But Sime turned away and followed the path that led to the cliffs and the narrow steps down to the jetty. The Cowells’ motor launch bobbed gently in the afternoon swell.
He imagined Kirsty, half drunk, fired by jealous humiliation, running down these steps in the dark and setting off across the bay in that small boat to Cap aux Meules. What kind of desperation must have driven her?
He turned and walked back towards the house and saw that Duke was still waiting for him on the hill.
Sime had no reason to talk to Kirsty again. And yet he wanted to see her. He wanted to tell her how much he hated this, even although he knew he wouldn’t. He started off up the hill after Duke. The dog waited until he was within a few metres, then turned and hobbled on.
The road was rutted and uneven, loose stones skidding away underfoot. When he reached the top of the rise Sime turned and looked back. The house seemed a long way below him already. In the distance, at the southernmost point of the island, the lighthouse looked tiny. And across the water, Havre Aubert seemed almost close enough to touch. The wind was stronger up here, whipping through his hair, filling his hoodie and blowing it out behind him. He turned to find Duke waiting for him again, and he walked on to a point where the road became little more than a path worn through the grass. It divided in a hollow, one branch snaking up towards the summit of Big Hill, the other descending again to the cliffs and the red rock stacks that rose up out of the ocean.
And there he saw her. Standing very close to the cliff’s edge, silhouetted against the blaze of reflected sunlight on the ocean beyond. They were facing east here, out across the Gulf of St Lawrence and the North Atlantic towards a far distant land from which their ancestors had once come.
Duke reached her before he did. She stooped to ruffle his neck then crouched beside him. Sime saw her smiling, animated in a way he had not seen her before. Until he entered her peripheral vision and she turned her head to see him approaching. The smile vanished and she stood up immediately. Her whole demeanour became hostile and defensive. ‘What do you want?’ she said coldly when he reached her.
Sime pushed his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I was just taking a walk. Killing time till the ferry comes.’ He flicked his head beyond where she stood. ‘You’re a bit close to the edge here.’
She laughed, and it seemed to Sime that it was the first time he had seen her genuinely amused. ‘I’m not going to throw myself off, if that’s what you think.’
He smiled. ‘I didn’t.’ He looked along the ragged line of the cliffs. ‘But there’s a lot of erosion here. Not safe to get too close, I wouldn’t think.’
‘I’m touched by your concern.’ The sarcasm had returned.
He looked at her very directly. ‘I’m only doing my job, Mrs Cowell. I bear you no ill will.’
She gasped her disbelief. ‘Accusing me of killing my husband doesn’t feel like you bear me much good will either.’
‘Just testing the evidence.’ He paused. ‘A pathologist I know once told me that when he performs an autopsy on a murder victim he feels like that person’s only remaining advocate on earth. Someone to find and test the evidence that the body of the deceased has left in his care.’
‘And that’s what you’re doing for James?’
‘In a way, yes. He can’t speak for himself. He can’t tell us what happened. And whatever he might have done, whoever he might have been, he didn’t deserve to die like that.’
She looked at him steadily for a long moment. ‘No, he didn’t.’
An awkward silence settled between them. Then he said, ‘Do you really intend to spend the rest of your life here?’
She laughed. ‘Well. That depends on whether or not you put me in jail.’ He found a pale smile in response. ‘But the truth is, Mr Mackenzie, that whatever I might have said in an emotional moment, I really love this island. I played all over it as a child, I’ve walked every inch of it as an adult. Big Hill, Jim’s Hill, Cherry’s Hill. Pimples on the landscape really, but when you’re young they’re the Alps or the Rockies. The island is your whole world, and anything beyond it far off and exotic. Even the other islands in the Magdalens.’
‘Not an easy place to live, I wouldn’t have thought.’
‘Depends what you’re used to. We didn’t know anything else. At least, not until we were older. The weather is hard, sure, but even that you accept, because it’s just how it is. The winters are long, and so cold sometimes that the bay freezes over and it’s possible to walk across to Amherst.’ And for his benefit, ‘That’s Havre Aubert.’