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Rain had begun to fall in earnest now, and Sime and Blanc were trapped by the circle of bikes, unable to reach the shelter of the minibus. The teenagers were laughing and hollering above the noise. Sime stepped into the path of the nearest bike to break the circle and for a moment thought it was going to run him down. But at the last moment it turned sharply away, overturning and sending its rider sprawling into the grass.

The others pulled up abruptly and Blanc went over to the fallen biker to take his arm and drag him to his feet. He was a sullen-faced boy who looked like the eldest of the group. His hair was shaven at the sides and gelled into spikes on top. ‘Damned idiot!’ Blanc shouted at him. ‘Are you trying to kill yourself?’

But the boy never took his eyes off Sime. Humiliated in front of his friends. ‘No, he’s the one trying to do that.’

A sharp, shrill voice cut across the noise of wind and motors. ‘Chuck!’ Everyone turned towards the house. Mary-Anne Clarke’s dyed hair looked incongruously red in the sulphurous light. She stood in the doorway, and there wasn’t one among them, adult or adolescent, who didn’t know that she was not to be argued with. ‘Get yourself in here. Now!’

Reluctantly, and with the worst possible grace, Chuck righted his quad bike with the help of one of his friends and turned a sulky face towards Sime. ‘You leave my dad alone. He’d nothing to do with killing that fucking man.’ And he climbed back on the bike, revving its motor several times, before driving it away around the back of the house. His mother went inside and closed the door. The other kids gunned their engines and wheeled away up the hill, kicking up mud and grass in their wake.

The rain was coming in waves now, blown in on the wind. And Sime felt it burning his face.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The imminent weather event had now leached most of the light out of the sky. There was a strange ochre quality to it, and it was dark enough in the summerhouse to warrant the use of electric light to record the second interview with Kirsty Cowell.

The wind had reached something approaching storm force. Shutters were rattling and shingles lifted on the roof. It was nearly as noisy inside as out. The rain was still coming in bursts and flurries. Just an advance guard. But the main body of it was visible out across the water, like a black mist, and it was on its way.

Sime sat again with his back to the window but with his face lit now by the overhead light. It left him feeling more exposed than he would have liked. A digest of the nurse’s medical examination of Mrs Cowell lay across his knees. His face was pink from the sting of the rain. He had dried his hair with a towel, but it still felt damp.

‘Why did you not tell me that you had broken up with your husband?’

Her face remained expressionless. ‘You didn’t ask.’

‘You do yourself no favours, Mrs Cowell, by withholding information.’

She said nothing, and he examined her face. With the blood washed away, and not a trace of make-up, he saw now that she was a handsome woman without being beautiful. And oddly, even more familiar. She had a strong bone structure with slightly high cheekbones, and a full wide mouth. Her nose was a little broader than it might have been in a perfect world, but not disproportionate to the rest of her face. She had a well-defined jawline that culminated in a slightly pointed chin, but her eyes were still her most striking feature. They were fixed on him now, cool and wary. Her hair, wet from her shower, hung in limp ropes down to her shoulders, and she wore a simple pair of cut-off jeans with tennis shoes and a sweatshirt that seemed several sizes too big. There was light bruising on her left cheek and right temple.

‘Tell me why he left you.’

‘I’m tempted to tell you to ask him that.’ She paused. ‘But I’m sure you already know that he was having an affair with another woman.’

He wondered if perhaps her hostility was a shield against the humiliation she must surely feel at having to discuss the failure of her marriage with a stranger — he could imagine how he himself might feel if the roles were reversed. Or whether she was just wary of being caught out in an inconsistency. ‘I’d like to hear your version of events.’

She sighed, resigned to the inevitable. ‘He was spending more and more time away on business, Mr Mackenzie. As I’m sure you’ve been told, I have not left the island for many years, so I never accompanied him on any of his trips.’

‘Was it unusual for him to be away so often?’

‘No, he left the island frequently. Almost daily during the lobster season, but was never gone for long. It was the amount of time he was spending away from the island that was new. Whenever I asked about it, he just said it was the increasing demands of the business. But business had never been that demanding before, and he was quite capable of running it all from his upstairs office in the house.’

‘So you challenged him about it?’

‘No.’ Her tiny laugh was facetious. ‘Like a fool I believed him. I had no inkling of the truth until a neighbour returning on the ferry from Cap aux Meules one day told me she had seen him there.’

‘And he was supposed to be somewhere else?’

‘Montreal. He had phoned me just the night before. From his hotel, he said. The one he always stayed in. He wanted to warn me that he was going to be delayed for a couple of days in the city and wouldn’t be home until the end of the week. So when I heard he was just across the water I knew he’d been lying to me.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I waited until he got home, and I asked him how it had gone in Montreal. Wanting to give him every chance to tell me a change of plans had brought him back to Cap aux Meules and he just hadn’t had the opportunity to tell me.’

‘But he didn’t.’

She shook her head. ‘He even told me about the meal he’d had the previous night in his favourite Montreal restaurant, La Porte in Boulevard St-Laurent.’ She closed her eyes and for just a moment Sime felt released from their hold. When she opened them again they were burning like ice. ‘I told him I knew he’d been on Cap aux Meules, and I watched the colour drain from his face.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He was pathetic. Floundered around trying to find some excuse, some reason to explain why he’d been in one place when he said he’d been in another. And then suddenly he just gave up. Knew it was hopeless, I suppose. Admitted that he’d been lying. That there was someone else. That he’d been having an affair for months. And that somehow it was all my fault.’

‘How was it your fault?’

‘Oh, I was cold and distant, apparently.’ Accusations that were only too familiar to Sime. ‘And my biggest crime of all? Refusing to leave the island. Like he hadn’t known that from day one of our relationship.’ She was breathing hard now, and Sime could feel her pain and anger in the memory of the confrontation.

‘When did all this happen?’

She closed her eyes again, drew a deep breath, and it was as if a cloud of calm descended upon her. Her lids fluttered open and she looked at him candidly. ‘About ten days ago, Mr Mackenzie. He moved out and in with her last week.’

Evidently the wounds were still fresh. ‘Did you know her?’

‘Not personally. But I knew of her. Everyone knows of her.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Ariane Briand. She’s married to the mayor of Cap aux Meules.’

Sime gazed at her thoughtfully. Suddenly there was another jilted lover in the frame, and he wasn’t quite sure why he felt a sense of relief. ‘Why did your husband fly back to the island last night if he had already left you?’

‘Because there’s a ton of his stuff still in the house. He came to pack some cases.’