Dog Will Have His Day (Three Evangelist 2)

by Vargas, Fred

  ‘That isn’t a bone. What are you after?’

  ‘I’m serious, monsieur le commissaire. I think it is a bone, and a human bone, what’s more. I agree that it’s hard to make out and not very big, but I thought to myself, that is a bone. So I came to see whether it was a matter for the police, whether there had been any reports of missing persons in the quartier. I found it on the Place de la Contrescarpe. Because, you see, there may have been a crime, since I’ve got a bone.’

  ‘My friend, I’ve seen plenty of bones in my career,’ said Paquelin, his voice rising. ‘Burnt, crushed, pulverised. And that is not a human bone, I can tell you.’

  Paquelin picked up the object in his large hand and shoved it towards Kehlweiler.

  ‘You just have to feel its weight. It’s hollow, empty, nothing. A bone would be heavier than that. You can take it away again.’

  ‘I know, I weighed it too. But it might be prudent to check? Get it analysed? A report?’

  Paquelin rocked on his feet, ran a hand through his fair hair; it’s true that he would have been really good-looking if not for that detestable mean mouth.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘You’re trying to trap me, Granville, or whoever you are. You’re pushing me to go on a wild goose chase, make me look ridiculous, then plant a newspaper article, it’s a little game of fool the cops . . . Well, it won’t work, my friend. The stupid attempt at provocation, the toad, the little mystery, the big joke, the silly music-hall act. Find another trick. You aren’t the first or the last person who’s tried to make a fool of me. And I’m the boss around here, OK?’

  ‘I insist, commissaire. I want to know if anyone’s been reported missing in this quartier. Yesterday, day before, recently.’

  ‘You’re out of luck, nothing to report.’

  ‘It could be that no one’s called you about it yet. Sometimes people wait a long time. I’ll have to drop in next week to find out.’

  ‘And then what? You want copies of all our day records?’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Kehlweiler, shrugging.

  He screwed up the piece of paper and put it back in his pocket.

  ‘So that’s a no, is it? Not interested? Still, Paquelin, I think you’re being very negligent.’

  ‘That will do!’ said Paquelin, standing up.

  Kehlweiler smiled. At last, the commissaire was losing his temper.

  ‘Lanquetot, chuck him in the cells,’ Paquelin muttered, ‘and get him to cough up his identity.’

  ‘Ah, no,’ Kehlweiler said, ‘not the cells. Impossible, I’ve got a dinner date.’

  ‘The cells!’ Paquelin repeated, with a sharp gesture towards Lanquetot.

  Lanquetot had stood up.

  ‘Permit me, please, to phone my wife,’ asked Kehlweiler, ‘to let her know. That’s my right, Paquelin, you know that.’

  Without waiting for an answer, he had seized the telephone and dialled a number.

  ‘Extension 229, please, personal and urgent. From Ludwig.’

  Half perching on Paquelin’s table, Louis looked at the commissaire, who was now standing up as well, with both fists on the table. Good-looking hands, pity about the mouth, really.

  ‘My wife. Busy,’ Louis explained. ‘Might take a bit of time. Ah, no, there she is. Jean-Jacques? Ludwig here. Listen, I am having a little argument with Commissaire Paquelin in the 5th arrondissement . . . Yes, the very same. He wants to lock me up, because I came with an enquiry about a possible missing person in the quartier . . . Yes, I’ll explain . . . Could you sort it please? . . . Very kind of you . . . Hang on, I’ll put him on the line.’

  Louis held out the receiver to the commissaire with an amiable expression.

  ‘It’s for you, commissaire. The Minister of the Interior, Jean-Jacques Sorel, would like a word.’

  As Paquelin took the phone, Louis dusted himself down and put Bufo in his pocket. The commissaire listened, answered briefly and hung up, quietly.

  ‘What is your name?’ he asked again.

  ‘Commissaire, it’s your job to know who you’re dealing with. I know quite well who you are. So, what’s the verdict? You don’t want anything to do with my little object? Or to collaborate? Or to let me see the day lists?’

  ‘Nice little scam, isn’t it?’ said the commissaire. ‘With help from high-ups in the Ministry of the Interior . . . And that’s all you could come up with, to land me in it up to my neck? Do you really take me for an idiot?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lanquetot, get this so-and-so out of here before I make him eat his toad.’

  ‘No one touches my toad. They’re fragile creatures.’

  ‘Know what I’d like to do with your toad? Or with people like you?’

  ‘I certainly do know. You probably wouldn’t want me to say in front of your junior officers, though?’

  ‘Out!’

  Lanquetot went back down the stairs behind Kehlweiler.

  ‘I can’t give you your papers back now,’ Lanquetot whispered. ‘He might be watching you.’

  ‘Let’s say 8 p.m., metro Place Monge.’

  Lanquetot went back up to Paquelin’s office, after having made sure Louis Kehlweiler was out on the street. There was a little bead of sweat on the boss’s upper lip. He’d take a couple of days to calm down.

  ‘Did you hear that, Lanquetot? Not a word to anyone else here, mind. And how do we know it really was Sorel on the line, after all? We could check, call up the Ministry . . .’

  ‘Yes, we could, sir, but if it really was Sorel, might not be a good idea. He’s an irascible man.’

  Paquelin sat down heavily.

  ‘You were here before me, Lanquetot, under that lunatic Adamsberg. Have you ever heard of this character before, “Ludwig” or Louis Granville? Does the name ring a bell?’

  ‘No, sir, nothing.’

  ‘On your way, Lanquetot. And remember? Not a word to anyone.’

  Lanquetot went back to his office, damp with perspiration. To start with, check out any missing persons in the 5th.

  V

  LANQUETOT ARRIVED ON time. Louis Kehlweiler was already there, leaning on the balustrade around the entry to the metro station. He was holding his toad in his hand and gave the impression of being deep in a conversation which Lanquetot dared not interrupt. But Louis had seen him, and turned round and smiled.

  ‘Here are your ID papers, Kehlweiler.’

  ‘Thanks, Lanquetot, it worked perfectly. My apologies to your junior colleagues.’

  ‘I’ve checked all the missing persons in the 5th arrondissement. I even looked at the 6th and 13th, because they’re the adjoining ones. Nothing. Nobody’s been reported missing. I’ll take a look at the other districts.’

  ‘How far back did you go?’

  ‘The whole of the last month.’

  ‘That should be enough. Unless there’s some exceptional circumstance, I think it would have been in the last three or four days, and not too far from the Place de la Contrescarpe. Or maybe somewhere completely different.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘My little piece of bone, Lanquetot. I brought it to your boss quite honestly. And if he hadn’t been so aggressive, he’d have had some doubts, thought about it, and done his job properly. I played the game, I don’t need to feel guilty, and you’re my witness. He didn’t do his job. All the better, I get to take it on, with his blessing and a kick up the backside from him. Just what I wanted.’

  ‘So this little thing – it’s really a bone?’

  ‘A human bone, my friend. I got it checked at the Natural History Museum just now.’

  Lanquetot gnawed at a fingernail.

  ‘I don’t get it. It didn’t look like anything. What bone is it?’

  ‘The top joint of a big toe. Could be left or right, you can’t tell, but probably a woman’s. So we need to look for a woman.’

  Lanquetot paced around a little, hands behind his back. He needed to think.

  ‘This toe bone,’ he said at last, ‘cou
ld have come from an accident maybe?’

  ‘Improbable.’

  ‘But it’s not normal to find a toe bone on the grid round a tree.’

  ‘That’s what I think too.’

  ‘So how did it get there? Perhaps it’s from a pig?’

  ‘No, Lanquetot, no. It’s human, I’m not going to go back on that. If you’re still sceptical, we can get it analysed further. But even Bufo agrees, it’s a piece of human bone.’

  ‘Well, shit,’ said Lanquetot.

  ‘You said it, inspector.’

  ‘I said what?’

  ‘You hit on it, how the bone got there.’

  ‘How am I supposed to know that?’

  ‘Wait,’ said Kehlweiler, ‘I’m going to show you something. Can you just hold Bufo?’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  ‘Right, hold your hand out.’

  Louis brought out a bottle of water and sprinkled some on Lanquetot’s hand.

  ‘It’s for Bufo,’ he explained, ‘you can’t hold him with a dry hand. He gets too hot, he gets upset, it doesn’t work. There. Now pick up Bufo with your thumb and index finger, fairly firmly because he doesn’t know you. Not too tight though, OK? I’m fond of him. The only being in the world who lets me talk without interrupting me, and never asks for explanations. Now, just take a look.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Lanquetot interrupted him, ‘was that really Sorel you spoke to at the Ministry?’

  ‘No, not at all, my friend. Sorel is too isolated, he can’t afford to cover me too openly. It was a pal acting a part, I’d fixed it in advance.’

  ‘That was a mean trick,’ Lanquetot murmured.

  ‘Yes, it was, rather.’

  Louis flattened out the screw of paper again and carefully picked up the bone.

  ‘You see, Lanquetot, it’s been bitten, gnawed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And all the little holes, see them?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘So now do you understand where this came from?’

  The inspector shook his head.

  ‘From the gut of a dog, Lanquetot, from the gut of a dog! This bone has been digested, do you see? It’s the acids that make the little holes, quite unmistakable.’

  Louis put the bone away, and took his toad back.

  ‘Come on, Bufo, we’re going for a little walk, you, me and the inspector. The inspector is a new friend. You’ve seen him, right? And he didn’t hurt you, did he?’

  Louis turned to Lanquetot.

  ‘I talk like this to him because he’s a bit stupid, as I told you. You have to keep it simple with Bufo, just basic ideas: nice people, nasty people, eating, sex, sleep. He can’t cope with anything else. Sometimes I try something a bit harder, a bit of philosophy even, to improve his mind.’

  ‘One lives in hope.’

  ‘He was much more stupid when I first got him. Let’s go for a walk, Lanquetot.’

  VI

  LOUIS LOOKED IN the car park, doorways, cafes. It was night-time by now. Right, the metro. She wouldn’t be going far, she didn’t like leaving her territory. When he finally saw her on the metro platform at the mainline station, the Gare d’Austerlitz, he felt something relax in his stomach. He looked at her from a distance. Marthe was pretending to be waiting for the last train. And how long would she be able to go on pretending?

  Dragging his stiff leg, because he had done too much walking, he hurried along the platform and let himself flop on to the seat next to her.

  ‘So, my old friend, you’re not in bed yet?’

  ‘Ah, Ludwig, you’ve turned up just in time, you wouldn’t have a spare ciggie, would you?’

  ‘What the heck are you doing here, Marthe?’

  ‘I’m out and about. I was just leaving.’

  Louis lit a cigarette for her.

  ‘Good day?’ Marthe asked.

  ‘I got up the noses of four cops, three of them weren’t to blame. I’m going to get ahead of them now, with their blessing.’

  Marthe sighed.

  ‘All right,’ said Louis, ‘I was mean, I showed off, I teased them and I humiliated them a bit. But it was fun, you see, just a bit of fun.’

  ‘You played the ancestors’ trick?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘In another life, you’ll have to work things out better. Get your fun without spreading mayhem everywhere.’

  ‘In another life, my dear old Marthe, there will be major works to be done. Rebuild the foundations, large-scale restoration. Do you believe in other lives?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘I wanted to catch Paquelin out. Had to climb over the others to get to his office.’

  OK, Louis said to himself, we’re not going to bang on about this all night, he’d had his fun and done very little harm. There wasn’t much wriggle room with guys like Paquelin.

  ‘Did it work, anyway?’

  ‘Pretty well.’

  ‘Paquelin, that’s the good-looking one, fair hair, skinny, and a real bastard?’

  ‘You got it. He knocks prostitutes about, and the guys he arrests he grabs by the balls.’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose you cut him to bits. What do you want from him?’

  ‘Just that he gets the hell out, that’s all I want.’

  ‘Louis, don’t forget you’re not so well connected these days. Well, it’s your funeral. Vincent took a picture of the man from 102 and followed him.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Can’t tell you anything, can we? I like bringing you bits of news.’

  ‘I’m listening. Tell me some news.’

  ‘Well, that’s it. Told you everything.’

  ‘And about where you’re staying now, you told me everything too?’

  ‘Whose business is that?’

  Marthe turned towards Kehlweiler. This man was like a fly strip. All the bits of news stuck on to him, without his having to lift a finger. That’s how he was, everyone told him everything. A real pain, in the end.

  ‘Take a fly, for instance,’ said Marthe.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, drop it.’

  Marthe put her chin in her hands. A fly thinks she can flit across a room without being spotted, no problem, and she bumps into Ludwig, so she sticks to him, Ludwig gently extracts all her news and lets her go again. He was such a flypaper for information that he’d made it his profession and couldn’t do anything else any more. Fixing a lamp, for instance: no point asking him, he’d be rubbish. No, all he was good at was knowing things. His grand army told him what was going on, from the tiniest details to massive affairs, and once you were in the eye of the storm, it was hard to get out. Well, that was how he’d wanted it.

  Ludwig said you shouldn’t judge a detail by appearances. You never know, it might be hiding another. And his mission was to chase them up, and it paid off. Why all this energy? Who knew? And Marthe had her own idea about that. Until his dying day, Louis would be chasing exterminators, whether they had exterminated one being or a thousand. But as for where she was lodging, who asked you to poke your nose in? We have our pride. She’d told herself she’d find a solution, and now, not only was there no solution in sight, but Louis knew about it. Who’d been telling him that? Who? Never mind, one of his army of wretched whistle-blowers.

  Marthe shrugged. She looked at Louis who was waiting patiently. From a distance, you would think he looked nothing special. But from near to, eighty centimetres say, everything changed. You didn’t really have to ask then why everyone came and told him everything. At one metre fifty, or two metres, say, Louis looked like a forbidding scientist, unapproachable, like those pictures of bearded gents in school history books. At one metre, you weren’t quite so sure. And the nearer you got, the more you doubted. The index finger he laid lightly on your arm to ask a question, it dragged words out of you on its own. That hadn’t worked with Sonia, she must be a fool. She should have stayed with him for life, no, perhaps not for life, because there are times when you absolutely have to
eat, earn a living, she knew what she meant. Perhaps Sonia hadn’t taken a good look at him, close up. Marthe could see no other explanation. Ludwig himself thought he was ugly; for twenty years she’d been telling him the opposite, but he did think himself very ugly all the same, and if women were fooled into thinking otherwise, that was his good luck. Too much already, Marthe, who had known hundreds of men and had loved only four of them, knew what she was talking about.

  ‘You’re thinking?’ Louis asked.

  ‘Do you want a bit of cold chicken? Some left in the bag.’

  ‘I had a meal with Inspector Lanquetot.’

  ‘The chicken will go to waste.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘Even kings don’t throw away good cold chicken.’

  Marthe had a disconcerting way of suddenly announcing maxims apropos of nothing. Louis liked that. He had a good collection of Marthe-isms and had often used them.

  ‘Right, you’re on your way to bed? Shall I see you home?’

  ‘Who said it was your business?’

  ‘Marthe, let’s not go round in circles. You are as stubborn as a pig, and I’m as stubborn as a wild boar. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I can manage. I’ve got my address book. Someone’ll find me something. Old Marthe has things up her sleeve, you’re not God Almighty.’

  ‘Your address book, your list of ancient toffs . . .’ Louis sighed. ‘Because you think those toffs will lift a finger to help an old tart who has to sleep in shop doorways in the winter.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, they’ll help an old tart. And why not?’

  ‘You know why . . . You tried them? Did you get a result? Not a thing. Am I right?’

  ‘So what?’ muttered Marthe.

  ‘Come on, old girl. We’re not going to spend all night on this metro platform.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To my bunker. And since, as you say, I’m not God Almighty, it isn’t paradise on earth.’

  Louis hauled Marthe towards the stairs. It was freezing outside. They went quickly through the streets.

  ‘You can fetch your things tomorrow,’ said Louis, opening a door on a second-floor landing near the Arènes de Lutèce. ‘But don’t bring all your stuff, there’s not a lot of room.’