by Fred Vargas
‘He’s not asleep yet,’ said Camille, putting on her formal black jacket.
‘I’ll read him a story. I’ve brought a book.’
Adamsberg pulled a large volume out of his overnight bag. The fourth of his sisters had taken it upon herself to try and cultivate his mind and complicate his life. She had packed for him a four-hundred-page book on architecture in the Pyrenees, something he had no interest in, and given him the assignment of reading it and telling her what he thought of it. His sisters were the only people Adamsberg obeyed.
‘Buildings of the Béarn,’ he read. ‘Traditional techniques from the twelfth to the nineteenth century.’
Camille shrugged and smiled, unmistakably taking on the role of a sympathetic friend. As long as the child went to sleep – and on this point she trusted Adamsberg absolutely – his oddities didn’t matter. Her thoughts were entirely concentrated on the concert that evening – a heaven-sent engagement for her, and no doubt due to Yolande’s regular prayers to the Powers-that-be.
‘He likes this one,’ Adamsberg said.
‘Yes, why not?’
No criticism, no irony. The blank neutrality of authentic friendship.
Once he was alone, Adamsberg examined his son, who was looking at him with a philosophical expression – if that can be said of a nine-month-old baby. The child’s concentration on something far away, his indifference to little worries, even his placid absence of desires concerned Adamsberg, since so much of that resembled him. Not to mention the dark eyebrows, the nose which looked as if it would later be dominant, and a face so unusual in every respect that he looked two years older than his age. Thomas Adamsberg was a chip off the old block, which was not what the commissaire would have wished on him. But through the resemblance, Adamsberg was starting to see, in fits and starts, that this child really was the fruit of his own loins.
He opened the book at the page marked by the metro ticket. He usually turned down the corner of the page, but his sister had asked him not to spoil this book.
‘Tom, now listen to me, we’re both going to be educated, we’ve got no choice. Remember what I read you last time about north-facing façades? Remember all that? Now, this is how it goes on.’
Thomas looked up calmly at his father, his expression attentive but indifferent.
‘… “The use of stones from the river bed to build walls, a combinatory approach indicating an organisation adapted to local resources, is a widespread, though not universal practice.” Like the sound of that, Tom? “The introduction of the opus piscatum into many of these walls constitutes a compensatory mechanism, occasioned by the small dimensions of the materials and the weakness of the unstable mortar.” ’
Adamsberg put the book down, meeting his son’s gaze.
‘I don’t know what the hell the “opus spicatum” is, son, and I don’t care. So we can agree about that. But I’m going to teach you how we resolve a problem like this when it crops up in our lives. How to proceed when you don’t understand something. Just watch.’
Adamsberg took out his mobile and slowly tapped out a number under the child’s unconcerned eyes.
‘What you do is you call Danglard,’ he explained. ‘It’s quite simple. Just remember that, always keep his phone number about you. He can fix anything in this line of country. You’ll see, just pay attention now.’
‘Danglard? Adamsberg. I’m sorry to disturb you, but the little one doesn’t understand this word, and needs an explanation.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Danglard wearily. He was used to the commissaire‘s wayward habits. He had implicitly been given the mission of dealing with them.
‘Opus spicatum. He wants to know what that means.’
‘No, he doesn’t – he’s only nine months old, for God’s sake.’
‘I’m not joking, capitaine, he wants to know.’
‘Commandant,’ Danglard corrected.
‘Danglard, are you going to harp on about your rank for ever? Capitaine or commandant, does that really matter between us? Anyway, that isn’t the question. The question concerns the opus spicatum.’
‘Piscatum,’ Danglard corrected.
‘OK. It’s some sort of opus they put in village walls by some compensatorily occasioned mechanism. Tom and I are stuck in this place, and we can’t think about anything else. Except that in Brétilly, a month ago, someone demolished a stag and didn’t even take the antlers, but cut out the heart. What does that say to you?’
‘Some crazy lunatic,’ said Danglard, gloomily.
‘Exactly. That’s what Robert said too.’
‘Who’s Robert?’
Danglard might curse as much as he liked every time Adamsberg called him up for some inconsequential trifle, but he could never tear himself away from the conversation, assert himself, or get cross and hang up. The commissaire’s voice, like a slow, gentle and embracing breeze, carried his will-power along like a leaf on the ground, or one of the damned pebbles in the damned river. Danglard reproached himself for this, but in the end he always gave way. The water wins in the end.
‘Robert’s a new friend I’ve made in Haroncourt.’
There was no need to tell Danglard where the little village of Haroncourt was. With his compendious and encyclopedically organised memory, the commandant knew all the districts and municipalities in France, and could tell you at once who was the local police chief.
‘Had a good evening, then?’
‘Very.’
‘Is she still just good friends?’ Danglard hazarded.
‘Alas, yes. The opus spicatum, Danglard, that’s where we were.’
‘Piscatum. If you’re educating him, at least try to do it correctly.’
‘That’s why I’m calling you. Robert thinks it was just some young nutter who did the deed. But Angelbert, who’s the elder statesman round here, isn’t so sure – he thinks a young nutter can turn into an old one.’
‘And this high-level conference took place where?
‘In the café, at aperitif time.’
‘How many glasses of wine?’
‘Three. What about you?’
Danglard stiffened. The commissaire was keeping an eye on his drinking problem, and that rankled.
‘I’m not asking you about your way of life, commissaire.’
‘Yes, you are, you asked if Camille was still just a good friend.’
‘OK,’ said Danglard, giving in. ‘The opus piscatum is a way of mounting flat stones – or tiles or pebbles – obliquely so that it looks like a herringbone, hence its name, which comes from the Latin for fish. It goes back to the Romans.’
‘Ah. And then what?’
‘Then nothing. You asked me a question, I gave you the answer.’
‘But what’s it for, Danglard?’
‘Well, commissaire, what are we for? Why are we on this earth?’
When Danglard was in a bad way, the Unsolved Question of the infinite cosmos returned to plague him, as well as the fact that the sun would explode in four billion years, and that humanity was but a miserable and desperate chance occurrence on a piece of matter whirling through space.
‘Is there anything precise that’s depressing you?’ asked Adamberg, anxiously.
‘I’m just depressed, that’s all.’
‘The kids are asleep?’
‘Yes.’
‘Go out, then, Danglard, go and find an Oswald or an Anglebert. There are plenty of them in Paris as well as here.’
‘Not with names like that, there aren’t. And anyway, what could they tell me?’
‘That cast-off antlers aren’t as highly prized as antlers from a hunted stag.’
‘I know that already.’
‘That it’s only members of the deer family that have a bone growing out of their forehead.’
‘Know that, too.’
‘That Lieutenant Retancourt is sure not to be asleep, and that it would be beneficial to go chat with her for an hour.’
‘Yes, that’s probably correct,�
� said Danglard after a silence.
Adamsberg heard a little more optimism in his deputy’s voice, and hung up.
‘See, Tom,’ he said, cradling the baby’s head in his hand, ‘they put a herringbone in a wall, and don’t ask me why. We don’t need to know that, because Danglard knows all about it. Let’s give up on this book – it’s boring.’
As soon as Adamsberg put his hand round the child’s head the baby went off to sleep, as indeed did any other child. Or adult. Thomas’s eyes were closed within a few moments, and Adamsberg gently removed his hand, looking in mild puzzlement at his palm. Perhaps one day he would understand through which pores of his skin drowsiness seeped out. Not that it interested him overmuch.
His mobile rang. It was the pathologist, very wide awake, calling from the morgue.
‘Wait a minute, Ariane, I just have to put the baby down.’
Whatever the purpose of her call, and it certainly would not be a social one, the fact that Ariane was thinking about him was a distraction in his present state of having no woman on the horizon.
‘The gash on the throat – we’re talking about Diala now – is horizontal. The hand holding the blade was therefore neither high above the point of impact nor well below, or the wound would have been slanting. Like in Le Havre. You follow me?’
‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg, playing with the baby’s toes, which were like little round peas in a pod. He lay down on the bed to listen to Ariane’s voice. To tell the truth, he didn’t much care about the techniques she must have used, he simply wanted to know why she was so sure it was a woman.
‘Diala stood one metre eighty-six. The base of his carotid artery would be one metre fifty-four from the ground.’
‘Well, what does that tell us?’
‘The cut would be horizontal if the aggressor’s clenched fist holding the knife was below his eyes. That would give us an aggressor of one metre sixty-six. If we do the same calculation for La Paille, where there’s a slight downward trajectory, we get a killer of between one metre sixty-four and one metre sixty-five. But perhaps one metre sixty-two, if we take high heels into account.’
‘A hundred and sixty-two centimetres,’ said Adamsberg pointlessly.
‘That’s well below the average height for a man. It’s got to be a woman, Jean-Baptiste. And as for the syringe marks on the arm, they both punctured the vein very precisely.’
‘You’re thinking it’s a professional?’
‘Yes, using a medical syringe. The very fine gauge and the angle of the insertion mean it wasn’t just any old needle.’
‘So someone injected them with something before they died?’
‘No, nothing. Nothing at all was injected.’
‘Nothing? Air do you mean?’
‘Air would definitely be something. No, this person didn’t inject them with anything, just made a jab.’
‘Without having time to finish?’
‘Or without needing to. She jabbed them after they were dead, Jean-Baptiste.’
Adamsberg hung up, thoughtfully. Thinking of old Lucio and wondering whether at this very moment Diala and La Paille were trying to scratch an unfinished injection in their dead arms.
X
ON THE MORNING OF 21 MARCH, THE COMMISSAIRE TOOK THE TIME TO greet every tree and little branch on his new route to work, from the house to the office. Even in the rain, which had not stopped since that hailstorm over Joan of Arc, the date deserved effort and respect. Even if, like this year, Spring was late, perhaps on account of some previous engagement. Or maybe she had slept in, as Danglard did one day in three. Spring is capricious, Adamsberg thought, you can’t expect her to arrive punctually on the morning of 21 March, when you think of the astronomical quantity of buds she has to deal with, not to mention all those larvae, roots and seeds, things you can’t see but that must certainly take up a huge amount of her energy. By comparison, the non-stop work of the Crime Squad was negligible, a joke really. A joke that gave Adamsberg a good conscience while he took his time walking through the streets.
As the commissaire strolled at a leisurely pace across the large shared hall known to the staff as the Council Chamber, to place a sprig of forsythia on the desks of the six female officers, Danglard came rushing to meet him. The commandant’s shambling body – which seemed to have melted like a candle, wiping out his shoulders, making his torso shapeless and his legs crooked – was not suited to rapid walking. Adamsberg always watched with interest when he tackled long distances, wondering whether one day he would lose one of his limbs in the process.
‘We’ve been looking for you,’ puffed Danglard.
‘I was paying homage, capitaine, and just now I’m paying my respects.’
‘But for heaven’s sake, it’s after eleven.’
‘The dead aren’t going to quibble over a couple of hours. My appointment with Ariane isn’t until four o’clock. She sleeps in all morning. Be careful not to forget that.’
‘It’s nothing to do with the deaths. It’s the New Recruit. He’s been waiting for you for two hours. This is the third time he’s made an appointment to see you. And when he turns up, he’s left sitting on a chair as if you couldn’t care less.’
‘Sorry, Danglard, I had an important rendezvous that was fixed a year ago.’
‘With?’
‘With the Spring. She’s touchy. If you forget her, she’s liable to go off and sulk. Then it’s no good trying to catch her. But the New Recruit will be back. Anyway, which New Recruit are we talking about?’
‘Oh for God’s sake, the one who’s replacing Favre. Two hours he waited.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘Red-haired.’
‘Good, that makes a change.’
‘Actually his hair’s dark, but it has ginger stripes in it, sort of black-and-tan effect. Odd-looking, I’ve never seen anything like it before.’
‘All the better,’ said Adamsberg, putting his last flower on the desk belonging to Violette Retancourt. ‘If we have to have New Recruits, best they should be really new, out of the ordinary.’
Danglard thrust his gangling arms into the pockets of his elegant jacket and watched as the massive Lieutenant Retancourt put the little yellow flower in her buttonhole.
‘This one seems rather too out of the ordinary, perhaps,’ he said. ‘Have you read his file?’
‘Dipped into it. At any rate he’s here on probation for six months, whether we like it or not.’
Before Adamsberg could open his office door, Danglard held him back.
‘He’s not there any longer, he’s gone off on duty to the broom cupboard.’
‘He’s guarding Camille? Why’s that? I asked for experienced officers.’
‘Because he’s the only one who will put up with that damn cubbyhole on the landing. The others are all fed up with it.’
‘And since he’s new, the others have landed him with it.’
‘Correct.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since three weeks ago.’
‘Send Retancourt. To protect Camille. She can stand anything, even the broom cupboard.’
‘She did offer. But there’s a problem.’
‘I don’t see any problem that would hold Retancourt up.’
‘Just the one. She can’t turn round in the space.’
‘Ah, too big,’ said Adamsberg pensively.
‘Too big,’ Danglard confirmed.
‘It was her magical size that saved my life, Danglard.’
‘Maybe so, but she can’t fit into that cupboard and that’s that. So she can’t take over from the New Recruit.’
‘OK, capitaine, I get it. How old is he, this New Recruit?’
‘Forty-three.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘From what point of view?’
‘Aesthetic, seductional.’
‘There’s no such word as “seductional”.’
The commandant ran his hand over the back of his neck, showing his embarrassment. S
ophisticated as Danglard’s mental processes were, he was, like all men, reluctant to comment on the physical appearance of other men, pretending he hadn’t noticed anything. Adamsberg, on the other hand, really wanted to know what the man looked like who had been allowed to sit for three weeks on Camille’s landing.
‘What’s he look like?’ Adamsberg persisted.
‘Quite good-looking,’ Danglard admitted reluctantly.
‘Not my lucky day, then.’
‘You could say that. It’s not Camille that I’m worried about, though, it’s Retancourt.’
‘She’s susceptible?’
‘So they say.’
‘Quite good-looking in what way?’
‘Built like a tree trunk, crooked smile, melancholy expression.’
‘Certainly not my lucky day,’ commented Adamsberg again.
‘Well, you can’t go round killing all the other men in the world.’
‘One could perhaps go round killing all the ones with melancholy expressions.’
‘Conference time,’ Danglard announced abruptly, looking at his watch.
Danglard was of course responsible for giving the name ‘Council Chamber’ to the large room in which they held meetings, in this case a general assembly of the twenty-seven officers in the squad. But the commandant had never owned up to it. Similarly he had planted the term ‘conference’ in the minds of his fellow officers, instead of ‘meeting’ which he found off-putting. Adrien Danglard’s intellectual authority carried such weight that everyone accepted his dictates without questioning their appropriateness. Like a medicine taken in full confidence, the new words that the commandant introduced were absorbed without qualm, and were so rapidly integrated that they became irreversible.
