by Fred Vargas
Camille stopped at the fifth floor and shifted the baby on to her other arm. The simplest thing would probably be to go downstairs and come back after eight o’clock when the duty officer would have changed. The nine conditions of the warrior are to flee, according to a Turkish friend of hers, a cellist at the church of Saint-Eustache, who was a mine of proverbs, as Byzantine as they were incomprehensible and beneficial. Apparently there was a tenth condition, but Camille didn’t know what that was and preferred to make up her own version. She took the letters and the groceries out of her bag and rang the bell. The stairs had become too much for Yolande, whose legs were weak and whose bulk was great.
‘Such a shame,’ said Yolande, opening the door. ‘Bringing up that child on your own.’
Yolande said this every day. Camille would go in, put down the provisions and the letters. Then the old lady, for some reason known only to herself, would offer her some warm milk, as if for a baby.
‘It’s OK, it’s quite all right,’ Camille would reply automatically as she took her seat.
‘No, it’s no good. A woman doesn’t want to be on her own. Even if men are nothing but trouble.’
‘Well, there you are, Yolande. Anyway, women can be nothing but trouble too.’
They had exchanged these remarks a hundred times, almost word for word, but Yolande never seemed to recollect that. At this point, Camille’s comment would plunge the large old woman into meditative silence.
‘In that case,’ Yolande would then say, ‘they’d do well to keep apart, if love just brings them both grief.’
‘Could be.’
‘But you know, my dear, you shouldn’t keep putting them off. Because when it comes to love, you can’t always do what you want.’
‘But Yolande, who’s going to do for us what we don’t want to do?’
Camille smiled, and Yolande sniffed by way of reply, her heavy hand moving to and fro across the tablecloth in search of a non-existent crumb. Who? Why, the Powers-that-be, of course, Camille silently completed the answer. She knew that Yolande saw the signs of the Powers-that-be everywhere. This was her private pagan religion, which she didn’t talk about much, for fear that it might be taken from her.
Eight stairs from her landing, Camille slowed down. The Powers-that-be, she thought. Who had parked this man with the crooked smile in the cupboard outside her apartment. He was no better-looking than average, if one didn’t look too closely. But much better-looking if one had the bad idea of thinking about it afterwards. Camille had always been susceptible to elusive features and undulating voices, which was why she had spent fifteen years, on and off, in the arms of Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, and kept promising herself not to return to them. To him or to anyone else blessed with that subtle sweetness and treacherous tenderness. There were plenty of men in the world who were less difficult to pin down, if one wanted a bit of straightforward contact that would allow you to come home relieved and peaceful, without needing to think about them any more. Camille felt no need of permanent company. Why the hell, then, had some chance dictated, thanks to the Powers-that-be, no doubt, that this guy on the landing, with his husky voice and his crooked lip, should touch her senses? She stroked the head of little Thomas, who was dribbling as he slept on her shoulder. Veyrenc. With his strange black-and-tan hair. A grain of sand in the works and an inconvenient disturbance. Distrust, vigilance and flight.
VII
NO SOONER HAD ADAMSBERG LEFT ARIANE THAN A HAILSTORM SWEPT OVER the Boulevard Saint-Marcel, blurring its outlines and making a Parisian avenue look like any country road drenched by a sudden flood. Adamsberg walked on contentedly, since he was always happy in a downpour and was now also satisfied to be able to close the file on the killer in Le Havre after twenty-three years. He looked up at the statue of Joan of Arc, who was bearing the assault of icy hail without flinching. He felt heartily sorry for Joan of Arc; he would have hated to hear voices telling him to do this and that. He already had enough trouble obeying his own instructions, or indeed even identifying them, and would have seriously objected to orders coming from celestial voices. Voices like Joan’s would have taken him into the lions’ den after a brief and glorious epic struggle, since that kind of story always ended in tears. On the other hand, Adamsberg did not object to picking up the pebbles that heaven placed in his path to charm him. He needed another one for the Squad, and was searching for it.
When, after the five weeks’ compulsory leave ordered by his divisionnaire, he had come back from the Pyrenees to the Paris Crime Squad, he had brought with him thirty or so grey pebbles, washed smooth by the river, and had placed one on each of the desks of his colleagues for them to use as paperweights or anything else they pleased. A rustic offering that no one dared refuse, even those who had no wish to keep a pebble on their desk. An offering which did not help them understand why the commissaire had also brought back with him a gold wedding ring now to be seen on his finger, and striking sparks of curiosity from every doorway he passed. If Adamsberg had got married, why hadn’t he told the team? And above all, who had he married, and why? Had he finally and straightforwardly married the mother of his son? Or somehow forged a fraternal union with his long-lost brother? Or a mythical one with a swan? With Adamsberg, all solutions were possible, as rumours flew quietly from desk to desk and from pebble to paperweight.
It was generally expected that Commandant Adrien Danglard would resolve the puzzle, partly because he was Adamsberg’s longest-standing colleague, having spent years alongside him in a relationship which allowed for no concealment or precautions, and partly because Danglard couldn’t stand Unsolved Questions. These Unsolved Questions cropped up at every turn, like dandelions, turning into a host of uncertainties, fuelling his anxiety and making his life a misery. Danglard worked ceaselessly to eliminate the Unsolved Questions, like a maniac who keeps trying to remove non-existent specks from his coat. The gigantic task usually led him to a dead end and then to a feeling of powerlessness; the powerlessness, in turn, drove him down to the basement of the building, where the bottle of white wine was concealed, the only thing that could help him deal with any Unsolved Question that was too thorny. If Danglard took the trouble to conceal his bottle so far away, it was not for fear that Adamsberg would discover it, since the commissaire was, by some supernatural means, perfectly aware of his secret. It was simply that going up and down the spiral staircase to the basement was sufficient of an obstacle for Danglard to postpone calling on his heart-starter until later. So he patiently gnawed away at his doubts at the same time as he chewed incessantly at the ends of his pencils.
Adamsberg had developed a theory running exactly contrary to the pencil-chewing, which posited that the number of uncertainties a single person can support at the same time cannot multiply indefinitely, and reaches a maximum of three or four. That did not mean that there were no more, but that only three or four uncertainties could be in proper working order simultaneously inside a human brain. Danglard’s mania for eradicating them was therefore futile, since no sooner would he have resolved two Unsolved Questions than another two would take their place, and he would not have had to concern himself with these if he had had the wisdom to stick with the old ones.
Danglard had no time for this hypothesis. He suspected Adamsberg of liking uncertainty to the point of inactivity. Of liking it to the point of deliberately creating it himself, to cloud the clearest perspectives, for the sheer pleasure of wandering irresponsibly through them, in the same way he liked walking in the rain. If one didn’t know the answer, if one didn’t know anything, why bother one’s head about it at all?
The sharp conflicts between Danglard’s precise ‘Why?’ and the commissaire’s nonchalant ‘I don’t know’ punctuated the squad’s investigations. None of the others tried to understand the core of this bitter struggle between accuracy and vagueness, but they all favoured one side or another. The positivists thought that Adamsberg dragged out investigations, taking them wilfully into the fog, leaving his colleague
s trailing behind him without instructions or road maps. The others, the cloud shovellers – thus named after a traumatic visit by the squad to Quebec – thought that the commissaire‘s results quite justified the vagaries of the investigation, even if the essentials of his work methods escaped them. According to mood, or to the circumstances of the moment, which might inspire either jumpiness or relaxation, someone could be a positivist one day and a cloud shoveller the next or vice versa. Only Adamsberg and Danglard, the two principal antagonists, never varied their position.
Among the more anodyne Unsolved Questions there was still that wedding ring glinting on the commissaire’s finger. Danglard chose the day of the hailstorm to ask Adamsberg about it, simply by looking pointedly at the ring. The commissaire took off his wet jacket, sat sideways and stretched out his hand. The hand, too big for the size of his body, weighed down at the wrist with two watches which rattled together, and now further embellished with the gold ring, did not match the way he dressed, which was negligent, bordering on the scruffy. It was as if the richly adorned hand of some old-fashioned aristocrat were attached to the body of a peasant, excessive elegance conjoined with the sunburnt skin of a mountain villager.
‘My father died, Danglard,’ Adamsberg explained calmly. ‘We were both sitting under a pigeon-shooting hide, and watching a buzzard circling in the sky over our heads. The sun was very bright, and he just keeled over.’
‘You never told me,’ muttered Danglard, who found the commissaire‘s secrets irritating, for no reason.
‘I stayed there until evening, lying beside him, holding his head against my shoulder. We might be there yet, but some hunters came across us at nightfall. Before they closed his coffin, I took his wedding ring. Did you think I had got married? To Camille?’
‘I had wondered.’
Adamsberg smiled.
‘That’s a Question Resolved, Danglard. You know better than I do that I’ve let Camille go ten times, thinking that the train would come along for the eleventh time on a day that suited me. But that’s just when it stops coming along.’
‘You never know, the points might change.’
‘Trains are like people, they don’t like going round in circles. In the end it gets on their nerves. After we buried my father, I amused myself picking up pebbles from the river bed. That’s something I can do. Think about the infinite patience of the water, running over the stones. And the stones allow it to run, but the river is gradually wearing away all their rough edges, without seeming to. The water wins in the end.’
‘If it comes to a fight, I’d prefer stones to water.’
‘As you like,’ Adamsberg replied with a shrug. ‘But talking of stones and water, there are two things to report, Danglard. First, I’ve got a ghost in my new house. A bloodthirsty and avaricious nun, who was killed by a tanner in 1771. He murdered her with his bare fists. Just like that. She’s taken up residence in a fluid sort of way in my attic. That’s the water.’
‘I see,’ said Danglard, prudently. ‘And the stones?’
‘I’ve seen the new pathologist.’
‘Elegant woman, bit stand-offish, but works hard at her job, they say.’
‘And very talented, Danglard. Have you read her thesis about murderers who are split in two?’
A pointless question, since Danglard had read everything, even the fire-evacuation instructions in hotel bedrooms.
‘On dissociated murderers, you mean,’ Danglard corrected. ‘Either Side of the Crime Wall. Yes, the book made quite a stir.’
‘Well, it turns out she and I had a major bust-up over twenty years ago, in a café in Le Havre.’
‘So you’re enemies?’
‘No, that kind of clash can sometimes create a close friendship. But I don’t advise you to go to a café with her – she mixes drinks that would knock out a Breton fisherman. She’s taken charge of those two men killed at La Chapelle. She seems to think a woman killed them. She’s going to refine her preliminary conclusions this evening.’
‘A woman?’
The usually languid Danglard sat up, in shock. He hated the idea that women might be killers.
‘Has she seen the size of those two guys? Is she joking?’
‘Not so fast, Danglard. Dr Lagarde doesn’t make mistakes, or hardly ever. Suggest her hypothesis to the Drug Squad, anyway – it’ll keep them off our backs for a bit.’
‘You won’t be able to hold Mortier off at all. He’s been getting nowhere with the dealer networks in Clignancourt-La Chapelle for months. It’s not looking good and he needs results. He’s called in twice already this morning. I warn you, he’s screaming blue murder.’
‘Let him scream. The water will win in the end.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘About my nun?’
‘No, about Diala and La Paille.’
Adamsberg looked at Danglard in bewilderment.
‘Those are their names,’ Danglard explained. ‘The two victims. Diala Toundé and Didier Paillot, known as “La Paille”. So should we go to the morgue tonight?’
‘No, I’m in Normandy tonight. For a concert.’
‘Ah,’ said Danglard, heaving himself to his feet. ‘You’re hoping for the points to change?’
‘I’m humbler than that, capitaine. I’m just going to look after the baby while she plays.’
‘Commandant, I’m a commandant now. Don’t you remember? You were at my promotion ceremony. What concert, anyway?’ asked Danglard, who always took Camille’s interests to heart.
‘It must be something important. It’s some British orchestra with period instruments.’
‘The Leeds Baroque Ensemble?’
‘It’s some name like that,’ said Adamsberg, who had never managed to learn a word of English. ‘Don’t ask me what she’s playing, I’ve no idea.’
Adamsberg stood up, and flung his damp jacket over his shoulder. ‘While I’m away, can you look after the cat, and Mortier, the two bodies, and the temper of Lieutenant Noël, who is getting more and more difficult? I can’t be everywhere, and duty calls just now.’
‘Since you’re being a responsible father,’ muttered Danglard.
‘If you say so, capitaine.’
Adamsberg accepted without demur Danglard’s grumbling reproaches which he considered almost always to be justified. A single parent, the commandant was bringing up his five children like a mother hen, whereas Adamsberg had hardly registered that Camille’s newborn baby was his. At least he had memorised his name: Thomas Adamsberg, known as Tom. That was at least one point in his favour, thought Danglard, who never completely despaired of the commissaire.
VIII
BY THE TIME HE HAD DRIVEN THE 136 KILOMETRES TO THE VILLAGE OF Haroncourt in the département of the Eure, Adamsberg’s clothes had dried in the car. He had only to smoothe them out by hand before putting on his jacket and finding a bar where he could wait in the warm for his prearranged rendezvous. Sitting comfortably on a battered leather banquette, with his back to the wall and a glass of beer in front of him, the commissaire examined the noisy group which had just taken possession of the café, rousing him from a semi-doze.
‘Want me to tell you what I think?’ said a big fair-haired man, pushing his cap back with his thumb.
He’s going to tell them anyway, thought Adamsberg.
‘Summat like that? Want me to tell you?’ the man was repeating.
‘We need a drink first.’
‘We do at that, Robert,’ said his neighbour, pouring out generous helpings of white wine into the six glasses.
So the big fair one was Robert – built like a wardrobe. And he was thirsty. It was the aperitif hour: heads sunk into shoulders, fists clenched around glasses, chins jutting at aggressive angles. The majestic hour, when the men of the village foregather and the angelus is rung, a time for sage opinions and nods of the head, a time for rural rhetoric, pompous and trivial. Adamsberg knew the score by heart. He had been born into this music, had grown up hearing it
s solemn developments, its rhythms and its themes, its variations and counterpoints, and he knew the players. Robert had sounded the first note on the violin, and all the other instruments would be moving into place at once, in an unvarying order.
‘Tell you what, though,’ said the man on Robert’s left. ‘It’s not just a drink we need after that. Makes you sick to your stomach.’
‘That it does.’
Adamsberg turned to have a better view of the last speaker, who had the humble but essential task of punctuating every turn in the conversation, as if on a double bass. He was small and thin, the least robust-looking of the group. That figured.
‘Whoever did that,’ said a tall stooped individual at the end of the table, ‘he’s no human being.’
‘No, he’s an animal.’
‘Worse than an animal.’
‘That he is.’
The first subject had been introduced. Adamsberg got out his notebook, still warped with rain, and started sketching the faces of the actors in the little drama. These were Norman heads, no mistake about it. He realised that they looked like his friend Bertin, a descendant of the god Thor, wielder of thunderbolts, who kept a café on a square in Paris. Square-jawed and high-cheekboned, fair-haired and blue-eyed, with an elusive expression in them. It was the first time Adamsberg had set foot among inland Normandy’s damp woods and fields.
‘What I think,’ Robert was saying, ‘is it’s some young fellow. Some nutter.’
‘Nutters aren’t all young.’
This contrapuntal interjection came from the oldest speaker at the head of the table. Alerted, the other faces turned his way.
‘Because when a young nutter grows up, he turns into an old one.’
‘Dunno about that,’ grunted Robert.
So Robert had the difficult but also essential task of contradicting the elder of the tribe.
‘I’m telling you they do,’ the older man said. ‘But say what you like, whoever did that, crazy’s the word all right.’
