by Fred Vargas
“There are two of them. All the victims, male and female, are of the same generation, and lived in Paris. That’s why I say it was a gang or a group.”
He put out his hand and Decambrais gave him the big ivory envelope. Adamsberg pulled out that morning’s missive:
This epidemic stopped abruptly in August 1630 and every […] was overjoyed; unfortunately the interruption was but short-lived. It was the sinister foreboding of a resurgence so horrible that from October 1631 to around the end of 1632 […]
“Where are we up to on the sign-painting?” Decambrais asked as Adamsberg punched out Vandoosler’s number. “The papers say eighteen thousand buildings in Paris, four thousand in Marseille.”
“That was yesterday. Today it’s twenty-two thousand, conservatively speaking.”
“How dreadful.”
“Vandoosler? Adamsberg here. Can I read you this morning’s missive? Are you ready?”
Decambrais’s face expressed a degree of superciliousness and mild jealousy as he watched the commissaire principal read the “special” into his mobile phone.
“He’ll do some research and call back,” Adamsberg said as he snapped the phone shut.
“Your consultant, he’s very good, isn’t he?”
“Very,” Adamsberg confirmed with a smile.
“If he can find the town on the basis of that snippet alone, hats off, I say. That would be more than good, that would be second sight. Or a giveaway. All you’d need to do would be to set your police dogs on him.”
“We did that ages ago, Decambrais. The fellow is completely out of the picture. First, he had a snow-white laundry alibi for the time of the first murder. Second, I’ve had him tailed every night ever since. He sleeps at home and goes out in the morning to do the cleaning.”
“The cleaning?” Decambrais queried.
“He’s a cleaning lady, sorry, cleaning man.”
“And an expert on the plague?”
“You’re a lace-maker, aren’t you?”
Decambrais paused awkwardly.
“He won’t find it.”
“He will.”
The old man slicked back his white hair, adjusted his navy-blue tie, and retreated to his ill-lit cubbyhole study, where he knew no rival.
Bertin’s thunder-roll swept across the square. People made their way though the drizzle to the Viking, skirting pigeons taking off in the opposite direction.
“Please forgive me, Bertin,” Adamsberg said. “I took your oilskin all the way to Marseille.”
“Your jacket is dry. Madame Bertin gave it a press.”
Bertin hauled out from under the counter a neat, square paper parcel and put it in the commissaire’s hands. The denim jacket had never looked so smart since the day it had been bought.
“Hey, Mr Barman, are you sucking up to flics these days? He takes a bloody liberty and you just roll over and ask for more!”
The mighty restaurateur turned towards the speaker, a man with an evil grin on his face who was stuffing his paper napkin between his collar and his ox-like neck prior to eating.
The scion of Thor came out from behind the counter, made a straight line towards the man’s table, casting chairs right and left as he went, until he got right up to him, seized him by the shirt front, and pushed him back hard. The man started objecting in the language of screams, so Bertin gave him two good slaps in the face, lifted him up and ejected him bodily into the street.
“Don’t bother to come back, there’s no room at the Viking for shit-piles like you!”
“You’ve no right, Bertin!” The man was making great efforts to get himself off the ground. “You’re a public house! You’ve no right to filter your customers!”
“I choose my flics and I choose my men,” Bertin said as he slammed the door shut. Then he brushed his fair hair back into place with his hand, and with determination and dignity resumed his duty station behind the bar.
Adamsberg was about to slip under the longboat on the right.
“Are you lunching here?” asked Bertin.
“I’m having lunch and settling in until the newscast.”
Bertin nodded agreement. He didn’t like flics more than anyone else did, but that table had been allocated to Adamsberg in perp.
“I can’t see what you’re going to find on that square,” the barman said as he sponged the table clean. “It wouldn’t be half dreary without Joss.”
“Precisely,” said Adamsberg. “I’m waiting for the town crier.”
“Fine. That gives you five hours to kill, but I guess every man has his method.”
Adamsberg laid his mobile beside his plate and looked at it dreamily. Camille, for heaven’s sake, ring. He picked it up, turned it round, put it back. Then he flicked it at one end and the phone spun round like a roulette wheel. Will she, won’t she, who cares anyway. But ring me. Who gives a damn.
Marc Vandoosler called in mid-afternoon.
“Not exactly a piece of cake,” he said, sounding like a man who’d spent all day looking for a needle in a haystack.
Adamsberg didn’t doubt that he’d found it and waited to hear the answer.
“Châtellerault,” Vandoosler continued. “A text written long after the facts.”
Adamsberg relayed the news to Danglard.
“Châtellerault,” Danglard logged. “Superintendents Levelet and Bourrelot. I’ll alert them.”
“Any 4s in Troyes?”
“Not yet. The newspapers can’t crack this one the way they could with the Marseille message. I must leave you, sir. Woolly is doing dreadful things in wet plaster.”
Adamsberg hung up and only realised after a minute’s reflection that his deputy had been talking about a cat. For the fifth time that day he looked his mobile phone straight in the eye and spoke to it man to man.
“Ring,” he pleaded softly. “Get a move on. It was a bump, there’ll be other bumps. It was none of your business, and what difference does it make to you anyway. They’re my bumps, they’re my affairs. Leave them to me. Ring.”
“Does that gizmo do voice recognition as well?” Bertin asked as he served the main course. “Does it ring back on its own?”
“No,” said Adamsberg, “it doesn’t.”
“They don’t always do what they’re supposed to, do they?”
“No.”
Adamsberg spent the afternoon at the Viking, his vigil disturbed only by Castillon and then Marie-Belle, who distracted him with thirty minutes’ chatter that went round full circle. He stationed himself for the newscast five minutes ahead of time just as Decambrais, Lizbeth, Damascus, Bertin and Castillon got into position, as well as melancholy Eva, half hiding behind one of those cylindrical billboards known as colonnes Morris. The audience was as large as ever and packed up close to Joss’s soapbox.
Adamsberg abandoned his plane tree so as to get as close as possible to the crier. He trained his eyes on one then the next of the regulars, going over their hands one by one, alert for the slightest movement that might reveal the faintest glint. Joss got through eighteen small ads without Adamsberg seeing anything at all. During the shipping forecast, someone wiped a brow, and Adamsberg spotted it in a flash. The sparkle.
He was astounded and retreated to his plane tree. He propped himself against it and stood there for a long moment, unsure of himself, in doubt.
Then he slowly extricated the mobile phone from his freshly pressed jacket pocket.
“Danglard,” he mumbled, “get yourself down here PDQ with two men. At the double, commissaire. I’ve got the monger.”
“Who is it?” Danglard was already on his feet and beckoning Noël and Voisenet to come with him.
“Damascus.”
A few minutes later the squad car screeched to a halt at Place Edgar-Quinet, three men tumbled out and went straight over to Adamsberg, who was waiting for them by the plane tree. It caused quite a stir among the idlers still standing round and chatting, especially because the largest of the three flics was holding a wh
ite and grey kitten in his hand.
“He’s still here,” Adamsberg said in a loud whisper. “He’s doing the till with Marie-Belle and Eva. Don’t touch the women, just get the bloke. Watch out, he could be dangerous, he’s a great hulk of a man, so check your weapons are working. If it gets rough, please, no damage. Noël, you’re coming with me. There’s a second door on the side street, the one the crier uses. Danglard, Justin, take that position.”
“Voisenet,” Voisenet corrected.
“Guard that exit,” Adamsberg repeated as he pulled himself upright from his leaning post.
“Wagons roll.”
When four flics brought Damascus out in handcuffs and bundled him straight into the squad car, the entire local community was struck dumb with disbelief. Eva ran to the car which zoomed off in front of her eyes as she stood there with her head in her hands. Marie-Belle collapsed in tears on Decambrais’s shoulder.
“He’s crazy,” Decambrais said as he hugged the girl. “He’s gone completely crazy.”
Even Bertin, who had followed the whole show through the window of the Viking, felt his veneration for Commissaire Principal Adamsberg coming under serious threat.
“Damascus,” he muttered. “They’re off their heads.”
Within five minutes the whole square had crammed into the Viking and begun a heated debate in an uproar not far short of a riot.
XXXII
DAMASCUS FOR HIS part was as calm as could be, his face unclouded by the slightest sign of worry or doubt. He’d not resisted arrest, he’d not resisted the ride in the car to the station, he’d not said a word nor even altered the steady expression on his wide-open face. He was the quietest detainee Adamsberg had ever eyeballed in the interview room.
Danglard perched on the corner of the desk, Adamsberg crossed his arms and propped himself up against the wall, Noël and Voisenet stood to attention, guarding the exits. Favre was stationed at a corner desk ready to type up the statement. Damascus sat easily in a chair with his long hair thrown back over his shoulders and his handcuffed wrists in his lap, waiting for it all to begin.
Danglard slipped out to put Woolly back in his basket and to ask Mordent and Mercadet to fetch food and drinks for everyone, as well as a pint of milk, please, if they would be so kind.
“For the customer?” Mordent asked.
“For the kitten,” Danglard said under his breath. “If you could fill his bowl, that would be very kind of you. I’m going to be busy all evening, maybe through the night.”
Mordent said he could be counted on for that, and Danglard went back to his desk-corner perch.
Adamsberg was taking off the handcuffs, a measure Danglard considered premature, seeing as there was still one unbarred window in the building and they had no clue how the man would behave. But despite that he wasn’t really worried. What worried him much more was to have a man charged with being the plague-monger without the slightest evidence. Damascus’s peaceable manner made it absolutely obvious it wasn’t him, anyway. They were looking for a man of great learning and intellect. Damascus was a simple fellow, almost a simpleton. A guy like that whose main concern in life was keeping fit could not possibly have sent such complicated messages to the town crier. Danglard wondered if the chief had even thought about that before rushing in to make this implausible arrest. Full of foreboding, he sucked on his teeth. In his view Adamsberg was heading for a fall.
Adamsberg had already been on to the magistrate’s office and had got a search warrant for Damascus’s shop and for his dwelling, in Rue de la Convention. Six men had left fifteen minutes earlier to go over them with a toothcomb.
“Damascus Viguier,” Adamsberg began with the man’s dog-eared ID card in front of him. “You stand accused of the murder of five individuals.”
“Why, sir?”
“Because that is what you are accused of,” Adamsberg repeated.
“Oh, I see. You’re saying that I killed people?”
“Five people,” said Adamsberg as he laid out photographs of the victims on the table for Damascus to see, and gave each one his and her proper name.
“I haven’t killed anyone,” Damascus said with his eyes on the photos. “Can I go now?” he added immediately, and stood up.
“No. You are helping us with our inquiries. You may make one phone call.”
Damascus gave Adamsberg a look of incredulous surprise.
“But I can use the phone whenever I want,” he said.
“These five people,” Adamsberg said as he pointed to the photos in turn, “were all throttled to death within the last week. Four were killed in Paris, one in Marseille.”
“Fine,” Damascus said as he sat down again.
“Damascus Viguier, do you recognise them?”
“Sure I do.”
“Where did you last see them?”
“In the papers.”
Danglard got up and went out, leaving the door open so he could still hear how this very sticky interview was proceeding.
“Show me your hands, Damascus.” Adamsberg put the photos away. “No, not like that. The other way up.”
Damascus did what was asked without demur and held out his long-fingered hands, palm uppermost. Adamsberg grabbed his left hand.
“Is that a diamond, Damascus?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you wear it on the palm side?”
“So as not to damage it when I’m repairing skateboards.”
“Is it worth a lot?”
“Sixty-two thousand francs.”
“Where did you get it? Or did you inherit it?”
“It was in lieu of cash for a bike I sold, an R1000 7, nearly new. The buyer paid me with the ring.”
“It’s not very common for a man to wear a diamond ring.”
“I do. Since I’ve got it on.”
Danglard appeared in the doorway and beckoned Adamsberg to join him out of earshot of the others.
“The search team have just called in,” Danglard whispered. “Clean as a whistle. No charcoal, no flea-breeding, no rats dead or alive, no books. At home or in the shop. Except for a couple of paperback novels.”
Adamsberg massaged the back of his neck.
“Drop him, sir,” Danglard said insistently. “You’re heading for a bad fall. This man is not the plague-monger, sir.”
“Yes, he is, Danglard.”
“You can’t build a case on a diamond ring, that’s ridiculous.”
“Men do not wear diamonds, Danglard. But this guy wears one on his left ring finger and turns it in to hide it.”
“To protect it from scratching, sir.”
“That’s rubbish, diamonds don’t scratch. Diamonds are the prime protectors against plague. He’s had it in the family since 1920. He’s lying, Danglard. Don’t forget he handles the town crier’s urn three times a day.”
“The man hasn’t read a book in his life, for heaven’s sake!” Danglard was almost angry.
“How do you know?”
“Can you see that fellow doing Latin? You must be joking!”
“As I haven’t come across people who do do Latin, Danglard, I don’t labour under your preconceived notions.”
“What about Marseille? How did he get to Marseille? He’s in Rolaride, morning, noon and night.”
“Not on Sundays, he isn’t, and he doesn’t reopen till two on a Monday afternoon. After the Sunday evening newscast he had plenty of time to catch the 8.20 p.m. train. And to be back in Paris by ten on Monday morning.”
Danglard shrugged his shoulders, almost beside himself, and went off to consult his computer. If Adamsberg wanted to take a fall, well, he could bloody well jump all on his own.
The lieutenants had brought in pizzas and Adamsberg had them served in their cardboard bases on the interview-room table. Damascus wolfed down his, looking pleased. Adamsberg waited for everyone to finish eating, stacked the empty boxes by the waste-paper bin, closed the door and resumed the interrogation.
Danglard knocked half
an hour later. His anger seemed to have subsided to some degree. He told Adamsberg with his eyes he should come out and follow him.
“Damascus Viguier does not exist,” he whispered. “No ID has ever been issued in that name. The papers he’s using are fake.”
“So you see, commissaire. He is lying. Send his fingerprints off for matching, I’m sure he’s been inside. We’ve been saying it again and again: the guy who opened Laurion’s front door and the flat in Marseille is a professional.”
“The fingerprint data base is down. Didn’t I tell you that bloody data base has been playing up all week?
“So get down to Central Records at the double. Ring me from there.”
“Good Lord, everybody at Edgar-Quinet is using an alias.”
“Decambrais says that there are places like that. Where the wind listeth.”
* * *
“Is your name Viguier or is it not?” Adamsberg asked as he resumed his position propping up the wall.
“It’s my trading name.”
“But it’s on your ID card, young man. Forgery and dissimulation.”
“A friend made it for me. I prefer it that way.”
“Because?”
“Because I do not like my father’s name. It speaks too loud.”
“Speak it, all the same.”
For the first time Damascus kept his mouth tight shut. Finally:
“I do not like the name. My name is Damascus.”
“OK, so we’ll have to be patient. We’ll wait until we find out your real name,” said Adamsberg.
The commissaire principal went out for a walk, leaving his officers to keep an eye on Damascus. It’s often quite easy to spot when a fellow is lying and when he is telling the truth. Damascus was telling the truth when he said he hadn’t killed anybody. Adamsberg could hear the ring of truth in his voice, he could read it on his lips, he could see it on the man’s brow. But he was no less certain that he had the plague-monger. No suspect had ever cut him into two irreconcilable halves like that before. He called the men who were still searching the shop and the flat. Zilch. Adamsberg got back to the office an hour later, read through the fax that Danglard had sent in, and transcribed it on his notepad. It hardly surprised him to see that Damascus had dropped off sitting up and was sleeping the deep sleep of a man with a clear conscience.
