by Fred Vargas
Hippolyte arrived first and sat on the edge of the well, hands in pockets.
‘Tough and self-confident, eh?’ Veyrenc murmured.
‘Watch out by the dovecote, that’s the way Émeri will arrive.’
Three minutes later, the capitaine turned up, walking in his usual very upright way, his uniform buttoned up, but his footsteps a little hesitant.
‘That’s the problem,’ whispered Adamsberg. ‘He’s more worried.’
‘Could give him the advantage.’
The two men started to talk to each other, but their words were inaudible from the barn. They were standing less than a metre apart, looking suspicious and aggressive. Hippolyte was talking more than Émeri. And more rapidly, with aggressive intonations. Adamsberg looked anxiously at Retancourt, who was still leaning on the jamb, not having modified her stance one iota. That wasn’t entirely reassuring, since Retancourt was capable of going to sleep standing up, like a horse.
Hippolyte’s laugh rang out in the night, a harsh and unkind laugh. He tapped Émeri on the back, but it was not a friendly gesture. Then he leaned over the coping of the well, stretching out an arm, as if to point to something. Émeri raised his voice, shouting something like ‘Stupid bugger’. And also leaned over.
‘Watch out,’ whispered Adamsberg.
The move was more expert and faster than he had anticipated – one man passing his arm under his opponent’s legs and sweeping him off his feet – and his own reaction slower than he had hoped. He took off a good second behind Veyrenc, who had hurled himself into motion. Retancourt had already reached the well, while he was still three metres away. With a technique peculiar to herself, Retancourt had thrown Émeri to the ground, and was sitting astride him, keeping his arms pinned to the ground, and implacably blocking his ribcage as he groaned under her weight. Hippolyte was getting up, breathing heavily, his knuckles grazed by the stones he had been flung against.
‘Close thing,’ he said.
‘You weren’t in danger,’ said Adamsberg, pointing to Retancourt.
He caught the capitaine’s wrists, and handcuffed them behind his back, while Veyrenc attached his legs.
‘Don’t try to move, Émeri. Violette could crush you like a woodlouse, believe me. Like a land shrimp.’
Adamsberg, sweating, and his heart beating fast, called Blériot on his mobile, as Retancourt got up, sat on the coping and lit a cigarette as calmly as if she had just got back from the shops. Veyrenc was pacing up and down swinging his arms, getting rid of the tension. From a distance, his outline faded from view, and only the gleam of his auburn locks shone out.
‘Come and join us at the old Oison Well, Blériot,’ said Adamsberg. ‘We’ve got him.’
‘Got who?’ said Blériot, who had only answered after about ten rings and then sounded only half awake.
‘The Ordebec murderer.’
‘But Valleray…?’
‘It wasn’t Valleray. Hurry up, brigadier.’
‘Where to? Are you in Paris?’
‘The Oison Well isn’t in Paris, Blériot. Wake up!’
‘But who is it?’ asked Blériot, after clearing his throat.
‘It’s Émeri. I’m really sorry, brigadier.’
And he really was. He had worked with this man, they’d walked, drunk and eaten together, they’d toasted victory round his table. That day – only yesterday in fact, as Adamsberg recalled – Émeri had been convivial, chatty, charming. He had killed four men, pushed Danglard on to the rails and knocked Léo’s head on the floor. Old Léo who had saved him from the frozen pond. Yesterday, Émeri had raised his glass to the memory of his ancestor, he’d been confident: they’d identified a culprit, even if he wasn’t the one expected. His work wasn’t over yet: there were two more deaths to be arranged, three if Léo should regain her powers of speech. But things were going well. Four deaths had been accomplished. Two attempts had been thwarted, true, but three others remained to be seen to: well, he had his plan. Seven deaths, a big total for a proud soldier. Adamsberg would soon be on his way back to Paris, convinced that the culprit was Denis de Valleray: case closed, field of battle wide open.
Adamsberg sat down cross-legged on the ground beside him. Émeri, eyes directed up at the sky, was composing his features into those of a combatant who does not flinch before the enemy.
‘Eylau,’ said Adamsberg. ‘One of your ancestor’s most famous victories and one of your favourites. You know the strategy by heart, you’ll talk about it to anyone, whether they want to listen or not. That’s what Léo said: “Eylau”. Not “Hello”. “Eylau, Fleg, sugar.” You were the one she was pointing to.’
‘You’re making the biggest mistake of your life, Adamsberg,’ said Émeri in a hoarse voice.
‘Three of us were witnesses. You tried to tip Hippo into the well.’
‘Because he’s a murderer, a devil! I always told you he was. He threatened me, and I defended myself.’
‘He didn’t threaten you, he said he knew you were guilty.’
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘Yes, he did, Émeri. I told him what to say to you. He had to say he’d seen a body in the well, and call you to come and see for yourself. You were anxious. Why was he calling you to meet him at night? What was this story about a body in the well? So you came.’
‘Of course I bloody came. If there was a corpse somewhere, it was my duty to turn up. Whatever the time.’
‘But there was no corpse. Just Hippo, who accused you of murder.’
‘On the basis of no evidence whatsoever,’ said Émeri.
‘Exactly. Since the beginning of the whole thing, there’s been no evidence, no clues. Not for Herbier, not for Léo, Glayeux, Mortembot, Danglard, Valleray. Six victims, four deaths and not a single clue. That’s rare, a murderer who comes and goes like a ghost. Or like a cop. Because who better than a cop to get rid of any traces? You handled the technical side of things, you passed me the results. Sum total: not a thing, not a fingerprint, not a single clue.’
‘There aren’t any clues, Adamsberg.’
‘I can well believe you’ve destroyed them all. But there’s still the sugar.’
* * *
Blériot parked his car near the dovecote, and came running up, flashlight in hand, his great belly before him. He looked down at his capitaine lying handcuffed on the ground, glanced in alarm and anger at Adamsberg, but held himself back from speaking. He didn’t know whether he should say anything, he didn’t know now who was a friend and who an enemy.
‘Brigadier, get me away from these idiots,’ Émeri commanded. ‘Hippo called me out here, pretending there was a body in the well, he threatened me and I had to defend myself.’
‘By trying to push me into the well,’ said Hippo.
‘I didn’t have a gun on me,’ said Émeri. ‘I’d have raised the alarm at once to get you out. Even if devils like you absolutely deserve to die like that, down in the bowels of the earth.’
Blériot looked from Émeri to Adamsberg, still unable to choose his camp.
‘Brigadier,’ said Adamsberg, getting to his feet, ‘you don’t take sugar in your coffee, do you? So all that sugar you keep in your pockets is for your capitaine, isn’t it? Not for you.’
‘I always have some sugar on me,’ said Blériot in a tight, neutral voice.
‘To give him some when he has an attack. When his legs fail him and he starts shaking and sweating?’
‘We’re not supposed to mention it.’
‘Why is it you that has to cart all these lumps of sugar around? Is it so that his uniform pockets won’t bulge? Or because he’s ashamed of it?’
‘Well, both, commissaire. But we’re not supposed to mention it.’
‘And the lumps of sugar, they always have to be wrapped in paper?’
‘Yes, sir, it’s more hygienic. They can stay in my pockets weeks without him needing any.’
‘Your sugar papers, Blériot, are the same ones that I found on the Chemin de Bonneval, by t
he fallen tree trunk. Émeri had a crisis right there. He sat down and ate six lumps and left the wrappers on the ground. And then Léo found them. After Herbier’s murder. Because ten days earlier, they weren’t there. Léo knows everything. She puts two and two together, details like butterfly wings. Léo knows that there are times when Émeri needs to eat several sugar lumps to recover his normal state. But what was Émeri doing on the Chemin de Bonneval? Well, he came to tell her why, that is, he came to kill her.’
‘But that’s impossible, sir, the capitaine never carries sugar around himself, he asks me for it.’
‘Yes, but that night, Blériot, he went alone to the chapel, and he took some with him. Because he knows he’s got this problem. Strong emotion and a sudden discharge of energy might set off a diabetic crisis. He didn’t want to risk fainting after killing Herbier. How does he tear the paper? From the side? From the middle? What does he do next? He crumples them into a ball? Or leaves them as they are? Or folds them? We all have our little ways of dealing with the wrappers. But you screw them up into a tiny little ball and put them in your pocket.’
‘So as not to leave litter.’
‘And the capitaine?’
‘He opens them from the middle and undoes three sides.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘He just leaves them like that.’
‘Precisely, Blériot. And Léo surely knew that. I’m not going to ask you to arrest your capitaine. Veyrenc and I will put him in the back of the car. You get in the front. And all I’ll ask you to do is drive us to the gendarmerie.’
LIII
Adamsberg had removed the handcuffs and freed Émeri’s legs once they were inside the interview room. He had alerted Commandant Bourlant at Lisieux. Blériot had been sent to Léo’s cellar to fetch the sugar wrappers.
‘Unwise to leave his hands free,’ said Retancourt, in as neutral a tone as possible. ‘Remember how Mo got away. Suspects try to escape at the drop of a hat, you know.’
Adamsberg met Retancourt’s eyes and found there without any doubt a glint of provocative irony. Like Danglard, Retancourt had understood how Mo escaped, but had kept her counsel. And yet nothing should have displeased her more than that unorthodox manoeuvre of uncertain result.
‘But this time, you’re here, Retancourt,’ said Adamsberg with a smile. ‘So there’s no danger. We’re waiting for Bourlant,’ he said, turning to Émeri. ‘I’m not authorised to question you in this gendarmerie where you’re still an officer. The station doesn’t have a chief, so Bourlant will transfer you to Lisieux.’
‘That’s fine by me, Adamsberg. At least Bourlant respects principles based on the facts. Everyone knows that you just shovel clouds, and your opinion carries no weight in any police force, whether gendarmes or regular cops. I hope you realise that?’
‘Was that why you were so insistent that I come to Ordebec? Or because you thought I’d be easier to deal with than your colleague, who wouldn’t have let you get near the inquiry?’
‘Because you’re nothing, Adamsberg. Wind, clouds, an illiterate mass of ectoplasm, incapable of the slightest reasoning.’
‘You’re well informed.’
‘Obviously. It was my investigation, and I had no intention of letting some super-efficient cop take over. As soon as I set eyes on you, I realised that what they say about you is true. That I’d be able to have my hands free, while you were wandering around in the mist. You got precisely nowhere, Adamsberg, you did fuck all, and everyone can testify to that. Including the press. All you achieved was to stop me arresting that bastard Hippo Vendermot. And why are you protecting him? Do you even know that? So that nobody lays a hand on his sister. You’re useless and obsessed. All you’ve done while you were in Ordebec is stare at her tits and fuss over your fucking pigeon. Not to mention that the police disciplinary team came down here to do a search. Think I didn’t know about that? So what were you doing here, Adamsberg?’
‘Picking up sugar wrappers.’
Émeri opened his mouth, then breathed in and said nothing. Adamsberg sensed that what he was about to say was: ‘Poor fool, the sugar wrappers won’t do you any good.’
Right, that meant he wouldn’t find any fingerprints on them. Just some pieces of paper, unidentified.
‘You think you can convince a jury with your scraps of paper?’
‘You’re forgetting something, Émeri. Whoever tried to kill Danglard had also killed those other people.’
‘Obviously.’
‘A tough man, a good runner. You said, like I did, that Denis de Valleray had committed the murders and that therefore it must have been him who gave Danglard the rendezvous at Cérenay. It’s in your first report.’
‘Naturally.’
‘And that he killed himself when the secretary of that club came and informed him about some kind of inquiry.’
‘Not a club. The Compagnie de la Marche.’
‘Whatever, it doesn’t impress me. My own ancestor was a conscript in your famous Napoleonic Wars, and he died aged twenty, in case you’re interested. At Eylau, if you want to know why that name stuck in my memory. His legs caught fast in the mud of the battlefield, while your forefather was holding a victory parade.’
‘The family curse, eh?’ said Émeri with a smile, holding his back straighter than ever, and resting a confident arm on the back of the chair. ‘You’ll have no better luck than your forefather, Adamsberg. You’re already over your knees in mud.’
‘Denis killed himself, you wrote, because he knew he was about to be accused. Of the murders of Herbier, Glayeux and Mortembot, and the attempted murder of Danglard and Léo.’
‘Of course. You didn’t see the final report from the lab. He’d taken enough anxiolytics and neuroleptics to kill a horse and he had almost five grams of alcohol in his blood.’
‘Could be, perfectly well. It’s quite easy to push all that down the throat of a man who’s been knocked half conscious. You pull up his head and the swallowing reflex follows. But you have to ask this question, Émeri: why on earth would Denis have wanted to kill Danglard?’
‘Come on, shoveller, you told me yourself. Because Danglard had found out the truth about the Vendermot children. Because of the birthmark like an insect.’
‘A crustacean.’
‘What the hell does that matter?’ said Émeri exasperatedly.
‘Yes, I did say that to you myself, and I was wrong. Because you tell me, how did Denis de Valleray find out so soon that Danglard had seen the crustacean? And realised what that meant? I only heard it myself the night Danglard left.’
‘Rumour, gossip.’
‘That’s what I thought too. But I called Danglard and he hadn’t told anyone else except Veyrenc. The man who slipped the note in his pocket did so very soon after the count had his attack in the hospital. The only people who could have seen Danglard putting Lina’s shawl back on her shoulders, and also known that Danglard had seen the count with his shirt off, the only people who could have seen Danglard stare in surprise at the purple birthmark, were: the count, Dr Turbot, the nurse, the prison warders, Dr Hellebaud, Lina and you. Rule out the warders and Hellebaud, they were far away. Rule out the nurse, who hadn’t seen Lina’s birthmark, and rule out Lina, who hadn’t seen the count’s own birthmark.’
‘She saw it that day.’
‘No, she was at the far end of the corridor, as Danglard confirmed. So Denis de Valleray couldn’t possibly know that the commandant had worked out the origins of his half-brother and – sister. So he had no motive to try and push him under the Caen-Paris express. You did. Who else would?’
‘Turbot. He operated on Hippo’s fingers when he was a boy.’
‘Turbot wasn’t in the little crowd in front of Glayeux’s house. And in any case, Valleray’s descendants were of no interest to him.’
‘Lina could have seen, never mind what your commandant says.’
‘But she wasn’t at Glayeux’s house, either.’
‘Yeah, but her clay br
other was, yes, Antonin. Who’s to say she didn’t tell him?’
‘Turbot would. Lina didn’t leave the hospital until after everyone else. She was chatting to a friend at reception. You can rule her out.’
‘That leaves the count,’ Émeri declared firmly. ‘He didn’t want anyone to know they were his children. Not in his lifetime anyway.’
‘But he wasn’t at Glayeux’s house, he was still under observation at the hospital. You’re the only one who could have both seen and understood, and you were the only one who could have put the note in his pocket. Probably when he went into Glayeux’s house.’
‘What the fuck do I care if the count is the father of those devil children? I’m not in the Valleray family. You want to look at my back? Just find one thing that links me to the death of all those lowlifes.’
‘Easy, Émeri. Terror. And the need to eliminate the cause of the terror. You’ve always been lacking in courage and mortified not to be as brave as your ancestor. It was your bad luck that they gave you his name.’
‘Terror,’ said Émeri, spreading his hands wide. ‘For the love of god, what am I supposed to be terrified of? That drip Mortembot, who died with his pants down?’
‘No, Hippolyte Vendermot. In your eyes he is the cause of all your failures. For thirty-two years. The thought of ending up like Régis haunts you, you wanted to destroy the man who cursed you when you were both kids. Because you really did believe in the curse. You fell off your bike, and nearly died after he cursed you. You didn’t tell me about that. Am I wrong?’
‘Why should I tell you everything about my childhood? Every kid in the world falls off a bike and gets hurt. Didn’t you?’