The Watcher in the Shadows (Niebla 3)

Ismael took her hand and helped her up to the jetty.

‘One more reason to believe only what you see,’ he replied, still holding her hand.

Irene remembered the words spoken by Lazarus during their first evening at Cravenmoore.

‘Sometimes our eyes can mislead us.’

‘Not mine.’

‘Thanks for the lift.’

Ismael nodded, slowly letting go of her hand.

‘See you Saturday.’

‘See you Saturday.’

Ismael stepped back into the boat, cast off the line and let the boat drift away from the jetty while he hoisted the sail. The wind carried the craft as far as the entrance to the cove; seconds later the Kyaneos had sailed out into the bay and was riding the waves.

Irene stood on the jetty, watching the white sail lose itself in the immensity of the bay. A smile was still plastered on her face and a suspicious tingling ran up and down her hands. She knew then that it was going to be a very long week.

4

SECRETS AND SHADOWS

In Blue Bay, calendars only identified two seasons: summer and the rest of the year. During the summer, the people of the village worked ten times as hard, servicing the neighbouring seaside resorts, where tourists and people from the city came in search of sand, sun and expensive forms of boredom. Bakers, craftsmen, tailors, carpenters, builders; all kinds of professions depended on the three long months when the sun smiled upon the coast of Normandy. During those thirteen or fourteen weeks, the inhabitants of Blue Bay worked like busy ants, so that they could then idle away the rest of the year like Aesop’s lazy grasshopper and survive the winter. Some of those days were particularly intense, especially the first few in August, when demand rose from practically zero to levels that were sky-high.

One of the few exceptions to this rule was Christian Hupert. Like the other fishing boat skippers in the village, he worked like an ant for twelve months of the year. Every summer, around the same date, when he saw the other villagers gearing up for action, it occurred to him that perhaps he’d chosen the wrong profession: maybe it would have been wiser to break with the tradition of seven generations and set himself up as a hotelier, a shopkeeper, or something else. That way, perhaps his daughter Hannah wouldn’t have to work as a servant at Cravenmoore and he’d be able to see his wife’s face for more than thirty minutes a day.

Ismael watched his uncle as they worked together fixing the boat’s bilge pump. The fisherman’s pensive expression gave him away.

‘You could always open a boatyard for repairs and such,’ said Ismael.

His uncle replied with what sounded like a croak.

‘Or sell the boat and invest in Monsieur Didier’s shop. He’s been going on about it for six years,’ the boy continued.

Ismael’s uncle stopped what he was doing and observed his nephew. In the thirteen years he’d acted as a surrogate father to the boy, he’d still never managed to erase what he both feared and adored the most in him: his obstinate similarity to his dead father, including a fondness for voicing his opinion when nobody had asked him for advice.

‘Perhaps you should be the one to do that,’ Christian replied. ‘I’m nearly fifty. You can’t change your career at my age.’

‘Then why are you complaining?’

‘Who’s complaining?’

Ism

ael shrugged. They both turned their attention back to the bilge pump.

‘Fine. I won’t say another word,’ Ismael mumbled.

‘I’d be so lucky. Tighten that clamping ring.’

‘The ring’s had it. We should change the pump. One of these days we’ll find ourselves in real trouble.’

Hupert gave him the particular smile he reserved for fish merchants, port authorities and simpletons of various sorts.

‘This pump belonged to my father. Before that, to my grandfather. And before him . . .’