The Missing Corpse by Jean-Luc Bannalec

Author:Jean-Luc Bannalec
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

* * *

“So, any new findings on the car? Clues on Mackenzie’s corpse?”

Dupin, Riwal, and Melen had left Tordeux’s land and were walking down the idyllic, ivy-lined path to the quay.

“Reglas was cursing like a fishwife when Melen and I had to leave ‘just because of a fire.’”

“Findings?” Dupin ignored everything else.

“No. As I said, the doors of the Citroën were open. Sea, tides, and currents did a good job—everything was washed away. The forensics team still haven’t found anything. No blood in the trunk, none on the front or back seats, no DNA.”

“Has the car been secured?”

“A fire engine pulled it out of the sea using a rope winch with help from two coast guard divers. A spectacular operation. They’ll take it away now.”

While it was frustrating that they did not yet have the second corpse, the discovery of the rental car added something solid and conclusive to the current scenarios—or hypotheses, strictly speaking. The probability that Mackenzie had not been lying dead in the parking lot had been low before, but it was now dwindling to zero.

“Reglas is to keep us up to speed. Go on, what else is there?”

“Yesterday evening,” Riwal got out his notebook, “a bus did in fact drive from Kerfany to Riec, via Moëlan-sur-Mer. At six twenty-five. That could fit timing-wise. Three people got on in Kerfany. Two young girls who probably wanted to go to Moëlan, and one woman.”

Dupin stood up straight.

“What kind of woman? Did the bus driver know her?”

“No. He says he had never seen her before. She was also difficult to see. Quite a long blue jacket with a hood.”

“Where did she get off the bus?”

“Riec.”

It was approximately three kilometers from there to Port Belon. A stone’s throw away.

“Did any of the other passengers know the woman?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“I want to know who this woman was. Find out.”

“We will.”

They had arrived at their command center, the tables outside the château.

“What about Tordeux’s two business partners in Scotland?” Dupin got out his Clairefontaine and leafed through it. Riwal beat him to it:

“Smollet. A trader in Edinburgh. MacPhilly, a farmer in Dundee. The Scottish police have spoken to them both in depth. Both have stated they knew neither Mackenzie nor Smith. And that they have never had business ties with any other French firm. I also had the policeman from Tobermory speak to the staff in Mackenzie’s farm specially. The upshot was the same: they were sure that Mackenzie didn’t do business with Smollet or MacPhilly. Apart from Oyster Heaven in Glasgow, he only supplied local and regional caterers directly. Our colleagues have finished examining his books, by the way. In terms of imports, only the seed oysters are in fact recorded, and nothing on the export side.”

They weren’t making any progress this way.

“What about the oyster farmers in Riec?” Dupin said urgently. “The ones with potential business ties to Scotland? What do we know on that?”

Melen was responsible for this part: “Three connections to Scotland. That’s it. Three farms in Riec—they refine oysters in the Belon for one Scottish farm each.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.