Fred Vargas - An Uncertain Place

‘Not the same horse farm?’ Justin chipped in.

Adamsberg took up the piece of horse manure again, biting back a more angry retort to Noël, who never stopped needling Retancourt, saying she wasn’t a woman at all, but an ox or something. Whereas for Adamsberg, if Retancourt wasn’t exactly a woman in the ordinary sense, it was because she was a goddess. The polyvalent goddess of the squad with as many talents as the God-knows-how-many-armed goddess Shiva.

‘How many arms does that Indian goddess have?’ he asked his juniors, still holding the scrap of dung.

The four lieutenants shook their heads.

‘Always the same,’ said Adamsberg. ‘When Danglard’s not here nobody knows the answer to anything.’

He closed up the sachet again, shut the zip and gave it to Voisenet.

‘We’ll have to call him to get an answer. Now, what it is, I think this horse, the one that produced this shit, familiarly known as Émile’s horse shit, was out in a field and has eaten nothing but grass. And I think the other one, the origin of the pellets in the villa, which we’ll call “the killer’s horse shit”, was fed in a stable on granules.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘I spent my childhood collecting horse manure for fertiliser, and cowpats for burning in the fireplace. I still do that, and I can assure you, Voisenet, that depending on what they’ve been fed, you get a different kind of horse manure.’

‘OK,’ agreed Voisenet.

‘When will we get the lab results?’ asked Adamsberg, as he punched in Danglard’s number. ‘Give them a kick up the pants: we need this stuff urgently – the shit, the Kleenex, fingerprints, body parts, all that.’

He walked away as Danglard came on the line.

‘Nearly five o’clock, Danglard. We need you for this Garches mess. It’s all cleared up, we’re on our way back, we’re going to do the first summary. Oh, one second, how many arms has that Indian goddess got? The one that sits inside a ball? Shiva?’

‘Shiva’s not a goddess at all, commissaire . He’s a god.’

‘A god! It’s a man,’ added the commissaire for his lieutenants ’ benefit. ‘So Shiva’s a man, and how many arms does he have?’ he asked Danglard.

‘Depends on the different images, because Shiva’s powers are immense and contradictory, covering practically the whole spectrum, from destruction to blessing. Sometimes two, sometimes four, but it can go up to ten. Depends what he’s embodying at the time.’

‘And roughly speaking, Danglard, what does he embody?’

‘Well, to cut a long story short, “at the vacuum in the centre of Nirvana-Shakti is the supreme Shiva whose nature is emptiness”.’

Adamsberg had turned up the speaker, and looked at his colleagues who seemed as lost as he was and were making signs to forget it. Finding out that Shiva was a male deity was quite enough for one day.

‘Has this got anything to do with Garches?’ asked Danglard. ‘Not enough arms?’

‘Émile Feuillant’s inherited Vaudel’s estate, except the legal share that goes to Pierre junior. Mordent broke the rules and told him he was about to be arrested. So Émile, aka Basher, floored him and made a break for it.’

‘And Retancourt couldn’t catch him?’

‘She didn’t manage it. She can’t have had all her arms working, and he’d broken one of her ribs when he took off. We’re expecting you, commandant . Mordent’s out of it more or less.’

‘I dare say. But my train doesn’t leave until nine twelve in the evening. I don’t think I can change my ticket.’

‘What train, Danglard?’

‘The train that goes through the goddam tunnel, commissaire . Don’t imagine I’m doing this for my own amusement. But I saw what I came to see. And if he didn’t cut off my uncle’s feet, it came pretty close.’

‘Danglard, where are you?’ asked Adamsberg slowly, sitting back down at the table and turning off the speaker.

‘Where the heck do you think I am? I’m in London, and they’re pretty sure now, the shoes are almost all French, some good quality, some bad. Different social classes. Believe me, we’re going to get the whole lot on our plate, and Radstock is already rubbing his hands.’

‘But what the devil took you back to London?’ Adamsberg almost shouted. ‘Why the hell did you have to go and get mixed up with the damned shoes again? Leave them in Higg-Gate, leave them to Stock!’

‘Radstock you mean. Commissaire , I told you I was going and you agreed, it was necessary.’

‘Don’t mess me about, Danglard, it was that woman Abstract, and you swam the Channel to see her.’

‘No, I did not.’

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t seen her again!’

‘I didn’t say that, but that’s got nothing to do with the shoes.’

‘I certainly hope not, Danglard.’

‘If you thought that someone had cut off your uncle’s feet, you’d want to go and take a look too.’

Adamsberg looked up at the sky which was clouding over, watched as a duck flew across the horizon, and turned back to the phone more calmly.

‘What uncle? I didn’t know there was an uncle involved.’

‘I’m not talking about a living uncle, I’m not talking about someone walking around with no feet. My uncle died about twenty years ago. My aunt’s second husband, and I was very fond of him.’

‘Without wanting to upset you, commandant , nobody would be capable of recognising their uncle’s dead feet.’

‘Not his feet, no, the shoes. As our friend Lord Clyde-Fox rightly said.’

‘Clyde-Fox?’

‘That eccentric English lord we met.’

‘Ah. Yes,’ said Adamsberg with a sigh.

‘I saw him again yesterday, incidentally. He was down in the dumps because he’s mislaid his new Cuban pal. We had a few drinks, he’s a specialist on Indian history. And as he quite rightly said, what can you put into shoes? Feet of course. Usually your own. And if the shoes belonged to my uncle, there was every chance the feet did too.’

‘A bit like the horse shit and the horse,’ Adamsberg commented. Fatigue was starting to give him a backache.

‘Like the container and the contents. But I’m not sure whether it’s actually my uncle or not. It could be a cousin, or someone from the same village. They’re all cousins of some kind over there.’

‘OK,’ said Adamsberg, sliding along to the end of the table. ‘Even if some nutter has made a collection of French feet and his path unfortunately crossed that of your uncle, or his cousin, what the hell has that got to do with us?’

‘You said yourself that there was no rule against taking an interest,’ said Danglard, sounding disgruntled. ‘You were the one who wouldn’t let the Highgate feet drop.’

‘While we were there, yes, maybe. But now we’re in Garches and I’m not interested. And that was a big mistake to go back, Danglard. Because if these feet are French, Scotland Yard will want us to collaborate. It could have been sent to a different squad, but now, thanks to you, our squad is the one with its head above the parapet. And I need you here, for this bloodbath in Garches, which is a damn sight more scary than some necrophiliac who went round cutting off feet right and left twenty years ago.’

‘Not “right and left”. I think they were selected.’

‘Did Stock tell you that?’

‘No, that’s my idea. Because when my uncle died, he was in Serbia, and so were his feet.’

‘And you’re wondering why the amputator went all the way to Serbia to collect feet, when there are sixty million of them in France.’

‘A hundred and twenty million. Sixty million people, a hundred and twenty million feet. You’re making the same mistake as Estalère in reverse.’