This Poison Will Remain

by Fred Vargas

  ‘No, no, Jean-Baptiste, I didn’t say nun, I said “the man or the creature”, the spider, you know.’

  ‘No, I’m sure you said “the nun”.’

  ‘You must be tired, I said “the man”.’

  ‘What man, anyway?’

  ‘Over Comminges way, there was this old fellow, he had a smallholding, and we called his place “La Recluse”, because he didn’t want to see anyone, and then in the end, he hanged himself. That’s how people often end up, if they don’t see anyone, they hang themselves. You know Raphaël has moved?’

  ‘Yes, he’s gone to live on the Île de Ré.’

  ‘He’s got a lot of work on his hands there, and guess what? He has a really nice seaside villa.’

  His mother had changed the subject abruptly. Why did she mention a nun, and then backtrack and deny she’d said it? What was all that about a farm called La Recluse? And he knew it, that sick feeling was about to come over him again.

  It didn’t just come back, it enveloped him. He lay down on the bank, rubbing his fists into his eyes, feeling a chill down his back, and a stiffness in his neck. His mother. The recluse. Feeling shaken, he forced himself up and set off again, with hesitant steps, then broke into a trot, making his way along narrow tracks where the delicate branches of hazel bushes caught him in the face. He was brought to a halt in a clearing surrounded by thick undergrowth. How long had he been running? He looked at the time on his mobile. Only forty-five minutes before his rendezvous with Irène. He had no choice but to go back, at a brisk run now.

  * * *

  *

  So he was dripping with sweat, his jacket knotted round his waist and his hair standing on end, but at least without any feeling of vertigo, when he burst into Le Rossignol. Veyrenc was sitting at a table with Irène Royer and Élisabeth Bonpain, who was holding her friend’s hand. They had been eating lunch, except for Élisabeth, who was as if in mourning and had not touched a morsel on her plate.

  Irène stood up at once to go and greet ‘her’ commissaire, assuming her position of privilege. She liked Veyrenc, but Adamsberg was the one she had chosen, over a hot chocolate in the Étoile d’Austerlitz.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she said, a little anxiously.

  ‘I’ve been running.’

  ‘But where were you running to, Holy Mother of God? And your cheek’s bleeding.’

  Adamsberg put his hand to his face and saw traces of blood on his fingers. The hazel twigs, he hadn’t felt them at the time. Veyrenc discreetly passed him a paper napkin and Adamsberg went to the washroom to wipe his face and neck, emerging wetter than ever.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, sitting down.

  ‘Understandable,’ murmured Irène, ‘all that emotion.’

  ‘How is he?’ Adamsberg asked Élisabeth Bonpain.

  More tears, and Veyrenc at once offered her some paper napkins which he had asked for at the counter.

  ‘Not so good,’ he said.

  Without Élisabeth seeing, since she had her head plunged in her hands, he wrote a few words on a napkin and passed it to Adamsberg. ‘Haemolysis, necrosis of vital organs starting. Massive dose.’ Adamsberg concealed the message, thinking once more of the last words he had spoken softly to the dying man: Cheers, Vessac.

  ‘There’s no hope, is there?’ asked Élisabeth, raising her head.

  ‘No,’ said Adamsberg, as gently as he could. ‘I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘This year, the insecticides seem to have increased the power of the venom. Or perhaps the heat.’

  Word of honour.

  ‘Madame, I need your help,’ he said. ‘We need to check where these spiders are coming from. It was outside, was it, right by the door that Olivier felt the bite?’

  ‘Oh yes. He just said “Bloody hell”, and rubbed his shoulder.’

  ‘And there was no one else around to see? Man, woman or child?’

  ‘No, we were quite alone, commissaire. On that path, there’s not a soul after the angelus.’

  ‘One more question. Did Olivier like fishing?’

  ‘Yes, every Sunday, he went to the lake.’

  Adamsberg made a sign to Irène that he would leave the two women alone, and stood up, followed by Veyrenc. Le Rossignol was also a tobacconist’s, so he bought a pack of Zerk’s favourite cigarettes.

  ‘You smoke that rubbish?’ said Veyrenc, as they emerged on to the pavement, although he consented to take one himself.

  ‘They’re Zerk’s choice.’

  ‘And why are you buying them?’

  ‘So I can steal them from him, because I’ve given up smoking.’

  ‘I suppose there’s a hidden logic in that somewhere. This woman seems to be sincere, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Irène will tell us. But yes, that’s what I think too.’

  Just then, Irène came out to find them.

  ‘Yes, she’s telling the truth, the whole truth,’ she said. ‘They were on their own. I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, commissaire. Very difficult.’

  ‘Yes, very. Are you going to stay with her?’

  ‘For a bit. Though I can’t leave my daft Louise alone for too long, I think she’s creating bloody havoc in the house, excuse me, but she is. She knows another man’s been bitten and she’s claiming she saw three recluses in the kitchen and another two in her bedroom. They’re “multiplying”, she says. That would make five new recluses in our house, walking about bold as brass.’

  ‘Five? She’s seen five?’

  ‘She’s imagining them, commissaire. Tomorrow she’ll say there are ten, the next day thirty. I need to get back, otherwise I’ll find her standing on a chair with three hundred recluses around her. She’s soft in the head, that’s all it is. That’s the trouble with social media, they go on and on, everyone chips in and it blows some people’s minds. And worse luck for me, that’s what’s happened to her.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Seventy-three.’

  ‘I’d like to meet her,’ said Adamsberg evasively.

  ‘Whatever for? You must come across a lot of daft people in your work, surely?’

  ‘I’d like to see how it is now that the recluse is blowing people’s minds. Yes, that would interest me.’

  ‘Ah, that’s different. If you want to observe her, be my guest. We can pretend to squash recluses together. How long has he got, Élisabeth’s Olivier?’

  ‘Two days at most.’

  Irène shook her head with a fatalistic expression.

  ‘After the funeral, I’ll ask Élisabeth to come and stay with me. There’s a spare room, I could look after her.’

  ‘Say goodbye to her for us,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Give her our sincerest wishes.’

  ‘Commissaire, at the risk of shocking you, would you mind very much giving me a cigarette? I don’t smoke normally. But with all this going on.’

  ‘Feel free,’ said Adamsberg, passing her three cigarettes. ‘A gift from my son.’

  They watched as Irène went back into Le Rossignol. Adamsberg stayed on the pavement, dividing Zerk’s pack of cigarettes into two halves and thrusting them into his pockets.

  ‘I don’t like packets,’ he said.

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘Louis, I’m not going back to Paris.’

  ‘Where are you going? Back to the Icelandic mists, to recover your sight?’

  ‘My brother, Raphaël, lives on the Île de Ré now, and I haven’t seen him for ages. Drop me off at Rochefort and I can get a bus to La Rochelle. I’ll come back tomorrow.’

  Veyrenc agreed. His brother and the seaside quite near at hand. Fair enough. But there was something else. Veyrenc couldn’t see through the mists – who could? – but he was very good at interpreting Adamsberg’s expressions.

  ‘I’ll drive you o
ver to the Île de Ré, then I’ll go straight back.’

  ‘Drive carefully. You haven’t had a lot of sleep. We’re not Retancourt, you know.’

  ‘Obviously not.’

  ‘Ask the gendarmerie at Courthézon to alert us when Jean Escande gets back. Tell them not to call the squad, I mean not to call so that Danglard picks up. Just give them our two numbers.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Tonight, you’d better have some garbure and then a good night’s sleep.’

  The two men from Béarn exchanged a quick glance as they got into the car.

  XXVII

  Two hours later, Adamsberg was slowly walking barefoot along an endless sandy beach, shoes in one hand, rucksack over his shoulder. From a distance, he made out his brother’s silhouette, sitting on the terrace outside a tiny white building. Their mother preferred to believe Raphaël had a seaside villa, rather than a beach hut, and he did not care to disillusion her.

  It would have been impossible for anyone else to recognise Adamsberg at that distance. But Raphaël turned his head, saw the man walking towards him and stood up at once. He went to meet him at a determined and almost as slow a pace.

  ‘Jean-Baptiste,’ was all he said, when they had hugged each other.

  ‘Raphaël.’

  ‘Come and have a drink. Will you have supper, or are you just passing through?’

  ‘Supper. And sleep.’

  After this brief exchange, the two brothers, who were strikingly alike to look at, went back to the house without a word. Silence had never bothered them, the way it is with all those who are practically twins.

  Adamsberg decided not to broach the subject that was tormenting him until after their supper, which they ate outside, listening to the cries of the seagulls, with two candles on the table. He knew of course that Raphaël had at once sensed his anxiety and was waiting for him to be ready. They could read each other without having to think about it, and could almost have existed in their own self-sufficient world, exception made for women. Which was why they did not see each other so often.

  Adamsberg lit a cigarette in the dark and started to recount to his brother everything that had happened since the very beginning of the investigation, an effort that was no simple matter for him, since he was not gifted for chronology or marshalling his thoughts logically. After twenty minutes, he stopped short.

  ‘I’m boring you to death, I expect,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got to tell you all of it, not missing anything out. It’s not just a moan about my life in the police.’

  ‘You seem troubled, Jean-Baptiste. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Worse than troubled. It’s this damn spider. And it gets worse still when I think about our mother. It’s a kind of terror.’

  ‘What’s the connection?’

  ‘There isn’t one. It’s just the way it is. Let me go on, I’m not going to spare you any details of the last week, anything that was said, just in case this terror is hidden somewhere under a floorboard, or in Froissy’s cupboard, or in the jaws of that horrible moray eel, or in the lime blossom outside my window or in a speck of dust under my eyelid that I haven’t seen before.’

  Raphaël was not as vague as his brother. He was much more down to earth, better educated and more organised for the concrete world, despite finding that world and the way it was going intolerable. Raphaël was not Jean-Baptiste. But he had a gift no one else had: he could put himself in his brother’s place, slip inside his skin to the ends of his fingers, almost being reincarnated in him, while preserving his full ability to observe.

  Adamsberg took over an hour to finish his recital of the events, large and small, that had punctuated his pursuit of the killer. Then he paused to light another of Zerk’s cigarettes.

  ‘You smoke those things? I’ve got better ones if you want.’

  ‘No, these belong to Zerk, he stayed back in Iceland.’

  ‘I see. A glass of Madiran, perhaps? I get it delivered here. Or do you think that might muddle your ideas?’

  ‘I don’t have any ideas, Raphaël, the whole thing already seems a big muddle. So yeah, a glass of wine would be nice. We’ve just got this one man on the loose, Jean Escande. You picked that up?’

  ‘I picked everything up,’ Raphaël assured him, in the voice of a man who knows it hardly needs saying.

  ‘All the arrows point towards him. Everything logically leads to him, as Vessac’s murderer. The men in the Ex-victims Gang probably took it in turns to bump off their tormentors. It’s perfect, it fits, the gang of boys who were bitten have launched a toxic offensive against the Recluse Gang. But I’m missing something here, I’ve got to probe deeper, I don’t know what for. I don’t know, because I can’t see. And I can’t see, because I can’t bear this damned recluse, I can’t even stand to hear its name any more, I don’t want to hear it. It’s eating me up on the spot, it’s necrotic.’

  ‘So you’re stuck, caught in its web. And the investigation will run into the sands without you,’ Raphaël concluded, pouring a glass of Madiran for his brother.

  ‘And it’ll leave me all alone, with what I haven’t told you yet.’

  ‘The terror. You said.’

  With difficulty, stumbling over words, or avoiding them, Adamsberg described to his brother the growing malaise into which the recluse spider had plunged him, from the moment he had first seen its name on Voisenet’s computer screen until this very afternoon, when after telephoning his mother, he had collapsed on the bank in the forest as if paralysed, and had then had to run in order to escape.

  ‘So,’ said Raphaël, when his brother had finished. ‘You don’t remember anything?’

  ‘That’s not what I said. I said “I can’t see anything” and I’m empty-handed.’

  ‘And I’m asking you: do you really not remember anything? When you mentioned a spectre just now, without even knowing what you meant, you really didn’t remember? No image? No spectre? Jean-Baptiste, don’t you remember when you did see a spectre?’

  ‘Never have.’

  ‘Forget everything, yes, why not?’ said Raphaël, in the same gentle low-pitched voice as his brother, although his own voice was usually sharper. ‘Except when something absolutely refuses to be forgotten. Then it’s warfare. And it hurts enough to make you fall down in the forest and then run like a madman without feeling the branches hit your face. You’ve got scratches on your cheeks.’

  ‘It was just the hazel bushes, Raphaël.’

  ‘You haven’t lost the ability to see, Jean-Baptiste.’

  And this time, Raphaël had really entered into the corners of his brother’s mind. He rubbed the back of his own neck as if it was stiff.

  ‘Raphaël, I just told you, I can’t see,’ cried Adamsberg, shocked by his brother’s failure to understand. ‘Are you listening, or have you gone as deaf as I’m blind?’

  Adamsberg raised his voice very rarely and his recent outbursts, first to Voisenet because of his wretched moray eel, and then to Danglard because of his wretched cowardice, were unusual events. On the other hand, shouting at his brother was a habit and Raphaël was quite ready to shout back.

  ‘You can see perfectly well,’ yelled Raphaël, standing up and pounding the table. ‘You can see as well as you see me standing here, the table, the candles. But some doors have shut, and put you in the dark. Can you understand that? And how do you choose the way out when everything’s shut? In the dark?’

  ‘What way out? How come these doors are shut?’

  ‘You shut them yourself.’

  ‘Me? I’m closing doors? When eight men have been murdered?’

  ‘Yes, you, in person.’

  ‘So I closed all these doors deliberately, so as to stay in the dark?’

  ‘By dark, I mean profoundly dark. Like the interior of the earth, or inside a hole. Where the recluses hide.’

  ‘I kno
w all about the recluse spiders and they never frightened me.’

  ‘I’m not talking about them, for God’s sake, I’m talking about the other kind of recluse. The women. Holy women.’

  Adamsberg shivered. The wind was rising on the beach. Raphaël did not say: ‘It’s getting cold, do you want to go in?’ His brother had shivered. Good. He knew he was about to hurt him. He just pointed to Adamsberg’s glass, which he had not touched.

  ‘Drink up,’ he said. ‘So when I say “recluse” and “woman”, that doesn’t remind you of anything? Absolutely nothing?’

  Adamsberg shook his head and sipped his wine.

  ‘What am I supposed to remember? What do I have to break to get out of your black hole? Where do I have to go?’

  ‘Wherever you like, you’re the cop, it’s your investigation, not mine.’

  ‘So why are you bothering me with all these closed doors?’

  Raphaël held out a hand for a cigarette, never mind that they were coarse.

  ‘Why do you keep them loose in your pockets?’

  ‘Don’t like packets. Especially now.’

  ‘I understand.’

  There was a short silence, while Adamsberg located his lighter for his brother’s cigarette.

  ‘We’re stupid,’ said Raphaël, ‘I could have lit it from the candle.’

  ‘By the time you think of an idea, you know what it’s like. Where were we?’

  ‘We’d reached something I don’t dare say to you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m going to hurt you.’

  ‘You’re going to hurt me?’

  ‘You don’t remember a thing about it, and yet you were twelve years old. I was only ten. You were twelve! And you can’t remember! That means it really has terrified you. I didn’t see her. You did.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘About the recluse for God’s sake. A hideous old woman, hidden in the dark . . . You saw her. It was just off the road to Lourdes.’

  Adamsberg shrugged.

  ‘I remember the road to Lourdes perfectly well, Raphaël. The Chemin Henri IV.’