Roxanne Bouchard - The Coral Bride

‘How about a beer?’ Lefebvre sidled over to the bar, pulled two bottles from the fridge and went over to join Moralès, who had just closed his case file, in the dining room.

SQ patrol officers had rapidly descended on the winter-mooring yard after Lefebvre had intervened, and taken Clément Cyr away. Moralès and Lefebvre had followed the patrol cars to the station, given their statements and promised to deliver their reports that week. Moralès had called his boss, Lieutenant Marlène Forest, from the road.

In the early morning of Saturday 22nd September, Clément Cyr had gone to hide his bike in the bushes at L’Anse-aux-Amérindiens. Next, he had gone home and switched his wife’s antihistamines for sleeping pills. At the end of the afternoon, the couple had begun their wedding anniversary celebrations, starting with a drink at his mother’s place, followed by dinner at her father’s. Angel was allergic to dogs, and her father had two of them, so she took an antihistamine pill. It didn’t seem to be working, so she took another one. The alcohol and sleeping pills had made her feel so ill that around eleven that night, she had asked her husband to drive her home.

Clément Cyr had lied to the investigators. He hadn’t taken the road the locals called La Radoune, but the coast road that skirted the national park. His wife didn’t know – she didn’t like driving that way at night – because she’d closed her eyes and fallen asleep. He had driven her to the wharf at Grande-Grave. They had taken her car that night, and he had only touched the bottom of the steering wheel to leave as few fingerprints as possible. He knew the code for the barrier at the entrance to the park, because he had often gone with his wife to her boat in the middle of the night.

When they arrived at the wharf, he had put gloves on and carried Angel aboard the Close Call II . Then he had pushed away from the dock and driven the trawler to L’Anse-aux-Amérindiens. There, he had brought the boat to a standstill, killed the engine and tied Angel’s legs to the lobster trap. The entire manoeuvre had taken about half an hour. He had undressed, stuffed his clothes into a transparent plastic bag, dived into the water and swum ashore, pushing the bag of clothes, which in the light of the moon the clairvoyant had perceived to be a ‘transparent appendage’. The frigid water certainly explained why she had thought the ‘monster’ had a ‘shrivelled phallus’.

The men sipped their beers in silence. Sébastien’s car pulled into the parking area. Moralès junior got out of the driver’s seat, opened the hatchback and took out the fishing rod, lures and other paraphernalia Corine had loaned him, walked to the shed by the shore and returned without them.

All told, Cyr was away from the party at the bar for an hour and a half. Because fishing had been a common topic of conversation for him and his wife, he knew that the slack water at L’Anse-aux-Amérindiens at that stage of the tide would keep the boat in place for at least two hours. When he returned to the bar, he had drunk to get drunk. Not just to forget the chain of events he had set in motion, and perhaps to flee from his demons, but also to have an excuse to stay the night at the auberge, which would give him an alibi.

Sébastien walked into the dining room carrying some plastic bags. Earlier that day, their discussion about loyalty had jogged Kimo’s memory about a conversation she had had with Clément Cyr at the bar on the night Angel went missing. The man was haunted by a devastating and fateful sense of loyalty. It had dawned on her that he had been drinking heavily and coming on strong to her that night, not to make Bruce Roberts jealous, but to strengthen his own alibi. Deeply shaken by what she had realised, she had gone with Sébastien to the police station and asked him to drive her home afterwards. She just wanted to be alone now, she had said; she’d call him later.

Sébastien had picked up his own car from her driveway and gone back to the auberge to phone Maude and end their toxic relationship. Feeling both saddened and relieved, he had driven down to the fish market; it was about time he started those culinary experiments of his.

‘How about lobster for dinner?’

Érik Lefebvre was certainly on board with that idea. Joaquin watched his son carry the bags to the kitchen, then return with a bottle of tequila and three glasses. He put the glasses on the table, opened the bottle and poured three generous measures. Sébastien raised one of the glasses to his father, who had already raised his. Lefebvre followed suit, grabbing the third and clinking glasses with Moralès senior and junior.

‘Yuck! Call that a drink? It’s gross.’

The detective looked at his son, his eyes filled with emotion. ‘Why don’t you put some music on for us, chiquito ?’

Sébastien nodded while Lefebvre rinsed his mouth out with beer.

Clément Cyr knew that Jimmy Roberts and the Babin brothers were poaching with Angel’s boat. He knew they’d be hanging around the wharf like a bad smell and their prints would be all over the lobster trawler. That was probably why the three of them had been so insistent to join the search efforts – otherwise, how else would they explain the marks of their presence aboard the Close Call II ?

But Leeroy Roberts was the man the murderer wanted to cast under suspicion. He wanted to make sure the finger was pointed at his father-in-law, and the inheritance clause in the loan contract he had made Angel sign would do the job nicely. Clément knew that if he waited another week before putting his plan into action, he himself would naturally fall under suspicion, because he would have been accused of killing his wife to inherit her boat. So he had decided to strike as soon as Angel had finished paying off her loan, but before the contract technically expired. He had calculated everything, from the tides and currents to the note Angel had left for him a few weeks earlier, which he had tucked away somewhere and brought out to show the investigators when his wife was reported missing.

The men drank in silent contemplation.

‘Do you think she woke up – Angel – when she heard the splash of the old wooden trap hitting the water?’ Lefebvre asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Moralès replied.

Had she opened her eyes? Had she looked at the sea and the rope tied around her legs and known she was going to die?

‘Well I suppose if she had, she would have put up a fight, eh?’

Moralès cringed. Some couples went strange ways. They might seem like a solidly built house, but at their very foundation they were destroying one another, oblivious to the devastation unfolding before their eyes. Some were a train wreck happening in slow motion, never realising they could turn onto a different track before they went off the rails. Had Angel been one of those people who resigned themselves to their fate? Had she known her husband was both head over heels in love with her and obsessed by the idea of killing her?

The detective wanted to say no. But he had his doubts. Because Angel Roberts had chosen her destiny. She had chosen a life at sea, and she’d had the guts to dive to the frigid depths and retrieve her traps when her lines were cut. Because she loved her brother enough to turn a blind eye to him using her boat for poaching. He looked at his son, who had filled the air with music and brought the sea into the kitchen. Because she was loyal.

Outside, they heard the sound of a car door closing.

‘It’s Simone.’ Lefebvre got up, not so much to greet her as to get more drinks.

Moralès turned to the window again and gazed out to sea. The voice of Celia Cruz piped louder from the kitchen.

Perhaps that was why Angel had celebrated their wedding anniversaries with such gusto – to mark one more year of overcoming her husband’s delusions. And she had stayed with him, in spite of the ever-present threat, blinded by the mirage of her love, by those photos of their travels and camping trips she had clung to like fool’s silver.