‘Let me tell you, I have plenty of things to say to you, Police Inspector Moralès, but only at the station, in a proper interview room.’
‘You want me to take you in for questioning?’
‘Well, that depends.’
‘Depends on what?’
‘On whether you want the true truth.’
‘Fine. Tomorrow afternoon?’
‘Let me tell you, I can’t tomorrow, because a bistro like this gets busy, busy, busy, believe me, and I work long days… I do want to answer your questions, mind you, but it can’t interfere with my schedule… How about the day after tomorrow?’
‘Fine. Two o’clock, then.’
‘Morning would be better, before we open.’
‘Naturally. Half past nine.’
‘Right. Let me tell you, are you going to haul me in?’
‘No, just come into the station, please.’
‘And are you going to leave me your card, in case I have any urgent information?’
‘You can call the station and leave a message.’
‘And what if you’re not there?’
‘Isn’t that the smell of my pizza burning?’
Renaud hurried off.
Moralès turned to the window, which, in the opacity of the night, had morphed into a mirror. The table appeared longer, the place settings multiplied, the beer found company and Moralès found himself face to face with his twin. He hated that. Staring himself in the face and wondering what he was doing there, in the antechamber of nowhere, waiting for a phone call and a burnt pizza.
Outside, a sliver of moonlight opened a crack in the sea and the glass was once again transparent. A female silhouette walked slowly into the shard of light scratching the water’s surface with its giant nail. Moralès watched as she walked up towards the auberge, hesitated, then turned towards the beach.
‘Let me tell you, that’s mademoiselle Day.’
‘Ah.’
Renaud placed the pizza on the table. The blackened edges had clearly been scraped away with a knife.
‘She’s a tourist who’s staying at Guylaine’s, the seamstress’s place.’
‘Renaud?’
At the bar, the man with the priest’s collar was summoning the bistro owner.
‘And let me tell you something, I just have one thing to say—’
‘Renaud!’
‘It’s that—’
‘RENAUD!’
Our Father wanted another drink. Right now.
‘I’ll tell you in the interview.’ As he walked away, the bistro owner winked knowingly at the exhausted policeman.
Moralès dug into his pizza, his eye on the solitary feminine figure, silhouetted like a Chinese shadow puppet on rice paper as she climbed slowly, delicately eastward. Until she disappeared out of sight.
Why wasn’t Sarah returning his calls? For some months, it had been as if the threads of his life were slipping between his fingers, tangling around his ankles, catching his feet, and tripping him up. It crossed his mind he was just getting old and… how could he put it?
A cloud swallowed the crescent moon, leaving only the tired reflection of his own face in the window, which darkness had once again turned into a mirror. Joaquin Moralès took a look at himself. Fifty-two years old. The salt and pepper of time had streaked his hair like shooting stars. Some said it lent him a certain charm. He caught his own eye. Old and… just a fool, he thought.
Then he lowered his gaze.
2
CHARTED WATERS
Alberto (1974)
When O’Neil Poirier returned from Anticosti seven days later, the sailboat was still moored at the wharf, right where he and his men had left it, silent, unmoving, its hatches battened down.
The fisherman tied up the Alberto and went to see the guy in the fish warehouse, to ask him…
Ah, yes, there had been a woman with a baby in the sailboat. But she’d had things to do in the city, apparently, and so one of the delivery drivers had taken them on board his fish truck – her and the bairn – must have been two or three days ago. Was that Tuesday or Wednesday? Poor driver, stuck with a woman and a newborn, what a hassle! But she paid well, apparently. And the driver had just got married – didn’t have a lot of money – so it suited him. Know who I’m talking about, O’Neil? Daraîche, the tall, gruff one who never says a word? Well, he was the one who went off with the girl and the baby. When are they coming back? He came back yesterday. Took a while in town, ’cos there was a problem with the truck. Transmission was worn, apparently. Could have had an accident. Can you imagine, with a newborn? Would have been a hassle! Her? Nobody knows when she’s coming back. Daraîche told her his schedule and she said she’d contact him, apparently.
Anyway, the guy in the fish warehouse added, the boss reckons the sailboat is in the way, so they’re on about moving it, taking it down to the end of the wharf. The cargo ships from the Schefferville mine make a big wake, O’Neil Poirier said, so that might bash the sailboat up against the wharf. Sink it, even. The guy in the fish place shrugged – all they cared about there was offloading the fish without any hassle, and the sailboat was in the way. Poirier said he was the one who moored it there, and that his men would take care of it.
And so that’s what they did. They emptied the Alberto of her catch and tied the sloop alongside without breaking a thing. Then they towed it slowly to the middle of the bay to free up the wharf and the boat ramp, and keep it clear of the cargo-ship channel. They took the sailboat to the lobster-fishing area. If the small fishing boats could pass through there, it’d be deep enough for the sailboat too. They dropped the sloop’s anchor off to the side, then used the Alberto to pull the chain tight, to make sure the sailboat wouldn’t drift free. And that night, since it was warm out, Poirier slept out on deck, just in case. Two days later, when the men set off again, the sloop was still in the same spot. They added an extra anchor to Pilar (Poirier made a mental note of the sailboat’s name, just in case) – one they had aboard the Alberto that would hold fast in rough weather. They also attached a float to the warp, so that, if the woman came back and wanted to set sail in their absence (which O’Neil feared might happen), she could just cast off and his crew could recover the anchor using the float.
But as it turned out, the Alberto had the time to sail the seas and fish almost all summer long, and then sold her season’s catch before the young mother returned to her sailboat and O’Neil finally got the chance to talk to her.
Charted Waters (2007)
Cyrille said that all truths were ever-flowing and elusive. Those who went to sea knew that anything atop the waves was forever breaking up and reforming. Differently. He said that the wind, the current and the ocean swell were insatiable; that you could never be too careful, even on a glassy sea. What was true in the here and now would make a liar of you not ten minutes later. He said the only reason we exist was the ever-shifting lie that is life.
Until then, I had accepted, in spite of myself, that happenstance would lead me to my destiny and that the incomprehensible would cross my path. But down on the wharf, seeing Cyrille on his knees before Marie Garant’s body, tangled up in the net, I didn’t have the heart for Victor’s Hail Mary.
I ummed and ahed for a while before I made up my mind, then, during the dark hour when the wolves come out to play, I rang the bell at Father Leblanc’s door. Encased in a questionable fixture, a feeble bulb attracted a cheery bunch of summer flies, who revelled in its yellowish halo. One of them buzzed fretfully, trapped inside the globe. I waited. I had gathered he often enjoyed a tipple down at the bistro. It didn’t bother me that I might be bothering him. I was looking for somebody to enlighten me and, being a man of God, he should have some answers. Etched into the pane of frosted glass was a dove flying towards a triangle of light. I rang again.