Seeking Whom He May Devour

by Fred Vargas

  “Someone wants to harm you?”

  “No.”

  Her heart sank at the prospect of having to spew out the whole convoluted story of the sheep and the man without hair, Soliman and his stink-pond, the lorry and their fruitless pursuit. She was trying to find the least outlandish angle.

  “But there’s the business about the sheep,” said Adamsberg. “The beast of the Mercantour.”

  Camille looked up in surprise.

  “Something went wrong,” the commissaire continued. “Something happened that you didn’t like. You’ve plunged into it without telling anyone. Your local gendarmerie isn’t in the know. You’re freelancing, and now you’re stuck. You’re looking for a flic to get you out of trouble – one who’s not going to tell you to go jump in a lake. As you’re at the end of your tether, and also because you don’t really know any other policemen, you’ve come looking for me, with very mixed feelings. Now you’ve found me. But all of a sudden you can’t remember how you got here. You don’t give a damn for the sheep. What you really want to do right now is to be off. To walk away from me. To take flight.”

  A smile flitted over Camille’s face. Adamsberg had always fathomed things nobody else could work out. Conversely there were masses of things other people knew which remained entirely beyond him.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Vague smell of the mountains and sheep grease about you.”

  Camille looked down at her jacket and started rubbing the sleeves, instinctively.

  “Yes,” she said. “The smell does cling.”

  She looked up at him. “How do you know that?”

  “I saw you on the news, when it broadcast a shot of the village square.”

  “Do you remember the story about the sheep?”

  “Reasonably well. Huge fang-marks found in thirty-one savaged animals at Ventebrune, Pierrefort, Saint-Victor-du-Mont, Guillos, La Castille and, most recently, at La Tête du Cavalier near the village of Le Plaisse. But the main thing was the woman at Saint-Victor who met the same fate as the sheep. I therefore suppose that you knew the woman, and that’s what has been your motive for getting involved.”

  Camille stared at him, unbelieving.

  “Did the police take any notice of any of it?” she asked.

  “The police are totally uninterested in the story,” Adamsberg said. “Apart from me.”

  “Because of the wolves? Your grandfather’s wolves?”

  “Maybe. Then there’s that huge monster, like something out of a time-warp. In the midst of so much darkness. That sparked my interest.”

  “What darkness?” Camille did not understand.

  “The darkness enveloping the whole story. It has a gloomy, nocturnal feel to it; you can’t see through it, but you can think through it. That’s what I’d call darkness.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. I wondered if there was someone leading the monster on. It’s done a lot of killing, brutally, not out of a need to survive. Like a mad dog, but in fact, more like a man. Then there’s Suzanne Rosselin. I don’t understand how an animal would have attacked her. Unless the beast was crazy or rabid. What I also don’t understand is the failure to capture the animal so far. Much darkness.”

  Adamsberg looked at Camille and said nothing for a while. He had never found silence awkward, however long it lasted.

  “Tell me what you’re up to in all this,” he said softly. “Tell me what’s gone wrong. Tell me what you expect me to do.”

  Camille explained the whole story from the beginning: the Ventebrune sheep, then the wolf-hunt, then Massart and his squat figure, smooth skin and twisted legs; then there was the mastiff, the size of the bite-marks, Crassus’s disappearance and the murder of Suzanne; Soliman shutting himself in the toilet, Watchee standing stock-still, Massart gone missing; then there was the map, the pencil-marks, the werewolf with his hair inside, the abattoir in Manchester; kitting out the sheep-truck, Woops or whatever the hell the dog was called, Soliman’s definitions and the five candles laid out like a M; then the murder of the Sautrey pensioner; then the dead end they’d got into, the brick wall they were up against, and the pond where the soul of Suzanne still lay trapped.

  Unlike Adamsberg, Camille had a mind that was fast, sharp and orderly. It took her no more than fifteen minutes to tell the whole tale.

  “Did you say Sautrey? I didn’t pick that up from the news. Where is it?”

  “Not far beyond the Col de la Croix-Haute, downhill from Villard-de-Lans.”

  “What did you find out about that murder?”

  “That’s the thing – we learned nothing. He was a retired teacher. He was slashed not far from the village, in the night. Nothing is known about his injuries, but there’s talk about a stray dog, a runaway Baskerville or something of the sort. Soliman wanted to look inside every church on the route, but then he backed down. He said we’d always be one step behind.”

  “And then? What did you do next?”

  “We reckoned we’d have to find a policeman.”

  “And then?”

  “I said that I knew one.”

  “Why didn’t you go to see the flics at Villard-de-Lans?”

  “No-one there would have heard us out. We’ve got nothing tangible.”

  “I’m quite fond of intangibles.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Adamsberg nodded and said nothing for several minutes. Camille waited. She had explained everything to the best of her abilities. The decision was now no longer in her gift. She had given up trying to persuade other people long ago.

  “Was it a big problem to track me down?” Adamsberg asked at long last, looking up at Camille.

  “Do I have to tell the truth?”

  “If you can.”

  “It really pissed me off.”

  “Good,” said Adamsberg after another pause. “That means the case really matters to you. Or else the wolves do, or the Suzanne woman, or your Soliman, or your shepherd fellow.”

  “All wrapped up together, I would say.”

  “What have you been doing with yourself these last years?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly.

  “I repair boilers and leaky pipes.”

  “What about your music?”

  “I’m composing the soundtrack for a soap.”

  “A drama? An adventure?”

  “A love story. Major heartaches for M. and Mme Water Rat.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  Adamsberg paused again.

  “And you’re doing all that in this village, in Saint-Victor?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the Lawrence Johnstone you mentioned? The wildlife warden who studied the injuries on the first sheep?”

  Adamsberg said “Laurence” as if it was a French girl’s name; he never could get his tongue around English pronunciation.

  “He’s not a warden,” Camille said, on the defensive. “He’s a visiting scientist making a documentary.”

  “OK. So let’s say this man, this Canadian, then . . .”

  “Let’s say what?”

  “Well, tell me a bit about him.”

  “He’s from Canada. He’s a visiting scientist making a documentary.”

  “Yes, you’ve already said that. Tell me about him.”

  “Why do I have to say anything about him?”

  “I need to understand the context.”

  “He’s a Canadian. I’ve not much more to say about him.”

  “Isn’t he a tall, fit, strapping fellow? A handsome guy, a good-looker with fair hair down to his shoulders?”

  “Yes,” Camille said warily. “How do you know that as well?”

  “All Canadians are like that. Isn’t that so?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “So tell me about him.”

  Camille looked at Adamsberg, who, smiling a little smile, was observing her calmly.

  “You want to understand the whole context, is that it?” she asked.

/>   “That’s right.”

  “Including knowing whether I sleep with Johnstone, is that right?”

  “That’s correct. Including knowing if you go to bed with him.”

  “Is that any of your business?”

  “No. The wolves aren’t any of my business either. Nor are your murderers. Or the police. Nothing and nobody is any of my business. Save for this willow-branch, perhaps,” he said as he touched the piece of wood lying between them. “And myself, from time to time.”

  “All right,” said Camille with a sigh. “I’m living with the man.”

  “That makes it all easier to grasp,” Adamsberg said.

  He stood up, took the willow-branch and walked around the clearing.

  “Where did you park?”

  “Just outside town, at the ‘Hop Inn’ campsite.”

  “Are you up to driving all the way to Sautrey this evening?”

  Camille said that she was.

  Adamsberg walked on again, slowly. At five that morning the Latin Quarter murderer’s sea wall had cracked, and confessions had flooded through the breach. He still had to write up the report, call Danglard and the police judiciaire. To go back to the hotel, call the prosecution service in Grenoble, ring Villard-de-Lans. He knew the head of the gendarmerie at Villard-de-Lans. Adamsberg stopped as he hunted for the name. Montvailland, that was it. Maurice Montvailland. A frightfully logical fellow.

  He added it all up on his fingers, went down to the riverbank to pick up his revolver, which he put back in its holster, then put on his shoes.

  “Around 8.30 this evening,” he said. “Can you wait for me?”

  Camille nodded and stood up in her turn.

  “Will you come with us?” she asked. “To Sautrey?”

  “To Sautrey or wherever. I have to go back to Paris, I’ve finished what I had to do in Avignon. There’s nothing that says I can’t go back by way of Sautrey, is there? What’s the place like?”

  “Misty.”

  “OK. We’ll cope.”

  “Why are you coming?” Camille asked.

  “Do I have to tell the truth?”

  “If possible.”

  “Because I would rather stay under cover at the moment, because of the girl on my tail. I’m waiting for a piece of information.”

  Camille nodded.

  “Because I’m interested in that wolf,” he added.

  Adamsberg paused, audibly.

  “And because you asked me to.”

  XXVII

  SOLIMAN AND WATCHEE stood at the back of the lorry as soon as it turned eight to look out for the flic with special gifts. The sheep wagon was so out of place amid the spotless tents and mobile homes that it had barely been allowed in at the “Hop Inn” campsite. They had parked as far away from other vehicles as possible so that people would not come and grouse about the smell.

  Soliman had spent the afternoon showering and shaving and doing the rounds in Avignon on his moped. He had recharged the mobile phone and restocked the lorry with all the necessaries, and some superfluities too. Watchee did not have the same need for movement and action. Observing ten people was for him as good as seeing ten thousand. He wasn’t exactly happy, but he certainly seemed quite content to stand guard by the lorry with his hands on his crook and his dog at his feet, watching the world go by, with a certain disdain. Whereas Soliman was getting more inquisitive and voracious by the hour. He was fascinated by the bustle of a place like Avignon. Watchee was as alarmed by the boy’s interest in something other than Les Écarts as he was by his taste for unexplained absences and for taking off on the moped at all hours of the day and night. The sooner they got hold of the vampire and the sooner they slit him open, the sooner Soliman would get back home to the farm and calm down.

  A little further off on a folding canvas stool, Camille was finishing her supper – a helping of rice, moistened with olive oil and downed with a soup spoon. She was also waiting for Adamsberg. Without great relish, on the other hand without dread. Seeing him again had been less stressful than she had feared. And persuading him had been no trouble at all. He had seemed to be willing to take on the wolf case before she even mentioned it. He was a step ahead: as if he had been waiting for her on purpose by the banks of the Rhône, in bare feet. Soliman kept his eyes glued to the campsite entrance as he looked out for the flic; Watchee said nothing, but remained on his guard.

  Adamsberg turned up at the appointed hour in an unmarked squad car that was close to retirement. With little ado hands were shaken and names exchanged. The commissaire did not appear to even notice Watchee’s standoffishness. Awkwardness had never much bothered Adamsberg. As he was simply incapable of bowing to social constraints he disregarded pecking orders and their associated rituals; he coped with human relations in his own blunt way, neither holding back nor pulling rank. He really did not mind who was lording it over whom so long they left him in peace to get on with his job.

  The only thing he asked for was Massart’s map. He laid it out on the dusty ground and spent a long time poring over it with a vaguely worried look on his face. Everything about Adamsberg was always vague; you could never quite trust his face to tell you what was actually going on in his head.

  “That’s a pretty odd route,” he said. “All those minor roads and twists and turns. It’s really complicated.”

  “He’s a complicated guy,” said Soliman. “Madness is complicated.”

  “If he had wanted to hang around and get caught he wouldn’t have gone about it any differently. Whereas he could have gone right across the country in a day, and left France in a flash.”

  “But he still hasn’t been caught,” Soliman pointed out.

  “Because he’s not being looked for,” said Adamsberg, folding the map.

  “But we’re looking for him.”

  “Maybe you are,” Adamsberg smiled. “But when he’s got the whole force on his tail, he won’t be able to afford the time to saunter down by-ways and stop off in churches. I don’t understand why he’s not using the motorway.”

  “He spent twenty years of his life traipsing round the back roads of France,” Camille said. “When he made his living as an itinerant bottomer. He’s familiar with all the side roads, he knows quiet places to lay up in, and where to find sheep, too. He wants to be thought dead. And above all he’s trying to keep his wolf from being seen.”

  “He prowls at night,” Watchee broke in. “That’s when he murders his victims, sheep or human. He sleeps during the daytime. That’s why he’s making slow progress. He can’t show his face, that’s instinctive for a man of that sort. And he steers clear of people, that’s natural for a man of that kind.”

  It was nearly one in the morning before the sheep wagon reached Sautrey. Adamsberg got there before them, and waited patiently for the other three, parked just outside the fog-bound village. He let his mind wander from the wolf to the map, then to Soliman, the truck, and Camille. He thanked fate for having put his path across Camille’s and for having put the big wolf in his way. But he wasn’t really surprised. It seemed normal and natural for him to be tackling the beast that had been on his mind ever since its first act of carnage. As natural as having caught up with Camille. Seeing her appear by the riverbank had shaken him a bit, of course, but not so very much. It was as if a tiny but functional fragment of his mind had never stopped watching out for her on the edges of his field of vision. So that when she did enter the field, he turned out to be in some sense already prepared for her to do so.

  There was that muscle-man, of course, there had to be, and why not? Adamsberg had nothing against that. Obviously there was a man in the picture. Why shouldn’t there be? And handsome, too, from what he had glimpsed. That was fine and all to the good, your life’s your own, my friend. Camille had been rather tense to begin with, down by the Rhône, and then she got over it. Now she was calm and neutral. Neither friendly nor hostile, not even evasive. Peaceful and distant. Fine. That was normal. She had erased him. That’s how it was.
That’s how he wanted it to be. And it was OK. And the tall guy, too, why not, there had to be one, why shouldn’t it be him? Just as well she had got a good-looking man, she deserved no less. Would Camille take off for Canada, though? That was another question.

  He saw the black mass of the sheep wagon drive past, opened the door of his car and flashed his headlights twice. The lorry pulled in to the side with a clatter of loose metal and its lights went out. Soliman and Watchee were asleep in the cab. Camille shook the young man awake and jumped down to the road. Soliman got out next, all bleary-eyed, and helped the old man negotiate the footholds.

  “Bugger that, stop carrying me like a baby,” Watchee growled.

  “I don’t want you to have a fall, old man,” said Soliman.

  “Didn’t you have anything more serviceable than that thing?” Adamsberg asked Camille. “For the journey?”

  Camille shook her head. “I’ve got used to it.”

  “I can see why,” Adamsberg said. “I like that smell. That’s how it smells down my way, in the Pyrenees. It’s the wool-fat that does it.”

  “I know,” Camille said.

  The shepherd screwed up his eyes in the dark, sizing up the flic. At last someone, the only one, who did not grouse about the lorry’s lanolin smell. Maybe this guy with the rough-cut face would be worth talking to. He went round the lorry and waved Adamsberg over.

  “He’s summoning you,” Camille explained.

  Adamsberg went up to the shepherd, who adjusted his hat and crossed his hands on his crook.

  “Listen here, young fella,” said Watchee.

  “He’s a commissaire,” said Soliman. “You call him ‘Commissaire’. No way is he a ‘young fella’.”

  “There’s one thing about Massart,” the old man persevered, “that the young lady has probably not told you. He’s a werewolf. No body hair. You know what I mean?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “It’s all on the inside. Gloves off when you get at him. A werewolf is as strong as twenty men.”