‘So you took the boat that you keep at the jetty below the cliffs?’
She nodded. ‘It was pure madness. I’m not great with boats at the best of times. But the alcohol had me all fired up and I didn’t really care. If the weather had been worse I’d probably never have made it. James would still be alive, and my body would have been found washed up on a beach somewhere.’ She was looking in his direction, but he doubted that she saw him. She was somewhere else, reliving the madness. ‘I was, literally, unravelling.’ And suddenly she jumped focus and her eyes seared into him. ‘I’m not proud of myself, Mr Mackenzie. God knows what was going through my mind, or what kind of emotional state I was in. I just wanted to have it out with him. Face to face. Clear the air. I just wanted to know. Everything.’
‘And when he wasn’t there you turned on the next best thing. His lover.’
‘I didn’t turn on her!’
‘According to Madame Briand you said …’ Sime looked down to consult the notes taken during her formal interview, ‘I’m not giving him up without a fight. And if I can’t have him, neither you nor anyone else will.’ He looked up again. ‘Are those your words?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘So she paraphrased you?’
‘It doesn’t sound like me.’
‘But was that the sentiment you expressed?’
Her embarrassment was clear. ‘Probably.’
‘Was it or wasn’t it?’
‘Yes!’ she snapped at him. ‘Yes, yes, yes! I lost it, okay? Drink, emotion …’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘Whatever. I was coming apart at the seams. It felt like my life was over. Tied to this damned island. Alone. Almost nobody my own age left. No way I was ever going to meet someone else. All I could see stretching ahead of me were a lot of lonely years in an empty house.’
Sime sat back and let a silence settle between them again, like dust after a fight. ‘You realise, Mrs Cowell, that what you said to Madame Briand could be construed as a threat to kill your husband.’
‘Well, of course, you’d just love to give it that construction, wouldn’t you?’ She imbued the word construction with all the sarcasm she could muster.
‘You told me that on the night of the murder you didn’t know that your husband was coming back to the island.’
She gazed at her hands.
Sime waited for several moments. ‘Are you going to respond or not?’
She looked up. ‘You didn’t ask a question.’
‘All right, is it true that you didn’t know your husband was coming home that night?’
Her eyes drifted away towards the window behind him, and the view out over the cliffs. And again she made no response.
‘According to Madame Briand he received a short, fractious call on his cellphone earlier in the evening and left immediately afterwards. Did you make that phone call?’
Her eyes drifted back in his direction, but all the fight had gone out of them.
‘We can check the phone records, Mrs Cowell.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, without further prompting.
‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him I wanted to talk to him.’
‘To say what?’
‘All the things I wanted to have out with him the night before. Only I wasn’t drunk anymore. Just kind of cold, you know. Angry. Wanting to know stuff that we’d never had the chance to talk about, so I wouldn’t be wondering about it for the rest of my life.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘That we’d talked enough, and he had no intention of coming to the island. At least, not then.’
‘So how did you persuade him?’
‘I told him that first I was going to gather together all his clothes and make a nice big bonfire of them on top of the cliffs. And if he still didn’t come I was going to set his precious house on fire, his computer and all of his business records with it.’ She almost smiled. ‘That seemed to do the trick.’
He braced himself for a final onslaught. ‘So everything you told us about what happened that night was a lie.’
‘No!’
‘When you failed to confront him the night before at Ariane Briand’s house, you issued a veiled threat to kill him, and the following night lured him to the island by threatening to set his house on fire. When he arrived you fought, verbally at first, then physically.’
‘No!’
‘Whether it was premeditated or not, you grabbed a knife and in a frenzy you stabbed him three times in the chest.’
‘That’s not what happened!’
‘You immediately regretted it and tried to revive him. And when that didn’t work you made up a story about some intruder and ran off to tell it to your neighbours.’
‘There was an intruder. I did not kill my husband!’ She glared at him, breathing heavily, and he sat back in his seat, aware that his hands were trembling. He didn’t dare pick up the papers on his knee for fear that it would show.
She looked at him with hatred in her eyes. ‘I think the lion just got the gazelle.’
‘It’s only what you can expect from a prosecuting attorney if you ever go on the witness stand, Mrs Cowell.’ He knew that all the evidence was circumstantial, and accusations alone would not secure a conviction. But just one tiny piece of forensic evidence against her would be enough to tip the balance.
Her face was flushed. Whether from fear, or guilt, or anger it was impossible to tell.
‘Are you charging me?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’ She stood up. ‘Then this interview is over. And if you want to talk to me again you can do it in the presence of a lawyer.’ She strode past him, pushing the screen door open, and went out on to the porch. He got up to look from the window and watched as she ran down the steps and walked off along the edge of the cliffs. Her arms were folded, hair streaming out behind her, and it made him think of Ciorstaidh striding off across the machair after she had told his ancestor that she hated him.
When Sime turned back to the room, Crozes was standing there. He looked exhilarated. ‘Just about nailed her,’ he said. ‘Great job, Sime.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I
The bar shimmered in semi-darkness, light washing down across bottles and optics from hidden overhead lighting. Sime sat at the polished counter on his own, while a bored barman cleaned glasses to keep himself busy. He hadn’t felt much like eating with the others, and now they were all in the bowling alley. Friends and colleagues who had worked together on the same team for months, sharing friendship and downtime. Laughing. Cheering when someone made a strike, voices echoing around the cavernous bowling hall. There was a feeling that they were just one step away from cracking this case, and spirits were high. Norman Morrison had been dismissed as a red herring. At worst it seemed that his death had been nothing more than a tragic accident.
Sime had his back to them, but couldn’t shut out the noise.
He was on his third or fourth whisky and had begun to lose count. But the oblivion he had been hoping for seemed no nearer than it had when he first sat down. If the alcohol was having any effect on him he wasn’t aware of it.