by Fred Vargas
It was indeed this detail which had unsettled some members of the squad, the horror aroused by hearing of ‘pink and intact’ corpses, with blood coming from their orifices, and with skin looking fresh and unlined, while their old skin and nails were under them in the grave. Here, Danglard’s superior knowledge came into its own. He had the answer, he knew precisely why and how the bodies had been preserved, a fairly frequent phenomenon in fact, and he could even explain the cry of the vampire when it was pierced with a stake, or the sighs of the shroud-eaters. The others had formed a circle around him and were hanging on his words. They had just reached the moment in the debate when science was going to dispel obscurantism all over again. Danglard was just starting to tell them about the phenomenon of gases which sometimes, depending on the chemical composition of the earth, didn’t come out of the bodies, but inflated them like a balloon, stretching the skin – when he was interrupted by the hullabaloo of a dish being overturned on the floor above, and then Cupid came bounding down the stairs, rushing straight through to reception. Without breaking step, the little dog gave a very particular kind of yap as it rushed past the photocopier, where Snowball was, as usual, stretched out, its paws hanging over the edge.
‘In this case,’ observed Danglard, as he watched the dog going frantic with joy, ‘we have neither knowledge nor fantasy. Simply pure love, unquestioning and unlimited. Very rare in humans, and very dangerous. But Cupid is a tactful dog, because he said goodbye to the cat, with a mixture of admiration and regret.’
The dog had jumped right up into Émile’s arms and was clinging to his chest, panting and licking and scrabbling at his shirt. Émile had had to sit down, pressing his ugly mug against the dog’s back.
‘We ran the tests – the manure on his feet matched the stuff on the floor of your van,’ Danglard told him.
‘What about that love letter from old Vaudel? Did that help the commissaire?’
‘Yes, plenty. It led him almost to his death in a stinking vault. Full of corpses.’
‘And the secret tunnel from Madame Bourlant’s house, that helped him too?’
‘Yes, that got him to Dr Josselin.’
‘Never liked him, poser he was. So where is he, the boss?’
‘You want to see him?’
‘Yeah, I don’t want him to make trouble for me, we can settle it friendly like, if he wants. Help I gave him there, he owes me one.’
‘Settle what?’
‘For his ears only.’
Danglard called Adamsberg’s mobile.
‘Commissaire, we’ve got Cupid here, he’s sitting on Émile’s knee, and Émile wants to talk to you to settle something.’
‘Settle what?’
‘No idea, he says he’ll only speak to you.’
‘Personally,’ insisted Émile self-importantly.
‘How is he?’
‘Looks fine to me – new jacket and blue badge in his lapel. When will you be back?’
‘I’m on a beach in Normandy, Danglard, I’m coming back soon.’
‘But what are you doing there?’
‘I had to talk to my son. We’re neither of us very good at this, but we’ve managed to communicate a bit.’
No, of course, Danglard thought, Tom isn’t a year old, so he can’t talk yet.
‘I told you more than once. They’re in Brittany, not Normandy.’
‘I’m talking about my other son, Danglard.’
‘What—?’ said Danglard, unable to finish his sentence. ‘Wha … other son?’
He was seized with instant rage against Adamsberg. How had he managed to have another child somewhere else, when little Tom was still a baby?
‘How old is this other one?’
‘Eight days.’
‘You are such a bastard,’ Danglard hissed.
‘It’s the way it was, commandant. I didn’t know about him.’
‘No, you never bloody know about anything, do you?’
‘And you never let me finish either, Danglard. He’s eight days old for me, but for other people, he’s twenty-nine. He’s beside me here, smoking a cigarette. His hands are covered in bandages. Paole pinned him to that Louis XIII armchair with a knife last night.’
‘The Zerquetscher?’ asked Danglard weakly.
‘Correct. Or Zerk as I call him. Aka Armel Louvois.’
Danglard looked blankly across at Émile and his dog, while he tried to concentrate on the facts of the situation.
‘This is a figure of speech, isn’t it? You’ve adopted him, or some crazy stunt like that?’
‘No, no, Danglard, he’s my son. That’s why Josselin had a lot of fun choosing him as a scapegoat.’
‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Look, you’d believe Veyrenc, wouldn’t you? Ask him. He’s his uncle and he’ll give you a glowing report on him.’
Adamsberg was half reclining on the sand, drawing on it with his finger. Zerk was lying down, his arms across his body, his hands now numbed, thanks to a local anaesthetic, and was soaking up the sun and relaxing like the cat on the photocopier. Danglard ran through his head all those photographs of the Zerk from the papers, and at once realised how familiar that face had been. Yes. It had to be the truth, but it was a shock.
‘Not to worry, commandant. Put Émile on, will you?’
Without a word, Danglard handed the phone to Émile, who hobbled away towards the door.
‘This colleague of yours is stupid,’ he began. ‘It’s not a badge, it’s my winkle pin. I went and fetched it from the house.’
‘Because you’re nostalgic.’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘So what deal is this you want to settle?’ said Adamsberg sitting up.
‘I kept a record. Nine hundred and thirty-seven euros. Now I’ve got plenty of cash, I can pay it back, and then you don’t know nothing about it. Because I got you that stuff about the postcard, and the door in the cellar. Savvy?’
‘What don’t I “know nothing about”?’
‘Vaudel’s money, for fuck’s sake. Bit here, bit there, total nine hundred and thirty seven. I kept a record.’
‘I’m with you now, Émile. Well, for a start, I’ve got nothing to do with that money, like I said. And in any case, it’s too late. I don’t think Pierre junior, since you’re already getting half his inheritance, will be too happy to find out that you were pinching his old man’s money and that you want to pay him nine hundred and thirty-seven euros.’
‘Ha,’ said Émile pensively.
‘So just keep the money, and shut up about it.’
‘Got you,’ said Émile, and Adamsberg reflected that he must have picked up the expression at the hospital in Châteaudun from that tall paramedic, André.
‘You’ve got another son?’ asked Zerk, as they got back in the car.
‘He’s very, very small,’ said Adamsberg, demonstrating with his hands apart, as if that made it less of a fact. ‘Does it bother you?’
‘Nope.’
No doubt about it, Zerk was an accommodating sort of chap.
XLIX
THE PARIS CENTRAL LAW COURTS WERE UNDER A CLOUD, WHICH was entirely appropriate to the place and the time. Adamsberg and Danglard, sitting at the terrace of the cafe opposite, were waiting for people to emerge from the trial of Mordent’s daughter. It was ten to eleven by Danglard’s watch. Adamsberg was looking at the gold-tipped railings which had been carefully repainted.
‘When you scratch the gold, what do you find underneath, Danglard?’
‘Nolet would say: the scales of the snake.’
‘Coiled round the Sainte-Chapelle. Not a very suitable combination.’
‘It’s not such a contrast as you might think. There are two chapels there one on top of the other and quite separate. The bottom one was reserved for the common people and the top one for the king and his courtiers. Everything leads back to that in the end.’
‘The great snake was already there in the fourteenth century then,’ said Adamsberg,
looking up at the top of the steep Gothic spire.
‘Thirteenth century,’ Danglard corrected him. ‘Built by Pierre de Montreuil between 1242 and 1248.’
‘Did you get in touch with Nolet?’
‘Yes. The school friend was indeed a witness to the wedding between Emma Carnot and a young man aged twenty-four, Paul de Josselin Cressent, at the town hall in Auxerre, twenty-nine years ago. Emma had fallen for him, her mother was impressed by the name with a “de” in it, but she told us that Paul was the last of a damaged line. The marriage didn’t last three years. There were no children.’
‘Just as well. Josselin would hardly have been a good father.’
Danglard chose not to pursue that line of thought. He would wait and see what Zerk was like.
‘There would have been another little Paole loose in the world,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘and God only knows what he would have got up to. But no, this is the end of the Paoles, the doctor said so.’
‘I’m going to help Radstock dispose of the feet. Then I’m taking a week off.’
‘Going fishing in that loch perhaps?’
‘No,’ said Danglard evasively, ‘I think I’ll probably stay on in London.’
‘With a rather abstract sort of plan in mind.’
‘Yes.’
‘When Mordent has got his daughter back, which will be tonight, we’ll unleash the torrent of mud in the Emma Carnot affair. It’ll run from the Council of State to the Appeal Court, then to the public prosecutor and the Gavernan Assize Court, and it will stop there. We won’t let it reach down as far as the junior judge and Mordent, since that is no consequence to anyone but us.’
‘It’ll cause an almighty row.’
‘Of course. People will be shocked, they’ll propose a far-reaching reform of the judicial system, then it will all be forgotten when they dig up some other scandal. And you know what will happen then.’
‘The great snake will have lost three of its scales, after an attack, but it will have regrown them again in a couple of months.’
‘Or less. We’ll set in motion the counter-offensive, using the Weill technique. We won’t release anything to the press about the link to the judge at Gavernan, or name him. We’ll keep him in reserve for our own protection, and in order to protect Nolet and Mordent. And we’ll use the Weill technique to get the pencil shavings and the cartridge from Avignon to the quai des Orfèvres. Where they can moulder away in a cupboard.’
‘Why should we protect Mordent? He’s acted like an arsehole.’
‘Because the straight and narrow is never straight. Mordent’s not part of the snake. He was swallowed whole. He’s in its belly, like Jonah in the whale.’
‘Or the uncle in the bear.’
‘Aha,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I knew you’d show some interest in that story one day.’
‘But what sort of idea of Mordent will be left inside the great snake?’
‘A thorn in the side, and the memory of failure. That’s something at least.’
‘So what are we going to do about Mordent?’
‘Whatever he thinks he will do himself. If he wants to, we’ll take him back. A damaged man is worth ten. You and I are the only people who know about this. The others all think he’s had a nervous breakdown because of his daughter, and that that explains his mistakes. They’ve also heard he’s recovered his testicles intact, and that’s as much as they know. Nobody knows that he went to Pierre Vaudel’s place.’
‘Why didn’t Pierre Vaudel tell you about going to racecourses and the horse manure?’
‘His wife was not supposed to know he was involved with the bookies.’
‘And who paid the concierge, Francisco Delfino, to give Josselin a false alibi. Josselin himself or Emma Carnot?’
‘Nobody. Josselin simply sent Francisco on holiday. For the first few days after the Garches murder, Josselin impersonated Francisco. He took his place, knowing there’d be a visit from the police sooner or later. When I saw him, the lodge was dark, he was wrapped up in a blanket, including his hands. All he had to do after that was nip back up to his apartment via the service stairs and get changed to welcome me in.’
‘Sophisticated.’
‘Yes. He’d thought of everything, except his ex-wife. As soon as Emma discovered that Josselin was Vaudel’s doctor, she realised before us. Right away.’
‘Here he comes,’ Danglard interrupted. ‘Justice has been pronounced.’
Mordent was emerging alone, under the cloudy sky. The children have eaten sour grapes and the father’s teeth have been set on edge. His daughter, a free woman now, would have to go back to Fresnes for the paperwork and to pick up her things. She would eat her supper at home that night, he had already done the shopping.
Adamsberg caught Mordent under one arm, and Danglard took the other. The commandant looked from side to side, like an old heron trapped by the disciplinary police. A heron having lost its prestige and its feathers, condemned to fish alone and in disgrace.
‘We’ve come to celebrate the triumph of justice, Mordent,’ said Adamsberg. ‘And to celebrate the arrest of Josselin, and the liberation of the Paole clan, who will now return to their uncomplicated destiny of being ordinary human beings, and to celebrate the birth of my elder son. Plenty to celebrate. We left our beers on the table.’
Adamsberg’s grip was firm, his face was tilted sideways and he was smiling. Light flickered under his skin, his expression was lit up, and Mordent well knew that when Adamsberg’s cloudy eyes became gleaming orbs, he was approaching his prey or some great truth. The commissaire marched him over to the cafe.
‘Celebrate?’ said Mordent in a blank voice, unable to find anything else to say.
‘Yes, celebrate. And we’re also celebrating the disappearance of a certain scatter of pencil shavings and a cartridge case under a fridge. We’re celebrating my freedom, Mordent.’
The commandant’s arm barely moved in Adamsberg’s grip. The old heron had lost all his strength. Adamsberg sat him down between them, as if dropping a bundle. The F3 fuse has gone, he thought, a psycho-emotional shock, inhibited action. No Dr Josselin around to heal it either. With the departure of Arnold Paole’s descendant, medicine was losing one of its great practitioners.
‘I’m up to my neck in it, aren’t I?’ murmured Mordent. ‘Deservedly,’ he went on, ruffling his grey hair and stretching his long neck, with that movement of a wading bird that was peculiar to him.
‘Yes, you are. But a cunningly constructed dam has been built, which is going to block the mud outside the doors of the Gavernan Assize Court. From there on down, there will be no visible traces of betrayal, nothing but innocent procedures. In the squad nobody else knows anything. Your job’s still there. It’s up to you. On the other hand, Emma Carnot is going to go up in smoke. You were taking orders directly from her?’
Mordent nodded.
‘On a special mobile?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which is where now?’
‘I destroyed it last night.’
‘Good. Don’t try to protect yourself by rushing to help her, Mordent. She’s killed one woman, she had Émile shot at and then tried to poison him. She was on her way to bump off the other witness to her marriage.’
Ever vigilant, Danglard had ordered a third beer which he put in front of Mordent, with a gesture as authoritarian as Adamsberg’s arm, meaning ‘Drink up!’
‘And don’t think about doing away with yourself either,’ Adamsberg went on. ‘That would be irrelevant, as Danglard might put it, when Elaine needs you most.’ Adamsberg stood up. The Seine was flowing a few metres away from them, flowing to the sea, flowing towards America, then to the Pacific, then back here again.
‘Vratiću,’ he said. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
‘What did he say?’ asked Mordent, looking surprised, and for a moment back to normal, which seemed to Danglard to be a good sign.
‘He’s still got a little bit of the Kisilova vampiri inside him. It’ll disapp
ear in the end. Or not. You never know with him.’
Adamsberg came back towards them, looking preoccupied.
‘Danglard, I know you’ve told me this before, but where does the Seine rise?’
‘On the Langres plateau.’
‘Not Mont Gerbier de Jonc?’
‘No, that’s the Loire.’
‘Hvala, Danglard.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘That means “thank you”,’ Danglard told Mordent. Adamsberg walked off again towards the river, with jaunty steps and holding his jacket over his shoulder with one finger. Mordent raised his glass clumsily, like a man who is not sure if he has the right to do so, and moved it first in the direction of Adamsberg then towards Danglard sitting beside him.
‘Hvala,’ he said.
L
ADAMSBERG WALKED FOR OVER AN HOUR ON THE BANK OF the Seine that was in sunlight, listening to the seagulls mewing in French, and holding his mobile in his hand, waiting for a call from London. It came through at 2.15, as Stock had promised. It was a very short conversation, since Adamsberg had left a single question with DCI Radstock, one to which he had only to reply ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
‘Yes,’ said Radstock, in English. Adamsberg thanked him and snapped his phone shut. He hesitated a moment, then chose Estalère’s number. The young brigadier was the only person he could think of who would offer neither comment nor criticism.
‘Estalère,’ he said, ‘go and see Josselin in hospital. I’ve got a message for him.’