Seeking Whom He May Devour

by Fred Vargas

  “The news didn’t give a time.”

  “And the man? What was he doing outdoors?”

  “We’ll go and ask,” Camille said.

  XXIII

  TO GET TO sautrey camille had to nurse the lorry over yet another mountain pass. But it was an easier, wider road with fewer wiggles overall and more leeway on the hairpin bends. As they left the last slivers of Mediterranean landscape behind them and began the climb towards the Col de la Croix-Haute, about ten kilometres before the summit they drove into a bank of white, fluffy fog. Soliman and Watchee were entering an alien sector and they observed their new surroundings with hostility and fascination. Visibility was poor, Camille was driving slowly. Watchee cast disparaging eyes on the long, low houses that seemed to have been plastered onto these melancholy hillsides. They reached the summit at four and made it to Sautrey thirty minutes later.

  “Woodpiles, woodpiles,” Watchee muttered. “What the hell do they do with all those logs?”

  “They have to keep fires burning nearly all year round,” Camille said.

  Watchee shook his head with pity and disbelief.

  * * *

  The owner of the Sautrey café was about to shut up shop and set off home just before it turned eight. A short-haired dog gambolled at his feet. Dinner time.

  “See here now, mutt,” said the café-keeper. “It ain’t right for a nice kind of girl to drive a truck, and no good’ll come of it, you mark my words. Why can’t those two beggars who are with her do the driving, eh? It’s a right sorry sight. Ain’t that what it is, mutt? I couldn’t begin to tell you how clapped-out that truck is. And the girl sleeps inside it, with a Black and a crone beside her.”

  The café-owner sighed as he draped his tea-towel over the sideboard.

  “What do you think, mutt?” he continued. “Which one do you think she sleeps with? You’re not going to tell me she sleeps with nobody, ’cos I wouldn’t believe you. Probably with the nigger-boy. It doesn’t turn her off. The Black looks at her like she was a goddess. Anyway, what the hell are the three of them doing here getting up everybody’s nose with all their bloody questions? What’s old Sernot got to do with them, anyhow? You don’t know, mutt? Well, nor do I.”

  He switched off the last of the lights and buttoned up his coat as he left the premises. The temperature had fallen below ten degrees.

  “Ain’t that right, mutt? People who ask so many questions about a stiff can’t be normal, can they.”

  Because it was cold and windy Soliman set up their dinner-table inside the lorry, squeezing the wooden box between the two bunks. Camille let Soliman look after the meals. He was in charge of the moped, food supplies and water. She held out her plate.

  “Meat, tomatoes and onions,” Soliman announced.

  Watchee uncorked a bottle of white.

  “In times gone by,” Soliman said, “when the world was new, people didn’t need to cook.”

  “Oh, not that again,” Watchee groaned.

  “And so it was for all the animals on earth.”

  “Quite so,” Watchee butted in, pouring the wine. “Then Adam and Eve got it together and ever since we’ve had to slave away and do the cooking all our life long.”

  “No, no,” Soliman said. “That’s a different story.”

  “You make up your stories from start to finish.”

  “So what? Do you know any other way?”

  Camille shivered, and went to fetch a pullover from her drawer. It wasn’t raining, but the mist was so damp that it made you feel like a wet rag all over.

  “There was food within arm’s reach all around,” Soliman went on. “But Man gobbled everything up, and the crocodiles began to complain about his selfishness and greed. To check up on what was really going on, the god of the stinking marsh turned himself into a crocodile and went to see for himself. The marsh god went hungry for three days, then he summoned Man and said: ‘From now on you’re going to share and share alike.’ ‘Sod that,’ said Man. ‘We don’t give a toss for the others.’ The god of the stinking marsh then went into an awesome rage and took away Man’s taste for blood, raw flesh and uncooked meat. Since when we’ve had to cook everything we put in our mouths. It took a long time to learn, and crocodiles have had the kingdom of raw meat all to themselves ever since.”

  “And why shouldn’t they?” Camille said.

  “Man felt so humiliated being the only animal to have to cook his food that he dumped all the work on Woman. Except for me, Soliman Melchior, because I’ve stayed good and I’ve stayed black, and also I haven’t got a woman.”

  “You could put it that way,” Camille said.

  Soliman fell silent and concentrated on his plate. “People round here aren’t very chatty,” he said.

  He held out his glass for Watchee to fill.

  “That’s because they’re in on it,” said Watchee as he poured.

  “They didn’t spill a single bean.”

  “Because they’ve none to spill,” Camille said. “They’re as much in the dark as we are. They’d heard the radio, that’s all. If they knew anything they’d have told us. Have you ever met a human being who knows something and doesn’t end up blurting it out? Any one at all?”

  “No.”

  “So there you are. They’ve told us all they know. The guy had been a teacher at Grenoble, then he retired here.”

  “Retired here,” Watchee repeated pensively.

  “It’s where his wife had her roots.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “We’ve run into the sand,” Soliman said. “We’re going off as fast as windfallen figs. Aren’t we?”

  “Let’s not get stuck in this woodpile,” said Watchee. “On with the road movie. Sit on his shadow and catch him by the tail.”

  “Stop talking rubbish, will you?” Soliman burst out. “We’ve no idea where Massart’s shadow is, for heaven’s sake! We don’t know if it’s ahead of us, behind us, or down the bloody well!”

  “Calm down, lad.”

  “Can’t you get it into your head that we’ve lost it? That we’re in the dark? That we’ve no way of knowing if it was Massart or the man in the moon who killed Sernot? Could even be that the flics already know who did it – could have been the man’s son, or his wife! What the bloody hell are we really doing in this sheep wagon?”

  “Eating and drinking,” Camille said.

  Watchee filled her glass. “Careful,” he said. “It’s got a tail.”

  “We know nothing!” Soliman said excitedly. “Patiently and persistently, we go on learning nothing. We’ve put hundreds of hours into learning nothing. And we’ll sleep though the night and wake up in the morning knowing exactly the same amount of nothing.”

  “Calm down,” said Watchee.

  Soliman paused, then let his arms slump into his lap.

  “Ignorance,” he said in a more collected tone. “‘Lack of knowledge, general or particular. State of unknowing.’”

  “Exactly,” Camille said.

  Watchee set himself to hand-rolling, licking and sticking down three cigarettes.

  “Time to break camp,” he said. “Might as well go and see the flics on the Sernot case. Where do we find them?”

  “Villard-de-Lans.”

  Soliman shrugged. “Do you really think the flics will fall over themselves to help us with their case-notes? Do you think they’ll be delighted to repeat everything the pathologist told them? To oblige a Black? To please a shepherd? Out of courtesy for a female trucker?”

  “No,” Watchee scowled. “I think they’ll fall over themselves asking for our ID and then they’ll kick us out.”

  He gave one roll-up to Camille and one to Soliman.

  “And we can’t tell them we’re after Massart, can we?” Soliman went on. “What do you think the flics would do to three people like us if they knew they were tracking an innocent man so as to teach him a lesson?”

  “They’d lock them up.”

  “Quite.”

&nbs
p; Soliman paused to inhale.

  “Three people, three know-nothings,” he said after a while, with a shake of his head. “The three know-nothings in the fable.”

  “What fable?” asked Camille.

  “The fable I’m about to make up, under the title ‘The Three Know-Nothings’.”

  “I see.”

  Soliman got up and paced back and forth with his hands behind his back.

  “What we really need,” he resumed, “is a special sort of policeman. A very special flic. A flic who’d pass on all the info without giving us any grief, and who’d let us carry on tracking the vampire down.”

  “Stop daydreaming,” said Watchee.

  “Daydream,” said Soliman: “‘Idea without substance. Wishful thinking.’”

  “Right.”

  “But we’re up the creek if we don’t find the dream. Without the dream policeman we’re wasting our time.”

  The youngster went to open the tailgate and threw his cigarette stub out. Camille picked hers off the floor and dropped it through the slats.

  “I once met a dream,” she said.

  Camille had spoken almost in a whisper. Soliman turned to look at her. With her elbows propped up on her knees she was turning her wine glass in her two hands.

  “No, Camille, I didn’t mean a guy. I meant a flic.”

  “So did I.”

  “A special kind of flic. I meant getting to know a very special policeman.”

  “I once met a very special policeman.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Completely, utterly serious.”

  Soliman cleared the dining table and opened the box that it actually was. He got down on his knees to rummage inside and pulled out a box of candles.

  “Can’t see a bloody thing in this cattle-truck,” he said.

  He dripped some melting wax into a saucer and stood three candles up in it. Camille was still swirling white wine in the bottom of her glass.

  Candlelight suited Camille. It made her silhouette stand out against the background of grey canvas at the top end of Soliman’s bunk. What with night nearly upon them, and the prospect of more long hours lying only a few feet apart either side of the canvas curtain, Soliman was a little hesitant. He sat down opposite her, next to Watchee.

  “Did you meet him a long time ago?”

  Camille looked up at the young man.

  “Maybe ten years ago.”

  “Friend or foe?”

  “Friend, I suppose. I don’t know really. I haven’t seen him for years.”

  “What way is he special?”

  Camille shrugged. “He’s different.”

  “Really not like other flics?”

  “It’s worse than that. He’s not like other people even.”

  “Oh,” said Soliman, taken aback. “So what is he like as a policeman? Unscrupulous?”

  “He’s very scrupulous, but quite unprincipled.”

  “You mean he’s bent?”

  “No, he’s not bent at all.”

  “So what is he, then?”

  “He’s special, as I said.”

  “Don’t keep on at her,” said Watchee.

  “And they let him stay in the force?”

  “He’s got gifts.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg.”

  “Age?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” Watchee interrupted.

  Camille thought hard and added things up on her fingers.

  “Around forty-five.”

  “And where does your special flic hang out?”

  “In Paris, at the police HQ in the fifth arrondissement.”

  “He’s an Inspector?”

  “No, he’s a commissaire.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Could this guy Adamsberg get us out of our hole? Does he have that much power?”

  “He’s got gifts, that’s what he has.”

  “Can you give him a call? Do you know his number?”

  “I’ve no intention of ringing him.”

  Soliman stared at Camille in surprise. “And why don’t you want to ring him?”

  “Because I don’t want to hear his voice.”

  “Really? Why not? Is he a bastard?”

  “No.”

  “Is he an idiot?”

  Camille shrugged again. She was passing her finger in and out of the candle’s flame.

  “Go on, then,” said Soliman. “Why don’t you want to hear his voice?”

  “I told you. Because he is special.”

  “Don’t keep on at her,” Watchee said.

  Soliman jumped up in sheer exasperation.

  “It’s her call,” Watchee reminded the young man, tapping Soliman’s shoulder with the tip of his crook. “If she doesn’t want to see the fellow, she doesn’t, and that’s that.”

  “Bugger that!” Soliman yelled. “We don’t give a toss for him being special!” He turned towards Camille and said: “And what about Suzanne’s soul, Camille? Have you thought about that? Stuck for all eternity in that bloody stinking pond with all those crocodiles? I’d call that a special position, and so should you!”

  “The pond stuff’s not altogether gospel, you know,” said Watchee.

  “But don’t you reckon Suzanne’s relying on us?” Soliman went on. “By now she must be wondering what the hell we’re up to. Whether we’ve forgotten her. Whether we aren’t just getting sozzled and don’t give a damn any more.”

  “No, Sol, I don’t believe she is.”

  “Really, Camille? So what the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Have you forgotten? I’m here to do the driving.”

  Soliman pulled himself up straight and wiped his brow. He was getting agitated. He was much too agitated about Camille. Perhaps because he fancied her and had no idea how to make it over the last fifty metres between him and her. Unless Camille made a move, but she had not given the slightest sign so far. Camille was pretty much all-powerful in the lorry and that was exhausting. She was mistress of seduction, she was mistress of the lorry, and she could be the mistress of the chase – if only she would call that special man of hers.

  Soliman sat down again somewhat crestfallen.

  “It isn’t true you’re only here as the driver.”

  “No.”

  “You’re here because of Suzanne, you’re here because of M. Johnstone, you’re here because of Massart, to nab him before he tops anyone else.”

  “Could be,” said Camille before emptying her glass.

  “He might have killed again already,” said Soliman insistently. “But we can’t even find out if he has. We can’t find out the first thing about a vampire that only we know. And that only we can head off.”

  Camille got up.

  “Unless you call that flic, of course.”

  “I’m going to bed,” she said. “Give me your mobile.”

  “Are you going to ring him?” Soliman asked with a brighter face.

  “No, I want to get hold of Johnstone.”

  “Who cares about your trapper?”

  “I do.”

  “Think about it all the same, Camille. Pausing for thought is the privilege of the wise. Do you want to hear the story about the man who refused to pause for thought?”

  “No,” said Watchee.

  “No,” Camille concurred. “I find wisdom boring.”

  “All right then, don’t think. Act. Boldness is the privilege of stout hearts.”

  Camille smiled and gave Soliman a kiss. She paused, then shook Watchee’s hand and vanished behind the canvas screen.

  “Bugger,” said Soliman.

  “She’s hard to crack,” Watchee observed.

  XXIV

  CAMILLE WOKE UP by herself at around seven, which was a significant indication of inner tension and contradictions. Also a symptom of wine with a tail. Yes, it could be that too.

  Last night she had been able to get in touch with Johns
tone and she had enjoyed hearing the Canadian’s voice, even if only in splinters. Johnstone had been more monosyllabic than ever on the telephone. Up in the Mercantour, Crassus the Bald remained untraceable. Almost all the other known wolves had been spotted in their ranges, but big Crassus was still missing. Augustus was gobbling down his ration of rabbits, Mercier was amazed that the old boy was holding up so well given the rotten state of his teeth. “You see,” he told Johnstone, “where’s there’s a will, there’s a way.” And Johnstone had accepted that without a word. He had been concerned to hear of the death of Jacques-Jean Sernot. Sure, Massart had crossed his mind. But he did not like the ragged turn that Camille’s pursuit of the man was taking. He did not like knowing that Camille was within spitting range of Massart, holed up but also vulnerable in that truck. In any case, he did not like Camille being stuck in that stinking vehicle with two men. With any man, actually, in any lorry. No, he wasn’t against getting a flic involved. Quite the opposite, in fact. Hadn’t they wanted to get the police involved from the start? Well, if she knew one, she should call him. Makes no difference if he’s special or not, as long as he’s a flic. He would be more effective than the three of them together, if he was prepared to get interested in the werewolf. A big if. Johnstone was convinced that police involvement would put an end to the saga of the girl, the shepherd and the boy-child. That’s what his heart most desired. He’d try to come to where the lorry was this evening, to have a talk with her, sleep with her. She must let him know if they decided to move.

  Lying on her back Camille watched the slanted rays of the sun filter through the slats and light up the dust suspended in the air. That was no ordinary dust. There must be micro-particles of straw, sheep wax and sheep shit hanging there, shimmering in the morning light. A rare blend, for sure. A really beefy kind of dust. Camille pulled the blanket up to her chin. The night had been cool in this misty village, and they had needed the woollen blankets Buteil had provided. What would it cost her to call Adamsberg? Bugger all, as Soliman said. She did not give a toss for Adamsberg, he had fallen through the floor into the black hole of forgetting, where everything gets pulped and incinerated and turned into something else, like in those recycling plants where you make cane chairs out of old tractor parts. Basically, she had already recycled Adamsberg. Not into a cane chair, definitely not, she had no use for such things. She had turned him into wanderlust and musical scores, into 5cm sheet-metal screws, and into a Canadian, why not? Memory does whatever it wants with the rubbish you discard in it, that is memory’s business, you have no right to go poking around down there. In any case, there was nothing left of the Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg she had once loved so much. Not a tremor, not an echo, not even a regret. There were a few images, of course, but they had no relief, no charge. At one point Camille had been deeply upset by memory’s merciless pulping of people and sentiments. Seeing a man you had spent so much time worrying about transformed into a 5cm sheet-steel screw was enough to make you stop and think. And she had stopped for a while to think. Her memory had not done all that work in a day, of course. There was no denying it had been a lot of work. Long months of smashing and grinding. Then a period of thinking. Then nothing. Devoid of the slightest twitch or the batting of an eyelid. Just a few souvenirs from another world.