“Jumeau?”
“Indeed, Jumeau’s the kid’s name.”
Dupin was wide awake. “Did somebody tell you about Kerkrom and Jumeau?”
“I didn’t need anybody to tell me. I could feel it.”
“What was it that you … felt?”
“That she was after him.”
“When did you last speak with Céline Kerkrom?”
“Monday, this week. In Douarnenez harbor. At the auction. We don’t often bring a catch in there. But we had a large number of red mullet.”
“And what did you talk about?”
“About the large number of red mullet.”
Dupin took a hard look at him. “Did she say anything specific?”
“She told me about Laetitia’s project. With the transmitters.”
“Did she mention Morin?”
He hesitated a brief moment. “No.”
“Did she—” Dupin cut himself short. He’d felt faint for a moment. He’d already felt it on the way to the Relais du Port. It was familiar to him, this tiredness. More than that: deep exhaustion. Neither the meal nor the two cups of coffee had helped.
“Monsieur Vaillant,” he began again, “did you know Professor Philippe Lapointe?”
He blinked at Dupin bemusedly.
“The third victim, the one found on the beach at Lostmarc’h?”
“Ah, of course, it’s been on the news already.”
“And?”
“I didn’t even know this professor existed.”
Dupin walked around the fish boxes, the buoys, and the nets. This boat was a total mess.
“Along with fishing, I’ve been told you also enjoy acting as old-fashioned smugglers.” Dupin made a point of looking around him.
“We get by. But obviously we stay within the limits of our respected laws.” Vaillant was flirting shamelessly.
“So strictly that you’ve had a series of fines, I’ve heard. Primarily for illegal quantities of alcohol.”
“Trivia. We like drinking. We like smoking too. Nowadays they count as much less serious matters than capital crimes. Like I said, look around all you will. We’ve got time, and you won’t find anything.”
“What about Morin, does he smuggle too? Cigarettes. Big time?”
“I don’t smuggle,” Vaillant said with exaggerated annoyance. “And I haven’t the faintest whether Morin is involved in this lucrative business. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Dupin was now standing directly in front of Vaillant. “Céline Kerkrom or Laetitia Darot saw something, maybe even documented something so that they had proof,” he said, wrinkling his brow. “Or maybe they found something. Whatever it was, it had to do with illegal action by Morin.”
He looked Vaillant directly in the eyes. “Something so concrete and provable that he couldn’t wiggle out of it as easily as he used to. And you in turn knew about it. You got wind somehow. And now you’re in danger too.”
Dupin had to give it a go. Make suppositions. Try his luck. Cut swathes through the thorns. If that was really what had happened. If they really had found proof of something, and others knew it, or even just guessed or speculated that they had, then it would be an explosive shock not just for Morin but for the whole region. In that scenario, Morin wouldn’t just be looking for the murderer, but for others who might know about it. The unknown factor remained what role the professor played.
“If I really knew something I would have seen to it that Morin was in jail long ago.”
“I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Go ask Gochat, the iron lady, why she sent her fisherman spy out after Céline.” He sounded bitter.
“You’ll know that we consider you a chief suspect, Monsieur Vaillant. You followed two of the victims. You were on the Île de Sein last night. You could have murdered Céline Kerkrom before that in Douarnenez, then Laetitia Darot this morning on the island.”
“We’re regularly on the island and usually sit in Le Tatoon. I wasn’t aware that this was a cause for police suspicion.”
“And this morning? You left the island at seven, where did you go? Where were you between seven and eleven?”
“We were fishing for sea bass. Up until midday. Over by the Pierres Noires to the west of Molène.” This was one of the places Kerkrom also fished for sea bass, Madame Gochat had said. “We sold the bass at noon to two restaurants in Ouessant. And ate a couple of them ourselves. Go and ask at the restaurants if you want.”
“I assume you have no witnesses for those four or five hours of fishing.”
“No.”
Vaillant put on his ironically contrite face. Dupin let it go. He was tired. He didn’t want to keep at it. And he couldn’t. In any case it was clear Vaillant didn’t have a shred of an alibi. Dupin had intended to take a closer look around the boat. But he didn’t bother with that either.
“That’ll do for today, Monsieur Vaillant.” He turned abruptly away and made for the little door in the railing. “But I think we’ll be seeing one another again soon.”
“And you really don’t want to take a couple of mackerel with you? You won’t find them anywhere as good as they are in the Mer d’Iroise,” Vaillant called after him.
Dupin took another determined stride.
He walked up the ramp and then he was back on land. He didn’t react, even to the last sentence.
“I hope you have a pleasant evening, Monsieur le Commissaire.”
Two minutes later Dupin was standing next to his car. The conversation with the crazy pirate had sapped the last of his strength. He was angry, felt he hadn’t been good enough. Not crafty enough. But even in top form he probably wouldn’t have got more out of the guy.
He leaned for a moment on the car door and took a deep breath.
Nolwenn had been right. It was hardly a stone’s throw back to Concarneau. He forced himself reluctantly to think of the one-and-a-half-hour drive. And if he really wanted to go out to the island to talk to the boy tomorrow morning, then he would have to be on Goulch’s boat by seven at the latest. That meant getting up before six if he wanted to have a café. That meant very little sleep once again. And he wasn’t going to see Claire today anyway: she was in Rennes and it was probably too late to organize something now.
He got his phone out.
“Nolwenn?”
“Monsieur le Commissaire.” She sounded wide awake.
“Maybe I should stay here, overnight—spend the night here.”
Nolwenn knew every guesthouse, every hotel, every room for rent.
“Château de Sable. Porspoder. Twenty minutes from you. They’re expecting you. The owners are friends of Alain Trifin, the owner of the Ar Men Du. There were no more rooms free in the nice La Vinotière in Le Conquet. They’ll bring a toothbrush and so forth up to your room.”
It was unbelievable. Nolwenn was unbelievable.
“Thanks.”
“I’d thought as much.”
“Tomorrow morning I’m going out to the island first thing. Riwal might need your help. Something to do with a laboratory in Paris. We need information urgently.” It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Riwal with the job, but Nolwenn could work wonders.
“We’ve already spoken on the phone.”
“I…” He was too worn out, too exhausted.
“You need sleep, Monsieur le Commissaire. We all do.”
“Yes.”
A rare confession.
“Till tomorrow morning.”
Nolwenn had already hung up.
* * *
It was magnificent, the place, the hotel, the room. Even if Dupin was looking at it all through a veil of exhaustion.
The Château de Sable lay in a landscape of rough dunes, the sand grown up around the omnipresent stubble of greenery and high cliff formations. It was as if the earth had just exploded. A big wooden terrace facing the Atlantic, and two outcrops of land, one to the left, the other to the right, had closed the spreading sea into a gentle bay. They had also come to Po
rspoder on their work outing, but only briefly, primarily so they could go down the “Route Mandarine” to see Nolwenn’s friend who made luxurious natural soaps from aromas of the earth, the plants, seaweed, and the sea itself. Dupin enjoyed going over the top in situations like that and had bought the whole selection for Claire. They had poetic names like “Ciel d’Orage sur Ouessant,” “Avis de Tempête,” “Envie d’Ailleurs.” One even bore the name of his favorite song by Serge Gainsbourg, “Sous le Soleil Exactement.”
Dupin opened the terrace door and went out. To breathe in the wonderful air once again, but also maybe to get a moment of relaxation after such a day.
Then he would lie down and be asleep immediately. The bed looked extremely promising.
The sky to the west still held the slightest trace of light. The last light of the day, a dark glimmer, blue verging on black but not quite there yet. The sea was brighter than the sky, even if that was theoretically impossible. Dupin had noticed the phenomenon a few times in recent years, although not as noticeably as here. The water of the bay glowed, shone, the light clearly coming from below. As if the sea itself were a source of light. As if it had somehow stored the light, in a bright shimmering and shining. Silvery ocher, metallic, an unearthly color. A flat, magical expanse, no waves, not even a wrinkle.
It seemed to be getting even brighter, turning on its end the natural order of things, Dupin thought. It wasn’t the sky illuminating the sea, but the sea illuminating the sky—not just the sky but the whole world. Along with these strange sensations came strange thoughts and images, going back to his first boat trip of the day, as if they’d been strangely distorted, seen from a distance. Pictures of the dark shadows on the Île Tristan, thoughts of the seven graves. Dupin had to stop himself getting lost. He held tightly to the terrace railing.
Suddenly he heard a noise.
Dupin pulled himself together. He was almost relieved: the noise had shattered his bizarre impressions.
The noise was coming from above. Far above, somewhere to the front of him. A sort of thunder, rolling, then getting increasingly loud.
Dupin stretched his neck, scanning the sky with his eyes.
All at once, Dupin was practically thrown around, the sound now clearly coming from behind him. For a few seconds it became weaker. It wasn’t his imagination. It had become clearly weaker, then stronger again. And sounded as if it came from all around. Even the nature of the sound had become strange: technical, artificial, and yet completely natural at the same time. It reminded him of a storm cloud or a volcano coming from deep in the earth.
Dupin stood stock-still for a moment.
He shook himself hard, ran a hand through his hair.
What had it been? Had it been his state of exhaustion that caused him to feel this? Were his senses playing tricks on him?
He turned around, went back inside, and fell on the bed. He found it difficult even to take his shoes off. He couldn’t call a single clear thought to mind.
Day Two
Once again Dupin was jarred from sleep early. A particularly restless, troubled sleep. He had indeed immediately passed out but then quickly woken up again, then waltzed into a half-sleep of confused thoughts, before finally drifting off again. He had only really fallen into a deep sleep—for half an hour at most—shortly before Kadeg’s call at seven minutes past five.
“You say we can’t, I mean we’ve no way,” Dupin said, stumbling on his words, “of getting to the email, to know who sent it.”
“For now that’s the way it’s seems; we’ve forwarded the email to experts in Rennes.”
“Gochat’s garden house? We need to search the harbormistress’s garden house?”
Dupin was sitting in bed, his back against the headrest. It had been hard enough for him to get into this position. He was not even up to being in a bad mood.
“Exactly,” Kadeg said. “There’s that one sentence: ‘Search Gaétane Gochat’s garden house,’ but no address, no subject, nothing.”
“And no hint as to what we might find there?”
“Just that one sentence.”
“We need to start the action straightaway.” There was an insufferable enthusiasm in the inspector’s voice. “I can be there in an hour. Where are you, by the way?”
“Porspoder.”
“What are you doing in Porspoder?”
Dupin ignored the question. “It could be a joke. Some idiot, who finds it funny. Or it could be the killer himself. Trying to divert our attention or confuse us. Leaving false tracks.”
“It could solve the case.”
“Maybe.”
“And prevent any more murders.”
Kadeg loved the drama in the tone of his voice. But that was true as well. It wasn’t impossible, that it could have important consequences.
“Good, we’ll search the garden house, Kadeg.”
“You will need to get the search warrant, Monsieur le Commissaire.”
“A dangerous delay,” Dupin growled.
Even when it was tricky, and Dupin had had problems more than once, his motto was: better problems afterward than acting too late. If necessary a public prosecutor or a commissaire himself could, in an emergency, order a search, if they could prove they had consulted a judge. Nolwenn would deal with that.
“I’m on my way immediately.” Kadeg was in dynamo mode. “We’ll see each other there. I’ll deal with getting support in Douarnenez, we’ll need a few colleagues.”
It didn’t take Dupin long to think about it. “You do this on your own, Kadeg.” He quickly added, “I mean I’m appointing you as leader of this important operation, Inspector.”
There was a brief silence. Dupin could almost genuinely feel the effect that was having on Kadeg, how he was torn between the impulse to protest because the commissaire wasn’t going to be there and that meant the importance of the measure wasn’t that far-reaching, and on the other hand pride that he was going to lead something that might be decisive.
“Fine.” Pride had won out. “I’ll keep you fully informed.”
“You do that, Kadeg,” Dupin said, and hung up.
It wasn’t as if he thought the anonymous email was meaningless. Not in the slightest. But his original plans for this morning still seemed the best to him.
Dupin was still sitting in bed. Only now did he realize he had a headache, behind his forehead, his eyes. He hated that. He felt totally wrecked. A brilliant start to what would be another stressful day.
The email, though. What did it mean? Who sent it? Obviously it was tempting to think of Morin, and his own investigation.
He looked at the clock: 5:15 A.M.
The most important thing was: Where at this time of day, with people still asleep, was he going to get a café?
He pushed himself to get up. Dupin had had one hope and it had come to pass, even if not totally. The little fishing harbor where he had met Captain Vaillant the previous evening. And where Goulch was going to pick him up to take him out to the island. The fishermen would be up and about early here to set about their work, Dupin had reckoned. There would be people here needing coffee. And they had it. Only not from a coffee stall, but a machine. Still, better than nothing.
* * *
There had been nobody to be seen so early at the hotel. Dupin had taken a quick shower and simply set off. He had given them his details when he checked in last night. From the room he had called Nolwenn, who—obviously—was full of life and already in the picture about the anonymous email. She had made an agreement with Goulch and was now going to talk to the judge.
Dupin had found a bench near the fish hall, right by the water, and now had two brown plastic cups in his hands with a double espresso in each. The coffee tasted of plastic but it was hot and gave him the caffeine he was after.
It had been getting lighter for a long time now, and before long the sun would be up. The tide was dangerously high; ten to fifteen centimeters more and the water would be slopping over the quay. Coefficient 116, t
hat was what Antoine Manet had said yesterday. That was enormous—the maximum was 120. And only a total eclipse of the sun would cause that, a miracle that would only happen three times in this century.
In the little fish warehouse, the one that was open to the quay, it was already busy. Fishermen in yellow oilskins, blue plastic boxes scattered around on the ground, a great water basin to the rear, for crabs, spider crabs, and lobsters, Dupin assumed. Three brightly colored fishing boats—coastal fishers—looked as if they were ready to set out, their heavy diesel engines already growling.
It had remained unusually mild overnight; the air was damp and smelled particularly strongly of salt and iodine. Dupin tried hard to muster his first clear thoughts, to come to his senses. It wasn’t easy.
By the time Goulch’s boat came into the harbor, twenty minutes late, he had almost fallen asleep on the bench. It took the third double espresso he fetched to have any effect.
Dupin took mechanical steps along the pier to the very end. There was no need of the concrete ramps with a tide like this. Goulch gave the commissaire a brief greeting. He looked tired too. Dupin was pleased to meet another person looking tired at this hour of the morning.
In next to no time he had steered out of the harbor, and it didn’t take long before they had got beyond the last defenses of the peninsula. Goulch put his foot on the gas.
The only good thing was the strong tailwind, which astonishingly had more effect on waking Dupin up than the cafés—six of them when he counted them individually. As always, Dupin had positioned himself in the stern. The young policemen on Goulch’s team understood and left him in peace.
To the north and northwest extended a whole row of islands, as far as the eye could see. With white sand and broad lagoons. It was easy to pick out Molène, the second-biggest island, and then beyond Ouessant, with the island’s high cliffs at the eastern end and the great lighthouse, near which Vaillant and his team lived. Amidst the bigger islands, some of which were just a few hundred meters apart, innumerable smaller islands and rocks stood out, despite the high tide. This had to be where the seal colonies were that Nolwenn and Riwal had been so keen to tell him about, the ones on lots of postcards.
The Killing Tide Page 21