by Fred Vargas
‘Hey, Noëlla,’ the waiter interrupted, putting the bills on the table. ‘You still working up at the Caribou?’
‘Yeah, gotta save up for the airfare, Michel.’
‘Still feeling sore about that boyfriend?’
‘Maybe, evenings. Some people get the early morning blues, me it’s the evening.’
‘Well, forget him. The cops have run him in.’
‘You’re kidding!’ said Noëlla, sitting up straight.
‘I kid you not. He was stealing cars and selling them with new plates, that kind of thing.’
‘No, I don’t believe it,’ said Noëlla. ‘He’s in computers now.’
‘Wise up, sweetie. Your pal’s a crook. You better believe it, Noëlla, it was in the papers.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Black and white in the papers. Son of a bitch went too far one time, he’d had a skinful, the cops caught up with him, and he’s in big trouble now. Face it, Noëlla, he was just no good. You need to put that in your pipe and smoke it. I wanted to tell you, so you’d stop fretting over him. Excuse me, folks, I gotta move on to the other tables.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Noëlla, wiping the sugar from her cup with a finger. ‘Do you mind if I have a drink with you? That’s thrown me a bit.’
‘OK, ten minutes, then I’m going back.’
‘I get it,’ said Noëlla as she ordered a drink. ‘You’re spoken for. But gee, think of that. My boyfriend.’
‘What did he mean, about smoking it in your pipe?’ asked Adamsberg. ‘Did he just mean forget it?’
‘No, it means “Stop and have a good think about it”. See, my story’s even dumber than you thought.’ Finishing her glass in a single gulp, Noëlla went on, ‘I need a bit of distraction, after that. I’ll drive you back to your place.’
Surprised, Adamsberg hesitated to respond.
‘I’m in a car, you’re on foot,’ explained Noëlla impatiently. ‘You’re surely not going back via the footpath?’
‘I was planning on it.’
‘It’s pouring with rain. Are you scared of me, or what? Does little Noëlla frighten a big forty-year-old. A cop, what’s more?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Adamsberg, smiling.
‘Well then. Where are you staying?’
‘It’s off the rue Prévost.’
‘I know it, I’m three blocks away. Come along.’
Adamsberg got up, still not understanding why he felt so reluctant to follow a pretty girl into her car.
Noëlla parked in front of his building and Adamsberg thanked her as he opened his door.
‘Not even a little kiss goodbye? You’re not very polite, for a Frenchman.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m from the mountains. Not civilised at all.’
Adamsberg kissed her on both cheeks with a serious face, and Noëlla frowned, looking offended. He opened the front door with his key, and greeted the janitor, who was always on call after eleven o’clock. After taking a shower, he lay down on the large bed in his room. In Canada, everything is bigger. Except for the memories, which are smaller.
XIX
THE TEMPERATURE HAD DROPPED TO MINUS 4 BY THE MORNING, AND Adamsberg hurried out to see his river. On the path, the edges of the little pools had frozen over, and he enjoyed crunching the ice with his stout shoes, under the vigilant gaze of the squirrels. He was about to go further, when the thought of Noëlla, stationed on her stone, restrained him like a noose. He turned back and sat on a rock to observe the competition going on between a colony of ducks and a gaggle of Canada geese. Wars and territory disputes everywhere. One of the geese was obviously the big boss, and repeatedly returned to the charge, spreading its wings and clacking its beak with despotic obstinacy. Adamsberg disliked this goose – or maybe gander. He distinguished it from the others by a mark on its plumage, with the idea of coming back next day to see whether it would still be running the show, or whether geese practised some kind of democratic pecking order. He left the ducks to their resistance and went up to his car. A squirrel had taken refuge underneath it and he could see its tail near the back wheel. He drove off gently in stops and starts, so as not to squash it.
Superintendent Laliberté was in a good temper once more, having learned that Jules Saint-Croix had performed his civic duty and filled a test tube, which was now inside a big envelope.
‘Semen is absolutely fundamental,’ Laliberté said loudly to Adamsberg, ripping open the envelope, without any consideration for the Saint-Croix couple, who were huddled in a corner of the room.
‘We’ve got two experiments to conduct, Adamsberg,’ Laliberté went on, shaking the test tube in the middle of the sitting room. ‘We need a warm sample and a dry one. The warm sample simulates semen taken from the victim’s vagina. Dried semen is more problematic. You have to use different ways of collecting it. Depends whether it’s on fabric, a road surface, vegetation or on a carpet, for instance. The worst surface of all is grass. You following me? We’ll have to distribute four doses in four strategic places: on the drive, in the garden, in the bed, and on the sitting room carpet.’
The Saint-Croix couple disappeared from the room like fugitives, and the morning was spent depositing drops of semen here and there, and surrounding them with chalk-marks so as not to lose sight of them.
‘While it’s drying, we can move to the toilet and tackle urine. Bring your card and kit.’
The poor Saint-Croix couple spent a difficult day, which filled the superintendent with satisfaction. He had made Linda cry, in order to collect her tears, and made Jules go running in the cold, to collect mucus from his nose. All the samples had been operationally usable, and he returned to the RCMP base a happy man, with all his cards and kits clearly labelled. There had been just one hold-up: the teams had had to be re-organised at the last minute, because two of the volunteers had refused to hand over semen samples to the all-women teams. This had sent Laliberté into a towering rage.
‘For Chrissakes, Louisseize,’ he yelled down the phone. ‘What do they think their semen is? Liquid gold? They’re happy enough to spread it around when they’re out chasing girls, but to oblige working women, oh no. Go tell him that, your damned volunteer.’
‘No I can’t, superintendent,’ said petite Berthe Louisseize. ‘He’s as stubborn as a mule. I’ll have to swap with Portelance.’
Laliberté had had to give in, but he was still snarling about it at the end of the day.
‘People can be as dumb as bison sometimes,’ he said to Adamsberg as they returned to HQ. ‘Now we’ve got all the samples, I’m going to give those stupid bastards a piece of my mind. The women in my squad know a damned sight more about their precious semen than that pair of dopes.’
‘Let it go, Aurèle,’ suggested Adamsberg. ‘They’re not worth bothering with.’
‘I’m taking it real personal, Adamsberg. You go off and find a woman tonight if you want, but I’m going out after supper to give them what for.’
That day, Adamsberg understood that the expansive jovial nature of the superintendent had another side, equally pronounced. The cheery, hail-fellow, tactless buddy could be a determined and ferocious bearer of grudges.
‘It wasn’t you that set him off, was it?’ Sergeant Sanscartier asked Adamsberg anxiously.
Sanscartier was speaking quietly, his whole bearing that of a mild-tempered man.
‘No, it was the two idiots who wouldn’t hand over their semen samples to the women’s teams.’
‘Just as well it wasn’t you. A word in your ear,’ he added, looking at Adamsberg with his big brown eyes. ‘He’s a good pal, our boss, but when he makes a joke, best to laugh and say nothing. What I mean is, don’t provoke him. Because when the boss gets going, he makes the ground shake.’
‘Does that happen often?’
‘If people cross him, or if he gets out of bed on the wrong side. Have you seen, we’re paired up for Monday?’
After a dinner for the whole group at the Cinq Dim
anches to celebrate the end of the first short week, Adamsberg went back via the forest trail. He knew the way by now, and was able to avoid the potholes and sharp drops, spotting the sparkling of the pools alongside. He made better time than on the way out. He had stopped to retie a shoelace when a flashlight shone out at him.
‘Hey, man!’ shouted a gruff, threatening voice. ‘What are you doing there? Are you after something?’
Holding up his torch in return, Adamsberg found himself facing a burly man, dressed as a logger and wearing a cap with earflaps. He was standing looking at him, legs planted firmly apart.
‘What’s all this?’ Adamsberg asked. ‘Don’t hikers have the right to use the trail?’
‘Ah,’ said the man after a pause. ‘You’re from the old country, I guess. French?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thought so,’ said the man, laughing this time, and coming closer. ‘Because you talk like a book. What are you doing here? Looking for a boyfriend?’
‘I could ask you the same.’
‘Now don’t be cheeky, I’m the site watchman. Can’t leave the equipment unguarded at night, it’s worth money.’
‘What site?’
‘Can’t you see?’ asked the man, waving his flashlight behind him.
In the section of forest above the path, Adamsberg could just make out through the darkness a pick-up truck, a mobile trailer, and various tools leaning against tree trunks.
‘What sort of site is it?’ he asked politely. It seemed to be expected in Quebec to make conversation.
‘Taking out dead trees and replanting more maples,’ the watchman explained. ‘I thought you were after the equipment. Sorry to challenge you, buddy, but, hell, it’s my job. Make a habit of walking here at night, do you?’
‘I just like it.’
‘You visiting?’
‘I’m a cop. I’m working with the Mounties at Gatineau.’
This admission removed the last suspicions of the watchman.
‘Hey, that’s fine. Want to come and share a beer in the cab?’
‘Thanks all the same, but I’ve still got work to do. Must get back.’
‘Too bad. So long, buddy.’
Adamsberg slowed down as he approached the Champlain tablet. Yes, Noëlla was there on her stone, muffled up in a bulky anorak. He could see the glowing tip of her cigarette. He climbed quietly back into the forest and made a long detour, reaching the path again about thirty metres further along, then hurried towards his residence. Damned girl, after all it wasn’t as if she was the devil. The devil suddenly reminded him of Judge Fulgence. You think your thoughts have gone to sleep, but there they are, planted right in the middle of your forehead, three holes in a line. They’re just veiled by a transitory Atlantic fog.
XX
VOISENET HAD PLANNED TO SPEND THE WEEKEND OFF IN THE FORESTS and lakes, with his binoculars and camera. Because of the need to share cars, he was taking Justin and Retancourt with him. The other four had chosen the big city, and were leaving for Ottawa and Montreal. Adamsberg had decided to head off alone for the north. Before leaving in the morning, he went to check whether the noisy goose of the day before had handed over to another leader. He was certain it was a gander in fact.
No, the despotic gander had not yielded an inch. The other geese were following him like sheep, swerving whenever the leader changed direction, and waiting in complete stillness when he went into action, flapping along the surface of the water towards the ducks, wings outspread and feathers ruffled to make him look even bigger. Adamsberg shouted an insult at him and shook his fist before going back to the car. Before moving off, he knelt down to check that no squirrels were underneath.
He headed due north, lunched at Kazabazua, and then drove along an endless succession of dirt roads. Ten kilometres or so out of town, the Québécois didn’t bother to asphalt the roads, since the frost broke up the surface every year. If he went on driving in a straight line, he thought, with immense pleasure, he would end up looking across to Greenland. That’s something you can’t say in Paris when you go out after work. Or in Bordeaux. He allowed himself to wander along, taking side-roads when they tempted him, finally turning south again before parking at the edge of a forest by Pink Lake. The woods were deserted, the ground strewn with red maple leaves and occasional patches of snow. Here and there, a notice told travellers to watch out for bears and to recognise their claw marks on the trunks of beech trees. ‘Warning: black bears climb trees in order to eat beech nuts.’ ‘Good,’ thought Adamsberg, looking up and feeling with his finger the scars left by the claws of bears, peering to see if any beast was overhead. Up till now, he had only seen some beaver dams and some tracks left by deer. Just footprints and traces, but no animals were visible. A bit like Maxime Leclerc in his Haguenau Schloss.
Stop thinking about the Schloss and go and take a look at this pink lake instead.
Pink Lake was marked on the map as being a small example of the half-million or so lakes in Quebec province, but Adamsberg found it large and beautiful. Because he had taken to reading notices in the days since visiting Strasbourg, he read the information board about Pink Lake. He discovered therefore that he had chanced upon a unique lake.
He recoiled a little. This recent propensity to come across exceptions was unsettling. Waving these thoughts away, with his habitual gesture, he read on. Pink Lake was twenty metres deep and its bed was covered with three metres of mud. So far, so normal perhaps. But because of the great depth, the surface waters did not mix with the lower ones. From fifteen metres down, they did not move, were never disturbed or oxygenated, any more than the mud on the lake bed which enclosed its 10,600 years of history. The lake might look normal, Adamsberg concluded, and indeed it seemed to be reflecting blue and pink colours, but its smooth surface covered a second lake, one that was perpetually stagnant, airless and dead, a fossil. Worst of all, a saltwater fish still lived down there, from the era when the sea had covered it. Adamsberg examined the drawing of the fish, which seemed to be a sort of cross between a carp and a trout, but smaller and with spines. He looked in vain for its name on the notice; it didn’t seem to have one.
A living lake lying over a dead one. Harbouring a nameless creature, of which only a sketch or image was available. Adamsberg leaned over the wooden fence to try to glimpse the dead lower waters under the shimmering pink surface. Why did all his thoughts keep leading him back to the Trident? Like the marks of the bears’ claws on tree trunks? Like this dead lake, muddy and grey, surviving silently underneath an apparently living surface, and home to a strange creature left over from a bygone era.
Adamsberg hesitated, then got his sketchpad out of his anorak. Warming his hands, he copied as precisely as possible the artist’s impression of the damned fish which seemed to swim between heaven and hell. He had intended to spend a long time in the forest, but Pink Lake made him go back. Everywhere he found himself facing the long-dead judge, everywhere he found himself touching the threatening waters of Neptune and the traces of his accursed trident. What would Laliberté have done in the face of this torment that dogged him so continuously? Would he have laughed it off with a wave of his huge hand, opting instead for rigour, rigour and more rigour? Or would he have pounced on his prey and never let it go? Walking away from the lake, Adamsberg had the sensation that the pursuit was the other way round, that the hunter was becoming the hunted, and that the prey was itself sinking its teeth into him. Its spines, claws, and prongs. In that case, Danglard would be right to suspect that he was now becoming obsessive.
He walked slowly back to the car. By his two watches, which he had altered to read local time, while still respecting their five minutes difference, it was twelve and a half minutes past four in the afternoon. He drove along the empty roads, searching for indifference in the uniform immensity of the forests, then decided to turn back towards civilisation. He slowed down as he approached the parking lot of his residence, then gradually speeded up, leaving Hull behind him and heading for
Montreal. This was precisely what he had not wanted to do, as he kept telling himself the whole two hundred kilometres of the way. But the car was just taking him there, as if it were radio-controlled, at a speed of ninety kilometres an hour, following the tail-lights of the pick-up trunk in front.
Just as the car knew it was going to Montreal, Adamsberg remembered perfectly the directions from the green brochure, the time and the place. Or perhaps, he thought as he approached the city, he ought to opt for a film or a play, why not? If he could, he ought perhaps to get rid of this damned car and find one that didn’t drive him to Pink Lake or to concerts by the Montreal quintet. But at 10.36 that evening, he was slipping into the church, just after the interval. He went to sit on one of the forward pews, behind a white pillar.
XXI
VIVALDI’S MUSIC UNFURLED AROUND HIM, RELEASING SPIRALS OF thought, profuse and confused. The sight of Camille wrestling with her viola affected him more than he would have wished, but this was merely a stolen hour, and an incognito emotion which committed him to nothing. Transferring his professional habits to the music, he heard the thread of the composition stretch as if it were an insoluble enigma, almost reach the point of screaming with impotence, and then resolve itself into an unexpected and fluid harmony, as if it were alternating complexities and resolutions, questions and answers.
It was at one of the moments when the string players had begun a ‘resolution’ that his thoughts shot back to the hasty departure of the Trident from the Haguenau Schloss. He was following the trail, as he watched Camille’s bow move. By pursuing the judge, Adamsberg had always forced him to move on, that being the only slight power he had ever acquired over the magistrate. He had arrived in Schiltigheim on the Wednesday, and it was the next day that Trabelmann had exploded with anger at him. There would have been plenty of time for the event to become known and to appear by Friday in the local papers. Which was the very day that Maxime Leclerc had put his house on the market and cleared out. If that was so, both of them were involved now. Adamsberg was once more chasing the dead man, but the dead man knew that his pursuer had reappeared. In that case, Adamsberg had lost his only advantage, and the power of the dead man could block his way at any time. Forewarned is always forearmed, but the judge’s foresight was potent to the power of a hundred. Back in Paris, Adamsberg would have to adapt his strategy to this new threat and escape the alsatians snapping at his legs. ‘I’ll give you a start, young man. I’ll count to four.’ Run, Adamsberg, run for your life.