by Fred Vargas
Adamsberg was therefore only half-surprised to see a view of the now-familiar village square of Saint-Victor-du-Mont on the screen. He bent low and put his ear to the set so as to hear the voice-over. He stood up five minutes later somewhat groggy. Was that what he had been looking for? A woman slaughtered in her own sheep-pen? Had he not been expecting it all week long, at some deeper level of intuition? Only at moments like this one, when the lower depths of his mind were validated by reality, did Adamsberg lose his inner poise and become almost scared of himself. He had never been entirely at ease with his lower depths. He thought them approximately as wholesome as ingrained dirt on the bottom of a witch’s cauldron.
He walked slowly back to his table. Enid had already served his regular plate, a good old baked potato with cheese filling, and Adamsberg sat down to consume it mechanically. He wondered why the death of that woman had not surprised him. Good grief, wolves do not attack humans, they scarper, like the clever good beasts they are. Maybe they might, at a pinch, go for a small child, but they would never take on an adult. The woman would really have had to have given the wolf no alternative at all. And who is dumb enough to corner a wolf? But still, that’s what must have happened. The pedantic vet from the previous broadcasts had come on screen again. Science lesson time. He’d given another demo of the carnassials, here, there, you see? The first tear, the second tear. The man was a bore. But he seemed to know his job, and he virtually certified that the woman had been done in by the teeth and jaws of a wolf, of the wolf, the big bad wolf of the Mercantour. Yes indeed, that ought to have surprised him, Adamsberg thought.
Adamsberg frowned, pushed away his empty plate, put sugar in his coffee. Maybe it had all seemed odd from the start. Too wonderful or too poetical to be true. When poetry bursts into real life you may be amazed and delighted, but it is never very long before you see that you have been had by a con or a scam. Maybe he had thought it unreal for a wolf out of hell to turn up and lay siege to a whole village. But for heaven’s sake, those really were the marks of a wolf’s bite. Maybe it was a mad dog? No, the vet had been clear it could not be that. Of course, it was not easy to make a positive identification on the basis of mere bite-marks, but no, it was not a dog. Domestication, mongrelisation, lesser height, shortening of muzzle, overlapping of premolars – Adamsberg had not got all of the explanation in detail, but the gist of it was clear: the sheer distance between the two halves of the bite made it impossible to pin the crime on a dog. Save for the special case of the giant mastiff, or bloodhound. But was there a mastiff running wild in the mountains? No, there was not. It was therefore a wolf, and a big one.
On this occasion spoor had been found – a left front paw imprinted in sheep dung, just to the right of the corpse. A print about ten centimetres wide, the size of a wolf’s tread. When men put their left foot in shit, it’s supposed to bring luck. Adamsberg wondered if it also worked for wolves.
You would really have to be rather dim to corner an animal of that kind. That’s what happens if you take it too fast. People always want to go faster, to get things over with. Never does any good. Sin of impatience. Or else this was not an ordinary wolf. Not just a big one, but psychotic too. Adamsberg opened his sketch-pad, pulled a chewed pencil from his pocket, and looked at it with moderate interest. Must be one of Danglard’s. He could chew away a warehouseful of pencils. Adamsberg rotated it in his fingers and dreamily studied the deep incisions in the wood made by the teeth of man.
XIII
CAMILLE HEARD THE motorbike starting up at dawn. She had not even heard Johnstone getting up. He was a very quiet Canadian and mindful of Camille’s sleep. For himself, he did not mind much whether he slept or not, but Camille considered sleep as one of life’s key values. She could now hear the engine fading into the distance. She glanced at the alarm clock, and wondered what all the hurry was about.
But of course, it was about Massart. Johnstone was trying to catch him before he left for the slaughterhouse at Digne. She turned over and went straight back to sleep.
At nine o’clock Johnstone returned and shook her shoulder.
“Massart didn’t sleep at his place last night. His car is still there. Didn’t go to work.”
Camille sat up and rubbed her hair.
“Gonna tell the police.”
“Tell them what?”
“That Massart has gone AWOL. Have to search the mountains.”
“You won’t say anything about Suzanne?”
Johnstone shook his head.
“Gonna go through his place first,” he said.
“Search his house? Are you crazy?”
“Have to find him.”
“What good would searching his place do?”
“Could tell us where he’s gone.”
“What do you think you’ll find? His werewolf suit on a hanger in the closet?”
Johnstone shrugged. “Camille, put a sock in it, for God’s sake. Come on.”
Forty-five minutes later they walked into Massart’s little shack, built half of cinder-block and half of planks. The door wasn’t even locked.
“I prefer it that way,” Camille said.
There were only two rooms: a barely furnished, gloomy main room, a bedroom and a bathroom. In one corner of the main room a large freezer provided the only visible trace of the modern world.
“Filthy,” Johnstone muttered as he looked around. “The French are filthy. Have to look in the freezer.”
“Do it yourself,” Camille said, defensively.
Johnstone collected what was on top of the freezer and put the whole lot – a cap, a pocket lamp, a newspaper, a road map and some onions – on Massart’s dining table. Then he opened the lid.
“And so?” asked Camille, who had retreated to the opposite side of the room.
“Meat, meat and more meat,” Johnstone reported.
He rummaged among the contents with one hand, right down to the bottom.
“Hare, rabbit, beef, and a quarter-carcass of a deer. Massart’s been poaching. For himself, or for his dog, or for both.”
“Any pieces of lamb?”
“No.”
Johnstone dropped the lid back down. Camille was relieved, and sat down at the table to unfold the map.
“Maybe he marks his tracks through the mountains,” she said.
Johnstone moved silently to the bedroom, lifted the mattress, then the base of the bed, opened the drawers in the bedside table and the chest of drawers, looked into the little wardrobe. All filthy.
He came back into the main room wiping his hands on his trousers.
“It’s not a local map,” Camille said. “It’s a map of France.”
“Anything written on it?”
“Dunno. Can’t see anything in this light.”
Johnstone shrugged, opened the table drawer and emptied its contents onto the oilcloth.
“Stuffs his drawers with piles of shit,” he said. “Utter crap.”
Camille went to the open front door and looked at the map in the light of day.
“He’s marked a route in red pencil,” she said. “All the way from Saint-Victor to . . .”
Johnstone surveyed the scattered objects briefly, then stuffed the lot back into the drawer and blew away the dust that had settled on the table. Camille was unfolding the other half of the map.
“. . . to Calais,” she concluded. “Then it crosses the Channel and ends in England.”
“A trip,” Johnstone decided. “Irrelevant.”
“Along secondary roads. It would take days and days.”
“So he likes the byways.”
“But not people. What’s he going to England for?”
“Forget it,” said Johnstone. “No connection. Anyway it could have been ages ago.”
Camille folded the map in half again and took another look at the area of the Mercantour.
“Look at this,” she said.
Johnstone looked up at her.
“Come and see,” Camille repeated. �
��Three pencilled Xs.”
Johnstone bent over the map.
“Can’t see them.”
“There,” Camille said, pointing with her finger. “They’re hardly visible.”
Johnstone took the map outside and creased his brow as he studied the red marks in full daylight.
“The three sheep farms,” he said between his teeth. “Saint-Victor, Ventebrune, Pierrefort.”
“Can’t be sure. The scale’s too big.”
“Yes, we can,” Johnstone said with a shake of his long hair. “Sheep farms.”
“But so what? All it proves is that Massart is interested in the savagings, same as you, same as everyone. He wants to work out how the wolf is moving around. You’ve done exactly the same thing, you’ve plotted the sites on the map of the Mercantour.”
“In that case he’d have put crosses on the other savagings, the ones that happened last year and the year before.”
“But if he’s only interested in the big wolf?”
Johnstone folded the map in a trice, put it in his jacket and closed the door behind him.
“We’re off,” he said.
“What about the map? Aren’t you going to put it back?”
“Taking it. To have a closer look.”
“And what about the flics? What if they discover what you’ve done?”
“Do you think the flics are bloody well going to care about a map?”
“You’re talking like Suzanne.”
“I told you. She turned my head.”
“Turned it a bit too far. Put the map back.”
“Camille, you’re the one who’s trying to protect Massart. It’s better for him if we slip his map out from under.”
When they reached home Camille opened the shutters wide while Johnstone spread the map of France on the wooden table.
“This map stinks,” he said.
“No, it doesn’t,” Camille said.
“It stinks of grease. Dunno what you French have up your noses so as smells never bother you.”
“We’ve been deep-fried in two thousand years of historical fat, that’s what. You uncooked Canadians can’t understand.”
“Has to be something like that,” said Johnstone. “Has to be why old countries always stink. All right,” he added, handing her a magnifying glass, “you give that a good look. I’m going down to see the flics.”
Camille bent over the map and studied the roads, moving the glass slowly over the whole Mercantour area.
Johnstone took a whole hour to get back.
“They kept you a while,” Camille said.
“Yeah. Wondered why I was fussing over Massart. How did I know he’d run off. Nobody round here gives a damn for that man. Couldn’t tell them about the werewolf.”
“So what did you say?”
“I told them Massart had made a rendezvous with me on Sunday to show me a big paw-print he’d spotted near Mont Vence.”
“Not bad.”
“And there was nobody there in the morning, or in the evening. So I got worried, and went back to see this morning.”
“Sounds logical.”
“In the end, they got worried too. Rang the slaughterhouse at Digne. Nobody’s seen him there either. So they’ve just called in the men from Puygiron and given them instructions to comb the area around the shack. If they haven’t found Massart by two o’clock, they’ll call in the gendarmes from Entrevaux as well. I want to eat, Camille. I’m starving. Fold the map away. Did you find anything else?”
“Four more Xs, very faint. All of them between RN202 and the Mercantour.”
Johnstone raised his head interrogatively.
“They correspond roughly to Andelle and Anélias, east of Saint-Victor, to Guillos, ten kilometres north, and to La Castille, at the very edge of the National Park.”
“Doesn’t fit,” said Johnstone. “Never been a savaging in those farms. You sure of those locations?”
“Pretty much.”
“Doesn’t fit. Must mean something else.” Johnstone pondered. “Maybe that’s where he sets his traps,” he suggested.
“Why mark them on a map?”
“To log catches. To record good poaching grounds.”
Camille nodded in agreement and folded the map away.
“We’ll have lunch at the village café,” she said. “There’s nothing in the larder.”
Johnstone scowled as he looked in the fridge for confirmation.
“You believe me now?” Camille said.
Johnstone was a loner who did not like mixing in public places; he especially disliked eating in cafés in front of other people, amid the clatter of cutlery and the sounds of mastication. Camille liked the noise and whenever she could she dragged Johnstone to the village café, where she went almost daily whenever he disappeared up into the Mercantour hills.
She went up to him and kissed him on the lips.
“Come on,” she said.
Johnstone gave her a hug. Camille would run away if he tried to cut her off from the rest of the world. But that meant making a big sacrifice.
As they were finishing their lunch, Larquet, the roadman’s brother, burst into the café, out of breath and apoplectic. Everyone fell silent. Larquet never set foot in the café as he always took his tiffin in a dixie and ate on the hoof.
“What’s up, old fellow?” said the barkeeper. “You look like you’ve seen the Virgin Mary.”
“I ain’t seen no virgin, you idiot. I saw the vet’s wife coming back up from Saint-André.”
“Not quite the same thing, I grant you,” said the barkeeper.
The vet’s wife was a medical auxiliary and had stuck needles into just about every backside in Saint-Victor and the surrounding area. She was much sought after because she had such a gentle touch that you hardly felt the injection. Others claimed her popularity stemmed from her sleeping with all the not entirely repulsive males whose rumps she perforated. More charitable souls said it was not her fault if she had to give injections in men’s behinds, it could not be much fun to do that for a living and just put yourself in her shoes for a moment.
“And so what?” asked the barkeeper. “Did she tip you in the ditch and have it off with you?”
“You’re a brainless oaf, you are,” Larquet snorted with contempt. “You want to know something, Albert?”
“Tell me, do.”
“She refuses to treat you, and that’s what you can’t stand. So you sling mud at her because that’s the only thing you know how to do.”
“You finished your sermon?” the barkeeper retorted with a flash of anger in his eyes.
Albert had very small blue eyes set in a broad, baked-clay face. He was not particularly appealing.
“Yes, I’ve finished, but only because I don’t want to offend your lady wife.”
“That’s enough of that,” said Lucie, putting her hand on Albert’s arm. “What’s going on, Larquet?”
“The vet’s wife was on her way back from Guillos, she was. Where three more sheep have been done for.”
“Guillos? Are you sure? That’s a long way off!”
“Of course I’m sure, I ain’t making this up. It was Guillos. That means that the beast can strike anywhere. If it wants, it can be at Terres-Rouges tomorrow and Voudailles the day after. Whenever it likes, wherever it likes.”
“Whose sheep were they?”
“Gremont’s. He’s all churned up about it.”
“But it’s only sheep!” someone bellowed. “Are you going to cry your eyes out just for sheep?”
Everyone turned to see who it was. It was Buteil, the farm manager at Les Écarts, looking distraught. Bloody hell: Suzanne.
“None of you’s shed a tear for Suzanne, and she ain’t even in her grave! But you’re sniffling over bloody baa-baas! You’re all swine!”
“No, Buteil, we’re not sniffling,” said Larquet, holding his hand out. “We may all be swine, specially Albert, but nobody’s forgotten Suzanne. But it’s the same foul beast that d
one her in, and bloody hell, we’ve got to find it!”
“Right,” someone said.
“Right. And if the lads from Guillos find it first, we’ll look pathetic.”
“We’ll get it first. The Guillos lot have gone soft since they switched to lavender.”
“Don’t kid yourselves, my friends,” said the postman, who was something of a nervous wreck. “We’re past it too, same as the blokes from Guillos or wherever. We’ve lost the knack, we’ve forgotten how to do it. We aren’t going to catch the beast until it drops in here for a drink at the bar. Even then we’ll have to wait until it’s good and sozzled, and we’ll need to be ten strong to keep it down. Meanwhile it’ll have eaten up the whole county.”
“Heigh-ho, what a jolly fellow you are.”
“That story about a wolf coming in for a drink at the bar is farcical.”
“We should call in a ’copter,” said someone else.
“A ’copter? To look down on the mountains? Are you completely out of your mind?”
“Looks like we’ve lost Massart as well,” someone butted in. “The gendarmes are looking for him on Mont Vence.”
“Not what I’d called a great loss,” Albert said.
“Fuckwit!” Larquet said.
“Enough of that!” Lucie said.
“How do you know Massart hasn’t also fallen prey to the beast? What with his habit of going out at night.”
“Yeah, right enough, when we find Massart, we’ll find him in little pieces. You mark my words.”
Johnstone grasped Camille’s wrist. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “They’re driving me crazy.”
When they got into the open air Johnstone took a deep breath, as if he had just emerged from a cloud of poison gas.