Entry Island(61)

‘But as you say, why would he attack you?’ Crozes took off his baseball cap and scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘What about the fisherman you and Blanc interviewed?’

‘Owen Clarke?’

Crozes nodded. ‘You give him any reason to be pissed off at you?’

‘Not that I’m aware of.’

Crozes dragged his cap firmly back on his head, pulled a gob of phlegm into his mouth and spat into the water. ‘Let’s go talk to him.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Are you okay?’

Sime found it hard to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. ‘I’m fine, Lieutenant. Thanks for asking.’

II

Clarke was wearing an oil-stained blue boiler suit open halfway down his chest to reveal a tangle of wiry hair like silvered copper fusewire. The legs of his trousers gathered around a pair of dirty white trainers that were no longer able to contain his big feet and had burst open along either side. He was out with a strimmer, cutting down the long grass around the house. His face was red and beaded with sweat beneath the peak of his baseball cap. His habitual brown-stained roll-up issued smoke from the corner of his mouth. He saw them coming, but made no attempt to stop the motor until Crozes shouted at him and ran a finger across his throat.

He flicked a switch to cut the fuel supply and turned towards them with a bad grace as the motor spun to a halt. ‘What do you people want now?’

Sime looked at him carefully. He was a big man, which had not been immediately apparent when he and Blanc interviewed him seated at his workbench two days previously. He was certainly big enough to have been Sime’s attacker. Sime glanced at his hands and saw bruised and skinned knuckles, and he realised what had only registered in his subconscious until now. That his assailant had been gloved.

Crozes said, ‘Where were you last night around midnight?’

Clarke looked at Sime and flicked his head towards Crozes. ‘Do I get an introduction?’

‘Lieutenant Daniel Crozes.’ Crozes showed him his ID. ‘Will you answer the question, please?’

Clarke leaned on his strimmer and leered at them. ‘I was screwing this amazing-looking blonde,’ he said. ‘Tits on her like this.’ And he raised his big-knuckled hands to his chest as if grasping imaginary breasts. Then he laughed at the expression on their faces. ‘In my fucking dreams! I was asleep. Home in bed. Ask my wife.’ He grinned to reveal the remaining handful of brown stumps that passed for teeth. ‘Only, don’t tell her about the blonde, okay?’

Crozes leaned forward unexpectedly and whipped off the man’s baseball cap, exposing the swirls of hair that sweat had flattened to his skull, and a nasty bruise high on his left cheekbone.

‘Hey!’ Clarke grabbed for his hat, but Crozes held it out of reach.

‘Where’d you get the bruise, Mr Clarke?’

Clarke’s fingers went automatically to the bruising on his face, and he touched it lightly. His smile had vanished. ‘Slipped on the boat and fell,’ he said defiantly, as if challenging them to contradict him. He swung his gaze towards Sime and the grin returned, ugly and without humour. ‘Where did you get yours?’

*

There seemed little point in asking Mary-Anne Clarke to confirm her husband’s whereabouts of the night before. Wherever he might have been she was going to tell them he was at home in bed with her. But Crozes said he would send someone to take a statement from her later. Just for the record. He was nothing if not punctilious.

As they drove back along the track to Main Street, they could see groups of islanders in the distance, each led by a police officer, working their way methodically across the island in the hunt for Norman Morrison. More than thirty islanders had volunteered, and they were searching old barns and disused sheds, raking through overgrown gullies and creeks. The breeze was getting up now and blew among the long grasses, shifting them in waves and currents like wind on water. The cloud cover was high, allowing only a little hazy sunshine through to lift the brooding darkness of the ocean that moved in restless swells all around the island.

Sime drove, and Crozes stared bleakly out of the window at the searchers. ‘I’m going to assign most of our team to help with the search,’ he said. ‘The sooner we find this guy and rule him either in or out the better. Then we can get back to bringing this investigation to a conclusion.’ He dipped his head to peer up towards the near horizon. ‘Who the hell’s that?’

Sime craned to see, and caught sight of half a dozen quad bikes rising and falling with the contours of the island as they followed a parallel course to the minibus on Main Street. ‘Looks like the Clarke boy and his pals.’