The Missing Corpse: A Brittany Mystery, page 32
part #4 of Commissaire Dupin Series
“Ben Osborn—you are…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
It was horrific.
But it was the truth.
There was a deathly silence in the room.
He started again: “You are not dead. And never died.”
Dupin could feel the onset of goosebumps as he said these words.
Kolenc remained as calm as before.
“You didn’t drown. You merely staged your own death.” Suddenly the words just started to pour out of Dupin. “You had the stolen money. The entire time. You fled. Probably that very night.”
Dupin’s crazy idea had been correct. It had been about the bank robbery, that bank robbery more than forty years ago, yes, but in a very different way from how he had initially thought. It was not about the money that someone had somehow got their hands on—it was about the third man in the bank robbery: the supposedly drowned third man. The one presumed dead.
Baptiste Kolenc’s expressionless eyes were fixed glassily on the tabletop now.
Dupin stepped back a little; he could feel the wall behind him, that was good. “You left Scotland and Britain. You crossed over to Cancale. To the oyster town. Nobody bothered you, not for weeks. Thanks to the money, you had no problems getting by, and you knew all about oysters. You gradually calmed down. You began to think you would get away with it. And be able to start a new life.” Perhaps the alcohol in his head was actually helping, Dupin thought—as the words flowed, the story was really starting to come together. “You learned French meticulously, as quickly as possible, you already spoke Celtic. But Cancale was not a solution. Just a stepping-stone. That’s where you got everything ready. You created a new identity for yourself, got yourself new papers, a few documents as evidence of your new identity. The money—it made everything possible.” Claire was still standing rooted to the spot. She was looking at Dupin, not at Kolenc and his daughter, but Dupin didn’t notice. “And then you went to Port Belon. Far away from it all. With the new identity. That’s how Baptiste Kolenc came into being. The wonderful Baptiste Kolenc. You bought a farm. Gradually becoming the rather private but universally respected Baptiste Kolenc. You fell in love, married a local girl. A daughter was born. You worked hard and honestly. You became an important figure in the area, an institution, above all, and this was the best protection: an old hand. Which you were not. For over forty years, you were something you are not.”
Dupin paused. It was an absolutely insane story.
The enormous oyster in the Belon earlier had reminded him of his dream. Of the spine-chilling, sinister words that felt like something out of a fairy tale and had contained the solution to the puzzle: “It’s me. Me, but not me.” It was these words that had given rise to the crazy brainwave—Nolwenn and Riwal would be proud of him: a quasi-druidic lucid dream had brought the truth to light in this strange case. And oddly, there had also been echoes of a story L’Helgoualc’h had told Dupin on the peaks of the Monts d’Arrée: about the figures who turned up in the villages from time to time and were not who they claimed to be …
Kolenc and his daughter still made no move to speak. There was something creepy about it. Their faces expressionless, still no trace of hostility.
“At some point you stopped being afraid, but you remained careful. The probability that you would be found here in Port Belon after so many years, decades, was getting slimmer and slimmer. Everything was going well. But then,” Dupin paused, “but then came a crazy twist of fate. One of those twists that happen in our lives, strange turns of events that”—the commissaire was finding it increasingly difficult to go on; it was actually a profoundly sad story—“that change everything. That seem unbelievable, but happen anyway and,” Dupin was absolutely convinced of this, “our lives essentially consist of them. A reporter took photos for a Scottish magazine that Smith regularly read. And Smith recognized you in one of these photos. He called Mackenzie right away. And the catastrophe took its course.”
Dupin’s flow of words ebbed away. He felt sick.
Baptiste Kolenc reached for a glass as if in slow motion and drank it in small sips, extremely slowly. His daughter watched his every movement. Then she suddenly turned to Dupin, who had leaned against the wall.
“They wanted money,” she said tonelessly but clearly. “Five hundred thousand euro, in cash. They threatened to go public. To destroy my father’s life. But it wasn’t just the money they wanted. They wanted revenge. Mackenzie wanted revenge. My father wanted to give them the money, all of it, straightaway. I was against it. They were awful people.” Her voice grew hard, disdainful. “The pair of them were already fighting about the money between themselves, before they even had it. It was Mackenzie who killed Smith, on their journey here, he said that to my father outright. And he said that my father belonged to him now, that he could control him.”
Baptiste Kolenc had put the wineglass down, his face stony. It was impossible to tell what was going on inside his head. His daughter went on:
“He said my father would be his personal financier now. He himself was about to get into the oyster business in Brittany. And would destroy what my father had built up over all these years.”
Louann Kolenc stopped.
She fixed her gaze on Dupin. Tilted her head back for a moment. Was about to keep going, but her father beat her to it, almost inaudible: “I stabbed him to death. I didn’t mean to. But I stabbed him to death.”
Another rather long silence. Then Baptiste Kolenc suddenly came to life, fiercely defiant:
“I am not Ben Osborn. I am Baptiste Kolenc. Yes, I was Osborn once. But that was a long time ago. There is no Ben Osborn anymore!”
“Those two were the criminals, Monsieur le Commissaire! Mackenzie!” There was utter disgust in Louann’s voice. “He—”
“Leave it, Louann. I killed him. I didn’t mean to, but I don’t regret it either. I would do it again.”
Dupin came away from the wall and approached Baptiste Kolenc. “You suggested the parking lot as a meeting point, an isolated spot.”
“I had parked my car a little way away. I had to go and get it to take Mackenzie’s body away, then … then Armandine Bandol came and saw the body.” Kolenc paused. “After that, I took the body away, sank it in the sea. I called Louann and told her everything, she came to take Mackenzie’s car away.” Kolenc almost seemed relieved now. “Lots of people didn’t believe Armandine at first. But it was all true. Everything she said. Everything. There … there was a dead body.”
“Matthieu saw my father—Matthieu Tordeux. The bastard. He saw him driving away from the parking lot in his car. He was coming from his gîte. He blackmailed my father. He wanted…”
“He blackmailed him?” Dupin hadn’t thought of this scenario. “Matthieu Tordeux blackmailed your father? Tordeux is actually part of this business too? The fire—the car crash?”
At some point this afternoon, Dupin had—he now realized—attributed the blackmail, along with the fire and the car crash, to the whole sand theft business.
“So everything does hang together. It’s all one case after all.”
Nobody responded to his words.
“I couldn’t allow it. It needed to stop. To be over. Once and for all.” Louann Kolenc’s voice had taken on a mechanical tone. “It was all meant to go back to how it always was. My father didn’t know anything about what I did, I take sole responsibility for it. He would never have agreed to it! He … he is a wonderful person.” Louann Kolenc’s voice shook; she went pale and quiet and looked as if she might break down at any moment. “The grief from my mother’s death was bad enough. He made a mistake as a young man. Yes. But he paid for that. A long time ago. This wasn’t fair.”
Kolenc had slumped in his chair, just a miserable shadow, profound sadness in his eyes.
“You should never have done it.” This was a whisper. “Never. I should never have dragged you into it.”
Louann Kolenc stood up. She was trembling.
She walked round the table and gave her father a kiss on the forehead. Then she sat on the chair next to him, holding his hand.
She too could barely take any more.
“I would…” Dupin took a step closer to them.
“Georges.” Claire had turned to him, speaking softly but firmly. “Georges. It’s all right. Leave it.”
She was right, that was enough.
He was glad to hear Claire say these words.
Kolenc stood up.
“I’ll just get a few things.” He went over to a door at the back of the room. “Then we can go.”
He disappeared. His daughter followed him.
Dupin knew he really ought to follow him but he didn’t.
He stayed behind with Claire.
She had walked over to the window without saying a word. Dupin joined her, taking her hand and squeezing it hard. Then they looked out. The sun had disappeared behind the hills at the Belon estuary now, more or less where the parking lot was. It had set peacefully, no dramatic colors or effects, just pastel shades, pink and light orange, and a pale, translucent blue at the horizon.
“This is so tough, Georges.”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t long before Baptiste and Louann Kolenc returned, wearing jackets. They stood in the room in silence. Looked at the commissaire.
Dupin wanted to say something, anything.
He couldn’t.
There was nothing more to say.
He broke away and crossed the room, with the last of the concentration he could muster, his back straight. Claire followed.
Father and daughter seemed to hesitate for a moment, then they moved too.
Kolenc turned off the light before closing the door.
* * *
Dupin was sitting in his office in Concarneau that he disliked so much. He hadn’t switched the light on, opening the windows wide instead, the yellow streetlights casting diffuse shadows into the corner room on the second floor. Bright shafts of light raced across the room now and again, a car driving down the street from the hill to the harbor.
Claire had stayed with Nolwenn in the office next door.
They had remained silent throughout the journey, cooped up in the little Citroën C2. The air-conditioning had done a bad job of the moisture exchange and Claire had had to open a few of the windows so that the windowpanes didn’t mist up too much.
After arriving at the commissariat, Dupin had told Nolwenn the necessary details. Nolwenn hadn’t said a word, not a single one. She had brought him a glass of water, which meant she considered Dupin’s condition critical.
Two of their colleagues had led Baptiste and Louann Kolenc away. They had left with vacant looks, Kolenc turning around once and looking at Dupin. The commissaire couldn’t tell what that look had contained. A lot. But no hostility. Most importantly: Kolenc wasn’t broken. On the contrary. There was a kind of pride maybe. Kolenc stood by everything he had done, even though it had turned into a tragedy. Dupin understood him deep down, if he was honest, although he wasn’t supposed to.
There was one very last thing to do. Even though Dupin had no more strength left and he didn’t have the nerve—least of all for this.
But he had to do it, for himself.
He heaved a deep sigh.
And dialed the number.
It was a while before the prefect answered.
“Dupin, you are—”
He cut the prefect off immediately.
“We’ve got the murderer of Ryan Mackenzie: Baptiste Kolenc. He has confessed. He is not Baptiste Kolenc.” Dupin raised his voice. He had no idea where he summoned up the energy to do this from. “And we also have the perpetrator of the attacks on Matthieu Tordeux. Louann Kolenc. She has also confessed to everything. It’s all connected. They’re both at the police station in Concarneau. It has also been confirmed that Mackenzie killed Smith.”
“I…” The prefect hesitated.
Dupin had no idea what would come next. It didn’t matter anyway. He didn’t intend to say any more.
“I was just saying to the young policewoman from Riec: it’s a good thing I let you go so that you could keep investigating in secret! I think that was the crucial trick! Officially, the case was over and the perpetrator was lulled into a false sense of security. A brilliant strategy on my part. But I’ve got to say: you didn’t play your part badly either, mon Commissaire. I would even say you did it very well! You’ll have to tell me the whole st—”
Dupin pressed the red button. This was too dreadful. And it was worse than all of the dirty tricks he had put up with from the prefect in the last five years.
Luckily, he hadn’t had even an ounce of strength left to fly into a rage. Dupin didn’t care at that moment, he couldn’t care less.
He stood up. Closed the windows and left the room.
Claire smiled at him as he walked into Nolwenn’s office. Her inimitable, enchanting smile. It did him a world of good.
“You ought to get some sleep, Monsieur le Commissaire. Just sleep.”
Like Claire, Nolwenn had got to her feet.
“I will, Nolwenn. I…” He couldn’t go on. “Thank you.”
He headed straight for the door.
Claire slipped her arm through his.
“Good night, Nolwenn,” she said.
Half a minute later, they stepped out into the clear night. And shortly after that, Claire was opening the door to Dupin’s apartment.
The Fourth Day
Dupin had woken around eleven o’clock. Claire had taken the precaution of turning off all the phones during the night, severing every link to the outside world. Dupin had slept like a log. And had woken up with a hangover anyway.
Claire had been up early. She had got croissants and baguettes—sarmentines, the tradition—in the market hall, from the bakery stall at the front. She had made just one petit café, which didn’t count. And brought everything to him in bed. It was wonderful, apart from the headache behind his forehead. His stomach had handled the small amount of excess amazingly well; the oyster actually seemed to have done the trick.
Dupin and Claire had walked to the Sables Blancs, the legendary white beaches, at a leisurely pace, and his headache had disappeared. Then they had come back and strolled through the little streets of Concarneau. They had bought a few things for Claire’s apartment, mainly dishcloths. By then it was already afternoon and they had eaten crêpes at Valérie Le Roux’s—the artist who ran a crêperie with her husband on the other side of her studio. Nobody made them better. They had slept a little more at home. Later, they had bought magazines at the newsagent on the large square—no newspapers today, Dupin was not in the mood to read the headlines—and then had a drink in the Amiral.
A perfect day. So far. By the early evening he had even forgotten the “big party,” or at least he almost had.
Shortly after getting up, Dupin had made just two quite short official calls. To Nolwenn, to hear the latest updates—she had been busy with the final details for this evening—and to the prefect, who had held his “big final press conference” at noon. As he had done in his phone call late the night before, he was still acting as if nothing had happened, and Dupin knew it would stay that way. That was fine by him. It was only as the prefect was saying that Dupin’s gun and badge were on his desk that he had sounded hesitant for a split second, almost ashamed.
Baptiste and Louann Kolenc had made their confessions officially and thoroughly on the record last night. The sand theft had also been definitively confirmed. Kadeg had been there at the conference.
No doubt the prefect had put in a triumphant performance at the press conference with the solving of two “capital offenses,” a real show.
The brilliant thing was, when the conversation ended, Dupin had instantly forgotten about it all again.
He was extremely pleased with himself.
The Kolenc thing would be a bitter blow for Madame Bandol. Dupin feared she wouldn’t understand it, wouldn’t forgive him for it. It was complicated. The whole business. And sad too.
It had been a tough case.
So intricate. The strangest case of his career so far. He had just, and only just, solved it. He had been closer to giving up than ever before.
* * *
The terrace of the Ar Men Du was a magical place. And not just the terrace. The wonderful restaurant with the pretty hotel on a headland was fitted with two side windows to the west and east out over the Atlantic, which meant all of the rooms had a sea view. You could see the vast horizon with the two little offshore islands. Twice a day, the Île de Raguénez exposed enough seafloor—sand, stones, shells, algae—at low tide that you could get there with your feet dry. It was a path that you shared with lively crabs of all sizes and where particularly good mussels could be found in the sandy spots and on the rocks.
It was half past seven. The sky was at its best; the Atlantic blue was immaculate and resplendent. The scraggy, storm-tossed grass that turned the island into a dark green dome shone in the wonderful evening light. Everything glowed. Including the mysteriously isolated stone house on the island, white and uninhabited, that looked as if it had only been placed there to make the already breathtaking scene even more picturesque.
Even the Atlantic, it seemed, had spruced itself up for this evening and dressed in a stylish dark blue. It lay there tranquilly, almost solemnly. Most importantly, it was infinite. You could feel it here, in all of its magnificence: the End of the World.
The Glénan loomed on the horizon. This evening, the legendary archipelago looked as if it were floating slightly above the sea. Majestic and mysterious. Dupin had had a complicated case to solve there. And he had sat in the bar of the Ar Men Du during one of his first cases, during torrential rain. Five years was a long time. And yet it had gone by in a flash.
There was a jagged rock in the sea in front of the Glénan. A gigantic Atlantic menhir, a vast monument. Jagged and above all one thing: jet black. Ar Men Du. The black rock that gave the hotel its name. It was said that anyone who caught sight of it gained their own special powers.
