Fred Vargas: This Night’s Foul Work

‘An excellent reason to have your hands behind your back. I was tied up, Veyrenc, like a goat at the end of its chain. My wrists were tied to the tree. I hope you’ll understand now why I didn’t intervene.’

Veyrenc ran his hand through the grass several times.

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘There were two rival gangs in Caldhez. The gang from the bottom of the village, by the fountain, with Fernand as its leader; and the gang at the top of the village by the wash house, which was led by me and my brother. We used to fight all the time – wars, plots, battles, it was all we thought about. Just kids’ games, until Roland and a few other boys arrived. At that point, the fountain gang turned into a really nasty outfit. He wanted to wipe us out and run the village. It was like gang warfare in the city. We resisted as best we could, but he hated me more than anyone else, he really had it in for me. The day they went after you, Roland came and cornered me, with Fernand and Big Georges. “We’re taking you to watch something, motherfucker,” he said. “Keep your eyes open, and after that you’ll keep your mouth shut, because if you don’t, motherfucker, we’ll do the same to you.” They dragged me up here and tied me to the tree. Then they went into the chapel to wait for you. It was your usual route home from school. They jumped you, and you know the rest.’

Adamsberg realised that he had started to call Veyrenc ‘tu’ without realising it. As kids do. Both of them, up on the High Meadow, were kids again.

‘We-ell,’ said Veyrenc, pulling a face and not looking entirely convinced.

‘Give me leave to show doubt, to my ears this is new .

How can I be convinced that what you say is true?’

‘I managed to pull my penknife out of my back pocket. And because I’d seen lots of films, I tried to cut the cords. But we’re never in a film, Veyrenc. If we were in a film now, Ariane would have confessed. In real life, her wall has remained intact. So I was getting nowhere, sweating away, trying to get through the cord. The blade slipped and my knife fell on the ground. When you passed out, they untied me quickly and dragged me off down the path at a run. It was a long time before I dared try and go back to the High Meadow to find my knife. Winter was over, the grass had grown. I looked everywhere but I never found it.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘No, Veyrenc. But if the story’s true, there’s a good chance the knife’s still here, stuck somewhere in the ground. The song of the earth, remember? That’s why I brought the pickaxe along. You’re going to look for the knife. It should still be open, just as it fell. My initials are carved on the wooden handle, JBA.’

‘Why don’t we both look?’

‘Because you’re not sure if you believe me. You might still accuse me of dropping it in the earth while I was digging. No, I’m going to walk away, with my hands in my pockets and I’m going to watch you. We’re going to open another grave, looking for a living memory. But it would surprise me if it’s more than a few inches from the surface.’

‘It might not be there at all,’ said Veyrenc. ‘Someone might have come along a few days later and picked it up.’

‘If they had, we’d have heard about it. Remember that the cops were looking for the fifth boy. If someone had found my knife, with my initials on it, I’d have been caught. But they didn’t find the fifth boy, and I kept my mouth shut. I couldn’t prove anything. If the story’s true, the knife should still be there, thirty-four years later. I wouldn’t ever have dropped my precious knife on purpose. If I didn’t pick it up myself, it’s because I couldn’t. I was tied up.’

Veyrenc hesitated, then stood up and took the pickaxe while Adamsberg walked off a little distance. The surface was hard, and the lieutenant spent over an hour under the walnut tree, at regular intervals picking up clods of earth and crumbling them in his fingers. Then Adamsberg saw him drop the pickaxe and pick something up from the ground, wiping the earth off it.

‘Find it?’ he asked, coming up. ‘Can you read anything on it?’

‘JBA,’ said Veyrenc, as he finished cleaning the handle with his thumb.

He handed the knife to Adamsberg without a word. The blade was rusty, the handle’s varnish worn away, and the carved initials were full of black earth – and perfectly legible. Adamsberg turned it over in his hand, his penknife, the damned penknife which hadn’t managed to cut the cords, and hadn’t helped him to come to the rescue of a little kid bleeding from an attack by the vicious Roland.

‘It’s yours if you want it,’ said Adamsberg, offering it, taking care to hold it by the blade. ‘It’s a male principle, a symbol of how both of us were impotent that day.’

Veyrenc nodded and accepted it.

‘Now you owe me ten centimes,’ Adamsberg added.

‘Why?’

‘It’s a tradition. If you give a sharp object to anyone, the other person has to give you a coin to prevent it cutting him. I wouldn’t like you to have bad luck on my account. You keep the knife, I’ll take the ten centimes.’

IN THE TRAIN ON THE WAY BACK, VEYRENC WAS TROUBLED BY ONE LAST IDEA.

‘Someone who’s a dissociator,’ he said, looking grave, ‘doesn’t know what they’ve done, right? They repress the memory.’

‘That’s the theory, according to Ariane. We’ll never know whether she was just play-acting when she refused to confess, or whether she’s a genuine dissociator. Or indeed if such a thing really exists.’

‘If it did exist,’ said Veyrenc, with a crooked smile, ‘would I have been able to kill Fernand and Big Georges and then wipe it from my memory?’

‘No, Veyrenc.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Because I checked. I got your employment records and your worksheets from Tarbes and Nevers, which was where you were at the time of the murders. The day Fernand was murdered, you were accompanying someone to London. When Big Georges was killed, you were under arrest.’

‘I was?’

‘Yes, for insulting a superior officer. What was that about?’

‘What was his name?’

‘Pleyel, like the pianos.’

‘Yes,’ Veyrenc said, remembering. ‘He was someone like Devalon. We had a scandal on our hands, political corruption. Instead of doing his job, he did what the government told him, provided false documents and got the main offender out of trouble. I wrote a few harmless lines about him, and he didn’t like that.’

‘Remember them?’

‘No, not any more.’

Adamsberg got out his notebook and leafed through it.

‘“The pride of the powerful corrupts men without cease ,

And makes a cringing slave of a chief of police .

The Republic turns pale and slides into despair ,

While criminal tyrants profit without a care.”

Result, fifteen days confined to barracks.’

‘Where did you find that?’ asked Veyrenc, smiling.

‘It’s in the station records. Your lines saved you from killing Big Georges. You didn’t kill anyone, Veyrenc.’

The lieutenant squeezed his eyes shut and relaxed his shoulders.

‘You still haven’t given me my ten centimes,’ said Adamsberg, holding out his hand. ‘I’ve been working hard on your behalf. You gave me a lot of trouble.’

Veyrenc dropped a copper coin into Adamsberg’s hand.

‘Thank you,’ said Adamsberg, pocketing the coin. ‘And when are you going to give up Camille?’

Veyrenc turned his head away.

‘OK,’ said Adamsberg, leaning against the window and falling instantly asleep.

DANGLARD HAD TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF RETANCOURT’S RETURN FROM hospital, earlier than expected, to decree a break in honour of the third virgin, after bringing up some bottles from the basement. In the resulting festivity, only the cat remained calm, sleeping peacefully curled up on Retancourt’s powerful forearm.