‘Your lobster?’
‘Lobster.’
‘You’re in the Quatre Vents?’
‘Correct.’
‘Lobster from the Glénan is the best in the world. Good thing you’re there. If you need anything, ask Solenn Nuz. She’s the owner of the Quatre Vents. She knows everything. Knows everyone. The Glénan are her kingdom.’
‘Her kingdom?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘You’ll see. Solenn Nuz bought the Quatre Vents from the council ten years ago with her husband, Jacques. A passionate diver. The diving school already belonged to him, but they still lived on the mainland at that time. Nobody wanted to have the old boathouse, it was empty for almost seven years. Everyone thought it would be too tough to open a restaurant out there. – Have you met Solenn Nuz yet?’
‘No.’
‘Then I’m sure you’ll have met one of her two daughters. Louann and Armelle, they work in the bar too. You can barely tell the three of them apart, they look so similar, it’s amazing. One lives with her mother on the archipelago, the other with her boyfriend on the mainland, but she’s often there. They have a cottage on the island, diagonally behind the sailing school.’
Dupin imagined it was not an easy life out here.
‘And the husband, the diver?’
‘Oh, it’s a sad story. Drowned. Just after they’d bought the Quatre Vents and were about to move to the Glénan. It was their great shared dream. Solenn went to the islands anyway. She rented out the club. To a girlfriend of hers.’
During his years of close cooperation with Nolwenn, Dupin had become used to her knowing a huge amount about a huge number of people from Cornouaille – the coast between the most western point in France, the Pointe du Raz, and Quimperlé – without making the least bit of fuss about it. Sometimes he was gobsmacked though, and and a question slipped out.
‘And how do you know all this?’
‘The ‘End of the World’ isn’t big, Monsieur le Commissaire. And also, my husband…’
‘…once did a a few jobs for Solenn Nuz.’
‘That’s right.’
Dupin had no idea what Nolwenn’s husband did for a living – he had also decided early on never to ask – but his job was clearly of a universal nature. There couldn’t be many people in the region, Dupin reckoned, for whom Nolwenn’s husband hadn’t ‘done a few jobs’.
‘She is an attractive woman. Dour. A rugged beauty. Stayed young. Very young.’
Dupin wasn’t sure what Nolwenn meant by that. Or why they had even been talking about the owner of the bar for minutes on end.
He allowed a pause to develop.
‘Forget I called, Nolwenn.’
Nolwenn was familiar with every detail of Dupin’s abrupt shifts.
‘Then let’s speak later.’
‘I’ll be in touch.’
Nolwenn had hung up.
Dupin still had the phone to his ear and had only just pushed the red button to hang up when it rang again. He answered automatically.
‘Monsieur le Commissaire?’
‘Riwal?!’
‘You were engaged again. I wanted to say that the bodies are being brought to the pathologist’s office by helicopter now, if you’re okay with that. We can’t get anything more done here. Savoir can’t either. He needs them in his lab. He’s pestering.’
‘Of course. Is there any news? Missing persons reports? Something on the shipwreck?’
‘Not yet.’
‘But how can that be? Surely the three of them have been missed.’
‘They could be from anywhere. Maybe they were foreign nationals. Dutch, German, English or Parisians taking a trip along the coast. Lots of people do that. If they were holidaying here on their own boat or on a rented one, it could take a while for them to be missed. And then for someone to call the police.’
That was true. Dupin’s brow furrowed and he rubbed his temple with his right hand.
‘The Bir is at the Méaban now. There’s some stuff floating in the water between the cliffs, probably plastic mainly. Still nothing directly indicating a wrecked boat. They’re taking a good look at everything now. Kadeg and I can come over to you on the Luc’hed now. And then go round the boats in the chamber and ask questions. About whether anyone noticed anything. Even if it’s highly unlikely to come to anything.’
‘Over to me?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Feel free.’
Dupin said these words slowly – he had been thinking about something else as he spoke. Frankly, he didn’t know what he was still doing on Saint-Nicolas, or indeed on the Glénan at all – except that it was very beautiful here, he was eating the best lobster of his life and the coffee was perfect. He could just as easily fly back with Dr Savoir and coordinate everything from Concarneau – which had the distinct advantage of meaning not having to get onto another boat today.
‘Are you still there, Monsieur le Commissaire?’
‘Riwal – the helicopter is to pick me up. In half an hour, from Saint-Nicolas. You need to take the bodies on board first of course, I’m sure that will take a while.’
Riwal’s answer, when it came, was hesitant.
‘All right, there’s nothing more for you to do here. I’ll arrange that.’
‘And you can start the interviews on the boats straight away. You really don’t need to come to Saint-Nicolas first.’
He would still have the entire half hour to himself. Be able to finish his meal in peace.
He hung up.
Dupin looked around. The terrace had filled up all of a sudden. Almost all of the tables were full now, including one of the two closest to him. The couple must have heard what he’d said. Dupin put on an ostentatiously friendly smile, which didn’t do a thing to change the fact that his neighbours were giving him suspicious looks.
It really was all go. The sailing and diving season had already begun. Every year the Atlantic made the crucial leap from ten or twelve degrees to fourteen or fifteen (then in June or July the leap to eighteen degrees and, in Breton ‘heat spells’, sometimes even up to nineteen or twenty. Apparently in 2006, the sea in Port Manech was actually twenty-two degrees celsius on the 23rd and 24th of August!) The people he could see were clearly water-sports lovers, mostly between the ages of twenty and forty. For the anglers too, the best seasons were now, in May, and then in September, when the huge schools of mackerel appeared. Then you only needed to let your line down into the sea with nothing more than a hook and they would already be biting – with the number five hook lines that they used here, there were five fat fish per line. Dupin had heard many stories about it.
He ate the last piece of lobster, the flesh from the broken open pincer. He had saved the best till last, he’d done that even as a child. And he drank the last mouthful of the very good, very cold, white wine.
Dupin leaned back. He picked up the newspaper. Almost the entire front page of Ouest France – one of the two large regional papers that Dupin loved and meticulously studied every morning – was devoted to the thirty-six dead wild boar, as it had been for the last few days. Thirty-six wild boar had been found dead on a beach in the north, in the Côtes-d’Armor département. Killed by poisonous gases released during the decomposition of green algae. It was a sad report and one which provoked extreme rage. The death of a wild boar touched Bretons to their core, they loved their wild boar – Asterix and Obelix was pure truth. For years, the plague of algae had been one of the most discussed topics in Brittany. It was also one of Riwal’s favourite topics – just last Friday afternoon he had got worked up for a full half hour (‘an absolute disgrace!’). The over-fertilisation of the fields through the years and the run-off of the nitrates through the streams and rivers into the sea often resulted in large algae build-ups in the summer months. Some beaches were strewn with it for hundreds of metres. It was harmless really, edible in fact, it only became dangerous if it decomposed in the summer sun. T
his year the first of the algae had already been washed up by the end of April, earlier than ever before. Suddenly the whole of France and half of Europe were discussing it. Maybe the deaths of the wild boar would actually affect the supremacy of the farming lobby and the barefaced way many politicians played it down. Maybe the wild boars would change things – it would be a very Breton story.
Dupin’s phone rang. Nolwenn again.
‘Konan’s friend is called Lucas Lefort. A big name in Brittany. Co-owner of the sailing school Les Glénans. The most famous sailing school in the world! It belongs to him and his sister, the two of them inherited it. Also, Lefort used to be a professional sailor himself. He was a member of the crew of the Explorer IV that won the Admiral’s Cup eight years ago, the toughest and most significant sailing competition for ocean-going yachts. The open class – the unofficial world championship. Only Bretons on the team!’
Nolwenn did actually draw breath here, going on a little more calmly.
‘Konan goes with him on his trips. The headquarters on the islands are right next to the Quatre Vents. He also has a house on Saint-Nicolas, one of those houses that are very ugly on the outside, towards Bananec.’
Dupin delved into the topic reluctantly.
‘Does he live on the islands?’
‘He actually lives in Les Sables Blancs, he’s got a villa there, renovated in an extremely modern way by a top architect, with a pool and all that. But he also seems to spend the night on Saint-Nicolas quite often. A confirmed bachelor. If you ask me: a show-off, snob and womaniser. He makes headlines quite a lot.’
Dupin was again tempted to ask how she knew all of this and how she’d come by this information within such a short time. Not least, how she had come to this drastic characterisation of hers. He had sounded like a hero at first.
‘By the way, Lefort didn’t keep his two boats in Bénodet, of course, he kept them in Concarneau. He owns a luxury sailing yacht and one of those speedboats. He’s always running between the Glénan and the mainland in them.’
‘Hmm. And why are they not out in the luxury yacht on their trips, he and Konan?’
‘No idea, Monsieur le Commissaire.’
‘I’ll see if I happen to run into him here. Or whether anybody knows anything.’
Dupin had uttered this sentence instinctively. Nolwenn had, apparently, been reckoning on that exact thing. She knew him.
‘I’ve just asked at the sailing school whether he is there. They said they don’t know where he is right now, but he’s expected there at any moment.’
‘All right. Tell Riwal there’s no need for the helicopter to pick me up. I’m sure it’ll come back again later. I assume. After it’s taken the bodies to Quimper?’
‘I don’t know. But there’s also the second sea-rescue helicopter.’
‘Great.’
There was just one thing Dupin did not want: to set foot on another boat.
* * *
A few minutes later, Commissaire Dupin was standing in front of Lucas Lefort’s house, which was indeed very ugly. It was the first in the row. The other absolutely identical houses followed at intervals of about fifteen metres – six of them, each one set a little further back than the last. They were each surrounded by a large, albeit barren garden, overgrown with nothing but bushy, wild island grass. For all that, they had an enchanting view of the lagoon of Saint-Nicolas and of Penfret, Drénec, Le Loc’h and – in the middle of the chamber – Fort-Cigogne. The gardens were separated from the seaside path by a knee-high, strange-looking and very plain concrete wall. The houses must have dated from the seventies and the architecture had surely been ambitious for the time. The slate roofs reached the ground, with windows and balconies built into them like niches, which must have been considered chic at the time. Probably, only the extremely strict coastal protection laws of the last few years had prevented them being torn down and replaced with new houses. Lefort’s balcony was wooden and was the only attractive thing about the whole house, which was surrounded by large stones and furnished with – in Dupin’s opinion – an excessively large wooden table and an equally excessive number of chairs.
You couldn’t make anybody out through the light-reflecting panoramic windows. On the right hand edge of the property, there was a small wooden gateway, from where a narrow gravel path led towards the entrance at the side of the house. There was no doorbell visible on the gate. Just a small enamel plaque: ‘L. Lefort’.
Dupin again toyed with the idea of letting Riwal know he was to be taken straight to the mainland after all. The whole situation was too awful. Here he was making enquiries about the clearly unpleasant friend of an equally unpleasant friend of the Prefect whom he hated. Perhaps Lefort was lying contentedly in bed after a long night and if not here, then in his villa in Sables Blancs. And what did that mean – ‘They’re expecting him’? Anyway: there were no indications of any kind that Konan and Lefort were two of the three bodies in the air on their way to the pathologist’s office in Quimper at that very moment. And what was he meant to say to Lefort if he did runinto him here? ‘For some reason I had a hunch you were one of the three water corpses, even though we had nothing indicating that – I’m glad that you’re not’? Everything was pointing towards his immediate return to Concarneau. But no matter how much this all annoyed him, Dupin couldn’t do anything about it. He opened the gate and walked along the gravel path.
The main door was just as ugly as the house – made of aluminium, with a frosted glass window in the upper third. No bell here either. Dupin knocked. Discreetly at first, but after waiting a while, with more force.
‘Monsieur Lefort? Hello?’
Dupin called out several times. Louder each time. ‘Commissariat de Police Concarneau.’
‘I don’t know if he’s even in.’
Dupin jumped. There was a woman standing right behind him. He hadn’t noticed anyone approaching and she couldn’t have come up the pebbled path.
‘I – Bonjour, Madame – Commissaire Dupin, Commissariat de Police Concarneau.’
The woman looked to be in her late thirties, with long, thick hair, dark blonde, set in a tidy plait. She was exceptionally thin, of average height, with elegantly high, yet completely harmonious, cheekbones, in a narrow face. Very narrow, but not ugly. Not at all. Guarded, alert, self-assured eyes. A visibly tight, mud-brown tweed skirt and an equally tight, severe blouse in a dark orange. It looked quaint, the way she was dressed, old-fashioned somehow.
‘Has something happened to Lucas? What’s this about? I’m his sister. Muriel Lefort.’
‘No, not at all. I just wanted…’
This was even more difficult than if it had been Lefort himself. Whatever he said, it would make her anxious.
‘I’m sure there’s no need to worry.’
Dupin felt uneasy at this sentence.
‘My brother and I had arranged to meet, but he hasn’t turned up yet. I wanted to check if he was here. He’s not answering his phone. His boat is in the harbour. So he should be on the island. He actually lives in Sables Blancs, but he’s here now and again, although he doesn’t stay overnight very often. He was still here last night anyway.’
‘He was here last night?’
‘Yes. I saw him briefly in the Quatre Vents. But I didn’t speak to him. I was only there for a few minutes.’
‘Was your brother alone?’
‘I couldn’t say. He was standing at the bar talking to a blonde woman. Why are you looking for my brother?’
Dupin had hoped to avoid this question.
He was confused. Lefort had been here yesterday evening. Had Yannig Konan been too? Had they been travelling in the area, did they stop off here because of the storm? Did the two of them stay overnight on the island? If Lefort had been alone, was that not really an indication that Konan had not been travelling with Lefort at all, but had actually been with a woman or something along those lines? But where was Lefort?
‘Do you have a key to your brother’s hous
e?’
‘Not here. I can get it, I live just next door.’
Dupin’s telephone rang loudly. He saw Kadeg’s number. He stood aside and picked up.
‘We have a missing person’s report. It just came in to Quimper.’
Kadeg was getting a bit flustered, even though he was desperately trying to keep his words under control.
‘Who is it?’
‘A Monsieur Arthur Martin. From Île-Tudy, not far from Bénodet. He…’
‘What age?’
‘Fifty-five.’
‘I – wait a minute, Kadeg.’
Dupin turned to Muriel immediately, who was looking nervously at him.
‘This is about something totally separate, Madame Lefort. About someone else. Categorically.’
‘That’s good to hear. – – – I think…’ she broke off awkwardly, ‘I’ll go get the key.’
‘Please do.’
Dupin waited a moment, then turned back to Kadeg.
‘Who reported him missing?’
‘His girlfriend. He was on the Île aux Moutons yesterday. It’s not a part of the archipelago at all, but everyone counts it anyway. It’s five nautical miles away, in the direction of the mainland, slightly more to the west. He was meant to be back tomorrow morning at the latest, travelling by boat. Not a very big boat, five metres sixty, that he was always going out in. With a cabin though. The girlfriend tried to get him on his mobile. Then she got more and more worried.’
‘Maybe the battery is dead.’
‘She drove round to his house and called his office. He hasn’t turned up there yet either.’
‘What was going to do on the islands?’
‘Fish. He was an experienced fisherman.’
‘Was he alone?’
‘His girlfriend says he was always alone on the boat. I’m having a photo of Arthur Martin sent to us on my smartphone.’
Kadeg didn’t use a mobile, of course, he used a smartphone. Dupin couldn’t even stand how Kadeg pronounced the word ‘smartphone’, let alone watch how he showed off when he used it – with all of its sensational functions.
‘I don’t see any signs that the missing man could be one of the three bodies. Monsieur Martin is certain to turn up again soon.’
Murder on Brittany Shores Page 5
