Fred Vargas - This Night’s Foul Work

‘All right, come round after the concert. I work late – I expect you remember.’

‘No, I can’t, it’s in Normandy.’

‘Gracious me,’ said Ariane, stopping still. ‘What’s on the programme?’

‘No idea.’

‘You’re going all the way to Normandy to listen to it and you don’t even know what they’re playing? Or perhaps you’re trailing after a woman?’

‘I’m not trailing after her, I’m politely accompanying her.’

‘Gracious me. Well, come by tomorrow. Not in the morning, though. I sleep late.’

‘Yes, I remember. Not before eleven, then?’

‘Not before midday. Everything gets accentuated as time goes by.’

Ariane perched back on her chair, as if in temporary hesitation.

‘There’s something I’d like to tell you. But I don’t know if I really want to.’

Silence, however long it lasted, had never embarrassed Adamsberg. He waited, letting his thoughts run towards the evening concert. Five minutes went past, or ten, he couldn’t have said.

‘Seven months later,’ said Ariane, having taken a sudden decision, ‘the murderer made a complete confession.’

‘The one in Le Havre, you mean?’ said Adamsberg, looking up.

‘Yes, the man with the twelve rats. He hanged himself in his cell ten days after that. You’d got it right, not me.’

‘And you weren’t too happy about that?’

‘No, and neither were my bosses. I missed my promotion. I had to wait another five years. You’d practically given me the solution on a plate, and I hadn’t wanted to hear what you were saying.’

‘You didn’t tell me about it.’

‘I’d forgotten your name. In fact I’d deliberately wiped you out of my mind. With your glass of beer.’

‘And you’re still angry with me?’

‘No, actually. It was thanks to the rat man that I started my research on dissociation. Have you read my book?’

‘Some of it,’ Adamsberg prevaricated.

‘I invented the term “dissociated killers”.’

‘Yes, I remember – I’ve heard of them,’ Adamsberg corrected himself. ‘People who are split in two.’

The doctor pulled a face.

‘Let’s just say individuals who are made up of two distinct parts: one that kills, one that leads a normal life – and both halves are almost entirely unconscious of the other’s existence. It’s quite rare. For instance, that district nurse they arrested in Asnières, two years ago. This kind of murderer is dangerous, and recidivist, and almost impossible to spot. Nobody suspects them, not even themselves, and they go to extraordinary lengths to stop the other half of themselves from finding out.’

‘I remember the nurse. So, according to you, she was a dissociated killer, was she?’

‘Almost the classic case. If she hadn’t crossed the path of some genius in the police force, she’d have gone on killing people until the day she died, and denied it to herself. Thirty-two victims in forty years, without turning a hair.’

‘Thirty-three,’ Adamsberg corrected her.

‘Thirty-two. I’m well placed to tell you, I interviewed her for hours.’

‘It was thirty-three, Ariane. I arrested her.’

The doctor paused, then smiled.

‘Ah, did you now?’

‘So when the Le Havre killer cut open those rats, he was the other part of himself. Number Two, the murderous one?’ said Adamsberg.

‘Are you interested in dissociation?’

‘That case of the nurse still haunts me, and the Le Havre man sort of belongs to me too. What was his name?’

‘Hubert Sandrin.’

‘And when he confessed? Was he still the other one then?’

‘No, that would be impossible, Jean-Baptiste: the other one never denounces himself.’

‘But Number One couldn’t confess, because he didn’t know about the murder.’

‘That’s the point. For a few moments, the dissociation stopped working and the barrier between the two selves opened up, like a crack in a wall. And, through the crack, Hubert Number One saw the other one, Hubert Number Two, and was overcome with horror.’

‘And that sometimes happens?’

‘Hardly ever. But dissociation is rarely perfect. There are always a few leaks. Odd words leap from one side of the wall to the other. The murderer doesn’t notice, but an analyst can surprise them. And if the jump is too abrupt, it can cause a breakdown, a personality crash. That’s what happened to Hubert Sandrin.’

‘What about the nurse?’

‘Her wall has stayed intact. She has no idea what she’s done.’

Adamsberg seemed to be thinking, rubbing his cheek with his finger.

‘That surprises me,’ he said quietly. ‘It seemed to me she knew perfectly well why I was arresting her. She came along like a lamb, without a word.’

‘Part of her did, which explains her consent. But she has no memory of her actions.’

‘Tell me something. How did the guy in Le Havre find out about his other self?’

Ariane smiled broadly, flicking her cigarette ash to the ground.

‘It was because of you and your rats. At the time, the local press made a bit of a song and dance about them.’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘Well, Hubert Number Two, the murderer – let’s call him Omega – had kept newspaper cuttings, out of sight of Hubert Number One – let’s call him Alpha.’

‘Until Alpha found the cuttings that Omega had hidden away?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Do you think Omega had wanted that to happen?’

‘No. Alpha simply moved house. The cuttings fell out of a cupboard. And it detonated the explosion.’

‘So if it hadn’t been for my rats,’ Adamsberg summed up quietly, ‘Sandrin wouldn’t have denounced himself. Without his case, you wouldn’t have started working on dissociation. Every psychiatrist and detective in France knows about your studies.’

‘Yes,’ admitted Ariane.

‘So I reckon you owe me a beer.’

‘Certainly.’

‘By the Seine.’

‘OK, if you like.’

‘And, of course, you won’t hand these guys over to the Drug Squad?’

‘It’s the bodies that will decide that, Jean-Baptiste, not you and not me.’

‘The syringe mark, Ariane, and the earth under their nails. Take a look at the earth for me. Tell me if that’s what it is.’

They got up together, as if Adamsberg’s words had been a signal for them to leave. The commissaire walked along the street as if he was strolling aimlessly, and the doctor tried to follow his slow pace, her mind already on the autopsies awaiting her. Adamsberg’s preoccupation puzzled her.

‘There’s something about those bodies that bothers you, isn’t there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not just because of the Drug Squad?’

‘No. It’s just…’ Adamsberg broke off. ‘I’m going this way. I’ll see you tomorrow, Ariane.’

‘It’s just…?’ the doctor insisted.

‘Nothing that will help your analysis.’

‘But tell me anyway.’

‘Just a shade, Ariane, a shade hovering over them, or over me.’

Ariane watched Adamsberg walk away down the avenue, a wayward silhouette, taking no notice of anyone else. She recognised his style from twenty-three years back. The gentle voice, the slow gestures. She had not paid much attention to him when he was young, so she had understood nothing. If she was starting over again, she would listen to his story about the rats. She plunged her hands in the pockets of her overall and set off towards the two bodies waiting to take their place in history. Just a shade hovering over them. Today she could understand that kind of strange remark.

L IEUTENANT VEYRENC TOOK ADVANTAGE OF HIS LONG HOURS IN THE BROOM cupboard to copy out in large handwriting one of Racine’s plays for his grandmother, whose sight was going.