by Fred Vargas
‘By a man in our squad.’
‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg sadly, leaning back in his seat. ‘By one of our own, a black ibex on the mountain.’
‘What’s it got to do with an ibex?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘I don’t want to believe this.’
‘We didn’t want to believe there was a bone in a pig’s snout, but there is one. Like there’s a bone in the squad, Danglard. Stuck in its throat.’
The rain slackened off and Adamsberg slowed the pace of the wind-creen wipers.
‘I did tell you he was lying,’ Danglard went on. ‘Nobody could have remembered that text from the De reliquis unless they already knew it. He must have known the recipe for the potion by heart.’
‘But in that case, why did he tell us it?’
‘Provocation. He thinks he’s invincible.’
‘The child on the ground,’ murmured Adamsberg. ‘The lost vineyard, poverty, years of humiliation. I used to see him around, Danglard. He used to pull a beret right down to his nose to cover up the ginger streaks. He used to limp after the accident with the horse, he would blush to meet people, and he skulked along by the walls, with other boys calling him names.’
‘He can still get to you, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘But it’s the child that touches you. And the adult has grown up twisted. He’s trying to turn the tables on you, because you were the little gang-leader of the village, responsible for his tragic lot, as he would put it in his verses. He’s making the wheel of fortune spin round. It’s your turn to fall, while he’s moving up the ranks. He’s turning into what he spouts about all day long, a Racinian hero, caught in a torrent of hate and ambition, plotting the deaths of other people and the day of his own apotheosis. From the start, you knew he’d come here to get his revenge for the fight between the two valleys.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s put his plan into action, one thing after another, driving you in the wrong direction, sending the investigation off track. He’s killed seven times now: Fernand, Big Georges, Elisabeth, Pascaline, Diala, La Paille, Grimal. He almost killed Retancourt. And he’s going to kill the third virgin.’
‘No, Francine’s safe enough.’
‘So you think. But this man’s tough. He’ll kill Francine, then he’ll get you, once you’ve been disgraced. He hates you.’
Adamsberg lowered the window and stretched his arm out of the car palm up, as if to catch the rain.
‘You’re unhappy about it,’ said Danglard.
‘Yes, I am rather.’
‘But you know we’re right.’
‘When Robert called me about the second stag, I was tired and couldn’t really be bothered. It was Veyrenc who offered to drive me up there. And in the cemetery at Opportune it was Veyrenc who pointed out the short grass on Pascaline’s grave. He encouraged me to open it, just as he’d encouraged me to carry on in Montrouge. And he intervened with Brézillon, so that we could continue our investigation. So that he could keep track of it, while I was getting deeper and deeper in the shit.’
‘And,’ Danglard pointed out gently, ‘he took Camille from you. That’s high-level vengeance, like in a play by Racine.’
‘How did you know about that, Danglard?’ said Adamsberg, clenching his fist in the rain.
‘When I had to take over the listening device in Froissy’s cupboard, I had to play a bit of the previous tape to get the soundtrack tuned. I did warn you about him. Intelligent, strong and dangerous.’
‘All the same, I liked him.’
‘Is that why we’re sitting here in Clancy in this car? Instead of getting back to Paris?’
‘No, capitaine. For one thing, it’s because we’ve got no absolute proof of all this. An examining magistrate would release him after twenty-four hours. Veyrenc could tell him about the war between the valleys and say that I was bent on destroying him for private reasons. So that no one would ever know who was the fifth boy under the tree.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ agreed Danglard. ‘He’s got that over you.’
‘Secondly, I still don’t understand what Retancourt was trying to tell me.’
‘Well, I can’t fathom how the Snowball was able to do those thirty-eight kilometres,’ remarked Danglard, looking thoughtful about this new Unsolved Question.
‘That was an example of the miracles of love, Danglard. And maybe the cat had also picked up some tips from Violette. How to save your strength, bit by bit, to commit it to a single mission, overcoming any obstacle in your path.’
‘She was partnered with Veyrenc at work. That’s why she must have guessed about that damned thing we couldn’t see. He knew she was going to see Roman. He must have waited for her on the way out. And she was rather taken by him, so she would have followed him. The only time in her life when Violette’s instincts let her down.’
‘Love and its disasters, Danglard.’
‘Even Violette can be tricked. By a smile or the sound of a voice.’
‘I want to know what she was trying to tell me, Danglard,’ Adamsberg insisted, pulling his now soaking-wet arm back into the car. ‘In your view, capitaine, what would be the first thing she would do, once she was able to articulate at all?’
‘She’d try to talk to you.’
‘To tell me what?’
‘The truth. And that’s what she did. She talked about the shoes. She said they didn’t matter. So she was telling us it wasn’t the nurse.’
‘But that wasn’t the first thing she said. It was the second.’
‘Before that she didn’t say anything that made sense, just quoted a line or two from Corneille.’
‘Who speaks those lines in Corneille?’
‘Camille. It’s in his play Horace.’
‘Ah, you see, Danglard, that proves it. Retancourt wasn’t just reciting stuff from school. She was trying to send me a message through another Camille. But I don’t know what it means.’
‘Because it wasn’t clear. Retancourt was still only semi-conscious. You can’t treat what she said to an interpretation, like you can for dreams.’
Danglard thought for a few moments.
‘The play goes like this,’ he said. ‘Camille is caught up in a fight between two sets of brothers, who are enemies. The Horatii on one hand and the Curiatii on the other. She’s in love with one of them, but he wants to kill a man from the other side, who’s her brother. Well, around your Camille, we have the same thing, sort of. Two cousins who are enemies, you and Veyrenc. But Veyrenc stands for Racine. And who was Racine’s big enemy and rival? Corneille.’
‘Really?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘Really. Because Racine’s terrific success as a playwright pushed poor old Corneille out of the limelight. They hated each other. Retancourt has chosen Corneille, and is pointing at his enemy: Racine. It must mean Veyrenc. That’s why she spoke in verse, so that you would immediately think of Veyrenc.’
‘Well, that’s just what I did. I wondered if she was dreaming about him, or if he’d infected her with his verse-speaking.’
Adamsberg put the window back up and fastened his seat belt. ‘Let me have a word with him alone first,’ he said, starting the engine.
LIX
VEYRENC WAS CONVALESCENT NOW. SITTING ON HIS BED, WEARING SHORTS, and leaning back on two pillows, with one leg bent and the other stretched out, he watched as Adamsberg, arms folded, paced up and down at the foot of the bed.
‘Does it hurt to stand on it?’ Adamsberg asked.
‘It stings a bit, I can feel it, but it’s not too bad.’
‘Are you OK to walk, drive a car?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Good.’
‘Now speak to me, my lord: I see from your pale face
That a worry torments you in some secret place.’
‘Correct, Veyrenc. This killer who murdered Elisabeth, Pascaline, Diala, La Paille, the gendarme Grimal, this person who opened graves and nearly killed Retancourt, who cut u
p three stags and a cat and stole the relics, it’s not a woman at all. It’s a man.’
‘Is that just a hunch? Or have you got some new elements?’
‘What do you mean by “elements”?’
‘Well, evidence.’
‘No. But I know this man knew enough about the angel of death to send us off on a wild-goose chase after her, stopping us looking elsewhere, while he was calmly going about his business.’
Veyrenc screwed up his eyes and reached for his cigarettes.
‘The investigation was dragging on,’ said Adamsberg, ‘and these women had been killed, and I was getting nowhere. A pretty good form of revenge for the killer. Can I have one?’ he added, pointing to the cigarette packet.
Veyrenc passed him the packet and lit both cigarettes. Adamsberg watched his hands. No trembling or sign of emotion.
‘And this man,’ said Adamsberg, ‘is someone in our squad.’
Veyrenc ran his fingers through his variegated hair and exhaled rapidly, a stunned expression on his face.
‘But I don’t have a single tangible element of proof. My hands are tied. What would you do, Veyrenc?’
The lieutenant flicked some ash into his hand, and Adamsberg passed him an ashtray.
‘When we searched far afield, sending forth all our men
Into distant domains in search of this our prey,
He was here, in our midst, and our quest went astray.’
‘Yes. Some victory, eh? One intelligent killer manipulating twenty-seven idiots.’
‘You surely can’t be thinking of Noël? I don’t really know him, but I can’t see it. He’s aggressive but not a killer.’
Adamsberg shook his head.
‘Well, who then?’
‘I was thinking about what Retancourt said when she was semiconscious.’
‘Ah,’ said Veyrenc, with a smile. ‘When she quoted Corneille, those lines from Horace.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Because I’ve been asking for news of her. Lavoisier told me about it.’
‘You’re very considerate, for a newcomer.’
‘Retancourt’s my partner at work.’
‘I think she tried hard to point the finger at the killer, but she hadn’t the strength to do it.’
‘Did you doubt it, my lord?
Since you waited so long, to give her words their weight
Neglecting their meaning, until it was too late?’
‘So have you discovered it, Veyrenc? What she meant?’
‘No, I haven’t’ said Veyrenc, looking away to tap off his ash. ‘So what are you going to do, commissaire?’
‘Something very obvious. I’m going to lie in wait for the killer. Things are moving faster. He knows that Retancourt is bound to talk soon. He doesn’t have much time, since she’s recovering quite well – about a week, maybe. He absolutely has to finish the potion, before he’s intercepted. So we’ll expose Francine, without any obvious protection.’
‘Pretty classic,’ said Veyrenc.
‘A race against time isn’t original, lieutenant. Two guys run neck and neck around a track and the fastest one wins. That’s all. And yet thousands of people have been racing each other for thousands of years. Well, it’s just the same with this. The killer’s running, so I’ll run too. Not a matter of doing anything tricksy, just trying to get there before he does.’
‘But the killer’s sure to suspect that you’re going to try and trap him.’
‘Of course. But he’ll keep running, because he doesn’t have any choice either. He’s not trying to be original at this point, just trying to succeed. And the more elementary the trap, the less the murderer will suspect anything.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, like you, he’ll think I’m plotting something more intelligent.’
‘Ye-es,’ Veyrenc admitted. ‘So if you choose the elementary method, you put Francine back in her house? Discreetly protected this time?’
‘No, no. No one in their right mind would think we could get Francine to set foot in that farmhouse again.’
‘So where’ll you put her? In a hotel in Evreux? And let the information leak out?’
‘Not quite. I’ve chosen a place that I think is reasonably safe and secret but which the murderer might be able to guess, if he has his wits about him. Which he generally has.’
Veyrenc thought for a few moments.
‘So it’s got to be a place you know quite well,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘A place that won’t frighten Francine too much, but that you can protect without your policemen being obvious.’
‘For instance?’
‘For instance, the inn in Haroncourt.’
‘See, it was quite easy. In Haroncourt, where the whole thing started, but under the protection of Robert and Oswald. They’ll be a lot less obvious than a bunch of cops. Cops are always easy to spot.’
Veyrenc looked doubtful.
‘Even a cop who’s come down out of the mountains and hasn’t bothered to do up all his shirt buttons or to get rid of the mist in his eyes?’
‘Yes, even me, Veyrenc. And do you know why? Why do you think an ordinary customer sitting in a café drinking his beer doesn’t look like a policeman sitting at a table and drinking his beer? Because the policeman’s on duty and the other isn’t. Because a man on his own thinks, daydreams, and wonders about things. But the cop is watching the whole time. The ordinary guy’s eyes are looking in at himself, but the cop’s eyes are always flicking round his surroundings. He might as well put up a sign. So we won’t put an officer in the bar at the hotel.’
‘I see. Not bad,’ said Veyrenc, stubbing out his cigarette.
‘Well, anyway, I hope so,’ said Adamsberg, getting up.
‘What did you really come here for, commissaire?’
‘To ask you whether any more details had come back to you, now you’ve remembered where it really happened, the attack: in the High Meadow.’
‘Just one.’
‘And that is?’
‘That fifth boy, the one under the tree, standing looking at the others getting to work on me.’
‘Yes.’
‘He had his hands behind his back.’
‘So?’
‘So I’m wondering what he was holding in his hands, or hiding. A weapon, perhaps?’
‘You’re getting warm. Keep on thinking, lieutenant.’
Veyrenc watched as the commissaire picked up his jacket, of which one sleeve was inexplicably soaking wet, and went out, slamming the door. He closed his eyes and smiled.
You lie to me, my lord, but your tricks help me know
To what strange final end you wish my steps to go.
LX
CROUCHING IN A DARK CORNER OF THE LINEN STORE, THE SHADE WAS waiting for the evening routines to be over. The night shift would soon be there, and the nurses were going round the rooms, emptying bedpans, putting out lights, and getting ready to return to their lodgings. Getting into Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Hospital had been even easier than expected. No distrust, no questions, not even from the lieutenant on duty on the first floor, who tended to drop off to sleep every now and then but who had saluted pleasantly and reported that all was well. The hypersomniac idiot, that was a piece of luck. He had gratefully accepted a cup of machine coffee, containing two sleeping pills, which meant he’d be out for the count till tomorrow morning. When people don’t suspect you, it’s all quite simple. Soon now, the incredible hulk would be unable to say anything: it was about time she was shut up for good. Retancourt’s unpredictable survival capacity had been an unexpected setback. And those damned lines from Corneille that she had stammered out. Luckily none of the imbeciles in the squad had understood, not even their resident intellectual, Danglard, never mind an airhead like Adamsberg. Retancourt, though, was dangerous, as smart as she was strong. Still, tonight there would be a double dose of Novaxon, and in her present condition she’d croak at the first intake of breath.
The Shade smiled, thinking
of Adamsberg, who right now would be setting up his gimcrack little trap in the inn at Haroncourt. A pathetic little trap, which would close on him, making him look ridiculous and humiliated. In the distress that would be caused by the incredible hulk’s death, the Shade would have no trouble getting to the goddamn third virgin, who had escaped by a hair’s breadth last time. What a pathetic halfwit – and they were protecting her as if she were a precious vase. That had been the Shade’s only mistake. Who would have thought that anyone would guess there was a bone like a cross in the heart of a stag? Or that such an ignorant and vague mind as Adamsberg’s would find the link between the stags and the virgins, between Pascaline’s cat and the De reliquis. But by some monumental bad luck, that’s what he had done, and he’d identified the third virgin quicker than might have been expected. It was also bad luck that Danglard was well-read enough to want to see the book at the priest’s house and had recognised the 1663 edition. Typical that fate should throw some cops like this in the way.
But, after all, these obstacles weren’t serious: Francine’s death was only a matter of weeks away and there was still plenty of time. By the autumn the mixture would be ready and both time and the enemy would be powerless.
The ancillary staff were leaving the kitchens on the first floor, the nurses were going round saying their usual goodnights to each patient (close your eyes now, try to get a good night’s rest). The night lights in the corridor had been lit. Best to wait a good hour, so that the insomniacs had time to drop off. But by eleven o’clock the hulk would be asleep for good.
LXI
ADAMSBERG CONSIDERED THAT HE HAD LAID HIS TRAP WITH CHILDLIKE simplicity and he was quite pleased with it. It was a classic mousetrap, of course, but it ought to be secure, complete with the slight twist he was banking on. Sitting behind the door of the bedroom, he was waiting for the second consecutive night. Three metres to his left sat Adrien Danglard, an excellent exponent of the speedy assault, unlikely though that might seem. In action, his lethargic body snapped into movement like a rubber band. Danglard was wearing a particularly elegant suit this evening. His bulletproof vest affected its lines somewhat, but Adamsberg had insisted on his wearing it. To his right was Estalère, whose qualities included seeing uncommonly well in the dark, like the Snowball.