by Fred Vargas
‘What if we were to concern ourselves more with whoever killed Diala?’
‘We are. Being fixated on virgins and castrating a male must have some connection. This cat belonged to Pascaline, and only the tom was killed. As if someone wanted to eliminate all masculine presence surrounding Pascaline. To purify her environment, perhaps. Maybe they were trying to purify the graves as well, by putting some invisible potion in there.’
‘As long as we don’t know whether these two women were deliberately killed, we won’t get anywhere. Accidents or murders, a killer or a grave-robber, that’s a huge difference. But we’ve no way of telling.’
Adamsberg slid off the stool and paced round the room.
‘There is a way,’ he said. ‘If you can face it.’
‘Carry on.’
‘If we could find the stone that fractured Pascaline’s skull. If it was an accident, it must have been loose and got dislodged from the wall of the church. But if it was a murder, the stone could already have been on the ground, and the killer would have used it to hit her with. Either a falling stone or a murder weapon. If it was the latter, the stone would surely show some sign of having been exposed to the air. The accident is supposed to have happened on the south side of the church. So there would be no reason for a stone out of the wall to have any moss on it. But if it was lying in the grass, some moss might have grown on its north face. It rains a lot up there, so that would be bound to happen quite quickly. Knowing Devalon, I doubt whether he would have looked for lichen on the stone.’
‘So where’s the stone now?’ asked Retancourt.
‘It must either be in the gendarmerie in Evreux or have been thrown out. Devalon’s an aggressive cop, Retancourt, and an incompetent one. You might have to fight your way to get to the stone. Best not to give him any warning, he’s quite capable of getting rid of it just to bugger us up. Especially since he’s already made some mistakes in this inquiry.’
The cat miaowed anxiously. The Snowball could always sense the moment when his preferred shelter was going to disappear. Three hours later, while Retancourt was making her inquiries in Evreux, the cat was still mewing, its nose glued to the front door of the squad’s office, an obstacle between its little body and the absent woman to whom it was devoted. Adamsberg forcibly dragged the animal over to Danglard.
‘Capitaine, since you seem to have some pull over this creature, can you tell it that Retancourt will be back soon? Give it a glass of wine or something, but for pity’s sake stop it making this din.’
Adamsberg broke off sharply.
‘Shee-it,’ he muttered, letting the Snowball fall heavily to the ground with another pitiful mew.
‘What is it?’ asked Danglard, by now preoccupied with the despairing cat, which had jumped on to his knee.
‘I’ve suddenly understood the story about Narcissus.’
‘About time,’ muttered the commandant.
Just then Retancourt called in. Her voice could be heard clearly on the mobile, and Adamsberg couldn’t guess which of the two, Danglard or the cat, was listening more attentively.
‘Devalon didn’t want me to see the stone. He’s an obstinate man – he would have fought me with his bare fists to stop me getting to it.’
‘You’ll have to find a way, lieutenant.’
‘Don’t worry, the stone’s safe in the boot of my car. One of its surfaces is covered in lichen.’
Danglard wondered whether Retancourt’s methods had been even more physical than Devalon’s fists.
‘I’m on to something else,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I know what happened to Narcissus.’
Yes, thought Danglard resignedly, everybody has known that for about two thousand years. Narcissus fell in love with his reflection in the water, and drowned when he tried to get close to it.
‘It wasn’t his balls they cut off, it was his penis,’ Adamsberg explained.
‘Ah,’ said Retancourt. ‘So where does that get us, sir?’
‘To the very centre of an abomination. Get back here quickly, lieutenant, the cat’s pining for you.’
‘That’s because I went without saying goodbye. Put him on the line.’
Adamsberg knelt down and put the mobile close to the cat’s ear. He had once met a shepherd who telephoned to his bell-wether to keep it calm, so this kind of thing no longer surprised him. He could even remember the ewe’s name: George Sand. Maybe one day George Sand’s bones would find their way into a sacred reliquary. Lying on its back, the cat listened while Retancourt explained that she was on her way home.
‘Can you tell me what this is all about?’ asked Danglard.
‘Both those women were murdered,’ said Adamsberg, getting to his feet. ‘Call everyone together. Conference in two hours.’
‘Murdered? Just for the pleasure of opening their graves three months later?’
‘I know, Danglard, it doesn’t make sense. But it doesn’t make sense to cut off a cat’s penis, either.’
‘That makes more sense,’ retorted Danglard, who always retreated into his bottomless fund of knowledge when he was lost, as another might retreat to a convent. ‘I’ve known zoologists who would think it quite important.’
‘Why?’
‘To get at the bone. There’s a bone in a cat’s penis.’
‘Danglard, you’re having me on.’
‘There’s a bone in a pig’s snout, isn’t there? Well, then.’
XXXI
ADAMSBERG ALLOWED HIMSELF TO WANDER DOWN TO THE SEINE, FOLLOWING the seagulls wheeling in the distance. Paris’s river, although polluted and evil-smelling on certain days, was his watery refuge, the place where he could allow his thoughts to float free. It released them like a flock of birds, and they scattered into the sky, enjoying themselves, allowing the wind to blow them here and there, disorganised and unconscious. Paradoxical though it might sound, producing disorganised thoughts was Adamsberg’s most important activity. It became particularly necessary when too many elements were blocking his mind, piling up in compact bundles and petrifying his actions. The only thing to do then was to open his head and let everything spill out. This happened effortlessly as he walked down the steps to the waterside.
In this general release, there was always one idea more tenacious than the others, like the seagull that marshals the rest of the group. A sort of head prefect, or gendarme, spending all its energy supervising the others and stopping them flying outside the boundaries of the real. The commissaire looked up into the sky to identify which gull was currently acting as this single-minded gendarme. He quickly found one, harrying a giddy juvenile that was playing at confronting the wind instead of its responsibilities. Then the gendarme swooped down on another thoughtless bird that was skimming over the dirty waters. The gendarme-gull was screaming without intermission. Just now his own gendarme-thought, equally monomaniac, was flying to and fro inside his head, squawking, ‘There’s a bone in the snout of a pig, and there’s a bone in the penis of a cat.’
These new pieces of knowledge were preoccupying Adamsberg greatly as he strolled along beside the river, which today was dark green, its surface ruffled with waves. There couldn’t be that many people who knew about the bone in a cat’s penis. What was it called? No idea. What shape was it? Again, no idea. Perhaps it was odd, like the one in the pig’s snout. So people who found one must have wondered where to place it in the great jigsaw puzzle of nature. On the animal’s head, perhaps. Or they thought it was sacred, like the narwhal’s tusk that people used to think grew on the head of the unicorn. Whoever had taken it from Narcissus must obviously be a specialist, possibly a collector, like some people collect shells. But what for? And why do people collect shells, for that matter? For their beauty? Their rarity value? To bring good luck? Adamsberg decided to take the advice he had given his son, and pulled out his mobile to call Danglard.
‘Capitaine, can you tell me what it looks like, this bone from a cat’s penis? Does it have some special beautiful shape?’
‘No,
not particularly. It’s just odd, like all penile bones.’
‘All penile bones?’ said Adamsberg to himself, disconcerted by the thought that some element of human anatomy might also have eluded him. He could hear Danglard tapping on his keyboard, probably writing up the trip to Opportune. It wasn’t a good moment to disturb him.
‘Good grief,’ Danglard was saying. ‘We’re not going to have to deal with this wretched cat for ever, are we? Even if his name was Narcissus.’
‘Just a few minutes. This thing is worrying me.’
‘Well, it doesn’t worry cats. In fact, it makes life easier for them.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant. Why did you say “all penile bones”?’
Resignedly, Danglard tore himself away from the computer screen. He could hear the cries of seagulls at the other end of the phone and knew perfectly well where the commissaire was, and in what state of mind, his thoughts blowing about over the river.
‘Like all penile bones, that is to say the penile bones of all carnivorous animals,’ he said, enunciating clearly as if talking to a dull schoolboy. ‘All carnivores have one,’ he went on, underlining the point. ‘Pinnipeds, felids, viverids, mustelids …’
‘Stop, Danglard, you’ve lost me.’
‘All carnivores, then: walrus family, weasel family, badgers, polecats, bears, lions, what have you.’
‘So why isn’t this generally known?’ Adamsberg asked, for once feeling shocked at his own ignorance. ‘And why is it just carnivores?’
‘That’s just how it is – it’s nature’s way. And nature knows what it’s doing: it’s giving a bit of help to the carnivores. They’re rare, so they have to spend a lot of energy reproducing and surviving.’
‘And why is this bone so special?’
‘Because it’s unique, it doesn’t have any symmetry, bilateral or axial. It’s twisted, a bit curved, has no articulation at top or bottom, and it has a swelling at its distal extremity.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘At the end.’
‘Would you say it was as bizarre as the one in the pig’s snout?’
‘Yes, if you like. Because there isn’t an equivalent in humans, so when medieval people found the penile bone of a walrus or a bear, they were puzzled by it. Just like you are.’
‘Why a bear or a walrus?’
‘Because they’re big animals it’s a bigger bone, and turns up more easily. In a forest, on a beach. But they weren’t any better at identifying the penile bone of a cat. Since cats aren’t eaten for food, their skeleton is less well known.’
‘But people eat pork. Why don’t they know about the one in the snout of the pig?’
‘Because it’s enclosed inside cartilage.’
‘Capitaine, do you think the person who stole Narcissus’s penis was a collector of some kind?’
‘No idea.’
‘Let me put it another way: do you think this bone might be thought valuable by certain people?’
Danglard made a sound that might have indicated doubt, or weariness.
‘Well, like anything that’s rare, or puzzling, it might have some value. There are some people who pick up pebbles out of streams. Or cut antlers off stags. We’re never very far away from superstition. Which is the glory and the tragedy of the human race.’
‘You don’t like your pebble, then, capitaine?’
‘What bothers me is that you picked one with a black stripe down the middle.’
‘It’s because of the line on your forehead when you’re worried.’
‘Are you coming back for the conference?’
‘See, you’re worried now. Of course I am.’
Adamsberg climbed back up the stone steps, hands in pockets. Danglard wasn’t mistaken. What had he been doing when he’d picked up the pebbles? And what value had he attached to them, being himself a freethinker, who had never been tempted by superstition? The only times when he thought of a god was when he felt godlike himself. It happened on very rare occasions, when he found himself out alone during a violent thunderstorm, preferably at night. Then he liked to rule the sky, directing thunderbolts, summoning up torrential rain, conducting the music of the cloudburst. These were passing crises, exhilarating, and perhaps convenient outlets for the masculine libido. Adamsberg stopped suddenly in the street. Masculine libido. The male principle. The cat. the pig. The reliquary. His thoughts once more shot up into the air like a flock of birds.
XXXII
THE OFFICERS IN THE SERIOUS CRIME SQUAD WERE ARRANGING THE CHAIRS in the Council Chamber when Adamsberg walked across the large communal room without saying a word. Danglard gave him a quick look, and from the glow circulating under the commissaire‘s skin like radioactive material he deduced that something critical had happened.
‘What is it?’ asked Veyrenc.
‘He’s plucked an idea out of the air,’ Danglard explained, ‘from the seagulls. You could call it a celestial bird-dropping. It falls on him, with a flurry of wings, between earth and heaven.’
Veyrenc glanced admiringly at Adamsberg, momentarily unsettling Dangard’s suspicions. But the commandant quickly corrected the impression. Admiring one’s enemy doesn’t make him any less an enemy, on the contrary. Danglard remained convinced that Veyrenc had found in Adamsberg his quarry of choice, an enemy to be reckoned with, the little gang-leader of long ago, standing in the shade of the walnut tree, and the chief of the squad today.
Adamsberg opened the meeting by distributing to everyone the photographs of the exhumation at Opportune, which were particularly horrific. His movements were quick and concentrated, and everyone understood that the investigation had taken a new turn. Their chief rarely made them stay for conferences at the end of the afternoon.
‘We didn’t have victims, murderer, or motive with these graves. Now we have all three.’
Adamsberg rubbed his cheeks, wondering how to proceed. He didn’t like summing up, not being gifted at the task. Danglard always helped him out in this respect, rather like the punctuator in the village, providing links, transitions and repetitions in the conversation.
‘The victims,’ Danglard proposed.
‘Neither Elisabeth Châtel nor Pascale Villemot died by accident. Both of them were murdered. Retancourt has brought the evidence back from the Evreux gendarmerie this afternoon. The stone which had supposedly “fallen” out of the south wall of the church, fracturing Pascaline’s skull, had been lying on the ground for at least a couple of months. While it was there, it had acquired a deposit of dark lichen on one of its surfaces.’
‘And the stone couldn’t have jumped up off the ground to hit her,’ observed Estalère attentively.
‘Correct, brigadier. Someone used it to bash her head in. That enables us to deduce that someone had most likely tampered with Elisabeth Châtel’s car as well, causing a fatal accident once she drove it on the main road.’
‘Devalon’s not going to be happy about this,’ observed Mercadet. ‘It’s what you could call rubbishing his investigation.’
Danglard smiled as he chewed his pencil, feeling pleased that Devalon’s aggressive refusal to listen had led him straight into trouble.
‘But why didn’t Devalon think of examining the stone?’ Voisenet asked.
‘Because he’s as thick as two planks, according to local opinion,’ explained Adamsberg. ‘But also because there was no reason in the world to think anyone would murder Pascaline.’
‘How did you find her grave?’ asked Maurel.
‘By chance, apparently.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Correct. I think we were deliberately pointed in the direction of the graveyard at Opportune. The murderer is telling us where to look, but from way ahead.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Back to the victims, then,’ prompted Danglard. ‘Pascaline and Elisabeth.’
‘They were about the same age. They both led very quiet lives and there was no man in sight. Both
of them were virgins. Pascaline’s grave had been treated in exactly the same way as Elisabeth’s. The coffin had been broken open, but the body hadn’t been touched.’
‘Was their virginity something to do with the motive for the killings?’ asked Lamarre.
‘No, it was the criterion for choosing the victims, but not the motive.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Lamarre, frowning. ‘This murderer, she kills virgins, but her aim isn’t to kill virgins?’
The interruption had disturbed Adamsberg’s concentration, so he signed to Danglard to carry on.
‘Remember what the pathologist told us,’ the commandant said. ‘Diala and La Paille were killed by a woman, measuring about one metre sixty-two or so, someone who was a perfectionist, who knew how to use both a scalpel and a syringe, and wore navy-blue leather shoes. The shoes had been polished under the soles, indicating a possible dissociative pathology, or at least a desire to provide a protective layer between herself and the ground on which the crimes were committed. Claire Langevin, the angel of death, presents all these characteristics.’
Adamsberg had opened his notebook without noting anything in it. He doodled as he listened to the summary by Danglard, who would, in his opinion, have made a better chief of squad than him.
‘Retancourt has found a pair of shoes that belonged to her,’ Danglard added. ‘They were made of navy-blue leather. That’s not enough to provide any certainty, but in the meantime we’re still closely investigating this nurse.’
‘She finds everything, Retancourt,’ muttered Veyrenc.
‘She can channel her energy,’ Estalère responded passionately.
‘This angel of death is a fantasy,’ said Mordent irritably. ‘Nobody ever saw her talking to Diala or La Paille at the Flea Market. She’s invisible, she’s vanished into thin air.’
‘That’s how she used to operate all her life,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Like a ghost.’
‘No, it doesn’t fit,’ Mordent persisted, stretching his long heron-like neck out of his grey pullover. ‘This woman killed thirty-three old people, always the same method, never changing it at all. And suddenly she’s transformed herself into a different kind of monster, she goes chasing after virgins, opens graves, cuts the throats of two big lads. No, it just doesn’t fit. You can’t change a square into a circle, and someone who goes round quietly killing off helpless elderly folk doesn’t turn into a wild necrophiliac. Shoes or no shoes.’
