Fred Vargas - This Night’s Foul Work

‘I’m sorry,’ said Adamsberg, ‘I missed our appointment.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I was told something urgent had come up.’

The voice was well pitched, light and slightly husky. Quite pleasant. The New Recruit stubbed out his cigarette in a pocket ashtray.

‘Yes, it was very urgent.’

‘Another murder?’

‘No, the first day of spring.’

‘OK,’ said the New Recruit, after a slight pause.

‘How’s this guard duty going?’

‘Long and monotonous.’

‘Not interesting?’

‘Not at all.’

Perfect, thought Adamsberg. He was in luck. The man was blind, unable to spot that Camille was one in a thousand.

‘We’ll suspend it, then. I’ll get a team from the thirteenth arrondissement to relieve you.’

‘When?’

‘Right away.’

The New Recruit glanced at the broom cupboard and Adamsberg wondered whether he was regretting something. But no, it was just his generally melancholy expression that suggested he clung on to things longer than other people. He picked up his books and came out without looking back, nor did he so much as glance at Camille’s door. Blind and probably insensitive too.

Adamsberg pressed the light switch and sat down on the top stair, gesturing to his colleague to join him there. His tumultuous life with Camille had given him complete familiarity with this landing and with the entire staircase, to every one of whose steps he had given a name: impatience, negligence, infidelity, pain, remorse, infidelity, reconciliation, remorse, and so on for ever in a spiral.

‘How many steps do you think there are on this staircase?’ Adamsberg asked. ‘Ninety?’

‘A hundred and eight.’

‘You count stairs do you?’

‘I’m methodical – it’s in my file.’

‘Sit down. I’ve hardly had time to look through your file yet. You know that you’re on probation, and this conversation doesn’t alter that.’

The New Recruit nodded and sat down on the wooden stairs, with no sign either of insolence or distress. Under the electric light, Adamsberg could see the ginger stripes in his otherwise dark hair, like strange flashes of light. The New Recruit’s hair was so thick and curly that it looked as if it would be difficult to get a comb through it.

‘There were plenty of candidates for the job,’ Adamsberg began. ‘What were the qualities that helped you get it?’

‘Pulling strings. I know Divisionnaire Brézillon very well. I helped his younger son out of trouble once.’

‘A police matter?’

‘No, a sexual matter, in the boarding school where I was teaching.’

‘So you didn’t set out to be a cop?’

‘No, I started off in teaching.’

‘What ill wind made you change your mind?’

The New Recruit lit a cigarette. His hands were square and compact. Quite attractive.

‘A love affair,’ Adamsberg guessed.

‘Yes, she was in the force, and I thought it would be a good thing to join her. But by trailing after her I lost her, and I got stuck with the police.’

‘Pity.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you want this job? To get to Paris?’

‘No.’

‘To join the Serious Crime Squad?’

‘Yes. I made inquiries, and it suited me.’

‘What did your inquiries tell you?’

‘Lots of things, some of them contradictory.’

‘I haven’t made any inquiries about you, though. I don’t even know your name, because in the office they’re still calling you “the New Recruit”.’

‘Veyrenc, Louis Veyrenc.’

‘Veyrenc,’ Adamsberg repeated thoughtfully. ‘And where did you get your ginger streaks, Veyrenc? They intrigue me.’

‘Me too, commissaire.’

The New Recruit had turned his face away quickly, shutting his eyes. The New Recruit had suffered, Adamsberg sensed. Veyrenc blew a puff of smoke up at the ceiling, wondering how to finish his reply and failing to decide. In this arrested pose, his upper lip was raised slightly to the right as if pulled by a thread, a twist which gave him a peculiar charm. That and the dark eyes, reduced to triangles with a comma of long lashes at the corners. A dangerous gift from Divisionnaire Brézillon.

‘I’m not obliged to answer that question,’ Veyrenc said at last.

‘No.’

Adamsberg, who had come to fetch his new colleague with no other aim than to dislodge him from Camille’s door, felt that there was something disturbing about this conversation, without being able to identify why. And yet, he thought, the reason wasn’t far away, it was within thinking range. He allowed his gaze to wander over the banisters, the walls, the steps, one by one, down and up again.

He knew that face.

‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Veyrenc.’

‘Veyrenc de Bilhc,’ Adamsberg corrected him. ‘Your full name’s Louis Veyrenc de Bilhc.’

‘Yes, it’s in the file.’

‘Where were you born?’

‘Arras.’

‘An accident of birth, I presume, during an absence from home. You’re not a northerner.’

‘Maybe not.’

‘Definitely not. You’re a Gascon, a Béarnais.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘Of course it’s true. A Béarnais from the Gave d’Ossau valley.’

The New Recruit closed his eyes quickly, as if making a tiny movement of retreat.

‘How do you know?’

‘If you have the name of a wine, you’re likely to be easy to place. The Veyrenc de Bilhc grapes grow on the slopes of the Ossau valley.’

‘Is that a problem?’

‘Possibly. Gascons aren’t the easiest of people to deal with. Melancholy, solitary, mild, hardworking, ironic and stubborn. It’s a nature which is quite interesting if you can put up with it. I know some people who can’t.’

‘Yourself, for instance? You’ve got something against the Béarnais?’

‘Obviously. Think, lieutenant.’

The New Recruit drew back a little, as an animal withdraws better to consider the enemy.

‘The Veyrenc de Bilhc vintage is not very well known,’ he said.

‘Not known at all.’

‘Except by a few wine experts, or people who live in the Ossau valley.’

‘And?’

‘And possibly the people in the next valley.’

‘For instance?’

‘The Gave de Pau valley.’

‘It wasn’t exactly rocket science, was it? Can’t you recognise someone else from the Pyrenees when you’ve got one in front of you?’

‘It’s a bit dark on this landing.’

‘Never mind, I’m not offended.’

‘It’s just that I don’t go round looking for them.’

‘What do you think happens when someone from the Ossau valley works in the same outfit as someone from the Gave de Pau valley?’

The two men both took a little time to think, staring at the wall opposite.

‘Sometimes,’ Adamsberg suggested, ‘it’s harder to get on with your neighbour than with a perfect stranger.’

‘There’ve been run-ins between the two valleys in the past,’ agreed the New Recruit, still looking at the wall.

‘Yes. They’ve been known to kill one another over a scrap of land.’

‘Over a blade of grass.’

‘Yes.’

The New Recruit got to his feet and paced the landing, with his hands in his pockets. Discussion over, thought Adamsberg. They could pick it up again later, on a different footing. He stood up in turn.

‘Close the cupboard and go back to the office. Lieutenant Retancourt is waiting to take you to Clignancourt.’

Adamsberg made a sign of farewell and went down the first flight of stairs, feeling annoyed. Sufficiently annoyed for him to have forgotten his little sketchbook on the top stair, so that he had to go back up. On the sixth-floor landing, he heard Veyrenc’s elegant voice in the semi-darkness: