Peter May - Entry Island

‘No, she’s fine.’

Aitkens frowned. ‘I thought you people had gone home.’

‘We had,’ Sime said. ‘But I’m not done here yet.’

‘They’re sending her to Montreal,’ Aitkens said, as if Sime wouldn’t know.

‘Were you in court?’

‘Of course. It’s just two minutes from my door.’ He paused. ‘There’s not much evidence against her, you know.’

Sime nodded. ‘I know that.’

Aitkens was taken aback. ‘Really?’

‘I need to talk to you, Monsieur Aitkens.’

He glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t really have time.’

‘I’d appreciate it if you’d make some.’ Sime’s tone conveyed the strong impression that it was more than a request. But, all the same, he wondered why Aitkens’s first response had not been to ask what Sime wanted to talk to him about. Almost as if he already knew.

Aitkens said, ‘Well, not out here. Let’s get a coffee.’

Most of the shops and restaurants on the main street were closed for the season, but the Café de la Grave was open, yellow light spilling out into the sulphurous afternoon. There were no customers. Just rows of polished wooden tables and painted chairs, wood-panelled walls peppered with colourful childlike paintings of fish and flowers. A menu chalked up on a blackboard had earlier offered Quiche à la Poulet or Penne sauce bolognese à la merguez for lunch. Sime and Aitkens sat by an old upright piano and ordered coffees. Aitkens was ill-at-ease and fidgeted with his fingers on the table in front of him.

‘So what do you want to talk to me about?’ At last the question.

‘Your family history.’

Aitkens swung his head towards Sime, frowning. He thought about it for a moment. ‘Is this an official line of enquiry?’ His tone was hostile. Sime, after all, was the man who had arrested his cousin for murder.

Sime was caught momentarily off-balance, but couldn’t lie. ‘My interest is more personal than professional.’

Now Aitkens tilted his head and squinted at Sime with both suspicion and confusion. ‘What? About my family history?’

‘Well, it’s Kirsty’s more than yours that interests me. But I guess much of it will be shared. She told me that genealogy was something of an obsession of yours.’

‘Not an obsession,’ Aitkens said defensively. ‘A hobby. What the hell else does a man do with his life when he’s not working? The hours I work, and a geriatric father in the hospital, I’m not exactly an eligible bachelor, am I? Winters here aren’t only hard, they’re long and damn lonely.’

‘So how far back have you been able to trace your lineage?’

Aitkens shrugged. ‘Far enough.’

‘As far back as your great-great-great-grandmother?’

‘Which one?’

‘The one buried in the cemetery on Entry Island. Kirsty McKay.’

Aitkens frowned darkly and examined Sime’s face for a long time, until the silence became almost embarrassing. Finally he said, ‘What about her?’

‘What do you know of her origins?’

He smiled now. ‘Well that wasn’t easy, Monsieur Mackenzie. When people have been shipwrecked and start a new life, the past can be pretty damned difficult to uncover.’

Sime felt his heart rate quicken. ‘But you did?’

He nodded. ‘Her ship went down just off Entry Island in the spring of 1848. Driven on to the rocks in a storm. The boat had come from Scotland and was bound for Quebec City. She was the only survivor, pulled out of the water by a family living on the cliffs at the south end of the island. There was no lighthouse back then. Seems she was in a bit of a state. They took her in and nursed her back to health, and in the end she stayed with them, almost like a kind of adopted daughter. In fact, she never left the island and five years later married their son, William.’

Sime said, ‘Which is how she ended up with the name McKay, the same as her parents. Only they weren’t really her parents.’

‘Parents-in-law. But since she had no parents of her own, she was kind of like a real daughter to them.’

Which explained the inscription on the headstone. ‘What happened to her real parents? Did they go down with the boat?’

‘No, she was travelling alone. Apparently she had some kind of short-term memory loss as a result of the trauma, and no real idea at first who she was or where she’d come from. But her memory did eventually come back. In fragments at first. She used to write things down in a notebook as she remembered them. A kind of way of keeping them real. That notebook came all the way down through the family. I found it in a trunk of memorabilia that my father kept in the attic. I’d no idea it was there until after they’d taken him into hospital.’

Sime was having difficulty keeping his breathing under control and the excitement out of his voice. ‘So who was she?’

Aitkens pulled a face and exhaled deeply. ‘What the hell does any of this have to do with Kirsty’s arrest?’

‘Just tell me.’ Sime’s tone was imperative.

Aitkens sighed. ‘Seems she was the daughter of the laird of some estate in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Fell in love with the son of a crofter, which was completely taboo in those days. The father opposed the relationship, and when the crofter’s boy killed her brother in a fight he fled to Canada. She followed, hoping to find him, and of course never did.’

‘Kirsty Guthrie,’ Sime said.

Aitkens clenched his jaw and looked at him. ‘You knew all along.’

But Sime shook his head. ‘No. But a lot of things have just dropped into place.’

Aitkens had returned to fidgeting with his fingers on the table in front of him. ‘I’ve been trying to patch in more detail. Kirsty has a lot of stuff passed down to her by her mother. Stored somewhere down in the basement of the house that Cowell built. I’ve been at her for ages to let me see it.’ He pulled a face filled with resentment. ‘But it was never convenient. God knows what’ll happen to it now.’

Suddenly Sime said, ‘Could you take me over to Entry Island in your boat?’

Aitkens looked at him in surprise. ‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘Man, are you crazy? There’s a storm on the way.’

‘It won’t be here for an hour or two yet.’

But Aitkens just shook his head. ‘It’s way too rough out there.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘And anyway, I’ve got to go shortly. I’m still working the night shift at the mine.’

‘Well, do you know someone who could take me?’

‘What in the name of God do you want to go there for right now?’

‘A couple of things.’ Sime was forcing himself to stay calm. ‘I’d like to cast eyes on that stuff she keeps in the basement. And...’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t think Kirsty killed her husband.’

‘Jesus! It was you that arrested her!’

‘I know. But I was wrong. We were all wrong. We’re just missing something. Something that’s probably been staring us in the face all along. I want to take a look at the house again.’

Aitkens stood up, and his chair scraped the floor in the quiet of the café. ‘Up to you. But if you’re really determined to go out there tonight, Gaston Boudreau might be persuaded to take you. If you cross his palm with silver.’

‘And he is...?’

‘The guy whose boat you requisitioned during the investigation.’

Sime braced himself against one side of the wheelhouse as Gaston Boudreau’s fishing vessel rose and fell on a swell that was heavy, even within the harbour wall.

Boudreau stood in the doorway unconcerned, it seemed, at the prospect of taking Sime over to Entry Island with the storm so close. But he was perplexed. ‘Why can’t you just wait till morning, monsieur? The storm’ll have blown itself out by then and you can get the ferry over.’