Seeking Whom He May Devour

by Fred Vargas

  “Hang on until he comes,” Camille said.

  She was reading The A to Z of Tools for Trade and Craft; Soliman was stripped to the waist as he got on with the washing in the blue plastic bowl; Watchee was drowsing in the lorry. They were hanging on until the flic came.

  The best part of an hour went by in silence.

  Suddenly a roar of souped-up revs heralded four bikers coming down the road. They cut off towards the lorry and came to a halt a few feet from Soliman. They took off their helmets without a word, smiling intently at the astonished young man. Camille froze.

  “What’s this about then, nigger boy?” said one of the bikers. “Having fun with whitie?”

  “Not worried about leaving black paw-marks on her, are we?” said another.

  Soliman stood up, quivering with anger, holding tight to the linen he had been wringing out over the bowl.

  “Quietly does it, monkey man,” the first biker said, dismounting. “We’re going to fix you up. We’re going fix you up right and proper so you’ll forget about screwing around down to the day you’re ripe for retirement benefits.”

  Then the second biker, a scrawny ginger-nut, dismounted as well.

  “As for you,” he said to Camille, “you’re going to get a facial. A right makeover. After that you’ll have to make do with niggers ’cos no-one else will want you. That’s by way of punishment.”

  The four of them drew nearer. They were bare-chested beneath their leather jackets, they were wearing knuckledusters and swinging motorcycle chains. The talkative one was fair and plump.

  Soliman crouched ready for the attack and moved over to shield Camille. He had suddenly lost his childish clarity. His upper lip snarled with rage and his eyes narrowed to a slit. Anger made him almost ugly.

  “You got a name, monkey boy?” asked the first biker, twirling his chain. “I like to know what to call things I shunt.”

  “Melchior!” Soliman spat at him.

  The fat guy grinned and moved closer while the other three circled so as to box the boy in.

  “Whoever touches the King of Orient is a dead man,” Watchee’s voice boomed through the silence.

  The old shepherd was standing bolt upright on the back steps of the lorry aiming his hunting rifle at the bikers. He was rigid, and his eyes shone with loathing.

  “A dead man,” Watchee repeated, and he shot a hole in the petrol tank of one of the black bikes. “These bullets are good enough for wild boar. I don’t advise any one of you to move an eyebrow.”

  The four bikers stood stock-still, unsure what to do. Watchee raised his chin.

  “It is customary to bare your head before royalty,” he said. “Take off your caps. And your jackets. Drop the chains. Take off your knuckledusters. And your boots.”

  The bikers obeyed and dumped all their gear on the ground.

  “But keep your pants on,” Watchee continued in a rasping tone. “There is a lady present. I wouldn’t want her to be put off for life.”

  The four men stood before the old sheep-hand, bare to the waist, in their stockinged feet, struck dumb with humiliation.

  “Now, get down on your knees,” Watchee ordered. “Like worms. Put your hands flat on the ground, and touch the earth with your forehead. Keep your bums down. Like hyenas. That’s right. Good. That is the correct posture for greeting royalty.”

  Watchee grinned as he saw them prostrate themselves.

  “Now listen to me, you young fellas. I’m past the age for sleep. I stay awake all night long. I stand vigil for young Melchior. It’s my job. If you come back I’ll shoot you down like mad dogs. Hey, you, fatso, try to keep still,” he said as he took aim with his rifle. “Or would you rather I start on it now?”

  “Don’t shoot, Watchee,” said Adamsberg.

  The commissaire was approaching quietly from behind, his .357 in his hand.

  “Unload that rifle,” he said. “We’re not going to lose a single boar-bullet up the arses of these rats. It would take too much time, and we’re in a hurry. A great hurry. Camille, come over here, grab my mobile from my jacket pocket and call the local flics. Soliman, you drain their tanks, puncture their tyres and smash their headlamps. It’ll make us all feel better.”

  Camille moved cautiously among these seven warring males. It was the first time she had seen the killer twitch in Soliman’s face, or ferociousness in Watchee’s expression.

  Not a word was said in the minutes that followed. The bikers watched Soliman destroy their machines with measured fury.

  The gendarmes arrived in a paddy wagon, handcuffed the four men and put them aboard. Adamsberg did what was necessary to make the initial statement as succinct as possible and to have the formal procedure put off until a more convenient time. Before they drove off, he put his head through the paddy-wagon window.

  “You,” he said to the first biker. “Soliman will catch up with you. And you,” he said as he turned towards the ginger-nut, “you I’ll catch up with myself.” Then he told the gendarmes he would follow on behind.

  “Since when,” Camille asked after the gendarmes had driven off, and as Soliman was getting his breath back, leaning on Watchee’s shoulder, “since when has there been a gun on board?”

  “Camille, are you not glad there was one on board?” Watchee said.

  “As it happens, yes,” Camille said, realising that in all the excitement Watchee had for the first time addressed her by name. “But we’d said: no guns. That was the deal. We’d said: nobody’s going to kill anybody.”

  “We’re not going to kill anybody,” Watchee said.

  Camille shrugged, sceptically.

  “Why did you say ‘Melchior’?” she asked Soliman.

  “To let Watchee know I couldn’t cope on my own.”

  “You knew he had a rifle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you got a weapon as well?”

  “No, I promise. You want to go through my things?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Later that evening Adamsberg gave a summary of his conversation with the superintendent of police in Grenoble. The prosecution service had agreed to launch a criminal investigation for manslaughter. They were looking for a man and an animal trained to kill. Adamsberg had provided a description of Auguste Massart. Inquiries would be re-opened into the death of Suzanne Rosselin, and in all the villages where sheep had been savaged.

  “Why don’t they put out an appeal for witnesses to come forward?” Soliman said. “Or publish Massart’s photograph in the papers?”

  “That would be against the law,” Adamsberg said. “Until the case against Massart is supported by evidence, we don’t have the right to make his name public.”

  “I found his bloody candles of penance in a chapel two kilometres away. Shouldn’t we take them in for fingerprinting?”

  “There won’t be any prints.”

  “All right,” said Soliman, plainly disappointed. “If the police are on the case, what use are we?”

  “You can’t see?”

  “No.”

  “Our use is to carry on believing in it. We’re moving on tonight,” he added. “We’ll not stay here.”

  “Because of the bikers? I’m not scared of them.”

  “No. We have to get a step ahead of Massart. Or at least get closer to him.”

  “Nearer to where? Nearer to what? He puts in at any old place.”

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Adamsberg said almost under his breath.

  Camille glanced at him. When Adamsberg spoke like that it meant that it was more important than it sounded. The softer he spoke, the more you had to listen.

  “Not quite any place,” Soliman concurred. “He only strikes when he’s on his red line, and where sheep are easiest to get at. He chooses his sheep farms.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Soliman looked at him, but did not say a word.

  “I’m thinking about Suzanne, and about Sernot,” Adamsberg explained.

  �
��He killed Suzanne because he was afraid,” Soliman said. “And he slit Sernot’s throat because Sernot surprised him.”

  “Woe betide him who crosses the vampire’s path,” said Watchee, somewhat sententiously.

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Adamsberg said a second time.

  “Where do you want to go?” Camille asked with a frown.

  Adamsberg took the map from his pocket and unfolded it.

  “There,” he said. “To Bourg-en-Bresse. One hundred and twenty kilometres north of here.”

  “But for heaven’s sake, why?” Soliman said with a shake of his head.

  “Because it’s the only sizable place he’s willing to go through,” said Adamsberg. “With a wolf and a mastiff in tow, it’s no mere detail. Everywhere else the red line keeps away from towns. So if it goes via Bourg-en-Bresse, there must be a reason for it. Seeking whom he may devour.”

  “It’s a guess,” said Soliman.

  “It’s instinct,” Adamsberg corrected him.

  “He passed through Gap,” Soliman pointed out. “And nothing happened in Gap.”

  “True,” Adamsberg granted. “Maybe nothing will happen at Bourg-en-Bresse either. But that’s where we’ll be. Better to be one step ahead than two steps behind.”

  * * *

  It was dark when two and half hours later Camille parked the lorry by the side of the N75, on the outskirts of Bourg-en-Bresse.

  She got out on the nearside, towards the open field that ran alongside the road, with a slice of bread and the one glass of wine allowed her by Watchee. Seeing as the road movie was turning out longer than expected, Watchee said, he had to impose rations on the blanc de Saint-Victor. They had to keep some until the very end. That was vital, even if it meant drinking barely a gulp a day. But Camille, as lorry-driver, because she was taking a lot of strain in her shoulders and back, was allowed an extra evening ration, so as to relax her muscles for the night and to ensure they were fit again in the morning. It did not even occur to her to turn down Watchee’s offer of liquid embrocation.

  She walked along the field to the woods at the end, and then turned back on her steps. A diffuse awareness of danger and vulnerability, the feelings of apprehension and freedom that had arisen on coming out of the Alps, still held her in their sway. Johnstone’s voice, a few moments ago, had made her feel much calmer. Hearing him on the telephone had brought back to her Saint-Victor with its high walls, steep inclines, narrow alleys, and the massive mountains that cradled it and blocked all vistas. Back there things all seemed foreseeable and expected. Here everything seemed confused and anything was possible. Camille pursed her lips and stretched out her arms, as if she was trying to shake off fear, physically. She had never been afraid of possibilities before, and she did not like having a reflex that put her on her guard. She downed Watchee’s ration in a single swig.

  She was the last to go to bed, around one in the morning. She tiptoed past Soliman and Watchee, then carefully drew the canvas curtain and listened for Adamsberg’s breathing. She put her boots noiselessly on the floor, undressed without making a sound, and lay down. Adamsberg was not asleep. He did not move, he said not a word, but she could feel that his eyes were wide open. It was not as dark as the night before. If she had turned her head she would have been able to see his face. But she did not turn her head. And lying rigidly still she finally dropped off to sleep.

  The mobile woke her a few hours later. By the light seeping through the side-curtains she guessed it was not yet six. She half-closed her eyes again, but not so tight that she could not see Adamsberg sitting up without haste, putting his two bare feet onto the sheep wagon’s filthy floor and getting his mobile phone out of the jacket he had hung on the feeding-trough. He mumbled something and hung up. Camille waited until he was dressed before asking what was going on.

  “Another murder,” he said. “Heavens above. What a mess that man is.”

  “Who called you?” asked Camille.

  “The Grenoble police.”

  “Where did it happen?”

  “Where I said. Here, in Bourg-en-Bresse.”

  Adamsberg ran his fingers through his hair, raised the curtain, and got down from the lorry.

  XXIX

  HE CAUGHT UP with the bourg-en-bresse police at Place du Calvaire. It was at the edge of town, almost in the country, at a three-way junction of minor roads. A stone cross marked the spot. The flics were busying themselves over the corpse of a man aged about seventy, who had had his shoulder torn open and his throat slit.

  Commissaire Hermel, who was almost as short as Adamsberg, sported a droopy moustache and had his spectacles pushed up over sticking-out ears. He came to shake hands.

  “I was told you’d been on this case since the beginning,” he said. “I’m glad to have your assistance.”

  Hermel was a cordial and pliant fellow, who did not care to see Adamsberg as a potential rival. The latter quickly gave him all the information he had. Hermel listened with his head down and rubbed his cheek.

  “It all fits,” he said. “Apart from the wounds, we’ve got a pretty clear paw-print to the left of the body. It’s the size of a saucer. A vet’s on his way to look it all over. But everybody is running late on Sunday morning.”

  “What time did it happen?”

  “Around 2 a.m.”

  “Who discovered the body?”

  “A nightwatchman on his way home.”

  “Have we got an ID yet?”

  “Fernand Deguy, former mountain guide. He’s been living in retirement in Bourg-en-Bresse for fifteen years or so. His house is round the corner. I’ve just informed the family. Talk of a disaster. Eaten by a wolf!”

  “Does anyone know what he was doing out at that time?”

  “We haven’t had a proper talk with the wife yet. She’s in no condition. But he was often up late. When there was nothing to watch he would go out for a walk in the countryside.”

  Hermel waved at the distant hills.

  “To watch where?”

  “On TV.”

  “There wasn’t anything worth watching last night,” a lieutenant piped up. “Saturday night. I watched the programme all the same, it’s my only quiet evening.”

  “He would have done better to follow your example,” said Hermel pensively. “Instead of which off he went out into the open. And he crossed the path of the man you really don’t want to meet.”

  “Could you put together everything you can find out about the man?” Adamsberg asked.

  “What for?” said Hermel. “It hit him out of nowhere. It could have been anyone.”

  “That’s what I’m wondering. Could you do that for me, Hermel? Collect all the facts you can lay your hands on? The Villard-de-Lans people are doing the same on Sernot for me. We’ll see if anything matches.”

  Hermel shook his head.

  “The poor old fellow was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “What good will it do to know when he bought his first pair of skis?”

  “I don’t know. I would like to have that information, though.”

  Hermel pondered. He knew Adamsberg by reputation. The man’s request seemed inept, but he’d do what was asked. A fellow-officer had told him that Adamsberg often seemed inept. But there was something appealing about the man.

  “As you wish, old chap,” Hermel said. “We’ll open a file.”

  “Commissaire,” the lieutenant said as he came back towards them, “I found this in the grass, beside the body. It’s brand-new.”

  In the palm of his hand the lieutenant held out a crumpled ball of blue tissue. Hermel put on his gloves and unfolded it.

  “It’s a piece of paper,” he said grumpily. “Maybe it’s a flyer. What do you make of it, old chap?”

  Adamsberg picked it up by the tips of his fingernails and looked it over.

  “Do you ever stay in hotels, Hermel?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you see all those bits and bobs you usually pocket, off the
bathroom shelf?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mini-bars of soap, mini-shoe polish, mini-toothpaste tubes, and mini-handwipes? You see what I’m talking about?”

  “Of course.”

  “All that rubbish you stuff in your case when you leave?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, that’s what it is. It’s the envelope that contained complimentary cleansing tissue. It comes from a hotel.”

  Hermel took the crumpled paper back, pulled down his spectacles, and looked at it more closely.

  “Le Moulin,” he read out. “There’s no hotel called Le Moulin in Bourg-en-Bresse.”

  “You’ll have to scour further afield,” said Adamsberg. “And double quick.”

  “Why the hurry?”

  “Because then we’d have a chance of finding the room where Massart slept last night.”

  “The hotel isn’t going to fly away.”

  “But it would be a whole lot more useful to get there before the cleaning lady.”

  “Do you think this thing belonged to the killer?”

  “It’s possible. It’s the sort of thing you stuff in your pocket and which only falls out if you lean right over. And who would have been leaning right over, right here, at the foot of this cross?”

  By ten a Hôtel du Moulin had been found at Combes, about sixty kilometres from Bourg-en-Bresse. A car bearing Hermel, Adamsberg, the lieutenant and two forensics set off at once from the police station.

  “He’s crafty,” Adamsberg opined. “He murders along his marked-out itinerary, but he hides well away from it. You might as well whistle as try to find him on his itinerary. He can be anywhere.”

  “If it is him,” said Hermel.

  “It is,” said Adamsberg.

  They drew up in front of the Hôtel du Moulin, an upmarket two-star, just before eleven.

  “Even craftier,” said Adamsberg as he cast an eye over the façade. “He reckons the flics will be looking for him in low dives, and he’s not wrong either, so he stays in classy places.”