Fred Vargas - This Night’s Foul Work

‘Me too,’ murmured Adamsberg.

‘Ah, you see, even this guy from the Pyrenees agrees with me. ‘Cos a massacre like that, Alphonse, you listen to me, it means there’s some maniac loose out there. And you better believe me, I know what I’m talking about – you’ll be hearing more about him before long.’

‘The Pyrenean agrees with that, too,’ said Adamsberg, while the old man started to refill his glass for him.

‘Ah, see that, and he isn’t even a hunter!’

‘Nope,’ said Adamsberg. ‘He’s a cop.’

Anglebert suspended his arm, holding the bottle of white wine over the glass. Adamsberg met his gaze. The challenge began. With a slight nudge, Adamsberg indicated that he would like the glass filled up. Anglebert didn’t move.

‘We’re not big fans of the cops round here,’ said Anglebert, still not moving his arm.

‘Who is?’ Adamsberg rejoined.

‘Ah, but here we’re even less their fans than anywhere else.’

‘I didn’t say I was their fan, I said I was a cop.’

‘You’re not a fan, then?’

‘Wouldn’t be much point, would there?’

The old man screwed up his eyes, concentrating all his attention on this unexpected duel.

‘So why are you a cop, then?’

‘Because of a lack of consideration.’

The rapid reply was above the heads of everyone there, including Adamsberg, who would have been hard put to it to explain what he meant. But nobody dared to reveal his puzzlement.

‘Stands to reason,’ said the punctuator.

And as if a film had been paused for a moment, the movement of Anglebert’s arm resumed, his elbow went up and the wine poured into Adamsberg’s glass.

‘Or, you might say, because of this kind of thing,’ Adamsberg added, pointing to the slaughtered stag. ‘When did it happen?’

‘A month back now. Keep the paper if you’re interested. Because the Evreux cops don’t give a damn.’

‘Stupid pricks,’ said Robert.

‘What’s that?’ said Adamsberg, pointing to a stain on the animal’s side.

‘The heart,’ said Hilaire with disgust. ‘He’s put two bullets into the ribs, than he’s took out the heart with a knife and cut it to bits.’

‘Is that a tradition? To take the heart out?’

There was a fresh moment of indecision.

‘You tell him, Robert,’ Anglebert ordered.

‘Surprises me, all the same,’ said Robert, ‘that you’re from the mountains and you don’t know anything about hunting.’

‘I used to go out with the men on trips,’ Adamsberg admitted. ‘And I went up in the pigeon-shooting hides we have down there, like all the kids.’

‘All the same.’

‘But nothing else.’

‘Well, now. When you make a kill,’ Robert explained, ‘first you take the skin off to make a cover. Then you cut off the honours and the haunches. You don’t touch its innards. You turn it over and you carve the fillets to keep. Then you chop off the head, for the antlers. When you’ve finished, you cover the animal with its skin again.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But bloody hell, you don’t go cutting its heart out. Yeah, in the old days, some people used to. But we’ve moved on from then. Nowadays you leave the heart inside.’

‘Who used to do it?’ asked a voice.

‘Never you mind – it was way back.’

‘Whoever it was,’ said Alphonse, ‘what he was after was killing it, then ripping its heart out. He didn’t even take the horns, and that’s the only thing people take when they don’t know nothing about it.’

Adamsberg looked up at the large antlers displayed on the wall of the café, over the door.

‘No,’ said Robert. ‘That’s crap, that lot.’

‘Don’t talk so loud,’ said Anglebert, pointing to the counter, where the café owner was playing dominoes with a couple of youngsters too inexperienced to join in the gathering of the elders.

Robert cast a glance at the owner, then turned back to the commissaire .

‘He’s from away,’ he said.

‘Meaning?’

‘He’s from Caen, not from round here.’

‘Caen’s in Normandy, isn’t it?’

There were a few exchanges of glances and pulled faces. Could they really trust this mountain dweller with such intimate and painful information?

‘Caen’s in Lower Normandy,’ Anglebert explained. ‘Here you’re in Upper Normandy.’

‘And that’s important?’

‘Let’s just say you don’t compare them. The real Normandy’s the Upper one, here.’

Anglebert’s gnarled finger pointed to the wooden table. As if Upper Normandy could be reduced to the size of the café in Haroncourt.

‘But you watch out,’ Robert added. ‘Over there in Calvados, they’ll tell you different. But don’t you listen to them.’

‘All right,’ Adamsberg promised.

‘And over there, it rains all the time, poor sods.’

Adamsberg looked up at the windows, against which the rain was beating continuously.

‘There’s rain and rain,’ Oswald explained. ‘Here, it doesn’t rain, it’s just a bit damp. Don’t you have them where you come from? Outsiders?’

‘Yes,’ Adamsberg agreed. ‘There’s bad feeling between the people in the Gave de Pau valley and the Gave d’Ossau valley.’

‘Yeah, course there is,’ agreed Anglebert, as if he already knew all about that.

Although he was well used to the ponderous music of the evening male ritual, Adamsberg understood that the Normans, true to their reputation, were more difficult to get through to than other people. They didn’t say much. Here their sentences came out cautiously and suspiciously, as if testing the ground with every word. They didn’t speak loudly, nor did they tackle their subjects head-on. They went round them, as if putting a subject directly on the table was as indelicate as throwing down a piece of raw meat.

‘So why is that crap?’ Adamsberg asked, pointing to the antlers over the door.

‘Because those are cast antlers. OK for decoration, to show off. Go and have a look if you don’t believe me. You can see the bump at the base of the bone.’

‘It’s a bone?’

‘Don’t know a thing, do you?’ said Alphonse sadly, sounding regretful that Angelbert had allowed this ignoramus to join them.

‘Yes, it’s a bone,’ the old man confirmed. ‘It grows out of the skull – only the deer family does that.’

‘What if we had skulls that bulged out?’ wondered Robert fancifully.

‘With ideas growing on ‘em,’ said Oswald with a thin smile.

‘Wouldn’t be a big bulge in your case, Oswald.’

‘Practical for the cops,’ said Adamsberg. ‘But risky. You’d be able to read people’s thoughts.’

‘Stands to reason.’

There was a pause for thought and for a third round of drinks.

‘So what do you know about? Apart from police stuff?’ asked Oswald.

‘No questions,’ decreed Robert. ‘He knows what he knows. He’s asking you what you know about.’

‘Women,’ said Oswald.

‘So does he. Or he wouldn’t have lost his.’

‘Stands to reason.’

‘There’s knowing about women and knowing about love, and it’s not the same thing. Specially with women.’

Anglebert sat up as if dispelling a memory.

‘Explain it to him,’ he said, gesturing towards Hilaire and tapping his finger on the photo of the stag that had been slit open.

‘Right. So a red deer stag, he loses his antlers every year.’

‘What for?’

‘’Cos they get in the way. The only reason to have antlers is for the rut, to get the hinds. So when the rutting season’s over, they fall off.’

‘What a pity,’ said Adamsberg, ‘when they’re so beautiful.’