by Fred Vargas
“He’s taking the game pretty close to a reality show, though, with his genuine rat fleas. They’re not easy things to get hold of.”
“I think it’s another wind-up. That’s why he killed the victim himself. He knows his fleas won’t do any harm.”
“How can you be so sure? You’d better have every single flea in Laurion’s flat caught and bagged.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
“The easiest way is to take a couple of guinea pigs into the flat, and let them poke around on their own for five minutes or so. They’ll pick up any fleas that happen to be there. Then you pop them straight back into a plastic bag and rush them over to the lab. Then you have pest control come and do the flat over from top to bottom. Don’t let the guinea pigs stay in the flat for very long because once the fleas have had their bite they usually hop off and look for another snack. You have to get the beasts while they’re still having lunch.”
“OK, thanks,” Adamsberg said as he scribbled notes on the recommended procedure. “You’ve been very helpful, Vandoosler.”
“A couple of other points before you go,” Marc said as he was showing Adamsberg out. “Your plague-monger is not quite on top of his subject, you know. There are some gaps in his knowledge of the field.”
“You mean he’s making mistakes?”
“Yes.”
“About what?”
“Charcoal. Black Death. It’s just an image, as well as a bad case of mistranslation. The Latin term pestis atra means ‘terrible plague,’ not literally ‘black’ plague. Victims’ bodies never did go black. Sure, there could be nasty dark bluey-black blotches here and there, or just about. But the black idea came quite late in the history of the plague. It’s a folk thing, a popular misapprehension. Everybody thinks the plague turns you black, but it’s not true. So when your man smudged his victim’s corpse with charcoal, he was making a big mistake. A bloody great howler, if I may say so.”
“Ah,” said Adamsberg.
Lucien came past on his way out. “Keep a cool head, commissaire,” he advised. “Marc has a blinkered vision of things, which is only to be expected from a medievalist. He often can’t see the wood for the trees.”
“And what’s the name of the wood, then?”
“Violence, commissaire. Human violence.”
Marc smiled and stood aside to let Lucien get out of the front door.
“What does your friend do for a living, then?” Adamsberg asked.
“His principal avocation is to get up everyone’s nose, but that doesn’t pay the rent. He does it not-for-profit, gratis and for free. His secondary activity is modern and contemporary history, with a particular interest in the First World War. We have big fights between periods.”
“Ah, I see. And what was the other thing you wanted to tell me?”
“Am I right in thinking you’re looking for someone whose initials are CLT?”
“It looks like a serious lead.”
“Drop it. CLT is just an acronym. It used to be called the electuary of the three adverbs.”
“Excuse me?”
“Almost every treatise of the plague told you that the very best way to ward off the disease was to say cito longe fugeas et tarde redeas. Word for word, ‘Go away fast and for a long time, and come back slowly’. To put it another way, ‘Scram right now and take your time about coming back’. That’s what was meant by the ‘remedy of the three adverbs’ – fast, long, late. Latin original: cito, longe, tarde, which makes CLT.”
“Can you write that down for me?” Adamsberg held out his notepad for the historian to use.
Marc scribbled down a couple of lines.
“CLT is a piece of advice that your murderer is giving the people that he’s protecting with those 4s,” said Marc as he handed the pad back to the commissaire.
“I’d much rather they were initials,” Adamsberg confessed.
“That’s comprehensible. Can you keep me up to date, please? About the fleas?”
“Are you that interested in the case?”
“That’s not the point,” Marc said with a smile. “But you might have a Nosopsyllus on you right now. Which means I might have one too. As might other members of this establishment.”
“I see.”
“Here’s another remedy for plague: shower, soap and scrub. SSS.”
On his way out Adamsberg bumped into the blond giant and stopped to ask him a single question.
“One pair was beige,” Mathias replied, “with grey turn-downs, and the other pair was blue, with a seashell pattern.”
Adamsberg left the house by way of the fallow garden, feeling punch-drunk. There were people around who knew a horrendous number of things. People who had paid attention at school, to begin with, and had then gone on storing up truckloads of facts for the rest of their lives. Facts about other worlds. There were people who devoted their lives to learning about mongers and mixtures and fleas and adverbs and Latin and Greek. And it seemed obvious that he’d glimpsed only a sliver of the huge heap of knowledge that Marc Vandoosler had stuffed into his head. It didn’t seem to make it any easier for the young man to get on in life. All the same, in the very particular circumstances they were in, facts were going to make a big difference now. A vital difference.
XX
WHEN ADAMSBERG GOT back to his office he found several new faxed reports from the lab and he read them straight away. The only fingerprints on the “specials” were the town crier’s and Decambrais’s, and they were easily identifiable on all of the sheets.
“It’s hardly likely our plague-monger would have been careless enough to touch the messages with bare hands,” said Adamsberg.
“Why does he use such expensive stationery?” asked Danglard.
“A sense of ceremony. In his mind, all his acts are of utmost importance, so he can’t possibly put them in common or garden envelopes. He wants them to look distinguished and superior, because all his acts are deeds of exquisite refinement. Not the sort of thing plain folk like you or me might be able to perform, Danglard. You wouldn’t expect a top chef to serve a soufflé in a plastic cup, would you. Same thing here. The envelope fits the crime. Both are superior.”
“Le Guern’s and Ducouëdic’s prints,” Danglard said as he put the faxes back on the desk. “Two jailbirds.”
“Yes. But they didn’t do a lot of time. Nine months and six months.”
“That’s quite enough to make useful acquaintances.” Danglard scratched his armpit energetically. “Anyway, lock-picking can be learned when you get out. What were they in for?”
“Le Guern was sent down for grievous bodily harm and attempted manslaughter.”
Danglard whistled. “That’s quite something. Why didn’t he get longer?”
“Mitigating circs. The shipowner he took apart hadn’t done proper maintenance on Le Guern’s trawler, and so it sank. Two crew drowned. Le Guern was crazy with grief when he came off the rescue helicopter and he went horizontal.”
“Did the owner get done too?”
“No. He got off scot-free, and so did the port authority cats who’d been paid off, or so Le Guern said in the box. They passed the word along and got Joss blackballed in every fishing port in Brittany. He never sailed again. So he landed on the platform at Montparnasse fourteen years ago, as lean as a string bean.”
“So he has got a reason for being angry with the whole wide world.”
“Sure, and he’s got a temper, and he can lash out. But as far as we know René Laurion never went near a harbour master’s office.”
“Maybe Le Guern’s displacing. That’s happened before. Choosing to kill people in lieu. The crier is surely in the best position to send messages to himself. What’s more, since we’ve been watching the square – and Le Guern knew we were from the start – there haven’t been any more ‘specials’.”
“He wasn’t the only one to know the police were around. At 9 p.m. in the Viking, they’d all smelled a rat.”
“
If the murderer isn’t a local, how would he have known?”
“He’d already done the deed, so he must have realised the police would be moving in. And he must have seen through the plain-clothes officers sitting on the bench in the square.”
“So surveillance is pointless, then?”
“We’re doing it as a matter of principle. And for another reason.”
“So tell me, what brought Decambrais-Ducouëdic down?”
“Attempted rape of a minor at the school where he taught. He was hounded by every newspaper in the land. He was nearly lynched, at the age of fifty-two. He needed police protection until the trial.”
“Ah yes, I remember, the Ducouëdic affair. Some poor girl who was attacked in the lavatory. You really wouldn’t think he was like that, would you, when you look at him now.”
“You’ve forgotten his side of the story, Danglard. Three twelve-year-old boys had been beating up the girl during lunch break when there was no-one around. Ducouëdic came across the fight, laid into the lads really hard, and carried the girl out of the lavatory in his arms. Half the girl’s clothes had been torn off in the fight, so there was teacher running down the corridor with a half-naked girl screaming her head off in his arms. That’s what all the kids in the school saw. The three boys told a different story: Ducouëdic had been raping the girl, they intervened, so the teacher hit them hard and then ran off with the girl. It was their word against his. Ducouëdic lost. His girlfriend dropped him on the spot, the teachers turned the other way. In the absence of certainty. You know, Danglard, doubt is a void, and doubt goes on and on. That’s why he’s taken the name of Decambrais. Ducouëdic died at the age of fifty-two.”
“How old would those schoolboys be now? Thirty-two, thirty-three, roughly? Roughly Laurion’s age?”
“Laurion went to school in Périgueux. Ducouëdic taught at Vannes. That’s a long way away.”
“But he could be displacing as well, using substitutes for his real enemies.”
“Him as well?”
“But it’s perfectly comprehensible. There are heaps of old men who detest everyone under thirty-five.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“We’ve got to dig deeper into these two men. Decambrais is well placed to be the message-sender and he’s obviously capable of writing the ‘specials’. After all, he’s the one who decoded them. Supposedly because a single Arabic word led him to Avicenna. He’d have to be a genius to have worked that one out from scratch!”
“We have to get to the bottom of those two in any case. I’m convinced that the killer comes to the newscasts. We’ve agreed that he must have started his campaign that way because he had precious little alternative. But I also reckon he’s been familiar with the urn for a good while, at close quarters. What looks to us like a loopy mode of communication must have seemed to the killer to be the obvious way of talking to the world. I mean, look at the size of the audience: using the town crier has become part of normal life round there. I know I’m on the right track. I’m sure he comes to listen to his own ‘specials’. He’s there at the newscasts. I’ll swear to that.”
“I can’t see why you’re so sure,” Danglard objected. “He’d be putting himself at risk.”
“You can’t see why, and I don’t mind, because I know he’s there, he’s one of the people in the crowd. That’s why we’re not taking the watch off the square.”
Adamsberg got up and they both went to the incident room, where the chief stood with his back to the Paris wall map. All eyes were on them, but Adamsberg realised that the object of interest and attention was not himself but Danglard in his outsize sleeveless black T-shirt. He raised his arm, and eyes swivelled left.
“The premises will be evacuated at 1800, for pest control. When you all get home, you will shower immediately, body-wash and hair-wash obligatory, and you will place all your clothes, repeat all your clothes without exception, in the washing machine. Set water temperature to very hot, and run a full wash cycle. Objective: to kill any fleas you may have picked up.”
Smiles and grumbles.
“That was not a suggestion but an order,” Adamsberg said. “It applies without exception to everyone in this team but most especially to the three officers who came with me to Laurion’s flat. Now, has anybody been bitten since yesterday?”
A hand rose timidly. Kernorkian. The others stared at him, apprehensively.
“Lieutenant Kernorkian.”
“Now don’t worry too much, lieutenant. You’re not alone. Commissaire Danglard got bitten yesterday too.”
“My shirt will be wrecked if I put it through a hot wash,” someone piped up.
“Well, put it in the incinerator instead. That’s your only alternative. If you’re thinking of disobeying orders, let me emphasise that you would be running the risk of catching the plague. I repeat: a risk, not a certainty. I am personally convinced that the fleas in Laurion’s flat are perfectly healthy and just another part of the set-up. Nonetheless, my order stands, and the hygienic measures required are not optional. Fleas bite mostly at night, which is why I insist you get on with personal hygiene the moment you get home. Second: after scrub-down and putting on the washing machine, you must all use the foggers which you can pick up from the changing rooms on your way out. OK. Now for tomorrow. Noël and Voisenet, your job is to check out the alibis of these four academics who know a lot about plague and are therefore provisionally suspect. And you,” said Adamsberg to the smiling face with thinning grey hair above it …
“Lieutenant Mercadet,” the man said as he half stood up in order to bow.
“Mercadet. Your job is to check out the ironing story with Mme Toussaint in Avenue de Choisy.”
Adamsberg gave out two slips of paper which were handed along the rows to Mercadet and to Noël. Then he pointed straight at the quaking green-eyed baby-face and then at the ramrod from the Channel coast.
“Brigadier Lamarre,” the pikestaff said as he stood up to attention.
“Brigadier Estalère,” said baby-face.
“Your job is to check the unmarked doors in all twenty-nine of the affected buildings. I want you to find any trace you can of an oily or greasy substance – skin cream, dripping, anything like that – on the keyhole, bell push, or doorknob. Take proper precautions and wear gloves at all times. Now, who’s been working on the twenty-nine residents of the unmarked flats?”
Noël, Danglard, Justin and Froissy each raised a finger.
“What’s come up? By way of connections?”
“Negative so far,” Justin said. “Statistical analysis of the sample has produced no significant result.”
“Statements from the other residents in Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau?”
“Useless. Nobody saw an intruder. Neighbours heard nothing.”
“The door code?”
“That’s an easy one. The five numbers have completely worn away from over use. So given that you know which keys to punch, you’ve got only 120 combinations to try out, and that takes less than ten minutes.”
“Who took statements from the residents of the other twenty-eight buildings? Did anyone get a glimpse of the phantom painter?”
The big woman officer with the rock-hewn face held her hand up forthrightly.
“Lieutenant Retancourt,” she said. “Nobody saw the dauber. He works at night, obviously, and his brush makes no sound. With all the practice he’s had, he gets the job done in no more than half an hour.”
“Door codes?”
“We found traces of plasticine on several of the keypads, sir. The murderer slaps the stuff on the whole set of keys and then peels it back. It shows you which keys have been used because greasy fingermarks show up on plasticine.”
“That’s trade,” Justin said. “Means he’s been inside.”
“But it’s child’s play,” said Noël. “Anyone could think it up for himself.”
Adamsberg looked at the wall clock.
“Ten to,” he said. “Time to evacuate the
premises.”
The biologist rang at 3 a.m. and woke Adamsberg up.
“No bacilli,” a sleep-deprived male voice said. “Result negative. Negative re fleas from clothing, negative re insect in envelope, negative re twelve specimens brought direct from the flat. Fine healthy fleas, sir. They’re as clean as a pig’s whistle.”
Adamsberg was aware of a feeling of relief.
“And they’re all rat fleas, are they?”
“Rat fleas every one, sir. Five male, ten female.”
“Wonderful. Keep them safe under lock and key.”
“But they’re already dead, commissaire.”
“Forget about the funeral announcement, would you. Keep them in a jar.”
Adamsberg sat up in bed, switched on the light, and rubbed his head. Then he called Danglard and Vandoosler with the news from the lab. Then he dialled all twenty-six other members of the team, the police pathologist who’d been in the flat, and Devillard. Not a single one grumbled about being woken up in the middle of the night. Adamsberg’s head was swimming with all these lieutenants and brigadiers and he was afraid his telephone book wasn’t up to date. He’d not had time to keep up his memory-jogger either. Or to call Camille to find out when they could get together again. The plague-monger was eating up his life. He wasn’t going to get much sleep for a while.
At half past seven in the morning he got a call on his mobile as he was walking to the office from his flat in the fourth arrondissement.
“Commissaire Principal Adamsberg?” The caller was out of breath. “This is Brigadier Gardon, on the night roster. We’ve got two corpses. They were lying in the street, in the twelfth arrondissement, one in Rue de Rottembourg and another not far away on Boulevard Soult. Both laid out stark naked on the roadway, both bodies smudged with charcoal. Both male.”
XXI
BY NOON THE two bodies had been bagged and taken off to the mortuary and the police cordons at the crime scenes had been taken down. The outdoor staging of the murders destroyed any chance of keeping the story under wraps. It was bound to break on the eight o’clock television news, and it could hardly fail to make the front page in the morning papers. No way of withholding the victims’ identities either. The link between their home addresses in Rue Poulet and Avenue de Tourville and the unmarked doors on the two blocks that had been daubed with backwards 4s would be made in a trice. Two males, aged thirty-one and thirty-six respectively. One married with kids, the other living with a partner. Three-quarters of the murder squad were out on the job, looking for witnesses to the dumping of the bodies, or going through the blocks of flats where the victims had lived, or interviewing relatives and trying to find any kind of connection between these men and René Laurion. All the others were at their keyboards, logging the details and writing up.
