Entry Island by Peter May Read Free Book Online Page B

you last night, Mr Clarke?’
    Clarke raised dangerous eyes to fix Sime in their glare. He spoke slowly, suppressing his anger. ‘I was at home. All night. You can ask my wife, or my mother.’
    ‘We will.’
    He pushed himself back from the bench and sat up straight. ‘I guess the good thing is that when you people go, you’ll take Cowell with you, and he won’t be back. See, I really don’t care who killed him. As long as he’s dead.’ He smiled grimly at the expression on the faces of the detectives.‘There’s no law nor nothing on this island. People make their own justice. We’re free.’ He took a roll-up from a tin and lit it. ‘This our place. And you can all go to hell.’
III
    Old Mrs Clarke sat at the dining-room table, her downturned mouth and sad eyes reflected in its polished surface. Entering the Clarke household had been like stepping back in time. Frilly yellow net curtains gathered around the windows. Floral striped wallpaper covering the walls above dark wood panelling. The floor laid with a dull green linoleum. Plastic ivy with red flowers draped around a profusion of mirrors that somehow seemed to light the room even in the fading afternoon. Every surface and every shelf groaned with ornaments and framed family photos.
    The old lady herself wore a long red blouse over a straight blue skirt that modestly covered her knees. Bloated feet at the end of corned-beef legs were squeezed into shoes that must once have fitted but now looked painfully small. Her face behind thick round glasses was pale, almost grey, and looked as if it had been moulded from putty.
    ‘I was just making up the message list,’ she said, indicating a printed sheet of grocery items and a scrap of lined paper covered with shaky scribbles. The wind outside whistled around the windows and door frames.
    ‘Message list?’ Sime said.
    The old lady chuckled. ‘Messages we call them. Shopping you would say. I phone in my grocery list to the Co-op on Grindstone every two weeks and they send them over on the ferry next day. That’s my job. Chuck’s job is to go and fetch them. Not much to ask a grown boy, but it doesn’t stop him complaining.’
    ‘You live here with your son and daughter-in-law then?’
    ‘No. They live here with me. Though you’d not know it to hear the way her ladyship calls the shots around the place. Not that I pay a blind bit of notice. They’ll get the house soon enough. I’m not long for this world.’
    Sime glanced at Blanc, who seemed confused. ‘You look well enough to me, Mrs Clarke.’
    ‘Appearances can be deceptive, son. Don’t believe everything you see.’
    The door from the hall flew open and a small, square woman in her forties with cropped, red-dyed hair stood glaring at them. Sime glanced from the window and saw a car at the gate where there hadn’t been one earlier. They had not heard it arrive above the clatter of the wind. Mary-Anne Clarke, he presumed.
    ‘What the hell do you want?’ she said.
    ‘Mrs Clarke?’
    ‘My house, I’ll ask the questions.’
    Sime began to understand why Owen Clarke hated the winters. He showed her his Sûreté ID and said, ‘Detectives Mackenzie and Blanc. Just trying to establish the where abouts of your husband yesterday evening.’
    ‘He didn’t kill that weasel Cowell, if that’s what you’re thinking. Wouldn’t have the balls for it unless he had half a pint of whisky in him. And then he wouldn’t be capable of it.’
    ‘Do you know where he was?’
    ‘He was right here at home. All night.’ She glanced at her mother-in-law. ‘That right, Mrs Clarke?’
    ‘If you say so, dear.’
    Mary-Anne swung her gaze back towards the two policemen. ‘Satisfied?’
    *
    ‘Jesus, Sime,’ Blanc said as they closed the garden gate behind them. ‘If I was Clarke I wouldn’t be able to wait till that flare went up on May first.’
    Sime grinned. ‘Are you married, Thomas?’
    Blanc cupped his hands around the end of a cigarette to light it,