In the eighteenth century, Dupin knew, people had started to remember this powerful, ancient civilization and its culture, one of the great roots of Europe, that had too often been forgotten, displaced, oppressed, or even violently fought. That’s what was going on when Riwal and Nolwenn gave their impassioned lectures: it was a matter of defense, recognition, significance.

  It had sounded odd to Dupin’s ears initially, but that had long since stopped being the case: this was where anyone who wanted to understand Brittany and the Bretons had to start.

  * * *

  Dupin was approaching Rennes, the Breton capital. He was just turning onto the ring road that ran round the city to the north; from the ring road there were turnoffs for Saint-Malo and Cancale. After Lorient there had been constant heavy bursts of torrential rain, which had forced Dupin to make an infuriating reduction to his speed.

  Real waterfalls, another kind of Breton rain: as if the sea were being sucked up and then poured right back down to earth from the skies.

  After the phone call with Kadeg, Dupin had immediately tried to reach Riwal. Every five minutes. With no luck. He had only just got through. Riwal had arrived in Tobermory by now. The line had been terrible. Dupin had passed on his priorities briefly. First, Riwal would go to Mackenzie’s wife and drive to the oyster farm.

  The prefect had called soon after that, but Dupin hadn’t answered. He would only get annoyed again. It was a good thing he hadn’t answered, because a call from Claire had come in right after. She had been sitting in the Amiral having breakfast. There were quite a few things on her to-do list today: phone line, registering at the town hall, furniture shops, boutiques in Quimper; the move had begun. Dupin had been—without meaning to—curt with her.

  The rain was pelting down so hard on the metal that he almost didn’t hear the electronic beeping starting again. Magalie Melen.

  Dupin had wanted to get in touch with her anyway. There must be more specific information from the forensic experts by now.

  “Melen, what—”

  She interrupted him frantically: “They’ve just showed up with an entire police van. In Port Belon! A special commission from Lorient is searching Delsard’s weekend house now too. The search warrant was widened to include everything: company, personal home, weekend house.”

  A comprehensive measure—they really wanted to find out.

  “The house next to Tordeux’s house,” Dupin murmured.

  “Should we do something?”

  Dupin would have liked to say yes. But of course it was foolish. What could they do?

  “There’s so much going on in this tiny village these days,” he said instead.

  “I don’t see any kind of connection between this event, the whole sand theft issue, and our case,” said Melen, again very focused. “Do you, Commissaire?”

  Dupin felt the same way, and he would have expressed it with the same rigor.

  “The stupid thing is just that despite all of our attempts, we do not even remotely have a story that could lend some sense to the events,” he said pensively.

  “By the way, every attempt to track down the woman from the bus from Plage Kerfany has come to nothing; we’ve spoken to all of the passengers. It’s getting difficult now.”

  That had been an abrupt change of topic. But Melen was right, it wasn’t worth continuing to spend time on the idiotic sand theft, no matter what or who the special commission was searching.

  “Keep trying. Sometimes you’ve got to force luck, corner it. What about the fire? Are the experts able to say more?”

  “They’ve cut the section in question out of the wooden wall and are examining it in the laboratory. They’re still leaning the same way: the fire was more likely set from outside than inside, although they weren’t able to detect any fire accelerants at the scene.”

  “So it was arson.”

  “It’s not certain yet.”

  So much hinged on this answer. Completely different scenarios developed, depending on it.

  “We need to know. Beyond doubt. Call again, apply pressure.”

  They simply had to make some headway.

  “Will do. We have another piece of new information: your inspector just told you about a possible link between Cueff and Tordeux that we’re looking into. There’s a second possible connection between Cueff and someone in Port Belon: a big écailler meet-up took place at the beginning of March. A meet-up for oyster shuckers, and it included a competition. And do you know who was there? Madame Premel. For two days. It’s probably an old hobby of hers.”

  Dupin remembered visiting Parisian restaurants during his childhood, hours of sitting there stiffly with his family, and there were always oysters to start (perhaps that was also why he didn’t eat them?). He had hated it, the sitting around and the oysters. His mother, on the other hand, had loved oysters. He had watched them: the écaillers. Oyster shuckers—a highly regarded gastronomic profession, steeped in tradition. So perhaps Cueff and Madame Premel knew each other too. That was interesting.

  “Madame Premel told me about the trip herself. But she said she didn’t get to know a Monsieur Cueff there, as far as she could remember. Which doesn’t mean a thing,” Melen said.

  Absolutely correct.

  “Try the organizers. Perhaps you’ll learn something there,” Dupin said.

  “We’re also working on the Interceltic activities in Port Belon. And we’ve received a call from the authorities. The infection has reached the Étel.”

  The Étel was one of those incredible fjords on the south coast. It formed a small gulf with a dozen islets, similar to the Gulf of Morbihan, only smaller. It was not all that far from the Belon.

  “There’s still one checkpoint between the Belon and the Étel. The oyster farmers have already been informed,” Melen reported matter-of-factly. “But they are still relaxed.”

  Dupin was again more nervous than everyone else. But, where nature, natural events, and catastrophes were concerned, Bretons were always relaxed. They knew that nature was more powerful than they were. That whatever nature wished to happen, would happen. Not that Bretons simply resigned themselves to their fates and put up with everything, that wasn’t it; of course they did everything they could to protect themselves—but they remained calm and they didn’t get worked up. A big storm just elicited a shrug here.

  “Speak to you soon, Commissaire,” Melen said, about to hang up.

  “One more thing.” Dupin hesitated, but then put it firmly: “Call in to Delsard’s house regularly and have a colleague tell you what’s going on there, whether they find anything interesting.”

  “All right.” Magalie Melen waited to see if there was anything else coming, then added a “See you soon,” and hung up.

  The gas tank light had come on a quarter of an hour ago. Dupin ignored it on principle, for as long as he possibly could. But at his speed, it wouldn’t be sensible. Even though deluges of water continued to pour down and it wouldn’t be pleasant to leave the car.

  The gas station was before the turnoff. Dupin knew this gas station as he did every other one along the four-lane stretches in Brittany. (Which mainly meant he knew if their coffee was good. Unfortunately, it was good here.)

  Dupin signaled and took the exit.

  Half a minute later, the gas tank hose was in his tank. The narrow roof over the pillar was a joke. The commissaire’s hair and pants were soaked through in seconds, the water was streaming down his face, through the denim, into his shoes; only his jacket was keeping the rain out. The locking device on the nozzle wasn’t working—Dupin hated that—so he had to stand next to the car.

  The rain was so loud that he almost didn’t hear the beeping in his pocket. An unknown number. He hated that too.

  He answered anyway. Anything could be important right now. He pressed the phone as close to his ear as he could.

  “Hello?”

  Dupin immediately recognized the self-important way of speaking: “This afternoon, I will be going in front of the press. These are really spectacular developments, mon Commissaire!”

  Locmariaquer, the prefect. It was sneaky, and he had done it on several occasions recently: he sometimes just called from a different phone, without caller ID. But that didn’t matter now. It was more important that—Dupin knew this from painful experience—the utmost caution was exercised when the prefect spoke of “mon Commissaire.”

  “Spectacular developments?”

  “It’s all cleared up now, of course. I’m so pleased!”

  “What’s cleared up, Monsieur le Préfet?”

  “The case. The mysterious events of recent days.”

  “What?”

  “Well, the two murders, all of the investigations into them have come to nothing so far. Now we’ve got the story at the center of it all! The people involved!”

  Dupin took a few deep breaths in and out, the water running into his mouth as he did so. He was in a critical psychological state, and he was struggling to control himself.

  “Hello, mon Commissaire, are you still there?”

  The tank was full; Dupin had automatically hung the hose up again and was running toward the little gas station building through large oil-smeared puddles.

  “Why would a Scottish oyster farmer and his seasonal worker be embroiled in a French construction company’s sand theft in Brittany? And to such an extent that the first one murders the other and then he gets murdered himself? And the fire that, the forensics suggest, was probably arson? I don’t see the slightest connection between these events,” Dupin said.

  “That, mon Commissaire”—the prefect had clearly decided not to lose his cool and to stay steadfastly on track—“that is your exact task. You’ll find the connection—we’ve solved every case so far, haven’t we? It’s about the sand theft, I’m sure of it! The connection is hidden somewhere, you just need to establish it. Inspector Kadeg is absolutely certain of it anyway. We have a lot to thank him for on this case, you know that.”

  This was outrageous. The whole thing was.

  Just yesterday the prefect had almost had Kadeg suspended, as cool as anything. Dupin had saved Kadeg’s skin, and because of this, he had suggested the idea of a great coup to the prefect in the first place, in view of a sand theft that was highly improbable at the time. It was nothing but an invention born of necessity at that point in time. A lie. He was an idiot—Dupin himself had been the idiot.

  “You want me to construct the link between the events? Invent a supposed link that connects everything to the sand theft and Pierre Delsard?”

  Apparently that’s exactly what the prefect was asking of him.

  Dupin stayed as far away from the cash register in the shop as possible. Even though he was the only customer there. The woman at the register had already given him a skeptical glance. Dupin tried to lower his voice. He didn’t really manage to.

  “Even though there’s no evidence of this? This is—”

  “No evidence? Is Tordeux the closest friend of Delsard or not? Do the two of them do business together or not? Well, of course the fire wasn’t a coincidence, an amateur can see that! Either they got into an argument or the oyster farmer wanted to destroy evidence. That’s just obvious.”

  “It’s pure speculation, and how would—”

  “Mon Commissaire.” The sharp tone signaled his readiness to launch fierce attacks, although the prefect was keeping any escalation in reserve for now. “If someone’s head itches and lice are found, it’s highly unlikely that they have fleas too. Do you know what a tiny backwater Port Belon is? A scattering of houses in a little wood! Surely you don’t suppose several crimes took place there at the same time and they have nothing to do with one another?”

  Again, an absurd metaphor, an absurd argument.

  And the prefect still wasn’t done:

  “Besides, the Trenez and Kerfany-les-Pins beaches are both just a stone’s throw away. Actual crime scenes! Maybe the Scotsman saw something he shouldn’t have. Tragically, that kind of thing happens. Wrong place, wrong time! Wouldn’t be the first time. And if I understand correctly, we’re currently only talking about circumstantial evidence in that murder. Apparently we don’t have a single witness. That—that is speculation!”

  “And Smith, his laborer? He—”

  “Is the investigative work my job all of a sudden? As I say, you’ve got specific orders, Commissaire! This is your investigation now. I want a connection! And I want it quickly. The press is already bombarding me. And this afternoon I’m going to report that we are on the point of dealing a decisive blow to ruthless, abhorrent criminals who are destroying our Breton coast and do not even stop at murder. And also that we will share the full story soon. I’m expecting—”

  Dupin should have done it sooner: he pressed the red button.

  And took deep breaths in and out. Several times.

  Then he ran a hand roughly through his wet hair. They needed the real story behind all of this. As quickly as possible!

  He paid and ran back to his car through the pelting rain. After getting in, he waited a little while. He needed to get his anger under control. “Never fight if you’re angry.” Zorro’s motto sprang to mind, one of his childhood heroes. Although not fighting felt incredibly difficult to him in that moment.

  Melen dropping in on her colleagues in Delsard’s house was not a good idea under these circumstances. The less contact they had with all of that, the better.

  As he drove away, he dialed her number.

  She picked up immediately.

  “Melen, leave the whole—”

  “Tordeux!” Her voice cracked. “Matthieu Tordeux—he’s had a serious car accident. It’s unclear whether he has survived, it looks bad, they—”

  “What?” Dupin was stunned.

  “They’re bringing him to the hospital in Lorient.” The young policewoman was gradually recovering her composure. “It’s touch and go. Your line was busy just now, I’ve—”

  “What happened?”

  “He crashed into a tree head-on, on the stretch of road just beyond Port Belon in the direction of Riec. Where everyone drives much too fast.”

  “Why? Why on earth did he crash head-on into a tree?”

  “We don’t know yet. The car’s a write-off, an old Citroën Jumper, the pickup version that lots of people drive here.”

  “That cannot be a coincidence. This was definitely not an accident.”

  Dupin was completely fed up. What on earth was going on in this idyllic place?

  “We need to find out what happened right away. A fire yesterday, a car accident today, how likely is that? This was not an accident, this—” Dupin broke off.

  “Even if someone caused the accident, it may be very difficult to prove. Someone could, for example, have run Tordeux off the road with another vehicle. You wouldn’t necessarily see that on his car. Someone else would have to have been watching by chance.”

  “Tordeux might be able to tell us himself. If he … is in a position to do so again.”

  Dupin had been back on the four-laner for some time now and had just riskily braked from 150 down to 40 kilometers an hour, taking a small turnoff at the last minute so that he could turn around.

  “He’s unconscious.”

  Dupin was silent for a while.

  “Hello—Commissaire, are you still there?”

  “Shit.”

  If it really had been an attack, then they were dealing with a third attempted murder. By an unknown number of perpetrators. The case was growing and growing; it was worsening, unchecked.

  “Who found Tordeux?”

  “Madame Premel.”

  “Premel? What on earth was she doing there?”

  “According to her statement, she was on her way to Riec, as apparently Tordeux had also been shortly before. She saw the crashed car to her right by the tree and called the police.”

  “Where was she before her trip to Riec?”

  “We’ll ask her that soon.”

  “And the other people from our lovely oyster world? Find out right away who was where today!”

  “We’ll do that.”

  “And make a start on searching Tordeux’s house. And also the first floor of the little building on the Belon. Have some experts come for the computers, the data. I want every email, every document, and every database scrutinized, the accounts schedules, the delivery documents, whatever! All of it! Start with the last few months.”

  “Understood, Commissaire.”

  They’d have access to everything now; the suspicion of murder was enough.

  “Focus on the oyster businesses and possible discrepancies.” They needed to know quickly whether there was evidence of shady business—that could be where the solution to the whole case lay. “And look for Mackenzie’s and Smith’s names, of course. That’s it for the time being, Melen. I’m on my way.”

  Dupin had driven over a dangerously narrow motorway bridge and was already on the slip road in the opposite direction, back to Port Belon. Cancale would have to wait.

  “Nolwenn, I want Brioc L’Helgoualc’h on the scene.” Dupin had just thought of this, although he had no doubt completely mispronounced the name. “The Native American from the Monts d’Arrée. He’s to set out immediately. I want him to take a look at everything: the car, the surroundings. In his own way. If anyone asks, this is on my strict instructions.”

  “Good idea, Monsieur le Commissaire. And also because you don’t have Kadeg at your disposal after all. The prefect has just assigned him exclusively to the ‘great sand operation.’ He called a few minutes ago, he wanted—”

 

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