on the three-hour flight back to the city.

Equipment packed away in the hold, they squeezed themselves into the tiny passenger cabin. Sime once more sat on his own at the front, isolated from his colleagues. As on the flight out he avoided eye contact with Marie-Ange. The tension aboard the small aircraft was almost physical.

They took off into the wind, and as they banked left Sime had a view out across the Baie de Plaisance. The sun was rising beyond Entry Island, casting its shadow long and dark across the bay towards Cap aux Meules. Like a clenched fist with a single finger pointing in accusation.

Sime looked away. It was the last time he would set eyes on it. Just as, the day before, he had set eyes on Kirsty Cowell for the final time. She would be waking now to her first full day of incarceration, awaiting the hearing that would allow her officially to claim her innocence.

He sighed and felt tired. So very, very tired.

The insomnia clinic was located in the Behavioural Psychotherapy and Research Unit of the Jewish General Hospital on the Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, almost in the shadow of Mount Royal, and just a few streets away from the Jewish cemetery at the foot of it.

There was still warmth in the sun, and leaves on the trees, but an autumn chill on the edge of the wind. The sky was well broken, and Montreal basked in the late September sunshine. From the office where he had sat patiently answering questions for the last half an hour, Sime could see the traffic heading south on the Rue Légaré. The office was warm, made warmer by the sun streaming in through the windows, and the stop — start movement of the cars below was almost hypnotic. Sime was finding it hard to concentrate.