by Fred Vargas
‘Maybe going on the Internet wasn’t so bright,’ said Mo, closing the door of their room.
‘Cool it, Mo. Nothing’s more suspicious than someone looking tense. At least we found what we were after.’
‘It wouldn’t be a good idea either to phone the cafe in Ordebec, what’s it called?’
‘The Running Boar. No, I agree. We’ve got the number just for emergencies. But now we know the name of the games shop with the diabolos, Strung Out. We’ll easily get the name of the guy who runs it and if he has kids. I’m guessing a boy, twelve to sixteen.’
‘Yeah, gotta be a boy,’ agreed Mo. ‘I don’t think a girl would go tying a pigeon’s legs together.’
‘Or torch cars either.’
Mo sat on his bed, stretched his legs and tried to take deep slow breaths. He had the feeling he had a second heart beating constantly in his stomach. Adamsberg had explained to him in the house with the cows that it was probably little bubbles of electricity here and there. He put a hand on his stomach to try and make them go away, then started leafing through a French newspaper from the previous day.
‘Still,’ Zerk went on, ‘a girl might watch the kid tying up the pigeon, and think it was funny, or watch the guy torching the car, come to that. Anything there about Ordebec?’
‘No. But I bet your dad’s got better things to do than worry about the kid from the diabolo shop.’
‘No, not really. My guess is the boy who likes torturing pigeons, and the Ordebec murderer, and whoever burnt Clermont-Brasseur, all of them are going round in his head, without him really seeing much difference between them.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t know him.’
‘Yeah, but I’m starting to feel like I’m like him. Mo, I think we better have a regular time to leave in the mornings, starting tomorrow, say 8.50. Every day the same. Give the impression we’ve got some regular job to go to. If we’re still here, that is.’
‘Ah. Did you notice him too?’ said Mo, still rubbing his stomach.
‘The guy looking across at us downstairs?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He did kind of stare, didn’t he?’
‘Yeah. Make you think of anything?’
‘A cop, right?’
Zerk opened the window, to smoke near the fresh air. From their room, all you could see was a little courtyard, a lot of waterpipes, clothes lines and zinc roofs. He threw his fag end out of the window, and watched it fall into the shadows.
‘I think we’d better get out of here right now,’ he said.
XXXIII
Émeri had proudly opened the double doors into his dining room, eagerly awaiting the expressions on his guests’ faces. Adamsberg looked surprised but indifferent (uneducated, Émeri thought) but Veyrenc’s open-mouthed astonishment and the admiring comments made by Danglard pleased him enough to wipe away the last traces of the argument earlier that day. In reality, although Danglard appreciated the quality of the furniture, he found this recreation of an Empire salon over-meticulous and rather excessive.
‘What a marvellous room, capitaine,’ he concluded, however, accepting an aperitif, since he had far better manners than either of his two Pyrenean colleagues. For that reason, it was Danglard who did most of the talking over dinner, with that sincere show of interest that he was so good at faking, and for which Adamsberg was always grateful to him. Especially since the quantity of wine dispensed, from period carafes engraved with the arms of the Prince of Eckmülh, was sufficiently generous to prevent the commandant having any fear that it would run out. Encouraged by Danglard, who was on equally brilliant form whether talking about the county of Ordebec or the battles fought by Marshal Davout, Émeri drank a good deal and let himself go, sounding familiar and even sentimental. It seemed to Adamsberg that the marshal’s cloak, and the posture it forced upon his descendant, was gradually slipping from his shoulders and falling to the ground.
At the same time, however, Danglard’s expression was somehow altered. Adamsberg knew him well enough to realise that the hint of amusement in his eyes was not just the effect of the alcohol. It was a slightly mischievous look, as if the commandant had something up his sleeve but wasn’t going to reveal it. And, Adamsberg thought, that something might be aimed at Lieutenant Veyrenc, towards whom Danglard was being almost friendly, for once, which was a potential danger sign. The little something up his sleeve was making him smile at a man he was going to pull a trick on later.
The events of Ordebec, which had been temporarily put aside during the chat about imperial times, finally surfaced when they reached the after-dinner Calvados.
‘What are you going to do about Mortembot, Émeri?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘If your men can back us up, we could have a team of six or seven on watch during the week. Could you get them here?’
‘I’ve got one lieutenant who’s worth ten men, but she’s gone scuba-diving. I’d rather call on a couple of normal men.’
‘Could your son give us a hand?’
‘No, I’m not exposing my son to danger, Émeri. He’s not got the training and he can’t handle a gun. Anyway, he’s gone off on his travels.’
‘I thought he was doing a photo shoot about rotten leaves.’
‘Yes, he was, but this girl phoned him from Italy and he went like a shot. You know what they’re like.’
‘Yes,’ said Émeri, leaning back in his chair, as far as its upright Empire form allowed him. ‘I used to play the field myself, then I met my wife, she’s from these parts. When she followed me to Lyon, she was already getting bored, but I still loved her. I thought getting a posting back to Ordebec would please her. Go back home, meet up with old friends. So I moved heaven and earth to get the job here. And then what did she do, but stay in Lyon? I did everything wrong my first two years here. I did the rounds of the red-light district in Lisieux, but that was no fun. I’m not like my illustrious ancestor, my friends, if I can so call you. I lost every fight I took on, apart from a few arrests any fool could have made.’
‘I don’t know if winning and losing are the right words for judging one’s life,’ said Veyrenc. ‘That is, I don’t really think you should judge your life at all. We’re all forced to do it, but it’s a crime.’
‘Worse than a crime, a blunder,’ said Danglard, automatically quoting the famous reply Fouché is supposed to have made to the Emperor about the murder of the Duc d’Enghien.
‘Ah yes, well said,’ said Émeri, looking reinvigorated. He got up rather unsteadily to pour out a second round of Calvados. ‘We found the axe,’ he announced without transition. ‘Chucked over the wall of Glayeux’s garden, and lying in the field behind.’
‘If one of the Vendermots killed him,’ said Adamsberg, ‘do you really think they’d have used their own axe? And anyway, if they did, the easiest thing to do would be to take it back home, wouldn’t it?’
‘You could read it either way, Adamsberg, like I said. It could make them look innocent, clever way of doing so.’
‘Not as clever as they are, though.’
‘You like them, don’t you?’
‘I’ve got nothing serious against them, so far anyway.’
‘But you do like them.’
Émeri left the room for a few moments and returned with an old school photograph which he put on Adamsberg’s knee.
‘Take a look at this,’ he said. ‘We’re all between eight and ten years old. Hippo was already very big, he’s third from the left in the back row. He’s still got his six fingers on each hand. You know the ghastly story?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m in the row in front of him, the only one not smiling. So, you see, I’ve known him a long time. Well, I can tell you, Hippo was a terror. Not the nice guy he likes to show to you. We were very wary of him, even me, and I was two years older.’
‘Did he beat people up?’
‘Didn’t need to. He had a more powerful weapon. With his six fingers, he said he was an arm of the devil, and he could make
all kinds of curses fall on us if we were nasty to him.’
‘And the kids were nasty to him?’
‘Yes, at first. You can imagine how a school playground reacts to a boy with six fingers. When he was five or six, he was teased and persecuted mercilessly. It’s true. There was one gang that really went for him; the leader was a boy called Régis Vernet. One time, he put tacks on Hippo’s chair and Hippo sat on them. When he stood up he was bleeding, six holes in his backside, and everyone was laughing. Another time he was tied to a tree and everyone pissed on him. But one day Hippo got his revenge.’
‘He turned his six fingers on the lot of you.’
‘Exactly. His first victim was the nastiest one, Régis. Hippo threatened him, then he held out his two hands, with this weird expression. And you can believe me or not, but five days later, Régis was knocked down by a Parisian’s car and lost both legs. Horrible. In school, we knew it wasn’t the driver’s fault, it was the curse of Hippo. And he didn’t deny it. On the contrary, he said the next person who crossed him they’d lose their arms and their legs, and their balls, come to that. So then everything went into reverse and we were all scared stiff. Later on, Hippo stopped all that nonsense. But I can assure you that even today, believe it or not, nobody likes to cross him in any way. Not him, not his family.’
‘Is this Régis still around. Can we see him?’
‘He’s dead. I’m not making this up, Adamsberg, he had terrible luck all his life: illness, couldn’t hold down a job, family all died, he had no money. He drowned himself in the Touques three years ago. He was only thirty-six. All of us who were at school with him knew that it was Hippo’s revenge all the time. Hippo had said so. He said if he decided to point his fingers at you, well, you were going to have bad luck all your life.’
‘So what do you think about that today?’
‘Luckily for me, I left the region when I was eleven, and I could forget all about it. If you ask Émeri the cop, he’ll tell you this kind of story is a load of rubbish. But if you were to ask Émeri the schoolkid, I find myself thinking that Régis did have a curse on him. Let’s say that Hippo, as a boy, defended himself the only way he could. He was treated as if he was a limb of Satan, a misbegotten monster from hell, so he started living up to it. But he went on playing up spectacularly, even after his fingers were chopped off. So, whatever you think of the story, I can tell you he may not be a servant of the devil, but he’s very tough, and possibly dangerous. He suffered with that father worse than anyone can imagine. When he set his dog on his father, he really meant to kill him. And I wouldn’t be sure he’s over it yet. How could the Vendermots become good little angels, after all they’ve been through?’
‘Do you lump Antonin in with the others?’
‘Yes. I don’t think a baby who’s had every bone in his body broken can ever develop a normal nature, do you? People think Antonin would be too scared of shattering again to actually do anything. But he might be able to pull a trigger. Or even lift up an axe, I don’t know.’
‘He says not.’
‘But he’d blindly back up everything that Hippo does. It’s plausible that his visit today, about the axe, was on his brother’s orders. Same goes for Martin, the one who eats like a wild animal and always shadows his big brother.’
‘That leaves Lina.’
‘Who sees Hellequin’s ghostly cavalcade, and isn’t any saner than her brothers. Or who pretends to see it, Adamsberg. The main thing is to point the finger at future victims, and get everyone in a panic, like Hippo with his hands. And then Hippo might kill these victims, while the rest of the family provides him with all the alibis he needs. That way they’d be able to spread terror through Ordebec and they’d look like avengers, because the victims so far were real bastards, however you look at it. But I’m more inclined to think Lina’s simply seeing things. That started it all off. And her brothers have taken the vision literally and decided to follow it through. They believe it. Because Lina’s first vision happened about the same time as the father’s death. Before or after, I’m not sure which.’
‘Two days later. She told me.’
‘She’ll tell anyone who’ll listen. You saw how she didn’t turn a hair?’
‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg, seeing again Lina bringing down the side of her hand on the table. ‘But why would Lina keep quiet about the fourth victim?’
‘Either she really didn’t see him, or else they’re keeping that secret to get the locals scared stiff. They’re smart in that family. A terrifying threat like this would bring all the rats out of their holes. And that amuses them, it makes them feel good, and they’d think it was justice being done. Like the death of their father.’
‘You’re probably right, Émeri. Unless, that is, someone is exploiting the apparent guilt of the Vendermots to commit murders. That someone can kill with impunity because he can be sure the townspeople will accuse the so-called family from hell.’
‘But what motive could he have?’
‘Terror of the Ghost Riders. You said yourself that plenty of people in Ordebec believe in them, didn’t you, and some people are so scared they won’t even pronounce their name. Think about it, Émeri. We could make a list of them all.’
‘Too many for that!’ said Émeri, shaking his head.
* * *
Adamsberg walked home in silence, Veyrenc and Danglard strolling calmly along in front of him. The clouds in the west had still not come to anything and the night was overpoweringly hot. From time to time, Danglard passed some remark to Veyrenc, which was another surprising thing, to put alongside that cunning little air of concealing a secret.
Émeri’s accusations against the Vendermots troubled Adamsberg. With the details about Hippo’s childhood he had heard, they were credible. It would be hard to see how any wisdom or grace could have blessed the Vendermot children allowing them to escape from their anger and desire for vengeance. But a piece of grit was also whirling round inside his random thoughts. Old Léo. He couldn’t see any of the four Vendermots being capable of hitting her or pushing her to the ground. Even if one of them had approached her, Adamsberg supposed that Hippo – for the sake of argument – would have found a less brutal way of silencing the old woman who had been good to him throughout his childhood.
He went to the cellar before going to bed and hid the sugar wrappings and the photos in an empty cider keg. Then he sent a message to the squad to ask for two more men by 2 p.m. Estalère and Justin would be best, since both of them were immune to the boredom of keeping a watch over someone, the former because of his ‘cheerful nature’ as some called it (what they meant was ‘not very bright’), and the other because patience was a feature of his perfectionism. Mortembot’s house, he’d gathered, shouldn’t be too difficult to protect. It had two windows in front and two at the back, all with shutters. The only weak spot was the little window of the lavatory on the side, without shutters but barred. The murderer would have to come very close and break the glass before aiming through a narrow space, and that would be impossible with two men patrolling the house. Anyway, if it was supposed to be in the tradition of killings by Lord Hellequin, bullets wouldn’t be used. Axe, sword, club, stone, strangling, any medieval method of killing could only be carried out inside the house. Except that Herbier had been killed with a sawn-off shotgun and that sounded a false note.
Adamsberg closed the cellar door and walked across the large courtyard. The lights in the house were out. Veyrenc and Danglard were already asleep. With his fists, Adamsberg made an even bigger hollow in his woollen mattress and curled up in it.
XXXIV
Zerk and Mo left by an emergency exit on to the hotel fire escape, and reached the street without meeting anyone.
‘Now where?’ asked Mo, getting into the car.
‘We’ll find some little village in the south, where it’s easy to cross to North Africa. Lots of boats with captains ready to do a deal to take us over.’
‘You think we’ll have to cross?’
‘We’ll have to see.’
‘Zerk, I saw what you put in your bag.’
‘The gun?’
‘Yeah,’ said Mo, looking unhappy.
‘When we stopped in the Pyrenees, when you were asleep, I was only a kilometre from my home village. It just took me twenty minutes to go and get my grandad’s gun.’
‘You’re crazy, man, what the fuck you want a revolver for?’
‘It’s an old pistol, 1935A, 7.7mm. From 1940, but it works.’
‘And bullets, you got bullets too?’
‘Yeah, boxful.’
‘Shit, Zerk, what for?’
‘Cos I know how to use it.’
‘But fuck, man, you’re not going to shoot at a cop?’
‘No, but we could really need to get across, right?’
‘I thought you were the quiet type. Not a nutter.’
‘I am the quiet type. My dad got us out of the trap but we’ve got to use our wits not to get back in it.’
‘So we go to Africa right away?’
‘We’ll ask around the boats. Mo, if they find you, my dad’s in deep, deep shit. I may not know him that well, but I don’t like that idea.’
XXXV
Veyrenc wasn’t asleep. he was standing up, keeping watch from his window. Danglard had been behaving oddly all evening: anticipating some amusement, a victory over someone: he was planning some kind of coup. A professional coup, Veyrenc guessed, since the commandant wasn’t the kind of man to go round the red-light district of Lisieux, as suggested by Émeri. Or, if so, he would have said as much, without making any secret of it. The bonhomie he had shown towards Veyrenc, suppressing his usual childish jealousy, had put the latter on high alert. He imagined that Danglard was on the point of making some breakthrough in the inquiry without telling anyone, thus overtaking his colleague and scoring extra brownie points with Adamsberg. Tomorrow, he’d proudly present the commissaire with whatever he had found. Well, Veyrenc wasn’t too bothered about that. Nor was he irritated at whatever plan was disturbing the commandant’s usually calm judgement. But in an inquiry where the bodies were piling up, one shouldn’t go venturing out alone.