A Climate of Fear

by Fred Vargas

  ‘No. Obviously not.’

  ‘OK, so now, you’re Éléonore.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Concentrate.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Are you going to die, Éléonore, after over forty years worshipping this man, without bothering to do anything about Robespierre’s teeth?’

  ‘No, absolutely not.’

  ‘So who will you pass them on to, when you’re an old woman?’

  ‘My sister? She’s got a son.’

  ‘What happened to the son?’

  ‘He became a Bonapartist, I believe.’

  ‘Look it up on the tölva,’ said Adamsberg, passing his laptop across.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Veyrenc after a few minutes. ‘Éléonore was still alive when her nephew actually became tutor to Bonaparte’s nephew, the future Napoleon III.’

  ‘So that wouldn’t work, Éléonore. You couldn’t give mementoes of Robespierre to someone with Bonapartist connections. Who can you give them to?’

  Veyrenc hoisted himself up on his crutches, and poked the fire – it had turned cool in these early days of May – then came back to sit down. He tapped the floor with his wooden crutch, while he thought.

  ‘Right. What about the man rumoured to be Robespierre’s actual son?’ he decided. ‘The innkeeper Danglard told us about, François-Didier Château.’

  ‘That’s got to be it, Louis. When did Éléonore die?’

  ‘Pass me the tölva. 1832,’ he said after a few moments. ‘Thirty-eight years after him.’

  ‘And by then, our innkeeper, François-Didier Château, is forty-two. So before she dies, she gives him the teeth. Would that work, Louis? If you were Éléonore is that what you’d do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How would she have kept them? Like our Icelandic bones? In a little box for sweets?’

  Veyrenc banged again on the floor, this time a regular beat.

  ‘That noise is annoying, Louis.’

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know why, it gets on my nerves.’

  ‘Sorry, just a reflex. No, in those days, the teeth would surely have been put inside a locket of some kind. Under glass, with a gold case. Or silver.’

  ‘The sort you can wear round your neck?’

  ‘That’s what they’re for.’

  ‘And after François-Didier, where do the teeth end up, from descendant to descendant?’

  ‘With our François Château.’

  Adamsberg smiled.

  ‘There you are then,’ he said. ‘Does that seem possible to you? Correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So there really is a relic of Robespierre.’

  ‘Well, they have a lock of his hair in the Carnavalet Museum.’

  ‘But teeth are very different. Have you noticed that François Château, when he’s playing Robespierre, has this compulsive gesture?’

  ‘He blinks a lot?’

  ‘No, I mean with his hand. He is always fingering his lace jabot, on his chest. He’s touching the locket, Louis, I’d put my hand in the fire on it.’

  ‘Agreed, though perhaps that isn’t the happiest turn of phrase.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. And when he puts this locket round his neck, he becomes Robespierre, with the great man’s teeth against his skin. I’m sure he doesn’t wear it when he goes to work at the hotel. But I’m sure he was made to wear it as a child. The teeth, like a talisman, are a means of making him become one, physically, with his ancestor. He really becomes another person, he becomes Him.’

  ‘And when he murders someone, if he does murder anyone, does he have the teeth then?’

  ‘Of course. It wouldn’t be Château doing the killing, it would be Robespierre, carrying out a purge, executing. That’s why I think that wig in the Dijon case is too much. He wouldn’t need that. He owns something much more important than a disguise.’

  ‘But Robespierre never appeared in public without his wig, You can’t imagine Château pulling a stocking over his face, can you? Robespierre wouldn’t have a woman’s stocking over his face.’

  ‘You’ve got a point there,’ agreed Adamsberg, sitting back, arms folded.

  ‘Is he so absolutely inhabited by Robespierre?’ Veyrenc asked, looking up at the ceiling and tapping his crutch again on the tiled floor.

  There was a long silence, which Adamsberg didn’t break. He opened his eyes on to the void, and all he could see was thick fog, the fog of the afturganga. Suddenly, he grabbed Veyrenc’s wrist.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘go on, but don’t say anything.’

  ‘Go on what?’

  ‘Banging the floor. Go on. I know why it was getting on my nerves. Because it was waking a tadpole.’

  ‘What tadpole?’

  ‘The beginning of an idea, still vague, Louis,’ Adamsberg said quickly, afraid of getting lost in the fog again. ‘Ideas always come up out of the water – where else would they come from? But they go away again if we talk about them. So say nothing, but go on tapping.’

  Although he was well used to the improbable meanderings of Adamsberg’s mind and the confusion of his thoughts, Veyrenc eyed the commissaire’s face rather anxiously: eyes wide open, pupils all but disappeared, lips pursed rigidly. Veyrenc went on tapping the floor with his crutch. After all, he supposed, the rhythm might be helping the thoughts along with its vibration, like when you are on a march, or hearing the sound of a train going over the rails.

  ‘It reminds me of Leblond,’ Adamsberg said. ‘The smooth and silky Leblond. You know, last time we went, he was playing the snake in the grass. Who was that?’

  ‘Fouché.’

  ‘That’s the one, Fouché. Carry on.’

  After a few minutes, Veyrenc was tempted to stop the game, but Adamsberg with a circular gesture of his hand signalled to him to carry on. Until suddenly, he jumped up, pulled on his jacket, still fitted with his holster, and ran out across the garden. Veyrenc hobbled after him, and saw him hurry down the road and get into his car.

  ‘I’ll be back!’ he shouted.

  And Veyrenc saw him changing gear quickly, first, second, and then disappearing out of sight, at the corner of the little street.

  XLV

  ADAMSBERG WAS DRIVING down the route nationale, too fast. Slow down, there’s no rush, slow down. But his speed, rare for him, matched the turmoil of thoughts, sentences and images running through his head. As if going faster could bind them all together, like beating eggs. The cynical Fouché, the fog, the teeth, the wig, the rope in the garage with its rough texture, the carpal bones, Robespierre, the afturganga, Bérieux’s mutism. Fear, the sound of the wooden stick on the floor, movement. The chessboard on which no pieces had moved.

  The afturganga. And astonishingly, as he thought of the creature on the island, the description of Robespierre came back to him in fragments: . . . a reptile rearing up, with a frighteningly gracious gaze . . . make no mistake . . . it is painful pity . . . mixed with terror. The images blurred, Robespierre mutated into the afturganga of the Revolution, the one who kills, and the one who gives – on condition you never seek to know him, on condition you never penetrate into his sacred territory.

  Then he saw in his mirror the lights of two motorcycles approaching, and one passed him, the rider signalling to him to pull over. God in heaven, fucking traffic cops!

  He jumped out of the car.

  ‘OK, OK,’ he said, ‘I was going too fast. Urgent case, I’m a police officer.’

  He showed the gendarmes his card. One of them smiled.

  ‘Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg,’ he read out loud. ‘Well, just fancy that!’

  ‘Urgent, is it?’ said the other, legs straddled as if he were still on his bike. ‘No siren going?’

  ‘I forgot to set it,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Look, I’ll come and see you tomorrow to sort this out. You’re from which gendarmerie?’

  ‘Saint-Aubin.’

  ‘Right, got it. I’ll see you tomorrow
, officers.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ said the first gendarme. ‘For a start, it’s Sunday tomorrow, and anyway, that’ll be too late.’

  ‘Too late for what?’

  ‘The breathalyser,’ he said, while his colleague found the kit and held it out.

  ‘Breathe into this, commissaire.’

  ‘I’ll say it again,’ Adamsberg said, as calmly as he could manage, ‘I’m on an urgent case.’

  ‘Sorry, commissaire, you were driving very erratically.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, erratically,’ the other one agreed gravely. ‘You were very tight cornering the bends.’

  ‘I was driving fast, that’s all. How many times do I have to tell you, it’s urgent?’

  ‘Just breathe in here, sir.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Adamsberg, ‘give it here.’

  He sat down in the driving seat, and breathed into the bag. His engine was still running.

  ‘Positive!’ said the gendarme. ‘Follow us please, sir.’

  Adamsberg, already in driving position, slammed the door shut and took off at high speed. Before the two men had had time to run back to their motorbikes, he had taken a right turn and escaped along minor roads.

  Ten thirty, pitch dark and a fine rain falling. He braked at ten past eleven in front of the large wooden gates to the Haras de la Madeleine. Lights were still showing in both the lodge pavilions. He banged hard on the gates.

  ‘What’s all that racket?’ called Victor, stepping out on to the drive.

  ‘Adamsberg. Open the gate, Victor.’

  ‘Commissaire? Are you going to keep bugging us for ever?’

  ‘Yes. Open up, Victor.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ring the bell?’

  ‘Not to wake Céleste, in case she’s still up at the house.’

  ‘Well, you must have woken Amédée,’ said Victor, as he opened the gate with a clanking of chains.

  ‘His light’s on.’

  ‘He sleeps with it on.’

  ‘I thought you were sleeping over with him.’

  ‘I will do, when I’ve finished working. Ah see, now you have woken him.’

  Amédée was crossing the drive towards them, wearing jeans and a thick jacket pulled on over his bare chest.

  ‘It’s the commissaire,’ said Victor. ‘Yet again.’

  ‘Quick,’ said Adamsberg.

  Victor took him into a small ground-floor room, containing very little furniture: a battered leather sofa, an old armchair and a low table. No family heirlooms here, obviously.

  ‘Want some coffee?’ said Amédée, looking rather alarmed.

  ‘Yes please. The very first scene, Victor, describe it again for me.’

  ‘What scene, for God’s sake? What do you mean?’

  Victor was right, he could afford to slow down now. It wasn’t urgent.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, I’m on edge, I broke the speed limit getting here, I was pulled over by some traffic cops, and the bloody idiots breathalysed me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘So how did you get here?’ asked Victor. ‘Special commissaire’s privilege?’

  ‘Absolutely not. They were rubbing their hands, thinking they could take me to the station. So I jumped back in the car and drove off.’

  ‘Ooh, leaving a crime scene. Bad mark,’ said Victor, looking amused.

  ‘Yes, very,’ said Adamsberg patiently. ‘Just please describe to me, again, the scene when the twelve of you, all French, were sitting round the table at the guest house on Grimsey. The day before you went to the island.’

  ‘Well, all right,’ said Victor, ‘but what more is there to tell?’

  ‘The killer, just describe him to me.’

  Victor stood up, gave a sigh and waved his arm dismissively.

  ‘I’ve already told you.’

  ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘Well, ordinary, average sort of fellow,’ said Victor wearily. ‘Except for his hair, he had plenty of that. He had the kind of face you don’t really notice, a short beard, but no moustache, glasses. About fifty perhaps, but he could have been less. When you’re young, everyone looks old.’

  ‘And his stick, Victor, you mentioned he had a stick.’

  ‘Is that important?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, yes, he had a stick, to test the ice with when you walk on it.’

  ‘And you said he was doing something with the stick?’

  ‘Yeah, right, he was tapping it up and down on the flagstones. Tap, tap, tap.’

  ‘Fast or slow? Try to remember.’

  Victor looked down, searching his memory.

  ‘Slow,’ he said in the end.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I don’t get it. God knows why, but you’re determined, aren’t you, to get to the bottom of the Iceland story, whatever it takes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now you have. But you’re not supposed to be looking for the Iceland killer, you’re looking for the one in the Robespierre club. The one who draws those signs.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘So why are we going back over Iceland again?’

  ‘Because I’m looking for both killers, Victor. Give me some paper, a few pieces, and something to draw with, pencil preferably.’

  Amédée brought him some drawing materials and a tray to rest on.

  ‘We’ve just got a blue pencil, will that do?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Adamsberg, sitting down to work. ‘I’m going to make a few sketches of faces, Victor. I’ll start with the killer on the island.’

  Adamsberg worked in silence for several minutes. Then he passed his first sketch to Victor.

  ‘Does that look like him?’ he said.

  ‘Can’t say it does, no.’

  ‘Please don’t give me any more lies, Victor, this time we really are reaching the end of the road, and we’re up against the wire. We’re not going to use port to make a breakthrough this time. Or else,’ he went on, ‘did he look like this one?’ and he passed across a different sketch. ‘Is this one any better?’

  ‘If you’re going to keep fiddling around with a whole set of portraits, I’m not prepared to play this game.’

  ‘I’m not fiddling with anything, I’m making deductions.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From a face as it is today, that I’m trying to make younger by ten years. Which isn’t easy, because the face isn’t remarkable in any way, just as you said. No big nose, no bushy eyebrows, no striking eyes, no prominent chin, nothing like that. Neither handsome nor ugly. Neither Danton nor Billaud-Varenne. So, now, look at this one.’

  Victor observed the second portrait, then let it fall on to the low table, and pursed his lips.

  ‘Go on,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Say.’

  ‘All right,’ said Victor, breathing heavily as if he had been running. ‘Like that.’

  ‘That’s him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The killer in Iceland.’

  Adamsberg took out some battered cigarettes from his pocket and offered them. Amédée took one, but looked at it carefully.

  ‘This a spliff?’

  ‘No, no, just some cigarettes of my son’s.’

  Adamsberg lit his cigarette, picked up the pencil and went back to work. A sound from outside alerted him, and he stopped to listen for a moment. Holding the sheets of paper, he approached the uncurtained window looking on to the park. The night was dark, and the street lamp out on the road lit up only a small portion of the drive between the two pavilions.

  ‘Perhaps it’s Marc,’ said Victor. ‘He’s a bit noisy when he prowls around.’

  ‘Would he leave Céleste at night though?’

  ‘Normally, no, he wouldn’t. Perhaps he’s come to greet you. Or maybe it was just the wind.’

  Adamsberg came back to sit down and resumed the drawing. Three new portraits, which took him about fifteen minutes.

  ‘What are you drawing now?’ asked Amédée.

/>   ‘Now I’m drawing the other one, the killer in the Robespierre circle. I know you’ve seen him, Victor. When you accompanied Henri Masfauré to the assembly.’

  ‘I didn’t look at everyone.’

  ‘But you did look at him. Of necessity.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know very well why.’

  ‘Why three drawings?’

  ‘Because this man has several faces, and I don’t know which one would be most familiar to you. Wearing make-up, white powder, with dark shadows, add a little silicone to the cheeks, take a wig, a lace collar that covers the neck, and the illusion is complete. That’s why I’m making several sketches. Because with all the make-up in the world, you can’t disguise the shape of the eyes, the placing of the mouth, the cheekbones. There,’ he said, putting his new sketches on the table.

  Adamsberg looked towards the window again. A rustle, a twig snapping? A cat? But they don’t make any noise. A hedgehog, a hare? Hedgehogs are quite noisy. Victor put his finger down on one drawing, then another.

  ‘That’s him, and maybe that one is. But not exactly in that get-up.’

  ‘But it is the man you saw close to Masfauré?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And near to you as well.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Victor, give it up! Now,’ he said, placing the first sketch alongside the others, ‘look at the killer from the island and the killer at the Robespierre meetings.’

  Victor had quickly bent back his fingers on the table, but Amédée, totally absorbed by Adamsberg’s sketches, and possibly a bit dazed by his medication, once more failed to notice. Amédée had had to suffer too much recently to be completely in control of himself.

  ‘Oh, it’s the same man!’ he said spontaneously.

  ‘Thank you, Amédée. And you can see that just as well as him, Victor. But of course you actually know. It is the same man. The island murderer. Who made regular arrangements to meet you.’

  ‘He didn’t arrange to meet us!’ Victor began angrily.

  Adamsberg lifted his hand to impose silence and listened again to the sounds of the night.

  ‘We’re not alone,’ he said quietly.

  They all listened hard.

  ‘Can’t hear anything,’ said Victor.

  ‘Someone’s footsteps,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Very quiet. Put out the light. And move back.’