by Fred Vargas
‘We’re not going to find any stones.’
‘He says we will.’
Estalère usually called Adamsberg only by the pronoun – ‘He’, ‘Him’ – as if he were the living god of their team.
‘Please yourself. Look for this stone wherever you like, but don’t expect me to come crawling under the tables with you.’
Retancourt surprised an unexpected sign of revolt in the brigadier‘s green eyes.
‘Yes, I will go and look for the stone,’ said the young man, standing up brusquely. ‘And not because the entire squad thinks I’m an idiot, you included. But he doesn’t. He looks, and he knows. He looks for things.’
Estalère drew breath.
‘He’s looking for a stone,’ said Retancourt.
‘Because there are things in stones, their colour, their shape, they tell stories. And you don’t see that, Violette, you don’t see anything at all.’
‘For instance?’ asked Retancourt, gripping her glass.
‘Think, lieutenant.’
And Estalère left the table with a show of teenage rebellion, going to join Emilio who had taken refuge in the back room.
Retancourt swirled her beer round in her glass and looked at the New Recruit.
‘He’s on a knife-edge,’ she said. ‘He gets carried away sometimes. You have to understand that he worships Adamsberg. How did your interview with him go? Was it OK?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Did he jump from one subject to another?’
‘Sort of.’
‘He doesn’t do it on purpose. He had a very hard time recently in Quebec. What do you think of him?’
Veyrence smiled his crooked smile, and Retancourt appreciated it. She found the New Recruit very attractive, and kept looking at him, checking over his face and body, seeing through his clothes, reversing the usual gender roles by which men mentally undress a pretty girl they see in the street. At thirty-five, Retancourt behaved like an old bachelor at the theatre. Without any risk of involvement, for she had locked up her emotional space in order to avoid any disillusionment. As a girl, Retancourt had already been massively built and she had decided that defeatism was her only defence against hope. That made her the opposite of Lieutenant Froissy, who took it for granted that love was the sweetest thing, and that it was waiting for her round every corner – and who, as a result, had accumulated an impressive number of unhappy love affairs.
‘I’ve got a different take on him,’ said Veyrenc. ‘Adamsberg grew up in the Gave de Pau valley.’
‘When you talk like that, you sound like him.’
‘Possibly. I’m from the next valley along.’
‘Ah,’ said Retancourt. ‘they say you should never put two Gascons in the same field.’
Estalère walked past them without a glance and went out of the café, slamming the door.
‘He’s shoved off now,’ said Retancourt.
‘Gone back without us?’
‘Apparently.’
‘He’s in love with you?’
‘He loves me as if I were a man, as if I were what he wants to be and never will be. Big and strong, a tank, a troop carrier. In this outfit, you’d do well to take care of yourself and keep your distance. You’ve seen them, you’ve seen us all. Adamsberg and his inaccessible wanderings. Danglard, the walking encyclopedia, who has to run after the commissaire to stop the train going off the tracks. Noël, who’s a loner and likes being as crude and narrow-minded as he can get away with. Lamarre is so shy he never looks you in the face. Kernorkian’s afraid of the dark and germs. Voisenet’s a heavyweight, who goes back to his zoology as soon as your back is turned. Justin’s a perfectionist, meticulous to the point of paralysis. Adamsberg doesn’t always remember which is Voisenet and which is Justin, he’s always calling them by the wrong name, but neither one of them minds. Froissy is always unhappy about something or other, and eats to make up for it. Estalère, whom you’ve met now, is a worshipper. Mercadet’s a genius with figures, but he can’t keep his eyes open in the afternoon. Mordent’s inclined to take a tragic view, and has hundreds of books on stories and legends. I’m the big fat all-purpose cow of the team, according to Noël. So what the heck are you doing in this outfit?’
‘It’s a project,’ said Veyrenc, vaguely. ‘You don’t like your colleagues, then?’
‘Oh yes, of course I do.’
‘But Madame,
Your words are so bitter, with scorn for all the crew,
Does each one have some fault, or does blame lie with you?’
Retancourt smiled, then looked sternly at Veyrenc.
‘What did you just say?’
‘You turn on your fellows so pitiless a gaze.
However can they hope one day to win your praise?’
‘Why do you talk like that?’
‘It’s a habit,’ said Veyrenc, smiling in turn.
‘What happened to your hair?’
‘A car crash – I went head first though the windscreen.’
‘Ah,’ said Retancourt. ‘You tell lies too.’
Estalère came back into the café and strode up to their table on his long thin legs. He pushed back the empty beer glasses, felt in his pocket and put three small grey stones on the table. Retancourt examined them without changing position.
‘He said “white,” and he said “one”,’ she said.
‘There are three of them and they’re grey.’
Retancourt picked up the stones and rolled them around in the palm of her hand.
‘Give those back to me, Violette. You’re quite capable of keeping them from him.’
Retancourt jerked her head upright, clenching the stones firmly.
‘Don’t push me too far, Estalère.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because if it wasn’t for me, Adamsberg wouldn’t be with us at all. I rescued him from the clutches of the Canadian police. And you don’t know, and never will know, what I had to do to get him out of there. So, brigadier, when you have proved yourself worthy of Him with some similar act of devotion, you’ll have the right to shout at me. Not before.’
Retancourt put the stones rather roughly into Estalère’s outstretched hand. Veyrenc saw the young man’s lip start to tremble, and made a sign to Retancourt to go easy on him.
‘OK, let’s call a truce,’ she said, lightly tapping the brigadier’s shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Estalère. ‘I wanted those stones.’
‘Are you sure they’re the right ones?’
‘Yes.’
‘But for the last thirteen days, Emilio has been sweeping out the café at night, and the dustbins are emptied every morning.’
‘That night, it was very late. Emilio just swept the floor very quickly to get the mud and gravel up, and brushed it all outside into the street. I went looking where any stones would have ended up, by the wall, against the next-door step, where no one ever goes.’
‘Back to base,’ said Retancourt, putting her jacket back on. ‘Only another day and a half before the drugs people grab the case from us.’
XIII
IN THE LITTLE ROOM WITH THE DRINKS MACHINE, ADAMSBERG HAD FOUND on the floor two big foam cushions covered with an old blanket, creating a makeshift bed and transforming the area into a refuge for the homeless. It was no doubt the work of Mercadet, who was bordering on the narcoleptic, and whose need for sleep was agonising to his professional conscience.
Adamsberg served himself a coffee from the kindly machine and decided to try out the bed. He sat down, pushed a cushion behind his back and stretched out his legs.
Yes, one could have a nap there, no doubt about it. The warm foam wrapped itself round one’s body insidiously, almost giving the feeling of having company in bed. Perhaps one could do some thinking there, but Adamsberg was only capable of thinking when he was out for a stroll. If you could call it thinking. He had long ago been forced to the conclusion that in his case it did not correspond to the normal definition of thought: to shape and combin
e ideas and judgements. It was not for want of trying: sitting on a proper chair, elbows leaning on a table, without distractions, pen and paper to hand, pressing his fingers to his forehead. An approach which merely succeeded in disconnecting his logical circuits. His unstructured mind was like an unreadable map, a magma in which nothing clear emerged to be identified as an Idea. Everything always seemed to be linked to everything else, in a network of little pathways where sounds, smells, flashes of light, memories, images, echoes and grains of dust mingled together. And that was all he had at his disposal to act as Commissaire Adamsberg, running the twenty-seven officers in his outfit and obtaining, as his divisionnaire was always reminding him, Results. He ought to have been anxious. But that day, other floating bodies were taking up all the space in his mind.
He stretched out his arms, then folded them behind his head, appreciating the initiative of his drowsy colleague. Outside, rain and shadows. Which had nothing to do with each other.
Danglard stopped short before operating the machine when he found the commissaire asleep, and tiptoed backwards out of the room.
‘I’m not asleep, Danglard,’ Adamsberg said, without opening his eyes. ‘Go ahead and get your coffee.’
‘This bedding’s Mercadet’s is it?’
‘I imagine so, capitaine. I’m trying it out.’
‘You may have some competition there.’
‘Or multiplication. Another six couches in the corners if we don’t watch out.’
‘There are only four corners,’ objected Danglard, hoisting himself on to one of the high bar stools and swinging his legs.
‘Well, it’s more comfortable than those damn bar stools. I don’t know who produces them but they’re too tall. I can’t even reach the foot rest. We look like a lot of storks on chimney pots.’
‘They’re Swedish.’
‘The Swedes must be taller than us. Do you think that makes a difference?’
‘What?’
‘Size. Do you think it makes a difference if your head is nearly two metres above your feet? If the blood has such a long way to go up and down all the time? Do you think it makes the thought process purer if the feet are too far away to matter? Or would a little man think better, because the circulation would be more rapid and concentrated?’
‘Immanuel Kant,’ said Danglard without enthusiasm, ‘was only one metre fifty tall. He was all thought, impeccably constructed.’
‘What about his body?’
‘He never bothered to use it.’
‘But that’s no good either,’ murmured Adamsberg, closing his eyes again.
Danglard considered it more prudent and useful to head back to his office.
‘Danglard. Can you see it?’ said Adamsberg in a level tone of voice. ‘The Shade?’
The commandant turned back, and looked towards the rain which darkened the window. But he was too much of a connoisseur of Adamsberg to think the commissaire was talking about the weather.
‘It’s there, Danglard. It’s hiding the light. Feel it? It’s surrounding us, looking at us.’
‘A dark presence?’ he suggested.
‘Something like that. All round us.’
Danglard took time to think, rubbing the back of his neck. What Shade could this be? When and how had ‘it’ appeared? Since the traumatic events which had befallen Adamsberg in Quebec and had forced him to take more than a month’s leave to recover, Danglard had been watching him closely. He had been following his quick return to form after the shocks which had almost stripped him of his reason. And it seemed to Danglard that everything had gone back to normal fairly quickly, or at any rate to what passed for normal in Adamsberg’s case. He felt his fears creeping up again. Perhaps Adamsberg wasn’t so far away from the abyss into which he had almost fallen.
‘Since when?’ he asked.
‘A few days after I got back,’ replied Adamsberg, suddenly opening his eyes and sitting up straight. ‘Perhaps it was waiting, prowling around us.’
‘Us?’
‘The Squad. Our base. That’s the Shade’s territory too. When I go away – when I went to Normandy, for instance – I don’t sense it any more. When I get back, there it is again, quiet and grey. Perhaps it’s the Silent Sister.’
‘And who might that be?’
‘Sister Clarisse, the nun who was killed by the tanner.’
‘You believe in her?’
Adamsberg smiled.
‘I heard her the other night,’ he said, quite cheerfully. ‘She was walking about in the attic, with a sound like a robe sweeping the ground. I got up and went to have a look.’
‘And there was nothing there?’
‘No, stands to reason,’ said Adamsberg, with a fleeting memory of the punctuator of Haroncourt.
The commissaire looked all round the little room.
‘And does she bother you?’ asked Danglard carefully, feeling he was stepping into a minefield.
‘No, but this isn’t a friendly ghost, Danglard, bear that in mind. Not there to help us.’
‘Since you got back, nothing special’s happened, except we’ve got this New Recruit.’
‘Veyrenc de Bilhc.’
‘Does he bother you? Did he bring the Shade with him?’
Adamsberg thought over Danglard’s suggestion.
‘Well, he does bother me a bit. He comes from the valley next to mine. Did he tell you about it? The Ossau valley? And about his hair?’
‘No. Why should he?’
‘When he was a little kid, five other boys attacked him. They slashed his stomach and cut up his scalp.’
‘And?’
‘And these boys came from my village, and he knows that. He pretended he was only just discovering it, but he was perfectly aware of it before he got here. And if you ask me, that’s why he’s here at all.’
‘But why?’
‘Chasing memories, Danglard.’
Adamsberg lay back again on the cushions.
‘Remember that woman we arrested a couple of years ago? The district nurse? I’d never had to arrest an old woman before. I hated that case.’
‘She was a monster,’ said Danglard in a shocked voice.
‘According to our pathologist, she was a dissociated killer. With her Alpha self, which went about its everyday business, and her Omega self, which was an angel of death. What are Alpha and Omega, anyway?’
‘Letters from the Greek alphabet.’
‘If you say so. She was seventy-three years old. Remember what she looked like when we arrested her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not a happy memory was it, capitaine? Do you think she’s still spying on us? Do you think she could be the Shade? Cast your mind back to the case.’
Yes, Danglard could perfectly well cast his mind back. It had begun at the home of an elderly woman who had apparently died of natural causes, and there was a routine procedure to determine the cause of death. The local GP and the police pathologist, Dr Roman, at that stage not having a fit of the vapours, had reached agreement in fifteen minutes. A cardiac arrest. The television was still on. Two months later, Lamarre and Danglard had been in attendance for another routine formality, this time concerning a man of ninety-one who had died sitting in his armchair, his hand still holding a book, curiously enough entitled The Art of Being a Grandmother. Adamsberg had arrived just as the two doctors were agreeing the certificate.
‘An aneurysm, I’d say,’ said the man’s own physician. ‘You can never predict them, but when they strike, they strike. Any objection, doctor?’
‘None at all,’ Roman had replied.
‘OK, let’s do the paperwork.’
The GP had already pulled out his pen and was about to sign the certificate.
‘Stop,’ said Adamsberg.
They both looked at the commissaire, who was standing against the wall, arms folded, looking at them.
‘Anything wrong?’ Roman had asked.
‘Can’t you smell anything?’
Adamsberg
moved away from the wall and approached the body. He sniffed close to the old man’s face and vaguely patted his sparse hair. Then he walked around the small two-room flat, his nose in the air.
‘It’s in the air, Roman. Look around, instead of at the body.’
‘Around where?’ asked Roman looking up through his glasses at the ceiling.
‘Roman, this old man was murdered.’
The GP looked impatient as he pocketed his fat fountain pen. This little man with vague eyes who had just turned up, hands thrust in the pockets of a scruffy pair of trousers, and whose arms were as brown as if he spent his life out of doors, did not inspire him with confidence.
‘My patient was worn out, like an old workhorse. Like I said, when it strikes, it strikes.’
‘It strikes all right, but not necessarily from heaven. Can you smell it, doctor? It’s not a perfume, not a medicine. It’s something like camphor, camomile, pepper, orange blossom.’
‘We’ve made our diagnosis, and you’re not a doctor as far as I know.’
‘No, I’m a policeman.’
‘I dare say. But if you’re not satisfied, go and tell your commissaire.’
‘I am the commissaire.’
‘He is the commissaire,’ Roman confirmed.
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ said the doctor.
Danglard, who had been there before, had watched as the GP gradually responded to Adamsberg’s voice and manner, yielding to the persuasiveness that seemed to flow out of him like an insidious breath. He had seen the doctor bend and submit, like a tree in the wind, as so many others had before him, men of bronze and women of steel, seduced by a charm that was neither brilliant nor showy, but which obeyed no rhyme or reason. It was an arrogant phenomenon, which always left Danglard both satisfied and irritated, divided between his affection for Adamsberg and his pity for himself.
‘Yes,’ said Danglard sniffing the air. ‘I know this smell. It’s some expensive sort of oil, they sell it in little capsules at aromatherapists. It’s supposed to settle the nerves. You put a drop on each temple and one at the back of the neck, and it works wonders. Kernorkian in our office uses it.’
‘That’s what it is, Danglard, you’re right. That must be why I recognised it. And I don’t suppose your patient was in the habit of buying it.’
