Kadeg brought the laptop over as if it were a holy object. He put it down on the narrow aluminum table with exaggerated care. Dupin was impatient.
“And here’s the USB cable,” Kadeg said as he pulled it out of his pants pocket.
Dupin took it and put it rapidly into the connector slot.
The laptop booted up. Riwal took over, standing in front of the keyboard. Kadeg yielded to him.
“Naturally we don’t have the program the institute uses to transmit and store the measurements. I’m trying to do it at OS level. All we need through the USB port of the apparatus is when it was last contacted.”
Dupin had only the faintest idea what the technical stuff Riwal was talking about meant. He couldn’t care less.
Riwal was typing enthusiastically.
“That’s not it.” A buzz, clicking keyboard, another buzz. “Not that either.”
A pause.
Riwal typed with all ten fingers.
“Shit!” Riwal took a deep breath. “But…” A sustained pause, then: “Yes!”
All of a sudden he was in top form.
There wasn’t much to see on the screen. Just at the bottom left edge, a row of commands. Letters, signs, numbers. In a tiny type size.
Dupin’s gaze hung on the final line:
Synchronizing run 22.06–13.25.
“That’s it, that’s our proof. Somebody here transmitted data at one twenty-five. That is reliable proof.”
Dupin stood there motionless. He didn’t say a word. For a few moments they stood in silent celebration.
Until a different noise struck them suddenly: furious, rattling rain. It had begun to hammer down as if from nowhere with apocalyptic strength.
Then an ear-splitting clap of thunder seemed to cause heaven and earth to tremble.
The storm. At last it had arrived.
“Tell Goulch, he’s to arrest Leblanc as soon as he’s caught his boat.” There was a small smile on Dupin’s face.
“Goulch got in touch as soon as we were outside. They have Leblanc’s boat on their radar, they’re on it. But he’s doing the best he can to shake off the Bir. He’s making zigzag maneuvers at breakneck speed. Despite the raging sea he’s heading for the little islands near Quéménès where the water is very shallow.”
A gigantic blinding flash illuminated the sky and the island, a stroke of lightning that seemed to have come through everything, even the massive walls. The thunder that came with it was instantaneous. The crash was even louder than the first.
“We need to get away from the island and onto solid dry land as fast as we can. It’s really going to take off now.” Riwal sounded seriously worried, which was no good sign, given that of the three of them he was toughest in extreme weather conditions.
On top of the rain, thunder, and lightning, now came ferocious gusts of wind.
The boat that had brought the laptop was now moored just about where Goulch had been. Two police officers had come to the island with it and were now waiting by the tender. Kadeg’s forehead too was now creased with worry lines.
“Let’s go.”
The commissaire had extremely unwelcome memories of a storm on the Glénan islands, which had ended up with him being forced to spend an unexpected night on a miserable folding cot in a damp, narrow room along with Riwal and another policeman. And there wasn’t even a folding cot to be seen here.
“I’m going to leave the readout from the laptop as it is. But I’m taking a screenshot for safety’s sake.”
A few clicks and Riwal closed the computer.
“How are we going to get it onto the boat dry?”
A good question. They couldn’t just tuck it under their clothing. That was already soaked from them coming through the sea.
Dupin looked around. In one corner, next to all the other junk, there were some pieces of polystyrene. “That’ll have to do.” Dupin grabbed it. “We can squeeze the laptop in between.” They were dirty and smeared, but dry.
“Okay,” Riwal said. Dupin laid the laptop between the two sheets of polystyrene foam.
Another mighty crash of lightning, another mighty thunderbolt.
“To the boat!”
They stopped briefly in the doorway.
“Kadeg, as soon as we get to land, you make certain that the laptop gets to Quimper safely and as fast as possible.”
“And where are we headed now?”
“To the Île Tristan.”
“To the institute?”
“Yes.”
They ran off. Into the monstrous rain. Into the storm that was now right above their heads.
The sixty-seven minutes on the police boat from Trielen to the Île Tristan on that twenty-second of June were—Dupin had absolutely no doubt—the most horrid, terrifying, unspeakable of his life.
It hadn’t been long from them setting off until the symptoms of massive seasickness manifested themselves. Not just the basic symptoms of seasickness, such as nausea, dizziness, and vomiting, but at the same time every other possible reaction that seasickness could provoke.
Dupin hadn’t just gone pallid, but a pale white, and a thick film of sweat had covered his forehead. His heartbeat hadn’t just increased, his heart was pounding like mad. Just as his headache pounded. And his head was not just dizzy but swirling.
This was no matter of pitching or yawing—in most people seasickness was caused by one or the other—this was both at once. The most terrifying sensation was not just that the boat and he himself along with it and the whole crew were inescapably being tossed forward and backward but that at the same time the whole of the sea, the Atlantic itself, was doing the same. It was as if the Earth was being tilted, the whole planet, a sudden shift in the Earth’s axis, some cosmic catastrophe. It was remarkable how long panic attacks could last.
It was a nightmare.
The previous day’s trip, which had severely stressed Dupin, mentally and physically, had in hindsight been child’s play.
Comical as it sounded, he had been taken by surprise. He had been so taken up on Trielen by the new developments, so fervently obsessed with new thoughts, that when it came to the journey he had assumed things would be as they usually were at such moments of an investigation when it came to dealing with the rest of reality: for the period of his feverish obsession with the solution of the case, the remainder of reality would sink into the background without any involvement from him. It would temporarily cease to exist. But not today. The seasickness had won out.
The mountainous waves had become monsters, totally erratic and at irregular intervals, as if a titan in a fuming rage had slammed a mighty fist down here and there across the surface of the water, each time creating new, unpredictable, dramatic spurts of water. There was no more wind anymore, just foam and spray with every breath. Even the sound of the water was deafening, the sound of the water, not the storm. When the monstrous crest of the waves broke, the water was blown away horizontally, something Dupin had never seen before.
The Atlantic had literally roared. Dupin had always thought the term, which he knew from lots of stories of great storms, was a metaphor, a spectacular poetic picture. This was no metaphor. The sea really could do all of that. It roared. It raged. Riwal had on countless occasions explained the signs that indicated the classification of storms. Now Dupin had experienced all of them. Wind strength nine: severe storm, meters-high waves with spray blowing, sea begins to roll; wind strength ten: severe storm, crushing waves, higher still, in excess of hundred kilometers per hour; wind strength eleven: hurricane-style storm, sea roars; wind strength twelve, hurricane, a pure hell of white foam.
On top of that Dupin was certain that sooner or later a lightning bolt would strike the boat. Given the monstrous number of lightning bolts that continually seemed to strike nearby it was a statistical miracle that they hadn’t been hit.
He wasn’t helped by the expression on Riwal’s face, which had gone stony as soon as he’d lain down. The inspector didn’t say a word throughout the whole journey, and nor had Kadeg, whose face had gone chalky white. Only once, and it could have been his imagination, Riwal had suddenly turned to Dupin and with a horrorstruck face said something that was hard to understand in the noise of the storm. He thought he had heard “There’s no escape,” but that was obviously nonsense. Like the whole scene the previous morning, with the seven graves. It was ridiculous, but involuntarily the thought of the curse had come back to him during the crossing. In confused, flashing pictures Dupin had seen himself in the cholera graveyard, standing by the seventh grave.
The stupid thing was that even back on solid ground the heaving and lurching—though not the spinning—didn’t go away. And still hadn’t: even when Dupin was on the soil of the Île Tristan, he was still reeling.
Even while leaving the boat Dupin had had to hold on for every step he took, last of all onto the railing. Now, with nothing to hold on to, he had to be careful not to stumble.
Determinedly, he tried to sway in the direction of the institute, which Kadeg and Riwal were already hurrying toward with fast strides. The nausea was still bad too.
The rain hadn’t even relented any, it had just got seriously colder, dropped a few degrees.
Dupin was soaked through. The only good thing, if it could be put like that, was that he wasn’t aware of just how miserable a state he was in. Mainly that he was freezing. He headed for the wall of the house between two windows. He wasn’t yet in a state to carry on a sensible conversation, not even half sensible.
He would lean here for a bit.
As soon as he felt the wall at his back he forced himself to breathe in and out in a regular rhythm: to hold his breath for five seconds after breathing in, and another five seconds after breathing out. A method that Docteur Garreg had recommended for extremely stressful situations.
The most important thing, and hopefully that would help, was that he had to get his concentration back on the case, pull his thoughts together. Bring them into order, which above all meant consistently concentrating on the matter in hand, the searching of all the rooms with any relation to Pierre Leblanc and his arrest.
It took some minutes before he trusted himself to carefully move away from the wall. Coffee would be fatal to his stomach still, even if he needed it more right now than he ever had done in his life.
Even in the entranceway the institute was abuzz. A troop of six uniformed police came toward him, led by Inspector Kadeg, who was already telling them: “Then we’ll take a second look at the technical building. And properly this time!”
Precisely the building Dupin was most interested in.
One of the officers, a chubby young kid, stopped in front of Dupin.
“We just searched the building systematically, Monsieur le Commissaire,” he said self-confidently, clearly. “And found nothing.”
Dupin just nodded. It still wouldn’t be a mistake to take another look. The first time couldn’t have been all that thorough, the team couldn’t have had all that much time.
Dupin wondered if he should join up with Kadeg. But he ought to take an overview first. He stumbled on, through the small hall, then another door to a sort of reception, where he spotted Riwal. He still wasn’t well, not nearly.
Riwal came toward him, clearly excited.
“Leblanc has now turned toward Le Conquet, maybe to take shelter from the storm. Goulch is still on his heels. Even though, if it comes down to it, Leblanc’s Zodiac is faster and more maneuverable. The crazy maneuvers won’t help him, though. Goulch will soon get him. I suspect you’ll see Leblanc shortly.”
“Shortly?” Every word was an effort. “Here, on the island?”
Dupin couldn’t wait.
“Here in the institute?”
“Here.”
There was no way the commissaire was getting on a boat again in this storm, even for the two hundred meters to Douarnenez. Even the thought of it brought on a new wave of dizziness.
“Okay, boss. An initial search of Leblanc’s house has been completed.” Riwal sounded frustrated. “As well as that of the little weekend house he owns. Not far from the Pointe du Raz, in Kermeur. Both without result. The same goes for the rooms here. So far nothing found. And the object isn’t small. We’re seeking out people in Leblanc’s circle who might know whether he owns other buildings. Professionally and privately.”
Dupin winced.
He needed to lean on the wall for support. He had that terrifying feeling again; to be more precise he once again actually experienced the earth falling steeply away in front of him.
He waited, took deep breaths; his five-second ritual.
“All okay, boss?” There was deep concern in Riwal’s voice.
“I need to go out for a moment, Riwal.”
It was only after Dupin had been walking for quite a while that he felt better.
The fresh air did him good. The wind and rain had died down a bit.
Only slowly the horrible sensation diminished and he could consciously get his thoughts back into order. He had to go back, continue the conversation with Riwal. There were still a lot of important points.
He turned round. After a while he made out the brightly lit windows of the institute.
And a figure, hurrying toward him.
“Boss, is that you?”
Riwal.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
“Everything’s fine, I…”
Yet again Dupin winced.
But this time it wasn’t dizziness, but a thought. A thought that came as if from nowhere. He shoved a hand in his pants pocket. His Clairefontaine.
Being given a bath so many times—in the Atlantic, in the Breton rain—wouldn’t have done it any good.
“What are you intending, boss? Shouldn’t we go back in? It’s not raining quite so hard, but…”
“You go on,” Dupin said absently.
His notebook did indeed look in a miserable state. The cardboard cover was soaked through, and the thin protective film had come away on all sides. Despite the fact that the notebook pages had been pressed tightly together in his pants pocket, the water had naturally soaked all the way through from the cover to the inside.
It was only a thought. But it could just be right. Even if it sounded fantastic. But what did that mean?
“I want to take a look at something, Riwal.”
Dupin’s eyes glanced along the island path: without intending to he had walked quite a long way.
“Should I…” Riwal hesitated, “come with you to look?”
“No, no. It’s just … just a thing.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Absolutely.” Dupin did his best to sound steady. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He turned around and marched off again. Riwal shrugged despairingly when he knew the commissaire couldn’t see him.
Dupin’s footsteps were fast and determined.
He didn’t need the Clairefontaine. At least not to be sure of what it was the wonderful owner of the Ty Mad hotel had mentioned yesterday. The semi-derelict pier at the western end of the island—and the grottoes. Grottoes that served as entranceways to underground caves and passageways, believed to be legendary, where the fantastic treasures of the fearsome pirates lay hidden.
Leblanc could only have taken the object off Sein in the boat. A pier, therefore, would almost certainly have played a part in his choice of hiding place. It was like in Kerkrom’s house: they had to think absolutely concretely and practically, from Leblanc’s point of view. Where and how was it going to be easiest to move such a heavy object? So that it would be best hidden? The island rose substantially toward the center. The sky was still letting only a little light through; here and there you could see little more than the outlines of low-hanging cloud clusters.
High trees stood on both sides of the path, making it into a wild avenue. If Dupin’s sense of direction was still more or less functioning, the path ran virtually straight.
The commissaire panted for breath. He had set a high pace. But internally he was far from stable. His moment of inspiration, which was extremely interesting, had now been followed by huge doubt. Very basic doubts that had reversed his conviction at one go. What if the whole story of the “find” really was just a fantasy? If the thing under the tarpaulin really was just a wooden beam for the house? What if it had just been something banal standing in Kerkrom’s bedroom that had left the notches? What if his own fantasy had simply run away with him, as so often happened with Riwal? And the business with Leblanc and the island, maybe even that was nothing out of the ordinary? What if it really was all about Morin’s boat? In some complicated way that he simply didn’t understand, didn’t remotely imagine? Or was it all something different altogether? And that out here on the island he was just chasing a figment of his imagination?
The sudden doubts—which hopefully were just the results of his distraught condition—had caused him to slow his steps.
Nonetheless he carried on. His eyes focused straight ahead.
In the meantime the heavy banks of cloud had been ripped open everywhere, and in a curious way Dupin was glad of it, genuinely relieved. Above anything else it seemed to have restored a touch of reality. The dominance of the obscure dark matter that had unleashed the capricious storm was at an end.
The path now turned steeply downward, toward the sea. Dupin had to be careful. Before long he saw the outline of a building. An old stone house, without a roof for the most part, the wall on one side totally collapsed. The path led right past it.
Then Dupin made out the semi-dilapidated pier. There were only a few meters left. One of the huge storms must have long ago taken the rest with it.
Even if the weather seemed to have calmed down, the Atlantic was still working at it. Dupin went down to the start of the pier—paying attention to keeping a safe distance of a few meters from the tossing sea. It was easily possible to dock a Zodiac. A good place to go ashore. Dupin turned around. Concentrated. Leblanc would definitely have had something to help him, like Kerkrom’s boat trailer. It was unimaginable otherwise.
The old stone house was some twenty meters away. The path was in reasonably good condition, stony, but sound. Another path, also reasonably smooth, led off to the right. Behind it were huge rocks and a warning sign: Keep Clear—Danger of Death. And another with a symbol Dupin knew well from the Brittany coast: cliffs from which the rocks had broken off and crashed to the ground. With a large red exclamation mark next to it.
Dupin headed on along the shore path. A few gentle turns, the cliff wall to the left, the sea to the right. Twenty, thirty meters.
Then the path ended abruptly in a sort of stone platform. Two jagged, tall, dark holes were visible in the rocks. One directly behind the platform, one that required clambering over a few meters of rough gravel. In this weather, and this light, they looked like wide-open jaws. Next to the pair of them was another “Keep Clear—Danger of Death” sign.
Dupin pulled out his phone, one of the modern “outdoor” models that Nolwenn had equipped the whole commissariat with, which had withstood the past few hours better than he had expected.
He turned on the flashlight function. It would be a laughably weak light, but it was all he had. Without hesitation he entered the first grotto.
Inside it was pitch black. And astoundingly cold.
Dupin stopped and shone the light around the stone chamber. The phone’s light reached a lot farther than he would have thought possible, revealing imposing dimensions. Not so much in the width or length—the grotto was no more than ten meters long, and maybe six wide. But in height it was another matter altogether. The light disappeared above, with no ceiling to be seen. In some places the rocks glistened brightly when Dupin shone the light on them, patches of mineral: quartz.
There were thick layers of dried seaweed on the floor, with only a narrow stone corridor left free in the middle. The seaweed would be brought in during high tides and heavy storms. It seemed it had piled up here over the years. There was no sign anywhere of any activity suggesting that anybody had been here recently. Dupin walked around a bit, shining his light on the ground. The grotto had to be astonishingly dry; the seaweed crackled under his shoes.
He stood there a few moments, ankle-deep in seaweed, and involuntarily shook his head. He turned around and headed quickly toward the exit.
The second grotto was surely twice as large as the first. Here too there was no ceiling to be seen. But in contrast to the first, the rocky floor here was clear, no sign of a single piece of seaweed. On the other hand, directly behind the entrance on the left, there was a crack, about one meter fifty high and a meter broad. Dupin shone the light inside. It didn’t reach very far, but far enough to see that from the crack there ran a sort of natural passage in the rocks.
Should he explore the passage? Or would he do better to come back and do it with reinforcements and suitable equipment? Such as a proper light. Riwal would know what to think about such a spelunking expedition.
Dupin hesitated. Then he ducked down, ready to go in.
The minute he set foot in the crack, leading with his head in an extremely cramped position, something suddenly occurred to him. He nearly rocketed up.
A mental image of the cave with the seaweed, when he had pointed his phone at the ground.
Something had flashed, he had just seen it from the corner of his eye, which was probably why he hadn’t immediately noticed it, because the quartz had shone in various places. But when he thought back to it now, it was clear to him that it wasn’t just the walls that had glittered, but something else. And that something had been on the ground.
He turned around quickly, left the cave, and just a few seconds later was back in the first grotto, out of breath.
The seaweed looked the same everywhere. He would just have to try. He squatted down in the middle, holding the phone flashlight toward the ground, and turned slowly in a circle.
Nothing.
He went two steps farther, did the same again.
Still nothing.
And again.
Had he just imagined it?
“What a load of shit.”
Dupin stood up. The softly spoken words echoed notably, his voice sounding strangely distorted.
“Then that’s the way it is,” he muttered defiantly.
He went straight over to the right-hand corner by the entrance to the grotto, then turned round and began systematically pushing the seaweed aside with his right foot.
The rocky ground was uneven, as one might expect, with dips and cracks that were covered over by the seaweed at the surface. He made slow progress. It hadn’t been possible to see that the layer of seaweed reached up to half a meter in thickness in places. Then the next minute it would be no more than a few centimeters. It reminded him of autumns in his childhood when he would run through thick layers of fallen leaves, or when he whirled around in the heap of them that his father had carefully stacked up in the garden.
Suddenly he lost his footing. For some reason or other he slipped. He swayed, tried in vain to keep his balance, then fell over. Straight forward, instinctively putting out both hands in front of him. And hit something hard. A piercing pain in his hands, arms, and shoulders overwhelmed all other sensations for a few seconds.
He tried to get his bearings.
He was lying on his right shoulder. Thousands of tiny shreds of seaweed swirled through the air. He coughed.
His phone with the flashlight app must have fallen into the carpet of seaweed. It took a while for his eyes to accustom to the darkness. The only light was a dim glow coming from the entrance to the grotto. Dupin tried to prop himself up, only to be rewarded by a strong, sharp pain in both wrists. He carefully felt around with his left hand.
He felt the edge of a rock, about forty centimeters high. Now he understood. He had fallen into a depression in the rock floor. A real dip. It had to be a few square meters in size. He now noticed that his shin too was aching badly. He must have landed with it on the sharp edge. Dupin moved his leg carefully. Even though he was a bit stunned from the impact, the pain wasn’t as bad as in his wrists. But this was not a rock ledge, it felt quite different.
In the semidarkness he could make out a sharp, straight line in the seaweed. Dark. There was something lying there.
He quickly brushed some seaweed out of the way, and felt the object. The upper surface felt soft, organic, but below it was hard. He rashly got to his knees, ignoring the pain in his hands.
A sort of brace, four-sided. Maybe fifteen centimeters long, five wide.
He tried to move the thing a bit. Impossible. He hastily felt his way upward.
Then he stopped as if struck by thunder.
He lost his breath.
A crossbar. A right angle.
He exposed the horizontal bar completely. It was shorter than the other.
He still couldn’t breathe.
A cross.
It was a cross.
A large cross, made of a heavy material.
Dupin felt goose bumps creep all over him.
It was completely mad. Too mad. It couldn’t be true. Had he fallen on his head or something? Was he hallucinating? But the pain in his hands—for example—felt absolutely real. It lasted until he got free of the spell he had fallen into.
He shook himself and looked back at it. He couldn’t make out much. It looked as if a sort of moss had formed over the brace.
All of a sudden he found something lying right next to the cross. On the bare rocks.
His phone. It was only when he had it in his hand that he realized that the display had shattered. The lower part of the glass was missing altogether, while there were holes in the housing. But the worst was that the light no longer worked. Dupin pressed the On button but nothing happened.
He needed to get up. No matter how painful it would be. And it was. Not just his hands, arms, and shoulders hurt like hell, but all his other bones too.
He squatted down, which hurt no less.
A shining material appeared. That must have been what he had previously seen glittering in the seaweed when he shone the light on the ground.
In the light it was hard to tell if it was golden; but it certainly couldn’t be ruled out. Dupin used his fingers to touch the place. And felt a notch. With a sharp edge. The material was damaged, or to be more precise there was a bit missing. Not much: a long, thin piece.
Once again Dupin was frozen.
What was it Riwal had said about the thing Kerkrom had sent in?
The material test which the Paris laboratory had identified as pure gold?
Dupin sat up.
This had to be it.
Kerkrom and Darot really had found a cross. A golden cross. On the bottom of the sea. In Douarnenez Bay. They had brought it up in Kerkrom’s boat and taken it to her house. Leblanc had brought it here after murdering them.
Maybe they had involved both him and Professor Lapointe to examine their find. To work out what it really was. To decide what to do. Perhaps they then would have given the cross to a museum, a regional or national museum—and Leblanc wanted to do nothing of the kind. Or perhaps he had just somehow found out about it by chance and they didn’t know someone else was on to it.
In theory the cross could have been from any year at all; from the nineteenth, eighteenth, seventeenth centuries or even from the Middle Ages, no matter what Riwal’s cousin had said. There were the craziest stories, and history was full of them. Brittany had created so many saints after the end of the western Roman Empire, faith was so acute, who knew what people would have done to be as sure as they could of getting to heaven. Or what Napoleon’s troops had secretly brought back from their Russian campaign. From some immensely rich Orthodox church. There was without doubt an endless number of wholly realistic possibilities.
“I have to…” Dupin was speaking aloud. “… I have to fetch the others.” The loudly echoing sentence had the effect of building up his self-confidence.
He struggled to climb out of the dip in the ground and stared once again for a moment at the dark cross lying there. He saw it, and yet it seemed completely unreal. It was monstrous.
He turned around and headed as fast as he could toward the exit from the grotto.
Once outside he was blinded by the bright light. He had to hold his hand in front of his face.
The sky was torn open theatrically in places, with rays of sunshine breaking dramatically through chaotically jagged holes.
“A cross, Riwal. An … archeological find.”
The inspector’s eyes were open wide. Dupin thought he noticed a gentle shiver run through his inspector’s whole body. The fact was, it was just that which Riwal had expected, hoped, but now that it was reality it seemed to be too much for him. Something Dupin could easily understand.
Kadeg, standing next to him, was no less shocked.
“You think they…”
“Back to Leblanc. What’s happened, Riwal? Tell me.”
The two inspectors had stormed toward Dupin the minute he stepped into the institute. Riwal had excitedly reported something about Goulch, Leblanc, and “still on the run.” Dupin interrupted him: it just burst out of him. His discovery. He tried to tell them about it simply, remaining as prosaic as possible in his choice of words and manner. Out of the grotto, in broad daylight, the discovery seemed even more fantastic.
Riwal was still palpably under the influence of Dupin’s news, but was trying to pull himself together to present his report. “Just by the entry to the harbor, before turning past the rocks in the channel leading into the port, he suddenly spun the rudder round, turned the motor up to full, and shot off northward. You know how fast those Zodiacs are. But Goulch will get him whatever tricks he plays.”
“He doesn’t have a ghost of a chance,” Kadeg said. “There are by now also two speedboats of water police involved in the operation.”
“Good. We need four men for the grotto, I think.” Dupin was in a hurry.
“Do we have a car?”
“An old Land Rover Defender. We were about to take it out on a search. I was trying your phone the whole time, but—”
“Where is the car?”
“Just to the left behind the building when you come out.”
Dupin set off. The pain in various parts of his body had slowly eased, although that in his wrists had gotten worse.
Half a minute later they were standing, along with reinforcements, next to the Land Rover.
Dupin took a seat up front. He had difficulties climbing into the car. It was one of the many peculiarities of the vehicle that despite a built-in step it was necessary to pull yourself up by a handle.
Riwal let the engine rev up and then put his foot on the gas.
The vehicle’s violent jolting on the unsurfaced path made Dupin’s stomach churn again, but before long they had reached the half-collapsed house and jumped out into the open air.
Dupin headed in front, the rest of the troop behind him. The high rock walls, the short winding way along the shore, the little stony platform. The Keep Out signs.
At the entrance to the grotto, Dupin stood still for a moment. The others nearly walked into him. Then he went in.
Riwal, following directly behind him, turned on one of the powerful flashlights. On its own it illuminated the whole grotto. Others blazed on.
“There, in front.”
Dupin moved forward carefully. He had already reached the carpet of seaweed.
“Here! You have to be careful, it’s half a meter down, it’s easy to fall over. It’s underneath…”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
He had uncovered the cross. And pulled a serious amount of seaweed out of the dip. But now the dip was almost no longer visible, just a rocky edge at one point. The seaweed was spread evenly all round, creating an even surface. A gust of wind must have blown into the grotto and swept it all around, even though Dupin hadn’t felt a single breath of air.
He felt around with his right foot until he found the edge of the dip and then—extremely carefully—stepped into it.
“Here below the seaweed?”
Kadeg had also stepped down. Dupin didn’t react. He moved his right foot backward and forward in the mass of seaweed. Took one step forward and repeated the exercise. Kadeg copied him.
Riwal and the others had stayed by the edge, and were watching the commissaire and the inspector, shining their flashlights on the seaweed.
Nothing.
It was impossible.
“There has to be another dip.”
Riwal had gone a step farther into the cave.
That had to be it. Of course. Even if Dupin would have bet this was it. In fact, he was dead certain. Nevertheless.
The other policemen followed Riwal’s example and swarmed out.
“Here. There’s something here.”
Kadeg had squatted down.
Dupin walked around.
The inspector was holding up his hand in a comically triumphal manner, with Dupin’s broken phone in it. The commissaire had simply left it there.
Nobody said a word.
Dupin’s disbelief was soaring by the second.
It was one of the four other policemen who, after a period of depressed silence—and further futile combing through the seaweed—finally gave voice to the obvious.
“There’s nothing here. No cross. Nothing at all.”
“That’s completely impossible. It must be here. It was just there. In this cave. In this dip in the rock.”
“But no longer,” Kadeg said.
“I was only away for twenty minutes,” Dupin said. “From leaving the cave to the moment we entered, no more than twenty minutes passed.”
“It seems that was enough,” Kadeg said. “Enough for somebody to get the cross out of the cave. Or,” he added quietly, “there was no cross. If you didn’t have a light and your phone was broken, it must have been very dark here.”
What was that supposed to mean? That he had mistaken the edge of the rock for a large golden cross? That he had been hallucinating?
“After the journey on the boat,” Kadeg said without the slightest ill-meant nuance, which only added to the effect of his words, “completely blown away by the wind, Monsieur le Commissaire. I would describe it as seasick in the highest order. Something like that confuses everything, including sensory perceptions. And the mind. With after-effects that can last hours. Or, and this would be perfectly understandable, you hit your head somewhere on falling.”
Dupin was too busy with the situation to go into Kadeg’s impertinences.
“Maybe it was the other grotto, boss?” Riwal tried to keep on Dupin’s side. “Shouldn’t we search it too?”
It was well meant, but only made things worse. He wasn’t wrong. He had, even in the wake of the admittedly serious attack of seasickness, long since got his five senses back. He hadn’t had some pipe dream.
“It was here!”
The only possible, logical explanation was Kadeg’s first suggestion:
“Somebody has taken the cross. Somebody was watching me and then took it themselves.”
That meant, however, they had to have been working at lightning speed.
Without waiting for any of the others, Dupin headed for the exit.
“Whoever it was can’t be far away. Riwal, Kadeg, give the order to seal off the island and search it systematically.” Dupin knew he had already given the same order today on another island. “And they should deploy more boats and check all the ships in the vicinity of the island.” He hesitated, but only slightly, before adding: “Best of all, every boat in Douarnenez Bay. Every single one needs to be searched, big or small, no matter what its purpose is. And find out where Gochat, Jumeau, Vaillant, and Carrière are right now.” It was another order he had already given. “And what Morin is doing on Molène. I want you to speak to every one of them personally.”
He had had it. He had had the cross! Just twenty minutes ago. And then he had made a fatal mistake. He should never have left it here alone.
Leblanc could have worked out that they had begun searching on the Île Tristan. Did he have an accomplice? Had they been getting it wrong the whole time? If so, would he have warned him immediately after the incident with Morin? So that the accomplice had been on the ball all along, and either arrived when Dupin had already left the grotto, or while he was still there, but without Dupin noticing him? In that case he would have to have waited a bit in order to get the cross off the island.
That was how it would have been. Someone had stolen it from them.
Dupin ran to the pier, with Riwal, Kadeg, and the four uniformed police at their own distance after him. Puffing, he came to a stop at the pier, looked around, turned on his own axis, and scanned the sea and the island.
“We need to go up the hill. To a spot where we can see the surrounding area and the sea.”
Dupin sprinted off again, up the steep path.
“Up to the left.” Riwal was now hard on his heels. “I’ll show you.”
Dupin heard Kadeg, who had stayed behind on the pier, bellowing orders into his phone.
Dupin’s heart was pounding.
By now Riwal had reached the same point.
“Here, along here.” Riwal left the path. They ran cross-country between huge trees. Not long, but long enough to make Dupin’s wrists ache again from the constant impacts.
Then, suddenly, a breathtaking panorama opened up in front of them.
The whole bay of Douarnenez lay before them. The fifty meters above sea level was enough for an impressive outlook. And overview. Riwal had been right. At first Dupin stood dangerously close to the abyss.
Over the past few meters he had begun systematically to seek out the water. The sea was still wild. Huge waves were crashing against the cliffs. Dupin felt the fine spray in his face.
There wasn’t a boat to be seen. Not a single one.
“With a sea whipped up like that,” Riwal gasped, trying to calm his breath, “the smartest thing would be to take the left hand from the pier and straight along the coast, preferably into the Port de Plaisance in Douarnenez. There are dozens of boats there. Moor there to start with. And move the cross on by land, or wait and then head out at the same time as the other boats, when the sea has more or less calmed down.”
Dupin got the message immediately.
“Have the leisure boat harbors searched, every single boat.”
“Straightaway, boss.” Riwal got out his phone.
Dupin walked along the rocks for a bit, running his fingers through his hair. Again and again.
“To hell with it.”
The commissaire and his inspector had walked from the cliff to the vehicle next to the semi-dilapidated house, and from there driven back to the institute.
Kadeg and the four uniformed police officers had begun their search operation directly from the pier. Several other officers had joined them.
But with no luck so far, either on the island or the water. They had four boats out on the sea, and six police combing the leisure harbors.
Dupin had become grimly angry. Leblanc had pulled one over on them properly, and was still doing it with a vengeance, with his latest attempt to escape, above all with his chess games here on the island.
They shouldn’t underestimate him again. Leblanc was cold-blooded, cunning. He was one of those criminal types you shouldn’t trust with anything. Dupin knew the type. He was literally burning to get his hands on him.
He was furious at Leblanc, but it was primarily anger at himself that was driving him on. Not just because of the stupid mistake he had just made, but because he had several times let himself be led up the path.
Dupin pushed the institute door open, Riwal right behind him.
“We need to concentrate on this question: Who could be his accomplice?”
Riwal’s phone rang. “It’s Goulch.”
Dupin snatched it from his hand.
“Have you—?”
“A deep-sea trawler, the Gradlon, came out of Lanildut bay. Out of the harbor there, he…” Goulch stammered. Dupin had never come across the self-confident policeman like this. “There’s absolutely no visibility in the area. It just plowed right over the Zodiac. We had to watch it happen. The boat burst.”
“What?”
Dupin stood there as if paralyzed.
He could hear shouts, calls, hectic orders, Goulch’s crew members.
“It only just happened, a few seconds ago. We’re looking for Leblanc now. The Zodiac went right under the trawler’s keel, at high speed.”
“Morin.”
Goulch got it immediately. “Yes. The trawler belonged to his fleet. We signaled to him to turn back into harbor immediately. He’s just turning now.”
Dupin was dumbstruck.
“He’ll have heard the police radio.” Goulch sounded resigned. Of course. That’s what had happened. Morin was definitely perfectly equipped. “There were several boats out there.”
It was insufferable. Too much.
“There, there he is.” A loud shout. One of Goulch’s men. A moment passed before Goulch commented:
“We can see Leblanc’s body, he’s … certainly no longer alive, Commissaire, we … I’ll call you right back.” Goulch hung up.
Dupin still hadn’t moved from the spot.
Suddenly he sprang to life. He rushed out, Riwal’s phone to his ear.
It took a while before the call was answered.
“Yes?” An indifferent grunt.
“They executed him.” Dupin stressed the word hard. “They set their boat on him. That’s murder.”
“Ah, Commissaire Georges Dupin,” Morin said calmly, at peace with himself, no trace now of exhaustion. “Obviously I fear I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“One of your deep-sea trawlers ran over Leblanc and his Zodiac.”
“You mean there’s been an unfortunate accident?”
Morin didn’t even try to sound surprised or shocked. At the same time there was no hint of provocation. He had no intention of humiliating Dupin, or laughing at him. He was interested in something else.
“You lay in wait for him on Trielen, and now your work’s over.”
It was enough to drive you mad. How could they get their hands on Morin?
“There’s no point in denying it. We know.”
“Apparently,” Morin said calmly, “you also know who the murderer was. Which means you’ve solved the case. That must be a tremendous relief. A tremendous relief for us all. Congratulations.” It was unreal how satisfied Morin sounded. “The killer was a man of extreme brutality and pure greed. He has three people on his conscience. Two wonderful young women. If I understand correctly, he would seem more or less to have suffered the punishment he deserved.”
“You admit it?”
“I admit nothing.”
Dupin stalked up and down feverishly outside the institute.
“We’ll prove it was you, monsieur, you can count on that.”
The reality was different. Dupin wasn’t promising himself anything; it would be extremely difficult to prove anything against him.
“In weather like that, with such a turbulent sea, there are unfortunately tragic accidents all the time. Particularly in such a rugged landscape with all the rocks. And I imagine Leblanc was going at a dangerously high speed.”
“Had your trawler any business in Lanildut harbor?”
“I can’t tell you. You can imagine that I am not continuously in contact with all my captains. I suspect, however, they were looking for shelter from the storm. He probably set out for Douarnenez, heading for the channel. It’s wise to make for land there.”
It was shameless, but that’s the way it would go. Exactly like that.
The captain was the only one who could cause trouble for Morin, and Dupin was certain the man wouldn’t say a word. He’d be true to his patriarch.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a major issue for the people and the press if a triple murderer fleeing from the police died as a result of an accident he himself was guilty of.”
The worst was: Morin was right.
That’s how it would go.
“Apart from everything else,” Morin said slowly, a sharp tone in his voice now, “remember how complicated it would have been really to have placed the crime at his door. Obviously he would have denied everything. And you had no more than a chain of more-or-less plausible hypotheses and circumstantial evidence. None of which would have ever made the thing certain. And you know that.
“Is that what you wanted? You would have been left to depend totally on my statement. Everything would have depended on me making a statement. And maybe even presenting some proof…” He spoke ever more softly. “Maybe, and this is obviously just hypothetical, one of my fishermen really had seen something incriminating. Or I had said how Leblanc tried to kill me.”
He didn’t expect any reaction.
“You’re a clever man, Monsieur Dupin. You know I had no interest in seeing Leblanc in jail. Even if my statement could have landed him there forever.”
It kept getting worse, ever more ironic. And at the same time ever clearer. Dupin understood—and that was the awful thing—exactly what Morin meant. The last thing he would have wanted was to see Leblanc protected in jail. He wanted to see him set free. So he could carry out his revenge. And if Leblanc had tried to disappear from the scene, Morin would have hunted him down mercilessly, until he was found.
It was appalling.
There was something defensive in Dupin, they couldn’t just take it, just let it happen.
“The cross, Monsieur Morin, the cross is gone.” Maybe that was the way to get to him. “Somebody took it from the hiding place where Leblanc had kept it.”
Morin didn’t reply.
There was a long silence. A very expressive silence. It seemed as if Morin had also known about the cross, but not that it had now disappeared. Maybe that was the only thing he hadn’t known.
“Leblanc had to have had an accomplice,” Dupin said. “It might have been the accomplice who killed your daughter, and not Leblanc himself.”
Morin still didn’t react.
“Or you might have had the cross fetched yourself,” Dupin said.
Morin could have used force to make Leblanc reveal the hiding place during their confrontation on Trielen. Before he had been overcome himself. He would only have had to wait for the right moment and had the cross fetched. Maybe by one of his coastal fishers. Their boats were only a few hundred meters away.
“I couldn’t care less about the cross, Monsieur le Commissaire,” Morin replied with the deepest scorn.
The line went silent again. Dupin could hear Morin breathe.
“Let it go, Monsieur le Commissaire.” Morin’s voice was for once almost upbeat. “If you really must, go look for the cross. Do what you have to do. Come and look around my place if you will, my doors are always open to you. And just so you know: there is no accomplice. But in any case, it’s over.”
“Nothing is over, Monsieur Morin. Nothing.”
Dupin hung up.
Without noticing it, he had walked to the end of the quay, then walked on, along the stony beach. Quite a way.
“Boss? Boss?”
Riwal, somewhere in the distance.
“Here.”
He could see the inspector now. Riwal had been standing on the grass outside the institute and now came running toward him. Dupin walked in his direction.
“They’ve taken Leblanc’s body on board. The body was horribly mutilated. The ship’s screw must have caught him. It must have been a terrible death, his left arm and the whole shoulder are—”
“That’ll do, Riwal.”
“I’ve spoken with the captain of the trawler. He’s in shock, or so he says.”
But of course. Dupin had expected as much.
“He had seen the Zodiac coming. They had been happy finally to get out of the storm. There are three police cars on their way to Lanildut. We’ll bring the captain and the whole crew to Quimper and interview them.”
“Do that.”
It was a waste of time. But they had to give it a go.
Riwal had already come to terms with Leblanc’s death. Just as everybody else would. Morin had predicted it. Nobody was going to be much bothered by the death of a brutal murderer.
Dupin put his hands behind his neck.
“I want—” Then he stopped. “I need to think.”
He turned abruptly away.
He needed to be alone.
Only a native of Brittany would believe it. There wasn’t a cloud to see in the whole sky, not one. The fuss over the heavy storm was over. As if the world hadn’t nearly drowned two hours ago. The only reminder of the storm was the fact that everything was wet—including Dupin, his inspectors, and all the uniformed police who had been on duty.
Dupin had walked on farther. A long way farther. As far as the little bay.
The whole world was steaming, Douarnenez, the town—on his right hand—the island, the trees, the rocks, the ground. Everything had now warmed up, as the cool rain had sunk into the land. It was an entrancing sight, one Dupin normally loved: these dainty, ethereal plumes. But now he barely noticed them. Nor the warmth and strength of the sun, even in the evening.
He turned his eyes to the water, hazy, empty. His wrists ached endlessly.
“Boss?” Riwal was approaching him cautiously from the side. Kadeg next to him. “We’ve—” Riwal began.
Kadeg interrupted him. “We’ve searched all over the island. It isn’t big. Without finding anybody or anything. Unless there are more hidden caves, then I don’t know where anyone could hide a one-and-a-half-meter-high cross. Especially if you didn’t have much time. We’ve also, by the way, checked the fissure in the other cave. After a few meters it gets ever narrower and more inaccessible. Nobody could get through there.”
Dupin didn’t reply.
“Two boats in the bay have been searched.” Riwal made no secret of his disappointment. “They were the only ones to come out after the storm had ended. Nothing suspicious about either. We haven’t found anything yet in the leisure harbor either. The harbormaster couldn’t think of any boat that came in during the time in question. His office is right at the front by the entrance and he has a very good view.”
“Somebody took it.” Dupin spoke in a low monotone. “Somebody has to have taken it.” The second sentence sounded as if he was pleading. “There’s no other way.”
“Or,” Kadeg said calmly, “it was the seasickness, like I said. These things happen.” This time too he didn’t want it to seem he was making fun of Dupin.
“Where were Vaillant, Jumeau, Gochat, and the others in the last hour?”
“Gochat and her husband turned up back in Douarnenez, we actually caught them at home on their landline. Gochat had something to do in Morgat, she went from the Île de Sein directly there, we checked it out. Out of the question that she could have made a trip to the Île de Trielen during the time in question.”
“What about Frédéric Carrière, Morin’s bolincheur?”
“We haven’t managed to raise him yet. I have the number. I’ll try it again now.” Riwal reached for his phone.
“Same goes for Vaillant. Not to be reached.”
“If you don’t reach him soon, send out a search warrant for him.”
Kadeg raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you think that’s a bit over the top?”
The commissaire ignored Kadeg’s comment.
The inspector tried to adopt a friendly tone of voice, which was bad news: “I don’t want to offend you, Commissaire, nor do I think that you’ve really lost your mind, but like I said: lots of people have had seasickness and—”
“That’s enough, Kadeg. Do you understand? That’s the last time!”
Dupin had made the sentence as forceful as he still could. “Try Vaillant again. Now!”
The inspector moved away, looking insulted.
Dupin saw that Riwal, already a few meters away, was on the phone. He seemed to have gotten through to somebody.
Before long the inspector was back.
“Carrière headed for Ouessant before the storm. He was there the whole time, in a bar by the harbor. There’s a whole crowd of witnesses. If you want…”
“That’s fine, Riwal.”
Yet again the wrong tack.
“And Jumeau?”
“Sitting in Chez Bruno. He went back to Sein when the storm broke. He’s out of the question too.”
It was cursed. Somebody had to have taken the cross.
Riwal seemed embarrassed. “You shouldn’t despair now, boss. You solved the case.”
Riwal meant well, but it didn’t help.
It was unbearable. They had found the killer. A solution to one of the hardest and most challenging cases in his whole career. Then, however, the killer was caught and killed before their very eyes. By the father of one of the victims. Who was himself a criminal—and now a murderer, too. A last brutal twist in an otherwise brutal case. A case filled with dark, devastating moral chasms. A murderer they wouldn’t catch.
Everything else was laudable enough. But at the same time it wasn’t sufficient. The “spoils”—the thing it had all revolved around—a massive golden cross of inestimable value, had escaped them. Dupin had had it, and had it stolen away from him. When it came down to it, that was a sorry defeat.
The day had been long, terribly long. Just like the day before. He’d had hardly any sleep either night. And he hadn’t had any caffeine since midday. On top of that his wrists were still aching. To make everything worse, Dupin had to deal with the prefect. Who didn’t want the case cleared up before Monday and would now learn that the case had been “solved.” Anything but a stroke of luck.
“Boss.” Dupin had almost forgotten that he wasn’t alone. “I’ve been thinking.” Riwal was trying to speak as softly as possible. “To be honest, there was very little time to take the cross. I mean”—he seemed uncertain if he should continue—“twenty minutes isn’t much. Somebody must have been watching you from a boat as you were going to the grotto. The island was full of police. Then, when you came out again, he must have waited until you were some distance away, then moored at the pier, gone into the cave, loaded the cross into a car or something of the sort, maneuvered his way out, and taken it back to the path to the pier. Then loaded it onto the boat, and”—Riwal was using long, awkward phrases—“got away so quickly that we never saw him again. It has to have been a semi-military operation.”
Dupin had had similar thoughts, a few times, even if he had put them to one side. There was really nothing plausible about such assumptions. Nothing.
“We’re not getting anywhere with a natural explanation. There’s no doubt about the following: the cross exists. You saw it. Then it was gone,” Riwal whispered, meaningfully. “Something mysterious happened here.”
Those weren’t the thoughts that had struck Dupin.
“This isn’t the time for things like that, Riwal.” Something else had just occurred to him. “Where is Leblanc’s assistant, by the way?”
“She was down in the reception with us the whole time. She behaved extremely cooperatively, even if she’s a bit agitated.”
Then it couldn’t have been her.
“I think…” Riwal started again in a whispering voice, “it was the cross…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
Dupin wasn’t pleased. He could tell from Riwal’s tone what it would have been about: Ys. Or something else fantastic. And that was the last thing that Dupin would have been able to bear now: a serious mention of the supernatural.
“Vaillant is in Ouessant,” Dupin continued.
Kadeg had come closer unnoticed and said, “They went there for safety’s sake. Obviously reception was patchy during the storm. There are witnesses, he says, we can…”
“—speak to him any time,” Dupin said. “Damn.”
“Another thing: the units who searched Leblanc’s house and weekend retreat want to know if they are still needed.”
“They can go home,” Dupin said wearily.
“I think so too.” Kadeg marched off.
Dupin took a few weak paces along the shore. And then stopped.
Riwal followed him discreetly.
The commissaire and inspector stood there silently together in the bright evening sun for a while.
“Kadeg and I will deal with the interview with the captain in Quimper. Maybe, maybe we’ll come up with something.” Riwal was trying to be somewhat circumspect.
“Do that.”
“And,” speaking decisively now, “I think you should also go home, boss. That’s it for today.”
Nothing happened. It wasn’t even clear if Dupin had heard what he said. Then he gave a deep sigh.
“You can rely on the fact that our colleagues will carry out the searches at the harbor conscientiously. If they find anything we’ll hear about it straightaway. And obviously we’ll leave a few uniformed police officers on the island to keep watch on everything. Through the night as well.”
There really wasn’t any more they could do.
“You should also have your wrists looked at.”
Dupin glanced at his hands. There were notable large swellings on both wrists. As far as the base of his fingers. They hadn’t been there until now. There was a blue sheen to his skin.
“I … right, Riwal.” Embarrassed, he tried to stick his hands in his pants pockets. Which was a stupid idea.
“Let’s go.”
Riwal’s face showed deep relief, which clearly meant more than just Dupin’s readiness to let things be for the evening.
“You’re through now, boss. You actually were lucky. Good luck amidst bad. Things can go like that. You should be glad.”
Dupin had no idea what the inspector was on about.
“You have the aura of the island to thank, its bright aura. They say the grave of Tristan and Isolde, their last and eternal reunion on the island, wards off harm. It’s supposed to be somewhere near the cliffs above the grottos.”
Dupin still hadn’t understood, but had got enough to be sure he didn’t want to.
“Do you understand? The evil spell is diminished by the other, the good spell. The curse of the seven graves was too strong to be completely neutralized.” Riwal shot a stolen glance at Dupin’s hands. “It so often ends in death. But…”
“Enough, Riwal. I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
His harsh reaction didn’t seem to have any effect at all on Riwal. The relief on his face had even turned into a smile.
“Fine, boss. I’ll let Kadeg and the captain know. We’ll meet up on the boat.”
Dupin winced at the mention of the word “boat,” but then got a grip on himself again. It really was only a stone’s throw to the mainland.
More important, he had had another thought. A wonderful thought, such a seductive promise, that it gave him new strength. In an hour’s time he would be sitting in the Amiral in front of a wonderful entrecôte frites and a rich, velvety Languedoc wine.
“Can I just borrow your phone for a moment, Riwal?”
The inspector handed it to Dupin. “You can give it back to me on the boat.”
Riwal turned away.
It was one of the few numbers Dupin knew by heart, one that his head had no problem retaining.
“Hello?”
“Claire, it’s me.”
“Georges? This isn’t your number.”
“I’ll explain later. Could we eat together tonight?”
“I … I can’t, Georges, I thought … Are you finished already?”
“More or less.”
“I didn’t think you’d have the time. That’s why I agreed to stay on to midnight. I could do it after that. But that’s ridiculous. The earliest I could get to the Amiral would be a quarter to one. But I’ll come to your place, naturally. As soon as I can. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter, Claire.” Dupin did his best to sound convincing, but didn’t succeed. “We’ll see each other later then, at my place. I’ll look forward to it.” There was only real enthusiasm in the last sentence.
“See you later, Georges.”
That was a shame, a real shame.
He had to rely on the vision of the delicious entrecôte to help him. Which it did. Even if it couldn’t rescue everything.
The sun hadn’t gone down yet, but it wouldn’t be long now. It had already spectacularly colored the western sky in all imaginable, softly merging shades of red, orange, lilac, and pink. The sea too. The sun itself had chosen a classic yellow for its performance.
Shadows had grown endlessly long, of everything, including the row of plane trees on the big Quai Square where Dupin had for ages parked his old Citroën. The soft light covered the trees and the rest of the world with a warm golden sheen. Made them light up magically.
The shadow of the restaurant—a fine old building from the end of the nineteenth century—stretched almost as far as his car.
Only the sight of the Amiral changed Dupin’s mood.
The anticipation of the entrecôte had made him put his foot on the gas. But even more urgent was the desire to get home. Back home to Concarneau. And, above all, unquestioned reality. To leave behind the island of fantasy, the whole region of fantasy with its legends, myths, and wild stories. The sinister case and the grim fatalities.
Dupin opened the heavy door, and went in.
And saw his regular seat. In the corner on the left near the bar. It was free. Dupin relaxed. He hadn’t warned the owner, Paul Girard.
He had made a few calls from his car phone. First and foremost he had tried to get hold of the prefect, feeling unwell about the idea of somebody else summarizing the events. He himself didn’t know exactly what he would tell him, and how. But the prefect had only his voicemail turned on. Dupin saw him in his mind’s eye, hidden in a ditch next to a hugely busy highway, enthusiastically bent over the latest high-tech radar equipment which they were currently testing.
The fact that his regular seat wasn’t taken also meant, however, that Claire definitely hadn’t arrived; he had secretly hoped she might have managed it.
Paul Girard was standing at the other end of the bar, opening a bottle of wine. He gave Dupin a long look, warm and friendly. A surprisingly emotional greeting by his standards. The long look was also asking if there was any difference to the usual order, the meal for particularly stressful, difficult days.
Obviously not.
Dupin sat down at the already laid table for two.
More accurately, he collapsed onto the dark blue, pleasantly upholstered bench. With the last of his strength. He pulled off his jacket. It was still damp and smelled of salt and seaweed. Like everything he was wearing. It occurred to him he must look completely disheveled, all the worse for wear. He didn’t care.
The first tables were already empty, the big ones, for families. The others, the tables for two, were already being served dessert.
It was Friday night, the mood was relaxed, easygoing.
Dupin liked the noise in the room, a cozy background noise that created a jovial, animated atmosphere.
The captain of the deep-sea trawler would be in Quimper by now. Kadeg and Riwal were probably beginning the interview in the next few minutes. But Dupin wasn’t going to think any more about that. It only made him angry. And would change nothing.
He knew less and less what he should be thinking about the vanished cross, and everything had seemed more unreal with every kilometer he distanced himself from the mythical island. There again he had seen it. With his own eyes. Which might have played a devilish prank on him; there were more than enough devils in the many wild legends. This cross existed—of that the commissaire was certain—a remarkable archeological find that had been the cause of three brutal murders.
And he would have to talk about the cross. The cross of gold. The whole truth, the whole story. Even though it would cause a huge fuss, a riot in the media. But whatever it caused, he was putting it aside for this evening.
What he did have to do was give a quick call to his mother. To relieve her. And above all to relieve himself. No more hardnosed putting her off. Yes, he would be there tomorrow. The party had been saved. And so had his soul.
He would ring Nolwenn too. The “big operation” had to be over by now. A chat with Nolwenn at the end of a case belonged anyhow to his fixed rituals.
Paul Girard headed toward him with a decanter carafe in his right hand, which he put down on the table with an unusually ceremonial gesture.
“I’ve found a last bottle of Le Vieux Télégraphe, your favorite Châteauneuf-du-Pape, 2004. The secret last bottle for extraordinary occasions, and emergencies. There was a lot of talk this evening.” A conspiratorial smile.
“Wonderful.”
Dupin adored this wine; he was moved.
Paul poured the wine, rather more than one normally poured into this round-bellied glass. He meant well toward the commissaire.
He set the carafe on the table and was gone in a flash.
Dupin lifted the glass, ignoring the pain in his wrist the movement caused.
He sat there rather reverently.
The first sip.
“You’re not going to drink it without me?”
Dupin looked up. Wine spilled over the rim of the glass and splashed on his polo shirt.
It didn’t matter, nothing mattered.
“I had to freshen myself up, I’ve just got here.”
Claire sat down without ceremony, took the bottle, and poured herself a glass. No less than Dupin had in his glass.
“My assistant doctor managed to come earlier.”
Dupin hadn’t said a word. He was too perplexed, and too pleased.
Claire.
No matter what he said, it wouldn’t have been able to express how happy he was.
Now everything was good.
Claire had that effect. She didn’t need to say a word. She just had to be there.
In this first year of being together in Brittany, they hadn’t seen as much of each other as he had hoped. But that wasn’t what it was about.
She was there. She would always be there.
“I…”
“Georges.” Paul Girard came over to them. “Telephone, for you…”
Dupin didn’t want to answer, whoever it was. He took the phone reluctantly.
“Yes?”
“Bon appétit, Monsieur le Commissaire. I won’t disturb you long,” Nolwenn said in a quiet voice. “You have to see things positively. You solved the case. You made everything clear. You did your job. But”—she spoke now immensely seriously—“you still don’t have everything in your hand. No one has. Not even you. I know, it’s hard for you to accept that. It is hard. But unalterable. And we’ll get Morin eventually. You’ll see.” She changed to an aggressive tone. “Nobody in Brittany gets away with lynch justice just like that. Where would we get to like that? No matter how unscrupulous a character Leblanc might have been. You absolutely mustn’t have your conversation with the prefect before tomorrow. Not until all the searches have been carried out. That way the case is still live. Right, now”—her voice became more lighthearted—“enjoy your evening with Claire. Tomorrow you have to start early. Call from Paris when you get there. Then we can talk over everything else. Until then, forget it all. We’re going into the brasserie here now to get something to eat. So, bonne nuit, Monsieur le Commissaire.” Clear instructions.
Nolwenn waited a few moments before hanging up—just long enough for Dupin to pick up all the threads. He would actually have talked to Nolwenn about the cross, at least a few sentences. But he’d let the moment pass.
And as soon as he had set the phone down on the corner of the table so that Paul could pick it up again, he had forgotten everything again.
Claire glanced at him curiously.
“Everything’s in order. Just a few—things—that need sorting.” Dupin hesitated briefly, then the words flowed with surprising certainty. “But they’ll sort themselves out.”
“Does that mean we’re going to Paris tomorrow?” Claire was genuinely pleased.
“Tomorrow morning. Paris!”
“Then we can spend Sunday morning in the park? And not come back until the evening?”
On Sunday mornings on fine summer days they used to go into the Jardin du Luxembourg, not far from Dupin’s apartment, and sit there in the sunshine in the brightly colored chairs, buried for hours in the Sunday newspapers with all their amazing supplements, the chairs close to each other so that their arms touched. Meanwhile Dupin had fetched both of them a café, a croissant, a brioche.
“Yes, we’ll do that.”
All of a sudden, Paul Girard was standing next to them again. This time with a really big plate. One of his waiters was standing behind him with a round metal rack.
“I just really fancied them.” Claire’s eyes sparkled. “And we’ve got the time. The entrecôte comes afterward.”
The waiter had put the metal rack in the center of the table, and Paul placed the large plate on top: oysters, langoustines, praires, palourdes—the little sea creatures, and the big ones: an immense crab.
It was perfect.
“Lots of time.”
Dupin looked at Claire.
And took a large sip of the wine.