Fred Vargas - The Three Evangelists

He couldn’t haul Mathias to the top if he was a deadweight. Mathias would have to be able to hold on.

Marc wrapped the chain round his right arm, and pressed his legs against the bucket, confirmed his grip, and began to pull Mathias up out of the water. He was so big and heavy. The effort was exhausting. Gradually Marc managed to pull him clear, and after a quarter of a hour’s effort, Mathias’ head and shoulders were resting on the bucket. Marc held him up with his leg, by bracing it against the wall, and with his left hand managed to pull the bottle of rum out of his jacket pocket. If Mathias still had some life left in him, he certainly wouldn’t like the cooking rum. He poured it as best he could into his friend’s mouth. It was going everywhere, but Mathias spluttered. Not for a second had Marc allowed himself to think that Mathias would die. Not the hunter-gatherer. Marc gave him a few clumsy slaps and tipped more rum into him. Mathias groaned. He was coming up from the depths.

‘Can you hear me? It’s Marc.’

‘Where are we?’ asked Mathias in a croaking voice. ‘I’m freezing. I’m going to die.’

‘We’re in the well? Where do you think?’

‘She pushed me in!’ stammered Mathias. ‘She hit me and pushed me in. I didn’t hear her coming.’

‘I know,’ said Marc. ‘Lucien is at the top. He’s going to pull us up.’

‘He’ll rupture himself,’ muttered Mathias.

‘Don’t worry about him. He’s good at front-line jobs. Come on, drink this.’

‘What the fuck is this stuff?’ Mathias was almost inaudible.

‘It’s cooking rum for cakes, it’s Lucien’s. Is it warming you up?’

‘Have some yourself. This water’s paralysing.’

Marc swallowed a few mouthfuls. The chain around his arm was biting and burning into his flesh.

Mathias had closed his eyes again. He was breathing, that was as much as you could say for him. Marc whistled and Lucien’s head appeared in the little circle of light far above.

‘The chain!’ said Marc. ‘Start hauling it up, but very gently, and whatever you do don’t let it go down again. If it jerks, I’ll have to let go.’

His voice sounded echoing and deafening in his ears. But perhaps his ears were frozen.

He heard a clanking sound. Lucien was releasing the chain, while holding on so that Marc did not fall lower. Lucien was a trooper, alright. The chain started to go up, slowly.

‘Pull it up link by link,’ Marc called. ‘He weighs as much as a bison.’

‘Has he drowned?’ Lucien called down.

‘No! Haul away, soldier!’

‘What a bloody shambles!’ came the reply.

Marc was holding onto Mathias by his trousers. Mathias kept his trousers up with a thick cord which was handy to grip on to. That was the only advantage that Marc could see for the time being of Mathias’ rustic habit of holding his trousers up with string. The hunter-gatherer’s head banged from time to time against the walls, but Marc could see the parapet approaching. Lucien heaved Mathias out and laid him on the ground. Marc climbed over the parapet and let himself fall to the grass. He unwound the chain from his arm, pulling a face. The arm was bleeding.

‘Take my jacket to put round that,’ said Lucien.

‘Did you hear anything?’

‘No, but here comes your uncle.’

‘He took his time! Slap Mathias on the face, and rub his limbs. I think he’s lost consciousness again.’

Leguennec was the first to arrive, at a run, and knelt down by Mathias. He did have a torch.

Marc got up, nursing his arm, which seemed to have turned to stone, and went to meet the six policemen.

‘I’m sure she’s hiding in the copse,’ he said.

They found Juliette ten minutes later. Two men brought her over, holding her by the arms. She appeared exhausted, and was covered in scratches and bruises.

‘She…’ panted Juliette. ‘I ran away…’

Marc rushed at her and grabbed her shoulder.

‘Shut up!’ he shouted at her. ‘Just shut up, d’you hear!’

‘Should I stop him?’ Leguennec asked Vandoosler.

‘No,’ whispered Vandoosler. ‘There’s no danger. Let him alone. This was his discovery. I suspected something like this, but…’

‘You should have told me, Vandoosler.’

‘I couldn’t be sure. But medieval historians have special ways of thinking. When Marc gets his mind in gear, he gets straight to the answer. He takes it all in, important stuff and rubbish, and then all at once he goes for it.’

Leguennec looked at Marc, who was standing stiff and pale, his hair soaking wet, and still gripping Juliette’s shoulder with his left hand, covered in shining rings, a large hand close to her throat and looking dangerous.

‘What if he does something stupid?’

‘He won’t do anything stupid.’

Leguennec, all the same, motioned to his men to stand close around Marc and Juliette.

‘I’m going to see to Mathias,’ he said. ‘It looks as if he had a close shave.’

Vandoosler remembered that when Leguennec had been a fisherman, he had also been in offshore rescue. Water, water everywhere.

Marc had let Juliette go now and was staring straight at her. She was ugly, she was beautiful. He felt sick. Maybe it was the rum? She wasn’t moving a muscle. Marc was shaking. His wet clothes were clinging to him and turning his body to ice. Slowly he looked around for Leguennec among the men clustered together in the darkness. He saw him further off, alongside Mathias.

‘Inspecteur,’ he said hoarsely, ‘give orders to have the tree dug up back in rue Chasle. She’s underneath it, I think.’

‘Under the tree?’ said Leguennec. ‘But we’ve already dug there.’

‘Exactly,’ said Marc. ‘The place we’ve already searched, the place nobody will open up again. But that’s where Sophia is.’

Now Marc was shivering all over. He found the little bottle of rum and drank what remained in it. He felt his head swimming and wanted Mathias to make a fire for him, but Mathias was lying on the ground. He wished he too could lie down, and scream perhaps. He wiped his forehead with the wet sleeve on his left arm, which was still functioning. The other arm was hanging limp, and blood was running onto his hand.

He looked up. She was still staring at him. Of all her plans, now in ruins, all that remained was that rigid body and the bitter resistance of her gaze.

Feeling stunned, Marc suddenly sat down on the grass. No, he didn’t want to look at her any longer. He even regretted what he had already seen.

Leguennec was hoisting Mathias into a sitting position.

‘Marc…’ Mathias was saying.

His croaking voice reached Marc, shaking him into speech. If Mathias had had more strength he would have said: ‘Tell them, Marc.’ That’s what he would say, the hunter-gatherer. Marc’s teeth were chattering and the words came out in fragments.

‘What Dompierre wrote…’ he said.

Head down, cross-legged, he was pulling out the grass in tufts, as he had under the beech tree. He scattered the tufts all round him.

‘He wrote Sophia’s name in a funny way: Siméonidis S. We thought he had written that last S the wrong way round, because he was trying to summon up strength. We said it looked a bit like a 2, and we were right, it wasn’t an S at all, it was a figure 2.’

Marc shivered. He felt his uncle pulling off his jacket and his dripping wet shirt. He didn’t have the strength to help him. He was still pulling up grass with his left hand. Now someone was wrapping him in a coarse blanket, which he felt against his skin, one of the blankets from the police van. Mathias was draped in one as well. It was scratchy, but warm. He relaxed a bit, huddled himself into it, and his jaw became less clenched. He kept his eyes fixed on the grass, instinctively so as not to have to look at her.