by Fred Vargas
‘Not in the playground,’ Veyrenc said. ‘Because it seems there was a big fence between boys and girls, just ordinary wire netting. Either they flashed at the girls, or maybe they even poked their peckers through the mesh and ejaculated on some girl who’d been unwise enough to get close. Or they scribbled pornographic graffiti on the walls. A janitor stopped them when they managed to get into the girls’ dormitory, just the once. And they’d already started pulling off the bedclothes.’
‘And what’s to say they didn’t manage it on other occasions?’ said Adamsberg. ‘Carried out rapes? Which the girls never told anyone about, like eighty per cent of women who are raped? The Recluse Gang turned into the Rapists’ Gang. But it didn’t break up after La Miséricorde. Just went on committing more outrages. As in their youth.’
‘But where are we going to look for the killer?’ said Veyrenc. ‘And who wants a coffee?’
Both Adamsberg and Voisenet raised their hands. It had been a long and difficult day for them all. Veyrenc went back up to the counter to order.
‘Where indeed?’ he repeated as he sat back down. ‘Could it be the boys who were bitten by recluse spiders? Or the girls who were raped? We don’t know how many there were of them, we just know the one.’
‘Could be any and every one of those, Louis.’
‘But why would girls who had been raped use spider venom, since it would mean going in for some very complicated process? You could argue the boys might have thought of that. Poison for poison. But rape victims? They could just pick up a gun and have done with it.’
‘There’s another possibility,’ said Voisenet, ‘but you’ll say I’ve got my zoologist’s hat on, or that I’m thinking like Danglard.’
‘Go ahead anyway.’
‘It means penetrating deep into the recesses of the primary thoughts of human beings.’
‘All right,’ said Adamsberg, ‘down you go.’
‘I’m not sure how to begin. Primary instincts are very complicated.’
‘Start with “Once upon a time”. Veyrenc says these recluse creatures remind him of fairy tales.’
‘All right, that’ll do. Once upon a time, venom was possessed by certain creatures. It has always had a special place in the human imagination. People came to think of poison, venom, as endowed with all kinds of magical properties, beneficial or prophylactic, and it was used by herbalists, for instance, on the principle that what can kill can also cure.’
‘What’s “prophylactic” mean?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘Anything that prevents an illness, or protects you from it.’
‘OK.’
‘So poisonous creatures, snakes, scorpions, spiders, what have you, were all seen as the enemies of mankind. To meet one was a fatal sign. But if you managed to master them, you could “cast the spell back”. So you would be stronger than the poison, stronger than death, invincible. Stop me if I’m boring you.’
‘No, not at all,’ said Adamsberg.
‘I’d add that there was an unconscious link between this venom, the poison that a creature could spit or inject, and human sperm. Especially for snakes, the kind that rear up before they strike, or worse, the kind of snake that spits. So you might imagine that a woman who’s been raped, and soiled by her aggressor’s sperm, might have the idea of vengeance of the same kind. For her, snake venom would be the liquid nearest to the sperm she hates.’
‘That figures,’ said Veyrenc.
‘But I’ll concentrate on the spider. With the idea that you could master the toxic poison, and become strong by overcoming it, the spider you’ve now controlled might bring you good luck and protection. People have made all kinds of concoctions from spiders to treat illnesses – they sometimes gave them to patients by mouth, in the olden days, to cure all kinds of diseases, intermittent agues, haemorrhages, bleeding from the womb, arrhythmia, senile dementia, impotence –’
‘Impotence?’
‘It’s quite logical, commissaire. Like I said, there’s a link between the poisonous fluid and spermatic fluid.’
‘But why wouldn’t you try to treat impotence by using real animal sperm direct?’
‘Because that would be the same as ours, no more, no less. You need some kind of superior fluid. But men do yield to big animals if they’re dangerous. Bulls’ testicles were used for instance. Can I get back to the spider?’
‘Yes, go on, Voisenet.’
‘Not all that long ago, people said if you carried around on you a spider you’d subdued – in a locket, say, or in a nutshell if you were poor, or sewn inside your clothes – it would protect you from all kinds of sickness, bad luck or the perils of war.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. So let’s imagine a woman who’s been raped, and she somehow manages to tame some spiders. She becomes the master of the poisonous liquid, and she can dominate the offensive human sperm. So that way, she could be victorious, and kill someone, with the spider and thanks to the spider.’
‘Well, to think up all that,’ Veyrenc observed, ‘you’d have to be a woman who’s seriously disturbed.’
‘Rape is seriously disturbing.’
‘Even today, Voisenet, in our time? Who’s going to believe in all that poison stuff?’
‘Our time, sir? What time are we talking about? Civilised? Rational? At peace? Our time is still prehistory, it’s the Middle Ages. Humankind hasn’t changed one iota. And primal thoughts certainly haven’t.’
‘Very true,’ said Veyrenc.
‘And when the little stink bugs were attacking kids with their recluses, that was really, deep down, a kind of sexual attack. The law of the strongest, injecting venom, animal liquid.’
‘Eleven victims of bites,’ said Adamsberg, ‘and God knows how many women raped. And there are just five of us.’
‘Five?’ said Voisenet.
‘You, Veyrenc, me, Froissy, and add Retancourt.’
‘No, not Retancourt.’
‘Yes, Voisenet. She’s on our side, she doesn’t believe in it, but she’s not opposing us. Five.’
‘So we’re nowhere near winning.’
‘But we’ve made a start, lieutenant.’
XX
For once, Adamsberg actually remembered his dream. Sitting in front of his bread and coffee, and reflecting that the bread wasn’t as interesting these days without Zerk cutting big uneven slices for him, he remembered that in his dream he had become impotent. And a feeling of devastation had sent him towards the only possible remedy: recluse spiders. He had searched through piles of logs and stones, without finding a single one to eat.
It was with his mind full of these jumbled stones, and the unpleasant idea that he had wanted to eat spiders, that he now crossed the large workroom in the squad headquarters, as The Book was finally being completed. People were coming and going, bringing their final drafts, while the printers were spitting out their first copies. He stopped Estalère who, with the help of Veyrenc, was carrying piles of papers to Danglard’s office, taking all the precautions one would have used for an ancient and precious manuscript. It could all have been done by sending attachments to his computer, but Danglard insisted on paper versions, which made the whole thing more long-winded.
‘Meeting at eleven this morning, council chamber. Estalère, can you spread the word? And call anyone who isn’t on duty today.’
‘You mean wake them up?’ asked the young officer, always worried that he might not have quite understood his orders. ‘Like the other time when it didn’t get anywhere?’
There was no criticism in his remark. There was no crack in his veneration of Adamsberg through which the slightest negative thought could slip.
‘Exactly. Like the other time when it didn’t get anywhere.’
‘Even Commandant Danglard?’
‘Especially him. Louis, you’re going to fill in the team,
if we can still call them a team. With Voisenet explaining about the fluids. Can you show them the photos by PowerPoint on the big screen, the torturers and the victims?’
Veyrenc nodded.
‘But why don’t you want to speak yourself?’
‘Because I’m afraid Danglard is going to counter-attack, with Mordent backing him up,’ said Adamsberg with a slight shrug. ‘And I don’t want to cross swords this morning. Today, those two are not the ones who matter, it’s the team as a whole. I’ll just say a few words to kick off, then you can take over.’
But what words? he asked himself. He had not given it any thought. He moved off towards Froissy’s office.
* * *
*
‘Lieutenant, it’s a fine day, the steps in the yard are probably warm by now.’
‘Shall I bring some cake?’ asked Froissy, immediately switching off her computer.
Once in the yard, she sat down on the steps, laptop on her knee, while Adamsberg crumbled the cake a few metres from the blackbirds’ nest.
‘Your trousers really will be ruined,’ Froissy muttered to herself, as Adamsberg came back across to her.
She was looking better. Retancourt must have done what she intended, washing her hands in the bathroom and noting that no further sound could be heard. He had never imagined that Retancourt would not succeed.
‘Any luck, lieutenant? With the doctors?’
‘I got through to their report. I must say, I felt guilty.’
‘But satisfied.’
‘Well, firstly,’ said Froissy with a slight smile, ‘all three of these men were still in good health, no heart trouble, though they did have serious liver problems. Arising from alcohol, in all cases. One of them was taking something for high blood pressure, another something for cholesterol, and the third Nigradamyl.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s to treat impotence.’
‘Well, well. Which one was that?’
‘The eighty-four-year-old, Claveyrolle.’
‘It would be.’
‘My cousin’s a doctor. He says the number of old men who don’t give up is impressive.’
‘And old Claveyrolle hadn’t given up.’
‘So,’ said Froissy, ‘on the face of it, no reason they would be extra-vulnerable to a spider bite. Or that their loxo . . . whatever . . .’
‘Loxoscelism,’ Adamsberg proposed.
He now felt quite confident about this word, not having to look it up yet again in his notebook.
‘Right. Or that their loxoscelism would develop so fast. The first one, Barral, turned up at the hospital on the morning of 10 May. He’d been bitten the night before, when he was clearing nettles near his woodpile. I’ll read you the doctor’s report: “Patient felt stinging sensation lower left leg, not much pain, possible nettle sting.” Then “11.30: sting giving cause for concern. Purplish patch, 7 x 6 cm, early sign of necrosis. Suspected recluse bite. Anti-venom ordered from APC Marseille. Amoxicillin drip prescribed + local shot of midocaïne” – that’s a painkiller. Then here’s the note in the evening: “20.15: Alarming progress of wound. Necrotic extension to 14 x 9 cm. Temperature 39.7. Treatment modified: Rocephin” – that’s a much more powerful antibiotic – “plus an antihistamine.” Next day, 11 May: “7.05: Temperature 40.1. Leg necrotic 17 x 10 cm. Wound 7 mm deep. Additional quarter-dose of Rocephin. Blood test result: level of immunity satisfactory. Presence of haemolysis” – a fall in proportion of red corpuscles – “and necrotic development in left kidney. Patient put on dialysis. 12.30: injection of anti-venom. 15.10: Temperature down to 39.6. Unprecedented speed of toxicity. 21.10: Temperature 40.1. Rapid rise in haemolysis, septicaemia diagnosed, visceral infection of right kidney, liver affected.” 12 May: “Patient died 6.07. Cause of death: haemolysis, septicaemia, kidney failure and cardiac arrest. The case appears to be one of rapidly developing loxoscelism of a kind never previously recorded. Stocks of anti-venom ordered.”’
‘Never previously recorded,’ Adamsberg repeated. ‘Death occurred in the space of two days and three nights. Actually it’s less than that, Froissy, two days and two nights.’
‘How do you make that out?’
‘Because Barral must have been lying. I think he must have been bitten in the morning, when he put his trousers on. Not the night before by the woodpile. What about the other two?’
‘I could read you the same kind of text – I’ve already sent you them by attachment. The development of the poisoning and the treatment were similar. Except that the anti-venom was administered as soon as the patient showed up, and they were put on a Rocephin drip straight away. Didn’t make any difference though. So what now?’
Adamsberg pulled two crumpled sheets of paper from his pocket.
‘Here’s a list of the nine boys in Claveyrolle’s gang in the orphanage, plus Landrieu.’
‘Right.’
‘Three of them are dead, so seven are left. And here are the names of their eleven victims. Kids.’
‘Back at the orphanage?’
‘Yes. Forgive me, lieutenant, I haven’t time to give you all the details, I know that you’ll be working in the dark. You’ll hear everything in the meeting. But I need to find out where all these people are right now, all of them. Mercadet can check out all the reported rapes in the Gard département. But I won’t know if he’ll be willing to do this until we’ve finished the meeting.’
‘Rapes? More than one?’
‘When they grew up, these stink bugs went in for a new distraction. I’d be very surprised if they were guilty of just one rape.’
‘Because the rape of that girl, that was him, Landrieu?’
‘Landrieu, Barral and Lambertin. Three of them together.’
‘How many?’ said Froissy in a faint voice. ‘How many of us are with you, now, and believe in you?’
‘With me, five. Believing me, four.’
* * *
*
Adamsberg’s call to Professor Pujol was quickly answered. However insufferable one might be, one usually replies promptly to a call from the police.
‘I won’t keep you long, professor. Do you think that, say, two to four bites from recluse spiders, suffered simultaneously, could trigger a rapid case of loxoscelism?’
‘Recluses are solitary spiders, you wouldn’t find several of them biting at once.’
‘This is just in theory, professor.’
‘Very well, I’ll repeat what I told you. A lethal dose of the venom from recluse spiders has been calculated as forty-four glands, i.e. twenty-two recluses, so work it out. Your three or four theoretical bites wouldn’t do it. To kill your three men, you’d have needed something like two hundred recluses. Or sixty to seventy spiders for each man. I told you that before.’
‘Yes, I’ve got your figures. But if these men died with unprecedented toxic poisoning in the space of a couple of days, what does that suggest to you?’
‘They must have been eating recluse spider pâté, to give themselves an erection, because they confused it with the black widow,’ said Pujol, laughing in his casual and disagreeable manner.
You really couldn’t make him up.
‘Thank you, professor.’
He had some thirty minutes before the meeting. Pujol’s obscene joke had revived his thoughts about impotence and spider venom. Obscene but scientific. ‘They confused it with the black widow,’ he’d said. Adamsberg typed in ‘spider venom’ and ‘impotence’ and grabbed his notebook to see which sites came up first. On the question: ‘Can spider venom cure impotence?’ he found dozens of websites. Nothing to do with the ancient beliefs Voisenet had talked about. But completely serious articles about current research, suggesting that scientists had discovered that the bites of certain spiders could provoke a long and painful episode of priapism. On account of that, medical researchers were now at wo
rk identifying, sorting and weakening the toxins responsible, with the hope of being able to extract a new drug, to treat impotence without risk. He copied down laboriously the following sentence: ‘Some components of the toxin act by stimulating production of a remarkable amount of nitrogen monoxide, which is implicated in the mechanism of the male erection.’ From the analysis of 205 species of spider, eighty-two of them had been shown to display the right kind of toxin, but three of them were ahead of the rest: the Phoneutria, or Brazilian wandering spider, the Australian funnel-web spider, and the black widow.
But not the recluse.
Adamsberg opened the window and looked out at the latest state of his lime tree. The black widow spider, of course he’d heard of that, everyone had. Among other places, it was known to inhabit the warm regions of the south of France. A pretty little creature with its red or yellow heart-shaped spots. Much more visible, and easier to collect than the recluse hiding away in the depths. And you couldn’t possibly confuse it with the recluse either. Unless you were stupid enough to think that one spider’s much like another, and try to use the recluse for the erectile properties of the black widow.
He looked in on Voisenet.
‘Lieutenant, might one possibly mix up the effects of a recluse bite and a black widow bite.’
‘No, impossible. The black widow injects a neurotoxic venom, the recluse a necrotic one, nothing in common.’
‘OK, I believe you. Where are they all going?’ he asked as he saw the officers leaving their desks.
‘To the meeting you called, sir.’
‘What’s the time?’
‘Five to. Did you forget? About the meeting?’
‘No. Just the time.’
Adamsberg went unhurriedly back to his desk to pick up his confused notes. He preferred to get there once they were all settled, like two days ago. Two days ago? Heavens above, only two days since his squad had been split down the middle. Still, he had not been wasting his time. He’d discovered the meaning of the word loxoscelism, he’d dealt with Lieutenant Froissy’s terror, he’d found out why St Roch is accompanied by a dog, he’d fed some blackbirds and remembered a dream.