This boat trip was torture too. Neither the calm sea, the beautiful weather, nor Dupin’s trust in Goulch and his team changed anything. Nonetheless, there was one good thing to say: it was definitely not as bad as that morning.

They had just gone around Cape Quillien in Douarnenez Bay, and straightaway, there it was, with the sun framing it: the Île Tristan. An apparition. A secret island of adventure, a pirate island like in picture books. A legend.

Half a kilometer long, half as wide, stretched out evenly in almost an oval shape. To the west soared high, rugged rocks, dark at the bottom, turning to dark gray and then light gray. Bright sprouting vegetation that made the island look like it might be too small and be overwhelmed by it. Tall spreading trees in every shade of green—some nobleman in the last century had imported unusual and also exotic trees and plants, and laid out a botanical garden, which had gone wild. Different types of bamboo, myrtle, araucaria. Fruit trees too: miniature red apples, plums, apples, pears, medlars.

Ancient stone walls enclosed meadows and heathland, defiant remains of a fortress, an atmospheric ruin. A fallen-down house next to an equally dilapidated pier, a small weather-worn lighthouse. There were endless unbelievable stories about the island—Nolwenn was keen to tell the story of a fearsome devil pirate—and even for Brittany the legends and historical poems were extraordinary.

“We’re steering round to the other side of the island and will dock right by the old fish cannery, which is now where the scientific department of the Parc Iroise is located. We’ll be there in two minutes. Leblanc has been informed. He’s waiting for us in his office.”

Goulch’s precise information brought Dupin back to reality.

The commissaire had made several calls on board the boat: to Riwal, Kadeg, and Nolwenn.

They had got hold of Jumeau, the young fisherman, who had grumbled but then without too much resistance given up on fishing for the day and come back to the Île de Sein. Dupin just listened to the barest details, as was his habit.

In fact, he would have been prepared to have seen him himself. He would still do that. A young lad, not unfriendly but sparse with his words; Riwal hadn’t managed to get much out of him. He had drunk a beer occasionally with Céline Kerkrom—“once a month maybe” was as precise as he could be—and chatted about this and that. “Nothing in particular.” Obviously they had bumped into one another regularly down at the harbor, and exchanged a few words, though their boats were moored far apart. He had also occasionally run across Laetitia Darot, mostly down at the harbor too, and then, Riwal had obviously asked him about their “walk” together; they would take a few steps together in the direction of her house. On those occasions they would talk about anything and everything. He had no idea what had happened, what could have led to the murder of the pair, and there was nobody who seemed suspicious to him. Dupin was convinced Riwal had done all he could to drag anything more out of him. But he knew the type.

The inspector had also spoken with Frédéric Carrière. These days the bolincheur spent the night more frequently on the island, as he was fishing in the far west of the parc. He claimed that he had been on Sein around nine o’clock, but so far no witnesses had been found. He had been in his mother’s house and he had only been seen by anyone else when he arrived at Le Tatoon. This morning, by his own account, he had been out at sea by five. Around ten he had had to go to Douarnenez for a brief appointment. Right now he was on his own boat west of the Pierres Noires lighthouse. Riwal had asked him about his row with Céline Kerkrom. Carrière had spoken about his anger openly, without seeming in any way reluctant to admit it. Their major falling-out had occurred in the auction hall in January. Kerkrom had accused him and the other bolincheurs of using catch methods that were wiping out the coastal fishers’ living. That was the conflict Manet had mentioned.

At the end of their conversation, Riwal had asked Dupin how he was, if the journey had gone “smoothly.” In reply Dupin had simply grumbled testily: “Everything’s in order.”

He had gone over the agenda for this afternoon’s interviews again with Nolwenn. She had pulled all the levers to find out what she could about Morin’s much-rumored paternity issues, setting a whole information machine in motion: amidst relatives, girlfriends, and her husband, who all wanted to hear everything, all of whom would put out their listening ears too. Concentrated particularly on Douarnenez Bay and western Finistère beyond. That was the maximum; there was nothing more anyone could do. It had always been successful in the past.

Nolwenn had of course also come up with the name of the bolincheur who had been caught with two tons of pink bream: it had indeed been one of Morin’s boats, but not Frédéric Carrière. A heavy fine had been levied, but nothing more. Dupin hadn’t asked about the protest demonstration in Lannion; it was better to leave that alone.

Obviously, the commissaire told all three about the maritime raid about to take place. They needed to be aware of it.

Riwal had handed the hairdresser and oil boat man over to Kadeg. He had spoken to the hairdresser’s “friend,” with whom the hairdresser had spent yesterday night. It had turned out, all too comically, that “the friend” was the mayor of Camaret, which raised the question why the hairdresser hadn’t said so in the first place. It would have greatly increased the credibility of his statement. Kadeg had made a few discoveries: the mayor was highly regarded on the peninsula, and in Quimper, which seemed to put the hairdresser out of the picture. On the other hand the reputation of the oil boat man, Thomas Roiyou, was pretty poor. Kadeg had heard a few unpleasant stories. Over the past few years, Roiyou had been involved in several serious scuffles, one of which had resulted in charges, curiously withdrawn a few days later with no explanation. It was a fact that nobody on the island had seen his boat before 7:05 A.M., not that that mattered much given that the boat could have lain unnoticed on the northern side of the island, by the jetty not far from the cholera cemetery, for example. He also had a tender. But two of the islanders had confirmed they had seen the whole crew—including the captain—on their boat between the oil tanker’s two trips. In which case the only time that could have mattered—according to Manet’s estimate and the forensic pathologist’s—was before they moored in the harbor. What was likely to be impossible to be sure of was his assertation that he had gone to bed early last night.

The Douarnenez side of the island came into view. They had been going along the long side of the island at the same tempo and the boat had only now begun to slow down.

They could see the long, whitewashed building of the former fish canning plant, with its sharply pointed high roof, white chimney, and bay windows, and behind it, at an angle, another long building made of stone. A little farther on, partly concealed by flowers and shrubs, was a rather dilapidated but still noble manor house, a building of substance. All the buildings lay only a stone’s throw from the water. There was a concrete quay running along the western side of the island with a pier at either end pointing toward the mainland, no more than two or three hundred meters away. A clutch of weary seagulls were dozing in front of it. Between the houses, pathways led into thick woodland, with inviting shady patches under the tall pine trees. It was a little paradise.

In this weather the island had a delightful light and contemplative aura, radiating a bright strength, not in the least reflecting the sinister world of the stories told about it; on a day like today there was no trace of a dark aura—quite the opposite. Dupin was relieved.

The boat headed for the first pier.

“Goulch, I’d like you to keep a close eye on the action taking place in the parc. Get in contact with the operational boss, confidentially of course. He needs to keep you constantly informed.”

“Consider it done. We’ll be waiting for you here. It’s too late today to get to Douarnenez by foot. The tide will be coming in.”

Dupin hadn’t thought of that.

One of Goulch’s young team leaders—none of his men were older than thirty—had climbed into the bow and was using a hook to skillfully bring the boat parallel to the pier.

A few moments later Dupin was on dry land. He had to admit he had been particularly careful getting out of the boat; he had reluctantly found himself thinking about the stupid story with the butcher.

He walked across the unkempt lawn and found himself in front of an apparently recently built entrance to one side of the building with a white placard declaring PI-Antenne Sud du Parc Naturel Marin d’Iroise.

Dupin opened the door.

“You must be the commissaire,” announced a cheerful young voice wafting toward him. It belonged to a particularly beautiful woman with fine features and chestnut brown hair. She was wearing casual jeans and a dark blue T-shirt. She seemed to be expecting him. “I’m Pierre Leblanc’s assistant. We saw you dock. Come in.”

The original internal factory architecture of the building had been forced to accommodate a wholly functional layout, to fit in as many offices as possible.

The young woman was already standing on a spiral staircase leading from the entrance to the upper stories, and practically flew up it.

When they got to the third floor they found themselves in a workroom with a row of desks and large screens on one side and on the other a professional maritime map of the Parc Iroise.

“Come in!” called a deep, dynamic voice. “We need to talk urgently.” The tone was almost friendly.

A suntanned man—in his early forties, Dupin reckoned—came toward him with his hand stretched out. Short frizzy hair, almost black, a modest V-necked T-shirt, faded jeans—a surfer type. The most striking thing about him—so striking that they seemed to define his personality—were beaming pale blue eyes.

He shook Dupin’s hand, strongly, engagingly.

“She was our best scientist. Already a distinguished expert at such a young age. Nobody else was as close to the dolphins. Some people said she was one of them.” There was real tragedy but also sincere warmth in his voice.

“One thing is sure: she belonged to us, human beings, a lot less than she belonged to the dolphins.” Leblanc paused. “None of us can come to terms with what has happened. It’s terrible.”

They went into the room next door, a signally untidy room: stuffy, small gray carpet, white walls with charts, diagrams, and photos hanging all over them. In one corner was a desk with a computer and an outsized screen. On the wall opposite the door was a little table with four chairs. That tabletop too was covered with papers. The remarkable thing about the room was the extraordinarily superb view from the bay window.

“What was Laetitia Darot working on, Monsieur Leblanc?”

“Various things. As opposed to what most people think, we are still in the early days of research into dolphins. Laetitia had been primarily involved in studying dolphins’ exceptional cognitive and social facilities. Chiefly among the great porpoises that live in the parc, the Tursiops truncatus, but not just them. For example, they are capable of learning simple sign language; Laetitia properly established a friendship with certain individuals of the two populations in the parc. The dolphins had even given her a name of her own. They know one another by whistle names, you should know; even after twenty or thirty years, their memory functions excellently.”

Dupin was envious—his own memory for names lasted barely two minutes.

“Laetitia had put all that together in one coordinated project.”

“And this project is all stored on your computers and servers?”

“Obviously.” Leblanc gave Dupin an inquisitive look.

“I assume she had her own notebook, her own computer?”

“Of course. We give all our researchers laptops.”

“And they have their own hard drives?”

“Yes. Running special software, programs that automatically sync their data with our cloud. And all their notes too.”

Dupin had begun taking notes of his own, in his Clairefontaine paper notebook.

“But she could have had data on her laptop that only she had access to? In a word processing program, for example?”

“Absolutely. Most of the researchers also use their laptops for private matters. It’s explicitly allowed.”

“What about email?”

“The email runs on our client server. But it is strictly limited to professional use. Private communications have to run on private accounts.”

“Do you know if she had a private account?”

“Unfortunately I don’t know.”

“We didn’t find a laptop either in her house or on her boat—could it be somewhere here?”

“Definitely not. It was her everyday work tool.”

“Did she have an office here?”

“She didn’t want one. And didn’t need one.”

So the killer had to have taken her laptop. Or got rid of it.

“Tell me more about Darot’s research work.”

Even if it was specialized, Dupin wanted to know more. You never knew what might turn up. He had come across deciding factors before in the most improbable subjects.

“She was chiefly concerned with showing that with each dolphin we were dealing with a specific personality, with specific individuals with different mental and emotional attributes. More developed and closer to humans than in the case of chimpanzees. Dolphins are, after humans, the most intelligent creatures on our planet. That also applies to their neuroanatomy. Seen purely anatomically and physiognomically, the brain of a dolphin is closer to that of a human than that of any other animal.” He was getting carried away now. “Despite the fact that it evolved along an entirely different route. Laetitia had not only come closer neurologically, but over meticulous behavioral studies of individual dolphins, demonstrated wholly consistent, complex personality depictions: a distinct sense of self and awareness, including awareness of the future that permitted making plans for the future. Most important of all, they also exhibit highly nuanced emotions that lead them to behave in groups the same way humans do.

“That was her second focus, after the question of individuality: the social life of dolphins. She studied the highly complex structured manners in which dolphins live together. They are capable of learning, and she studied how they passed on their learning, actually teaching one another. Animals released into the oceans, for example, can teach their wild fellows the artistic tricks they’ve learned in those dreadful dolphinariums: in a distant part of the Caribbean all of a sudden whole populations began swimming on their tails. Other dolphins use sponges as tools to extract little sea creatures from rocky ground—a learned trick passed on from dolphin mothers to their children.”

Dupin was deeply impressed. But it was the dolphin researcher he was interested in, not the actual dolphins.

“What was a standard working day like for Darot? How should I imagine it?”

Leblanc had gone over to the bay window. Dupin followed him.

“She spent it either on her boat or in the water. With the dolphins, one way or the other. That was her working day. Like I said, she wasn’t really interested in people. Every two weeks she came to see me and we talked over her latest discoveries.”

“Was she the only dolphin researcher in the Parc Iroise?”

“Yes.”

“What about you? What is your area of research, Monsieur Leblanc?”

“Marine ecology. I’m mainly involved in long-term studies in two areas: overfertilization and excessive acidation. Parc Iroise, like all seas, suffers from eutrophication, from phosphates leaked into the sea by industrial farming methods, which lead to the production of poisonous phytoplankton and excessive green algae. Only”—his face darkened—“to give an example of the consequences: last year in Douarnenez Bay certain types of shellfish couldn’t be fished for a hundred and fifty days because of an exaggerated concentration of toxic plankton. I’m sure you know about the consequences of the green algae.”

The commissaire nodded.

“Humanity’s excessive production of CO2 is acidifying the oceans, which has already had fatal consequences: one-third of all life in the sea is now threatened, countless species are already extinct. This is no alarmist futuristic scenario, but has already long been reality. Just like the tangible warming of the Atlantic, take cod for just one example: the temperature has risen so far that the fish are laying their eggs even farther north, because they need cooler water. But there isn’t enough of the nourishment they need there, so they die after hatching.”

Leblanc rested his case on that topic.

“Sorry.” He was speaking calmly in a deep voice once again. “We had a meeting with politicians yesterday and I’m still angry. The current reform of EU fisheries policy doesn’t go far enough, and even now we’re getting fatal decisions about quotas. The reality is that we need significant reductions in the allowed catches, and support for small fishermen along the coasts, which lies at the heart of our ideas here at the parc. But the quotas are being shared out in the same old way: the fishing barons, and their fleets with their destructive drag fishing, get the lion’s share, which leaves the small-scale fishing businesses and the independent fishers hugely disadvantaged and driven further into ruin. Just look at the quotas for trawler fishing of sole in the Channel, beginning north of Ouessant and taking in all of northern Brittany. Along with the devastating overfishing it ends up with huge waste catch.”

“Was Laetitia Darot at this meeting?”

“No. She hated all that.”

“Do you think—” The monotone chirping of Dupin’s cell phone interrupted him.

Paris.

His mother. Unbelievable. There was absolutely no point in answering; what was he to say at this junction, except that it was getting less and less likely that he could come.

“Do you think”—Dupin took up where he had left off, letting the phone ring—“Darot’s murder might have something to do with her work? Directly or indirectly?”

“How do you mean?”

“In recent weeks numerous dolphins have washed up dead.”

“Happily none from our populations, but all the same, Laetitia was apoplectic, with anger and despair. They were probably caught up in the collateral catch of the sole fishers north of the parc. The dolphins hadn’t been dead longer than a day, the inquest said. So they must have died locally.”

“Had Darot anything to do with the inquest?”

“No. It was a veterinarian from the Gendarmerie Maritime.”

“So what happens now?”

“Nothing.”

“Is it possible”—it was pure speculation, but still—“she could have caught out the culprit?”

“Unlikely—and even if she had, nothing would have happened; the culprit had nothing to fear. In this year alone three thousand killed dolphins have been washed up on French shores. In the north Atlantic, on our side of the Atlantic, dolphins are at risk of going extinct.”

“What type of nets are banned in the parc?”

“There are six different kinds of fishing practiced in the parc. Drift nets are forbidden, dragnets and gillnets only allowed up to certain sizes. On top of that, the catch quotas for the different types of fish are strictly enforced. Those of us here at the parc are only involved in the recommendations made; the legal binding regulations are then decided on by politicians, and then put into law by the prefecture. We’ve been trying for years to implement a special program to make major reductions in the by-catch. We’re just beginning to have some success.”

“If there are no legal consequences, proof that the dead dolphins in the last weeks were by-catch victims of one of the local big fishing businesses would seriously damage the owner’s reputation, and maybe also his business?”

“You mean Morin, the so-called fisherman king?” Leblanc didn’t wait for an answer. “I should think so. But Laetitia didn’t go out to sea that often. And in any case she would have filmed it or taken photos; she would have gotten close up.”

“Maybe it wasn’t Laetitia Darot who witnessed it. Maybe it was one of the fisherfolk? Who told her about it later. Céline Kerkrom maybe? The pair of them were friends.”

“Even that’s extremely unlikely.”

But possible. Obviously that too was pure speculation.

“Or”—Dupin was thinking again—“somebody had laid down the banned dragnets inside the parc, north of Ouessant. More than once. Or ignored the quotas, caught banned species of fish … And perhaps the women had systematically checked it out, documented it, over weeks, months?”

“You think the two women might have been spying on Morin?”

Dupin didn’t reply. Something had just occurred to him that he hadn’t mentioned yet.

“What could be the connection of the strange net that was seen at Laetitia Darot’s—a net with little bits of apparatus attached to it?”

The answer was prompt. “That was one of her current projects. Those little bits of apparatus were sonar devices that send out ultrasound signals to warn dolphins and other mammals. They ought to keep them from getting trapped in the nets in the first place. The parc is in charge of doing scientific tests of their effectiveness. In some parts of the world where conditions in the sea are even worse, there have already been positive results collected.”

That was the mystery of “bits of apparatus” solved. But not the fact that the net was there and what else it could be used for.

“And this test net is currently here with you in the parc?”

“I think so. I can ask. Is it important?”

“I’d like to know.”

“The parc worked together with several fishermen.” Leblanc paused for a moment’s thought. “I don’t know whether or not Kerkrom was one of them.” It sounded as if he was kicking himself for not having thought of that already. “I’ll find out right away.” He walked over to the telephone—the same ancient old office sort that they also had in the commissariat, the same ghastly green—and pressed the key for a preprogrammed number. “Mathieu, just a quick question: Laetitia’s program with the sonar devices, was the young fisherwoman from the Île de Sein, Céline Kerkrom, involved?”

He listened for a moment, then nodded and said: “Yes, dreadful.”

He listened again.

“Ah, right. Thanks, Mathieu. Do you know anything about how they got on? Did Laetitia say anything to you about it?”

A brief answer.

“Thanks, do you still have the net?… Good. And send me a list of who else was involved.”

He hung up.

“That was the technical assistant in the scientific department. So, yes, she was there. Along with three other fisherfolk. From the north of the parc, where the major population of dolphins lives. Near Molène and Ouessant. You’ll have the list soon.”

“Thank you.”

Well, that was something. An actual factual connection between the two women apart from their friendship.

“Also the test nets are for now still with us. All four. My colleague didn’t know anything more about it, he’s not been here long.”

“Do you think the ordinary fishermen would take to nets like that?”

“There’d be very different reactions. The large part of the fisherfolk cooperate well with us—apart from the odd skirmish here and there—because they know that it’s in their own interest for the sea to be kept in good order. But not all of them, of course.”

“Have there been rows over the nets?”

“No.”

Dupin looked out of the window.

The view was superb. The silver shining sea; to the right Douarnenez, which looked particularly picturesque in this light. The air was so clear he could even see the broad beach of Quillien at the far end of the bay; it looked as if it were close enough to swim to it. He could see the pier, Goulch’s boat, the seagulls still snoozing. He turned round to face Leblanc.

“If I understand rightly, you were the only one of all the staff who had regular contact with Laetitia Darot?”

“I think so. Not that Laetitia was particularly unfriendly to the others, not at all. Quite the opposite: she was a very warmhearted, likable creature. It was just that she didn’t seek out contacts, human company just wasn’t her thing. But I know next to nothing about her private life. We had a purely professional relationship, she never told me anything about herself.”

Leblanc pulled a sheet of paper from the printer and handed it to Dupin. “The list of the fishers involved.”

Dupin put it in his pocket. “About the rumors that she was a love child of Charles Morin, do you know anything?”

“Somebody mentioned it to me once. But I don’t listen to rumors; I couldn’t care less. They only say something about the people who spread them.”

Dupin was of the same opinion.

“She never referred to it herself?”

“She never would have.”

“So you don’t know anything about her family situation?”

“No. I’ve had somebody look through her personnel files to see what information we had about her. There’s no more than date of birth, place of birth, school career. We have extensive documents only about her studies and her scientific positions. She studied maritime biology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, passed everything summa cum laude, has excellent scientific references. She went on to work there for two years, and following that, three years in Halifax at the famed Bedford Institute of Oceanography. She’s been here now with us for three years, even when she was still living in Brest. She can hardly have had much time for a private life; she was already spending most of the time with her dolphins. I can’t tell you much about her time in Canada. But I can send you a copy of all the documents we have.”

“That would be good. Do you know why she moved from Brest to the Île de Sein?”

“To be closer to her dolphins. There’s a large population of great porpoises living around Sein, and if she was lucky she could see them just by looking out of her window in the morning. And then—I think this was also a reason—there were fewer people on the Île de Sein.”

“And why did she suddenly come back to Brittany?”

“Her contract in Halifax ran out, and here she had all the scientific freedom she wanted. Maybe there was a bit of homesickness too? To be honest, I just don’t know.”

There was a pause for the first time in the conversation.

“There’s a big collective action taking place in the parc today, as you know.”

Dupin had just dropped the sentence into the room.

Leblanc nodded. “We’re counting on catching one or another of the culprits red-handed. The regular controls and checks aren’t enough. It’s easy to see that more reaches the market than can legally be caught.”

“Do you have a suspicion who it is that’s not keeping to the catch quotas?”

“It’s no secret—we talk about Morin’s boats. But not only his. There are another two big-time fishers who are suspect.”

“This could be a big thing then?”

“I hope so.”

Dupin glanced at the clock.

“That was all very worthwhile information, Monsieur Leblanc.”

“Let me know if I can do anything to help. I hope…” He hesitated, then continued in a firm voice, “… that Laetitia’s murder had nothing to do with her work. I mean this collaboration between the two women in the net project.” He broke off.

“What would a possible story in that respect look like—how would you imagine it?”

The question was, how could the thing have evoked such a force that could have led to murder; two murders.

“I’m a scientist.” He smiled with a sad expression on his face. “I need facts, empirical facts. My imagination isn’t that well developed.”

“Call if anything occurs to you.”

“I’ll do that. You can count on me.”

“Thanks.”

Dupin turned away, left Leblanc’s office, and strutted rapidly across the anteroom; the assistant’s workplace was empty.

He found his way on his own.

A minute later Dupin was out of the building, grateful to be in the open air.

He walked toward the pier. Goulch waved at him. Suddenly Dupin stopped dead and turned around. He let his gaze drift over the fabled island. He had the strange impression that, however bright and pretty it might appear, it simultaneously belonged elsewhere. In other, darker realms.

A vague, indescribable feeling of unease crept over the commissaire, though he himself had no idea why.

---

It had been a brief trip. Harmless. A speedy crossing. Dupin had sat in the bow to watch Douarnenez harbor coming toward him.

It reminded Dupin of the little town ferry in Concarneau that one took to get from the Ville Close, the medieval old town in the mouth of the Moros, to the eastern part of the town, just a stone’s throw, maybe a hundred meters. An enjoyable tour in a little green boat; it went through the sheltered harbor and had nothing whatsoever to do with a trip on the sea. Sometimes, when he needed to think, the commissaire would take a walk along the fortified walls of the old town as far as the wild garden on the hill and the church, then take the little boat and cross over. Not to get out on the other bank; he stayed in the boat and took it back again. He had the picturesque view of the fortifications, the harbor, the town, a bit like a bus trip in the old days on the open buses. It was one of the commissaire’s many enjoyable rituals; his whole life and work were filled, if the truth be told, with an extremely rich and well-stocked storehouse of such rituals. Including those that might be categorized by others as tics, quirks, or foibles.

Dupin had told Goulch about his conversation with Leblanc. Despite the minimal information, a picture of Laetitia Darot as a person was slowly emerging. Dupin was getting an idea who this wonderful dolphin researcher had been.

Goulch’s speedboat, the Bir, had moored at the quay right in front of the auction hall, between two larger boats flying Spanish flags. Dupin and Goulch, who had emerged from the captain’s cabin, were already standing to the rear, from where Dupin was going to take to the land.

“Here is the list of the other fisherfolk involved in the net project,” he said. “Talk to them. I’m interested in everything. Particularities of the project, incidents of any sort. Ask them also what they know about Darot and Kerkrom. What they spoke about with them.”

Goulch took the list and glanced at it. “Do you think this might have something to do with the case?”

Dupin didn’t know, but he did know it was bothering him. First and foremost: at this stage of a case they had to put their feelers out in all directions.

“We have to check everything, Goulch. And we mustn’t neglect Céline Kerkrom.” The sentence was primarily directed at himself.

“We’ve just gotten the information on the radio. Operation Red Lobster is going according to plan. Every boat currently fishing in the parc has been ordered to halt where it is. I’ve just spoken with the head of the operation.”

“Good. We’ll see how it goes. Any news from Kadeg, Riwal, or Nolwenn? Anything new from the island?”

“Not so far.”

“See you later, then. I’m going to remain on the mainland for now.”

Dupin sprang enthusiastically ashore.

Goulch went back to the bridge.

Dupin looked around. He was standing almost exactly in front of the entrance to the auction house, just where he had been standing early that morning. It was busy now too. He saw the big ice silo and next to it a functional office building, which had to contain Gochat’s office. The sun shone as bright as ever, there wasn’t a breath of air, just a strong smell of fish, seaweed, salt, oil, and rust—the smell of a harbor.

Dupin was intending to head for the office building when out of the corner of his eye he spotted a figure coming out of the auction house and heading toward him with resolute steps. Madame Gochat.

He stopped in his tracks.

She was looking down at the ground.

He waited.

She walked straight past him.

“Madame Gochat!”

The harbor chief started in shock.

“Ah, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

They crossed glances.

“I was on my way to see you, madame.”

“I’m afraid it’s not convenient right now, we’re—”

“You asked a fisherman to follow Céline Kerkrom. To watch where she stopped at sea, where she fished. Something that you can imagine makes you look suspicious in our eyes. More so than anyone else up to now. That might be the reason why you were so taciturn during our conversation this morning.”

She replied to him promptly, without showing the least sign of annoyance. “I had no motives.”

“I’d like to check that out, Madame Gochat.”

Just a second of hesitation, then she said: “I like to see things are done properly. That’s what I do. It’s my job.”

“You’ll need to explain a bit more to me.”

She seemed to be thinking.

“You know Céline Kerkrom fished with small gillnets, but for sea bass and lieus jaunes, she mainly used a line. That means she was primarily in three areas: around Ouessant-Grabens, the Pierres Noires to the west of the Molène archipelago, and in the Chaussée de Sein. Never in Douarnenez Bay; in that area you’ll find completely different fisherfolk with different boats and different nets. Yet it was right there that I’d seen her with her boat recently, four weeks ago and again three weeks ago.” She sounded almost sarcastic.

“And I wanted to know why. That’s why I asked one of the fishermen from the bay if he would just keep an eye on her now and then. A harmless request.”

“Had you any particular suspicion?”

“No, nothing in particular.”

Madame Gochat was saying no more.

“What could possibly have been her reason?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

Or wouldn’t.

“And how did you happen to see Céline Kerkrom there?”

“My husband has a boat, and every now and then we take it out for an excursion. Usually in the afternoon, when I don’t work.”

“How big is your husband’s boat?”

“Eight meters ninety.”

“That’ll take you wherever you want.”

Anywhere in the parc. Or out to the Île de Sein.

The harbormistress gave Dupin a piercing look.

“Do you know about this experiment the parc is carrying out with these nets that send out signals to warn dolphins and other creatures?”

“I’ve heard of it. But only peripherally. It’s parc business,” she said, once again in the deliberately neutral tone of voice Dupin recognized from the morning. “I supported anything that tried to unify professional fishing with ecological and animal welfare.”

“Of course”—Dupin affected a ponderous tone—“the parc might be seen as your enemy, Madame Gochat? At a time of economic stress, ever more requirements, regulations, restrictions all make things harder.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, Monsieur le Commissaire,” she said. “The direction the parc is taking is the only one that over the long term is viable for economic survival.”

Dupin couldn’t be certain whether or not she was having him on. It had sounded as if she was talking from deepest conviction. But it also might all have been a show.

“So you also support controls by other official bodies?”

“We support all official bodies.”

Nor did she show any emotion at the use of the word “controls.” But that meant nothing. Maybe she knew about the big operation after all. Dupin accepted she could have that much self-control.

She hadn’t moved a centimeter. It was an extremely tense conversation.

“I need to get back to my office, Monsieur le Commissaire. They’re waiting for me.”

“Is there something in particular going on?”

She shook her head.

“Can the auction hall”—Dupin spoke in a way that made it clear he had paid no attention at all to her last sentence—“be held responsible if it sells fish caught by illegal practices? Or if the catch quotas have been disregarded?”

“No, and nor should it be. We have no way of checking where the fish come from. The fishermen just tag them. They are the only ones responsible for their declarations. In any case, there are different regulations outside the parc and they may have come from there. Anyway, we’ve already discussed the fact that the majority of the catch doesn’t get sold at the auction. Or the boats go to other harbors outside the parc. If you want to put a stop to illegality the fishermen need to be caught in flagrante. The harbors can’t do that.”

“What were you doing down here in the hall, Madame Gochat?”

“I wanted to see if after the excitement of this morning all had returned to normal.”

“I—”

A phone rang.

Dupin took his cell phone from his pants pocket. “Just a minute, please.” He took a few steps to one side, toward the water. There was serious irritation written on Madame Gochat’s face.

It was Goulch.

“You’re not going to believe this,” the normally calm Goulch said excitedly. “The first boats they checked were Morin’s. They found nothing, not a thing. Not a single red lobster, not even as accidental by-catch. Completely clean, every one of his ships; it’s not possible. In comparison they found loads on the ships of two other fishermen, so that means—”

“Morin was forewarned. Somebody tipped him off.”

Dupin was finding it hard to keep his voice calm.

“The project leader thinks it’s not possible.”

“Humbug.”

Dupin realized he wasn’t exactly keeping calm.

“Should we talk to the other two fishermen?”

“Take their names. That’ll do for the moment. Have a chat with the man from the Affaires Maritimes, the one who called me. Tell him there’s a leak somewhere.”

If only half of what Dupin had heard about Morin’s godfather status was true then it was no wonder. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“He’ll deny it.”

“Anything else, Goulch?”

“Not right now, the operation is still going on. But Morin’s boats have got through.”

Dupin hung up and went back over to Madame Gochat, who had remained standing exactly on the same spot.

He had lost the thread, but it didn’t matter.

“I’m afraid now I have to—” the harbor chief began, but Dupin interrupted.

“There were a few other things you left unmentioned this morning, Madame Gochat.”

She looked as if she hadn’t a clue what Dupin was talking about.

“Let’s take those charges against Morin that actually were successful: criminal jettisoning of caught fish, high-grading the catch so only the most expensive were sold, exceeding the permitted numbers of ormeaux mollusks.”

“I repeat what I said this morning: so far Monsieur Morin has never been convicted. And I haven’t the time to deal with the countless allegations.”

“One of his bolincheurs is about to get a heavy fine. He’s been found with pink gilthead bream.”

“I’m afraid that happens now and then. The authorities have to react as swiftly as possible, there’s no space for error. The question is whether Morin gave the orders.”

There was no way of getting around her.

“And the serious row between Frédéric Carrière and Kerkrom—did that not seem worth mentioning?”

“Have you any idea how long it would take if we talked over every quarrel Céline Kerkrom had with somebody or other? I assumed your question about unusual occurrences was aimed at things of importance?”

She could hardly have been more callous. Everything rolled right off her.

“That’ll do for the moment, Madame Gochat.” There was no point in carrying on the conversation. Dupin had lost patience. “We’ll see each other again. Soon.” Even this gruff end to their conversation didn’t disconcert Madame Gochat. She feigned a smile and immediately set off, at the same time as Dupin. She headed straight to the entrance of the office block.

Dupin went in the opposite direction. He had to go along the harbor road a bit to where his old Citroën stood.

He was early. He would head to Tréboul, then drive around a bit, to reflect, pull his thoughts together. The events of the morning had hurtled past.

He pulled out his cell phone and called Nolwenn’s number.

“Nolwenn, I’m going to—”

“I just had my phone in my hand to call you. It’s like a curse. I simply can’t find out anything about Morin’s possible paternity.” He could hear that she felt as if her honor were at stake. “I’m still sitting here with a scanned copy of Laetitia Darot’s birth certificate, issued at the clinic in Douarnenez. It lists the parents, I mean the mother and father, the birth parents, as Francine and Lucas Darot.”

“That sounds good.”

“It would hardly be the first time that a birth certificate has been forged. It’s not all that long ago, but those were different times. Obviously Morin could have had an affair with Francine Darot which had consequences. According to the certificate, Darot’s father was forty-two and her mother thirty-seven when their daughter came into the world. They lived just outside of Douarnenez. The mother died two years ago, the father twelve years ago. Also in Douarnenez. I’m trying to find out more about the pair of them. Laetitia Darot had no siblings at the time of her birth, and nothing changed.”

Nolwenn was in the best of form despite her apparent despondency at the beginning of the call. It would have taken Dupin longer to find out all that information thirdhand.

By now the commissaire had arrived at his car not far from the famous Connétable sardine factory.

He had wanted to hear something in particular from Nolwenn, which was why he had picked up the phone, but he could no longer remember what it was. It was something that happened to him more often recently, and he would have mentioned it to Docteur Garreg, if he hadn’t been too afraid of the treatment he would prescribe.

“What about you, are you still in Lannion?”

It sometimes helped him to remember what it was if he talked about something else until it hit him all of its own.

“We’re at my aunt’s. Her living room is a fully equipped communications center. An astounding broadband width, superfast network, two computers, high-resolution scanner and printer. Just what is needed for things like this.”

“I understand. I’m…” Dupin left off asking another question, instead saying, “I’m on my way to see Charles Morin.”

“Have you already spoken with Madame Gochat?”

“Just now.”

“She seems to lead a tough regime. A typical Douarneniste! The Douarnenez women have a reputation for being strong, busy, and efficient. Breton women in general, but in particular those from Douarnenez. It’s a matriarchy,” Nolwenn said, a dry statement of fact. “It goes back to the fisherwomen in the nineteenth century who worked in the fish factories. The ‘whitebait daughters.’ Their men would spend weeks and months at sea and most of the time couldn’t support their families, so the women earned the money, did the housework, brought up the children, organized the commune and the town. Everything. ‘Rien’ got done without her, she did ‘tout.’ Nothing happened without her, and everything that did get done got done thanks to her, that was the Douarnenistes’ proud boast. Actually the proud boast of all women!”

Certainly Nolwenn didn’t come second to them, and seen like that, there was also a matriarchy in the commissariat.

“You’ve got to Tréboul a bit too early. I would recommend that you go to the Ty Mad for a coffee, just a stone’s throw from Morin’s house. It’s a remarkably fine hotel and restaurant, with a fabulous terrace. You’ll be completely undisturbed there. Max Jacob, Picasso, Dior were all there in the thirties, a place with an extraordinary soul. The Ty Mad is run by a woman too.”

A quick café absolutely belonged to Dupin’s idea of a reflective sit and think, but of course he was aware Nolwenn knew him very well, so he felt a bit caught out.

“See you later then, Nolwenn.”

---

With the help of his car GPS—a ridiculously minute display that did more to cause confusion than provide orientation—Dupin made it as far as Chapelle Saint-Jean, and left the car there.

A narrow path led from the chapel to the bay with its pristine white sand and bright blue shimmering sea, hemmed in on both sides with spiky rocks. The chapel, the narrow little path, and the old houses seemed as if they had come from ancient times, with prolific vegetation of elegant trees, extravagant shrubbery that cast welcome shade, palm trees with tousled tops. A rare alluring charm. A tiny seaside resort from the end of the nineteenth century, pretty but not overexaggeratedly prettified. The fishermen from here once sailed as far south as Andalusia, Morocco, and Mauretania to catch lobsters, and had called their quarter “petit Maroc.”

According to the map, Morin’s house had to be on the other side of the chapel. A wonderful footpath led by the sea, above the little beach, meandering along the cliffs and by a big cemetery in the direction of Douarnenez’s town center. From here too you could see the Île Tristan, barely half a kilometer away. It must have reached high tide because there was no sign of the dark lower part of the cliffs.

Dupin decided to drink his café first before walking on. He turned around and walked back to the Ty Mad.

There was rough white gravel on the hidden inner courtyard, which had the atmosphere of a beautiful little garden. On the left was the old stone house, overgrown with vines gone wild, dark shutters; a tall building under the circumstances here, with three floors and an extended roof space.

The terrace was filled with a sea of flowers in different colors, beguiling scents mixed with one another, little rows of tender green bamboo, lacy tall grasses, profligate rhododendron in blinding white, dark green pots with olive trees, tables, chairs, and cozy sun beds all over the garden in the midst of the green.

A magic place.

An oasis.

Pairs of lovers sat at two half-hidden tables, with eyes only for each other.

Dupin chose a table by a high bamboo tree.

He had scarcely sat down when an elegant woman came out of the house, down the stone steps, and directly over to him. Maybe early fifties, of a particular, unique beauty; wild dark locks of hair gathered into a bun from which a few loose strands had strayed; wise, dark, velvety eyes; a singular complexion. Bright pink linen blouse, a deep red skirt, a long string of glass beads of differing sizes.

A smile that came from deep within beamed at him. “Nolwenn said you would be coming.”

Nolwenn hadn’t mentioned she knew the owner. Only now did Dupin notice she had an espresso cup in her hand, which she set down on the table with a casual gesture.

“Thank you.” Dupin was a bit embarrassed. But mostly he was delighted.

“I knew Céline Kerkrom. A little.” Her voice was gentle but strong. “Every now and then she would bring us sea bass. Caught by line. Incredible fish. My chef said they were the best. She was an extraordinary woman.”

“When was she last here?”

“She brought us some just two weeks ago. We were having a big party. A birthday party. With a special menu.”

“Do you know Monsieur Morin, madame? I mean personally.” They were, after all, virtually neighbors.

The owner of the Ty Mad took a chair and sat back, all quite casually.

“There are people who unbalance the world. People who damage it, poison it.” She was thinking it aloud to herself, calmly. “I’ve never consciously had anything to do with him. I’ve always avoided him.”

Dupin downed his café in a few small sips. It was strong and gave off an irresistible aroma.

“The Morin family has tyrannized the bay for generations. The whole region. They’re domineering types, always have been. Morin’s father was a judge, renowned for his toughness. The Île Tristan belonged to them once upon a time. The mid-twentieth century. Before it was taken by a poet, and then bought by the state. Do you know the island?”

“Just the bit in front of the pier, the building belonging to the Parc Iroise.”

“The island has two faces. If you see it in beautiful sunshine like today, you’re looking at the bright side. That’s the aura projected by the lovers in their graves,” the Ty Mad’s owner told him without the slightest hint of the dramatic. “But there is another side too. In the sixteenth century the island was a bastion of a gory pirate and warlord.” That had to be the bogeyman Nolwenn told him about now and again. “Guy Éder de La Fontenelle, ‘the Wolf.’” She held a long pause but it didn’t seem to be for effect. “The Wolf turned a small band of thieves and thugs into a garrison of nearly a thousand warlike men, with whom he terrorized the region under the guise of religious war. They massacred thousands of people, peaceful farmers, fishermen, everyday town and country dwellers, and laid waste to whole strips of land. They raged like storms of destruction; in Douarnenez the Wolf forced the citizens to tear down their own houses to give him the stone to build his fortress on the island, then he had them executed.” She pushed strands of hair from her face. “He built a huge fortune from his robberies, primarily gold. He was obsessed with gold and piled it up in hidden caves across the island, where it still lies today. Somewhere out in the western cliffs, near the half-collapsed pier where the grottos are, that’s the entrance. Before long there was so much gold that he had to hide it in other caves the length of the bay.” She gave Dupin an inscrutable look. “People here remember everything. They make no distinction between yesterday and today.”

Dupin was aware of that. It was a basic trait of Brittany and its people. That was the way things were, and you had to know that.

He wiped a few beads of sweat from his forehead. The heat had become unbearable.

“There’s a tiny place beyond Tréboul where the locals still talk about the landing of Viking ships as if it were just something that happened last week. They claim they can tell you the exact site of the Viking Thingstead, their parliament. A few years ago a team of archaeologists searched the area and indeed found the Thingstead. There were lots of remains, and exactly on the site they had indicated. People pass these things on from one generation to the next; a thousand years is nothing, just a chain of twenty or thirty human lives. It’s the same with the Wolf. There are locals who can tell you everything about him, what routes he used to get to the island, who his lovers were. Everything.”

Dupin believed every word.

“And these treasures”—the question had fallen off his tongue, and now she seemed somewhat unfriendly toward him—“do people look for the treasure?”

“People are always looking for it,” she said, sounding disdainful. “People will do anything to get rich. They would commit any murder.”

It was tragic but true.

“From time to time this darkness visits the island. But believe me, it doesn’t turn off the island’s light.”

The sentence had barely faded away when Dupin’s cell phone rang.

“I’m sorry, madame, I have to take this.”

“Please, go ahead.”

Dupin pulled the phone out of his jacket pocket.

An unfamiliar number.

“Dupin. Who is this?”

“Antoine Manet here. Jumeau was just here. He admitted to me that he had a relationship, a relationship with both women. Although loosely. One after another, sort of. Maybe not quite after one another. I can’t be certain.”

Dupin’s attention had already been grabbed by the first sentence. He had to pull himself together not to speak too loudly.

“With both? A relationship with both women? For how long?”

“If I understand correctly, that with Céline had already ended, but in March they … ‘saw’ each other again. By then he had already started up with Laetitia Darot. But it was very relaxed. He only met up with her three times, so he said.”

The impact of this information was immense.

“That makes Jumeau our most prominent suspect.”

“I know.” There was clear resignation in Manet’s words. “I told him I would inform you. And that you yourself would want to speak to him. He accepted that with a shrug of his shoulder. On both counts.”

“Why had he not already told my inspector?”

“He needed time to think if he ought to tell anybody at all.”

“Did he mention any quarrels, or allegations? Jealousy?”

“He and Céline split up amiably, and remained friends as they had been before. And Darot knew all about it. Even the subsequent time. There hadn’t been any problems. For any of them, so he said.”

Sort of a ménage à trois. It was the first time there had been anything that complicated.

“Was he nervous when he spoke to you?”

“Jumeau’s never nervous.”

“Tell him a police boat will come to collect him.”

“I will.”

“He’s to stay at home. I’ll let my inspector know.”

“Fine.”

Antoine Manet hung up faster than Dupin.

The hotel owner had sat there fascinated throughout the phone call, without letting him know she had been listening to the whole conversation.

She put her head to one side and looked Dupin straight in the eye. “I’m holding you up, you need to get on. I do too. I have to pick up my two daughters from the airport, they’re staying all summer, two months.” She beamed warmly; the dark stories she had just been relating now seemed unimaginably distant. “The season is starting, my daughters will help me, along with my best friend. Come for dinner next time. You’ll enjoy it.”

Dupin had already spotted the dining room, a cast-iron annex in Art Deco style. It would be magnificent sitting in there, staring out at the blue of the Atlantic through the greenery of the garden. Claire would love it.

“I’ll do that.”

The Ty Mad’s owner stood up, turned around, and a moment later was gone. Dupin hadn’t heard her light feet on the gravel.

He sat there a while longer.

Then he called Riwal’s number.

“Boss?”

“Fetch Jumeau in one of the speedboats.” Dupin told him about Manet’s call. “I want to see him. Make it…” Dupin thought for a minute, “… at the Ty Mad in Tréboul.” Why not? A quieter place would be hard to find. “I’ve spotted a little jetty, not far from the Chapelle Saint-Jean. You can dock there.”

Apart from that, it would save wasting time driving.

“Are you in the Ty Mad now, boss?”

“I’m on the way to see Morin.”

“Aha. Apart from that…” Riwal dithered a bit and then added, “Apart from that, all’s well with you?”

It took a minute for Dupin to understand. “I’m fine. In the best of form. And I think it was actually just four graves I saw that first time. I was just a bit tired. There’s not the slightest reason to worry.”

He was going to have to ditch this idea once and for all.

“Okay, boss.” Riwal sounded far from convinced.

---

On the way to Morin’s, Dupin still worried over the spectacular news of Jumeau’s multiple affairs. That, and the growing barrage of events, and his interviews. Dupin wasn’t making any assumptions. He was in the midst of the confusing whirl of events, and confused by them himself. His thoughts were bouncing endlessly from one thing to another. What he needed more than anything else was some distance. But obviously this stroll was much too short even to get a bit of distance. He was outside Morin’s house in the wink of an eye.

A belle époque villa, visible from afar. A relic of the glittering era of the aristocracy. Nothing swanky. Rather discreet nobility. An elegant narrow house built of interlaced L-shaped red stone, the obligatory steep roof in natural slate, unostentatiously laid. Ornamental dark brown brickwork around the numerous windows, on the first floor a balcony full of ornaments from which there had to be a superb view of the bay. The most notable thing was a weathered rosebush in a winter garden built of elaborate woodwork. In front of the balcony was a single tall palm tree, and apart from that a few ancient, overgrown pines on a deep green lawn. Everything looked well cared for, none of it overly extravagant.

Dupin had to walk around the extensive grounds enclosed by a wall and with a cast-metal gate on the side away from the sea. A black Volvo SUV stood in the entrance. There was no name on the bell, one of those old-fashioned black buttons on a convex gleaming steel plate.

Dupin pushed the button. Once. Then once again, quickly one after the other.

It didn’t take long for the gate to open. Almost immediately a man appeared through the heavy wooden door of the house.

Dupin waited for him to speak first.

“How are your investigations going, Commissaire? Have you brought anything new to light?”

That same tone of voice that Dupin already knew from the phone: paternal, considerate, but pressing at the same time. Once again Morin didn’t waste time with pleasantries but cut straight to the chase.

“Tell me what I can do to help you. You know it’s a matter of deep concern to me.”

“You could help me by telling the truth.”

Morin had come a few paces toward Dupin, but now that Dupin had reached him, he nodded briefly, turned about-face, and headed back toward the door of his villa.

He cut a robust, stocky, burly figure, a singularly strong neck sticking out of a white shirt with vertical beige stripes, dark cloth pants, and black suspenders. Black hair, two bushy eyebrows, and pushed up onto his hair a pair of dark sunglasses which, like everything else he was wearing, looked as if they had cost no more than a few euros. The fine features of his face were a complete contrast to his otherwise coarse appearance.

“You must know that I have more than a few contacts, not unimportant ones. I know what levers need to be pulled and where in order to get information or anything else. I know the ways and means. We should be working together, Commissaire.”

The way Morin pronounced those sentences was supposed to appear not so much a threat as an offer of cooperation.

“Somebody warned you about the control operation today, monsieur. Your boats had been informed.” Dupin had spoken without any hint of implication; calmly, almost deliberately.

Morin showed not the slightest reaction. Rather he held the door open for Dupin and led him down a long hallway into a bright, spacious living room, decorated—or so it seemed—in the style of the same era as the building. Exquisite furniture, a glossily polished dark brown table with curved legs, modest but ornately decorated high-backed chairs. There was the smell of beeswax, dust, and mothballs, an idiosyncratic scent that Dupin recognized from long ago, from the grandiose house of his Parisian grandparents, who ended up only using the lowest floors. Morin was unlikely to spend much time here. Even now it seemed they were alone in the house.

Morin steered them to two deep armchairs directly in front of a window with a superb view: the deep blue of the sea with a bright sparkling surface. He sat down and waited for Dupin to do likewise.

“It’s a joke, the effort, the expense—childishness.”

There was no malice in what he said. He had made the statements simply facts. That it was taken for granted he had known about the operation. It meant nothing to him.

“I want to know who killed Laetitia Darot.”

For the first time there was a hardness evident in Morin’s expression.

“She could have been a witness to your numerous illegal activities in the parc. You wanted to get rid of her. Perhaps she had also got together with Céline Kerkrom to systematically monitor you and your boats.”

“I’m not going to answer that, Commissaire.”

“Eventually, Monsieur Morin, eventually, we’ll find out everything. Nothing will be left in the dark. I can assure you of that.”

Dupin had made a point of leaning back in his armchair as he said that, not letting his eyes leave Morin for a second. His face showed nothing more than a calm aplomb.

“We know…” Dupin let a few seconds pass; he obviously had to try it once more: “We know that she was your daughter.”

This time too, Morin showed not the slightest trace of reaction.

“I’ve heard that the two women were friends. And that they were working on a research project together. Other fisherfolk were involved too. I know them.”

Morin had his contacts, obviously. That was no surprise. Dupin would be damned if he’d engage him on the topic.

“Your trawlers’ dragnets and drift nets kill hundreds, thousands of the animals your daughter dedicated her life to. The animals she fought to protect.”

Morin’s eyes had drifted over to the window. He was silent.

“We know about the bream you let your men catch despite the strong regulations, the large numbers you throw back, the ormeaux. We also know your boats fish for red lobster, even though they weren’t caught with any today. That you use forbidden nets and fishing methods on a large scale. We know about all of it.”

There was no point in going through it all in detail, and in any case it was probably only a small part of what went on, but Dupin felt the need to do it.

“As I said, laughable. But that’s not the issue, Commissaire. I’ve been listening. You’re a reasonable man, a clever man. At least I hope so. I hope so very much.”

He was still staring into the distance.

“Where were you yesterday evening, Monsieur Morin? Early yesterday evening.”

“Is this really necessary?”

“It is.”

Morin groaned. “Around seven thirty P.M. I was at home. In Morgat. My wife and I had eaten, we chatted, watched television, and about ten thirty P.M. we went to bed. I had a meeting with my fishermen this morning at ten.”

Calmly Dupin fumbled his red Clairefontaine out of his pocket and opened it to the page with his list of persons.

“With Frédéric Carrière, I believe. Where did you meet?”

Morin remained unimpressed. “Here, in Douarnenez, by the harbor.”

It would have been no problem for Morin to have been in the auction halls yesterday evening and on the Île de Sein this morning. It was a trivial thing, but that was how it was. And the more complicated and tricky a case was, the more important it was to know the simple things. The banal facts.

“In other words, you have no alibi of any kind, Monsieur Morin?”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t talk about me, but about what the two dead women had to do with one another, hmm?” Morin’s forehead had developed deep creases. “They were both seen together at the entrance to Douarnenez Bay, on Laetitia Darot’s boat. And also on Céline Kerkrom’s.”

“We know that.” Dupin had immediately reacted. It wasn’t true. They hadn’t known that. It was an interesting piece of news, but it could probably be explained by the project with the specially equipped nets.

“Why were they together on one boat? What were they doing?” Morin was speaking quietly and not necessarily directed at the commissaire.

“Perhaps testing the special nets which give off a signal; a real thorn in your side, I imagine. It must cause you a lot of expense.”

“I’ve already checked out all the fisherfolk involved in the project. There’s nothing in that. You can save your time, Commissaire.”

Morin kept going. And it wasn’t Dupin’s idea. He was doing it of his own will.

“Madame Gochat,” he continued calmly, “was having Céline Kerkrom watched. Here again we have to ask ‘why?’ And the boat of that hippie-pirate Vaillant has been seen a few times not far from Laetitia Darot’s boat. The devil knows what he had to do in the entrance to Douarnenez Bay.”

It was uncanny. And depressing. Yet again Dupin would have loved to have known how Morin knew all this—and above all, if he knew more. He didn’t ask.

“And he was on Sein last night, of all places.” Morin gave a grim look.

Dupin didn’t react, even though he found it difficult.

“So far you’ve always gotten away with things. But nobody has that much luck forever.”

A curiously calm smile played around Morin’s lips. He tried to catch Dupin’s eye. Then he leaned back in his armchair. Relaxed. Master of the situation.

“Young people don’t understand the big world yet. They are necessarily naïve. I was too at that age. The world is complicated. Life is complicated. They think it is simple.”

He wasn’t impressing Dupin at all.

“Complexity is one of the most frequent excuses, especially for oneself,” the commissaire replied.

“You should accept my help, Commissaire. We should exchange information and work together.”

“You’re one of the suspects, Monsieur Morin. And high up the list.” Dupin’s voice was surly.

It wasn’t a problem for Morin to put the gentle smile back on his face. “Commissaire, our world has rules of its own. Apparently not everybody adheres to them.” Morin got up slowly. “But I’ll deal with that, I promise you. And if not with you, then on my own.”

He was on his feet. The conversation was at an end.

Dupin stood up too. Unhurriedly.

“Au revoir, Monsieur Morin.”

Dupin set off and it was not long before he found himself on the coastal path. The silvery glitter of the bay through the villa window was no more than a cheap shadow of the unending sparkle out here.

---

“Jumeau insisted on coming in his own boat. Two officers are with him.”

It was unorthodox, but why not? Dupin was, after all, the embodiment of unorthodox procedure. He wouldn’t criticize Riwal’s decision.

“He should be here any minute, our colleagues have just called in.”

“Okay.” Dupin would be there in a few minutes; he could see the chapel, but he hesitated. “Let’s do this differently, Riwal. I’ll meet Jumeau on his boat, not in the Ty Mad. I’ll head to the quay.”

“I … okay, that works too, I’ll tell them … By the way, we can scrub Thomas Roiyou, the oil boat captain, from our list. Two fishing boats saw him coming out of the long harbor neck at Audierne a few minutes after six P.M. He still had to go by the auction hall; his little oil depot lies beyond it.”

“I understand.”

It was almost a shame. They might at least have let him stew a bit longer, Dupin thought.

“One more thing, Riwal. Ask Nolwenn to organize a meeting with this Vaillant. This evening.” Just to be safe, he quickly added, “Somewhere here on the mainland.”

“Consider it done.”

Dupin had reached the chapel, on his left the little beach that suggested the Mediterranean.

Something had occurred to him. Something important.

He looked for the numbers Nolwenn had sent him, and found what he was looking for.

“Hello? Monsieur Leblanc? Commissaire Dupin here.”

Maybe the scientist could make sense of it.

“One second.”

He could hear dull thuds.

“I was just in the technical area. I’m yours now. All ears.”

“Laetitia Darot and Céline Kerkrom stayed a while in Darot’s boat at the entrance to Douarnenez Bay. Was that one of Darot’s areas? What could they have been up to there?”

It was clear to Dupin that there were two questions: Why were the two women on one boat? And: Why had they stopped there, there in particular? What were they doing in that area? If he wasn’t mistaken, it wasn’t one of their usual sites.

“Really, in the bay?”

“In the mouth of the bay, yes. You said Darot’s dolphins lived near Sein, Molène, and Ouessant, right?”

“Recently? That was recently?”

“In the last few weeks, yes.”

“What obviously occurs to me is the round-headed dolphins. They follow the cephalopods and mollusks: squid, octopuses, their preferred food. In summer these retreat into the rocky coastal areas of the bay, and the dolphins follow them. I know Darot watched them last summer. This year she didn’t mention it, but that means nothing.”

Dupin thought he remembered Riwal mentioning round-headed dolphins that morning, but so far nobody else had.

“Are they rare?”

“They’re only around our area in the summer. The round-headed dolphins grow to about four meters. A few examples can weigh up to six hundred and fifty kilos. They have a bulky forehead that falls away vertically, a broad, short snout, a sickle-shaped fin, and—”

“Could there be something politically charged about these dolphins?” Dupin interrupted him.

“I don’t know. All I know is Laetitia watched them for several weeks last summer. Their arrival is always something special.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Leblanc.” The curved path down to the sea was fringed with several tall pines. To the right was the cemetery behind an old wall. To the left the Île Tristan. It looked as if you could be there in just one long jump.

Dupin could already see the pier. And at the end of the pier a boat was just docking.

Snow white, a bright blue stern, rounded off at the front, a paprika red edging all around. The bridge was glazed from waist height and had orange-and-yellow-painted sides, on its roof the usual antennas and transmitters. Dupin reckoned the boat was about eight or nine meters long. In the bow there was a big red box, two pink buoys, and a tower of plastic boxes.

Dupin reached the pier. Even though the tide was still high, there were at least two meters between the pier and the waterline.

He could now make out two policemen on board and a slim young man with collar-length hair. A black sweatshirt and bright yellow oilskin bib overalls. That had to be Jumeau.

Dupin headed for the rusty narrow ladder at the end of the pier, the same as there were everywhere along the coast. The two policemen noticed the commissaire and waved to him; Jumeau just gave him a fleeting glance.

Clambering down the ladder was a dicey business, and Dupin sighed when he reached the bottom.

“Everything go normally?” Dupin asked, and pushed himself past his two colleagues standing between the buoys and boxes. Jumeau hadn’t thought it necessary to come to the bow.

“All okay.”

When Dupin had made his way around the bridge, Jumeau was busy emptying two boxes by the side, as if he’d come here to work. Then he stood with his back to the railing, leaning on his elbows. A casual pose.

“One of the two women will have been jealous. Probably both,” Dupin said without skipping a beat.

“It was just small stuff. Nothing more.” He had almost shrugged his shoulders, or at least it looked like that. But it was clear Jumeau didn’t mean it disparagingly.

“Occasionally we spent the night together. Mostly not even the whole night, just a few hours.”

Dupin eyed him.

“I liked them a lot. Both.” His eyes moistened.

He was undoubtedly a good-looking guy. A handsome face, if a bit lean; harmonious features, gentle, mild, boyish, with melancholy dark green eyes. Wiry, slender fingers and hands.

“Was there an argument? Between you and the women? Between Kerkrom and Darot?”

“Never.”

Hard to believe.

“It all just sort of happened of its own accord, en passant.”

“Did you tell them? That you were also having—a relationship—with the other?”

“They both knew, yes. The thing with Céline was over sooner, back in March, actually.”

“Did you prefer one? Laetitia?”

It took him a while to answer.

“Maybe, yes.” He suddenly seemed terribly sad.

“You know that this ‘small stuff’ has made you a prime suspect?”

His eyebrows rose slightly.

“Your … meetings with Laetitia Darot, when did they start?”

Jumeau blinked and for the first time looked directly at the commissaire. “In March. Then we saw one another a few weeks later. And last night.”

Dupin pricked up his ears. Unbelievable. Manet had said nothing about that.

“Last night? You were together with Laetitia Darot last night?”

“Yes.”

“The night before she was murdered?”

A barely noticeable nod.

“From when until when?”

“From eleven until twelve, more or less.”

“That was just a few hours before her death.”

He said nothing.

“Where did you meet? At your place?”

“Hers.”

“And then—where did you go afterward?”

“Home. To sleep.”

“And did anyone see you by chance, on your way home?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you mention to anyone the next morning you had met? Give a hint?”

“Not a word.”

“Did she seem different to you last night? In any way? Did anything strike you?”

“She was the same as always.”

It was exhausting. He had to drag every word out of the fisherman.

Dupin stood next to Jumeau. Stared at the water. Across the bay. Followed with his eyes a boat sailing leisurely toward the Île Tristan.

“Last night, prior to eleven o’clock, what were you doing?”

“I was at home, alone.”

“Before that you were in Le Tatoon.”

“Yes.”

Seen objectively, Jumeau hadn’t a trace of an alibi. He could easily also have gone to Douarnenez.

“I went out again.” It was the first time that Jumeau had begun to speak of his own accord. “I couldn’t sleep. I bumped into Laetitia by chance. At her shed. We hadn’t arranged anything.”

Dupin paid keen attention. “What was she doing at her shed?”

“I’ve no idea. She was standing by the door.”

“Did she have anything with her?”

“No.”

“When you were in her house, did you see her laptop?”

“No.”

“But you have seen one at her place?”

Jumeau looked as if he was thinking hard. “On the table in the living room.”

“Not last night?”

“We weren’t in the living room.”

Dupin sighed audibly. “Did she tell you anything about her work? About her project?”

“She told me a lot about the dolphins.”

“Including the dead dolphins over the past few weeks?”

“She was so furious.”

That was almost certainly the right word.

“But she didn’t talk about it much. She didn’t want to.”

“Did she have a theory, about how they were killed? And by whom?”

“She hated the whole industrial fishing industry.”

“Did she say that?”

“Yes.”

“Did she link Charles Morin to the dead dolphins?”

“No, she never mentioned Morin. But of course he has countless dolphins on his conscience.”

Dupin walked over to the railing opposite. Jumeau appeared to take no notice. The view from there was the yacht harbor.

“What do you think? Is Morin her father?”

“A father isn’t a father, just because he’s a child’s biological parent.” For a moment it was clear Jumeau was internally agitated.

“Was he her father?”

“I don’t know.”

There was no point to this.

“Was she preoccupied by anything? Did she seem worked up? Was there anything unusual?”

“No.” He was looking at Dupin, but at the same time seemed to be looking through him. “She was the same as always.”

“What did she talk to you about yesterday?”

“She told me about some dolphins getting high.”

“High!”

“How a group of young dolphins were getting high on the poison from a blowfish. They were inhaling it like a joint. One after another would take the fish in their mouth and squeeze it gently so that the fish exhaled its poison in tiny doses. They were all completely high, doing the craziest tricks, backflips and so on.”

The anecdote was too weird.

“Did she tell you about the project with the signal emitters on the nets?”

“I saw the net once down at the harbor. She had mentioned it when we met up three weeks ago. Saying that all the fishing boats in the world should be immediately equipped with them, that the small-scale fisherfolk can’t afford them and that the big ones don’t give a shit about them.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Not even—”

The penetrating ring of Dupin’s cell phone interrupted the sentence.

“Riwal, I’ll call you right back, I’m—”

“Boss, we’ve—” The inspector was hard to understand, his voice weak. “We’ve—” He stumbled again. “We’ve got another murder. Yet another throat cut.”

Dupin froze.

“On the Crozon peninsula. Lostmarc’h Beach. The craggy tail that hangs into Douarnenez Bay.” Riwal gradually pulled himself together. “On the other side of Morgat, a totally isolated—”

“Who is it?”

Dupin pushed his way past the bridge and ran into the foremost part of the bow.

Anxiety showed in the eyes of the two policemen who had come with Jumeau. Dupin had almost shouted at them.

“A professor emeritus, seventy-five, living alone, he—”

“An old professor?”

“A Parisian like you. Similarly been here in Brittany about five years. Has a house across the beach. A neighbor found him, when she was out with her dog. On one of the dunes. She knew him. An extraordinarily well-read man, she said, he—”

“His throat cut?”

“That’s how the police there described it.”

“Who’s there?”

“Four police from Crozon. I know two of them. Good men.”

It was hair-raising. Insane.

“I’m heading there right away. We can meet at the scene. Kadeg needs to come, you too…” Dupin thought for a moment. “Then again, no. You stay on the Île de Sein, Riwal. Kadeg needs to drop everything. I’ll call Nolwenn.”

The case had taken on serious proportions. Completely unaffected by their investigation. Now there were three. Three murders within less than twenty-four hours. That was going to cause giant waves.

“Boss, do you think now we’re dealing with a serial killer?”

“No, that’s not what I think.”

“I know we’re only a tiny blip in the statistics. But they exist even so. Think back to the serial killer we had last year in Normandy. Nobody had thought that possible either.”

“It remains distinctly unlikely, Riwal.”

His conviction was less than convincing, he realized.

“We have spent the whole day tracking down the corpses the killer left for us to find.”

The conversation was crazy.

“What was the professor’s subject?’

“Virology. Professor Philippe Lapointe.”

“A physician?”

“Virology falls into the divide between medicine and biology.”

“We need to find out the time of death as quickly as possible.”

Obviously what Riwal had said was true. The killer was doing a proper tour. Douarnenez yesterday evening. The Île de Sein this morning and—maybe, probably—the Crozon peninsula afterward. And there was another thing: mixing the two earlier victims with this murder was curious, at least at first glance. A young fisherwoman, a dolphin researcher—between whom there were however several things in common and certain overlaps—and now a retired Parisian professor of virology. What could link them?

“The pathologist is on the way. The same as on Sein this morning.”

“Do we know anything about the professor’s contacts?”

“So far all we’ve had is the agitated call from his neighbor to the gendarmerie. And the few bits of information I’ve just given you.”

“See you later, Riwal.”

Dupin put his cell phone in his pants pocket.

The two other policemen had stared at him continuously.

“Tell Jumeau I’ll contact him again.”

Dupin was already at the rusty ladder.

On the almost one-hour trip around the wide bay, and despite the car’s breakneck speed, the commissaire had managed to speak three times on the phone to Nolwenn.

She had never heard the dead man’s name but she was already researching it as they spoke, and very shortly had gathered a pile of information. Professor Philippe Lapointe was a virologist and immunologist, and clearly had a substantial national and international reputation, had recently studied at the Paris Université Descartes’s Institute for Molecular Virology. For years, however, there had been no new publications. It seemed he really was in retirement; the list of previous publications took up several pages. There was nothing about him personally except for the fact that he had turned seventy-five in March; the other data only related to his scientific work. By her third call—it seemed she was still sitting in her aunt’s “head office”—she had turned up an assistant from the former Paris faculty who was going to try to find other information for her.

Between Dupin’s first and second calls, Nolwenn had spoken on the phone to the prefect, who had let “his” commissaire know that they had “both been assigned to very important business.” That of course he was involved in the investigation, even from afar, and that he had full confidence in their “so thoroughly successful investigative work so far.”

Meanwhile Nolwenn was on the tail of Laetitia Darot’s mother’s neighbors, friends, and acquaintances. So far in vain. But it was still of importance.

Goulch had tried to get through to Dupin but ended up talking to Nolwenn. He had checked out the fisherfolk who were involved in the net project. They had all only tried out the net a few times. The people they dealt with were the technical department at the parc, not Laetitia Darot. There was no indication of any communication between them, not anything that would make any of them in any way suspicious: Goulch had come to the same conclusion as Morin.

Dupin had made it—strictly following his GPS—down bumpy roads as far as the lonely high cape. The last part of the route had been an unpaved, dusty track. Potholes, large stones, and deep sand tracks alternated. The rocking back and forth of the car reminded Dupin of the ferry that morning. The path came to an abrupt end before meter-high brambles. Not so much a parking place as a dead end, with just a glimpse of the bay here and there. It couldn’t be far to the beach. Dupin hadn’t seen a car anywhere, so there had to be another way here, probably from the north, from the village.

He left his car where it was.

He battled his way down a steep path through a jungle of thorny blackberry bushes. Suddenly, completely unexpectedly, they opened up to reveal a breathtaking view.

Only moments ago, in Tréboul, he had found himself in a gentle Mediterranean dream of a bay with babbling turquoise water and a couple of decorative rocks. Now he was on top of a great cliff hemmed in on all sides by wild beaches stretching for kilometers, reminiscent of northwest Scotland or Ireland. On both sides the craggy landscape stretched endlessly, deep bright green on the hills.Overwhelming. There before his eyes, his ears, he could feel it, smell it: the wide-open Atlantic, crashing tumultuously against the beach. The tossing, whipping winds, the torrents of water coming together crossing thousands of kilometers to crash onto the land. The old continent. The Atlantic with all its power, its forces, its size. The ancient feel of Brittany—it was in places like this that you really felt it. Dupin always thought it had to be at a place like this that a Roman had once stood and determined: this is where it ends, here it is, the end of the world.

Back in Douarnenez, there hadn’t been even the slightest breeze. But here there was a strong wind blowing incessantly, as always bringing the sea surf with it. Nowhere, Dupin thought, did the Atlantic smell as good, as wide, and as free as in this wind from the sea. No sooner did the spray hit your face than you could taste it.

Here even on the calmest, most beautiful days there were still waves: real waves. Long, calm, stately waves. A meter high.

Even the sun and the sky were different, more ancient, like at the beginning of the world. You had the impression of having been traveling for days, so distant did this landscape seem in comparison to Tréboul.

He could see a group of people at the end of the beach, looking tiny and lost, down there where the beach turned into long, extenuated dunes, thickening as they moved inland.

Dupin headed down at a swift pace toward the beach, which looked even bigger when you were down there, and trod through the heavy sand.

Kadeg, who must have parked in a better place than he had—he couldn’t have driven any faster—spotted him and headed toward him.

“Brutal. Same stab wound. An ice-cold killer.” Kadeg loved pithy utterances that could have come from a dramatic movie script.

“Is the pathologist there yet?” Dupin had made out eight people.

“Yes.”

“Did she mention anything about the time of death?”

“She only arrived just before me. She would have done better to have parked here at the northern end of the bar, as—”

“And the woman who found him?

“She’s gone back home.”

“His neighbor?”

“Exactly.”

Dupin thought for a moment whether he ought to have her fetched. But he wanted to go to the village anyway shortly. To take a look at the professor’s house.

“How big is the place?”

“Ten, fifteen houses, no more. We’ve already been through everything down here.” Kadeg gave the impression he’d done it all himself, even if it had to have been their colleagues from Crozon or Morgat. “We found nothing. Nor did the crime scene team. Nothing around the body on the dune and nothing on the path leading down here. It must have happened in the shifting dune sand. There are only vague footprints to be seen, barely imprints, two people most probably.”

They had almost reached the group. Dupin greeted them all round.

“Kadeg, take the officers here and knock on all the doors up there. I want to know everything anybody has to say about the professor. Whom he had contact with, how he passed his days. Everything.”

“Shouldn’t I wait here until—”

“Immediately, I want you to start asking questions straightaway. I’m coming up too, shortly.” That way he could prevent the unnecessary gathering of people here at the scene.

Kadeg turned away with a childishly sulky face and made a snappy gesture to the police. They hurried toward him. Together they plodded up the dune. Only one of them stayed behind.

“We’ll go into the professor’s house together,” Dupin called out loud enough for Kadeg and his people definitely to hear him. “Nobody’s to set a foot inside before I get there.”

Dupin walked the last few meters to the corpse.

It was a gruesome sight.

Philippe Lapointe lay on his back. Unlike in the case of Laetitia Darot, a large quantity of blood had spread all over the body. Into his bright blue sweater, which was saturated with it, and beneath his clothing as far as his jeans. A lot of blood. His head was brutally bent backward, down into the soft sand. Probably the professor in his agony had used his last ounce of strength to try to snatch a gasp of air. It was easy to see the intense agony that this death had involved. The eyes were wide open, staring emptily at the sky. The arms were curiously fixed by his side, almost straight; his legs, on the contrary, were at crazy angles.

The virologist was of average height, neither fat nor thin. A distinguished face, even when so ferociously distorted; narrow lips; thick white hair, cut short; a notable high forehead.

Dupin was standing directly in front of the corpse, just a few centimeters from the black sneakers the deceased was wearing.

“Body temperature twenty-eight degrees.” A pleasant voice. Dupin turned around to find a young woman in her late thirties standing next to him, her light blond hair in a ponytail, no makeup. He had only caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye; she’d been standing with her back to him, busying herself with a silver case. “Given the pleasant temperature today, the body will have lost about one degree per hour. That suggests ten hours. Plus or minus an hour.” She said it as a matter of routine, but in a tone that reflected the seriousness of the situation. “The pupil test confirms that. His pupils hardly reacted to eyedrops, but still just noticeably, which also suggests about eight hours. And my gut feeling says the same.” The pathologist sounded detached, as if looking back over innumerable corpses she had seen in her professional life.

“Good.” Dupin was satisfied. “That’s a great help. It fits exactly with our scenario.” It sounded accidentally comic. It already appeared that the killer had come here from the Île de Sein more or less directly, without much of a detour. Either he had come from the Île de Sein to the mainland directly with his boat, and then here in a car, or come here directly in the boat.

“We’re dealing with a hardworking killer here.” She gave a grim smile.

“You think it can be one and the same person?”

“Just looking at the cut here I would say at first glance it’s perfectly possible. But I’ll have to check that out in the lab. Compare the wounds. By the way, we’ve found nothing else unusual in the case of the dolphin researcher.”

“Do you see anything out of the usual here?”

“There’s a hematoma on the right wrist. Maybe the killer overcame him and held him tight. He certainly couldn’t have put up much resistance.”

“Do you think it happened right here?”

“He would have collapsed straightaway. Yes.”

That too seemed to be part of the killer’s modus operandi. He met his victims in lonely places, murdered them there on the spot, and left the bodies where they were, without moving them. Everything was thought out thoroughly. According to a precise plan. As far as Darot and the professor were concerned, the killer must have made an arrangement to meet them. He couldn’t have lain in wait for them, that would have been far too unreliable. That was also true for Céline Kerkrom, actually: she needed to have had a reason to come to the out-of-the-way room with the waste barrels. The perp had known the places he had chosen. And known them well. The whole area.

“Did the professor have anything in his pants pocket? A cell phone?”

“Nothing. We’re taking the body with us now. I’m calling the van, so it’ll take a while. It can only get here from the other end of the bay.”

“Thanks.” Dupin smiled. The pathologist returned his smile with a friendly, professional glance. “And let me know if anything occurs to you.”

“I’ll do that.” She took a phone from her bag and stood to one side.

Dupin made a gesture to the uniformed policeman who had stayed behind, an impressively portly man with a head round as a ball, who had been following everything attentively. “You stay here and mark the spot where the body lay. Clearly.”

“Consider it done.”

Dupin took a look around.

Although the land rose only gently toward the interior of the peninsula, at the edge of the beach, high cliffs rose with dangerous overhangs. Dupin found himself staring at them, and the policeman noticed.

“There’s a Celtic defensive structure up there, where the Gauls fled to from the Romans.”

Dupin sighed gently.

There was nowhere without stories and history. No single place where something important hadn’t happened. That was Brittany for you.

He moved toward a narrow footpath he had noticed amidst the dunes.

The policeman had noticed that too.

“The path is the best way to the village, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

This man wouldn’t miss anything down here at the crime scene; he was undoubtedly the right man to keep watch.

Dupin set off.

---

“Madame Lapointe, yes, I’ve already spoken on the phone to her. She lives in Paris. In the Marais district. They separated fifteen years ago, been divorced for twelve.”

Nolwenn had been working hard. Her idea about the assistant at the institute had been spot-on, and she had come across Philippe Lapointe’s ex-wife.

“They parted on good terms. No intrigue. They even saw one another occasionally. They went out for dinner. But not for the last year. She was taken aback by the news.”

“Had he still been doing any work? Had anything to do with the faculty? In any way at all?”

The path up to the village was longer than Dupin had imagined. It was only now that he saw the first houses. From here on, the road was paved. There were four police cars by the side of the road and he recognized Kadeg’s.

The rough harshness of the Atlantic reached up here, limiting the vegetation to bare bushes, shrubs, grasses, moss, heathland. Nothing soft and pretty up here. In stormy weather the spray would swirl through Lostmarc’h, as if the hamlet were only a few meters from the sea.

“She couldn’t say. She didn’t know what he’d being doing in his ‘exile,’ as she called it, indeed if he still had anything at all to do with his research, as he had no laboratory anymore. He spent a lot more time reading, she reckoned, having taken his entire library with him to Brittany: the great literary and philosophic classics. That was his great hobby.”

That was only of peripheral interest to Dupin. They needed to find out how Lapointe spent his time. Dupin had already been thinking about that in the car. Had the great virologist, biologist, physician, come across something unusual in the parc somewhere along the coast? Had he got wind of something he realized was a disaster? Something that only he would have noticed. These were all hazy thoughts. But all the same, there had to be some connection to the two women, a decisive—even fatal—link. What could be the story in which these three people could have played a role? Each on their own or the three of them together, knowingly or unknowingly? Up until now they had no more than a few loose threads, or not even that, a few themes that could link them: the fishing industry, possible offenses, illegal practice, the dead dolphins, water pollution, smuggling, intertwined topics, a suspicious family relationship, including a possible highly complicated paternity. But none of those themes were really urgent. They might also even be totally irrelevant, all of them leading in the wrong direction. And the one thing that hadn’t even stirred so far was Dupin’s nose, his scent of a trail. The one thing he had always relied on in messy situations. Like this.

“Was he in a new relationship?”

“She didn’t know that either. She herself had got remarried.” It sounded like and just right, too.

“Does she know if he had friends here in Brittany?”

“His best friend died two years ago. They had talked about that the last time they met up. He hadn’t mentioned any new friends. She did mention what good shape he had been in, kept very fit and did a lot of walking. Not that it helped him.”

Dupin had walked farther along the street but not met anyone.

“And just so you know, the press have already got wind of the professor’s death. I’ll spare you the first headlines.” According to her tone, they left Nolwenn cold. “Obviously the ghost of the serial killer is doing the rounds. They’re having a feast day.”

Obviously, Riwal wasn’t the only one with a contagious imagination.

“That’s it for the moment, Monsieur le Commissaire. We’re getting ready for an all-out day tomorrow. I’ll come back to you when I get anything new. See you later.”

Nolwenn hung up.

The “all-out day.” Things like that always disquieted him. He quickly turned his thoughts back to the case, and the professor.

“Commissaire!”

Kadeg’s voice.

Dupin looked around, but didn’t see him.

“Over here.”

He was standing in the doorway of an old, flat-fronted stone house with a reed thatch, the sort you saw often in the little hamlets. It was quite a ways away; he had shouted loudly.

Dupin walked quickly toward him.

“This is the house of Madame Corsaire. The neighbor. Back here,” Kadeg waved vaguely, “is where Lapointe’s house is.”

But before Dupin reached the old stone house, a head with impressive gray curls popped up next to Kadeg in the doorway. It belonged to a dainty lady in a pink apron dress. She blinked curiously at Dupin, who was standing almost next to her on a narrow piece of land between the road and the house, with the same stubby, bushy grass as on the cliffs.

“This is Madame Corsaire, she—”

“He’s been away a lot recently. In Brest and Rennes. In libraries. He loved old books, old maps, old documents. All that. His whole house is full of it. An eccentric if you ask me. Have you any idea how much dust it creates?”

She passed Kadeg by and took a step toward the commissaire.

Dupin was glad there was no great prologue. “When you found him down on the beach, did you see anyone else? Or at any time on your walk?”

“Is he still lying down there, the poor man? The wind down there is even worse than up here.” She shook her head. “Nobody, not a living soul.”

“Did anything else unusual strike you, Madame Corsaire?”

“More unusual than a corpse?”

“So you didn’t notice anything in particular on the beach today, or among the dunes?”

“No. And all of this today, just when my husband is away in Roscoff! And I’m here all on my own!”

“Was there maybe a car in the parking lot you didn’t recognize, for example?”

“No. Nobody comes here.”

The murderer had been there.

“Do you know if Monsieur Lapointe had been particularly busy recently, with something special that had happened? Here in the Parc Iroise? In the water, or along the coast?”

The old lady’s face looked extremely skeptical. “What on earth might that be?”

“Something he might have mentioned that was worrying him? Pollution? Animals, wounded or dead? Dolphins? Anything at all.”

“He went for a walk every day. Always along the shore. He loved it, that’s why he moved here, he said. Either along the beach or along the cliff tops. Sometimes he went on ‘walking excursions,’ that’s what he called them. Along the coast of the Pointe du Raz or in Douarnenez Bay. On those occasions he took his car.”

“Did you see him often?”

“Not every day, but two or three times a week. We always stopped for a chat.”

Dupin would have another go. “But Professor Lapointe never mentioned anything he’d been busy with of late?”

“He gave the impression of being very upbeat in the past few weeks. He was in a good mood.”

“So there was nothing.”

“I don’t think so—”

The penetrating tone of Dupin’s phone interrupted them. Dupin snatched it into his hand.

His mother.

To be honest he had been wondering—her last attempt had been hours ago. Normally she was a lot more persistent.

The elderly lady looked at him queryingly.

“You were saying”—Dupin put the phone back in his pants pocket—“you don’t think…”

She was immediately back on topic. “I just wanted to say I didn’t think there was anything on his mind.” She shook her head energetically. “That he had any worries. Or worse.”

“Do you know if he still had anything to do with virology?”

“Not that he mentioned to me.”

“Did he have friends, acquaintances? Did he get visitors sometimes?”

“Not many. An elderly man came by from time to time, not someone I know.”

Dupin took out his notebook.

“He came in a tiny car, but the professor never told me who it was. Maybe once a month. Then they went for a walk together, and came back and sat in the professor’s house. But I don’t know what they did there.”

“You have no idea who it might have been?”

“No. It was a white Citroën C2. From Finistère.”

Dupin made a note.

He turned to Kadeg. “Have the colleagues in the village ask around, maybe somebody knows something more about this man.” Then, turning back to Madame Corsaire: “Any other visitors, madame?”

“Marie from the citizens’ movement, she was there a couple of times last week.”

“Yes?”

“The citizens’ movement against chemicals.”

Dupin waited. In vain.

“Can you tell me any more about those chemicals, madame?”

“They use them in Camaret harbor, to clean boats and treat them against rot. They belong to Charles Morin, the Fisher King.”

“We know about this.”

Only about protests, a citizens’ movement, nothing else, but even so: this was the first potential link. And to Morin.

“It all ends up in the sea. It’s a disgrace. The politicians don’t dare do anything. So a few people have got together.”

Morin, again and again, Morin.

“You just said Professor Lapointe wasn’t involved in anything, but it would appear he was, in this water pollution.”

“There was nothing recent; this business with the chemicals has been going on for years.”

“But it would appear things have suddenly got worse. You said a woman from the citizens’ movement was there a couple of times last week.”

“You’d need to ask Marie Andou yourself, she’s a kindergarten teacher.”

Yet another note. And another instruction for Kadeg.

“Go round to see the teacher and talk to her. She must be able to explain. Any other visitors?” Dupin asked.

“The island doctor from Sein came to see him twice…”

“Antoine Manet?” That was unexpected.

“You know him?” It came across more like I wouldn’t have thought you up to it.

“What did he want from Professor Lapointe?”

“How should I know?” Madame Corsaire said indignantly.

Dupin was still dumbfounded. “When was this?”

“Once in April, then again in May, I think. I’m not absolutely sure.”

“I’ll deal with him,” Kadeg interjected. His eyes sparkled.

“I’ll talk with Manet myself, Kadeg.”

“That…” Kadeg forced himself to swallow it.

“How long was Antoine Manet there?”

“Maybe an hour, not longer.”

“Do you know how the two of them got to know one another?”

“How should I know that?”

He needed to talk to the island doctor straightaway.

“Do you have keys to the professor’s house?”

Triumphantly she held up a small key that must have been in her hand all along.

“Did the professor always lock his door?”

“Yes, obviously an old habit from the capital.” She sounded sympathetic.

The funny thing was that no key had been found on the professor.

“Good, that’s it for now, Madame Corsaire. Thank you very much.” And with those words, Dupin was off again.

“Bring the key straight back to me,” Madame Corsaire said.

“I think the police will hold on to it for a bit.”

Dupin headed for the narrow unpaved track that led from the house. He had his phone already in his hand. There it was, Antoine Manet’s number. It took a few moments before the call was answered:

“Hello?”

“Dupin here.”

“Oh, Commissaire, I’ve just heard. I knew Monsieur Lapointe. This thing is getting crazier still.” Manet sounded deeply upset.

“You visited him twice in the last few months.”

Dupin let the sentence hang in the air. Manet didn’t seem at all irritated.

“Yes, we both belong to the Patrimoine et Héritage Culturelle de la Cornouaille organization, for looking after and maintaining the cultural and historical roots of the region.”

There were countless organizations like that in Brittany, in every region, every village. The most disparate types of people got passionately involved in them.

“These two visits, was there a reason for them?”

“I wanted him to become the new chairman. He had lots of knowledge and a lot of spare time.”

“And?”

Dupin had reached the end of the path. On his right was a simple house with a raised ground floor in the mundane “nouveau bretonisme” style from the seventies and eighties, narrow with a very steep roof. It appeared to have been painted recently; the white shone pristinely.

“He wanted to mull it over. I think he would have said yes. He was as crazy as I am. And lots of others here. He was interested in everything local and regional. He knew every path on the Crozon peninsula, every tree, every stone, every building, and above all: every story about every tree, every stone, and every building, Which dwarf, which fairy lived where and what they got up to. We got along well. He passed on some material to me.”

“Material?”

“I collect anything to do with our island here. It’s going to be a big library.”

Dupin was silent for a bit. As corny as it seemed, it sounded plausible, very plausible for Brittany.

“How long have you known one another?”

“About five years, as long as he’s lived on the peninsula.”

“And every now and then you met him alone, I imagine, not just at meetings?”

“Apart from the two meetings over recent months, maybe three times. No more.”

“Did he seem in any way different when you last met?”

“Not at all. No.”

“Nothing that seems somehow relevant, now, in hindsight? Something that could have been keeping him busy?”

“No.”

“Do you know if he was still doing research? Privately, on the quiet?”

“I don’t think so. At least he never mentioned anything. Last year I asked him for advice about a chronic viral illness one of the islanders had; he was a real genius in his field.”

“So I believe.”

“My feeling is he wanted to draw a line under his past when he came to Brittany. He didn’t even have a computer. Just a cell phone.”

“You know for certain that he had a cell phone?” He had forgotten to ask the neighbor that.

“I can send you his number if you want.”

“Please.”

“Do you think the professor could have had anything to do with the two women?”

“I had been hoping you were going to tell me something about that, at least if they had known one another?”

“Very unlikely, I imagine. But I don’t know. I’ll ask around on the island. We have a lot of money in the organization, to be shared out; we got a large sum from the region. The chairman has some influence on how the money is spent.”

It took a moment for Dupin to react.

“You think this could be about some cultural or historic project? About handouts? Money?”

“I have no idea in particular.”

“Was there an argument about something in the organization? Allegations?”

“No, as it happens. But of course you can’t see into people. In Brittany least of all.”

Dupin was baffled. But it was an interesting point. But how could that have any connection to Kerkrom and Darot?

“I’m sure I’ll come back to that. Thank you, Monsieur Manet.”

“And I’ll get back to you if I come across any possible connection between the three.”

“Good.”

Dupin hung up.

He got a move on. Kadeg and the crime scene men would be here shortly. He clambered up the steep steps to the house doorway.The key stuck and the door hadn’t been locked. That obviously explained why the key hadn’t been found on the professor. The perp had been here, therefore. In Lapointe’s home. As he almost certainly had been in the cases of Darot and Kerkrom. They would test the key thoroughly for fingerprints or any other clues, but Dupin didn’t expect the killer to have left them a gift.

Dupin went all through the house for a first sweep, and found nothing unusual. Apart from the kitchen and bathroom, the house was filled with shelves from floor to ceiling, all of them filled with books, books, books, books; there had to be thousands of them. The shelving was fitted to the rooms, every centimeter properly used. Literally everywhere, in the dining room, the adjacent living rooms, as well as in the three rooms upstairs: a bedroom, a tiny room with a cot, and an office.

Dupin had already finished his tour by the time the two men from the crime scene team arrived. Kadeg was on the phone outside.

He indicated the key to his colleagues.

“We’ll sort that out straightaway.” The elder of the two men set down the case with their work tools. A pragmatic attitude, the solution right at the scene. Dupin liked that. “I’m upstairs if you need me.”

Dupin took the stairs. He wanted to take another, more thorough look around Lapointe’s office in peace and quiet. An outsize desk in front of the window, a magnificent view of the beach, the cliffs, the bay. Even the desk had to serve primarily as a storage space for books. A simple wooden chair, and in front of it, on the desktop, a small area of free space. No notebooks, no paper, nothing. Not even a telephone. A little patch of empty space, which looked strange, because it was the only one in the entire room.

The books on the desk covered a variety of topics and genres: novels, lots of history books, biographies (Charlemagne at the top), but not one factual book on medicine or biology, nor any scientific magazines.

Two piles of magazines, on history, philosophy, or cultural topics. Particularly high up, and clearly read, were several books on Breton and regional topics. One pile lay at a slanting angle, while all the others were in solid upright piles. Dupin came closer to look at them, without touching anything. He put his head on one side and read several of the titles on the spines. Celtic Myths and Legends of Finistère, Ancient Armorica, The Revolution in Brittany, The Christianization of Finistère, The Iroise Sea as a Cultural Space.

Dupin’s glance flitted over to the shelves. Mallarmé, Flaubert, Apollinaire, Maupassant, Baudelaire, the French nineteenth century.

It was only just now that he noticed that between the two piles on the table there was one book lying at an angle, The Life of Sea Mammals in Brittany.

That was interesting. Dupin pulled it out carefully and flicked through it. First came the whales, many types, then orcas, and dolphins. He flicked more slowly. He was looking for something: marks, underlining, notes in the margin. Whatever. There were impressive photos of dolphins. He put the book back. It was quite clearly no book for experts, but for the layman.

He hadn’t the faintest idea whether or not one of these books or magazines could give something away under the right circumstances. Their investigations were now relying on a coincidence—in combination with a stroke of inspiration. They needed luck. But obviously the killer would have removed anything that would have given him away. Anything obvious, including notes. But perhaps on a second glance, there might be something. The killer hadn’t had time to do a complete search. He might have missed something.

“Commissaire? Where are you?”

Kadeg plodded up the stairs. “Madame Corsaire wants to see you again,” he said. “And I’ve already spoken to the woman from the citizens’ movement, the kindergarten teacher. The professor was effectively the citizens’ movement’s scientific advisor. Amongst other things he helped them send water samples from the Camaret harbor area to a laboratory and evaluate the results.”

“And?”

“They regularly found noticeable concentrations of certain toxic materials. Always at approximately the same level. The use of the noxious substances was not reduced as a consequence.”

“And?”

“The citizens’ movement is submitting more documentation to the authorities. The Parc Iroise is supporting them. Some of their staff have taken their own samples, with the same results.”

“Has there been any escalation?”

“How do you mean?”

“Arguments with people from the facility where the boats are dealt with? With the boat owners? With Charles Morin?”

“The kindergarten teacher didn’t mention anything like that. Just that there had been reports in the local press.”

“Was it widely known that Professor Lapointe was helping the movement?”

“Yes, there was even a quote from him in the last article. How devastating these materials were, stuff like that.” Kadeg pointedly cleared his throat. “I also, as ever, asked about any connections of any kind between the movement and Kerkrom and Darot—to no avail. The kindergarten teacher had only heard of Kerkrom by name. She’d never heard at all of Darot.”

“And did she say anything about Morin?”

“Only that some of the boats belonged to him.”

“Anything more precise?”

“No. Her anger was primarily directed at the people who run the facility.”

“And what does the neighbor want with me?”

“I don’t know.”

They needed to move forward with something, finally get their hands on something concrete. “Kadeg, I want to find out from a few people where they were this morning. Think of all of them as potential witnesses and check everything they say meticulously. Get Riwal to help you. As many people as you need.”

“Who are we talking about?” Kadeg asked.

“The harbormistress, Madame Gochat, claims to have been in her office the whole morning, apart from nipping into the fish hall from time to time—somebody must have noticed that; Jumeau, the fisherman from the Île de Sein, says he was at sea from four thirty A.M.—for the man with the multiple affairs it would have been easy to make a detour to the peninsula.” Dupin flicked through his Clairefontaine. “The boy who found the dolphin researcher saw Jumeau at seven twenty-four, not far from Sein. That is the only thing we’re sure of so far.”

“He could have killed Darot beforehand, and Professor Lapointe afterward.”

It was true.

“And let’s also talk with Pierre Leblanc, the scientific chief at the parc.” Dupin had seen him around two o’clock. There would have been enough time before that.

“I’ll speak myself to the pirate, who was also on Sein last night, Captain Vaillant.”

Put so generally the operation seemed a bit casual, the commissaire knew, but as far as he was concerned it didn’t matter.

He already had Morin’s statement. He had allegedly met up with his chef bolincheur at Douarnenez harbor at ten, but there was no confirmation.

“And, most important, ask this Carrière if he has witnesses. Anyone who saw him and Morin this morning at the harbor. Otherwise, their alibi is no good. And also, find out how long they claim they stayed there.”

“Noted,” Kadeg said. “We’ll let him feel our teeth.”

“Find this man who came to see the professor once a month. And have the crime scene team make a list of all the titles and topics of all the books here on the desk and in the office.”

“Are you looking for something in particular, Commissaire?”

Dupin didn’t go into it. “Professor Lapointe had a cell phone. We need to get our hands on his itemized bill as soon as possible. And find out if he used the phone for email, if he had an account.”

“Noted too.” This time it didn’t sound quite so euphoric.

“And work on getting the call logs of Darot and Kerkrom.”

“Yessir!”

“Is Madame Corsaire waiting for me in her house?”

“She’s outside, in front of the door.”

Dupin left the office without another word.

In an instant he was standing in front of Madame Corsaire. She sought out Dupin’s eyes with an inscrutable look on her face. The old lady hesitated for a second, then seemed to give herself a shove.

“I’ve just spoken to my husband on the phone.” She sounded seriously worked up. “He thinks there’s something I absolutely have to tell you. Something private. About the professor.”

“You should tell me everything, Madame Corsaire.”

“Over the past few months he would receive occasional visits from a young lady. A very young lady.”

There was no allegation, no condemnation, no shock in her voice. Quite the opposite. What seemed to be troubling her was the fear of being indiscreet.

“Did you know the woman? Do you know who it was?”

“We’d never seen her before.”

“Can you describe her?”

“Long hair, nothing more. And young … What do you think? We weren’t spying on him, you know. Our houses aren’t quite that close together. My husband just thought she ought to be part of the picture. Maybe the young woman might know something.”

“You would help us with a few general details of her appearance, madame.”

“Probably dark hair, not very tall. Pretty, I think. I only ever saw her briefly. She wore longish jackets, usually with a hood.”

That wasn’t much help.

“Do you think she didn’t want to be seen? That was why she wore the hood?”

“That was the impression it gave.”

“When did she start calling on the professor?”

“My husband and I asked ourselves that too. I think since the end of April. My husband thinks it wasn’t until May.”

“And how often was she there?”

“We think five times. More or less. For how long each time, we can’t say. But they weren’t short visits.”

“Did you see her car?”

“No.”

Dupin pricked up his ears. “What does that mean?”

“There wasn’t a car. Once I saw her walk past our house on her own. Once with the professor.”

“How did she get here?”

“Maybe somebody dropped her off. Or she took the bus to Saint-Hernot and then walked the rest of the way. We do that ourselves sometimes. Even though my husband still drives.”

“Or…” Dupin broke off. Or she came by boat.

Something had suddenly occurred to him.

“I’m going to have to check on something. I’ll be right back,” he said.

Madame Corsaire stared at him, perplexed.

Dupin took a few steps along the grassy path with its innumerable rabbit holes, and called Nolwenn. She would have it figured out within a minute. And so she did. An email almost immediately arrived on his phone, with the attachment Dupin had been hoping for: a photo.

“Is that her?” Dupin held his phone up to Madame Corsaire’s face. “The young woman with long hair who visited the professor?”

The forensic lad in Brest had taken it. Laetitia Darot’s facial features hadn’t been harmed, she was easy to recognize from the photo.

Madame Corsaire’s eyes widened. “Oh my God, that’s her.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Laetitia Darot had known Philippe Lapointe. She had come to visit him several times at home in Lostmarc’h.

That was it, just what they needed; now they had a direct connection between the women and the professor, even if they didn’t yet know what sort of a relationship they’d had.

The problem was: Who could or would know that? Who knew anything at all about these meetings? And would they reveal the background? The most likely person, Céline Kerkrom, was dead. But nonetheless they had to do everything they could to find out.

After his conversation with the neighbor, Dupin exchanged a few more words with Kadeg. In their investigations of the professor’s call list they now needed to look for possible conversations with Darot. Had he and Darot been in contact long? Had they spoken often on the phone? These could be further points to fill out the character of their relationship.

From Lapointe’s house Dupin did not turn left onto the little street, but right onto the path he had walked down to make his phone call. Toward the bay and the beach. Then he would have to take a left at some point to get to his car.

He could only spontaneously think of a few people he could try. He would just have to give it a go. He had already dialed the first number.

“Monsieur Jumeau? Commissaire Dupin here.”

It took a while for him to get an answer.

“Yes,” Jumeau responded sluggishly.

“I have another important question. Did you know,” Dupin said, trying to keep it neutral sounding, not suggesting anything, “that Laetitia Darot used to go to see a certain Professor Lapointe?”

A long silence.

“We didn’t have a firm relationship. She could do whatever she wanted.”

“I’m only interested in whether you knew. Did she ever mention it to you? Maybe she was consulting the professor about something in particular?”

“Consulting?”

“You knew nothing about this contact?”

“No.”

“Did you…” Dupin gave up. It was hard work. “Thanks. My colleague will be in touch with you again soon.”

The path came to an abrupt end by shoulder-high thorny bushes; he would have to walk along the side of it. He would keep trying. Maybe he’d get lucky.

Dupin had his phone to his ear again. The scientist picked up immediately. “Pierre Leblanc here.”

“Commissaire Dupin.” There was no need for formalities with Leblanc. The commissaire came straight to the subject. “Did you know about any contact between Laetitia Darot and a certain Professor Lapointe? Philippe Lapointe. He lives on the Crozon peninsula. A distinguished virologist from a Paris university.”

“The name means nothing to me … is he the third murder victim? I just heard on the news.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“That’s dreadful.” His reaction was automatic, and there was a deep horror in his voice. “Terrible—I’ll ask my colleagues here at the institute if anyone knew about such a contact, which is in any case highly unlikely.”

“That would be good, Monsieur Leblanc.”

“I’ll be in touch if I hear anything. This case is achieving monstrous proportions.”

“Indeed it is.” Dupin thought for a moment. “Did Laetitia Darot ever mention an illness, an infection going around among the dolphins? Were there animals who’d been affected?”

“No. And she certainly would have. For sure.”

It was a plausible possibility.

“One more question, Monsieur Leblanc. Where were you this morning, let’s say between six o’clock and eleven?”

The answer was clear and calm.

“In the office, here, from nine o’clock. Then at half past nine I was at Pointe Saint-Mathieu, where we’re building a new measuring station, which we want to start using by the end of the year. Something that was very important to Laetitia, as the dolphins often stopped around there. I was back by half past eleven.”

“And prior to nine o’clock?”

“At home. I live in Tréboul, on my own, as it happens. I realize that is very hard for you to check.” Leblanc had said the words with almost scientific concern. “I’m trying to think if anyone might have seen me. Possibly on the way.”

“Were you on the boat?”

“Yes, just me.”

“How long does it take to get there?”

“From here, an hour and a half.”

“And nobody saw you there either?”

“Probably not. The station is a jagged headland, hard to reach from the mainland.”

“What about when you came back? Around midday?”

“My assistant. She was waiting for me for a meeting.”

“So did your assistant also see you at nine?”

“She wasn’t there yet. But some of the technicians must have done. Certainly somebody here. I was up here briefly before I went down to the boat.”

“How about last night, between nine and eleven o’clock?”

“I was here at the institute for a long time, maybe up to midnight.”

“And did you bump into somebody who could bear witness to that?”

“I know it’s unfortunate, but I don’t think so. I’m usually the last to leave.”

A very factual briefing. But Leblanc’s alibi was as weak as those of the others.

“Thank you, Monsieur Leblanc. One of my inspectors will be in touch again. He will want to talk to your assistant too.”

Dupin had reached the end of the thorny hedgerow. A little footpath led straight down toward the beach. Another led parallel to the beach; theoretically he ought to come to the path that led to his car.

It had been through this pair—as far as Dupin could say for now—that he had felt that he might have had a chance of finding out something about the meetings between Darot and the professor.

Then he thought of Manet. He got his phone out again.

“Hello?” Manet answered.

“Commissaire Dupin here.” He didn’t need to go into formalities with the island doctor either. “Laetitia Darot was in contact with Professor Lapointe—she went to visit him in his house in Lostmarc’h a few times over the past few months.” Dupin refrained from asking a question.

“That’s interesting. Why?”

“That’s what I’d like to find out. You didn’t know?”

“No, I would have mentioned it.” He didn’t seem irritated.

“Have you any idea what these meetings might have been about? Or what sort of a relationship at all they might have had?”

“Not in the slightest. No.”

“Does anyone else occur to you who might have known about it?”

“Céline, that’s all.”

That was the problem.

“Two other things, Monsieur Dupin. The tide will be particularly high tomorrow. Coefficient 116. That can cause the weather to turn rough. We will have to bring the boats into the innermost part of the harbor, for safety’s sake. Including Darot’s. Only so you know.

“Also: there’s registered mail for Céline Kerkrom. The woman from the post office was just here to ask me what she should do with it. It has to be collected by hand.”

“Inspector Riwal will pick it up. I’ll talk to him.”

“Thank you. Thanks.”

“See you later, then.”

Manet hung up. That was it, then, the people who could have helped him. Dupin swore aloud.

His sense of orientation hadn’t let him down. He had stumbled onto the path that led to his car. It went remarkably steeply uphill; he hadn’t noticed before.

He glanced at the time. Quarter past eight. He lost all sense of time when he was on a case. He needed to call Claire straightaway. He had been intending to do it all day long. And, there was no alternative, his mother too.

He realized how worn out and exhausted he was. His night had been over by five in the morning, and the day since had been a solid turbulent marathon. And it was by no means over yet. He needed a café. Urgently.

---

Dupin already had his phone to his ear, about to call Claire, when it rang. He was almost at his car at last.

“Extraordinary news, boss!” Riwal burst out. “Guess who cut the professor’s hair?” Riwal left a rhetorical pause, before continuing excitedly. “Yan Lapal.”

Yet another pause.

“The hairdresser with the boat, who also cut the hair of Darot and Kerkrom. His salon is in Camaret. Professor Lapointe went there. Lapal cut the hair of all three.”

“Really?”

The hairdresser had a rock-solid alibi, Kadeg had told him, at least for last night.

“That’s just a stone’s throw from the new murder scene. And it would only take him five minutes from his house to get to his boat in Camaret harbor, I’ve checked on the map. From there he could get anywhere within an hour. Including the islands.”

It was all true. And it was a funny coincidence that all three had used him. But there was no chance of it being him—and there was no reason to think differently—if you continued to assume there was just one killer, which the pathologist also considered probable.

“Think it over. A hairdresser who could get in his boat to the most isolated areas, and commit murder undisturbed. Nobody would suspect him.”

That applied not just to the hairdresser but also to their serial killer. Dupin should have known that.

“Anything else, Riwal?”

“I’ve spoken to a few men from the island who enjoy spending time on the quays. Sitting in the bars, watching the world go by, the boats coming and going,” Riwal said.

“And?”

“They say that recently Kerkrom spent more time out at sea than normal. That she used to take one day off a week but hadn’t done so for a while.”

“We need to ask around in Douarnenez harbor. Maybe they could—”

“Already done that. One of Madame Gochat’s staff has been told to send us a list of which days Céline Kerkrom brought her catch to auction, from March on. That’s all that’s on record, not whether or not she docked in Douarnenez harbor. But even so.”

“Excellent, Riwal.”

Dupin should have thought of that himself, first thing that morning.

“She also fished to order for certain restaurants, sea bass and lieus jaunes. On those days, obviously, she wasn’t registered at the auction. Their best watcher, in any case, was the little boy you spoke to this morning at the cholera cemetery, boss, and he often hangs about the harbor. He knows the fisherfolk well. And even he said that recently Kerkrom was at sea most of the time. Darot too. And occasionally both of them in the same boat.”

“Which?”

“Either. Darot’s and Kerkrom’s.”

“How often?”

“Sometimes, was what he said. I couldn’t get him to be any more exact.”

“And why did they go out together? Did he say anything about that?”

“He thought they were rod fishing together. But he didn’t know.”

“Did the two of them tell him that—that they were line fishing?”

“No, it was just what he thought.”

“And did he add where exactly they went to?”

Another one of the crucial questions.

“No.” Dupin turned a narrow corner. He didn’t remember the path from his car to the beach being this long.

“Anything else?”

“Once or twice Kerkrom would give him a fish or a crab when she came back. So would the other fishers. He used to help them sorting out their nets, at their sheds. And if the fishers had found anything on the seafloor, he would take it to the museum. There’s a room there where they collect things that have been found. Madame Coquil showed me it, they keep everything, even really old stuff.” Riwal sounded impressed. “Cannonballs, two huge anchors, bits of boats, even a few Roman coins and ceramics. Amazing things, remnants of shipwrecks and settlements over six thousand years. They ought to—”

“Is that all, Riwal?”

Dupin needed to stop his inspector’s habit of meandering away from the topic. Current matters were too important.

“Yes.”

The commissaire would have very much liked to have spoken to the boy himself.

“Good, Riwal, we’ll speak again soon.”

“I need to pass on to you something from Goulch. The authorities have produced their decisive conclusion to the ‘joint services action.’ Things remain the same: nothing to be proved on any of Morin’s boats. Red lobsters were found on two other fishing boats, whose captains, as you know, had nothing to do with Morin. In one case it was almost certainly the result of by-catch, in the other it really was a breach of the regulations, which will now be punished. Everybody assumes Morin had been tipped off about the operation. There’s a lot of talk going on. Xavier Controc of the Affaires Maritimes is beside himself.”

Speculative talk to be sure.

Two more points occurred to Dupin, both ones he had almost forgotten. “You need to go by the mail office and pick up a registered letter for Céline Kerkrom. And I want one of our people there when they move Darot’s boat into the inner harbor. Antoine Manet said…”

“The weather’s going to change tomorrow.”

“Like I said, we need somebody watching.”

“Consider it done, boss. By the way”—Riwal’s tone of voice had changed oddly—“are you well, physically I mean?”

This time the commissaire understood immediately. “I’m fine, Riwal. Now, enough of this.”

He would not speak another word about it.

Dupin shoved his phone into his pocket.

A seagull flew crazily close over his head. It had done that a couple of times ever since he walked along the blackberry hedge, almost as if it was aiming at him. Squawking. Maybe she had chicks and had a nest nearby.

At last Dupin caught sight of his car.

And not just his.

A few meters behind the Citroën was a second car. Big, black, and shiny.

Charles Morin was leaning on the door of the Citroën and looking at Dupin. As if it was the most obvious thing in the world that he should be standing there.

He waited until Dupin was only a few paces away.

“The pirate clown had been diligently on the tracks of both of them, we’ve found out. Vaillant spent days at sea near them. When they were out together on Kerkrom’s boat. Apparently without them noticing. By the entrance to Douarnenez Bay,” Morin said with the same self-confident, relaxed tone of voice and gestures as in their last conversation.

“How did you know where to find me, Monsieur Morin?”

“I think you need to deal with Vaillant. I certainly would.”

“How did you come to be here, Monsieur Morin?” Dupin really wanted to know.

“I was on the way home. My wife’s waiting with dinner.”

The uncanny thing was not that Morin was near the scene of the crime—the media had already reported that—but that he was here, by Dupin’s car, in the middle of nowhere. It was a demonstration of power.

“The murderer,” Morin said thoughtfully, “was obviously in a hurry. He wanted to stop his intended victims warning one another.”

That was one aspect, undoubtedly. But Dupin wanted to go his own way without any middle-man input from Morin.

“Professor Lapointe was involved in the citizens’ movement against the use of poisonous chemicals on your ships. You had a reason to undertake something against him. Who knows what he knew.”

“You think I’m going to kill somebody because of their ridiculous allegations against me? About cleaning material?” Suddenly Morin sounded downcast. “And why Madame Gochat had the pair of them followed remains also completely in the dark. We absolutely need to concentrate on these questions, Commissaire. Believe me.”

With those words he let go of the car door and went over to his own vehicle. Without even looking back.

Dupin opened the door of the Citroën, climbed in, and fired up the engine. Even before Morin had started his motor, Dupin drove off.

---

The commissaire had intended to see Vaillant anyhow. But obviously what Morin said had made his intention more pressing, even if it went against the grain to follow a “tip” from Morin. He might not have wanted to give it to the “tipster,” but Vaillant was nonetheless still high on his list of suspects. There was no doubt Morin had a cunning intelligence.

But it posed an urgent question, if true. What was the reason behind Vaillant following the two women in his boat? What was he after? Captain Vaillant was the second to be tailing them. And it always revolved around Douarnenez Bay.

Dupin was to meet Vaillant in Le Conquet in the fishing harbor. Nolwenn had arranged everything.

Kadeg had got hold of Frédéric Carrière, whose meeting with Morin had taken place by his high-seas trawlers, in the harbor area that wasn’t open to the public. Because they allegedly had to take a look at a problem with one of the boats. Of course the only person to see them was another of Morin’s employees; nobody else confirmed what he said. Carrière claimed he had come out again at eleven o’clock. Kadeg made no secret of the fact he found the whole meeting suspect. As indeed it was.

All the other alibis also seemed extremely vague; it could hardly be otherwise. Gochat had definitely been seen at twelve, but the last time in the morning at half past nine. In between she had “retreated” into her office. Jumeau claimed that apart from his conversation with Dupin, he had been at sea the whole time until six o’clock, but there was no way to confirm that.

Dupin subsequently spoke with Riwal. The post office was obviously long closed. Dupin had been around the Bay of Brest before; it was a good hour’s drive. Vaillant would also need an hour. Dupin could be there in a few minutes.

He had discovered Le Conquet and this part of the extreme west coast for himself last year for the first time. He and the whole commissariat had gone on a “work outing,” organized by Nolwenn, to the most westerly part of Brittany and France, the Pointe de Corsen, an excursion that despite Dupin’s deep skepticism about such outings had been very nice. They weren’t back until midnight and in an extremely good mood. It was not just the most westerly part of France, but apart from a tiny piece of Portuguese and Spanish land was the most westerly part of the European continent, and more: the entire European continental plate which rose some seven thousand kilometers away, including Siberia and China, from the Pacific. It was a reasonable Breton superlative and every upstanding Breton made the pilgrimage to the Pointe de Corsen. Naturally that was part of Nolwenn’s deeper reason in choosing the destination, yet another symbolic act in Dupin’s Bretonization.

They had begun the excursion in bright sunshine at Saint-Mathieu—a magic place with innumerable legends, with high cliffs buffeted by wind and sea, with a picture-pretty lighthouse and next to it the atmospheric ruins of an old abbey from the sixth century—then ate lunch sumptuously in Le Conquet and from there drove to the Pointe de Corsen and the pretty little town of Porspoder and on to the almost unearthly beauty of the beaches of Lampaul-Ploudalmézeau. It was perhaps the stretch of Breton coast that had impressed Dupin most. He knew it was a stupid thing to say but he had done so many times. In any event it was the most remote, isolated, roughest, and wildest stretch. In “the south,” in “his” region, the land—fields, forests, meadows—mostly ran straight to the coast, and then suddenly there was the sea. Up until then it was clearly land. Here it was different. Here the monstrous forces of the tossing Atlantic and the whipping winds, the endlessly fine salty spray that was carried for kilometers, shaped nature far inland. Above all, that meant that everything, apart from the few oaks or pine forests, was barren, with little plant life. The typical stubby grass, ferns, bushes, brush, sandstone, rocks, cliffs. Yet with that the excess of green tones seemed to act as competition to the absence of any other beauty, from the darkest black-green to the brightest yellow-green. These were grand, powerful, superlative landscapes, most impressive perhaps to be seen on the road that ran directly by the water from Penfoul to Trémazan, but even better on the endless smugglers’ paths along the coast.

Even the houses seemed more solid, more massive than those on the south coast, the granite darker, a little stronghold that wanted to say: I resist, over centuries. They were pushed close together, just like those on the Île de Sein.

Dupin had reached Le Conquet, steered through the narrow streets toward the town center, and then on to the modern fishing harbor, where the ferries to Ouessant and Molène also docked.

All at once he could see the almost tubular bay, the beginning of the narrow sea arm that was one of the best protected natural harbors, opposite a rocky peninsula with a green top. From the harbor quay it was hardly two hundred meters to the peninsula, which gave enough space to maneuver, even for bigger boats. A long pier stuck out at the entrance to the basin. At the end of the arm of sea lay the Vieux Port, directly next to the picturesque center.

Dupin parked his car on the big square behind the quay, where the day-trippers going out to the islands parked. He walked along next to the water. There wasn’t a soul in sight, not anywhere on the pier. Two ferries had tied up on the long pier; proud letters on one spelled out Penn Ar Bed, the same company as that to which the Enez Sun III, which he had seen this morning, belonged. A few fishing boats lay tied up to brightly colored buoys in the harbor basin.

Vaillant—Captain Vaillant—would only be able to tie up here at the pier. He wasn’t there yet. Nor was there any boat to be seen on the bit of sea visible at the exit from the harbor. Toward the northwest and Ouessant the peninsula blocked the view. On the other hand, even though it was just before ten, the sun still hung high enough to peek over and shine its mild, milky light into Dupin’s face. It was still remarkably warm. Definitely over twenty degrees.

A magnificent summer’s evening. It had gone through Dupin’s head while parking the car that it couldn’t be far to the restaurant where the whole gang from the commissariat had eaten. They had taken a walk down here to the harbor after dinner. He would be back in a quarter of an hour, a lot more lively and attentive. Dupin didn’t think long about it. Vaillant would have to wait if needs be.

Five minutes later he was standing outside the Relais du Port, down at the old port. It was an old stone house with a lot of flair, but a simple restaurant, an everyday one, the sort Dupin loved. You could look out at the Vieux Port while eating. It didn’t get any better than that. Right now that meant looking at the seabed and the boats laid up on the sand. Even on such a fine summer evening very many of them still had something melancholy about them. There were lots of patches of seaweed on the beach, glittering yellowy green in the light. Directly in front was a bright blue wooden boat, beyond that an orange one, a turquoise one, then a red—a crazy field of colors.

Dupin chose a table in the first tow of a cozily roofed terrace.

Perfect. He had downed his coffee in seconds. It was then that his glance—unintentionally—landed on the menu: Steak tartare, frites, salade. One of Dupin’s favorite dishes, just behind entrecôte steak. There was a lot the commissaire would do for a good tartare.

He reached for his phone.

“Nolwenn?”

“Monsieur le Commissaire?” Nolwenn said cheerfully.

“I’ve been held up. Tell Vaillant I’ll be there in—let’s say, twenty minutes.”

It didn’t take long to serve up a tartare, and he needed to eat something. The last bite he’d had was ages ago. Apart from that, the Amiral would probably be closed by the time he got back to Concarneau. That did it.

“I imagine you’re sitting in the Relais du Port. Just right, Monsieur le Commissaire!” Nolwenn said it as if it was common sense. “The pirate will just have to wait.”

Dupin had too often been a witness to Nolwenn’s uncanny ability to guess his whereabouts to be surprised.

“I assume you are aware”—Nolwenn’s tone of voice had changed and her choice of words also signified that she was not amused—“that your mother has several times tried to get ahold of you. And every time she’s been put through to me.”

As far as Madame Dupin was concerned, everybody outside the metropolis was a provincial, particularly people from such remote regions as Brittany, which was the epitome of provincialism. And she let them know that. Nolwenn had her own way to counter that. She avoided clashing with her and instead calmly and without sympathy let his mother dangle starving on the end of an outstretched arm.

“You need to talk to her.”

What that really meant was that she wasn’t going to do so anymore.

“I will talk to her, Nolwenn. First thing tomorrow morning.”

“Good.” Already she sounded happy again. “Apropos, as you happen to be in the region of Ys: Do you know when Ys will rise from the waves again? When Paris sinks into them. That’s the way the Bretons have talked for centuries about Par-Is: meaning ‘on a par with Ys.’”

Dupin chuckled.

“We’re turning the lights out here now, Monsieur le Commissaire. We’ve made our preparations for tomorrow and are trying to get some sleep, so we’re back at full strength tomorrow. But you know I always have my phone with me. Riwal, by the way, is going to spend the night on the island. We found him a room in the only hotel. Simple but clean. It’ll probably be the first night he’s slept through since Maclou-Brioc came into the world. Kadeg decided to come back. How are things with you? It’s a good hour and a half’s drive. I have—”

“I’m still coming back.” It was a reflex answer.

“One and a half hours.”

“It’s not a problem, Nolwenn.”

“As you wish.”

“Another thing,” Dupin said, massaging his temples. He had already involuntarily come back a couple of times to one of the stories the woman at the coffee stand in the auction hall had told him this morning. “This boat of Morin’s, the one suspected of smuggling, people say the customs men really did tail it into a corner, and, on Morin’s instruction, they sank it in order to get rid of any proof.”

“I haven’t heard anything of a story like that. The chief customs officer, whom I spoke to this morning about Morin, didn’t mention anything like that. But I’ll keep on it.”

“That would be good, Nolwenn. And ask where the incident is supposed to have taken place.’

“I’ll do that. Bonne nuit, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

“Bonne nuit, Nolwenn.”

Dupin leaned back and made a gesture to the friendly waitress who was just bringing something to the next table.

“I’d like the tartare, please. And a glass of Cornas. The 2009 Empreintes.”

For most things, Dupin had a lousy—recently damn lousy—memory. But for wines, their names and where they came from, he had no problem. They had drunk the Cornas on their work outing.

“Of course, sir.”

Dupin had to admit that Nolwenn’s “day of action” still made him nervous; he would like to have known exactly what was going to happen. Why it was important to be “at full strength.” But he should probably just stick to his instinct, which told him it would be best for everybody to say as little as possible about it. But there was another thing going through his head. And even though it required effort, he ought to do it.

He reached for his phone again.

“Riwal?”

“Boss, I was about to—”

“I want to talk to the boy again, myself.” Dupin had lowered his voice. “The one from the island, who hangs around the harbor all day. I want—”

“I’ve got the registered letter,” Riwal said. “I bumped into Antoine Manet in Le Tatoon. He knew that the mail woman had been invited to dinner this evening. He knew where and asked her to get me the registered mail quickly. Manet is—”

“Riwal, what is the piece of mail?”

“It’s a cautionary note, from a laboratory in Paris, for an unpaid check.”

Riwal paused unnecessarily.

“And?”

“A specialist laboratory, one that does chemical, physical, and biological analyses of materials of all sort, fabrics and liquids.”

“What?” He hadn’t been expecting that.

“The firm is called Sci-Analyses.”

“And what exactly was the issue?”

“Like I said, it was a cautionary note, with a copy of the check. All it says is ‘RfS-Analysis.’”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing else. I checked on the Internet, but all I found was FRS-analysis.”

“And what does that mean? I mean the thing you found.”

“Distance X-Ray. It’s a form of analysis used in orthodontics.”

“Orthodontics?”

The waitress placed the glass of wine and a basket of bread and butter in front of Dupin.

“Exactly.”

“When does the check date from?”

“April 27.”

“And how much is it for?”

“1,479.57 euros.”

An expensive operation.

“Have you already tried to call the firm?”

“They’re only taking recorded messages at this hour.”

Obviously. Riwal went on: “I looked down the page to find the directors, to try to call them direct. Neither are in the phone book. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning. I’ll keep at it.”

Riwal had done a lot already. He knew that in situations like this Dupin would go to great lengths, no matter how crazy and complicated it was. But if they were to get in touch with somebody from the firm tonight it would mean getting the big guns out. Without knowing if the matter had anything to do with their case.

“Okay, and like I said, I want to talk to the boy again.”

“You’ll need to come early then, Monsieur le Commissaire; he’ll be in school from eight thirty.”

Dupin sat back. He had instinctively, without thinking about it, assumed they would meet on the mainland. But that would obviously be hard to arrange. To take the boy out of school for the morning and bring him to Douarnenez on a police boat. For an interview based on nothing concrete.

That meant he would have to make the boat ride himself.

“Goulch will take you, boss. You just need to let him know.”

“I’ll see. Maybe it was a crazy idea, to see the boy.”

“The pathologist from Brest has submitted her report. She compared both wounds, and had the photos of the examination of Kerkrom sent to her. It could certainly be the same knife. No doubt about it. But there was nothing specific, for example she didn’t find anything that would have caused particular damage to the blade.”

“Hm.” A pause. “Anything else, Riwal?”

“Not for the moment. The news media are already reporting on the ‘big day of action’ tomorrow. It’s going to make the headlines,” the inspector said, obviously delighted. “That’s the way to go.”

“Meaning…?” Dupin didn’t finish the sentence. “See you later, Riwal.”

The commissaire put his phone back on the table. And lifted his wineglass instead.

What had Kerkrom been looking for with this scientific analysis? By a specialist laboratory in Paris?

The wine was rich and velvety, the way Dupin liked it. He took a chunk of the baguette, and spread salted butter on it. It was good.

It had been a hard day, harder than any Dupin had yet experienced in his career. Three murders. Clinically calculated. Each one carried out quickly after the other. In three different places, each one roughly an hour distant from the other. It wasn’t possible to investigate them jointly. Each time they had to start again, from the beginning; could never deepen the investigation, never dig down.

The waitress brought his meal, poured him more wine.

The tartare looked fantastic. And tasted as good as it looked. The French fries were excellent too. They were something Dupin had loved since he was a child. His godfather had at some stage moved to Brussels, and every time he visited him they had eaten fries in big paper bags full to the brim, conjured up instantly as if by magic from a few sheets of paper. Served with delicious sauces. They were superb: crispy outside, soft as butter inside. Eaten standing up, at a nondescript stall on some shabby square; his bourgeois mother was dismayed every time, but his father loved them, as did he.

---

Dupin hadn’t exactly hurried. It was a quarter to eleven when he got back to the quay. There was now a third boat on the long dock behind the two ferries. A conspicuous boat, in a light faded blue with a narrow white stripe that ran all around it below the railing. It was totally made of wood, to the front unusually high and sweeping like a sperm whale. A bow shape that Dupin had never seen before. It was at least fifteen meters long, pretty wide overall, and it sat low and heavy in the water. A captain’s cabin and the usual electronics. A curious boat, like something from a Jules Verne movie. A sign on the bow read Pebezh Abadenn. It had to be Vaillant’s.

Even on the longest day of the year it happened: Brittany had turned away from the sun—or as people said, the sun had gone down. It had turned the sea, out there where it sank, bright orange and seemed even to have set the sky alight. It seemed the entire horizon was on fire, a crazy orange-red. Only at its far fringes did it turn blue-black. The one thing that a Breton knew was that it was an occasion to relax, to remain calm, and not to fear the world was about to end.

On the deck of the Pebezh Abadenn stood a group of men. One of them was busy tying up the boat, an indication that it hadn’t been there for long.

Dupin stopped by the pier, then walked along it to the last of the three concrete ramps that led down into the sea, so that, as on the Île de Sein and everywhere along the coast, you could get on or off a tied-up boat at whatever the height of the tide.

“Here comes the cop.”

Dupin heard it as clearly and plainly as everybody else. But it didn’t sound antagonistic.

He had reached the height of the railing.

One of the men began walking toward him silently. A somber-looking guy with a deeply tanned face, notable rings under his eyes, slightly swollen eyelids, a great wild mop of black hair that dominated his whole appearance and reminded Dupin of seventies rock bands. The reflection of the bright orange just increased that impression. He wore a dark green linen shirt with the top buttons open, jeans, black rubber boots. Dupin put him in his midforties.

“We couldn’t resist, there was a huge swarm of mackerel beneath us, we just had to throw a few lines down.”

Vaillant nodded toward a few plastic buckets full of flipping, flapping fish. It was intended to be an explanation for turning up late—which at the same time meant that if Dupin hadn’t been in the Relais du Port, he would have been waiting here on the quay for three quarters of an hour.

“I’ll pack up a couple for you. They’re really delicious.” He meant it seriously. Only now was it obvious that there was a little door set into the thick wooden railing. Captain Vaillant opened it and was about to take a large stride onto the ramp.

“I’ll come to you,” Dupin said.

“Of course.” Vaillant retreated. He seemed completely calm. “Inspect as much as you will.” There was no sarcasm or aggression in the tone of his voice. “Take a look round everything. We’ve nothing to hide.”

Dupin took a long stride, almost a little jump, and was on board the Pebezh Abadenn. “Monsieur Vaillant, you followed and watched Céline Kerkrom’s boat, which Laetitia Darot was also on board, for several days. At the entry to Douarnenez Bay. Two women who were murdered between yesterday evening and this morning. Why?”

The other men on board had all got out of the way, disappeared up to the bow or beneath the deck.

“Didn’t you find them extraordinarily good-looking? For myself I’m happy to be around good-looking women,” Vaillant said, neither unpleasantly nor condescendingly. He laughed; a rough, deep laugh.

“Why did you follow Céline Kerkrom? What did you want from her?” Dupin said gruffly.

“They were being followed by Gochat’s fisherman. He had been on their heels for several days, just keeping his boat far enough away so as not to be conspicuous.”

“That’s no answer.” But Vaillant had admitted it frankly. Dupin continued: “What was the reason for you following them?”

“Maybe I was just concerned and was following the fisherman who was following them.” Vaillant’s eyes gleamed. “Or I was simply, let’s say, ‘curious.’ Curious what the two of them were up to.” He made a mischievous face.

“No, seriously, in summer, we like to be toward the front of the bay, reeling in the fat squid. They also attract the dolphins. We weren’t following anybody. Even though the attractiveness of those women alone would have been grounds enough.”

Vaillant wasn’t giving anything away. He was lying, of course. He had been following them. That wasn’t by chance.

“How well did you know Céline Kerkrom and Laetitia Darot?”

“Nobody knew the mermaid. Not even me. She was as mysterious as the depths of the Atlantic itself. And as for Céline, we’d chatted pleasantly a few times. I have to say I personally wouldn’t have minded chatting with her more often.” For the first time he seemed serious. “But she wasn’t interested. I wasn’t her type. I think she’d already given her heart to that fisherman from the island.”

“Jumeau?”

“Indeed, Jumeau’s the kid’s name.”

Dupin was wide awake. “Did somebody tell you about Kerkrom and Jumeau?”

“I didn’t need anybody to tell me. I could feel it.”

“What was it that you … felt?”

“That she was after him.”

“When did you last speak with Céline Kerkrom?”

“Monday, this week. In Douarnenez harbor. At the auction. We don’t often bring a catch in there. But we had a large number of red mullet.”

“And what did you talk about?”

“About the large number of red mullet.”

Dupin took a hard look at him. “Did she say anything specific?”

“She told me about Laetitia’s project. With the transmitters.”

“Did she mention Morin?”

He hesitated a brief moment. “No.”

“Did she—” Dupin cut himself short. He’d felt faint for a moment. He’d already felt it on the way to the Relais du Port. It was familiar to him, this tiredness. More than that: deep exhaustion. Neither the meal nor the two cups of coffee had helped.

“Monsieur Vaillant,” he began again, “did you know Professor Philippe Lapointe?”

He blinked at Dupin bemusedly.

“The third victim, the one found on the beach at Lostmarc’h?”

“Ah, of course, it’s been on the news already.”

“And?”

“I didn’t even know this professor existed.”

Dupin walked around the fish boxes, the buoys, and the nets. This boat was a total mess.

“Along with fishing, I’ve been told you also enjoy acting as old-fashioned smugglers.” Dupin made a point of looking around him.

“We get by. But obviously we stay within the limits of our respected laws.” Vaillant was flirting shamelessly.

“So strictly that you’ve had a series of fines, I’ve heard. Primarily for illegal quantities of alcohol.”

“Trivia. We like drinking. We like smoking too. Nowadays they count as much less serious matters than capital crimes. Like I said, look around all you will. We’ve got time, and you won’t find anything.”

“What about Morin, does he smuggle too? Cigarettes. Big time?”

“I don’t smuggle,” Vaillant said with exaggerated annoyance. “And I haven’t the faintest whether Morin is involved in this lucrative business. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Dupin was now standing directly in front of Vaillant. “Céline Kerkrom or Laetitia Darot saw something, maybe even documented something so that they had proof,” he said, wrinkling his brow. “Or maybe they found something. Whatever it was, it had to do with illegal action by Morin.”

He looked Vaillant directly in the eyes. “Something so concrete and provable that he couldn’t wiggle out of it as easily as he used to. And you in turn knew about it. You got wind somehow. And now you’re in danger too.”

Dupin had to give it a go. Make suppositions. Try his luck. Cut swathes through the thorns. If that was really what had happened. If they really had found proof of something, and others knew it, or even just guessed or speculated that they had, then it would be an explosive shock not just for Morin but for the whole region. In that scenario, Morin wouldn’t just be looking for the murderer, but for others who might know about it. The unknown factor remained what role the professor played.

“If I really knew something I would have seen to it that Morin was in jail long ago.”

“I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Go ask Gochat, the iron lady, why she sent her fisherman spy out after Céline.” He sounded bitter.

“You’ll know that we consider you a chief suspect, Monsieur Vaillant. You followed two of the victims. You were on the Île de Sein last night. You could have murdered Céline Kerkrom before that in Douarnenez, then Laetitia Darot this morning on the island.”

“We’re regularly on the island and usually sit in Le Tatoon. I wasn’t aware that this was a cause for police suspicion.”

“And this morning? You left the island at seven, where did you go? Where were you between seven and eleven?”

“We were fishing for sea bass. Up until midday. Over by the Pierres Noires to the west of Molène.” This was one of the places Kerkrom also fished for sea bass, Madame Gochat had said. “We sold the bass at noon to two restaurants in Ouessant. And ate a couple of them ourselves. Go and ask at the restaurants if you want.”

“I assume you have no witnesses for those four or five hours of fishing.”

“No.”

Vaillant put on his ironically contrite face. Dupin let it go. He was tired. He didn’t want to keep at it. And he couldn’t. In any case it was clear Vaillant didn’t have a shred of an alibi. Dupin had intended to take a closer look around the boat. But he didn’t bother with that either.

“That’ll do for today, Monsieur Vaillant.” He turned abruptly away and made for the little door in the railing. “But I think we’ll be seeing one another again soon.”

“And you really don’t want to take a couple of mackerel with you? You won’t find them anywhere as good as they are in the Mer d’Iroise,” Vaillant called after him.

Dupin took another determined stride.

He walked up the ramp and then he was back on land. He didn’t react, even to the last sentence.

“I hope you have a pleasant evening, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

Two minutes later Dupin was standing next to his car. The conversation with the crazy pirate had sapped the last of his strength. He was angry, felt he hadn’t been good enough. Not crafty enough. But even in top form he probably wouldn’t have got more out of the guy.

He leaned for a moment on the car door and took a deep breath.

Nolwenn had been right. It was hardly a stone’s throw back to Concarneau. He forced himself reluctantly to think of the one-and-a-half-hour drive. And if he really wanted to go out to the island to talk to the boy tomorrow morning, then he would have to be on Goulch’s boat by seven at the latest. That meant getting up before six if he wanted to have a café. That meant very little sleep once again. And he wasn’t going to see Claire today anyway: she was in Rennes and it was probably too late to organize something now.

He got his phone out.

“Nolwenn?”

“Monsieur le Commissaire.” She sounded wide awake.

“Maybe I should stay here, overnight—spend the night here.”

Nolwenn knew every guesthouse, every hotel, every room for rent.

“Château de Sable. Porspoder. Twenty minutes from you. They’re expecting you. The owners are friends of Alain Trifin, the owner of the Ar Men Du. There were no more rooms free in the nice La Vinotière in Le Conquet. They’ll bring a toothbrush and so forth up to your room.”

It was unbelievable. Nolwenn was unbelievable.

“Thanks.”

“I’d thought as much.”

“Tomorrow morning I’m going out to the island first thing. Riwal might need your help. Something to do with a laboratory in Paris. We need information urgently.” It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Riwal with the job, but Nolwenn could work wonders.

“We’ve already spoken on the phone.”

“I…” He was too worn out, too exhausted.

“You need sleep, Monsieur le Commissaire. We all do.”

“Yes.”

A rare confession.

“Till tomorrow morning.”

Nolwenn had already hung up.

---

It was magnificent, the place, the hotel, the room. Even if Dupin was looking at it all through a veil of exhaustion.

The Château de Sable lay in a landscape of rough dunes, the sand grown up around the omnipresent stubble of greenery and high cliff formations. It was as if the earth had just exploded. A big wooden terrace facing the Atlantic, and two outcrops of land, one to the left, the other to the right, had closed the spreading sea into a gentle bay. They had also come to Porspoder on their work outing, but only briefly, primarily so they could go down the “Route Mandarine” to see Nolwenn’s friend who made luxurious natural soaps from aromas of the earth, the plants, seaweed, and the sea itself. Dupin enjoyed going over the top in situations like that and had bought the whole selection for Claire. They had poetic names like “Ciel d’Orage sur Ouessant,” “Avis de Tempête,” “Envie d’Ailleurs.” One even bore the name of his favorite song by Serge Gainsbourg, “Sous le Soleil Exactement.”

Dupin opened the terrace door and went out. To breathe in the wonderful air once again, but also maybe to get a moment of relaxation after such a day.

Then he would lie down and be asleep immediately. The bed looked extremely promising.

The sky to the west still held the slightest trace of light. The last light of the day, a dark glimmer, blue verging on black but not quite there yet. The sea was brighter than the sky, even if that was theoretically impossible. Dupin had noticed the phenomenon a few times in recent years, although not as noticeably as here. The water of the bay glowed, shone, the light clearly coming from below. As if the sea itself were a source of light. As if it had somehow stored the light, in a bright shimmering and shining. Silvery ocher, metallic, an unearthly color. A flat, magical expanse, no waves, not even a wrinkle.

It seemed to be getting even brighter, turning on its end the natural order of things, Dupin thought. It wasn’t the sky illuminating the sea, but the sea illuminating the sky—not just the sky but the whole world. Along with these strange sensations came strange thoughts and images, going back to his first boat trip of the day, as if they’d been strangely distorted, seen from a distance. Pictures of the dark shadows on the Île Tristan, thoughts of the seven graves. Dupin had to stop himself getting lost. He held tightly to the terrace railing.

Suddenly he heard a noise.

Dupin pulled himself together. He was almost relieved: the noise had shattered his bizarre impressions.

The noise was coming from above. Far above, somewhere to the front of him. A sort of thunder, rolling, then getting increasingly loud.

Dupin stretched his neck, scanning the sky with his eyes.

All at once, Dupin was practically thrown around, the sound now clearly coming from behind him. For a few seconds it became weaker. It wasn’t his imagination. It had become clearly weaker, then stronger again. And sounded as if it came from all around. Even the nature of the sound had become strange: technical, artificial, and yet completely natural at the same time. It reminded him of a storm cloud or a volcano coming from deep in the earth.

Dupin stood stock-still for a moment.

He shook himself hard, ran a hand through his hair.

What had it been? Had it been his state of exhaustion that caused him to feel this? Were his senses playing tricks on him?

He turned around, went back inside, and fell on the bed. He found it difficult even to take his shoes off. He couldn’t call a single clear thought to mind.