Seeking Whom He May Devour

by Fred Vargas

  Camille was not a little upset and turned to face Soliman.

  “He makes them up,” Watchee said with weary irritation. “He makes up silly African stories to explain things. But they don’t explain a thing.”

  “You never know,” Camille said.

  “Not a thing,” Watchee insisted. “They make things more complicated instead.”

  “Don’t take your eyes off the steel door, Camille,” said Soliman. “And my story doesn’t make things more complicated,” he added for Watchee’s benefit. “It just explains why we need to be three to see one single thing. It’s a clarification.”

  “Pull the other one,” said Watchee.

  By ten no car had appeared. Camille’s back was aching and so she granted herself a short walk along the village road. At noon even Watchee began to lose heart.

  “We’ve missed him,” Soliman said glumly.

  “He’s been and gone,” said Watchee. “Or else he’s still up there.”

  “He could stay up there for weeks,” Camille said.

  “No,” said Soliman. “He’ll move.”

  “If he’s got a car, he doesn’t have to move at night any more. He can drive in the daytime. He could come out of that garage at five this afternoon, or he could come out in September.”

  “No,” said Soliman. “He’ll travel at night and sleep by day. His animals might be heard, the wolf might howl. It’s too risky for him. And anyway, he’s a man of the night.”

  “So what are we doing hanging round here in broad daylight, then?”

  Soliman shrugged.

  “Optimism,” he began.

  “Switch on the radio,” Camille interrupted. “He didn’t do anything on Tuesday night, but maybe he did last night. Find a local station.”

  Soliman twiddled the knob for a good while. Reception came and went through a crackle of static.

  “Bloody mountains,” he said.

  “Don’t you blaspheme at the mountains,” said Watchee.

  “All right,” Soliman replied.

  He tuned in to a station, put his ear to the speaker, then turned up the volume.

  “That’s our boy,” he mumbled.

  . . . pert who examined the earlier victims considers there is a good case for thinking that the same animal is involved, namely an unusually large wolf. The beast has attacked several sheep farms over the past two weeks and also caused the death of an inhabitant of Saint-Victor-du-Mont who tried to kill it, Suzanne Rosselin. Now the wolf is believed to have reverted to its pattern of killing at a place called La Tête du Cavalier, in the canton of Fours, in the department of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, where last night five ewes from the local flock were savaged. The wardens of the Mercantour National Park believe it is a young male seeking new territory and think that within . . .

  Camille grabbed the map. “Show me where La Tête du Cavalier is,” she said to Soliman.

  “On the other side of the Mercantour, right up north. He’s over the pass.”

  Soliman spread out his arms to unfold the map and laid it on Camille’s lap.

  “There,” he said. “Among the high pastures. It’s on the red route he’d pencilled in, two kilometres off that minor road.”

  “He’s just ahead of us,” Camille said. “Bloody hell, he’s only eight kilometres away.”

  “Shit,” said Watchee.

  “What are we going to do?” Soliman asked.

  “Sit on his shadow,” said Watchee.

  “Hang on a second,” Camille interrupted.

  She frowned and turned up the volume on the softly sputtering radio. Soliman wanted to say something, but Camille motioned him to shut up.

  “Just a second,” she said again.

  . . . raised the alarm when the man failed to return. The victim, Jacques-Jean Sernot, is a retired teacher, aged sixty-six. His horribly mutilated body was found at daybreak on a country path near the village of Sautrey, in the department of Isère. His throat had been cut. Family and friends describe the victim as a quiet individual, and the tragedy remains a complete mystery. An investigation is being conducted by the coroner’s office in Grenoble and it is believed that the facts . . .

  “Not our boy,” said Soliman as he jumped down from the cab. “Sautrey’s a godforsaken hole at the other end of the universe, south of Grenoble.”

  “How did you learn where everything is?” asked Camille.

  “In the dictionary of proper names,” Soliman said, who was lifting and then lowered the moped from the hooks it was hanging on.

  “Show me on the map.”

  “There,” said Soliman, pointing it out with his forefinger. “Not our man, Camille. We can’t take on every murder in the land. Sautrey is at least 120 kilometres from here.”

  “That may be so. But it is also on Massart’s itinerary, and the man had his throat cut.”

  “So what? If you haven’t got a gun the best way is either to strangle or to cut a throat. Forget about this Sernot, don’t waste your energy, we’re concentrating on ewes. La Tête du Cavalier is where he went. Maybe they spotted his car down there.”

  Soliman pushed the moped for a few yards to get the motor to start.

  “Pick me up on the other side of the village,” he said. “I’ll get some supplies: water, cooking oil and food. We’ll eat in the cab.”

  “Foresight,” he said as he rode away. “‘The capacity to see ahead. Taking relevant action.’”

  At one thirty Camille drew up in a lay-by on the D900 outside Le Plaisse, the village nearest to the grazing land known as La Tête du Cavalier. All it contained was an old church with a tin roof, a café, and a score of dilapidated houses made of stones and planks patched up with cinderblock. The café kept going out of the locals’ generosity, and the locals kept going out of the magnetic presence of a café. Camille hoped that a car stopping by the roadside at night around here stood a good chance of being noticed.

  Watchee walked into the café with head held high. Since crossing the Col de la Bonette he was outside his own patch and bonhomie was no longer appropriate. Strangers should be kept at a wary distance, initially, before making contact with any of them. He acknowledged the barman with a nod and looked around the small room where six or seven men were eating lunch. His eye came to rest on a man sitting hunched up in the corner. The hair beneath the man’s cap was as white as Watchee’s own. He was staring vacantly into space and had his hand gripped tightly around a glass of wine.

  “Sol, go and get some white from the lorry,” the old man said with a sideways move of his head. “I know that fellow. He’s called Michelet, from Seignol. He often brings his flock up for summer grazing to La Tête du Cavalier.”

  Watchee took off his hat respectfully, then took Camille by the hand – it was the first time he had touched her – and led her rather pompously to the shepherd’s table.

  “A shepherd who’s had a sheep savaged,” he said to Camille, not letting go of her hand, “is a changed man. He can never be the same again. No two ways about it. It warps your mind.”

  Watchee took a seat at the table and held out a hand to the hunchback shepherd.

  “Five sheep, wasn’t it?”

  Michelet looked at him with empty blue eyes which spoke to Camille of real despair. He just held up his left hand with four fingers and his thumb outstretched to agree the figure, while he mouthed a silent sentence. Watchee put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Ewes, were they?”

  The shepherd nodded, tight-lipped.

  “Nasty business,” said Watchee.

  At this point Soliman returned with the bottle and put it down on the dining table. Without a word Watchee took Michelet’s glass, emptied it out of the open window with a lordly sweep of his arm, and uncorked his own bottle of wine.

  “You’re going to down two glasses of this,” he said. “We’ll talk when you’re done.”

  “So you want to talk?”

  “I do.”

  “Not your usual style.”

&n
bsp; “No indeed. Drink up.”

  “Is it your local wine?”

  “It is. Saint-Victor-du-Mont. Drink up.”

  The shepherd drank two full glasses and Watchee poured a third.

  “This one’s to be drunk slowly,” he said. “Sol, fetch some glasses for us.”

  Michelet glared at Soliman with disapproval in his eyes. Like others he had not managed to come to terms with the idea of a Black being involved with Provence or its sheep. To his mind it would be a grisly state of affairs if the next generation were all to be like that. But he was not so daft as to open his mouth on that subject with Watchee present, because it was common knowledge that if you took it out on Soliman, you’d have Watchee’s knife to reckon with.

  Watchee finished pouring the round and stood the bottle on the table as straight up as he was.

  “Did you see anything?” he asked.

  “Not until this morning. When I went back up to the pasture I found them lying on the ground. That bastard didn’t even eat them. He bit them in the throat, that’s all. For fun, I reckon. The animal’s cruel, Watchee, real cruel.”

  “I know,” Watchee said. “It got Suzanne. But was it the wolf? Would you swear to that?”

  “Cross my heart and swear to die. Rips in the flesh as long as that,” he said, rolling up his sleeve to show his forearm.

  “What time did you go back down yesterday?”

  “Ten.”

  “Did you see anyone in the village? Did you see a car?”

  “A stranger, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, Watchee, I didn’t.”

  “Nothing on the way down?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Do you know Massart?”

  “The weirdo from Mont Vence?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I come across him here and there, at services. He won’t attend Mass at the churches round your way. And he always comes for the St John’s Day procession in midsummer.”

  “He’s a religious fanatic?”

  Michelet looked away. “You lot from Les Écarts have no respect, not even for Adam and Eve. Why are you asking after Massart?”

  “He went missing five days ago.”

  “Is there a connection?”

  Watchee nodded.

  “What are you saying?” asked Michelet. “You mean the animal . . . ?”

  “That’s what’s not clear. That’s why we’re asking.”

  Michelet swallowed a mouthful of wine and whistled through his teeth.

  “So you’ve not seen him around here, then?” Watchee said.

  “Not since Mass a week ago last Sunday.”

  “Tell us about the processions. Is he a fanatic?”

  Michelet scowled.

  “Could call it something worse. He’s superstitious, know what I mean? Bowing and scraping and all that. You know what I mean.”

  “Not sure I do. But I know what people say. That raw meat turned his head. What he has to do in the slaughterhouse really got to him and made him go all religious.”

  “What I can tell you is that the fellow ought to have been a monk. They say he’s never touched a woman.”

  Watchee poured out another round.

  “I’ve never known him miss a Sunday service,” Michelet went on. “He spends fifteen francs on candles every week.”

  “Does that make a lot of candles?”

  “Five,” said Michelet, putting his hand up as he had done to number his lost sheep. “He arranges them like the five points of an M,” he added, drawing the figure on the tablecloth with his finger. “Maybe M stands for ‘Massart’, or for ‘My God’, or for ‘Mercy’. I dunno, I never asked, and I don’t give a damn anyway. Bowing and scraping, if you know what I mean. He does a complicated shuffle down the aisle as well – one foot forward, one foot back. God knows what he thinks he’s up to. It don’t look above-board or regular to me, that’s for sure. Then he does a war-dance around the font. Bowing and scraping all the time. You know what I mean.”

  “Would you say he’s a raving lunatic?”

  “Not lunatic, no, but he must be slightly barmy. A bit nutty. But he’s OK. Never did anyone any harm.”

  “Never did anyone any good either, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Michelet agreed. “In any case he doesn’t talk to anyone. What’s it to you that he’s gone missing?”

  “Don’t give a damn about him being missing.”

  “Well then, why are you asking after him?”

  “It’s him who slashed your sheep.”

  Michelet opened his eyes wide and Watchee put a firm hand on the man’s arm.

  “Keep it to yourself. Shepherd to shepherd.”

  “Is that what you mean? A werewolf?” whispered Michelet.

  Watchee nodded. “Certainly. Did you notice anything?”

  “One thing.”

  “What?”

  “He ain’t got no hair on his skin.”

  An angel passed as Michelet let the news sink in. Camille sighed and emptied her glass of white wine.

  “And you’re after him?”

  “We are.”

  “With them two?”

  “Sure.”

  “Never met the lass,” Michelet said reproachfully.

  “She’s a stranger in these parts,” Watchee explained. “She comes from the north.”

  Michelet doffed his cap to Camille, perfunctorily.

  “She’s our driver,” Watchee added.

  Michelet looked at Camille and Soliman steadily and thoughtfully. A pretty odd pair of escorts for old Watchee, he reckoned, but he wasn’t going to criticise. In any case, nobody ever criticised Watchee. Soliman, Suzanne, women in general and whatever else, they were all off limits. Because of that knife.

  Michelet watched the old man put his hat back on and stand up.

  “Thanks,” said Watchee and a smile flashed across his lips. “Warn the sheep farmers. Tell them that the wolf is moving eastwards, towards Gap and Veynes, and that he’ll then head north towards Grenoble. Tell them to stay with their flocks by night. With a gun.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “I hope you do.”

  “How come you know so much about him?”

  Watchee did not deign to answer and went over to the bar. Soliman went outside to get water from the fountain. It was two in the afternoon. Camille went back to the lorry, climbed into the driving seat, and switched on the radio.

  Fifteen minutes later she could hear Soliman winding the hose back in at the rear of vehicle while Watchee was rummaging around among the bottles of wine. She got out of the cab, went round to the back, got in and sat down on Soliman’s bunk.

  “We’re out of this dump,” said Watchee as he sat down opposite. “Nobody’s seen anything. No Massart, no car, no wolf.”

  “Not a bloody thing,” Soliman confirmed, as he too sat down, next to Camille.

  It was getting hotter in the back of the truck. The canvas sides had been half raised to let in a paltry breath of air. Soliman watched the fine hairs on Camille’s neck waving up and down as if they were breathing.

  “But there might be something,” said Soliman. “What Michelet told us.”

  “Michelet’s an oaf,” Watchee said with hauteur. “He was not courteous towards the young lady.”

  He took out his tobacco and rolled three cigarettes. He licked the paper two or three times over, stuck it down, and handed one of the roll-ups to Camille. She put the cigarette between her lips with a thought for Johnstone.

  “What he said about Massart being a bigot,” Soliman went on, “and about his thing with candles. It’s possible Massart can’t manage without churches and candles, especially after a murder. It’s possible he’s been to light candles somewhere to beg forgiveness.”

  “How could you tell which candles were his?”

  “Michelet said he always puts five in the shape of the letter M.”

  “Are you going to examine every churc
h on the itinerary?”

  “It would be one way of working out where he is. He can’t be terribly far from here. Ten kilometres, fifteen at the outside.”

  Camille pondered as she smoked, leaning her elbows on her knees, and said nothing. Then:

  “I think he’s a long way away. I think he killed the retired teacher in that village, Sautrey.”

  “Good heavens,” Soliman exlaimed. “So he’s not the only crazy person around! Whatever makes you connect him to that old bird?”

  “Same thing as connects him to Suzanne.”

  “Suzanne had twigged, so he had to corner her. What makes you think a teacher in Isère saw through the werewolf?”

  “He might have come across him unawares.”

  “The vampire only kills females,” Watchee growled. “Massart’s not interested in old men. Not the tiniest bit interested, young lady.”

  “Right. That’s what Lawrence says too.”

  “Well, that settles it,” Soliman said. “We’re going to scour the churches.”

  “But I’m going to Sautrey,” said Camille as she stamped out her cigarette butt on the black floor.

  “Hey!” said Soliman. “Not on the floor!”

  Camille picked up the butt and threw it out between the slats.

  “We are not going to Sautrey,” Soliman said.

  “Yes we are, because I am the driver. I listened to the two o’clock news. Sernot was killed in a quite particular way: his throat was torn open by means unspecified. A stray dog, they reckon. They’ve not yet connected it to the Mercantour wolf.”

  “That makes a whole heap of difference,” Watchee said.

  “What time did it happen?” Soliman asked as he stood up. “It can’t have been before three. The sheep here were killed around two in the morning, according to the vet.”