The Killing Tide Read online

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

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

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

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

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

  “Has he allies?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “On the fringes of it.”

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

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

  The harbormistress hadn’t mentioned anything about that either.

  “Recently?”

  “I only know about their quarrels last winter.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Which day?”

  “Fridays. In the morning.”

  “And what about the dead dolphins last week?”

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

  A dreadful topic. Even Nolwenn talked about it often.

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

  “Have there been incidents recently?”

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

  “I’ll do that.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Did Darot herself say anything about it?”

  “Not that I know.”

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

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

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

  “And Céline Kerkrom? What about her family?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Whereabouts are the houses?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  It wasn’t hard to imagine.

  “Whom can I talk to next, Riwal?”

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

  “Did you try?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Orcas?”

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

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

&nb
sp; That was where they had docked on the ferry that morning.

  Dupin shuddered.

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

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

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

  “And where was he yesterday evening?”

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

  “Hmmm.”

  One of those special alibis.

  “And this morning?”

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

  “We need to check everything thoroughly.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I think she meant where she was fishing.”

  “Why would Gochat want to know that?”

  “I’ll talk to her straightaway. I—”

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

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

  “Talk to you later, Kadeg.”

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