An Uncertain Place

by Fred Vargas

  ‘And she wants to be Minister of Justice, I suppose?’ asked Adamsberg.

  ‘Or go even higher. There’s no limit to her ambition, she’s out for all she can get. At my request, Danglard searched Mordent’s office. He found Emma Carnot’s personal number, pathetically obvious, just stuck on the underside of the desk. Forgivable in a junior officer, but a black mark against someone on the commandant grade. I have one golden rule: if you can’t memorise a ten-digit telephone number, don’t get mixed up in anything dodgy. Second golden rule: don’t let anyone slip a bomb under your bed.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Adamsberg, shuddering at the thought of Zerk, whom he had let go, just like that.

  That was a real bomb under his bed. It could blow him sky-high like the toads the village boys tortured. But he was the only one who knew that. No, of course Zerk knew it and was determined to use it: I’ve come to fuck up your life.

  ‘So, are you pleased?’ asked Weill.

  ‘To find out that the key woman in the Council of State is after my guts? Not really, Weill.’

  ‘Adamsberg, what we have to do is find out why Emma Carnot doesn’t want the Garches murderer found at any cost. Is he some dangerous colleague? Her son? Her ex-lover? The word on the street is that these days she’s only interested in women, but some people whisper – and I’ve got a whisperer on the line from the Limoges Appeal Court – that there was a husband at one time. One time very long ago. The trail always leads to family secrets. Third golden rule: keep your private life private, and burn all your papers if you can.’

  ‘That’s no doubt what she’s trying to do.’

  ‘I’ve looked, Adamsberg. I can’t find any records of a marriage, or of any link between her and the Garches affair, or the Pressbaum one either. No marriage, well, perhaps I’m not entirely sure about that.’

  Weill clicked his tongue and savoured the brief pause.

  ‘The page that corresponds to her maiden name at the town hall which should be the right one, because she was born in Auxerre, has been quite simply cut out of the register. The clerk says that a woman from “the ministry” asked to see the register recently, something to do with “national security”. I think our Emma Carnot is panicking. I can smell fear. A woman with jet-black hair, the clerk said. Golden rule number four: never use a wig, it’s ridiculous. So what we have is a marriage which has been removed from the public record.’

  ‘The killer is only twenty-nine, though.’

  ‘Could be the son of the marriage. She might be protecting him. Or trying to make sure her son’s crazy actions don’t get in the way of her career.’

  ‘But, Weill, the mother of our Zerk has a name, she’s called Gisèle Louvois.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But what if Carnot discreetly had a baby adopted – for a hefty consideration?’

  ‘All right, Weill, so we’ve arrived at the seventh rung – what do we do next?’

  ‘We get hold of Carnot’s DNA, we compare it to the Kleenex from the crime scene and see where that gets us. It’s easy, the waste-paper baskets at the Council of State are taken out every morning to the Place du Palais Royal. On days when there’s been a meeting, there will be water bottles, plastic cups and so on provided for the members of the council. Hers will be there and we can identify it. They’ve got a meeting this week. Disconnect your mobile now, commissaire, and only put it back on tomorrow morning at nine, without fail.’

  ‘OK, without fail,’ said Adamsberg, feeling suddenly greatly relieved to learn that the vice-president of the Council of State might have given birth to Zerk. Because whereas he had no recollection of ever having made love to a girl called Gisèle, he was one hundred per cent certain never to have slept with the vice-president of the Council of State.

  He switched off and took the battery out of Weill’s mobile.

  Tomorrow, nine o’clock. He would have to explain to the landlady of the kruchema why he was going out early. He bit his lip. He had sworn to Zerk, in good faith, that he always remembered the names and faces of any women with whom he had made love. And this was only yesterday. He concentrated, trying out all the words he had picked up: kruchema, kafa, danica, hvala. Danica, that was it. He stopped at the door of the mill, suddenly struck by a new anxiety. Now, what was the name of the soldier whose life Peter Plogojowitz had fucked up? He had remembered when he started walking by the river. But Weill’s phone call had pushed it to the back of his mind. He gripped his head in his hands, but with no result at all.

  The noise came from behind, like a sack being dragged along the ground. Adamsberg turned round. He was not alone in the mill.

  ‘Fancy seeing you, scumbag,’ came a voice from the gloom.

  XXXV

  WHAT BROUGHT ADAMSBERG BACK TO CONSCIOUSNESS WAS a series of rasping sounds from a roll of tape. Zerk was trussing him up in the kind of heavy-duty tape removal men use. His legs were already immobilised when he was hauled out of the mill and into a car parked about twenty metres away.

  How long had he been lying there, tied up on the floor of the mill? Until darkness had fallen, for it must be about nine at night now. He could move his feet, but the rest of him was firmly wrapped like a mummy. His wrists were pinned together, and his mouth sealed. The man was just a dark shape. But he could hear the leather jacket creaking, and the heavy breathing resulting from the effort of dragging him, just sounds without any meaning. Then came a short ride on the back seat of the car, less than a kilometre he estimated, before they stopped. Zerk was now pulling him by his wrists, as if his arms were the handle of a huge basket. He dragged him about thirty metres, stopping five times; gravel crunched under Adamsberg’s body. The man dropped him suddenly, puffing from the exertion and muttering. A door opened.

  Gravel under his back, scratching him through his shirt. Where had he seen any sharp gravel in Kisilova? Black gravel, different from the kind you saw in France. The man had turned a key, a large old key by the heavy metallic sound. He came back, took hold of the arm-handle again and brutally hauled Adamsberg down a few stone steps, letting him fall to the ground at the bottom. A beaten earth floor. Zerk cut the tape round his wrists, and removed his jacket and shirt, by cutting them with a knife. Adamsberg tried to react, but he was already too weak. His legs were bound and cold, and the man’s boot was on his chest. Then more tape, round his torso now, pinning his arms to his sides. A few steps sounded and Zerk closed the door without a word. The intense cold was a contrast to the warm night outside and the darkness was absolute. It must be some kind of cellar without any grating.

  ‘Know where you are, scumbag? Why couldn’t you leave me alone?’

  The voice reached him in a distorted form, as if on an old-fashioned radio.

  ‘I know your tricks now, mister policeman, I’m taking precautions. You’re in there and I’m out here. I’ve put a speaker under the door. That’s how you can hear me. But if you yell, nobody will hear you, so don’t even bother. No one ever comes this way. The door’s ten centimetres thick and the walls are like a fortress. It’s a real bunker.’

  Zerk gave a short expressionless laugh.

  ‘And you know why? Because you’re in a tomb, scumbag. In the best sealed tomb in all Kisilova. Nobody ever gets out. I’ll tell you where you are because you can’t see it, so you can imagine it before you die. You’ve got four coffins stacked up on one side and five on the other. Nine dead bodies. Nice, huh? And the one to your right, if you were to open it, I don’t think you’d find a skeleton. No, perhaps a nice fresh body bursting with juices. She’s called Vesna and she’s a man-eater. Maybe she’d take a fancy to you.’

  Another laugh.

  Adamsberg closed his eyes. Zerk. But where had he been hiding these last two days? In the woods, in one of the old woodcutter’s cabins perhaps. But what did that matter now? Zerk must have followed him; now he’d found him and it was all over. Unable to move an inch, Adamsberg could already feel his muscles seizing up and the cold penetrating his body. Zerk was right, nobody would come into
the old cemetery, absolutely not. The place had been abandoned after the panic of 1725, as Arandjel had explained. People didn’t dare go there, not even to prop up their ancestors’ tombstones when they fell over. And that’s where he was, eight hundred metres outside the village, in the vault where Plogojowitz’s nine victims had been entombed, built far away from the other graves, and which nobody would go near. Except Arandjel. But what would Arandjel know about his situation? Nothing. Vladislav? Nothing. Danica might start to worry when he didn’t return to the kruchema. He had missed the evening meal, kobasice she had promised. But what could Danica do? Go and find Vladislav. Who might go and find Arandjel. But what then? Where would they think of looking? Along the banks of the Danube for instance. But who would ever imagine that a dark-intentioned Zerk had tied him up and locked him in a vault in the old cemetery? Arandjel might just think of it as a last resort. But only in a week or ten days. Perhaps he might even have been able to survive that long without food or drink. But Zerk was no fool. Tied up in the cold vault, his blood would congeal in his limbs: he could already feel himself getting numb. He wouldn’t last two days. Maybe not even until tomorrow. Don’t go into the world of the vampiri without knowing what you’re doing, young man. With a strength of feeling prompted by deep fear, how he missed it all now. The lime tree, the Carpathians, the sun glinting off the little glass of rakija.

  ‘Tomorrow, you’ll be dead, scumbag. Just to cheer you up, I went back to your place and I killed that kitten. Just one kick did it. Her blood went all over the place. Making me rescue her, huh, that got up my nose. Now you don’t owe me anything. And I got some of your fucking DNA out of your house. So I’ll have proof now. Everyone will know that Adamsberg abandoned his kid, and how the kid turned out. Because of you. You. You. And your name will be cursed for generations to come.’

  The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge. Adamsberg was having difficulty breathing. Zerk had wound the tape very tightly round his chest. Tomorrow you’ll be dead, scumbag. With his limbs unable to move and his lungs constricted, he soon wouldn’t be getting much oxygen in the blood. It wouldn’t take long. Why did the image of the little kitten being kicked to bits under Zerk’s boot give him so much pain? When he was going to die in a few hours anyway. Why was he thinking about the kobasice, when he didn’t even know what kobasice looked like?

  Kobasice reminded him of Danica, who reminded him of Vlad and his hair like a cat, who reminded him of Danglard, and Danglard made him think of Tom and Camille, unsuspectingly enjoying themselves in Normandy, and that made him think of Weill and Emma Carnot, with whom he had certainly never slept. And Gisèle? No, never a girl called Gisèle either. So why at this moment could he not keep his mind on anything, concentrate on a single tragic thought?

  The voice spoke again. ‘I’ll give you one thing,’ it said with a tinge of regret. ‘I admit you got a long way. You got the point. So I’d keep your head and leave the rest of your body. Anyway, scumbag, I’m going to abandon you now, like you abandoned me.’

  Zerk pulled on the wire and the little speaker must have slipped back under the door. The last sound Adamsberg heard. Except for the agonising tinnitus in his ear, which had almost disappeared before, he realised. Unless what he was hearing was the cold breath of the rosy-skinned woman sleeping on the lower shelf, on his right. He caught himself wishing that Vesna the vampire would come out of her coffin and suck his blood, to give him eternal life. Or just to keep him company. But no, nothing doing. Even in the tomb, he believed in nothing. Without his being able to control it, his body went into a spasm of shivering for a few seconds. Several convulsive shudders, the start of the organic breakdown, in all probability. His frantic thoughts went to the doctor with golden fingers and his fuse F3. Could Dr Josselin’s treatment help him to resist a little longer than other people? Now that his fuse and parietal bone had been cured? But another shudder froze his blood under the wrappings. No. Not a chance.

  What should you think about when you are about to die? Some lines of poetry came into his mind, although he had never been able to learn any. It was like that word kobasice that he had remembered. If he were able to survive till the next day, perhaps he would wake up speaking English, and remembering things, like normal people.

  In the night of the tomb, Thou who …

  One of those lines Danglard muttered to himself, along with thousands of others. But he couldn’t remember the rest.

  In the night of the tomb …

  Already he couldn’t feel his feet. He would die there like a vampir, his mouth sealed and his feet pinioned. That way they can never get out. But Peter Plogojowitz had. He had sped away like a flame from the ashes of his remains. And he had taken possession of Higg-gate, and the wife of that Dante somebody, and the schoolgirls. He had gone on oppressing the vampirised family of the Serbian soldier. A vengeful family, from which that madman Zerk must surely be descended, but he could no longer send a text to Danglard to find out. That bastard Weill had made him switch off the GPS. Why?

  In the night of the tomb, Thou who consolest me.

  Yes, that was it, the end of the line. He was taking short breaths now, with more difficulty than before. The asphyxia was happening faster than he had thought. Zerk was obviously an expert. But what did ‘before’ mean? It must be about an hour since Zerk had left the graveyard. He couldn’t hear the church clock striking. Too far from the village. And he couldn’t see either of his watches. So they couldn’t even tell him Lucio’s pissing timetable.

  In the night of the tomb, Thou who consolest me.

  There was more to this poem, something to do with ‘the sighs of the saint’ and ‘the cries of the siren’. Yes, like Vesna. One breath, then another breath. His own.

  Arnold Paole! Yes, that was the name of the soldier overcome by Peter Plogojowitz. He would never forget it now.

  XXXVI

  DANICA CAME INTO VLADISLAV’S BEDROOM WITHOUT knocking, switched on his bedside lamp and shook him awake.

  ‘He hasn’t come in. It’s three in the morning.’

  Vlad lifted his head and let it fall back on the pillow.

  ‘He’s a cop, Danica,’ he muttered, without thinking. ‘They don’t do things like everyone else.’

  ‘A cop!’ said Danica, shocked. ‘But you said he was a friend of yours who’d had a breakdown.’

  ‘A psycho-emotional episode. Sorry, Danica, it slipped out. But he is a cop. One who’s had a psycho-emotional episode.’

  Danica folded her arms, looking both worried and offended, revisiting the previous night, which she now learned she had spent in the embrace of a policeman.

  ‘So what’s he up to here? Does he suspect someone in Kiseljevo?’

  ‘He’s searching for traces of a Frenchman.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Pierre Vaudel.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Someone might have known him here a long time ago. Let me go back to sleep, Danica.’

  ‘Pierre Vaudel? Never heard of him,’ said Danica, biting her thumbnail. ‘But I don’t remember all the tourists who come here. Have to look in the register. When was this? Before the war?’

  ‘Oh, long before, I think. Danica, it’s three in the morning, so just what are you doing in my room?’

  ‘I said. He isn’t in yet.’

  ‘And I gave you an answer.’

  ‘It’s not normal.’

  ‘With a cop, nothing’s normal, you should know that.’

  ‘He hasn’t any business being out at night, even if he is a cop. Anyway, Vlad, you shouldn’t say “cop”, you should say “police officer”. You haven’t turned into a polite young man. But then your dedo wasn’t either.’

  ‘Leave my dedo out of it, Danica. And don’t start lecturing me about good behaviour. You haven’t exactly gone by the book yourself.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Vlad made an effort and sat up in bed. ‘Forget it. Are you really worried?’ />
  ‘Yes. Was it dangerous, what he came here for?’

  ‘I don’t know, Danica, I’m tired. I don’t know anything about the case, and I don’t care, my job’s just to translate. All I know is, there was this murder somewhere near Paris, a nasty one. And another before that in Austria.’

  ‘If there are murders involved,’ said Danica, attacking her nail more viciously, ‘then that means it is dangerous.’

  ‘I know he thought he was being followed in the train. But all cops are like that, aren’t they? They don’t look at people the way we do. Maybe he went back to see Arandjel. I think they had plenty of stories to tell each other.’

  ‘Vladislav, you’re such an idiot. How is he supposed to talk to Arandjel? In sign language? Arandjel speaks English but not French. And he speaks French but not English, that’s for sure.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘There are some things one just knows,’ said Danica, in some embarrassment.

  ‘Right,’ said Vlad. ‘So let me go back to sleep now.’

  ‘Look, the police,’ Danica went on, by now chewing angrily at both thumbs, ‘if they start finding out the truth, the murderer will kill them, won’t he? Eh, Vladislav?’

  ‘If you want my opinion, he’s getting further from the truth with every step.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Danica, letting go of her thumbs, by now glistening with saliva.

  ‘If you go on biting your nails you’ll end up eating a whole finger. Then you’ll wonder where it’s gone.’

  Danica shook her mass of blonde hair impatiently and carried on chewing.

  ‘Why are you so sure he’s getting further from the truth?’

  Vlad laughed quietly, sat up and put his hands on the landlady’s plump shoulders.