Roxanne Bouchard - The Coral Bride

‘If someone had untied the trawler from the dock, would the current have carried it out to sea?’

‘No, it would have been pushed ashore. Grande-Grave is in a little cove. You’d have to navigate the boat out of the cove just to get out into Gaspé Bay, and that’s not the open sea.’

‘What if the engine had broken down somewhere in the bay? Would the current have carried the boat towards the shore or swept it out to sea? Was the tide coming in or going out that night?’

Lord muttered a half-hearted reply, as if she were discouraged to hear him asking all the right questions. ‘Depends what time you’re talking about. High tide was around midnight on Saturday. The first couple of hours after that, there was a northeast wind blowing stronger than the current, which was pretty much standing still. If the engine had been turned off, the boat would have drifted ashore on the south side of the bay sometime between midnight and three in the morning. To make sure it didn’t find its way back to shore, someone would have had to take it much further out, almost to the other side of Forillon Park. Past the point. After two in the morning, the tidal flow would have increased. If it was out in Gaspé Bay any time after that, then yes, the boat would have been carried out to sea.’

‘Was the engine running when they found the trawler? Do you know if the boat had been having engine trouble? Did Angel Roberts make a distress call? Could she have launched a lifeboat?’

Moralès had called the woman by her name. Simone Lord would almost have rather given Angel a nickname instead, something that would create more distance, the way cops often did to allow themselves to pass judgement.

‘No. She didn’t make a distress call, and the lifeboat was still on board when they found the trawler. I don’t know about the engine.’ She seemed reluctant to admit it.

Moralès turned his attention away from her and back to the chart on the wall. If Angel Roberts didn’t launch her lifeboat, that meant she must have gone overboard. He looked at the vast expanse of the Gulf of St Lawrence. The water out there was frigid. Four degrees Celsius at most. If she had fallen in, she was a dead woman. Simone Lord reached out and pointed to one of the places she had circled on the chart, then the other.

‘We’ve been combing the area between these two circles, along this line from Gaspé Bay to Bonaventure Island.’

Lefebvre sidled over, placing the heater discreetly beside his notes, and tried to peer at the chart over Moralès’s shoulder.

‘What if Angel didn’t go aboard?’ Moralès asked.

Moralès turned to find his new colleague standing uncomfortably close. Lefebvre backed away without having managed to get a proper look at the chart.

‘Did you initiate any search efforts on the shore, Constable Lefebvre?’

‘We don’t tend to look on dry land for people who’ve gone out to sea. Plus, she’s only just been officially reported missing.’

Moralès’s phone started to vibrate. Simone Lord rolled her eyes as he checked the caller ID. It was the same number as before.

‘I’m going to need your help, Constable Lefebvre,’ Moralès said.

Lefebvre was rummaging through the papers on the table in nervous haste.

‘Just stop it, will you!’ Simone Lord laid into him. ‘Do you really have to turn everything upside down?’ She pulled a pile of documents out of Lefebvre’s reach while he, momentarily taken aback to see so many tidy papers had escaped his sticky fingers, returned to the task of leafing through his own pile in search of a blank page to write on. Lord passed him a pen.

‘Do we have a photo?’ Moralès asked.

‘Right, well, I thought you could ask the husband for one,’ Lefebvre replied.

‘As soon as we have a photo, I want you to show it around at the train station, bus terminal and taxi rank, OK? Ask if anyone has seen her. If so, was she leaving town, and where was she going? Have you thought to do a sweep of the area where her car was found?’

‘Well, since it looked like she’d gone out to sea…’

‘Do it. We’re looking for a missing woman, but we’re also looking for clues. You’re going to need a warrant to get a record of her recent bank transactions. Has she withdrawn any large amounts of money? Has she opened a different account? Have her debit and credit cards been used?’

Moralès turned to Simone Lord. ‘When is the boat getting here?’

She glanced at her watch. ‘Not for another hour. The guys are on their way to the wharf at Rivière-au-Renard. I’m going there to interview them to find out how—’

‘I’ll be the one conducting the interview, Ms Lord.’

She pouted as Lefebvre fell over himself to point out how efficient the Gaspé detachment could be when they tried. ‘The forensic technicians are already down at the wharf.’

Lord cracked half a smile. ‘I bet they’re sitting in their van eating doughnuts.’

‘Hey, those guys are professionals!’ he protested.

Moralès cut him off. ‘Do we have time to pay the husband a visit?’

‘He doesn’t live far away. I’ll give you the address.’

‘Do you have a mobile phone, Constable Lefebvre?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’re coming with me.’

‘I’m really better at my desk.’

‘I’ll drive, and you can do your research on the way. I want you to sit in on the interview.’

Moralès wasn’t taking no for an answer, and Lefebvre was a good sport. ‘I’ll get my jacket,’ the constable said, and left the room.

Simone Lord was now tidying her files. Moralès decided to try to smooth the waters. ‘Do you think she’s still alive?’ he asked.

She drew a deep breath. ‘If she’s out at sea with no way to send a distress signal, the chances of finding her are slim. Negligible at best. Probably nonexistent. Even if she’s found something to cling on to, the area we have to search is immense, and…’

Moralès’s phone started to vibrate again. He checked the screen. Again, the same number. Simone Lord didn’t bother finishing her sentence. She picked up her files. ‘Just keep an eye on your pacemaker, all right? I’ll see you on the wharf.’

As she brushed past Joaquin on her way out, he couldn’t help but notice how nice she smelled. She had an earthy, garden-like scent about her, mixed with the hint of a sea breeze. When she’d gone, he took a deep breath and answered the phone.

‘Have you found her?’

The husband of Angel Roberts stood imposingly broad and tall in the doorway. He was a beefcake of a man with legs like tree trunks and slabs for hands. But a note in his gravelly voice suggested he was treading a narrow tightrope of hope. Érik Lefebvre retreated a step and shook his head in resignation. He hated working in the field.

‘Not yet.’

The house on the north side of Highway 132 in the village of Cap-aux-Os had its back turned to the life in the town of Gaspé, enjoying instead a sweeping view of the bay and its south shore, all the way from the point at Sandy Beach to Haldimand Beach, where a handful of out-of-towners would be waiting for Thanksgiving to come and go before boarding up the windows of their holiday cottages and abandoning the place until the spring.

Clément Cyr was leaning all his weight against the door frame, burying his giant, powerless head in his chest. Moralès took a mental picture of the man and filed it away with all the others. This collection of snapshots, which he had committed to memory and never talked about, was like an old family photo album – negatives he hung on to despite the passing of time, fragments of stories associated with the smells, sounds and attitudes of humanity in tears.