by Fred Vargas
“Good, that’s the way I’m heading, too.”
“Eh?” said Sol.
“Yes. I’ll tell you what the idea is as we go.”
The transporter clanked and snorted down the dirt and gravel track and onto the metalled road. Buteil, leaning back against the old wooden gate, gave them an unenthusiastic wave. He had the worried look of a man watching his own home wandering over the fields and far away.
XVIII
CAMILLE TURNED VERY slowly onto the main road.
“Did you have to bring the dog?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about him,” said Watchee. “He’s a real sheepdog. He goes for wolves and foxes and all kinds of shit including werewolves, but he never lays a paw on women. Woof respects women.”
“I wasn’t worrying,” Camille said. “It’s just that he smells.”
“He smells of dog.”
“As I said.”
“You can’t expect a dog not to smell of dog. Woof will look after us. You can rely on him to catch the scent of that lousy werewolf five miles off. Nobody needs to know his teeth have been filed.”
“Filed?”
“He’s a sheepdog. Has to be prevented from harming the flock. Mustn’t get used to the taste of blood, either, because he’d have to be put down. But Woof has a fine nose. He’s taken the scent from Massart’s shack, and he’ll find the man.”
Camille nodded, keeping her eyes on the road. She had changed up to third and for the time being she had the lorry under control. It made an enormous racket on the road. The metal bars holding together the side-slats rattled with every bump. You had to shout in the cab to be heard. The windows were down and the tarpaulins rolled up to get some air through the vehicle.
“Woof? Is that his name?” she asked.
“I picked it from the dictionary, arbitrarily, when he was born,” Soliman explained. “‘Woof. n. A. The threads that cross from side to side of the loom. B. A woven fabric. C. The texture of a fabric.’”
“I see,” Camille said. “What time is it?”
“Past six.”
“Tell us your idea, Sol.”
“It’s Watchee’s, too.”
The lorry was now rolling along a minor road that ran beside the north-flowing river. Camille wasn’t pushing the vehicle, she was taking her own good time to get accustomed to the controls. Bends were not easy.
“Massart left his pick-up at Mont Vence,” Soliman began. “He had to, if he wanted people to believe he’d gone missing in the mountains. So for the meantime the vampire had to go on foot.”
“Or by bike,” Watchee added.
“Tell him to shout louder, Soliman, I can’t hear a word he says with all the racket the lorry’s making.”
“Say it louder!” Soliman told the shepherd.
“Or by bike,” Watchee boomed.
“Has he got a bike?”
“Certainly has,” said Watchee. “At any rate he had one, a few years back. He used to keep it in the kennel. I went over to look last night and the bike’s not there.”
“You mean Massart is riding round on a bike with a mastiff and a wolf padding along beside him?”
“He’s not riding around, dear girl. He’s proceeding. And proceeding to murder.”
“It’s too visible,” Camille objected. “He’d be spotted a mile off if he tried to get near a sheep farm.”
“That’s why he only moves at night,” said Soliman. “He hides during the day and moves at night, with his creatures.”
“Even so,” Camille said. “He won’t get far with a crew like that.”
“He’s not going far, dear girl. He’s going to Loubas, just past Jausiers.”
“I can’t hear you!” shouted Camille.
“To Loubas,” bellowed Watchee. “It’s eighty kilometres the other side of the Mercantour. That’s where he’s heading.”
“Is there anything special at Loubas?”
“There certainly is.”
Watchee leaned out of the window and spat noisily. Johnstone’s warning flashed across Camille’s mind.
“There’s his cousin,” he continued. “Sol, you explain.”
“He needs a car,” Soliman said. “He can’t hang around out in the open with his animals in tow. He only abandoned his pick-up because it’s part of a plan. Massart’s cousin is a crook who lives at Loubas, runs a shady garage and sells used cars. A cousin who can be relied upon to keep his mouth shut.”
“Fine,” Camille said, who was concentrating on the tight bends in the narrow road. “Let’s say Massart has gone to Loubas to get a car. Fine. But why didn’t he just rent one?”
“So as not to get caught.”
“For heaven’s sake, no-one is looking for him! Nobody’s going to stop him going wherever he pleases.”
“He’s not a wanted man yet, but he could be. But the main thing is that Massart wants to be thought dead.”
“To carry on doing the werewolf business in peace and quiet,” Watchee said.
“Exactly,” Sol said.
“If that’s so,” Camille pointed out, “he’ll need an alternative ID.”
“His cousin’s bent,” Watchee said. “The garage is a front.”
“That’s what people say,” Soliman confirmed.
“The cousin can forge official documents?”
“He can get hold of false identity papers.”
“How?”
“You can buy anything if you know where to shop.”
Camille slowed down and brought the lorry to a halt in a lay-by.
“Are we stopping already?” Watchee said.
“My arms need a break,” said Camille, getting down from the cab. “The steering is heavy and the road is nothing but bends.”
“I can see,” said Sol. “I realise.”
“I’m going to show you a map,” she said. “We found it at Massart’s place. It’s got a whole route marked out on it. You’re going to show me where Loubas is on that map.”
“Just past Jausiers.”
“Well, show me where Jausiers is.”
“You don’t know Jausiers?” said Soliman, evidently astonished.
“No, I don’t.” Camille was leaning on the driver’s door. “I do not know where Jausiers is. I’d never even been to this baking-hot region until earlier this year. And this is the first time I’ve driven a three-ton wreck round a bloody switchback. And I’ve no idea what the Mercantour looks like. All I know is that the Mediterranean is down at the bottom and that it has a tide that goes neither up nor down.”
“Wow,” said Soliman. He was really impressed. “Where have you been living so as to not learn all that?”
Camille went to her drawer to look for the map, closed up the tailgate, climbed back into the cab and sat down beside Soliman.
“Listen, Sol,” Camille said, “did you know that there are places – thousands of places – in the world where cicadas never go?”
“I had heard tell,” Sol said, pursing his lips sceptically.
“Well, that’s where I was living.”
Soliman shook his head, half in admiration, half in pity.
“All right then,” Camille said as she unfolded Massart’s map. “Show me where this Loubas is.”
Soliman put a finger on the map. “What’s this red line?” he said.
“I told you, it’s Massart’s route. All the Xs match sheep farms where he’s savaged the animals, except Andelle and Anélias where nothing has happened. I reckon he hit the road before he had time to attack there. They’re too far east. At the moment he’s making his way along his red route to the north. By the banks of the Tinée, through the Mercantour, and by way of Loubas.”
“And then?” asked Soliman, with an inquiring frown.
“Look. The itinerary wiggles along minor roads as far as Calais, and then over the Channel to England.”
“Whatever for?”
“He’s got a step-brother working in a slaughterhouse in Manchester.”
Solima
n shook his head. “No,” he said. “Massart is not trying to start a new life like your average fugitive. Massart is beyond the living already. He’s out of the light, he’s living in the night. He’s dead to the police, he’s dead to the village, he’s dead to everyone and maybe even to himself. He’s not after a new existence, he’s after an altered state.”
“My, what a lot you know!” Camille said.
“He wants a new skin,” Soliman added.
“A hairy one,” said Watchee.
“That’s right,” said Soliman. “Now the man is dead, the wolfman can kill as he pleases. I just don’t see him going to look for a decent job in Manchester.”
“In that case, why cross the Channel? Why work out an itinerary if it’s not to follow it somewhere?”
Soliman rested his head on his hands and thought, letting one eye wander over the map. “It’s like a vanishing point. He’s on the move because he can’t stay where he is. He will cross to England, maybe he’ll look for a helping hand over there. But he’ll keep on moving wherever he is, all round the world. You know what ‘werewolf’ means?”
“Lawrence told me that lycanthropy wasn’t my strong point.”
“It means a wolf that wanders far and wide. Massart won’t hide under a stone, he’ll keep going, moving on each night. He knows the little roads like the back of his hand. He knows where he can go to ground.”
“But Massart is not a werewolf,” Camille said.
There was a brief silence in the cab. Camille could feel Watchee making an effort not to respond.
“Well, at least he thinks he’s a wolf,” Soliman said. “That’s sufficient.”
“Probably.”
“Did the trapper show this map to the flics?”
“Obviously he did. They take it to refer to an ordinary trip to Manchester.”
“And the Xs?”
“Just simple job-related marks, they say. It holds water, if you’re convinced that Suzanne was savaged by a wolf, and only a wolf. And the police are convinced of that.”
“Idiots,” said Watchee authoritatively. “Wolves do not attack humans.”
Another pause. The memory of Suzanne lying in her own blood flashed through Camille’s mind.
“No,” Camille mumbled.
“We hunt him down,” said Watchee.
Camille switched on the ignition and manoeuvred the lorry out of the lay-by. She drove on for a good while with her arms taut on the wheel before anything more was said.
“I’ve worked it out,” Soliman said at length. “Massart can do between fifteen and twenty kilometres a night without overstretching the animals. He must be on the northern edge of the Mercantour now, let’s say around the level of the Col de la Bonette. So tonight he’ll have an easy downhill walk towards Jausiers, about twenty-five kilometres. That’s where we’ll expect him tomorrow morning, if we haven’t crossed his path already, higher up.”
“Do you want us to spend all night driving round the Mercantour?”
“I’m simply suggesting we pitch camp at the Col. We’ll take turns to keep watch on the road, but I don’t expect any result. He knows the goat-tracks and the passes. At five thirty in the morning we’ll drive down to Loubas and that’s where we’ll pounce on him.”
“What exactly do you mean by ‘pounce’?” asked Camille. “Have you ever tried to pounce on someone who has a mastiff and a trained wolf for bodyguards?”
“We’re going to set ourselves up properly first. We’ll identify his car. Then we tail him until he savages another flock. We’ll catch him at it, red-handed. That’s when we pounce.”
“We means you and who, Sol?”
“We’ll sort that later. It’s a nuisance you don’t know Jausiers.”
“Why?”
“Because that means you don’t know the road either. It climbs to almost three thousand metres, with a hairpin every few hundred metres. It’s barely wider than the lorry. There’s a sheer drop over the side and the barrier wall’s got a gap in it every few feet. What we’ve done so far is a picnic compared to what’s up ahead.”
“I see,” Camille said. “I didn’t think the Mercantour was quite like that.”
“What did you think it was like, then?”
“I imagined a hot and slightly hilly sort of area, with olive trees. That sort of thing.”
“Well, no. It’s cold and hilly to the utmost extreme. There are larches, but when it gets too high for them to survive, there’s nothing at all, just us three, and a lorry.”
“How jolly,” Camille said.
“Didn’t you know that olive trees can’t grow above six hundred metres?”
“Six hundred metres above what?”
“Above sea level, for heaven’s sake. Olive trees stop at the six hundred metre line, everyone knows that.”
“Where I come from there aren’t any olive trees.”
“You must be joking. So what do people live on?”
“Beet. Beets are brave, you know. They never give up, and they go right round the world.”
“If you were to plant beets up on the Mercantour, they would die.”
“Fine. That’s not what I was aiming to do. How far is it to the top of the bloody Col?”
“About fifty kilometres. The last twelve are the worst. Do you think you can manage it?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Can you give a real heave with those arms?”
“Yes, I can heave with these arms.”
“Do you think you can make it?”
“Leave her alone, Sol,” Watchee growled. “Leave her in peace.”
XIX
IT WAS SEVEN in the evening and the day’s heat was slowly waning. Camille kept her hands on the wheel and her eyes straight ahead. The road was still wide enough for two cars to pass, but the unending switchbacks were wearing her arms out. The trouble was that she had virtually no margin for error.
The road went ever up. Camille wasn’t saying a word, and Soliman and Watchee had fallen silent too, their eyes glued to the landscape. The familiar foliage of hazelnut and oak was long behind them. Now serried ranks of dark sylvestris pines marched over the hillsides. Camille found them as sinister and as disturbing as columns of black-clad soldiers. Further up you could make out the start of the larch forest which was a little lighter in colour but just as regimented and military, then the green-grey grass of the high plateau and then, higher up still, bare rock reaching to the summit. The higher you go the harsher it gets. She relaxed for a few moments on the descent into Saint-Étienne, the last village at the head of the valley before the big climb to the Col. The last inhabited outpost. Much more sensible to stop here, call it off, settle down. Taking this cattle truck up two thousand metres over the next twenty-five kilometres was not going to be a piece of cake.
Camille pulled up just after Saint-Étienne, took the water bottle, drank slowly, and let her arms hang loose. She wasn’t sure she could control the lorry in these conditions. She did not like sheer drops and felt that she was at the limit of her physical abilities.
Soliman and Watchee said nothing. They were peering intently at the mountainside, and Camille was not sure whether they were trying to make out the bent shadow of the werewolf, or whether they were fretting about what the lorry might fall into. But since they looked pretty confident Camille reckoned they must be on the lookout for Massart.
She glanced at Soliman, who smiled back.
“Obstinacy,” he said. “‘The quality or condition of being obstinate; stubbornness; persistency.’”
Camille started the engine and the livestock transporter moved on, away from the village. A sign told them this was the start of Europe’s highest road. Another sign advised caution. Camille took a deep breath. It stank of sweat, dog and sheep, but in the circumstances that homely if stomach-turning blend was almost comforting.
A little more than two kilometres further on they crossed into the Mercantour National Park. Much as Camille had feared, the corkscrew road narrowe
d until it seemed no wider than a shoelace, no more significant than a scratch on the mountainside. The engine roared and the bodywork rattled as the sheep wagon nosed its way up, with less thunderous moments only on the flatter curves of left-hand hairpin bends. The near-side wing was inches from the sheer rising cliff, and from her window Camille could see straight down to the bottom of the ravine. She tried to keep her eyes off that spectacle and watched out instead for the kilometre posts by the roadside. Above 2,000 metres’ altitude the trees grew sparser, and the engine began to pink in the thinner air. Gritting her teeth to keep on going, Camille kept a wary eye on the water temperature gauge. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that the lorry would make it to the top. A brawny lass, Buteil had called her, but he had had lots of practice nursing her from pasture to mountain pasture. Camille would not right now have said no to a helping hand from him, just to get to the top of this Col.
At 2,200 metres the last puny larches gave way to verdant carpets of grazing set against the grey slopes. A harsh kind of beauty, to be sure: a vast, noiseless, lunar landscape in which people, not to mention their sheep, were mere specks. Lonely, old, tin-roofed sheepfolds were dotted around the fields. Camille glanced at Watchee. With his face overshadowed by his faded hat, he sat so still and steadfast, like a ship’s captain standing at the bridge, that he almost seemed to be drowsing. She thought him admirable. She was awed by his having spent more than half a century living in these immense uninhabited spaces, no bigger than a flea on a mammoth’s back, without making the slightest fuss about it. People always seemed to be hinting at something dark when they said that Massart had never had a wife; Watchee had not been married either, but nobody commented on that. Always on his own up in his mountains. Two thousand six hundred and twenty metres. Camille cautiously overtook two cyclists weaving out of exhaustion, only yourself to blame, and then double-declutched into first for the last round of tight bends before the top. Her whole chest was aflame with aching muscles.
“Summit,” Soliman shouted above the engine noise. “ ‘The top, the highest point; utmost elevation, as of rank, prosperity, etc.’ Pull in over there, Camille, there’s a parking area at the peak.”
Camille nodded.
