The Killing Tide

by Jean-Luc Bannalec

  He was on his feet. The conversation was at an end.

  Dupin stood up too. Unhurriedly.

  “Au revoir, Monsieur Morin.”

  Dupin set off and it was not long before he found himself on the coastal path. The silvery glitter of the bay through the villa window was no more than a cheap shadow of the unending sparkle out here.

  * * *

  “Jumeau insisted on coming in his own boat. Two officers are with him.”

  It was unorthodox, but why not? Dupin was, after all, the embodiment of unorthodox procedure. He wouldn’t criticize Riwal’s decision.

  “He should be here any minute, our colleagues have just called in.”

  “Okay.” Dupin would be there in a few minutes; he could see the chapel, but he hesitated. “Let’s do this differently, Riwal. I’ll meet Jumeau on his boat, not in the Ty Mad. I’ll head to the quay.”

  “I … okay, that works too, I’ll tell them … By the way, we can scrub Thomas Roiyou, the oil boat captain, from our list. Two fishing boats saw him coming out of the long harbor neck at Audierne a few minutes after six P.M. He still had to go by the auction hall; his little oil depot lies beyond it.”

  “I understand.”

  It was almost a shame. They might at least have let him stew a bit longer, Dupin thought.

  “One more thing, Riwal. Ask Nolwenn to organize a meeting with this Vaillant. This evening.” Just to be safe, he quickly added, “Somewhere here on the mainland.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Dupin had reached the chapel, on his left the little beach that suggested the Mediterranean.

  Something had occurred to him. Something important.

  He looked for the numbers Nolwenn had sent him, and found what he was looking for.

  “Hello? Monsieur Leblanc? Commissaire Dupin here.”

  Maybe the scientist could make sense of it.

  “One second.”

  He could hear dull thuds.

  “I was just in the technical area. I’m yours now. All ears.”

  “Laetitia Darot and Céline Kerkrom stayed a while in Darot’s boat at the entrance to Douarnenez Bay. Was that one of Darot’s areas? What could they have been up to there?”

  It was clear to Dupin that there were two questions: Why were the two women on one boat? And: Why had they stopped there, there in particular? What were they doing in that area? If he wasn’t mistaken, it wasn’t one of their usual sites.

  “Really, in the bay?”

  “In the mouth of the bay, yes. You said Darot’s dolphins lived near Sein, Molène, and Ouessant, right?”

  “Recently? That was recently?”

  “In the last few weeks, yes.”

  “What obviously occurs to me is the round-headed dolphins. They follow the cephalopods and mollusks: squid, octopuses, their preferred food. In summer these retreat into the rocky coastal areas of the bay, and the dolphins follow them. I know Darot watched them last summer. This year she didn’t mention it, but that means nothing.”

  Dupin thought he remembered Riwal mentioning round-headed dolphins that morning, but so far nobody else had.

  “Are they rare?”

  “They’re only around our area in the summer. The round-headed dolphins grow to about four meters. A few examples can weigh up to six hundred and fifty kilos. They have a bulky forehead that falls away vertically, a broad, short snout, a sickle-shaped fin, and—”

  “Could there be something politically charged about these dolphins?” Dupin interrupted him.

  “I don’t know. All I know is Laetitia watched them for several weeks last summer. Their arrival is always something special.”

  “Thank you, Monsieur Leblanc.” The curved path down to the sea was fringed with several tall pines. To the right was the cemetery behind an old wall. To the left the Île Tristan. It looked as if you could be there in just one long jump.

  Dupin could already see the pier. And at the end of the pier a boat was just docking.

  Snow white, a bright blue stern, rounded off at the front, a paprika red edging all around. The bridge was glazed from waist height and had orange-and-yellow-painted sides, on its roof the usual antennas and transmitters. Dupin reckoned the boat was about eight or nine meters long. In the bow there was a big red box, two pink buoys, and a tower of plastic boxes.

  Dupin reached the pier. Even though the tide was still high, there were at least two meters between the pier and the waterline.

  He could now make out two policemen on board and a slim young man with collar-length hair. A black sweatshirt and bright yellow oilskin bib overalls. That had to be Jumeau.

  Dupin headed for the rusty narrow ladder at the end of the pier, the same as there were everywhere along the coast. The two policemen noticed the commissaire and waved to him; Jumeau just gave him a fleeting glance.

  Clambering down the ladder was a dicey business, and Dupin sighed when he reached the bottom.

  “Everything go normally?” Dupin asked, and pushed himself past his two colleagues standing between the buoys and boxes. Jumeau hadn’t thought it necessary to come to the bow.

  “All okay.”

  When Dupin had made his way around the bridge, Jumeau was busy emptying two boxes by the side, as if he’d come here to work. Then he stood with his back to the railing, leaning on his elbows. A casual pose.

  “One of the two women will have been jealous. Probably both,” Dupin said without skipping a beat.

  “It was just small stuff. Nothing more.” He had almost shrugged his shoulders, or at least it looked like that. But it was clear Jumeau didn’t mean it disparagingly.

  “Occasionally we spent the night together. Mostly not even the whole night, just a few hours.”

  Dupin eyed him.

  “I liked them a lot. Both.” His eyes moistened.

  He was undoubtedly a good-looking guy. A handsome face, if a bit lean; harmonious features, gentle, mild, boyish, with melancholy dark green eyes. Wiry, slender fingers and hands.

  “Was there an argument? Between you and the women? Between Kerkrom and Darot?”

  “Never.”

  Hard to believe.

  “It all just sort of happened of its own accord, en passant.”

  “Did you tell them? That you were also having—a relationship—with the other?”

  “They both knew, yes. The thing with Céline was over sooner, back in March, actually.”

  “Did you prefer one? Laetitia?”

  It took him a while to answer.

  “Maybe, yes.” He suddenly seemed terribly sad.

  “You know that this ‘small stuff’ has made you a prime suspect?”

  His eyebrows rose slightly.

  “Your … meetings with Laetitia Darot, when did they start?”

  Jumeau blinked and for the first time looked directly at the commissaire. “In March. Then we saw one another a few weeks later. And last night.”

  Dupin pricked up his ears. Unbelievable. Manet had said nothing about that.

  “Last night? You were together with Laetitia Darot last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “The night before she was murdered?”

  A barely noticeable nod.

  “From when until when?”

  “From eleven until twelve, more or less.”

  “That was just a few hours before her death.”

  He said nothing.

  “Where did you meet? At your place?”

  “Hers.”

  “And then—where did you go afterward?”

  “Home. To sleep.”

  “And did anyone see you by chance, on your way home?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you mention to anyone the next morning you had met? Give a hint?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Did she seem different to you last night? In any way? Did anything strike you?”

  “She was the same as always.”

  It was exhausting. He had to drag every word out of
the fisherman.

  Dupin stood next to Jumeau. Stared at the water. Across the bay. Followed with his eyes a boat sailing leisurely toward the Île Tristan.

  “Last night, prior to eleven o’clock, what were you doing?”

  “I was at home, alone.”

  “Before that you were in Le Tatoon.”

  “Yes.”

  Seen objectively, Jumeau hadn’t a trace of an alibi. He could easily also have gone to Douarnenez.

  “I went out again.” It was the first time that Jumeau had begun to speak of his own accord. “I couldn’t sleep. I bumped into Laetitia by chance. At her shed. We hadn’t arranged anything.”

  Dupin paid keen attention. “What was she doing at her shed?”

  “I’ve no idea. She was standing by the door.”

  “Did she have anything with her?”

  “No.”

  “When you were in her house, did you see her laptop?”

  “No.”

  “But you have seen one at her place?”

  Jumeau looked as if he was thinking hard. “On the table in the living room.”

  “Not last night?”

  “We weren’t in the living room.”

  Dupin sighed audibly. “Did she tell you anything about her work? About her project?”

  “She told me a lot about the dolphins.”

  “Including the dead dolphins over the past few weeks?”

  “She was so furious.”

  That was almost certainly the right word.

  “But she didn’t talk about it much. She didn’t want to.”

  “Did she have a theory, about how they were killed? And by whom?”

  “She hated the whole industrial fishing industry.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she link Charles Morin to the dead dolphins?”

  “No, she never mentioned Morin. But of course he has countless dolphins on his conscience.”

  Dupin walked over to the railing opposite. Jumeau appeared to take no notice. The view from there was the yacht harbor.

  “What do you think? Is Morin her father?”

  “A father isn’t a father, just because he’s a child’s biological parent.” For a moment it was clear Jumeau was internally agitated.

  “Was he her father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There was no point to this.

  “Was she preoccupied by anything? Did she seem worked up? Was there anything unusual?”

  “No.” He was looking at Dupin, but at the same time seemed to be looking through him. “She was the same as always.”

  “What did she talk to you about yesterday?”

  “She told me about some dolphins getting high.”

  “High!”

  “How a group of young dolphins were getting high on the poison from a blowfish. They were inhaling it like a joint. One after another would take the fish in their mouth and squeeze it gently so that the fish exhaled its poison in tiny doses. They were all completely high, doing the craziest tricks, backflips and so on.”

  The anecdote was too weird.

  “Did she tell you about the project with the signal emitters on the nets?”

  “I saw the net once down at the harbor. She had mentioned it when we met up three weeks ago. Saying that all the fishing boats in the world should be immediately equipped with them, that the small-scale fisherfolk can’t afford them and that the big ones don’t give a shit about them.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Not even—”

  The penetrating ring of Dupin’s cell phone interrupted the sentence.

  “Riwal, I’ll call you right back, I’m—”

  “Boss, we’ve—” The inspector was hard to understand, his voice weak. “We’ve—” He stumbled again. “We’ve got another murder. Yet another throat cut.”

  Dupin froze.

  “On the Crozon peninsula. Lostmarc’h Beach. The craggy tail that hangs into Douarnenez Bay.” Riwal gradually pulled himself together. “On the other side of Morgat, a totally isolated—”

  “Who is it?”

  Dupin pushed his way past the bridge and ran into the foremost part of the bow.

  Anxiety showed in the eyes of the two policemen who had come with Jumeau. Dupin had almost shouted at them.

  “A professor emeritus, seventy-five, living alone, he—”

  “An old professor?”

  “A Parisian like you. Similarly been here in Brittany about five years. Has a house across the beach. A neighbor found him, when she was out with her dog. On one of the dunes. She knew him. An extraordinarily well-read man, she said, he—”

  “His throat cut?”

  “That’s how the police there described it.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Four police from Crozon. I know two of them. Good men.”

  It was hair-raising. Insane.

  “I’m heading there right away. We can meet at the scene. Kadeg needs to come, you too…” Dupin thought for a moment. “Then again, no. You stay on the Île de Sein, Riwal. Kadeg needs to drop everything. I’ll call Nolwenn.”

  The case had taken on serious proportions. Completely unaffected by their investigation. Now there were three. Three murders within less than twenty-four hours. That was going to cause giant waves.

  “Boss, do you think now we’re dealing with a serial killer?”

  “No, that’s not what I think.”

  “I know we’re only a tiny blip in the statistics. But they exist even so. Think back to the serial killer we had last year in Normandy. Nobody had thought that possible either.”

  “It remains distinctly unlikely, Riwal.”

  His conviction was less than convincing, he realized.

  “We have spent the whole day tracking down the corpses the killer left for us to find.”

  The conversation was crazy.

  “What was the professor’s subject?’

  “Virology. Professor Philippe Lapointe.”

  “A physician?”

  “Virology falls into the divide between medicine and biology.”

  “We need to find out the time of death as quickly as possible.”

  Obviously what Riwal had said was true. The killer was doing a proper tour. Douarnenez yesterday evening. The Île de Sein this morning and—maybe, probably—the Crozon peninsula afterward. And there was another thing: mixing the two earlier victims with this murder was curious, at least at first glance. A young fisherwoman, a dolphin researcher—between whom there were however several things in common and certain overlaps—and now a retired Parisian professor of virology. What could link them?

  “The pathologist is on the way. The same as on Sein this morning.”

  “Do we know anything about the professor’s contacts?”

  “So far all we’ve had is the agitated call from his neighbor to the gendarmerie. And the few bits of information I’ve just given you.”

  “See you later, Riwal.”

  Dupin put his cell phone in his pants pocket.

  The two other policemen had stared at him continuously.

  “Tell Jumeau I’ll contact him again.”

  Dupin was already at the rusty ladder.

  On the almost one-hour trip around the wide bay, and despite the car’s breakneck speed, the commissaire had managed to speak three times on the phone to Nolwenn.

  She had never heard the dead man’s name but she was already researching it as they spoke, and very shortly had gathered a pile of information. Professor Philippe Lapointe was a virologist and immunologist, and clearly had a substantial national and international reputation, had recently studied at the Paris Université Descartes’s Institute for Molecular Virology. For years, however, there had been no new publications. It seemed he really was in retirement; the list of previous publications took up several pages. There was nothing about him personally except for the fact that he had turned seventy-five in March; the oth
er data only related to his scientific work. By her third call—it seemed she was still sitting in her aunt’s “head office”—she had turned up an assistant from the former Paris faculty who was going to try to find other information for her.

  Between Dupin’s first and second calls, Nolwenn had spoken on the phone to the prefect, who had let “his” commissaire know that they had “both been assigned to very important business.” That of course he was involved in the investigation, even from afar, and that he had full confidence in their “so thoroughly successful investigative work so far.”

  Meanwhile Nolwenn was on the tail of Laetitia Darot’s mother’s neighbors, friends, and acquaintances. So far in vain. But it was still of importance.

  Goulch had tried to get through to Dupin but ended up talking to Nolwenn. He had checked out the fisherfolk who were involved in the net project. They had all only tried out the net a few times. The people they dealt with were the technical department at the parc, not Laetitia Darot. There was no indication of any communication between them, not anything that would make any of them in any way suspicious: Goulch had come to the same conclusion as Morin.

  Dupin had made it—strictly following his GPS—down bumpy roads as far as the lonely high cape. The last part of the route had been an unpaved, dusty track. Potholes, large stones, and deep sand tracks alternated. The rocking back and forth of the car reminded Dupin of the ferry that morning. The path came to an abrupt end before meter-high brambles. Not so much a parking place as a dead end, with just a glimpse of the bay here and there. It couldn’t be far to the beach. Dupin hadn’t seen a car anywhere, so there had to be another way here, probably from the north, from the village.

  He left his car where it was.

  He battled his way down a steep path through a jungle of thorny blackberry bushes. Suddenly, completely unexpectedly, they opened up to reveal a breathtaking view.

  Only moments ago, in Tréboul, he had found himself in a gentle Mediterranean dream of a bay with babbling turquoise water and a couple of decorative rocks. Now he was on top of a great cliff hemmed in on all sides by wild beaches stretching for kilometers, reminiscent of northwest Scotland or Ireland. On both sides the craggy landscape stretched endlessly, deep bright green on the hills.Overwhelming. There before his eyes, his ears, he could feel it, smell it: the wide-open Atlantic, crashing tumultuously against the beach. The tossing, whipping winds, the torrents of water coming together crossing thousands of kilometers to crash onto the land. The old continent. The Atlantic with all its power, its forces, its size. The ancient feel of Brittany—it was in places like this that you really felt it. Dupin always thought it had to be at a place like this that a Roman had once stood and determined: this is where it ends, here it is, the end of the world.