by Fred Vargas
‘How big do you reckon the saint’s zone of influence would be?’ asked Retancourt.
‘The best thing would be to draw up a radius of fifty kilometres around Le Mesnil-Beauchamp.’
‘Seven thousand, eight hundred and fifty square kilometres,’ said Mercadet, making a rapid calculation. ‘And how old would our victim be?’
‘Symbolically,’ said Danglard, ‘one could guess a minimal age of twenty-five. That was the age of Saint Catherine, when adult virginity is supposed to start. And we could use a cut-off date of forty, because after that both men and women were considered old.’
‘That’s a bit too broad,’ said Adamsberg. ‘We need to move more quickly. Let’s start with the age of our existing two victims, somewhere between thirty and forty. About how many women would that give us in the area, Mercadet?’
The lieutenant was given a few moments to do his calculations in silence, surrounded by his cups of coffee, sorted in threes. It was a pity, Adamsberg reflected, that Mercadet was so given to drowsiness. He had a remarkable head for figures and lists.
‘Very roughly, I’d say about a hundred and twenty to two hundred and fifty women in the area who might possibly be virgins.’
‘That’s still too many,’ said Adamsberg chewing his lip. ‘We need to make the area smaller. Let’s target an area of, say, twenty kilometres around Le Mesnil. What does that give?’
‘Between forty and eighty women,’ Mercadet replied promptly.
‘And how are we going to identify these forty virgins?’ asked Retancourt, sharply. ‘It’s not a crime, so it won’t show up on any database.’
A virgin, thought the commissaire, glancing quickly at his large but pretty lieutenant. Retancourt kept her private life very private, hermetically sealed against any inquiries. Perhaps this detailed discussion of virgin women was exasperating her.
‘We’ll consult the local priests,’ Adamsberg said. ‘Starting with the one in Le Mesnil. Work quickly, all of you. Overtime if necessary.’
‘Commissaire,’ said Gardon, ‘I don’t think it’s as urgent as all that. Pascaline and Elisabeth were killed three and a half months ago and four months ago respectively. The third virgin is almost certainly already dead.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Adamsberg, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Because of the new wine which has to be the final liquid binding the whole mixture. It has to mix all the ingredients. So it will be the November vintage.’
‘Or October,’ said Danglard. ‘They used to do the first pressing earlier than we do today.’
‘All right,’ said Mordent, ‘So what does that mean?’
‘Well, if we follow what Danglard told us,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘you have to respect the harmonious balance for the mixture to succeed. If I was making this mixture, I’d arrange for regular intervals between taking the ingredients so that there wasn’t too long a gap. Like a sort of relay race.’
‘It’s compulsory, even,’ said Danglard, chewing his pencil. ‘In medieval times irregularity and interruptions were a sort of obsession. They brought bad luck, broke the spell. Whatever the line was, a real or an abstract one, it shouldn’t be interrupted or broken. In all things, it was essential to follow an orderly and continuous development, in a straight line without hiccups.’
‘Now,’ said Adamsberg, ‘the killing of the cat and the looting of the relics happened three months before Pascaline’s death. Then the “quick of virgins” was taken three months after their deaths. Three, like the number of pinches, the number of virgins, three months, like the length of a season. So the last “quick” will be collected either three months before the new wine, or just before it. And the virgin will be killed three months before that.’
Adamsberg interrupted himself and counted on his fingers, several times.
‘So it’s quite probable that this woman is still alive, but that her death is programmed for some time in the next three months, most likely either early April or late June. And today’s the twenty-fifth of March.’
Three months, two weeks – or even one week. In silence, everyone was considering the urgency and the impossibility of their task. Because even if they did manage to establish a list of virgin women in the circle around Le Mesnil, how could they possibly guess which one the angel of death would choose? And how on earth could they protect her?
‘All this is just speculation on a massive scale,’ said Voisenet, shaking himself as if coming round at the end of a film and abruptly tearing himself away from the fiction that had engaged him up till then. ‘Like everything else.’
‘Yes, that’s all it is,’ said Adamsberg.
A flurry of wings between heaven and earth, thought Danglard anxiously.
XXXIV
THE DISCUSSION HAD LASTED SO LONG THAT ADAMSBERG WAS RUNNING LATE and had to take his car to go to Camille’s studio. He certainly wouldn’t tell Tom the story about the nurse and the ghastly mixture. Eternal life, he thought, as he parked in the rain. Omnipotence. The recipe in the De reliquis seemed ridiculous, a real hoax. But a hoax that had haunted humans since their first steps in the cosmic wilderness which so worried Danglard. A murderous hoax, in search of which which men had elaborated religions and killed each other since time immemorial. This was essentially what the nurse had been looking for, throughout her life. To have the power of life or death over others, to be able to dispose of other people’s existences, was already to be some kind of goddess, weaving the web of their destinies. And now she was taking care of her own. Having reigned over other lives, she couldn’t allow death to catch up with her like any normal old woman. She would use her immense power of life and death for herself, gaining the power of the Immortals and reaching her true throne, from where she would continue her lethal work. She had reached the age of seventy-five and it was time, now that the cycle of youth had passed five times. This was the moment and she had always known it. Her victims had been singled out far in advance, the times and methods of killing had been worked out in minute detail. This woman was meticulous, the plan had been worked out step by step, without leaving anything to chance. She didn’t have a few months’ advance over the police, but ten or fifteen years. The third virgin had been doomed in advance. And he couldn’t see how he, Adamsberg, with his twenty-seven officers, or even with a hundred, could block the implacable advance of the Shade.
No, he would tell Tom the rest of the story of the two ibex instead.
Adamsberg climbed the seven flights of stairs and rang the bell, ten minutes late.
‘If you remember, can you give him his nose drops?’ asked Camille, giving him a small bottle.
‘Of course I’ll remember,’ said Adamsberg, putting the bottle in his pocket. ‘Off you go. Play beautifully.’
‘Yes.’
Just a basic exchange of words between friends. Adamsberg lay on the bed, with Tom lying on his stomach.
‘Remember where we’d got to? Remember the nice brown ibex, who loved birds, but didn’t want the other ginger one to come and annoy him on his bit of the mountain? Well, he did come along, just the same. He came along with his big horns flashing around. And he said: “You were nasty to me when I was a kid, and now you’re going to be sorry.” “It was just kids’ games,” the brown ibex said, “Nothing serious. Go home and stop bothering me.” But the ginger one wouldn’t listen. Because he’d come a long, long way to get his revenge on the brown one.’
Here Adamsberg stopped and the child signified by moving his foot that he wasn’t asleep.
‘So the one who’d come a long, long way said, “You poor sap, I’m going to take your territory, and I’m going to take your job.” Just then a very wise chamois, who was passing, and who had read all the books there are, said to the brown one: “Watch out, this ibex has already killed two other ibex and he’s out to get you as well.” “No, I don’t believe you,” said the brown one to the wise old chamois. “You’re just exaggerating because you’re jealous.” But he was left feeling uneasy. Because this ginge
r ibex was very clever and what’s more he was very good-looking. The brown one decided to fence the ginger one in with a fireguard, while he had a serious think. No sooner said than done. The fireguard was perfect. But the brown ibex had one failing: he wasn’t very good at having a serious think.’
By the child’s weight, Adamsberg felt that Tom had gone to sleep. He put his hand on the baby’s head and closed his eyes, breathing in his smell of soap, milk and sweat. And something else.
‘Surely your mother doesn’t spray perfume on you,’ he whispered. ‘That’s silly, babies shouldn’t wear perfume.’
No, the delicate smell didn’t come from Tom, it was coming from the bed. Adamsberg sniffed in the dark, like the brown ibex, suddenly alerted. It was a scent he knew from somewhere. But it wasn’t Camille’s.
He got up gently, and laid Tom in his cot. He walked around the room, sniffing the air. The scent was localised, it was on the sheets. A man, for God’s sake, a man had been sleeping there, leaving his smell.
Well, so what? he thought, switching on the light. How many women’s beds did you jump into, before it turned Camille into a friend? He lifted the covers in a swift movement, looking at them as if finding out more about the intruder would soothe his anger. Then he sat on the disturbed bed and breathed in deeply. It wasn’t important. One lover more or less, what difference would that make? Nothing serious. Not a reason to be angry. Feelings of revenge like those of Veyrenc were not in his nature. Adamsberg knew the sensation would pass, and waited for it to subside, while he withdrew to the protection of his own private shore, where nothing and no one could reach him.
Calmly, he folded the covers back, tucked them in properly on both sides, and smoothed the pillows with the palm of his hand, not quite knowing whether with this gesture he was wiping out the unknown man or his own anger, which had already passed. He found under his hand a few hairs, which he examined under the lamp. Short hairs, mascu-line hairs. Two black and one ginger. He clenched his fingers round them abruptly.
Breathing fast, he paced from wall to wall, images of Veyrenc tumbling into his head. A torrent of mud, in which he saw the lieutenant’s face from every angle, sitting in the blasted broom cupboard: the silent face, the provocative face, the verse-spouting face, the obstinate face, just like a Béarnais. Fucking bastard of a Béarnais. Danglard was right, this mountain dweller was dangerous, he had seduced Camille on to his wavelength. He had come to exact vengeance, and had started right here. In this bed.
Thomas made a sound in his sleep, and Adamsberg laid his hand on his head.
‘It’s that ginger ibex, little one,’ he whispered. ‘He’s on the attack, and he’s taken the other one’s wife. And that means war, Tom.’
Adamsberg sat motionless for the next two hours, alongside his son’s cot, waiting for Camille to return. He departed quickly, hardly speaking to her, his attitude bordering on discourtesy, and went out into the rain. Behind the wheel, he reviewed his strategy. It looked good: it would be silent and efficient. If one can play at bastards, so can two. He looked at his watches by the overhead light and nodded. By five o’clock tomorrow, the system would be in place.
XXXV
LIEUTENANT HÉLÈNE FROISSY, SO SELF-EFFACING, QUIET AND GENTLE THAT she tended to melt into the background, a woman with unremarkable features but a very shapely figure, had three special qualities. The first was that she could be seen eating from morning to night, without putting on any weight; secondly, she painted in watercolours, the only hobby she was known to have. Adamsberg, who filled entire notebooks with sketches during meetings, had taken over a year to notice Froissy’s little paintings. One night the previous spring, he had been looking in the lieutenant‘s cupboard for something to eat. Froissy’s office was considered by the whole squad as a back-up supply of groceries and you were sure to find a great variety of foodstuffs there: fresh and dried fruit, biscuits, dairy products, cereal, pâté, Turkish delight – a resource in cases of unforeseen pangs of hunger. Froissy was well aware of these depredations and laid in stocks accordingly. When foraging about, Adamsberg had stopped to leaf through a sheaf of watercolours and had discovered the darkness of her colours and subjects, the desolate silhouettes and mournful landscapes under lowering skies. Since then, they had occasionally exchanged paintings and drawings without speaking, slipped into a report here and there. Froissy’s third characteristic, however, was that she had a degree in electronics and had worked for eight years in the transmission-reception services, otherwise known as telephone tapping, and had accomplished marvels of speed and efficiency in this post.
She joined Adamsberg at seven in the morning, as soon as the rather scruffy little bar opposite the Brasserie des Philosophes opened its doors. The Brasserie, being opulent and catering for a largely bourgeois clientele, never opened before nine, whereas the workmen’s cafe raised the blinds at dawn. The croissants had just appeared in a wire basket on the counter and Froissy took advantage of this to order her second breakfast.
‘It’s illegal, of course,’ she said.
‘Naturally.’
Froissy pulled a face as she dipped her croissant in her cup of tea.
‘I need to know a bit more,’ she said.
‘Froissy, I can’t take the risk that a rogue cop has infiltrated the squad.’
‘What would he be up to?’
‘That’s what I don’t know. If I’m wrong, we’ll forget it – you know nothing about it.’
‘But I’ll still have placed bugs without knowing why. Veyrenc lives alone. What do you expect to get by listening in?’
‘His telephone conversations.’
‘So what? If he’s plotting anything, he’s hardly going to talk about it on the phone.’
‘If he is plotting anything, it would be extremely serious.’
‘All the more reason for him to keep quiet.’
‘All the less. You’re forgetting the golden rule of secrecy.’
‘And that is?’ asked Hélène, sweeping up her crumbs into one hand with the other, so as to leave the table looking clean.
‘Someone who has a secret, a secret so important that this person has sworn by all that’s holy not to tell a single soul, always does in fact tell one other person.’
‘Where does that rule come from?’ asked Froissy, rubbing her hands together.
‘From human nature. Nobody, with very rare exceptions, can keep a secret entirely to themselves. The bigger the secret, the more reliable the rule. That’s how secrets leak out, Froissy, being passed from one person who’s sworn not to tell to another person who swears not to tell, and so on. If Veyrenc has a secret, at least one other person must be in on it. And he’ll talk to that person, which is what I want to hear.’
That and something else, thought Adamsberg, feeling uncomfortable at misleading an honest person like Hélène Froissy. His resolve of the previous evening had not diminished, and he had only to think of Veyrenc laying hands on Camille – or, worse still, their inevitable coupling – for his entire being to be transformed into a war machine. In his dealings with Froissy, though, he simply felt a bit shabby, and he could deal with that.
‘Veyrenc’s secret,’ Froissy repeated, dropping her crumbs neatly into her empty cup. ‘Does it have anything to do with his poems?’
‘No, not at all’
‘With his stripy hair?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Adamsberg, realising that Froissy would not cross over the bounds of legality unless he gave her a bit of help.
‘He was attacked?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And he’s looking for revenge?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Deadly revenge?’
‘That I can’t say.’
‘I see,’ said the lieutenant, continuing to smooth the table with her hand, and looking vaguely puzzled to find nothing left there. ‘So it amounts to protecting him from himself in the end?’
‘You’ve got it,’ said Adamsberg, delighted that Froissy had managed
unaided to find that the end might justify the means. ‘Afterwards, we’ll dismantle the listening equipment and everyone will be OK.’
‘All right, then,’ said Froissy, pulling out her notebook and pen. ‘Let’s go. Targets? Objectives?’
In an instant, the self-effacing and morally anxious woman had disappeared, transformed into the formidable technician that she could be.
‘It would be enough for me if you bug his mobile. Here’s the number.’
While he was feeling in his pocket for Veyrenc’s number, Adamsberg found the little bottle Camille had given him. Contrary to his promise, he had failed to remember to give Tom his nose drops.
‘Bug all his calls and have them connected through to my home number.’
‘I’ll have to make them transit through the squad headquarters, then be transferred to you.’
‘Where will the transmitter be at headquarters?’
‘In my cupboard.’
‘But everyone goes looking in there for food, Froissy.’
‘I’m talking about the other food cupboard, to the left of the window. I keep it locked.’
‘So the first one is a decoy, is it? What do you keep in the other one?’
‘Turkish delight, direct from Lebanon. I’ll give you a spare key.’
‘Fine. Here are the keys to my house. Install the speaker in the bedroom upstairs, away from the window.’
‘Obviously.’
‘I don’t just need sound, I need a screen too, to follow where he goes.’
‘Long distances?’
‘Could be.’
To see whether Veyrenc would take Camille away somewhere. A weekend in the country, a fairytale inn in the woods, the baby playing happily in the grass at their feet. Oh no, no fucking way! The bastard was not going to take Tom away from him.
‘Is it important to follow his movements?’
‘Essential.’
‘Well, in that case, we’ll have to do more than bug the mobile. We’ll put a GPS under his car. And do you want a mike in the car too?’