internet. Lu â cas Le â fort. I want to know straight away. Have the bodies arrived in Quimper yet?â
âThe Admiralâs Cup winner?â
Riwal sounded agitated.
âYes, he hasnât been seen since yesterday evening.â
âIâll call our colleagues. I think they should be arriving in Quimper soon. How did youâ¦â
âCall them, Riwal. Everything else can wait.â
âUnderstood, chief.â
Dupin hung up.
He walked over the picturesque wooden bridge that ran alongside the sea all the way round the island. The âinsideâ of the island (and there wasnât much of it) was barren, austere â he liked it. Thorny undergrowth, raspberries, blackberries, a scanty covering of grass, waist-high ferns, heather flaring here and there, pockets of garish yellow gorse. The rising water had already washed over the sandbank between Saint-Nicolas and Bananec. Long, gentle waves glided into the chamber from the open Atlantic. Right in the middle of the sandbank, two men were visible. They were standing no more than ankle-deep in the water. It looked insane â like they were walking on water. The high tide was coming. The landscape was changing, which meant above all that land was becoming even more scarce.
The archipelago was an extreme outpost of the old continent. You could feel it, Dupin thought. The final stop at the end of the world. In fact, there was nothing more between the Glénan and the coast of Canada, not a speck of earth, not even a bleak rock formation. You would have to put five thousand kilometres behind you before youâd set foot on solid ground again. Five thousand kilometres of water. In the wildest sea in the world. And it wasnât much land, this very last piece. Dupin was thinking about last nightâs storm. This very last piece of land wasnât a solid landmass, not even close. These were desolately placed, chaotically torn, misshapen swatches of land â which the popular aerial shots showed impressively. The last bastion of land was a very fragile bastion.
Dupin had walked slowly round the northern tip of the island. He looked westwards. The ringing of his phone broke the silence. It was Kadeg. Dupin answered.
âNegative.â
Kadeg sounded more frantic than usual.
âWhat do you mean, Kadeg?â
âItâs not him.â
âSo youâre saying none of the three dead who have been examined is the missing angler? The man from Ãle-Tudy?â
Dupin had phrased the sentence in such detail so that he could gloat. Because his instinct had been right and Kadegâs wrong.
âNo.â
âHas he turned up again then?â
âNo. But theyâve examined the bodies carefully, using the photographs and he has been conclusively excluded as being one them.â
There was open disappointment in Kadegâs voice. And a little embarrassment. âSo we have a missing person who is not any of the three dead â and three dead, of whom none of them have yet been missed.â
Kadeg clearly didnât know how to respond to Dupinâs bit of wordplay and remained silent.
âRight, Kadeg, thatâs where we are.â
Dupin hung up.
As macabre as it was and for motives different from Kadegâs, he would not have been unhappy if the missing person had been one of the three bodies washed up on shore. To have some kind of lead at least. Then they could probably find out who the other two dead bodies were quickly.
Dupin had come to a stop. He was contemplating turning around, but it seemed he would be back at the Quatre Vents sooner if he just followed the path. The bar might not have been visible yet â a sand dune ran lengthways across the island â but it couldnât be far now.
Dupinâs gaze slid uncertainly into the distance, over the sea, which was a deep ultramarine at the horizon. He had stopped saying that the sea was blue. Because that wasnât