The Killing Tide Read online

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “When does the boat usually get in?”

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

  “And the provisions boat?”

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

  “Also from Audierne?”

  “From Camaret. On the Crozon peninsula.”

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

  “Did it get in before eight today?”

  “Just after.”

  “And when did it leave again?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Dupin’s phone rang.

  A Parisian number he didn’t recognize.

  He stopped reluctantly and took it.

  “Yes?”

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

  Dupin was too puzzled to say a word.

  His mother.

  The “big event.”

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

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

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

  A second later she hung up.

  The seventy-fifth birthday of Anna Dupin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Captain Vaillant?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Dupin made another note.

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

  “The cholera cemetery?”

  A man came toward them with a deliberate pace.

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

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

  He held out a hand to Dupin and smiled.

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

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

  “That was all we needed on the island!”

  Dupin had no reply to that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  That was it. The whole cemetery.

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

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

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

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

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

  But it was unnecessary.

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

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

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

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

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

  He had made a mistake.

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

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

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

  He wasn’t going to be any help.

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

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

  Dupin had expected nothing different.

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

  A good idea.

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

  “Find out the network and connection.”

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

  “Good.”

  Kadeg was in charge of the whole systematic procedure.

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

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

  Riwal was about to contradict him, but caught himself.

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

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

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

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

  He hadn’t seen it anywhere.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The question had already come up that morning.

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

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

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

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