Fred Vargas - An Uncertain Place

He was interrupted by his telephone, and moved away – rather fast for Danglard – pressing his mobile eagerly against his ear. That’ll be Abstract, Adamsberg diagnosed.

‘Should we wait for him?’ asked Voisenet.

Froissy shifted on her chair. She was getting anxious about eating – it was 2.45 already – and started to clench her arms around herself. Everyone knew that missing a meal brought on a panic attack and Adamsberg had asked his colleagues to watch out for that, because three times when out on a mission she had fainted with fear.

THEY RECONVENED IN THE CORNET À DÉS (THE DICE SHAKER), a scruffy little bar at the end of the street. At this time of day the classier Brasserie des Philosophes opposite had stopped serving lunch, since it observed conventional hours. According to one’s mood and wallet, merely by crossing the street one could opt to be either a bourgeois or a worker, rich or poor, choose lemon tea or a vin ordinaire .

The owner passed round fourteen cheese baguettes – there was no choice, all that was left was Gruyère – and the same number of coffees. He put three carafes of red wine on the table, without being asked. He didn’t like customers who refused his wine, which was of unknown origin. Danglard said it was a lousy Côtes-du-Rhône and the others believed him.

‘This painter who killed himself in prison – are we any further forward with him?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘Haven’t had time,’ said Mordent, who was pushing away his sandwich untouched. ‘Mercadet’s going to do that this afternoon.’

‘The horse manure, the hairs, the Kleenex, fingerprints, anything from those?’

‘You were right, the two samples of horse manure were different,’ said Justin. ‘Émile’s wasn’t the same as the pellets in the house.’

‘We can check the dog for comparison,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Ten to one it comes from that farm.’

Cupid was crouching at his feet – Adamsberg had not yet dared to confront the cat with him.

‘That dog stinks,’ called Voisenet from the top of the table. ‘We can smell him from here.’

‘We take a sample first, we clean him up afterwards.’

‘What I mean is,’ insisted Voisenet, ‘he smells bad anyway.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Noël.

‘No surprises in the fingerprints,’ Justin continued. ‘Vaudel’s and Émile’s are all over the house. Émile’s are mostly on the card table, the mantelpiece, the door handles and the kitchen. Émile was a conscientious cleaner it seems, because the furniture isn’t dusty. But we’ve got a partial print from Pierre junior on the desk, and a good one from a chair back. He must have pulled it up when he was working with his father. And there are four prints on the lid of a little writing desk in the bedroom, unknown male.’

‘Could be the doctor,’ said Adamsberg. ‘He would have done the consultation there.’

‘And we have another, different man in the kitchen, and a woman’s print in the bathroom, on the washbasin.’

‘There you are,’ said Noël. ‘Vaudel had a woman in the house.’

‘No, you’re wrong, Noël, no woman’s prints in the bedroom. The neighbours say he rarely went out. He got everything delivered and he also had his hairdresser, his bank manager and a men’s outfitter from the avenue come to the house. Same result for phone calls, nothing personal. He spoke to his son a couple of times a month, and it was always the son who made the first move to call him. Their longest conversation was four minutes sixteen seconds.’

‘He didn’t call Cologne at all?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘In Germany? No, why?’

‘Apparently he had an old flame, a German lady, getting on a bit now, a Frau Abster in Cologne.’

‘Doesn’t mean he didn’t sleep with the hairdresser.’

‘I didn’t say he didn’t.’

‘No, he didn’t have women callers, the neighbours are pretty sure about that. And in this road they all seem to know each other.’

‘How do you know about this Frau Abster?’

‘Émile gave me a love letter that he was supposed to post to her if Vaudel died.’

‘What does it say?’

‘It’s in German,’ said Adamsberg, taking it from his pocket and putting it on the table. ‘Froissy, you can handle that, can’t you?’

Froissy looked at it and frowned.

‘It says, more or less: Guard our empire, resist to the end, stay beyond attack .’

‘Unhappy love affair,’ Voisenet pronounced. ‘She was married to someone else.’

‘But then there’s this word in capitals at the end,’ said Froissy, ‘and it’s not in German.’

‘Some sort of code they used?’ said Adamsberg. ‘Some reference to a moment only they knew about?’

‘Oh, here we go,’ said Noël. ‘Secret words. Load of rubbish, girls like it, drives men up the wall.’

Froissy asked quickly if anyone wanted another coffee and some hands went up. Adamsberg thought that she too probably invented secret words, and that Noël’s remark had offended her, given that she had had plenty of love affairs, all of which turned toxic in record time.

‘Vaudel obviously didn’t think it was rubbish,’ said Adamsberg.

‘It could be a code,’ said Froissy, bending over the scrap of paper, ‘but anyway, it seems to be in Russian: KИCЛOBA. That’s Cyrillic script. Sorry, I don’t know any Russian. Not that many people do.’

‘I do a bit,’ said Estalère.

There was a stunned silence, which the young man did not seem to notice, since he was stirring his coffee.

‘How come you know Russian?’ said Maurel, almost accusingly.

‘I tried to learn it once. I only got as far as pronouncing the alphabet.’

‘But why Russian? Why not Spanish?’

‘I just felt like it.’

Adamsberg passed him the letter and Estalère concentrated. Even when he was concentrating, his eyes didn’t narrow. They remained wide open, looking on the world in surprise.

‘If you pronounce it properly it sounds something like “kisslover”,’ he said. ‘So if it is a secret love message, that would make sense: kiss, lover , that’s English for “ embrasser ”, “ amant ”.’

‘Of course,’ said Froissy.

‘Yeah, right,’ said Noël, taking the paper to have a look. ‘Put it on a letter, get the girls going.’

‘I thought you said just now codes were rubbish,’ Justin piped up. Noël smirked and gave the letter back to Adamsberg. Danglard came into the cafe, puffing, his cheeks rather flushed. The conversation went well, Adamsberg thought. She’s going to come to Paris, it’s just hit him, he’s in shock.

‘Anyway, all this stuff, love letters, horse shit, is beside the point,’ said Noël. ‘We’re still not getting anywhere. It’s like the dog hairs on the chair, long, white ones, Pyrenean mountain dog, the sort that slobbers all over you. And where does that leave us? Still in the dark.’

‘No, because it completes the information from the Kleenex,’ said Danglard.

Silence fell once more, arms were crossed, and a few furtive glances went round. Ah, thought Adamsberg, that’s what the commotion was about this morning.

‘Let’s have it then,’ he said.

‘The tissue was recent,’ Justin explained, ‘and there were traces on it.’

‘A tiny speck of the old man’s blood,’ said Voisenet.

‘And it was a used Kleenex…’

‘… so it was snotty.’

‘In other words, all the DNA you want.’

‘We meant to tell you last night when it came through, and we tried again this morning, but your mobile was off.’

‘The battery’s run down.’

Adamsberg looked around at their faces in turn and poured himself half a glass of wine, something he rarely did.