by Fred Vargas
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Adamsberg and Veyrenc walked together back up the long rue de l’Église without speaking, too stunned to raise at once the subject of recluse spiders, those of today and those of the past, meeting up after an interval of seventy years.
‘Pretty little street, this,’ remarked Veyrenc.
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘See that niche over the door? With the statue of a saint? Danglard would say it was sixteenth century.’
‘He would.’
‘He’d say the stone is very worn down, but you can recognise a dog beside him. So it must be St Roch who protects people from the plague.’
‘Yes, indeed. And to make him happy, I would ask, “Why is St Roch shown with a dog alongside?”’
‘And he’d explain that St Roch caught the plague and took refuge in a forest, so as not to contaminate anyone else. But the dog belonging to the lord of the local manor brought him food it had stolen every day. And he got better.’
‘Do you think he’d protect people from recluse spider bites as well?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘And what would Danglard say about recluse bites?’
‘Knowing what we know now, he’d be in quite a fix what to say.’
‘Deep in shit is what you mean. Because there really is a case here with these recluses, isn’t there? Yes or no?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it all began from this rock. The orphanage. Do you think Danglard will admit to being mistaken?’
‘He’s going to have to admit to more than that. I found something out yesterday.’
‘And you didn’t tell me?’
‘Danglard was intending to take his concerns to Divisionnaire Brézillon, so as to get the recluse trail completely closed off.’
Adamsberg stopped still and stared at Veyrenc.
‘What did you say?’
‘You heard.’
‘Talk to Brézillon! And why not get me suspended while he was at it? With a reprimand for incompetence?’ said Adamsberg, speaking quickly, his top lip trembling with surprise and anger.
‘That wasn’t what he was after. He thought the squad was being led in the wrong direction. He said as much to Mordent. Who told Noël. And Mordent and Noël, yes, Noël, our own local bully, marched round to Danglard’s office, where Noël put an end to the plan by banging his fist on the table. It is said some of the pages of The Book fell to the ground. And Noël threatened – you know how tactful he is – to lock Danglard in his office if he made the slightest attempt to contact the divisionnaire.’
‘Who told you all this?’
‘Retancourt.’
‘But why? Why did Mordent and Noël take my side?’
‘Instinctive protection of the herd from the top brass. Defence of our squad, defence of our territory. You could add a poetic note actually.’
‘You think this is really the moment, Louis?’
‘We know that Mordent was totally opposed to following up the recluse business. But he’s also a fanatic about fairy tales. And believe me, there’s so much that’s improbable and unreal in the story of our recluse that it isn’t unlike some kind of fairy tale.’
‘A fairy tale?’
‘All fairy tales are cruel by nature, that’s their distinguishing feature. And something about it, perhaps without his realising it, must be attracting Mordent to this business.’
‘Not Danglard, though. He began by creating division in the squad then he tried to get me locked up. Louis, is Danglard becoming a stink bug?’
‘No. He’s frightened.’
‘What of?’
‘Of losing you perhaps. And then losing himself. He thought he was saving you both.’
‘But his fear, if that’s what it is,’ said Adamsberg, gritting his teeth, ‘has turned him into a traitor.’
‘That’s not the way he sees it.’
‘Well, don’t tell me he’s simply lost his wits.’
Veyrenc hesitated.
‘I could be wrong,’ he said, ‘but I think it might be some deeper kind of fear.’
XVIII
During the short drive to the station, in an overheated bus, Adamsberg remained silent, sending texts from his phone. Veyrenc did not interrupt him, waiting for him to calm down. His dark mood was quite understandable. But Adamsberg was not a man to remain angry for long. His wayward mind prevented him from travelling far down the clear trajectory of rage.
‘You should get another phone,’ Veyrenc finally remarked.
‘Why?’
‘Because if you keep typing the wrong letters, “p” for “n” and all that, you’ll end up being infected.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ll start talking like it, saying “soop” for “soon”. Change it.’
‘Another day,’ said Adamsberg, pocketing his mobile. ‘We’re meeting someone at the station buffet.’
‘If you like.’
‘You don’t want to know who?’
‘Yes, tell me.’
‘Remember Irène Royer, the woman I met in the Natural History Museum?’
‘The one who offered you a fur coat full of dead recluses?’
‘The one who overheard Claveyrolle and Barral talking when she went out for a glass of port. She might be able to recall more of their conversation. She lives locally, in Cadeirac.’
‘Well, since she’s local . . . Is she making the journey for your sake?’
‘No, for the recluse’s sake, Louis.’
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Irène Royer was waiting impatiently for them at the bus station, waving her walking stick in the air to greet them.
Adamsberg had told her he had some news. In the southern heat, she had exchanged her jeans for an old-fashioned flowery dress, but was still wearing ankle socks and trainers.
‘Must be her, I guess,’ said Veyrenc looking out of the bus window, ‘Exactly the kind of person to offer you dead recluses in all innocence.’
‘Admit it, Louis, you’re jealous of my dead spider.’
While Irène Royer was moving to shake hands with the commissaire – apparently pleased to see him again, or perhaps to hear his news – her eyes alighted on Veyrenc’s hair: the russet patches were particularly visible in the glaring sunshine of Nîmes, and her hand halted. Embarrassed, Adamsberg grabbed the hand in mid-air and shook it.
‘Thank you for coming, Madame Royer.’
‘You were calling me Irène last time.’
‘Yes, true. And let me introduce my colleague, Lieutenant Veyrenc. He’s helping me on the recluse case.’
‘Ah, but I never said I was going to help you with it.’
‘No. I know. But as we happened to be just round the corner from you, I wanted to come and thank you.’
‘Is that all?’ asked Irène. ‘So you haven’t got anything new to tell me? Commissaire, you never seem to tell the truth.’
‘Let’s go into the café here. That bus was like an oven.’
‘I like the heat, it’s good for my arthritis.’
As if it had become a habit by now, Adamsberg took Irène’s elbow and steered her to a distant table overlooking the railway tracks.
‘No more stones through your windows?’ he said as they sat down.
‘No. No new spider bites, so the ignoramuses are giving up. They’ve forgotten about it. But you haven’t, have you? What exactly are you doing in Nîmes, if that’s not being too nosy?’
‘We followed the trail you pointed out, Irène. Would you like a hot chocolate?’
‘You’re going to try and get me to promise something again, aren’t you?’
‘Well, to keep a secret, yes. Or I can’t tell you what we’ve found. A cop isn’t supposed to divulge information about an investigatio
n.’
‘Ah, keeping a secret, that’s quite normal. I’m sorry.’
Irène’s gaze had once more diverted quite openly towards Veyrenc’s variegated hair, and it wasn’t clear whether she was more interested in hearing the news or in finding out how he had acquired these striking highlights. Adamsberg glanced at the café clock – their train would leave at 18.38. He was wondering how to regain the attention of the little woman, when she came out bluntly with a question:
‘Do you dye your hair, Lieutenant? It’s the fashion, isn’t it?’
Adamsberg had never heard anyone dare ask Veyrenc to his face about his hair. People noticed it, but said nothing.
‘It was when I was a kid,’ Veyrenc told her, without embarrassment. ‘This gang of boys cut my scalp in fourteen places, and when the hair grew again it was ginger.’
‘That can’t have been much fun!’
‘No.’
‘Kids, rotten kids, nothing between the ears, they do something like that for fun, not thinking it could last a lifetime.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Adamsberg, signalling to Veyrenc to bring out Dr Cauvert’s folder. ‘I was just saying that we followed your trail.’
‘What trail?
‘The secret link, like an eel hiding under a rock.’
‘Your moray eel under a rock, you mean.’
‘Well remembered. Anyway, the first two old men who died. The ones you saw in the café, when you went out for your port.’
‘Just one glass,’ Irène made it clear, for Veyrenc’s benefit. ‘At 7 p.m., not before and not after.’
‘Well, you said they were talking about the mischief they got up to,’ Adamsberg insisted, ‘and that was the eel I followed.’
‘Well?’
‘And it was indeed a moray eel.’
‘Can you stop talking in riddles please, commissaire?’
‘The son of the former director of the orphanage has kept his father’s archives. Including a whole folder about the “bad boys”. And mischief, well, they did a lot of that – really nasty things. So you were right. Claveyrolle was the ringleader and Albert Barral followed his lead. A whole gang of stink bugs.’
‘Stink bugs?’
‘Don’t you remember? It was you that told me about them. Cellar beetles. Little bastards. I hope you’re not squeamish?’
‘Oh, yes, I am.’
‘Have a sip of your chocolate then, to give yourself courage.’
Adamsberg put on the table one after another the photos of the victims of recluse bites, starting with those whose bites had become necrotic, but who had survived.
‘Do you know what these are, Irène? You recognise the signs?’
‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice. ‘That’s what happens if a recluse bite goes necrotic. Oh my God, that one has a terrible wound.’
‘And this one,’ said Adamsberg, ‘has had a third of his face disfigured. Eleven years old.’
‘Oh my God!’
Then he gently put in front of her the photos of the two children who had had limbs amputated. Irène gave a little cry.
‘I’m not trying to upset you. But I am telling you where this eel under the rock led to. In the case of these two children, penicillin wasn’t yet available. Little Louis, four years old, lost a leg, and Jeannot, who was five, his foot.’
‘Holy Mother of God. So that’s what they called getting up to mischief?’
‘Yes. And they had a name: the Recluse Gang. Claveyrolle, Barral and the others. They caught spiders, and hid them in clothes of other children they’d decided to persecute. Eleven victims in all, two amputations, one disfigured, and one who became impotent.’
‘Holy Mother of God. But why are you showing these to me?’
‘To help you understand, and I’m sorry to have given you a shock like this, that the two old chaps sipping their drinks in La Vieille Cave, were the lowest of lowlifes. Louis and Jeannot were their first victims, but that didn’t stop them, they carried on doing the same thing for four years.’
‘When I think,’ muttered Irène, ‘when I think I was sitting alongside them, sipping my port, alongside those bastards, sorry, language, excuse me. When I think back.’
‘That’s just what I’m asking you to do, to think back, and to try really hard.’
‘Ah now, I told myself you’d be wanting something from me. But wait a minute,’ she interrupted herself. ‘Does that mean you were right? That these two were killed deliberately with a spider bite, because one of these poor kids was taking revenge? And what about the third man who died? What was his name?’
‘Claude Landrieu.’
‘Was he in the orphanage too?’
‘No. We’re just at the beginning of this, Irène.’
‘But you can’t kill someone with a recluse, there’s no getting away from that.’
‘What about if you had a few of them? Let’s say three or four, hidden in someone’s trousers? And then if the person was very old . . .’
‘... they might die?’ Irène finished the sentence.
‘You follow me? As Professor Pujol would say.’
‘Still, all the same, three old men died. That means if someone killed them, they’d have had to find, ooh, nine to twelve recluses. Not so easy.’
‘It’s true,’ Veyrenc said, ‘that those kids only managed to catch eleven in four years. And there were nine of them in the gang, and they were used to it.’
‘What about someone breeding them? What if the killer was breeding spiders?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘Begging your pardon, commissaire, but I can see you still don’t know much about spiders. You think maybe they lay eggs, and then you can collect them when they hatch, like baby birds? No, no, it doesn’t work like that. When baby spiders are born, they fly, they’re carried away by the wind on gossamer, like little specks of dust to take their chances, if they don’t get snapped up by birds. Out of a couple of hundred, maybe two or three remain – have you ever tried to catch a speck of dust?’
‘I have to say, no.’
‘Well, that’s what little recluses would be like.’
‘What about if you put them in a box, so they couldn’t fly away?’
‘They’d eat each other. The mothers would start on the little ones.’
‘What do they do in scientific labs then?’ asked Veyrenc.
‘No idea. I dare say it’s very complicated. Labs are always complicated places. You think your killer has lots of special equipment?’
‘If he happened to work in a lab, why not?’ said Veyrenc.
‘Anyway, your idea doesn’t work. You’re forgetting that the old men were bitten out of doors in the evening, not because there was a spider in their trousers when they got up. I already told you about that.’
‘What if they were lying?’ said Adamsberg.
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Because they did know. If they got three recluse bites, from inside their trousers, they’d know what that meant. And they wouldn’t want anyone else to know that someone was taking revenge. They wouldn’t want anyone to know that they were persecuting little kids back in the orphanage.’
‘Oh, I see what you mean. I think I’d have lied too.’
‘So, Irène, please, can you concentrate and think back? Can you remember any more precise details of their conversations?’
‘Yes, but if it was one of the little kids getting back at them, I wouldn’t want him to be caught.’
‘Well, we all think that. I didn’t say I was going to catch him. But if it is one of them, I might be able to persuade him to stop before he spends the rest of his life in jail.’
‘Oh, I see. I suppose you could be right.’
Irène, as Adamsberg had already seen her do, leaned her head back to think, eyes staring straight ahead, out of the window
.
‘There might be something,’ she said, finally. ‘Wait a minute. It was something they said about this car boot sale there’d been in Écusson, oh, ten years ago or so now, on the main square. Those sales, there’s nothing much worth buying, just old shoes going cheap, you know, but people like to come out and chat. Mind you, this dress is from a car boot sale, and it’s fine.’
‘Very becoming,’ said Veyrenc quickly.
‘One euro,’ said Irène. ‘Now just a minute, wait while I think. It was the big one who was talking.’
‘Claveyrolle.’
‘Right, Claveyrolle. He was saying something like, “Guess who I saw at the fucking car boot sale.” I’m sorry, forgive me, really, language! But I have to tell it the way they were talking.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘So he said that. And then he said. “Little Louis. The so-and-so recognised me, no idea how.” Is Little Louis one of those children?’
‘Yes, the one who lost a leg.’
‘Well, the other one, Barral, he said to the big one, Claveyrolle, yes? That maybe it was because of his teeth that Louis recognised him. Because even when he was a kid, Claveyrolle was missing some teeth. That’s what they thought anyway, Little Louis had spotted him and the big one wasn’t at all pleased about that. Oh no, not at all. He was very grumpy. Oh yes, he said something else, that the little so-and-so (I won’t say what he really called him) was as skinny as ever with stick-out ears, but he’d had the cheek to threaten him. So he’d told him to piss off (sorry, that’s what he said). But this Little Louis had said, “You better watch out, Claveyrolle, I’m not alone.”’
‘Not alone? So the victims might have carried on seeing each other?’
‘How would I know? But you know, these days, with all that stuff on the internet, social media, Friends Reunited, School Mates and so on, everybody seems to like catching up with everybody else. So why shouldn’t these men?’
Then Irène gave a jump.
‘Your train!’ she cried. ‘It’s at the platform, I heard a whistle.’
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