An Uncertain Place

by Fred Vargas

  Sitting down with a contented sigh, he tucked his napkin familiarly into his collar, as Émile might have done. Ten minutes later, the conversation had become as relaxed as his practised gestures.

  ‘The concierge thinks you’re a guru,’ said Adamsberg. ‘He says you’ve got golden fingers, can put anything right.’

  ‘Not at all,’ replied Josselin with his mouth full. ‘Francisco likes to believe in something beyond him, and that’s understandable, given that his parents were “disappeared” under the dictators.’

  ‘The sons-of-bitches-God-damn-them-to-hell.’

  ‘Just so. I’m spending a lot of time trying to settle the trauma, but he keeps blowing a fuse all the time.’

  ‘He’s got a fuse?’

  ‘Everyone does, more than one as a rule. In his case it’s F3. It’s a sort of safety valve, like in a security system. It’s just science, commissaire. Structure, agency, networks, circuits, connections. Bones, organs, connective tissue, the body works like a machine, you understand?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Take this boiler,’ said Josselin, pointing to the wall. ‘Is it just a set of distinct elements, tank, water pipes, pump, joints, burner, safety valve? No, it’s a synergetic whole. If the pump gets furred up, the valve flips, and the burner goes out. You see? It’s all connected, the movement of each element depends on all the others. Well, so if you sprain your ankle, the other leg tries to compensate, you put your back out, your neck gets stiff and gives you a headache, next thing you know you feel sick and lose your appetite, your actions slow down, anxiety creeps in, the fuses blow. I’m simplifying of course.’

  ‘Why did Francisco’s fuse blow?’

  ‘He’s got a blocked zone,’ said the doctor, pointing to the back of his own head. ‘It’s his father. That box is shut, the basal-occipital won’t move. More salad?’

  He served Adamsberg without waiting for an answer, and refilled his glass.

  ‘And Émile?’

  ‘His mother,’ said the doctor, munching noisily, and pointing to the other side of his head. ‘Acute sense of injustice. So he goes round bashing other people. But much less these days.’

  ‘And Vaudel?’

  ‘Ah, we’re getting to the point.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Since the press has revealed so many details, the police can’t keep it a secret any more. Can you tell me about it now? Vaudel was horribly chopped up, is what they seem to say. But how, why, what was the killer after? Did you discover any logic, some sort of ritual?’

  ‘No, just a sort of unending panic, a fury that couldn’t be resolved. There must be a system there somewhere, but what it is we don’t know.’

  Adamsberg got out his notebook and drew from memory the diagram showing the points the murderer had attacked most fiercely.

  ‘You’re good at drawing,’ said the doctor, ‘I can’t even draw a duck.’

  ‘Ducks are difficult.’

  ‘Go on, draw me one. I’ll be thinking about this diagram and the system while you do it.’

  ‘What sort of duck – flying, roosting, diving?’

  ‘Wait,’ said the doctor, smiling. ‘I’ll fetch some proper paper.’

  He came back with some sheets of paper and moved the plates aside.

  ‘A duck in flight.’

  ‘Male or female?’

  ‘Both if you can.’

  Then he asked Adamsberg to draw a rocky coastline, a pensive woman and a Giacometti sculpture, if possible. He waved the drawings about to dry the ink, and propped them up under the lamp.

  ‘Now you really have got golden fingers, commissaire. I would like to examine you. But you don’t want that. We’ve all got closed rooms we don’t want strangers to walk into, don’t you think? Don’t worry, I’m not a clairvoyant, I’m just a pragmatic practitioner with no imagination. You’re different.’

  Carefully putting the drawings on the windowsill, the doctor carried the bottle and glasses through to his sitting room, along with the Vaudel diagrams.

  ‘What did you make of this?’ he asked, pointing with his large fingers at the elbows, ankles, knees and skull on the diagram.

  ‘Well, we thought the killer destroyed what made the body work, the joints, the feet. But it doesn’t take us very far.’

  ‘But also the brain, liver and heart. He was also intent on demolishing the soul, don’t you think?’

  ‘That’s what my deputy thought. More than a murderer, he’s a destroyer, a Zerquetscher, as the Austrian policeman said. Because he destroyed someone else, outside Vienna.’

  ‘Someone related to Vaudel, by any chance?’

  ‘Why?’

  The doctor hesitated, then, noticing the wine was finished, took out a green bottle from a cupboard.

  ‘Some poire eau de vie – like a drop?’

  No, he wouldn’t like a drop, after such a long day, but it would spoil the atmosphere, if he let Josselin drink the liqueur alone, so Adamsberg watched him fill two small glasses.

  ‘It wasn’t a single blocked zone I found in Vaudel’s skull, it was much worse.’

  The doctor fell silent, hesitating again, as if wondering whether he should go on, then raised his glass and put it down again.

  ‘So what was there inside his skull?’

  ‘A hermetically sealed cage, a haunted room, a black dungeon. He was obsessed with what was in there.’

  ‘And that was …?’

  ‘Himself. With his entire family and their secret. All locked up inside there, silent, away from the rest of the world.’

  ‘He thought someone was locking him in?’

  ‘No, you don’t understand. He locked himself in, he was hidden away, removed from anyone’s view. He was protecting the other occupants of the cell.’

  ‘From death?’

  ‘From annihilation. There were three other clear factors in his case. He was fanatically attached to his name, his family name. And an unresolved tension over his son: he was torn between pride and rejection. He loved Pierre, but he didn’t want him to have been born.’

  ‘He didn’t leave his property to him, he left it to the gardener.’

  ‘Logical. If he left him nothing, then he had no son.’

  ‘I don’t think Pierre junior saw it that way.’

  ‘No, of course not. And thirdly, Vaudel was full of boundless arrogance, so total that he generated a feeling of invincibility. I’ve never seen anything like it before. That’s what I can tell you as a doctor, and you’ll understand perhaps why I was so interested in this patient. But Vaudel was very strong-minded, and he resisted my treatment fiercely. He didn’t mind if I treated him for a stiff neck or a sprain, and he was even very pleased when I helped him get rid of vertigo and helped with his approaching deafness. Here,’ the doctor said, tapping his ear. ‘The little bones in his middle ear were blocked solid. But he hated it if I tried to get near to the black dungeon and the enemies he thought were all around.’

  ‘And who were these enemies?’

  ‘All those who wanted to destroy his power.’

  ‘He was afraid of them?’

  ‘On the one hand, he was afraid enough not to want any children, so as not to expose them to danger. On the other hand, he wasn’t personally afraid at all, because of that sense of superiority I told you about. It was a sense he had in his dealings with the law courts, when he seemed to have the power of life and death over people. Be careful, commissaire, what I’m saying here isn’t objective reality, it’s what he saw as reality.’

  ‘Was he mad?’

  ‘Totally, if you consider that it’s mad to live by a logic that’s different from the logic of the rest of the world. But not at all, in the sense that within his own scheme of things he was completely rigorous and coherent, and he was able to make it fit inside the basic framework of the general social order.’

  ‘Had he identified these enemies?’

  ‘All he would say seemed to point to some kind of gang warfare, a sort of endless v
endetta. With some kind of power game thrown in.’

  ‘He knew their names?’

  ‘Yes. These weren’t enemies who changed, random demons waiting to pounce on him from round some corner. Their location inside his head never varied. He was paranoid, at least in this sense of his power and his increasing isolation. Yet everything about this war he was living was rational and realistic, and he could certainly put names and faces to his adversaries.’

  ‘A secret war and enemies who are fantasies. And then one night, reality strikes, walks on to his private stage, and kills him.’

  ‘Yes. Did he end up by threatening his “enemies” in real life? Did he speak to them, or become aggressive? You know the standard formula, I expect: paranoid people end up by creating the persecution they always suspected. His invention came to life.’

  Josselin offered another drop of alcohol, which Adamsberg refused. The doctor went nimbly over to the cupboard and carefully put the bottle back.

  ‘I don’t imagine our paths will automatically cross again, commissaire, because I’ve told you all I know about Vaudel. But would it perhaps be too much to ask of you to come back one day?’

  ‘You want to look inside my head, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. But we might find a less intimidating problem. No back pains? Stiffness, oppression, digestive troubles, circulation problems, sinusitis, neuralgia? No, none of those.’

  Adamsberg shook his head, smiling.

  The doctor screwed up his eyes.

  ‘Tinnitus?’ he suggested, almost like a street trader offering something for sale.

  ‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘No magic! The way you keep rubbing your ears!’

  ‘I have been to someone. Nothing to be done about it, apparently, I just have to live with it and try to forget it. Which I’m quite good at.’

  ‘You’re indifferent, you don’t mind too much,’ said the doctor, as he accompanied Adamsberg into the hall. ‘But tinnitus doesn’t fade away like a memory. I could help you with it. Only if you want me to, of course. Why should we carry our burdens round with us?’

  XXI

  AS HE WALKED BACK FROM DR JOSSELIN’S HOUSE, ADAMSBERG turned over in his pocket the squashy little silk heart. He stopped under the porch of Saint-François-Xavier’s to call Danglard.

  ‘Commandant, it doesn’t make sense. That code in the love letter, it’s all wrong.’

  ‘What love letter, what code?’ Danglard asked cautiously.

  ‘The one from Vaudel. “Kiss lover”. The message for the old lady in Germany. He just wouldn’t say that. He was old, he was cut off from the world, he was a traditionalist, he used to drink Guignolet, sitting on a Louis XIII armchair, he just wouldn’t write “kiss lover” on a letter. No, Danglard, and especially not if it was a last message to be read after his death. It’s too cheap for his style. He wasn’t going to write silly slogans like you get on toy hearts.’

  ‘Toy hearts?’

  ‘Never mind, Danglard.’

  ‘Nobody’s above doing silly things, commissaire. Vaudel was eccentric.’

  ‘Silly things in Cyrillic script?’

  ‘If he liked secrets, why not?’

  ‘Danglard, this alphabet, is it only used in Russia?’

  ‘No, it’s used in other Orthodox countries in Eastern Europe; it’s a Slavonic alphabet, derived from ancient Greek.’

  ‘Don’t tell me where it comes from, just tell me if it’s used in Serbia.’

  ‘Yes, of course it is.’

  ‘You told me you had an uncle who was a Serb. Were all those cut-off feet Serbian too?’

  ‘I’m not sure they were my uncle’s, actually. It was your story about the bear made me think that. They could be someone else’s.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, a cousin maybe, or a man from the same village.’

  ‘But it is a Serbian village, isn’t it, Danglard?’

  Adamsberg could hear Danglard banging his glass down on the table.

  ‘Serbian word, Serbian feet, are you trying to make something of it?’

  ‘Yes. Two Serbian signals in a few days – that doesn’t happen very often.’

  ‘They have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Plus, you didn’t want us to have anything to do with the feet in Highgate.’

  ‘The wind’s changed, commandant. What can I do? And right now, it’s blowing from the east. Find out what this “kiss lover” stuff could mean in Serbian. Start by investigating your uncle’s feet.’

  ‘Look, my uncle didn’t know many people in France. And certainly not any rich legal eagles in Garches!’

  ‘Don’t shout, Danglard. I’ve got tinnitus and it hurts my ears.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since Quebec.’

  ‘You never said.’

  ‘Because before it didn’t matter. Now it does. I’ll fax you Vaudel’s letter. Think, Danglard, something starting with kiss. Anything. In Serbian.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘He was your uncle, wasn’t he? We’re not going to leave him inside the bear.’

  XXII

  HIS FEET UP AGAINST THE BRICK FIREPLACE, ADAMSBERG WAS dozing in front of the ashes of his fire, his index finger held tightly against his ear. Not that it helped, because the noise was inside his ear, humming like high-tension cables. It must be affecting his hearing by now, and he was already absentminded, so maybe one day he would end up like a bat without radar, understanding nothing about the world. He was waiting for Danglard to get to work. By now his deputy would surely have changed out of his elegant daytime wear into the work clothes his father used to wear down the pit. Adamsberg could picture him sitting there in his vest and trousers, cursing his commissaire.

  Danglard looked at the Cyrillic word from Vaudel’s letter and did indeed mutter something about his commissaire, who unlike him had not been the least bit interested in the feet when he was in London. And now, just when he, Danglard, had decided to leave them in peace, Adamsberg was suddenly opening up that can of worms again. Without saying why, in his usual impromptu and mysterious way, which was destabilising Danglard’s normal defence mechanisms – indeed, undermining them radically, if Adamsberg should turn out to be right.

  Which was not impossible, he admitted to himself, as he spread out on the table the few archives he had inherited from his uncle, Slavko Moldovan. And it wouldn’t do at all – that was true at least – to leave him inside some bear, without trying to do something. Danglard shook his head in irritation, as he did whenever Adamsberg’s vocabulary infiltrated his own. He had been fond of this Uncle Slavko, his aunt’s husband, who had made up stories all day, who had put his finger to his lips to keep a secret, a finger smelling of pipe tobacco. Danglard used to believe that this uncle had been specially invented for him, to be at his service. Slavko Moldovan had never tired, or at least had never shown it, of telling him about fantastic and terrifying aspects of existence, full of mystery and weird lore. He had opened windows, shown new horizons. When he went to stay with them, the young Adrien Danglard used to follow him all round the house, his uncle in his gold-stitched moccasins with red pompoms, which he sometimes used to repair with a shiny thread. You had to take care of them, because they were for feast days back home in the village. Adrien helped him, he threaded the needle with the golden thread. So of course he was very familiar with those shoes, and then had found them ignominiously mixed up in the sacrilegious pile in Highgate. True, these pompoms could have belonged to anyone else from the same village, which was what Danglard was fervently hoping. DCI Radstock had made some progress. He had established that the collector must have gone into mortuary buildings, or funeral parlours when a body was laid out. He would take away his fetish feet, then screw down the coffin again. The feet were clean and their nails trimmed. And if this foot-chopper was French or English, which was most likely, why on earth and how the devil had he managed to find the feet of a Serb in an undertaker’s parlour?
How could he have gone unnoticed in a little village? Unless, that is, he was from the village in the first place.

  Slavko had described village life to him in every season. It was a place full of folklore, fairies and demons: his uncle was favoured by the former and fought the latter. There was one great demon, who hid deep in the earth but who prowled around the edge of the wood, he would say, dropping his voice and putting his finger to his lips. Danglard’s mother had disapproved of Slavko’s stories and his father had scoffed, ‘Why’re you telling the kid all this stuff? He won’t sleep of nights!’ ‘Just my nonsense,’ Slavko would say, ‘the kid and me, we’re having fun.’

  And then his aunt had left Slavko for some cretin called Roger. Slavko had gone back home.

  Back over there.

  To Kiseljevo.

  Danglard gasped, poured himself a glass and dialled Adamsberg’s number. The commissaire picked up the phone at once.

  ‘So it doesn’t mean “kiss lover”, eh?’

  ‘No, it means Kiseljevo, which is the name of my uncle’s village.’

  Adamsberg frowned and pushed a log with his foot.

  ‘Kiseljevo? That doesn’t sound the same as Estalère pronounced it. He said “kiss lover”.’

  ‘It is the same. In the west, Kiseljevo is called Kisilova. Like Beograd is called Belgrade.’

  Adamsberg took his finger out of his other ear.

  ‘Kisilova,’ he repeated. ‘That is extraordinary, Danglard. There’s a chain running from Highgate to Garches, through the tunnel, the dark tunnel.’

  ‘No,’ said Danglard, who was putting up a frantic final defence. ‘Over there, lots of names start with K. And there’s another obstacle, don’t you see?’

  ‘I can’t see anything, I’ve got this tinnitus.’

  ‘I’ll speak louder. The obstacle is that it would be a truly massive coincidence if there was any link between my uncle’s shoes and the bloodbath in Garches. Something linking both of us, you and me, in two different cases. And you know what I think about coincidences.’