by Fred Vargas
‘A savage.’
‘Stands to reason.’
Recapitulation and development of the first subject.
‘’Cos there’s killing and killing,’ said Robert’s neighbour, a man with hair less fair than the rest.
‘Dunno about that,’ said Robert.
‘Yes, I’m telling you there is,’ said the old man. ‘Whoever did that, they were just out to kill, nothing else. Two shots in the ribs, and that’s it. Didn’t even do anything with the remains. Know what I call that?’
‘Cold-blooded murder.’
‘That it is.’
Adamsberg had stopped sketching and started listening. The older man half-turned towards him, with a sideways look.
‘Then again,’ Robert was saying, ‘where’s Brétilly? Not our neck of the woods – thirty kilometres away. So why should we care?’
‘’Cos it’s shameful, Robert, that’s why.’
‘I don’t even think it was someone from Brétilly. I’ll bet it was a Parisian. Anglebert, what do you think?’
So the old man who dominated the group from the top of the table was Anglebert.
‘Yes, Parisians now, they can be crazy,’ he said.
‘The life they lead.’
Silence fell around the table and a few faces turned furtively towards Adamsberg. When men foregather for a drink in the evening, the newcomer is inevitably spotted, weighed up and rejected or accepted. In Normandy, like everywhere else, and possibly a bit more so than anywhere else.
‘What makes you so sure I’m a Parisian?’ Adamsberg asked calmly.
The old man jerked his chin at the book on the commissaire’s table, next to his glass of beer.
‘The metro ticket,’ he said. ‘You’ve marked your page with a Paris metro ticket. Easy to spot.’
‘But I’m not a Parisian.’
‘Not from Haroncourt, though, are you?’
‘No, I’m from the Pyrenees, from the mountains.’
Robert raised one hand and let it fall heavily on the table.
‘A Gascon!’ he concluded as if a sheet of lead had fallen on the table.
‘I’m from the Béarn,’ Adamsberg said pointedly.
The weighing-up process began.
‘People from the mountains, they’ve been trouble,’ said Hilaire, a balding but slightly less old elder statesman, at the other end of the table.
‘When was that?’ asked the not-so-fair one.
‘Don’t you bother asking, Oswald, it was way back.’
‘Well, what about the Bretons? Man from the Pyrenees, at least he’s not going to try and take the Mont Saint Michel away from us.’
‘That’s true enough,’ said Anglebert, nodding.
‘Well,’ hazarded Robert, looking at the newcomer, ‘you don’t look to me like you’re descended from the Vikings. So where do people in the Béarn come from, then?’
‘Straight out of the mountain,’ Adamsberg replied. ‘Stream of lava came down the mountainside and when it hardened, it turned into us.’
‘Stands to reason,’ said the one who punctuated every stage in the conversation.
The men sat waiting, silently asking to be told what had brought this stranger to Haroncourt.
‘I’m looking for the chateau.’
‘That’s easy. There’s a concert on there tonight.’
‘I’m with one of the musicians.’
Oswald brought out the local paper from his inside pocket and unfolded it carefully. ‘Here’s a picture of the orchestra,’ he said.
That constituted an invitation to approach their table. Adamsberg crossed the room, holding his beer in his hand, and observed the page that Oswald held out to him.
‘Here,’ he said, pointing. ‘That one, the viola player.’
‘The pretty girl?’
‘That’s her.’
Robert served another round of drinks, as much to mark the significance of the pause as to absorb more alcohol. An archaic problem now tormented the gathering. What was this woman to the intruder? Mistress? Wife? Sister? Girlfriend? Cousin?
‘And you’re with her?’ Hilaire asked.
Adamsberg nodded. He had been told that Normans never ask a direct question, a myth, as he had thought, but in front of him he had a clear example of their proud silence. If you ask too many questions you reveal yourself, and if you reveal yourself you’re less of a man. Ill at ease, the group turned to the elder statesman. Angelbert tilted his unshaven chin, scratching it with his fingers.
‘Because she’s your wife,’ he asserted.
‘Was,’ said Adamsberg.
‘But you’re still coming along with her.’
‘A question of consideration.’
‘Stands to reason,’ said the punctuator.
‘Women,’ Anglebert said in a low voice. ‘Here one day, gone the next.’
‘You don’t want ‘em when you got ‘em,’ commented Robert. ‘Then when they’ve gone, you do.’
‘You lose them,’ Adamsberg agreed.
‘Dunno how it is,’ said Oswald.
‘Lack of consideration,’ Adamsberg explained. ‘Or at least it was that in my case.’
Here was someone who didn’t make a secret of things, and who’d had woman trouble, which chalked up two good points in this male gathering. Anglebert pointed to a chair.
‘You’ve got time to sit down, pal, haven’t you?’
The familiar tone meant he had been provisionally accepted in this assembly of Normans from the flatlands. A glass of white wine was pushed towards him. This evening the assembly had a new member, and there would be plentiful comment on him next day.
‘Who’s been killed, then? In Brétilly?’ Adamsberg asked, after drinking the requisite number of mouthfuls.
‘Killed? Massacred more like! Shot down like, well, like vermin.’
Oswald brought another paper out of his pocket and handed it to Adamsberg, pointing to a photograph.
‘What it is,’ said Robert, who had not lost the thread of the previous conversation, ‘you’d do better to be not so considerate first, and more considerate after. With women. Less trouble that way.’
‘Never know where you are with ‘em,’ agreed the old man.
‘Never do,’ said the punctuator.
Adamsberg was looking at the newspaper article with a frown. A russet-coloured beast was lying in a pool of blood under the headline ‘Odious massacre at Brétilly’. He turned the paper over to see that it was a monthly magazine, the Western France Hunting Gazette.
‘You a hunter?’ asked Oswald.
‘No.’
‘Well, you won’t understand, then. Stag like that, eight points, you just don’t shoot ‘im like that. Diabolical.’
‘Seven points,’ corrected Hilaire.
‘’Scuse me,’ said Oswald, an edge to his voice, ‘but that one there, he’s got eight points.’
‘Seven.’
Quarrel imminent. Anglebert took control. ‘You can’t tell from the picture,’ he said. ‘Seven or eight.’
Everyone took a drink, feeling relieved. Not that a little discord was unwelcome and indeed necessary in the evening concert. But tonight, with an intruder present, there were other priorities.
‘See that?’ said Robert, pointing with his large finger at the photo. ‘That’s no hunter’s doing. That fellow, he hasn’t touched the carcass, he hasn’t taken the pieces, or the honours or anything.’
‘The honours?’
‘The antlers and the hoof, front right. What he’s done, he’s slit it open, just out of cussedness. A maniac. And what have the Evreux cops done about it? Nothing, that’s what. They couldn’t give a toss.’
‘’Cos it’s not a murder for them,’ a voice said.
‘Want me to tell you what I think? When someone kills an animal like that, he’s wrong in the head. Who’s to say after that he won’t go off and kill a woman? Murderers, they practise on animals, then go on …’
‘True enough,’ said Adamsberg, t
hinking of the twelve rats in Le Havre.
‘But the cops are so dumb they can’t see it when it’s staring them in the face. Stupid bastards.’
‘It’s only a stag, though,’ objected the objector.
‘You’re stupid too, Alphonse. If I was a cop, I’d get going after this so-and-so – and quickly, too.’
‘Me too,’ murmured Adamsberg.
‘Ah, you see, even this guy from the Pyrenees agrees with me. ‘Cos a massacre like that, Alphonse, you listen to me, it means there’s some maniac loose out there. And you better believe me, I know what I’m talking about – you’ll be hearing more about him before long.’
‘The Pyrenean agrees with that, too,’ said Adamsberg, while the old man started to refill his glass for him.
‘Ah, see that, and he isn’t even a hunter!’
‘Nope,’ said Adamsberg. ‘He’s a cop.’
Anglebert suspended his arm, holding the bottle of white wine over the glass. Adamsberg met his gaze. The challenge began. With a slight nudge, Adamsberg indicated that he would like the glass filled up. Anglebert didn’t move.
‘We’re not big fans of the cops round here,’ said Anglebert, still not moving his arm.
‘Who is?’ Adamsberg rejoined.
‘Ah, but here we’re even less their fans than anywhere else.’
‘I didn’t say I was their fan, I said I was a cop.’
‘You’re not a fan, then?’
‘Wouldn’t be much point, would there?’
The old man screwed up his eyes, concentrating all his attention on this unexpected duel.
‘So why are you a cop, then?’
‘Because of a lack of consideration.’
The rapid reply was above the heads of everyone there, including Adamsberg, who would have been hard put to it to explain what he meant. But nobody dared to reveal his puzzlement.
‘Stands to reason,’ said the punctuator.
And as if a film had been paused for a moment, the movement of Anglebert’s arm resumed, his elbow went up and the wine poured into Adamsberg’s glass.
‘Or, you might say, because of this kind of thing,’ Adamsberg added, pointing to the slaughtered stag. ‘When did it happen?’
‘A month back now. Keep the paper if you’re interested. Because the Evreux cops don’t give a damn.’
‘Stupid pricks,’ said Robert.
‘What’s that?’ said Adamsberg, pointing to a stain on the animal’s side.
‘The heart,’ said Hilaire with disgust. ‘He’s put two bullets into the ribs, than he’s took out the heart with a knife and cut it to bits.’
‘Is that a tradition? To take the heart out?’
There was a fresh moment of indecision.
‘You tell him, Robert,’ Anglebert ordered.
‘Surprises me, all the same,’ said Robert, ‘that you’re from the mountains and you don’t know anything about hunting.’
‘I used to go out with the men on trips,’ Adamsberg admitted. ‘And I went up in the pigeon-shooting hides we have down there, like all the kids.’
‘All the same.’
‘But nothing else.’
‘Well, now. When you make a kill,’ Robert explained, ‘first you take the skin off to make a cover. Then you cut off the honours and the haunches. You don’t touch its innards. You turn it over and you carve the fillets to keep. Then you chop off the head, for the antlers. When you’ve finished, you cover the animal with its skin again.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But bloody hell, you don’t go cutting its heart out. Yeah, in the old days, some people used to. But we’ve moved on from then. Nowadays you leave the heart inside.’
‘Who used to do it?’ asked a voice.
‘Never you mind – it was way back.’
‘Whoever it was,’ said Alphonse, ‘what he was after was killing it, then ripping its heart out. He didn’t even take the horns, and that’s the only thing people take when they don’t know nothing about it.’
Adamsberg looked up at the large antlers displayed on the wall of the café, over the door.
‘No,’ said Robert. ‘That’s crap, that lot.’
‘Don’t talk so loud,’ said Anglebert, pointing to the counter, where the café owner was playing dominoes with a couple of youngsters too inexperienced to join in the gathering of the elders.
Robert cast a glance at the owner, then turned back to the commissaire.
‘He’s from away,’ he said.
‘Meaning?’
‘He’s from Caen, not from round here.’
‘Caen’s in Normandy, isn’t it?’
There were a few exchanges of glances and pulled faces. Could they really trust this mountain dweller with such intimate and painful information?
‘Caen’s in Lower Normandy,’ Anglebert explained. ‘Here you’re in Upper Normandy.’
‘And that’s important?’
‘Let’s just say you don’t compare them. The real Normandy’s the Upper one, here.’
Anglebert’s gnarled finger pointed to the wooden table. As if Upper Normandy could be reduced to the size of the café in Haroncourt.
‘But you watch out,’ Robert added. ‘Over there in Calvados, they’ll tell you different. But don’t you listen to them.’
‘All right,’ Adamsberg promised.
‘And over there, it rains all the time, poor sods.’
Adamsberg looked up at the windows, against which the rain was beating continuously.
‘There’s rain and rain,’ Oswald explained. ‘Here, it doesn’t rain, it’s just a bit damp. Don’t you have them where you come from? Outsiders?’
‘Yes,’ Adamsberg agreed. ‘There’s bad feeling between the people in the Gave de Pau valley and the Gave d’Ossau valley.’
‘Yeah, course there is,’ agreed Anglebert, as if he already knew all about that.
Although he was well used to the ponderous music of the evening male ritual, Adamsberg understood that the Normans, true to their reputation, were more difficult to get through to than other people. They didn’t say much. Here their sentences came out cautiously and suspiciously, as if testing the ground with every word. They didn’t speak loudly, nor did they tackle their subjects head-on. They went round them, as if putting a subject directly on the table was as indelicate as throwing down a piece of raw meat.
‘So why is that crap?’ Adamsberg asked, pointing to the antlers over the door.
‘Because those are cast antlers. OK for decoration, to show off. Go and have a look if you don’t believe me. You can see the bump at the base of the bone.’
‘It’s a bone?’
‘Don’t know a thing, do you?’ said Alphonse sadly, sounding regretful that Angelbert had allowed this ignoramus to join them.
‘Yes, it’s a bone,’ the old man confirmed. ‘It grows out of the skull – only the deer family does that.’
‘What if we had skulls that bulged out?’ wondered Robert fancifully.
‘With ideas growing on ‘em,’ said Oswald with a thin smile.
‘Wouldn’t be a big bulge in your case, Oswald.’
‘Practical for the cops,’ said Adamsberg. ‘But risky. You’d be able to read people’s thoughts.’
‘Stands to reason.’
There was a pause for thought and for a third round of drinks.
‘So what do you know about? Apart from police stuff?’ asked Oswald.
‘No questions,’ decreed Robert. ‘He knows what he knows. He’s asking you what you know about.’
‘Women,’ said Oswald.
‘So does he. Or he wouldn’t have lost his.’
‘Stands to reason.’
‘There’s knowing about women and knowing about love, and it’s not the same thing. Specially with women.’
Anglebert sat up as if dispelling a memory.
‘Explain it to him,’ he said, gesturing towards Hilaire and tapping his finger on the photo of the stag that had been slit open.
> ‘Right. So a red deer stag, he loses his antlers every year.’
‘What for?’
‘’Cos they get in the way. The only reason to have antlers is for the rut, to get the hinds. So when the rutting season’s over, they fall off.’
‘What a pity,’ said Adamsberg, ‘when they’re so beautiful.’
‘Like everything beautiful,’ said Anglebert, ‘they’re complicated. They’re heavy, you got to understand, and they catch on the branches. So after the fighting they fall off.’
‘It’s like laying down his arms, if you like. He’s got his females, he drops his weapons.’
‘Females, now, they’re complicated,’ said Robert, still pursuing his train of thought.
‘But beautiful.’
‘Like I said,’ muttered the old man, ‘more beautiful they are, more complicated. No good trying to understand everything in this world.’
‘No, right,’ said Adamsberg.
‘Ah, well.’
Four of the men took a mouthful of wine at the same time, with no apparent coordination.
‘So it falls off, and that’s what we call cast antlers,’ Hilaire went on. ‘You can find them in the forests like mushrooms. But antlers from a kill, they’ve been cut off from the animal you hunted. See? Living bone.’
‘And this killer doesn’t care about living bone,’ said Adamsberg, returning to the murdered stag. ‘He’s just interested in death. Or the heart.’
‘That he is.’
IX
ADAMSBERG TRIED TO EXPEL THE STAG FROM HIS MIND. HE DIDN’T WANT TO go into the hotel room with all that blood in his head. He paused in front of the door, wiping his thoughts, clearing his brow, and forcing himself to think about clouds, marbles and blue skies. Because in the hotel room a child aged nine months was asleep. And with children you never know. They can penetrate your skull, hear the ideas moving around, feel the sweat of anguish and maybe even see a picture of a slaughtered stag in their father’s head.
He pushed the door open quietly. He had not told the male assembly the truth. Accompanying, yes, out of consideration, yes, but so as to babysit the child, while Camille played her viola up at the chateau. Their last break-up – had it been the fifth or the seventh? he wasn’t sure – had led to an unforeseen catastrophe. Camille had become a good friend, a comrade, something that drove him to desperation. Towards him she was absent-minded, smiling, affectionate and familiar: in short, and tragically, just a good friend. This new state of affairs disconcerted Adamsberg who was trying to find the fault line, to dislodge the feeling beating under this natural mask, like a crab under a rock. But Camille seemed really to be walking away into the distance, freed of her former stress. And as he said to himself, as he greeted her with a polite kiss, trying to bring an exhausted friend back towards a renewal of love was a near-impossible task. He was therefore concentrating, in a fatalist manner and to his own surprise, on his paternal function. He was a beginner in that domain, and was still trying to assimilate the information that the child was his son. He thought he would have put in as much effort if he had found the baby on a park bench.