by Fred Vargas
‘If everyone who’s ever been murdered was still trailing around in the ether,’ Adamsberg said, ‘how many ghosts would I have on my hands in this building? Saint Clarisse, plus her seven victims. Plus the two your father knew, plus Madeleine. That makes eleven. Any more?’
‘No, no, it’s just Clarisse,’ Lucio pronounced. ‘Her victims were all too old, they didn’t come back. Unless they went to their own houses – that’s possible.’
‘OK.’
‘And the other three women, they’re different. They weren’t murdered, they were possessed. But Saint Clarisse hadn’t finished her life when the tanner beat her to death. Now do you see why the house was never demolished? Because if it had been, Clarisse would have moved somewhere else. To my house, for instance. And round here, we’d rather know exactly where she is.’
‘Right here.’
Lucio agreed with a wink. ‘And here, so long as nobody comes to disturb her, there’s no harm done.’
‘She likes the spot, you’re saying.’
‘She doesn’t even go into the garden. She just waits for her victims up there in your attic. But now she’s got company again.’
‘Me.’
‘You,’ Lucio agreed. ‘But you’re a man, so she won’t trouble you much. It’s the women she drives crazy. Don’t bring your wife here. Take my advice. Or else just sell up.’
‘No, Lucio, I like this house.’
‘Pig-headed, aren’t you. Where are you from?’
‘The Pyrenees.’
‘High mountains,’ said Lucio, with respect. ‘So it’s no good my trying to convince you.’
‘You know the Pyrenees?’
‘I was born the other side of them, hombre. In Jaca.’
‘And the bodies of the seven old women? Did they look for them when they held the trial?’
‘No, in the century before the one before, the police didn’t search the way they do now. I dare say the bodies are still under there,’ said Lucio, pointing to the garden with his stick. ‘That’s why people haven’t dug it too deeply. You wouldn’t want to disturb the devil.’
‘No, no point.’
‘You’re like Maria,’ said the old man, with a smile. ‘You think it’s funny. But I’ve seen her often, hombre. Mist, vapour, then her breath, cold as winter on the high peaks. And last week I was out taking a leak under the hazel tree in my garden one night, and I really saw her.’
Lucio drained his glass of Sauternes and scratched the spider’s bite.
‘She’s got a lot older,’ he said, almost with disgust.
‘It is a long time, after all,’ said Adamsberg.
‘Yes. Well, Sister Clarisse’s face is as wrinkled as a walnut.’
‘And where was she?’
‘On the first floor. She was walking up and down in the upstairs room.’
‘That’s going to be my study.’
‘And where will you sleep?’
‘The room next to it.’
‘You’re not easily scared, are you?’ said Lucio, getting to his feet. ‘I hope you don’t think I was too blunt? Maria thinks I’m wrong to come in and tell you all this straight off.’
‘No, not at all,’ said Adamsberg, who had unexpectedly acquired seven corpses in the garden and a ghost with a face like a walnut.
‘Good. Well, perhaps you’ll manage to calm her down. Though they say that only a very old man can get the better of her now. But that’s just fancy. You don’t want to believe everything you hear.’
Left to himself, Adamsberg drank the dregs of his lukewarm coffee. Then he looked up at the ceiling, and listened.
III
AFTER A PEACEFUL NIGHT SPENT IN THE SILENT COMPANY OF SAINT CLARISSE, Commissaire Adamsberg pushed open the door of the Medico-Legal Institute, which housed the pathology lab. Nine days earlier, at Porte de la Chapelle, in northern Paris, two men had been found a few hundred metres apart, each with his throat cut. According to the local police inspector, they were both small-time crooks, who’d been dealing drugs in the Flea Market. Adamsberg was keen to see them again, since Commissaire Mortier from the Drug Squad wanted to take over the investigation.
‘Two lowlifes who got their throats cut at La Chapelle? They’re on my patch, Adamsberg,’ Mortier had declared. ‘And one of them’s black, what’s more. Just hand them over. What the devil are you waiting for?’
‘I’m waiting to find out why they’ve got earth under their fingernails.’
‘Because they didn’t take a bath too often.’
‘Because they’d been digging somewhere. And if there’s digging going on, it’s a matter for the Crime Squad.’
‘Have you never seen these characters hide drugs in window boxes? You’re wasting your time, Adamsberg.’
‘That’s OK by me. I like wasting time.’
The two bodies were stretched out, unclothed, alongside each other: one very big white man, one very big black man, one with a hairy torso, the other smooth, both harshly illuminated by the strip lighting in the morgue. With their feet neatly together and their hands at their sides, they seemed in death to have turned abruptly into docile schoolboys. In fact, Adamsberg thought, as he considered their sober appearance, the two men had led lives of classic regularity, since there’s not a great deal of originality in human existence. Their days had followed an unchanging pattern: mornings asleep, then afternoons devoted to dealing, evenings to women, and Sundays to their mothers. On the margins of society, as elsewhere, routine imposes its rules. Their brutal murder had cut abnormally short the thread of their uneventful lives.
The pathologist was watching Adamsberg as he walked round the two bodies.
‘What do you want me to do with them?’ she asked, her hand resting negligently on the black corpse’s thigh, idly patting it as if in ultimate consolation. ‘Two dealers from the wrong side of town, slashed with a knife – looks like the Drug Squad had better take care of it.’
‘Yes, they’re shouting for them.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘Me. I’m the problem. I don’t want to hand them over. And I’m hoping you’ll help me hang on to them. Find some excuse.’
‘Why?’ asked the pathologist. Her hand was still resting on the black corpse’s thigh, signifying that for the moment the man was still under her jurisdiction, in a free zone, and she alone would make any decision about sending him either to the Drug Squad or the Crime Squad.
‘They had newly dug earth under their fingernails.’
‘I expect the drugs people have their reasons too. Do they have files on these two?’
‘No, not at all. So these two are mine, full stop.’
‘They told me about you,’ said the pathologist calmly.
‘What did they tell you?’
‘That you’re sometimes on a different wavelength from everyone else. It causes trouble.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time, would it, Ariane?’
With her foot the doctor pulled over a stool. She sat down on it and crossed her legs. Twenty-three years earlier, Adamsberg had thought her a beautiful woman and, at sixty, she still was as she posed elegantly on her perch in the mortuary.
‘Gracious me!’ she said. ‘You know my name.’
‘Yes.’
‘But I don’t know you.’
The doctor lit a cigarette and thought for a few seconds.
‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I can’t say I remember you. I’m sorry.’
‘It was twenty-three years ago, and we were only in contact for a few months. I remember your surname and your first name, and indeed that we were on first-name terms.’
‘Were we now?’ she said, without enthusiasm. ‘And what were we doing to be on such familiar terms?’
‘We had an almighty quarrel.’
‘A lovers’ tiff? I’d be devastated if I’d forgotten something like that.’
‘No, it was professional.’
‘Gracious me,’ said the doctor again, frowning.
> Adamsberg inclined his head, distracted by the memories that her high-pitched voice and cutting tone brought up for him. He recognised the ambiguity which had both attracted and disconcerted the young man he had been then: her severe way of dressing combined with a mane of tousled hair, her haughty manner but familiar way of speaking, her elaborate pose but spontaneous gestures. He had never been quite sure whether he was dealing with a superior but absent-minded specialist, or a workaholic who cared nothing for appearances. He even recalled the way she said ‘Gracious me!’ at the start of a sentence, without being able to work out whether this was an expression of scorn or simply a provincial mannerism. He was not the only policeman to be wary of her. Dr Ariane Lagarde was the most eminent pathologist in France, an unrivalled forensic expert.
‘So we were on first-name terms, were we?’ she went on, letting the ash from her cigarette fall to the floor. ‘Twenty-three years ago I would have been in mid-career, but you would have been just a junior policeman.’
‘As you say, a very junior policeman.’
‘Well, you surprise me. As a rule, I’m not on familiar terms with my junior colleagues.’
‘We got on pretty well. Until a big bust-up that caused a stir in a café in Le Havre. The door slammed and we never met again. I never got to finish my beer.’
Ariane stubbed out her cigarette underfoot, then sat back on the metal stool as a smile hesitantly returned to her face.
‘The beer,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t by any chance have thrown it on the floor, would I?’
‘You did indeed.’
‘Jean-Baptiste,’ she said, detaching each syllable. ‘That young idiot Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, who thought he knew better than everyone else.’
‘Yes. That’s what you said when you smashed my glass.’
‘Jean-Baptiste,’ Ariane repeated more slowly.
The doctor slipped off her stool and put her hand on Adamsberg’s shoulder. She seemed on the point of kissing him, then put her hand back in the pocket of her overall.
‘I did like you, Jean-Baptiste. You upset the apple-cart without even noticing. And according to what people say about Commissaire Adamsberg, you haven’t changed. Now I see: that was you, you’re him.’
‘Sort of.’
Ariane leaned her elbows on the dissecting table where the white corpse lay, pushing the body aside to make more room. Like most pathologists, Ariane showed little respect for the dead. On the other hand, she investigated the enigma of their bodies with unrivalled talent, thus paying homage in her own way to the immense and singular complexity of each one. Dr Lagarde’s analyses had made the corpses of some quite ordinary mortals famous. If you passed through her hands, you had a good chance of going down in history. After your death, unfortunately.
‘It was an exceptional corpse,’ she remembered. ‘We found him in his bedroom, with a sophisticated farewell letter. A local councillor, compromised and ruined, and he had killed himself with a sword, hara-kiri style.’
‘Having drunk a lot of gin first, to give himself courage.’
‘I remember it clearly,’ said Ariane, in the mild tone of someone recalling a pleasant story. ‘A straightforward case of suicide, on the part of a subject with a history of depression and compulsion. The local council was glad the matter went no further, do you remember, Jean-Baptiste? I had put in my report, which was impeccable. You were just the junior who used to make photocopies, run errands, sort out my paperwork, though you didn’t always stick to instructions. We used to go and have a drink sometimes by the harbour. I was about to be promoted, and you were daydreaming and going nowhere. In those days, I used to put pomegranate juice in beer to make it fizz.’
‘Do you still mix crazy drinks?’
‘Yes, lots,’ said Ariane, sounding disappointed, ‘but I haven’t found the perfect mixture yet. Remember the violine? An egg whipped up in crème de menthe and Malaga.’
‘Awful drink, I never went for that one.’
‘I stopped making the violine. OK for the nerves but a bit too strong. We experimented with a lot of things in Le Havre.’
‘Except one.’
‘Gracious me.’
‘A bedroom experiment. We never tried that.’
‘No, I was married in those days, and a very devoted wife. On the other hand, we worked well together on the police reports.’
‘Until the day.’
‘Until the day a little idiot of a Jean-Baptiste got it into his head that the local councillor in Le Havre had been murdered. Why? Because you found ten dead rats in a warehouse in the port.’
‘Twelve, Ariane. Twelve rats, all slashed across the belly with a blade.’
‘All right, twelve, if you say so. And you concluded that a murderer had been testing his courage before the attack. And there was something else. You thought the wound was too horizontal. You said the councillor would have had to hold the sword at more of an angle. While he was blind drunk.’
‘And you threw my glass of beer on the floor.’
‘I had a name for that beer-grenadine mixture, for heaven’s sake.’
‘La grenaille. You had me transferred away from Le Havre, and put in your report without me: suicide.’
‘What did you know about forensics? Nothing.’
‘Nothing at all,’ Adamsberg admitted.
‘Come and have a coffee. And tell me what’s bothering you about these two corpses.’
IV
LIEUTENANT VEYRENC HAD BEEN ASSIGNED THIS MISSION FOR THE PAST THREE weeks, stuck in a broom cupboard one metre square, providing protection for a young woman whom he saw go past on the landing a dozen times a day.1 He found the young woman rather touching, and this feeling disturbed him. He shifted on his chair, trying to find another position.
He shouldn’t have been troubled by this – it was just a little grain of sand in the machinery, a splinter in the foot, a bird in the engine. The myth according to which a small bird, however exotic, could make an aeroplane engine explode was complete nonsense, one of the many ways people find to scare each other. As if there weren’t enough problems in the world already. Veyrenc expelled the bird with a twitch of his brain, took the top off his fountain pen and set about cleaning the nib. Nothing else to bloody do anyway. The building was completely silent.
He screwed the top back on, replaced it in his inside pocket and closed his eyes. It was fifteen years to the day since he had defied the old wives’ tales and gone to sleep in the forbidden shade of the walnut tree. Fifteen years of determined effort that nobody could take away from him. When he had woken up, he had used the sap of the tree to cure his allergy, and over time, he had tamed his furies, worked his way backwards through the torments he had endured, and exorcised his demons. It had taken fifteen years of persistence to transform a skinny youth, who took care to keep his hair hidden, into a sturdy body attached to a solid psyche. Fifteen years of applied energy to learn not to be tossed like a cork on the seas of love, something that had left him disillusioned with sensations and sickened with complications. When Veyrenc had straightened up under the walnut tree, he had taken the decision to go on strike, like an exhausted worker taking early retirement. From now on, he would keep away from dangerous ridges, taking care to temper his feelings with prudence and to control the intensity of his desires. He had done well, he thought, at keeping his distance from trouble and chaos, and approaching the serenity he yearned for. His relationships with people ever since that day had been non-committal and temporary, as he swam calmly towards his goal, on a course of work, study and versification – a near-perfect state of affairs.
His goal, which he had now achieved, was to be posted to the Paris Crime Squad under Commissaire Adamsberg. Veyrenc was satisfied with this, but it had surprised him. An unusual microclimate reigned in the squad. Under the almost imperceptible leadership of their chief, the officers allowed their potential to develop unchecked, indulging in humours and whims unrelated to precise objectives. The squad had achieved undeniable
results, but Veyrenc remained highly sceptical. Was this efficiency the result of Adamsberg’s strategy, or was it simply the benevolent hand of providence? Providence seemed to have turned a blind eye, for example, to the fact that Mercadet had put down cushions on the first floor and went to sleep there for several hours a day; to the abnormal office cat, which defecated on reams of paper; to Commandant Danglard’s practice of concealing his bottles of wine in a cupboard in the basement; to the papers, quite unrelated to any investigations, that lay about on tables: estate agents’ prospectuses, race cards, articles on ichthyology, private notes, international newspapers, colour spectra – to name only those he had noticed in one month. This state of affairs did not seem to trouble anyone, except perhaps Lieutenant Noël, a cussed character who found fault with everyone. And who, the second day he was there, had made an offensive remark about Veyrenc’s hair. Twenty years earlier, it would have provoked tears, but nowadays he couldn’t care less – well, not much less. Veyrenc folded his arms and leaned back against the wall. Unshakeable strength allied to a solid physique.
As for the commissaire himself, Veyrenc had taken some time to identify him. Seen from a distance, Adamsberg looked nondescript. Several times in the corridor, Veyrenc had passed this small man, a slow-moving bundle of tension, whose face was curiously angular and whose clothes and demeanour were dishevelled, without realising that he was one of the most famous figures, for good or ill, in the Serious Crime Squad. Even his eyes did not seem to be much use. Veyrenc had been waiting for his official interview since his first day on the job. But Adamsberg had never even noticed him, going round as he did in a daze of either profound or vacant thought. Perhaps it was possible that a whole year would go past before the commissaire noticed that his team had acquired a new member.