Roxanne Bouchard - The Coral Bride

‘Yes.’

Moralès leaned against his car for a moment to wrap his head around this information. Why hadn’t Simone Lord told him about these boxes?

‘Listen, Moralès, I want to make myself useful – that’s what I’m being paid to do – but you’re going to have to help me help you by telling me what you’re looking for exactly.’

‘What’s the link between the Maurice Lamontagne Institute and the Fisheries and Oceans administration?’

He heard Lefebvre’s fingers flying across the keyboard.

‘It’s part of a network of research centres that are all connected to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, by the looks of it. I don’t know what it is you’ve found, but if you’re wondering why Simone didn’t tell you about it, maybe she wasn’t aware of it. It says here there are more than three hundred people who work in independent research centres like this. They’re funded by the federal government, and they specialise in ocean science and aquatic ecosystems management.’

Moralès finally understood and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Lefebvre, I want you to call Simone Lord and tell her to contact the Maurice Lamontagne Institute.’

‘And what is she supposed to ask these mad scientists? What do they study, anyway – whales?’

‘She needs to ask for the video recordings from the camera they set up at L’Anse-aux-Amérindiens.’

‘At L’Anse-aux-Amérindiens?’

‘There might be two cameras. Maybe more. I want her to get the recordings from the night Angel went missing, and all those from the previous week. Then I need you to go through all that footage, Lefebvre.’

‘Me?’

‘And you call me as soon as you see anything resembling a naked monster, with a transparent appendage and a shrivelled phallus, emerging from the water, all right?’

‘I hope you’re buying the popcorn.’

‘I can do better than that. I’m also tasking you with a mission to call that charming doctor of yours.’

‘Now you’re talking, boss. It’s nice to see you know what I’m good at.’

Moralès hung up and turned the phone ringer on again.

Sébastien Moralès was suffocating. He turned to his left and ran as fast as he could, but after just a few metres he fell to his knees and vomited profusely. His body shook with spasms. His skin was drenched in sweat. Tears streamed down his cheeks. His throat was on fire. He struggled to his feet and leaned back against a tree, trying to catch his breath. Water, he needed water. Feeling steadier on his feet, he made his way to the river.

There he saw Kimo, sitting in the lotus position on a large flat rock. She was barefoot and had pulled her leggings up to her knees.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

Appearances can be deceiving. That was what his father had said. He moved towards her, crouched at the water’s edge and rinsed his hands.

She rose and stretched. ‘Want to borrow a towel? There are plenty in the cabin.’

Kimo’s body was firm and athletic, much more toned than his. ‘It might do you good to go for a dip, or at least dunk your head in the water.’

He was ashamed to be sick in front of this alluring young woman who was full of energy and had offered him her body again just last night. He was suffocating again. Just like he had with Maude. He wanted to run away. Not because he was paying the price for a night of drunkenness, with his stomach turned upside down and his head feeling like it was about to explode. Because he had just admitted to himself that he had erred, that he had been the author of his own misfortune with Maude. Of their misfortune.

The images scrolled through his mind like a horror film he couldn’t bear to watch. She was eighteen, and she’d got drunk and kissed another guy at a party the night before. The silly kind of thing that happens when you’re young and just starting to have regrets. She did regret it, he remembered that. In his mind’s eye, he could see his girlfriend timidly asking him to forgive her. And, more importantly, he could see himself. Mocking her, scoffing at her lack of commitment, both to him and to what she’d just done. He had laughed in her face and told her she was as shy as a mouse in love and infidelity alike. ‘If you’re going to cheat on me, you might as well do it for real!’ That was what he had said. He had done it on purpose. His arrogance and apparent indifference were intended to hurt her. But his words had been a challenge, and she had risen to it.

A few weeks later, tired of all his mocking, she had gone out and slept with someone else just to prove to him that she could ‘do it for real’. She had been hoping he would tell her to stop, tell her he loved her and wanted her all to himself. But he had been hurt, and had shrugged it off to protect himself. And so the game had continued. ‘Do you want me to cheat on you tonight?’ she would tease. ‘Maybe it’d turn me on,’ he would laugh, even though he didn’t mean it. Again and again she had done it, and he had taken it upon himself to get his own back by making love to her with words that, in the cruellest of ironies, echoed a pain he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge.

She had cheated on him out of resentment because they were barely twenty years old and that was the way they were learning to love each other, by tearing each other apart. As time had gone by, they had settled into a certain rhythm and crafted a narrative they both believed. The rhythm had become a rut, and they would only rarely make love, fuelled by alcohol, turmoil and nostalgia. Last year, when she had announced she wanted to have a baby, he had told her to go and pick a father from her crowd of lovers. She had simply nodded, out of habit more than anything.

Lying on the ground, he looked up at the sky. A ray of sun was emerging from the clouds. There was a warmth to the air, but he couldn’t feel it. He took a deep breath and plunged his head below the water’s surface. It was bracing, to say the least. Slowly he released the air from his lungs in a string of bubbles and opened his eyes. On the shallow river bed, he saw the faint moving shadow of Kim Morin looming over him. With a knot in his throat he realised that he had let the situation get out of hand, and a shiver ran down his spine.

Moralès drove out of the national park as quickly as the bends in the road would allow. When he got back to the auberge, Sébastien’s car wasn’t there. He looked at his watch and went into the dining room. Corine came out of the kitchen to say hello, wearing a headscarf like a vintage housewife’s. She seemed happy to see him.

‘You just missed Jacques Forest,’ she said. ‘He left a bag full of fish for you. Looks like a decent catch. Should I fry up a few fillets for lunch?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Feel free to work if you like, I’ll bring it out when it’s ready.’

Corine disappeared into the kitchen. Moralès went up to his holiday apartment, saw that Sébastien hadn’t been back, went into his room to retrieve his copy of the case file from the back of the drawer where he had hidden it, under a pile of clothes, and returned to the dining room. He would have preferred to work at his kitchenette table, but he didn’t want to seem rude by shutting himself away while Corine was making lunch.

He sat at a table by the window, opened the file and went over the timeline of the night Angel Roberts died. That afternoon, the young couple put their wedding outfits on and went to Gaétane Cloutier and Fernand Cyr’s for a drink.

Corine poked her head out of the kitchen. ‘Ah, you’re here already. Perfect. I’m going to make us a little salad to go with the fish.’