by Fred Vargas
‘In your case, Zerquetscher, like a shot.’
‘You son of a bitch.’
‘Yes.’
‘You can’t kill a man like that.’
‘Yes I can.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Put the guns down. Open that drawer in the chest, take out two pairs of handcuffs. You put one pair on your wrists, the other on your feet. Hurry up, I said I was getting edgy.’
‘Fucking cop.’
‘Yes. But get a move on. Maybe I shovel clouds up there, but down here I can be quick.’
The young man swept the table with his arm, scattering papers round the room, and threw the holster on the ground. Then he put his hand behind his back.
‘Careful with the P38. If you stick it in your waistband, you shouldn’t push it in so far, especially in tight jeans. One false move and you’ll shoot yourself in the backside.’
‘You think I’m a baby!’
‘Yes, you are a baby, a kid who’s lost it. But not an idiot.’
‘If I hadn’t let you get dressed, you wouldn’t have that bottle.’
‘Correct.’
‘But I didn’t want to look at you with your kit off.’
‘Oh really? Same thing for Vaudel, you didn’t want to look at him with his kit off, as you put it, either?’
The young man carefully pulled the P38 from his trousers and dropped it to the floor. He opened the drawer and took out the handcuffs, then turned round suddenly with a burst of strange laughter, as irritating as the cat’s mewing earlier.
‘You don’t get it, do you, Adamsberg? You still don’t get it. You think I’d risk getting arrested? Just for the pleasure of seeing you? You don’t understand that if I’m here it’s because you can’t arrest me. Not today, not tomorrow, never. Don’t you remember why I’m here?’
‘You said you wanted to fuck up my life.’
‘Yeah.’
Adamsberg had stood up too, holding the bottle in front of him like a chisel, his fingernail under the lid. The two men turned around each other, like two dogs looking for a chance to pounce.
‘Give it up,’ said the young man. ‘You don’t know who my father is. You can’t kill me, you can’t shut me up, and you can’t go on chasing me.’
‘Why not? Are you untouchable? Who is your father then? A government minister? The Pope? God perhaps?’
‘No, scumbag, it’s you.’
XXIV
ADAMSBERG STOPPED IN MID-MOVEMENT, DROPPED HIS ARM, and the bottle rolled on to the red tiled floor.
‘Shit! The bottle!’ shouted the young man.
Adamsberg picked it up automatically. He was looking for a word that meant ‘someone who makes up a story and then believes it’, but he couldn’t think of it. Fatherless kids who go round saying they’re the son of royalty, or the son of Elvis, or a descendant of Julius Caesar. One notorious gangster had had eighteen fathers, including famous politicians like Jean Jaurès, and he changed them all the time. Mythomaniac, that was it. And people said you shouldn’t shatter the illusions of a mythomaniac, it was dangerous, like waking a sleepwalker.
‘Well, while you’re about it,’ he said, ‘you might have found a better father than me. Not very interesting, is it, to be the son of a cop?’
‘So, Commissaire Adamsberg,’ the young man laughed as if he hadn’t heard a word, ‘father of the Zerquetscher! Don’t like that, do you? But that’s how it is, motherfucker. One day the long-lost son comes back, he crushes his father, he takes over the throne. You know stories like that, don’t you? So his father has to go away with nothing, and beg on the streets.’
‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg.
‘Now I’m going to make the coffee,’ said the young man, mimicking him. ‘Bring your fucking bottle, and watch me.’
Looking at him pouring water into the funnel, the cigarette hanging from his lower lip, one hand scratching his dark hair, Adamsberg felt something like a depth charge in the pit of his stomach, an acid spurt more biting than the awful wine in Froissy’s car, spreading to the roots of his teeth. ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ In his concentration on the coffee, the young man did look very like his own father used to, as he knitted his dark eyebrows while watching a stew on the stove. In fact, he looked like half the young men of the Béarn, or two-thirds of those from the valley of the Gave de Pau: thick curly hair, receding chin, well-shaped lips, a compact body. Louvois, not a name he recognised at all from his home valley. He could equally well be from the other valley where his colleague Veyrenc had been born. Or he could have been from Lille or Reims or Menton. Not London though.
The young man took the bowls and refilled them. The climate had changed since he had dropped his bombshell. He had carelessly tucked the P38 into his back pocket, and put the holster near him on a chair. The confrontational phase was over, like the wind dropping at sea. Neither of them knew what to do, so they stirred their sugar into the coffee. The Zerquetscher, leaning forward, tucked his long hair behind his ear. It fell out and he pushed it back again.
‘All right, it’s quite possible you’re from the Béarn,’ said Adamsberg, ‘but pull the other leg, Zerketch. I haven’t got a son, and I don’t want one. Where were you born?’
‘In Pau. My mother went to town to have me, so people wouldn’t know.’
‘And what’s your mother’s name?’
‘Gisèle Louvois.’
‘No, doesn’t ring a bell at all. And I know everyone in the three valleys.’
‘You screwed her one night, by the bridge over the Jaussène.’
‘A lot of couples went to the bridge over the Jaussène.’
‘Then she wrote to you to ask for your help. And you didn’t answer, because you couldn’t give a damn, or because you’re chicken.’
‘Never got any letter like that.’
‘You probably can’t remember the names of the girls you screwed.’
‘Number one, I do remember their names. And number two, I wasn’t a Jack the Lad in those days. I was shy, and I didn’t have a moped. Other boys like Matt, Pierrot, Loulou, Manu, yes, you might well wonder if one of them’s your father. They could get any girl they wanted. But afterwards, the girls didn’t own up, because it would have ruined their reputations. How do you know your mother’s telling the truth?’
The young man felt in a pocket, frowning, and brought out a little plastic envelope which he waved in front of Adamsberg’s eyes, before putting it on the table. Adamsberg took out an old photo, the faded colours turning purple: it showed a youth leaning up against a plane tree.
‘And who’s that?’ asked the young man.
‘It’s either me or my brother. So what?’
‘It’s you, look on the back.’
His name: J.-B. Adamsberg, written in pencil in small round handwriting.
‘It looks more like my brother, Raphaël. I don’t remember having a shirt like that. So your mother didn’t know us very well, and it proves she’s making things up.’
‘Just shut up – you don’t know what my mother’s like, she doesn’t make things up. If she says you’re my father, then it’s the truth. Why would she make it up? It’s not as if it’s something to be proud of, is it?’
‘True. But in our village, it was probably better to say it was me than to own up to Matt or Loulou, because they were known as local bad boys, good-for-nothings, piss-artists. In fact, they used to piss out of the windows on warm summer nights. The grocer’s wife, they didn’t like her, and she got it in the face once. Not to mention Lucien’s gang. In other words, even if it’s no big deal, it would still be better to pretend it was me than Matt. Look, I’m not your father, I have never known any girl called Gisèle, in my village or in the next one, and she has never written me any letter. The first time a girl wrote a letter to me, I was twenty-three.’
‘Liar.’
The youth clenched his teeth, swaying on the plinth of certainty that had suddenly developed
cracks. His imagined father, his long-lost enemy, his target, seemed to want to slip between his fingers.
‘Look, whether I’m a liar or she is, Zerketch, what are we going to do? Stay drinking coffee here for ever?’
‘I always knew it would end like this. Well, you are going to let me go, free as a bird. And you can stay here with your lousy cats, because you can’t do a thing about it. You’ll be reading about me in the papers, believe me. Because there’s more to come. And you’ll be sitting in your office, and you’ll be fucked. You’ll have to resign because even a cop doesn’t shop his own son for a life sentence. When your kid’s involved, there aren’t any rules. And you won’t want to admit you’re the Zerketch’s old dad, will you, and that it’s all your fault that the Zerketch has gone crazy? Because you abandoned him?’
‘I did not abandon you. And I’m not your father in the first place.’
‘But you’re not sure, are you? See your face? See mine?’
‘Yes, we both look like we come from the Béarn, full stop. But there is a way to find out, Zerketch. A way to put an end to your little dream. We’ve got your DNA on file. And we’ve got mine. We take a look.’
The Zerquetscher stood up, put the P38 on the table and smiled calmly.
‘I dare you,’ he said.
Adamsberg watched as he walked unhurriedly towards the door, opened it and went out. Free as a bird. I came here to fuck up your life.
He reached out for the bottle and looked at it. Nitrocitraminic acid. He folded his hands, and dropped his head on to them, closing his eyes. Of course he wasn’t immunised. With his thumbnail, he flicked the top off.
XXV
AS HE WENT INTO THE DOCTOR’S SURGERY, ADAMSBERG Realised that he reeked of aftershave, and that Dr Josselin had also noticed it with surprise.
‘It was a sample I spilt on myself,’ he explained. ‘Nitrocitraminic acid.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘I made the name up, it sounded good.’
There had been one good moment, when Zerketch had fallen for it, when he had believed that the nitrocitraminic acid really existed, believed in the little bottle and the hundredths of a second. Just then, Adamsberg had thought he had got him, but the young man had a secret weapon far more powerful. A different trick, a different illusion, but it had worked. He, Adamsberg, the cop, had let Zerketch go, without lifting a finger to stop him. When his revolver was on the table, he could have grabbed it in a couple of steps. Or he could have had the area surrounded in five minutes. But no, the commissaire hadn’t budged. ‘COMMISSAIRE ADAMSBERG LET THE MONSTER GO FREE.’ He could see the headlines. In Austria too. It would begin something like ‘KOMMISSAR ADAMSBERG’. In big letters dripping with blood, like the ribs on the Zerquetscher’s T-shirt. Then there would be a court case, people screaming, a lynch mob, a rope from a tree. The Zerquetscher would turn up, his fangs red with blood, thrusting his fist in the air and yelling with the others, ‘The son crushes the father!’ The characters of the headline began whirling into a cloud of black and green spots.
He could taste pear-flavoured alcohol in his mouth; his head was swimming. He opened his eyes and focused on the face of Josselin who was bending over him.
‘You fainted. Does that happen often?’
‘First time in my life.’
‘Why did you want to see me? Is it about Vaudel?’
‘No, it was because I didn’t feel well. I was leaving the house and I thought I’d come here.’
‘You don’t feel well? What’s the trouble?’
‘Sick, confused, exhausted.’
‘Does that happen often?’ the doctor repeated, helping him to his feet.
‘No, never. Yes, once in Quebec. But it didn’t feel the same and anyway that time I had drunk way too much.’
‘Lie down,’ said Josselin, tapping his examination couch. ‘Lie on your back and take your shoes off. Maybe it’s just a touch of flu, but I’ll examine you all the same.’
Adamsberg hadn’t really intended, when he had come to the surgery, to end up on the padded table while the doctor moved his large fingers over his head. His feet had simply taken him away from the office and towards Josselin. He had just intended to talk. The fainting fit was a serious warning. Never would he tell anyone that the Zerketch claimed to be his son. Never would he admit to anyone that he had let him go without lifting a finger. Free as a bird. On the way to a fresh massacre, with a smile on his lips and his deathly shirt on his back. Zerk was easier to say than Zerketch and it was almost onomatopoeic, a sound of rejection and disgust. Zerk, the son of Matt or Loulou, the son of a pisspot. But all the same, no one had felt any remorse over the grocer’s wife.
The doctor put his palm across Adamsberg’s face and pressed two fingers against his temples. The immense hand easily covered the distance between his ears. The other hand was cupped under the base of his skull. Under this slightly perfumed hand, Adamsberg felt his eyes closing.
‘Don’t worry I’m just testing the PRM of the SBS.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Adamsberg with a slight question in his voice.
‘The primary respiratory movement of the sphenobasiliar symphysis, a simple basic check.’
The doctor’s fingers continued to move, like attentive moths, on to his nose, his jaws, touching his forehead, going into his ears.
‘Right,’ he said after a few minutes, ‘what we have here is a fibrillation incident, which is hiding your basic state. Some recent event has put the fear of death into you, and that has caused an overheating of the system. I don’t know what happened, but you didn’t like it. A major psycho-emotional shock. What it’s done is immobilise the parietal, block the pre-post sphenoid, and blown three fuses. Major stress episode, no wonder you weren’t feeling well. That must be why you fainted. Let’s get rid of this first, if we want to check the rest.’
The doctor scribbled a few lines and asked Adamsberg to roll on to his stomach He pulled up his shirt and felt the sacro-iliac joint. ‘I thought you said it was in my head.’
‘The head has to be reached through the sacrum.’
Adamsberg stopped talking and let the doctor move his fingers up his vertebrae, like kindly gnomes trotting up his back. He kept his eyes wide open, so as not to fall asleep.
‘Stay awake, commissaire, and lie on your back again. I’m going to relax the mediastinal fascia which are also completely blocked. Do you have some pain between your ribs on the right. Here?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good,’ said Josselin and put two fingers as a fork under the nape of his neck and then with the flat of his hand stroked his ribs as if he was ironing a shirt.
Adamsberg woke up groggily, with the unpleasant feeling time had passed. It was after eleven, he saw by the clock. Josselin had let him go to sleep. He jumped down, slipped on his shoes, and found the doctor sitting at the kitchen table.
‘Sit down, I’m having an early lunch because I’ve got a patient in half an hour.’
He pulled out another plate and cutlery and pushed the dish towards Adamsberg.
‘You put me to sleep?’
‘No, you just dropped off. The state you were in, there could be no better solution after the treatment. Everything’s back in position,’ he added, like a plumber reporting on a repair. ‘You were deep inside a well, totally inhibited from action, you couldn’t go forward. But it should settle down now. You might feel a bit drowsy this afternoon, and tomorrow you may feel a bit low and have a few aches and pains, but that’s only to be expected. Within three days, you ought to be back to normal. Better in fact. I had a go at the tinnitus while I was at it, and maybe a single session will be enough. Now it would be a good idea to have something to eat,’ he said, pointing to the dish of couscous and vegetables.
Adamsberg obeyed. He felt a bit stunned but also better, lighter, and very hungry. Nothing like the sickness and the feeling that he was carrying lead weights in his feet that had assailed him earlier. He raised his head to see the
doctor give him a friendly wink.
‘Apart from that,’ he said, ‘I saw what I wanted to. What your natural structure is.’
‘Oh?’ said Adamsberg, who felt somewhat diminished alongside Josselin.
‘A bit as I had hoped. I’ve only ever seen one similar case, in an elderly woman.’
‘And?’
‘It’s a total absence of anguish. A rare case. To compensate of course, your emotional temperature is low. The desire for things is only moderate, there’s some fatalism, a temptation to walk away, some difficulty relating to people around you, blank spaces. Well, you can’t have everything. Even more interesting, there’s a sort of interaction between the conscious and the unconscious. You could say that the airlock is badly adjusted, that sometimes you forget to shut the gate. Take care all the same, commissaire. It can result in ideas of genius which seem to come from out of the blue – intuition as it’s sometimes wrongly called, for short – immense stocks of memories and images, but it also allows toxic elements to rise to the surface, things that absolutely ought to remain buried in the depths. Do you follow me?’
‘Sort of. And if these toxic elements come to the surface, what happens?’
Dr Josselin whirled a finger round near his head.
‘Then you can’t tell the true from the false, the fantasy from the real thing, the possible from the impossible, in short you will end up mixing saltpetre, sulphur and carbon.’
‘Explosive,’ Adamsberg concluded.
‘As you say,’ said the doctor, wiping his hands and looking satisfied. ‘Nothing to fear if you keep a grip on things. Keep up your responsibilities, carry on talking to other people, don’t isolate yourself too much. Do you have any children?’
‘One, he’s very little.’
‘Well, tell him about the world, take him for walks, hang on to him. That will help you throw down some anchors, you mustn’t lose sight of the harbour lights. I’m not going to ask you about women, I can see. Lack of confidence.’
‘In them?’
‘No, in yourself. That’s the only little worry, if it can be called that. I have to leave you now, commissaire. Make sure to shut the door when you go out.’