Fred Vargas: This Night’s Foul Work

His goal, which he had now achieved, was to be posted to the Paris Crime Squad under Commissaire Adamsberg. Veyrenc was satisfied with this, but it had surprised him. An unusual microclimate reigned in the squad. Under the almost imperceptible leadership of their chief, the officers allowed their potential to develop unchecked, indulging in humours and whims unrelated to precise objectives. The squad had achieved undeniable results, but Veyrenc remained highly sceptical. Was this efficiency the result of Adamsberg’s strategy, or was it simply the benevolent hand of providence? Providence seemed to have turned a blind eye, for example, to the fact that Mercadet had put down cushions on the first floor and went to sleep there for several hours a day; to the abnormal office cat, which defecated on reams of paper; to Commandant Danglard’s practice of concealing his bottles of wine in a cupboard in the basement; to the papers, quite unrelated to any investigations, that lay about on tables: estate agents’ prospectuses, race cards, articles on ichthyology, private notes, international newspapers, colour spectra – to name only those he had noticed in one month. This state of affairs did not seem to trouble anyone, except perhaps Lieutenant Noël, a cussed character who found fault with everyone. And who, the second day he was there, had made an offensive remark about Veyrenc’s hair. Twenty years earlier, it would have provoked tears, but nowadays he couldn’t care less – well, not much less. Veyrenc folded his arms and leaned back against the wall. Unshakeable strength allied to a solid physique.

As for the commissaire himself, Veyrenc had taken some time to identify him. Seen from a distance, Adamsberg looked nondescript. Several times in the corridor, Veyrenc had passed this small man, a slow-moving bundle of tension, whose face was curiously angular and whose clothes and demeanour were dishevelled, without realising that he was one of the most famous figures, for good or ill, in the Serious Crime Squad. Even his eyes did not seem to be much use. Veyrenc had been waiting for his official interview since his first day on the job. But Adamsberg had never even noticed him, going round as he did in a daze of either profound or vacant thought. Perhaps it was possible that a whole year would go past before the commissaire noticed that his team had acquired a new member.

The other officers, however, had not missed the considerable opportunity offered by the arrival of a New Recruit. Which was why Veyrenc found himself stuck here in the broom cupboard on the seventh floor of a building, carrying out an excruciatingly boring surveillance duty. Normally, he should have been relieved regularly, and at first that had happened. Then the relief had become more erratic, with the excuse that X was depressive, Y might fall asleep, Z suffered from claustrophobia, or irritation or backache. As a result, he was now the only officer still mounting guard from morning to night, sitting on a wooden chair.

Veyrenc stretched out his legs as best he could. Newcomers usually get treated this way, and he was not particularly downcast. With a pile of books at his feet, a pocket ashtray in his jacket, a view of the clouds through the skylight and his pen in working order, he could almost have been happy here. His mind was at rest, his solitude was overcome, his objective reached.

1The events in Canada which prompted this protection, and are referred to occasionally hereafter, are described in Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand (Knopf Canada, 2007).

DR LAGARDE HAD MADE LIFE COMPLICATED BY ASKING FOR A DROP OF barley water in her café au lait, but at last the drinks had arrived at their table.

‘What’s the matter with Dr Roman?’ she asked as she stirred the frothy liquid.

Adamsberg made a gesture of ignorance. ‘An attack of the vapours, he says. Like ladies in the nineteenth century.’

‘Gracious me. What kind of a diagnosis is that?’

‘His own. He’s not suffering from depression, no serious symptoms. But all he can do is drag himself from one sofa to another, between a siesta and the crossword.’

‘Gracious me,’ said Ariane again, with a frown. ‘But Roman’s a tough guy, and a very competent pathologist. He loves his work.’

‘Yes, but there it is, he’s suffering from an attack of the vapours. We hesitated a long time before getting a replacement.’

‘And why did you ask for me?’

‘I didn’t ask for you.’

‘I was told the Serious Crime Squad of Paris was clamouring for me.’

‘Well, it wasn’t at my request. But I’m glad you’re here now.’

‘To get these two guys away from the Drug Squad.’

‘According to Mortier, they aren’t just two guys. They’re two villains, and one of them’s black. Mortier’s head of the Drug Squad. We don’t get on.’

‘Is that why you’re refusing to hand these bodies over?’

‘No, I’m not chasing after bodies for the sake of it. It’s just that those two should come to me.’

‘As you said before. So tell me about it.’

‘We don’t know anything about them. They were killed some time in the night between Friday and Saturday, at the Porte de la Chapelle. To Mortier, that means only one thing: dope. According to him, blacks do nothing all day long but deal drugs, that’s all their life consists of. And there was a syringe mark on the inside elbow in both cases.’

‘I saw that. The routine analysis didn’t turn anything up. So what do you want me to do?’

‘Take a look and tell me what was in the syringe.’

‘Why don’t you buy the drugs hypothesis? No shortage of narcotics round La Chapelle.’

‘The mother of the big black guy tells me her son never touched the stuff. Didn’t use it, didn’t deal it. The other one’s mother doesn’t know whether he did or not.’

‘And you’re ready to take the word of their old mothers?’

‘My own mother always used to say I had a head like a sieve, the wind went in one side and came out the other. She was right. And as I told you, they had dirt under their fingernails.’

‘Like a lot of no-hopers round the Flea Market.’

Ariane said ‘no-hopers’ in the pitying tone of the well-off and indifferent, for whom poverty is a fact of life rather than a problem.

‘It’s not just dirt, Ariane, it’s soil. And these guys didn’t go in for gardening. They lived in squalid rooms, in godawful tower blocks, without heating and lighting, the sort of place no-hopers get from the city council. With their old mothers.’

Dr Lagarde was staring at the wall. When Ariane was observing a corpse, her eyes narrowed to a fixed position, as if they were high-precision microscope lenses. Adamsberg felt sure that if he examined her pupils at that moment he would have found perfect representations of the two bodies, the white one in the left eye, the black one in the right.

‘Well, I can tell you one thing that might help you, Jean-Baptiste. It was a woman that killed them.’

Adamsberg put his cup down, hesitating to contradict the doctor for the second time in his life.

‘Ariane, did you see the size of them?’

‘What do you think I look at in the mortuary? Old photographs? I saw your guys. Big lads, who could lift up a wardrobe with one finger, yes. Even so, they were both killed by a woman.’

‘Explain.’

‘Come back tonight. I’ve got a few more things to check.’

Ariane stood up, and put on over her suit the clinical overall she had left on the peg. The owners of cafés near the morgue did not appreciate doctors in white coats dropping in. It put off the other customers.

‘I can’t tonight. I’m going to a concert.’