Fred Vargas - This Night’s Foul Work

‘A ghost, Francine! Get up, run!’

Francine screamed, and Grimal, although terrified, approached the shadow to cover the flight of the young woman. Devalon had not prepared him to deal with this, and he cursed his boss with his last thought. To hell with him, and the ghost as well.

ADAMSBERG GOT THE CALL FROM THE EVREUX BRIGADE AT EIGHT-TWENTY in the morning, as he was sitting in the workmen’s café opposite the sleeping Brasserie des Philosophes . He was drinking a coffee there with Froissy, who had embarked on her second breakfast. Brigadier Maurin, who had arrived at Clancy to take over from Grimal, had found his colleague dead with two bullets in the chest, one of them through the heart. Adamsberg slammed his cup down on his saucer.

‘And the virgin?’ he asked.

‘Disappeared. It looks like she jumped out of the back window. We’re looking for her.’

The gendarme’s voice was broken with sobs. Grimal had been forty-two years old, and more concerned with clipping his garden hedge than with upsetting people.

‘What about his gun?’ asked Adamsberg. ‘Couldn’t he have used it?’

‘He was in bed, asleep, sir. His gun was on the chest in the bedroom – he can’t have had time to pick it up.’

‘But that’s impossible,’ muttered Adamsberg. ‘I particularly asked that the guard should be sitting up, awake, fully dressed and armed.’

‘Devalon didn’t bother with all that, sir. He sent us over there after work. We couldn’t stay awake all night.’

‘Tell your boss he can go roast in hell.’

‘Yes, I know, commissaire.’

Two hours later, gritting his teeth with fury, Adamsberg was leading his men into Francine’s farmhouse. The young woman had been found in tears, her feet bleeding, in a neighbour’s hay barn, where she had taken refuge between two bales of straw. A grey shape that wobbled like a candle flame was all she had seen, that and the arm of the gendarme who had pulled her out of bed and pushed her towards the back bedroom. She was already running towards the road when the two shots had rung out.

The commissaire felt Grimal’s cold forehead, kneeling by his head so as not to tread in his blood. Then he called a number, and heard a sleepy voice at the other end.

‘Ariane, I know it’s not eleven yet, but I need you.’

‘Where are you?’

‘In a village called Clancy in Normandy, on the Chemin des Biges, number four. Please hurry. We won’t touch anything till you get here.’

‘Who’s this technical team you’ve got here?’ asked Devalon, indicating with a sweep of his hand the small group who had accompanied Adamsberg. ‘And who are you bringing in now?’ he added, jerking his chin at the telephone.

‘I’m bringing in my forensic pathologist, commandant . And I don’t advise you to raise any objections.’

‘Go fuck yourself, Adamsberg – this is one of my men.’

‘A man you sent to his death.’

Adamsberg glanced at the two gendarmes who had accompanied Devalon. Their body language indicated that they agreed with him.

‘Stay here to guard your man’s body,’ he said to them. ‘And don’t let anyone approach him until the doctor gets here.’

‘Don’t you give orders to my men, Adamsberg. We don’t have to take any shit from a Paris cop.’

‘I’m not from Paris. And you haven’t got any men any longer.’

Adamsberg went out, dismissing Devalon’s fate from his mind immediately.

‘What have you found?’

‘I think I can piece it together,’ said Danglard. ‘The killer came in over the north wall, crossed the grass, that’s about fifty metres, then came in though the scullery door, which is the most dilapidated.’

‘The grass isn’t very long. No footmarks, then.’

‘The outside wall’s banked with earth, so there are some prints. A lump of clay’s fallen out, showing where the killer came over.’

‘What else? asked Adamsberg, sitting down and half-sprawling across the kitchen table.

‘Forced the door, went through the scullery, then the kitchen, and into the bedroom through this door. No prints there, there isn’t a speck of dust on the tiles. Grimal must have been coming out of the back room, and the shooting took place near Francine’s bed. He was shot at point-blank range, apparently.’

Devalon had been obliged to leave the farmhouse, but he was refusing to cede the territory to Adamsberg. He was walking up and down in the road, cursing as he waited for the arrival of the doctor from Paris, firmly intending to use his own pathologist for the post-mortem. He saw a car screech to a halt in front of the old wooden gate of the farm, and a woman got out and turned towards him. He had his last shock that day when he recognised the well-known features of Ariane Lagarde. He retreated and saluted without a word.

‘Yes, point-blank,’ said Ariane. ‘Must have been between about three and four-thirty, at a guess. The shots were fired during a fight, they must have been struggling. He didn’t have time to resist much. And I think he was scared stiff, you can see it in his expression. On the other hand,’ she said, sitting down next to Adamsberg, ‘the murderer took her time. She’s even signed it.’

‘You mean she injected him like the others?’

‘Yes, on the left arm – it’s almost invisible. We can check it later, but I think it’s like for Diala and La Paille: a make-believe injection, with nothing going in at all.’

‘It’s her trade mark,’ said Danglard.

‘Can you make a guess at the killer’s height?’

‘I need to check the direction of the bullets. But at first sight, not anyone very tall. And the weapon was small-calibre. One of those deadly little handguns.’

Mordent and Lamarre returned from the bedroom.

‘That sounds right, commissaire,’ said Mordent. ‘In the struggle, they trod on each other’s feet. Grimal was barefoot, so he left no marks, but she did. Just a little, but there’s a slight trace of blue.’

‘Are you sure, Mordent?’

‘You have to look for it, but when you see it it’s obvious. Come and have a look – take the magnifying glass. It’s not so easy on this old floor with its tiles.’

With the extra light provided by the technician, and using the magnifier, Adamsberg looked at a streak of blue on the terracotta tiling, about five or six centimetres long. There was a clearer trace on the join, and a further patch of polish on the next tile. Frowning, he came back into the dining room without speaking, opened the cupboards one by one, then went into the kitchen and found some shoe polish and an old rag on a shelf.

‘Estalère,’ he said, ‘take this. Go back to the wall where she came in. Put polish all over the soles of your shoes, then come back here.’

‘But this polish is brown.’

‘Never mind, just go and do it.’

Five minutes later, Estalère was back at the kitchen door.

‘Stop, brigadier . Take your shoes off and give them to me.’

Adamsberg examined the soles by the light of the window, then put his hand into one of them and pressed it to the floor, turning it on the spot. He looked at the spot with the magnifying glass and then did the same with the other shoe.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘The wet grass has washed it all off. There are a few traces of polish on the sole, but not enough to have left it on the floor. You can put your shoes back on, Estalère.’

He came back to sit in the other room with his three colleagues and Ariane. His fingers smoothed the oilcloth on the table, as if trying to find something invisible.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s too much.’

‘Too much polish?’ asked Ariane. ‘Is that what you mean?’