The Missing Corpse: A Brittany Mystery, page 3
part #4 of Commissaire Dupin Series
Reglas and his team put down their imposing silver suitcases in synchrony and opened them. Neither the two police officers from Riec nor Dupin and his inspectors reacted to the forensic investigator’s demand.
“It’s possible,” Riwal said, unfazed, “that there was no body at all.”
“We don’t have any reliable evidence at all,” the older police officer said, showing his unsuitability for the job again.
“For the time being,” Kadeg said, startlingly matter-of-fact, “we’ve got a yet-to-be-disproven statement that there was a corpse lying here. With blood visible on it. Despite it not being here anymore. There might be reasons for that—perhaps the murderer disposed of it.”
“Show me where the corpse supposedly was,” Reglas said. He was also a master of remaining unimpressed.
The older policeman shot Dupin an obsequious, inquiring look, and Dupin raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
“Here, that’s what the old lady who made the statement claims.” Braz showed Reglas the spot.
“This place has an aura about it,” Riwal suddenly said in a low, mysterious voice. He was known for a tendency to do this, counterbalanced by a very practical side, and all heads abruptly swiveled around toward him. Dupin was glad nobody asked any questions, including their two colleagues from Riec. A moment later, Kadeg drew everyone’s attention back to himself: “My informant suspects that sand has been removed from the Plage Kerfany-les-Pins and the Plage de Trenez in recent days. That’s very near here.”
Excellent. That was all they needed. For weeks now, Kadeg had been nagging Dupin and the entire commissariat about this topic like a maniac: sand theft. Dupin couldn’t stand to listen to it anymore, although Nolwenn had urged him not to take the subject lightly. Cases of sand theft really did happen over and over again, and on a large scale on some coastlines. Contrary to popular perception, sand was an extremely valuable, almost universal raw material, and was used in large quantities for all kinds of purposes: for concrete, mortar, glass, paper, plastic; above all, the silicon in quartz sand was essential for microchips, computers, mobile phones, and so much more. Kadeg had the facts at his fingertips: two hundred tons of sand were needed to build a single house, thirty thousand tons for a kilometer of motorway. Seventy percent of all beaches in the world had already, at a conservative estimate, fallen victim to the industry. Most of them illegally. The sand was stolen in enormous quantities by criminal gangs and companies. A global phenomenon, Dupin had learned, that affected Brittany too, and caused catastrophic ecological consequences. A few years ago, a militant association had been founded to provide well-publicized opposition to protect the beaches: le peuple des dunes, the people of the dunes. Nolwenn had left a long article about it on Dupin’s desk: “La Guerre du Sable”—“The War of the Sand.”
No matter how urgent the subject might be, though, this was not the time or the place.
“We don’t need that stuff about the sand now, Kadeg! We’ve got other things to worry about,” Dupin said.
“You know that sand was being stolen from the wild beaches at Kerouini and Pendruc for more than two years until anyone even noticed. The culprit was only caught by chance.”
Kadeg was fanatical. Although he was right: a skillfully executed sand theft was difficult to detect. The culprits drove trucks to isolated beaches on nights when the tide was low, and by the next morning the tide had removed all of their tracks. Nobody even noticed the absence of considerable quantities of sand, simply because the sea often carried tremendous amounts of sand away during higher tides and storms—and sometimes only brought it back days later and deposited it in entirely different places. Or only a proportion of it. And kept the rest. It happened many times a year. Dupin was always worried it could affect his favorite beach—that the sand might just not come back one day. It was crazy how the sea was constantly creating new landscapes. Sometimes a wide bay was full of the finest powdery sand and ran evenly for half a kilometer into the sea, and sometimes the same bay was stony, rocky, and was two or three meters lower, with no sand at all. In February, a storm on the Sables Blancs in Concarneau had taken away so much sand that the fossilized trunks of an oak wood thousands of years old had been visible for days. They had jutted half a meter out of the muddy ground like an enormous art installation.
“And you see a connection between the corpse that Madame Bandol thinks she saw, the disappearance of the corpse, and criminal sand theft activity here on the coast?” Melen asked.
Dupin was grateful to the young policewoman for this precise question. Although she couldn’t stop Kadeg.
“I don’t think the culprit in Kerouini was acting alone. Even though the building contractor is claiming that. There’s a system behind it. Sophisticated organized crime. A mafia! One of these gangs has just been busted in Senegal!”
“This seems extremely vague right now,” Magalie Melen said calmly.
“Everyone wants it: in Brittany we have the best sand in the world. The purest granite. They’re particularly keen on that. It’s not ideal for everything, for—”
“Enough, Kadeg. We know.”
Erwann Braz showed some stubbornness. “I’d like to point out again that it’s still highly questionable whether we actually have anything to deal with here.”
“When exactly does the old lady claim to have seen someone lying here?” Reglas butted into the conversation. He was kneeling on the ground a few meters away from them.
“Shortly before five, she says,” Melen answered.
“Excellent. It must still have been raining heavily here too then.” It sounded as if Reglas took this as a personal insult. “In rain like that, all organic trace evidence dissolves within minutes. We’ll have to take soil samples, and even then we probably won’t have any luck.”
Dupin felt a growing unease. “I’ll speak to Madame Bandol myself.”
As always, Kadeg had objections. “But what should we—”
“You wait here with Riwal and our two colleagues until Monsieur Reglas has a preliminary report for us.” Dupin was already some distance away when he said this, making a beeline for his car.
“But we—” Kadeg couldn’t be silenced.
“Speak to you later.” Dupin opened the car door, got in, and stepped on the gas pedal as the engine started, the Citroën jolting forward.
It was an absurd situation. Not just Kadeg with his sand theft obsession. But also the great film star of the twentieth century playing a role; a corpse that had suddenly disappeared—and which, although it was impossible to tell, may never actually have existed. Although in principle Dupin didn’t think the magnificent Sophie Bandol lacked credibility for now, just because she was old and apparently quite odd. It was true: older people really did get confused sometimes.
* * *
Dupin loved Port Belon, the enchanted little village that was somehow divorced from time and the real world. He loved its charm, its aura, its atmosphere. Like in one of those films from the seventies and eighties that celebrated life at long wooden tables in wild gardens by rivers, lakes, or the ocean.
Port Belon lay in the estuary of the Belon, which at this point, just a few hundred meters from the open Atlantic, was very wide. At high tide, the Atlantic thrust its water kilometers inland. From the other side, from the land, the Belon came, flowing as a stream through picture-book meadows and woods, over dark, nutrient-rich soil, always carrying a little of the soil along with it. At Le Guily, where there was another eight kilometers to go before the sea, it flowed as a small stream under a picturesque bridge, and on the other side it was suddenly a river, a sea river. Freshwater and saltwater mixed in ever-changing proportions. And something unique was formed.
A secret, a gift. Sea and river, that was the special thing about this place, something you noticed and tasted in the air, in the extraordinary smells: a unique mixture of land—with green meadows, grass, flowers, fields, the taste of rich soil and damp woods—river, and, depending on the direction and strength of the wind, the salt and iodine of the sea.
The village was tucked inside the middle of a thick Breton wood on a tapering flat headland. A wood like the one near the cliffs at the parking lot: ancient, full of ivy and mistletoe. All along the only street that led to Port Belon, the tall treetops grew together over the road so that they formed a dark green tunnel.
There were fewer than a dozen houses here, white or made of pale granite, and two centuries-old manor houses, proper châteaux, and anarchic gardens with several bushy palms towering up out of them. You could still see the old splendor in the properties, but you could also see the time that had passed, ubiquitous ivy and flaking paint. The charm of decay, of the transitory nature of things.
Dupin had left his car in the parking lot a little upstream and went to the village on foot the way he always did—down the narrow dead end that headed straight toward the water and ended abruptly at a small jetty.
Dupin loved standing here. On the dock, right by the water. A narrow staircase with a terribly rusty frame led down to the river, and at high tide it went directly into the water.
Opposite this, on the other side of the river, lay Belon, also just a few houses, white with Atlantic-blue shutters and dark slate roofs. They were also nestled in gently flourishing woods on slightly hilly banks, oak woods like on the Port Belon side, with several stone pines and fir trees towering into the air here and there in the gaps. A few local fishing boats were bobbing lazily to and fro on the flat, now dark turquoise water of the river, all of them in vibrant colors—orange, light green, yellow, sea green, and scarlet. They were called Au Large, Horizont, Dauphin; one was L’Espoir II, and every time he saw it, Dupin thought sadly about the tragic story of what the “first hope” might have been.
It was still low tide, very low tide; the Belon was truly a river now, you could see the current flowing toward the sea. Large stretches on either side lay exposed, sand and silt that reflected the dazzling sunlight. Extensive, glittering landscapes were formed. Dreamlike black-and-white scenery—the blinding light was so dazzling that it leached the colors from the landscape. Hundreds of artists had captured this unique nature. Like a bizarre, dark shadow, from here you could see what had made the enchanting village so famous ever since the nineteenth century—legendary, it had to be said—not just in Brittany and France, but throughout the world: the oyster beds. The extensive oyster beds that sank beneath the water at high tide.
Port Belon was—along with Cancale in the north—the mecca for oysters, or huîtres, and the art of growing and refining them, ostréiculture. Breton oyster farming was first developed here, and the Belon oysters were legendary throughout the world: they were swallowed in the best bars and restaurants in Tokyo, in New York, in Rome, in London, and of course in Paris. This was where they came from. And yet everything here was completely unpretentious, calm. It was like with the villages in Champagne: such exclusive delicacies made you expect incredibly fancy villages, and then they were totally down-to-earth.
Port Belon was not chic, but it was all the more beautiful for it. You got out of the car and you could feel it: a magic. Some places had it. The commissaire kept a private list of the places that cheered him up, brought him happiness, even though this was a big word—you had to seek them out in life. Just a few weeks ago he had come here with Claire, just like nearly every time she visited for the weekend (as a Normandy woman, she was crazy about oysters). They had generally met in Paris less often recently; Claire was coming to Concarneau more and more often, which Dupin had been pleased about, because this way they avoided the ceremonial visits to his mother. Claire had even come during the week, if she had worked another whole weekend at the hospital. “I want to get a feel for what normal life is like here. Your everyday life,” she had said. They had walked along the bank of the Belon in glorious sunshine and fresh wind in the late afternoon. It was one of the most marvelous walks Dupin knew. With blissful fatigue and cheeks reddened by the wind and sun, they had stopped off. And had eaten until late. Sat, eaten, drunk, talked, and laughed.
Dupin shook himself. He could stand here and watch forever. Lose himself in it. But not now.
La Coquille was just a stone’s throw away, on the edge of the village, in one of the fjord’s last, sharp turns. The restaurant run by three elderly sisters was an institution, a paradise for seafood lovers. Only a few of the tables were occupied, but that would change soon. Dupin recognized Sophie Bandol immediately. She was sitting at one of the windows that looked out onto the wooden terrace. At a small table for two right by one of the wide windowsills crammed with carved seagulls, little brightly painted boats, a blue-and-white-striped lighthouse, a lamp with a protruding old-fashioned lampshade, and several picture frames with Atlantic paintings in them. Everything higgledy-piggledy. Over the decades, hundreds of objects had been collected in La Coquille, mostly maritime objects, and they had been hung on walls, put out however and wherever there was space, all over the place, bit by bit, in no particular order. Dupin really liked it. Sextants, life rings, shells and stones, little boxes with glass panels that had miniature models of beach landscapes behind them, ship’s wheels, barometers, pieces of rope, and cabin lamps.
Dupin realized he was a little nervous. Which he found embarrassing and almost never happened; neither official authorities nor famous people ever affected him. Except when he admired them.
“Bonsoir, Madame Bandol, enchanté. Commissaire Georges Dupin, Commissariat de Police Concarneau.”
In his bashfulness he had become formal, which felt awkward. Sophie Bandol sized him up with a mixture of skepticism and curiosity.
Dupin started again. “You … you notified the police, Madame Bandol, because you saw a man lying in a parking lot near the Pointe de Penquernéo. You assumed the man was—”
“I know when someone is dead. And I did see a dead body. A corpse. Dead as a doornail. A tragic incident.”
She looked marvelous. Tousled, shoulder-length hair, elaborately dyed a dark blond with a messy center parting, sparkling pitch-black warm eyes—which had fascinated Dupin ever since the first film he had seen them in—a wide mouth with curved lips, elegant bright red lipstick, and a sumptuous smile without a trace of aloofness. Unaffected, generous.
The smile he knew from the films, the smile that was just as famous as her coquettish, sullen pout.
“I … Madame Bandol, it’s a great pleasure. I mean, I’m so very glad to meet you, I can hardly believe it.”
The words had just come tumbling out. But Dupin didn’t mind. He was sitting here with Sophie Bandol!
“What do you intend to do, Monsieur le Commissaire? Now that the dead body has disappeared. How are you going to find it again? You can’t just put up with a body going missing on you. I think the situation is looking rather tricky.”
“What can I get you?” Jacqueline, one of the three sisters at La Coquille, was standing next to them.
“Jacqueline has already taken my order. I’m starving, you know.” Madame Bandol suddenly spoke in a very intimate tone, as if she were sitting across the table from a good friend. “What will you have to eat, Monsieur le Commissaire?”
“I … no, thanks. I’ll have…” Dupin was considering how many more petits cafés would fall under “no coffee”—you had to look at it in proportion to his usual amount of coffee. “I’ll just have … a tea.” Dupin knew it had sounded pitiful. Besides, tea didn’t do anything for him; he kept trying it, it had no effect. In fact had no effect at all, no matter how black he drank it. “And,” he hurried to say—Jacqueline had already turned round, but not before acknowledging his order with an extremely annoyed expression—“and a glass of Anjou.” One of his favorite white wines.
“That’s something anyway,” Jacqueline said, somewhat placated.
“Something terrible has happened here,” Madame Bandol whispered. There was real fear in her voice. Then, a moment later, a cheerful smile suddenly appeared on her face. “I’m on the champagne and I’ll stick to it if you don’t mind.” She was holding an empty glass in her hand.
“What did you see, Madame Bandol? Please tell me everything again very carefully. In as much detail as you can, every little thing you can remember.”
“Zizou was barking like mad all of a sudden,” she said, and looked down at her legs—underneath the table, right next to her feet, lay a motionless, medium-sized, friendly looking brown-and-white dog. Dupin didn’t know much about dogs, but he knew this breed: it was a fox terrier, Tintin’s dog. The dog lifted its head for a moment, then dropped it comfortably onto its front legs again.
“He was absolutely beside himself. We were still in the little wood at that point. On the path. Not at the parking lot yet at all. I immediately knew something was wrong. Zizou doesn’t just go crazy out of the blue, you know, he has a very even temperament. It was obvious this wasn’t just a wild boar, hare, or fox. He sometimes barks when Kiki is nearby too, but that wasn’t it either. Luckily, I had him on the lead,” she said.
“And then?” Dupin rummaged for his red notebook in the back pocket of his pants. And one of the Bic pens that he bought in considerable quantities at the Tabac Presse next to the Amiral, only to then lose them again with impressive speed.
“I asked him what was wrong. Then he dragged me right to the parking lot. Getting more and more agitated. Then I saw him. The man, I mean. He was lying in the grass. Right next to the asphalt. I showed your inspector the spot. I didn’t go any closer, I didn’t want Zizou to get even more agitated. Or to catch something.”
Dupin ignored this final sentence. “Describe everything that you saw for me,” he said.
“It was raining cats and dogs, the visibility was not particularly good. What can I say? It was a man. The head was oddly bent, it wasn’t normal, and one of the legs too, I don’t remember which one now, was sticking out strangely. I couldn’t see his face. Or maybe a little. As I say, I wisely didn’t go one step closer.”
