Fire in the Stars. Barbara Fradkin
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verges, their occupants crowding against the cordon at the entrance to the concrete pier. Some of the townsfolk had binoculars, Chris noticed, while others had cellphone cameras, even in this remote nook of the island. St. Anthony, he quickly learned, had an excellent cellphone signal.
An RCMP vehicle blocked access to the pier itself, splashing the scene in eerie red and blue. For good measure, yellow tape had also been strung across the entrance road. Stubby shrimp boats bobbed in a line along the pier, and rigging clanked in the stiff night wind.
Chris drew his own, very unofficial-looking GMC Silverado right up behind the RCMP vehicle, prompting a warning shout from the uniformed constable standing guard at the tape. Chris fumbled in his jacket for his ID as he climbed out.
“Corporal Tymko from Deer Lake,” he said. “Looking for Corporal Biggs.”
The constable snapped to attention. “He’s up on the boat, sir. The body’s still in the net. We’re waiting for the medical examiner.”
Chris was amused. His corporal rank was brand-new; not so long ago, he’d been standing at the bottom of the ladder himself, gazing upwards in awe and hope. The constable pointed out the small shrimp vessel rocking in the water at the end of the pier. The edge of the pier was cluttered with storage boxes, netting, and coils of rope, but the pavement next to the boat was clear. As Chris strode along the pier, breathing in the sea air tanged with fish and salt, he mentally braced himself. Bodies pulled out of the sea could be bloated and chewed beyond recognition. As long as it isn’t Phil, he repeated to himself over and over, I’ll be fine.
The detachment commander’s vehicle was parked beside the boat with its engine running and three people huddled beneath blankets inside, obviously chilled by the wind that licked off the ocean. Part of the crew, he assumed, suffering as much from shock as cold.
Powerful floodlights had been set up on the pier to supplement the boat’s lights, and, looking beyond the boat’s high steel hull, Chris could clearly see two men inside the cabin. One was pacing, while the other projected a quiet, watchful attention. After showing his ID to the constable in the DC’s cruiser, Chris clambered aboard and ducked into the cabin. The stench of fish nearly closed his nostrils and he suppressed a gag. He wondered, irrelevantly, whether the crew could ever wash themselves clean of the smell.
Corporal Biggs lived up to his name in breadth as well as height, and his florid face and bulbous nose suggested a fondness for Newfoundland screech. He reminded Chris of an oversized leprechaun, but there was no hint of mischief or merriment in his eyes tonight. A waft of booze floated around him as he shook Chris’s hand and thanked him for coming.
Chris glanced out the cabin window. The boat deck was empty, but suspended above it by ropes was a huge net of shrimp “Where’s the body, sir?”
“Still in the net as per the instructions we were given.”
“May I see it?”
“Why?”
“I’d like to rule out a missing person.”
Biggs grunted. “All in good time. Nothing to see yet but a hand, a foot, and some clothes. It’s a waiting game until the doc pronounces.”
“Any damn fool can see he’s dead!” snapped the man who’d been pacing. He wore a seaman’s cap and a heavy wool jacket. Biggs hadn’t bothered to introduce him, but Chris took him to be the skipper.
“Well, I know that, Norm,” Biggs said, “but those are the rules.”
“Meanwhile I’ll have to throw all that catch away.”
“Probably a wise move, anyway. Not too much call for shrimp that’s been cozying up to a dead body for hours.”
The skipper sank onto the stool by the wheel and yanked off his cap to rub his bald head. “Can’t you at least let my kids go home? They been days on the boat and hours without food or rest.”
“I’ll arrange for some food. We have to take their statements before they go.”
“What statements? We all saw the same t’ing! We pulled up the net, this foot near falls out, and we called to shore. You know the rest!”
Chris sympathized with the exasperated skipper. What the hell had Biggs and his detachment been doing since they got here? He’d seen shock take many forms in his career. As a seaman, Norm had probably experienced his share of drama and tragedy over his lifetime, but pulling a dead man up in his net was likely a first. Worrying about his children was a natural reaction.
“I can take their statements if that helps, sir,” he said.
“Good idea. Take Constable Leger there with you. One by one, so they don’t contaminate each other’s stories.”
Contaminate! Chris nearly laughed aloud as he descended onto the pier. Their stories had all been well contaminated during their wait in the car, if not on the twelve-hour trip back to port, but he held his tongue. More than once, a smart quip had landed him in trouble with his superiors, and if he ever wanted to make it up the career ladder in a police force with no sense of humour, he had to learn to behave.
It appeared the entire contingent of St. Anthony RCMP officers was at the scene, but since it also appeared the entire town had turned out for the drama, Chris didn’t suppose it mattered. He opened the cruiser door and peered at the expectant faces gazing back at him. Two men and a young woman. They all looked a pale shade of green, but perhaps that was the light.
He picked the woman and ushered her to a quiet corner of the pier. She hunched over against the wind. Her thin frame didn’t begin to fill out the huge wool jacket that she hugged around herself, but the dark eyes that appraised him were shrewd and sure.
“He’s not a local, you know,” she said before he could even record her name.
“You saw his face?”
“No, but not wit’ ’dem clothes. Nudding on him but a plaid jacket, pants, and running shoes. You don’t go out to sea like that.”
“Maybe he was on the land.”
“What? And swam 250 kilometres out to sea? Some trick, that!”
He laughed and asked her name. “Liz Parsons. My dad’s the skipper. Me and my brothers crews for him when we’re not in school. But we’ll all tell you the same. This time of year, none of us locals would be wearing thin clothes like that. Don’t keep the wind out at all. Most likely a tourist. You check whale-watching tours, I bet you’ll find someone fell overboard.”
Chris suspected those had already been checked, but he nodded appreciatively. “Good idea, Liz. What can you tell me about the area he was snagged?”
“It’s prime shrimp waters, about 250 kilometres northeast of St. Anthony. Also has lots of other ground fish. It’s about a hundred metres deep ’dere, but I can’t tell you if we caught ’im on the bottom or in between. We didn’t know he was ’dere until we hauled the net aboard.”
Chris cast about for more questions. He knew nothing about the sea or the behaviour of bodies within it. The closest he’d come was Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories, where fishermen and unlucky tourists were occasionally caught out in a deadly storm. He knew that in fresh, warm water lakes, bodies sank to the bottom immediately and began to rise again after about a week as they bloated with gas. But the salt water and frigid temperatures of the North Atlantic could change all that.
“Is it possible to guess — say, from the prevailing winds or the current — what direction he likely came from?”
“Labrador current comes down the coast,” she said, gesturing with her arms, “and the gulf current comes up the strait, so it can be tricky, but mostly easterly. So he could be from anywhere on the coast of Labrador to the open North Atlantic.”
“Did you see any other boats around the area of your net?”
She snorted. “We was out there four days, towed miles with that net.