‘He told us in no uncertain terms to leave his father alone.’
Crozes sat up. ‘Let’s talk to him.’
Sime swung left and took the road up towards the church, accelerating over ruts and potholes. The minibus rattled and juddered over the uneven surface, and it seemed to take some moments for the bikers to realise it was going to cut them off. Sime pulled the wheel hard left and the vehicle careened across the track to end up side-on to the approaching bikers. They immediately altered course, turning away towards Big Hill. Crozes jumped down and shouted at them to stop. The bikes drew to a reluctant halt in an idling knot of diesel fumes and revving motors. Crozes raised his ID above his head. ‘Police,’ he shouted. ‘Come here.’ And he waved them towards him. The kids exchanged glances, then one by one engaged gears and turned to motor slowly towards the minibus as Sime climbed out of it. At the last they fanned out to form a semicircle around the two policemen. ‘Which one of you’s Clarke?’ Crozes said.
Chuck Clarke was in the middle of the group, clearly its leader. The spikes of his gelled hair stood firm against the breeze. ‘What do you want with me?’ he said.
‘Turn off those motors,’ Crozes instructed, and in the ensuing silence Sime heard the wind blowing through the grass, and the sound of the sea washing all along the southern shore. Crozes looked at Chuck. ‘Get off the bike, son.’
The teenager thrust out a belligerent jaw. ‘And what if I don’t?’
Crozes slowly removed his sunglasses. ‘I’m conducting a murder investigation here, kid. If you want to obstruct me in the course of that I’ll have you over on Cap aux Meules kicking your heels in a police cell before you can say quad bike.’ He replaced his shades on the bridge of his nose. ‘Now get off the fucking bike.’
It was a further loss of face for the Clarke boy, but he had little alternative but to comply. He dismounted slowly and stood with his legs slightly apart, gloved hands on his hips, glaring at Crozes.
The lad was built. Six feet or more, and Sime ran his eyes over the jeans and black leather jacket. He wore scuffed Doc Martens, and Sime thought that they could easily have been the boots that had bruised his ribs. His gaze fell on the expensive, hand-stitched leather gloves. Kirsty had spoken about the gloves of her attacker, and the stitching in the leather.
‘Where were you last night?’ Crozes said.
Chuck glanced uneasily towards the others. ‘Why?’
‘Just answer the question, son.’
One of the girls said, ‘We had a party last night. My dad’s got a barn over the far side of Cherry Hill. We can play music as loud as we like there and don’t disturb nobody.’
‘How long did that go on for?’
‘Oh, I don’t know …’ she said. ‘Maybe till about three.’
Crozes cocked his head. ‘And Chuck was with you the whole time.’
‘He was.’ This from one of the other boys. He leaned back on the comfortable leather seat behind him, lacing his fingers together at the back of his head and lifting his feet to cross them on the handlebars of his bike. ‘Any law against that?’
‘Not unless you were drinking. Or smoking dope.’
An uneasiness stirred among them, and Crozes turned back to Chuck. ‘Where were you the night Mr Cowell was murdered?’
Chuck gasped in disbelief and pulled a face. ‘You don’t think I had anything to do with that?’
‘I’m asking you a question.’
‘I woss at home wiss my parentss,’ Chuck said, mimicking Crozes’s strong French accent, and the other kids laughed.
Crozes grinned as if amused. ‘That’s very good, Chuck. Now if you like, I can have every item of clothing you own confiscated for forensic examination. And I can arrest you and hold you in custody for forty-eight hours while a team of experts pulls your house apart piece by piece. Which I am sure will endear you to your parents.’
Chuck’s pale skin darkened. ‘I was at home all night. Ask my mother.’
And it seemed to Sime that Mary-Anne Clarke was providing alibis for the whole family.
Crozes’s cellphone rang in his pocket and he turned away to fish it out and take the call. He put a finger in one ear and walked several paces away, listening for a moment then speaking rapidly before hanging up. He turned back to the kids and waved a hand toward the far distance. ‘Go,’ he shouted. ‘And if you want to do something useful, join the search for Norman Morrison.’
The kids wasted no time in starting up their motors and wheeling off to snake in an undulating line away across the hillside. Crozes turned to Sime as the sound of the motors faded. ‘Ariane Briand just landed at the airport at Havre aux Maisons,’ he said. ‘You and Blanc take the boat and get over there. I want to hear what she’s got to say for herself.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I
During the crossing to Cap aux Meules Blanc assiduously avoided asking him about the attack. They passed most of the fifty-five minutes it took to cross the bay in silence. But Sime caught him examining the bruising on the side of his face, and Blanc seemed embarrassed and compelled to say something.
‘Are you all right?’
Sime nodded. ‘I’ll live.’
But there was a tension between them.
They picked up the Chevy the team had left parked at the harbour, and Blanc drove them south on the Chemin Principal before turning off on to the coast road that they had driven two days earlier in the rain. This time there was a vehicle parked outside the Briand house. Ariane Briand was back in residence.
As soon as she opened the door, Sime saw what Aitkens had meant about her. She was a real looker and still is, he’d said. I didn’t know a boy at school who didn’t have the hots for her.
She was closer to forty than she would probably want to admit, and was still a good-looking woman. She wore a short-sleeved cut-off top revealing a taut, tanned belly above tight-fitting jeans that showed off her slim hips. Chestnut-brown hair with blonde streaks tumbled in big, loose, careless curls to her shoulders. She had soft brown eyes and fine, full lips, and a jawline that most women would require surgery to replicate.
She wore very little make-up, and her age was only discernible in the finest of lines creasing the skin around her eyes and mouth. She was the kind of woman, Sime knew from experience, that you could only ever admire from afar, unless you happened to be rich, or powerful. Cowell had most certainly been rich. And her ex, he supposed, could be described as powerful. At the very least, a big fish in a small pond.
She stepped back from the door, looking at them without curiosity, and Sime saw that she was barefoot. ‘Can I help you?’
Blanc showed her his ID. ‘Sûreté, madame. We’re investigating the murder of James Cowell.’
‘Of course you are. You’d better come in.’ She stood aside to let them pass.
They walked into a large dining room that extended up into the roof space where huge Velux windows set into the slope of the roof allowed light to cascade into the room. An arched opening led through to a big, square kitchen with an island set at its centre. They never got any further than the dining room. Ariane Briand stood, almost barring their way to the rest of the house, her arms folded, defensive verging on hostile.
‘So …’ Blanc said. ‘Would you like to tell us where you’ve been for the last two days?’
‘Well, maybe you’d like to tell me why that’s any of your business.’
Blanc bristled. ‘Madame, you can answer my questions here or at the Sûreté. Your choice.’
She pursed her lips pensively, but if she was ruffled showed no sign of it. ‘I went shopping in Quebec City. Is that against the law?’