Day One

“What a load of shit,” Commissaire Georges Dupin muttered.

The stench was appalling. He felt sick to his gut. He had been overtaken by a fit of nausea almost to the point of fainting. He had had to lean back against the wall to support himself; he wasn’t going to last much longer if he stayed here. He felt cold sweat running down his forehead. It was 5:32 A.M., but no longer night and noticeably cool. Dawn was creeping slowly across the sky. Dupin had been dragged from his bed by a phone call at 4:49 A.M., when it was still the middle of the night. He and Claire had only just left the Amiral shortly after 2:00 A.M.; they had been at one hell of a party to mark the beginning of the longest day of the year: the summer solstice. In Celtic they called it Alban Hevin. Brittany was naturally blessed with enthralling light, but at this time of year it became magical. The sun didn’t set until 10:30 in the evening, and yet long afterward a brilliant light lingered in the atmosphere; the horizon was clearly visible across the Atlantic, yet at the same time the brightest stars could already be seen. This “astronomical twilight,” as they called it, lasted almost until midnight before total darkness united sea and sky. There was so much light it almost made you drunk. Dupin loved these days. Really loved them.

The room, with its yellowish tiles reaching up to the ceiling, was cramped and cold in the harsh neon lights, with its tiny windows tilted open but not letting in anything like enough fresh air. Half a dozen dark gray containers as high as a man stood on rollers in two rows of three.

The young woman—in her midthirties, Dupin guessed—had lain in the container to the front on the left; a cleaner had found her. Two policemen had turned up here at the fish auction hall in Douarnenez harbor right away. Together with the crime scene team from Quimper, who had taken the body out of the container and laid it on the tiled floor before Dupin arrived.

It was a revolting spectacle even for the hardened observer. Dupin had never come across anything like it in his whole career. The body was covered in rotting fish, guts, stomachs, intestines, a mixture of all the more or less liquid waste that had been in the container. Even whole pieces of fish, tails, and bones stuck to the woman, to her hair, her hands, and—though there were only a few places where their original color could be made out—her light blue sweater, bright yellow oilskin pants, and black rubber boots. Her short, dark brown hair was tangled with sardine heads. Her face was a mess too. Fish scales glittered in the light, particularly macabre where one extremely large fish scale covered her left eye while her right eye was wide open. The slimy mess on her upper body had intermingled with the woman’s blood. A lot of blood. There was a four-to-five-centimeter cut across her lower throat.

“Dead as a dormouse,” said the wiry pathologist with red cheeks, shrugging. He didn’t look in the slightest like a comedian and didn’t seem in the slightest bothered by the stench. “What is there to say? The cause of death is no more a puzzle than the woman’s state of health. Somebody cut her throat, probably yesterday between eight P.M. and midnight, though I’ll spare you the reasoning behind that.” He glanced at Dupin and the two crime scene specialists. “If you have no objections we’ll take the young lady to the lab. And the barrel too. Maybe we’ll find something interesting.” There was a jovial tone to his voice. Dupin was overcome with another wave of nausea.

“Not a problem for us. We’re done. There’s nothing more to be added to the crime scene investigation for now.”

The chief forensic officer from Quimper, Dupin had been pleased to note, was away on holiday, and his job was being done by two assistants, both of whom had the same unbounded self-confidence as their lord and master. The shorter of the two took over: “We were able to take a number of fingerprints from the top of the container, where it opens—twenty or so different prints altogether I’d say, although most of them weren’t complete or were one on top of the other. Hard to say much more at present. Even though we will,” he hesitated a moment, “need to look more closely at the interior.”

Kadeg, one of Dupin’s two inspectors, who seemed fully awake and composed and stood too close to the corpse, cleared his throat. “We could do with a little bit more information. On the knife for example.” He had turned toward the pathologist and mimed for the experts: “I believe the blade must have been very sharp; the wound looks almost surgical.”

The pathologist wasn’t going to be impressed. “We’ll examine the wound carefully in due course. The state of the wound depends not only on the blade but also on the skill of the perpetrator, as well as the speed with which he made the cut. Someone who knows his knives can make almost any cut with any knife, even in a fight. Mind you, I would probably rule out a machete”—he clearly thought this really funny—“but any of the hundred, maybe two hundred knives carried by the fishermen who use this hall could have done it.”

“Just who might be carrying a knife with him,” the smaller forensics man said ironically, “isn’t a question you’re going to get very far with here. Everybody who lives by the sea, whether they fish, hunt, collect mussels, own a boat, or are looking for work—in other words virtually everyone who lives here—owns at least one good knife and knows how to use it.”

Kadeg looked as if he was about to make another objection, then dropped it and quickly changed the subject. “How often and when are the barrels emptied? Have you been able to find that out? There must be a regular schedule.”

He aimed the question at the rookie policeman from Douarnenez, who, along with his colleagues, had been the first to turn up and seemed a down-to-earth local.

“Twice a day, we already know that. The men who gut the fish sometimes work late into the night and so the barrels are emptied very early in the morning before the first fishing boats come in. And once again around three P.M. The cleaners who empty them were totally distraught and called in one of the warehouse staff, who reported the incident to us at the police station. Then he closed off the hall.”

“Without even glancing into the barrel himself to see if he might know the person?”

“There was only a leg visible.”

“What about a phone?” Kadeg asked. “Did you find a cell phone on the body?”

“No.”

“Okay,” the pathologist said, obviously in a hurry. “Then let’s pack up the corpse and—”

“Boss,” Riwal, Dupin’s other inspector, interrupted. He was standing in the doorway of the little room, which was already too full. There was a woman behind him who looked remarkably similar to the dead woman, except that she was probably about fifty years old.

“Gaétane Gochat, the chief of the harbor and the auction hall here, she’s just turned up and—”

“Céline Kerkrom, that’s Céline Kerkrom.” The harbor chief had stopped in her tracks, staring at the body. It took a few moments before she got her voice back.

“She’s one of our coastal fisherwomen. She lives on the Île de Sein and usually brings her catch here to sell.”

Gaétane Gochat sounded completely unmoved, no trace of shock, horror, or sympathy, which, Dupin had learned, meant nothing whatsoever. Each person reacted totally differently when it came to sudden brutal or tragic events.

On his last case, in the Belon area, they had moved heaven and earth to find out who the murder victim was; here the identification of the deceased seemed remarkably simple.

“I need a café,” Dupin muttered. It was only the second sentence he had spoken since he arrived. “We have a few things to talk about. Come along with us, Madame Gochat. You too, Riwal!” He was in no state to hide the grumpy tone in his voice.

He suddenly tore himself away from the wall, walked past all of them without waiting for their reaction or noticing the puzzled, surprised expressions on their faces, and was out of the door. He needed coffee. And now. He needed to shake off the stupor, the infernal stench, and the exhaustion that meant he was seeing everything as if through a hazy veil. To put it in a nutshell: he needed to come to himself, to plunge back into reality, and quickly. Get his mind wide awake, clear, and sharp.

The commissaire made his way through the big halls to where he had on his way in spotted a stand with a little bar, and a large coffee machine and a couple of scuffed bar tables. Riwal and Gaétane Gochat had trouble keeping up with him.

Everyday professional life in the plain tiled fish market had resumed, paying little heed to the dramatic news which had obviously already done the rounds; things were busy. Fishermen and fish sellers, restaurant owners and other customers were going about their business. Hundreds of flat plastic boxes were spread around the big hall on the damp concrete floor, in garish colors: fire red, neon green, signal blue, bright orange, just a few in black or white. Dupin recognized the boxes from Concarneau; they were a standard item in all the fish warehouses and the chief utensil in all the auction houses. They contained heaps of ice, on top of which lay everything the fishermen had caught in their nets: vast quantities of fish and sea creatures in every shape, form, color, and size; every sort of exotic sea creature you could imagine in your wildest fantasy. Huge, prehistoric-looking monkfish with their jaws ripped open wide, shining mackerel, fierce-looking lobsters, grayish black squid squeezed together, masses of langoustines, different types of sole, top-quality examples of sea bass (a fish Dupin loved, primarily served as carpaccio or tartare), delicious red mullet everywhere, gigantic spider crabs. There were also fish and shellfish Dupin didn’t know the names of, as well as some he had never seen before, at least not knowingly, maybe already prepared on his plate, but not like this. He had to admit that as a good Frenchman his culinary interest went far beyond the zoological. In one box he came across a sadly confused-looking shark, in another next to it, a meter-long, almost completely round-bodied yet at the same time somewhat flat fish with a disproportionately large back fin. A sunfish, if Dupin’s memory served him well. It was only recently that Riwal had shown him one in the Concarneau fish hall. Brittany was a paradise in many ways, particularly for lovers of fish and seafood; nowhere were they better or fresher. That was why the adjective “breton” stood alongside the name of almost every fish dish in almost every starred French restaurant: Langoustines bretonnes, Saint-Pierre Breton—there was no higher praise.

The busiest part of the hall was the rear, where the auctions took place. Along the sides were half-open rooms where some of the fish were already being prepared. Men in white protective suits, with hairnets, white rubber boots, and blue gloves worked with large, long knives at stainless steel workbenches.

“Two petits cafés.” Dupin had reached the stand quickly, despite having to zigzag between the boxes. The old lady behind the counter gave him a suspicious look but placed two cardboard cups beneath the machine.

Dupin turned to the harbor chief, who was standing next to Riwal.

“Are you related to the deceased, madame?” The thought had occurred to Dupin because they looked so alike.

“Not at all,” said Gaétane Gochat dismissively. It seemed she had been asked the question more than once.

“Have you any idea what happened here?”

“Not in the slightest. Was she killed here in the auction hall? At what time was the murder?”

“Apparently between eight P.M. and midnight yesterday evening. Whether or not she was killed here is something we don’t know yet. How late were you here yesterday?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, madame.”

“I think up until about nine thirty. I was in my office.”

“Whereabouts is your office, if you don’t mind me asking?”

She replied with an impassive face. “Directly next to the auction hall. That’s the administration center for the harbor.”

Madame Gochat was the prosaic type, one who concentrated on doing the things that needed to be done, speedily and rationally. She was a stocky person with presence, short brown hair, brown eyes, little worry lines around her eyes and lips; businesslike rather than stubborn. Dupin thought she could be feisty if it came to it. She wore jeans, a fluffy gray fleece, and the obligatory rubber boots.

“What sort of fishermen come here? Those from the big boats too?”

“The deep-sea trawlers come in around five in the morning, the ones that have been at sea for a couple of weeks; the local boats that have been out for a couple of days come in around midday; and then at about five in the afternoon we get the coastal fishermen who’ve set out at around four or five in the morning, while the sardine fishers have gone out the evening before. The auctions begin as soon as the boats have come in. We were very busy yesterday. It was the beginning of the holiday season; a few of the coastal fishermen were still here by the time I left.”

“Did you see Madame Kerkrom?”

“Céline? No.”

The elderly lady behind the counter had set the two cafés down in front of Dupin. The expression on her face as she did so was hard to decipher.

“What about earlier?”

“About seven P.M., I think, I saw her briefly then. She was carrying a box into the hall.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“No.”

“What were you yourself doing in the hall at that time?”

There was just a hint of testiness in Madame Gochat’s look.

“Every now and then I look and see if there’s my sort of guy.”

Dupin drank down his first café in one gulp. A proper café de bonne soeur, a “nun’s coffee,” as the Bretons called weak coffee. Torre, bull coffee, was what they called a strong one. For really bad coffee, undrinkable and disgusting, there were a multitude of names, serious Breton names: “Bardot piss,” which supposedly meant something like “mule piss,” or café sac’h, water squeezed through an old pair of stockings.

“You said Céline Kerkrom usually brought her catch here. What do you mean by that? How regular was she?”

“Almost every day, just as the auctions were starting. She specialized in lieu jaune—pollock—bass, and bream. Most of the time she fished with a line. She rarely used a net, as far as I know.”

“So yesterday she brought her catch here?”

“Yes.”

“But not every day.”

“Maybe she missed out five or six days in the month. Every now and then she would sell direct to a couple of restaurants.” To judge from her tone of voice, Madame Gochat wasn’t happy with that.

“The killer could more or less reckon on her being here?”

Madame Gochat looked irritated for a brief moment, before continuing. “Absolutely.”

“Did she have a crew? Fellow workers?”

“No. She always went out on her boat alone. Lots of the coastal fisherfolk are one-man or one-woman operations. It’s a hard way to earn a crust.”

“We need to know when she came in yesterday, who last saw her, and where and when. Everything.”

“Obviously,” Riwal replied.

“If I understand properly”—Dupin had turned back to face the harbormistress, pulled his red Clairefontaine notebook out of his pants pocket, and his Bic ballpoint from his jacket—“I imagine none of the fishermen who were here this morning were here last night.”

“Certainly not.”

“Who, apart from the fisherfolk, is here during the auctions?”

“At least one of my colleagues, the customers—fish merchants, restaurant owners—the workers who’re already working on some of the fish. And two people to deal with the ice.”

Madame Gochat noticed Dupin’s curious look. “Everyone needs vast amounts of ice. There’s a huge ice silo directly next to the auction hall. It’s a service we provide.”

“We need as soon as possible a complete list of everybody who was in the hall last night between six P.M. and midnight and/or who had been at the quayside beforehand.”

“My colleagues will work on that,” Gochat said. She seemed used to giving instructions. “We’ll get together the people who were in the hall, but it will be harder to find out who was on the quayside. That part of the harbor is freely accessible. Anglers really like the quayside and there are always biggish groups of them there. Tourists like to pass by too; there’s always something to see. Apart from that, three Spanish deep-sea trawlers have been moored there since midday yesterday, each of them with at least eight crew members.”

The entrance was open, at least ten meters wide, and once in the hall it wasn’t far to the little side room where the body had been found.

“I want to know about everybody who was here.” Dupin repeated his instruction, stressing the “I.” “What each and every person who was here was doing, from when and until when. And then we can tackle each and every one of them.”

“It’ll be done, boss,” Riwal replied. “Our colleagues from Douarnenez have in any case already spoken with the member of Madame Gochat’s staff who was here last night and closed up the hall. Jean Serres. At 11:20 P.M. The last fisherfolk had left shortly before. He had seen Céline Kerkrom a few times in the course of the evening.”

Like Kadeg, Riwal gave the impression of being lively and relaxed, but then that had been the case ever since the birth of his son, Maclou-Brioc, four weeks earlier; despite the lack of sleep, his paternal pride had left him looking invincible. “He didn’t notice anything unusual or suspicious. So far nobody’s said they noticed anything.”

It would have been too easy.

“At what time did this Jean Serres see the fisherwoman last?”

“None of our men said.”

Dupin drank his second café. Yet again down in one gulp. It didn’t taste any better than the first one. Never mind.

“One more, please,” he said. Right now it wasn’t about taste, it was the effect that mattered. The woman at the stand fulfilled the order with the slightest of glances.

“Madame Gochat”—Dupin turned to face the harbormistress—“I would like to call your colleague and ask him when he last saw Céline Kerkrom last night.”

“You mean you want me to call him now?”

“Now.”

“As you wish.”

Madame Gochat took her cell phone out of her pants pocket and stepped aside.

“Jean Serres,” Riwal continued, “said that at about nine P.M. there were some ten to fifteen fisherfolk in the hall. Of those, five were preparing the fish, and there were maybe five buyers, and a couple of men dealing with the ice. At about nine P.M. the first coastal sardine fishermen had come in from the nearby harbor basin. It was busy on the quayside. The afternoon rain had suddenly stopped about six P.M. and the sun had broken through, which had brought the anglers and promenaders out.”

In Concarneau, Dupin himself was one of the promenaders who always strolled by the fish auction hall. He liked the lively, colorful goings-on around the harbor, the way it was reliably repeated every day, perfectly choreographed. There was always something going on.

The elderly woman on the stand had set a third paper cup on the counter in front of Dupin, and was now dealing with four older fishermen who had just turned up.

“I want all the workers in the hall put stringently under the microscope, Riwal,” Dupin said loudly.

“Leave it to me, boss.”

Dupin threw back the third petit café.

The harbormistress came back over to them, her phone still in her hand. Serres said he had last seen Céline Kerkrom about 9:30 P.M. In the hall. He reckoned she had come in around 6:00.

“Did he notice anything in particular?”

“No. She’d been absolutely normal. But then he had no reason to pay her any particular attention. They didn’t speak.”

“I want to speak with the man myself—Riwal, tell him to come here now.”

“Consider it done.” Riwal left the counter and headed toward the exit from the hall, where a small group of police was standing.

“How long do the coastal fish auctions last usually, Madame Gochat?”

“It’s very variable, it depends on the season and the weather. December, coming up to the holidays, is the busiest time. Even busier than in June, July, and August. At that time of year we work until after midnight. Now it’s up to about eleven P.M. or eleven thirty.”

“What do the fisherfolk do after the end of the auction?”

Madame Gochat shrugged. “They go back to their boats, take them to their moorings. Sometimes they hang around for a while, tinkering with their buoys, chatting on the quayside. Or maybe they go for a drink.”

“Here?”

“Down at the Vieux Quai, Port de Rosmeur, right next door.”

For the first time that morning Dupin’s features lit up. The quai and the area behind it were fabulous; he could spend hours on the old pier side with its fishermen’s houses painted in shades of blue, pink, or yellow, sitting in one of the cafés or bistros watching the world go by. His favorite was the Café de la Rade, painted in bright Atlantic blue and white, a former fish canning factory. Everything there was unstaged, nothing put on for show. There was a view of the harbor and the bay of Douarnenez, breathtakingly beautiful. Dupin liked Douarnenez, in particular its wonderful old market halls—the coffee there was great—and the Port de Rosmeur, the charmingly aged harbor quarter, built in the nineteenth century, the golden age of the sardine. If you needed to name a center of operations in Douarnenez, then the Café de la Rade was the perfect place. The commissaire, who had a tendency toward ritual, in every one of his cases designated either a bar, a bistro, or sometimes even a location out in the open air as “center of operations.” It would be the scene for interviews and, if necessary, for official interrogations too. Dupin was famous for his dislike of offices of every kind, in particular his own. He escaped from them as often as possible. He solved his cases from the scene of the crime, not from a desk. Even when the police prefecture was close by, Dupin needed to be outside, in the open air, amongst other people. He had to see things for himself, speak to people himself, live in their world.

“Did you know any more about the deceased, Madame Gochat?”

“No. Like I said, she was a coastal fisher from Île de Sein. She’d been married. As far as I know her ex-husband was one of the technicians in the island lighthouse.” The harbormistress, even now, talking about the dead woman, showed no sign of emotion.

“When did they get divorced?”

“Oh, that was years ago, ten at least. They get married young on the islands. And if it goes wrong, they’re on their own again young.”

“What else? What else can you say about her?”

“I don’t know, she was thirty-six, one of the few women in this business. She spoke her mind and had a few hefty disagreements with some people.”

“She was a rebel, a fighter,” said the elderly woman at the coffee stand, who was busy with a few glasses at a little washbasin. She seemed angry.

Displeasure was written all over Madame Gochat’s face. Dupin was quick to follow up. He was curious.

“What do you mean, Madame…?”

“Yvette Batout, Monsieur le Commissaire.” She had now positioned herself directly opposite Dupin on the other side of the counter. “Céline was the only one who stood up to the self-appointed ‘king of the fishermen,’ Charles Morin, a criminal with a big fleet, half a dozen deep-sea trawlers and more coastal boats. Bolincheurs primarily, but a couple of chalutiers. He has more than a few skeletons in his closet, and not just in the fishing business.”

“That’ll do, Yvette.” The harbormistress’s tone was cutting.

“Let Madame Batout say what she wants to say.”

Madame Batout batted her eyelashes briefly at Dupin. “Morin is unscrupulous, even when he plays the grand seigneur. He uses giant dragnets and drift nets, even along the sea bottom, causes piles of unnecessary catch, ignores the quotas—Céline even caught him out a couple of times inside the Parc Iroise, right in the middle of the conservation area, even though he denies it all and threatens his critics. Céline reported him to the authorities several times, including those at the parc. She had the balls to do it. Just last week six dolphins who’d been crushed in one of the nets were found dead on a beach at Ouessant.”

“Did he threaten Céline Kerkrom directly?”

Dupin was making thorough notes, in a rapid scribble that looked like a secret code.

“‘You need to take care, you’ll see,’ he told her here in the hall, back in February, in front of witnesses.”

“He was threatening to take her to court for slander, not to kill her, there’s a bit of a difference, Yvette.” Gaétane Gochat’s memory was curiously mechanical; there was no way of knowing what she actually thought.

“What exactly happened back in February?”

“The two of them,” the harbormistress said before Madame Batout could answer, “bumped into one another by chance here, and they quarreled. Nothing more.”

“It was more than a quarrel, Gaétane, and you know it.” Madame Batout’s eyes were blazing.

“How old is Monsieur Morin?”

“Late fifties.”

“What did you mean about ‘skeletons in the closet, and not just in the fishing business,’ Madame Batout?”

“He had a finger in the pie in a whole raft of criminal affairs, including smuggling cigarettes across the channel. But for some reason or other nobody ever caught him. Three years ago a customs boat was close on his tail and nearly caught him, until he sank the boat. The only piece of evidence! And there was nothing else to hold against him.”

“Be careful what you say, Yvette!”

“Has Charles Morin ever been the subject of a police investigation?”

“Never,” the harbormistress said firmly. “Everything against him, I’ll say it outright, amounts to nothing more than extremely vague accusations. Rumors. I think that given the number of illegal actions he’s accused of, the police would have been on his tail at some stage.”

Dupin unfortunately knew all too many cases where that hadn’t been what happened.

“Great,” he mumbled.

His first conversation and already he had not only one hot topic but two: illegal fishing and cigarette smuggling.

Fishing was a huge affair in Brittany. Anyone who regularly read Ouest-France and Le Télégramme—and Dupin did so with particularly strict regularity—came across news from the fishing industry every day. Almost on a par with agriculture and tourism, it was one of the most important branches of the economy, a proud Breton symbol: nearly half of France’s fishing catch came from Brittany. A venerable branch of the economy that was deep in crisis. There were several factors at work causing trouble for the Breton fleet: overfishing; the destruction of the seas by industrial large-scale fishing; the rising temperature and pollution of the oceans causing serious damage to fish stocks; climate change and the associated quirks in the weather which led to ever-diminishing catch sizes; the brutal, almost lawless international competition; fishing policies that had long been failing, on regional, national, and international levels; and fierce arguments, bitter quarrels, and conflicts.

And the prefecture had—to the commissaire’s chagrin—been on them for years about the tobacco smuggling. No matter how bizarre it might seem in modern times in the middle of Europe, tobacco smuggling really was a serious problem. A quarter of all the cigarettes smoked in France entered the country illegally; the loss to the public purse was a multibillion sum. And since sales over the Internet had been banned, the situation had got even worse.

“Thank you very much, Madame Batout. That was extremely helpful. I think we’ll have to have a chat with Monsieur Morin straightaway. Where does he live?”

“Morgat, on the Crozon peninsula. He has a grand villa out there. But he has other houses too, one here in Douarnenez, in Tréboul. Always in the best places.” Madame Batout continued to look at him dourly.

“And was he here too last night?”

“I didn’t see him.” Madame Batout was clearly disappointed to tell him this.

“He comes here very rarely,” the harbormistress butted in, “but there would certainly have been some of his fishermen here. He—”

“Madame Gochat!” A thin young man in a thick blue fleece sweater had come over to them and tried to attract her attention. She gave him the slightest of nods.

“We need you upstairs, madame.”

“Anything to do with the dead fisherwoman?” Dupin was quicker than Madame Gochat. The coffee was finally beginning to work.

The young man looked at a loss.

“Answer the commissaire, we’ve nothing to hide,” Madame Gochat encouraged him.

It was an interesting scenario. The young man was clearly afraid of her.

“It’s the mayor, on the telephone. He says it’s urgent.”

“He will have to wait a moment,” Dupin told him.

It seemed Gaétane Gochat was about to say something to the contrary, then let it pass.

“Going back to the deceased, Madame Gochat, is there anything else you can tell me? Has she been involved with anyone else?”

The harbormistress made a sign to the young man and he took off immediately.

Gochat hesitated a while and appeared to be weighing her words. “She campaigned for sustainable, ecologically sound fishing, and got involved now and again with projects and initiatives down at Parc Iroise.”

“Parc Iroise”—Madame Batout butted in again, having in the meantime dealt surprisingly quickly with two other orders—“is a remarkable maritime nature park. There’s nothing quite like it. Here on the extreme west coast of Brittany between the Île de Saint, Ouessant, and the Channel. Our park boasts the greatest maritime diversity in Europe.” There was unbridled pride in the dogged old lady’s voice. Dupin almost thought he was listening to Riwal. “More than one hundred and twenty types of fish live here. There are also several colonies of dolphins and seals. And the largest algae field in Europe! There are more than eight hundred different varieties, the seventh largest algae field in the world. And even—”

“The parc,” the harbormistress interrupted Madame Batout, “is a major pilot project. Apart from the scientific research it’s primarily designed to be a model for a functioning balance between human use of the sea—fishing, algae harvesting, leisure, and tourism—and a functioning ecology, protection of the sea.”

Nolwenn and Riwal had frequently talked about the—undoubtedly extraordinary—project, but to tell the truth, Dupin knew very little about it. And right now his interest was elsewhere.

“I mean: Has Céline Kerkrom had arguments with anyone else recently?”

“Oh yes, it wasn’t just Morin,” said Madame Batout.

Gochat shot her a warning glance, and took over the conversation: “Céline set up an initiative for alternative energy generation on the island, to replace oil that they use to produce electricity and water desalination. She got the whole island worked up. She wanted to set up several small tidal generators, a sort of pipe system.”

“And that annoys you?”

Gochat hadn’t sounded quite so neutral in her previous sentences.

“I only mean that she would definitely have made enemies.”

“Who in particular?”

“Thomas Roiyou, for example. He’s the owner of the ship tanker that supplies the island with its oil.”

Dupin was writing it all down. “And they quarreled?”

“Yes. In March, Céline Kerkrom wrote up a ‘manifesto’ for her island movement and distributed it everywhere. Ouest-France and Le Télégramme reported on it. Then Roiyou gave an interview in which he talked about it.”

The annoyance clearly in evidence on Gochat’s face grew.

“I’ve got all that. We will definitely have a conversation with this gentleman too. Do you know”—Dupin made a point of addressing both women—“if Céline Kerkrom had any family? Or if she had friends among the other fisherfolk?”

“I couldn’t say,” Gochat said, looking genuinely clueless. “She seemed to me to be a loner. But I could be wrong. You need to speak to somebody who knew her better. Ask the people on the island. Everybody there knows everybody else.”

Dupin turned to Madame Batout. “Do you have any concrete idea what might have happened here?”

“No.”

A surprisingly blunt response, given that she’d been so ready to get involved previously.

There was a brief pause.

“But you need to bring the perpetrator to justice.”

Dupin smiled. “We’ll do that, okay, Madame Batout. Have no worries on that account.”

“In that case … I need to fetch milk from the cellar.” And with those words, Madame Batout headed off, looking very pleased with herself.

“Will you…” Gochat was obviously concerned about something. “Will you be closing off the hall now?”

Dupin was about to say yes; he was famous for sealing off a crime scene extensively and for quite some time.

“No. Initially at least we’ll just seal off the little room with the waste barrels in it.”

In this case it would be smart to let everyday life and business in the hall continue as normal.

“One last question, Madame Gochat. How is business doing in the harbor here? You must be finding it difficult, as all the other harbors are.”

“We’re struggling, yes. But we’re fighting back. For the past few years we’ve been fourteenth out of all French harbors in size of catch: forty-five hundred tons of fish a year, the majority, of course, in sardines. They are our traditional strength.” The subject hardly seemed to bother her.

“But the number of boats registered here must have dropped?”

In Concarneau, and throughout Brittany, that was a regular topic.

“For several years now things have been more or less steady. We have twenty-two boats registered, eighteen of them coastal.”

“And the share of the catch auctioned here has also remained steady?”

Dupin had noticed a slight flash in Gochat’s eyes. Riwal would have been proud of his knowledge of the subject. This was another topic that was heavily debated in the commissariat: international firms, Spanish for example, used the Breton harbors, but only to unload. Their catch was immediately loaded onto freezer trucks.

It took a moment for her to answer.

“No. But in response we’ve increased charges for using the harbor.” For the first time there was a hint of bitterness in her voice. “Our harbor is in a very privileged location. Even in high seas, the water here is calm, the conditions are almost perfect. Do you see some link between the economic conditions in the harbor and the murder?” She looked at him demandingly. Defiantly.

Dupin ignored the question. “That’s it for now, Madame Gochat. We will need to speak again.” Dupin didn’t mind if it sounded like a threat.

The harbormistress was back in control of herself. “I’m here all day. Au revoir, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

She had already turned away when Dupin—who had remained standing by the counter—called after her: “After you leave your office about nine P.M. or nine thirty, where do you go?”

He didn’t bother to add a phrase like “Just a routine question,” or “It’s something we ask everyone.”

She came back a few steps. “Straight home, into the shower, and then to bed.”

Even this follow-up hadn’t jarred her.

“How far is it from here to your house?”

“A quarter of an hour in the car.”

“So you were in bed by ten thirty P.M.?”

“Yes.”

“Any witnesses?”

“My husband is on a business trip, he only gets back this evening.”

“Did you make any calls from your landline?”

“No.”

“That was very useful, thanks once again.” With those words Dupin set off decisively in the direction of the exit, just a few steps away.

He would take a look around outside until he came across the colleague of Madame Gochat’s he wanted to talk to.

The “look around,” a particular way of wandering about aimlessly, was one of Dupin’s favorite disciplines. It was a way he often discovered details that initially seemed irrelevant, but then suddenly became very important. He had solved more than one case on the basis of one of these inconspicuous details that he had stumbled across while wandering around.

---

Dupin stood on the quayside. It was light by now.

He had been looking around for a while, strolling about rather aimlessly, looking at this and that with particular attention—even though it was of no importance.

He looked at the auction hall. The building was flat, long, and simple, painted white, like the other buildings here around the harbor. Next to the entrance were two forklift trucks, diagonally across the quay as if the drivers for some reason had hastily abandoned them.

Business was going on as usual all around, people doing what they normally did. It was all as the harbormistress had said: the auction hall was right in the middle and anyone could have wandered around it without being noticed. There were narrow footpaths on the ground, part earth, part grass, behind and in between the various buildings. Dupin even saw two rectangular camper vans with deck chairs beside them.

The still noticeably fresh air did him good, sharpened the senses and the mind, and then there was the caffeine from the three cafés as well.

As was his habit, he had walked right to the very edge of the pier, the toes of his shoes almost over the edge. The slightest careless movement and he could have fallen over, a fall that at this ebb tide would have been three or four meters.

In front of him lay the wide bay of Douarnenez, which stretched from the long beaches at the end of the bay to Cape Sizun in the southwest and the Crozon peninsula in the north, and eventually to the open Atlantic.

A vast natural bay and an impressive panorama. Dupin understood why the whole world said it was the most beautiful bay in France. One of the most beautiful in Europe.

The still, deep blue water, the light-colored concrete jetty and closed-off harbor, and the water again beyond it, even bluer. Postcard blue. Serene. Already there were a few light sailing boats gliding along, and there would be more and more as the morning went on. People were in holiday mood. Above the broad strip of sea lay the gentle green landscape with the low, soft swell of the hills. The Crozon peninsula. And beyond that finally the endless, clear pale blue of the sky, decorated with a few perfect white clouds. It was summer and the temperature would rise by the hour. A heavenly day lay ahead. For anyone who didn’t have to deal with the tragedy that had taken place here.

To the right lay the Vieux Port, also protected by a long pier. To the left of the hall, some two hundred meters away, the quay took a right turn and ran as far as the harbor pier. Thick car tires hung on ropes against the pier as bollards for the boats. A few anglers were already out trying their luck at this early hour of the morning. Three pretty fishing boats, moored with multiple ropes, were named Vag-a-Lamm, Ar Raok, and Barr Au. They looked like the fishing boats Dupin had seen in the movies as a child, the way painters in Pont-Aven had depicted them. Made of wood, one in bright turquoise, striped yellow, and lower down paprika red, the other with its upper half bright red, and the lower Atlantic blue, the third in various shades of green, from dark to pale and then blaring white below the waterline. There was nothing arbitrary about the colors. Every fisherman or company chose their own colors or combination of colors, Dupin knew: it was a deliberate signature, as conspicuous as possible so that it could be identified at sea even from afar.

Dupin studied the technical equipment on the deep-sea trawlers behind them: boats of a completely different dimension, forty or fifty meters long, tall. This part of the harbor, the halls, the machinery, had none of the charm and flair of the Vieux Port. Everything here was functional, technical, made of concrete, steel, aluminum, constantly fighting off rust, the sea, time itself. It was obvious everywhere that this was hard work, a world where only extreme professionalism counted. Any mistake could prove fatal. Knowledge, experience, ability, those were the currency if you had to deal with the sea. Bravery, endurance. Dupin was in awe of it. Even as a little boy he had loved the harbors, the sea in general and its stories. It was as if he was obsessed; he had read every story that came into his hands. More than anything else, the sea had become a subject of romantic imagination, even if he was becoming increasingly unwilling to take boat trips of any sort. It might even have been his fantasy at work: the vast number of creatures, horrible monsters that he had imagined, and, like those of Jules Verne, lurked in the dark depths: giant squid, sea snakes, shapeless twisting beasts. The world below was as black and featureless as the world above; the universe. The fearful unknown; the fearful wonderful.

Dupin headed over to the anglers. Only one road led into the harbor area. Dupin had left his car farther up, not far from Chanterelle-Connétable, the world’s first ever fish factory. It had been set up in 1853, Riwal recited like a prayer. It had been Napoleon himself who had set up the French industry as a way of preserving fresh food for his campaigns. The tin can had been invented and Douarnenez and other Breton regions had become very rich, although to be more precise it was the sardine that had made them all rich. Dupin was crazy about the red cans with sardines, mackerel, and other fish, above all the incredibly tender tuna fish. In the heyday of the sardine, toward the end of the nineteenth century, more than a thousand boats had been based in and around the Port de Rosmeur, and there had been all of fifty “fritures,” canneries. Nolwenn had given Dupin a book with early photographs of Brittany. The pictures showed the hectic lifestyle, the colorful crowds and—though you could only imagine it—the penetrating smell of fried fish which must have been everywhere in the air. Penn Sardin, sardine heads, was what the local people had called themselves.

“Boss! Boss!” Riwal was running toward the commissaire. “I’ve been looking for you. I…” He stopped and stood in front of Dupin. “Jean Serres, the harbormistress’s colleague, should be here in a few minutes. It’s taken a while, he had to use his bicycle because his car wouldn’t start and he lives quite a way out.” He held an arm out but it was unclear which direction he was supposed to be pointing. “Our men have already spoken to three of the fishermen who were here last night. One of them remembered seeing Céline Kerkrom shortly before ten P.M. He says she was on her own and standing near the entrance. The three of them gave us the names of a lot of others who were here last night. And a few customers. I don’t think we’ll have a problem putting our list together. But so far nobody has had anything unusual to report.”

“Find out from as many of them as possible what they know about”—Dupin pulled out his notebook and glanced at the first page—“the so-called fisherman king. Charles Morin. I want to know primarily what the police think of him. Whether or not they think he’s a criminal. One they haven’t been able to lay hands on so far.”

“Consider it done, boss. Meanwhile the press have turned up, the pair from Ouest-France and Le Télégramme, they’re over at the coffee stand next to Madame Batout.”

“Tell them we’re completely in the dark. It’s the truth, after all.”

“Will do.”

Dupin was standing right at the edge of the pier again, looking out across the wide bay.

Riwal did the same. Passersby would have assumed they were two laid-back day-trippers.

“You know, don’t you”—it was a rhetorical form of speaking used by his inspector when he began telling a story—“that it was here on the Bay of Douarnenez that the mythical city of Ys is supposed to have been, an unimaginably rich city with red walls in which even the roofs were made of pure gold, and one day it just sank beneath the sea. It was where the famous King Gradlon ruled, whose wife gave him a wonderfully pretty daughter called Dahut. There are many stories and tales, ‘ancient Breton things.’” Riwal obviously stressed that element. “The story is undoubtedly the most well-known of all French sea sagas.”

Of course. Dupin knew the story only too well. In fact every child in France knew it.

“Next year a long-planned thorough scientific expedition is due to search the bottom of the bay. Researchers had found that it was covered in several meters of sand and mud, dragged into the bay by big storm floods. Back in 1923. During one of those once-in-a-century ebb tides after a total eclipse of the sun, several fishermen reported seeing ruins in the middle of the bay.”

Dupin felt like saying there had also been a number of expeditions looking for Atlantis.

“And just there,” Riwal made a vague nod, “just before you get to the western end of Douarnenez, is the Île de Tristan with its unusually large variety of wildlife and its mysterious ruins. According to the legends, they are supposed to be the last remaining bit of Ys. And not only that,” he was speaking reverently now, “the island itself is linked to many mythical wild, ghoulish, bloody but also wonderful stories and legends. Including the greatest and most tragic love story known to humanity: that of Tristan and Isolde. Both of them doomed to die. A Breton story,” once again Riwal stressed the word, “a story of Cornouaille, the famous medieval kingdom that stretched from the Pointe du Raz as far as Brest and Quimperlé, and,” his tone became ever more celebratory, “a story that became one of the most important elements in Western literature. It dates back to as early as 1170 when already it states that Tristan came from around Douarnenez, then capital of Cornouaille. Quimper,” he gave a dismissive look, “only became the capital much later. Before that it was Ys.

“Isolde is a Breton. In one of the innumerable versions of the story, Tristan was about to throw himself off high crags into the sea in despair at the death of his beloved, when he was taken by the wind and set down gently on the island. But even there he soon died of his incessant grief. And there they lie for all time, the two lovers, beneath two trees with their branches intertwined,” Riwal sighed emotionally, “somewhere in the northwest of the island. Nobody knew where they lay save the king who buried them. The remnants of his castle stand near Plomarc’h by Plage du Ris…”

“Riwal.” However much he loved sea sagas, Dupin was getting impatient. “We need to know who had the closest personal contact with Céline Kerkrom, search her house, talk to her friends and neighbors on the Île de Sein. Above all, the islanders. Go to the island as soon as possible.”

“No problem, boss.” Riwal loved boats.

“Find out who knows most about her and then bring that person back to the mainland.”

Dupin wanted, as far as it was possible, to avoid having to go to the island himself.

“Consider it done,” Riwal said. “By the way, I have a cousin here in Douarnenez.”

Dupin refrained from asking the follow-up question, not that it made any difference. “He’s president of the Association du véritable Kouign Amann, the kouign amann association.”

The Breton butter cake. Dupin involuntarily found his mouth watering. Breton butter—an elixir—lots of it, a bit of flour and even less water but more sugar, the simplest of ingredients, but the great art was to caramelize them into an ambrosian delicacy.

“In the middle of the fourteenth century,” Riwal said quickly, glancing briefly aside at Dupin, “a baker here in Douarnenez had to make cakes for a big celebration, but during the night most of his ingredients were stolen and he was left with just butter, flour, and sugar. My cousin has made it his mission to preserve the original recipe. It can’t be improved on.”

“I need urgently to make a phone call, Riwal. And you need to get going. Kadeg can take over here.”

“I’ll get a boat sent over. On the subject, Kadeg and a few colleagues are inspecting the fisherwoman’s boat,” Riwal said.

That was important.

“And?”

“We’ll report the minute they’re finished, boss. See you later.” Riwal ran back into the hall.

Dupin stayed standing on the pier.

He pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. He was missing an important part of his ritual: the first phone call in a new case with Nolwenn, his personal assistant. He would have to ring Claire too, given that he had just vanished, leaving only a short note on the table. They had agreed to sleep off the night before, have a convivial breakfast together at the Amiral, and lunch together too. Dupin had intended not to turn up at the commissariat until the afternoon. They had spent all too little time together in the last few months, Claire and he. Not at all what he had planned—and wanted—when he had dragged Claire to Brittany the previous year and she had taken over the post of head of the cardiology department in Quimper. The sad thing about it was that Claire had the morning off—precious hours they might have spent together—before she had to go to Rennes for a medical meeting and would have to stay the night too. Back in Paris, during their early relationship, it had been exclusively Dupin’s fault that they saw each other so seldom; now it was the other way around. Dupin frequently had to drive to Quimper late at night to collect her from the clinic. Then they would sit on Claire’s little balcony and drink red wine and eat cheese that Dupin had bought at the Concarneau market. Often Claire was so tired that they simply sat in silence next to one another looking at the lit-up ancient alleyways. Nowadays they rarely went on excursions as they had earlier when Claire had come to Brittany from Paris on her days off. Dupin missed that.

He had already tried Nolwenn from the car but the line had been busy. As always she would already be in the picture, well informed. Dupin had long ago given up trying to figure out how she knew what and from whom, and simply assumed she had telepathic abilities. Druidic abilities, it would seem. Nolwenn picked up the phone.

“The woman is a rebel, Monsieur le Commissaire, I know her through my husband’s aunt who’s a friend of hers.” Dupin might have guessed, even if this familial link didn’t exactly open up the case. Nolwenn was, in principle, on the side of the opposition—a genetically anchored, wonderfully anarchic reflex. She knew everybody who had fought back against injustice, arbitrary judgments, and bad management.

“Did you know her personally?”

“As good as. I’ll try to find out what I can.”

“Absolutely.”

It couldn’t be better. Nolwenn took charge of the business.

“It’s more than just about the tragic death of this wonderful woman.” Nolwenn was livid. “That shouldn’t put more pressure on you but it’s something you need to know. And you know what immense courage it takes to go out amid tossing seas, waves several meters high, and whipping storms, in total darkness, to put yourself at the mercy of the sea, alone? Daily? That’s how a fisherman or fisherwoman earns their daily bread.”

Dupin considered it a nightmare.

“They’re heroes! It’s a magnificent job! A mythical calling indeed,” Nolwenn said.

Dupin had no intention of contradicting her.

“Jean-Pierre Abraham”—Nolwenn’s favorite author, who had for years been a lighthouse keeper and later lived on the Glénan islands—“once wrote, ‘Going out to sea means something new every time, to leave the land of the living with no guarantee of returning to it.’ In comparison the work of a police commissaire was just thumb-twiddling!”

Dupin didn’t take it personally.

Nolwenn left a dramatic pause.

“You have to come down hard on this mafioso Morin, he’s responsible for everything.”

“We’ll do that, Nolwenn, we’ll do that.”

“Céline is bound to have made many enemies.”

“Riwal is going out to the island.”

“Excellent. He knows how to speak to the people there. But really you should go with him.” Advice seriously meant. “And by the way, in case you’re wondering, I will be working from Lannion today. But I’m contactable at any time.”

Dupin hadn’t the faintest idea what her work from Lannion was about.

“And—”

“Boss, boss!” It was Riwal again, but this time he came charging right up to him. There was a look of horror on his face.

“I’ll call you back, Nolwenn.”

“We’ve got—” Riwal stopped in front of Dupin, gasping for breath. “We’ve got another corpse, boss!”

“What?”

“I’m not joking, boss. Another corpse. A new one.”

“Another dead body? Who?”

“It’s a woman again—and guess how she was killed.”

“Her throat was cut.”

Riwal stared at him in confusion. “How did you know?”

Dupin brushed his hand through his hair. “It can’t be true.”

“A dolphin researcher from Parc Iroise. Her throat cut. And guess where?”

Before Dupin could say anything, Riwal answered his own question: “On the Île de Sein!”

The island had now assumed an indisputable role in events.

“A dolphin researcher?”

“Yes.”

“The woman at the coffee stand said something about dead dolphins.”

“There are two groups of great porpoises in the Parc Iroise. About fifty around the Île de Ouessant, and another twenty around the Île de Sein. The Parc Iroise also has various different types of dolphins, little porpoises, blue dolphins, and roundhead dolphins. The dolphins are very important to the scientists in the parc: we still know very little about their highly evolved social relationships, their remarkable intelligence. In addition, the condition of the dolphins is an important indicator of the ecological conditions in the parc, the quality of the water…”

“Did the two women know each other?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“When was the dolphin researcher killed?”

“We don’t know that yet either.”

“That’s completely crazy.”

Dupin had only just begun to deal with one murder. “This means we need to go out to the island together. Me too.”

“I’m afraid so, boss.”

There was no way for Dupin to avoid it.

“The sea is still going to be a bit rough,” Riwal said. Dupin knew that all too well, but was aware that there were more important things at the moment. Even so. For the past few days, up until midday yesterday, there had been a storm. But today was summer. High summer. The water in the bay was beautifully calm, but—he was no longer a newbie in Armorica, “the land by the sea”—it would still be seriously choppy farther out.

“Unfortunately we can’t use the helicopter. The prefect is using it, on the four-day simulation exercise for a—”

“That’s enough, Riwal.”

Dupin knew he would only get worked up. It was always the same. Whenever they needed the helicopter, the prefect was using it. This time the prefect had announced weeks ago that there was going to be a practical simulation of something that for Dupin personally was a particularly dubious issue.

“We can go out from here in a police boat, or…” Riwal checked the time, “or take the regular ferry from Audierne, we could make that, we’re twenty minutes from the stop.”

Dupin gave him an inquisitive look.

“The ferry would be much more comfortable. It sits deeper in the water and is more stable. But we need to leave right now.”

Dupin liked the word “regular” when he needed to go out on the water.

“Are there any of our colleagues there already? Is there a gendarmerie on the island?”

“No. But the deputy mayor takes care of everything. He’s also the island doctor and president of the national lifeboat organization.”

“Sounds promising.”

“There’s a police boat already on its way. From Audierne.”

“It’s a shorter distance from Audierne than from Douarnenez?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll take the ferry. The regular one. We can set off right now. In your car. Call the ferry company and tell them to wait for us. Kadeg can take over here. Tell him our priorities. He’ll call for reinforcements.”

With that Dupin set off, Riwal following him.

The whole thing was absurd. Two slit throats within a few hours—that was no coincidence. Both victims were women and both came from the Île de Sein, had to do with the sea. Obviously it was one and the same case. Dupin was in no doubt.

---

The swells were three meters high at the dock, up to five meters a bit farther out—long, forceful, rolling waves with astonishing troughs—and now that they were past the last piece of land, the Pointe du Raz, the waves reached as high as seven or eight meters. And they had nine kilometers more of open sea until they reached the island.

The classic blue-and-white Enez Sun III—the island’s name in Breton—was neither as long or as big or as solid as Dupin had imagined it from Riwal’s description. The promised “much more comfortable” and “more stable” were unnoticeable. The regular ferry flew upward toward the sky in challenging leaps and turns only to fall deep into the waves the next moment.

It was complete chaos. Up and down like the scariest roller coaster. But not just the one up-and-down movement, but lots of other movements too, all completely different, and what made it worst of all, they were all simultaneous: backward and forward, a sudden drop, a slithering and sliding. Neither body, soul, nor senses could find a rhythm. And on top of this horrible sensation the whole body was subject to the unbearable vibration of the entire boat, produced by the motor, situated right beneath the commissaire. And the deafening noise.

Dupin tried to fix his gaze on the horizon. Everyone said that helped. It was just unfortunate that Riwal and he hadn’t found seats on the upper deck—the ship had waited twelve minutes for them, and they had to stand on the open deck at the rear, two meters above the theoretical water level, from where the horizon wasn’t visible because it was regularly obscured by mountains of water. The ship was absolutely booked up with day-trippers and island dwellers who had been on the mainland overnight.

They would have to remain standing for the whole journey, and not even in the middle of the deck where it might have been just a little bit better, in that the sideways slipping and sliding wasn’t quite so bad. But a fat couple with a tiny dog and masses of luggage had made themselves comfortable there.

Dupin wondered if the police boat might have been the lesser evil. But it was too late now.

He was reminded of a story that Nolwenn had told him about how the Romans had referred to Brittany as the end of the world and all life. Finis terrae, they had called it, meaning the Atlantic. The Atlantic had literally been the end for them, the end beyond the end, the ultimate landfall, the mer extérieure, that had nothing to do with the harmless civilized Mediterranean, the mer intérieure. “It’s completely different,” Caesar had noted in his last decisive sea battle against the Gauls, “traveling across an enclosed sea to going out into an immeasurable ocean, a sea without end that is an end in itself.”

Dupin had the feeling that his whole body was a swaying movement. He needed to distract himself. Riwal was standing on the other side of the deck with a provocatively jovial expression on his face, looking out delightedly at the gigantic waves.

It might be best if they talked over a few things.

Carefully, feeling his way for a handhold, Dupin worked his way over to the other side of the deck, some five meters in all.

“Ah, boss”—Riwal’s tone of voice had changed—“a wonderful trip. You know what the fishermen say: ‘whoever sees Sein, sees his end,’ or ‘God help me survive the crossing from Raz, the boat is small and the sea is big.’ We’re making one of the wildest, most dangerous crossings there is. Strong currents, swirling seas and swells, the sea on the ‘Bay of the Dead.’ Majestic soaring crags for kilometers all along the route.”

It wasn’t exactly the distraction Dupin was hoping for. Riwal went on unperturbed. “From 1859 to now there have been one hundred and seventy shipwrecks officially recorded here. In reality it was more like three times as many! You need precise high-tech navigation technology here, and even that doesn’t always help. Take a look: jagged rocks everywhere. It’s as if some lazy giant had sat on the Cap du Van and tossed rocks into the sea for fun, like kids do with pebbles.”

It was a pretty image, but it only made things worse.

“Even the devil had a problem reaching the island, boss. The story of his failed attempt explains why the sea is so wild here. Just the introduction makes it clear that it was inevitable.

“The devil demanded the souls of the islanders. So he had to deal with Saint Guénolé, who had promised the islanders he would build a bridge to the mainland. To reach the island the devil first disguised himself as a man. But the boat caught fire because of his hellfire hooves. Then the devil thought up a fiendish ruse: he would persuade Guénolé to build a bridge for him. That put Guénolé on the spot: if he didn’t build the bridge he would be breaking his sacred oath, which was a serious sin, and the devil would take his soul. And those of all the islanders too, because Guénolé wouldn’t be able to carry out his missionary work amongst them. In desperation Guénolé asked God for help, and God used his mighty breath to blow on the sea and create a bridge of ice. The devil thought he had won and quickly ran onto the bridge. But it melted beneath his feet and he fell into the tossing waves. Failed again.”

As far as Riwal was concerned the punch line had fallen surprisingly flat.

“The heated water between the mainland and the island—here, in other words,” the inspector waved an arm over the railing, “turned into a giant maelstrom that prevented the devil from getting any farther and saved the island from him. Even today the fishermen cross themselves in thanks when they pass the Pointe du Raz. The spot where the devil fell into the sea is called the ‘hell of Plogoff’ and is marked on all maritime maps.”

A crazy story, Dupin had to admit. But even that wasn’t distraction enough.

“Call the prefecture in Quimper, Riwal. Ask if there have been any other murder cases in Brittany recently where the victim has had their throat cut.”

“Have you got an idea, boss?” Riwal was suddenly disturbed. “Are you thinking…” he hesitated, “… we might have a serial killer?”

“I’m just checking, only checking.”

The expression on Riwal’s face indicated he regarded Dupin’s answer as disconcerting.

“On our right here we have the two mythical lighthouses Tévenneg and Ar Groac’h.” Now it was Riwal who seemed to be looking for distraction. “You might glimpse one of them amidst a dip in the waves. Just two bare, rough rocks in the middle of the sea. They built towers on them. Great architectural achievements. Unfortunately, Tevenneg is cursed. The last lighthouse keeper fled in panic in 1910. Today it’s run by remote from the Île de Sein. Do you know what lighthouse keepers call solitary towers in the sea? Hell. Those on the islands they call Purgatory. And those on the mainland, Paradise.”

They were on their way to further an investigation into a capital crime, a brutal murder, the second within a few hours; “Hell” seemed the right word for their excursion to Dupin.

“Above all, we have to find out what link there was between the two women, Riwal. That’s what we need to work out.”

“I imagine we’ll find out something on that when we get to the island.”

Dupin was concentrating on something Riwal had said at Douarnenez harbor. Going back over things in his head, reworking them, was one of the commissaire’s oblique but effective skills.

“You mentioned that the state of the dolphins’ health was an indicator of the quality of the water, and other factors about the sea.”

“Indeed.”

Obviously Riwal was waiting for a conclusion that would let him understand why the question had been asked. Instead Dupin simply changed the topic.

“Do the ferries only go from Audierne?”

“One ferry. The Enez Sun III. Which is what we’re on now. In July and August there are others, one of them from Douarnenez even. For the rest of the year there’s just this one. Forty-three meters long, eight meters across, fifteen knots top speed, double 1750 horsepower. She belongs to Penn Ar Bed—the Celtic name, in other words the real name, for Finistère—a private company that deals with the three islands, Sein, Molène, and Ouessant, on behalf of the state. The Enez Sun III goes once a day.”

“Only once?”

“It leaves Audierne in the morning and leaves the island in the afternoon. That’s it.”

“There must be other ways to get from the island to the mainland and back?”

“If there’s a medical emergency the helicopter comes from the clinic in Douarnenez. Apart from that, no. At least no public means of transport.”

That meant the island was very isolated from the rest of the world. A factor of some significance in their investigation.

“Depending on when the murder occurred,” Dupin mused aloud, “the murderer could still be on the island. Either way is possible: someone who came from the island and had to go to the mainland to commit the crime, or someone from the mainland who had to go to the island.”

Spoken out loud, it sounded stupid. Riwal took things a bit further.

“The people who live on the island call themselves ‘islanders,’ and those on the mainland ‘French,’ which to them more or less means ‘tourist.’ Just to avoid any confusion in our investigations. Sometimes they even refer to themselves as ‘Americans.’”

Dupin gave him a confused look.

“Beyond Brittany, there’s only America,” Riwal replied.

Dupin knew this wasn’t just trivia or quirkiness; things like that were important in Brittany if you didn’t want to sound like a fool.

“In general they’re stubborn. Like the island itself. It doesn’t belong to this world, boss. It’s wonderful. France is far away, a lot farther than just the actual nine kilometers. You’ll see. A tiny dot of rocky land in the wide oceans, shaped like some long-tailed mythical creature in the face of the elemental forces of the Atlantic. Two and a half kilometers long and in some places just twenty-five meters wide, mostly flat, barely two meters above water level. During real storms gigantic waves sweep over the island, putting it totally underwater. All in all just less than a single square kilometer in area. Rough, barren, wild, lonely. I love Sein and its people.”

Riwal sounded as if he was talking about another species. Another planet. “An island of magical forces, with an extreme aura. You’ll feel that too. Sometimes it can make you scared.” Riwal was speaking with serious respect. “In prehistoric times cults were based here, even today you find menhirs and dolmens, standing stones. One important burial mound was destroyed by greedy gold robbers. Later, according to Celtic belief, the island was the closest place to the realm of the dead and the immortals. A place of fairies, nymphs, and druids, lots of the latter buried here. You absolutely have to be prepared for a trip to Sein, boss, inwardly prepared,” Riwal said, a deep seriousness on his face.

Dupin hadn’t the strength to tell Riwal to calm down. In any case, most of it had gone straight over his head. For one thing the boat had taken another leap, and then plunged way down again. Dupin had clung so tightly to a steel brace behind him that his wrists were aching. For another thing, he was trying as hard as he could to concentrate on the vital questions in the case.

“How big is the crew on the police boat that’s coming from Audierne?”

“Four men, plus the crime scene team.”

“How many people live on the island?”

“All year round, two hundred and sixteen, in summer some six hundred. Most tourists only stay until the ferry leaves in late afternoon. Just a few spend the night.”

“Four police plus the two of us isn’t enough for all the people we need to talk to.” Dupin rubbed his temples. “Does the ferry have a passenger list? Do people use their names when they buy tickets?”

“Yes, they have to, for security reasons. But if it’s the same killer in both cases, he can’t have used the ferry. If he had been on the mainland between eight P.M. and midnight yesterday, this is the first ferry he could have taken since, and the dolphin researcher was murdered either last night or early this morning.”

Dupin’s brain wasn’t exactly working at full speed yet, he realized. He needed more caffeine.

“But obviously there are lots of private boats as well as boats owned by companies and institutions that run to and from the island, some of them regularly. There are also specialist boats, such as the waste disposal and oil delivery boats. The ones Céline Kerkrom protested about. Then there are the tourist boats that come out dolphin-spotting, even though there aren’t that many. Or the boats used by scientists and researchers, and the Parc Iroise guards. The deceased would have had her own boat too, as one of the parc’s scientific team.”

That meant that, despite how out of the way it was, there were lots of possible ways to get to and from the island without problems.

“No matter, Riwal, we have to check the arrival and departure of every single boat between yesterday morning and this morning.”

“That won’t be easy. I’ve only listed some of the boats, and like I said, anyone here can be out in their own private boat at any time.”

“We…” Dupin didn’t finish the sentence. The Enez Sun III had merrily ridden a particularly big wave. Piquer dans la plume, the Breton seagoing folk called it: “riding the feather.” The white horse of the breaking wave.

Dupin breathed deeply in and out.

He had forgotten what he wanted to say.

Riwal took advantage of the moment.

“The story about the Île de Sein that has most resonance is by a Roman writer who visited the island about the year 20 AD. He writes about a Celtic goddess’s oracle served by nine virgin priestesses who carried out ritual ceremonies. They were called the Gallicènes, and are the earliest witches ever reported. They could make the sea and the winds rise with magic spells and could transform themselves into any animal they wanted, heal the sick and the dying. Or tell the future. Truth seekers from all over the world came to them, just like us.” Riwal wasn’t joking, that much was clear. “One of them was Morgan le Fay.” The inspector said the name as if she was a friend. “The one you know from the King Arthur saga. It was on Sein that the nine priestesses were supposed to have healed Arthur from a wound suffered in battle: Avalon!”

Dupin didn’t react. He was deep in thought.

“Riwal, call the Parc Iroise and find out about the incident with the dolphins.”

“Are you thinking of something in particular?”

“No. Ask them about irregularities in the quality of the water. Pollution, if there is or has been any.”

“Straightaway, boss. Nolwenn is dealing with Charles Morin. I’ve spoken to her. She’ll do her research thoroughly and she’s organized a meeting with him. She’s also spoken to the prefect, and told me to tell you she’s put him in the picture.”

“Very good. Do you happen to know what Nolwenn is doing in Lannion?”

“An aunt.”

“She has an aunt in Lannion?”

Dupin had already heard about a lot of aunts, but not one in Lannion.

“Jacqueline Thymeur. I think she’s the third sister of her mother. Early seventies.”

Fine. Nolwenn could work anywhere. It didn’t matter.

“Is it something special?”

During their last big case Nolwenn had had to go to a funeral. Of another aunt.

“She’s fine. If you mean the aunt.”

“Riwal.” Dupin had just had an idea, a good idea. “Call Goulch! He should get ready and come and collect us from the Île de Sein later.”

Dupin was pleased at his inspiration. Kireg Goulch of the water protection police might steer one of those dreadful speedboats, but for one thing the ferry wasn’t the slightest bit better and for another Dupin trusted the tall, lanky Goulch, whom he had worked with on a complicated case on Glénan. Not that Goulch’s handling of the boat back then had exactly been a pleasure, but Dupin’s fear of traveling by sea—a lot worse than just seasickness—hadn’t been as bad in Goulch’s company as it was normally. On top of that: Goulch was an excellent policeman. And an expert on the sea.

“Gladly.” Riwal beamed.

Goulch and he had become good friends over the years.

Once again the boat shot sharply into the air, seemed to sway there for an endlessly long moment, then crashed mercilessly down with a fearful fury. As if the Atlantic were playing with it. Not cruelly or angrily—that would be something different—but playfully, coquettishly. Just to pass the time, maybe. All of a sudden, for no obvious reason—the island was still at least a kilometer away and the boat hadn’t changed its speed—the sea calmed, as if they had passed through some magic border that blocked the forces of nature. If Dupin hadn’t been so preoccupied with himself, his queasiness, his now cramplike tension—following the chat with Riwal he had crept into a corner of the deck and tried hard to get at least an occasional view of the horizon—this mysterious change would have been yet another reason for worry, but he just accepted it.

To the right, bizarre-shaped rocks stuck out of the sea. Dangerously sharp and dark, several meters high, rising up against the marvelously blue sky. Some of them with bright green trails of seaweed. Wary seagulls stared at the boat.

The ferry passed unnecessarily close to the rocks. It was only very late that it took a sharp curve around a stony islet in front of the harbor, and then all of a sudden there it was: the Île de Sein. Very real and breathtakingly beautiful.

The harbor, a few jetties in front of a black-and-white picture-book lighthouse, Men-Brial, a solemn, surprisingly large church just sitting there, a curved quayside with a small sandy beach in front of it. Behind lay small houses painted yellow, bright blue, and bright pink, though most were simply white or just stone with window shades painted Atlantic blue. All a bit faded, battered, whipped by the perpetual wind, the spray, the sun. The sea reflected the light from all sides, multiplied it until it seemed like a psychedelic vision.

The harbor was a natural bay with a sturdy pier built around it, and enclosed a group of rocks opposite—also with a bright white sandy beach. The concrete and the defensive rocks had over the years turned yellowish. Behind the quay and the village and towering over everything was the elegant, gracious, extremely tall island lighthouse. Dupin knew it from picture books: Goulenez—le Grand Phare. A famous landmark, as were all the lighthouses in Brittany, all of which had their own names and were listed in an unofficial rating depending on how inaccessible and difficult to maintain their position was.

The boat headed for the outermost pier; their course left no doubt, that was where they would disembark.

“At ebb tide the boat stops at the first pier, the water at the others isn’t deep enough,” Dupin heard one of the tourists say, who were beginning to come down the steel steps from above.

Within seconds there was a line. Dupin was glad to join it. He would soon have his feet on dry land again, even if there wasn’t much of it.

A hefty thump. The boat had docked.

“Here, here!” A vigorous, high-pitched woman’s voice from the pier. Dupin started to gingerly make his way down the narrow, steep ladder. “Monsieur le Commissaire!”

A stocky, elderly lady with crinkly gray-blond hair was waving frantically. The passengers were staring curiously at the lady and even more so at the commissaire, as she called out more loudly. “The corpse!”

The day-trippers looked suddenly concerned and distraught at this dramatic opening to their stay on the island.

Dupin, his legs wobbling, had finally reached the pier. Immediately the little woman was standing in front of him. The expressions on her face were as vigorous as her voice: tough, stubborn, ruthless. Dupin knew the type: hard-nosed to the bitter end. She must have recognized him from a photo in the newspaper.

“I’m Joséphine Coquil, director of the island museums.” She turned her gaze casually to Riwal. “And you must be the inspector. Right, I’ll take you to the corpse,” she raised her eyebrows, “to our second corpse! This is quite a drama for the island.” She sounded more exhilarated than dismayed.

“First the murder of our Céline, and then the dolphin woman. The poor girls! Such a shame! Do you know anything yet? Have you an initial clue?”

“Céline Kerkrom has only just been found, madame.” Dupin moved his weight from one foot to the other, trying to get an even stance again.

“You know what they say, ‘See Sein and you’ve seen your end.’ Ha!”

“I’ve heard say it’s the ‘island’s motto,’ madame.” And he reckoned it wasn’t going to be the last time.

“Is it true that Céline had her throat cut? The same thing happened to the dolphin researcher. There’s no doubt about that, I can tell you.”

“There was no doubt in the fisherwoman either.”

“There’s a monster at large here!” Madame Coquil exclaimed, without sounding in the slightest shocked by her own statement.

“Céline was brave, she changed things. And Laetitia Darot was a strong woman too,” she hesitated, “even if she didn’t really know anybody well. She was usually out on her own on the sea. She only talked to Céline, and occasionally to the deputy mayor. What a mess, she only arrived on the island in January.” She shook her head grimly. “She was only interested in our dolphins. She came into my museum four times. Even if she didn’t talk to anybody much, she had our interests at heart, our island’s. Its history, its flora and fauna. When you come here again, Monsieur le Commissaire, not for some terrible murder, then you must come and see my museums, three of them altogether, one about the island and life on the island, another on the Second World War resistance, and one on the lifeboats, I—”

“Where is the dead woman’s body, madame? Do we have a car?” Dupin was impatient.

He was met with a glare that suggested he should know better. “There are no cars here. Just four motor vehicles—two fire engines, a gas truck that carries the oil for the lighthouse and the electricity and drinking water facilities, and one emergency vehicle. That is used only for the most urgent cases,” she concluded firmly.

Dupin was about to say that this might be considered one of the most urgent cases, but Madame Coquil was ahead of him.

“And the woman is already dead, so why would we need an emergency vehicle. We will go on foot. You don’t have any luggage. Come along, no need to dally.”

She set off at a pace down the long, wet pier. Despite her age and her small size, she set such a bracing tempo that Dupin had to work to keep up with her. The same went for Riwal, who had a grin on his face.

“This is your first time on the island, I’m right in thinking?”

It wasn’t exactly a question.

“Yes, madame.”

“How long have you been working in Brittany?” Dupin didn’t miss the implied criticism. “Whatever, you’re here now. In July and August we get a lot of your Paris friends come to visit, most of them only for a few hours.”

It sounded as if Dupin was supposed to know them all. “But do you know when things were busiest here? Back in the Roman days! Sein and Ouessant were the most important resting points between Britain and Germany, the most important shipping route for trade and military. The Romans here also met the nine witches who—”

“I’ve heard the story, madame.”

“Or in the Hundred Years’ War! In 1360, eighty ships landed here, carrying fourteen thousand men! All on this island. In order to plunder it.”

That sounded like a lot of men to the commissaire, just for this little island. Even practically it was hard to imagine. Fourteen thousand men!

On the quay to their right, four men in yellow oilcloth pants were standing against the low wall, which had a few handsome crabs lying on it, the fruit of some successful pêche-à-pied. They had big knives in their hands.

“After that things were very quiet on the island for a long time.” There was a tone of deep disappointment in Madame Coquil’s voice. “So quiet that the Sun King decreed that all the inhabitants be exempt from tax in order to make the island more attractive. The decree is still good today. He said, and I quote, ‘To tax Sein, already depressed by nature, would be to tax the sea, the storms, and the rocks.” It was clearly something she could repeat even in her sleep at night. “How right he was! Nor did it help when the missionaries introduced agriculture, which obviously did no good, producing no more than a few measly potatoes in some years, and some miserable grain, so little that the women still had to use roots to make bread. Most of the fish caught goes to Audierne. The dried biscuits and the low-quality salted fish that get brought to the island every couple of weeks aren’t much help either. The islanders had to gather seaweed to eat and to make fire. There was nothing left for them but to become pirates, beach robbers, and plunderers. What else were the poor people to do?” Her expression was one of deep, if dubious, understanding.

Madame Coquil took a deep breath.

“Do you know what they call us in France? Wild men, barbarians, sea devils, and the island they call the rocks of hell. Just because we have nothing to eat and no priest, which is obviously because not one of those milksops dared come here. Wagging tongues have suggested that some of the islanders even opposed the building of the first lighthouse, on the grounds that it would reduce the number of shipwrecks. We only got wine if some unlucky ship had any on board.”

They walked past the pretty black-and-white lighthouse on the quay. A forklift truck was heading down the pier to the ferry to pick up the containers with baggage and shopping in them. Dupin realized all he had to do was listen. They would find the islanders ready to engage. And it would clearly be no disadvantage to their investigation if they were to learn more about the islanders and their “realm.”

“Today there are about five or six times as many rabbits on the island as there are people. The mayor before last let loose three pairs, and that had, as we put it, consequences. He thought it would be a good idea to have some meat to eat for a change. Everyone can go hunt for their own roast. Previously it was nowhere near as comfortable as it is today. People are getting softer. The more pleasant life has become over the past decades, the greater the numbers leaving. In 1793 we were three hundred and twenty-seven and we gnawed on dried fish and died of hunger. By the end of the nineteenth century we were nearly a thousand. By 1926 we were even one thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight! But in the second half of the twentieth century there were fewer and fewer. And by then we had electricity, water, a mail office, a supermarket, cafés, restaurants, television, a school with six students, even sport facilities on the beach at low tide, a grand church, handsome menhirs, a mayor and a deputy mayor who’s also the island doctor, three fisherfolk—” She corrected herself: “Two fishers and an LTE mast for perfect cell phone reception. Nobody here needs a landline anymore! And”—the LTE mast obviously wasn’t the high point—“we’re one of just five places in France to be awarded the Ordre de la Libération. After General de Gaulle, on June 18, 1940, made his appeal from London for the establishment of an army of liberation, all one hundred and forty men on the island, without exception, set off in six boats, on the same day. One of those proud boats, Le Corbeau des Mers, still exists.”

Everyone in France knew that deeply impressive story. It somehow represented the soul of the island.

“Only the women, old men, children, the priest, and the lighthouse keeper remained. Twenty-five percent of the men who turned up in London in response to de Gaulle’s appeal were ours. In a celebratory speech later, the president declared to the nation ‘L’Île de Sein est donc le quart de la France’—The Île de Sein is a quarter of France! Us. Nobody was as heroic as us. The president came in person to award us the Ordre de la Libération. ‘You were the ones who saved France,’ he told us. That”—she took a deep breath—“Monsieur le Commissaire, that is the Île de Sein, that is its spirit! The ‘wild men’ were the ones who saved France.”

“How far is it to where the body is, madame?” But Joséphine Coquil wasn’t finished yet.

“And now, now Sein is on its last legs.”

She turned to Dupin and shot him a withering look. Dupin had no idea what he was supposed to have done.

“It was in the papers yesterday. An important professor from Brest, Paul Tréguer, said that Sein will be one of the first islands to disappear under the water if the sea level keeps rising. A study has shown that the increasing extreme weather conditions”—she spoke the phrase as if it were some deep-sea monster—“are going to hit the islands particularly badly. As always, people will only learn when it’s too late, and by then Sein will have long been history. That’s the tragedy. And if the Gulf Stream collapses, all Brittany will be in the Arctic … We’re considering going to the International Court of Justice and accusing the world like other islands have done, in the South Seas and such…”

“I…” Dupin pulled himself together. “You’re absolutely right, madame,” he replied seriously.

“It’s quicker if we go through the village,” Madame Coquil said, and took a sharp turn between two houses, down an alleyway so narrow that Dupin would almost have missed it, barely a meter wide, but still with a proud street sign: Rue du Coq Hardi. They went one after the other, with Riwal last.

“Just so you know”—the museum chief’s anger seemed to have abated somewhat, apparently thanks to Dupin’s ready agreement—“we have fifty-four streets, the most important obviously the two quays on either side of the harbor, Quai des Paimpolais and Quai des Français Libres; we just call them Quai Nord and Quai Sud, north and south. And the great east–west axis that links the village with the other end of the island. Last week we had a great event: all the streetlights were fitted with LED bulbs. They give out stronger light, use much less energy, and are indestructible. Only Monaco in Europe has LED streetlights, and cities like Los Angeles in America.”

The old lady had turned left, then right and then left again down other streets that were little wider. The house fronts all looked the same, plastered white, occasionally pale yellow or pink. All close together as if they had been pushed. A proper labyrinth. Quite unique. Dupin had lost all sense of direction, something that normally never happened.

“The houses are all squeezed together to keep the wind out; they all protect one another.”

Yet again Madame Coquil had turned one way and then the other. Dupin had the impression they were walking in a circle. He wouldn’t have been surprised if they came out back at the quay. Yet again they took a sharp left and came out on a broad concrete path.

“Voilà, the east–west axis, la Route du Phare.”

A car would have found it difficult here. There were little gardens and courtyards to the right and left, but not a soul to be seen.

“If the weather stays fine, everybody will sit outside here and eat.” She cast a wary glance at the sky.

“Madame Coquil, how might we find out which boats came and went from the island yesterday?”

Before Madame Coquil could answer him, Dupin turned to his inspector: “Riwal, see to it that no boat leaves the island before we have registered it, and spoken to the passengers. No exceptions.”

“That’s a thing you’re asking, Monsieur le Commissaire. Two tasks fit for Sisyphus at once,” Madame Coquil said. “Obviously there’s no central list of which boats come and go. How could you imagine there would be? Particularly now in the summer: all the leisure boats, sailors, divers, anglers, Bretons, French, and other foreigners. And then the boats from Parc Iroise … You mustn’t forget them! And then there are the official boats. The oil boat that comes every Thursday, as well as the food boat for the minimarket. And normally the hairdresser is here at this time on a Thursday.”

“The hairdresser?”

There really were a lot of boats. And a hairdresser.

“He comes in his own boat to the islands. Mondays and Tuesdays he’s in his salon in Camaret, on the Crozon peninsula. He used to be a fisherman, who occasionally cut his friends’ hair. Then he turned it into a full-time job. He’s very good at it. We have a lot of older people on the island who’re pleased they don’t have to go to France to get their hair cut. Oh yes, not to forget the priest. He also uses his own boat to get around the islands. But you can write him off the list of potential murderers straightaway: he’s been in Zanzibar for two weeks!”

It was all too strange, and at the same time very plausible: people living out here, cut off and with a minimum of infrastructure and social life, had to organize things differently. Even so it was a mad idea to have a priest and a hairdresser commuting between the islands. And committing murders. Like something from an Agatha Christie mystery.

---

They had come to the last houses in the village, where the island narrowed disconcertingly, with the ocean lapping on either side. Inevitably—this was the only street on the island beyond the village—they headed toward the big lighthouse, even though it was still a ways away. Riwal had dropped behind a bit, with his phone to his ear.

Uneven coarse grass everywhere, kept short by the sea, salt, wind, and almost certainly also the rabbits. It was a low, undulating landscape, bright shining green, that petered out into stony beaches along the coastline. It was a remarkably empty landscape, without trees or bushes. But here and there were pretty pink flowers in full blossom, which lent a certain appeal to the rough, barren landscape.

“Where does the oil boat come from, Madame Coquil?”

“From Audierne harbor. It comes to us first, then goes on to Molène and Ouessant.”

Those were the other two large islands that formed the unique archipelago that made up the extreme west coast of Brittany. The rest was comprised of countless tiny islands, islets, and some that were little more than chunks of rock. The most imposing by far was Ouessant, but Molène too—only slightly larger than Sein—had its reputation.

“I assume we’re talking about the boat Céline protested against.”

“Not the boat, but the wrong state of affairs that everything is done with oil here. There are alternatives.”

“When does the boat usually get in?”

“Between seven and eight in the morning. And leaves again between ten and eleven.”

“And the provisions boat?”

“Around eight. It isn’t always punctual.”

“Also from Audierne?”

“From Camaret. On the Crozon peninsula.”

Dupin knew the peninsula well. Particularly Crozon, as well as Morgat, a summer spa with a little harbor. He had very good friends in Goulien, next to one of the peninsula’s breathtaking beaches.

“Did it get in before eight today?”

“Just after.”

“And when did it leave again?”

“It’s still in the harbor. The two captains are sitting in one of the bars we passed.”

Naturally Dupin had seen the bars on both quays. They looked wonderful, perfect even.

“Riwal.” The inspector had finished his phone call. “Where is the police boat at the moment?” Dupin hadn’t seen it in the harbor.

“It’s anchored in the bay over there, look.” Madame Coquil was pointing in the direction of the lighthouse. “Apart from the harbor, that’s the only other jetty on the island usable by a ship no matter what the state of the water. But actually nobody uses it anymore. We’ll be there in a moment.”

“By the way”—Riwal had caught up with the commissaire— “there hasn’t been any murder in which someone’s throat was cut in Brittany in recent years, definitely not. And as for the matter of the dolphins, Parc Iroise can’t say anything at present, but it happens all the time. One of the problems with the nets. It’s appalling. They said we need to speak to the parc’s scientific director. About water pollution too. And the boats: I’ve organized everything.”

Dupin turned back to the museum boss. “Is there one of the Parc Iroise boats nearby at the moment? Have you—”

Dupin’s phone rang.

A Parisian number he didn’t recognize.

He stopped reluctantly and took it.

“Yes?”

“There is also a train at six twenty-seven A.M.,” said a rapidly rattling voice in full flow, “then you would get there at eleven seventeen A.M. The one at eight thirty-three A.M. only gets to Paris at one twenty-three A.M. That would be a shame because by then it would be packed, my dear Georges. I’m sitting here with your aunt Yvonne, going through everything. Down to the last detail.”

Dupin was too puzzled to say a word.

His mother.

The “big event.”

Obviously he hadn’t given it a thought in the last few hours. Nor had he thought of the likely, almost certain explosion that he was unquestionably about to create. But not telling his mother the situation or inventing excuses would only make things worse in the end.

“I … we … we have a murder, two murders, in fact. Brutal murders. Just, just a few hours ago.” He sounded more pathetic than he intended, but perhaps that was the right thing. “I’m in the midst of a case.” He took a deep, deliberate sigh.

There was a silence—two rabbits pattered down the east–west axis—then: “It is my seventy-fifth birthday, my dear Georges.” Her voice was a cold, suppressed hiss. “You will be in Paris the day after tomorrow, come what may. You and your fiancée.” Which was how she referred to Claire even though there had been no talk of an engagement to date. “At seven P.M. precisely. You will sit at my right side at the table of honor with your sister on the left.” A lengthy silence; perhaps she was calming down, a little at least. Then she cleared her throat theatrically. “Very well then. In that case, the eight thirty-three train. I’ll agree to that. You already have those tickets.”

A second later she hung up.

The seventy-fifth birthday of Anna Dupin.

The preparations had been under way for a year now. She went in for big celebrations, obviously, or in her words, “appropriate.” It would be what a Parisian from a gros bourgeois family would consider a highly elegant, highly ceremonial affair.

There would be exactly one hundred guests and she had rented one of the restaurants at the Hotel George V, no less. Dupin had had at least a hundred telephone calls since the planning had begun, three yesterday alone, in which he had for the umpteenth time discussed the most minute of details.

Obviously he had no idea how long he would be busy with this case, but he had never solved a major case in just two days. It was out of the question.

Dupin ran his fingers roughly round the back of his head. He had to get a grip on himself.

He joined Madame Coquil and Riwal again. The little group continued on their way.

“The Parc Iroise boats—that was my question, Madame Coquil—whether there are any here right now, on the island?”

“I don’t know. But watch out for Captain Vaillant, the pirate smuggler, he turns up anywhere he likes. Including here.”

“Captain Vaillant?”

“Some folks consider him a knave, others a hero who thumbs his nose at the state.” It wasn’t clear which Madame Coquil considered him to be. “A fisherman with a crock of a boat, a chancer. He basically makes a living from smuggling, alcohol smuggling. Eau-de-vie. He buys the stuff from various illegal distillers and sells it in England. But so far nobody’s caught him at it.”

Smuggling as a topic yet again. And alcohol and cigarettes every time. And another shady character whom nobody had any proof of anything against.

Dupin had got his notebook out again and taken a few notes while walking—in his hieroglyphic script. “Vaillant, you say?”

“Captain Vaillant, nobody knows his first name. We’re almost there.”

Some fifty or sixty meters to their right was a large group of people: police, people in plain clothes—probably the crime scene investigators—and among them a woman and a boy.

“You should know,” Riwal turned to Dupin and said, “that smuggling has a long tradition on the British Isles, just as smuggling has had a long history of links with piracy in Brittany. Smuggling began in the early seventeenth century. The next three hundred years were the heyday of smuggling in the Channel, with the main route leading directly from Ouessant—”

“Riwal!” Dupin stopped him. He was getting out of hand again. Dupin knew the history and also that smuggling had made no minor contribution to the economic prosperity of Brittany, and that places such as Roscoff or Morlaix had become famous and wealthy nationwide on that account. There were whole strips of land, including the magnificent coastal route that Dupin so loved, that were basically just smuggling routes, to the extent that the concept even today had a remarkably romantic sound to Breton ears. Something that had nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with the modern smuggling that took place on the seas of the world and had a very different face, a particularly brutal face.

“This Captain Vaillant.” Dupin turned toward Madame Coquil; he didn’t want to get any further involved in the digression. “Was he on the island yesterday or today?”

“You’ll need to ask around in the bars along the quays. They head directly there after they’ve concluded their business. They don’t see much more of the island.”

All of a sudden celestial Celtic notes rang out—Riwal’s cell phone. The inspector took a few discreet steps to one side.

“What about Charles Morin, the big-time fisherman? Has he been seen on the island recently?”

“Now there’s a real criminal!” This time Madame Coquil was leaving no doubt about what she thought. “Not that I knew it. No. He has a large Bénéteau, you see it straightaway. Every now and then you find him sitting in Le Tatoon. You get the best lieu jaune in the world there. Caught by our fishermen.”

Dupin made another note.

“Well, here we are: the cholera cemetery.”

“The cholera cemetery?”

A man came toward them with a deliberate pace.

“Antoine Manet. Our deputy mayor. And the island doctor!” Madame Coquil had assumed a businesslike voice. “The mayor is on holiday. Jokkmokk. Lapland. Elk watching. Did you know they make elk salami there?”

The deputy major—in his late fifties, maybe early sixties—was lean and sporty with thick, short, light gray hair and an open, serious tanned face with intelligent eyes. Young man’s eyes. Jeans, black leather shoes, a polo shirt, a gray all-weather jacket, and a dark green shoulder bag.

He held out a hand to Dupin and smiled.

“What a load of shit!” he said, and gave him a forceful handshake.

Dupin stood there as if struck by lightning. He found himself incomprehensibly irritated. It was the deputy mayor, not him, who had sworn, and used Dupin’s most common swear word expression.

“That was all we needed on the island!”

Dupin had no reply to that.

“Come along, Monsieur le Commissaire. The dead woman is over here.” He spoke casually but formally. “You know the phrase, ‘See Sein and see your end.’”

Without waiting for any reaction from Dupin, the doctor had turned around sharply.

There was no sign of Madame Coquil retreating, quite the opposite:

“We were struck by a serious cholera epidemic in 1849,” she said, as if she was talking about something that had occurred only a month ago. “In the seventeenth century we were also hit by plague, which almost wiped us out. The surviving islanders had to repopulate the island in the following years and sought partners from the mainland.” It was easy to tell the last sentence was important to her. “But going back to the cholera, it was stupidly accompanied by a sweating fever that had come from the mainland! The doctor had cautiously isolated the bodies of the first to die and brought them here to be buried in a separate cemetery, rapidly laid out. The island’s black traditional dress dates back to the epidemic. Even today people still wear the black bonnet.”

It all sounded particularly tragic and morbid, particularly given that Breton traditional dress was usually marked by its richness in bright colors.

Dupin followed the deputy mayor. The cholera cemetery lay on one of the scrubby fields, grazed down to the ground by rabbits, that here ran right up to the rocky beach. It was a perfect square with one entrance on the east–west axis. Little clumps of the pink flowers clustered in the shelter of the walls. On the other side, opposite the entrance, a modest, weathered stone cross, no more than a meter high. On both sides of the square were huge granite slabs lying parallel to one another. With no inscriptions. Totally blank.

That was it. The whole cemetery.

It was a crazy place. A flat, naked nothing below an endless beautifully blue sky. Thirty meters farther and the endless ocean began, a few strangely shaped chunks of granite on the waterline, and a few more jagging out of the sea beyond them, like obscure sculptures, cryptic signs.

“They have to share the cross.” Madame Coquil had seen Dupin’s look. “In the end there were no more than six cholera victims; the cemetery could have taken far more.” She obviously regretted the waste of space.

The policemen, the men in plain clothes, the mother and boy were standing next to the stone cross, looking over at Dupin. The deputy mayor was waiting by the entrance for the commissaire, Riwal, and Madame Coquil.

“Seven, I think? Seven surely,” Dupin remarked in passing.

He had counted five stone slabs on the left and two on the right.

But it was unnecessary.

“Pardon?” The museum chief had stopped on the spot, hearing Dupin. Her face bore a look of horror. Something awful must have happened, even if Dupin had no idea what it was.

Even Antoine Manet had noticed. “Joséphine, don’t scare the commissaire! We have important work to do here. And he’s supposed to be the best.”

Madame Coquil tried to regain her composure, but it clearly wasn’t easy.

“You—you said you counted seven graves? Five on the left—five graves? Five? Is that right?”

“I must have miscounted,” Dupin said after he had taken another look and only seen four.

He had made a mistake.

“They say that anyone who sees a fifth grave in the western row”—she was trying hard not to appear too dramatic, but in vain—“has seen his own grave. And in the next few days will be struck by something dreadful. The last time it happened was four years ago, a man from Le Conquet, a butcher, he—”

“Joséphine! Stop it!” Manet said sharply. He was serious. Which hardly made things better, Dupin thought. Why was he taking it so seriously? It was only a silly superstition.

Dupin shot a glance at Riwal, who was still holding his phone, but said nothing. Riwal just stood there rooted to the ground, glancing back and forth between Madame Coquil and Dupin.

He wasn’t going to be any help.

“What’s up, Riwal.” Dupin walked over to him.

“Kadeg.” Riwal was trying in vain to keep his voice calm. “He just called: the pathologist put the time of death at approximately ten P.M., give or take an hour.”

Dupin had expected nothing different.

“Apart from that, he confirmed all his initial assumptions. Nothing new. And they found nothing unusual on Kerkrom’s boat either. So far it all seems unremarkable. But Kadeg wants to let a fisherman whom the Douarnenez police trust have a look. It’s possible he might notice something we missed.”

A good idea.

“A cell phone,” Riwal said. He still didn’t seem very calm. It was as if he was trying to calm himself down as he spoke. “They didn’t find one on the boat, but Kerkrom had one. The murderer must have taken it.”

“Find out the network and connection.”

“We’re already doing that, but you know that will take time. Kadeg talked to Jean Serres, Madame Gochat’s colleague. But to tell the truth nothing came of it. He only repeated what we already knew. The list of customers who were at the auction is ready. That means the agreed list of lists is ready as far as we know: a list of everybody who was in the auction hall that evening. Interviews are still going on but we will be notified if there is anything important.”

“Good.”

Kadeg was in charge of the whole systematic procedure.

“But boss, you … you shouldn’t dismiss the seventh grave thing lightly.” Riwal looked deeply worried.

Louder than he intended, Dupin replied, “Everything’s fine, Riwal, everything’s fine!”

Riwal was about to contradict him, but caught himself.

“I’ll deal with the boats and their crews, boss. You can get me on the cell phone.” He paused. “Call me if something happens. Anything.”

The inspector gave himself a shove and went over to the uniformed policemen. “We’ve got a few urgent tasks to deal with, messieurs. Follow me.”

With an inquisitive look on their faces they tagged after him like puppies, back to the east–west axis.

Dupin turned to Manet. “The body? Where is the body?”

He hadn’t seen it anywhere.

“Behind the last grave,” Antoine Manet said, and walked up to the cemetery wall. “Over there,” he waved a hand vaguely, “right at the back. The grave was dug but never used. Over time it’s fallen in on itself. The body isn’t visible from the road. Anthony found it this morning while playing.”

That had to be the boy, maybe nine or ten years old, standing next to his mother. Dupin introduced himself to everyone.

“Why would she have been left in the cholera cemetery, of all places?”

Manet, who had stayed next to the wall, shrugged slowly. “We have no idea.”

Dupin had reached the last stone slab. Then he saw the body.

The corpse of Laetitia Darot, an extraordinarily pretty woman, there was no other way to say it, aged somewhere around thirty, lay on its back as if peacefully in bed. She had long, slightly wavy brown hair with a copper-red glow. Fine features, but in no way weak, a curved mouth. It almost looked as if she was asleep. Dark jeans, low blue rubber boots, a blue wool jacket, and a gray, roughly knitted woolen sweater beneath it.

“I imagine it happened this morning. Probably between six and seven o’clock. A straight cut, through the windpipe and the vocal cords.” Manet’s brow was furrowed; he seemed to be concentrating. “She wouldn’t have been able to make any noise after that. The brain would have got no more oxygen and blood would have poured down her windpipe and suffocated her.” Manet took a step back and let his eyes run down the victim’s body, Dupin’s following his. “Her right wrist is a bit swollen, presumably where the killer held her. There are no real signs of a struggle though. No other visible wounds.”

“Would it take a specialist to make a cut like that, do you think?”

The question had already come up that morning.

“Not particularly. By the sea there are so many people who use a knife and are masters at doing so. Proper masters.”

One of the crime scene team took a step forward, a younger version of Kadeg. “The pathologist should be here any moment,” he said, a jaunty, enthusiastic tone to his voice. “I think we should wait for the expert.”

“I have all the information I need about the body,” Dupin mumbled.

The island doctor smiled gently. Dupin’s taking sides hadn’t been necessary. Manet wouldn’t be so easily unsettled. He gave the impression it wasn’t the first time he had seen something like this.

“The murder was probably carried out here, or nearby,” said the other of the two men, older with thick white hair, making a confident gesture. “There is a lot of blood soaked into the ground next to the body, and she can’t have lost that much in two different places. She can’t have moved after she was placed in the ditch; the blood all flowed the same way.”

Manet nodded in agreement. “Laetitia Darot would already have lost consciousness by then—it normally happens in about ten seconds.”

“Just to be sure, we’ve searched the entire cemetery for any other signs of blood. And found none. Not on the grassland around the cemetery. Absolutely nothing of note. And on ground like this,” the older of the two glanced down pointedly, “there’s no point even starting to look for footprints. We haven’t found anything suspicious on the clothing or the body. We’ll inspect everything once again after the body’s been removed.”

The competent impression they gave seemed confirmed.

Dupin had walked around the ditch.

“She must have met up with the murderer here, very early.” Dupin’s gaze wandered toward the shore. “If he had come here with a largish boat he would have anchored by the jetty, exactly where the police boat is now.”

“Or…” Madame Coquil spoke up for the first time since the “incident” with the graves. Dupin had the impression she was still giving him a strange look. “He could have anchored farther out and come in on a tender, or,” her face darkened, “he lives on the island.”

“Exactly when did your son find the body, madame?”

The two crime scene men had set off toward the jetty with their two heavy silver cases. Dupin had remained behind with the boy, his mother, Antoine Manet, and Madame Coquil.

“At seven twenty-four A.M.”

The boy had chosen to answer the question himself.

His eyes were sparkling. It was quite clear he was in no way cowed.

“How do you know that so exactly?”

The boy proudly showed the commissaire a shiny black digital watch. “Precise timing is important in criminal cases. School starts at eight thirty, but I can play outside until eight fifteen and then I have to go.”

His mother felt obliged to add: “We live in one of the first houses, at the front. Normally Anthony isn’t allowed to come this far. But then nothing can happen here.” She noted the irony. “Normally, that is.”

“Was the body lying exactly like this when you found it?”

“Yes, exactly like that.”

“Did you notice anything else unusual, Anthony?”

He was a very bright boy. An adventurer. Stubbly dark blond hair, a roguish smile. Filthy jeans, sneakers, a faded blue T-shirt. All the pockets of his jeans, front and back, were bulging: it seemed he had all sorts of stuff in them.

“Rabbits. Six rabbits, who were having a look at the body. They were sitting all round it. And Jumeau was out there.”

“One of the island fishermen, with his boat,” Manet said, looking admiringly at the boy.

Suddenly Dupin was wide awake.

“How far out?”

“Halfway,” Anthony said, and pointed into the distance, at the open sea. It wasn’t a very useful answer.

“Perch, line fishing. For a few days now, he’s been out there at the same spot every morning. You have to add that fact, or else the commissaire might think it suspicious. But you only have to say what’s most important.” Anthony’s mother wrinkled her brow.

The boy wasn’t going to let himself be browbeaten: “Do you know that the president visited with us in our house? And over there,” he pointed in the direction of a stone monument a little way away: a soldier next to a curious double cross standing on a large stone plinth, “he made a speech last year. Because we were so brave and it was the anniversary of that bravery. We were all there, the whole school. After the speech I went up to him and invited him to lunch. It was midday.”

Anthony’s mother laughed in embarrassment. “It’s true. He really came back to our house. For half an hour.”

“We had turbot with fried potatoes.”

Dupin had other interests. “What was the name of this fisherman you mentioned?”

“Jumeau.”

“Does he have a first name?”

“Luc.”

Dupin made a note. He already had quite a few names on his list: Gochat, the harbormistress; Batout, the woman at the coffee stand; Morin the fisherman king … Struggling to remember names was the hardest thing in all his cases. It had been like that in Paris, but it was harder still with Breton names. To be honest, Dupin reflected occasionally, it was a weakness that should have made him unsuited to his job, and a few others too.

“Ten years ago,” the museum chief added, “there were still twelve fishermen.”

“What else did you notice, Anthony?”

“Nothing that would be relevant to an investigation, Monsieur le Commissaire.” Even so, he seemed to be thinking hard. “But I’ll let you know if anything occurs to me—that’s the way to put it, isn’t it?”

“It’s time for you to get to school now,” his mother said in a tone that brooked no argument. “You’ve missed enough already.”

The boy’s eyes lit up again.

“School’s not quite the same,” his mother explained apologetically.

Dupin understood the boy well. “Many thanks. You’ve been a lot of help.”

Dupin reckoned that were it not for Anthony, the body would not have been discovered so quickly. The distance from the east–west axis was at least fifty meters. And the body in the ditch could really only be seen from next to it. It could have taken a lot longer, days perhaps.

The next minute, the boy was up and away with his mother following him.

Dupin walked over to Antoine Manet and Madame Coquil. “Who comes regularly to this part of the island?”

“Me, for a start,” Manet replied. “When I come to see the four technicians at the lighthouse, and the equipment itself.” He laughed. “But there are others too. People just going for a walk. The path out to the lighthouse is very popular, not just with island folk, but day-trippers too. There aren’t that many paths here.”

Dupin let his gaze drift over to the lighthouse.

It was no more than a kilometer away. And there was nothing in between.

“The three houses between the village and the cholera cemetery,” Manet nodded toward the village, “are only occupied in July and August. Maybe for a week at Easter.”

Dupin rubbed his brow, one of those gestures that along with several others became a tic when he was on a case.

“Have you any idea what might have been going on here? Two women from the Île de Sein killed. You knew both of them.”

Madame Coquil wasn’t going to get worked up. “We’ve had worse. They won’t beat us that easily. But there’s something nasty going on. Something very nasty. I can’t tell you any more. But you need to look out for yourself too, Monsieur le Commissaire. The seven graves!”

With those few words she turned on her heel. “I need to go back. My museums. I’m supposed to open at nine. I’ll look forward to you getting the chance to visit, Monsieur le Commissaire—I know a lot.”

With that she rushed off.

“You have no idea either what might have happened here, Monsieur Manet?”

“To be honest, no. I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“Tell me about the two women. What they did, who they were connected to.”

“One moment. I must get in touch with the pathologist and the helicopter. We shouldn’t leave the body here too long.”

Manet took a few steps to the side. It came into Dupin’s head that he might be able to fly with them, and avoid the trip back on the boat, even though it was obviously too early. He still had lots of people to talk to.

The commissaire pulled out his cell phone and dialed his inspector’s number.

“Riwal, one of the uniformed police officers should come to the cemetery here and keep an eye on things until the body is removed. I want to close the cemetery off.”

“Very good, boss. I have placed one of our men down at the harbor to make sure that no boats leave the island before we’re told about it. The oil boat is still there. And the hairdresser too. I’ve told them we want to talk to them. They’re waiting for us in one of the bars. The food supplies boat had already gone though. People get hungry. It will be more difficult with the list of all the boats that arrived or left between yesterday and today. There’s no harbor office. But we can try. We’ll talk to everyone, and the bar landlords will help us.”

“Very good.”

“Even so we won’t be able to catch up with every boat. In summer there are always some that arrive late in the evening and leave again very early the next morning. They don’t have to report anywhere, just come and go as they please. Even during the day, boats come for just a few hours, the people go for a walk through the village, get something to eat, and head off again.”

There was no chance of them putting together a systematic record. They would have to rely on pure luck. Dupin sighed.

Antoine Manet had finished his phone call, but remained a few meters away out of discretion.

“As I said”—Riwal made it sound as if it were encouraging—“it is always possible the killer lives on the island.”

If the killer were an islander, he would have had to have taken a boat trip to Douarnenez before eight or nine the previous evening—on some boat or another—and another back after the murder there. Either during the night or very early that morning, to have time to carry out the second killing. Or, there was another scenario: the killer lived on the mainland, in which case he would have had to have taken a boat to the island yesterday between eleven o’clock in the evening and six o’clock this morning. But if there was an accomplice involved then there were any number of alternatives. Dupin didn’t even want to start working them out.

“I want us to go by every house and make inquiries—maybe somebody saw something that might help us. Somebody going for a walk very early this morning, for example.”

They were going to have to trust on luck, or at least to give it a chance, no matter how improbable it might seem.

“I’ve already requested additional reinforcements that should be here soon. Another two boats. Eight police in all.” Riwal knew his boss. It would be a minor invasion. “Between the south quay and the north there is a row of sheds and huts used by the fishermen, among others. They store their nets and buoys and so forth in them. Both Céline Kerkrom and Laetitia Darot rented one. A colleague of the mayor will show them to us. I already have two of our men in Kerkrom’s and Darot’s houses, taking a first look around. Laetitia Darot’s boat is actually in the harbor here. Obviously we’ll take a look at it.”

Riwal was concentrating seriously on the business, which pleased Dupin, because it meant he could concentrate on his own ideas.

“See you soon, Riwal.”

Manet came over to Dupin. “Come along. If you accompany me to my patient’s house, we can talk along the way. She has a badly inflamed knee, just a minor accident in a wooden boat, as it happens, but a nasty splinter.”

The island doctor had already set off while he was talking. Dupin followed him. Two particularly nosy rabbits that had been sitting by the cemetery gate shot off.

“I used to have a drink now and then with Céline. Usually at Chez Bruno. We talked about everything under the sun: life, the island, fishing. Serious conversations but we also had a lot of laughs. She was a serious woman, sincere. Very quirky. Very involved. I’m sure you’ve already been told that. A loner, but not antisocial. Not grief-ridden, or constantly moaning about the world. By and large I think she was at ease with her life, including her failed marriage. She loved her job, despite how hard things are for the fisherfolk.” It was a balanced résumé. “When the dolphin researcher arrived on the island in January, they immediately became friends. It was remarkable. Particularly in recent times, over the past two or three months, I frequently saw them together. Sometimes they would come in their boats at the same time of an evening, or occasionally one of them on the other’s boat.”

Manet rubbed the back of his head. “The unfortunate thing is that the pair of them knew more about each other than anybody else on the island.”

“What can you tell me about Laetitia Darot?”

“Not much. Laetitia was shy, but not unfriendly. Not introverted or arrogant. She just didn’t go out of her way to make contact. Here on the island we let people get on with their lives the way they want. It’s a unique blend of community and solidarity on one hand and an exceptional individuality on the other. Obviously this closeness, the fact that we’re all crowded together, can lead to conflicts too. But as I said, Laetitia wasn’t really part of the village, which is why I don’t know what she might have got involved in. Some people thought she was a bit secretive, but nobody had a bad word to say against her. People respected the fact she was a scientist. And worked with the dolphins.”

They were already walking on.

“She was out at sea most of the time,” Manet continued.

“Do you know what she did in Brest before coming here?”

“All I know is that she was working for the parc there too.”

“Who on the island could tell me more?”

“Nobody, I’m afraid. But I’ll keep my ears open. If there’s anything to report, if anybody saw or heard anything noteworthy, I’ll soon hear about it, and not just concerning the two of them.” Antoine Manet smiled.

Dupin believed him. It was obvious. Anything newsworthy would do the rounds like the sails of a windmill on the island. And a doctor was a person of trust; he would hear everything.

“Fine. Did Céline Kerkrom have contacts with the other island fisherfolk?”

“Yes, both of them did, but I never heard of any problems. She was closer to Jumeau. But if they were really friends, I couldn’t say. Fishing is a hard life.”

An elderly couple came toward them on the way to the village.

“Pauline, Yanik, bonjour.”

“What a tragedy! Will you be able to make it, Antoine? Are we still on for this evening?”

“Of course.”

Obviously everybody on the island knew Manet. Deputy mayor, doctor, and president of the lifeboat association. But he gave no impression of being authoritarian, no superiority complex, no put-on airs. On the contrary he gave the impression of being wise. A friend to everybody, it seemed.

“See you later then, Antoine.”

“A meeting to prepare for the big festival to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the lifeboat association,” Manet explained after the couple had passed them. “Yanik has been a member for fifty years and was an active lifeboat man for a long time. We’ll drink a toast to Céline and Laetitia. In situations like this it’s better for people to stick together. Murder is something we’ve never had on the island.”

“I believe Céline Kerkrom had arguments with a lot of people?”

“Not that many. With a certain few, for sure. Every now and then she caused a fuss on the mainland, but not so much here. Life here goes along at its own unshakable pace.”

“What about the row over the oil? Her action for alternative energy supplies on the island? I heard something about that.” Dupin leafed through his notebook. “Tidal generators, a piping system.”

“Most people think the same as she did. Just a few worry that it wouldn’t give us a stable supply, but we’ll convince them. There’s a feasibility survey going on at present. It’s not just small tidal generators, but a combination of other alternative energy sources. That’s why the real row was with the oil boat boss. One morning he hung around her boat swearing at her.”

That was more concrete than anything Dupin had heard so far.

“Did he lay hands on her?”

“He pushed her about a bit.”

“Did he come late in the morning … I mean wouldn’t she have long been out at sea?”

“Normally, yes. But sometimes she went out late. It depended on the weather.”

“What’s the man’s name?”

“Thomas Roiyou.”

Dupin looked in his notebook. “I’d like to talk to him right away. My inspector has already made contact with him.”

Manet nodded.

“Has there been any trouble or incidents related to fishing recently?”

“Not that I know. I’ve heard nothing from anybody. Fishing is a hard life. But it hasn’t been any harder this year than in the last few. Céline got by, at least she never complained about financial difficulties. But you should probably speak with the people in charge of the harbor in Douarnenez. Céline took most of her catch to the auction there.”

“We’re…,” Dupin said as neutrally as possible, “… already in contact.”

They had reached the first village houses and were about to enter the labyrinth. Manet stopped at the first left turn.

“And I’ve heard about Charles Morin. And the incident between him and Céline Kerkrom,” Dupin said.

“You need to think of him as a sort of Breton godfather. He never gets his fingers dirty in his dodgy enterprises. He pulls the strings in the background.”

“I want to meet him.”

“You should.”

“Do you share the belief that Céline Kerkrom was right that he practices illegal fishing—or facilitates illegal fishing?”

“That’s not the question. The question is whether anyone can find any proof.”

“What sort of illegal practices would these be?”

“Morin doesn’t pay any attention to anything, whether it be with his trawlers outside the parc or with his bolincheurs inside it. He ignores the catch quotas, the catch limits, the regulations on nets. And not just sometimes, I’m certain, but systematically. His dragnets cause a huge amount of accidental catch. And some of the fisherfolk have seen his boats leaking seriously polluted wastewater into the sea. All serious stuff.”

“And the fisherfolk have reported this? And the other transgressions?”

“As far as I know there have been a few reports, but there’s never been a prosecution. The worst of it is that nobody knows the most of it. Nobody sees what happens on the boats.”

Hopefully Nolwenn would have something a bit more exact to relate.

“Smuggling? Have you ever heard anything about cigarette smuggling?”

“I’ve heard about it. There are rumors. But I’ve no idea if there’s anything to it. Sometimes people fantasize.”

“Has he allies?”

“A few, yes. Including some of the most powerful people in the region. Primarily because of his polemics against the Parc Iroise. Most of the fisherfolk support the parc. The coastal fishers at least, but others claim the whole idea is to throttle them, the big industrial fishers mainly. For them the parc is a brain-baby of bureaucrats and ecologists out of touch with reality, a Parisian gimmick to take over their control of the sea. They say overfishing and the poor quality of seawater are just invented. Obviously it’s all humbug even if there is excessive bureaucracy. That is a huge problem, we can’t deny. The Breton and French fishermen are obliged to keep their catch to ecologically acceptable measures, enforced more stringently in the parc than elsewhere. Other countries do whatever they like; it’s complete anarchy on the global seas, barbarism if you like. Even within the European Union the fishing regulations are different. The result is that the local fisherfolk here are at a disadvantage to the competition. Stricter standards are important, but they need to be global. Or at least Europe-wide.”

Without noticing it they had made their way through the maze of alleyways and were standing in front of the church Dupin had seen from the boat, on a small square with a well-kept lawn.

“Those are the pregnant woman and the warrior, two of our standing stones. They’re talking to one another, night and day. Sometimes you can hear them.” Unlike Riwal or Madame Coquil, Manet didn’t go in for colorful storytelling; he related even the fantastical without elaboration.

As it was, the standing stones really were unusually shaped; without using too much imagination, it was easy enough to recognize the pregnant woman and the warrior.

“Are there frequent breaches of the fishing regulations in the parc?”

“Every now and then. There was a serious one just last week. A bolincheur fisherman was caught in Douarnenez Bay.” He noticed Dupin’s questioning look—there had been a reference to that back in the auction hall. “It’s a fishing method that uses a net fixed to two buoys and a ball in the water, a circular net, primarily to catch sardines, anchovies, mackerel, and scad. He caught two tons of sea bream, which is illegal.” And very delicious, it struck Dupin.

“And this bolincheur belongs to Morin’s fleet?”

“I don’t know. They haven’t released the name. The trial is ongoing.”

They would get the name straightaway. A job for Nolwenn. Madame Gochat hadn’t mentioned the case that morning.

“All through the winter there was trouble in the parc between the bolincheurs and the coastal fishermen with their small boats. The bolincheurs make life hard for the small fishermen. When a couple of their boats with their big round nets have dredged an area, there isn’t much left for the little guys. But then the bolincheurs themselves are just ‘small fish’ compared to the trawlers. And even the trawlers come in different dimensions, right up to the huge floating fish factories.” It was easy to tell from Manet that the subject was a hot topic, frequently discussed. “It’s not easy. There’s a bolincheur union led by one of Morin’s fishermen. Céline had a few confrontations with him too. Frédéric Carrière. His mother lived here on the island. She died a couple of years ago, but he still owns the house.”

Yet another name to add to the list in Dupin’s notebook.

“Was Céline Kerkrom somehow involved in this argument about the parc?”

“On the fringes of it.”

“And what sort of rows did she have with this Carrière? Putting it plainly?”

“Verbal attacks. From both sides. During the auctions primarily.”

The harbormistress hadn’t mentioned anything about that either.

“Recently?”

“I only know about their quarrels last winter.”

By now they had left the square in front of the church and were back in the labyrinth of houses.

“All this fishing stuff,” Dupin said, and ran his hands through his hair, “it’s a very complicated business.”

Complicated enough to cause a few crimes in the area. Including murder.

“You can say that, all right.” Manet laughed.

“Have you heard anything about incidents of pollution in the parc? In the last few weeks or months?” Dupin was obsessed by the topic, without knowing why.

Manet raised his eyebrows. “I know of two instances. A blanket of oil on the water, not large, but even so. North of Ouessant. It’s a hugely busy area with all the traffic in the Channel. The second instance was an extreme case of chemical pollution caused by the dock workers in the harbor area at Camaret. They used horrible stuff to treat the stern of the boats against erosion and rotting. Morin’s deep-sea trawlers are based there.”

“Were the works being carried out on his boats?”

“No idea. You need to talk to the science chief at the parc. Pierre Leblanc. He knows everything. About all the things that have happened at the Parc Iroise. He has an eagle eye on it all.”

The science chief had already been mentioned. Dupin made a note of his name.

“He would have been Laetitia Darot’s boss.”

“Indeed. He works on Île Tristan, which is where the parc’s scientific center is located.”

Dupin needed to talk to him first and foremost, as soon as he was back. In France.

It was the same as always. Dupin would have liked to talk to everyone at once. He didn’t like having to talk to people one after the other in a specific order. If he had his way—it was dreadful for himself and everyone else too—everything would happen at once, and he was not just frustrated but angry every time it turned out not to be possible.

“The parc has several water-quality control stations, including one here on the island. Leblanc comes once a week to take the readings.”

“Which day?”

“Fridays. In the morning.”

“And what about the dead dolphins last week?”

“By-catch. A result of drag-and-dredge fishing. It’s infamous, and so far the European fishing commission hasn’t managed to pass a total ban on these nets.”

A dreadful topic. Even Nolwenn talked about it often.

“The collateral catch also includes the seal colonies in the north of the archipelago. Also the various whales and the sea turtles. In general it includes many types of fish that are forbidden to catch.”

“Have there been incidents recently?”

“Talk to Leblanc. He can tell you precisely what it was Laetitia was working on. I can’t. Nor can anybody else on the island, I imagine.”

“I’ll do that.”

Manet had stopped next to a pretty old house with a steep gable, surrounded by hollyhocks. It appeared this was where the patient with the knee infection lived.

“There’s something else I ought to tell you,” he furrowed his brow, “even if it is just a rumor and normally I don’t heed rumors. I have no idea if there’s any truth to it. But who knows whether or not it might be important: Laetitia Darot is said to be Morin’s illegitimate daughter.”

Dupin stood stiff. “Darot, Morin’s daughter.”

That was one for the books. Would be one for the books.

“He’s supposed to have had an affair with Darot’s mother. Given that people knew so little about Laetitia, that led to speculation. You know what I mean.”

“Did Darot herself say anything about it?”

“Not that I know.”

It would be a script worthy of a classic drama: father and daughter, one an irresponsible, destructive fishing boss, the other an ecologist and researcher who had dedicated her life to the dolphins.

“Do you know anything about Darot’s family?”

“Not a thing. And I doubt anyone else does either.”

“And Céline Kerkrom? What about her family?”

“An only child. Her parents died a few years ago. Shortly after one another. Islanders. Going back generations. Céline’s father worked on a deep-sea trawler. Tuna fishing. Her mother collected edible seaweed, like many people here do.”

It sounded tragic, the pair of them lonely women, but then maybe Dupin was getting it wrong.

“I need to go in here now,” Manet said in a low voice, “and then afterward I’ll have a few forms to fill in. I’ve no idea what sort of a report I’m supposed to file on a murder. And we need to think about the funerals.”

“And I need to go in search of my inspector.” The juxtaposition sounded comic, though Dupin hadn’t intended it to. “And carry out a few more interviews.”

“If you need me, it’s not hard to find anybody on the island.”

With that, Manet disappeared into the house with the hollyhocks, without ringing a bell or knocking on the door, as if he lived there.

---

The Quai Sud was a magnificent place. As if somebody had sought out all the ingredients that constituted Dupin’s idea of an ideal place and brought them together to a real one. The bay was a gentle semicircle, with pretty little fishermen’s huts: white, pale green, bright blue. Dupin had emerged from the confusion of streets and houses at the end of the quay—having got lost twice—and now had the whole quay in front of him.

A magical light illuminated everything here, a clear light that reinforced all the contours sharply but without being glaring or unpleasant.

The quay was surrounded by a defensive stone wall in good condition, which was visible everywhere on the island, and was intended as protection against the lashing storms and raging floods that came to mind the minute you set foot on this tiny piece of land, even if with today’s calmly lapping sea in the well-protected harbor basin the idea seemed remote. Wonderfully pretty little wooden boats painted in Atlantic colors bobbed up and down in front of him. Directly opposite lay the glitteringly white sand bank Dupin had seen from the ferry, which formed part of the harbor’s protection.

Something strange happened to the world on the island. Dupin had tried to grasp it the minute he arrived. The quay, the houses, the whole village, indeed the entire island seemed squeezed together, as if the vast sky above was literally crushing them beneath it. At sea the sky seemed far away, enormously far away, but here on the island it seemed to be farther still: it seemed inflated, spread, stretched, yawned in every direction, even the mighty Atlantic seemed no more than a thin shining line beneath it. It was just like using an extreme wide-angle lens while lying down, that was exactly what it was like, Dupin thought. And this impression, it was quite clear, was part of what gave the island its peculiar atmosphere, a feeling of endless distance, that made one feel tiny—and free. Perhaps dangerously free. Obviously only in the amazing summer weather. In stormy weather, beneath furious towering black clouds in the midst of an angry sea, left at the mercy of the primitive powers of nature, there would be none of that.

One of the other defining qualities of the island was a curious silence. All the usual background noise of civilization was missing: no cars, no waste trucks, no trams or trains, no machinery. The few noises that existed seemed to be gently swallowed up by the Atlantic, with the result that when they ceased, the silence seemed even more absolute. Lots of things were different here. You noticed it the moment you stepped onto the island, but it took a long time to work out what it was that made this world particular.

“Boss.” Riwal appeared next to him as if out of nowhere, causing Dupin to flinch. “Our colleagues have taken a quick first look around the houses of Céline Kerkrom and Laetitia Darot. It doesn’t look as if anyone else has been there. Everything seems normal, nobody has gone through the drawers or anything. But then it’s hard to say, because neither of them locked their doors. Nobody on the island does. The killer could just have walked straight in. And obviously could have simply taken something without us finding out now. The crime scene team are going to go over them again shortly.”

“Whereabouts are the houses?”

“Not far from each other, behind the Quai Nord. If you’re coming from the cholera cemetery along the outer path next to the sea, you don’t even need to go through the village. But as I said, at present there are no indications that anybody was in either of the two houses. On the other hand, however, there is still no sign of Darot’s cell phone.”

“I want to take a look at the houses myself. And you check out Darot’s phone calls.”

The list of things that had to be gone through immediately was still growing.

“And the sheds the pair had. Have our men already taken a look at them?”

“At first glance, both of them are crammed full of all sorts of stuff, mainly things they needed for work. Kerkrom’s was full of nets and buoys, totally chaotic. Darot’s is relatively tidy: old diving suits, bottles, buoys, a small rubber boat. Nothing suspicious so far. Obviously somebody could have gone through them, Kerkrom’s in particular. We have no idea what was in there, and what might be missing.”

“The crime scene team needs to check them out as soon as possible too.”

“They’re on it. Otherwise they’ve found nothing suspicious on the pier. And Kadeg has reported in: they found a large quantity of human blood in the barrel. They believe Céline Kerkrom was thrown in there very shortly after her throat was cut, probably immediately. That means she was probably killed in that room.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine.

“Whom can I talk to next, Riwal?”

“The hairdresser has already left the island. He has appointments in Molène, and we couldn’t force him to stay.”

“Did you try?”

“We threatened him with everything we could. Even telling him he would have to come to the prefecture in Quimper. He said there were four elderly people waiting for him on Molène.” It was easy to tell from Riwal that that was what had weakened his resolve.

“Two of our colleagues,” the inspector was quick to add, “checked the boat over first and found nothing unusual. Apart from dozens of sharp blades.”

Dupin assumed it was meant as a joke; everyone who figured in the case so far had a knife: the fishermen, the harbor workers, the staff at the parc, the doctor, and even the hairdresser, anyone who had a boat, who went to sea, all of them.

“It’s a relatively small boat, seven meters eighty, but with a powerful engine. And, do you know what?” Riwal made it sound exciting: “Both women were customers of his! Kerkrom and Darot. He last cut their hair, both of them, three weeks ago. One after the other. The fisherwoman had been a customer of his for years. Like nearly everybody else on the island.”

Obviously the hairdresser was an interesting figure. Lots of people chatted with him in the unusually intimate and yet businesslike situation of having their hair cut.

“Did he say anything? Had either of them told him anything that could be meaningful in the light of the circumstances?”

“He seemed clearly disturbed, I have to say, but nothing automatically occurred to him. He said Darot had been friendly, but she had only exchanged a few words with him. He and Céline Kerkrom had talked about the sighting of orcas.”

“Orcas?”

Dupin had recently seen a documentary in which powerful orcas had mercilessly played Ping-Pong with a poor seal for a few minutes, flicking it to and fro with their powerful tail fins, before eating it.

“The big orcas that come from the same family as dolphins. A large one can grow as big as ten meters long. In summer they sometimes come up to the coast in groups. Recently a pair were spotted in Audierne Bay.”

That was where they had docked on the ferry that morning.

Dupin shuddered.

“Occasionally you also find large porpoises or razorback whales in the Parc Iroise. Sperm whales too.”

Dupin wasn’t going into it any further; he was rather going back to the case. “Did the hairdresser make home visits to the two women?”

“Yes. After that he would go on to Ouessant, and then back to the mainland. He lives in Camaret.”

“And where was he yesterday evening?”

“At home, with a friend. He gave us the name.”

“Hmmm.”

One of those special alibis.

“And this morning?”

“He arrived here just before eight o’clock, he says.”

“We need to check everything thoroughly.”

“Clearly. In the meantime, Goulch has arrived. He’s checking Laetitia Darot’s boat. And he’s ready to go anytime.” Riwal gave an unnecessary grin.

Dupin’s cell phone rang. Given that he was on a case, it had been silent for an unusually long time. Even Nolwenn hadn’t called again.

It was Kadeg’s number on the screen. Dupin grabbed it testily. “Riwal has already told me what you reported.”

“A fisherman called anonymously. One of the coastal fishermen who was at the auction yesterday.”

All of a sudden Dupin was wide awake. Kadeg paused theatrically.

“He claims Madame Gochat had asked him a few times over the past weeks if he had seen Céline Kerkrom in the parc, and where.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I think she meant where she was fishing.”

“Why would Gochat want to know that?”

“I’ll talk to her straightaway. I—”

“Leave it, Kadeg. I’ll do it myself. I have a few questions for her in any case.”

Dupin was too eager to find out what the harbormistress would say. In any case he needed to go back to the mainland when he had finished his interviews here. To meet the parc’s scientific chief. And to speak to Morin.

“Talk to you later, Kadeg.”

His phone rang again. They were still standing in the middle of the quay.

It was Nolwenn. She sounded clearly unhappy and—unusually for his assistant—tense, stressed.

“It’s goddamn useless, Monsieur le Commissaire. I can’t find out anything interesting about Céline Kerkrom. Only stuff we already know. I spoke to the friend of my aunt’s”—in Brittany it wasn’t just families that built fully fledged clans across the generations, they included close friends too—“but she knew next to nothing. Céline Kerkrom was very intelligent and remarkably stubborn, she said, even more hard-necked than your average Breton. A ‘good girl.’ She was totally in shock but couldn’t help.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

It really wasn’t much.

“There is no other family.”

Dupin could hear voices in the background. Nolwenn was on her way somewhere.

“And what about this Morin guy?”

“As a matter of fact there are two accusations against him. Both relating to fishing regulations in the parc. And there’s been a whole series of them over recent years. That said, not one from Céline Kerkrom. It would seem that was just a rumor. But so far there have been no charges. Morin has a pretty wily lawyer. I’ve spoken with people in several positions. Including the chief of police in Douarnenez. He says he’s given up; nobody is likely to prove anything against Morin. They would need photographs or video, not just circumstantial evidence or witnesses who’d seen something from a hundred meters away. That is usually the problem with things at sea.”

“What sort of accusations, and when were they made?”

“One of them was about throwing back fish from one of his trawlers.”

“Oh yes?”

“It’s all to do with the so-called ‘upgrading,’ which is strictly illegal. The fishermen make a grand show of throwing back fish they’ve already caught and are already dead, to make space for better fish or cheat on the quotas. For fish that they can sell at a better price than those they caught earlier. We’re talking about huge quantities here. It’s disgraceful.”

This was news to Dupin.

“It’s another one of those things,” Nolwenn said. “How do you prove it? Even if you board a boat—and there’s no legal justification for doing so—and could prove that purely by chance every catch was the best it could be, which is hardly possible, even then you’d only have indirect evidence, not actual proof. And that would never work. The public prosecutor has said upgrading can only legally be proven if they are caught in the act. We urgently need a law that specifies boats must install cameras!

“Just recently,” Nolwenn hissed between her teeth, “a deep-sea trawler on a three-week fishing trip in the North Sea was found to have thrown overboard one thousand and five hundred tons of dead herring. A ship that over the last fifteen years had received twenty million euros in subsidies. A heroic commissaire uncovered the case. A magnificent woman!”

“Who made accusations against Morin?”

“A young fisherman from Le Conquet. A brave man. I’ve just been speaking to him.” Nolwenn was just brilliant. “He didn’t know Céline Kerkrom personally though. There’s no evidence of any ties between them.”

“And the other accusation?”

“One of Morin’s fishermen has regularly been caught with too large a catch of ormeaux. He was given a small disciplinary fine. The ormeaux were sold on to Japan at a horrific price.”

Ormeaux were a form of abalone, Dupin’s favorite shellfish, with mother-of-pearl shells and firm, white flesh to be quickly seared like an entrecôte steak, with salted butter, fleur de sel salt, and piment d’espelette pepper. Delicious.

The commissaire tried to concentrate again.

The opportunities for indulging in illegal practices in relation to the fishing industry seemed to be impressively wide.

“Has Morin said anything about all this?”

“Not as far as I know. No.”

“The water around the Camaret harbor area was polluted with chemicals recently. Because of the stuff they use to prevent rot around the stern of the boats. Have you heard if they were Morin’s boats?”

“Not all of them, but primarily. There’s a big installation at the end of the Quai du Styvel. In Le Conquet and Douarnenez too. The foul business with the water pollution has been going on for years, but I haven’t heard anything about it getting worse.”

“Have you heard anything about cigarette smuggling? What does the customs office say?”

“They were on the heels of a smuggling ring three years ago, tobacco smuggling, by sea. In fishing boats. Two of the investigators came across two of Morin’s boats involved, apparently spotted a few times on the English side of the Channel, just where they suspected there was a smugglers’ meeting point. They managed to nab the boats, but they openly found proof of smuggling through the Channel Tunnel in big trucks.” As ever, Nolwenn’s investigations had been fastidious. “Therefore they closed the investigation into Morin. Also because there were no other indications against him. As far as the customs people go, Morin has a spotless character.”

“Well and good, but we have one more rumor to go on, Nolwenn. The murdered dolphin researcher is said to be Morin’s illegitimate daughter.”

“Well, she certainly would have deserved a better father,” Nolwenn said, completely unperturbed. Then she took a deep sigh. “I certainly haven’t heard anything about that, Monsieur le Commissaire. But I’ll look into it. Morin is married and has no children, legitimately at least.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“His private wealth is estimated at around ten million. That makes him greedy; we Bretons say hemañ zo azezet war e c’hodelloù: he sits on his pockets.” Nolwenn treated personal characteristics like facts. “He has a spectacular property empire, most of which he inhabits himself. His main home is near Morgat, and the other houses—by which I mean those I could find out about—are in Tréboul, Saint-Mathieu, Cap Sizun, and Molène.”

The most attractive places, spread all along the west.

“His four deep-sea trawlers are registered in Douarnenez.” Nolwenn had switched her voice to a staccato reporting style, as if she was in a rush again. “His other boats are seven bolincheurs of the twenty licenses for the parc, and three chalutiers spread between Le Conquet, Douarnenez, and Audierne.”

Dupin had noted it all down.

“You’re meeting him today at four.” She hesitated slightly, which was unlike her, then added, “If that suits you. Otherwise I can rearrange it.”

“I’ll see how long I need here. First of all I need to see the head of the parc, then I need to talk to the harbormistress again.”

Nolwenn was silent. That was unusual too.

“The harbormistress,” Dupin said, “wanted to know where Céline Kerkrom had been fishing over the past few weeks.”

“Have you any idea why?”

“Not the slightest.”

“I’ll send you, Riwal, and Kadeg all the telephone numbers you need right now. Those of all the people involved.”

Dupin was only half listening.

“One more thing, Nolwenn.” He was glad to have remembered the fact, he had almost forgotten. “There’s a court case currently under way against a bolincheur charged with illegally catching two tons of pink gilthead bream. I want to know who it was and whether or not he belongs to Morin’s fleet.”

“Fine. I’ll come back to you—until then, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

Dupin jumped in. “Nolwenn?”

“Monsieur le Commissaire?”

“Is everything okay?” The rumble of voices in the background had got louder. “Where are you actually?”

“We need a few more signatures, we’re working on it now.”

“Signatures?”

“You know the economics minister in Paris has signed off on the demolition of the sandbank in the bay. A scandal! My aunt Jacqueline is the local head of the Peuple des Dunes, one of the local opposition groups. We need to get mobilized again and I’m helping them out.”

Dupin let it go.

Nolwenn had explained everything as if it were all a matter of course. She had made it clear that further questions would not be welcome.

Lannion had been a big issue throughout Brittany for weeks now. The anger was simmering, and with good reason: since the beginning of the year there had been big demonstrations and other acts, but none of it had done any good. Dupin had read a long interview in Ouest-France with a professor of biology. A company had got an agreement with the French central government to extract vast quantities of valuable sand, and shell-containing sand used as a construction material, from the bay of Lannion. Or to put it another way, which was the truth, to destroy an underwater landscape which was both geologically and biologically unique: a gigantic underwater sand dune, four cubic kilometers in size, Trezen ar Gorjegou. Both the smallest and the biggest fish, sea mammals and birds, all of them depended on the plankton produced en masse in the area; all the sea life relied on it. The entire biological equilibrium of the marine region would be seriously damaged, with severe consequences also for the smallest coastal fisherfolk, who were already struggling to keep going. The most cynical part of it was it had been decided to halt the process between May and August, so as not to disturb the tourists. In his last case Dupin had had to deal with the sand-stealing phenomenon in which a criminal firm had been stealing sand illegally; to have it done here—by a company sanctioned by the state—would be more monstrous still.

Nolwenn was in full flow: “We’re inviting the whole world to the biggest-ever climate and environment conference, presenting ourselves as the barbarians.”

Dupin heard frenetic hand-clapping in the background, loud cries of support.

“Just like the ban on deep-sea fishing that France blocked in the European Union!” More loud applause in the background. “And why do people let this happen? Because people don’t see the damage underwater. People only realize the catastrophic consequences later when it’s long been too late.”

Enthusiastic cheers broke out. It seemed Nolwenn was part of a large crowd.

If Dupin understood correctly, Nolwenn would be working on this case from behind the barricades. But that wouldn’t hinder her amazing work, and the commissaire would be busy with other aspects of the situation.

“You’re absolutely right, Nolwenn.”

He had to say something, and in any case, it was true.

“You need to get involved too, Monsieur le Commissaire, if you think like that. But back to the case, we have no time to lose. I’ll call back, like I said.”

A second later she had put down the phone.

Dupin had to get his head together. It was all getting very complex.

Riwal had used the time during Dupin’s phone call to make his own.

“I’ll be there straightaway, see you soon,” he now said. Then he turned to the commissaire. “We have an initial sketch of which boats left the island last night and which arrived this morning. Obviously only the boats that were seen. I’m going through it with colleagues.”

“Get in touch with all of them, Riwal. Check them out.” Dupin was still thinking about Nolwenn and the barricades. He pulled himself together. “Check out all of their alibis, all of them, without exception.”

“I’m on it, boss. Thomas Roiyou is waiting for you. The man from the oil boat. He’s sitting up front at Chez Bruno. With his two crewmen. He’s been waiting quite a while.”

And with that Riwal disappeared.

---

The bar owner had chosen a warm, summery yellow for the façade and a bright lemon yellow for the gable of his narrow house. A neat little white wall with a green wooden door and a bright pink strip high up on the wall, a green awning out over the terrace. Chez Bruno was painted in big letters on the awning. The terrace in front of the entrance to the bar was made of faded wooden planks. There were a few round bistro tables and comfortable wicker chairs. Hard to find anywhere better to sit, with a view of the harbor, the pier, the sandbank, the sea behind them, and the wonderfully blue sky above.

Dupin glanced at his notebook to refresh his memory and mounted the terrace steps.

“Thomas Roiyou?” They were sitting at the corner table.

All three of them were in worn, dirty blue overalls. The whole terrace smelled of oil. In front of each of the men were two petits cafés, an empty Fischer beer glass, and a heap of crumpled Gitane cigarette ends in a red Ricard ashtray. On the next table lay three pairs of oil-smeared gloves.

“She wants to put me out of business on account of a couple of liters of oil.” The tall, chisel-jawed man in the middle of the threesome, with reddish-blond hair and high cheekbones, opened the conversation on an aggressive note. “It’s madness. She should busy herself with something else. I’d like to see it. I mean, they can do what they want, it’s not my island. But she can lick my—”

“She has been murdered.”

The man sneered at Dupin. “Oh, and you think…”

“Where were you yesterday afternoon, last night, and early this morning, Monsieur Roiyou? And what witnesses do you have?”

Dupin had taken an empty chair from the next table and sat himself down casually. Opposite the threesome, with their boss directly in his sights.

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“I’ll be happy to ask you the same question after inviting you down to the police station.” Dupin had lowered his voice, and he pronounced his words coolly and emphatically, leaning the weight of his body into every syllable. It was a routine that rarely failed him. And didn’t here either.

“So what?” Roiyou said, trying to calling his bluff.

“It’ll take a whole day of your time. Possibly two, depending on the circumstances. Obviously we’ll arrange a time for you in Concarneau, maybe tomorrow morning, but you can imagine how much urgent police work there is to do in a case like this. You will have to come in and wait. And then I might have to push the schedule back and you’ll have to wait again. I’ll be very apologetic.”

Primitive as the tactic was, it seemed to have gotten Roiyou to think about it. Which didn’t help.

“You’re not scaring me.”

“Have the police checked out your boat yet? If not, we’ll do it now.”

“You can’t do that without—”

Always the same old tune. Dupin was losing his patience. “Yes, we can. Without any search warrant. Two brutal murders have been committed just a few hours ago. You and one of the victims had a serious altercation. And apart from that, you’re behaving oddly. That’s grounds enough for reasonable suspicion.”

Dupin was bluffing. But by now he was ready to go to extremes.

“Last night, where were you? Between nine and midnight?”

The man seemed to be thinking again. If you could say that. But not for long. “At that time I’m asleep.”

In principle it might be true: his day clearly had a very different rhythm. As did the whole fishing world, and the sea.

Even so.

“Who can confirm that? That you were asleep at that time?”

“My old lady?”

“And this morning?”

“We left Audierne at six in the morning and got to the island at five past seven.”

The dolphin researcher had probably been murdered between six and seven, according to the island doctor. But it might also have been a little later.

“The oil transporter was already waiting for us. Everything here takes its time. We refilled the tanks twice. When transport headed out to the lighthouse the first time, we hung around the boat.”

“Were you and your men together the whole time?”

“I think so.” It was one of the men with a sunbeaten face who replied. Both of them were grinning stupidly.

“Was there anyone else with you?”

“Just the driver. Or do you mean somebody else?”

More grinning.

“How long was he away, taking the first load to the lighthouse?”

“I’d say half an hour.”

Dupin made a note. “We’ll check that,” he mumbled. “How long did it take for the tanker truck to fill up and set off?”

“Ten minutes, I’d say. Tops,” Roiyou said.

“So that would have been about seven fifteen. And he drove off immediately?”

“Yes, what would he be hanging around for?”

“And you had your boss in sight all the time from when you docked?” Dupin had turned his attention back to the two crewmen.

“Yes,” they answered simultaneously, if not quite so obviously as the nodding of their heads. But it meant nothing.

Dupin was thinking things through.

“You could comfortably have made it to the cholera cemetery and back again in the time from when they docked.” Roiyou’s alibi was anything but convincing. “Did the truck driver see you before he set off?”

“No idea. I was busy on the boat. Right, that’s enough.”

Roiyou stood up abruptly. His voice was harsh and his facial expression hard. His force of movement knocked over the chair he had been sitting on, with a clatter so loud the whole island must have heard it.

For a moment Dupin didn’t rule out the possibility that Roiyou was going to tackle him physically. The conversation had turned into more than just a verbal skirmish. Apart from anything else, the man made Dupin furious.

“We’ll see each other very soon then.” Dupin had remained seated, not showing the slightest reaction.

The other two men had got to their feet too. They followed Roiyou onto the quay toward the harbor.

Dupin grabbed his phone. “Riwal, listen up. Send a few men right now onto Thomas Roiyou’s boat. They need to search it thoroughly. If Roiyou complains, tell him to call me. Ask around in the harbor and the boats of the Quai Nord if anyone saw him this morning, either on his boat or near it. And what time exactly the boat arrived. Oh, and one more thing: get the man who drives the oil truck to confirm what time he left after filling up the first time, and when he got back. And whether or not he had seen Roiyou when he set off.”

“Got it, boss, but watch out. Roiyou is directly descended from the Vikings, one of our policemen knows the family—”

“Nolwenn will find out if he’s had problems with the police before.” Dupin sighed and put down his phone.

Already during his conversation with the oil boat captain he had heard unusual dull sounds that had sounded far away but were quickly getting closer.

The helicopter.

Dupin searched the sky in the direction of the mainland, clearly visible in the distance: France. And found it: a spot on the horizon, like an insect.

The noise got louder and louder.

The helicopter was heading directly toward the island. They were coming to collect the body.

The young woman had woken up on the island on this beautiful morning with nothing before her but a day with her dolphins—now she was lying dead in a bag, ready to be flown to her autopsy in the forensic laboratory in Brest. It was strange; sometimes one little thing in the wake of a murder made it more real than the news of the murder itself. That was how it was for Dupin now. All morning long the whole thing had had a strange element of the abstract to it. Even the sight of the body—strangely, that was almost the most abstract moment of all.

Dupin followed the helicopter with his eyes. It had now reached the island and was thundering low above the harbor, the noise deafening. The pilot was going to land on the stubble grass directly next to the cemetery.

For a while Dupin stood there lost in his thoughts. Then his cell phone rang. Kadeg.

“Yes?”

“Is that you, Commissaire?”

Who else could it be? This habit of Kadeg’s was maddening.

“The fisherman has taken a look at Céline Kerkrom’s boat.”

“And?”

“It’s called Morweg—Mermaid. Nine meters thirty long. She fished with lines and gillnets. Loach, red mullet, turbot, brill, whiting, hake. Her lines are no more than seventy meters long. He saw nothing unusual about it. He said the boat was old, but still in remarkably good condition. One of the good old wooden boats. She had recently had a new lifting arm installed. For the nets. That lifting arm can really handle stuff, the fisherman said.”

“Anything else?”

“I spoke on the phone with Kerkrom’s ex-husband. He has four children, lives on Guadeloupe, and seems a happy guy. He’s had no contact with her for over ten years.”

Céline Kerkrom’s past appeared to give them nothing to work on.

“Have you interviewed Madame Gochat, Commissaire?”

“I want to have her in front of me when I speak to her.”

“Don’t you think we need to pursue a clue of such importance right away?”

Kadeg was particularly insufferable when he talked like this.

“See you later, Kadeg.”

Dupin hung up and leaned back.

He really ought to talk to the harbormistress soon. Riwal could take over on the island and conduct the interviews that had to be carried out, including the one with the fisherman Kerkrom apparently had a connection to.

Dupin still had his phone in his hand. He dialed the number of his inspector.

“Riwal! We need to chat.” Dupin had spotted a restaurant at the far end of the quay, where they could meet up soonest. “Let’s meet up in…” He tried to read the name at a distance. “Le Tatoon.” Somebody had already mentioned it. “At the end of Quai Sud. And tell Goulch we’ll be needing his boat shortly. I want to go to Île Tristan, to speak to the parc’s scientific boss.” He thought for a second, then added, “Tell you what, bring Goulch along too.”

The young policeman had his complete trust.

“Goulch has inspected the dolphin researcher’s boat. And was extremely impressed. It has very expensive, very high-spec sonar equipment.” Riwal seemed no less impressed. “As well as a whole row of other high-tech equipment. A tracker system for fish and marine mammals with a program that allowed her to keep them under continuous surveillance. That means—”

“Anything suspicious?”

“No. But—”

“We’ll talk in Le Tatoon, Riwal.”

“One more thing. The pathologist verified Antoine Manet’s suggested time of death for Darot.”

“I thought she might.”

Dupin left the terrace of Chez Bruno and walked past another bar that also looked wonderful. There were several of them along the quay, each of them a coffee shop, bistro, restaurant, and bar all in one. Everything seemed tranquil and relaxed.

All of that also contributed to the impression the island gave of being “another world”; the tempo, the rhythm, all slowed down. Everything seemed to happen—for outsiders at least—in a contemplative calm. It was as if it were a state of mind. Things moved differently. Dupin could get on remarkably well with it. Normally calm made him nervous. There were rumors that at one stage when it had been suggested from the prefecture that he should be sent on a relaxation seminar he had almost drawn his weapon. Rumors that weren’t totally false.

---

Le Tatoon was splendid.

An old white stone house with a Breton pointed roof and window shutters painted a bright green. A pretty terrace, large ceramic pots with olive trees in front of it, tables and chairs made of untreated wood that had developed their typical patina. A few more tables than Chez Bruno, but still the same inconspicuous narrow slates on either side of the entrance with the menu on them—which was primarily what the island fishermen had pulled out of the sea a few hours earlier.

Dupin had chosen the table outside in the first row of the terrace. He had taken his jacket off and draped it over a chair. By now, just before midday, the temperature had risen to at least twenty-eight degrees Celsius. There was a gentle wind. As expected, the cool morning had turned into a perfect midsummer’s day.

Before sitting down he had popped inside to order a café.

Riwal and the gangly young policeman were walking along the quay.

“Goulch!”

Dupin was happy to see him.

They only saw one another once or twice a year. Either at a police party or the Festival des Filets Bleus, a Fest Noz, a traditional Breton music affair.

“Commissaire!”

A particularly hefty handshake, but a friendly one.

“Nasty business.”

“Really dreadful.”

“I would love to have the kind of equipment on my police boat the dolphin researcher has on hers,” Goulch said with a smile. “Riwal has already told you. It doesn’t look as if anybody else has been on the boat. The killer would have been taking quite a risk: the boat is at the end of the quay, just before the storage huts. It’s busy there from early in the morning.”

Riwal and Goulch sat down.

“Do you know the history of this restaurant?” Riwal asked. Of course Le Tatoon had to have a history, just like everything in Brittany had a history. And of course Riwal knew it.

“The chef ran a two-star restaurant in Monaco, but one day he was visiting his friend in Brest and they came on a trip to the Île de Sein. The chef fell in love with the Quai Sud, saw this house was for sale, sold everything in Monaco within a month, and opened Le Tatoon. Now he conjures up delicious menus here. He works together with the…” Riwal faltered a second, “the two fishermen on the island, and until yesterday with Céline Kerkrom too.”

“S’il vous plaît, messieurs.” The waitress, a smiling blonde with a complicated hairdo, brought the coffee and set it down on the table in front of Dupin. “I suspect my colleagues will want one too.” He glanced at Riwal and Goulch, who both nodded.

He downed his—wonderful—café in two swallows.

“Netra ne blij din-me,’ vel urbanne kafe!”

Dupin had been planning for weeks to try this sentence out on Riwal. He had hoped to stun him, and it seemed he had succeeded: the inspector was staring at him open-mouthed. Paul Girard, boss of the Amiral, had given Dupin a book about Brittany and coffee, in which Dupin had found a few magic lyrics from an old song. He had made a note of this one: “Nothing makes me as happy as a slug of coffee.”

Goulch grinned. Riwal needed a moment to master his confusion—quotations and wandering digressions were supposed to be his business. As if changing the subject without mentioning it, the inspector set his notebook down on the table and opened it, still without saying a word, to reveal an impeccably neat double page. He began to read out his report mechanically.

“That is all we could find. All the boats that docked either yesterday or this morning. As I said, it’s also possible to dock at the jetty at the other end of the village. And with a tender, of course, you can pull up to the land anywhere on the island.”

It wasn’t much help.

“Oh yes, our colleagues did a full examination of Roiyou’s boat. Nothing to be found, even though they took a fine-tooth comb to it.”

“Pity,” Dupin grumbled.

“We’ve also talked to the technicians at the lighthouse and the supply sheds: they didn’t see any suspicious boats, nothing out of the ordinary.”

The waitress came with the cafés for Riwal and Goulch and a little slate with the specialties of the day: fricassé de praires au piment d’espelette, filet de lieu jaune et purée de pommes de terre maison—that was the dish the museum keeper had raved about, the sensational fish with potato purée—and for dessert soupe de fraises à la menthe.

Dupin hadn’t been thinking about eating when he had suggested Le Tatoon, even though he had already been on his feet for seven hours.

“I’ll have another café.”

Dupin leaned down over the list of boats, which was longer than he had imagined.

Riwal spoke up: “The majority are private individuals. Nine of them islanders. We’re already checking them out. We’ve had widely differing reports as to who arrived in the harbor overnight and left again first thing in the morning. Between three and eight boats. For the sailors, the summer season has already begun. That makes it all the harder—nobody knows where they came from and where they are going.”

“We have to try.”

“We spoke to the captain of the food delivery boat,” Riwal said. “He has a crew of three.”

Dupin had forgotten all about it.

“During the day yesterday they loaded up all the orders for the islands, particularly for the Metro. They worked until late, until around eleven thirty, with the help of a few packers, from whom the two of us have witness statements. The boat then left Camaret this morning—the harbormaster there verified that—and couldn’t have been on the island before eight.”

That ruled out the food delivery boat too.

“They were bringing half a Charolais bull for Le Tatoon here.”

Dupin wasn’t to be distracted. He was still taken up with one name on the list.

“Vaillant? Madame Coquil mentioned him. Captain Vaillant? Isn’t he the pirate?”

Goulch grinned. “He’s even more famous than I thought. An anarchist swashbuckler. A bon viveur. He was here in Le Tatoon last night, with his crew.”

Dupin couldn’t help it; everything about Vaillant smacked of adventure stories and classic sailors’ yarns. He imagined him to look like a relative of Captain Haddock from the Tintin books.

“When did they come in?

“Late. After eleven o’clock.”

“Where from?”

“Douarnenez.”

“How long does it take to get here in their boat?”

“Seventy minutes, maybe eighty.”

That would have made it tight for the murder of Céline Kerkrom. But there would have been just time enough.

“With his whole crew?”

“One of them wasn’t there. We’ve already set someone on his tail.”

The friendly waitress brought Dupin’s second café.

“Good. Where does this Vaillant live?”

Dupin downed his second coffee in a couple of swallows.

“On the Île de Ouessant, that’s where they all live. They have three houses in Le Stiff, a hamlet on the east end of the lighthouse, close to the lighthouse and the main pier.”

The piracy business seemed to be going well.

As soon as the waitress was out of hearing range, Riwal commented, “For twenty euros you can have a complete three-course meal here. And it’s said to be excellent.”

As it happened, the restaurant was just the kind Dupin loved: down-to-earth, cozy, and not in the slightest way chic.

“And what about the smuggling? Is there anything to that, do you think?” Dupin had ignored Riwal’s comment and turned to Goulch.

“I’ve had a bit to do with Vaillant myself. He pops up everywhere along the coast. A couple of years ago we searched his boat along with the customs guards when he came into French waters. We couldn’t find any cigarettes, but we did find alcohol. Various expensive eaux-de-vie in canisters. In quantities that went above the legal limit, but not excessively. But we also found a load of canisters we suspect he had poured out before we boarded. I think he’s a smuggler all right, but in small quantities.”

“Who does the patrols in the parc here? Whose authority does it fall under?”

“Boats from the Affaires Maritimes, the sea authorities, as well as customs and excise, the Gendarmerie Maritime, and the boats from the parc itself.”

“Has Vaillant ever been prosecuted?”

“Only small fines.”

“But he fishes too? I mean, gets involved in actual fishing?”

“Yes. But not every day. He uses long lines. For the more expensive fish. Sea bass. Lieus jaunes, as many people now do in the parc.”

“Did they still go back to Ouessant after eating here last night?”

“They moored here overnight. One of the landlords on the Quai Nord saw them leave, about seven in the morning.”

That would have been just about right for the timing. Goulch understood straightaway.

“They claim not to have left the ship after that this morning. And we have no witnesses to the contrary. Not that that means anything.”

That was the way it was.

“A lucky chance,” Dupin said, primarily talking to himself. “They hardly come to the Île de Sein for dinner that often.”

“The harbor landlords say they come to the island about once a month. So it’s not that seldom,” Goulch added drily.

“Okay, onward.” Dupin would have to meet the man. His list was growing ever longer. He bent down over Riwal’s notes. The inspector resumed.

“Two boats came from the parc yesterday, one in the morning, one in the evening, about seven o’clock. Both routine.”

“What were they doing precisely?”

“They patrol regularly, primarily to keep tabs on the fishing and environmental rules. They take samples to see if anything suspicious comes up. They check a few boats, their nets, their catch.”

“We’ve already spoken to the captains of both boats,” Goulch added. “They didn’t come across anything unusual yesterday, and they’d asked their colleagues too, with the same response. The same goes for the boats belonging to the other authorities. Nobody reported anything anywhere that could have to do with the murders.”

“Have you chosen?” The blond waitress was standing in front of them again.

“Lunch today, sadly not.” Dupin wanted to be off. He was feeling impatient.

“You’re making a big mistake,” she said, and turned away smiling, Riwal looking glumly after her.

“Had anyone from the patrol boats had anything to do with Laetitia Darot?”

“No. The parc scientific department operates completely independently and isn’t involved in the patrols. Their boss is Pierre Leblanc.”

The man whom Manet, the island doctor, considered extraordinarily competent and who was on the list of people Dupin hoped to talk to soon. Maybe he had been too quick to say no to the friendly waitress. If he left here right now he would undoubtedly get nothing to eat over the next few hours.

“How about Darot’s relations with her colleagues?”

“There are six scientists in all. Leblanc will be able to tell you more.”

Dupin leaned back.

His fellow officers had done good work. The factual investigations were going ahead well, even if to date they had brought nothing concrete to light. But then who knew, maybe somewhere in the sieve, covered in sand and mud, was a lump of gold they would only discover later.

“Goulch, have you heard anything from the Gendarmerie Maritime about water pollution in the parc that has happened recently?”

“No.”

“Riwal, have you had the opportunity to talk to the island’s two fishermen?”

Their names too were on the list.

“I’ve spoken to both of them, albeit not for long. They’re out at sea. Neither noticed anything unusual either last night or this morning.”

“And where were they themselves last night and this morning?”

“Marteau, that’s what the older fisherman is called, was out at a little birthday party here on the island—until midnight. There are witnesses. And this morning he was up at six for a meeting on the wharf in Douarnenez. That’s confirmed too.”

That eliminated him.

“Jumeau says he was back in the harbor at five thirty yesterday. He brought six large bass to Le Tatoon, drank a beer, and sat around for a while. There are witnesses to that. By nine he was home and went straight to bed, because he goes out earlier than normal at the moment: four thirty today. He lives on his own. He’s a bachelor.”

“So last night he could have done anything,” Dupin murmured, “and the same goes for this morning. The boy who found the dolphin researcher saw him to the north of the island, in visible range. He could have come ashore for half an hour at any time.”

“Correct,” the inspector confirmed.

“The pirate and the fisherman.” Dupin folded his hands behind his head. “Both were here in the restaurant yesterday.”

He was really talking to himself. There was no volume in his voice.

“Maybe,” Dupin began hesitantly, “maybe we should have something to eat after all,” quickly adding, “just a little.”

Relief spread across Riwal’s face. It was as if he had hoped things might go this way. Goulch too nodded keen approval.

“Very sensible,” Riwal said, and nodded heavily. “It will be our only chance before this evening. And in any case you have to try the oysters, boss. Just for your stomach’s sake.” His eyes turned misty. “Docteur Garreg will be very proud of you.”

It was a clever move. On their last case, Dupin had had a lot to do with oysters, which up until then he had shunned. Certain circumstances, accompanied by medical advice, had led him to start eating them. And despite his initial skepticism, they had turned out to be an efficacious therapy for his sensitive stomach. And a new delicacy in his life. Ever since, for medical reasons, he had eaten three every evening. From then on, his stomach had been much better and he had shaken off the wretched “Gastritis C,” which meant he could once again drink as much coffee as he liked. He could be himself again.

“Oysters from the island! A young couple has recently opened up an oyster farm, L’huitre de Sein. An absolute treasure. The phytoplankton around the island gives off extraordinary aromas: powerful, raw, wild aromas, absolutely wonderful, and above all not dominated by iodine.”

Dupin had discovered that it was true. Eat an oyster and one was eating the sea itself, the seawater from which they had come.

He waved at the waitress. Yes, they would have something to eat. And support the young couple. Riwal beamed, Goulch no less so.

“Do you know who else dropped in here last night? And drank a bottle of red wine on his own?” Riwal seemed to want to illustrate that you could continue to work while eating. “This Frédéric Carrière. The bolincheur, the one who fishes for Morin.”

Dupin pricked up his ears. “Here in Le Tatoon?”

“Here in Le Tatoon. Late on, about midnight.”

Yet another coincidence. And his mother’s house was here. He obviously knew people round about. This was a very close-knit community.

“Was there anyone with him?”

“No.”

“Hmmm.”

The waitress was standing in front of them. “You’ve changed your mind?” She couldn’t restrain her satisfaction.

“The menu du jour, please. And a few oysters first. Eighteen.”

Riwal and Goulch nodded in agreement.

“Menu of the day three times. Oysters beforehand,” the waitress confirmed. “Maybe a bottle of muscadet to go with it, monsieur?”

The temptation was unconscionably great, here in the sun, along with the endlessly delicious white meat of the lieu jaune.

“No thank you,” Dupin grumbled. “Just water.”

He pulled himself together and turned back to Goulch and Riwal. “Do we have an alibi for this Carrière? What was he up to on the island?”

“We haven’t spoken to him yet.”

“Do so. Where is his boat moored? I mean which is his harbor?”

“Douarnenez. He lives there too. We’ll deal with him.”

“Good.”

“That’s all we can tell from the list for now, boss.”

The stupid thing was, it could take a lot of hard work over a long time to find out who arrived at or left the island, and all the while it might be a waste of time. They had to get a grip of some sort on the story, at least something to start from.

---

The oysters, the mussels in allspice, and the lieu jaune were all on the table in the twinkling of an eye. None of the effusive praise for the restaurant had been exaggerated; everything was sensational. The place was perfect.

In the meantime the colors had acquired a surreal intensity: the opal blue of the sky, the deep blue of the sea, the bright green of the seaweed and the algae at the edge of the harbor bay in front of them, the blinding white of the sandbank opposite, the orange and red of the gently bobbing wooden boats, each and every color magnified to the max, no faded, diluted tones, no shades.

They had exchanged a few more thoughts before the meal, Riwal, Goulch, and the commissaire, but none of them had in any way changed the world or the case as each of them had increasingly frequently turned their eyes to the door of the restaurant. Dupin’s stomach was really grumbling.

But the first oyster was followed by a deep, ecstatic sigh.

It had gotten warmer while they had been sitting there, in that the last bit of wind had ceased. The sun was now incredibly strong. Sweat was running down Dupin’s brow. He’d never been able to bear hats and as a result never wore one.

His eyes flitted lazily over the pretty quay and the bay, a number of things simultaneously going through his mind.

“Really good decision, this! I reckon you’ve never eaten as splendid a fish as this in your life. Am I right?”

Antoine Manet had appeared on the terrace, along with Madame Coquil. They must have come along the path by the seaside, not along the quay.

“Have you found out any more yet? Was it one of us?” The museum chief couldn’t restrain herself, and yet again she sounded more as if she were curious, rather than worried.

Dupin found himself involuntarily grinning. He put in his mouth the last morsel of the baguette with which he had cleaned his plate of the remains of the heavenly creamy potato puree.

“As of now it might still be anybody…” He hesitated, then added, “Almost anybody. Almost anybody from the island, or anybody from anywhere else.”

Antoine Manet pulled up two chairs from the next table, and he and Madame Coquil sat down.

“We have a little news.” Manet’s expression was serious. “People are saying the dolphin researcher met up with Luc Jumeau, the young fisherman. They were seen walking together two weeks ago, out by the dolmens, about nine o’clock in the evening. And it wasn’t the first time.”

Obviously the islanders had been talking amongst themselves about the two murders. And this and that had cropped up. The phrase “people are saying” was clearly a distillation of everything the island doctor had picked up from all his meetings and visits during the morning.

“You mean they were in a relationship?”

“Possibly.”

“That landscape gardener certainly thinks so,” Madame Coquil said definitely.

“The landscape gardener?”

Manet explained: “The local regional authority has recently assigned a landscape gardener to each of the islands. Ours has been here two years, an amazing guy. Since he’s been here the arméries maritimes—a particular type of sea carnation—have been growing again. You must have seen them: little pink flowers. And he has a wonderful wife.”

“When will this Jumeau guy get back in from the sea?”

“About five o’clock.”

“That’s too late. Call him now. We need to talk to him.”

They should have done it ages ago. It was all the more important now. Of course it could be a tragic love story. The region was apparently known for them. Worldwide. Riwal gave the commissaire a look to see just exactly how urgent it was. Within a second he was on his feet with his phone in his hand.

“Natalie’s husband,” Madame Coquil said, “the pair of them own the restaurant on the Quai Nord, directly opposite the main pier—he saw Laetitia Darot hanging out a strange fishing net in the little garden next to her house.”

“What was strange about it?”

“It had little bits of apparatus around the edges,” she said. “More than a few of them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He didn’t rightly know himself.” She gave Dupin a challenging look.

“What could that be about?” Dupin had turned the question to Goulch, but he just shrugged.

“We’ll need to discuss it with an expert. I’ll ask the parc chief when I see him shortly. Did the crime scene team mention a net like that?”

“No, they found no equipment at all in Laetitia Darot’s house. It seems she kept everything in her shed. I have no idea why she might have needed a net. There certainly wasn’t one in her boat.”

Riwal came back to the table. “I couldn’t get through to Jumeau, but asked one of his colleagues to get hold of him on the radio.”

“Good, so what else is there?” Dupin looked expectantly at the two islanders.

Madame Coquil’s face looked fierce. “There was a sighting of Dahut, just three days ago. That’s always a bad sign. Our eldest girl, Annie, spotted her. Where she’s always seen. Not far from the ruined burial mound.”

Manet realized an explanation was in order. “She’s talking about the daughter of King Gradlon. She became a sea siren.” He thought nothing more of the sighting than if Madame Coquil had been talking about the sighting of a dolphin or orca.

“She’s spotted every couple of years. And every time something bad happens afterward.” Madame Coquil gave Dupin an inscrutable glance. “There are witnesses for many of these things, just in case you think we’re rambling here. In 1892 a priest who’d come to say mass spotted her. He saw a spectacularly beautiful woman with long hair and a fish’s tail in the midst of the waves. Dahut swims around here endlessly, wanting to bring everything back: the glittering balls and parties, the expensive clothes, the excess.”

Much as he tried, Dupin hadn’t a clue how to respond to this.

“And as if that weren’t enough,” Madame Coquil drew her eyebrows together in yet more consternation, “the Bag Noz has been sighted too! The Boat of the Night. Down at the western end of the island. Not far from the chapel.”

Once again Manet came to their assistance. “The maritime equivalent of the Garrig an Ankou, the Chariot of Death.”

Dupin knew the stories of the Grim Reaper who came to collect the corpses of the dead in his coach.

“The Boat of the Night turns up,” Madame Coquil continued, “when dark things are happening. Your eyes can’t ever see it clearly, it’s always blurred, and when you get closer, it gets farther away. Every now and then you can hear heartbreaking wailing from the boat. The first drowning victim of the year is always doomed to become the boat’s ghostly helmsman.”

A lengthy silence followed that statement. Riwal was fidgeting uncomfortably back and forward on his seat.

“Is there anything else—of news?”

“Just a little.” Manet glanced meaningfully at Dupin. “But perhaps the most important. The ladies and gentlemen of the press. I’ve put them into one of the bars on the Quai Nord, as far as possible from what’s going on. I’ve told them you’re bound to drop in.”

“Then I’m headed straight back to the mainland.”

Dupin’s phone rang. An unidentified number.

“Yes?” He had pushed his chair back and dropped his voice.

“Charles Morin here. Am I speaking with Commissaire Georges Dupin?”

A remarkably polite tone of voice. Dupin himself didn’t know why, but he wasn’t very surprised by the call.

“That’s me.”

“Your assistant called me. It seems you want to speak with me?”

“Indeed.”

“Four P.M. would be good. I’m, let’s say…” A slight pause followed. “… extremely curious to know how your investigation is going.”

Despite the excessively accommodating choice of words, there was no suggestion of sarcasm or obsequiousness in Morin’s voice. Dupin had expected a very different tone from Morin. He had imagined him to be a totally different character, more like Roiyou, except hiked up a grade.

“Because Laetitia Darot was your daughter,” Dupin retorted out of the blue.

Morin’s response contained no trace of aggression. On the contrary, it sounded in control of itself, self-confident, worldly, without the slightest intent of provoking the commissaire.

“We don’t need to go into all that, Monsieur le Commissaire. I feel responsible. I live and work here and have done for decades. The sea, the parc, the people—this is my home.”

“Your empire, you mean.” Dupin too had adopted a convivial tone.

“Up to a point you could say, yes. You will understand that I am interested”—he spoke more slowly—“when two young women become victims of a crime that doesn’t appear to have been committed by an outsider. That worries me. In a big way.”

“I’ll see you at four o’clock, Monsieur Morin.”

“Your assistant said you would come to see me here, in Douarnenez.”

“Gladly.”

Nolwenn had forgotten to mention that. But that was no bad thing.

“I look forward to our first meeting,” Dupin said, but Morin had already hung up. He got to his feet. Charles Morin made any particular interpretation difficult. Quite a skill.

“Time for us to go.”

“Good luck,” Manet said to encourage them, simultaneously signaling he understood why they had to go so suddenly.

“We’re here when you need us, Monsieur le Commissaire. And you will,” Madame Coquil said with a smile. She wasn’t so much making an offer as making a point.

“Indeed, Madame Coquil. We need you. No doubt about that.”

“And don’t forget the inscription on the monument by the cholera cemetery: ‘The soldier who never surrenders is always in the right.’”

Goulch and Riwal had also gotten to their feet.

Dupin disappeared inside Le Tatoon to pay the check.

A short while later he came back out onto the terrace and said good-bye to Monsieur Manet and Madame Coquil. Riwal and Goulch were already waiting for him on the quay.

“Riwal, you take charge here on the island. Kadeg will continue to do the same in Douarnenez. Keep in touch regularly, and if you come across anything new.” Riwal gave a routine nod. “And give Nolwenn a ring. I want to know what’s up with Morin’s paternity. She should do whatever she can to find out about it.”

“I’m on it, boss.”

Riwal set off, turning left into the labyrinth of alleyways, acting as if he knew the place like the palm of his hand.

“One more thing, Riwal, just briefly.” Dupin took a few paces after the inspector.

“The butcher from Le Conquet”—Dupin was unintentionally speaking softly—“the one who saw seven graves, of which five rather than four were in one row”—he tried to speak in a louder voice—“whatever happened to him?”

Riwal looked at him worriedly for a moment, so that Dupin was already regretting having asked the question.

“He fell out of the boat he’d gone fishing in. In a calm sea and good weather. Dead. His heart. Despite there being no previous history or warning signs. Just like that.”

Dupin’s eyes widened, even though he had tried to restrain any reaction. He shook himself. It was ridiculous. Now he was paying attention to ghost stories. Fantastic fables come from crazy superstition.

“You…” Riwal hemmed and hawed. “… you need to watch out, boss. I mean, watch out particularly carefully, twice or three times as much as normal, if you’re going to Île Tristan.”

Dupin stared at him.

“You’ve just heard: Dahut, the daughter of King Gradlon, is now a ghostly siren in the bay of Douarnenez. If you think you see something odd in the waves, some strange form in the spray, under no circumstances take another look. Her gaze drags you into the sea after her.”

But before Dupin could say anything, Riwal had vanished amidst the houses.

---

“The boat was right at the end of the Quai Nord.”

Goulch was striding out decisively as they headed toward the harbor area between the two quays, where the huts belonging to Céline Kerkrom and Laetitia Darot stood.

“Are you aware—” Dupin’s cell phone rang again. A Rennes number.

“Yes?”

“Xavier Controc. Affaires Maritimes. Head of fisheries department. Commissaire Dupin?”

“What’s this about?”

“I’d like to tell you about something in complete confidence. I think it might be of importance, even if it’s not related to this case.”

Dupin had automatically stopped in his tracks.

“But first I need you to swear not to utter a single word to anyone about this. Can you do that?”

“Go ahead.”

“This afternoon we are going to carry out a major ‘joint services action’ in the Parc Iroise, controls at sea. We will be taking part alongside a unit from the Gendarmerie Maritime, and Ifremer, the Institut Français de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la Mer. We’re investigating apparent breaches of the catch regulations for red lobsters. Are you familiar with the matter?”

Dupin was already familiar with almost every possible subject connected to the fishing industry; not that one, however.

“It’s a local type of lobster, found primarily in the Chaussée de Sein, which was nearly driven to extinction through overfishing in 2006. On that occasion they introduced a total ban on fishing for the species, which led to something of a recovery. But the ban is still in effect, and there are some who think they no longer need to heed it.”

“Is your operation aimed at anybody in particular?”

“In theory, no, but there are one or two who we believe are ignoring the ban. Over the past few weeks, some boats refused to let inspectors carrying out spot checks come on board.”

“Charles Morin’s boats?”

He hesitated. “There are several boats involved, but yes.”

They seemed to be taking it seriously. Even the chief of police in Douarnenez, with whom Nolwenn had spoken, apparently didn’t know about this, or at least hadn’t mentioned it.

Dupin had remained standing on the spot. “So who knows about this operation?”

“Only a few staff of each organization involved. From yesterday, of course, the control boats and their crew.”

“And what happens if infringement of the ban is proved to be happening? I mean, what are the stakes here?”

“A few of them were caught at it last year. This time around, for a repeat infraction, there could be fines of up to fifteen thousand euros, or in an extreme case a jail sentence. Up to six months. That’s when it gets serious.”

“And the boats undertaking the operation are authorized to take control against the will of the captains?”

“Absolutely. We have permission from the courts.”

If Dupin understood properly, an operation like this could be a real slap in the face for Morin.

“Could Laetitia Darot have known about this operation?”

“The dead dolphin researcher?”

“The murdered dolphin researcher.”

“In theory it’s impossible. This has nothing to do with the parc’s scientific department.”

“Darot’s boss, Pierre Leblanc, does he know about it?”

“He’s in on the secret.”

Dupin had no firm idea, no clear plan to follow, but the whole business was of great interest.

“However, seeing as you are investigating within the parc, I thought it proper to inform you.”

“I am very grateful to you, Monsieur…” He had of course already forgotten the man’s name.

“Controc. Do you see—” Controc paused for a moment. “In the circumstances of your investigation at present, do you see any possible connection between this operation and the murders?”

“I can’t say for now,” Dupin replied honestly.

“Everybody here is very worked up about it.”

“Here too, Monsieur Controc. I suggest we keep in touch with one another in case there are any new developments.”

“Agreed.”

Dupin hung up. Goulch was waiting for him a few meters farther on. Dupin caught up with him and put him in the picture.

“They must have real grounds for suspicion. I can’t remember anything on this scale in recent years,” Goulch said. He had started walking on, and Dupin with him.

They were walking along the last stretch of the quay, mountains of colorful fishermen’s nets in big wooden boxes along the way. To their right a concrete slipway led down to the sea. Straight on led to the harbor area, with a handful of long, low, flat-roofed buildings, the storage sheds.

“You didn’t find any net on Darot’s boat,” began Dupin, returning to a point he had been mulling over. “With little bits of equipment attached?”

“Certainly not.”

The sheds were worn by the wind and the sea. There were just a few painted white, while most were bare concrete that over the years had taken on yellow or green tones. Bright orange patches of lichen. Narrow doors with tiny windows next to them. The frames of the doors and windows were painted in bright colors: turquoise, bright blue, petroleum green, sunlight yellow. Between the barracks lay buoys, anchor chains, all sorts of rusted bits and pieces.

Outside one of the barracks stood two policemen, the Gendarmerie Maritime.

These had to be the sheds belonging to Darot and Kerkrom.

Dupin slowed his pace.

“I just want to take a quick look to see if we can find this net.” For some reason the strange net was nagging at him.

Without waiting for any reaction from Goulch, Dupin went up to the policemen.

“Which is Laetitia Darot’s shed?”

“This one here, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

An extremely carefully painted door—reddish ocher. The frames of the narrow windows were deep blue. There was a small wooden bench in front, with two empty plastic boxes on top. Two old window boxes with a few wind-blown flowers still managing to be in bloom.

“The one next to it”—the policeman pointed to the door a few meters away—“belongs to Céline Kerkrom. The crime scene team have already documented everything.”

“Is it just by chance that they’re next to one another, Darot’s and Kerkrom’s?”

“Apparently.”

What else was the poor uniform to say?

Goulch had followed Dupin. “I’ll follow up again with the colleague who checked out the houses. About the net. Just to be sure.”

“Good.”

Dupin headed toward the reddish-ocher door, which was half open. He opened it wide. And walked in.

The dusty window didn’t let much light in, and the light bulb fixed to the ceiling didn’t help much. It took Dupin’s eyes a moment to adjust. There was a rather musty smell, but not unpleasant. In the right-hand corner—the room was some five meters by two and a half—lay a few buoys.

They were different shapes, most of them oblong and orange, which to Dupin looked like those used by divers. There were at least a dozen of them.

Then there was divers’ equipment on metal shelves half a meter high, which took up most of the room: bottles in different shapes, breathing apparatus, diving masks, neoprene suits. A handful of knives.

The rear part of the room was occupied by a large table with an unusual hodgepodge of objects on it: sticks of driftwood, rusty bits of metal, a largish ship screw, things that Laetitia Darot had brought up from the sea bottom, pretty shells in various shapes, dried seaweed, unusual stones.

No nets.

Not even one.

Dupin walked out again.

Goulch seemed still to be on the phone.

He would take a quick look at the other shed.

Perhaps it had been Kerkrom’s net. And for some reason or other she had kept it in Darot’s shed.

The room was the same size. But it created a completely different impression. It was impossible to say if it was random chaos or the result of what had actually been a systematic collection of things that over the years had been picked up and put down, which in the end would give an outsider the same impression.

There was a rusty old fridge directly to the right of the door, and next to it, piled up against the wall, lobster cages, fish boxes in various shapes and sizes, paddles. Then buoys, much larger than Darot’s, mostly in fire engine red, and reaching into the far corner, mountains of nets. Dupin pushed his way through them. With meshes in different sizes and colors. Dupin rooted around a bit. They looked as if they were no longer used. Amidst them were lines, lots of long lines, wrapped around logs. A bucket full of fishing hooks, a bucket of lead weights.

But nothing with little gadgets attached.

Everything seemed to belong here, nothing out of the ordinary.

Dupin turned around and left the shed. The light was so blinding, he had to hold his hand in front of his eyes.

“We have already made progress,” said Goulch, who was standing directly in front of him. “The crime scene team have been through the dolphin researcher’s house in detail, and are now on the fisherwoman’s. They definitely found no net at Darot’s. There were a couple at Kerkrom’s, but none with some sort of gadgets attached. Nor did they find a cell phone on Darot’s boat. Nor a computer or laptop. Just a battery charger. No laptop at Kerkrom’s either, and it was a big fifteen-inch notebook, from what we know by now.”

In which case the killer had been into the houses. Maybe he knew there were clues on the machines, or at least was afraid there might be. In which case maybe he had also taken other things.

“We need somebody to go through their email accounts straightaway.”

“That’s complicated, as you know. But we’re working on it.”

“Good. Okay, let’s go.”

Dupin had already set off; his voice had sounded grumpy.

He was unsatisfied. And nervous.

It wasn’t long before the shakedown on the sea was due to start, the so-called “joint services action.” That would stir things up. Maybe even throw up things to do with their case, speed things up, bring them to a head.

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