Fred Vargas - An Uncertain Place

‘Course I am, it’s all on the Internet. Pictures of you, your famous cases. Like when you chased that guy in Lorient and he threw himself into the harbour.’

‘He didn’t drown.’

There was another more urgent and panicky sound of mewing.

‘What the fuck’s the matter with that cat?’

‘She’s probably in trouble. Just had her first litter and doesn’t know what to do. Maybe she’s lost one of the kittens somewhere. Take no notice.’

‘You say take no notice, because you’re a cold bastard, you don’t care about anyone.’

‘OK, Zerketch , go and see.’

‘Ha! And let you get away, scumbag?’

‘All right, lock me in the study, the window’s barred. You take your guns with you, and you go and see. If you’re not a cold bastard like me, go on, prove it.’

The young man inspected the study, keeping the gun trained on Adamsberg.

‘Don’t you dare budge from there.’

‘If you do find a kitten, lift it from underneath or by the scruff of the neck, not by the head.’

‘Ha,’ laughed the young man, ‘hark at Adamsberg, fussy as the cat’s mother.’

He laughed again and locked the study door. Adamsberg listened to what was happening in the garden and heard the sound of wooden boxes being moved and then Lucio’s voice.

‘The wind blew these boxes over,’ he said, ‘and there’s a kitten trapped underneath. Come on, hombre , you can see I’ve only got one arm. Who are you anyway? And what are all these guns for?’

Lucio’s imperious voice was probing the ground.

‘I’m a relation. He’s teaching me to shoot.’

Not bad, Adamsberg thought. Lucio respected the family. He heard the sound of the boxes being moved and a tiny mewing sound.

‘See it?’ Lucio said. ‘Is it hurt? I can’t stand the sight of blood.’

‘Yeah, well, I like it fine.’

‘ Hombre , if you’d seen your old grandad shot in the stomach, and if you’d seen your own arm cut off and spraying blood like a fountain, you wouldn’t say that. What did your mother teach you? Pass me that kitten, I don’t trust you.’

Gently does it, Lucio, Adamsberg muttered to himself, clenching his teeth. That’s the Zerquetscher you’ve got out there, can’t you see, he could blow up any moment? He might trample on the kitten and cut you up in the tool shed. Shut up, take the kitten and get out of it.

The door banged and the young man came stamping back into the study.

‘Stupid bloody kitten under some boxes, couldn’t even find its way out. Like you,’ he added, sitting down facing Adamsberg. ‘Your neighbour’s no fun, I prefer Weill.’

‘Look, Zerketch , I’ve got to get out. Sitting still too long makes me edgy. It’s the only thing that does. But it makes me really edgy.’

‘No kidding,’ scoffed the young man. waving the gun. ‘So the cop’s had enough, the cop wants to get out.’

‘That’s right, you got it. See this bottle?’

Adamsberg was holding a little glass tube filled with liquid, no bigger than a perfume sample.

‘If I were you, I wouldn’t touch the gun till you hear what I’ve got to say. See the cork? I take it off and you’ll be dead. In less than a second, in 74.3 hundredths of a second to be precise.’

‘You bastard,’ said the young man. ‘Is that why you’re so pleased with yourself? Why you aren’t scared?’

‘I haven’t finished explaining. The time it takes for you to slip the safety catch on your gun is 65 hundredths of a second, and then to press the trigger, 59 hundredths. Time for the bullet to hit, 32 hundredths. Total: one point fifty-six seconds. Result, you’re dead before the bullet hits me.’

‘What’s that bloody stuff?’ The young man had stood up and was walking backwards, holding his hand towards Adamsberg.

‘Nitrocitraminic acid. Turns into a lethal gas on contact with air.’

‘So you’ll snuff it with me, fucker.’

‘I still haven’t finished explaining. All us cops in the squad get immunised by a special course of injections for two months, and believe me that’s no picnic. If I push the top off, you’ll die – your heart will dilate and burst – but what will happen to me is I’ll be sick, and empty my guts out for three weeks, and I’ll have a skin rash, and lose my hair. But after that I’ll recover.’

‘You wouldn’t do it.’

‘In your case, Zerquetscher , like a shot.’

‘You son of a bitch.’

‘Yes.’

‘You can’t kill a man like that.’

‘Yes I can.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Put the guns down. Open that drawer in the chest, take out two pairs of handcuffs. You put one pair on your wrists, the other on your feet. Hurry up, I said I was getting edgy.’

‘Fucking cop.’

‘Yes. But get a move on. Maybe I shovel clouds up there, but down here I can be quick.’

The young man swept the table with his arm, scattering papers round the room, and threw the holster on the ground. Then he put his hand behind his back.

‘Careful with the P38. If you stick it in your waistband, you shouldn’t push it in so far, especially in tight jeans. One false move and you’ll shoot yourself in the backside.’

‘You think I’m a baby!’

‘Yes, you are a baby, a kid who’s lost it. But not an idiot.’

‘If I hadn’t let you get dressed, you wouldn’t have that bottle.’

‘Correct.’

‘But I didn’t want to look at you with your kit off.’

‘Oh really? Same thing for Vaudel, you didn’t want to look at him with his kit off, as you put it, either?’

The young man carefully pulled the P38 from his trousers and dropped it to the floor. He opened the drawer and took out the handcuffs, then turned round suddenly with a burst of strange laughter, as irritating as the cat’s mewing earlier.

‘You don’t get it, do you, Adamsberg? You still don’t get it. You think I’d risk getting arrested? Just for the pleasure of seeing you? You don’t understand that if I’m here it’s because you can’t arrest me. Not today, not tomorrow, never. Don’t you remember why I’m here?’

‘You said you wanted to fuck up my life.’

‘Yeah.’

Adamsberg had stood up too, holding the bottle in front of him like a chisel, his fingernail under the lid. The two men turned around each other, like two dogs looking for a chance to pounce.

‘Give it up,’ said the young man. ‘You don’t know who my father is. You can’t kill me, you can’t shut me up, and you can’t go on chasing me.’

‘Why not? Are you untouchable? Who is your father then? A government minister? The Pope? God perhaps?’

‘No, scumbag, it’s you.’

ADAMSBERG STOPPED IN MID-MOVEMENT, DROPPED HIS ARM, and the bottle rolled on to the red tiled floor.

‘Shit! The bottle!’ shouted the young man.

Adamsberg picked it up automatically. He was looking for a word that meant ‘someone who makes up a story and then believes it’, but he couldn’t think of it. Fatherless kids who go round saying they’re the son of royalty, or the son of Elvis, or a descendant of Julius Caesar. One notorious gangster had had eighteen fathers, including famous politicians like Jean Jaurès, and he changed them all the time. Mythomaniac, that was it. And people said you shouldn’t shatter the illusions of a mythomaniac, it was dangerous, like waking a sleepwalker.

‘Well, while you’re about it,’ he said, ‘you might have found a better father than me. Not very interesting, is it, to be the son of a cop?’

‘So, Commissaire Adamsberg,’ the young man laughed as if he hadn’t heard a word, ‘father of the Zerquetscher ! Don’t like that, do you? But that’s how it is, motherfucker. One day the long-lost son comes back, he crushes his father, he takes over the throne. You know stories like that, don’t you? So his father has to go away with nothing, and beg on the streets.’