by Fred Vargas
‘While we’re at it. How long do you need?’
‘I’ll have it done by five this evening.’
XXXVI
BY FOUR-FORTY THAT AFTERNOON HÉLÈNE FROISSY WAS FINE-TUNING THE reception for the receiver she had installed in Adamsberg’s bedroom. She could hear Veyrenc’s voice quite well, although it was overlaid by the voices around and by sounds of chairs scraping, footsteps and papers rustling. The microphone was too powerful, the bug on the mobile only needed to pick up sound from a radius of five metres. That would be enough to cover Veyrenc’s small flat, and it would allow her to tune out much of the interference.
Now she could hear Veyrenc’s voice quite distinctly. He was talking to Retancourt and Justin. Froissy listened in for a few moments to the light tone and husky sound of the lieutenant’s voice while eliminating the last remnants of outside interference. Now Veyrenc was sitting down at his desk. She heard the click of a keyboard and then he said quietly to himself: ‘I have no place to go to bury deep my pain.’ Froissy glanced angrily at the bug she had just installed, at the diabolical device that could pour Veyrenc’s innermost thoughts direct into Adamsberg’s room. There was something violent about putting these tracking devices on Veyrenc. Froissy hesitated before setting everything to ‘go’, then turned all the switches on, one by one. A battle between macho boys, she thought as she closed the door, and she had been drawn into it on her full responsibility.
XXXVII
ON MONDAY, 4 APRIL, DANGLARD PINNED UP A MAP OF THE EURE département in Normandy on the wall of the Council Chamber. In his hand he was holding a list of the twenty-nine women assumed to be virgins, aged between thirty and forty, living within twenty kilometres of Le Mesnil-Beauchamp. Their addresses had been located, and Justin was marking their homes on the map with red drawing pins.
‘You should have used white ones,’ said Voisenet.
‘Oh, bugger off,’ said Justin. ‘Haven’t got any.’
The men were all tired. They had spent a week checking lists and combing the area, interviewing all the parish priests. One thing seemed certain. No other woman corresponding to their criteria had died accidentally in recent months. So the third virgin must still be alive. This certainty weighed as heavily on the shoulders of the officers as their doubts concerning the direction in which their boss had taken the investigation. They were inclined to question the very basis of their work – namely the link between the profanation of the graves and the recipe in De reliquis.
The opposition had divided into different groups. The most hard-nosed among them thought that traces of lichen on a stone were insufficient evidence of murder. And that, seen from one point of view, the whole structure which Adamsberg had built up was as flimsy as a dream, a fantasy into which he had drawn them all during that extraordinary conference. Others, more hesitant, were prepared to accept that both Pascaline and Elisabeth had been murdered, and agreed that their deaths might somehow be related to the mutilated cat and the theft of the relics. But they refused to follow the commissaire in his view of the medieval potion. And even among those, finally, who accepted the De reliquis theory, its interpretation was subject to much discussion and analysis. After all, the text didn’t say anything about cats, and the male principle could just as well, for all they knew, refer to the semen of a bull. There was nothing to indicate the contrary, just as there was no precise indication that three separate virgins were required to provide ingredients. Maybe two were enough, and all this labour was for nothing. And nothing proved, either, that the third virgin would be killed three months, or six months, before the new wine was ready. The whole thing, from insubstantial beginnings to improbable reasoning, made a completely unbelievable farrago, detached from reality.
With the passage of time, an unprecedented rebellion was brewing in the squad, drawing in more recruits as the hours passed and their fatigue grew. People remembered the hasty rustication of Lieutenant Noël, from whom nothing had been heard. And this punishment appeared all the more incomprehensible since Adamsberg was now treating the New Recruit very offhandedly, and avoiding him as much as possible. Murmurings were heard that the commissaire had still not recovered from his traumatic Quebec experience, from his separation from Camille, or from the death of his father and the birth of his son, events which had suddenly precipitated him into the the ranks of older men. People remembered the pebbles he had placed on their desks, and somebody suggested that Adamsberg was veering towards mysticism. Once he was on such slippery territory, he would send the whole investigation plunging into the abyss, with all hands.
Such discontent would not have gone beyond the usual level of grumbling if Adamsberg had seemed his normal self. But since the day after the conference about the Three Virgins, the commissaire had become inaccessible, sending out brief, morose messages, never setting foot in the Council Chamber. It was as if his veins had frozen. The rebellion had revived the old debate between the positivists and the cloud shovellers, the latter becoming fewer in number as Adamsberg remained cold and distant.
Two days earlier, a fierce argument over whether they ought simply to stop looking for the damned relics and all the rest of the ridiculous ingredients had once more stimulated these antagonisms. Mercadet, Kernorkian, Maurel, Lamarre, Gardon, and Estalère were, of course, solidly behind the commissaire, who did not himself appear to be preoccupied by the potential mutiny in the squad. Danglard, stony-faced, was still holding the bridge, although he was one of those who had the gravest doubts about Adamsberg’s orders. But in the face of a mutiny, he would have allowed himself to be chopped into tiny pieces rather than admit this; and he continued stolidly defending the De reliquis theory, though without placing any faith in it. Veyrenc had not taken sides, contenting himself with carrying out his duties and trying to keep a low profile. Since the conference of the Three Virgins, he and the commissaire had suddenly been placed on a war footing, but he had no idea why.
Strangely enough, Retancourt, one of the leading positivists in the squad, had remained neutral throughout, like a blasé supervisor on duty in a rowdy playground. Quieter than usual and deep in concentration, Retancourt had appeared to be absorbed in a problem known only to herself. She had not even turned up for work on Monday morning. Puzzled at this, Danglard had consulted Estalère, who was reckoned to be the expert on the polyvalent goddess.
‘She’s channelling all her energy in one direction,’ was Estalère’s diagnosis. ‘There’s not an ounce left for us, and hardly any for the cat.’
‘And what’s she channelling it into, in your opinion?’
‘It’s not administrative, not family, nothing physical. Not technical,’ said Estalère, ticking off the possibilities, I think it’s, how shall I put it … ?’ Estalère pointed to his forehead.
‘Intellectual,’ said Danglard
‘Yes,’ said Estalère. ‘It’s something she’s thinking about. Something’s intrigued her.’
Adamsberg was in fact acutely conscious of the climate which he had produced in the squad, and he was attempting to control it. But the recordings of Veyrenc had seriously upset him, and he was having difficulty regaining his equilibrium. The phone-tapping had not taken him one step further in his research into the war of the two valleys and the deaths of Fernand and Big Georges. Veyrenc called nobody except one or two relatives and friends, and never commented on his work with the squad. On the other hand, Adamsberg had twice overheard Veyrenc and Camille in bed, and was crushed by the thought of their two bodies, wounded by the crudity of real lives when they are those of other people. And now he deeply regretted his action. Their relationship, far from enabling him to get close to them and control them, was in fact driving him ever further from them. He wasn’t there in that bedroom, it wasn’t his space. He had invaded it like an intruder and he would have to leave it. The disappointed recognition that there was an inaccessible space belonging only to Camille and which did not concern him at all was gradually beginning to replace his anger. All that was left for h
im to do was return to his own territory, chastened and soiled, encrusted with memories that he would have to destroy. He had spent a long time walking around listening to the seagulls, in order to understand that he would have to give up his siege of an imaginary citadel.
Feeling relieved and as if recovering from a fever which had left him drained, he crossed the Council Chamber and looked at the map which Justin was completing. On seeing him come in, Veyrenc had immediately withdrawn into a defensive posture.
‘Twenty-nine,’ said Adamsberg, reckoning up the red drawing pins.
‘We’ll never manage it,’ said Danglard. ‘We’ll have to narrow down the criteria to keep it more controllable.’
‘What about their way of life?’ suggested Maurel. ‘We could rule out the ones who live with someone else – parents, brother, aunt – because they’d be less accessible to a killer.’
‘No, we can’t assume that,’ said Danglard. ‘Elisabeth was killed on her way to work.’
‘What about the wood of the Cross? Any joy there?’ wondered Adamsberg in a husky voice, as if he had had a cough for a week.
‘There are no other relics in the whole of Upper Normandy,’ replied Mercadet. ‘And there’ve been no thefts during the period in question. The last dodgy sale reported was of some relics of Saint Demetrius of Salonika, fifty-four years ago.’
‘And the angel of death. Any sightings of her in the area?’
‘There is one possibility,’ said Gardon. ‘But we’ve only got three witnesses. A district nurse came to live in Vecquigny six years ago. That’s only three kilometres north-east of Le Mesnil. The description’s a bit vague. A woman between sixty and seventy, small, neat, chatty. Could be just about anyone. They remembered her in Le Mesnil, Vecquigny and Meillères. She was practising there about a year.’
‘Long enough to pick up information, then. Do we know why she left?’
‘No.’
‘Let’s just drop it,’ said Justin, who had crossed over into the positivist camp during the rebellion.
‘Drop what, lieutenant?’ said Adamsberg in a faraway voice.
‘Everything. The book, the cat, the third virgin, the bits of bone, the whole bloody lot. It’s a complete load of bollocks.’
‘I don’t need any more men on this business,’ said Adamsberg, sitting down in the middle of the room with everyone looking at him. ‘All the facts have been assembled. We can’t do any more, either through the files or on the ground.’
‘Well, how do we proceed, then?’ asked Gardon, still hoping for a lead.
‘Intellectually,’ hazarded Estalère, imprudently joining the discussion.
‘You’re the intellectual genius who’s going to find the solution, are you, Estalère?’ asked Mordent.
‘Anyone who wants to be taken off this case can go,’ said Adamsberg in the same tired voice. ‘In fact, they’re needed elsewhere. We need someone to look at the death in the rue de Miromesnil and the fight at Alésia. And there needs to be an inquiry into the outbreak of food poisoning at the nursing home in Auteuil. We’re behind on all these cases.’
‘I think Justin’s got a point,’ said Mordent, in a level tone. ‘I think we’re on the wrong track, commissaire. After all, if you take the long view, it started with a cat that some kids could have been tormenting.’
‘A penile bone taken from a cat,’ said Kernorkian defensively.
‘I just don’t believe in the third virgin,’ said Mordent.
‘I don’t even believe in the first,’ said Justin gloomily.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Lamarre. ‘That Elisabeth woman was dead all right.’
‘I meant the Virgin Mary.’
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Adamsberg, putting on his jacket. ‘But the third virgin’s out there somewhere, drinking her little cup of coffee, and I’m not going to let her die.’
‘What little cup of coffee?’ asked Estalère, but Adamsberg had already left the building.
‘Nothing,’ said Mordent. ‘It’s just a way of saying she’s carrying on with her life.’
XXXVIII
FRANCINE DIDN’T LIKE OLD THINGS. THEY WERE DIRTY AND RICKETY. SHE really felt happy only in the immaculate universe of the pharmacy where she did the cleaning and laundry and stacked the shelves. But she didn’t like returning to the old family home, which was dirt-encrusted and tumbledown. When he was alive, Honoré Bidault wouldn’t let anyone touch it, but now what difference could it make? For the last two years, Francine had been planning her move away, far from the old farmhouse, to a brand-new flat in town. And she would leave everything here – the crocks, the battered saucepans, the big old wardrobes – everything.
Half past eight in the evening was the best moment of the day. Francine had finished the dishes, closed the plastic rubbish bag firmly and taken it out to the doorstep. Dustbins attracted any number of insects – best not to keep them inside the house at night. She checked the kitchen, always with the fear that she might find a mouse or some disgusting insect, a caterpillar or spider – the house was crawling with nasty creatures like this that kept making their way in and out when you weren’t looking, and there was no way of getting rid of them because of the fields outside, the attic up above and the cellar down below. The only bunker which she had succeeded in protecting from these intruders was her bedroom. She had spent months blocking the chimney, cementing up all the cracks in the walls and the gaps under the windows and round the doors, and had put her bed up on bricks. She preferred to leave the room unaired rather than let anything get in while she was asleep. But there was nothing she could do about the woodworms which were eating their way through the ancient beams overhead all night. Every evening, Francine watched the little holes over her bed, fearing to see the head of a worm poking out. She didn’t know what the horrid creatures looked like – earthworms? centipedes? earwigs? But every morning she had to brush away in disgust the little piles of sawdust that had fallen on her bedspread.
Francine poured some hot coffee into a large cup, added a lump of sugar and two capfuls of rum. The best moment of the day. Then she carried the cup into the bedroom, with the little bottle of rum, ready to watch two films one after the other. Her collection of eight hundred and twelve tapes, all labelled and in order, was stacked in the other room, her father’s bedroom, and sooner or later the damp would start to damage them. She had decided to leave the farm the day a woodwork expert had come to inspect the house, five months after her father’s death. In the cross-beams he had detected seven holes made by death-watch beetles. Seven. Huge holes you could put your little finger into. ‘If you listen hard, you can hear them munching away,’ the man had said with a laugh.
It ought to be treated, the expert had said. But as soon as she had seen the size of the beetle holes, Francine had made up her mind. She would move out. She sometimes wondered, with horror, what a death-watch beetle looked like. Like a big worm, or a beetle with a drill in its head?
At one in the morning, Francine looked up at the woodworm holes and checked, thanks to the marks she had made, that they had not moved too much further across the beam. She put out the light, hoping not to hear the snuffling of the hedgehog outside. It was a horrid sound, almost like a human being snorting away in the night. She lay on her stomach, pulling the blankets over her head, just leaving a little space to breathe through. ‘Francine, you’re thirty-five years old and you still act like a child,’ the priest had said. Well, so what? In another two months, she wouldn’t have to see this house, or the priest in her village of Otton, ever again. She wouldn’t spend another summer here. It was even worse in summer, with the big moths that came in – goodness knew how – banging their huge floppy bodies against the blinds and lampshades. And then there were bluebottles, hornets, horseflies, field mice and harvest-mites. People said that harvest mite larvae dug little holes in your skin and laid eggs in them. Yuk.
In order to get to sleep, Francine went through the countdown to her removal day, the first of June. S
he had been told over and over that she was getting a bad deal, exchanging this enormous eighteenth-century farmhouse for a two-room balcony flat in Evreux. But as far as she was concerned, it was the best deal she’d made in her life. In two months’ time she’d be safe with her eight hundred and twelve films in a clean white apartment, just along the street from the pharmacy. She’d be sitting on a nice new blue cushion on a floor covered with shiny lino, in front of her TV set, with her coffee and her rum, and without the least little woodworm to bother her. Only two months to go. She’d sleep in a high bunk bed, away from the wall, with a varnished ladder to climb into it. There would be pastel-coloured sheets, which would stay clean without flies coming and leaving spots on them. Acting like a child or not, she’d be happy at last. Francine snuggled under the bedclothes and put her fingers in her ears. She didn’t want to hear the hedgehog.
XXXIX
AS SOON AS HE HAD CLOSED HIS FRONT DOOR BEHIND HIM, ADAMSBERG made for the shower. He shampooed his hair, rubbing as hard as he could, then leaned against the tiled wall and let the warm water run over his closed eyes and dangling arms. Stay in the river like that, his mother used to say, and you’ll come out white as snow.
An image of Ariane flashed across his mind, refreshingly. Good idea, he said to himself, turning off the taps. He could invite her out to dinner, and then see if anything happened, yes or no. He dried himself quickly, put his clothes back on over his still-damp skin, and went past the tracking console which was at the end of his bed. Tomorrow he would ask Froissy to come and disconnect this infernal machine and carry off in its wires the image of the damned Béarnais with his crooked smile. He picked up the pile of recordings of Veyrenc, and broke the disks one by one, throwing the shiny fragments round the room. Then he put them all in a bag which he carefully sealed. Next, he ate some sardines, tomatoes and cheese. Feeling both purified and well fed, he decided to call Camille as an indication of his goodwill, and enquire about Tom’s cold.