Fred Vargas - This Night’s Foul Work

As Francine slept under her guard in the inn at Haroncourt, the Shade checked the time in Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, a hundred and thirty-six kilometres away. At ten fifty-five, the Shade silently opened the door of the linen store and slipped along the corridor, syringe in hand, checking the numbers of the rooms. Retancourt’s room, number 227, had its door open, being guarded by the sleeping Mercadet. As the Shade tiptoed round him, he did not stir. In the middle of the room the large body of the lieutenant was visible under the sheets, her arm hanging down vulnerably at the side of the bed.

ADAMSBERG WAS THE FIRST TO SEE THE SHADE COME INTO HIS FIELD OF vision. His heart did not miss a beat. He pressed the switch with his thumb, Estalère barred the doorway, Danglard pushed the gun into the back of the figure, which did not cry out or utter a word as Estalère rapidly put the handcuffs on it. Adamsberg went over to the bed and stroked Retancourt’s hair.

‘OK, let’s go,’ he said.

Danglard and Estalère dragged their prisoner out of the room and Adamsberg took care to switch the light off on the way out. Two squad cars were waiting outside the hospital.

‘Wait for me back at headquarters,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I won’t be long.’

At midnight he was knocking at the door of Dr Roman. Five minutes later the doctor opened the door, looking pale and dishevelled.

‘You’re mad,’ said Roman. ‘What are you getting me up for?’

The doctor could hardly stand and Adamsberg pulled him along in his slippers into the kitchen, where he sat him down in the same place as he had on the evening of their conversation about the ‘quick of virgins’.

‘Do you remember what you asked me for?’

‘I didn’t ask you for anything,’ said Roman, looking dazed.

‘You asked me to find you an old recipe against the vapours. And I promised I would.’

Roman blinked and rested his heavy head on his hand.

‘So what did you find me? Eye of newt and toe of frog? Gall of pig? Or some recipe that tells you to cut up a chicken and lay it on my head? I know those old wives’ tales.’

‘And what do you think of them?’

‘Are you waking me up in the middle of the night for rubbish like that?’ said Roman, reaching out sleepily for his stimulant pills.

‘Listen to me,’ said Adamsberg, holding back his arm.

‘All right, but put some cold water on my head.’

Adamsberg once more rubbed the doctor’s head with the wet and still grubby dishcloth. Then he looked in the drawers for a plastic bin bag, which he opened and put down between them.

‘They’re here, your vapours,’ he said, putting his hand on the table.

‘In the bin bag?’

‘You’re not with it, Roman.’

‘No.’

‘They’re here,’ said Adamsberg, showing him the packet of red and yellow stimulants, which he dropped into the bag.

‘Hey, give me back my stuff.’

‘No.’

Adamsberg got up and opened all the medicine packs he could see, looking for capsules.

‘What’s this one?’ he asked when he found some.

‘It’s Gavelon.’

‘Yes, I can see that, but what’s it for?’

‘It’s for stomach relief. I’ve always taken it.’

Adamsberg made one pile with the boxes of Gavelon and another with the stimulants, Energyl, and swept the lot into the bin bag. ‘Have you taken many of these?’

‘As many as I could. Give me back my pills.’

‘Your pills, Roman, are what were giving you the vapours. It was in the capsules.’

‘I know what Gavelon is, don’t be silly.’

‘You don’t know what’s inside these capsules.’

‘Gavelon, of course, mon vieux.’

‘No, some ghastly stuff, eye of newt and toe of frog, ground up with pig’s gall and chicken’s blood. We’ll get it analysed.’

‘You’re the one who’s not with it now, Adamsberg.’

‘Listen carefully, and concentrate as hard as you can,’ said Adamsberg, taking the doctor’s wrist. ‘You’ve got plenty of friends, haven’t you, Roman? Plenty of excellent women friends too, like Retancourt, who run errands for you and help you out, don’t they? Like going and fetching your prescriptions from the pharmacy because you can’t go yourself.’

‘Yes.’

‘Someone comes to see you every week and brings you your pills?’

‘Yes.’

Adamsberg closed the bin bag and put it down beside him.

‘Are you taking that lot away?’ asked Roman.

‘Yes. And now you’ve got to drink as much fluid as you can and piss it out. In a week’s time, you should almost be yourself. Don’t worry about your supplies of Gavelon and Energyl, I’ll get you some. The genuine article. Because what you’ve been taking is really eye-of-newt stuff. Or your vapours, if you want to put it like that.’

‘You don’t know what you’re saying, Adamsberg. You don’t know who has been bringing me them.’

‘Oh yes, I do. One of your contacts for whom you have great esteem.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because your contact is sitting in my office this minute, with handcuffs on. Because she’s killed eight people.’

‘You can’t be serious, Adamsberg,’ said Roman after a shocked silence. ‘Are we talking about the same person?’

‘A very sharp mind, with a head screwed on to her shoulders. And one of the most dangerous killers I’ve come across. Ariane Lagarde, the most famous pathologist in France.’

‘You must be out of your mind.’

‘No, she is. She’s a dissociator, Roman.’

Adamsberg helped the doctor up and took him to his bed.

‘Get the dishcloth,’ said Roman. ‘You never know.’

‘OK.’

Roman sat down on the bed, looking both tired and stunned, gradually remembering all the times Ariane had been to visit him.

‘But we’ve known each other for ever,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you, mon vieux - she would never try to kill me.’

‘No, she wasn’t trying to kill you. She just needed you out of circulation, so that she could take your place for as long as was necessary to carry out her plans.’

‘Plans for what?’

‘Her plans to examine her own victims, so that we wouldn’t know what she was after. She told us it was a female killer about one metre sixty-two tall, so I’d go chasing off after that district nurse. She didn’t mention that Elisabeth and Pascaline had had their hair scalped at the root. You didn’t tell me the whole truth, Roman.’

‘No, all right, I didn’t.’

‘You realised that Ariane had made a serious professional mistake if she hadn’t noticed that the hair had been shaved. But if you told me that, you’d get your friend into trouble. On the other hand, if you said nothing you’d be hampering the investigation. You wanted to be sure before acting, so you asked Retancourt for enlargements of the photographs of Elisabeth.’

‘Yes.’

‘Retancourt wondered why, and she started looking at the enlargements differently. She saw the marks on the right side of the skull, but she didn’t know what they meant. It bothered her and she came back to ask you. What was it you were looking for? What had you seen? What you’d seen was that a small section of the skull had actually been scalped, but you hadn’t said so. You decided to help us as much as you could, without betraying Ariane. So you gave us the information, but you altered it a bit. You told us the hair had been cut, but not that it had been shaved . After all, what difference could that possibly make to our investigation? It was hair, just the same. And that way you got Ariane off the hook. By saying that you were the only person who could spot it. Your story about hair being recently cut and having different-shaped ends – that was rubbish, wasn’t it?’