by Vargas, Fred
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Fred Vargas
Title Page
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Copyright
About the Book
HOW DO YOU SOLVE A MURDER WITHOUT A BODY?
Keeping watch under the windows of the Paris flat belonging to a politician’s nephew, ex-special investigator Louis Kehlweiler catches sight of something odd on the pavement. A tiny piece of bone. Human bone, in fact.
When Kehlweiler takes his find to the nearest police station, he faces ridicule. Obsessed by the fragment, he follows the trail to the tiny Breton fishing village of Port-Nicolas. But when he recruits ‘evangelists’ Marc and Mathias to help, they find themselves facing even bigger game.
A THREE EVANGELISTS NOVEL
About the Author
FRED VARGAS was born in Paris in 1957. A historian and archaeologist by profession, she is now a bestselling novelist. Her books have sold over 10 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 45 languages.
SIN REYNOLDS is a historian, translator and former professor at the University of Stirling.
Also by Fred Vargas
The Inspector Adamsberg Series
The Chalk Circle Man
Have Mercy on Us All
Seeking Whom He May Devour
Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand
This Night’s Foul Work
An Uncertain Place
The Ghost Riders of Ordebec
The Three Evangelists Series
The Three Evangelists
Dog Will Have His Day
Fred Vargas
Translated from the French by Siân Reynolds
I
Paris, November 1995
‘AND WHAT THE hell are you doing in this neck of the woods?’
Marthe liked picking quarrels in her old age. That evening, she hadn’t found anyone to argue with, so she’d devoted herself to a crossword, standing up at the counter with the barman. He was a nice enough guy, but exasperating when it came to crosswords. He missed the point, didn’t follow the rules, couldn’t adapt to the number of letters. And yet he ought to have been helpful; he was good at geography, which was odd since he had never left Paris, any more than Marthe had. When the clue was ‘River in Russia, two letters’, he had suggested ‘Yenissei’.
Well, it was better than having no one at all to talk to.
Louis Kehlweiler had come into the cafe at about eleven o’clock. Marthe hadn’t seen him for two months, and she’d actually missed him. Kehlweiler had now put coins into the pinball machine and Marthe was watching the ball bounce around. This crazy game – with its special oubliette for the ball to get lost in, and the uphill slope it took huge efforts to climb, and as soon as you got there the ball tumbled down into the oubliette – had always irritated her. It seemed to her that the machine was designed purely to give people perpetual lessons in morality – and an unfair, austere and depressing morality at that. If you quite understandably gave it a bang with your fist, it went Tilt! and shut down the game. And on top of that, you had to pay! People had tried to explain to her that it was meant to be fun, but she wasn’t buying that, it reminded her of catechism classes.
‘Well? What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I just came to take a look,’ Louis replied. ‘Vincent has noticed something.’
‘Something worth your coming over for?’
Louis broke off the conversation, it was an emergency: the pinball was heading straight for the pit. He caught it and flipped it rattling back up, rather incompetently.
‘Pathetic,’ Marthe said.
‘I know, but you keep talking.’
‘Have to, don’t I? When you’re at catechism class, you don’t hear what people are saying. You didn’t answer. So. Worth your while?’
‘Could be. Have to see.’
‘What is it? Politics? Gangland? Bit of both?’
‘Don’t shout so loud, Marthe. It’ll get you into trouble one day. Let’s just say it’s this far-right politician, who’s somewhere we weren’t expecting him to be. And that intrigues me.’
‘Serious?’
‘Yep, Marthe. Authentic, certified, chateau-bottled. But we have to check it out, of course.’
‘And where’s this? Which bench?’
‘Bench 102.’
Louis smiled and flipped another pinball. Marthe stopped to think. She was getting confused these days, having the odd senior moment. She was mixing up bench 102 with benches 107 and 98. Louis had decided the simplest policy was to number the public benches in Paris, which he used as observation posts. Only the interesting ones, of course. It’s true that it was more convenient than giving details of their exact location, especially since that’s sometimes hard to get quite accurate. But in twenty years there had been changes, some benches had been retired, new ones had come into play. They’d had to number the trees too, when there weren’t any benches at key points in the city. Add in some temporarily used benches for minor cases. The numbers had reached 137, because they never reused an old number, and all this got muddled in her head. But Louis had made it a rule not to have anything written down.
‘Is 102 the one by the florist’s?’ asked Marthe with a frown.
‘No, that’s 107.’
‘Oh shit,’ said Marthe. ‘At least buy me a drink.’
‘Get what you want at the bar. I’ve got three more goes here.’
At seventy, Marthe could no longer roam around the city, between two clients. And she mixed up the benches too. But, well, she was Marthe. She might not bring in much information any more, but she had some excellent hunches. Though her last important lead went back a good ten years. Still, that one had really made the shit hit the fan, which was both salutary and the whole point of the exercise.
‘You’re drinking too much, old lady,’ said Louis, working the flipper.
‘Keep your eye on the ball, Ludwig.’
Marthe called him Ludwig, other people called him Louis. It was up to them, he was used to it. For fifty years, people had been dithering about which name to use. Some even called him Louis-Ludwig. He thought that stupid, nobody’s called Louis-Louis.
‘Did you bring Bufo?’ Marthe asked, as she came back holding a glass.
‘You know he gets panicky in cafes.’
‘Is he all right? Are you still friends?’
‘Love of my life, Marthe.’
There was a silence.
‘We don’t see your girlfriend around these days,’ Marthe began again, leaning her elbows on the pinball machine.
‘She walked out. Move your arm, I can’t see what I’m doing.’
‘When?’
‘Just move it, for heaven’s sake! This afternoon. She packed her bags while I was out, and she left a note on the bed. No
w look, you’ve made me lose the ball.’
‘It was you that was clumsy. Did you have some lunch at least? What kind of note?’
‘Pathetic. Yes, I had some lunch.’
‘Not easy to write a fancy note when you’re walking out on someone.’
‘Why not? And she could have said something, instead of writing.’
Louis smiled at Marthe and hit the side of the machine with the flat of his hand. Yeah, it really had been a pathetic note. OK, Sonia had walked out, she had a perfect right to, no point going over it again, ad infinitum. She’d left, he was sad, end of story. The world was full of horrors and bloodshed, you couldn’t blow your top just because a woman had walked out on you. Although, yes, of course, it was sad.
‘Don’t break your heart over it,’ said Marthe.
‘I have some regrets. And there was that experiment, remember? It failed.’
‘What did you expect? That she’d stick around for your film-star looks? I didn’t say you were ugly, don’t make me say anything I haven’t, mind.’
‘I’m not making you do anything.’
‘But look, Louis, it’s not enough, the flashing green eyes and all that. I used to have them too. And your gammy knee, frankly, that doesn’t help. Some girls don’t like a man who limps. It annoys them, can’t you get that into your head?’
‘Yeah, job done.’
‘Don’t break your heart.’
Louis smiled and patted Marthe’s wrinkled hand.
‘I’m not breaking my heart.’
‘If you say so. Do you want me to go to bench 102?’
‘You do whatever you want, Marthe. I don’t own all the benches in Paris.’
‘Can’t you give some orders, from time to time?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you’re doing yourself no good. Giving orders, that settles a man down. But there it is, you’ve no idea how to obey anyone else, so I don’t see how you can order other people about.’
‘Stands to reason.’
‘Haven’t I told you that plenty of times? In so many words? And it’s good advice, isn’t it?’
‘A hundred times, Marthe.’
‘A good piece of advice never wears out.’
He could have avoided having Sonia walk out on him, of course he could. But he had wanted to try the ridiculous experiment of hoping she’d take him as she found him. As a result, she’d left him after five months. OK, that would do now, he’d been thinking about it quite long enough, he was sufficiently sad, the world was full of horrors and bloodshed, there was work to be done, in small matters of the world as well as big ones, he wasn’t going to go on thinking about Sonia and her pathetic little note for hours and hours, he had better things to do. But the trouble was that up there in the damned Ministry, where he had once spent so long as a free electron – needed, hated, indispensable, and highly paid – they now wanted him out. New faces, new expressions on old idiots (not all of them were idiots actually, that was the trouble), and they no longer wanted the help of a guy who was a little too clued up about everything. They were getting rid of him, they distrusted him: with reason. But their reaction was absurd. Take a fly for instance.
‘Take a fly for instance,’ Louis said.
Louis had finished his game, only a moderate score, these new flippers were really annoying, you had to watch the screen and the ball all at once. But sometimes the balls popped out three or four at a time and it was interesting, never mind what Marthe said. He leaned on the counter while Marthe siphoned up her beer.
When Sonia had shown the first signs that she might leave him, he’d been tempted to tell her: to let her know all his achievements, in several ministries, on the street, in the law courts, in cafes, the countryside and police stations. Twenty-five years of bomb disposal he called it, tracking down men of iron with toxic ideas. Twenty-five years of vigilance, and he’d met too many men with calcified brains, working alone, or in groups, or screaming in hordes, the same rocks inside their heads, and the same murders on their hands. Hell’s bells, Sonia would really have loved him, if she’d known he was into bomb disposal. She might have stayed, even if he did have a knee that was shot to pieces: he’d got that in Antibes, during a showdown in a blazing hotel owned by the mob. That tells you something about a man, doesn’t it? But no, he had held out, he hadn’t told her anything at all. He had hoped the only attraction was his physique and his conversation, just to see. As far as the knee was concerned, Sonia thought he’d fallen down the steps in the metro. That doesn’t tell you anything about a man. Marthe had warned him he’d be disappointed, women were no better than anyone else, you couldn’t expect miracles. Possibly Bufo hadn’t actually helped.
‘Shall we have another, Ludwig?’
‘You’ve had enough to drink. I’ll walk you home.’
Not that Marthe was running much of a risk, since she carried no money, and she’d seen it all, done it all, but when she’d had a drop too many, and it was a rainy night, she had a tendency to fall over.
‘What’s that about a fly?’ Marthe asked as she left the bar, holding a plastic bag over her head. ‘You said something about a fly?’
‘You’ve got a thing about rain now?’
‘It’s my hair dye. If it runs, what’ll I look like?’
‘An old hooker.’
‘Which I am.’
‘Which you are.’
Marthe laughed. Her laugh had been well known in this quartier for half a century. A man turned round and gave her a little wave.
‘See that guy?’ Marthe said. ‘Should have seen him thirty years ago. I won’t tell you his name, I don’t do that.’
‘I know who he is,’ Louis said, with a smile.
‘Hey, Ludwig, I hope you haven’t been poking your nose into my address book. You know I respect professional secrecy.’
‘And I hope you’re just saying that, but you don’t mean it.’
‘No, I don’t mean it.’
‘All the same, Marthe, your address book could be very interesting for someone less scrupulous than me. You ought to destroy it, I’ve told you that a hundred times.’
‘Too many memories. All the high and mighty who used to come knocking at my door. Just think –’
‘Destroy it, I’m telling you. It’s dangerous.’
‘Get along with you! All those famous names, they’re old now. Who’d be interested in a lot of has-beens?’
‘Plenty of people. And it isn’t just a list of names, is it, Marthe, you have your little comments, don’t you?’
‘And you don’t have some little comments written down somewhere yourself, Ludwig?’
‘Marthe, keep your voice down, we’re not out in the country.’ Marthe had always spoken too loudly.
‘Eh? Little notebooks? Reports? Souvenirs of cases? You’ve thrown them out, have you, since you got the sack? You did get the sack, didn’t you, is that official?’
‘Apparently. But I’ve kept a few contacts. They’ll have a job to get me out entirely. See, take a fly for instance.’
‘If you like, but look, I’m dead beat. Can you just tell me, what’s that damn river in Russia, keeps coming up in crosswords, two letters, know what that is?’
‘The Ob, Marthe, I’ve told you that a hundred times too.’
Kehlweiler dropped Marthe off at her place, listened as she climbed the stairs, and then went into a cafe on the avenue. It was almost one in the morning, and there weren’t many customers. A few nighthawks like himself. He knew them all. He had a thirsty memory for names and faces, perpetually unsatisfied and eager for more. Which had been a cause of some anxiety in the Ministry.
Just a beer, and then he wouldn’t worry his head any more about Sonia. He could have told her about his grand army too, about the hundred or so men and women on whom he could count, a representative in every département of France and a score in Paris, you can’t do everything yourself in the bomb disposal business. Sonia might have stayed then, perhaps. Oh, let it go.
<
br /> Anyway, back to the fly. This fly comes into the house and it’s irritating everyone. Beating its wings, hundreds of times per second. A persistent little creature, a fly, but really annoying. It buzzes everywhere, walks on the ceiling, no special equipment needed, goes places it shouldn’t, and in particular it zooms in on every single spot of honey lying around. Public enemy number one. Exactly like him. He used to find honey in places people thought they’d cleaned up so well no trace would remain. Honey – or shit, of course, because to a fly it’s all the same. And what’s the dumb reaction? Shoo the fly outside. Big mistake. Because what’ll the fly do, once it’s outside?
Louis Kehlweiler paid for his beer, said goodnight to everyone and left the bar. He didn’t want to go home. He’d go and sit on bench 102. When he’d started this, he’d had four benches, and now there were 137, plus sixty-four trees. What with the benches and the chestnut trees, he’d picked up masses of stuff. He could have told her about that too; he’d resisted. And now it was pouring with rain.
So, what’ll the fly do, once it’s outside? It bombs around for a few minutes, naturally, then it copulates. Then it lays eggs. Now there are thousands of little flies growing up, bombing about and copulating in turn. So there’s nothing more illogical than getting rid of a fly by shooing it out of doors. It just multiplies the fly, to the power of x. You should let it stay inside, doing its fly-type things, and have patience, until age catches up with it and it gets tired. Whereas a fly outside is dangerous, a real menace. And those cretins had shooed him outdoors. As if, once he was there, he’d give up. But no. It would be worse. And obviously they couldn’t swat him with a tea cloth like you can a fly.
The rain was torrential as Kehlweiler came within sight of bench 102. It was a good lookout post, opposite the home of the nephew of a notably discreet politician. Kehlweiler knew how to look like a tramp, it came naturally to him, and people weren’t suspicious of a large man, if he was lolling on a bench. Not even when the large man slowly started to shadow someone.
