“That’s a secret place?”
“There are underwater caves there and particularly strong currents. With huge shoals of small fish. And for that reason it’s a hunting ground for the biggest bass and lieus jaunes. Over a meter long. There’s a lot of seaweed just below the surface of the sea; that’s why no anglers go there. But if you come across a heavy bream there”—the boy’s eyes twinkled—“you go down and catch it. You just have to know.” Anthony looked at the commissaire triumphantly.
“Do you know how long she’d been going there?”
“Just since this year, I think. But she had been there a long time before, she said.”
“Are there other secret places inside Douarnenez Bay? Where she had also been often recently?”
“No secret fishing places.”
A clear statement.
“Apart from the best fishing places—maybe she was in the bay somewhere recently for another reason?”
“I don’t think so. She would have told me.”
“Are you certain?”
The boy looked inquisitively at Dupin. “This is important, isn’t it?”
“Very.”
“I don’t know of any other reason,” Anthony said at last. He couldn’t manage to hide his disappointment, how much he would have loved to have something decisive to report.
“And Laetitia, did you watch her too?”
“Sometimes, not so often. I never knew when she would go out. Or come back. It was always different. But she was very nice. She would tell me dolphin stories sometimes.”
“What sort of stories?”
“About her favorite dolphin, a female. Darius. She had two male children last year. She told me everything Darius taught her boys. She showed them the best hunting places. She had secret places, just like Céline.”
“Other stories?”
“How dolphins helped people. Last year an extreme swimmer was attacked by a white shark. Then twelve dolphins came and formed a circle around him. They swam with him for twenty kilometers. Or the story about the little boy who fell overboard in a storm and was brought to land by a dolphin. The dolphin was called Filippo. But they also come to us for help, if they know exactly who we are. Recently a dolphin got caught up in an angler’s line, the hook caught in his fin. He swam up to two divers and drew their attention to the hook. When the divers had freed him, he gave them a pat with his fin to say thank you.” Anthony suddenly looked at him seriously. “There’s film of it. I can show you if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe every word.”
He seemed satisfied with Dupin’s answer.
“Did she talk about the dead dolphins?”
“Yes, that was really bad.” There was an expression of serious distress on the boy’s face.
“Did she say anything about it? About who was guilty?”
“The big ships and fleets. Everybody knows that.”
“Did she speak about that big fishing chief, Charles Morin?”
“No.”
A clear no.
Dupin sighed. The boy was great but there was nothing new in what he said.
“Once upon a time Jumeau found a cannonball on the seabed. Antoine said it’s from the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Maybe from a real pirate ship. There were lots of pirates around here.” The boy watched the commissaire carefully. “It’s now in the museum treasure room. There are also real coins there, some silver, according to Madame Coquil, even if some of them are covered in chalk. Have you been to the museum?”
“Not so far.”
“You have to go and see the treasure chamber! Madame Coquil has made me the treasure chamber’s special envoy. I always take everything the fishermen find there. Recently—”
The phone.
Kadeg again.
Dupin feared the worst.
“Yes?”
“Commissaire, we have the murder weapon.”
It sounded more comic than dramatic, even though Kadeg had tried for a dramatic effect. And then said nothing more. Dupin had sprung to his feet.
“Say that again, Kadeg!”
“A fisherman’s knife, standard black model, the one you find everywhere in Breton harbors. Eight-centimeter blade, the whole thing nineteen point four centimeters long. Stainless steel, hard plastic handle.”
“What makes you think it’s the murder weapon?”
“There’s bloodstains visible, both on the blade and the shaft.”
“Where did you find it?”
A whole range of different questions were flooding through Dupin’s head. He had walked on a few meters.
“The knife was hidden behind a loose wooden plank. I found it. It wasn’t actually visible. It was only when—”
“I want…” Dupin stopped. He looked at the boy, who had stayed sitting on the bench and was staring at him with eyes wide open.
“I’m afraid I have to go, Anthony.”
The boy nodded. He didn’t seem troubled; on the contrary he seemed fascinated by the sudden burst of excitement.
“Commissaire, you still there?” Kadeg sounded insulted.
Dupin headed toward the quay. “The forensic people need to look at the knife as soon as possible. I want to know with absolute certainty if it really is the blood of one of the victims. And if there are any other clues on the knife. They have to drop everything else.”
“Got it.”
“Have you confronted Madame Gochat with your discovery?”
“She claims never to have seen the knife, that it’s not hers. That she’s only been living in this house two years, and has never taken a close look inside the garden house.” Kadeg added derisively: “The shelves were already built in. The garden house was also never locked and is covered by two big trees.”
“We’re going to have to arrest her for now,” Dupin mumbled, lost in his thoughts. “You’ll bring her to Quimper, Kadeg.”
“Like I said, the knife was quite impossible to see, it was perfectly hidden. I documented it with photos.”
Dupin hung up.
Intuitively he headed south, to look for Riwal, though he couldn’t see him either on the Tatoon terrace or anywhere else on the quay.
The find could be all-important. Which didn’t exclude the possibility that it was a farce. Wasn’t it all very strange? Too easy, above all. Even if the knife really was the murder weapon, if there were traces of blood from Kerkrom, Darot, or Lapointe, there were still several possibilities. Somebody could have planted it on Gochat. To blame her for the murders. It wasn’t hard to hide a knife in a garden house—the killer would have carried out a lot of riskier operations. One thing was certain: even without Gochat’s fingerprints it would have been a very effective chess move that, when taken in conjunction with the fact she had had the pair spied on, would put serious pressure on her. A primitive move, but an effective one. Without watertight alibis it would make things difficult for her. And it was just this type of cold-bloodedness that could be expected from the killer.
Or, and was equally possible: Gochat actually was the killer. Even if she didn’t have the slightest glimmer of a motive.Dupin didn’t know what he should think. His “gut instinct” was telling him nothing right now. Nothing at all, not even a hint. No intuition, no inner voice, no inkling. However things might go, he had to remain calm, concentrate, follow the threads, and not turn away from any twist or turn.
“Boss!”
Dupin turned around.
“Here!” Riwal called as he burst out of one of the storybook small alleys.
“It’s unbelievable, boss. Nolwenn got in touch with the firm. She spoke to the chemist in the laboratory. The one who carried out the analysis.” He came to a brusque halt in front of Dupin. “It’s a fluorescent X-ray analysis, it’s used, amongst other things, to identify precious metals, it’s based on a complicated—”
“Riwal! Spit it out!”
“Gold!”
“What do you mean, ‘gold’?”
“The material
analysis that Céline Kerkrom asked for says that the sample she sent in contains gold. Very pure gold, nearly twenty-four karat.”
“Gold?”
“It’s incredible! One side of the sample, two and a half centimeters long, very thin, was very dirty, the lab man said. As if weathered, in layers, not at all recognizable as gold. Either Kerkrom didn’t know what the material was, or she knew it was gold and wanted to see how good quality it was.”
“And what’s so unbelievable about it?”
The process didn’t seem so unusual now.
“Maybe Céline Kerkrom,” Riwal said, stressing every syllable, taking his time, “had seen or found something made of gold. Or Darot.” He took a deep breath. “Everything would suddenly make sense. Everything!”
Dupin understood. This was right up Riwal’s street: treasure.
Dupin wasn’t in the mood for Riwal’s fantasies. “Or she had an old gold medallion, an armband, a chain. Something she’d inherited and wanted to know the worth of. Maybe she was considering getting rid of it.”
Riwal’s face fell with deep disappointment. And incomprehension.
“On the Internet form that Kerkrom filled in it said ‘sample.’ It can’t be something small. Two and a half centimeters is significant. Nobody mistreats an inherited artwork like that. Nobody has such a thorough analysis carried out for some chain.”
“There are other things made of gold. Plates. Cups. You can inherit things like that too.” Dupin thought of his mother’s house in Paris and remembered that he really had to ring her. “And she didn’t make any written reference to the origin of the sample?”
“No, we know nothing about it.”
“I have to go, Riwal.”
Dupin was suddenly feeling restless. He was unhappy with the abrupt way in which his chat with the boy had ended. They had now come across a topic he would have liked to go into more detail about.
He glanced at his watch. It ought to work, even if it would be close. He would make the call as he walked and then catch up with the boy at school. He headed toward the Quai Nord. “Monsieur Deschamps?”
“Who wants to know?” A testy grunt.
“Georges Dupin, commissaire de police, Concarneau.”
Dupin made a point of sounding friendly; after all he was the one who wanted to know something from this man.
“And?”
“It’s about Charles Morin. I’m investigating the triple murder case.”
“Yes?”
“I’m interested in the story of what happened on May 22, when you tailed a suspicious boat that you took to be a bolincheur from—”
“Forget it.”
“How do you mean?”
“That story only caused me problems. Like everything only ever causes me problems. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Have you changed your mind? Did you make a mistake back then?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Are you no longer of the opinion that it was one of Morin’s boats that you were following? That it had smuggled cigarettes on board and it was the crew itself that sank the boat, after you’d cornered it?”
Dupin had just passed the bench where he had been sitting with the boy. He was nearly at the Quai Nord.
“Of course that’s how it was. Exactly so. But nobody was interested. Quite the opposite. Once again I was the troublemaker. I’m not going to say another word about it. I’m running a small distillery with my brother-in-law. I’m happy. I don’t need those old stories anymore.”
Dupin found the man not in the slightest unpleasant. But he wouldn’t let himself get led astray.
“Did you have proof? Concrete proof?”
Deschamps said nothing. Then it seemed as if he gave himself a jolt.
“Their boat was faster than ours—what sort of bolincheur has an engine like that? Normal fishing boats are barely half as fast as ours. I’m telling you, boats like that are specially equipped for smuggling.”
“That’s why you lost it on the radar.”
“Like I said, I don’t want to talk any more about this subject.”
“Did anyone check on Morin’s fleet numbers afterward? I mean, every boat in every fleet has to have a registration, and when all of a sudden one goes missing somebody must notice.”
“I have nothing against the Parisian commissaire.” Deschamps spoke smugly if not unkindly. “The best of luck in his further investigations. Excuse me, please.”
Before Dupin could say a word, Deschamps had already hung up.
Dupin rubbed his temples.
He had turned off the Quai Nord. He had already noticed the gleaming white painted stone building with the big sign, École Primaire, the previous day.
Two children—a tall, lean kid in shorts and a disheveled little girl in a multicolored dress—were sitting on the steps. Dupin guessed Anthony was the sort of kid who would turn up last, as a straggler. He stood at a certain distance, just close enough to see everything.
He dialed Riwal’s number. The inspector was the expert on things to do with boats, and fishing.
“Boss?”
It was probably going to be a tough bit of work, but it had to be done. “The supposed smugglers’ boat, that the crew themselves are alleged to have sunk, I’ve just been talking to the retired customs authority captain, and I—”
“I’m in the picture. Nolwenn told me about her research.”
In that case he could get straight to the point.
“If they really did sink the boat, it must have been counted as missing eventually. It must be possible to find out if a boat suddenly vanished.”
“As a rule, boats are officially registered at several places. But they don’t keep a continuous record if the boats still exist, not even if they’re still in use.”
“You mean it might officially still exist all over the place even though it’s actually lying at the bottom of the sea?”
“Once every four years a fishing boat has to go through a technical check, a bit like a vehicle technical inspection.”
“And that might be this year.” Dupin had simply come out with the sentence, without really knowing what he meant by it. “You mean otherwise it would already have been noticed?” That was probably what he had meant.
“Not necessarily,” Riwal said. “Morin might simply have deregistered it. As ‘put out to rest,’ ‘inactive.’ You don’t need any official documentation for that.”
“We need to find out if Morin deregistered a bolincheur in the last three years.”
That was the crux of the matter.
“Or he used a few tricks to replace it.”
“How do you mean?”
“Every boat is identified by two numbers, which they also need for its registration. One is an official plate, set into the ship’s stern, while the other is the engine number.”
Dupin pricked up his ears. “You mean because of these two numbers a boat that was found on the seafloor could be positively identified.”
“Straightaway and with no doubt.”
There was a long silence. Dupin’s imagination was going wild.
“You think Kerkrom and Darot might have found the boat?”
“It’s possible,” Dupin replied absently.
“And the professor? Philippe Lapointe—how does he come into it all?”
“I don’t know.”
That was an issue for Dupin. But then he had only just begun to think through the scenario.
“How could Morin have passed off a new boat as an old one to the examiners, Riwal?”
“By manipulating the two identification numbers.”
“But how, precisely?”
“It’s difficult, but possible. In every run of boat production there are several that are identical. They then have to be made identifiable through the two numbers, the one on the stern and the one on the engine. In the end, you can manipulate everything if you’re … sufficiently motivated.”
Riwal was right of course
; it was an assumption that lay at the heart of their profession.
Dupin was keeping a close eye on the entrance to the school. The two kids got listlessly to their feet and walked into the building. Lessons were about to begin.
“Riwal, I want you to check everything out. Get some help.” The number of personnel required for something like this was huge, but Dupin didn’t care. “Somebody needs to make a list of all Morin’s boats, all the bolincheurs registered over the past four years. And compare it with the list of all boats registered today. And then check out each one painstakingly. To go and see it in person, including the two identification numbers, checking for possible manipulation. We also need to find out if Morin bought a bolincheur—new or used—over the past three years.” Dupin just rattled off the chores. “Then we need to know which boats were in for technical inspection over the past few years, and which have still to undergo it. All the permutations.”
“I’ll get on it straightaway, boss.”
Riwal was on the job.
“Good.”
“And the story,” Riwal said, “will go like this. Morin will hold us for fools, will refuse to cooperate and get the investigation moving, but instead he’ll have unscrupulously got rid of anyone who had found proof of his smuggling—the boat with its smuggled goods on board that was sunk by its own crew, the part of the stern with the identification number. Or the engine.”
Dupin didn’t reply. But yes, that’s how it might have been. It had gone vaguely through his head the previous evening, although only vaguely, a story that only hung together with the assumption of a lot of bold “if”s. But it was often like that at the beginning. Almost always.
“We’ll talk later, Riwal.”
He hung up hurriedly. Dupin had spotted the boy.
Anthony was coming across the grass, from the sea. He had spotted Dupin too.
He was smiling cheekily. Dupin went up to him.
“More police questions?”
Dupin smiled back.
“Will I have to miss my lesson?” the boy asked hopefully.
“Just for a few minutes, but you can tell your teacher, Monsieur…”
“Madame, Madame Chatoux.”
“Tell Madame Chatoux the commissaire needed your help.”
The Killing Tide Page 23