The Killing Tide

by Jean-Luc Bannalec

  “Poul Dahut, they called the pond into which she disappeared. It’s still there today, to the east of Douarnenez. Her legs turned into a fishtail, and she herself became a siren, swimming through her submerged city at the bottom of the bay, where she has lived ever since. And she will only be freed when—”

  “I’ve got the message, Riwal.”

  “Every day to the end of his life Gradlon stood on the coast of the bay looking out for his daughter, but he never saw her again. But on certain days he heard the bells of the cathedral, a strange distinctive sound, ‘not of this world,’ no ordinary bell ring. More like a sort of thunder, but changed and amplified by the water and the depths, suddenly lying over the entire region.”

  Dupin was reluctantly reminded of the extraordinary noise the previous night, that mad phenomenon; he did his best to banish all thoughts of it.

  “Even today it can sometimes be heard at night. And that’s it, boss, the story of Ys. Short and sweet.”

  Indeed, Riwal hadn’t overdone it too much. He knew it wouldn’t be wise to risk testing Dupin’s extraordinary willingness, even briefly, to take account of such legendary stuff in an investigation.

  “All in all, you could say it is at heart a story of the devil—An Diaoul!”

  That was one of the favorite Breton genres, Dupin knew. Their “devil stories.” In Brittany God and the devil were an inseparable pair, you couldn’t have one without the other. Dupin’s favorite story was the one about the slug, ar velc’hwedenn ruz. From the dawn of time, the devil had continuously tried to emulate God’s creation, to hold his own in a war of opposing creation. Only he never quite got there—he always came close but there was always something missing. That was why there were so many incomplete, half-done, awful things in the world, an idea that had a strange power of conviction when you looked around you in reality. When God produced the delicious edible snail, the devil also had to have a go. That was what gave the world the slug.

  “The devil led people into temptation, seduced them. But he was really only testing them. A test of character. Not everyone succumbed to him. Only those in whom greed, envy, vengefulness, and selfishness were stronger than all other traits.” Riwal sounded deeply miserable now. “Just as in the case of our perp here, not because it was their tragic destiny, but because they permitted it. People have a choice.”

  “Good.”

  Dupin himself wasn’t sure what he meant by “good” here.

  “Don’t think you’re going crazy if you take something like this into consideration, boss!”

  Dupin had in no way taken “something like this”—Ys—into consideration.

  “Like I’ve said, the search for Ys is the subject of serious scientific interest. Think of the expedition I told you about, or of the many reputed historians intensively involved in it.” It was as much to say, you shouldn’t find it irritating.

  By this time they had reached the cholera graveyard where Laetitia Darot had been so gruesomely laid to rest.

  “The story about the beam, the wooden beam, that Céline Kerkrom needed, it all sounds a bit implausible, don’t you think?” Riwal cautiously suggested.

  Dupin didn’t go into the matter. Instead he came back to another point.

  “Was Professor Lapointe seriously concerned with the story about Ys?”

  Dupin hadn’t seen anything in Lapointe’s study to suggest anything of the sort, nor was there anything on the list.

  “It was a hobbyhorse of his. I know that from my cousin. He belongs to the same cultural organization Lapointe belonged to. Manet as well.”

  In which case there could have been many reasons for Darot and Kerkrom to have turned to the professor. He was also a doctor, and a biologist.

  “Did I mention that my cousin is also an amateur historian? That he studied in Paris?”

  “Was your cousin any more closely acquainted with Professor Lapointe?”

  “Only superficially. In recent years he attended organization meetings so frequently because of his engagements for the kouign amann.”

  “What does your cousin do for a living?”

  “He’s the fire chief in Douarnenez, has been for many years, started out as a volunteer.”

  Dupin was massaging his temples. “Kerkrom and Darot must surely have known that Lapointe was advising the citizens’ movement against the use of poisonous chemicals during the cleaning of Morin’s boats. And they had been looking for an ally.”

  “But what for? An ally for what? Why would they have needed Lapointe in connection with the story about the sunken smugglers’ boat? How could he have helped them with that?”

  That was one of the unanswered questions. And in the end Riwal was happy enough to come back to it.

  Dupin’s gaze had drifted across the island, noticing nothing, but suddenly, he saw a single rabbit in front of them. It didn’t seem to be the slightest bit afraid, showed no intention of fleeing. Dupin gave the animal a wide berth, briefly wondering if rabbits could carry rabies.

  “What happens”—once again Dupin was trying to sound neutral—“if a private individual makes a major archaeological find. Is there a reward for the finder?”

  “Five percent of the calculated value. At the moment the value of gold is around thirty-three euros a kilo. And we’re undoubtedly looking at a serious weight in kilos here. A large cross could be worth several million. And that just goes for the sheer worth in weight. The real worth of such a find would be even more.” Once again Riwal got carried away. “Just imagine! A relic from the legendary city. Immeasurable, the value would be immeasurable. And one thing is clear: the finder would become world-famous and rich.”

  He gave Dupin a guilty look. But only for a fraction of a second. Then he went on the offensive again.

  “You heard the story about the arrival of the Vikings. Told precisely as it is today. And even these stories are today considered by non-natives as fantasies, legends! But these are just the exact historic events and venues passed down orally over a millennium, a little embellished in the process. No culture has preserved the oral tradition as that of the Celts. We’ve raised it to the level of an art form. All because of the legends.” Riwal was talking in a fury of excitement. “Why should an event such as that which happened to Ys not be exactly the same sort of thing? An event even more important than the landing of the Vikings: the sinking of an entire glorious city beneath the sea, a massive rise in sea level, a fact we today know can occur.” He was now supporting his fantasy with science, a clever tactic. “It could have been an ancient Celtic city, grown immeasurably rich through blossoming trade and fishing, which meant that Brittany in the early years of the Christian era belonged to the richest regions of Europe. Built directly on the coast, low down, below sea level, on a plain protected by high dunes and natural dykes, then continuously expanding. Until one day a devastating storm tide let nature break through.”

  Riwal looked Dupin directly in the eye. “A completely realistic scenario! Think of the greatest flood of the century following the solar eclipse this year! Or back to 1904, when the whole coast of Brittany disappeared underwater for two days. Including Douarnenez. And now imagine a once-in-a-millennium flood tide combined with an immense storm. And it’s clear that within a hundred or five hundred years even some of the existing towns in Brittany will also literally sink!” Riwal was performing well. Presented like that, the story seemed a lot less fantastic, a much more prosaic picture.

  “Do you know how many fishermen over the centuries have claimed at particularly low tides to have seen ruins in the bay? Above all the tower of a cathedral.” He added quietly, “Reports come in to this day.”

  Dupin and Riwal were just going through another breathtakingly narrow passage of the island, on either side of which the sea had eaten its way threateningly into the land. At the same time the path forked to the right toward the lighthouse, to the left toward a stone chapel.

  Riwal started up again: “You really must see—”

 
Dupin’s phone rang. He pulled it out gratefully. It was Nolwenn.

  “Your instinct didn’t let you down, Monsieur le Commissaire. Morin did indeed deregister a bolincheur. One that was only ten years old! That’s no age at all for a boat like that. He did it everywhere, with the fishing authorities, the harbor administration. And here’s the crucial point. He did it almost exactly a year after the incident, and just two months before the technical inspection was due. In the light of your hypothesis, that’s extremely suspicious behavior, I’d say.”

  “Splendid, Nolwenn, splendid! And this deregistered boat hasn’t appeared since?”

  “Obviously I can’t tell you that.”

  “Or in the period between the incident and the deregistration?”

  “I can’t tell you that either.”

  “We need to talk to Morin. And to the head of his bolincheurs. This Carrière guy. We need to ask where the boat is and have them show it to us.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Was any reason given for its deregistration?”

  “No, it’s not necessary. Obviously a boat owner can take it out of service any time they want to.”

  They had almost come to the lighthouse, soaring above them in the blue sky. Elegant, classical, bright white, a giant placard that said Sein. Above it a glass dome, an artificial metal construction with a black hood. The tower was on a building no less elegant, linked to the right and to the left in perfect symmetry by low connecting wings to two square blocks. An impressive piece of architecture.

  “I’ll keep searching, Monsieur le Commissaire. In the meantime, we’re all getting ready for the major operation—it’s about to start. Talk to you later.”

  Nolwenn had hung up.

  Dupin would have loved to embrace her. Her discovery brought a touch of reality back to the investigation. At last they had a real lead.

  Still in a good mood, he let Riwal take the lead again. Although there was a disappointed expression on the inspector’s face, Riwal was professional enough to take account of the news, for the moment at least.

  “If that’s true, it means Morin was playing a bigger role in cigarette smuggling, because that can hardly have been a one-off job. We’ll need to rethink.”

  Riwal was right.

  “Whatever there was on Kerkrom’s boat that June evening,” Riwal blinked, “they must have taken it somewhere, and—”

  “Hi there!”

  A loud shout. Both of them flinched.

  There was nobody to be seen anywhere.

  “Bonjour, messieurs!”

  There was still nobody to be seen, but Dupin was sure he knew the voice.

  “Up here!”

  It was quite a few meters above them, but they could clearly make out Antoine Manet, standing on the small platform at the top of the lighthouse.

  “Bonjour,” Dupin called in return.

  “Come on up!” It was easy to hear Manet, there was no wind to carry his voice away. “I was looking for you anyway.”

  “I—” Dupin caught himself for a moment. A chat with Antoine Manet was hardly a bad idea, since there were a few important new points to raise. Points that threw up new questions, new thoughts.

  “You really shouldn’t miss it, Monsieur le Commissaire. An overview can never do any harm. Fifty-two meters ninety, above the everyday reality.”

  “We’re coming.” Dupin sounded remarkably decisive.

  “The door’s open, come in, then turn right and come up. You can’t miss me.”

  “But be very careful, boss, this big lighthouse, Goulenez, is very high and the steps dangerously steep. I think it might be better if we stay down here.”

  * * *

  Dupin hadn’t counted on climbing. Not this immeasurable number of steps. Not on a spiral staircase, which got sharply narrower as it rose, or to put it another way—not on an unventilated, extremely narrow space which got narrower with every meter it rose, and which collected very warm, very damp, stale air that stank of dust, oil, and machinery. The tiny windows were so greasy that it was almost impossible to see the—doubtlessly breathtaking—view. There wasn’t a trace of any romance—this was a working lighthouse, not a tourist attraction.

  And certainly no place for anyone claustrophobic.

  Dupin had already broken into a sweat on the steep steps, pearls of moisture on his forehead. Even Riwal, who was younger and fitter—Dupin had wisely let him go in front—had to stop every now and then, and would then take a look back at Dupin.

  The commissaire had no idea how long he’d been climbing by the time the steps finally stopped and they found themselves standing by a steel ladder which led recklessly straight up—the space was too small for a conventional staircase. At the top of the ladder there was a hatch like on a submarine. There was no air at all up here, at least no oxygen.

  Riwal obviously had experience with lighthouses and their construction. Without hesitation he clambered nimbly up the ladder, turned the handle on the hatch, and threw it open. In a second he was through.

  Dupin followed him.

  “Close the hatch straightaway, boss. Otherwise all the doors in the building will slam.”

  Dupin knelt on one of the steel-riveted platforms inside the dome of the lighthouse, which housed the spectacular equipment: a gigantic lens. It was still extremely clammy, but the air was a bit better.

  “Ready?”

  Dupin had no idea what for.

  Riwal opened a tiny door in the dome, also made of steel, and vanished.

  “Watch your head, boss!”

  In the next second, Dupin was on a hazardous narrow construction that ran around the dome. He looked to the west.

  An unbelievable immensity of light. Clarity. Freedom. An overwhelming view over the Atlantic into the far distance, which seemed to stretch forever, just as the view did.

  The endlessness was blue. Everything was blue. Sapphire blue, turquoise blue, pale blue, azure blue, getting darker nearer the island: violet, then blue-black as far as the receding horizon. The sky was the opposite, the deeper tones of blue at first, the paler, lighter tones higher up. For a second Dupin felt as if he were drunk. He felt as if he were swaying, as if he were held aloft in the air by a magic trick between the sea and the sky. Majestic.

  There was one other overwhelming effect. You could see—no, not just see, experience—the fact that the world was round. A ball. Here, fifty meters above the sea, and yet at the same time in the middle of it, it was clear to see: the horizon curved. It was an experience felt only by the sea. It had fascinated Dupin as a child. But he had never experienced it as forcefully as here and now on the lighthouse.

  “The Chaussée de Sein,” Riwal said. He was standing close by Dupin, not letting him out of his sight. Manet had also come over to them. “Yesterday on the boat, if you recall, you saw the first stretch of the rugged granite formation which leads from the Pointe du Raz out some twenty-five kilometers into the sea. Sein is about halfway. Right at the end is Ar-Men, the farthest out of the Brittany lighthouses, on an isolated barren cliff in the endless Atlantic. It is the lighthouse of Jean-Pierre Abraham. He lived there for several years.”

  Nolwenn’s favorite writer. The one who had written the fine sentence about fishermen.

  “And Henri Queffélec describes the building most exactly in his novel. Un Feu S’allume Sur la Mer. As well as the particular communal life of the people of Sein.”

  It was no moment for literary discussion, no matter how interesting the subject.

  Dupin walked on a bit, along the narrow railing.

  From here the view was to the east. The island had the appearance of a shapeless drawn-out strip of land: from above it looked like an inverted S. Madame Coquil’s words came to him: “a fleeting little bit,” her fear that it might soon sink beneath the waves. He understood her now more than beforehand. From up here the “little bit” looked even more fragile, more vulnerable. More open to the destructive whim of the ocean. Impossible to protect. Just grassy fi
elds, rocks, and sand.

  “Your first lighthouse? Not bad, is it?” Antoine Manet’s voice was lively, fresh, and full of energy. He had a black camera in his hand. “Lighthouses play an enormously important role here in the most dangerous sea in Europe. They’ve all recently been classified as historical monuments. They save lives. They indicate directions. Absolutely reliable unchangeable safety symbols, more potent than any other. Real-life myths. I come up here, when possible, every day at the same time and take photos. A grand documentation plan.”

  He clearly had no intention of going into greater detail, and Dupin had no intention of asking for more.

  “The original 1839 lighthouse,” Riwal said, “was made of blocks of granite. It served for a hundred and five years, night after night. The Germans blew it up in 1944. This one here dates from 1951. It’s very strong, very bright. You can see it from a distance of fifty-five kilometers. But, the islanders’ hearts still belong to the old lighthouse. The two buildings—the one on the right and the one on the left—contain the machinery and equipment for desalinating seawater. They run on oil.”

  The deputy mayor leaned with both arms on the parapet and looked pensively at the village. “For people there, the history of the island is one of great storms, storm floods, and inundations,” he said.

  Something that applied to all of Brittany, Dupin had learned: storm floods shaped history as much as great battles, wars, or other decisive political events. There were hundreds of books on the topic, special editions annually of the Brittany magazine Les plus grandes tempêtes: Les tempêtes du siècles, Les plus grandes tempêtes de tous les temps.

  “In 1756, Sein was hit by a tornado accompanied by a flood tide; for days on end waves crashed over the island and the Duc d’Aiguillon gave the order for it to be evacuated. The survivors refused, and holed up in their attics. The retreating sea took over a third of the population with it. The years 1761, 1821, 1836, 1868, 1879, 1896, and so on: those are the ones everything revolves around.” Despite all the losses, Manet referred to them as if they were not defeats but great victories, acts of heroic self-confidence. They had defied the elements, again and again.