He was perspiring profusely, and he pushed the duvet aside. He remembered the story clearly from his grandmother’s reading of it, but dreaming it made it personal in a way that no amount of reading could.
He checked his watch. It was not even midnight. He had slept barely half an hour and all the sleepless hours of the night still lay ahead of him. Endless time to wonder what was sparking these dreams and recollections of his ancestor’s journals. What it was that his subconscious was trying to tell him. Something relating to that first meeting with Kirsty Cowell, and his conviction that he knew her. Of that he was certain. And then there was the ring, and the pendant. The arm and sword engraved in carnelian.
There was only one person in the world he knew who might be able to cast light on that. His sister, Annie. And despite his reluctance, he knew that he was going to have to call her tomorrow.
He swung his legs around and planted his feet on the floor, leaning forward on his elbows, his face in his hands. It had seemed chilly earlier, but now he could barely breathe for the heat that he was generating himself. He slipped his feet into his shoes and zipped on his hoodie. He needed air.
A light wind blew high clouds across an inky sky, stars like jewels set in ebony. An almost full moon came and went in washes of colourless silver light. The air was filled with the sound of the ocean, the slow steady breath of eternity.
He walked through the light that fell from the windows of the big house in slabs and rectangles, and stepped up on to the dirt road. For someone raised so far from the sea, the sense of being surrounded by it now was quite unsettling. It lay all around, momentarily at peace, reflecting moonlight in pools and patches, dangerously deceptive in its tranquil beauty. On the far horizon he could see the lights of Havre Aubert and Cap aux Meules twinkling in the dark.
As he walked down towards the lighthouse, his feet crunching on the gravel underfoot, he reflected on the missing man-boy. Why had he run away, and where could he possibly have gone? Did he have any involvement in the Cowell murder? The neighbour claimed he had a temper and was prone to tantrums. Might he simply have taken revenge for the beating he got from Cowell’s hired hands, and seen Kirsty as complicit in her husband’s actions? Or had he just made the whole thing up?
And then there was the photograph taken from Kirsty’s album. How had he got hold of it? If he had been in the house before, might he not have been the intruder who attacked Kirsty on the night of the killing?
Rows of creels, three deep, sat up on a wooden drying platform off to his left. Ahead of him the beam from the lighthouse raked the night sky. The houses dotted about the southern tip of the island lay in darkness, the good people of Entry Island long ago tucked up in bed, getting in practice for the long winter nights that lay ahead. Somewhere in the distance he heard a dog barking, seconds before a swishing sound made him turn to his right and he felt the full force of a blow to the side of his head. Pain and light filled it as his knees folded under him and he hit the ground with force enough to empty his lungs.
Without breath in them he was unable to cry out, and when a boot thumped with sickening force into his midriff he thought he was going to pass out. Instinct took over and he curled up into the foetal position to take the blows on his back and arms and legs. He fumbled desperately for the Glock holstered beneath his hoodie, but even as he pulled it free and tried to swing himself around towards his attacker it was kicked from his hand and spun away into darkness.
His assailant was a shadow against the sky, a big man dressed in black, soaking up the light, blotting out the stars. From where Sime lay retching on the ground, he seemed to fill it completely, eyes burning behind the slits of his mask. He could hear the man’s breathing, fast and tremulous, then saw the moonlight reflected on the blade in his right hand. Sime felt as if his insides had turned to liquid. He knew there was nothing he could do to stop this man from taking his life. Plunging the knife into him again and again. Pain, pure and simple, had robbed him of the capacity to defend himself, and in a moment his whole sorry life played itself out before him, filling him with regret for all his wasted years.
An elongated wedge of yellow light fell across the grass, throwing their shadows long into the night. Sime turned his head towards the source of it and saw the silhouette of a stout man standing in the open door of his house, a shotgun held firmly across his chest.
‘What the hell’s going on out there?’ he roared.
And in a moment Sime’s attacker was gone, silently sprinting off into the dark, a shadow in the wind, leaving behind him barely a whisper.
Sime very nearly blacked out with relief. He rolled over and emptied the contents of his stomach into the grass, then looked up as a flashlight shone in his face.
‘Jesus!’ he heard the man say. ‘You’re one of them cops from Montreal.’
Sime had not realised just how far he had walked in the dark, and it took him almost ten minutes to get back to the house, hampered as he was by the pounding in his head and the sharp pain like cramp that gripped his chest with every step.
His gun, retrieved from the grass, was safely back in its holster, but he was unnerved by just how easily he had been disarmed and left at the mercy of his attacker. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of a light-sleeping islander, the earth of Entry Island would have been soaking up his blood by now, his body growing cold in the grass.
Now his concern was for Kirsty. He should never have left her alone in the house. The assailant would have had ample time to kill her as she lay sleeping in her bed before coming after Sime. Though why he had attacked Sime at all was a mystery.
Sime hobbled up the steps on to the porch of the summer-house cursing his stupidity. He threw open the door and called her name at the top of his voice.
He was halfway up the stairs in the darkness when the light came on, and a pale and frightened-looking Kirsty stood on the top landing, pulling on her dressing gown, eyes dilated and dark with fear.
His legs almost gave way beneath him from the relief of seeing her. Then her mouth and eyes opened wide as she saw the blood on the side of his head and the mud on his clothes, and she hurried down the few steps that separated them to catch his arm. ‘For God’s sake, Mr Mackenzie, what happened to you?’
Through his pain and relief, he felt the comfort of the warmth that came from her body, the sureness of her touch. He had not been this close to her before, breathing in her scent, and had to overcome a powerful urge to take her in his arms. ‘I was attacked,’ was all he managed to say, and he drew himself upright again. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. But you’re not. I’m going to call the nurse.’
Downstairs they heard the clatter of footsteps, and the screen door banging open. The patrolman left to guard the crime scene in the big house stood breathing hard at the foot of the stairs, gazing up at them in alarm. ‘What’s happened?’
CHAPTER TWENTY
I
The harbour was crowded for the arrival of the morning ferry. Pickup trucks with colourful Entry Island licence plates stood idling along the quayside. Men of all shapes and sizes, old and young, in baseball caps and trainers, baggy jeans and T-shirts, hung around in knots smoking and talking. The womenfolk stood apart in groups of their own, conducting quite different conversations. A forest of aerials and masts and radar pods broke the skyline behind them, fishing boats berthed along the pier rising and falling on the gentle grey swell.
Sime stood at the end of the quay beyond the yellow ticket hut, the breeze in his face, watching as the now familiar shape of the blue-and-white Ivan-Quinn ferry nosed into the harbour. He was aware of the eyes that were on him, of the lowered voices exchanging the latest gossip that was doubtless spreading like wildfire across the island in the wake of the previous night’s attack. He was not looking forward to his meeting with Crozes.