by Fred Vargas
“Name?”
“We didn’t give our names or our first names. On a job like that nobody takes risks.”
“Age?”
“Same as everyone else. Twenty-something.”
“Parisian?”
“I suppose so.”
Adamsberg put Roubaud in a cell but did not lock it. Then he put his head through the bars of Damascus’s cell and gave him back his clothes.
“The magistrate’s given clearance for us to put you on remand.”
“All right,” the placid young man replied from the bench seat.
“Can you read Latin, Damascus?”
“No.”
“Isn’t there anything you want to tell me? About the fleas, for example?”
“No.”
“Or about six guys who gave you third degree one Thursday, on a seventeenth of March? Nothing to tell me? Or about a girl who had a real giggle?”
Damascus remained silent, wringing his hands in his lap, with his right thumb touching the diamond ring.
“What did they rob you of, Damascus? Apart from your girl, your body and your honour? What were they after?”
Damascus didn’t move an inch.
“All right. I’ll send you some breakfast. Get dressed.”
Adamsberg drew Danglard to one side.
“That shitbag Roubaud won’t give a positive ID,” Danglard said. “Leaves you up the creek.”
“Danglard, Damascus has an accomplice who’s still out there. The fleas were put under Roubaud’s door when Damascus was already here. Someone took over the message system, too, as soon as he was arrested. And he did it on the trot, without bothering to paint 4s for protection.”
“An accomplice would account for why he’s so cool and collected. He’s got someone to carry on the job, and he’s relying on him.”
“Send some of our men down to interview his sister, and Eva, and all the regulars in the square, to find out who his friends are. I especially want a list of all the phone calls he’s made for the last two months. From the shop and from the flat.”
“Aren’t you coming with?”
“My persona’s not very grata down there right now. I’m Judas. They’ll open up more if they’re talking to officers they’ve not met before.”
“Got that,” said Danglard. “We could have taken years to find the link. Guys who didn’t even know each other joining up in a dive one dark night. We’re dead lucky Roubaud took fright.”
“He had good reason, Danglard.”
Adamsberg got out his mobile phone and looked it straight in the eye. He pleaded with it silently for so long – to ring, to jump, to do anything at all – that he ended up mistaking the phone for a vision of Camille herself. So he talked to it and told it his life’s story, as if Camille could hear him, no trouble. But as Bertin had so rightly remarked, those gizmos don’t always do all they’re supposed to. Camille failed to arise from the keypad like a genie from a bottle. Who cares anyway. He put the phone on the floor, very gently so as not to bruise it, and lay down to sleep for an hour and a half.
Danglard woke him with the record of all Damascus’s telephone activity. The interviews at Place Edgar-Quinet hadn’t produced much by way of results. Eva clammed up totally, Marie-Belle sobbed as soon as anyone said anything, Decambrais was in a mood, Lizbeth let rip, and Bertin, as if reverting to the ancient tongue of the Northmen, would utter only monosyllables. The sum total was: Damascus virtually never left the square, he spent every evening at the Saint-Ambroise listening to Lizbeth and talking to nobody, he had no known friends and he spent Sundays with his sister.
Adamsberg went through the call list looking for repeat numbers. If there was an accomplice, Damascus had to be in touch with him or her: the synchronisation of the 4s, the fleas and the murders was too complex and too tight to brook any other explanation. But Damascus used the telephone remarkably rarely. There were calls from the flat to the shop, that was probably Marie-Belle calling Damascus. The shop phone was hardly used, and there were only a handful of repeat numbers. Adamsberg checked up on the four numbers that appeared more than once on the list – all of them to bona fide suppliers of skateboards, bearings and helmets. He pushed the sheets to one side of his desktop.
Damascus wasn’t stupid. Damascus was a genius who’d learned how to look blank. Something else he’d picked up in prison, and gone on practising after. He’d been planning this for seven years. So if he had an accomplice he wasn’t going to risk giving the game away by calling him up from his own phone. Adamsberg got on to the phone company’s fourteenth arrondisssement branch to request a listing of calls made from the public telephone in Rue de la Gaîté. Twenty minutes later the info arrived in the form of a fax. Mobile phones had made a huge dent in the use of public telephones, so the list he had to go through wasn’t enormously long. He found only eleven repeat numbers.
“I’ll unscramble them for you if you like,” Danglard offered.
“That one first,” said Adamsberg, pointing to a number. “That one, it’s an out-of-town number, somewhere in the north-east suburbs, department of Hauts-de-Seine.”
“Any reason?” Danglard asked as he went off to his computer to look it up in the reverse directory.
“Northern edge of the city, that’s our baby. Any luck and it’ll land us in Clichy.”
“Wouldn’t it be wiser to eliminate the others?”
“They’re not going to fly away.”
Danglard hit a few keys and waited in silence.
“It’s Clichy,” he reported.
“Bull’s-eye. Heart of the 1920 outbreak. It’s in his family, it’s his phantom. That’s where he used to live, I’ll bet you. Come on, man, give me the name and address.”
“Clémentine Courbet, 22, rue Hauptoul.”
“Look her up.”
As Danglard got himself into the central ID data base Adamsberg strode up and down, trying not to step on the kitten, who was playing with a loose thread trailing from his trouser ankle.
“Clémentine Courbet, maiden name Journot, born Clichy, married Jean Courbet.”
“Anything else?”
“Drop it, sir. She’s eighty-six, damn it, she’s an old lady. Let it go.”
Adamsberg pursed his lips.
“She gave birth to a daughter, in Clichy, in 1942,” Danglard continued, following routine. “Name of Roseline.”
“Click on Roseline Courbet.”
Adamsberg picked up Woolly and stuck it back in its basket. It jumped out again.
“Roseline, maiden name Courbet, married name Heller-Deville, forename Antoine.”
Danglard looked up mutely at Adamsberg.
“Did they have a son? Arnaud?”
“Arnaud Damascus,” Danglard read off the screen.
“It’s his granny,” said Adamsberg. “He calls Granny on the QT from the phone box down the road. What about Granny’s parents, Danglard?”
“They died, sir. We’re not going to take this all the way back to the Norman Conquest, are we?”
“Names, please.”
A few quick taps on the keys.
“Emile Journot and Célestine Davelle, born in Clichy, Cité Hauptoul.”
“So there they are. The plague-beaters. Damascus’s grandma was six years old during the epidemic.”
He picked up Danglard’s extension and dialled Vandoosler.
“Marc Vandoosler? Adamsberg here.”
“One moment, commissaire, let me switch off the iron.”
“Cité Hauptoul, in Clichy, does that ring a bell?”
“It was the epicentre of the outbreak. A rag pickers’ shanty. Is there a special that mentions it?”
“No, we’ve got an address.”
“The shanty was bulldozed years ago and they built back-to-backs over it. Narrow streets, small houses, for the poor.”
“Thank you, Vandoosler.”
Adamsberg put the receiver down slowly.
“Two lieutenants, Danglard. We’re getting o
ver there. Fast.”
“You want four men? To pick up an old lady?”
“Four men, Danglard. On the way we’ll stop by the magistrate’s to get a search warrant.”
“When do we get lunch?”
“On the hoof.”
XXXIV
THEY MADE THEIR way over ancient cobbles and down a rubbish-strewn alley to a dilapidated house with a ramshackle clapboard lean-to on one side. Rain plashed on the tiles. It hadn’t been much of a summer, and September was no better.
“Fireplace,” said Adamsberg, pointing to the chimney. “Wood. Apple tree.”
He knocked on the door and it was opened by a tall, fat old lady with a creased and heavy face and her hair done up in a flower-printed head-scarf. Without saying a word she turned her dark eyes on each of the policemen in turn. Then she removed the drooping cigarette from between her lips.
“Flics,” she said.
It was not a question but a diagnosis.
“The flics,” Adamsberg confirmed as he went inside. “Clémentine Courbet, I presume?”
“Herself,” answered Clémentine.
The old woman showed them into the lounge and pummelled the cushions before she let them sit on the sofa.
“So they have lasses in the force these days, do they?” she said with a sneer for Lieutenant Hélène Froissy. “Can’t say I think much of that. There’s too many fellows playing around with guns already, that’s what I say. No need for girls to go and play with them. Ain’t you got nothing better to do, miss?”
Clémentine’s accent seemed to come from long ago, from the days when life was spent toiling in the fields.
She huffed and puffed as she went to the kitchen and brought back a tray of glasses and a plate of girdle cakes.
“The trouble is, people never have enough imagination, that’s what I say.” She put the tray on a low table covered with a lace doily, next to the flowery sofa. “Can I interest you in some Madeira and girdle cakes made with the skin of the milk?”
Adamsberg looked at her with surprise, finding something attractive in that strong, battered face. Kernorkian made it plain that he wouldn’t say no to the cakes, since his system had made light work of the sandwich he’d bolted down in the car.
“There’s a good boy,” said Clémentine. “But you can’t get the skin of the milk any more. The milk you get these days is just dishwater. So I have to make do with cream. I’m sorry, but I have to.”
Clémentine filled the five glasses, took a sip of Madeira, and looked at the party.
“Now no more of this nonsense,” she said as she lit another cigarette. “What’s this all about?”
“Arnaud Damascus Heller-Deville,” Adamsberg began as he reached out for one of the girdle cakes.
“I beg your pardon, but it’s Arnaud Damascus Viguier. He prefers it that way. The name of Heller-Deville is not uttered under this roof. If you can’t help yourself, go say it somewhere else.”
“Is he your grandson?”
“Whoa there, pretty face, what you do take me for? A donkey?” said Clémentine, jutting her chin towards Adamsberg. “If you didn’t know that you wouldn’t have come here, would you? How do you like my cakes? Tasty? Or not?”
“Tasty,” Adamsberg asserted.
“Very tasty,” Danglard insisted, and quite sincerely too. To tell the truth, he’d not had such delicious girdle cakes in forty years, and the sensation filled him with joy.
The old woman had not sat down all this time.
“Now no more of this nonsense,” she said once more, sizing up the policemen. “Give me a few minutes to take off my apron, switch off the gas and tell the neighbour, and I’m all yours.”
“Clémentine Courbet,” said Adamsberg, “I have here a search warrant. We will first search the premises.”
“What’s your name, then?”
“Commissaire Principal Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg.”
“Mr Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, I’m not in the habit of endangering the lives of people who done me no wrong, flics included. The rats are in the attic,” she said, pointing to the ceiling. “Three hundred and twenty-two of them, plus ten cadavers crawling with ravenous fleas, what I don’t recommend approaching, or I’ll not answer for your life. If you want to poke around up there, you’ll have to call in pest control. There’s no great mystery. That’s where I breed ’em, and the side room is where you’ll find Arnaud’s machine, what he types his messages on. With the envelopes. Anything else you want to clap eyes on?”
“The book collection.”
“Attic as well. But you have to get past the rats first. Four hundred volumes, quite something, ain’t it?”
“All about the plague?”
“What else?”
“Clémentine,” Adamsberg asked gently as he took another cake, “wouldn’t you like to sit down?”
Clémentine lowered her large frame into a flowery armchair and crossed her arms.
“Why are you telling us all this? Why aren’t you denying it?”
“What, the plaguey stuff?”
“I mean, the five murders.”
“Murder my arse,” said Clémentine. “They’re the murderers, every one of them.”
“Yes, murderers and torturers,” Adamsberg agreed.
“They can drop dead. The more of ’em drop dead, the more Arnaud comes back to life. They took everything off him, they drove him right to the bottom of the pile. Arnaud’s got to come back to life. And he can’t do that as long as that dogshit stays on the face of the earth.”
“But dogshit doesn’t just wipe itself off the face of the earth, Clémentine.”
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it did? But dogshit spreads worse than nettles.”
“You had to give it a hand, didn’t you, Clémentine?”
“A big hand.”
“Why plague?”
“The Journots are lords of the plague,” Clémentine announced curtly. “You can’t mess with a Journot, and that’s that.”
“Or else?”
“Or else the Journots will put the plague on you. They are lords of the great affliction.”
“Clémentine, why are you telling us all this?”
“Instead of what?”
“Instead of keeping you mouth shut.”
“You found me, didn’t you? And the lad’s inside since yesterday. So no more of this nonsense, I say, let’s get on with it and be done. What difference does it make?”
“It makes all the difference in the world.”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Clémentine with a steely smile. “Job’s done. You get it, commissaire? Done. The enemy is within the walls. The next three will die in the coming week no matter what, whether I stay here or go somewhere else. It’s too late now. The job’s done. All eight will die.”
“Eight?”
“The six animals, the girl sadist and the man behind it. By my reckoning that comes to eight. Do you know all about it or don’t you?”
“Damascus hasn’t said anything.”
“Only to be expected. He couldn’t say anything until he was sure the job was over. That’s what we’d agreed, in case either of us got nabbed. How did you find him?”
“The diamond was what gave him away.”
“He hides it.”
“I saw it.”
“Aha,” said Clémentine. “You’ve got the gen, have you, all the gen about the scourge of God? We never reckoned on that.”
“I tried to learn fast.”
“But not fast enough. The job’s done. The enemy is within the walls.”
“You mean the fleas?”
“Dead right. They’ve already got them in their clothes. They’ve already caught it.”
“Who are they, Clémentine?”
“Go find out for yourself. You think I’ll let you save them? It’s what was waiting for them, and it’s got them. They shouldn’t have done down a Journot. They demolished him, commissaire, they took him to pieces, him and his girl, the one who jumpe
d out the window, poor kid.”
Adamsberg nodded.
“Clémentine, was it you who persuaded Arnaud to take revenge?”
“We talked about it almost every day when he was in clink. He’s his great-grandfather’s heir, and he inherited the ring. Arnaud had to raise his head high again, like Emile, during the outbreak.”
“Aren’t you scared of prison? For yourself, for Arnaud?”
“Prison?” Clémentine slapped her thigh and guffawed. “You must be joking, commissaire. Hold your horses, Arnaud and me, we ain’t killed nobody.”
“So who did, then?”
“The fleas.”
“Releasing infected fleas is like aiming a gun and pulling the trigger.”
“Hold your horses, they didn’t have to bite. It’s the scourge of God, it falleth where it listeth. If anyone done murder, it’s God. You ain’t aiming to arrest God, are you?”
Adamsberg took a long look at Clémentine’s face, which showed the same calm confidence as her grandson’s. He suddenly understood where Damascus’s imperturbable tranquillity came from. Both he and his grandmother felt profoundly unguilty of the five murders they’d just committed and of the three they still had in train.
“No more nonsense,” Clémentine said. “Now I’ve told you all that, do you want me to stay here or come with you?”
“I’m going to ask you to come with us, Clémentine Courbet,” said Adamsberg as he stood up. “To make a statement. You are helping us with our inquiries.”
“Suits me down to the ground,” said Clémentine, also rising. “That way I’ll get to see the boy.”
While Clémentine cleared the table, put out the fire and switched off the mains, Kernorkian made it clear to Adamsberg that he was definitely not keen on searching the attic.
“Brigadier, the fleas are not infected. Good Lord, where do you think that old lady could have got hold of rats infected with bubonic plague? She’s dreaming, Kernorkian, it’s all in her head.”
“That’s not what she says,” Kernorkian retorted glumly.
“She handles them every day. And she’s not got the plague.”
“The Journots have protection, sir.”
“The Journots have got a phantom, and the phantom won’t do you any harm, young man. You have my word. He only attacks people who have done a Journot grave harm.”
