Fred Vargas - An Uncertain Place

‘That’s no doubt what she’s trying to do.’

‘I’ve looked, Adamsberg. I can’t find any records of a marriage, or of any link between her and the Garches affair, or the Pressbaum one either. No marriage, well, perhaps I’m not entirely sure about that.’

Weill clicked his tongue and savoured the brief pause.

‘The page that corresponds to her maiden name at the town hall which should be the right one, because she was born in Auxerre, has been quite simply cut out of the register. The clerk says that a woman from “the ministry” asked to see the register recently, something to do with “national security”. I think our Emma Carnot is panicking. I can smell fear. A woman with jet-black hair, the clerk said. Golden rule number four: never use a wig, it’s ridiculous. So what we have is a marriage which has been removed from the public record.’

‘The killer is only twenty-nine, though.’

‘Could be the son of the marriage. She might be protecting him. Or trying to make sure her son’s crazy actions don’t get in the way of her career.’

‘But, Weill, the mother of our Zerk has a name, she’s called Gisèle Louvois.’

‘Yes, I know. But what if Carnot discreetly had a baby adopted – for a hefty consideration?’

‘All right, Weill, so we’ve arrived at the seventh rung – what do we do next?’

‘We get hold of Carnot’s DNA, we compare it to the Kleenex from the crime scene and see where that gets us. It’s easy, the waste-paper baskets at the Council of State are taken out every morning to the Place du Palais Royal. On days when there’s been a meeting, there will be water bottles, plastic cups and so on provided for the members of the council. Hers will be there and we can identify it. They’ve got a meeting this week. Disconnect your mobile now, commissaire , and only put it back on tomorrow morning at nine, without fail.’

‘OK, without fail,’ said Adamsberg, feeling suddenly greatly relieved to learn that the vice-president of the Council of State might have given birth to Zerk. Because whereas he had no recollection of ever having made love to a girl called Gisèle, he was one hundred per cent certain never to have slept with the vice-president of the Council of State.

He switched off and took the battery out of Weill’s mobile.

Tomorrow, nine o’clock. He would have to explain to the landlady of the kruchema why he was going out early. He bit his lip. He had sworn to Zerk, in good faith, that he always remembered the names and faces of any women with whom he had made love. And this was only yesterday. He concentrated, trying out all the words he had picked up: kruchema, kafa, danica, hvala . Danica, that was it. He stopped at the door of the mill, suddenly struck by a new anxiety. Now, what was the name of the soldier whose life Peter Plogojowitz had fucked up? He had remembered when he started walking by the river. But Weill’s phone call had pushed it to the back of his mind. He gripped his head in his hands, but with no result at all.

The noise came from behind, like a sack being dragged along the ground. Adamsberg turned round. He was not alone in the mill.

‘Fancy seeing you, scumbag,’ came a voice from the gloom.

WHAT BROUGHT ADAMSBERG BACK TO CONSCIOUSNESS WAS a series of rasping sounds from a roll of tape. Zerk was trussing him up in the kind of heavy-duty tape removal men use. His legs were already immobilised when he was hauled out of the mill and into a car parked about twenty metres away.

How long had he been lying there, tied up on the floor of the mill? Until darkness had fallen, for it must be about nine at night now. He could move his feet, but the rest of him was firmly wrapped like a mummy. His wrists were pinned together, and his mouth sealed. The man was just a dark shape. But he could hear the leather jacket creaking, and the heavy breathing resulting from the effort of dragging him, just sounds without any meaning. Then came a short ride on the back seat of the car, less than a kilometre he estimated, before they stopped. Zerk was now pulling him by his wrists, as if his arms were the handle of a huge basket. He dragged him about thirty metres, stopping five times; gravel crunched under Adamsberg’s body. The man dropped him suddenly, puffing from the exertion and muttering. A door opened.

Gravel under his back, scratching him through his shirt. Where had he seen any sharp gravel in Kisilova? Black gravel, different from the kind you saw in France. The man had turned a key, a large old key by the heavy metallic sound. He came back, took hold of the arm-handle again and brutally hauled Adamsberg down a few stone steps, letting him fall to the ground at the bottom. A beaten earth floor. Zerk cut the tape round his wrists, and removed his jacket and shirt, by cutting them with a knife. Adamsberg tried to react, but he was already too weak. His legs were bound and cold, and the man’s boot was on his chest. Then more tape, round his torso now, pinning his arms to his sides. A few steps sounded and Zerk closed the door without a word. The intense cold was a contrast to the warm night outside and the darkness was absolute. It must be some kind of cellar without any grating.

‘Know where you are, scumbag? Why couldn’t you leave me alone?’

The voice reached him in a distorted form, as if on an old-fashioned radio.

‘I know your tricks now, mister policeman, I’m taking precautions. You’re in there and I’m out here. I’ve put a speaker under the door. That’s how you can hear me. But if you yell, nobody will hear you, so don’t even bother. No one ever comes this way. The door’s ten centimetres thick and the walls are like a fortress. It’s a real bunker.’

Zerk gave a short expressionless laugh.

‘And you know why? Because you’re in a tomb, scumbag. In the best sealed tomb in all Kisilova. Nobody ever gets out. I’ll tell you where you are because you can’t see it, so you can imagine it before you die. You’ve got four coffins stacked up on one side and five on the other. Nine dead bodies. Nice, huh? And the one to your right, if you were to open it, I don’t think you’d find a skeleton. No, perhaps a nice fresh body bursting with juices. She’s called Vesna and she’s a man-eater. Maybe she’d take a fancy to you.’

Another laugh.

Adamsberg closed his eyes. Zerk. But where had he been hiding these last two days? In the woods, in one of the old woodcutter’s cabins perhaps. But what did that matter now? Zerk must have followed him; now he’d found him and it was all over. Unable to move an inch, Adamsberg could already feel his muscles seizing up and the cold penetrating his body. Zerk was right, nobody would come into the old cemetery, absolutely not. The place had been abandoned after the panic of 1725, as Arandjel had explained. People didn’t dare go there, not even to prop up their ancestors’ tombstones when they fell over. And that’s where he was, eight hundred metres outside the village, in the vault where Plogojowitz’s nine victims had been entombed, built far away from the other graves, and which nobody would go near. Except Arandjel. But what would Arandjel know about his situation? Nothing. Vladislav? Nothing. Danica might start to worry when he didn’t return to the kruchema . He had missed the evening meal, kobasice she had promised. But what could Danica do? Go and find Vladislav. Who might go and find Arandjel. But what then? Where would they think of looking? Along the banks of the Danube for instance. But who would ever imagine that a dark-intentioned Zerk had tied him up and locked him in a vault in the old cemetery? Arandjel might just think of it as a last resort. But only in a week or ten days. Perhaps he might even have been able to survive that long without food or drink. But Zerk was no fool. Tied up in the cold vault, his blood would congeal in his limbs: he could already feel himself getting numb. He wouldn’t last two days. Maybe not even until tomorrow. Don’t go into the world of the vampiri without knowing what you’re doing, young man . With a strength of feeling prompted by deep fear, how he missed it all now. The lime tree, the Carpathians, the sun glinting off the little glass of rakija .