Entry Island(33)

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‘Any reason I might need a lawyer?’

‘None that I can think of. How about you?’

Aitkens shrugged. ‘So what do you want to know?’

Sime stood up and closed the door. The noise from the incident room along the hall was a distraction. He sat down again. ‘You can start by telling me about what it’s like to work in a salt-mine.’

Aitkens seemed surprised. Then he puffed up his cheeks and blew contempt through his lips. ‘It’s a job.’

‘What kind of hours do you work?’

‘Twelve-hour shifts. Four days a week. Been doing it for ten years now, so I don’t think much about it anymore. In winter, on the day shift, it’s dark when you get there, it’s dark when you leave. And there’s precious little light underground. So you spend half your life in the dark, Monsieur … Mackenzie, you said?’

Sime nodded.

‘Depressing. Gets you down sometimes.’

‘I can imagine.’ And Sime could hardly imagine anything worse. ‘What size of workforce is there?’

‘A hundred and sixteen. Miners, that is. I have no idea how many work in administration.’

Sime was surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have guessed from the surface there were that many men down there.’

Aitkens’s smile was almost condescending. ‘You couldn’t begin to guess what’s down there from the surface, Monsieur Mackenzie. The whole archipelago of the Madeleine islands sits on columns of salt that have pushed up through the earth’s crust. So far we have dug down 440 metres into one of them, with another eight or ten kilometres to go. The mine is on five levels and extends well beneath the surface of the sea on either side of the island.’

Sime returned the smile. ‘You’re right, Mr Aitkens, I would never have guessed that.’ He paused. ‘Where were you on the night of the murder?’

Aitkens didn’t blink. ‘What night was that exactly?’

‘The night before last.’

‘I was on night shift. Like I’ve been all week. You can check the records if you like.’

Sime nodded. ‘We will.’ He sat back in his seat. ‘What kind of salt is it you mine?’

Aitkens laughed. ‘Not table salt, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s salt for the roads. About 1.7 million tons of it a year. Most of it for use in Quebec or Newfoundland. The rest goes to the States.’

‘Can’t be very healthy, down there twelve hours a day breathing in all that salt.’

‘Who knows?’ Aitkens shrugged. ‘I’ve not died of it yet, anyway.’ He chuckled. ‘They say that salt-mines create their own microclimate. In some Eastern European countries they send people down the mines as a cure for asthma.’

Sime watched his smile fade and waited while Aitkens grew slowly impatient.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened out on Entry Island or not?’

But Sime was not ready to go there yet. He said, ‘I want you to tell me about your cousin.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Anything. And everything.’

‘We’re not close.’

‘So I gather.’

Aitkens gave him a look, and Sime could see the calculation in his eyes. Had Kirsty told him that? ‘My father’s sister was Kirsty’s mother. But my father fell for a French-speaking girl from Havre Aubert and left Entry Island to marry her when he was barely out of his teens.’

‘You don’t speak English, then?’

‘I grew up speaking French at school. But my father always spoke English to me in the house, so it’s not bad.’

‘And your parents are still alive?’

He pressed his lips together in a grim line. ‘My mother died some years ago. My father’s in the geriatric ward of the hospital. Doesn’t even know me when I go to see him. I have full power of attorney.’

Sime nodded. ‘So basically you and Kirsty grew up in two very different linguistic communities.’

‘We did. But the differences aren’t just linguistic. They’re cultural, too. Most of the French-speakers here are descended from the original seventeenth-century settlers of Acadia. When the British defeated the French and created Canada, the Acadians got kicked out, and a lot of them ended up here.’ He grunted, unimpressed. ‘Most of my neighbours still think of themselves as Acadians rather than Quebecois.’ He started picking the grime from beneath his fingernails. ‘A lot of the English-speakers got shipwrecked here on the way to the colonies, and never left. That’s why the two communities have never mixed.’

‘So you didn’t have much contact with Kirsty when you were growing up?’