Murder on Brittany Shores (24 page)

‘The old development plans – were you very familiar with them?' Dupin asked.

‘Yes. They were made public. I wrote extensively about them, several times in
Ouest France,
once even for the
Libération.
Interestingly, the plans were then never officially submitted. So never officially rejected either. It was probably clear after an intense discussion that they didn't have a shadow of a chance and I believe Lefort didn't want to show any weakness.

‘How long have you been working for the institute?'

Dupin was aware that his way of steering this conversation sometimes swayed back and forth as much as the boat – it must have been because of the sea, he had been feeling dizzy and little unwell the whole time. And something else had been distracting him since he'd got on the boat: an erratic, loud splashing that kept coming back every few minutes, accompanied each time by noises that were difficult to identify. At first, Dupin had looked around, not found anything and assumed that it must have been seagulls. They performed daring flight manoeuvres over the boats in the hope that there would something for them to take. Now the sounds were louder than before. Dupin looked around yet again. A group of dolphins was swimming past them, less than ten metres away, at breathtaking speed, diving down for a moment before coming back up, as quick as a flash. It was absolutely surreal. Dupin was dumbfounded. It was only with an effort that he managed to suppress the cry, ‘Real dolphins!' He had never seen any in the wild before. They actually looked like they did in films.

Leussot had noticed Dupin's surprise – although the word did not even come close to describing it.

‘They've been keeping me company since last week. These ones are very playful.'

This sentence could hardly have been uttered in a more off-hand way. Leussot had smiled smoothly as he said it.

‘I…' Dupin really didn't know what to say.

‘The tourists always lose their minds. They are great animals after all.'

The second sentence sounded conciliatory.

‘But the sea is full of wonderful creatures that are just as fascinating. Even more fascinating than dolphins. Take the tychoplankton, for instance.'

The group of dolphins had swum in a semi-circle around the stern of the boat and then, after what looked like a final jump, they went under and disappeared. The whole thing had lasted perhaps fifteen seconds. Dupin tried to compose himself again with all the strength he could muster.

‘Yes, I think we should get back to where we were. Back to our conversation, Monsieur Leussot. I had asked you how long you'd been working at the institute?'

Leussot looked quite mischievous, but then answered very matter-of-factly.

‘I came here as a young man, fifteen years ago. After studying in Paris, I started my research here, got a PhD, then went to Brest for a few years for larger projects and have been back for four years now. When Lefort tried to push through his plans the first time, I was still in Brest, but came here regularly. Lefort's plans were my impetus for working as a science journalist. People have got to know what's going on.'

It was evident that Leussot hadn't given the dolphins another thought. Dupin had been forcing himself – reasonably successfully – not to scan the sea with his eyes again. He already felt ridiculous.

‘Fifteen years. And a journalist too. In Brest.'

Leussot looked seriously irritated. Dupin had to control himself.

‘Muriel Lefort, Madame Menez, Madame Barrault, Monsieur – the mayor, Solenn Nuz and her daughters, Monsieur Tanguy. Do you know them all personally?'

Now Leussot looked at the Commissaire for a moment, like a gormless young schoolboy.

‘You know – the Glénan. It's a world of its own. It's hard to explain, you have to experience it yourself. And in the
Quatre Vents
they come together: the inhabitants of this world and their constant stream of guests. We all know each other. Not as the people we are outside of this world, only as the people we are here.'

Dupin didn't understand the literal meaning of this exactly, but he guessed what Leussot meant. More importantly: he had found a way back into the conversation.

‘And do you think anyone had a motive for an act like this?'

‘The village forces you close together, the sea, the Atlantic – into each other's pockets, much closer than you'd like.' It was as though Leussot had not even heard Dupin's enquiry. ‘Even against the individual's will. Sympathies and antipathies don't come into it sometimes, not enmities, not even hatred. And more importantly: the archipelago may in fact bring people together – but in the end everyone is on their own.'

Even these sentences were cryptic, but Dupin had the feeling that they contained something important.

‘Hatred?'

Leussot draw a sharp breath in through his nose.

‘Yes.'

‘Who do you mean?'

‘Don't get me wrong, I don't mean anyone specific.'

‘Muriel and Lucas Lefort? You mean the siblings? Or Madame Menez and Lucas Lefort? – You yourself and Lucas Lefort?'

‘I don't mean anything in particular.'

‘It would be very helpful to us.'

Leussot was silent. Not an unpleasant silence. But one that made it clear that he would not answer.

‘And you didn't speak to Pajot or Konan two evenings ago, I assume.'

Leussot looked almost amused.

‘I wouldn't have made such an effort with the murder, believe me. Definitely not.'

He laughed. Leussot was very good. If it had been him – it would be impossible to behave more skilfully.

‘It's quite a feat! A brilliant plan really,' Leussot now contemplated Dupin's question, ‘No. I sat as far away from them as possible, I always do that. I didn't notice anything suspicious all evening. Nothing at all.'

Of course not, Dupin almost blurted out.

‘Depending on whom I had noticed something suspicious about, I might even forget it again, I have to admit.'

He smiled again. Dupin guessed that Leussot meant this sentence seriously.

‘Fine, then I'll leave you to prepare your fish. It's lunchtime after all. And I know what I wanted to know.'

That was true. He had learnt a lot.

Dupin raised his hand and looked over to the
Luc'hed.
The observant young police officers understood the gesture immediately and climbed into the dinghy without wasting another moment.

‘Yes, I'm going to eat now. And get back to work. Red algae are impatient creatures.'

‘Will be you be out at sea all day, Monsieur Leussot?'

‘We'll see.'

He pointed towards the west with a minimal movement of the head, where the wisps of cloud had become undeniably denser, although they were still far away.

‘Actually, yes. At the moment, I'm more or less at sea all week,' he smiled, ‘so you'll know where to find me.'

The dinghy had come to a stop alongside the stern.

‘
Bon appétit,
Monsieur Leussot.'

‘
Au revoir,
Monsieur le Commissaire.'

Dupin climbed nimbly back into the little boat, which turned around just a moment later and travelled back to the
Luc'hed.
As it did so, he contemplated the sky with raised eyebrows. It was – apart from that growing dark streak in the west – the same unchanged blue. Dupin was slightly uncertain about his own weather forecast. But not overly so. The signs were too clear: Grand Marée, spring tide, full moon, then for thirty days the weather stayed the way it was on the evening of the full moon, that's how he'd remembered …

‘Monsieur le Commissaire, Inspector Riwal has just radioed us. He needs to speak to you. You were already in the dinghy.'

The captain bent down to Dupin and offered him his hand, which Dupin accepted this time. He had forgotten that he had no reception here.

‘You'll be with him in less than ten minutes, at top speed.'

‘Good. Full speed ahead then.'

Dupin couldn't believed what he'd just said.

*   *   *

The air was absolutely still, even the ubiquitous Atlantic breeze could no longer be felt. Yet it was even hotter than yesterday. At the last moment, the islands had materialised in front of them, as if out of nowhere. And strangely, all of them did so at once. You were left with the impression: this is the last second before you're dashed on them.

Dupin was briefly overcome by a vague suspicion which he quickly pushed aside. He was busy going over the conversations he'd had today in his head. And the dolphins came into his mind again too.

They were going past Guiriden's long sandbar. To Dupin it was perhaps the most astonishing thing about the entirety of the Glénan. A few rocks at high tide, a little bit of land and green all around them, perhaps twenty metres by twenty and then – at low tide – suddenly two or three hundred metres of dazzlingly bright sandbar. Unbelievably white sand, falling gently away, even forming Caribbean-like lagoons. It was fantastic. Just like Henri had described it to him last year, on what have been his only trip to the Glénan before yesterday. Dupin had let himself be talked into a day on Henri's brand new boat – an Antares 7.80 – which he had regretted enormously, as beautiful as it had been on Penfret. This was no normal sand here! It was coral sand! It was not a Breton exaggeration, as Dupin had initially suspected. This really was genuine coral sand. And there was only one instance of it in Europe and that was on the Glénan. Nolwenn had explained it vividly to him a few times before too. The sand on the archipelago consisted of chalky coral skeletons ground down over the course of millions of years. Snow white, fine, yet solid, not fly-away like powder. ‘This bears no relation to sand – little, crystalline pieces of coral,' he recalled Nolwenn's words. Of course, Breton sand in general was no ordinary sand, not some run-of-the-mill sand from some normal sandstone; it was mainly
flawless
granite sand. Sand that had broken away from the elemental granite ridges that made up Brittany, geologically-speaking. But if the coral thing sounded spectacular enough already, the real highlight of it was the explanation. The sand, or rather the corals, hadn't been washed up somehow, no – they had once grown extensively right here: large, splendid corals. Right here – when Brittany was still in the tropics. This was not a joke or a metaphor or an analogy. It was reality. Dupin remembered the first time that Nolwenn had proudly said this: ‘For a long time we were an exotic, tropical landscape – in the heart of the tropics.' He had found it almost too strange to laugh, which Nolwenn had noticed with an indignant look and countered with a geography lecture that was all the more serious for it. The position of the earth's axis, Dupin had learnt, had shifted dramatically and with it, the climactic zones. So these really were tropical beaches here! Or at least they had once been. Bretons had, Dupin found, a special relationship with time, with the past, even the far-distant past. Which above all meant: it didn't exist for Bretons, the past. It had not passed. Nothing was past. Everything that there had been was also present and would stay that way forever. This didn't reduce the significance of the present at all, on the contrary: it made it even greater. It had taken Dupin some time to understand that. But at some point he had discovered that there was a truth in this that was very moving. And if you wanted to get by at the ‘End of the World', you couldn't forget it.

In the chamber the
Luc'hed
was going at a slower speed. Soon the quay at Saint-Nicolas came into view, the ugly triangular houses, the sailing school's farmhouse, the diving school, the
Quatre Vents.
The captain moored expertly at the quay and soon Dupin was already on his way to ‘operation headquarters'.

‘What have we got, Riwal?'

The inspector was sitting at the same table they had sat at yesterday. He was so absorbed in his notebook that he hadn't seen Dupin coming. Lots of A4 pages were stuck into it. He straightened up with a jerk and looked a little sheepishly at the large plate on the table in front of him, with the meagre remains of a lobster piled on it. Next to it stood two bottles of water and several glasses. And an empty wine glass.

‘You've got to drink a lot of water in this weather. I've conducted interviews with Madame Nuz and Madame Barrault. And with Madame Menez.' He added, slightly more quietly, ‘I've just had something to eat.'

‘Excellent, Riwal. I'm going to do that soon too.'

The solid ground beneath his feet was making Dupin feel, by his standards, practically euphoric.

Riwal burst out with the news.

‘The doctor from Sainte-Marine, who apparently was also in the
Quatre Vents
briefly the evening before last, has been reported missing: Devan Le Menn…'

‘Le Menn is missing? Le Menn?'

Dupin's mild fit of good cheer was evaporating.

‘His wife informed the police half an hour ago.'

‘Bloody hell.'

‘He left his house around half seven this morning, he had a few errands to do. Amongst other things, he wanted to go to the bank in Quimper, he often does that on Tuesday morning if there are no urgent house calls. He was meant to meet his wife at twelve o'clock. He's always on time. His wife seemed anxious.'

‘He's not even two hours late yet. There's no reason,' Dupin hesitated, ‘to assume that something bad has happened yet.'

‘I have a bad feeling about this.'

‘Maybe there was a medical emergency, one of his patients. Something acute – and he hasn't found the time to get in touch yet. He's a doctor.'

Dupin himself didn't believe this. He felt, if he were honest, the same way Riwal did. Although there really were, of course, quite a few possible explanations and Le Menn could turn up again any moment. However: disappearing at this point in time was too much of a coincidence.