by Fred Vargas
‘No, not really.’
‘What we’re doing is looking for some deranged descendant of Arnold Paole, who knows the whole story of his ancestor. Who has identified some other person as the source of his own suffering, and who has decided it must be the old enemy, Plogojowitz. And who has set about destroying all the remaining descendants of that man, in order to escape from his own destiny. If a man went around killing black cats because he was convinced they were bringing him bad luck, you wouldn’t think that absurd, would you, lieutenant? Unthinkable? Impossible to understand?’
‘No-oo,’ admitted Retancourt, encouraged by a few grunts from other positivists.
‘Well, it’s the same thing. But on a much bigger, monumental scale.’
After the second coffee break, Adamsberg set out his instructions. They were to trace the Plogojowitz line, find any possible members of the family, and put them under police protection. They should alert Kommissar Thalberg and have him move Frau Abster to a safe place.
‘Too late,’ came Justin’s high-pitched voice, laden with regret.
‘What, like the others?’ asked Adamsberg, after a silence.
‘Same thing. Thalberg called us this morning.’
‘It must be the work of Arnold Paole,’ said Adamsberg, deliberately looking Retancourt in the eye. ‘So let’s protect the others. Work with Thalberg to find out if there are any more members of the family.’
‘What about Zerk?’ asked Lamarre. ‘Do we get reinforcements in? Showing the photos around hasn’t brought any results yet.’
‘This bastard’s good at slipping the net,’ said Voisenet. ‘He must be on his way back from Cologne now, but where’s he going? Who’s he going to dismember next?’
‘It’s possible,’ said Adamsberg hesitantly, ‘that the bastard is only Paole’s executioner, a henchman. He doesn’t have any Paoles in the maternal line.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Noël, ‘but what about his father’s family?’
‘Could be,’ said Adamsberg in a whisper.
Zerk’s photo had been circulated to all police stations, gendarme headquarters, stations, airports and public spaces, in both France and Austria. In Germany, where the massacre of the old lady in Cologne had caused an outcry, the same was being done. Adamsberg didn’t see how the young man would be able to escape the net.
‘We need a rapid and thorough investigation of this choirmaster, Father Germain. Maurel and Mercadet, can you get on with it?’
‘What about Vaudel junior?’
‘Still at liberty,’ said Maurel, ‘and he’s got a very loudmouthed lawyer.’
‘What does Avignon say?’
‘Oh, that shower that managed to lose the samples,’ said Noël.
‘What samples?’ asked Adamsberg innocently.
‘Some pencil shavings left by whoever planted the cartridge case that rolled under the fridge.’
‘They’ve lost them, have they?’
‘No, found ’em in some lieutenant’s pocket. It’s not a station down there, it’s a holiday camp. They got them off to the lab in the end. Three days lost like that, pff!’
‘Pff,’ echoed Adamsberg, hearing in his ears Vladislav’s ‘plog’.
‘And Émile?’
‘Professor Lavoisier sent us a secret note, very conspiratorial. Émile’s being rehabilitated. He even asked for winkles to eat – which he didn’t get, naturally – and he’ll be out in a few days. But not before there’s some way to keep him secure, the doctor says. He’s waiting for instructions.’
‘Not before we find Paole.’
‘Why would Émile be in any danger from Paole?’ asked Mercadet.
‘Because he’s the only person that Vaudel-Plogojowitz really talked to.’
A danger both for Paole and for Emma Carnot, Adamsberg thought. The clumsy shooting near Châteaudun was looking like an operation on behalf of the hierarchy.
‘We don’t call him Zerk any more, do we?’ Estalère asked his neighbour, Mercadet. ‘We call him Paole?’
‘One and the same, Estalère.’
‘Oh, all right.’
‘Or not.’
‘I see.’
XLIII
DANGLARD, VEYRENC AND ADAMSBERG ARRANGED TO MEET discreetly for dinner in a restaurant some distance from the squad, like three conspirators. Veyrenc had told Danglard about the question marks looming over Weill’s interest in the case. The commandant ran his fingers over his fleshy cheeks and Veyrenc found that he looked different. Must be the Abstract effect, Adamsberg had warned him. There was more energy in Danglard’s pale eyes, his shoulders were more firmly squared, taking up the cut of his suit better. Neither of them knew that in his anguish at Adamsberg’s possible death, Danglard had postponed a visit from Abstract.
‘Shall we just call Weill?’ said Veyrenc.
Adamsberg had ordered stuffed cabbage to rekindle Kisilova memories, but it was so inadequate that he was regretting his choice.
‘Risky,’ he said.
‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ said Danglard.
The three heads nodded and Adamsberg tapped in Weill’s number, signing to the others to stop talking.
‘The Avignon sample went off to the lab yesterday,’ said Adamsberg into his phone. ‘Just two days left. Where are we now, Weill?’
‘Just a moment, while I rescue my lamb roast.’
Adamsberg put his hand over the phone.
‘He’s seeing to his lamb.’
The other two nodded, understandingly.
Adamsberg switched on the loudspeaker.
‘I don’t like interrupting the flow when I’m cooking,’ said Weill, coming back on. ‘You never know how it will turn out.’
‘Weill, Emma Carnot knows who the Garches killer is. But only indirectly. The man she has really latched on to is the one who put seventeen severed feet outside Higg-gate Cemetery.’
‘Highgate you mean.’
‘We forgot about the eighteenth foot. I think that’s the one she saw.’
‘If you won’t let me tell you anything myself, Adamsberg, I’ll get back to the lamb.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Right. I got on to someone from the police in Auxerre, the place where the marriage register was clipped. A rather intriguing report was made there twelve years ago. A woman had been shocked by finding a severed foot, still in its shoe, lying on a path in the woods, no less. The foot was decomposed and had been attacked by birds and animals. This woman, according to the officer I spoke to, had just evicted her ex-husband from her country house. She was only going down there, after he’d left, to change the locks. And she found this foot about fifteen metres from the front door, on the path leading to the house.’
‘And at the time, Carnot didn’t suspect the ex-husband?’
‘No, or she wouldn’t have gone to the police. But there were several reasons why she ought to have been suspicious. It was a private path, no one else would normally be there. The husband made use of the house at weekends, and had been doing so for over fifteen years. He liked hunting there. And this husband, a lonely oddball, according to the people in the village, used to keep his game in a locked freezer. He wouldn’t accept any help from the locals when Emma Carnot finally forced him to move out. You can imagine what the freezer held. One foot must have got dislodged when he was in a hurry, loading his van on his own. Emma Carnot must surely have realised that the foot couldn’t have fallen out of someone’s pocket, or been dropped by a bird. But she didn’t want to understand. She probably began to realise only some time later, and then she made the connection right away. The investigation got nowhere – they decided it must have been a bodysnatcher and the affair was buried.’
‘Until the discovery made at Higg-gate. Then she understood right away.’
‘Obviously. Seventeen severed feet outside a cemetery, and she knew where the eighteenth was. If it got out that she had married a man who had cut the feet off nine corpses, her career was shot. Unfortunately, you happened to
be on the spot in London. So her next step was to demolish you, as completely as she could. It took her less than a day to find out where Mordent’s pressure point was, and she got her hooks into him. When the Carnot machine gets going, nothing moves faster, and especially not you, commissaire. The Garches affair came to light on the Sunday, and she had linked it to Highgate before you did. How, I don’t know. Perhaps because of the dismemberment. She sabotaged the investigation, she got someone to shoot Émile, she had already told Mordent to engineer the flight of the suspect, and to plant the cartridge case and the pencil shavings in Vaudel junior’s house. She wanted the real culprit to get away, and she wanted you to go down with all hands.’
‘So what is her ex-husband’s name, Weill?’ asked Adamsberg slowly.
‘No idea. The house in Burgundy is in her mother’s name, and has been in the Carnot family for generations. And in the hamlet near it, as they do in the countryside, they give the husband the family name he married into. They used to call him Monsieur Carnot, or Madame Carnot’s husband. He only went there for the hunting anyway.’
‘But for heaven’s sake, there must be a married name somewhere – when she made her statement, for instance.’
‘No, because when she went to the police, she’d already been divorced long before. When she embarked on her legal career, aged twenty-seven, she was using her original name Emma Carnot. So she’s been using her maiden name for twenty-five years now at least. The marriage was a short-lived youthful aberration.’
‘We need her statement, Weill. It’s the only element against her that we have.’
Weill just laughed and asked for a minute or two to baste the lamb.
‘Honestly, Adamsberg, you don’t seem to realise the powers these people have. Of course, there’s no longer any record of the statement. I got it verbatim from the officer in Auxerre who dredged it up. No paper trail left. They do these things thoroughly.’
‘Weill, what about the other witness to the marriage?’
‘Nothing so far. But Emma Carnot’s mother is still alive. She must have known who the young husband was, even if she only met him briefly. That’s Marie-Josée Carnot, and she lives at 17 rue des Ventilles, Bâle, Switzerland. I think it would be a good idea to put her under protection.’
‘What, her mother?!’
‘Yes. We’re talking about Emma Carnot here. The witness who was killed in Nantes was her first cousin. Tell your colleague Nolet that, if he dares pursue it.’
‘What is your message, Weill?’
‘Protect the mother.’
‘How would Carnot have known where Émile was headed?’
‘She caught up with him in her own time, and at her own speed, to deal with him.’
‘But the cops in Garches lost track of him.’
‘Adamsberg, you really aren’t cut out for dealing with the hierarchy. They never lost track of him at all, and they knew perfectly well where he was when he took refuge in the hospital. But they had orders from high up to let him go and just follow him, report where he went to ground, and then vanish. Which they did. That’s what they do, they obey orders.’
Adamsberg ended the call and twiddled his phone on the table. He had given the little foam heart to Danica.
‘Danglard, you take the mother, get Retancourt on to protection duty straight away.’
‘Not her own mother?’ said Veyrenc in a horrified whisper.
‘Some people eat wardrobes, Veyrenc.’
Danglard went to phone Retancourt. She was ordered to leave for Switzerland immediately. As soon as they knew she was on her way, the three men sighed with relief and Danglard ordered an armagnac.
‘I’d prefer a rakija after my kafa, like in the kruchema.’
‘How is it, commissaire, that you manage to remember half a dozen words in Serbian, when you can’t be bothered even to remember an easy name like Radstock?’
‘I specially memorised those Kiseljevan words,’ said Adamsberg. ‘No doubt because it was a place of uncertainty, Danglard. Where strange things happen. Hvala, dobro veče, kamak. And in the vault, I was thinking of kobasice. But don’t expect anything lofty, they’re just sausages.’
‘Spicy ones,’ Veyrenc pointed out.
Adamsberg was not surprised that Veyrenc already knew more than he did.
‘Weill seems to be on the level,’ observed Danglard.
‘Yes,’ said Veyrenc, ‘but that doesn’t mean anything. Weill always plays at the top of his game. On the side of the police or not.’
‘But why would he be after Carnot’s guts?’
‘To shoot her down. She makes mistakes, so she’s dangerous.’
‘Weill isn’t Arnold Paole. He can’t be the ex-husband.’
‘Why not?’ said Veyrenc, though he did not sound too sure. ‘The young man of thirty years ago wouldn’t look the same. He could have metamorphosed into what he is today, sophisticated, fat and with a white beard.’
‘I can’t put anyone to spy on Weill officially,’ said Adamsberg, ‘but, Veyrenc …’
‘OK, I see.’
‘Get a gun from Danglard. And please cover up your hair.’
XLIV
A STRIP OF LIGHT WAS SHINING UNDER THE DOOR OF THE tool shed. Lucio was feeding the mother cat. Adamsberg joined him and sat cross-legged on the floor.
‘Ah, you,’ said Lucio, without looking up. ‘You’ve been far away.’
‘Further than you think, Lucio.’
‘Exactly as far as I think, hombre. La muerte.’
‘Yes.’
Adamsberg didn’t dare to ask after the little kitten called Charm. He looked left and right but couldn’t recognise her among the kittens which were wriggling about in the semi-darkness. ‘Killed that kitten. Just one kick did it. Her blood went all over the place.’
‘Any problems?’ he asked, uneasily.
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘Maria found my beer hidden under the bush. Have to find a better hiding place.’
One of the kittens tottered towards Adamsberg and bumped into his leg. He picked it up and looked at it. Its eyes were only just open.
‘Is this one Charm?’ he asked.
‘Don’t you recognise her? You brought her into the world, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Sometimes I despair of you,’ said Lucio, shaking his head.
‘No, it’s just I was worried about her. I had a dream.’
‘Tell me about it, hombre.’
‘No.’
‘In the dark night of the past, was it?’
‘Yes.’
Adamsberg spent the next two days lying low. He came into the office for a few minutes at a time, used the phone, took messages and went off again, not to be contacted. He took time out to call on Josselin about his tinnitus. The doctor had checked his ears with his fingers, and diagnosed a recent shock: ‘Shattering, I’d say, a brush with death perhaps? But it’s almost healed now,’ he remarked with surprise.
The man with golden fingers had removed the tinnitus and Adamsberg reacquainted himself with the street noises now no longer jammed by the high-level buzzing in his ears. Then he resumed the search for Arnold Paole. The attempt to investigate Father Germain was not going well. He refused to tell them anything about his family tree, as was his perfect right. His real name (Henri Charles Lefèvre) was such a common one that Danglard wasn’t getting anywhere trying to trace any ancestors. Danglard had confirmed Veyrenc’s judgement of him: Father Germain was an unusual and authoritarian person, physically very strong, in a way that might seem impressive to the young: he was unattractive to adults, but might well have some hold over impressionable choirboys. Adamsberg listened to the report, looking distracted, and had once more offended Danglard’s susceptibility.
Retancourt was looking after things at the Swiss end, relayed by Kernorkian. Veyrenc had moved into Zerk’s former apartment. He was watching Weill like a hawk. He had dyed his hair dark brown to hide the red
stripes, but in sunshine they inevitably appeared again, provocatively refusing to be concealed.
Seek not in the darkness to hide what once was done;
The past will reappear by the light of the sun.
Weill spent his time paying (brief ) visits to the quai des Orfèvres, then went off doing the rounds of purveyors of the exotic foodstuffs and products he liked best, such as soap scented with the purple rose of Lebanon. Weill had immediately invited the new neighbour round to his Wednesday ‘open house’, and Veyrenc had declined from a distance, in tones verging on the rude. There had still been party noise coming from Weill’s at three in the morning, and Veyrenc would have gladly abandoned his disguise, had it not been for his extreme anxiety about his nephew.
Adamsberg now slept with a gun under his pillow. On the Wednesday evening, he called the station in Nantes again, his earlier messages having remained unanswered. The duty officer, Brigadier Pons, refused, as his colleagues already had, to give him Commissaire Nolet’s private telephone number.
‘Brigadier,’ said Adamsberg, ‘I’m talking about a woman who was shot dead eleven days ago in Nantes. Françoise Chevron. You’ve arrested an innocent man, and I know that the killer is still at large.’
A lieutenant approached the junior officer with a questioning look. ‘It’s Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg from Paris,’ the junior whispered, covering the phone. ‘The Chevron case.’
By twirling his finger close to his head, the lieutenant indicated his opinion of Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. Then, as a flicker of doubt seized him, he picked up the phone.
‘Lieutenant Drémard.’
‘Can I have Nolet’s private number, Drémard?’
‘Commissaire, we’ve tied up the Chevron affair, all the papers are on the examining magistrate’s desk. Her husband beat her up regularly, she’d taken a lover. Straightforward case. We can’t disturb Commissaire Nolet at home, sir, he hates that.’
‘He’ll hate having an extra victim on his hands even more. Give me his number please, Drémard, move!’