by Fred Vargas
‘Can she take turns driving?’
‘No. Nice of you to ask, but we’ll stop now and then. Another thing. If we’re meant to be friends when Louise is around, when I’m calling you Jean-Bapt, we should perhaps call each other “tu” as well. It would be more plausible. But I’d need to get in practice. I’ll start right now. Don’t you worry about me, Jean-Bapt, I’ll make some halts on the way down? Does that sound right?’
‘Perfect. But with mobiles, the other voice can be heard as well. Goodnight, Irène, bon voyage to you. No offence, I’m getting in practice too.’
Adamsberg pocketed his phone and looked at Danglard, sitting on the dusty boot of the car, in his English-tailored suit. A very bad sign. The commandant, who had always tried to make up for his lack of good looks by wearing impeccable clothes of top quality cut, would never normally have dreamed of damaging the fabric by sitting on a dirty bench or stone steps. But tonight, the elegant Danglard was not giving a thought to the state of his clothes. That was all over, he’d given up on everything.
Adamsberg caught hold of his arm, and propelled him up into his office and on to a chair, for once shutting the door.
‘So, Danglard, you were going to sneak away,’ he said, once his colleague was sitting up more or less straight in front of him.
Adamsberg had remained standing, leaning against the opposite wall, arms folded. Danglard looked up. Yes, just as he had feared. A flame rising on his boss’s cheeks, and reaching his eyes, where it left a threatening glint of piercing light. Like a shard sparkling in a tangle of dark seaweed, as a Breton fisherman had once said.
He stiffened.
‘You didn’t think you’d get away with it, did you?’
‘No,’ said Danglard, sitting up straighter.
‘One,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘deliberate obstruction of an investigation. True or false?’
‘True.’
‘Two, inciting mutiny to the point I would find myself isolated in the team and forced to work secretly, in the courtyard, or a restaurant, or in the street at night. True or false?’
‘True.’
‘Three, protection of a potential criminal, who might already have been party to a crime, your brother-in-law, Richard Jarras. And four of his friends: René Quissol, Louis Arjalas, Marcel Corbière and Jean Escande. You know which article of the law applies to this offence?’
Danglard nodded.
‘Four,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘this very morning, unworthy behaviour in front of the whole team. You were lucky I stopped Noël when he was going to punch you. Do you recognise that offence? Yes or no, dammit?’
‘Yes, and since I agree entirely with this necessary and official (apart from the word dammit) list of charges, and all the offences you mention, you need go no further. If you would just hand me the document to sign.’
Danglard brought out his fountain pen from his inside pocket. He certainly wasn’t going to sign this document with any old pen lying on someone else’s table. The commandant was surprising himself. Lucid though he was about the seriousness of his actions, he nevertheless maintained a haughty demeanour, quite unlike his usual self, as if a layer of something foreign had become encrusted over his skin.
‘Do you recall, Danglard,’ said Adamsberg, coming nearer, ‘that I asked you, twice, whether you had so easily forgotten what I’m like?’
‘Yes, I remember it well, commissaire.’
‘Well, I’m waiting for your reply.’
Danglard put down his pen, but did not speak. In an abrupt movement, Adamsberg swept his arm across the desk, sending the pen and various folders on to the floor. He seized his deputy in both hands by the collar of his English shirt, lifting him up gradually, so that they were face-to-face. With his foot, he kicked away the chair, leaving Danglard no choice but to remain upright, within his grasp.
‘Have you so easily forgotten what I’m like that you bring out your fucking best pen and your fucking little speech? You pack your bags? You thought for a single second that I was going to fire you, and report you to the prosecutor? What has come over you? Have you really gone out of your mind?’
Adamsberg dropped his colleague, who staggered up against the wall.
‘Did you think that?’ Adamsberg insisted, raising his voice. ‘Yes or no, dammit?’
‘Yes,’ Danglard said.
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
And this time, Adamsberg’s fist did lash out, catching the commandant on the chin. With his other hand, the commissaire held Danglard up as he collapsed, letting him down gently on to the floor, as if shedding a garment. Then he went back to the window, opened it wide, leaned on the rail and breathed in the scent of the lime blossom in the evening air. Behind him, Danglard was struggling into a sitting position, breathing with difficulty, and leaning against the wall. Those trousers will be ruined, Adamsberg thought. It wasn’t the first time in his life that he had resorted to punching someone on the jaw, but he had never, ever, imagined that his fist would one day be raised against Adrien Danglard.
‘Noël thought,’ he said in a calm and steady voice, without turning round, ‘he really thought that a good punch would rearrange that “stupid bloody idiot expression” on your face, as he put it in his inimitable way. So I have to ask you, Danglard, have you stopped acting like a bloody idiot at last?’
‘I have to sign the paper,’ said the commandant with difficulty, holding his jaw. ‘Or you’ll go down with me, for failing to report me.’
‘By what miracle would that happen?’
‘If you don’t, others will.’
‘The others whom you humiliated along with me, like a fucking pedant, by being “astonished” that anyone else might know anything about Magellan. Do you at least understand what you did to them?’
‘Yes,’ said Danglard, trying to get up, without success.
‘So Noël was right. You’re getting less like a bloody idiot. You’re coming back to us. From far, far away.’
‘All right,’ said Danglard, ‘but what’s done is done. An offence was committed.’
‘And do you really think all the others knew about your protection of Richard Jarras? No, they didn’t, except for Froissy, Retancourt and Veyrenc, on whom I can rely absolutely.’
In a state of befuddlement – and pain, because the commissaire had not pulled his punch – Danglard looked at Adamsberg, still leaning on the rail, still with his back to him. Realising that the commissaire had not told the whole squad about his treachery. In his headlong rush off the rails, he had indeed forgotten what Adamsberg was like.
The commissaire closed the window and turned to face him.
‘Are you back with me now, Danglard?’
‘Yes, I am.’
Adamsberg picked up the chair and helped the commandant to his feet and then to sit down. He took a look at the bruise forming on the jaw.
‘Wait a minute.’
He went out and returned five minutes later with a plastic bag of ice cubes and a glass.
‘Put this to your jaw, and drink this. It’s just water. Shall we go for dinner?’
As they were coming out of the office, they met Noël, also leaving, jacket slung over his shoulder.
‘Can I have a word, sir?’
Adamsberg moved aside from Danglard, who was trying to cover the bruise with his hand.
‘Make it quick, Noël, you’ve got to be up at dawn.’
‘You really socked it to him, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did it work? He’s getting back to normal?’
‘Yes. But it’s a method to be used sparingly, lieutenant. And only between close friends.’
‘Understood, sir.’
XXXVI
At eleven in the morning, at the cemetery in Nîmes, Lieutenants Noël, Justin and Retancourt watched as the procession fo
rmed to follow Olivier Vessac’s coffin.
‘Lot of people,’ Noël remarked.
‘They can’t all have known Vessac,’ said Retancourt. ‘It’s the rumour about the recluse spiders that’s brought them here. The sensation. It’ll be in all the papers.’
‘Suits us,’ said Noël, ‘we can circulate without being spotted.’
‘Look over there,’ said Justin, ‘that woman, with two others. I recognise her, Froissy sent us her picture.’
‘She’s Louise something,’ said Noël, ‘the woman who was raped in Nîmes when she was thirty-eight.’
‘Louise Chevrier,’ Justin said.
‘Oh shit,’ said Retancourt, ‘what’s she doing here? I’ll take her picture. Justin, text the boss. Noël, can you see if Lambertin and Torrailles are here?’
Noël took from his pocket the photographs of the two men, provided by the Lédignan captain. It wasn’t going to be easy. Plenty of elderly men would be attending an old man’s funeral. And to the lieutenant, all old men looked more or less alike.
Adamsberg had just reminded Lamarre of his duties – scattering some worms under the trees in the courtyard – when he received two text messages from Nîmes.
The first was from Irène:
Texting quietly cos rude to call during funeral. Some people haven’t even turned phones off, what a din! Am here with poor Élisabeth. But guess what? Louise insisted on coming, didn’t know him from Adam. Weird for arachnophobe to come to funeral for man killed by spider? Am I being silly?
No, Adamsberg replied. Check what she does or says. Let me know.
You’re scaring me. Bye, just getting to grave.
The second message was from Justin:
Keeping it short, rude to text at funeral. Louise Chevrier here, why?
Adamsberg replied:
Her housemate Irène is friend of Vessac’s partner, Élisabeth.
Louise knew Vessac?
No. Unless?
Unless she knew he was friend of Landrieu, so Carnot, so R. Gang? Bye, getting to grave.
Adamsberg went back to his examination of local maps of the Chemin Henri IV, scanning the zone between four and eight kilometres from Lourdes, on the right-hand side coming out of town. He hadn’t been able to find anything on the internet about the recluse of the Pré d’Albret. Except that ‘by prefectoral decree a woman had been taken without undue force out of the Albret dovecot’, on the grounds of ‘non-assistance to person in danger’. This dry note was all one could glean from the police archives of Lourdes. The secret of the saintly recluse must have been respected by anyone who knew her. He found a little green patch on the map where he thought he could see printed in tiny italics Pré de J . . . He picked up Froissy’s magnifying glass and deciphered the rest. Yes, this was it: Pré de Jeanne d’Albret. He drew a circle round the green patch and looked at it in fascination.
He got up and walked across the room. Mercadet appeared in the doorway, looking extremely disturbed.
‘Commissaire, I’ve got one. A sequestered woman. Two in fact!’
Adamsberg put a finger to his lips to remind his officer about being discreet, and motioned to him to fetch his laptop, and bring it into his office. Here, there were still folders lying all over the floor, witness to his dust-up with Danglard the previous evening. He had told the commandant to take two days off, to get over his worries and mistakes, and to allow time for the bruise – which had turned purple during the evening – to fade a bit.
Mercadet brought his laptop in, and put it in front of Adamsberg, looking as strongly affected as if he had laid another egg, but this time, it was a tragic one, and he still didn’t understand why the commissaire was looking for sequestered women.
‘This is one of the clearest photos,’ he said. ‘It was taken when they were brought out of the house. See the fat woman? That’s the mother. And the two smaller ones, hiding from the photographers, with scarves over their heads? Those are the two girls who were sequestered. It’s the first time they saw the outside world. The elder was twenty-one when the photo was taken, the younger nineteen. This is a truly terrible story, commissaire.’
‘Go ahead, Mercadet. Where did it happen, that’s the first thing.’
‘About half a kilometre outside Nîmes,’ the lieutenant declared triumphantly. ‘On the road going south, La Route des Espagnols. An isolated farmhouse.’
‘And when were they freed?’
‘1967.’
‘So,’ Adamsberg said under his breath, ‘the older sister was born in 1946, she’d be about seventy now and the other sixty-eight.’
‘The father kept them locked in the attic all their lives. He systematically raped them for fourteen and sixteen years, both of them, starting from when they were five. There were six babies born, all buried behind the fucking farmhouse!’
‘Calm down, lieutenant,’ said Adamsberg who felt the same shudder come over him as well.
‘Calm down, you say? But can you imagine it? Kept in an attic, just one skylight, and in two different places, what’s more. They couldn’t even see each other, just make contact through a wooden partition. The mother brought them food at midday and in the evening, and never intervened. Who the fuck are these monsters?’
‘Gigantic stink bugs, I guess, Mercadet,’ said Adamsberg hoarsely.
‘And I’d have said “Bravo, kid!” I really mean it. But what did they do? Gave him twenty years. That’s our shitty justice system for you.’
‘Bravo who, Mercadet?’
‘The son.’
‘There was a son as well?’
‘Called Enzo. And when he was twenty-three, he murdered his father. With an axe, three strokes and he decapitated him. And his private parts. I don’t know what the word is for decapitating private parts.’
‘So Enzo was the oldest child. Was he sequestered too?’
‘Ah, no. He led a so-called normal life, he was allowed to go to school, but that was it. He was the face of normality for the neighbours. But he knew, of course. He’d heard the heavy footsteps on the stairs, his father’s grunts, and the cries and tears of the little girls. He managed to sneak up to the attic and talk to them. He read them stories, pages from his schoolbooks, and he passed them pictures under the door, drawings and photos of what the outside world was like. He did what he could, poor kid. He even found a way of getting up on the roof and in through the skylight. Kids can be ingenious, God knows. But if he spoke a word to anyone, he’d been told he’d be killed, and so would his mother and sisters. So he kept his mouth shut all those years. And he grew up. Got stronger. And beheaded the old man. Then he walked out on to the road, the bloody axe in his hand, and waited. When the cops got there, they found the mother prostrate by the body of the father. Enzo had lost the power of speech, and he pointed to the attic. That’s when they went up and found the two sisters. In indescribable filth – the place had never been cleaned. Filthy mattresses on the floor with mice and God knows what running round, a bucket for a toilet, emptied once a week by the mother when they had a bath. Fair hair, hardly ever cut, and their nails practically never trimmed. They were dirty, thin, smelly. Wearing blue and pink dresses, but grey with dirt. When the sisters came out of the house, even though they stank to high heaven, Enzo hugged them for a long time, there on the pavement, against his bloodstained shirt. You can see that in the photos. And the cops didn’t dare separate them. It was only after a bit that they handcuffed Enzo and took him away. And that’s the last time he saw them before being chucked in jail.’
Adamsberg stood up and laid his hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder. That seemed to help Mercadet calm down. It was said Adamsberg could send a child to sleep by putting the palm of his hand on its head. People claimed he could send suspects to sleep, and even himself, when sitting in his office.
When Mercadet had somewhat recovered, Adamsberg removed his hand.
/>
‘Got all that saved somewhere?’ he said.
Mercadet nodded.
‘Right, put your computer away and let’s go and eat. Not the Dice Shaker and not the Brasserie des Philosophes. Somewhere else.’
‘I’d like to go to La Garbure,’ Mercadet said in a pleading tone, like a child.
‘Fine, La Garbure it is.’
XXXVII
The Pyrenean restaurant was noisier at midday than in the evening, when the customers were fewer and mostly from the region. All to the good, thought Adamsberg as he steered his lieutenant, who was still shaken but a little calmer, towards a far table where they would not be overheard. At moments of tension, Mercadet’s voice tended to be high-pitched and loud. The commissaire noted a flicker of disappointment on Estelle’s face, but he had no inclination just then to concern himself with Estelle and Veyrenc.
He told Mercadet to eat some of his food, before they went any further.
‘Is this all you have down there?’ asked Mercadet. ‘Pork and cabbage, cabbage and pork?’
‘Oh, we have everything,’ Adamsberg said, smiling. ‘Chickens, sheep, goats, trout, honey, chestnuts. What more do you want?’
‘Nothing. It’s very good, all the same,’ said Mercadet.
‘So what were their names, lieutenant?’
‘The family was called Seguin. The father was Eugène, the mother Laetitia, and the elder sister Bernadette.’
‘Like the saint.’
‘What saint?’
‘The one in Lourdes.’
‘Is there any connection?’
‘A mystic one perhaps. The other sister?’
‘Annette.’
‘And what did the father do?’
‘Officially a metalworker. But there seems to be a bit of a mystery. The boss of his workplace gave evidence, but there were only a few pay slips. Probably he worked for cash only. Seguin certainly had money, he’d made it during the war.’