Roxanne Bouchard - The Coral Bride

‘I mean, it wasn’t ideal…’ Lefebvre began.

In the far-right corner, by a window half bricked-up with rocks, was a little table that had clearly been swept free of junk. It looked like a school desk. Lefebvre hadn’t bothered to clear the yellowed papers from the bulletin board on the wall above it. A boxy chair stood behind the desk.

‘…to be tidying up at night.’

As he spoke, Lefebvre was trying to forge a path to the desk. And failing.

‘But I did my best to set aside a corner for you.’

Piles of case files stood on either side of the school desk, boxing the chair in. The only way to get to it was to climb over the desk itself.

Lefebvre gave up trying to wade his way through to the desk and took stock of the situation. ‘Maybe I can rearrange a few things.’ He grabbed a pile of case files and turned, trying to find an alternative work surface. Something in one of the files caught his eye. Intrigued, he opened the file and leafed through a few pages as surprise spread across his face. He dumped the pile on the desk he had set aside for Moralès with the open file in plain sight on top and grabbed a rock from the window to weight it down. Then, turning to Moralès as if he were surprised to see him there, he changed tack completely. ‘Come on, let’s see where Simone’s at with her research.’

They left the room and crossed the corridor to a small meeting room, where a woman stood with her back to the door, making notes on a map pinned to a bulletin board. The fabric of her blouse draped in a perfect triangle from her shoulder blades to the middle of her waist. Her hair was pinned up loosely in a bun, held in place by a spindly piece of driftwood, but it wasn’t her hairstyle that had caught Moralès’s eye. She’d tilted her head forward a touch, revealing the slightest tease of bone through the skin at the nape of her neck. What was that vertebra called again? C3 or C4, a number that conveyed nothing of the gracefulness of this mound elongating the epidermis like a delicate knot in the stem of a cherry that would disappear as soon as the woman looked up. A mirage of a dimple flirted with the strands at her hairline.

‘Simone?’

She turned to look at them. Late forties, dirty blonde hair, pendant dangling from a silver chain in a plunging forest-green neckline. Sleeves rolled up, she was the picture of physical fitness and wearied efficiency.

‘Let me introduce you to Detective Moralès. He’s with the Sûreté du Québec too, at the Bonaventure detachment.’

Simone Lord looked him up and down. ‘Usually they send us a guy from Montreal.’

Her eyes were an almost translucent green, the faint lines in the corners like elegant little arabesques.

‘Actually, I used to be part of the personal crime team in Montreal. I’ve just moved to—’

‘The woman was reported missing yesterday afternoon. Why weren’t you here earlier?’

Moralès opened his mouth, but found nothing to say. His phone started to ring. He muttered a vague excuse, rummaged in his pocket and checked the number on the screen. It wasn’t one he recognised. He turned the ringer off and Lefebvre resumed the introductions under the wry regard of his colleague.

‘This is Simone Lord. She’s been a fisheries officer for … how long?’

‘The last ten years or so. I was with the coast guard before that. Search and rescue. Every time we have to work with the police, I’m the one they send.’

She said it with an air of disdain, or contempt, presumably directed at the police, or those who sent her. Or both. Then, silence. The two Gaspesians watched the newcomer, and waited.

Moralès spoke up. ‘Who’s in charge of the search efforts?’

‘At sea? That’s Simone.’

‘No, on land. If the boat was empty, that means Angel Roberts is officially a missing person. Who’s in charge of the investigation?’

The locals shared a puzzled look before Simone Lord turned on the sarcasm.

‘I’m not sure I caught that. Are you a real detective, or are you here to deliver a pizza? Because I’m pretty sure no one here ordered a pizza. Hey, Lefebvre, did you order a pizza?’

‘No, but maybe later…’

Moralès frowned. His boss hadn’t said anything about him leading the team. Constable Lefebvre didn’t finish his sentence. He went into the corner of the room, bent over a portable heater that had just rattled to life making a hell of a noise, yanked the plug out of the wall and started to tinker with it.

Meanwhile, Simone Lord kept going. ‘When it’s a man who goes missing, the SQ scrambles its finest team of specialists from Montreal, but when it’s a woman…’ She cast a disapproving eye up and down Moralès. ‘When it’s a woman we’re looking for, they send us the loser in early retirement who takes seventeen hours to drive two hundred kilometres. Oh, it’s all right if you don’t want anything to do with this investigation. No problem at all. Just go ask Thérèse Roch for a pair of slippers and make yourself comfortable in the waiting room. We’ll call someone else. And in the meantime, we’ll pretend this disappearance is a big deal, shall we?’

She turned and glared at Lefebvre. ‘What’s up with you? Are you an appliance repair man now?’

Lefebvre pushed the heater aside. ‘We were given the order to wait for you, detective.’

Inside, Moralès was cursing the crumbs of information Marlène Forest kept throwing to him, and the corners she backed him into. She’d told him he was going to lend a hand, not run the bloody investigation. He had to admit the fisheries officer was right, though. He should have come the night before. Why had he been so resistant to the idea? Was it because of Sébastien and Cyrille? Because he didn’t want to be away from either of them, as the reality of losing Sarah slowly sank in? Regardless, Lord had struck a nerve. He did feel old. And ridiculous.

He cut to the chase. ‘Where was Angel Roberts last seen?’

Lefebvre riffled through a pile of papers, found his notes, and answered without looking at them. ‘Her husband drove her home on Saturday night, around half past eleven. They’d been at a party in the village of Rivière-au-Renard. After that, he went back to the party, and that was the last he saw of her. He found her car the next morning by the wharf where she docks her lobster trawler.

Lord chimed in with the rest of the story. ‘The boat wasn’t there. The men in the Roberts family went out to look for her. They took the eldest brother’s shrimp trawler. They found the boat, but they didn’t find Angel.’

The fisheries officer moved over to the marine chart pinned to the bulletin board and tilted her head forward a touch. In spite of himself, Moralès was watching for the mirage to reappear at the nape of her neck, but saw nothing. With the tip of her pencil, she pointed to a spot that was circled on the chart. ‘The lobster trawler’s home port is Grande-Grave, on the other side of the village of Cap-aux-Os, in Forillon Park.’

Moralès stepped closer to the chart. ‘Does that mean fishing is allowed in the national park?’

‘Yes, but it’s strictly regulated. The boat was found here, off the shore of Bonaventure Island. You do know that’s nowhere near the town of Bonaventure, don’t you? It’s just off the shore of Percé. About eighteen nautical miles, let’s say thirty-five kilometres, away from her home port.’ She pointed to another spot circled on the chart, with geographic coordinates scribbled alongside. This was much further south, where the gulf opened into the ocean.

‘How did it get there?’

‘You tell me. You’re the detective.’

Moralès turned to look at the fisheries officer. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t indifferent to this woman’s disappearance. He wanted to clarify why he had hesitated to come, tell her his son needed him, explain to her that his only friend in the Gaspé was dying, and at least try to establish a healthy working relationship. But Moralès had never enjoyed those kinds of conversations.