“He didn’t bleed to death,” Dupin said, “much less from a broken wrist.”

  But he had to admit that the eerie imagery had thrown him slightly. Although he never really reacted to these kinds of stories anymore. They cropped up in every case: myths, legends—they weren’t in Brittany for nothing. They were essential. And what’s more, he found them somewhat comforting in the absence of Riwal—who would otherwise no doubt have told these stories long before. Riwal would have really embellished them, however, and delighted in telling them with style. L’Helgoualc’h had told them downright prosaically by comparison. And appeared to intend to leave it at this interjection—a moment later he was back to the footprints.

  “As I say, I’ve found the same footprints down there. Shoe size eleven or twelve. I suspect an especially heavy man, or a man who was carrying something heavy. Another man, for instance. The footprints are deep.” L’Helgoualc’h stood right next to the footprints and stayed there for a moment. Then he stepped aside.

  “Have a look.”

  Dupin crouched down again. The policeman’s footprint was practically invisible. And looked tiny compared to the others. “I’m a size seven and a half.”

  Dupin was impressed. The estimate of 11 or 12 was precise.

  “I think he brought the man up here once he was already dead, although I don’t see any drag marks. They won’t have been deep enough. With the rain. The man stopped a number of times to catch his breath where the ground was even and he could get a solid foothold. If there was a struggle, then it wasn’t on the rocks here, it was down there, earlier.”

  Dupin nodded.

  “He was wearing sneakers. Nikes. He—”

  “Nikes?”

  “Easy to identify by the tread marks.”

  Dupin took another look. He would not have been able, no matter how sharp the edges of the footprint, to identify any tread marks. L’Helgoualc’h seemed to Dupin like some Native American tracker. No doubt there was also an ancient connection between the Celts and Native Americans that Dupin just didn’t know about yet.

  “Bigger structures like honeycombs, wavy lines in between … A common design,” L’Helgoualc’h said.

  “I see.”

  If this was correct, they had their first clue to the perpetrator. Apart from the fact that he must have been reasonably strong. Nike sneakers in 11 or 12. This was potentially a crucial lead. Dupin was intrigued about what the forensic team would say, but he had no doubts about his colleague’s expertise.

  “It wasn’t a hiker. No sensible hiker wears sneakers like that.”

  “Are there footprints belonging to anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “And you haven’t found any other trace evidence up there on the ridge?”

  “No. It’s all rocky. Not a chance.”

  “I want to go up anyway.”

  Dupin turned away and followed the path up the ridge. It was in fact a much easier walk than the earlier path. Soon he had reached the last rocks. The slope that now came into view was brutal. Steep, a long way down, and dotted with sharp, rocky outcrops. Dupin averted his gaze. He turned around slowly. Amongst the ominous banks of cloud, bigger and bigger sections were being broken up by clear blue sky, opening up views far into the distance of the breathtaking peninsula of Crozon and of the bay of Brest where you could see the Atlantic—Ar Mor Braz: the large sea. The bog with the washerwomen of the night in the east, surrounded by the three rocs. The reservoir Saint-Michel, and beyond it, one of the largest unspoiled Breton forests, the Chaos of Huelgoat. Also a place of wild stories.

  “This—this is the balcony of the west.”

  Dupin practically jumped. He hadn’t heard L’Helgoualc’h coming. Suddenly he was standing next to him and speaking huskily, but with unexpected melancholy. “The balcony of the western world, they say. The Monts d’Arrée might look to you like strange hills—in reality they’re mountains. Majestic mountains; the Massif Armoricain is a vast mountain chain that stretches hundreds of kilometers, from Normandy to here. And for a long time its peaks were higher than Mount Everest is today. They were over nine thousand meters. The Himalayas, and also the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Caucasus, they’re all young mountains in comparison to this one; not even fifty million years old. The Monts d’Arrée are ten times as old. That, monsieur, that is the truth of these mountains.”

  Dupin had to concede that even he was moved. For Bretons, the commissaire had learned, the past was as real as the present, and a point in time three hundred million years ago, for example, was just as valid as one in the present, so that it was deeply unfair and presumptuous to arbitrarily pick today as the only valid point from the continuum of time. Just because you were someone who happened to live right now, it was pure arrogance, modern pretension. If you looked at the world in a Breton way, the Monts d’Arrée were real mountains, even today.

  “This is Bretagne bretonnante—the heart of Brittany beats here like nowhere else.” L’Helgoualc’h put it as a quintessential truth. In the last few years, Dupin had received many hours of Nolwenn-lessons about Bretagne bretonnante, or Breton Brittany. What this meant was the westernmost tip of the Breton peninsula, Basse-Bretagne, which in the old language meant “far from the capital,” far from Rennes and Paris. Which was the greatest compliment for Bretons, who were rebellious on principle.

  They spoke the “genuine” Breton here, Celtic, not the Gallo of eastern Haute-Bretagne that, like French, had developed independently from Vulgar Latin and was therefore a young language. Celtic was at least a millennium and a half older than French, a very important fact for Bretons. Thus had Bretagne bretonnante taken on the aura of the “real” Brittany over the centuries. If Finistère was the center of everything—the beginning of the world: Penn Ar Bed—then Breton Brittany was the center of the center.

  “I’m going to take a look at the corpse,” Dupin said. He really did need to make a move. “Excellent work, monsieur.”

  L’Helgoualc’h did not respond to the compliment in any way, of course. His expression darkened instead.

  “The perpetrator isn’t from round here.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “To a stranger, the steep slope must have looked like a place where it was possible to dispose of a body forever. But everyone even slightly acquainted with this area knows that there’s a path not too far away down there. A local would have disposed of the victim in the bog. The Yeun-Elez is just a few kilometers away.” He gestured vaguely westward with his head. “The body would never have reappeared.”

  There was something to that.

  “There’s a path that leads directly into the bog at Kernévez. There are peat banks meters deep there. It contains water, mud. It would be easy. This was someone who doesn’t know their way round here. A stranger. They were just passing through. It has nothing to do with us locals.”

  It was as though L’Helgoualc’h was speaking about his tribe.

  “So many people have disappeared in the bog. At night, but also during the day, in the most beautiful sunshine.” As he had done earlier, he explained sinister things with no warning. “Suddenly you see mist, a kind of bubbling on the surface as if the water underneath is boiling—if you stop and stare, you’re done for. Your curiosity will cost you your life. The ground you’re standing on gives way. The howls of a dog ring out. And you disappear forever in the Youdig. The portal to hell. To a cold hell. We had our last missing person’s report just several years ago: three men went missing in the bog during perfectly clear weather.”

  “And they were never found?” Dupin blurted out, and instantly felt awkward.

  “They were never found. The bog was combed systematically for days.”

  That must have been before his time. Dupin couldn’t remember news along those lines. He was glad.

  “That’s the way it is here. Every night you hear howling somewhere. Demons, the souls of the dead who were able to escape for a few hours. Now and then figures appear in the villages that are not what they look like, and that are not what or who they claim to be. Up until a few years ago, Catholic priests performed exorcisms here: they cast the demons out and into the bodies of black dogs and threw them in the water of the Youdig.” L’Helgoualc’h looked at the sky. “These mountains are a special place. To this day, the druids hold their most important ceremonies here, mainly at the bog. Just recently there was the Celtic end-of-year festival. A large group, three hundred druids were there.”

  Dupin had heard of it. From the modern druidic associations. Riwal had explained it to him. Riwal may not have been a member of these societies himself—surprisingly—but he knew several members and of course couldn’t see anything odd about it.

  The druids had apparently been the finale of the fantastical stories. L’Helgoualc’h looked inquiringly at Dupin.

  “Yes, that sounds plausible. That it was a stranger.”

  Dupin tried to shake off the images of devious demons.

  “They’re waiting for me down there.”

  He instinctively looked in the direction of the bog before setting about his descent.

  Back to the car.

  Back into the normal world.

  He had to concentrate on what was concrete: a strong person, according to the current scenario, had brought the victim from the road to the rocks and thrown him down from there. At that point, the victim was probably already dead, strangled. There had been a fierce struggle. The perpetrator wasn’t from round here. And he wore sneakers. Nikes.

  Now that was something.

  * * *

  The corpse looked truly horrific. Dupin had grown used to quite a lot. But this was amongst the worst that he’d ever seen. “Severely contorted” would have been an appropriate description. The dead man must have hit rock numerous times during the fall. His body had literally burst open in many places. The entire ledge he was lying on was covered in blood. Blood and other sticky fluids.

  “Do you want to spend longer looking at him? I’d like to take him to Brest immediately and get started on the autopsy,” the medical examiner said. She was a surprisingly pleasant-seeming representative of her profession—just forty perhaps, curly brown hair, a focused look on her face—and was standing on the rock next to the corpse. Dupin was at the edge. The landscape down here was different again; the bushes grew tall and there were small copses. A single vast oak tree stood a few paces away and cast long shadows.

  Dupin had had to walk quite a distance—by car you could only get within a few hundred meters of the site via a grassy path.

  The man, as far as it was possible to say, looked rather slight; he wasn’t tall, perhaps one meter seventy-five. Dupin guessed at dark blond hair, an inconspicuous color. He saw exactly what had been described to him earlier.

  “Take him away. Are there any more findings yet?”

  “I’ve already shared everything I’m able to say right now with your inspector. Just one more thing: above the broken wrist, you can see the edge of a tattoo. That could help with identification. I’m going to have to remove the clothing with a scalpel and hope that there’s still enough skin there to be able to make it out fully.” She sounded unfazed, professional. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I have news.”

  “Right, okay. Thank you.”

  The medical examiner gave a signal to two young men who were waiting next to the rocky ledge with a stretcher.

  Dupin turned away and walked toward the small group standing in the heather a few meters away. Kadeg was on the phone. It looked important, of course.

  A young policeman was coming toward him. Dupin greeted him with a vague gesture. “We spoke on the phone?”

  “Exactly. Gendarmerie de Sizun. You’ve already met my colleague up on the rocks there.”

  “So do we have a better picture of what might have happened here yet?”

  “No.”

  “Anything relevant? A missing person’s report? Reports from people in the area who’ve noticed something unusual?”

  The policeman’s expression verged on alarm. “No. I mean, not yet.”

  It would have been too perfect anyway.

  “Our colleagues from forensics want to know whether you’d like them to do anything specific down here at the rocks. Otherwise they’ll go up to the summit and carry on with their work there.”

  It was hard to believe that even the forensics team seemed to be easy to work with here.

  “That’s fine.” Dupin bit his tongue, not remarking that they probably wouldn’t find anything up there other than the Breton Native American. The word “summit,” he realized, didn’t make him smirk anymore. He would look at these mountains differently from now on.

  “So we know nothing, then? Nothing at all?”

  “Yes. I mean, no.” The policeman practically stood to attention as he answered.

  “Good work,” Dupin said in an upbeat way, although he noticed his mood was worsening. The policeman looked a little relieved anyway.

  There was nothing more for him to do here. And the same was true of the summit.

  In fact he could have done with a coffee now. To prevent his mood getting even worse for one thing, certainly, but mainly because he needed ideas and a razor-sharp mind. He had—by the looks of it—two cases on his hands all of a sudden. And both appeared utterly mysterious. This case, and of course the one in Port Belon too.

  “Is Sizun far from here?”

  “Just a few minutes by car.”

  “Is that the nearest village?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll take a look around there.”

  It was obvious the policeman would have liked to ask why. And also that his instinct told him he’d better not.

  “Here I am, Monsieur le Commissaire.” Kadeg, Dupin’s overzealous inspector, had come over to them. “The phone call is over, everything is okay.”

  Kadeg’s facial expression told a different story. He looked worked up and jittery, but he was trying to hide it.

  “What’s wrong, Kadeg?”

  The inspector hesitated.

  “No. Nothing. Everything is absolutely fine.”

  “All right then.”

  Dupin wouldn’t try to drag it out of him, whatever it was. Without another word, he turned around and walked back to his car.

  * * *

  Sizun was tiny; a pretty village. And indeed just a few minutes’ journey from the mountains.

  Dupin was sitting in the most glorious sunshine outside the bar at the Hôtel des Voyageurs. He could feel the warmth of the sun’s rays on his skin; it was as though the sun wanted to demonstrate with all its might what it was capable of as early as the beginning of April.

  A few plain wooden tables and chairs. One of the simple, authentic bars—brasseries, restaurants—that every French village had, no matter where they were, even in the sleepiest backwater, and Dupin loved them on principle. And also because without fail, you could rely on getting a decent entrecôte frites and a respectable red wine—one of the foundations of the Grande Nation. The Hôtel des Voyageurs was, like all of the buildings on the village’s small central square, an old stone building; a long building, whitewashed, with window frames, awnings, and other details in a flamboyant green. People gathered here every day, in the mornings, afternoons, and especially in the evenings—this was where it happened: the daily life that made up people’s existence. Dupin could sit at places like this for hours and watch people, watch them simply going about their lives. This was where everyday things were celebrated and special things too: births, baptisms, engagements, weddings, big birthdays—and funerals.

  Dupin had in fact only ordered one coffee, and that didn’t count. And he had already drunk it. Which had caused a recurrence of the stabbing pain. As a precaution he had ordered a jambon-fromage sandwich to give his stomach something different—and because he didn’t know when he would next get something to eat; during a case, food was always tricky for him. The baguette was an impressive size: it was lying on a large plate in front of him and it was still jutting out over the edge.

  Dupin had spoken to Nolwenn briefly. Brioc L’Helgoualc’h, the tracker, was obviously a police institution in Finistère, although Dupin had never heard of him. The deep respect in Nolwenn’s voice had been unmistakable.

  Nolwenn had not heard anything about Riwal and his exam yet; she had commented on it three or four times. The written portion of the exam was today and it had begun at nine o’clock. However—and it was already overdue, in fact—the prefect had been in touch. Lug Locmariaquer, as unpronounceable as he was unbearable—he was sadly unavoidable too. Dupin was to call him. “Urgently. Immediately.” Which didn’t surprise Dupin one bit—the prefect immediately became self-important if there was a crime that promised some attention. The only odd thing was that although the prefect, according to Nolwenn, did want to talk about the dead body in the Monts d’Arrée, he primarily wanted to talk about something else entirely. “Something extremely delicate.”

  Dupin didn’t have the slightest idea what this was about. And no desire whatsoever to find out. But he had had to promise Nolwenn, and she seemed to take the request seriously, so Dupin knew it would be sensible to take it seriously too. That was ten minutes ago now.

  The commissaire sighed, took another bite of his sandwich, and reached for his phone.

  It was already in his hand when the monotonous beeping started. A withheld number. Dupin hesitated for a moment before picking up.

  “Commissaire! Madame Bandol here! I need to speak with you urgently. It’s important.” She was speaking extremely fast.

  “What’s this about?”

  “The incident. I’ve remembered some more things after all.”

  Dupin pricked up his ears. This was unexpected. She sounded very firm and clear.

  “Go ahead.”

  “It all depends on what I remember, doesn’t it? We haven’t got anything else yet,” she said.

  “Exactly, Madame Bandol.”

 

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