Roxanne Bouchard - The Coral Bride

Bruce turned to his father. Did he know the guys were using Angel’s boat? Probably.

Leeroy looked his son in the eye. ‘Whatever happens, none of us point a finger at the other, you hear me?’

Bruce took a bite of his cupcake to avoid having to say anything. His brother was looking at their father with an air of suspicion. He wouldn’t be surprised if their old man was hiding something. It wouldn’t be the first time.

‘That applies to you too, Guy. And that brother of yours.’

He nodded. Guy and Jean-Paul Babin weren’t from the most reputable of families in Haldimand, but Leeroy had hired them young, and that had made them loyal. Today they were far from rich, but they had learned to work hard. And that was something they owed more to Leeroy than their own father.

‘For what it’s worth, Mr Roberts, I reckon Clément Cyr must have a hand in it. Him or his uncle.’

Leeroy was sure he’d done right hiring the Babins, but Bruce had never liked them. Finishing his mouthful, he raised an eyebrow.

‘Say that all you like to the cops, Ti-Guy, but Clément Cyr was at the auberge all night. He’s got an alibi set in stone. That’s more than you lot can say.’

‘Nobody’s dragging the Roberts name through the mud, is that clear?’

‘Yes, Dad.’

The men finished their coffee break in silence.

‘Now get back out there and keep looking.’

Jimmy couldn’t help himself from muttering under his breath. ‘We’re not going to find anything, I tell you. I wouldn’t put it past Angel to do a runner and sink her bloody boat just to get our backs up.’

His words fell on deaf ears, but the others were tempted to think her younger brother might be right.

The night passed under a moon that hung high in the sky even as dawn drew near. As the men rubbed the fatigue from their eyes, the light of day gradually filtered into their darkness-filled pupils.

Suddenly – wait, what was that? Over there. It looked like there was a reflection on the water. Something shiny. Something promising. Bruce was the one who pointed it out.

Leeroy came out on deck and took the scope from his son.

‘Huh! How did you know to look over there, eh?’ Jimmy’s words were full of undertones and spite.

Leeroy looked at his eldest son to gauge his reaction. Bruce didn’t say a word as he marched into the wheelhouse and turned the wheel to starboard to steer the Ange-Irène onto the right heading. Leeroy lifted the scope to his eye and scoured the horizon. At first he couldn’t see anything, but then the scope caught a faint glimmer of light. Leeroy’s heart began to race. Because he had a feeling. That reflection was his daughter’s boat. He was sure of it.

Joaquin tossed and turned in bed for a while before he went down to the living room. He leaned over the telescope, cast an eye over a night that would soon make way for the dawn, and drew himself tall.

The Gaspé Peninsula was an unforgiving kind of place.

He thought about Sarah and their plan to move here together. Things hadn’t exactly gone the way he’d hoped. Moralès had driven out to Caplan at the beginning of the summer to get their new place ready while his wife finalised the sale of their house in Longueuil. She was supposed to have followed a week later with all their belongings. But something had gone awry. Saltwater had somehow seeped in and seized up the plan. Sarah had driven out here unannounced at the end of the summer, when Moralès was out of town. He’d been called to investigate a case out in the back of beyond – near Saint-Elzéar, where there was no phone signal. He and two other officers had spent a few nights out there in a hunting cabin that had suffered a spate of break-ins. Thanks to their surveillance, the police had made a number of arrests.

The first Moralès had learned of Sarah’s flying visit was on his return, when he saw the scathing note she’d left on the kitchen table. Someone had told Sarah he’d had a romantic encounter out here, it seemed. But who? That was a mystery. Still, she had left without waiting for him to return. Since then, she’d been ignoring him, creating a bubble of silence around herself and what was left of their relationship, which now seemed destined to drift onto the proverbial rocks. Did that make him feel sad? He wasn’t sure. After thirty years of living together, it would take strength for any couple to keep the flames of passion burning.

He went back upstairs, undressed and sat upright in bed. He looked through the window at the moon splintering on the swell. He thought about Catherine and where she had gone. What had she set out in search of? Fool’s silver?

Moralès glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Five in the morning. Sébastien had been out all night, but he wasn’t worried. Joannie must have given him a breathalyser and made him sleep on a bench at the bistro. Moralès had left his phone beside the alarm clock, hoping Lieutenant Forest would call back. As reluctant as he was to be dragged away, he hated the idea of being excluded from investigating this disappearance.

He wondered how old the woman on the lobster boat might be. The woman on the lobster boat . In the city, that was the kind of name the detectives would use to talk about the victim. Moralès realised he would have been incapable of calling Marie Garant, the victim of the last homicide he investigated, ‘the woman on the sailboat’. Out here, the dead were allowed to keep their real names. Come to think of it, what was the missing woman’s name? He resisted the urge to call Marlène Forest.

Moralès found life in the Gaspé challenging not only because of its slow pace, but also because he found the demand to embrace intimacy here excruciating. Here you had to know everything about everybody to stand a chance of solving a case. In the city, everything was rougher, more raw. People killed violently – for drugs and money. Murderers took the lives of strangers. Spitting with vengeance, they executed their victims coldly. Here, death was inflicted so gently it hurt. And prison was more therapy than punishment. It was a gentleness that pained Moralès. This investigation was a case in point. It had held him captive all night, and it was yet to begin.

The phone remained silent. Moralès didn’t really feel like thinking about his son and their uncomfortable conversations, the pots and pans in a box on the kitchen counter, the roundabout ways the two of them found to avoid talking to one another. She’ll call back, he told himself. That very moment, his phone rang. Private number. He picked up immediately. He knew it was Marlène Forest. And he knew he’d be getting in his car and driving along the coast.

She didn’t bother saying hello. ‘They’ve found the lobster trawler.’

Moralès stood and pulled on a pair of jeans. ‘Where?’

‘It should have been at the wharf in Grande-Grave, on the south side of Forillon Park, but it was drifting offshore. Out in the gulf.’

‘And the woman?’

Marlène Forest drew a deep breath.

‘Lieutenant Forest? Where’s the woman?’

No reply.

Moralès pulled on the rest of his clothes. ‘She wasn’t on board?’

‘No.’

He ran down the stairs.

‘Constable Lefebvre is expecting you at the station in Gaspé. He’ll be glad of your help.’

Moralès grabbed his jacket, wallet, car keys and a duffel bag full of clothes he’d packed the night before, and stepped out into the pre-dawn light. ‘One more question, lieutenant.’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s the woman’s name?’

‘Roberts.’

Her voice was shaking, as if she were personally suffering from this disappearance, but Moralès didn’t notice.