by Fred Vargas
Replacing the photos quickly in his pocket, he hurried back to the still-deserted farm, checked the surroundings and dialled Retancourt’s mobile.
‘Violette,’ he said, ‘you know the photo you took of Saviour 1?’
‘Yes.’
‘His hair is very short. But in the photos from the evening reception, his hair was longer. So when did you take it?’
‘The day after I got here.’
‘So three days after the father’s death. Try to find out when he got his hair cut. To the hour. Before or after he returned from the reception. You’ve got to find this out.’
‘I’ve made friends with the grouchiest butler in the house. He won’t speak to anyone else but he makes an exception for me.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me. Send me the answer somehow but don’t use the mobiles any more and then get out of there fast.’
‘A problem?’ Retancourt asked placidly.
‘Yeah, big time.’
‘OK.’
‘If he actually cut his hair that night before getting back, there could be some on the headrest. Has he driven himself anywhere since the murder?’
‘No, he’s always had the chauffeur drive him.’
‘Well, look and see if there are any tiny bits of hair on the driver’s seat.’
‘But without a search warrant.’
‘Correct, lieutenant, we’d never get one.’
He walked on for twenty minutes before reaching the Chemin de Bonneval, his mind occupied but confused by Christian Clermont-Brasseur’s unexpected haircut. But he hadn’t been driving his father in the Mercedes. He’d left earlier, having drunk a lot, and if he had visited a woman later, her name would never be discovered. And it was quite possible that after the news he’d cut his hair in order to look more respectable in mourning.
Well, maybe. But what about Mo, whose hair sometimes got singed by the flames from his fires? If Christian really had set the car alight, and if his hair had been slightly singed, he would have made haste to cover that up with a quick haircut. But Christian hadn’t been at the scene, and that was what he always returned to. Nothing exhausted Adamsberg so much as going round in circles, contrary to Danglard, who could doggedly pursue a problem to the point of vertigo, going round and round in his own footsteps.
Adamsberg forced himself to ignore the blackberries, so that he could concentrate on the path, and any traces left by Léo. He passed the big tree trunk where he had sat down with her, and paused to send heartfelt wishes for her recovery, then he spent some time by the Chapel of St Antony, who helps people find things they have lost. His mother had always annoyed him by sending up prayers to the saint whenever she had lost the slightest thing: St Antony of Padua, finder of everything.
As a child, Adamsberg had been a bit shocked that his mother was not embarrassed to call on St Antony just to find a thimble. But now the saint wasn’t being any help, and there was nothing to be seen on the path. He decided conscientiously to retrace his steps back to the beginning and, at the halfway point, sat down on the felled tree trunk, this time having collected a few blackberries which he laid down beside him. He looked again, on his mobile, at the photos Retancourt had sent him, and compared them with those Valleray had given him. Suddenly there was a rustling sound behind him, and Fleg bounded out of the woods with the happy expression of a lad who had just made a successful visit to the girl at the farm. Fleg put his drooling head on Adamsberg’s knee and looked up at him with that pleading expression that no human being can reproduce as obstinately. Adamsberg patted his head.
‘I suppose you want some sugar now? But I haven’t got any, old fellow. I’m not Léo.’
Fleg insisted, putting his muddy paws up on Adamsberg’s trousers, begging more insistently.
‘No. Sugar. Fleg,’ said Adamsberg slowly. ‘The brigadier will give you some this evening at six. What about a blackberry?’
Adamsberg offered him one, but the dog refused. Seeming to realise that his request would not be granted, or that this man was stupid, he started digging around Adamsberg’s feet, sending the leaves flying.
‘Fleg, you are destroying the vital microcosm of leaf mould.’
The dog stopped and looked up meaningfully at Adamsberg and then down at the ground. One of his paws had unearthed a little piece of white paper.
‘Yes, I see, it’s the wrapping from the sugar. But it’s old. It’s empty.’
Adamsberg swallowed a handful of blackberries, and Fleg insisted, moving his paw and guiding this human who was so slow on the uptake. Within a minute, Adamsberg had found six old sugar-lump wrappings in the leaves.
‘They’re all empty, old boy. I know what you’re trying to tell me: there’s a sugar mine here. I know this is where Léo used to give you sugar lumps after you came back from the farm. Yes, I know you’re disappointed, but I haven’t got any sugar.’
Adamsberg stood up and walked on a few paces, with the idea of distracting Fleg from this pointless obsession. The dog followed him, whining slightly, then Adamsberg turned suddenly back and went to sit in the exact position where he had sat with Léo, revisiting the scene in his memory, their first words, the dog’s arrival. If Adamsberg’s mind was useless at remembering long words, he had a near-photographic memory for images. He could see again Léo’s gestures, as clearly as if they were drawn with a pen. She hadn’t unwrapped the sugar lump, because it didn’t have paper round it. She had given it directly to the dog. She wasn’t the kind of woman to have pre-wrapped sugar, she’d have taken some straight from the packet at home, and couldn’t care less about dirt in her pockets, on her fingers or on the sugar.
Carefully, he picked up the six papers Fleg had found. Someone else had been eating sugar here. These papers must have been there a couple of weeks, all together as if they had been thrown down at the same time. But so what? Well, they were on the Chemin de Bonneval, that’s what. Some teenager could have been sitting there one night, waiting to see the Riders – since this was a famous rite of passage – and might have been eating sugar to keep his strength up. Or he might even have been there the night of the murder, and seen the murderer go past.
‘Fleg,’ he said to the dog, ‘did you show the papers to Léo perhaps? Hoping for an extra reward?’
Adamsberg thought back to the hospital bed and considered differently the only three words that the old woman had whispered. ‘Ello, Fleg, sugar.’
‘Fleg,’ he said again, ‘Léo must have seen the papers, is that it? She saw them here? And I’ll tell you when she saw them. The day she found Herbier’s body. Otherwise she wouldn’t have mentioned them in hospital, since she had so little strength left. But why didn’t she say anything that night? Do you think she only understood later? Like me? Much later? Next day? But what did she understand, Fleg?’
Adamsberg slipped the papers carefully into the packet of photographs.
‘But what, Fleg?’ he said as he went down the short cut that Léo had used. ‘What did she suddenly understand? That someone had witnessed a murder? But how could she know that the papers had been thrown that night? Because she came the same way the day before the murder with you and they weren’t there then?’
The dog bounded down the path, taking care to lift its leg against the same trees as before, as they approached Léo’s house.
That must be it. A witness who was eating sugar. Who didn’t understand the significance of what he had seen until he later heard about the murder, and when it took place. But a witness who didn’t dare come forward because he was frightened. Léo might have known which teenager had been sent to brave out his initiation rite on the path that night.
Fifty paces from the house, Fleg started running towards a car parked on the side. Brigadier Blériot came to meet the commissaire, and Adamsberg walked faster, hoping he had been to the hospital and might have some news.
‘No, nothing to be done, we can’t find out what’s wrong with her,’ he told Adamsberg without any more formal greeting, spreading h
is short arms in a gesture like a sigh.
‘Hell, Blériot, what’s happened?’
‘This rattling sound, when she moves.’
‘Rattling?’
‘Yes, she gets out of puff soon as you push her. But downhill or on the flat, no problem.’
‘Blériot, who on earth are you talking about?’
‘This car, sir. Will the prefecture replace it for us? When the cows come home.’
‘Right, brigadier. But what did you find out when you questioned Mortembot?’
‘He can’t tell us nothing about nothing. Like a wet rag, he is, sir,’ said Blériot with a touch of pity, as he stooped to pat the dog, which was rubbing against his legs. ‘Without Glayeux, he’s completely lost.’
‘He wants his sugar,’ Adamsberg said.
‘He wants to stay in the cell. Stupid pillock, he shouted at me, he even tried to have a go at me, wanted me to put him in jail for a long stretch. Can’t put anything over me.’
‘Blériot, we’re at cross purposes again,’ said Adamsberg, wiping his face with his T-shirt sleeve. ‘I was just saying the dog wants his sugar.’
‘Ah, well, it’s not time yet.’
‘I know that. But we’ve been in the woods, he’s been to see his girlfriend at the farm and he wants some sugar.’
‘Well, you’ll have to give it to him yourself, commissaire. Because I’ve been fiddling with the engine, and when my hands smell of petrol, he won’t take it from me.’
‘But I haven’t got any sugar,’ explained Adamsberg patiently.
Without replying, Blériot pointed to his shirt pocket, stuffed with sugar lumps wrapped in paper.
‘Help yourself,’ he said.
Adamsberg took a lump out, unwrapped it and gave it to the dog. At least that was one minor victory.
‘Do you always cart around a pocketful of sugar?’
‘So what if I do?’ muttered Blériot.
Adamsberg sensed that the question had been far too direct and had touched a nerve with Blériot. Perhaps he suffered from diabetes, causing those sudden drops in blood sugar level which made you sweat and stumble and collapse – like a wet rag indeed. Perhaps Blériot was a horse lover. Perhaps he put sugar lumps in his enemies’ petrol tanks. Or dipped sugar in his morning Calvados.
‘Can you give me a lift to the hospital, brigadier? I need to see the doctor before he leaves.’
‘They say he’s brung Madame Léo up from the depths, like a fish off of a riverbed,’ said Blériot, getting back into the car as Fleg jumped in the back. ‘It’s like one day, I got this old brown trout from out the Touques. I just picked her up in my hand. Must have knocked herself out on a rock or something. What it was though, I couldn’t bring myself to eat her. Dunno why, I just put her back.’
‘What are we doing about Mortembot?’
‘Oh, that one, wimp like he is, he’ll be in the gendarmerie overnight. He can stay till two tomorrow afternoon, that’s his rights. After that, I dunno what’s going to happen. Bet he wishes he hadn’t killed his mother now. He’d have been all right with her around, tough old bird she was, wouldn’t take no nonsense. If he’d just have kept his hands off her, Hellequin wouldn’t’ve got the army after him.’
‘Do you believe in the army, brigadier?’
‘No, no, course not,’ muttered Blériot, ‘just saying what people say, that’s all.’
‘These teenagers who go on to the path at night, does that happen much?’
‘Yes. Stupid little perishers, they don’t dare run away neither.’
‘Who tells them what to do?’
‘These other daft kids, only older ones. Round here, it’s like the thing to do. You got to spend a night in Bonneval, or you got no balls. Simple as that. Did it myself when I was a lad of fifteen. Tell you what though, at that age, you don’t feel very brave. And you can’t light a fire neither, that’s another of their daft rules.’
‘The ones who’ve been there this year, would you know their names?’
‘Not this year or any other year. Nobody boasts about it after. Because the gang’s waiting for you at the end of it, and they want to see if you’ve pissed your pants. Or worse. So none of them is going to blab. It’s like a sect, commissaire. It’s secret.’
‘Do girls have to do it?’
‘Between ourselves, sir, girls are a lot less stupid than lads for that kind of thing. They’re not going to scare themselves to death for no point. No, course not, they don’t do it.’
* * *
Dr Hellebaud was finishing a light snack in the room placed at his disposal. He was chatting away to two nurses and Dr Turbot, now completely won over and looking relaxed and affable.
‘Now, mon ami,’ Hellebaud said, greeting Adamsberg, ‘you find me having a little afternoon tea before I leave.’
‘How is she?’
‘I did a second treatment, just to check, and I’m quite satisfied everything seems to be in the right place. Unless I’m mistaken, the vital functions will now gradually return, day after day. You should see a real difference in four days, then she’ll go into a consolidation phase. But look here, Adamsberg, none of your police-type questioning, what did you see, who was it, what happened? – all that. She isn’t capable of facing this memory yet. If you try to force her back there, it would destroy all our progress.’
‘I’ll see to that personally, Dr Hellebaud,’ said Turbot obsequiously. ‘Her room will be locked and no one will go in without my permission. No one will speak to her either without my being there.’
‘I’ll count on you, my dear colleague. Adamsberg, if you can arrange another outing for me, I ought to see her again in two weeks. It’s been delightful.’
‘Well, I have to thank you, Hellebaud, really.’
‘Come, come, mon ami, I’m just doing my job. By the way, what about your so-called bubble of electricity? Shall we deal with that now? René,’ he said, turning to the chief warder, ‘can we have five minutes? That’s all I need with the commissaire. He’s abnormally asymptomatic.’
‘All right,’ said René, checking the clock. ‘But we’ve got to be away by six, doctor, no later.’
‘I won’t need that long.’
The doctor smiled, patted his lips with his paper napkin and took Adamsberg into the corridor, followed by two warders.
‘You don’t need to lie down, just sit on this chair, that’ll do. Take off your shoes. Now where is this famous bubble? On the back of your neck?’
The doctor worked for a few minutes on the commissaire’s skull, neck and feet, and spent some time on his eyes and cheekbones.
‘As odd as ever, mon ami,’ he said at last, gesturing to him to put his shoes back on. ‘We’d only have to sever a few ties linking you to the earth for you to drift up to the clouds, without even having an ideal. Like a balloon. Watch out, Adamsberg, I’ve already warned you about that. Yes, real life is despicable and mediocre, a pile of shit in fact, we can agree about that. But we’re obliged to wade through it, mon ami. Obliged. Luckily, you’re also a fairly simple soul and part of you is held to earth, like a bull with its hoof in the mud. That’s your good fortune and I’ve consolidated it on the occipital condyle and the cheekbone.
‘What about the bubble?’
‘The bubble came physiologically from a zone compressed between your vertebra C1, which was locked, and C2. Somatically, it was created by a major guilt episode.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt guilt.’
‘If not, you’re a lucky exception. But I would say – and you know very well how closely I was involved with this resurrection – that the impact on your life of a previously unknown son, unbalanced by your absence, indeed debilitated by your negligence, could generate a whole truckload of guilt. Hence this reaction between your vertebrae. I have to go now, mon ami. We may meet again in a fortnight, if the judge will sign another laissez-passer. Did you know that Varnier was totally corrupt, rotten to the core?’
‘Yes, it’s becaus
e of that we could get you here.’
‘Good luck, mon ami,’ said the doctor, shaking hands. ‘It would give me pleasure if you were to visit me at Fleury.’
He referred to ‘Fleury’ as if to his country residence, as if he were simply inviting a friend to spend an afternoon at his rural manor, rather than a prison. Adamsberg watched him leave, with a feeling of esteem, very rare for him and no doubt the instant effect of the treatment he had just received.
Before Dr Turbot locked the door, the commissaire was able to slip into Léo’s room, touch her now warm cheeks and stroke her hair. He thought about, but immediately rejected, mentioning the sugar wrappers.
‘Hello, Léo, it’s me. Fleg has been to see his girlfriend at the farm. He’s happy now.’
XXXII
In the vestibule of a rather gloomy hotel on the outskirts of Granada, Zerk and Mo logged off the ancient computer they had consulted, and strolled with a deliberately casual air towards the stairs. You never think about the way you’re walking unless you think you’re being watched, whether by the police or by a lover. And then nothing is more difficult than to imitate the natural walk one has suddenly lost. They had agreed not to use the lift, a place where hotel guests might, for want of anything else to do, observe them more closely.