Seeking Whom He May Devour

by Fred Vargas

  “Quite,” said Adamsberg. “Nothing is to say that.”

  Adamsberg spent the whole morning in the gendarmerie or hard by, alternating between reading the files and snatches of daydreaming. He read slowly, standing up, and often coming back to the same line of text after his meandering mind had wandered away from it. For some years now he had been trying to impose mental discipline on himself by making notes in a jotter. But this tiresome exercise had not borne the expected fruit.

  He lunched with Aimont and then went off to explore the countryside around Belcourt, looking for a hidey-hole. He found one easily enough beside an old mill overgrown with brambles and honeysuckle. He took out his jotter and scribbled in it for over an hour, sketching the trees he could see in front of him. Then he went back to his temporary office. He was completely at ease working alongside the timid adjudant and he preferred to settle in at the gendarmerie rather than go back to the lorry camp. It wasn’t that he felt awkward about Johnstone being around. Adamsberg was almost entirely devoid of jealousy. When he saw it raise its destructive and agonising head in other people, he reckoned he must be missing a part, among the many others that he did not seem to possess. However, he was not at all sure that the Canadian appreciated having him around. Several times Johnstone had looked at him with confident and questioning eyes that seemed to be saying both: “I’m here” and “What’s your game?” And Adamsberg could not easily answer that question. Johnstone was a prize catch, he had nothing against that. Except that the man wasn’t much of a conversationalist, and did not always make his meaning clear. Adamsberg wondered what he meant by the word that to his ears sounded like “boulechite”, which Johnstone kept using. Maybe it was his mother’s name.

  Around five, Hermel got through to him.

  “Have you read the files, old chap? You could hardly call them page-turners, what? And there’s not one single crossover between the two men. They never lived anywhere near each other. I’ve checked all the membership lists of all the sporting clubs in the Grenoble area for the last thirty years. Not a sausage, old chap. They did not move in the same circles. Now, those fingernails. The ones we got from Massart’s dump and the ones we found on the windowsill. Spot on. The grooves make them as near to identical as you can get. What do you say to that, eh? The Head Deputy at Puygiron is still trying to find fingernails in the bathroom. When he gets an idea into his head, it just takes over, like a steamroller. If you want my opinion, old chap, he’s dim and muddle-headed. He won’t find any. Massart chewed his fingernails in bed, as I said. I told the Head Deputy to drop it, since we’ve got our samples, but he wants to prove he was right. If you want my opinion, he’s going to carry on searching that bathroom until they send him off with a gold watch, no skin off our nose. I reminded him we were expecting information about Massart from him, but I don’t think he’ll put his back into it. That chap only talks to members of his own force. I’ll get the man’s photograph direct from his employer, it’ll save time. Then, as agreed, I’ll have it circulated to all police stations.”

  It got progressively hotter through the day. Adamsberg dined alone at the same café, sitting outside on the terrace, then idled around the streets of the little town in the dark. Around eleven he decided to head back to community life.

  Soliman and Camille were sitting on the back steps of the lorry, smoking a cigarette. In the dark you could make out Watchee sitting in the plum tree orchard. The motorbike wasn’t there.

  Soliman leaped to his feet when he saw Adamsberg approaching.

  “No news,” Adamsberg told him as he waved him back to his seat. “Just paperwork. Ah, yes, there is,” he added after thinking for a moment. “The fingernails we found at the hotel do belong to Massart.”

  Adamsberg looked around.

  “Is M. Johnstone not here?” he asked.

  “He went back south,” Camille said. “He’s got visa problems. He’ll be back.”

  “Apparently his old wolf died,” Adamsberg said.

  “Yes,” Camille said in amazement. “His name was Augustus. He couldn’t hunt for himself any more so Lawrence used to trap rabbits for him to eat. But he stopped feeding, and then died. One of the wildlife wardens said: ‘If you’re past it, you’re past it.’ Lawrence was upset by that.”

  “I can understand,” said Adamsberg.

  Adamsberg went to share a jar with Watchee under the plum tree when Soliman and Camille repaired to bed. He went back to the lorry around one in the morning with his head swimming a little from the tail of the wine. Now that the weather had warmed up the smell of sheep wax had climbed a notch. Adamsberg drew the canvas curtain aside without making a sound. Camille was sleeping on her front, with the bed sheet pushed back and leaving her top half bare. He sat on his bed and looked at her for a long while, trying to think. He had never given up his ambition of learning to think the way Danglard did, that is to say, to some effect. After a few minutes’ effort, his mind cut out without warning and drifted off into dreams. A quarter of an hour later, when he was almost fast asleep, he started with a jump. He stretched out his hand, placed it palm down on Camille’s back, and said, calmly:

  “Don’t you love me any more?”

  Camille opened her eyes, looked at him in the dark, and went back to sleep.

  In the middle of the night another storm, heavier than the previous night, broke over Belcourt. Rain hammered down on the roof of the sheep wagon. Camille got up, put her boots on over bare feet, and went outside to tie the tarpaulins down over the side-lattices, as they were flapping in the wind and letting in rain. She lay down again noiselessly, alert to Adamsberg’s breathing, the way you keep an eye on a sleeping foe. Adamsberg stretched out an arm and took her hand in his. Camille did not flicker an eyelash, as if a single movement from her might suddenly make the situation worse, the way a thoughtless gesture can set off an avalanche. She had the impression that Adamsberg had said something to her earlier that night. Ah yes, she remembered now. She was more troubled than hostile as she tried to work out a scheme for getting her hand out of his without making a fuss, without hurting anyone. But her hand stayed obstinately where it was, entwined in Adamsberg’s. It wasn’t coming to any harm. Lacking resolution, Camille let it be.

  She slept badly, in a state of alertness she was familiar with, and which was always a symptom that something was going off the rails. When morning came, Adamsberg let go of her hand, grabbed his clothes, and left the lorry. Only then did she drop off again, for a good two hours.

  Adamsberg drove off at nine to see the diffident Aimont and came back less than thirty minutes later.

  “Nine ewes slashed at Champ des Meules,” he reported.

  Soliman jumped up and ran to the lorry to fetch the map.

  “Don’t bother,” Adamsberg told him calmly. “It’s just by Vaucouleurs, due north. He’s gone way off his track.”

  Soliman stared at Adamsberg, struck dumb.

  “You were wrong,” he said at length, in surprise and disappointment.

  Without a word Adamsberg poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “You were wrong,” Soliman insisted. “He’s changed his route. He’s running away. He’ll get away.”

  Watchee stood up, straight as a staff.

  “We’ll stick on his tail,” he said. “On track or off it. We’re breaking camp. Go tell Camille, Sol.”

  “No,” said Adamsberg.

  “What?” said Watchee.

  “We’re not breaking camp. We’re going to stay here. We’re not moving.”

  “Massart is at Vaucouleurs,” said Soliman, raising his voice. “And we’re going where Massart goes. To Vaucouleurs.”

  “We’re not going to go to Vaucouleurs”, said Adamsberg, “because that’s what he wants us to do. Massart hasn’t abandoned his itinerary.”

  “Really?” said Soliman.

  “No. He just wants us to get out of Belcourt.”

  “Why so?”

  “So as to have a free hand. He’s got someone
to kill at Belcourt.”

  “I don’t agree,” said Soliman with a vigorous shake of his head. “The more time we waste here, the further away he gets.”

  “He’s not getting further away. He’s watching us. Go to Vaucouleurs if you want to, Soliman. Go on, if it makes you happy. You’ve got the moped, you can go on your own. You can go too, Watchee, if you want to. Ask Camille, she’s the driver. I’m staying here.”

  “What’s to say you’re right, young fella?” asked Watchee, who was quite shaken.

  Adamsberg shrugged. “You know the answer,” he said.

  “The dogleg?”

  “Among other things.”

  “It’s not a lot to go on.”

  “But it’s a something that has no other explanation. There are other things.”

  Torn between dissent and devotion, Soliman paced back and forth for an hour by the side of the lorry – his patch – before he came up with a decision. At long last he got out the blue plastic bowl and the dirty washing, signalling that he had given in.

  Adamsberg went to his car. He was expected back at the gendarmerie, to supervise the investigation at Vaucouleurs. Before opening the car door he got out his pistol and checked that it was loaded.

  “Are you armed?” asked Watchee.

  “My name’s in the papers this morning,” said Adamsberg, wincing. “Somebody talked. Don’t know who. Now she can find me if she wants to.”

  “You mean the killer girl?”

  Adamsberg nodded.

  “Would she shoot?”

  “Yes. She’d put a little lump of lead in my gut. Keep an eye open for me, Watchee. Look out for a tall, pale-faced, scrawny redhead, with bags under sunken eyes, long wavy hair, and a small nose. She might have two younger girls in tow, skinny as rakes. Look, here’s her picture,” he said, taking a photograph from his pocket.

  “What sort of clothes does she wear?” the old man asked gravely, looking at the image.

  “Never the same thing twice. She dresses up, like a kid playing games.”

  “Do I warn the others?”

  “Yes.”

  Adamsberg spent the rest of the day with Aimont and the flics from Vaucouleurs. It was the first time Aimont had come face to face with the wolf’s work; the carnage wrought on the flock impressed him deeply. Late in the day the Digne police sent over a photograph of Massart and Aimont arranged to have it enlarged and distributed. On the other hand, they were still waiting for the case notes that Puygiron was supposed to be supplying. Adamsberg spent a long while staring at the face of Auguste Massart. Not a nice face. Large, pasty, ill-tempered, angry. Smooth, podgy cheeks, low forehead, black hair in a fringe, close-set dark eyes, sparse eyebrows. A slumbering brute.

  Danglard’s paperwork got to Belcourt at seven in the evening. Adamsberg folded it carefully, put it away for safe-keeping in his inside pocket, and went back to the lorry.

  Before going to bed he took his Magnum .357 out of its holster and placed it by his bed, within easy reach of his right hand. He lay down, took Camille’s hand in his own, and fell asleep. Camille stared at her hand for a good while, with her mind empty, and then let it stay where it was.

  Instead of keeping Woof curled up on his feet Watchee put the dog on guard duty outside.

  “Look out for that girl,” he suggested, scratching Woof behind the ears. “A tall scrawny redhead. She’s a killer. Bark your lungs out. But look on the bright side,” he added, scanning the sky. “It won’t rain tonight.”

  Woof gave him a look, as much as to say that he understood everything, and then lay down on the ground.

  On Thursday, 2 July, the heat rose another step. They hung around sweltering. Camille drove the lorry into the village to top up the radiator. Watchee phoned his flock to get news of George’s paw. Soliman buried himself in the dictionary. Camille was rather uneasy about her passive right hand, which no longer seemed to respond to mental directives. She dropped composing and took refuge in the The A to Z of Tools for Trade and Craft. There must be some gizmo in there designed to cope with the awkward position she found herself in. Perhaps the earthed single feed thermodecoupler 6–25 amps would do the trick, she thought. If Adamsberg agreed to let go of her hand, the problem would vanish. The simplest solution would be to ask him.

  It was not until nearly five in the afternoon that the gendarmes at Poissy-le-Roi informed their colleagues at Vaucouleurs of a sheep savaging that had taken place during the previous night at the Chaumes sheep farm. The Vaucouleurs squad took their time passing on the news onto Belcourt and Adamsberg only heard about it around eight o’clock.

  He laid the map out on the wooden crate.

  “Fifty kilometres east of Vaucouleurs,” he said. “Still off his route.”

  “He’s getting further away from us,” Soliman growled.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” said Adamsberg.

  “He’ll give us the slip!” the young man shouted, getting to his feet.

  Watchee was poking the fire a few feet away, and he put out his crook and tapped the young man on the shoulder.

  “Don’t get excited, Sol,” he said. “Come what may, we’ll collar him.”

  Soliman slumped back into his seat, looking downcast and exhausted, as he did whenever Watchee brought him to order with his crook. Camille wondered whether he had put something special on the tip.

  “Submission,” mumbled Soliman. “ ‘Agreement to abide by a decision or to obey an authority.’”

  After dinner Camille persevered in her reading of The A to Z of Tools for Trade and Craft in the cab until she was ready to drop. She had barely slept a wink the night before, and her eyelids were heavy. Towards two in the morning she crept to her bed as cautiously as a cat burglar. Soliman was still in town with the moped. Watchee was on sentry duty close to the road. He was watching. He was watching for the redhead. He was Adamsberg’s guard, and he had Warp at his feet. “I don’t mind,” he had said. “I’m not sleepy.”

  First, Camille sat on the edge of Soliman’s bed to take off her boots, even if it meant putting her bare feet on the filthy floor of the sheep wagon. That way she wouldn’t run the risk of waking the commissaire. Even a sleeping commissaire can’t take anyone’s hand in his. Slowly, she pulled back the canvas partition, taking things step by step in total silence, then gently pulled it closed behind her. Adamsberg was lying on his back and breathing regularly. She stole her way along the narrow gap between their beds and tried not to trip on the weapon glinting on the floor. Adamsberg raised both his arms towards her.

  “Come here,” he said softly.

  Camille turned to stone in the dark.

  “Come here,” he said again.

  Camille’s mind was a void and she took one wobbly step. From far beneath the void rose blurry memories and mewling shadows. He put a hand around her and pulled her towards him. Camille caught a glimpse of her old desires, getting nearer but still inaccessible, as if they were sealed off behind a thick pane of glass. Adamsberg touched her cheek and then her hair. Camille had her eyes open in the dark and she was still gripping The A to Z of Tools for Trade and Craft in her left hand, but she was more alert to the evanescent images swarming up from the dungeons of memory than to the face that was staring at her. She put a hand out towards the face, anxiously aware that if she touched it something would burst. Maybe that thick pane of glass. Or maybe the deepest storerooms of memory, stuffed to the gills with things that were still functional, hypocritical and deceptive sleepers lying low, defying the passing years. That’s more or less what happened. A long slow explosion that was more frightening than pleasant. She looked on as amazing junk spewed up in a great clatter from the bilges of her own boat. She wanted to tidy it up, hold it down, restore order. But as one part of Camille liked disorder, she gave up and lay down beside Adamsberg.

  “Do you know the story about the wind and the tree?” he asked, holding her in his arms.

  “Is that one of Soliman’s stories?” Camille murmured.
r />   “It’s one of my stories.”

  “I don’t much care for your stories.”

  “This is not a bad one.”

  “I’m still not keen.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  XXXII

  IT WAS AFTER ten in the morning when Soliman called through the partition.

  “Camille!” he shouted. “For heaven’s sake get up. The flic has gone.”

  “What am I supposed to do about that?” Camille said.

  “Come on out!” Soliman yelled.

  The young man was in a state of alarm. Camille slipped on her clothes and her boots and joined him at the wooden crate.

  “He really did come,” said Soliman. “But nobody saw him. Or his car. Or anything.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Massart, for God’s sake! Don’t you understand?”

  “Did he do anything?”

  “Camille, he slit a man’s throat last night.”

  “Fuck,” Camille said under her breath.

  “He was right, the young fella was,” said Watchee, banging his crook on the ground. “Belcourt was where the man struck.”

  “And he slaughtered three ewes into the bargain, thirty kilometres down the road.”

  “Down his route?”

  “Yup, at Châteaurouge. He’s striking off westwards towards Paris.”

  Camille went to fetch the map, now decidedly dog-eared, and opened it out.

  “You mean you don’t even know where to find Paris?” Soliman asked, twitchily.

  “Calm down, Sol,” Camille said. “The flics didn’t catch sight of him in town?”

  “He didn’t come this way,” said Watchee. “I had my eye on the road all night long.”

  “What happened?” asked Camille.

  “What bloody happened?” Soliman repeated. “What happened was that he came along with his big bad wolf and he set the aforementioned animal on some poor guy! What do you suppose?”