by Fred Vargas
‘Sounds like we’re wading through a bloodbath out there,’ he commented.
‘Not exactly wading, we’re using platforms six centimetres above the floor.’
‘Yeah, but we’ve got to deal with it, haven’t we? Sounds a God-awful case.’
‘Yes. If you’ve got the stomach for it, go and see it before they’re out of there. It’s slaughter without any rhyme or reason. But there is some obsessive idea behind it. As Lieutenant Veyrenc might say: a steel thread vibrating in the depths of the pit. I don’t know, some kind of invisible motive, perhaps only poetry could reveal it.’
‘Veyrenc would have come up with something better than that. We miss him, don’t we?’
Adamsberg swallowed down his coffee, surprised. He hadn’t thought about Veyrenc since he had left the squad. He was not inclined to dwell on the stormy events that had set them against each other in a previous case.
‘Perhaps you’re not bothered though,’ said Mercadet.
‘Perhaps. Mainly it’s that we don’t have time for that sort of thing, lieutenant.’
‘I’ll get over there,’ said Mercadet with a nod. ‘Danglard left a message for you. Nothing to do with the Garches affair.’
Adamsberg finished page 12 as he went down the stairs. Aha, the witty Nolet was not getting on as well as all that. The ex-husband had an alibi, the inquiry was at a standstill. Adamsberg folded up the paper contentedly. In reception, the son of Pierre Vaudel was waiting for him, sitting upright, alongside his wife. He looked no more than thirty-five. Adamsberg paused. How do you tell a man his father has been chopped into pieces?
The commissaire avoided getting to the point for some time, as he went through the formalities of identity and family. Pierre was an only child, and a late one. His mother had become pregnant after sixteen years of marriage, when his father had been forty-four. And Pierre Vaudel senior had been unrelentingly furious about this pregnancy, without giving his wife any reason. He was implacably opposed to having children, this child was not to be born and he wasn’t going to discuss it further. His wife had given in and gone away to have an abortion. In fact, she stayed away six months and allowed the pregnancy to go to term, and Pierre, son of Pierre, was born. His father’s anger had finally subsided after five years, but he always refused to let the child and his mother come and live with him.
Pierre junior had only seen his father now and then as a child, and had been petrified by this man who had refused his existence with such determination. And this fear was entirely because of his having been born against his father’s wishes, since Pierre senior was apparently a perfectly reasonable man in other respects, generous according to his friends and affectionate according to his wife. Or at least he had been at one time, since a gradual withdrawal from contacts made it hard to discover his feelings. From the age of fifty-five, he would only see very few visitors, and over time detached himself from all those in his previously quite wide circle of friends. Later on, as a teenager, Pierre junior had managed to gain occasional entry, coming to play the piano on Saturday mornings, choosing pieces he thought would please his father. Then as a young man, Pierre junior had managed to get some serious attention. For the last ten years, especially since his mother’s death, the two Pierres had met fairly regularly. The son had become a lawyer and his professional knowledge had been helpful to his father when he was researching legal cases. Working together had allowed them to avoid having too much personal conversation.
‘What was his interest in these cases?’
‘Well, it was his living. He made all his money from it. He did law reports for several papers and specialist periodicals. Then he would go in search of miscarriages of justice. He was a scientist by training and he used to complain all the time about how sloppy the judicial system was. He said that the law was ambiguous and could be twisted one way and another, so the truth got lost in these endless and sickening arguments. He said you could tell at once if a verdict was right or wrong, if it clicked into place satisfactorily or not. He operated like a locksmith, working by ear. If it squeaked he looked for the truth.’
‘And did he find it?’
‘Several times, yes. He was responsible for the posthumous exoneration of the Sologne murderer, remember that? And other famous cases too where people got released: K. Jimmy Jones in the US, a banker called Trevenant, Madame Pasnier. He got Professor Glérant acquitted. His articles really counted. As time went on, many lawyers started to worry about his going into print. He was offered bribes, which he refused.’
Pierre junior rested his chin on his hand, looking annoyed. He was not particularly handsome, with his domed forehead and pointed chin. But his eyes were rather remarkable, with a blank, dull glare, impenetrable shutters, possibly not open to pity. Leaning forward, with drooping shoulders and consulting his wife with a glance, he looked an apparently easy-going, docile man. But Adamsberg judged that there was intransigence somewhere behind the fixed glass of his eyes.
‘Were there some less happy endings?’ he asked.
‘He said the truth was a two-way street. He was also responsible for getting three men found guilty. One of them hanged himself in jail after protesting his innocence.’
‘When was this?’
‘Just before my father retired, about thirteen years ago.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Jean-Christophe Réal.’
Adamsberg nodded, indicating that he recognised the name.
‘Réal hanged himself on his twenty-ninth birthday.’
‘Were there any letters after that, threatening vengeance?’
‘What’s all this about?’ asked Pierre’s wife, who, unlike her husband, had regular and unremarkable features. ‘Father’s death wasn’t from natural causes. Is that it? You’ve got doubts about it? If so, say so. Since early this morning, the police haven’t given us a single clear fact. Father’s dead, but we don’t even know if it’s him. Your colleague says we can’t see the body. Why?’
‘Because it’s difficult.’
‘Are you telling us that Father – if it is Father – died in embarrassing circumstances? In bed with a prostitute? I hardly think so. Or some upper-class woman? Is this a cover-up, to protect people in high places? Because yes, my father-in-law did know a lot of those people who think they’re untouchable, the ex-minister of justice for a start. Totally corrupt.’
‘Hélène, please,’ said Pierre, but he was allowing her to go on.
‘Let me remind you, this is Pierre’s father we’re talking about, and he has a perfect right to see anything and to know anything there is to know, before you, and certainly before people in high places. We see the body, or we don’t answer any more questions.’
‘That seems reasonable, doesn’t it?’ said Pierre, in the manner of a lawyer finding a satisfactory compromise.
‘There is no body,’ said Adamsberg, looking straight at the wife.
‘No body,’ repeated Pierre mechanically.
‘No.’
‘Well, then how do you know it’s him?’
‘Because he’s in the villa.’
‘Who’s in the villa?’
‘The body.’
Adamsberg opened the window and looked out at the lime trees. They had been in flower for a few days and their scent floated in on a breath of air.
‘The body’s in pieces,’ he said. ‘He was’ – what word to choose? chopped up? pulverised? – ‘cut into pieces and scattered round the room. The big room with the piano. There’s nothing left to identify. I don’t recommend that you see it.’
‘There’s some kind of cover-up going on,’ the wife insisted. ‘You’re hiding something. What are you doing with him?’
‘We’ve collected what’s left of him, by going over every square metre of the room and placing what we find in numbered containers. Forty-eight square metres, forty-eight containers.’
Adamsberg turned back from the lime-tree blossom and towards Hélène Vaudel. Pierre was still looking down,
leaving matters to his wife.
‘People do say that it’s hard to grieve properly unless you have seen with your own eyes,’ Adamsberg went on. ‘But I’ve known cases where people have regretted it, and all things considered would prefer not to have seen. Still, the photos taken when the police arrived are available here,’ he said, passing his mobile to Hélène. ‘And we can send you to Garches in a car, if you insist. But perhaps you should have some inkling what’s there before you decide. These aren’t good quality, but they’ll give you an idea.’
Hélène seized the mobile and started viewing the images, She stopped at the seventh which showed the piano.
‘Very well,’ she said, putting it down with an altered expression.
‘No car?’ said Pierre.
‘No car.’
This was issued like a command and Pierre nodded. Not a sliver of rebellion, although it was his father they were discussing. No curiosity about the photos. Apparently simple and direct neutrality. A provisional and deliberate submission before he took back the reins again.
‘You don’t happen to ride a horse by any chance?’ Adamsberg asked.
‘No, I follow racing a bit in the papers. My father used to be a heavy better at one time. But for years now, he’d only had a flutter about once a month. He’d changed, he’d shrunk into himself. He hardly ever went out.’
‘Did he ever go to a trainer’s stables or a racecourse? Did he go out into the country? Could he have brought any horse manure home on his shoes?’
‘Papa? Horse manure in the house?’
Pierre sat up as if this idea had jolted him despite himself.
‘Are you telling me there’s horse manure in his house?’
‘Yes, on the carpet. Just a few bits from the sole of someone’s boot.’
‘He never put boots on in his life. He didn’t like animals, or nature, the earth, flowers, even daisies fading away in a vase, anything like that. Did the murderer come in with boots covered in dung?’
Adamsberg excused himself to answer his mobile.
‘If you’ve still got the son there,’ Retancourt said, without preliminaries, ‘ask him if the old man had a pet, a cat or dog. We found some hairs on the Louis XIII armchair. But there’s no sign of an animal, no cat litter or dog food. So if he didn’t, the hairs could have come off the murderer’s trousers.’
Adamsberg turned away from the couple, shielding them from Retancourt’s abrupt tones.
‘Did your father by any chance have a pet animal? Dog, cat?’
‘I just told you, he didn’t like animals. He didn’t put himself out for people, still less for an animal, too much bother.’
‘No, not at all,’ said Adamsberg into the phone. ‘But check it out, lieutenant, it could be from a rug or a coat. Check the other chairs as well.’
‘Or tissues? Did he use them? We found one crumpled up in the grass outside, but there aren’t any in the bathroom.’
‘Tissues?’ Adamsberg asked.
‘No, never,’ said Pierre, raising his hands as if to push away this further aberrant suggestion. ‘Only cotton handkerchiefs, folded in three one way and in four the other. He was fussy about them.’
‘No, just cotton handkerchiefs,’ Adamsberg relayed.
‘Danglard is insisting on talking to you. He’s walking around on the grass in circles with something on his mind.’
That was spot on, thought Adamsberg, as a description of Danglard’s temperament. Prowling around the basins in the limestone where his worries were becoming calcified. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to remember what stage the interview had reached. Oh yes, boots, horse manure.
‘No, not boots covered in manure,’ he explained. ‘Just a few little fragments that must have fallen off the soles, from the damp.’
‘Have you seen the handyman, the man who did the garden? He must have boots.’
‘Not yet. We’ve been told he’s a rough customer.’
‘A ruffian, an ex-convict and a halfwit,’ Hélène completed. ‘Father was besotted with him.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say he was half-witted,’ Pierre intervened. ‘Why,’ he asked cautiously, ‘was the body treated that way? Killing him, all right, one can perhaps understand. The family of the man who committed suicide, there could be a possible cause there. But why destroy the body? Is this a common modus operandi?’
‘Not until this particular killer came along. He wasn’t copying anyone, he seems to have created something entirely unprecedented.’
‘Anyone would think you were talking about a work of art,’ said Hélène with a disapproving frown.
‘Well, why not?’ said Pierre suddenly. ‘It would be a sort of rough justice. He was an artist.’
‘Who, your father?’
‘No, Réal, the suicide.’
Adamsberg made another apologetic sign as Danglard came on the line.
‘I knew we were going to be up shit creek,’ the commandant was saying in a studied voice, which told Adamsberg that he had already had several drinks and was making an effort to pronounce clearly.
They must have let him into the room with the piano.
‘Have you visited the crime scene, commandant?’
‘No, the photos are quite enough. But it’s just been confirmed, the shoes are French.’
‘The boots you mean?’
‘No, the shoes. And there’s something worse. And when I saw that, it was as if someone had lit a match in the catacomb, as if someone had cut off my uncle’s feet. But we don’t have any choice, I’m on my way now.’
More than three drinks, Adamsberg guessed, and knocked back in short order. He looked at his watches: only four o’clock. Danglard would be no good to anyone for the rest of the day. ‘Don’t worry, Danglard, just leave the villa, I’ll catch up with you later.’
‘That’s what I’m saying.’
Adamsberg put the phone away, wondering absurdly what was becoming of the cat and kittens. He had told Retancourt that the mother was recovering, but one of the kittens, one of the two he had delivered, a female, was not doing well. Had he squeezed her too hard? Had he damaged something?
‘Jean-Christophe Réal,’ Pierre reminded him insistently, as if he feared the commissaire wouldn’t find his way back alone.
‘The artist,’ Adamsberg agreed.
‘He worked with horses, he used to hire them. The first time it was to cover a horse with bronze paint to make a sort of living statue. The owner sued him, but that’s how he made his name. He did more after that. He painted everything, it took colossal amounts of paint: grass, trees, stones, leaves one by one, as if he was petrifying the whole landscape.’
‘That won’t interest the commissaire, Pierre,’ said Hélène.
‘Did you know Réal at all?’
‘I visited him in prison. Actually, I was determined to get him released.’
‘What did your father accuse him of?’
‘Of painting this woman – she was his patron – who had left him money in her will.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘He painted her, literally, with bronze paint, and sat her on one of these horses to be a living equestrian statue. But the paint blocked her pores, and before they could clean it off, she died of asphyxiation on horseback. Réal did inherit.’
‘How weird,’ said Adamsberg. ‘And the horse – that died too, I suppose?’
‘No, it didn’t, that’s the whole problem. Réal knew perfectly well what he was doing, of course, he used porous paint. He wasn’t mad.’
‘No,’ said Adamsberg sceptically.
‘Some forensic scientist said the paint must have reacted with her make-up and that led to the poisoning. But my father claimed to have proof that Réal had switched the paint after doing the horse, and that he had set out to kill her.’
‘And you didn’t agree.’
‘No,’ said Pierre, thrusting out his chin.
‘And was your father’s claim founded?’
‘M
aybe, who knows? My father was abnormally fixated on this guy. He hated him for no obvious reason. He just set out to destroy him.’
‘No, you’re wrong,’ said Hélène, suddenly disagreeing. ‘You knew Réal was a megalomaniac, and he was deep in debt. He must have killed that woman.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Pierre. ‘My father went after him to get at me. When I was eighteen, I wanted to be a painter. Réal was a few years older than me, I admired his work, I’d been to see him twice. When my father found out, he went berserk. He thought Réal was a greedy ignoramus, that’s what he called him, whose grotesque artworks were destabilising civilisation as we know it. My father was a man from the dark ages, he believed in the ancient foundations of the world, and Réal infuriated him. So with his notoriety in legal matters, the old bastard pestered the authorities, had him charged, and caused his death.’
‘The old bastard?’ repeated Adamsberg.
‘Yes,’ said Pierre unblinkingly. ‘If you really want to know, my father was a chateau-bottled shit.’
VIII
THE NAMES HAD BEEN NOTED OF ALL THE RESIDENTS IN THE nearby villas, and inquiries in the neighbourhood had begun, a necessary and wearisome task. Nothing they found so far contradicted what Pierre had said. No one else quite dared describe Pierre Vaudel as a chateau-bottled shit, but the witness statements all portrayed him latterly as a withdrawn, eccentric, intolerant man, entirely self-sufficient. He was clever, but to no one else’s advantage. He avoided people and by the same token didn’t bother anyone. The police went from door to door, explaining that an unpleasant murder had taken place, but without telling them that the old man had been butchered. Would he have opened the door to his attacker? Yes, if the reason had been something technical, like repairs, but not just to have a chat. Even after dark? Yes, he wouldn’t have been afraid, he was, well, sort of invulnerable. Or that was the impression he gave.