by Fred Vargas
Well, why not? Danglard thought to himself. The commandant was usually the first to criticise Adamsberg’s fantastic escapades, but he always put up the sturdiest of defences against any external attack.
‘And what’s that all about?’ Brézillon was going on. ‘I’ll tell you that, too. Because some village idiot saw a ghost in a field.’
Why not? thought Danglard again, swallowing another mouthful.
‘That’s what Adamsberg’s up to, that’s what he’s “checking” right now.’
‘Did the Evreux gendarmes report that to you?’
‘That, Danglard, is their job: to report when a commissaire goes offmission. And they get on to it, fast and efficiently. I want him back here at five this evening, checking out sightings of that nurse.’
‘I don’t think that will attract him,’ Danglard murmured softly.
‘And as for the two stiffs in La Chapelle, I’m taking you off them as of now. Drugs can have them. You can tell him that, commandant. I presume that when you call him, he deigns to answer his phone.’
Danglard emptied his glass and picked up the cat, but before doing anything else, he called the number of the gendarmerie at Evreux.
‘Get me the commandant – tell him it’s an urgent call from Paris.’
Clenching his fingers in the cat’s furry pelt, Danglard waited impatiently.
‘Commandant Devalon? Was it you told Brézillon that Adamsberg was in your sector?’
‘Listen, when Adamsberg’s on the loose round here, prevention’s better than cure. Who am I talking to?’
‘Commandant Danglard. Go to hell, Devalon.’
‘Don’t waste your breath, Danglard. You’d do better to get your boss back home, pronto.’
Danglard banged down the receiver, and the cat stretched out its paws in fright.
XXVI
‘FIVE O’CLOCK? OH, THE HELL WITH HIM, DANGLARD.’
‘He knows you’ll say that. Come back, commissaire – things will be hotting up otherwise. What are you doing, anyway?’
‘We’re looking for a hole under some blades of grass.’
‘Who’s “we”?’
‘Veyrenc and me.’
‘Well, get back here. Evreux’s been told you’re poking about in one of their cemeteries.’
‘But the dead men in La Chapelle are ours.’
‘Not any more. We’ve been taken off the case, commissaire.’
‘OK, Danglard,’ said Adamsberg after a silence. ‘I get the picture.’
Adamsberg snapped his phone shut.
‘We’re going to have to change tactics, Veyrenc. It’s going to be a bit tight for time.’
‘We’re giving up?’
‘No, I’m calling in the expert.’
Adamsberg and Veyrenc had been feeling the surface of the earth over the grave for half an hour without finding any sign of a crack indicating a hole underneath it. Vandoosler Senior answered the phone again, which suggested that he had the job of filtering the calls to the household.
‘Given up, finished, kaput?’ he said.
‘No, Vandoosler, since I’m calling you.’
‘Which one do you want this time?’
‘Same one again.’
‘Bad call, he’s out of town. He’s off on a dig in the Essonne.’
‘Well, give me his number.’
‘Look, when Mathias is on a dig, nothing will make him leave it.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Vandoosler, just give me the number!’
Vandoosler Senior was not mistaken, and Adamsberg gathered that he was disturbing the prehistoric expert when he eventually got through. No, Mathias couldn’t come, he was uncovering a Magdalenian household with scorched hearthstones, flint chippings, reindeer antlers and other objects which he listed, in order to try and convey the situation to Adamsberg.
‘This household circle is complete, it’s from 12,000 BC. What are you offering me instead?’
‘Another circle. Some of the grass is shorter, making a sort of ring in the middle of some longer grass, on top of a grave. If we don’t find anything, our two corpses will be sent over to Drugs. Mathias, look, I’m telling you there’s something important here. Your circle’s already been opened up – it can wait. Mine can’t.’
Mathias was no more interested in Adamsberg’s investigations than the policeman was concerned with palaeolithic remains. But the two men agreed when it came to emergencies.
‘What took you to this grave?’ Mathias asked.
‘It’s the grave of a young woman from Normandy, like the one in Montrouge, and a ghost has been seen recently, prowling in the graveyard.’
‘You’re in Normandy?’
‘Opportune-la-Haute in the Eure département.’
‘Clay and flint,’ Mathias pronounced. ‘You just need a layer of flint underneath to make the grass grow shorter and less thickly. Is there some flint around there – a wall with foundations for instance?’
‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg, walking towards the church.
‘Look at its base and tell me what kind of vegetation there is.’
‘The grass is thicker than on the grave,’ said Adamsberg.
‘Anything else?’
‘Thistles, nettles, plantains, and some other plants I don’t know the names of.’
‘OK, now go back to the grave. What can you see in the short grass?’
‘Some daisies,’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Bit of clover, couple of dandelions.’
‘OK,’ said Mathias after a pause. ‘Did you look for the edge of a hole?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘Why do you think I’m calling you?’
Mathias looked down at the Magdalenian household remains at his feet.
‘I’m on my way,’ he said.
At the café in Opportune, which was also the local grocery store and cider depot, Adamsberg was allowed to put the antlers down in the entry. Everyone knew already that he was a Pyrenean cop from Paris, who had been given Anglebert’s blessing in Haroncourt, but the noble trophies he was carrying opened doors for him more effectively than any references. The café owner, a cousin of Oswald’s five times removed, served the two policemen diligently, rendering honour where it was due.
‘Mathias is getting a train out of Saint-Lazare in three hours,’ Adamsberg reported. ‘He’ll be in Evreux at 14.34.’
‘We’ll need authorisation to exhume before he gets here,’ said Veyrenc. ‘But you won’t get that without the divisionnaire’s consent. And Brézillon doesn’t want you to handle this. He doesn’t like you, does he?’
‘Brézillon doesn’t like anyone much, he just likes shouting down the phone. He gets on fine with people like Mortier.’
‘Without his permission, though, we won’t get a permit. So there’s no point in Mathias coming.’
‘Well, we’d find out whether someone had dug a hole on top of the grave.’
‘Yes, but we’d still be blocked in a few hours, unless we do it unofficially. Which will be impossible, because the Evreux cops are watching us. Moment anyone lifts a pickaxe, they’ll be down on us like a ton of bricks.’
‘Your summary does you credit, Veyrenc.’
The lieutenant dropped a lump of sugar in his coffee and gave a broad grin, which raised his upper lip on the right.
‘There is something we could try,’ he said. ‘But it’s pretty mean.’
‘Go on.’
‘Threaten Brézillon, if he won’t lift the ban on us, to spill the beans on something his son did fourteen years ago. I’m the only one who knows about it.’
‘Yeah, that is pretty mean.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’
‘How do you propose to do that?’
‘I’d never carry out the threat. I’ve stayed on good terms with Guy, the son – I wouldn’t want to hurt him, after getting him out of that mess when he was a boy.’
‘Well, it could work,’ said Adamsberg, restin
g his cheek on his hand. ‘Brézillon would crack at once. Like all tough guys, he’s soft underneath. Same principle as the walnut. Put pressure on it and it breaks. But you try breaking honey.’
‘That makes me feel hungry,’ said Veyrenc suddenly.
He went up to the counter, ordered some bread with local honey, and sat down again.
‘I’ve thought of another possibility,’ he said. ‘I could call Guy direct. I tell him the situation, and ask him to beg his father to let us go ahead.’
‘Would that work?’
‘I think so.
The child of the father has powers at his command
To oblige the elder to grant a strange demand.’
‘And the son in question owes you a favour, if I’ve got this right?’
‘If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t be a graduate of the top college in France now.’
‘But he’d be doing me a good turn. Not you.’
‘I’ll tell him that I’m in on this investigation. That it’s a chance to win my spurs, get promotion. Guy will play ball:
Happy the man who can, when the time is well set,
Throw off from his shoulders the burden of his debt.’
‘That’s not what I meant. You’d be doing me a good turn, not yourself.’
Veyrenc dipped his bread in his coffee with a graceful gesture. The lieutenant had hands as shapely as those on old paintings, which made them look strangely old-fashioned.
‘I’m supposed to be protecting you, along with Retancourt, aren’t I?’ he said.
‘Nothing to do with it.’
‘Yes, it is, a bit. If the angel of death is involved in this case, we can’t hand it over to Mortier.’
‘Well, apart from the syringe marks, we don’t have any really conclusive evidence.’
‘You did something for me yesterday. About the High Meadow.’
‘Memory come back now?’
‘No, it’s more confused, if anything. But even if the place changes, the five boys are still in the picture. Aren’t they?’
‘Yes, agreed. They’re still the same.’
Veyrenc nodded and finished his sandwich.
‘I’ll call Guy, shall I?’
‘Go ahead.’
Five hours later, in the centre of an area which Adamsberg had temporarily cordoned off with some stakes and string lent by the owner of the café, Mathias, stripped to the waist, was prowling round the grave like a bear who had been hauled out of his sleep to help two cubs corner their prey. The difference was that the fair-haired giant was twenty years younger than the two policemen, who stood waiting, placing their trust in the expertise of the man who could hear the song of the earth. Brézillon had given in without a word. The Opportune graveyard had been handed over to them, along with Diala, La Paille and Montrouge. A huge territory which Veyrenc had secured in a few minutes. Immediately afterwards, Adamsberg had put in a request to Danglard to send down a team equipped with digging tools, sampling materials, and two overnight bags with clean clothes and shaving kit. The Squad always had sets of equipment in store as survival packs for emergencies. It was practical, but you never knew what the clothes would be like.
Danglard should have been pleased at Brézillon’s defeat, but such was not the case. The importance that the New Recruit appeared to be taking at Adamsberg’s side had sparked off painful pangs of jealousy in him. In his own eyes, this represented a serious lack of poise on his part, since Danglard always hoped to rise above any petty reflexes. But he was now feeling thwarted and irritated at being left out. Accustomed to his situation of unrivalled priority with Adamsberg, Danglard could no more envisage his role and position being challenged than he could the demolition of a stone buttress built to last centuries. The New Recruit’s arrival had made his world tremble. In Danglard’s anxious path through life, two things were his guiding stars, his comfort and his protection: his five children, and the esteem shown him by Adamsberg. In addition to which, some of the commissaire’s serenity had trickled into his own life by capillary action. Danglard did not intend to lose his privileged position, and was alarmed at the advantages the New Recruit seemed to have acquired. Veyrenc’s intelligence, which was wideranging and subtle, conveyed by his melodious voice and linked to his pleasant face with its crooked smile, might tempt Adamsberg into his web. And what was more, this man had removed the Brézillon roadblock. The day before, Danglard had acted with circumspection and chosen to say nothing about information he had received two days earlier. Now, wounded to the quick, he brought it out of his armoury and shot it off like a dart.
‘Danglard,’ Adamsberg had said, ‘can you send the team within the hour? I can’t hang on to our prehistoric man for long. He’s supposed to be on another dig with flint arrowheads.’
‘The prehistorian, you mean,’ Danglard had corrected.
‘Call the police doctor too, but not before midday. We need her here when we reach the coffin. She should reckon two and a half hours for us to do the digging.’
‘I’ll bring Lamarre and Estalère with me. We’ll be at Opportune in an hour and forty minutes.’
‘No, you stay in the office, capitaine. We’re going to open another sodding grave, and you won’t be any use sitting fifty metres away. I just need some hewers of earth and carriers of buckets.’
‘I’ll be there,’ said Danglard without further explanation. ‘And I have some news for you. You asked me to find out about four men.’
‘It can wait, capitaine.’
‘Commandant.’
Adamsberg sighed. Dangard often beat about the bush out of delicacy, but some times he beat about it even more out of anxiety, and the sophisticated process annoyed Adamsberg.
‘I’ve got a cemetery to cordon off, Danglard,’ he said more urgently. ‘We’ve got to find some stakes and string and so on. Anything else can wait for now.’
Adamsberg switched off his phone and spun it round on the table top.
‘What am I doing,’ he commented, more for himself than for Veyrenc, ‘in charge of twenty-seven human beings, when I could be just as happy, in fact a thousand times better off, on my own in the mountains, sitting on a stone with my feet in a stream?’
‘The movement of beings, the disorder of souls
Bring troubles in hundreds, and vexations in shoals,
But we cannot escape these currents of strife
For the flow is our fate: it is all human life.’
‘Yes, I know, Veyrenc. But I wish people wouldn’t get so worked up. Twenty-seven different people with their worries, all bumping into each other and getting across each other, like boats in a tiny harbour. There ought to be a way to move over the waves.’
‘Alas, my lord,
One cannot be human and remain on the shore
And he who would do so plunges in even more.’
‘Let’s see which way the aerial points,’ said Adamsberg, spinning his phone. ‘Towards people or towards empty space,’ he said, pointing first to the street door, then to the window, which looked out on open countryside.
‘People,’ said Veyrenc before it had stopped spinning. ‘People,’ Adamsberg confirmed, as he watched the phone come to a halt pointing to the door.
‘Anyway, the view wasn’t empty. There are six cows in that field and a bull in the next one. That’s already enough to start something, isn’t it?’
As in Montrouge, Mathias had taken up his position near the grave and was moving his large hands over the surface, his fingers stopping every now and then, as he followed the scars imprinted in the earth. Twenty minutes later he was using a trowel to dig up the trace of a hole 1.60 metres across, at the head of the grave. Adamsberg, Veyrenc and Danglard were standing round, watching him work, while Lamarre and Estalère were fencing off the area with yellow plastic tape.
‘Same thing,’ Mathias said, getting to his feet and addressing Adamsberg. ‘I’ll leave you to it, you know the rest.’
‘But only you can tell us if it was the same peopl
e digging. If we go in, we could destroy the edges of the hole.’
‘Yes, I suppose you would,’ Mathias agreed, ‘especially in clay. The loose earth will stick to the walls.’
It was half past five by the time Mathias had finished emptying the hole and the light had begun to fail. According to him, and following the traces left by the tools, two men had been taking it in turns to dig, probably the same ones as in Montrouge.
‘One of them lifts the pick very high and strikes almost vertically, the other doesn’t take it back so far and the marks left by his blows are shorter.’
‘Were,’ said the pathologist, who had joined the group twenty minutes earlier.
‘From the settlement of the mound and the height of the grass, I’d say this was done about a month ago,’ Mathias continued.
‘A bit before the Montrouge job, probably.’
‘When was this woman buried?’
‘Four months ago,’ said Adamsberg.
‘In that case, I’ll leave you to it,’ said Mathias, with a grimace.
‘What’s the state of the coffin?’ asked Lamarre.
‘The lid’s been smashed in. I didn’t look beyond that.’
A curious contrast, thought Adamsberg, watching the blond giant withdraw to the car which was to take him back to Evreux, while Ariane came forward to take over, putting on her protective clothing without any apparent apprehension. They didn’t have a ladder, so Lamarre and Estalère helped the doctor down into the hole. The wood on the coffin had cracked open in several places, and the two policemen stood back in reaction to the nauseating smell that arose from it.
‘I told you to put masks on first,’ said Adamsberg.
‘Light the projectors, please, Jean-Baptiste,’ came the doctor’s calm voice, ‘and pass me a torch. It looks as if everything’s still here, like in the case of Elisabeth Châtel. As if someone had opened both these coffins just to take a look.’
‘Maybe a reader of Maupassant,’ muttered Danglard, who had a mask wedged firmly on his face and was trying not to stand too far from the others.