Entry Island(37)

Sergeant Aucoin and half a dozen patrolmen from Cap aux Meules, along with a group of islanders, stood in a knot on a gravel turning area just beyond the house. They shuffled impatiently in the wind, anxious to get their search under way. Morrison had been missing for more than sixteen hours now. But Crozes didn’t want them trampling over what might be evidence until he’d had a chance to assess the situation.

‘Sime!’ On hearing his name Sime turned to see Crozes approaching with Blanc in tow. ‘We’re getting conflicting stories about this guy.’ He nodded towards a blue-and-cream house about fifty metres away along a pebble track. ‘The neighbours have been telling the local cops one thing, the mother something quite different. You’d better talk to them.’

*

‘Only reason we stayed was to raise the kids here.’ Jackie Patton ran dishwater-red hands over her apron and caught a stray strand of hair with her little finger to loop it back behind her ear. She left a powdering of flour on her cheek and on the soft brown hair at her temple. She had a square face, fair skin splattered with freckles, and there was a weary acceptance in her eyes that life had not gone as planned. She was not ugly, but neither was she attractive. ‘Soon as it was time for the big school, we was gonna be up and away. Figured we owed it to the kids to give them the kind of upbringing we had on the island. Nothing better.’ She sprinkled more flour on the dough on her worktop and flattened it out again with her rolling pin. ‘Now they’re gone, and we’re still here.’

Crozes, Blanc and Sime were squeezed into her tiny kitchen, standing around a small table at its centre. They very nearly filled it. Mrs Patton’s focus was on the short pastry she was preparing for her meat pie.

‘We lost count of the number of jobs Jim applied for. Trouble is, twenty years of fishing for lobster only qualifies you to fish for lobster. So he’s still out every May first on the boat and I’m stuck here counting the days till the kids get back for the holidays.’ She looked up suddenly. ‘They should have locked him up years ago.’

‘Who?’ Sime said.

‘Norman Morrison. He’s not right in the head. The kids used to go over there when they was younger. He was like one of them, you know, a big kid himself. Then he starts making this city on the ceiling.’

Sime frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, you’ll see it for yourselves when you go over to the house. I figure it’s probably still there. See, his bedroom’s right up in the roof. Low ceiling and all. And with him being tall like that he could stretch up and reach it.’

She stopped to gaze out the window. The Morrison house stood at a respectful distance in stark profile against the water of the bay and the islands of the archipelago beyond.

‘It was quite something. Took talent to do that. And some imagination. I mean, damn near the whole island has traipsed in there to see it at one time or another. Amazing what a simple mind can make of not very much.’

She returned to her pastry.

‘Anyways, in the end we figured he’d only done it so he’d have a reason for taking the kids up to his bedroom.’

‘Do you mean he molested the children?’ Crozes said.

‘No sir,’ she said. ‘I can’t say he did. But my Angela came back one time and said he touched her funny. And for the life of us we couldn’t get her to tell us how.’

Sime said, ‘Was she upset?’

Mrs Patton stopped rolling out her dough and raised her head thoughtfully to gaze into the middle distance. ‘No, she wasn’t. That’s the funny thing, I guess. She really liked Norman. Cried for close on a week when we banned the kids from ever going back to the Morrison house.’

‘Why did you do that?’

She wheeled around defensively. ‘’Cos he touched her funny. That’s what she said, and I don’t know what she meant by it, but I wasn’t taking no chances. He’s not right in the head, and he was far too old to be playing with children.’

There was an awkward silence, then, and she turned back to her pastry.

‘Anyways, someone like that should be in a home or a hospital. Not in the community.’

‘You think he was dangerous?’ Blanc asked.

She shrugged. ‘Who knows. He’s got a temper on him, I can tell you that. Like a kid throwing a tantrum sometimes. When his mother would call him in at mealtimes and he wasn’t ready to go. Or if something didn’t just go his way.’

‘What about Kirsty Cowell?’ Sime said.

She flicked a wary glance in his direction. ‘What about her?’

‘You told Sergeant Aucoin that Norman was obsessed with her.’