by Fred Vargas
‘North.’
‘Right. During the meeting, sit down next to her. Find some way of pinching her house keys out of her bag, then drop them in my jacket pocket. I’m going to go over there and take a look. I’ve got work for Froissy that will keep her here for quite a while. Anyway, she’ll be in no hurry to go home.’
‘Thanks, commissaire,’ said Retancourt, standing up.
‘And one more thing, lieutenant. During this meeting about to take place, if you smile, even the shadow of a smile . . .’
Retancourt frowned.
‘Blackmailing me, eh?’
‘Fair exchange is no robbery, lieutenant.’
* * *
*
The meeting opened on time in the council chamber, the rather pompous name Danglard had given the room where the squad held general assemblies, and which had become part of its everyday vocabulary. People said ‘See you in the council chamber’, or ‘in the chapter room’, if they meant a smaller office used for more intimate meetings. Adamsberg greeted everyone, especially Danglard, as if to put him on guard for what was to come, then, with a smile, he distributed the photocopies of his text, now elegantly edited by Veyrenc. Which did not on that account make it any more like police business.
‘I’ll give you a few minutes to take it in, without me, while Estalère serves up some coffee.’
Before going out he shot a glance at Retancourt who gave him a brief nod.
So, yes, there was indeed a goddam GPS trace under Froissy’s car.
Good grief. Retancourt ought to have told him her story before this. While he walked round the outer office waiting for his colleagues to read the text, he was not yet thinking about how he was going to handle the session. For the moment, he was thinking about Froissy, and how to give her absolute protection, while informing the police in the 9th arrondissement. And now he began to hear exclamations from the council chamber, as lively arguments started breaking out.
He went into his office, noted Froissy’s home address and returned to face his team. He sat down without taking any notice of the various movements of the officers nor of the sudden silence that fell. He noted how Froissy was looking thinner and more fragile, her fingers tense on the keyboard of her laptop.
XIII
Adamsberg had no need to look at the members of his team to identify the nature of this silence. It was composed of perplexity, lassitude and fatalism. He did not sense any temptation on their part to react aggressively, nor even any desire to ask him questions. This meeting, he predicted, would be one of the shortest in their history. They all seemed to have thrown in the sponge, in a spirit of sad resignation, which had the result of abandoning the commissaire to his lonely course. Except for Veyrenc, Voisenet, possibly Mercadet, and Froissy – simply because the spider story was the least of her worries. Danglard, however, was eyeing the commissaire with a combative and disappointed expression.
‘I’m listening,’ said Adamsberg.
‘Oh, what’s the point?’ said Danglard, firing the first shot. ‘You know quite well what we think. This is absolutely no business of ours.’
‘That’s your view, Danglard. What about the others?’
‘Same goes for me,’ said Mordent wearily, twisting his long neck.
There were several nods of approval – the opinion of the two senior commandants was influential – and a few faces did not dare to look up.
‘Let’s be clear about this,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I understand your doubts, I’m not forcing anyone to join me in this investigation. I’m simply keeping you informed. As you read in my notes, the first two victims had known each other since childhood.’
‘Nîmes isn’t that big a place,’ remarked Mordent.
‘No, it isn’t. Secondly, according to Professor Pujol, the venom of the recluse spider can’t have mutated. And people only die from its bite in extremely rare cases.’
‘But they were old,’ said Kernorkian.
‘Yes, they were,’ Mordent agreed.
‘“Investigation”?’ said Danglard. ‘Did I just hear you say this was an “investigation”? With victims and a murderer?’
‘Yes, that’s what I said.’
‘They’ll need three pairs of handcuffs when they catch the killer,’ guffawed Noël. ‘One for each pair of legs.’
‘Four, you mean, Noël,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Spiders have eight legs.’
The commissaire got to his feet and spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness.
‘OK, you can all go,’ he announced. ‘Froissy and Mercadet, I need you for a spot of research.’
* * *
*
The council chamber emptied with a sound of shuffling feet. The meeting had lasted less than six minutes. Gradually the officers who had been roused from their beds disappeared. Adamsberg grabbed Mercadet by the arm.
‘Lieutenant, can you give me five minutes?’
‘Froissy’s on duty, sir,’ said Mercadet. ‘I’m dropping off to sleep.’
‘It’s something I can’t ask Froissy to do. I need you, Mercadet. This is an emergency.’
The lieutenant rubbed his eyes, shook his head and stretched his arms.
‘What’s it about?’
‘Here’s an address: 82 rue de Trévise, staircase A, third floor, flat 5, I’ve written it all down. I want to know everything you can find out about this tenant’s neighbour on the north side. Well, at least his name, age, occupation and family situation.’
‘I’ll do my best, sir.’
‘Thank you. This is just between ourselves, understood?’
The appeal to secrecy seemed to wake Mercadet up, and he went off towards his computer holding his head a little higher. Adamsberg signalled to Estalère that he should provide the valiant lieutenant with some coffee, then went to see Veyrenc.
‘Are you still so sure it was a good idea to tell them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ever see such discouraged faces? I think I’ve plunged three-quarters of the squad into an immediate depression.’
‘They’ll get over it. Are you getting Froissy to look into the orphanage?’
‘Yes, and into the victims.’
* * *
*
Adamsberg entered Froissy’s office as if tiptoeing into a hospital ward. For once, she was doing nothing, just chewing gum and rolling a little ball between her fingers. Probably one of those gadgets that are meant to soothe bad nerves. No, he realised, it was the cat’s woolly ball, made for it by Mercadet. It was blue, since the cat was a male. An undoctored male, which nevertheless showed no sign of sex drive. One day, maybe, Froissy would go and curl up like the cat on top of the photocopier.
‘Thank you for the breakfast,’ he said. ‘I really needed it.’
This acknowledgement drew a smile from the lieutenant. In that respect at least, things were in order. He must get rid of the extra croissants, Adamsberg thought, so that she would think he had eaten them all.
‘Lieutenant, I’ve got these three guys and I know nothing at all about them.’
‘And you want to know everything?’
‘Correct. It’s to do with the recluse spider. And I’ve given everyone permission not to join in this investigation.’
‘The right to go on strike or something? I suppose you mean the three men who died?’
Froissy had dropped the woollen ball. That was a good sign. He was banking on her help. Not that she had made up her mind about the relevance of this project and chosen her camp. That kind of thing was of little importance to her. What did animate her intensely was the chasing up of secret data hidden deep within her computer. The deeper buried it was, the more the chase seemed to galvanise her.
‘I hope this is a difficult one,’ she said, but her fingers were already hovering over the keyboard.
‘You’ve got the three men’
s names on the note I gave you all earlier.’ Fair skin flushes easily, and Froissy went crimson.
‘I’m so sorry, sir, I don’t know what I’ve done with it.’
‘Not to worry, the meeting was unpleasant, that’s all. I’ll give you their names right now. Ready? Albert Barral, born in Nîmes, died 12 May, aged eighty-four, insurance broker, divorced, two children. Fernand Claveyrolle, born in Nîmes, died 20 May, aged eighty-four, art teacher, twice married and divorced, no children. And Claude Landrieu, born in Nîmes, died 2 June, aged eighty-three, shopkeeper.’
Froissy had already encoded this information and was waiting for the rest, hands hovering, and a more relaxed expression on her face.
‘The first two, Barral and Claveyrolle, were fellow pupils at La Miséricorde orphanage just outside Nîmes. They got up to all kinds of mischief there. Not on their own, they had a little gang. What kind of mischief? Who else was in the gang? Try looking there. The third victim who died, Claude Landrieu – where did he go to school? Did he know the others? What’s their point of contact? And for all three, try to find out if they were ever found guilty in later life of any crime or wrongdoing.’
‘So you want to know if they could have made enemies? And whether their schoolboy mischief was just the result of their difficult childhood or whether they turned into really bad guys, temporarily or permanently?’
‘Exactly. Find out as well who was running the orphanage back then. Are there records for those years? You’re with me?’
‘Yes, of course. Where else would I be?’
Back in the bathroom, Adamsberg thought.
‘Something else, but probably impossible. I won’t get the go-ahead from the divisionnaire to start a formal investigation.’
‘No, we shouldn’t count on that,’ said Froissy.
‘So I don’t have any right to question the medics who treated these patients. I’m not a family member.’
‘What is it you want to know?’
‘The general state of health of these men, in the first place. But there’s probably no way we can find that out.’
‘Up to a point. I can get the names of their local doctors through the social security records. But then I’d have to go deeper into those records, to know what treatment they received. From which one could deduce their possible pathology. Not exactly legal. I’d better tell you, we’d be operating in the realms of piracy.’
‘Seas of piracy. Pirates, seas.’
‘If you like. You’re getting like Danglard,’ she said with a smile, ‘playing on words.’
‘Who on earth could get like Danglard, Froissy? It’s just that I like the idea of sailing on the high seas.’
‘That’s because you’re just back from Iceland. And there’ll be mists on those seas. Well, what do we do? We go right ahead with this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well.’
‘Can you cover your tracks afterwards?’
‘That goes without saying. Otherwise I’d never suggest it to you.’
‘I’d also like to know the dates they were admitted to hospital, that is, how many days after the spider bite. And how the infection developed. Wait a second.’
Adamsberg brought out his notebook, where nothing was written in order, and leafed through it.
‘I need to know how their loxoscelism developed.’
‘How do you spell that?’
‘There’s an “s” between loxo and celism,’ said Adamsberg, showing her the page.
‘And it means?’
‘That’s the name of the illness caused by the venom of the recluse spider.’
‘Right. You want to know if this loxoscelism developed as normal, or if there was anything abnormal about it.’
‘Correct. And if they had any blood tests, what the results showed.’
‘Uh-oh,’ said Froissy, leaning back from her keyboard and rolling her chair to the side. ‘We’d really be on the high seas there. You’d need to know the names of the doctors who treated them in hospital. Well, that’s easy enough. But then it means getting into confidential data.’
‘So it can’t be done?’
‘Won’t make any promises. Anything else, sir?’
‘That’s all for now. But it will probably give you more than one day’s work. Take your time.’
‘I don’t mind too much coming in on a Sunday to work, like tomorrow. If needed.’
No, I guess you don’t, thought Adamsberg, it would be the ideal refuge for Froissy to come into headquarters, where no crazy neighbour was going to work the lavatory flush every time she turned a tap on.
‘That’s perfectly OK. I’ll add you to the duty roster. Thank you, lieutenant.’
‘In fact, if my work keeps me far into the evening,’ she said, with a slightly more shaky voice, ‘could I perhaps sleep on the cushions in the upstairs room?’
This was the small office with the drinks machine, where three large foam cushions had been installed so that Mercadet could take a nap in his narcoleptic phases.
‘It’s no problem as far as I’m concerned. Gardon will be on duty downstairs with Estalère. But I don’t want you to overdo things.’
‘I’m not short of sleep, it’ll be fine. I have a little overnight case here – I always keep one for emergencies.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Adamsberg echoed her.
* * *
*
Now for Mercadet. The commissaire was annoyed with himself for having asked him to do some research when the man was dropping with fatigue. His guilt magnified several times when he saw the grey face of his officer, who was propping his chin up with one hand while he tapped away on the keyboard with the other.
‘Stop, lieutenant,’ he said. ‘I’m very sorry, go and get some sleep.’
‘No, no,’ said Mercadet in a faint voice. ‘I’m just being a bit slow.’
‘Mercadet, that’s an order.’
Adamsberg helped the lieutenant up by the arm and pulled him towards the stairs. Step by step, he helped him on the long climb up to the first floor. Mercadet collapsed on to the providential cushions. Before he closed his eyes, he raised his arm.
‘Commissaire, the neighbour’s name is Sylvain Bodafieux. One “f”. Aged 36, bachelor, dark hair, balding. He rented the ap . . . um, the ap . . .’
‘The apartment.’
‘Just three months ago. Door code 3492B. Moves from place to place. Works for a removal firm, he’s a sh-shpessalist . . .’
‘Specialist?’
‘Yeah, specialist in moving antique furniture, upright pianos, grand pianos, baby grands . . .’
‘It’s OK, lieutenant, you can go to sleep now.’
‘... and boudoir grands,’ Mercadet murmured, as he dropped off.
* * *
*
Bodafieux. Not Marllot. The man was using a false name. Retancourt came into the little room just then, carrying the cat draped over her arm like an old cloth, paws dangling. Stretched out like that, it looked as big as a young lynx. Time for din-dins. Adamsberg put a finger to his lips.
‘Got the keys?’ he whispered.
‘In your left pocket.’
‘I’m off. Froissy’s going to spend the night here, and all day tomorrow.’
‘I’d better go and park her car outside her flat. So the neighbour doesn’t smell a rat.’
‘If everything goes to plan, there’s no need for that.’
Retancourt nodded, looking relieved. Although she was a systematic opponent of Adamsberg’s methods, his calming approach sometimes rubbed off on her like a soothing balm. Though as Danglard said, you had to watch out with the commissaire’s silent waters, and not let them swirl around you and engulf you along with him.
* * *
*
Adamsberg put on his jacket, felt the keys in the pocke
t, mixed up with three ragged cigarettes belonging to Zerk. Last stop: Danglard’s office. The latter, entrenched behind his desk, was relieving his distress with a steady stream of white wine, which did not prevent him making progress with his draft of The Book.
‘This isn’t about the recluse,’ Adamsberg said as he walked in.
‘No? You mean you have some other thoughts, commissaire?’
‘Now and then. Danglard, the police commissaire in the 9th.’
‘What about him?’
‘Name, character, career. This is urgent.’
‘Nothing to do with Loxosceles rufescens?’
‘I just told you, no.’
‘Hervé Descartier. He’s about fifty-eight.’
Commandant Danglard’s memory was not confined to erudition. He had at his fingertips the names of all the commissaires, commandants and captains in the French gendarmerie, and kept up to date with transfers, promotions and retirements.
‘I think I’ve met him before,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I must have been a junior and he was already a young lieutenant.’
‘What was it about?’
‘A naked man found dead on the line of the Paris–Quimper express.’
‘Paris–Deauville,’ Danglard corrected him. ‘Yes, years back. Nice enough guy, quite sharp, gets to the point fast. Sensitive, intelligent, sense of humour, likes word games and tricks. He’s not tall, quite slim, a ladies’ man, and will be till his last breath. There’s a problem, though, that nearly cost him his career.’
‘Corruption?’
‘Absolutely not. But he bends the rules, if he thinks it’ll be more effective to take a short cut.’
‘Give me an example, Danglard. Just one will do.’
‘Let me see. Well, there was the case of a rapist in Blois, when Descartier kicked the door in without a warrant, and beat the guy up. It wasn’t self-defence, and actually they didn’t have definite proof he was guilty. The man almost lost an eye.’
