Fred Vargas - An Uncertain Place

‘There’s some kind of cover-up going on,’ the wife insisted. ‘You’re hiding something. What are you doing with him?’

‘We’ve collected what’s left of him, by going over every square metre of the room and placing what we find in numbered containers. Forty-eight square metres, forty-eight containers.’

Adamsberg turned back from the lime-tree blossom and towards Hélène Vaudel. Pierre was still looking down, leaving matters to his wife.

‘People do say that it’s hard to grieve properly unless you have seen with your own eyes,’ Adamsberg went on. ‘But I’ve known cases where people have regretted it, and all things considered would prefer not to have seen. Still, the photos taken when the police arrived are available here,’ he said, passing his mobile to Hélène. ‘And we can send you to Garches in a car, if you insist. But perhaps you should have some inkling what’s there before you decide. These aren’t good quality, but they’ll give you an idea.’

Hélène seized the mobile and started viewing the images, She stopped at the seventh which showed the piano.

‘Very well,’ she said, putting it down with an altered expression.

‘No car?’ said Pierre.

‘No car.’

This was issued like a command and Pierre nodded. Not a sliver of rebellion, although it was his father they were discussing. No curiosity about the photos. Apparently simple and direct neutrality. A provisional and deliberate submission before he took back the reins again.

‘You don’t happen to ride a horse by any chance?’ Adamsberg asked.

‘No, I follow racing a bit in the papers. My father used to be a heavy better at one time. But for years now, he’d only had a flutter about once a month. He’d changed, he’d shrunk into himself. He hardly ever went out.’

‘Did he ever go to a trainer’s stables or a racecourse? Did he go out into the country? Could he have brought any horse manure home on his shoes?’

‘Papa? Horse manure in the house?’

Pierre sat up as if this idea had jolted him despite himself.

‘Are you telling me there’s horse manure in his house?’

‘Yes, on the carpet. Just a few bits from the sole of someone’s boot.’

‘He never put boots on in his life. He didn’t like animals, or nature, the earth, flowers, even daisies fading away in a vase, anything like that. Did the murderer come in with boots covered in dung?’

Adamsberg excused himself to answer his mobile.

‘If you’ve still got the son there,’ Retancourt said, without preliminaries, ‘ask him if the old man had a pet, a cat or dog. We found some hairs on the Louis XIII armchair. But there’s no sign of an animal, no cat litter or dog food. So if he didn’t, the hairs could have come off the murderer’s trousers.’

Adamsberg turned away from the couple, shielding them from Retancourt’s abrupt tones.

‘Did your father by any chance have a pet animal? Dog, cat?’

‘I just told you, he didn’t like animals. He didn’t put himself out for people, still less for an animal, too much bother.’

‘No, not at all,’ said Adamsberg into the phone. ‘But check it out, lieutenant , it could be from a rug or a coat. Check the other chairs as well.’

‘Or tissues? Did he use them? We found one crumpled up in the grass outside, but there aren’t any in the bathroom.’

‘Tissues?’ Adamsberg asked.

‘No, never,’ said Pierre, raising his hands as if to push away this further aberrant suggestion. ‘Only cotton handkerchiefs, folded in three one way and in four the other. He was fussy about them.’

‘No, just cotton handkerchiefs,’ Adamsberg relayed.

‘Danglard is insisting on talking to you. He’s walking around on the grass in circles with something on his mind.’

That was spot on, thought Adamsberg, as a description of Danglard’s temperament. Prowling around the basins in the limestone where his worries were becoming calcified. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to remember what stage the interview had reached. Oh yes, boots, horse manure.

‘No, not boots covered in manure,’ he explained. ‘Just a few little fragments that must have fallen off the soles, from the damp.’

‘Have you seen the handyman, the man who did the garden? He must have boots.’

‘Not yet. We’ve been told he’s a rough customer.’

‘A ruffian, an ex-convict and a halfwit,’ Hélène completed. ‘Father was besotted with him.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say he was half-witted,’ Pierre intervened. ‘Why,’ he asked cautiously, ‘was the body treated that way? Killing him, all right, one can perhaps understand. The family of the man who committed suicide, there could be a possible cause there. But why destroy the body? Is this a common modus operandi?’

‘Not until this particular killer came along. He wasn’t copying anyone, he seems to have created something entirely unprecedented.’

‘Anyone would think you were talking about a work of art,’ said Hélène with a disapproving frown.

‘Well, why not?’ said Pierre suddenly. ‘It would be a sort of rough justice. He was an artist.’

‘Who, your father?’

‘No, Réal, the suicide.’

Adamsberg made another apologetic sign as Danglard came on the line.

‘I knew we were going to be up shit creek,’ the commandant was saying in a studied voice, which told Adamsberg that he had already had several drinks and was making an effort to pronounce clearly.

They must have let him into the room with the piano.

‘Have you visited the crime scene, commandant ?’

‘No, the photos are quite enough. But it’s just been confirmed, the shoes are French.’

‘The boots you mean?’

‘No, the shoes. And there’s something worse. And when I saw that, it was as if someone had lit a match in the catacomb, as if someone had cut off my uncle’s feet. But we don’t have any choice, I’m on my way now.’

More than three drinks, Adamsberg guessed, and knocked back in short order. He looked at his watches: only four o’clock. Danglard would be no good to anyone for the rest of the day. ‘Don’t worry, Danglard, just leave the villa, I’ll catch up with you later.’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

Adamsberg put the phone away, wondering absurdly what was becoming of the cat and kittens. He had told Retancourt that the mother was recovering, but one of the kittens, one of the two he had delivered, a female, was not doing well. Had he squeezed her too hard? Had he damaged something?

‘Jean-Christophe Réal,’ Pierre reminded him insistently, as if he feared the commissaire wouldn’t find his way back alone.

‘The artist,’ Adamsberg agreed.

‘He worked with horses, he used to hire them. The first time it was to cover a horse with bronze paint to make a sort of living statue. The owner sued him, but that’s how he made his name. He did more after that. He painted everything, it took colossal amounts of paint: grass, trees, stones, leaves one by one, as if he was petrifying the whole landscape.’

‘That won’t interest the commissaire , Pierre,’ said Hélène.

‘Did you know Réal at all?’

‘I visited him in prison. Actually, I was determined to get him released.’

‘What did your father accuse him of?’

‘Of painting this woman – she was his patron – who had left him money in her will.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘He painted her, literally, with bronze paint, and sat her on one of these horses to be a living equestrian statue. But the paint blocked her pores, and before they could clean it off, she died of asphyxiation on horseback. Réal did inherit.’

‘How weird,’ said Adamsberg. ‘And the horse – that died too, I suppose?’