by Fred Vargas
‘Quite a lot the worse for wear, rather,’ Adamsberg said to himself, as he closed his mobile and called his colleague in the 18th arrondissement.
‘Montreux, that you? Adamsberg. You’ve got three kids there from last night?’
‘She come from you, the one that fell on them? A tree or what?’
‘A sacred tree – you got it. What shape are they in?’
‘They’re deeply humiliated. Your girl simply punched them in the stomach, nothing broken, the “tree” knows how to temper her punches. She left their balls intact.’
‘She’s a gentle soul.’
‘Well, one of them’s got a squashed nose, another has a torn ear – with three earrings still attached, actually the guy was keener to get those back than the bit of his ear, and the third has a real shiner. She was within her rights, they tried to jump her, they were pissed out of their minds. Her colleague witnessed it all, he gave a statement. Little guy, more like a daffodil than a tree, I’d say.’
‘He’s a harmless reed, but one that thinks.’
‘You seem to have some variety over there. Here I’ve only got five bloody idiots.’
‘Just the one here, I think.’
Adamsberg put down the phone as Estalère ushered in François Château’s two associates. One looked fragile and the other burly, like characters in classic buddy movies, but they both wore glasses, and had extensive beards, plus longer hair than would be usual for their age – about fifty.
‘I see,’ said Adamsberg with a smile as he asked them to sit down. ‘You are afraid of people taking clandestine photographs. Estalère, some coffee please. I have already agreed not to ask you your real names.’
‘We have to operate in total confidentiality,’ said the burly one. ‘We just have to. People are so narrow-minded that they easily misunderstand.’
‘The president explained the rules of confidentiality. Your beards look very convincing.’
‘You probably know we have some excellent make-up artists in the association. Beards are the easy part. They can manage complete transformations.’
‘So in that case, you feel safe,’ said Adamsberg.
‘Has that young man seen a ghost or what?’ the thin one asked, when Estalère had gone out.
‘Estalère? No, his eyes always look like that.’
‘If he had darker hair, he’d make a very good Billaud-Varenne.’
‘Is that a Robespierrist?’
‘Yes,’ said the burly one.
‘Estalère’s a little lamb.’
‘But he’s angelic-looking, like Billaud. As for character, that doesn’t matter. You saw how François Château subdued the assembly, didn’t you? But I can assure you he doesn’t produce that effect when he’s working at the hotel. As for the man you have on the desk at reception, not very good-looking, if you’ll forgive my bluntness, but he would make an excellent Marat.’
‘I doubt if he could make his speeches. I wouldn’t be able to myself.’
Adamsberg fell silent as Estalère brought in the coffees.
‘But François must surely have told you that our assemblies have the facility to loosen people’s tongues and change their behaviour,’ said the burly one.
‘To the point of producing genuine passions and wholehearted identification with the person they’re playing,’ added the thin one.
‘Even if, in real life, the actor doesn’t have anything in common with the character, and sometimes it’s even the opposite. You find some people with right-wing opinions turn into raging extremists of the left. That’s one of the aims of our research: the group effect, wiping out people’s individual convictions. But as we change roles every four months, we are currently looking for a Billaud-Varenne and a Marat.’
‘And a Tallien.’
‘But not a Robespierre,’ said Adamsberg.
The thin one smiled knowingly.
‘And you saw why the other night.’
‘Almost too clearly.’
‘He is exceptional, irreplaceable.’
‘Does he too sometimes fall victim to a “wholehearted identification”?’
The burly one seemed to know something about psychiatry, perhaps it was his profession. One could understand that he wouldn’t want his patients to see him in eighteenth-century clothes with a lace jabot.
‘Maybe, at the beginning, that might happen,’ said the thin one thoughtfully, ‘but he’s been interpreting the role of Maximilien for twelve years now. It’s become a routine. He can do it the way someone else can play draughts. With concentration, and intensity, but no more.’
‘One moment,’ Adamsberg interrupted. ‘Which of you is the treasurer, nicknamed Leblond, and which the secretary, known as Lebrun?’
‘I’m Leblond,’ said the thin one, with the fair silky beard.
‘Thank you, that’s helpful. So you’re Lebrun,’ Adamsberg said to the other man. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ he asked them, feeling in his pockets, having laid in a little stock from Zerk’s supplies that morning.
‘You’re on your home ground, commissaire.’
‘Now then, four deaths already in your association: Henri Masfauré, who was your financial linchpin, Alice Gauthier, Jean Breuguel and Angelino Gonzalez. Did you know them by sight?’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Lebrun, the one with the thick black beard. ‘Gonzalez used to wear full costume and make-up, but we’ve seen your sketch. That was him all right.’
‘François Château told me at once I should consult you. Because he says that you keep an eye on the members better than he does.’
‘It’s worse than that,’ said Leblond with a smile, ‘we spy on them.’
‘Really?’
‘You see, we’re being open with you. Our “living history” has got out of hand, and it’s occasioned some stupefying psychological upheavals.’
‘You might even say pathological consequences,’ added Lebrun. ‘That’s certainly what we’re seeing at the moment. Which proves to us that we were right to be keeping a close watch on our members.’
‘How do you go about it?’
‘Most of those who attend behave in classic fashion,’ said Lebrun. ‘They throw themselves into it. They play their parts, sometimes overdoing it in fact. And that can cover a wide range of behaviour, running from those who are amusing themselves – that was the case with Gonzalez all right, which didn’t stop him being a splendid Hébert, did it, Leblond?’
‘Excellent. It broke my heart to give the Hébert part to someone else who wasn’t too bad, but really nothing like as good. Never mind, by the next meeting Hébert will have been guillotined. Sorry, we’re talking shop.’
‘So, as I was saying,’ Lebrun went on, ‘it can run from people who are amusing themselves to people who take themselves very seriously, from those who are just taking on a part to those who are bursting with passion.’
‘Yes, and you have the full spectrum of diversity and graded nuances between the two poles.’
‘. . . the full spectrum of diversity and graded nuances,’ Adamsberg noted. Was Leblond perhaps a physicist?
‘And nevertheless, it is all contained within the bounds of “normality”, that is to say, our own rather “crazy normality”,’ said Lebrun, ‘especially since we have insisted on taking it in turns to play the parts. But it’s the others that my colleague and I are keeping an eye on. About twenty of them. We call them the “infras” between ourselves.’
‘Do you mind if I walk about a bit?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘You’re on your home ground,’ Lebrun repeated.
‘So who are these “infras”?’
‘The ones outside the regular spectrum,’ explained Leblond. ‘Like infrared rays for instance, which our eyes can’t see. You have to imagine a comedy show and someone who doesn’t laugh. Or a terrifying film that leaves a certain spectator quite cold.’
‘Whereas most of the people who attend our sessions “come out of themselves”, to put it simply.’
&nbs
p; ‘And we don’t just mean the odd moment,’ Leblond said. ‘It’s a constant. An invariant.’
An invariant. He must be some kind of scientist.
‘So these “infras”,’ Lebrun took up the explanation – and Adamsberg noted the harmony of their almost interchangeable double act – ‘remain astonishingly neutral, straight-faced. Not unhappy, or absent-minded, but inscrutable. They certainly can’t be indifferent – or why would they be there at all? – but distant.’
‘I see,’ said Adamsberg, still pacing up and down.
‘In fact,’ added Leblond, ‘they are there, they’re paying attention, but their participation is of a different order from the rest.’
‘What they’re doing is observing,’ said Lebrun, ‘and we’re observing the people who are observing us. Why are they there? What do they want?’
‘And your answer to that is?’
‘Hard to say,’ Lebrun replied. ‘Over time, my colleague and I have identified two distinct groups among the “infras”. We call one lot the “infiltrators” and the others the “guillotined”. If we’re right, the infiltrators number no more than ten.’
‘We don’t count Henri Masfauré, although he also seemed to be watching them. He would talk to one or other, now and then. Victor was there to act as his eyes and ears. And among them were those two other people, who were killed, Gauthier and Breuguel, and another man we haven’t seen for some years. So you see that, apart from Gonzalez, the killer has chosen to attack the infiltrators, the watchers in the shadows, the enquirers. Therefore, they can’t have been inoffensive.’
‘How would you describe the others? The survivors of that group?’
Adamsberg stopped at his desk and, still standing, prepared to take some notes.
‘We can only identify four of them with any certainty,’ said Leblond. ‘A woman and three men. She’s about sixty, mid-length straight hair, peroxide blonde. She has strong features and striking blue eyes, must have been a real beauty in her day. Leblond has managed to exchange a few words with her now and then, although the infiltrators are hard to get to know. He thinks she may have been an actress. As for the ex-cyclist – you describe him, you know him better than I do.’
‘We call him “the ex-cyclist” because of his huge legs, which he always holds planted slightly apart. As if, ahem, excuse me, he was still a bit saddle-sore. That’s just our nickname for him. I’d say he’s fortyish, short dark hair, regular features, but devoid of expression. Unless, that is, he’s deliberately made his face expressionless to discourage anyone from chatting to him. As all the infiltrators do in their own way.’
‘An actress and a cyclist,’ Adamsberg noted. ‘And the third?’
‘I suspect he’s a dentist,’ said Lebrun. ‘He has a way of looking at you as if he’s making a judgement about your teeth. And there’s a slight smell of antiseptic on his hands. About fifty-five. Brown eyes, which look both inquisitorial and sad, thin lips, well-cared-for teeth, crowns I’d say. There’s something bitter about him, and he has dandruff.’
‘Bitter, inquisitorial dentist with dandruff,’ Adamsberg noted. ‘And the fourth?’
‘No special distinguishing features,’ said Lebrun, frowning. ‘He’s hard to describe, nothing easy to pick on.’
‘Do they stand together?’
‘No,’ said Leblond. ‘But they certainly know each other. They carry out a strange sort of ballet movement. They meet, have a brief word, move off, and so on. Fleeting contacts, but apparently necessary, and I think deliberately discreet. They always leave before the end of the evening. So we’ve never been able to follow them out, because we are obliged to remain as François’s bodyguards.’
Adamsberg added to the list of the ‘infiltrators’ the names of Gauthier, Masfauré, Breuguel and, lower down, Gonzalez. He drew a line and headed his second column ‘The Guillotined’.
‘More coffee?’ he asked, ‘or would you prefer tea, or hot chocolate? Or a beer, perhaps?’
The two men pricked up their ears.
So Adamsberg upped the offer.
‘Or indeed some white wine,’ he said. ‘We keep some excellent stuff here.’
‘Beer please,’ the two men chorused.
‘It’s upstairs, I’ll take you there. Look out, there’s an irregular step on the staircase, always causing trouble.’
Adamsberg was so used to the little room containing the drinks dispenser that he walked in without warning his guests. The cat, accompanied by Voisenet, was eating from its dish of crunchy cat food, while Lieutenant Mercadet was fast asleep on the pile of blue cushions specially arranged for him.
‘One of our officers suffers from narcolepsy,’ Adamsberg explained. ‘He functions in three-hour cycles.’
He took three bottles of beer from the refrigerator, including one for himself, essential in order to make the session more friendly, and opened them at a small bar lined with four stools.
‘We only have plastic cups,’ he apologised.
‘We wouldn’t have expected you to have a luxurious bar here. Or that beer was allowed, come to that.’
‘Obviously,’ said Adamsberg, leaning on the counter. ‘Now then,’ he said, showing them a drawing of the sign. ‘Does this mean anything to you? Have you ever seen it before?’
‘Never,’ said Leblond, and Lebrun followed suit, shaking his head.
‘But how would you interpret it? Knowing that this sign has been drawn somehow or other at the scene of all four murders.’
‘I don’t see what it is,’ said Lebrun.
‘But in context? Your context, the Revolution?’ Adamsberg prompted them.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Lebrun, reaching out for the drawing. ‘It could be two guillotines. The old-fashioned English kind, and the new French one, put together to make a cryptogram? A warning sign?’
‘Of what?’
‘Well, of execution?’
‘But on what grounds?’
‘In our context, as you put it,’ said Leblond sadly, ‘it could be treason.’
‘So you think the killer might have identified the infiltrators, the spies?’
‘Looks like it,’ said Lebrun. ‘But the sign would be a royalist one. They say that it was Louis XVI himself who perfected the former prototype of the guillotine, by striking out the curved blade. Mind you, there’s no evidence of that.’
‘He was certainly a good mechanic,’ said Leblond laconically, taking a swig of beer.
‘Well, what about your second group, then?’ asked Adamsberg, ‘the “guillotined” as you called them?’
‘Or the “descendants”.’
‘What do you mean, descendants?’
Voisenet’s eyes met Adamsberg’s and the commissaire signalled to him not to intervene. The lieutenant picked up the cat who had finished feeding and left the little room.
‘He’s carrying the cat?’ asked Lebrun.
‘The cat doesn’t like the stairs. And he can’t feed unless someone sits with him.’
‘So why don’t you put his dish downstairs?’ asked Leblond, the logician.
‘Because he only likes eating up here. And sleeping downstairs.’
‘Peculiar.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not afraid we’ll wake up your lieutenant?’
‘No risk, that’s the problem. On the other hand, he is super-efficient when he is awake, in the other part of the cycle.’
‘Complicated business running a police station,’ remarked Lebrun.
‘Yes, some people think there’s a bit of laissez-aller here,’ said Adamsberg, drinking again from the bottle.
He really didn’t want this beer.
‘And yet you are a successful unit?’
‘We don’t do too badly. Because of the laissez-aller, I suppose.’
‘Interesting,’ commented Lebrun, as if to himself.
Lebrun, secretary of the association, perhaps a psychiatrist.
The three men went back downstairs, holding the bottles
of beer, and Leblond, in spite of the warning, almost tripped on the odd stair. Once back in the commissaire’s office, the atmosphere, previously simply courteous, was more relaxed.
It was Leblond who of his own accord launched the next stage of their session.
‘Now, for the “guillotined”,’ he said. ‘These ones are solitary. They don’t know each other, so they don’t talk to each other. They are regular, assiduous even, but they never volunteer to take the role of a deputy. They sit up in the high seats and melt into the background. They are silent, vigilant and serious, showing no apparent emotion. It’s because of their unusual expressions that Lebrun and I have identified them one by one. Three of them always stay till the end and drink a glass of wine in silence at the buffet after the assembly.’
‘Whose descendants are they?’
‘They’re descended from people who were guillotined.’
‘But how did you find that out?’
‘Because of those three,’ said Lebrun. ‘We were able to follow them out. Once François is safely back home, we can return for the end of the buffet and we tail them.’
‘You mean you know their names?’
‘Better than that. Names, addresses, occupations.’
‘So you know who their ancestors were?’
‘Exactly,’ said Lebrun, with a broad and amiable grin.
‘But you are not at liberty to tell me their names?’
‘We are strictly bound by the rule, we cannot reveal to a third person the identity of our members. Those or any other. But it would not be out of order, for me to point them out to you at a session. Then you would be free to follow them, if that seemed a likely lead for you.’
‘You should be clear,’ said Leblond, ‘that we are not actually accusing these people of anything. Neither the infiltrators nor the guillotined. But we don’t know why the infiltrators are coming to our sessions, as we said.’
‘The motives of the “descendants of the guillotined” are a bit clearer,’ said Lebrun, ‘because they’re inspired by intense hatred, inherited down through the generations, possibly morbid. A feeling of cruel injustice. Possibly seeing Robespierre in person and being able to hate him relieves them a little. Or perhaps they appreciate the implacable course of History, which will lead the Incorruptible to his own inevitable downfall. Culminating in the tumultuous session that closes the Convention cycle, on 9 Thermidor, bringing about Robespierre’s painful death next day, 28 July 1794. It always rouses applause and catcalls, a final catharsis – in speeches and witness statements only of course – because we never ever re-enact scenes of executions, I hardly need say! We’re not perverse or sadistic. But all that said, it’s possible that we are unintentionally leading you into some false trails. These infiltrators and descendants of the guillotined may not have the slightest murderous intention. In any case, why would they kill ordinary members and not Robespierre himself?’