The Killing Tide

by Jean-Luc Bannalec

  Dupin wondered if he should join up with Kadeg. But he ought to take an overview first. He stumbled on, through the small hall, then another door to a sort of reception, where he spotted Riwal. He still wasn’t well, not nearly.

  Riwal came toward him, clearly excited.

  “Leblanc has now turned toward Le Conquet, maybe to take shelter from the storm. Goulch is still on his heels. Even though, if it comes down to it, Leblanc’s Zodiac is faster and more maneuverable. The crazy maneuvers won’t help him, though. Goulch will soon get him. I suspect you’ll see Leblanc shortly.”

  “Shortly?” Every word was an effort. “Here, on the island?”

  Dupin couldn’t wait.

  “Here in the institute?”

  “Here.”

  There was no way the commissaire was getting on a boat again in this storm, even for the two hundred meters to Douarnenez. Even the thought of it brought on a new wave of dizziness.

  “Okay, boss. An initial search of Leblanc’s house has been completed.” Riwal sounded frustrated. “As well as that of the little weekend house he owns. Not far from the Pointe du Raz, in Kermeur. Both without result. The same goes for the rooms here. So far nothing found. And the object isn’t small. We’re seeking out people in Leblanc’s circle who might know whether he owns other buildings. Professionally and privately.”

  Dupin winced.

  He needed to lean on the wall for support. He had that terrifying feeling again; to be more precise he once again actually experienced the earth falling steeply away in front of him.

  He waited, took deep breaths; his five-second ritual.

  “All okay, boss?” There was deep concern in Riwal’s voice.

  “I need to go out for a moment, Riwal.”

  It was only after Dupin had been walking for quite a while that he felt better.

  The fresh air did him good. The wind and rain had died down a bit.

  Only slowly the horrible sensation diminished and he could consciously get his thoughts back into order. He had to go back, continue the conversation with Riwal. There were still a lot of important points.

  He turned round. After a while he made out the brightly lit windows of the institute.

  And a figure, hurrying toward him.

  “Boss, is that you?”

  Riwal.

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Everything’s fine, I…”

  Yet again Dupin winced.

  But this time it wasn’t dizziness, but a thought. A thought that came as if from nowhere. He shoved a hand in his pants pocket. His Clairefontaine.

  Being given a bath so many times—in the Atlantic, in the Breton rain—wouldn’t have done it any good.

  “What are you intending, boss? Shouldn’t we go back in? It’s not raining quite so hard, but…”

  “You go on,” Dupin said absently.

  His notebook did indeed look in a miserable state. The cardboard cover was soaked through, and the thin protective film had come away on all sides. Despite the fact that the notebook pages had been pressed tightly together in his pants pocket, the water had naturally soaked all the way through from the cover to the inside.

  It was only a thought. But it could just be right. Even if it sounded fantastic. But what did that mean?

  “I want to take a look at something, Riwal.”

  Dupin’s eyes glanced along the island path: without intending to he had walked quite a long way.

  “Should I…” Riwal hesitated, “come with you to look?”

  “No, no. It’s just … just a thing.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Absolutely.” Dupin did his best to sound steady. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He turned around and marched off again. Riwal shrugged despairingly when he knew the commissaire couldn’t see him.

  Dupin’s footsteps were fast and determined.

  He didn’t need the Clairefontaine. At least not to be sure of what it was the wonderful owner of the Ty Mad hotel had mentioned yesterday. The semi-derelict pier at the western end of the island—and the grottoes. Grottoes that served as entranceways to underground caves and passageways, believed to be legendary, where the fantastic treasures of the fearsome pirates lay hidden.

  Leblanc could only have taken the object off Sein in the boat. A pier, therefore, would almost certainly have played a part in his choice of hiding place. It was like in Kerkrom’s house: they had to think absolutely concretely and practically, from Leblanc’s point of view. Where and how was it going to be easiest to move such a heavy object? So that it would be best hidden? The island rose substantially toward the center. The sky was still letting only a little light through; here and there you could see little more than the outlines of low-hanging cloud clusters.

  High trees stood on both sides of the path, making it into a wild avenue. If Dupin’s sense of direction was still more or less functioning, the path ran virtually straight.

  The commissaire panted for breath. He had set a high pace. But internally he was far from stable. His moment of inspiration, which was extremely interesting, had now been followed by huge doubt. Very basic doubts that had reversed his conviction at one go. What if the whole story of the “find” really was just a fantasy? If the thing under the tarpaulin really was just a wooden beam for the house? What if it had just been something banal standing in Kerkrom’s bedroom that had left the notches? What if his own fantasy had simply run away with him, as so often happened with Riwal? And the business with Leblanc and the island, maybe even that was nothing out of the ordinary? What if it really was all about Morin’s boat? In some complicated way that he simply didn’t understand, didn’t remotely imagine? Or was it all something different altogether? And that out here on the island he was just chasing a figment of his imagination?

  The sudden doubts—which hopefully were just the results of his distraught condition—had caused him to slow his steps.

  Nonetheless he carried on. His eyes focused straight ahead.

  In the meantime the heavy banks of cloud had been ripped open everywhere, and in a curious way Dupin was glad of it, genuinely relieved. Above anything else it seemed to have restored a touch of reality. The dominance of the obscure dark matter that had unleashed the capricious storm was at an end.

  The path now turned steeply downward, toward the sea. Dupin had to be careful. Before long he saw the outline of a building. An old stone house, without a roof for the most part, the wall on one side totally collapsed. The path led right past it.

  Then Dupin made out the semi-dilapidated pier. There were only a few meters left. One of the huge storms must have long ago taken the rest with it.

  Even if the weather seemed to have calmed down, the Atlantic was still working at it. Dupin went down to the start of the pier—paying attention to keeping a safe distance of a few meters from the tossing sea. It was easily possible to dock a Zodiac. A good place to go ashore. Dupin turned around. Concentrated. Leblanc would definitely have had something to help him, like Kerkrom’s boat trailer. It was unimaginable otherwise.

  The old stone house was some twenty meters away. The path was in reasonably good condition, stony, but sound. Another path, also reasonably smooth, led off to the right. Behind it were huge rocks and a warning sign: Keep Clear—Danger of Death. And another with a symbol Dupin knew well from the Brittany coast: cliffs from which the rocks had broken off and crashed to the ground. With a large red exclamation mark next to it.

  Dupin headed on along the shore path. A few gentle turns, the cliff wall to the left, the sea to the right. Twenty, thirty meters.

  Then the path ended abruptly in a sort of stone platform. Two jagged, tall, dark holes were visible in the rocks. One directly behind the platform, one that required clambering over a few meters of rough gravel. In this weather, and this light, they looked like wide-open jaws. Next to the pair of them was another “Keep Clear—Danger of Death” sign.

  Dupin pulled out his phone, one of
the modern “outdoor” models that Nolwenn had equipped the whole commissariat with, which had withstood the past few hours better than he had expected.

  He turned on the flashlight function. It would be a laughably weak light, but it was all he had. Without hesitation he entered the first grotto.

  Inside it was pitch black. And astoundingly cold.

  Dupin stopped and shone the light around the stone chamber. The phone’s light reached a lot farther than he would have thought possible, revealing imposing dimensions. Not so much in the width or length—the grotto was no more than ten meters long, and maybe six wide. But in height it was another matter altogether. The light disappeared above, with no ceiling to be seen. In some places the rocks glistened brightly when Dupin shone the light on them, patches of mineral: quartz.

  There were thick layers of dried seaweed on the floor, with only a narrow stone corridor left free in the middle. The seaweed would be brought in during high tides and heavy storms. It seemed it had piled up here over the years. There was no sign anywhere of any activity suggesting that anybody had been here recently. Dupin walked around a bit, shining his light on the ground. The grotto had to be astonishingly dry; the seaweed crackled under his shoes.

  He stood there a few moments, ankle-deep in seaweed, and involuntarily shook his head. He turned around and headed quickly toward the exit.

  The second grotto was surely twice as large as the first. Here too there was no ceiling to be seen. But in contrast to the first, the rocky floor here was clear, no sign of a single piece of seaweed. On the other hand, directly behind the entrance on the left, there was a crack, about one meter fifty high and a meter broad. Dupin shone the light inside. It didn’t reach very far, but far enough to see that from the crack there ran a sort of natural passage in the rocks.

  Should he explore the passage? Or would he do better to come back and do it with reinforcements and suitable equipment? Such as a proper light. Riwal would know what to think about such a spelunking expedition.

  Dupin hesitated. Then he ducked down, ready to go in.

  The minute he set foot in the crack, leading with his head in an extremely cramped position, something suddenly occurred to him. He nearly rocketed up.

  A mental image of the cave with the seaweed, when he had pointed his phone at the ground.

  Something had flashed, he had just seen it from the corner of his eye, which was probably why he hadn’t immediately noticed it, because the quartz had shone in various places. But when he thought back to it now, it was clear to him that it wasn’t just the walls that had glittered, but something else. And that something had been on the ground.

  He turned around quickly, left the cave, and just a few seconds later was back in the first grotto, out of breath.

  The seaweed looked the same everywhere. He would just have to try. He squatted down in the middle, holding the phone flashlight toward the ground, and turned slowly in a circle.

  Nothing.

  He went two steps farther, did the same again.

  Still nothing.

  And again.

  Had he just imagined it?

  “What a load of shit.”

  Dupin stood up. The softly spoken words echoed notably, his voice sounding strangely distorted.

  “Then that’s the way it is,” he muttered defiantly.

  He went straight over to the right-hand corner by the entrance to the grotto, then turned round and began systematically pushing the seaweed aside with his right foot.

  The rocky ground was uneven, as one might expect, with dips and cracks that were covered over by the seaweed at the surface. He made slow progress. It hadn’t been possible to see that the layer of seaweed reached up to half a meter in thickness in places. Then the next minute it would be no more than a few centimeters. It reminded him of autumns in his childhood when he would run through thick layers of fallen leaves, or when he whirled around in the heap of them that his father had carefully stacked up in the garden.

  Suddenly he lost his footing. For some reason or other he slipped. He swayed, tried in vain to keep his balance, then fell over. Straight forward, instinctively putting out both hands in front of him. And hit something hard. A piercing pain in his hands, arms, and shoulders overwhelmed all other sensations for a few seconds.

  He tried to get his bearings.

  He was lying on his right shoulder. Thousands of tiny shreds of seaweed swirled through the air. He coughed.

  His phone with the flashlight app must have fallen into the carpet of seaweed. It took a while for his eyes to accustom to the darkness. The only light was a dim glow coming from the entrance to the grotto. Dupin tried to prop himself up, only to be rewarded by a strong, sharp pain in both wrists. He carefully felt around with his left hand.

  He felt the edge of a rock, about forty centimeters high. Now he understood. He had fallen into a depression in the rock floor. A real dip. It had to be a few square meters in size. He now noticed that his shin too was aching badly. He must have landed with it on the sharp edge. Dupin moved his leg carefully. Even though he was a bit stunned from the impact, the pain wasn’t as bad as in his wrists. But this was not a rock ledge, it felt quite different.

  In the semidarkness he could make out a sharp, straight line in the seaweed. Dark. There was something lying there.

  He quickly brushed some seaweed out of the way, and felt the object. The upper surface felt soft, organic, but below it was hard. He rashly got to his knees, ignoring the pain in his hands.

  A sort of brace, four-sided. Maybe fifteen centimeters long, five wide.

  He tried to move the thing a bit. Impossible. He hastily felt his way upward.

  Then he stopped as if struck by thunder.

  He lost his breath.

  A crossbar. A right angle.

  He exposed the horizontal bar completely. It was shorter than the other.

  He still couldn’t breathe.

  A cross.

  It was a cross.

  A large cross, made of a heavy material.

  Dupin felt goose bumps creep all over him.

  It was completely mad. Too mad. It couldn’t be true. Had he fallen on his head or something? Was he hallucinating? But the pain in his hands—for example—felt absolutely real. It lasted until he got free of the spell he had fallen into.

  He shook himself and looked back at it. He couldn’t make out much. It looked as if a sort of moss had formed over the brace.

  All of a sudden he found something lying right next to the cross. On the bare rocks.

  His phone. It was only when he had it in his hand that he realized that the display had shattered. The lower part of the glass was missing altogether, while there were holes in the housing. But the worst was that the light no longer worked. Dupin pressed the On button but nothing happened.

  He needed to get up. No matter how painful it would be. And it was. Not just his hands, arms, and shoulders hurt like hell, but all his other bones too.

  He squatted down, which hurt no less.

  A shining material appeared. That must have been what he had previously seen glittering in the seaweed when he shone the light on the ground.

  In the light it was hard to tell if it was golden; but it certainly couldn’t be ruled out. Dupin used his fingers to touch the place. And felt a notch. With a sharp edge. The material was damaged, or to be more precise there was a bit missing. Not much: a long, thin piece.

  Once again Dupin was frozen.

  What was it Riwal had said about the thing Kerkrom had sent in?

  The material test which the Paris laboratory had identified as pure gold?

  Dupin sat up.

  This had to be it.

  Kerkrom and Darot really had found a cross. A golden cross. On the bottom of the sea. In Douarnenez Bay. They had brought it up in Kerkrom’s boat and taken it to her house. Leblanc had brought it here after murdering them.

  Maybe they had involved both him and Professor Lapointe to examine their find. To work out
what it really was. To decide what to do. Perhaps they then would have given the cross to a museum, a regional or national museum—and Leblanc wanted to do nothing of the kind. Or perhaps he had just somehow found out about it by chance and they didn’t know someone else was on to it.

  In theory the cross could have been from any year at all; from the nineteenth, eighteenth, seventeenth centuries or even from the Middle Ages, no matter what Riwal’s cousin had said. There were the craziest stories, and history was full of them. Brittany had created so many saints after the end of the western Roman Empire, faith was so acute, who knew what people would have done to be as sure as they could of getting to heaven. Or what Napoleon’s troops had secretly brought back from their Russian campaign. From some immensely rich Orthodox church. There was without doubt an endless number of wholly realistic possibilities.

  “I have to…” Dupin was speaking aloud. “… I have to fetch the others.” The loudly echoing sentence had the effect of building up his self-confidence.

  He struggled to climb out of the dip in the ground and stared once again for a moment at the dark cross lying there. He saw it, and yet it seemed completely unreal. It was monstrous.

  He turned around and headed as fast as he could toward the exit from the grotto.

  Once outside he was blinded by the bright light. He had to hold his hand in front of his face.

  The sky was torn open theatrically in places, with rays of sunshine breaking dramatically through chaotically jagged holes.

  * * *

  “A cross, Riwal. An … archeological find.”

  The inspector’s eyes were open wide. Dupin thought he noticed a gentle shiver run through his inspector’s whole body. The fact was, it was just that which Riwal had expected, hoped, but now that it was reality it seemed to be too much for him. Something Dupin could easily understand.

  Kadeg, standing next to him, was no less shocked.

  “You think they…”

  “Back to Leblanc. What’s happened, Riwal? Tell me.”

  The two inspectors had stormed toward Dupin the minute he stepped into the institute. Riwal had excitedly reported something about Goulch, Leblanc, and “still on the run.” Dupin interrupted him: it just burst out of him. His discovery. He tried to tell them about it simply, remaining as prosaic as possible in his choice of words and manner. Out of the grotto, in broad daylight, the discovery seemed even more fantastic.