Day Two

Once again Dupin was jarred from sleep early. A particularly restless, troubled sleep. He had indeed immediately passed out but then quickly woken up again, then waltzed into a half-sleep of confused thoughts, before finally drifting off again. He had only really fallen into a deep sleep—for half an hour at most—shortly before Kadeg’s call at seven minutes past five.

“You say we can’t, I mean we’ve no way,” Dupin said, stumbling on his words, “of getting to the email, to know who sent it.”

“For now that’s the way it’s seems; we’ve forwarded the email to experts in Rennes.”

“Gochat’s garden house? We need to search the harbormistress’s garden house?”

Dupin was sitting in bed, his back against the headrest. It had been hard enough for him to get into this position. He was not even up to being in a bad mood.

“Exactly,” Kadeg said. “There’s that one sentence: ‘Search Gaétane Gochat’s garden house,’ but no address, no subject, nothing.”

“And no hint as to what we might find there?”

“Just that one sentence.”

“We need to start the action straightaway.” There was an insufferable enthusiasm in the inspector’s voice. “I can be there in an hour. Where are you, by the way?”

“Porspoder.”

“What are you doing in Porspoder?”

Dupin ignored the question. “It could be a joke. Some idiot, who finds it funny. Or it could be the killer himself. Trying to divert our attention or confuse us. Leaving false tracks.”

“It could solve the case.”

“Maybe.”

“And prevent any more murders.”

Kadeg loved the drama in the tone of his voice. But that was true as well. It wasn’t impossible, that it could have important consequences.

“Good, we’ll search the garden house, Kadeg.”

“You will need to get the search warrant, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

“A dangerous delay,” Dupin growled.

Even when it was tricky, and Dupin had had problems more than once, his motto was: better problems afterward than acting too late. If necessary a public prosecutor or a commissaire himself could, in an emergency, order a search, if they could prove they had consulted a judge. Nolwenn would deal with that.

“I’m on my way immediately.” Kadeg was in dynamo mode. “We’ll see each other there. I’ll deal with getting support in Douarnenez, we’ll need a few colleagues.”

It didn’t take Dupin long to think about it. “You do this on your own, Kadeg.” He quickly added, “I mean I’m appointing you as leader of this important operation, Inspector.”

There was a brief silence. Dupin could almost genuinely feel the effect that was having on Kadeg, how he was torn between the impulse to protest because the commissaire wasn’t going to be there and that meant the importance of the measure wasn’t that far-reaching, and on the other hand pride that he was going to lead something that might be decisive.

“Fine.” Pride had won out. “I’ll keep you fully informed.”

“You do that, Kadeg,” Dupin said, and hung up.

It wasn’t as if he thought the anonymous email was meaningless. Not in the slightest. But his original plans for this morning still seemed the best to him.

Dupin was still sitting in bed. Only now did he realize he had a headache, behind his forehead, his eyes. He hated that. He felt totally wrecked. A brilliant start to what would be another stressful day.

The email, though. What did it mean? Who sent it? Obviously it was tempting to think of Morin, and his own investigation.

He looked at the clock: 5:15 A.M.

The most important thing was: Where at this time of day, with people still asleep, was he going to get a café?

He pushed himself to get up. Dupin had had one hope and it had come to pass, even if not totally. The little fishing harbor where he had met Captain Vaillant the previous evening. And where Goulch was going to pick him up to take him out to the island. The fishermen would be up and about early here to set about their work, Dupin had reckoned. There would be people here needing coffee. And they had it. Only not from a coffee stall, but a machine. Still, better than nothing.

---

There had been nobody to be seen so early at the hotel. Dupin had taken a quick shower and simply set off. He had given them his details when he checked in last night. From the room he had called Nolwenn, who—obviously—was full of life and already in the picture about the anonymous email. She had made an agreement with Goulch and was now going to talk to the judge.

Dupin had found a bench near the fish hall, right by the water, and now had two brown plastic cups in his hands with a double espresso in each. The coffee tasted of plastic but it was hot and gave him the caffeine he was after.

It had been getting lighter for a long time now, and before long the sun would be up. The tide was dangerously high; ten to fifteen centimeters more and the water would be slopping over the quay. Coefficient 116, that was what Antoine Manet had said yesterday. That was enormous—the maximum was 120. And only a total eclipse of the sun would cause that, a miracle that would only happen three times in this century.

In the little fish warehouse, the one that was open to the quay, it was already busy. Fishermen in yellow oilskins, blue plastic boxes scattered around on the ground, a great water basin to the rear, for crabs, spider crabs, and lobsters, Dupin assumed. Three brightly colored fishing boats—coastal fishers—looked as if they were ready to set out, their heavy diesel engines already growling.

It had remained unusually mild overnight; the air was damp and smelled particularly strongly of salt and iodine. Dupin tried hard to muster his first clear thoughts, to come to his senses. It wasn’t easy.

By the time Goulch’s boat came into the harbor, twenty minutes late, he had almost fallen asleep on the bench. It took the third double espresso he fetched to have any effect.

Dupin took mechanical steps along the pier to the very end. There was no need of the concrete ramps with a tide like this. Goulch gave the commissaire a brief greeting. He looked tired too. Dupin was pleased to meet another person looking tired at this hour of the morning.

In next to no time he had steered out of the harbor, and it didn’t take long before they had got beyond the last defenses of the peninsula. Goulch put his foot on the gas.

The only good thing was the strong tailwind, which astonishingly had more effect on waking Dupin up than the cafés—six of them when he counted them individually. As always, Dupin had positioned himself in the stern. The young policemen on Goulch’s team understood and left him in peace.

To the north and northwest extended a whole row of islands, as far as the eye could see. With white sand and broad lagoons. It was easy to pick out Molène, the second-biggest island, and then beyond Ouessant, with the island’s high cliffs at the eastern end and the great lighthouse, near which Vaillant and his team lived. Amidst the bigger islands, some of which were just a few hundred meters apart, innumerable smaller islands and rocks stood out, despite the high tide. This had to be where the seal colonies were that Nolwenn and Riwal had been so keen to tell him about, the ones on lots of postcards.

It was a breathtaking sight, as Dupin slowly came to. You could see and feel just how much the Mer d’Iroise was almost completely surrounded by the land, embraced and protected. Everything seemed peaceful, as mild as the air. The water was calm as a mirror, shining silvery blue in the first light of the sun. The boat glided gently and in a straight line across it, undisturbed by waves or wind. Almost sliding. Dupin had no fear at all of the calm, peaceful sea here.

He stood there almost without moving when the penetrating tone of his cell phone tore him away from his thoughts. He had obviously assumed there would be no reception here. But he saw five bars. And Riwal’s number.

“Boss. I tried to get through to you last night, but you didn’t reply.”

Dupin had seen no indication of a missed call on his mobile, but then he had been half asleep. The inspector left an inscrutable pause.

“Go on, Riwal.”

“The experts in Rennes looked through the bank accounts and transfers between each of the three deceased. There was a transfer of ten thousand euros between Laetitia Darot and Luc Jumeau on June 6 this year. Both had accounts with the Crédit Agricole in Douarnenez.”

It wasn’t easy to make out what Riwal was saying, what with the noise of the vehicle and the wind.

“With some particular business in mind?”

“No. At least there is no reference to what the sum was for.”

Jumeau had said nothing. Which wasn’t very clever, even if it was harmless. He should have known something like that would come out sooner or later.

“I’m on my way to Sein.”

“I know.”

“I’ll talk to Jumeau myself.”

Already the second piece of unexpected news for that morning.

“He’s already out at sea.”

“Get in touch with him. He must return to Sein.”

“Okay, boss.”

“Do we already have details of the victims’ itemized phone calls? And what about their email accounts?”

“The experts are working on it. It’s complicated.”

“They need to let us know as soon as they manage it.”

“They’ll do that.”

Dupin glanced at his watch. “We’ll be there around a quarter past seven. Tell the boy’s mother.”

“Will do, boss. Did you…” Riwal was doing his level best to sound unconcerned, without succeeding. “… sleep well, then? And do you feel all right this morning?”

Dupin just hung up.

He wondered how long the—what should he call it? “Plague incubation time”?—might take in Riwal’s mind. As long as it took, as long as possible.

Then his mind switched to the latest piece of news. Ten thousand euros, that was quite a sum. He couldn’t wait to hear Jumeau’s explanation.

They were due to start the search at Gochat’s any minute, and Kadeg would arrive in Douarnenez soon. Dupin realized that the operation was making him a little nervous. He called his inspector’s number.

“Where are you, Kadeg?”

He could hear the noise of an engine. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Four colleagues from Douarnenez are already in the street where Gochat lives, waiting for me.” His voice shook.

It would make a splash, that was for certain. Dupin imagined Gochat opening the door, the harbor chief seeing a troop of policemen, and making a fuss before letting them in.

“Let me know everything that happens, do you hear me? And try not to make too big a scene.”

“I’ll behave fittingly.”

Dupin stuck his phone in the pocket of his jeans.

His eyes wandered across the wild, glistening sea.

---

“Hi, boss,” Riwal said. He was standing on the pier, where the museum chief had held her little reception committee yesterday. It felt as if it had been days ago.

“How was the trip?”

At least it seemed as if Riwal meant the question earnestly. Nonetheless Dupin ignored it.

“When do I see the boy?”

“At half past seven. At Darot’s and Kerkrom’s sheds.”

In twenty minutes’ time, that meant.

“Very good,” Dupin muttered.

That gave him a bit of time.

“You got here quickly,” Riwal said with an impressed nod.

Indeed, they had come at top speed the whole way. The sea had remained calm not just out on the open water, but even on the last stretch, just lain there flat and lethargic. “Like oil,” was what the Bretons said, and it painted a precise picture. On days like this you could have sworn it wasn’t really water.

Even out here on the island the air was still, already warm and damp. The smell of the sea was strong here too. Dupin had learned that the sea smelled differently every day, not just some days stronger than others but also differently in aroma. What they called in Brittany “the scents of the sea.” From heavy and intense—like today—to light and airy, from salty and bitter to sweet and mild, the whole spectrum. Bretons described the smells of the sea as if they were talking about perfume, with differing notes. Today it was seaweed that dominated.

“Jumeau should be here soon. He didn’t react much.”

Dupin could imagine.

“Great.”

He headed straight past him and was already a few meters away, then he turned around again. “Come along, Riwal.”

Five minutes later they were sitting on the terrace of Le Tatoon, and for the first time that morning the commissaire was in a good mood. He felt nearly at home now on the Quai Sud, a feeling that Dupin didn’t get from being there often but from one thing alone: his relationship with the place.

A series of islanders were already up and about as the island prepared itself for a new day, an atmosphere that Dupin very much enjoyed, as he did on mornings in the Amiral, in Concarneau, where, almost without exception, he began his days. An old lady with shining white hair, wooden clogs and a blue apron, and two baguettes in her hands strolled along the quay; an elderly man with a faded cap and broad-legged pants was pulling behind him a handcart laden high with wood. A laid-back young kid in jeans and T-shirt cycled past, legs splayed wide on a rusty bicycle that was far too small for him, whistling as he went. Somewhere on the island there was a lonely dull thudding going on. Like every sound on this island it vanished immediately again into nothing, ebbed away as if suddenly there was no longer any atmosphere to carry the sound.

It was a great Atlantic day, one of those days of pure flaming colors that always made Dupin a little drunk. Every tone was intense, penetrating, dizzying. Glowing and luxurious. A real high on colors.

Dupin had already chosen the sunniest place on the terrace, right at the front by the quay. Riwal had sat down next to him, rather than opposite, so he could enjoy the sun as well.

“Have you heard anything more about the relationship between Darot and the professor?” Dupin asked.

“No. Nobody knew about it. Manet’s made it into the talk of the island.”

Dupin understood immediately what the inspector meant.

“But nothing came of it.”

That would have been too much to ask for.

“So we’ve tried to get people to find out about the elderly man in the Citroën C2 who came to see Professor Lapointe once a month. A renowned literary professor. They got to know one another three years ago in the Tabac-Presse, Crozon’s cigarettes and newspaper shop. Both of them were classic literature fans, Maupassant above all. We’ve had people check it all out. He’s not remotely suspicious.”

“Anything new from the crime scene team? What about the list of books?”

“There was nothing out of the ordinary in the house, and the book list is ready.”

“And?”

“Lots of Maupassant. Mostly classic books. Lots about the local region: history, culture, flora and fauna, everything the heart could want for. But not one single book about virology or other natural sciences, not one scientific book. And no science magazines either—I have the list here.”

He handed Dupin his smartphone. Dupin looked down the list. Right at this moment he could see nothing revealing.

It was the same pleasant waitress as the day before. Dupin had ordered two cafés and two pains au chocolat, Riwal one café and two croissants, and she put them on the table in front of them with a charming smile.

It did them good. And was delicious at the same time. The strong coffee, a real torre, washed away the taste of the plastic.

There was a good view of “France,” the mainland, today—the Pointe du Raz, the high-and-mighty forbidding granite cliff, was superb despite the still air. Yet it seemed unimaginably far away. It was a basic feeling that immediately overtook anyone on the island; that of being far away from everything. Much farther than the nine kilometers it was in reality.

Despite there obviously being lots to talk about, they had automatically both stopped talking with their first sip. They had lost themselves in the taste of the coffee and the picturesque scenery.

Brusquely the pleasant quiet was broken by Dupin’s phone.

Kadeg.

“Yes?”

“Madame Gochat wants to talk to you in person,” Kadeg barked. “We formally requested that she let us take a look at her garden house.” Gochat must have been standing close by Kadeg. She was clearly whom he was addressing. “She has dismissively declined the police request. We are asking now for your intervention to secure access.”

Dupin hesitated.

“Pass her over.”

It had to be. There was no other way.

“If you were to be so good,” said the harbor’s boss in a tone that was cutting and sarcastic, “to explain to me what you mean by all this. I have informed my lawyer, who is making a formal complaint. That’s what you are causing with this serious breach of the peace.”

Dupin had known this was going to cause trouble. “We are in possession of substantial indications that you are hiding something relevant in your garden house. I have no choice, Madame Gochat.” Dupin’s cool tone of voice was not apologetic.

“Are you trying to get a search warrant?”

“The judge has been informed”—or soon will be—“which means I have the authority to order the search. Which I am hereby officially doing. Have no fears, Madame Gochat, everything will be done by the book. Your lawyer will confirm that. And as we’re speaking, do you have an explanation to give? Think well: if you do have anything to say it would be better for you to say it now rather than later.”

“I have nothing to say to you, either now or later.”

With that, she hung up.

He had actually imagined her reaction being more drastic.

Dupin leaned back and ate the last piece of pain au chocolat. “Madame Gochat is less than thrilled.” He got to his feet, still chewing. “I’d better go and see the boy. Let me know as soon as you hear anything from the company.”

He dropped a bill on the table, left the terrace, and walked down the Quai Sud toward the sheds.

A few minutes later he lifted his phone again. Maybe he would do well just to check.

“Nolwenn!” he said quickly. “Do we have the okay for the search at Madame Gochat’s place?”

“It should come through any moment. I imagine Judge Erevan won’t cause us any problems. I’ve had an extensive talk with his assistant, who knows him well. She suggested it would be a pure formality.”

“Good, that’s all for now.”

“Did you call your mother?”

“I’m just about to.”

“I’m not taking any more of her calls.”

“I understand.”

“More important, I’ve just been speaking to the customs people. Several people. The story about the sunken boat is complicated. They—”

“So, it wasn’t just a rumor?” Dupin interrupted her. Maybe he wasn’t losing his flair after all.

“It all goes back to a captain who’s since retired. A report by him. From May 23, 2012. The customs at the time suspected that the sea route was being used for cigarette smuggling. At which point they increased their patrols. The captain said that they spotted a fishing boat in the mist during heavy seas at dusk. A bolincheur. Just outside the entry to Douarnenez Bay. No fishing boats were going out at that time. He claimed to have recognized the typical colors of Morin’s fleet: bright blue, orange, and yellow. Another crew said the same, two others couldn’t confirm it. It looked suspicious to the captain and he tried to get closer to the bolincheur. At which point the fishing boat doused all its lights and set off at full speed. They followed it for twenty minutes, radar equipped with True-Track function. Until it vanished. They—”

“Where did they lose it? Where was its last known position?”

“Beyond the entrance to the bay, on the north side, where the panhandle from the Crozon peninsula comes down, Cap Rostudel.”

Dupin stopped in his tracks. “That’s more or less where Kerkrom was seen in her boat. Both the women.”

“Slightly farther south, as I understood it.”

Dupin didn’t respond to that, but asked, “And after searching in vain, the captain assumed the boat had sunk?”

“That’s what happened. And that the crew had reached land in the tender. In the meantime the weather had got even worse, which of course could be the reason they lost the boat. That was what it said in one commentary on the report. Of course, it could also have been that the bolincheur hid away in another bay. Given the weather conditions the captain obviously couldn’t have searched the area systematically.”

“Did they search for the boat in the following days?”

“Two days. But with no luck. They hadn’t had any exact position, so they gave up on the search. Then the news came that the smuggling routes over the water were no longer of importance. They had found heaps of cigarettes in refrigerated trucks driving through the Channel Tunnel. They had hidden the packs in deep-frozen animal carcasses.”

“Was there any indication that the fishing boat had been scuppered? Apart from the captain’s supposition? Anything concrete?”

“No. And apart from the conspicuous behavior of the boat there was no reason for suspicion.”

Dupin thought about it.

“The captain was totally convinced they’d played him for a fool. That they’d had vast quantities of smuggled cigarettes on board.”

“What’s the captain’s name?”

“Marcel Deschamps. I’ll text you his number. He’s a pensioner nowadays, but still alive.”

“Good.”

“See you later then, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

Dupin set off again.

---

The commissaire reached the shed still deep in thought.

He had expected to see the boy’s mother too, but Anthony was standing on his own in front of Darot’s storage hut, which had in the meantime been cordoned off by police tape. The boy looked as if he had been waiting a while. He was once again wearing the dirty jeans with the baggy pockets, but a clean green T-shirt.

“I saw you come in on the police boat,” Anthony said with a proud smile. “I was watching you.” He spoke casually, not making a fuss.

“The whole time? Since I came ashore?”

“You went with your inspector straight into Le Tatoon. You drank two cafés and ate two pains au chocolat. And talked with the inspector. You kept running your fingers through your hair. That looked funny.”

Impressive. Dupin hadn’t noticed Anthony. Despite the fact he must have been somewhere roughly nearby to have noticed all that so precisely.

“You’d make a first-class spy. Did you come on your own?”

“My mother told me to tell you she couldn’t come. I have little brothers and sisters.” He rolled his eyes.

“My inspector tells me you also watch the fishermen when they’re out spearing fish at sea, and when they come back. And when they’re working here at the harbor.”

“I help them too.”

“With their catch?”

“With everything: bringing the catch on shore, fixing up the nets, sorting through the fish.”

“Was Céline Kerkrom’s catch good of late?”

“Not bad. But she only brings fish here now and again. She sells her fish most of the time in Douarnenez.” He looked Dupin directly in the eye. “Why?”

“No reason. You said she was spending more time at sea than usual.”

“These are proper police questions, aren’t they?”

“Absolutely proper police questions.”

“Yes, more often.”

“Anybody else? Any other of the fisherfolk more often out than normal? Jumeau maybe?”

“No. Everything was as normal with him.”

“When was the last time you helped Céline Kerkrom?”

“Last week. I couldn’t say which day.”

“Did you chat with her when you were helping her?”

“Oh, yes. She told me stuff about the sea, about her trips. She knew great stories.”

“What sort of stories?”

“About secret places?”

Dupin pricked up his ears. “Secret places?”

“Where you catch the best fish.”

“She told you that?”

There was a bench made of wooden planks on concrete supports just a few meters away, right by the water. Dupin walked over to it, the boy following.

“Yes. But I’m not saying where.”

Anthony sat down next to Dupin.

“Just tell me approximately. The general area.”

“Maybe,” he hemmed and hawed, “maybe near the Witch.”

“You mean the lighthouse?”

The boy looked at him uncomprehendingly. “What else? Ar Groac’h.”

They had seen it on the crossing yesterday. If Dupin had gotten it right, the lighthouse with the memorable name wasn’t in the Chaussée de Sein but a little farther north. Which also meant: almost in the entrance to Douarnenez Bay.

“That’s a secret place?”

“There are underwater caves there and particularly strong currents. With huge shoals of small fish. And for that reason it’s a hunting ground for the biggest bass and lieus jaunes. Over a meter long. There’s a lot of seaweed just below the surface of the sea; that’s why no anglers go there. But if you come across a heavy bream there”—the boy’s eyes twinkled—“you go down and catch it. You just have to know.” Anthony looked at the commissaire triumphantly.

“Do you know how long she’d been going there?”

“Just since this year, I think. But she had been there a long time before, she said.”

“Are there other secret places inside Douarnenez Bay? Where she had also been often recently?”

“No secret fishing places.”

A clear statement.

“Apart from the best fishing places—maybe she was in the bay somewhere recently for another reason?”

“I don’t think so. She would have told me.”

“Are you certain?”

The boy looked inquisitively at Dupin. “This is important, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

“I don’t know of any other reason,” Anthony said at last. He couldn’t manage to hide his disappointment, how much he would have loved to have something decisive to report.

“And Laetitia, did you watch her too?”

“Sometimes, not so often. I never knew when she would go out. Or come back. It was always different. But she was very nice. She would tell me dolphin stories sometimes.”

“What sort of stories?”

“About her favorite dolphin, a female. Darius. She had two male children last year. She told me everything Darius taught her boys. She showed them the best hunting places. She had secret places, just like Céline.”

“Other stories?”

“How dolphins helped people. Last year an extreme swimmer was attacked by a white shark. Then twelve dolphins came and formed a circle around him. They swam with him for twenty kilometers. Or the story about the little boy who fell overboard in a storm and was brought to land by a dolphin. The dolphin was called Filippo. But they also come to us for help, if they know exactly who we are. Recently a dolphin got caught up in an angler’s line, the hook caught in his fin. He swam up to two divers and drew their attention to the hook. When the divers had freed him, he gave them a pat with his fin to say thank you.” Anthony suddenly looked at him seriously. “There’s film of it. I can show you if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe every word.”

He seemed satisfied with Dupin’s answer.

“Did she talk about the dead dolphins?”

“Yes, that was really bad.” There was an expression of serious distress on the boy’s face.

“Did she say anything about it? About who was guilty?”

“The big ships and fleets. Everybody knows that.”

“Did she speak about that big fishing chief, Charles Morin?”

“No.”

A clear no.

Dupin sighed. The boy was great but there was nothing new in what he said.

“Once upon a time Jumeau found a cannonball on the seabed. Antoine said it’s from the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Maybe from a real pirate ship. There were lots of pirates around here.” The boy watched the commissaire carefully. “It’s now in the museum treasure room. There are also real coins there, some silver, according to Madame Coquil, even if some of them are covered in chalk. Have you been to the museum?”

“Not so far.”

“You have to go and see the treasure chamber! Madame Coquil has made me the treasure chamber’s special envoy. I always take everything the fishermen find there. Recently—”

The phone.

Kadeg again.

Dupin feared the worst.

“Yes?”

“Commissaire, we have the murder weapon.”

It sounded more comic than dramatic, even though Kadeg had tried for a dramatic effect. And then said nothing more. Dupin had sprung to his feet.

“Say that again, Kadeg!”

“A fisherman’s knife, standard black model, the one you find everywhere in Breton harbors. Eight-centimeter blade, the whole thing nineteen point four centimeters long. Stainless steel, hard plastic handle.”

“What makes you think it’s the murder weapon?”

“There’s bloodstains visible, both on the blade and the shaft.”

“Where did you find it?”

A whole range of different questions were flooding through Dupin’s head. He had walked on a few meters.

“The knife was hidden behind a loose wooden plank. I found it. It wasn’t actually visible. It was only when—”

“I want…” Dupin stopped. He looked at the boy, who had stayed sitting on the bench and was staring at him with eyes wide open.

“I’m afraid I have to go, Anthony.”

The boy nodded. He didn’t seem troubled; on the contrary he seemed fascinated by the sudden burst of excitement.

“Commissaire, you still there?” Kadeg sounded insulted.

Dupin headed toward the quay. “The forensic people need to look at the knife as soon as possible. I want to know with absolute certainty if it really is the blood of one of the victims. And if there are any other clues on the knife. They have to drop everything else.”

“Got it.”

“Have you confronted Madame Gochat with your discovery?”

“She claims never to have seen the knife, that it’s not hers. That she’s only been living in this house two years, and has never taken a close look inside the garden house.” Kadeg added derisively: “The shelves were already built in. The garden house was also never locked and is covered by two big trees.”

“We’re going to have to arrest her for now,” Dupin mumbled, lost in his thoughts. “You’ll bring her to Quimper, Kadeg.”

“Like I said, the knife was quite impossible to see, it was perfectly hidden. I documented it with photos.”

Dupin hung up.

Intuitively he headed south, to look for Riwal, though he couldn’t see him either on the Tatoon terrace or anywhere else on the quay.

The find could be all-important. Which didn’t exclude the possibility that it was a farce. Wasn’t it all very strange? Too easy, above all. Even if the knife really was the murder weapon, if there were traces of blood from Kerkrom, Darot, or Lapointe, there were still several possibilities. Somebody could have planted it on Gochat. To blame her for the murders. It wasn’t hard to hide a knife in a garden house—the killer would have carried out a lot of riskier operations. One thing was certain: even without Gochat’s fingerprints it would have been a very effective chess move that, when taken in conjunction with the fact she had had the pair spied on, would put serious pressure on her. A primitive move, but an effective one. Without watertight alibis it would make things difficult for her. And it was just this type of cold-bloodedness that could be expected from the killer.

Or, and was equally possible: Gochat actually was the killer. Even if she didn’t have the slightest glimmer of a motive.Dupin didn’t know what he should think. His “gut instinct” was telling him nothing right now. Nothing at all, not even a hint. No intuition, no inner voice, no inkling. However things might go, he had to remain calm, concentrate, follow the threads, and not turn away from any twist or turn.

“Boss!”

Dupin turned around.

“Here!” Riwal called as he burst out of one of the storybook small alleys.

“It’s unbelievable, boss. Nolwenn got in touch with the firm. She spoke to the chemist in the laboratory. The one who carried out the analysis.” He came to a brusque halt in front of Dupin. “It’s a fluorescent X-ray analysis, it’s used, amongst other things, to identify precious metals, it’s based on a complicated—”

“Riwal! Spit it out!”

“Gold!”

“What do you mean, ‘gold’?”

“The material analysis that Céline Kerkrom asked for says that the sample she sent in contains gold. Very pure gold, nearly twenty-four karat.”

“Gold?”

“It’s incredible! One side of the sample, two and a half centimeters long, very thin, was very dirty, the lab man said. As if weathered, in layers, not at all recognizable as gold. Either Kerkrom didn’t know what the material was, or she knew it was gold and wanted to see how good quality it was.”

“And what’s so unbelievable about it?”

The process didn’t seem so unusual now.

“Maybe Céline Kerkrom,” Riwal said, stressing every syllable, taking his time, “had seen or found something made of gold. Or Darot.” He took a deep breath. “Everything would suddenly make sense. Everything!”

Dupin understood. This was right up Riwal’s street: treasure.

Dupin wasn’t in the mood for Riwal’s fantasies. “Or she had an old gold medallion, an armband, a chain. Something she’d inherited and wanted to know the worth of. Maybe she was considering getting rid of it.”

Riwal’s face fell with deep disappointment. And incomprehension.

“On the Internet form that Kerkrom filled in it said ‘sample.’ It can’t be something small. Two and a half centimeters is significant. Nobody mistreats an inherited artwork like that. Nobody has such a thorough analysis carried out for some chain.”

“There are other things made of gold. Plates. Cups. You can inherit things like that too.” Dupin thought of his mother’s house in Paris and remembered that he really had to ring her. “And she didn’t make any written reference to the origin of the sample?”

“No, we know nothing about it.”

“I have to go, Riwal.”

Dupin was suddenly feeling restless. He was unhappy with the abrupt way in which his chat with the boy had ended. They had now come across a topic he would have liked to go into more detail about.

He glanced at his watch. It ought to work, even if it would be close. He would make the call as he walked and then catch up with the boy at school. He headed toward the Quai Nord. “Monsieur Deschamps?”

“Who wants to know?” A testy grunt.

“Georges Dupin, commissaire de police, Concarneau.”

Dupin made a point of sounding friendly; after all he was the one who wanted to know something from this man.

“And?”

“It’s about Charles Morin. I’m investigating the triple murder case.”

“Yes?”

“I’m interested in the story of what happened on May 22, when you tailed a suspicious boat that you took to be a bolincheur from—”

“Forget it.”

“How do you mean?”

“That story only caused me problems. Like everything only ever causes me problems. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Have you changed your mind? Did you make a mistake back then?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Are you no longer of the opinion that it was one of Morin’s boats that you were following? That it had smuggled cigarettes on board and it was the crew itself that sank the boat, after you’d cornered it?”

Dupin had just passed the bench where he had been sitting with the boy. He was nearly at the Quai Nord.

“Of course that’s how it was. Exactly so. But nobody was interested. Quite the opposite. Once again I was the troublemaker. I’m not going to say another word about it. I’m running a small distillery with my brother-in-law. I’m happy. I don’t need those old stories anymore.”

Dupin found the man not in the slightest unpleasant. But he wouldn’t let himself get led astray.

“Did you have proof? Concrete proof?”

Deschamps said nothing. Then it seemed as if he gave himself a jolt.

“Their boat was faster than ours—what sort of bolincheur has an engine like that? Normal fishing boats are barely half as fast as ours. I’m telling you, boats like that are specially equipped for smuggling.”

“That’s why you lost it on the radar.”

“Like I said, I don’t want to talk any more about this subject.”

“Did anyone check on Morin’s fleet numbers afterward? I mean, every boat in every fleet has to have a registration, and when all of a sudden one goes missing somebody must notice.”

“I have nothing against the Parisian commissaire.” Deschamps spoke smugly if not unkindly. “The best of luck in his further investigations. Excuse me, please.”

Before Dupin could say a word, Deschamps had already hung up.

Dupin rubbed his temples.

He had turned off the Quai Nord. He had already noticed the gleaming white painted stone building with the big sign, École Primaire, the previous day.

Two children—a tall, lean kid in shorts and a disheveled little girl in a multicolored dress—were sitting on the steps. Dupin guessed Anthony was the sort of kid who would turn up last, as a straggler. He stood at a certain distance, just close enough to see everything.

He dialed Riwal’s number. The inspector was the expert on things to do with boats, and fishing.

“Boss?”

It was probably going to be a tough bit of work, but it had to be done. “The supposed smugglers’ boat, that the crew themselves are alleged to have sunk, I’ve just been talking to the retired customs authority captain, and I—”

“I’m in the picture. Nolwenn told me about her research.”

In that case he could get straight to the point.

“If they really did sink the boat, it must have been counted as missing eventually. It must be possible to find out if a boat suddenly vanished.”

“As a rule, boats are officially registered at several places. But they don’t keep a continuous record if the boats still exist, not even if they’re still in use.”

“You mean it might officially still exist all over the place even though it’s actually lying at the bottom of the sea?”

“Once every four years a fishing boat has to go through a technical check, a bit like a vehicle technical inspection.”

“And that might be this year.” Dupin had simply come out with the sentence, without really knowing what he meant by it. “You mean otherwise it would already have been noticed?” That was probably what he had meant.

“Not necessarily,” Riwal said. “Morin might simply have deregistered it. As ‘put out to rest,’ ‘inactive.’ You don’t need any official documentation for that.”

“We need to find out if Morin deregistered a bolincheur in the last three years.”

That was the crux of the matter.

“Or he used a few tricks to replace it.”

“How do you mean?”

“Every boat is identified by two numbers, which they also need for its registration. One is an official plate, set into the ship’s stern, while the other is the engine number.”

Dupin pricked up his ears. “You mean because of these two numbers a boat that was found on the seafloor could be positively identified.”

“Straightaway and with no doubt.”

There was a long silence. Dupin’s imagination was going wild.

“You think Kerkrom and Darot might have found the boat?”

“It’s possible,” Dupin replied absently.

“And the professor? Philippe Lapointe—how does he come into it all?”

“I don’t know.”

That was an issue for Dupin. But then he had only just begun to think through the scenario.

“How could Morin have passed off a new boat as an old one to the examiners, Riwal?”

“By manipulating the two identification numbers.”

“But how, precisely?”

“It’s difficult, but possible. In every run of boat production there are several that are identical. They then have to be made identifiable through the two numbers, the one on the stern and the one on the engine. In the end, you can manipulate everything if you’re … sufficiently motivated.”

Riwal was right of course; it was an assumption that lay at the heart of their profession.

Dupin was keeping a close eye on the entrance to the school. The two kids got listlessly to their feet and walked into the building. Lessons were about to begin.

“Riwal, I want you to check everything out. Get some help.” The number of personnel required for something like this was huge, but Dupin didn’t care. “Somebody needs to make a list of all Morin’s boats, all the bolincheurs registered over the past four years. And compare it with the list of all boats registered today. And then check out each one painstakingly. To go and see it in person, including the two identification numbers, checking for possible manipulation. We also need to find out if Morin bought a bolincheur—new or used—over the past three years.” Dupin just rattled off the chores. “Then we need to know which boats were in for technical inspection over the past few years, and which have still to undergo it. All the permutations.”

“I’ll get on it straightaway, boss.”

Riwal was on the job.

“Good.”

“And the story,” Riwal said, “will go like this. Morin will hold us for fools, will refuse to cooperate and get the investigation moving, but instead he’ll have unscrupulously got rid of anyone who had found proof of his smuggling—the boat with its smuggled goods on board that was sunk by its own crew, the part of the stern with the identification number. Or the engine.”

Dupin didn’t reply. But yes, that’s how it might have been. It had gone vaguely through his head the previous evening, although only vaguely, a story that only hung together with the assumption of a lot of bold “if”s. But it was often like that at the beginning. Almost always.

“We’ll talk later, Riwal.”

He hung up hurriedly. Dupin had spotted the boy.

Anthony was coming across the grass, from the sea. He had spotted Dupin too.

He was smiling cheekily. Dupin went up to him.

“More police questions?”

Dupin smiled back.

“Will I have to miss my lesson?” the boy asked hopefully.

“Just for a few minutes, but you can tell your teacher, Monsieur…”

“Madame, Madame Chatoux.”

“Tell Madame Chatoux the commissaire needed your help.”

A sly expression slipped across his face; that seemed good enough for him.

Dupin came straight to the point. “You were just saying that the fisherfolk sometimes brought things they had found on the seabed: cannonballs, coins, my inspector referred to old anchors and parts of shipwrecks…”

“You can see it all in the museum. Shall I show you?”

Actually, it was a good idea.

“Agreed, but in that case I had better have a word in person with your teacher.”

The boy’s face beamed.

“Wait here.” Dupin went up the stone steps into the building.

“The room on your right. There are only two downstairs.”

“I’ll find it,” Dupin called over his shoulder.

A few minutes later he was standing back outside.

“Done. You’ve got half an hour off to help with police investigation work.”

“Then we should lose no time.” The boy hurried to the Quai Nord, at the end of which the museums lay. Dupin had to work to keep up with him.

“Do you know if Céline Kerkrom or Laetitia Darot,” he said casually, “might have made a discovery of some sort on the seabed recently? Come across something special? Might even have brought it here?”

“Céline found something.”

Dupin stopped automatically.

“Mama wouldn’t believe me. Nor would Papa. They say people made jokes about holy symbols. They thought I had just made it up.”

“What do you mean?”

The boy had gone on ahead and made no sign of being about to stop. Dupin set off after him.

“I couldn’t see it properly. It was wrapped up in a cloth.”

“Céline Kerkrom brought something here?”

“Yes, on her boat.”

“What?”

“A big cross. A really big cross.”

“You saw a big cross?” Dupin stopped again. It sounded completely implausible.

“Yes.” The boy hesitated for the first time. “At least it looked like a cross.”

“What makes you think it was a cross?”

“The shape. From underneath the cloth it looked like a cross, the thing underneath it, I mean.”

“It was wrapped in a cloth?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t see the actual thing itself.”

“No, but I think it was a cross.”

“That would be appalling.”

Had they actually dug up a piece of Morin’s bolincheur? The piece with the identification number, the engine? It wasn’t impossible that provisionally covered or wrapped up it might have had a cross-like shape. Or the bit from the stern?

“When was this, Anthony?”

“Oh … about the beginning of the month. I know because I had gone swimming that day, for the first time this year. It was nice and warm, the water too.”

Dupin recalled the little heat wave at the beginning of June.

“Mama always says my imagination runs away with me. But it’s not true, monsieur.”

“Did her boat already have a new lifting arm?”

“Yes.”

It had to have been installed in the weeks before. Maybe even for this purpose. There was no way it could be coincidence.

“And Laetitia was there too,” Anthony said.

Dupin looked questioningly at the boy. “She was also on the boat?”

“Yes. They had gone out a couple of times together on Céline’s boat. And before that a couple of times on Laetitia’s. But most recently only on Céline’s.”

Dupin had to pull himself together. “Did they bring the object ashore?”

“I didn’t see. I had to go home. The following day I had a look in the treasure chamber. Before school. And I asked Madame Coquil if anything new had been brought in. And Antoine. Céline was already out fishing again.”

“And?”

“They said no. That evening I asked Céline herself.”

“And what did she say?”

“That it was a wooden beam she needed for her house. That she had brought it from France. But I think she was fibbing.”

“A wooden beam, she said?”

“Yes.”

“Where had you been hiding? Where were you watching them from?”

“Near the sheds. Between the two quays. If you’re small you can hide unnoticed behind the lobster cages,” Anthony said with another sly smile.

Dupin himself had been a witness to Anthony’s impressive proficiency in hiding and espionage.

“I want you to show me that briefly, before we go to the museum.”

“In that case half an hour won’t be enough. I’ll miss more lessons.” The boy grinned and turned around on the spot.

They were at the huts in seconds.

“Just here, this is exactly where I hid.”

He was pointing at a dozen piled-up lobster cages no more than three, maybe four, meters from the slope of the quay wall.

“Behind them. There weren’t as many that day, but even so they didn’t see me. And here,” Anthony ran over to the water, “this is where they laid it down. The cross was in the stern of the boat among several fish boxes. You could almost not see it. It was wedged in. I don’t think they wanted anybody to see it.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because it was so well hidden. And they only came into port when it was already dark.”

“But you could still see them nonetheless.”

“Yes.”

If he had been hunkered down behind the lobster cages he would only have been a few meters away.

“And you reckoned it was a cross because of the shape?”

They’d already been over that, but it was an important point.

“It really looked like a cross, it had exactly that shape. And it was really big.”

“But you didn’t manage actually to see what it was underneath the cloth?”

“No.”

There was nothing more to be got out of him. And Dupin had seen what he wanted to see.

“Let’s go.”

Dupin stopped again on the Quai Nord. The boy was still close beside him.

“And was there anybody else on the quay that evening? Did you see anybody?”

“No.”

“What about earlier, did you see anybody nearby?”

“The two other fishermen had already come in.”

“Jumeau first?”

“No, he was the second.”

“And did he stay about longer on the quay, I mean after he had docked?”

“He was gone by the time Céline’s boat came in. He had tied up his boat and left.”

“Long before?”

“No, not long.”

Dupin had taken his notebook out and scribbled something as they walked.

“Are you writing this down?” The boy tried to get a sideways look. “Is what I said important?”

“That depends. And did you see anybody else before the pair docked in Céline Kerkrom’s boat?”

“Antoine Manet came by, just as Jumeau came in.”

“What did he want?”

Dupin knew he was asking impossible questions. But children didn’t know what impossible questions were.

“They talked for a bit. He stood up close to the boat. I couldn’t hear them. Then he left again.”

“And that was it?”

“Yes, nobody else.”

“And in the days that followed, did you watch Céline again?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t see any other … object?”

“No, the cross was already gone the next day. They must have taken it to a hiding place.” He sounded devastated. “But I’m afraid I don’t know where.”

There was a brief pause. There were almost back at the museum.

“Earlier you said the object was really big. Just how big exactly?”

“About as big as me, maybe.”

“You’re sure?”

Dupin put Anthony at about one meter forty. Could be believe the boy? Should he? Dupin thought there was no way Anthony had invented the whole story, just made it up. To get hold of him, grab his attention. But there was another question. Had he maybe just seen something quite ordinary and then his imagination had run away with him?

“Yes, I’m positive. Maybe the cross was made of silver or gold and Céline had to die because she had found real treasure. Do you think that’s what it is?” The boy’s voice sounded sad and fascinated at the same time.

Dupin gave him an urgent stare. “What makes you think of gold?”

“Just because. Gold is the most expensive, isn’t it?”

Dupin sighed. “Let’s take a look in the treasure chamber.”

They had already turned into the museum’s inner courtyard.

Dupin didn’t imagine Kerkrom and Darot—whatever they’d brought back—would have used this as a “hiding place,” but nonetheless … he wanted to see this treasure chamber. Maybe it would give him other ideas.

“Over here, the room is in the lifeboat service museum.”

They were magnificent horseshoe-shaped buildings, in the middle of a picturesque courtyard. Dupin was impressed that the lifeboat service had a museum of their own.

The boy headed straight through the entrance doors, then turned left, past an imposing glass display case in the middle of the corridor with an old lifeboat inside.

“Ah, here you are, after all. And about time too. A visit to the island without a visit to the museum is unacceptable.”

The ironclad—wonderful—Madame Coquil had appeared from nowhere.

“Jacques de Thézac in person, the founder of the Abris du Marin, the shelters for stranded seafarers, built these houses. The very first shelters of all. Because conditions here were worse for people than elsewhere. And because back then lots of ships interrupted their journey here.”

Her eyes beamed nostalgically.

“Anyway, this July we’re having a big festival on Sein to mark the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the lifeboat service. You must come, Monsieur le Commissaire. No question about it. Seven thousand volunteers, and only seventy staff. The service was founded in Audierne in 1865,” she said, stressing the year as if she could hardly believe it herself. “That’s where the main festival will be held, but obviously we couldn’t let it go by without having one of our own. And in any case the station here on Sein was one of the very first, founded just two years later. The lifeboat service has a great tradition.”

She took a step toward Dupin as if there was something important to follow.

“Do you know how many poor souls have been saved here over the centuries? Tens of thousands! Antoine has made a list of all the life-saving actions, you can find it on the Internet. Back in 1762 the Duc d’Aiguillon proposed to the islanders a wholesale transfer to the mainland, offering them all the finest pieces of land. And why? ‘Who needs to care about the victims of shipwrecks when the island is going to waste?’ That was in the official letter. As a gesture of thanks, the duke sent us tons of biscuits. Tens of thousands we saved the lives of. In 1804 we even saved two hundred and eight English. Up until the lighthouse was built a big ship was wrecked here every two to three years.”

She took a step backward and smiled. “So, what can I show you? What are you most interested in?”

“Anthony here,” Dupin was quick to reply, “wanted to show me something.”

“The treasure chamber. The commissaire wants to see the treasure chamber. For police reasons.”

The last sentence was supposed to signal authority.

“That room isn’t open to the public, you know that. It doesn’t belong to the museum! And it’s pure chaos at present. We simply can’t let anyone in.”

A clear-cut decision.

“I’m sure it will be fine, Madame Coquil. I just want to take a brief look inside.”

“And for what reason, if I may ask? Your inspector has already been here.”

The boy ran on unheedingly straight to the door.

“At the moment we are on the track of different clues, investigative routine,” Dupin said.

“It’s off-limits.”

Anthony was rattling the handle.

“Yes, it’s now closed during the season. Order from Antoine Manet.”

“I really just want a brief glimpse inside.”

Dupin liked Madame Coquil, and he tried to show it in his tone of voice. It seemed to be working.

“All right then.” She fumbled around in the pocket of her canary yellow cardigan, which today she was wearing over a crimson dress, and produced a key.

“We never used to close it in the season.” Anthony was still looking unhappy. “Even I have to ask now when I want to go in.”

“Who has a key to the room?” Dupin asked.

“Monsieur Manet and I. And there is one in the drawer in the kitchen where the brochures lie.” She nodded her head.

While still wringing her hands, Madame Coquil had opened the door. She held it open.

“Afterward you must come by the historical museum. The history of the island should interest you at least as much as that here. Without our history we’re nothing. Just ghostly phantoms! Never forget that!” She added with a smile, “For a competent tour of the treasure chamber I’ll leave you in the hands of the future leader of the island.”

And with that she turned away.

Dupin entered the room.

It was very basic and clearly hadn’t been renovated in ages. The walls that had once been white had taken on a dirty yellow shade and smelled bad. The whole room smelled bad. An intensive mix of dust—which in places lay centimeter-thick on the floor—mold, Dupin guessed, some sort of glue and oil. There was something biting to it. One single window let murky light into the room.

Chaos was certainly the right word for the state it was in. Narrow painting tables were laid out in a long L. On top of them, next to them, between them, against the walls, everywhere there were cartons piled. With big yellow labels and abbreviations. All in the same format: S.-28-20/ Georges Bradou/ 05/2002.

The boy had noticed how Dupin stood there looking at the cartons.

“It’s only the best pieces on the tables. All the rest are in the cartons. The stickers tell all the important stuff: the coordinates of where the piece was found, who found it, and so forth. S stands for Sein. It’s Antoine’s system. It’s the same everywhere in Finistère. He’s in an organization, you know. They lay all that down.”

It would be the organization in which Professor Lapointe had been a member.

“Look, Monsieur le Commissaire, these here are genuine Roman.” Anthony was pointing to the middle of the tables. “This is Caesar Mazamian, that’s my favorite coin. And this is Carausius. Caesar entrusted the protection of Brittany against the Germans to him. Real bronze. And here,” he pointed to a handful of other coins, “these are silver.” He was in his element.

Dupin walked the length of the L. It was a curious, magnificent ragbag of stuff. Every single piece had been given a little tag which gave the exact details as to where it was found, when it was found, and by whom.

He saw something.

An engine. Under the table between two boxes was an engine. A big rusty motor. Clearly more than a meter long. He stooped.

“That belonged to a fishing boat that sank on the west side of Sein, in a storm, found directly on the beach not far from the lighthouse.”

“How long has it been here?”

“Oh, a few years. A long time.”

“There’s no plaque.” Dupin had been looking in vain for the registration.

“Hm.” The boy had no answer.

“Did anybody recognize the boat?”

“Yes. It belonged to a coastal fisher from Douarnenez. He had run it aground himself, he was okay.”

“I understand. You saw this engine lying here, let’s say, from the beginning of the year? And before that?”

The boy gave Dupin a quizzical look. “Yes.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“I just told you.”

In which case that couldn’t be it.

Dupin got down on his haunches. He had never seen an unmounted boat engine before. It had been built lengthwise but on one side there was a shaft that went downward, some thirty, forty centimeters, with a rusty rod in it, probably connecting it to the ship’s propeller. And on the other side, clearly much farther up, a pipe, ripped away after a few centimeters, maybe the pipe to the fuel tank. If you turned the engine on end, and threw a tarpaulin over it, it would only take a little imagination to envisage the outline of a cross. Dupin took another look: a lot of imagination.

He got up.

“And the door to this room here didn’t used to be closed?”

“No. Never before.”

“When where you last here?”

The boy thought a minute.

“I don’t know. Two weeks ago, maybe. Or three. There hasn’t been anything new found recently.”

“Nothing? Nothing at all?”

“No. Just the little iron horse.” He pointed to the end of the table. A rusty horse made of iron and coarsely designed. “Jumeau found it.”

“Where do you think the two women could have taken their big object?”

“That’s the big question, isn’t it?”

Dupin nodded.

“Not here. Home, surely. Or first to one of their two sheds. And then home. In the middle of the night when there’s nobody around. Or very early in the morning.” Once again he seemed to be thinking conscientiously. “That’s how I would have done it.”

Dupin let his gaze run around the room once again. Along the tables. He ran his fingers down the back of his head.

“A fabulous exhibition. Thank you for the tour, and in particular for your excellent investigative work. You have done a great service to the police, Anthony.”

The boy’s eyes lit up. Then suddenly he looked gloomy. “Do I have to go to school now?”

“I’m afraid so. But by now you’ve already…” Dupin said with a glance at his watch, “been out for substantially longer than half an hour.”

The light returned to Anthony’s face.

Dupin headed for the door. “I think we’ll be seeing one another again soon.” He reached out his hand to the boy. The boy took it slowly, and then shook it hard.

“Feel free to take me out of class anytime you like. You know now where my classroom is.”

With a broad grin he took off.

Dupin had to smile.

He closed the door of the treasure chamber.

Shortly before the exit he found Madame Coquil suddenly standing in front of him, as if she had just materialized out of nothing.

“And? Did you find what you’re looking for?”

Dupin hesitated. “A gripping collection. But what I’m interested in are—more recent finds. Things from the past few weeks.”

He gave Madame Coquil a penetrating gaze. It was pointless. Even if she had known anything there would have been nothing to see in the expression of the woman he had come to know. She showed not the slightest reaction to his sibylline question. Instead she just stared straight ahead.

“Now, I shall show you a little of the history of the island. We only have to go next door. We’ll start with Sein in prehistoric days.”

“I have to—”

Dupin’s telephone rang. The commissaire gave a sigh of relief.

Kadeg.

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

He took a few hurried steps out into the courtyard.

“What’s up?”

“There are no fingerprints on the knife. They tried it there and then with special fingerprint lifting papers,” Kadeg said. “But the knife is now on its way to the laboratory, where they’ll check it for DNA traces. And analyze the blood on the blade. A car is taking Madame Gochat to the headquarters in Quimper. I’m off there too now. Naturally we’ll wait for you if you also want to take part in the interview. Also the IT experts in Rennes have come back on the anonymous email. So far they can only give us the email client’s service provider.”

“We’re going to have to let Madame Gochat walk free, Kadeg.”

“We’re … what?!” Kadeg was finding it hard to control himself. “You can’t do that!”

“We’re setting her free. Here and now. Did you hear me?”

“We found the murder weapon at her house. She has no reliable alibi. She had Céline Kerkrom tailed.”

It was still not certain if it really was the murder weapon, almost nobody she had had anything to do with had an alibi, and Gochat was in no way the only person who had had Céline Kerkrom tailed. Of course naturally it had been enough to take the harbor chief temporarily into custody and have her interrogated—naturally it was possible to classify the facts to be as conclusive as Kadeg had done. The commissaire was concerned with other matters.

“If it was her it’s more interesting to watch what she does when set free.”

That was true, Dupin was convinced of it.

“I want to see what she gets up to. And you, Kadeg, will have her followed step by step, inconspicuously. Maybe she has something hidden away or knows where something might be hidden.” Dupin was speaking less to Kadeg than he was to himself. “Or she might at least have an idea.”

Kadeg had pulled himself together. “Have you something specific in mind?”

It wasn’t yet time to divulge anything about vague and maybe completely crazy ideas, without it being a state of emergency.

“I mean in general.”

“I think it’s a mistake, but fine, you’re the one who gives the orders here.”

“Exactly so, Kadeg. I’m the one who gives the orders.”

Something else had suddenly occurred to Dupin, an alternative, one that was an excellent extra idea.

“Kadeg, before we let Madame Gochat go, I want to talk to her one more time. Bring her here to the island. Straightaway.” Dupin was liking the idea more and more. “Set off right now. With bells and flashing lights. Straight to Audierne. Directly on a speedboat.” Kadeg was confused. “What if she refuses? I mean, if I tell her she can go and won’t be interrogated, except that beforehand she has to go through an interrogation on the island … Her lawyer…”

“If she has anything to say about it, tell her she has a choice: she can go free, but has to talk to me once beforehand, or she goes straight into investigative custody. Which means numerous interrogations. It’s up to her.”

There was a brief silence. Then Kadeg said: “I think we’ll see one another soon, on the island.”

“I think so too. I’ll wait for you.”

Dupin hung up. While they had been talking he had carefully slipped out of the museum.

There was one thing that had remained on his mind the whole time. The phone call with his mother. One way or the other, he had to deal with it before long. And there was no way he wanted her to end up calling Nolwenn again. He took the telephone in his hand, bravely.

---

“Boss! Boss!”

Yet again Dupin had headed down to the quay and once again Riwal had emerged from one of the small alleyways just in front of him.

“You were busy, boss. Jumeau is there. He’s sitting in the Chez Bruno.”

“Let’s go.”

Dupin headed straight to the bar’s little terrace. The call with his mother had been awful. But quickly over. It may have been the circumstance—lucky for him that the florist had just arrived and she was “occupied.” He had poured out the truth to her, that the case had become more complicated since their last conversation, that there had been a third victim, that they had so far seen no sight of land in their investigations and that therefore it appeared more unlikely than ever that he could come tomorrow.

Despite him setting it out twice, she hadn’t accepted his conclusion for a single minute, even at a rudimentary level, but had remained basically where she was. It was a technique—completely ignoring his information—which she had mastered perfectly. Anything she didn’t want to hear she simply didn’t hear. End of story. And that was the merciless but nonexistent punch line. She had mastered completely the ability to leave whomever it was with a bad conscience.

The lean young fisherman was sitting with a petit café, and seemed almost pensive.

“I would like to know,” Dupin began to say before he had even reached the table, while Jumeau had just turned his head toward the commissaire, “what the large sum Laetitia Darot had transferred to you was all about.”

Dupin sat on the facing stool, Riwal next to him. The question didn’t seem to bother Jumeau in the least.

“I’m in financial difficulties. Have been for the past two or three years.” He said it with no sign of self-pity or regret. It seemed nothing to him to admit it. “Fishing is a complicated business, for somebody like me anyhow.”

“And she just sent you a bank transfer of ten thousand euros? Just like that, a large sum like that?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

Jumeau gave Dupin an indifferent look.

“Was it meant as a loan?”

“No.”

The problem was that Dupin himself hadn’t the faintest idea what the money transfer might have been about. Not even to what extent it might or might not be criminal. Even given the—extremely speculative, extremely airy-fairy—considerations that had come to light over the past few hours, no scenario occurred to him. Even so, ten thousand euros was a hell of a lot of money.

“Do you have debts?” Riwal took over.

“A loan from the bank for the boat. And I already had an overdraft on my account. I didn’t ask her for it in any way. She had got hold of it by chance. And without another comment, asked me for my account number.”

For Jumeau, that was a remarkably thorough answer.

Laetitia Darot had a regular income, and not too bad a one. But even for her it must have been a lot of money. Riwal would have mentioned if there had been irregularities on her account, such as large deposits, for example.

Riwal continued: “What if Laetitia Darot had paid you for, let’s say, specific tasks? Perhaps for your help in recovering something? Or”—he wrinkled his brow—“for you to observe Morin and his boats taking part in something illegal?”

Obviously, that was easily plausible, although Dupin was getting more and more interested in the former idea.

“She just gave it to me like that. To help me.”

“And,” Riwal continued, “you did nothing for her in return?”

“Nothing at all.” Jumeau fell silent. “She was like that. Money meant nothing to her.”

“At the beginning of June, during the heat wave”—Dupin was keeping his eyes on Jumeau, alert for the slightest movement of his eyes, his mouth, his facial muscles—“the two women were out one day together in Céline Kerkrom’s boat and came back relatively late in the evening, as the sun was already going down.”

“I remember the hot days. So what?” He showed no reaction.

“You docked your boat shortly before the two did. At the front of the quay.”

“That’s where I always dock.”

Jumeau didn’t even appear impatient, something that would have been understandable enough given Dupin’s awkward behavior. Riwal looked as if he was waiting for the punch line.

“Do you remember that day, Monsieur Jumeau?”

“I can only remember one of the evenings when Céline came in late. I had everything tied up when I spotted her boat at the back on the first jetty. I didn’t notice whether or not Laetitia was with her.”

“Was it already dusk?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Did you come back down later to the moorings? To the sheds?”

“No.”

Dupin thought for a moment. Then he spoke deliberately, sharply: “Where did the pair of them take it, Monsieur Jumeau? Where is it now? We know about their find.”

The surprising question was initially met with nothing at all. This time too, Jumeau hadn’t shown even the slightest reaction.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jumeau said.

Was Dupin deceiving himself or had the fisherman sounded unusually sad?

“And I don’t believe a word you say.”

“The decision’s up to you.”

“We know…” Dupin was about to try it again, then gave up.

The message that they knew about some discovery hadn’t had any visible effect on Jumeau. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to mention it at all. Dupin was annoyed. Without warning he got up and said: “Thank you.”

It would have been a good opportunity to drink another café, but Dupin had lost enthusiasm. He was extremely annoyed. With everything. But most of all with himself. The whole case was going against the grain. Everything kept going head over heels. They weren’t even managing a rudimentary investigation, to follow a thread properly. Figures were marginalized, then suddenly surfaced again, tasks left undiscussed. He felt everything was falling short.

He turned around and left the terrace silently.

Riwal stood up indecisively, looked at Jumeau, who didn’t seem to be bothered by Dupin suddenly leaving, murmured, “Au revoir, monsieur. We’ll be in touch,” and followed the commissaire.

At the end of the quay Dupin turned onto the path that led directly to the sea, and inevitably, like all the others, to the lighthouse. Next to the path lay a gigantic rusty steel ship’s screw, just like the other bits of shipwrecks that rose up around the island, like sculptures in a vast open-air museum. And under the great ship’s screw there was a family of rabbits with little ones.

“Have we got anything yet on Morin’s alleged sunken smuggler’s boat?”

“I’ve asked for all the checks to be carried out at maximum priority, but it’s going to take a while yet.”

That was how it went. Follow-up checks took time. No matter how much Dupin resented it.

“Nolwenn is helping out. She has a good contact in the authorities.”

“Perfect.” That reassured Dupin.

“Do you really think”—Riwal made a serious face; something seemed to be worrying him—“that it’s really all about the sunken boat, that it’s Morin we’re after?”

“I don’t know!” That was the truth. “We have to keep looking in every direction.”

Riwal cleared his throat, not particularly discreetly.

“Has anyone ever told you that Professor Lapointe was a particular specialist on Ys?” Riwal held back, then reformulated what he had just said: “I mean, he was an expert on local archaeology in general, but in particular on Ys. For the past two or three years, the legend-soaked city was his chief point of interest.”

“Ys, really?” Dupin wasn’t in the mood for the rich treasury of Breton legends.

“Kerkrom and Darot might have made some archaeological find on the seabed, that’s what I mean. An important find. Something precious, of high value. And maybe that’s why they sought out Professor Lapointe and his expertise. Advice. The business with the analysis of the material would be plausible in that case. Darot and Kerkrom’s purchase of technical stuff too. The new lifting arm, and the high-quality sonar which was capable of scanning the seabed beneath the mud and layers of sand. They could find anything with that.”

Dupin was silent.

“It would also explain why Kerkrom and Darot were out to sea in a region where they had never been before. Maybe Darot had found it first. In the entrance to Douarnenez Bay, where the dolphins go in summer to hunt squid. And then she had taken Kerkrom there. Kerkrom’s boat is vastly better equipped for salvaging something. And when they spent some time in the relevant region somebody noticed. The harbor chief and Vaillant for sure, as we know. But maybe someone else too. And they were watched. It could all have happened like that.”

“You mean”—Dupin was trying to keep a neutral tone in his voice—“this is all about some sunken treasure in the end?”

This time it was Riwal who fell silent while the commissaire tested out the theory.

Dupin chose to follow the adventurous thread: “Say the two of them made a hugely important archaeological find? A cross, for example? Or something similar?”

He had spoken as absolutely casually as he could. But even so, at the word “cross” Riwal raised his eyebrows. “What leads you to the cross idea?”

Dupin made a dismissive gesture. “At the beginning of June the Anthony boy had been watching Kerkrom and Darot when they came back in aboard Kerkrom’s boat at dusk with something on board. An object as big as he himself, he says, wrapped in a cloth. As far as he was concerned the object had the shape of a cross.” Dupin interrupted himself and added—he clearly found it difficult to do—“He said it was a cross. The next day he asked Kerkrom and she told him it was a wooden beam she needed for her house.”

Dupin had reckoned it was important to put it all in as matter-of-fact a tone as possible, but it wasn’t exactly easy to treat the business with the cross as matter-of-fact.

Riwal had stopped in his tracks. For a moment he had looked pale. Then a light appeared in his eyes. Just the reaction Dupin had feared. The commissaire quickly added: “I think it might have been the engine or a part of the stern end of the sunken boat, a piece of a plank maybe. With the identification number on it.”

“You know what they say about Ys, boss, don’t you?” Riwal was trying hard to keep his excitement under control but not succeeding. “When they read mass in the big church in Ys on Good Friday, the city will arise again. And Dahut will come back. The legendary empire will rise again. And here comes the crucial bit, even if you aren’t going to believe it: the mass, according to one of the reports”—reports rather than legends, Dupin noted—“that day has to be read under the great gold cross, standing on the church altar! The emblem of the legendary cathedral.”

In fact Dupin wasn’t unhappy: the more fantastic the stories got, the less he had to bother with them.

Another two rabbits appeared just in front of them; they only ever seemed to appear in pairs, again with daredevil speed.

“And are there some versions of the legend in which there actually is a great golden cross that plays a role?” Dupin had asked the follow-up question against his will.

“There are indeed.”

“Tell me about it.” He was sure he was going to regret asking. “Briefly. In as few words as possible, just the important bits of the myth, in a nutshell.”

Riwal took a deep breath. “King Gradlon the Great was the king of Cornouaille, a famous king, repeatedly victorious and extremely rich, the son of Conan Mériadec, the first king of Armorica. The historic score could have been settled in the fourth or fifth centuries. Gradlon met the magnificent Malgven in the fjords of the north, and she bore him a daughter, Dahut, but herself died in childbirth. Dahut grew up to be an even more beautiful woman than her mother. Gradlon loved her more than life itself. Because she loved the sea more than anything else, he had a city built for her directly by the sea, the most splendid city the world had ever seen—with roofs of pure gold. And a spectacular cathedral. Great walls, the size of houses, surrounded the city, protecting this little empire from the sea. There was a single great gate, to which Gradlon alone had the key.

“Gradlon was a wise king loved by all and had an important adviser called Guénolé. Dahut was self-obsessed and greedy, but her father considered her a ray of sunlight and didn’t see it. He named her queen and gave her the key to the gate. No man was good enough for her until one day she met a young prince at a ball, considered him the most handsome man on earth, and wanted to have him. She was a queen now and had power and vast riches, and now she also had love. The prince wanted a sign of her commitment. One night of the full moon she handed him the key. But the prince,” Riwal caught his breath briefly, “was the devil himself. During the night he transformed back into his diabolical form and used the key to open the great gate. Within next to no time the whole city sank into the Atlantic. The king and his adviser saved themselves initially by climbing to the highest tower of the castle. Suddenly two horses emerged from the sea and took Gradlon and Guénolé to safety on the shore. The king called ceaselessly after his daughter—Dahut! Dahut!—but he caught no more than a glimpse of her in a wave. ‘It’s all my fault, I’m cursed,’ she called to her father. Then she disappeared beneath the waves, of her own choice.” Riwal was clearly moved.

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

“I’ve got the message, Riwal.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What does your cousin do for a living?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Obviously I can’t tell you that.”

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

“I can’t tell you that either.”

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

“I’m on it.”

“Was any reason given for its deregistration?”

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

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

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

Nolwenn had hung up.

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

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

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

Riwal was right.

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

“Hi there!”

A loud shout. Both of them flinched.

There was nobody to be seen anywhere.

“Bonjour, messieurs!”

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

“Up here!”

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

“Bonjour,” Dupin called in return.

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

And certainly no place for anyone claustrophobic.

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

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

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

Dupin followed him.

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

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

“Ready?”

Dupin had no idea what for.

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

“Watch your head, boss!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dupin walked on a bit, along the narrow railing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The most recent serious floods struck the island at the end of 2013, beginning of 2014. It was absolute hell, the sea raged. The very ground of the island shook, the walls of the houses too. A five-ton chunk of the quay was twisted out of shape by a wave meters wide, a huge sandbag was thrown through the air like a feather and killed a man.”

Manet’s face grew dark. “There will be more and more hellish events in the future. And every time the island will lose a meter of land.”

It was crazy. Despite the glorious high summer weather and the totally calm sea of the moment it was immediately possible to imagine the two extremes lying so close together on this unique island.

“And the rabbits”—Manet was staring at a brownish-white patch in a field—“contribute significantly to the damage. They tunnel through the ground and accelerate the erosion. Just like the day-trippers, who take stones from the beaches as souvenirs, stones we keep having to pile up again.”

Manet had an impressive way of telling stories casually, yet making them enthralling at the same time, but even so Dupin managed to tear himself free.

“There’s news, important news, Monsieur Manet. We now assume that Kerkrom and Darot…” He faltered, and failed to finish the sentence. While he was talking it had occurred to him that there was something else to do before they talked about it. Now. Riwal and the boy had been right: Kerkrom and Darot must have taken their object somewhere that evening. Somewhere here on the island, which wasn’t exactly big, as was very clear from up here.

“What I wanted to say was: I would like to talk to you again, Monsieur Manet. Do you think we might,” Dupin glanced at his watch, “meet later? In Le Tatoon? I’ll call you when I have time.”

The island doctor gave him an amused look. “Of course. But as far as I’m concerned, we could just talk now.”

“Later in Le Tatoon. Excellent.”

Dupin turned away and went back into the dome without further explanation. Riwal followed, shrugging his shoulders. Dupin clambered down the ladder hurriedly.

“You need to be careful, boss. Really careful.”

Dupin was already on the steps. Riwal was falling ever farther behind.

Back down on the ground, Dupin waited for the inspector. “I want to go back into their houses, and the sheds again.”

Riwal didn’t waste a word on the matter, but his face showed exaggerated relief that Dupin hadn’t had a fatal accident scurrying down the steep steps at that speed.

“You’re thinking about where they might have taken the cross?”

“Let’s forget Ys and all these stories, Riwal. Agreed?” It didn’t sound unfriendly, but it did sound decisive. “We are going to concentrate totally on the idea that the objects might be a part of the sunken boat.”

They walked rapidly to the exit. There was loud noise coming from the engineering area: a dull thumping sound.

“They have to have taken the thing somewhere during the night,” Dupin said, “somewhere it has been for a long time, maybe up until the time of the murders. Until the killer got their hands on it. Or, on the contrary, didn’t find it, and where it might still be.”

Riwal wrinkled his forehead. “The stupid thing is we have to find it. Everything depends on it. Apart from that all we have is speculation.”

They had emerged into the open air. Dupin headed silently toward the village. It didn’t take them long to get to Darot’s house. The commissaire and his inspector hadn’t said a word all the way. Now Dupin’s phone rang.

Kadeg.

“Yes?”

“Is that you, Commissaire?”

The last phone call had gone well. But now his aggravating habits were back.

“What’s up, Kadeg?”

“We’re down at the harbor, Quai Nord. Madame Gochat and I, on the main pier.”

Dupin had almost forgotten.

“Okay, I’m on my way, but it will take a while.”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘a while’?”

Dupin hung up. And turned back to Riwal. “Okay, let’s go. We’ll take a look at the house.”

It was small but in perfect order. It had to have been repainted not too long ago: the white was clean and bright. There was a little strip of rugged grass, and a waist-high white-painted concrete wall.

Riwal let his eyes rove over the house. “The neighbors didn’t notice anything unusual, not even last night.”

Dupin undid the police off-limits band outside the little gate, which had looked ridiculous in any case, and opened it. Instead of heading for the main house door, he went round the back of the house. The scrub grass here was twice as thick as in front and could pass as a garden.

Dupin was disappointed. There was no shed, no annex. Nothing. All that was remarkable was the view: a couple of strangely shaped granite rocks and the glistening Atlantic beyond them. There was a narrow terrace door, next to a big window. Dupin tried the door handle. It wasn’t locked.

He walked in, Riwal just behind him. On his guard, a tense expression on his face. Almost immediately they were in the living room, which also served as a dining room. It was a cozy room with bright blue walls, a wide, ancient-looking sofa in the opposite corner, a little table covered in magazines, an armchair positioned so that it had a view of the picturesque panorama.

Dupin glanced at the magazines. Technical magazines, all to do with diving: Dive Master, Plongée, Scuba People, Diver, loads of glossy magazines. Dupin flicked through a few.

Then he went through a narrow door and into a galley kitchen, barely wider than the door itself. There were the remnants of a croissant on a plate. A mug next to it.

A steep staircase led upward from the little hallway. There was no storage room, no wardrobe; the house really was tiny. Upstairs there was a minute bedroom, another equally tiny room, that gave the impression of being completely unused. The bathroom had an unusually large window facing the sea. Next to the tub was a tiny table with a mug and several more newspapers.

Somebody had lived here. There were traces of everyday life. But at the same time it was deeply disconcerting. “Nothing was brought here. Nothing the size the boy referred to, anyway.” It was Riwal, his face disappointed, who had made the brief summary, when Dupin was back downstairs.

Five minutes later the commissaire and his inspector were standing outside Kerkrom’s house. It was quite substantially bigger. Made from light gray stone. The same layout as Darot’s with an impressive panorama view to the rear. The land area was larger too, surrounded by a partially dilapidated stone wall and a blue gate. There was a low, level annex to the rear, in front of it a wooden terrace with a table, two folding wooden deck chairs, and three terra-cotta pots with camellias that were doing remarkably well for the climate of the island.

The terrace was unusually high with a steep set of steps up to it. Dupin nearly stumbled. It had a proper garden, looked after, quite unlike Darot’s, but then Darot had only been on the island a few months.

“Maybe…” Riwal was looking back and forth slowly between the house and the annex. “… they brought the object here at night as a temporary hiding place, then took it elsewhere.”

“That would only be increasing the chance of them being seen. And there aren’t that many possibilities on the island: buildings, places, squares to which people have access, and were safe enough.”

Dupin tried to open the door to the annex: just a temporary wooden lath door that looked like a bit of amateur carpentry. He only managed to open it with a strong shove.

Immediately to the right was another narrow door, open and with a few steps leading into the main house. A tiny window in the corner let some dull light into the annex. To the right was a switch for a bare bulb, which only just managed to do its duty. But it was just enough to make out all the stuff that Kerkrom had piled together in her annex. A large number of lobster cages next to the entrance, but piled up in an orderly manner here, unlike in her shed down by the harbor, just as everything else here seemed to be in a certain order. Next to the cages was a collection of buoys in different colors and sizes. Dupin checked out the gaps between the cages and behind them. He moved around some of the larger buoys. Farther behind them were three old cupboards with fishing rods lying against them. In the middle of the room was a stretch of free space. There was a smell of over-ripe rotten fruit, an aroma from Dupin’s childhood. That was how it had smelled in the cellar of his old family house, in the tiny Jura village where his father had been born. At the end of the room he made out a big wicker basket of apples.

Riwal had begun opening the cupboards.

Dupin moved into the center of the annex. He had automatically glanced over everything. If the object was even nearly as large as the boy had described it, it would not have been easy to hide it here. Even the cupboards were too close to the walls to hide anything behind them.

“The cupboards contain inventories, clothing, some old files, all neatly sorted.”

The floor was flat trodden soil.

“Look at this,” Riwal called out from between the lobster cages. Dupin had already seen it: a frame with two large wheels, some fifty centimeters high.

“It’s a trailer for boats, to be used for canoes and kayaks.”

Riwal looked like he’d been struck by lightning. “It’s brand new. She couldn’t have had it long.” There was a tremor in his voice. “She could have used that to transport a big, heavy cross easily, without a problem.”

Dupin walked over to Riwal.

“Look, boss, you’d just have to bring a car close to the heavy object, tilt it against it, lift it up, and it would almost automatically slip on. You could drive around anywhere with it like that. Very practical. Made out of enameled aluminum, very light to use and very flexible.”

Riwal’s renowned sense of the practical. Dupin felt a tingling. Riwal’s idea was brilliant.

The commissaire had hunched down to take a closer look at the trailer.

Suddenly he stood up. “We’ll take a look at it outside in the light.”

Riwal maneuvered it easily out of the annex. The wheelbase wasn’t big so the door wasn’t a problem. They immediately began a careful examination.

“It’s new, all but unused. The enamel is pristine all over, I would say no more than a few weeks old, but,” Riwal said, and pointed to a particular spot, “just here, exactly where the object would have been attached, between the rubber appliqués to the right and left, where the canoe or kayak would have lain, there are serious scratches, proper scrapes.”

Dupin had seen them too.

It was incredible. The tingle had increased. He looked closely at the scratches in the dark green enamel. They went deep. He ran his fingers over them.

“Riwal, ask at the post office. Either Kerkrom bought the trailer on the mainland or had it delivered. In a large package. I’d like to know when. If anyone at the mail office remembers a big package, and then ask the ferry people. Or she brought it in her own boat.”

The inspector already had his cell phone in his hand.

Dupin took another look at the scratch, trying to imagine in detail the scenario described by Riwal. They hadn’t found either a canoe or a kayak at either Kerkrom’s or Darot’s.

“Madame, Inspector Riwal here … Yes, the one who asked yesterday about Céline Kerkrom’s registered letter, yes … We’ve got another question … no, something different … Was there a large package delivered to Céline Kerkrom recently? At least one meter, eighty centimeters long. And sort of…” He didn’t need to finish the sentence; the answer must have been quick.

“Oh, really?… And that was the only large packet? From a well-known chandler in Douarnenez … and you wondered why Kerkrom needed a boat trailer?… Yes, particularly as she didn’t have either a canoe or a kayak … No, she certainly doesn’t need it now … No, unfortunately I can’t tell you why … But yes, indeed, like I said, you’ve been a great help. Thank you very much.”

Riwal didn’t seem quite to trust that the “thank you” would be taken as the intended close of a conversation that clearly wasn’t easy to terminate. He hung up.

“She says—”

“I got it all, Riwal.”

Dupin prowled up and down the terrace. Things were coming together, the lifting arm, the high-tech sonar, the boat trailer—even if they were all very tenuous, highly speculative clues. For a very tenuous, highly speculative theory, which at present only covered part of this murderous story. But there were possibly more people involved in the cigarette smuggling. And there was a craftily organized system in place. An entire apparatus. One that was using another existing apparatus for its own ends—the harbor, for example, the fishing industry.

They needed more solid clues. Something really substantial. It was just as Riwal had said; whatever Kerkrom and Darot had found, they now had to find it. Otherwise everything would remain a ghost.

Riwal pulled aside the police tape on the door that led from the terrace into the house.

“I can check out the house on my own, boss, I mean if you don’t … The harbormistress is waiting. I can look over everything in detail and report back to you.”

Riwal was right. He had to go.

Dupin’s mood had darkened in the past few seconds. One of those little investigative depressions often followed a moment of investigative euphoria which turned out not to clarify anything. And his chat with a worked-up harbormistress was definitely going to be extremely unpleasant.

Dupin turned to leave. “Not a word to anybody, Riwal. About anything.”

“Jumeau already knows … that we’re looking for something. And that we assume Kerkrom and Darot found something.”

“I know,” Dupin grumbled. Even as they were on their way to the lighthouse he had got noticeably angry with himself. That had been extremely rash. Stupid. It would have been better for loads of reasons if nobody else had known about their hypothesis. But it was probably out in the open now. Even if Jumeau wasn’t the chatty type.

“See you soon, Riwal.”

Seconds later Dupin was on the street, reluctantly heading for the harbor. Unpleasant interviews were best faced head-on.

He had already gone a few steps when he came to a sudden halt. A thought had just occurred to him.

He turned around on the spot.

He went back into Kerkrom’s house through the front door. Theoretically he only had to go straight ahead through the house, a hallway, living room, and dining room. He reached the annex through the narrow open door with the steep steps.

“Riwal?” He called loudly once inside the house. He hadn’t seen the inspector.

It took a moment.

“Here, boss. On my way. I was in the kitchen. There’s a little larder in there but nothing in it, except for crazy quantities of milk and oats. And Volvic mineral water.” With those words he arrived in front of Dupin. “What about Madame Gochat?”

“I want to try something first.” Dupin grabbed hold of the trailer that Riwal had set back next to the lobster cages. “Come along.”

He took the frame out onto the terrace and wheeled it to the edge, glancing all the time back and forth between the house, the garden, the annex, and the terrace.

“The ground is only flat to the front.” Dupin was focused as he was speaking. It had just occurred to him.

He pushed against the entrance door. It wasn’t wide either.

Now they would see.

It worked. The trailer got through without any problem.

“The object,” Riwal remarked, “can’t have been much wider if it was to get through. But if we’re assuming it was in the shape of a cross, some one hundred and forty centimeters long and no more than eighty wide, then it could work.”

Dupin stood there in silence. From the little square lobby there were three doors. Straight ahead led to the living room, which led out into the extension—steep steps—apart from that was the door to the kitchen and left to the bathroom.

Dupin pulled the trailer into the living room. If it had happened, this is the way it would have come.

A little combined living and dining room with an old, rustic wooden table, creaking floorboards. A plush sofa with shabby velvet cover. Crude but artistic paintings on the walls: crabs, langoustines, sardines—all in rich Atlantic colors—giving the room a merry, happy air. An old glass-windowed cupboard. To the right a closed door.

Dupin took a look around.

Where could you keep anything large here?

He went over to the sofa. It stood too close to the wall. Dupin checked it out even so. The distance to the floor was too small too. But he checked that as well.

Nothing.

He opened the glass-doored cupboard.

Riwal had checked the table and the tabletop.

“Solid.”

Dupin took another look around, thinking feverishly.

Then he took hold of the trailer again and pushed it over to the closed door.

A bright bedroom, with a view of the garden, the cliffs, and the sea. He walked in, pulling the boat trailer behind him. That wasn’t a problem either.

A double bed, two wooden chairs used to hang clothes on, an old wardrobe, a little bedside table, and the same worn floorboards.

Riwal had immediately gone over to the wardrobe and opened it.

“Negative.”

“Goddamn,” Dupin swore. “They must have taken it somewhere.”

For a while they stood next to one another in silence.

Then Dupin went over to the bed. He knelt down, looked under the bed. He had to turn his head sideways on the floor.

Nothing here either.

Nothing except dust. Lots of dust. In thick clumps. The whole room had a fine but visible layer of dust, but here, under the bed, the dust had nothing to stop it coming together.

“To hell with it, yet again,” Dupin exclaimed in frustration.

“Boss, an idea’s just come to me,” Riwal said carefully. “If the material analysis were to have any connection with the events of this case”—he was speaking cautiously but insistently—“then they would have had to take the test sample somewhere, on shore or on the water; they would have needed tools.” There was a certain defiance in his speech.

Dupin wrinkled his brow.

“I’ll take a look in the annex.”

It was up to Riwal to do what he felt was right.

Dupin was about to get up again when he suddenly hesitated. He bent his head down again to the floor with an extremely concentrated look.

He hadn’t made a mistake.

There was no doubt.

On the other side of the bed the layer of dust ended abruptly. He had only seen it with one eye and only half paid attention to it. The dust ended in a straight line. It had been brushed away there. Quite clearly.

He shot to his feet and went around the other side of the bed. On this side stood the wooden bedside table, with two packets of tissues on it, as well as a book and hand cream, along with the lacy-shaded bedtime lamp.

From the bedside table to the corner of the room was about a meter and a half, the wall roughly plastered and whitewashed, as throughout the house. And—from here it was even clearer to see—the floor was completely clean.

It would have been no problem to bring the boat trailer here, a straightforward direct way through the house.

Dupin went carefully down on his haunches again. He tried to imagine it as exactly as he could, to make the fantasy work. He inspected closely the broad floorboards, the floor in the corner between the bed and the wall. Where the object might have lain, or, more plausibly, stood. They could just have tipped it upright from the trailer. That would have been the most likely.

Dupin got down on his knees. Slowly, carefully, he shuffled closer to the wall, his eyes on the floor.

A moment later he stopped. All of a sudden he saw it.

Clearly.

A scratch.

A good long scratch, a groove. Some fifteen centimeters long. Dupin shuffled closer to it, felt it, stroked his index finger the length of it. It was deep, at least half a centimeter, and sharp-edged. The object must have had a sharp edge. And been heavy.

Obviously the floorboards were covered with scratches and traces from decades of use. But it was quite clear that this scratch was recent: the places where the wood had been pushed in it were clearly lighter and more open-pored.

Dupin knelt there a while, looking at the groove.

Eventually his gaze rose higher up the wall.

He tried to measure the height with his eyes. The object would have been leaning a bit, no matter how stable it was.

And then he discovered it.

An impression in the white of the wall.

Horizontal. Just about as long as the scratch below, but fine here, just a line. Nonetheless—and this was the crucial point—it was easily identifiable. Dupin shuffled back a bit and fixed his gaze on the two places, concentrating. He felt ever so slightly faint. Even so. Something had stood here. Something heavy. It was quite clear.

It seemed he had found the place.

But what was it that had stood here?

Part of a heavy ship plank with an identification number on it?

An engine could also have parts with sharp edges, metal edges: iron, aluminum. But was a wooden plank that heavy? And would an engine have left its mark only on these two places? And precisely marks like these?

There was an uneasy feeling hanging over Dupin. One that merged with the faintness.

Hesitatingly he shuffled—still on his knees—a little to the left.

Here there was nothing to be seen. Nothing at all. Dupin was somehow relieved.

Just to be sure, he had to check out the right side, too.

He inspected the wall there closely.

There was something.

It was undeniable.

Not a long groove like above, but even so an indentation. Barely a centimeter, but here too, sharp-edged.

It was all too fantastic, too ridiculous; the stupid thing was it all fitted too well.

“Boss,” Riwal said. He came back into the room with a depressed expression on his face. “I’ve found nothing.”

“Good,” Dupin said abstractly.

“Why are you kneeling on the ground in the corner?”

Dupin got quickly to his feet. Absently, he said, “They brought the object here, Riwal. Right here.”

Riwal stared at him with an expression of disbelief.

“Come over here, I’ll show you.”

---

Kadeg had picked out a bar on the Quai Nord where they had by now already been waiting more than an hour for the commissaire.

The harbormistress had already fired off a first sharp tirade, even before Dupin sat down. She was up and ready for it, prepared to fly out of her skin. Dupin had acted as if he hadn’t noticed. His first words were to order two cafés when the waitress turned up. Dupin was pleased they were alone; there were no other tables taken at the moment.

Riwal was seeing to it that the crime scene people examined the groove in the ground and the impressions in the wall. His reaction had been the same as Dupin’s. The difference was that he was more excited than the commissaire, but had denied himself the slightest mention of Ys. And absolutely any celebration.

“This is going to cost you dear, Commissaire! That was police bullying. A purely arbitrary act, forcing me to make a decision either to come along without my lawyer or to be remanded into custody!” The harbormistress had lowered her voice, without losing any of its contempt or aggression. “Those are dictatorial methods.”

“I am certain,” Dupin said, nodding over to his inspector in solidarity, “that Inspector Kadeg did not put it like that, and certainly didn’t mean it like that. It’s not the sort of thing he would do, nor any of us.” Dupin changed his tone from unashamedly smug to unapologetic. “You should think yourself lucky to be on the loose, Madame Gochat. I will find it hard to explain to my superior officer.” That was actually true, it occurred to Dupin. It had been a while since he had thought of the prefect. “And the public prosecutor too. We found the murder weapon on your property and have the statement from the fisherman who was tracking the first victim on your orders. Also we have a series of pieces of withheld information. That’s just the facts.”

“My lawyer…”

“You won’t be on the loose for much longer, Madame Gochat, if you don’t talk. It’s your choice.”

Dupin was sure she knew something. And she could actually genuinely be the person they had been after all along.

Madame Gochat drilled the commissaire with a penetrating stare, but remained silent.

“Direct from the island into police custody. In that case I have no alternative but to yield to the forceful evidence of the facts”—Dupin clearly enjoyed saying it—“no matter what my own personal opinion might be.”

There was pure hatred in her eyes, her face was pale, her expression strained. She thrust her chin forward as if ready for a fight.

“I am innocent. I haven’t murdered anyone. That is all I have to say.”

“Where is the find?”

For a fraction of a second, no longer, she flinched.

“Where is the find?” Dupin repeated.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Where is it?”

“I have nothing to say. Not a thing.” She snorted, her lips pressed together, her eyes squinting together, staring straight ahead. She wasn’t concerned about the consequences.

In the meantime the two petits cafés had been served and stood there in front of Dupin with their seductive aroma.

“In that case our conversation is over.”

Without haste he drank down one café, then the other. Madame Gochat stared at him, aghast. With the last slurp, he got to his feet.

“This is monstrous.” She was on the verge of losing her composure.

Dupin calmly gave instructions to his inspectors.

“We’ll do things as we discussed,” Dupin said, as if the harbormistress wasn’t present. “We let her go for now. We can arrest her again whenever we like, when charges have been pressed.”

He turned round and left.

“Oh, Kadeg,” Dupin said when he was already down on the terrace. “Report straightaway to Riwal; he’ll tell you about the new developments.” Dupin had seen that Kadeg too had flinched at the word “find,” but then quickly regained control of himself.

“What should I do here?” He heard Gochat cursing behind him. “Here, on this miserable island? The ferry doesn’t leave until the afternoon. You can’t just leave me sitting here.”

Dupin didn’t even slow his pace. It happened in every case that the commissaire would break off conversations or interviews, but here it had become the rule, which frankly fitted such an infuriating case. His mood had hit rock bottom. But at the same time he knew he had to think positively, even though it was an expression he hated.

In a recent irritatingly sleepless night—Claire had had yet another of her nocturnal emergency calls—he had watched a documentary about the first American who had reached the North Pole alone, without technical assistance, in forty-six crazy days. He had been literally half-dead when he got there. But he had done it.

He was asked how he had survived waking each morning despite serious frosts, fearsome pain, and ever new tortures—the changes in the weather, problems with the sledges he was dragging behind him—and setting off again. He had replied: “I had only permitted thoughts that reflected the positive about the situation, and cut out all the negative.” In the middle of the night, around half past two, Dupin had been deeply impressed by how simple it sounded.

He tried now with all his strength to concentrate on the positive. So, the object had been here. But even more important: it existed. That was the decisive factor. And a huge advance. It was no longer a pure hypothesis. The two women had found something, and that was what it was all about—that was it, that was the story they were hunting down. Dupin was convinced of that. There were too many indications, too many secondary lines that matched too well, even if they had no proof. Something that despite “positive” attitudes, they naturally desperately needed. They needed to find the find!

Dupin knew the risky point in an investigation when one had to commit oneself, when you otherwise would fail to achieve anything at all and in the end would go down with all flags flying. Obviously it was possible that they were on the wrong track and were leaping over a blind cliff. But he wasn’t afraid of that. Dupin had never been afraid of that.

He had reached the area of the harbor that lay between the two quays, where the sheds were. He stopped. Right at the spot Kerkrom always docked. As always he stood far too close to the water. And looked out at the harbor.

He had made his mind up: everything depended on this find. Only, was the find really part of a boat sunk by its crew? That was what he had decided. But what if Kerkrom and Darot really had made an archaeological discovery? In principle Dupin had so far never had problems with strange, wonderful, or bizarre ideas and theories in an investigation; certainly not since he had been in Brittany. Reality outdid fantasy by a long way, especially when it came to things that were odd and strange in the world. He was no beginner: if things initially seemed mad or even totally crazy, that was no argument in favor of reality. But there were clear lines between the romantic and the fantastic! There was no need to speculate about Ys. If so, then it was a spectacular archaeological find, the kind there were dozens of in France every year—he was always reading about them. Even if it was a cross.

Dupin shook himself and set off again. He had worked himself up into a strange mood—was it the influence of the island? He had to keep a cool head.

There were two options. Question number one: Who had taken the find from Kerkrom’s house? Answer number one: Kerkrom and Darot themselves. But where to? To somewhere else on the island? Where the killer had then found it? Or, equally plausible, where it still was, because the killer hadn’t found it? Or the second scenario: the killer had taken the object with him immediately after the murder, from Kerkrom’s house. And taken it off the island. Or—and that was another possibility—had left it there and come back to get it. Whatever the case, if they had their hands on the find, it would lead them sooner or later to the killer, Dupin was convinced of that.

He found his phone.

“Riwal, where are you?”

“Behind you, boss. Right behind you.”

Dupin turned round. The inspector was barely fifteen meters behind him.

“I came to look for you on the Quai Nord.”

Riwal didn’t hang up. He left that to Dupin, who impatiently came a few steps toward the inspector.

“We need a systematic search of the entire island. Every remotely possible hiding place. Every unused building, every empty shed, storeroom,” he said. “Plus the chapel and the church. Rooms that are rarely or never used in public buildings.”

“Possibly it’s no longer on the island.”

It was on the tip of Dupin’s tongue to object to Riwal’s use of the word “it,” but he let it go. There was no point.

“Possibly. How many staff do we have on the island right now?”

“Eight.”

“Good. Why were you looking for me, Riwal?”

They had walked farther toward Quai Sud.

Riwal pulled himself together: “Ah, yes, the island seems to be particularly popular today.”

Dupin looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“Our pirate captain, Vaillant, has docked at the first quay. Jumeau met up with Morin’s bolincheur fisherman Frédéric Carrière when he came back to the island after his meeting with you, and the scientific chief of the parc was here in his boat too for half an hour to take readings at his station.”

“What does Vaillant want here?”

“Nobody has talked to him yet.”

“Do that. Talk to him. I want—” Dupin said, then changed his mind. “No, leave it, Riwal. Let him do whatever he wants to on the island, but follow him, step for step. Shadow him.”

“Sure thing, boss. Jumeau, in any case, thinks Carrière is following him. And you know Jumeau doesn’t say much. Carrière has spread his net near him. And normally he never hangs out around here. There isn’t much for him to catch. All of this can’t be a coincidence.”

A chain of thought was running through his mind.

“One more thing, Riwal,” Dupin said as calmly and soberly as possible. “I want you to speak in confidence with your cousin the historian. Extreme confidence. Ask him what would occur to him as a meaningful archaeological find here in the region. If there are any local stories or historical incidents.” He stopped, seeing the thrilled expression on Riwal’s face. “Yes, ask him on my behalf about a massive gold cross. Ask him about anything that could be relevant from an archaeological point of view.” It was a risky, crazy thing, he knew; he had to limit it. “Just nothing about Ys, Riwal. Everything but Ys. I want something real, scientific.”

There was a glimmer of protest in Riwal’s eyes, but he managed to suppress it.

“That’s it for the moment. I—”

The phone rang. Nolwenn.

“News, Monsieur le Commissaire!”

Just the tone of her voice revealed two things: that the call was important, and that she had no time to deal with it; that it was a bad moment but clearly there was no alternative.

“I’ve spoken to Carrière, and the harbormaster at Le Conquet, where the suspicious boat was registered, with the fishing authorities, and last of all with Morin himself.”

Dupin could hear car doors at the other end, car doors slamming loudly.

“Most interesting of all is what the harbormaster says. He was very surprised when the boat was deregistered, because he knew it. It was in perfect condition. Officially it had been moved to another harbor, but according to the fishing authorities, that wasn’t the case. None of Morin’s boats are reported in any other harbor with that registration number.”

“What do Carrière and Morin say?”

“I had an extensive conversation with Carrière. He was making an effort to appear relatively cooperative; the topic itself didn’t seem to disconcert him in any way. He claims the boat has massive rot problems at the stern. That it needed to be laid up in dry dock in a private area of Morin’s, along with a couple of other, smaller boats. That the work to be done was very complex and it still wasn’t clear when it could return to water. I told him we’d like to see the boat—and he referred me to his boss.”

Even if Carrière hadn’t been bothered by the matter, it all sounded as soft as butter, exactly the sort of excuse to be expected.

“Monsieur Morin himself was extremely brusque, if not unfriendly. Basically he said nothing at all. Only that everything was completely in order and that it was up to him alone to decide which boat was seaworthy and which not. Unlike Carrière, he didn’t ask why we were suddenly interested in this boat.” Dupin was familiar with Morin’s self-confident manner; that meant nothing. “Nonetheless he didn’t give us permission to inspect the boat, nor tell us where it was.”

Obviously not.

“What’s the boat called anyhow?” He had been wanting to ask all along.

“Iroisette.”

“Find out where Morin keeps boats or boat parts.”

“If there is something dodgy about the business, Morin probably won’t have moved it there.”

That was true.

“And if we search all those places and don’t find it, that doesn’t mean by a long way that it’s lying at the bottom of the sea somewhere in the entrance to the bay.” Nolwenn’s razor-sharp mind was operating on full power, as ever. “It wouldn’t even be approaching proof.”

“What if we have the seafloor in the area searched?”

“Forget it, it would be easier to find a needle in a haystack. If everything we’re speculating about here turns out to be true, there’s only one solution: to find the parts of the boat that Kerkrom and Darot came across. That’s if the perpetrator hasn’t already gotten rid of it. Or, Monsieur le Commissaire, if it isn’t something else altogether. Riwal has kept me up to speed. Don’t forget: you’re investigating in Brittany.”

Her lower tone of voice implied the conversation was at an end.

“The convoy is setting off, Monsieur le Commissaire. And I’m in the lead. I’ll be in touch.”

She had already hung up.

Dupin and Riwal had taken exactly the same route that they had followed an hour and a half earlier, along the waterside to the cholera cemetery. From above—a bird’s-eye view, like that of one of the many seagulls, for example—it would have looked amusing to see them walking up and down the little island, Dupin thought.

“What did Nolwenn say?”

Dupin passed on her news.

“I’ll deal with the search now.”

“Riwal?”

“Boss?”

Dupin didn’t quite know how to put it. He didn’t want to attribute too much weight to the matter.

“Nolwenn—and her aunt—are leading a convoy. They…” He was best to leave it.

“The ‘great vehicle convoy’ beginning in different places but primarily in Lannion, and they’re all heading for Quimper: cars, trucks, tractors, down the four-lane roads.” The “Brittany highway,” and all the main traffic arteries. “It’s going to hold up traffic for hours on end.”

Dupin was trying his hardest to banish the images that sprang up in his mind. A state-employed police staffer was, in her normal working hours, leading an illegal operation to create massive traffic hindrance, which the police would have no option but to act against. A drive to Quimper—it would have to be Quimper! The head office of the prefecture.

The wisest thing to do was not to have anything to do with it. His inspector seemed to see things the same way.

“See you later, boss.”

With that farewell, Riwal turned around.

Dupin kept going, glad to be on his own at last.

---

The commissaire found himself halfway between the cemetery and the lighthouse, on his right hand the pier, the only one outside the harbor area. A Zodiac with one of those colossal engines was moored at it. Riwal would have automatically recited the technical details: the cubic capacity, horsepower, length.

Probably Leblanc, here to take the readings.

Dupin wondered if it was time to start going on the offensive about the “find.” Mention the various possibilities—they didn’t have to use Morin’s name if they mentioned parts of a boat. The islanders would get the message anyhow when the police began searching all the buildings. They would make wild guesses, which would get expanded on. There was no way of keeping secret any such large-scale search operation. Sometimes a revelation could exert interesting pressure at a specific stage of a case. Get things going. They hadn’t even spoken about it, but Riwal would have to tell the officers what it was they were to search for.

It would, in any case, have an effect. The perpetrator would be scared, and ideally do something careless, overhasty. One could even specifically ask the populace for help and suggestions. Dupin had no scruples on things like that. It only mattered if it was wise or not. Whether it would help them reach their goal. There was always the possibility that something like that could make the killer extremely careful: to disappear. Or just lie low.

Dupin had left the asphalt path and climbed up the substantial hill of pebbles on the shore of the sickle-shaped bay directly to the pier. At the edge was a small, low building, not unlike the concrete shed in front of the harbor, on its roof a steel cage for technical equipment. The pier was longer than it looked from a distance, with an elaborate technical construction at the end. A sort of elongated cage which extended into the water. The apparatus for taking the readings, probably.

“Monsieur le Commissaire!” Leblanc had suddenly appeared from behind the shed and waved at Dupin. The commissaire moved toward him. “Has there been any progress with the investigation?” Leblanc asked.

“We know the story and the motive. We know what it’s all about—we just don’t have the murderer.”

“That relieves me enormously.” Leblanc lowered his gaze. “I still haven’t come to terms with it. Here on the island I’m perpetually waiting for Laetitia to turn up any minute in her boat.” Now he looked Dupin straight in the eyes. “I assume you want to keep the story to yourself? What happened here?”

“I’m not quite sure about that.”

Dupin hadn’t intended to answer like that. There was a pensive look on Leblanc’s face. It prompted him to ask more questions, but he let it go.

“I’ve just taken the readings for the past week. Do you want to take a look at the equipment on the pier? It’s quite small but brilliant. It gives everything the most advanced analysis requires.” He was back to being the enthusiastic researcher again.

“What’s in the low building?” Dupin asked.

“Technical stuff. It belongs to the measuring station. That’s where the rest of the equipment is: for measuring wind, precipitation, air pressure.”

“Nothing else?”

“A few bits and pieces to do with building works. And equipment. Things like that.”

“Any objections if I take a look?”

“Not at all. But honestly, there’s nothing very exciting to see.”

Dupin walked over to the building.

A steel door. A solitary window overlooking the sea. An aluminum table in the corner near the entrance, a chair next to it. A laptop, connected to a piece of apparatus made of steel with lots of buttons and lamps, hanging on the wall. Cables that went upward and through a hole in the wall to outside, presumably to the devices on the roof.

“From here I can take all the readings from the measuring equipment out at the end of the pier: pH values, oxygen levels, things like that.”

Dupin was only listening with one ear. The room was a lot more interesting to him.

“Laetitia Darot would obviously have access to this building, wouldn’t she?”

“Theoretically yes, of course. But I doubt she was ever here. I can’t think of any reason she would have had to come here. Once or twice she took the readings for me, in extended spells of bad weather. But only then.”

Dupin had begun to move slowly around the room. Four meters by four, he reckoned. There didn’t seem to be any electric light.

On two sides there were bits of aluminum that looked as if they belonged to the construction at the end of the pier. In one corner lay a formidable-looking anchor, several plastic canisters, probably for oil or gas, Dupin assumed, and in the middle of the room there was a ladder on the coarse concrete floor. Layers of dust everywhere. In the corner opposite the table lay an inflatable boat, small but professional-looking.

Leblanc had noted Dupin’s glance. “Sometimes I have to fix something in the station from the sea. In that case I take the little boat.”

Whatever the object they were looking for might be, it wasn’t here. Which meant: it wasn’t easy to hide.

“Is there … any other room, an annex or something?”

“No. Just this.”

It was clear from Leblanc that Dupin’s questions were increasingly puzzling him.

“I’d also like to take a look at the measuring station at the end of the pier.”

The find had lain for ages in the sea; it wouldn’t hurt it to be put back in the sea. A calm, secure place under the sea would generally be no bad place to hide something.

“Gladly. Once we would have needed whole laboratories to do what this can do. Come along!”

Leblanc left the shed. Dupin took a last long look around and followed him.

“Did Laetitia Darot have access to all the institute’s rooms on Île Tristan?”

“Yes, in principle. But apart from in the technical area I never saw her anywhere. Like I said, she didn’t even have her own office.”

They walked down the pier. They could hear distant voices; snatches of voices, more like. Dupin turned around. He saw four policemen in uniform heading toward the end of the island. The operation had begun.

Then something occurred to him.

He took his phone out. “Just one minute, Monsieur Leblanc. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Dupin walked a few meters out onto the beach.

“Boss?” Riwal was speaking so softly he was almost impossible to hear.

“You absolutely have to take a look around the lighthouse. And the adjoining buildings with the power supply and the desalination works.”

“I’ll see to it. Four colleagues are on their way to the chapel.”

“I’ve just seen them, Riwal. They need to look into every room.”

“Meanwhile, Vaillant”—Riwal spoke even softer—“has left his boat with three men. I’m tailing him.”

“Where are you heading?”

“To the little supermarket.”

“The little supermarket?”

“Exactly.”

“What are they after there?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m watching the checkout. I can see them clearly. They haven’t paid yet.”

It was bizarre. Not least because Dupin was imagining Riwal cowering somewhere behind a wall.

“Call me again if something happens.”

Dupin put his phone back in his pants pocket.

Leblanc had walked on to the end of the pier, and was waiting for him there.

“Are you looking for something in particular, Monsieur le Commissaire? Can I help you?”

Dupin had caught up with him. He walked to the farthest edge, where the frame met the sea.

It was incredible how clear the water was. In the sun it shone emerald green and turquoise blue. He could see every little stone, every mussel, every single little wave of sand. A swarm of green fish shot by, their bellies shining silver for a second, as if someone had exploded a splendid firework in the sea. Two jet-black crabs hurried past.

It didn’t take long to see there was nothing here.

Dupin turned away. “That’ll do, Monsieur Leblanc.”

“Do you know any more now?” Leblanc couldn’t hide his amazement.

“I need to go,” Dupin said, frowning. “Thank you for your help.”

“I hope you’ll soon be able to draw a line under this case. It’s a catastrophe. Totally.” He looked sadly into the distance. He looked altogether even more upset than the day before.

“Yes.”

“On the subject of the readings”—the topic caused Leblanc to brighten up—“the air pressure has fallen hugely over the past half hour. That suggests a storm. If you want to get back to the mainland in good time, you need to leave soon.”

Involuntarily, Dupin looked up and stared around earnestly in all directions.

The sky was every bit as blue, glorious, and innocent as before. Not even the tiniest hint of a problem. Not the slightest indication of a change in the weather, let alone a storm. Naturally Dupin, compared with a genuine Breton, was no expert in predicting the weather, but he was also no longer a beginner, considering he had been training for years. He knew the signs. And the ones he was seeing didn’t look like an upcoming storm. His gut feeling didn’t indicate a storm either.

---

The searches of private buildings on the island were finished for the moment. The police had looked into every room. Madame Coquil had initially refused to hand over the keys to the non-public rooms in the museum, and in the end only agreed under protest. She was also in charge of the keys to the church and the little lighthouse on Quai Nord.

There were a few buildings—such as the old, empty Bureau du Port—which Dupin hadn’t thought of, but Riwal had. Toward the end there were only a few left, and the police were acting one by one.

Without finding anything. No suspicious boat boards, no engine, no metal object in the right dimensions, and not a cross. Not one suspicious trace. Nothing unusual, strange, conspicuous. Nothing at all.

An operation without result.

It was discouraging; the negatives had piled up, it was extremely difficult to see beyond that and turn one’s eye wholly toward the positive. As far as Dupin was concerned, there was nothing to see.

On the way back from Leblanc’s measuring station, he had taken a look himself in a couple of buildings that had already been searched without anything being found. In the fire station, in the church. He had become nervous, more so than he had so far admitted to himself, and his nervousness had only got worse as the operation went on.

The nervousness had gradually become ill humor and petulance. Not a situation he hadn’t been in before today, it had to be said, only now it was worse.

The word that the police were after “something” had, as expected, spread around the island in the blink of an eye. It was even said they were expecting to find another corpse. Then again there was talk of a “treasure”—a gold staff encrusted with precious stones. As if it had been created by a magician. Or druids. Found on the bottom of the sea. Antoine Manet had also got in touch and kept Dupin updated with all the latest. Before long, Dupin had no illusions, there would be online headlines and eccentric radio broadcasts.

He had told the uniformed police not to let slip a word about what it was they were after. Not even to deny anything, just to stick to the formula: “no comment.” The rumors didn’t worry him at all.

The perpetrator probably knew by now—or soon would. And he would assume that they knew.

Riwal had news. He was waiting for the commissaire in Ar Men, the only hotel on the island. Where Riwal had spent the night. The ferry today had brought a particularly large number of day-trippers, who had made themselves comfortable in the bars and cafés next to the harbor. Dupin had every understanding of that, but unfortunately it meant the cafés were no longer right for discreet police interrogations.

Riwal too looked depressed. The élan had gone; he looked jaded. He had been on his feet since five in the morning. And almost certainly—just like yesterday—without anything to eat. It was certainly not without ulterior motive that Riwal had chosen the Ar Men, which was also a restaurant. Dupin’s stomach had begun to grumble noisily. Leblanc’s report about the enormous drop in the air pressure had affected his stomach in the form of a small but persistent queasy feeling. Eating would certainly help; an empty stomach was never good. There were still no clouds to see anywhere, only that the blue sky had got just a little whiter, a little milkier if you preferred. But really only just a little.

“You’re saying Vaillant and his men have come back to the boat from the little supermarket? With cola, chewing gum, chips, and beer?” Dupin shook his head unbelievingly.

Riwal had just reported in on his stalking.

“That’s the way it is. As if they were having a laugh at our expense.”

“And have they since set off from the dock?”

“Straightaway. They docked, went to the little supermarket, back to the boat, and set off again. Carrière meanwhile is no longer to be seen out at sea. Nor is Jumeau. He’ll probably have headed off toward the Chaussée des Pierres Noires.”

Dupin thought to himself. He ought to have Vaillant shadowed at sea also. But that wasn’t going to be easy. If they wanted to be inconspicuous they’d need to get hold of a fishing boat. But at the same time they ought to shadow all the others, all their “special candidates.” That would need a lot of fishing boats.

The sea was a difficult place for investigations. It made things more complicated than they already were.

Riwal interrupted Dupin’s fruitless reflections. “As you asked, I’ve spoken to my cousin again. According to his scientific opinion, a find of that nature—let’s just say a cross made of solid gold at the bottom of Douarnenez Bay—I’m quoting here, boss, even though you won’t like it,” he hesitated again a moment, “would unquestionably have to be seen in connection with Ys. There are no churches in Douarnenez, and none of the towns or villages around the bay have churches, monasteries, or any sort of place that could even rudimentarily be home to such a cross or similar archaeological find.” He was speaking faster all the time for fear Dupin might interrupt him.

“In any case there are not many gold crosses of this size in the whole of historically Christian France, he said. And none of them are missing. ‘It would have to be an improbable importance to an improbable place.’ Those are his words. There’s nothing else imaginable.”

Dupin hadn’t interrupted. He was too tired. Apart from anything it was he who had told Riwal to talk to his cousin. He should have known.

Dupin had hoped for something else. A realistic historical context, possibly including a cross. Something like: in the great cathedral of Quimper or Rennes there was a great golden cross up until some century or other, when it was stolen at some stage by the Normans, the Angles, or Saxons, and brought to Douarnenez on a ship that sank in a stormy night … something like that.

He said nothing.

“What do we do now, boss?”

“I want us to concentrate on Morin.”

He had spoken forcefully, but it sounded pathetic. He hadn’t got a clear attitude. It was enough to make him fly off the handle.

“No,” he corrected himself. “From now on we’ll focus on all the others as well.” It didn’t sound quite so hangdog. “The killer isn’t going to make things easy for us,” Dupin grumbled. “It’s going to be a clever hiding place. Nonetheless, we’ll extend the search systematically. To the mainland. We need to keep the teams at it.”

It would be a lot of effort. A lot of frustrating effort. Dupin let out a deep sigh. But obviously it did no good.

Riwal just offered a battle-weary, “Let’s get on with it.”

“But beforehand, Riwal, we’re going to eat.”

The inspector’s face immediately brightened. “The restaurant’s specialty is known throughout France. Ragoût de homard!” He had announced it like a fanfare. “You will be delighted, boss. The ragout is served in large crockery pots. Lobster finely cut up, partly removed from its shell, pink onions from Roscoff, celery, fennel seeds, smoked mussels all seared in groundnut oil, rinsed with cider eau de vie, with two or three glasses of very good white wine added.” It certainly sounded like poetry. “Then the incomparable potatoes amandine, a dash of cream, Espelette peppers, sea salt and lots of salted butter, then let it sit and braise, braise, braise.”

“Yes, please?” A slim, dark-haired woman was standing in front of them, friendly but clearly not with unlimited patience, a little notepad and pen in her hands.

“Two, please,” Dupin announced.

“Gladly, sir. Two—that would be two what, precisely?”

“The lobster ragout!” Riwal blurted out. “And two glasses of Quincy.”

“Make it a bottle,” Dupin corrected him.

The woman nodded appreciatively and disappeared.

This was a great place to sit too. From Ar Men’s daringly pink painted tables and benches you looked out onto the rear of the island, the lighthouse and the chapel, down the road to the cholera cemetery, fields of the tiny pink flowers here and there. And on either side: the sea.

The milky white of the sky that had replaced the magnificent blue—there was no doubt about that—had gradually but inexorably turned to a hazy gray. Riwal looked as if he were still in another world. And he was once again in story-telling mode.

“Merlin, the most famous magician in the world, was a good friend of the nine witches of Sein. He came to the island regularly, to talk with them about the art of magic.” With every word his story gained vitality. “They told Merlin of their visions, including the future of a great king, that of the Arthur we all know, whom Merlin met a little later. One day Arthur was wounded in a fierce battle at Camlann. So badly that not even Merlin could save him. To cut to the quick, he brought Arthur here to the Île de Sein. To the nine witches. Who made him a shrine of pure gold. Veleda, the healer amongst them, ‘the woman from another world,’ took charge of him. He was as good as dead. But she restored him to life. Not even Merlin knew how. She had the power to open the doors to the underworld. You see, the island plays an important role even in the legend of Arthur.” Riwal’s eyes were gleaming.

Dupin said nothing.

He felt helpless.

“Monsieur le Commissaire!”

Dupin flinched in shock. Kadeg. He had almost forgotten him. The next moment the second inspector was standing, breathing hard, next to the table. For him, he was making something of an impression.

And there was a reason:

“She got away from me,” he said, his tone a mixture of embarrassment and anger. “She’s crafty! After the conversation with you she had to phone her husband straightaway. She walked around the harbor, not looking at all suspicious. Between the piers—”

“What are you talking about, Kadeg?”

“Gochat! She’s gone. She’s left the island. Her husband came to collect her with a boat. At some time she wandered down to the big pier, and all of a sudden a boat pulled up to the big rocks by the entrance to the harbor, pulled up next to them very briefly, and then she was gone.”

It didn’t really surprise Dupin. Even so, it was irritating.

“How do you know it was her husband?”

“I recognized the name of the boat, Ariane DZ. It’s registered to François Gochat, and I saw a man.”

“You can get anywhere with that boat,” Riwal, the expert, chipped in, “and fast. It has an excellent engine, I saw it yesterday in Douarnenez.”

Kadeg looked grief-stricken, a rare sight.

“Make sure that Gochat is watched as soon as she reaches Douarnenez harbor. And then take over yourself. Now.” Dupin spoke extraordinarily perkily. “Would you like to eat something first, Inspector Kadeg?”

Kadeg had been on his feet longer than either of them. And you could see it. At the moment, however, he looked astonished; he had expected a totally different reaction.

But he didn’t protest. “The lobster ragout?” he asked, anticipation in his voice.

“Yes.” Not long later he was sitting peacefully alongside Riwal on the bench, Dupin opposite them, each of them lost in their thoughts. Happily it wasn’t long before the waitress arrived with the bottle of Quincy and three enormous plates, then the vast cooking pot, full to the brim, lobster claws sticking out left and right. As if the cook had known the state of their stomachs and wanted to cheer them up. They could have invited a couple of ordinary uniformed police to join them and all of them would have been full.

“Phenomenal, isn’t it, boss?”

Dupin nodded, a nod of serious agreement. It really was magnificent, hearty and full of flavor. You could taste the sea itself, the character of the island, compared with which the lobster meat was sweet and tender; a confusing but wonderful mixture. And the cold white wine with it. Pure happiness.

The ring of Dupin’s phone tore them out of their mix of exhaustion and enchantment.

It was Nolwenn.

“Yes?” Dupin swallowed the last bite.

He could hear the satisfaction in Nolwenn’s voice: “I’ve found the eighty-six-year-old brother of Lucas Darot, Laetitia Darot’s alleged father. He lives a solitary life in a tiny hick town near Pointe du Raz and sounds pretty sprightly to me.”

It sounded confusing, but promising.

“A nephew of my husband has a butcher’s shop nearby, and the brother sometimes shops there.”

Dupin still couldn’t quite follow.

“I’ve spoken to him. It’s all true. It was an affair, Laetitia’s mother and Morin. A very short one. Lucas forgave her. And brought up Laetitia as his own child with all his love. He never told anybody. Except for his brother, who had kept it in his heart until today. But now with Laetitia’s death everything is different.”

So it was true. And that was what his gut feeling had been telling him all along.

“A moving story, Monsieur le Commissaire. This case gets right down to the nitty-gritty. It demands everything from us. But lobster ragout gives you strength—you’ll see.”

How could she have already found that out?

“We’re sitting here, Riwal, Kadeg, and me,” Dupin said. “All together in the Ar Men. We can talk it over peacefully here.”

He could hear engine noise over the phone; somebody had just shifted down into lower gear. Nolwenn seemed still to be in the car. Dupin could imagine the chaos. Cars, trucks, tractors, crawling along at a snail’s pace. The “four-lane roads” would be crippled.

“I’m afraid your mother’s party is going to be wrecked. But that’s the way it goes,” Nolwenn said, her tone of voice totally lacking in irony. “There’s nothing to be done. Work is work. See you later, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

Dupin put his phone away and raised his eyes to the sky. The light gray had now become a threatening gray. And it was getting thicker, looking like it was growing into a cloud bank. It covered the whole sky, like a shapeless, diffuse gray wall. There was still not the slightest wind, the air was still. Dupin had never seen anything like it, despite having experienced so many tricks, sensations, phenomena of the weather in the last five years—exposed to the most basic elements of Brittany—that he thought he had seen it all.

They needed to get going again. To pick themselves up.

“We’re going to extend the search to the mainland.” There was an urgency in Dupin’s voice. “There’s nothing more for us to do on the island for now.”

“Where exactly are we going to spread the search to?” Kadeg said with his mouth full. He had to rub it in, of course.

“We will locate all the properties, plots of land, houses, second homes, third homes, sheds, storerooms, and cellars that belong to our protagonists. Starting with Morin.”

“They’ll never tell us,” Kadeg said while appreciatively cracking the last lobster claw, “where they’ve hidden the thing.” The supremely tender, endlessly delicious final tip of the claw disappeared into his mouth. “If there even is such a find! Nobody has seen it yet. The whole thing might just be a fantasy. A small boy who gets bored and dreams up fantastic stories! A new boat trailer, and a few scratches on the floor and in the wall! It’s all very thin.”

It had been a stupid idea to let Kadeg gain new strength. Dupin should have known. The bad bit was Kadeg hadn’t intentionally set out to make a malicious impression. It hadn’t been his intention to insult Dupin; he meant what he said. And up to a point he was only raising the doubt that kept haunting the commissaire.

“We’re finished here.” Dupin stood up unexpectedly. “We can discuss the details on the boat.” His gaze had again turned to the sky; he was getting ever more queasily worried. He added a postscript intended to be as determined as possible: “First I’ll meet up with Morin again.”

---

They were ready to set off. The commissaire and his two inspectors had gathered in the bow of Goulch’s sleek boat.

“The slip lines are loose,” shouted one of the lanky young men to Goulch, who was already at the bridge. One moment there was just a gentle puttering, the next the mighty diesel engine roared away.

Dupin had left four uniformed police officers on the island and given them precise instructions. One each of them should mark Kerkrom’s and Darot’s houses, one at their storage sheds, and one down by the harbor to coordinate the little team. You never knew.

To be on the safe side, Dupin hadn’t asked Goulch about the weather. Could a storm really develop out of this nebulous gray mass? Goulch would let them know in good time if he saw changes worth mentioning in the weather coming toward them.

“First I want us to…”

All of a sudden the diesel engine fell silent. Dupin paused in irritation.

Within seconds Goulch had clambered out of the bridge house, looking extremely worked up, by his standards.

“A radio message, just came in. Charles Morin! They just fished him out of the water. Wounded, bleeding, totally exhausted. He almost drowned, was seemingly saved at the last minute.”

It couldn’t be.

“Morin?”

“Exactly.”

“What happened?”

“They don’t know yet.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“A coast guard boat. Morin was saved by an algae fisherman. A goémonier. He took him on board and called the coast guard, who had come out from Molène. They must have got to him in a few minutes.”

“I need to know what happened.”

“Like I said, we have no more information for now.”

“Didn’t Morin say anything to the algae fisherman?”

“At least the algae fisher didn’t say anything to the coast guard. It only just happened, I mean the report just came in.”

“Where was he fished out?”

“Four sea miles from Molène, toward the south, toward the Île de Sein, that is. An area with extremely strong currents. And think about the reduced visibility.”

It seemed to have been a lucky chance that they had found him at all and he was still alive.

“Is it possible to talk to Morin? I mean is he fit enough to answer questions?”

“I can’t tell you that either.”

“Where are they taking him?”

“Douarnenez. To the hospital.”

It was obvious what they had to do.

“We head for Douarnenez, as quickly as possible.” Dupin knew what that meant: maximum speed. But there was no alternative.

“Okay, take charge of my radio. The coast guard will come through again.” Goulch handed Dupin the bright yellow device.

A few seconds later the engine was screaming, twice as loud and fierce as before. The boat took a real leap forward.

A quarter of an hour later they were well out into the open sea. Theoretically they ought to have been able to see the Pointe du Raz to the east, but the diffuse gray wall had turned into a horrible, deep dark brew that had nothing in common with normal fog or mist. The sea itself had taken on a pale concrete gray; it was hard to see more than two or three hundred meters. The horizon had long since been swallowed by the ominous mass. Even Goulch wouldn’t be able to see anything, neither the steep cliffs, or worse, the hidden flat rocks, of which there were swarms around here. That meant he would have to rely totally on his high-tech navigation equipment. And he clearly trusted it, because they hadn’t slowed down from maximum speed for even a second. Dupin had passed the quarter hour in silence.

“Stelenn Bir, come in, please.”

The broken voice emanating from the radio in Dupin’s hand gave him a shock.

“Yes, here Bir, Dupin.” He had to pull himself together. “It’s me, Dupin. Captain Goulch is at the helm.”

“We have Charles Morin on board. He’s refusing to be taken to the hospital in Douarnenez. He wants to go to Île Molène. He says he has a house there and the island has a good doctor. Morin is extremely weak and hypothermic. He really needs to go to the hospital,” the coast guard man said professionally and calmly. “But he insists he’s fine. Even if we can hardly understand a word he says.”

It was unbelievable.

“Did he say what happened?”

“He says it was a spot of bad luck.”

“A spot of bad luck?”

The man from the coast guard was unperturbed. “He says he was out line fishing and fell overboard when he leaned too far over the railing to pull the line in. He was caught in a current. His boat was taken two kilometers away. He was spotted by another algae fisherman. The trouble is that these positions simply don’t agree,” the man continued as dryly as ever. “The position where Morin was fished out of the water, and the position where his boat turned up.”

“What do you mean?”

“The currents go the other way.”

“So how can it be that he turned up where he did?”

“No idea.” The coast guard man wasn’t the type to speculate.

“When did this happen?”

“Monsieur Morin says he swam for about half an hour. That makes it around one forty-five that he must have fallen into the water.”

Dupin was silent for a few seconds, different thoughts rushing through his head. Or more accurately, whirling around in his head, like in a snow globe shaken fast and hard.

“Are you still there, Commissaire?”

“Yes.”

“He is conscious and has made clear his wishes.” Dupin knew what that meant, he knew the formula. “We will have to take him to Molène.”

The commissaire didn’t hesitate for a moment. “I’ll come there too.” He had to see Morin.

“As you wish.”

“Where is he injured?”

“His upper arm. It’s bleeding substantially. He says it happened when he fell out of the boat. But when I ask myself how … what the hell. He’s bleeding.”

The whole thing sounded completely absurd.

“You don’t believe him?”

“When he says something like that…”

“You have doubts about his story, am I right?” Dupin also had doubts, great doubts. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

“I don’t think so,” the man came back as calmly as ever.

“We’re already on our way, monsieur. Over.”

Riwal and Kadeg had come over to Dupin, and despite the wind noise had overheard every word. Dupin just had to tell Goulch on the bridge. He was back in no time.

“Obviously it wasn’t an accident.” Riwal sounded decisive.

“The coast guard man is undoubtedly an expert on the currents here. It will be exactly as he says.”

That was exactly what Dupin felt too. An accident would be far too much of a chance.

Riwal’s features were dark. “It was an attack.”

“Attempted murder,” Kadeg said more precisely, “an attempt to murder Charles Morin.”

Dupin said nothing.

The consequences were enormous. And turned Dupin’s current scenario to dust. Either that or somebody wanted revenge? Because he had been particularly close to one of the victims and knew Morin was the murderer? That could explain why Morin lied. Why he gave no explanations. Why he’d dished them up the fairy tale about the accident.

Dupin leaned far out over the railing, dangerously far. The wind could blow your head off. He breathed the ferocious airstream in and out a couple of times. Then he went and stood in front of his two inspectors. When things were going bad and you didn’t know how to proceed there was only one thing to do: charge headlong.

Dupin’s voice was clear and steady, strong in presence: “I want to find out from all our suspects where they are now and where they’ve been for the past hour. I want to know precisely, and I want witnesses. Proof. Nothing vague. From now on that’s all we’re interested in. Nothing else anymore.”

“Precisely which individuals?” Riwal asked, just to be sure.

Dupin narrowed his eyes: “Our young fisherman Jumeau; Vaillant, the pirate; our charming harbormistress; Pierre Leblanc; and of course, Frédéric Carrière, Morin’s bolincheur.”

---

Morin was half sitting, half lying down, in a brown leather chair in the living room of his house, which was very different to the one in Douarnenez where Dupin had visited him. Simple, plain, not even very big. The one thing that at first glance made it different from the other was the magnificent location: right behind the old harbor with the laguna-like sandy beach, not that there was much to see in the dark gray soup that engulfed the island.

Morin was wearing a jogging outfit and was wrapped in several brightly patterned woolen blankets. He looked to be in a worrying condition. Totally exhausted. It was easy to see that the strain of what had happened had taken its toll on him. He was overwhelmed by shivering fits at irregular intervals, during which he appeared so weak that he looked like he might collapse. At the same time, however, Dupin thought he looked upset, deeply upset, his face muscles contracting and his features distorting.

The doctor had bandaged up Morin’s upper arm so that Dupin unfortunately couldn’t see the wound—“an ordinary wound.” The doctor had also given Morin a painkiller and something for his circulation. And he had made it clear to Dupin that—for medical reasons—he would not leave Morin’s side.

Dupin was on his own; Riwal and Kadeg hadn’t come in with him. “I was fishing, yeah, at one of my secret places, I was standing in a stupid position and fell overboard, wounding myself in doing so—that’s it. That simple.”

“You nearly died. The fact that you’re still alive is pure luck.” Dupin was annoyed. He had no sympathy.

Morin had not made any fuss even over his minimal greeting, made clear he regarded the interview as unnecessary, and—unlike previously—was not remotely interested in the commissaire or their conversation.

“The positions at which you and your boat were found don’t coordinate at all given the currents here. Explain that to me, Monsieur Morin.”

Dupin was standing in the middle of the room. He had refused the chair opposite Morin, who had offered it to him with a weak wave of his hand.

“Think whatever you want,” Morin said with complete indifference, his glance turning demonstratively toward the big window.

“What sort of boat were you out in? How big was it?”

“Eight meters ninety. An Antares, an old model.”

An easy boat to run on your own, Dupin knew from Riwal’s numerous explanations, ideal for fishing. Not a speedboat, but not slow either.

“How did you injure yourself?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t even bother to think about it. He was making a mockery of the whole thing.

“I don’t believe a word you say, Monsieur Morin.”

“I don’t care.”

“You were set upon. It was an attack. Somebody wanted to be rid of you.”

Morin just repeated: “Think whatever you want.”

Obviously Dupin had intended to confront him with the smuggling boat saga, with what they already knew. To threaten him with incontrovertible evidence. But Morin would just have dismissed it with a sardonic smirk.

“You know who the murderer is. Somehow or other you found out.” Dupin had begun walking up and down while he talked.

“It was only a matter of time.” Despite the shivering that had again afflicted Morin, there was a satisfied smile on his face.

“So you admit it.”

Dupin had tried a shot in the dark. Successfully. But right now another thought had occurred to him. It was easily possible that Morin had already been successful. That there had been a hand-to-hand fight in which Morin had killed the other man, even if he had fallen overboard somehow. Or both of them had fallen overboard. But only Morin was rescued. But what argued against that was Morin’s vast internal tension, which suggested that for him, whatever had happened was not yet over.

“I admit nothing. I had an accident, and I think,” he said slowly, “that I need to rest now.”

“That is clearly the case, from a medical point of view,” the pale, stubby doctor butted in. “I suggest that as a matter of urgency, Monsieur Morin.”

“Indeed. I need my strength,” Morin mumbled. Dupin hadn’t missed the fact that for fractions of a second he had balled his fists. Morin had noticed Dupin’s glance, but it had seemed irrelevant to him.

There was a distant rumble, not particularly loud, but clearly audible. A roll of thunder that came with a storm. A long way away, that was clear too. But even so.

An aggressive silence filled the room.

Morin wasn’t going to breathe another word. And they couldn’t force him. If it came to a legal matter, Morin would stick to the accident story. There would be nothing Dupin could do, nothing at all. He was condemned to impotence. And for him there was nothing worse. It made him furious.

“I’m going to sleep for a bit now, if you’ll excuse me,” Morin said, and fussed demonstratively with the blankets.

“We’ve spoken with Lucas Darot’s brother. We know the story now. Laetitia was your daughter.”

It was as if Dupin hadn’t said a word, the statement vanished into the air.

“I promise you, Monsieur Morin. We’ll find out everything.” Dupin paused briefly. “The whole truth.” But the words from his mouth were as nothing. They had long since become useless. Laughable.

Dupin turned around. Went to the door. A few seconds later he had left the house.

He turned sharply to the left, onto a steep clay track that quickly led to a narrow path directly down to the water. After a few meters he came to a halt.

“What a load of shit.”

The curse had come from his heart. His top and bottom molars pressed so hard together it hurt. Things were going completely out of control, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“What a load of shit!”

The swear word resonated across the island.

---

The air was heavy, warm, damp, oppressive. The nebulous mass swallowed all sound. It was as silent as a graveyard. Not even the slosh of a wave in the viscous sea to be heard. No seagulls. No people. No engine noise. It was an eerie dusk.

To the left, spiky, strangely shaped cliffs alternated with large flat granite slabs. All of which sank within a few meters into the dark Atlantic, which had already worked its way close to the innermost coastline. A flood tide was coming. Somewhat farther out were hazy patterns, silhouettes of small, rugged, rocky islands, some of them with dark green canopies. A surreal realm. Images recognized from science fiction films, imaginary landscapes from alien planets.

The air didn’t smell, it stank: a cocktail of moldy, rotten seaweed and decomposing fish innards, brought up by the rising tide around the island. On the other hand, the commissaire could no longer hear any more rumbling, not even in the distance. The storm had calmed.

The distance between Sein and Molène was hardly great, but the difference between the islands was. Molène was completely different, even in shape. If the Île de Sein was long and misshapen, extended, torn, then Molène was a harmoniously rounded, almost circular picture-book island. Even at the water level it was two or three meters higher than Sein, and from there it rose steadily toward the center of the island. People believed it could resist a tempestuous storm. Everything seemed more gentle than on Sein, more balanced, even if the vegetation on “Moal-Enez”—the “bald island,” as the Brittany expression had it—didn’t have anything more to offer: here too there were no trees, large bushes of hedgerows. The village with its two hundred residents lay around the harbor to the east.

Dupin had followed the sole footpath along the water, which seemed once to have gone all around the island. He had tried to regain sharpness and clarity of thought. To calm himself down. He was thinking far too strenuously, feverishly, flushed. He was trying to wring the answers out. By force. Hastily. That only led to distraction.

He had begun to calmly review everything. Everything that had happened since yesterday morning, when he had first stood, overtired and freezing in the small tiled room of the fish market hall. Maybe he had missed something. Somewhere, at some time maybe someone had said something, maybe he had noticed something and maybe even scribbled it in his notebook; something that contained a clue that he simply hadn’t so far recognized as such. He had pulled out his Clairefontaine and flicked through it without standing still. He had almost tripped up a couple of times in so doing.

Suddenly a noise shattered the strange silence. Dupin was sure his phone had never rung that loudly. It was an unknown number.

“Yes?” he said sullenly.

“I’ve been thinking it over, Georges.” His mother. It was hardly possible! She had an unfailing feel for the most unsuitable moment. “I don’t know if I made myself clear this morning when the florist was here. It is simply unthinkable for you not to be there tomorrow. There is simply no circumstance we would excuse. I know you are on an investigation and that it’s an extremely unpleasant story—I really am sympathetic—but you are simply going to have to have it sorted out by tomorrow morning.”

“I—”

“You have things to do, Georges, I know. I’ll let you get on with the job. See you tomorrow, my darling.”

That was the end of the conversation.

A totally insane conversation.

But before a stunned Dupin could put his phone back in his pants pocket, it rang for a second time.

Yet again an unknown number.

“Ah, Monsieur le Commissaire!”

Unfortunately he recognized the voice straightaway. And at the same time he wished downright it had been his mother again. This was worse: the prefect. Once again—and in one respect this was the happiest of his Breton cases to date—he had completely forgotten him.

“There’s trouble,” the prefect fired out, “a lot of trouble.” The words made clear they were about to be followed by one of his notorious tirades. The only puzzling thing was that his voice wasn’t more hot-tempered. “Madame Gochat, the harbormistress, has made a formal complaint. Against you and the police action. She knows a few powerful people in Rennes. The fishing industry lobby.” His voice got harder and harder with the latter words; maybe the attack was imminent. “Coercion, unlawful detention, and so on.” A rhetorical pause followed. Dupin feared the worst. “We are not going to let ourselves be bullied by this arrogant snob! Even if she swears like a trooper and carries on like Rumpelstiltskin. Do you understand? No velvet glove! Be merciless. Do everything that has to be done.”

Dupin thought he was hallucinating.

“I, er … I’ll do just that, Monsieur le Préfet. Everything necessary. Everything needed from a police point of view.”

“Police point of view, my ass! Don’t be so fainthearted! You know my wife is from Douarnenez. We still own her parents’ house.” Dupin had naturally no idea what this meant and didn’t understand why he needed to know. “We got ourselves a new boat a few years ago, and obviously we wanted to moor it in the Vieux Port. Where else? By one of the nice places directly at the front. Gochat refused flat out to do anything for me in that respect. Pure nastiness!”

So that was the way the wind blew. Dupin should have known.

“And one more thing, mon Commissaire.” It was a formula that suggested the greatest caution was required, and Dupin braced himself. “You are aware that this extremely important exercise being carried out for safety on the streets of our nation, in which I am taking part, will last until Sunday evening, six o’clock. Right?”

“Absolutely,” Dupin said. At least he would be able to investigate in peace until then. But he still didn’t know what the prefect was aiming for.

“Like I said, urgent national interest! I’m also not going to be able to give a press conference declaring the successful conclusion of the investigations before Monday morning.”

He stopped and gave no sign of carrying on. He must already have made his point.

Dupin needed a moment for the penny to drop.

“I—” he said, but the words he wanted failed him.

“There’s no need for you to rush into things, no need for an exaggerated, hectic pace. It’s perfectly satisfactory for you to arrest the perpetrator at the beginning of the week.” A complicitous tone, worse for Dupin to bear than any ferocious tirade. “That would then be a wonderful start to the week. The announcement of our common triumphant investigations.”

It was absolutely monstrous. With every case Dupin thought that this beat everything the prefect had tried so far, and there could be no way to top it. And every time he’d been taught a lesson.

“Oh, Commissaire, and while we’re speaking, I’ve heard something about a protest action on account of this sand dune, that there’s going to be a big closing demonstration right outside the prefecture office in Quimper. Do you know anything about that?”

“I—”

“Boss!”

Dupin started.

“Is everything okay, boss?” Riwal said. He was coming along the narrow coastal path, Kadeg in tow.

Dupin reacted immediately: “I’m terribly sorry, Monsieur le Préfet. Urgent news. I’ll be in touch.”

He hung up quickly; he didn’t want to take any risk.

“You need to be careful. There’s slippery granite hidden amidst the clumps of grass on the path here. You could easily fall over.”

Dupin didn’t reply.

Riwal immediately changed the topic. “You were on the phone. We bumped into the doctor. He had seen you take the island circular path. Did you know that there are seven hundred and twenty blue benches along this path, placed at all the best viewing points?” Dupin had been too deep in his thoughts to notice even one of them. “It’s the official island circular route.”

Riwal’s sentence was like a call to action. With those words the three of them set off again.

“If you could see anything,” Riwal continued, “you would have a breathtaking view from here on the northwest side. Above all, if it still were low tide you would have a perfect impression of the whole archipelago. To the south”—Riwal gave a meaningless wave at the gray soup—“there are a few larger islands. On one of them there’s a ruin of a house, inhabited from time to time by one mad fisherman or another, and on one of the other the parc has a measuring station. On yet another still there’s a blind for birdwatchers. The whole archipelago is a paradise for birds. From a geological point of view the archipelago is a gigantic granite plateau that during the last ice age formed part of the Brittany mainland and only slowly became part of the seabed, out as far as the island even. Do you know what they say?” It was a rhetorical question. Dupin was still too busy with phone calls to get involved. “At high tide this is a land in the sea, at low tide a sea on the land.”

Riwal stopped and gave Dupin a searching look, apparently an attempt to fathom the commissaire’s state of mind. Then he quickly followed his digression with a question about the case.

“How did the conversation with Morin go?”

Dupin had to sort something out; he had no choice, even if it was against his own maxim: “Riwal, do you know anything about the protest march holding a ‘major demonstration’ in front of the prefecture offices?”

“Of course. The march began on the Quai de l’Odet, and the demonstration is obviously to be outside the prefecture. It should be beginning any time now: several hundred people. The mood must be pretty worked up, people are stinking mad. And rightly so. There’ll be a lot of newspaper photos, even if the prefect himself isn’t there.”

That was precisely the problem. Dupin could imagine the pictures. A close-up of Nolwenn holding a banner in the front row directly outside Locmariaquer’s office. He could see the eggs and tomatoes flying. Windowpanes being smashed.

But then all of a sudden Dupin had to grin. What was he worried about? It was Nolwenn. She wouldn’t need his help. And if she should, obviously he would be there, at her side.

“So, what did Morin have to say?” Riwal asked again. He was completely correct, there were more important things to talk about.

Dupin went over the conversation as well as he could.

“This is completely unacceptable. We need to force Morin to talk,” Kadeg said.

“How do you plan to do that? Torture him? From now on, Kadeg, keep a permanent eye on Morin. Permanent! And no problem with letting him know it. Stay here on Molène. Somebody else can take over Gochat. And get help. Whatever he does, stick with Morin.”

“He’s not going to make any mistakes now.”

“Even so,” Dupin insisted. He felt his hawkishness return. “And now for the main thing. Who was where between one P.M. and two fifteen P.M. today. Friday.”

There was a muffled growl in the air, and this time it no longer seemed far away.

“That came from the south,” Riwal said, and once again made a ridiculous gesture into the invisible. “The business with Morin must have happened out there somewhere.”

Kadeg had even more ridiculously followed Riwal’s gesture with his eyes. “Also, we’ve checked out the algae fisherman who pulled Morin out of the sea. He seems innocent enough. There’s no reason of any sort to think he could have had anything to do with the business.”

“Good.” Dupin nodded in acknowledgment.

“He’s from Lanildut,” Riwal added. “The most important harbor for algae in Europe. There are about a hundred algae fishermen there. They call algae ‘the reed of the sea,’ and the laminaires, which can grow up to four meters long, they call the spaghetti of the sea.”

Algae was one of the big topics in Brittany, Dupin knew, and for good reason.

By now they were walking slowly; the coastal path was so narrow that they virtually had to walk one behind the other, as closely as possible so they could hear each other. Dupin, then Riwal, and then Kadeg.

“The legends talk about a ‘magic seaweed of multiple colors’ fed on by the magical sea cow Mor Yvoc’h.” Riwal began rambling on again. “But it’s only nowadays that the fantastic potential of the different sorts of seaweed has been discovered. They have medical potential as well as for biotechnology, pharmacology, natural fertilizer, insulation material. But the greatest potential of all is for nourishment. How are we going to feed what will soon be nine billion people on our planet? With algae. We’ll only manage it if we use algae!”

“Let’s get back to the case,” Dupin said.

“Algae are extremely healthy. Rich in iodine, magnesium, fiber, and antioxidants. And Brittany’s haute cuisine creates the most wonderful delicacies with it. There’s soon going to be a seaweed channel too: Breizh Algae TV, which is—”

“The alibis,” Dupin interrupted. “What about the alibis?”

“Gaétane Gochat is still not back in her office and so far can’t be reached.” Kadeg had jumped ahead of Riwal and snappily started his own report. “Nobody down at the old port where her boat’s mooring place is has seen either her or her husband…”

“Shouldn’t she have been back ages ago?” Dupin was wide awake.

“There’s no way they came straight from Sein to Douarnenez. That much is certain.”

“And you don’t find that extremely alarming?”

“Should we arrest her again if and when she surfaces?”

“As soon as she surfaces again, she’ll be questioned. And obviously, if details of Madame Gochat’s report as to where she was after she left Sein are even slightly incorrect, then we arrest her again.”

Kadeg rolled his eyes.

“Riwal, how many helicopters does the coast guard have?”

“I can’t say exactly, boss, maybe five in Finistère Sud.”

“I want you to search for Gochat.”

“I don’t think that makes much sense in this weather.”

“True,” Dupin moaned.

“Do you think it was her?”

“It’s possible. One way or another she’s looking for something. Just as we are. I’m convinced of that. But go on, what about the others’ alibis?”

“You saw Leblanc still on Sein at midday.” Riwal had obviously checked out the scientist. “After that he went on to Ouessant, also to take readings. I got through to him there. At two thirty-three, from the boat still. The institute has a tiny research station on Ouessant. Two staff. I spoke to one of the two, who confirmed that Leblanc had been there for a while but couldn’t say exactly for how long. Leblanc insisted it was about one forty-five. If that’s true then there wasn’t enough time for a clash with Morin. If not, and if he got to Ouessant half an hour later, then it would look very different. It also depends to a great extent how fast his boat can go.”

“Hmm.” A rough grunt from Dupin. That was one of these dubious alibis of which they had heard far too many since yesterday. Taken literally, it meant nothing.

“I think…”

All of a sudden Dupin flinched. And stood motionless. Riwal nearly walked into him.

In front of them they could see four strangely shaped granite rocks, right next to the path. And one of them had just moved. Slowly, calmly. But quite clearly.

Dupin fixed his eyes on the spot.

“A fat gray seal, tired from eating too much. They go out hunting and then come back here to eat comfortably.” Riwal sounded delighted.

The seal had turned its head toward them. It seemed for a moment to be studying the little group of humans to decide if there was anything to indicate they weren’t dangerous. It carefully put its head back to the rocks. A perfect, chameleon-like blending in with the granite it was lying on. And it wasn’t just one seal, Dupin saw now, but more of them. Eight altogether. The others hadn’t found it necessary to raise their heads even slightly and look to their right. It looked rather cozy; they were all lying there stretched out beside one another, classic examples, about two meters long. Nobody seemed amazed, except for Dupin.

“Regarding Vaillant,” Kadeg said, while Dupin remained somewhat impressed by the seals. “He was west of Ouessant when I heard him over the radio. They were out fishing for mackerel.”

“Could he have been at the spot where it happened around one forty-five?”

“Under the right circumstances, definitely. Just like Leblanc. It’s not out of the question.”

Unbelievable. It went on and on.

“He came to the Île de Sein to buy cola, chewing gum, chips, and beer, and then went out fishing? What did he do before visiting the supermarket?”

They had left the seals behind them, though not before Dupin had turned around for a last look.

“He said he’d been asleep a long while.”

It was absurd.

Kadeg’s phone went off. He took a few conspicuous steps on one side and picked up.

“Inspector Kadeg?”

He listened for some while.

“Three of his big boats? Three of the deep-sea trawlers?”

There came an answer, and then a follow-up question from Kadeg: “What about the coastal boats?”

Once again Kadeg stood there listening for a while. Then he terminated the call.

He came back to Dupin and Riwal with a meaningful expression on his face.

“Three of Morin’s deep-sea trawlers, which were in the Douarnenez harbor, had left at the same time. They weren’t supposed to go out to sea until tomorrow.”

Dupin ran his fingers through his hair. That was no coincidence either.

“Where are his other big boats?” Dupin asked. He recalled six of them, if he remembered correctly.

“Between Scotland and Ireland. Far away. Too far.”

“He’ll have sent all his coastal fishermen out,” Riwal said grimly.

“Without doubt,” Kadeg said.

Dupin wasn’t in the least surprised. That was why Morin had needed to get his strength back. To launch a major operation.

“The search for her still won’t be easy,” Riwal mumbled. “The sea is big. And the woman in question could have been on land long ago.”

“Could we have Morin’s fleet followed?” Dupin asked.

“Even if we wanted to, we don’t have enough boats.”

“Keep going. What about Jumeau? Where has he holed up?”

They had set off again. Now in a line the other way around: Kadeg, Riwal, Dupin, one on the heels of the other. They would soon have completed the entire circuit of the island.

“I got to him first. To the north of Sein, where he was yesterday. He claimed to have spent the whole time in that region, which would have been about ten sea miles away.”

“Of course.” That too had been vague. As was more or less in the nature of things, Jumeau too had been out at sea. To measure distances and times and make estimates on the sea they had to combine engine power, plus the strength of both waves and currents. All of which necessarily complicated the calculations and left them extremely elastic.

“Frédéric Carrière, Morin’s bolincheur,” Kadeg began again. “He was just two sea miles from Ouessant at two fifteen. That’s not far from the area we’re talking about. He was seen from the other boat, a bolincheur that had nothing to do with Morin. Carrière himself said he had been a lot farther north. Almost outside national waters. That means he was lying, that he lied to me directly.”

Maybe Morin’s fishermen really had played a central role in this drama.

“Call him, Kadeg and—” Dupin cut himself short. He had stopped dead. As if he had been struck by lightning.

“What was that you just said, Riwal?”

The inspector turned round in confusion. “What did I say? In connection with Jumeau or Vaillant? The sea is big and—”

“No, no. The thing about the parc measuring station. That the Parc Iroise has a measuring station out there”—Dupin waved out into the murky gray, just like Riwal had done—“on an island, in the south of Molène, you said, more or less close to where the business with Morin took place.”

“Yes, the Île de Trielen. But…”

“Wait a minute,” Dupin said. He had speedily produced his cell phone. He had already called that number today.

Riwal and Kadeg stood clueless in front of him. It took a while.

“Hello?”

A cheery female voice. Full of spark.

“Am I speaking with Monsieur Leblanc’s assistant?”

“That’s me.”

“Commissaire Dupin. I came by yesterday…”

“I remember.”

“Just one question. When Monsieur Leblanc does his Friday tour around the measuring stations, what route does he take?”

“Always the same: Sein, Trielen, Ouessant, Béniguet, then Rostudel and the Crozon peninsula.”

Dupin fell silent briefly.

“Trielen, the island to the south of Molène?”

“Exactly.”

“Always the same route, in the same order?”

“Only in extremely bad weather does he make a change. Trielen is the most difficult, what with the swell and the currents. In difficult conditions he skips the island and collects the data the following week.”

“What about today?”

“I think,” she began, then hesitated. “To be honest I don’t know. We’ve been waiting for a heavy storm since midday. But on the other hand the sea so far has remained calm. Should I ask him?”

“No. Leave it for now. I’ll call him myself. Thank you.”

Riwal and Kadeg had come closer and closer to the commissaire as he spoke on the phone. Kadeg was first to speak.

“Leblanc told me he was going directly to Ouessant. He didn’t mention Trielen. He must have canceled that stop today.”

“You think,” Riwal said sharply, “Leblanc was on Trielen, don’t you, boss? In which case he could well be our man.”

Dupin was silent.

“But even if he had been on Trielen and Morin had been waiting for him there, and that would fit perfectly…” Riwal paused. “How could we prove it? Somebody would have to have seen Leblanc. And that’s extremely unlikely, particularly in this weather. Out of the question, effectively.”

Dupin remained silent.

Unfortunately Riwal was right. It had felt like an unexpected inspiration—the sort of thing they desperately needed.

“There has to be a way.” Dupin’s sentence sounded like a prayer.

“I want to speak to Vaillant. He knows…”

Dupin froze again. And a moment later he had his phone to his ear again. He called the same number once more.

“Hello?”

“There’s something else I need to know. The readings Monsieur Leblanc takes, and uploads onto his computer.” All of a sudden he was feverish; something else had just occurred to him. “You only see the values when they’re in the system, correct? When Leblanc gets back to the office. I mean that’s when he feeds them into the system, and not by wire beforehand?”

“No, only then.”

“And if he erased them beforehand, you would never see them.”

“That’s correct.” He could hear justified confusion in the assistant’s voice. “I’ve already spoken on the phone with Monsieur Leblanc. There’s a couple more things I have to clear up with him before the weekend. And as you asked, he did leave Trielen out for now today, because he thought the storm would be well under way by now. But he’s going to pass by there now, on his way to the Île de Béniguet.”

“I…”

For seconds Dupin was incapable of saying any more because of the force with which the thought had shot through him. And this time it was a crystal-clear thought. One that illuminated everything. Dupin was sure of it. “Did you tell Monsieur Leblanc that I had asked about his route?”

“Only in passing.”

She could hardly have done otherwise.

That was it. That was the solution.

“I need Goulch. He has to pick us up immediately.”

Riwal and Kadeg stared at the commissaire.

“No time for explanations, Riwal, tell Goulch he needs to come here right now.”

Dupin had left the path and walked over to the water. They needed to be quick. Quicker than him. Or else the game was lost.

“Where should he pull in here?” Riwal already had his phone at his ear. He could hear the urgency in Dupin’s tone of voice.

“He needs to get here immediately.”

It was serious for Dupin. He kept on walking toward the sea.

It was going to be tight. He needed not to destroy the evidence. It had to be there. Dupin had reached the water. He looked around. There was no sign of sand or gravel, just huge black rocks. Luckily it was high tide. Maybe Goulch would be able to make it some way or other after all. That water was dark gray, somber. There were thick mats of seaweed.

A moment later Riwal and Kadeg were next to him.

“Goulch is coming.”

“Good.” Dupin was deep in thought.

“Where are we going to?” Kadeg’s question was cautious, not pushy; even he seemed to feel that this wasn’t the moment to be outspoken. Dupin didn’t hear a word. He had begun to pace up and down, his head bowed.

“The Bir will be here in a second,” Riwal said. He seemed to want to calm the commissaire.

All of a sudden, Dupin came to a stop, deep determination on his face. The next minute he stormed off, straight into the sea. Kadeg and Riwal stood there, open-mouthed, without moving from the spot.

Dupin rushed into the water up to his knees, then to his waist. Then he stopped, not feeling anything of the chill of the sea. He waited.

“Boss, this wasn’t a good idea.” Riwal had finally got moving and rushed down to the water’s edge. Suddenly there was a loud noise—the twin engines of Goulch’s boat, coming from the right, even if it still couldn’t be seen in the pea-soup fog.

“Here, we’re over here,” Dupin called as loudly as he could.

“Got you, Commissaire.”

Goulch, calm itself, as always. He was speaking through a megaphone, clear and easy to make out. It only took a moment for Dupin to see the shape of the Bir.

“I’ll send out the tender, Commissaire, but I’m not coming much closer.”

“That’ll take too long.”

Dupin walked forward, briskly if a little more carefully than minutes before. It wasn’t easy to keep his balance, with the ground stony and covered in seaweed. The water was up to his chest. And now he could feel it. Sixteen degrees, Dupin guessed. Or fifteen. Or fourteen.

“Watch out, boss! You’ll lose your footing!” Riwal’s voice betrayed the fact he could see catastrophe staring them in the face.

Dupin stopped one last time. There were still ten meters to the boat. Then without taking a single step farther, he slid completely into the water.

And swam.

He swam up to the high stern. Goulch had been watching everything and run to the rear of the boat with two crew members.

Riwal and Kadeg were now also wading into the water. Deeper and deeper until they began swimming. Faster toward the end; it was clear the commissaire wasn’t going to wait for them.

Dupin had reached the boat, the steps of the flat stern. With Goulch’s help he was immediately on board. One of the others handed him a blanket, but Dupin turned it down.

“To Trielen. As fast as possible,” Dupin said. His heart was hammering madly.

“Got it,” Goulch said and vanished into the bridge.

Riwal and Kadeg did the crawl the last few meters. They heaved themselves on board just as the engines roared into life.

---

“We’re here!”

Dupin had joined Goulch on the bridge during the high-speed trip. His polo shirt, pants, shoes, and socks were saturated with seawater but he didn’t notice. He had strained to keep a lookout the whole way, despite how crazy it was. The murky air seemed to have become even more impenetrable.

“There are two passages.” Goulch had a detailed map chart on his impressive monitor. “The measuring station is here at the narrow end. It looks as if you could get to the station in the same time from both north and south. We’re coming from the north.”

Kadeg and Riwal had in the meantime pushed in to join Goulch and Dupin, which made it very crowded on the bridge.

There was still nothing of the island to be seen: no rocks, no silhouettes.

“How close can we get?”

“Just a few meters, and that’s it. Even at high tide.”

“Isn’t there a pier?”

“No. You need a tender.”

“Turn the engines off, Goulch.”

As they couldn’t see anything, they had to work with their ears. But above all they had to hope they wouldn’t be too late. From one moment to the next everything fell silent.

Totally silent. All that could be heard was the gentle slapping of the water as the boat slid through it.

“Three possibilities,” Dupin said in a subdued voice. “He may already have gone again, so far that we can’t hear his boat anymore; he could be here now on the island but with his engines off, in which case he knows someone else has arrived; or he might still be on his way here and we’ll soon hear his boat.”

Nobody said anything for a while.

Dupin ran up to the stern. “We’ll go onshore. I want to get to the station.”

“This time I’d advise taking the tender,” Goulch said.

Suddenly they could make out shapes, dark low rocks in silhouette. Maybe twenty meters away. They really were next to the island.

“It’ll be quick,” Goulch said. He pressed a big yellow button, and the two massive arms released the tender to the water.

“Good.” With that modest comment, Dupin was already standing on the hard rubber of the tender. Kadeg and Riwal followed.

“Take this with you.” Goulch handed the commissaire a walkie-talkie radio. “I’ll stay right here with the boat. When you reach land, the station will be about a hundred meters to the right. Directly on the water.”

Dupin nodded.

Goulch released the tender.

Kadeg and Riwal had each grabbed a paddle, and pushed the boat off.

It glided toward the rocks almost silently. Instinctively Dupin reached for his gun.

In just a few meters they reached the island.

Riwal kept an eye on the spot where they were to get out. Still not a single other sound to be heard. No seagulls here, no people. Nothing.

Riwal was first to get out of the boat. “It’s fine here.”

Dupin did the same, then Kadeg. The water was up to their hips.

There was no doubt about one thing: if Leblanc was already on the island, he knew they were too, but not where exactly. He wouldn’t be able to see them either. Dupin waded to the shore.

He climbed onto the dark rocks until he reached the stubby grass. He headed right, as Goulch had said, the inspectors two or three meters behind him.

It was eerie. The thick pea soup, the absolute silence, as if nature, the island itself, and the sea were all holding their breath.

Dupin moved slowly, his hand on his Sig Sauer.

After a while the land went uphill.

To the right, on the rocks by the sea, they could see concrete constructions, probably a form of defense for the measuring equipment. All of a sudden there was a mighty noise.

Dupin had immediately identified it: the howling of a boat engine.

He was there now.

“It’s coming from the other side of the island.” Riwal had immediately shot off, Kadeg too. Even Dupin didn’t hesitate. The sound had died down a little but was still constant.

They ran over grass and stone without seeing where they were going. Heading for the source of the noise. The island was larger than Dupin had thought.

They reached the shore. And could see nothing here either at first.

The boat had to be farther to the left. The rocks looked higher and steeper than on the other side. They needed to take care not to slip and fall. They could break their arms or legs.

Just a few meters on, they spotted the boat. Dupin recognized it straightaway: a Zodiac. They could see a line that was provisionally tied to a prominent rock.

There was nobody to be seen.

“He’s left it ticking over on idle.”

Of course, Riwal was right. Even on their way here, Dupin had noticed the monotony of the engine noise.

It all happened in a fraction of a second. Dupin turned with a sudden jerk and ran back in the direction they had just come.

“Back! All back! To the measuring post. As fast as possible.”

He’d been leading them by the nose. It was a decoy. And they’d fallen for it.

He had wanted to pull them away from the measuring station. And he’d succeeded. That was how Dupin knew that it was actually all about the station.

The commissaire ran as fast as he could. It was unbelievable. Would it all fail as stupidly as this? At the very last minute? All because of a stupid trick?

Without slowing down he pulled out his gun.

“Police! Stay away from the station,” he called as loudly as he could, into the murky soup.

He ran on without waiting for a response.

“I’m about to shoot. Get away from the station, and put your hands up.”

No reaction.

Still running, he raised his gun to the sky.

And pulled the trigger.

Once, twice, three times.

There was no reaction.

Before long he could see water again. They were back on the side of the island where they had moored. He heard Riwal and Kadeg behind him and veered left.

His sense of direction had let him down. A few meters more and he came across the concrete construction again, the protection for the measuring post.

If the whole station was laid out like the one on Sein, the shed should also be nearby. Dupin stumbled, nearly falling over, then he ran on.

Suddenly he stopped still.

To the left was an outline of a shape. That had to be it. A bit farther and he could see it: a low shed made of concrete, with a door on the right. It would be a matter of seconds, split seconds. With one leap he was in. Ready, his pistol leveled.

Nobody. Kadeg and Riwal stormed into the room after him.

“He’s not here,” Kadeg gasped.

“Never mind.” Dupin had already caught his breath again. He seemed fully concentrated.

His eyes searched the room. The inside too was like that on Sein. An aluminum table, a chair in front of it. Technical equipment on the wall above the table, a box, small diodes, blinking red.

He had to remember. Where was the cable connected?

On the side somewhere.

Right.

There were two connectors here. Two USB connectors. Normal USB connectors, if Dupin was right.

“I want to know what’s going on here, once and for all,” Kadeg barked, no longer trying to play it calm. “What is this all about, Commissaire?”

Before Dupin could answer, a howl of engines erupted.

“He’s escaping,” Riwal said, and leapt toward the door. “He’s had one over on us again!”

“Let him go. If he’s already been in the station, then we’ve lost everything anyhow. And if he hasn’t, then we’ve everything we need.”

Dupin’s walkie-talkie sounded. “Goulch here. It sounds as if a boat is leaving the island. What should I do?”

“That’s Leblanc. Follow him.”

“Should we arrest him if we catch him?”

“I’ll tell you that then.”

“Good. Over.”

Dupin turned to the measuring apparatus. “We need a laptop here.” He hadn’t thought that far.

High-powered engines fired up again. Once again the noise was deafening.

“You want…” Riwal began, then paused, and beamed—he had understood: it burst out of him: “You want to link up to the apparatus here. There is the time the last data was registered. He had been here after all, he lied to us. Leblanc had been here and taken the readings. Just before the business with Morin. That here—that’s proof,” he said delightedly. “Incontrovertible proof. The measuring station will tell us. That’s why. That’s why he had to come back. He needed to erase all trace of the transmission. The time on it betrays him.” You could literally see the jigsaw puzzle coming together behind Riwal’s eyes.

“He was especially worried after his assistant told him you had asked about his route. The time the data was taken down was recorded in two places: his own computer and here. He can easily erase it from his own computer, but to erase it here, he had to come back,” he concluded. “There was no way Leblanc went direct from Sein to Ouessant; he was here. And this was where Morin tried to tackle him. Here on the island! He laid in wait for him here. Presumably as Leblanc was trying to leave the island again. He had to have transmitted the data again.”

That was more or less the conclusion Dupin had come to also.

“We’ll have a laptop sent from Molène. They must have two police boats on the island.” Kadeg was already on the job. He left the shed to make the call.

“In any case, we now know it was him,” Riwal said.

“But if he managed to erase the data from the midday reading, then our hands are empty.”

“Just the fact that he found us on the island and made fools of us is hardly definitive evidence.” Kadeg came back. “They’re bringing us a laptop. It won’t be long.” His tone made clear he’d roused somebody important.

“Good.”

Dupin walked slowly around the room. He was extremely calm but with an internal tension that could go off at any time.

It was a terrible few minutes. They had nothing to do but wait. Have patience.

Dupin tried as hard as he could to divert his thoughts. Another question came to the fore. Where was the object at the center of all this? The thing Kerkrom and Darot had unearthed? Dupin was convinced that in that respect nothing had changed. It was all about the find. It was at the heart of everything. But what was it about the object? Now that he knew they were after Leblanc, not Morin—at least as far as the murders were concerned—then everything had changed. It wouldn’t have to do with a plank or the engine from a smuggler’s boat.

Dupin had intuitively left the two inspectors in peace. He continued walking around the room.

“Give the order to have Leblanc’s house searched. All the buildings and pieces of land that belong to him, or with which he has any connection. Sheds, storerooms, outbuildings, whatever. The same goes for the institute, all the buildings belonging to the Parc Iroise. On the Île Tristan in particular. But not only there. They also need to check out the other parc measuring stations. That announcement to the public should say we are searching for an item of value. Approximately one meter forty tall, possibly of gold.” Only then did he turn round to his inspectors. “I want a major operation.”

“Got it, boss,” Riwal said, relieved. Kadeg nodded brusquely. Both left the room, leaving Dupin on his own. He had come to a halt before the apparatus.

He stared at it without moving.

---