Murder on Brittany Shores (38 page)

‘And the Director of the institute?'

The driver had taken a particularly tight
rond-point
at high speed and Dupin was pressed against the door.

‘Directeur Le Berre-Ryckeboerec?'

‘Exactly.'

‘That won't be easy. Our people still haven't found anything clear. Nothing that breaks the law. But since the institute, although largely funded by third parties, is essentially a state institution and partially even a European institution, there are regulations to be strictly adhered to regarding the sale of research. Studies, results, licenses and patents must come onto the market in a verifiable way. But it's probably complicated because it's not clear which regulations apply to which of the institute's platforms for which activities in each case. We need to look carefully at that. It will take a while.'

‘And his accounts? The private ones?'

‘I've spoken to Nolwenn a few times on the phone. It would be easier if we found something here. It was a miracle that we got the search warrant at all.'

‘Get in touch as soon as there's news. One more thing: call Riwal and tell him someone is to go to Muriel Lefort and ask whether she is in possession of a gun from the Résistance, belonging to her parents – she, or perhaps her brother…'

‘Will do…'

It was clear that there was something Kadeg still wanted to say. Dupin knew what it was too: he would want Dupin to bring him up to speed on things.

‘I'll be in touch, Kadeg. And I'll tell you then.'

Dupin had hung up. He wanted to speak to Nolwenn. He tried again. And at last he got through.

‘I have some information, Monsieur le Commissaire.'

They had arrived at the airport. Dupin got out, his mobile to his ear.

‘I looked at the file on Jacques Nuz's accident in great detail. The story begins just like the story on Sunday. It's astonishing. The Glénan, a stunning day in early summer. Then a storm picks up. Jacques Nuz has urgent things to do on the mainland and wants to get across before the storm. According Solenn Nuz's statement, he leaves the island at half two. So says the report. The next morning she registers him missing with the police in Fouesnant. A search operation is launched immediately by boat and helicopter. He is never seen again, his body never discovered, just pieces of the boat two days later. Quite far in the east. Nobody knows anything about the accident itself.'

‘The next morning?'

‘Think about it, mobile phones weren't widespread here at the time.'

Dupin was still standing next to the car. Just a few metres away from the helicopter. The pilot was already sitting in the cockpit. Dupin made a vague gesture that was intended to mean: just a moment.

‘And?'

‘Here it comes: two other boats also leave Saint-Nicolas with Jacques Nuz, one immediately after him and one some minutes later again. And do you want to guess who owned those boats?'

That was a rhetorical question.

‘Lucas Lefort and Devan Le Menn! And it gets even better, do you know who was on board with Lefort?'

‘Yannig Konan.'

It had been more of a murmur than an answer from Dupin. He shuddered.

‘That's right. Of course Lefort and Konan were questioned about Jacques Nuz's whereabouts. The statements are documented in the files. Nuz wanted to go to Fouesnant where he and Solenn still had a small apartment. Lefort and Konan wanted to go to Sainte-Marine. It's the same course at first.'

‘And Le Menn?'

‘He also testified he didn't see anything. Neither Nuz's boat nor Lefort's.'

‘And other boats? Were there any others out, are there any more witnesses?'

‘Nobody else is listed. Any sensible person would either have set out in good time – or else stayed put.'

‘And there are no indications of any kind as to what happened? Did Nuz come aground on a rock? Capsize? What kind of boat did he have?'

‘The pieces that were found didn't allow for any conclusions, although they were examined thoroughly. The reports are all enclosed. It was a Jeanneau, almost forty years old, but in good condition according to statements from Solenn Nuz and some others. Nothing pointed towards the possibility of the boat having a defect.'

‘Hmmm.'

Dupin's mind was racing.

‘You always need to remember: these accidents aren't uncommon here, Monsieur le Commissaire – and only in the very rarest cases are there clues as to the course of events.'

The helicopter pilot made a gesture of his own now, which Dupin understood as a request to get in. Reglas and his team were waiting. Dupin didn't care much about that, but he was in a hurry himself now, to get back to the islands. To a – very important conversation. What he had just heard was in fact highly interesting. But he still didn't understand the story, even though he was sure that it was the key. The key to everything.

*   *   *

Solenn Nuz's small stone house was – when viewed from the quay – at the back of the island, where the piece of land, scattered wildly over the sea, was at its widest. It was at the island's western beach, the most beautiful beach, the one that had the most Caribbean-like atmosphere. The building had been built so low that it looked as if it wanted to offer the storms the least resistance possible and was surrounded by an impressive number of flowerbeds, big and small. Salad, potatoes, all kinds of vegetables, even artichokes were growing there,
the
great Breton speciality in vegetables apart from leeks. Dupin ate them in all forms and by now his favourite way was the utterly Breton way: with a chive-and-egg vinaigrette. Two large herb gardens adjoined the flowerbeds. Somehow it didn't suit the islands, that there was soil here at all, proper ground, not just sand, dunes, grasses, stones and rocks.

Dupin had walked into the
Quatre Vents
first, without thinking. Louann Nuz had informed him that her mother was at home.

He was now standing directly in front of her house. Everything looked very simple. He liked it. He looked for a doorbell but couldn't find one. The massive wooden door with the iron edges and hinges stood half open. He stretched a little, so that he didn't to have to go inside just to knock.

‘Hello? Madame Nuz?

No answer. Dupin knocked and called a little louder.

‘It's Commissaire Dupin.'

Again, no reaction.

Dupin was just considering what to do when Pascal Nuz appeared beside him as if out of nowhere.

‘She's in the sea. Fishing for mussels.'

Dupin almost jumped. Her father-in-law must have been outside in the garden.

‘I would like to speak to her.'

The sentence sounded very obvious, Dupin realised.

‘You'll find her on the big beach.' With his right hand, Pascal Nuz made a vague gesture towards the west.

‘I'll look for her. Thanks very much,
Monsieur.
'

Dupin found an elaborate zigzag path through the flowerbeds, walked around the house and quickly found himself on the flat dunes right before the big beach.

It was the lowest tide, the beach extended far down into the sea, a flat, even surface, perfect again after every high tide. The uppermost, finest layer of sand had already been dried by the sun and recovered its flawless, dazzling whiteness. It was still thin – here and there the wet sand underneath shimmered like parchment. His eyes peeled, Dupin spotted Solenn Nuz in the north-west. You could just see her silhouette. She was the only person for miles around, in a landscape that belonged to the sea for a large part of the day (Dupin understood why her father-in-law had said ‘in the sea'). She was walking slowly towards the end of the low tide at the northern tip of the island. Dupin set off. It was further than he'd thought.

Solenn Nuz only noticed him once he had already come quite close. He hadn't called out. Suddenly she turned towards him. There was a dark green, woven-looking, plastic basket hanging over each of her shoulders. In her right hand she was holding a small shovel with a long handle.

She smiled when she saw the Commissaire, the calm, beautiful smile that he knew. She only spoke once he was standing directly in front of her.

‘It's the season.
Palourdes,
praires,
coques.
And
ormeaux.
– The
palourdes
are in the sand, the
ormeaux
on the rocks, in the cracks where the algae are,' she pointed in the direction of Bananec where the impressive rocky landscapes began at low tide.

‘The
palourdes
hide ten centimetres deep in the sand. You need to know that and recognise where to find them,' she spoke calmly to herself, as on previous days, ‘I learnt it from my mother. There are very few clues. Do you want to see how to find them?'

‘Show me.'

Dupin spoke just as calmly.

‘You have to look for small holes in the sand, in a figure of eight, those are the female
palourdes.
And then for two even smaller holes of equal size two to three centimetres away, those are the larger, male ones.'

Solenn Nuz's gaze hadmet Dupin's for a moment. Now her head was lowered again, her gaze fixed expertly on the seabed.

‘And then you put your hand carefully in the sand and feel for the mussels. And take them out.'

Dupin was walking next to her.

‘Do you like
palourdes?
Or
ormeaux
– the mother of pearl mussels?'

‘Very much.'

Dupin in fact loved both kinds of mussels, there were delicious
palourdes
in the
Amiral
– grilled with herb butter and white breadcrumbs. And he had to admit that, to this day, it still made him as happy as a child when he found an
ormeau,
an intact mother of pearl mussel that shimmered with every colour of the rainbow. He always stowed them away and he had already accumulated an impressive collection in his desk drawer.

‘There are crêpes with
palourdes
tonight, maybe with
ormeaux
too. Pan-fried. We'll see.'

‘What happened to the application that your husband had submitted at the mairie?'

The question had come without warning. But Solenn Nuz didn't look in the least bit surprised. Not at all. She answered without hesitation, in the same tone in which she'd just spoken of mussel-fishing.

‘For a while we thought we had a shared idea. Lucas, Yannig, Kilian Tanguy and us. And also Devan Le Menn. Muriel Lefort knew her brother better, from the beginning she was not on board. We didn't listen to her, we thought she was old-fashioned. After a period of hammering out a plan together, it became clear to us that Lucas had something else in mind entirely. We wanted to leave the Glénan the way they were, modernise and expand the diving school and the sailing club a bit, build a hotel and restaurant, but no crowds, no luxury. For Lucas that was just the beginning, a tactic. We started arguing more and more. Then one day there was a big fight. Yannig never said much about any of it – but he was on Lucas' side. And he had the money. Charles Malraux was on our side. Devan tried to keep out of it somehow.'

Suddenly she bent down.

‘Can you see, here – the two tiny holes?'

Dupin stooped down low. He might have missed them. But there they were.

Solenn Nuz let her hand glide into the sand in a fluid, gentle movement and drew it back out moments later with a magnificent
palourde grise
on it. She placed it in the basket to her right and only now did Dupin notice that there were already a large number of mussels inside.

‘Why was your husband the chief applicant?'

‘Because the land on which the hotel was supposed to be located was his land and it was initially intended to be the centre of all of the plans.'

‘I heard the application was never submitted. Why did your husband submit it following the final falling-out?'

It seemed now as if Solenn Nuz was holding back for a moment, but Dupin wasn't sure. She kept her head lowered, her gaze fixed firmly on the sand.

She was silent, then she seemed to pull herself together.

‘He didn't submit it.'

Dupin didn't understand. It seemed Solenn Nuz was not going to elaborate.

‘What do you mean, didn't he submit the application?'

‘We hadn't completed the application. But we were already uncertain by that point, Jacques, Kilian and I. And were already fighting fiercely with Lucas.'

She was silent again. Dupin waited.

‘We lived between two places at the time, the little apartment in Fouesnant and the islands. For a few months we lived on the boat most of the time, even though it was cramped. We didn't have the house here yet, we barely used the apartment any more. The boat was our real home. Everything we needed was there – we felt free, we were very happy. We kept our personal documents there too,' she paused again and finished the sentence in the same tone of voice, ‘including the application.'

Dupin stood still. At first, he didn't realise what she had just said. Then he felt dizzy. It dawned on him. He felt slight goosebumps on his forearms.

‘The application – the filled-out application was on the boat? It was on the boat that Saturday ten years ago when your husband set out from the Glénan one afternoon because the storm was approaching?'

Now it was Dupin who paused, his thoughts racing through his head at tremendous speed. Solenn Nuz kept on scanning the sand undeterred.

‘The application was on Jacques Nuz's boat when it left Saint-Nicolas,' Dupin was speaking mainly to himself, ‘and it was submitted directly after the accident. It didn't go down with the boat. The application – after setting sail from Saint-Nicolas,' Dupin was speaking more and more slowly, ‘it made its way onto another boat, it didn't go down with Jacques Nuz.'

They walked next to each other in silence, Solenn Nuz half a step in front. It was appalling. Dupin tried to collect his thoughts.