Dupin wrinkled his brow.
“I’ll take a look in the annex.”
It was up to Riwal to do what he felt was right.
Dupin was about to get up again when he suddenly hesitated. He bent his head down again to the floor with an extremely concentrated look.
He hadn’t made a mistake.
There was no doubt.
On the other side of the bed the layer of dust ended abruptly. He had only seen it with one eye and only half paid attention to it. The dust ended in a straight line. It had been brushed away there. Quite clearly.
He shot to his feet and went around the other side of the bed. On this side stood the wooden bedside table, with two packets of tissues on it, as well as a book and hand cream, along with the lacy-shaded bedtime lamp.
From the bedside table to the corner of the room was about a meter and a half, the wall roughly plastered and whitewashed, as throughout the house. And—from here it was even clearer to see—the floor was completely clean.
It would have been no problem to bring the boat trailer here, a straightforward direct way through the house.
Dupin went carefully down on his haunches again. He tried to imagine it as exactly as he could, to make the fantasy work. He inspected closely the broad floorboards, the floor in the corner between the bed and the wall. Where the object might have lain, or, more plausibly, stood. They could just have tipped it upright from the trailer. That would have been the most likely.
Dupin got down on his knees. Slowly, carefully, he shuffled closer to the wall, his eyes on the floor.
A moment later he stopped. All of a sudden he saw it.
Clearly.
A scratch.
A good long scratch, a groove. Some fifteen centimeters long. Dupin shuffled closer to it, felt it, stroked his index finger the length of it. It was deep, at least half a centimeter, and sharp-edged. The object must have had a sharp edge. And been heavy.
Obviously the floorboards were covered with scratches and traces from decades of use. But it was quite clear that this scratch was recent: the places where the wood had been pushed in it were clearly lighter and more open-pored.
Dupin knelt there a while, looking at the groove.
Eventually his gaze rose higher up the wall.
He tried to measure the height with his eyes. The object would have been leaning a bit, no matter how stable it was.
And then he discovered it.
An impression in the white of the wall.
Horizontal. Just about as long as the scratch below, but fine here, just a line. Nonetheless—and this was the crucial point—it was easily identifiable. Dupin shuffled back a bit and fixed his gaze on the two places, concentrating. He felt ever so slightly faint. Even so. Something had stood here. Something heavy. It was quite clear.
It seemed he had found the place.
But what was it that had stood here?
Part of a heavy ship plank with an identification number on it?
An engine could also have parts with sharp edges, metal edges: iron, aluminum. But was a wooden plank that heavy? And would an engine have left its mark only on these two places? And precisely marks like these?
There was an uneasy feeling hanging over Dupin. One that merged with the faintness.
Hesitatingly he shuffled—still on his knees—a little to the left.
Here there was nothing to be seen. Nothing at all. Dupin was somehow relieved.
Just to be sure, he had to check out the right side, too.
He inspected the wall there closely.
There was something.
It was undeniable.
Not a long groove like above, but even so an indentation. Barely a centimeter, but here too, sharp-edged.
It was all too fantastic, too ridiculous; the stupid thing was it all fitted too well.
“Boss,” Riwal said. He came back into the room with a depressed expression on his face. “I’ve found nothing.”
“Good,” Dupin said abstractly.
“Why are you kneeling on the ground in the corner?”
Dupin got quickly to his feet. Absently, he said, “They brought the object here, Riwal. Right here.”
Riwal stared at him with an expression of disbelief.
“Come over here, I’ll show you.”
* * *
Kadeg had picked out a bar on the Quai Nord where they had by now already been waiting more than an hour for the commissaire.
The harbormistress had already fired off a first sharp tirade, even before Dupin sat down. She was up and ready for it, prepared to fly out of her skin. Dupin had acted as if he hadn’t noticed. His first words were to order two cafés when the waitress turned up. Dupin was pleased they were alone; there were no other tables taken at the moment.
Riwal was seeing to it that the crime scene people examined the groove in the ground and the impressions in the wall. His reaction had been the same as Dupin’s. The difference was that he was more excited than the commissaire, but had denied himself the slightest mention of Ys. And absolutely any celebration.
“This is going to cost you dear, Commissaire! That was police bullying. A purely arbitrary act, forcing me to make a decision either to come along without my lawyer or to be remanded into custody!” The harbormistress had lowered her voice, without losing any of its contempt or aggression. “Those are dictatorial methods.”
“I am certain,” Dupin said, nodding over to his inspector in solidarity, “that Inspector Kadeg did not put it like that, and certainly didn’t mean it like that. It’s not the sort of thing he would do, nor any of us.” Dupin changed his tone from unashamedly smug to unapologetic. “You should think yourself lucky to be on the loose, Madame Gochat. I will find it hard to explain to my superior officer.” That was actually true, it occurred to Dupin. It had been a while since he had thought of the prefect. “And the public prosecutor too. We found the murder weapon on your property and have the statement from the fisherman who was tracking the first victim on your orders. Also we have a series of pieces of withheld information. That’s just the facts.”
“My lawyer…”
“You won’t be on the loose for much longer, Madame Gochat, if you don’t talk. It’s your choice.”
Dupin was sure she knew something. And she could actually genuinely be the person they had been after all along.
Madame Gochat drilled the commissaire with a penetrating stare, but remained silent.
“Direct from the island into police custody. In that case I have no alternative but to yield to the forceful evidence of the facts”—Dupin clearly enjoyed saying it—“no matter what my own personal opinion might be.”
There was pure hatred in her eyes, her face was pale, her expression strained. She thrust her chin forward as if ready for a fight.
“I am innocent. I haven’t murdered anyone. That is all I have to say.”
“Where is the find?”
For a fraction of a second, no longer, she flinched.
“Where is the find?” Dupin repeated.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Where is it?”
“I have nothing to say. Not a thing.” She snorted, her lips pressed together, her eyes squinting together, staring straight ahead. She wasn’t concerned about the consequences.
In the meantime the two petits cafés had been served and stood there in front of Dupin with their seductive aroma.
“In that case our conversation is over.”
Without haste he drank down one café, then the other. Madame Gochat stared at him, aghast. With the last slurp, he got to his feet.
“This is monstrous.” She was on the verge of losing her composure.
Dupin calmly gave instructions to his inspectors.
“We’ll do things as we discussed,” Dupin said, as if the harbormistress wasn’t present. “We let her go for now. We can arrest her again whenever we like, when charges have been pressed.”
He turned round and left
.
“Oh, Kadeg,” Dupin said when he was already down on the terrace. “Report straightaway to Riwal; he’ll tell you about the new developments.” Dupin had seen that Kadeg too had flinched at the word “find,” but then quickly regained control of himself.
“What should I do here?” He heard Gochat cursing behind him. “Here, on this miserable island? The ferry doesn’t leave until the afternoon. You can’t just leave me sitting here.”
Dupin didn’t even slow his pace. It happened in every case that the commissaire would break off conversations or interviews, but here it had become the rule, which frankly fitted such an infuriating case. His mood had hit rock bottom. But at the same time he knew he had to think positively, even though it was an expression he hated.
In a recent irritatingly sleepless night—Claire had had yet another of her nocturnal emergency calls—he had watched a documentary about the first American who had reached the North Pole alone, without technical assistance, in forty-six crazy days. He had been literally half-dead when he got there. But he had done it.
He was asked how he had survived waking each morning despite serious frosts, fearsome pain, and ever new tortures—the changes in the weather, problems with the sledges he was dragging behind him—and setting off again. He had replied: “I had only permitted thoughts that reflected the positive about the situation, and cut out all the negative.” In the middle of the night, around half past two, Dupin had been deeply impressed by how simple it sounded.
He tried now with all his strength to concentrate on the positive. So, the object had been here. But even more important: it existed. That was the decisive factor. And a huge advance. It was no longer a pure hypothesis. The two women had found something, and that was what it was all about—that was it, that was the story they were hunting down. Dupin was convinced of that. There were too many indications, too many secondary lines that matched too well, even if they had no proof. Something that despite “positive” attitudes, they naturally desperately needed. They needed to find the find!
Dupin knew the risky point in an investigation when one had to commit oneself, when you otherwise would fail to achieve anything at all and in the end would go down with all flags flying. Obviously it was possible that they were on the wrong track and were leaping over a blind cliff. But he wasn’t afraid of that. Dupin had never been afraid of that.
He had reached the area of the harbor that lay between the two quays, where the sheds were. He stopped. Right at the spot Kerkrom always docked. As always he stood far too close to the water. And looked out at the harbor.
He had made his mind up: everything depended on this find. Only, was the find really part of a boat sunk by its crew? That was what he had decided. But what if Kerkrom and Darot really had made an archaeological discovery? In principle Dupin had so far never had problems with strange, wonderful, or bizarre ideas and theories in an investigation; certainly not since he had been in Brittany. Reality outdid fantasy by a long way, especially when it came to things that were odd and strange in the world. He was no beginner: if things initially seemed mad or even totally crazy, that was no argument in favor of reality. But there were clear lines between the romantic and the fantastic! There was no need to speculate about Ys. If so, then it was a spectacular archaeological find, the kind there were dozens of in France every year—he was always reading about them. Even if it was a cross.
Dupin shook himself and set off again. He had worked himself up into a strange mood—was it the influence of the island? He had to keep a cool head.
There were two options. Question number one: Who had taken the find from Kerkrom’s house? Answer number one: Kerkrom and Darot themselves. But where to? To somewhere else on the island? Where the killer had then found it? Or, equally plausible, where it still was, because the killer hadn’t found it? Or the second scenario: the killer had taken the object with him immediately after the murder, from Kerkrom’s house. And taken it off the island. Or—and that was another possibility—had left it there and come back to get it. Whatever the case, if they had their hands on the find, it would lead them sooner or later to the killer, Dupin was convinced of that.
He found his phone.
“Riwal, where are you?”
“Behind you, boss. Right behind you.”
Dupin turned round. The inspector was barely fifteen meters behind him.
“I came to look for you on the Quai Nord.”
Riwal didn’t hang up. He left that to Dupin, who impatiently came a few steps toward the inspector.
“We need a systematic search of the entire island. Every remotely possible hiding place. Every unused building, every empty shed, storeroom,” he said. “Plus the chapel and the church. Rooms that are rarely or never used in public buildings.”
“Possibly it’s no longer on the island.”
It was on the tip of Dupin’s tongue to object to Riwal’s use of the word “it,” but he let it go. There was no point.
“Possibly. How many staff do we have on the island right now?”
“Eight.”
“Good. Why were you looking for me, Riwal?”
They had walked farther toward Quai Sud.
Riwal pulled himself together: “Ah, yes, the island seems to be particularly popular today.”
Dupin looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“Our pirate captain, Vaillant, has docked at the first quay. Jumeau met up with Morin’s bolincheur fisherman Frédéric Carrière when he came back to the island after his meeting with you, and the scientific chief of the parc was here in his boat too for half an hour to take readings at his station.”
“What does Vaillant want here?”
“Nobody has talked to him yet.”
“Do that. Talk to him. I want—” Dupin said, then changed his mind. “No, leave it, Riwal. Let him do whatever he wants to on the island, but follow him, step for step. Shadow him.”
“Sure thing, boss. Jumeau, in any case, thinks Carrière is following him. And you know Jumeau doesn’t say much. Carrière has spread his net near him. And normally he never hangs out around here. There isn’t much for him to catch. All of this can’t be a coincidence.”
A chain of thought was running through his mind.
“One more thing, Riwal,” Dupin said as calmly and soberly as possible. “I want you to speak in confidence with your cousin the historian. Extreme confidence. Ask him what would occur to him as a meaningful archaeological find here in the region. If there are any local stories or historical incidents.” He stopped, seeing the thrilled expression on Riwal’s face. “Yes, ask him on my behalf about a massive gold cross. Ask him about anything that could be relevant from an archaeological point of view.” It was a risky, crazy thing, he knew; he had to limit it. “Just nothing about Ys, Riwal. Everything but Ys. I want something real, scientific.”
There was a glimmer of protest in Riwal’s eyes, but he managed to suppress it.
“That’s it for the moment. I—”
The phone rang. Nolwenn.
“News, Monsieur le Commissaire!”
Just the tone of her voice revealed two things: that the call was important, and that she had no time to deal with it; that it was a bad moment but clearly there was no alternative.
“I’ve spoken to Carrière, and the harbormaster at Le Conquet, where the suspicious boat was registered, with the fishing authorities, and last of all with Morin himself.”
Dupin could hear car doors at the other end, car doors slamming loudly.
“Most interesting of all is what the harbormaster says. He was very surprised when the boat was deregistered, because he knew it. It was in perfect condition. Officially it had been moved to another harbor, but according to the fishing authorities, that wasn’t the case. None of Morin’s boats are reported in any other harbor with that registration number.”
“What do Carrière and Morin say?”
“I had an extensive conversation with Carrière. He was making an effort to appear relatively
cooperative; the topic itself didn’t seem to disconcert him in any way. He claims the boat has massive rot problems at the stern. That it needed to be laid up in dry dock in a private area of Morin’s, along with a couple of other, smaller boats. That the work to be done was very complex and it still wasn’t clear when it could return to water. I told him we’d like to see the boat—and he referred me to his boss.”
Even if Carrière hadn’t been bothered by the matter, it all sounded as soft as butter, exactly the sort of excuse to be expected.
“Monsieur Morin himself was extremely brusque, if not unfriendly. Basically he said nothing at all. Only that everything was completely in order and that it was up to him alone to decide which boat was seaworthy and which not. Unlike Carrière, he didn’t ask why we were suddenly interested in this boat.” Dupin was familiar with Morin’s self-confident manner; that meant nothing. “Nonetheless he didn’t give us permission to inspect the boat, nor tell us where it was.”
Obviously not.
“What’s the boat called anyhow?” He had been wanting to ask all along.
“Iroisette.”
“Find out where Morin keeps boats or boat parts.”
“If there is something dodgy about the business, Morin probably won’t have moved it there.”
That was true.
“And if we search all those places and don’t find it, that doesn’t mean by a long way that it’s lying at the bottom of the sea somewhere in the entrance to the bay.” Nolwenn’s razor-sharp mind was operating on full power, as ever. “It wouldn’t even be approaching proof.”
“What if we have the seafloor in the area searched?”
“Forget it, it would be easier to find a needle in a haystack. If everything we’re speculating about here turns out to be true, there’s only one solution: to find the parts of the boat that Kerkrom and Darot came across. That’s if the perpetrator hasn’t already gotten rid of it. Or, Monsieur le Commissaire, if it isn’t something else altogether. Riwal has kept me up to speed. Don’t forget: you’re investigating in Brittany.”
The Killing Tide Page 28