Fred Vargas - An Uncertain Place

‘That’s not what I’m after. I’m going to try and find the dark tunnel that links Vaudel to this village. We have to find it, Danglard, go right in and dig up the history and tear out its roots.’

‘So when are you going?’

‘In four hours from now. I couldn’t get a direct flight at this notice, so I’m flying to Venice, and getting the night train to Belgrade. I’ve reserved two places, and the embassy is trying to find me a translator.’

Danglard shook his head, looking hostile. ‘You’ll be too exposed. I’m coming with you.’

‘No, no way. It isn’t just the problem of the squad. If they really want to get me, and you come with me, you’ll go down with the ship. And if they do try to take me in, you’re the only person who could get me out of jail. It could take you ten years, so hang on in there. But meantime, keep away from me, keep right outside this. That way, I’m not going to contaminate you, or anyone else in the squad.’

‘I give in. If it’s a translator you want, Slavko’s grandson might fit the bill. Vladislav Moldovan. He works as an interpreter for research institutes. He’s a nice guy, like his grandfather. If I say it’s for Slavko, he’ll engineer some time off. When does the Venice-Belgrade train leave?’

‘Nine thirty-two this evening. I’m going home now to pick up a packet and my watches. It bothers me not to have the time.’

‘So what? – your watches are never right.’

‘That’s because I set them by Lucio – he goes out to piss in the garden every hour and a half. But it’s a bit approximate.’

‘You just need to do the opposite. Set your watches by a clock and then you’ll know the exact time Lucio pisses.’

Adamsberg looked at him in surprise.

‘But I don’t need to know when Lucio pisses. What use is that to me?’

Danglard signalled ‘drop it’, and handed him another file, a green one.

‘Here’s Radstock’s latest report. You can read it on the train. It’s augmented by the interrogation of Lord Clyde-Fox and some doubtful information about the Cuban friend, so-called. They’ve done some more precise analysis. All the shoes are French, except my uncle’s.’

‘Or maybe some cousin of your uncle, a Kisslover, or a Kisilovian.’

‘A Kiseljevian.’

‘How are these shoes supposed to have crossed the Channel?’

‘Smuggled in, by boat I guess, how else?’

‘It seems a lot of trouble to go to.’

‘But worth it. Highgate’s a very special place. Some of the shoes, four pairs at least, are no more than twelve years old, but Radstock has had problems trying to date the others. Twelve years could correspond to the time the Zerquetscher has been in action, assuming he started collecting around the age of seventeen. Which is a bit young to start creeping into undertakers’ parlours and cutting off feet. But chronologically, it could fit, because it would correspond to the gothic craze, heavy metal, old lace, horror movies, devil worship, sequins, zombies in evening dress and all that. It could be a sort of sympathetic impregnation.’

‘What on earth do you mean, Danglard?’

‘Goths,’ said Danglard. ‘Never heard of them?’

‘Gothic, like in the Middle Ages?’

‘No, goths as in the 1990s, and still today. You must have seen them. Young people who wear T-shirts with death’s heads and skeletons and blood.’

‘Oh. Yes. I know exactly what you mean,’ said Adamsberg, who had a vivid and ineradicable memory of Zerk’s T-shirt. ‘So Stock has a problem with the other shoes?’

‘Yes,’ said Danglard, rubbing his chin, which was clean-shaven on one side but had stubble on the other.

‘Why did you only shave on one side of your face?’ asked Adamsberg, interrupting himself.

Danglard stiffened, then went to the window to look at his reflection.

‘The bathroom light’s gone, I can’t see much on the left. I ought to get it fixed.’

Abstract, thought Adamsberg.

Danglard was waiting.

‘Do we have any here? Bayonet bulbs, sixty watt?’

‘In the store cupboard. Look here, time’s passing,’ said Adamsberg, tapping his wrist.

‘You changed the subject yourself. There are some feet that don’t fit a twelve-year time frame. Some of them belong to women with varnished toenails, a kind of varnish from before the 1990s. The analysis seems to point to the middle 1970s.’

‘Is Stock sure about that?’

‘Pretty much, he’s asked for more tests. There’s one pair of men’s shoes in ostrich leather, something very rare, very dear, and they stopped making them when our Zerquetscher was only ten. He’d have to be very precocious. And it gets worse. Some of them are maybe twenty-five or thirty years old. I know what you’re going to say,’ Danglard said, forestalling Adamsberg by lifting up his glass. ‘In your wretched village in the Pyrenees, even little boys used to make toads explode when they were practically in their cradles. But still.’

‘No, I wasn’t going to mention the toads.’

The idea of the toads, which small boys like himself used to make explode with a horrible burst of blood and guts, by forcing them to smoke a cigarette, brought Adamsberg back to the packet he had inherited from Zerk.

‘You really have started again, haven’t you?’ said Danglard, as Adamsberg lit his third cigarette.

‘That’s because you mentioned the toads.’

‘It’s always because of something. I’m giving up white wine. It’s over. This is my last glass.’

Adamsberg was dumbstruck. That Danglard should be in love, fine. That it was reciprocated, yes, one had to hope so. But if it was making him give up white wine, that was unbelievable.

‘I’m switching to red,’ the commandant announced. ‘It’s more vulgar but it’s less acid. The white’s destroying my stomach.’

‘Good thinking,’ said Adamsberg, who was curiously reassured by the thought that, after all, nothing changes, at least with Danglard.

Things were already bad enough without that.

‘Did you buy that packet?’ Danglard asked. ‘English cigarettes. Pretty stylish.’

‘It was my burglar from this morning. He left them behind. So anyway, either Zerk was such a precocious child that he could cut people’s feet off when he was two years old. Or some older figure took him on these morbid expeditions, and then he went on with it when he grew up. He could have been acting under someone’s influence since childhood.’

‘Manipulated?’

‘Why not? One can easily imagine some father figure behind all this, guiding him, filling some lack.’

‘Possibly. He’s registered as father unknown.’

‘We need to check out his background, see who he was in touch with, who he saw. He cleared his flat, left no clues.’

‘Naturally he would. You didn’t think he’d come and see us, did you?’

‘What about his mother, have they found her?’

‘Not yet. We have an address in Pau up to four years ago, then nothing.’

‘Her family?’

‘For now we can’t find anyone in the region called Louvois, but it’s only two days ago, commissaire , and we haven’t got all that many people on the job.’

‘What about Froissy and the phone records?’

‘Nothing doing. Louvois didn’t have a landline. Weill says he had a mobile, but we can’t find one registered in his name. Either someone gave it him, or he stole it. Froissy’ll have to check out the networks around his address, but that takes time.’

Adamsberg stood up abruptly, feeling impatient.

‘Danglard, can you tell me who’s in the Avignon team?’

Among Danglard’s feats of memory – who knew why he did it? – was that he could tell you more or less who was in all the police teams throughout France, adjusting his mental card index as people moved around to different postings.