by Fred Vargas
Adamsberg took out his notebook, its pages now sticking together, wrote four names on it and tore out the sheet.
‘When you’ve got a moment, Danglard, can you get me some info on these four names?’
‘Who are they?’
‘They’re the ones who cut up his scalp when he was a kid. It’s left visible traces on the outside, but much worse ones on the inside.’
‘What am I looking for?’
‘I just want to know if they’re alive and well.’
‘Is this serious?’
‘Shouldn’t be. I hope not.’
‘You said there were five of them.’
‘Yes, there were.’
‘So what about the fifth one?’
‘Well?’
‘Well, what do we do about him?’
‘The fifth one, Danglard, I’ll take care of personally.’
XVIII
MORDENT AND LAMARRE, WHO WERE PART OF THE DAY SHIFT, WERE BOTH wearing breathing masks as they finished extracting the sediments that had fallen into the coffin. Adamsberg was kneeling at the edge of the pit and passing buckets to Justin. Danglard was sitting on a tombstone about fifty metres away, with his legs crossed and the air of an other-worldly English aristocrat. He was staying at the scene as promised, but keeping his distance. The more oppressive reality became, the more Danglard cultivated an elegant stance, self-control combined with a kind of cult of nonchalance. The commandant had always counted on the cut of his British-style suits to compensate for his unprepossessing appearance. His father – not to mention his grandfather, a coal miner in Le Creusot – would have detested this kind of attitude. But then his father should have made more of an effort to have a better-looking son; he was simply reaping what he had, literally, sown. Danglard dusted off his lapels. If only he had had a crooked smile and a tender cheek, like the New Recruit, he would have tried to lure Retancourt away from Adamsberg. The others in the squad dismissed her as ‘too fat’ or ‘too big to handle’, the cruel judgement bandied about in the Brasserie des Philosophes. But Danglard considered her perfect.
From his observation post, he watched the pathologist in turn go down into the pit, using a ladder. She had put a set of green overalls on top of her clothes, but had not bothered to put on a mask, any more than Roman would have. These pathologists had always amazed Danglard. They were so unconcerned, tapping corpses casually on the shoulder, sometimes making childish jokes, and yet they had to spend their days in abominable surroundings. But the truth was, Danglard reflected, that they were professionals, relieved not to have to deal with the anguish of the living. Perhaps in this branch of post-mortem medicine there was a measure of tranquillity.
Night had fallen, and Dr Lagarde was completing her work under the light of arc lamps. Danglard watched her climb easily back up the ladder, pull off her gloves and toss them casually on to the heap of soil before going over to Adamsberg. From a distance, it seemed to him that Retancourt was sulking. The familiarity that linked the commissaire and the pathologist visibly irritated her. All the more since Ariane Lagarde had a formidable reputation, and even in her earth-stained overalls she was still a very beautiful woman. Adamsberg took off his mask and led the doctor away from the pit.
‘Jean-Baptiste, there’s nothing to be seen but the head of a woman who’s been dead three or four months. No mutilation, no violence. Everything’s there, and all present and correct. No more, no less. I wouldn’t suggest you bother to bring the whole coffin up, you’ll just find the cadaver inside.’
‘Ariane, I’m trying to understand what’s gone on. The grave-robbers were paid handsomely to open up this tomb. Then they were killed to shut them up. Why?’
‘You’re tilting at windmills. We can’t always tell what lunatics are after. I’ll compare the earth here with the earth that was under Diala and La Paille’s fingernails. Did you get me some samples?’
‘Every thirty centimetres.’
‘Perfect. You should eat something, then go home and get some sleep. I’ll come with you.’
‘He must have wanted something from the body, Ariane, this killer.’
‘She wanted, you mean. I told you it was a woman, for heaven’s sake.’
‘OK, for the sake of argument.’
‘I’m certain about that, Jean-Baptiste.’
‘If it’s just a question of height, that isn’t enough.’
‘I’ve got other indications.’
‘All right. So the female killer wanted to collect something from the body in the grave.’
‘Well, she must have taken it. The trail stops there.’
‘If the dead woman had been wearing earrings, you’d be able to tell that, would you, from her pierced ears?’
‘Jean-Baptiste, her ears aren’t there any more.’
One of the arc lamps suddenly blew, with a puff of smoke in the night, and seemed to notify everyone that the macabre spectacle was drawing to a close.
‘We put it all back?’ asked Voisenet.
XIX
ARIANE DROVE RATHER TOO ERRATICALLY FOR ADAMSBERG’S TASTE. HE LIKED, when he was a passenger, to lean his head against the window and be wafted smoothly along. She was looking out for a restaurant to eat at, as they drove through the wide streets.
‘Do you get on well with the fat lieutenant?’
‘She’s not a fat lieutenant, she’s a divinity with sixteen arms and twelve heads.’
‘Gracious. I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Well, it’s true. She uses them as she pleases. Speed, mass, invisibility, serial analysis, transport, physical transformation, depending on what’s called for.’
‘Sulking as well.’
‘It happens. I often get on her nerves.’
‘She’s working with the man with stripy hair?’
‘She’s training him. He’s a New Recruit.’
‘She’s not just training him, she likes him a lot. Well, he is quite dishy.’
‘Yes, quite.’
Ariane braked suddenly at a red light.
‘But since life isn’t fair,’ she went on, ‘it’s your elegant but ugly commandant who’s interested in the lieutenant.’
‘Danglard? Really? Interested in Retancourt?’
‘If Danglard’s the tall sophisticated guy who was sitting way over there. Looking like a disgusted academician, who’d have liked to have a drink to stop himself feeling sick.’
‘That’s him,’ Adamsberg confirmed.
‘Well, he’s attracted to the blonde lieutenant. He won’t get anywhere with her by keeping his distance.’
‘Love is the only battle that is won by retreating, Ariane.’
‘What cretin made that up? You?’
‘Bonaparte. Not a bad strategist, by all accounts.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m retreating at the moment. I don’t have any choice.’
‘You’re unhappy?’
‘Yes.’
‘All the better. I love hearing other people’s stories and the unhappier the better.’
‘There’s a space,’ said Adamsberg, pointing out a gap. ‘Let’s eat here. What kind of unhappy stories?’
‘A long time ago, my husband ran off with a sporty paramedic, thirty years younger than him,’ said Ariane as she backed into the space. ‘Always the way, isn’t it? Glamorous paramedics.’
She wrenched on the handbrake with a squeal, as the only conclusion to her story.
Ariane was not the kind of doctor who waits for the end of the meal before talking about the job, so as to keep the grisly details of the morgue separate from the pleasures of the table. As she ate, she drew on the paper tablecloth a sketch of the wounds suffered by Diala and La Paille, with angles and arrows to explain the nature of the injuries, so that the commissaire should understand the technology.
‘Remember how tall we said the killer was?’
‘A hundred and sixty-two centimetres.’
‘So there’s a ninety per cent chance it was a woma
n. There are two other arguments: the first is psychological, the second mental. Are you listening?’ she added doubtfully.
Adamsberg nodded his head several times, while removing the meat from his kebab and wondering whether he might or might not try to sleep with Ariane that night. By some miracle, due no doubt to her mixtures of improbable liquids, Ariane’s body was not that of a sixty-year-old. Such thoughts propelled him back over twenty years earlier, when he had already cast longing glances at her shoulders and breasts from across a table. But Ariane was thinking of nothing but her corpses. Or so it seemed, since women with her degree of poise know how to conceal their desires under an impeccable appearance, almost to the point of forgetting about them and coming close to being surprised by them. Camille, by contrast, with her irrepressible love of the natural, was not gifted at such concealment. It was easy to make Camille tremble, or blush, but Adamsberg did not expect to see such tell-tale signs from the pathologist.
‘Do you make a distinction between the psychological and the mental?’ he asked.
‘The mental is what I would describe as a compression of psychological phenomena over the longer timescale of history, in such a way that the effects are so deeply buried that they are mistakenly confused with the innate.’
‘Ah’, said Adamsberg, pushing back his plate.
‘You are listening, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course I am, Ariane.’
‘Well, it’s obvious that a man who was no more than one metre sixty-two tall – and there are very few men in that category – would never be tempted to attack someone the size of Diala and La Paille. But if they were facing a woman, those lads would have no reason to fear anything. And I can tell you quite categorically that when they were killed they were standing up, and they were quite relaxed. The second argument is both mental and more interesting: in both cases just the one wound, the first cut, would have been enough to floor these men and kill them. It’s what I call the first incision. Here,’ said Ariane, pointing to a mark on the tablecloth. ‘The weapon was a sharpened scalpel and the attack was lethal.’
‘A scalpel? Are you sure about that?’
Adamsberg refilled the glasses with a frown, tearing himself away from his irrelevant erotic musings.
‘Absolutely. And when someone uses a scalpel instead of an ordinary knife, say, or a razor, it’s because the attacker knows how to use it and what result it will produce. Nevertheless, Diala received two further cuts, and La Paille three. I call those the secondary incisions, made once the victim was on the ground, and those are not horizontal.’
‘I’m listening,’ Adamsberg assured her, before Ariane could ask him again.
The pathologist raised her hand to mark a pause, drank a mouthful of water, then some wine, then more water, before picking up her pen once more.
‘These secondary incisions point to a wealth of precautions being taken, a concern to see that the job was completely finished and, if possible, impeccably performed. Going to these excessive lengths betrays surviving traces of school discipline, possibly associated with neurotic perfectionism.’
‘Hmm, yes,’ said Adamsberg, who was reflecting that Ariane could very well have written the book on the compensatory stones in Pyrenean architecture.
‘This striving for excellence is always a form of defence against a threatening external world. And it’s essentially a feminine trait.’
‘Threatening?’
‘A desire for perfection, a wish to check everything in the world. The percentage of men displaying these symptoms is negligible. See, tonight I checked that my car door was properly shut. You didn’t. And I also checked that I had the keys in my bag. Do you know where your car keys are?’
‘Hanging on the nail in the kitchen, as usual, I suppose.’
‘You just suppose?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re not sure?’
‘Christ almighty, Ariane, I can’t swear to it.’
‘Just from that, without needing to look at you, I can tell that you’re a man, and I’m a woman, living in a Western country, with a margin of error of no more than twelve per cent.’
‘It would be simpler just to look at me, wouldn’t it?’
‘But remember that I haven’t been able to look at the killer of Diala and La Paille. Who is a woman, about one metre sixty-two tall, with a ninety-six per cent chance of probability, given the intersections of our three parameters, and making an allowance for high heels of an average three centimetres.’
Ariane put down her pen and took another sip of wine in between two sips of water.
‘OK, what about the injections in the arm?’ asked Adamsberg, picking up her expensive pen and twisting its cap on and off.
‘The injections are to throw us off the track. One might hypothesise that the murderer wanted to nudge the police towards a drugs scenario.’
‘Well, not very successfully, especially since there was only one puncture mark.’
‘Still, Mortier fell for it.’
‘In that case, why didn’t the murderer simply give them both a shot of heroin and have done with it?’
‘Perhaps she didn’t have any? Please give me back my pen – you’re going to ruin it and I’m fond of it.’
‘A souvenir from your ex-husband?’
‘Precisely.’
Adamsberg rolled the pen towards Ariane, who caught it three centimetres from the edge of the table and put it in her handbag along with her keys.
‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, please, and ask them for some crème de menthe and milk.’
‘Of course,’ said Adamsberg, making a sign to the waiter.
‘The rest is just supplementary detail,’ Ariane went on. ‘I’d say the murderess is quite elderly. A young woman would hardly have taken the risk of being alone at night with characters like Diala and La Paille in a deserted cemetery.’
‘Very true,’ said Adamsberg, who was immediately reminded of his idea of going to bed with Ariane later on.
‘Finally, I suppose, as you do, that she must have medical connections. The choice of the scalpel, of course, the precise nature of the incision which severed the carotid artery, and the presence of a syringe, very accurately inserted into the vein. Virtually a triple signature.’
The waiter brought their coffee over and Adamsberg watched as Ariane composed her mixture.
‘You haven’t finished yet.’
‘No. I’ve got a bit of a puzzle for you.’
Ariane thought for a moment, tapping her fingers on the tablecloth.
‘I don’t like to make a statement when I’m not quite sure about something.’
‘In my case that’s just what I do like to do.’
‘Well, it’s possible that I have a clue about her madness and possibly the nature of her psychosis. She seems to me in any case to be sufficiently insane to keep her two worlds separate.’
‘Does that leave traces?
‘She put her foot on La Paille’s torso to make the final incisions. From which we can tell that she polishes the soles of her shoes.’
Adamsberg gave Ariane a blank look.
‘She polishes the soles of her shoes,’ the pathologist insisted, more loudly, as if to wake him up. ‘There were traces of shoe polish on La Paille’s T-shirt.’
‘I heard you, Ariane. I’m just trying to work out the connection between the two worlds.’
‘I’ve seen two cases like this, one in Bristol, one in Berne. Men who polished the soles of their shoes, several times a day, to preserve themselves from the filth of everyday life. Their way of isolating themselves, protecting themselves.’
‘Dissociating themselves?’
‘I don’t think about dissociation every minute of the day. But you’re right, the man in Bristol was pretty much a case. The barrier between oneself and the ground, a way of preserving one’s body from contact with the rest of the world, yes, it does remind one of the walls that dissociators build up. Particularly when it’
s the ground on which crime is committed, or the ground of the dead, like the cemetery. That doesn’t mean to say that this murderer polishes the soles of her shoes every day.’
‘Just the Omega part of her, if she’s a dissociator?’
‘No, no, you’re wrong. It’s the Alpha one who wants to keep herself clear of the crimes. Omega commits them.’
‘Using shoe polish,’ said Adamsberg with a doubtful grimace.
‘Shoe polish is perceived as a waterproof material, a protective film.’
‘What colour?’
‘Navy blue. And that’s another thing that makes me think it’s a woman. Blue shoes are generally worn with navy suits, a conventional, rather austere way of dressing that one finds specifically in certain uniforms or professions: aviation, administration, hospitals, religious bodies – the list could be a long one.’
Faced with the mass of information which the pathologist was piling on the table, Adamsberg’s expression darkened. Ariane had the impression that his face was changing before her eyes, the nose becoming more hooked, the cheeks more hollow, the bone structure more evident. She had neither seen nor understood anything twenty-three years earlier. She had not noticed this man who crossed her path, had not seen that he was attractive, and that she could have taken him in her arms on the quayside at Le Havre. Now the quayside was far away and it was too late.
‘You don’t look pleased,’ she said, dropping her professional tone. ‘Do you want a dessert?’
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Pick something for me.’
Adamsberg ate a slice of tart without noticing whether it was apple or plum, without knowing whether he might sleep with Ariane, or where he could have put his car keys since his return from Normandy.
‘I don’t think they are hanging up in the kitchen,’ he said finally, spitting out a stone.
Must be plum, he calculated.
‘Was that what was preoccupying you?’
‘No, Ariane, it was the Shade. Remember that old district nurse, and her thirty-three victims?’
‘The one with dissociation?’