Fred Vargas - An Uncertain Place

‘Your investigation, your actions, who you met, the direction you were taking.’

‘But why?’

Veyrenc made a gesture indicating: next question.

‘And you really followed me?’

‘I was here when you got to Belgrade with that young man covered in hair.’

‘Vladislav, the translator. It’s fur really, he inherited it from his mother.’

‘So he said. One of my friends was assigned to eavesdrop on you on the train.’

‘The elegant woman, wealthy-looking. Nice body, pity about the face, was what Vlad said.’

‘She isn’t actually wealthy. She was acting a part.’

‘Well, tell her to try a bit harder, because I spotted her before we left Paris. But when we got to Belgrade, how did you know where I was going? She wasn’t on the bus.’

‘Called a colleague in the Overseas Missions Department, who told me where you were going. An hour after you’d reserved your tickets, I knew your final destination was Kiseljevo.’

‘You can’t trust cops further than you can throw them.’

‘No, as you well know.’

Adamsberg folded his arms, and dropped his head. The white shirt Danica had found for him was embroidered around the collar and on the cuffs and he stared at the shiny lace patterns the yellow and red threads made on his wrists. Perhaps that was what Slavko’s slippers had looked like.

‘Was it by any chance Mordent who passed on the information? And asked you to follow me?’

‘Mordent? Why would it be Mordent?’

‘You don’t know? He’s off work with depression.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘What it’s to do with, is his daughter: she’s due in court. What it’s to do with, is the hierarchy that doesn’t want us to catch the killer. And has somehow corrupted the squad. They’ve got their hooks into Mordent. Every man has his price.’

‘Where would you rate mine?’

‘Pretty high, I’d think.’

‘Thanks very much.’

‘Whereas Mordent’s treachery is utterly cack-handed.’

‘Doesn’t have a vocation for it, I expect.’

‘Still, he gets there in the end. A little cartridge case planted under the fridge, some pencil shavings on the carpet.’

‘No idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know any details about the case. Was that why you let the suspect go? You were under pressure to?’

‘Do you mean Émile?’

‘No, the other one.’

‘I didn’t let Zerk go,’ said Adamsberg firmly.

‘Who’s Zerk?’

‘The Crusher, the Zerquetscher . The man who killed Vaudel and Plögener.’

‘And who’s Plögener?’

‘The Austrian who suffered the same fate five months ago. I see you don’t know anything about all this. And yet it was you that opened the vault in Kisilova.’

Veyrenc smiled. ‘You’ll never really trust me, will you?’

‘If I can get to understand you, I might.’

‘I flew to Belgrade, then I took a taxi and got to Kisilova before you.’

‘How come you weren’t spotted in the village?’

‘I slept in a hut in the clearing. I saw you go past the first day.’

‘When I found Peter Plogojowitz.’

‘Who is he?’

And Veyrenc’s ignorance seemed genuine.

‘Look, Veyrenc,’ said Adamsberg standing up, ‘if you don’t know who Peter Plogojowitz was, you really have no business here. Unless – and please tell me why – you somehow thought I was in danger.’

‘I didn’t come here with any intention of getting you out of the vault. I didn’t come with any idea of helping you. On the contrary.’

‘That’s better,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Now we’re getting warmer, I can understand you better.’

‘But I couldn’t let you die in that tomb. You do believe me about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought the danger came from you. I followed you when you went to the mill, I saw the hire car on the road, registered in Belgrade. I thought it was yours. I didn’t know where you meant to go, so I got into the boot. But I was wrong. I ended up being driven like you to that blessed graveyard. He had a gun and I didn’t. I waited and watched. Like I said, he came back several times to check. I couldn’t do anything till quite well into the morning. Almost too late. Another couple of hours and you really would have been a centaur. A stone one.’

Adamsberg sat down again and re-examined the embroidery on his shirt. He didn’t want to look at Veyrenc’s smile, or allow himself to be enveloped by him as surely as in the rolls of duct tape.

‘So you saw Zerk.’

‘Yes and no. I didn’t get out of the boot until a while after you, and I went some distance away. I could see your outlines, that’s all. I could make out his leather jacket and boots.’

‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg, biting his lips. ‘That’s Zerk.’

‘If by Zerk you mean the Garches murderer, OK, yes, it was Zerk. If by Zerk you mean the young guy who came to see you at home on Wednesday morning, that wasn’t him.’

‘Were you there that morning too?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t do anything? But it was the same man, Veyrenc. Zerk is Zerk.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘You’re not making any more sense than you were.’

‘ Have you changed from the past, is clarity your god? ’

Adamsberg got up, took the packet of Morava from the mantelpiece, and lit a cigarette from the fire.

‘You smoke now?’

‘Zerk’s fault. He left a packet with me. And I’ll go on smoking till I get him under lock and key.’

‘So why did you let him go?’

‘Just don’t bug me, Veyrenc, he was armed, I wasn’t, I couldn’t do anything.’

‘No? Couldn’t you have called up reinforcements when he’d gone? Surrounded the district? Why didn’t you?’

‘None of your business.’

‘You let him go because you weren’t certain he was the Garches murderer.’

‘I was absolutely certain he was. You don’t know anything about the investigation. So let me tell you, Zerk left his DNA in Garches on a Kleenex. And that was the same DNA that came walking in on two legs to my house on Wednesday, with the clear purpose of killing me, that morning or some other time. And let me tell you that boy is bad through and through. He didn’t once deny the murder.’

‘He didn’t?’

‘On the contrary, he was proud of it. And he went back there just to stamp on a kitten with his boot. And he wears a T-shirt covered with vertebrae and drops of blood.’

‘Yes, I know about that, I watched him go.’

Veyrenc took a cigarette from the packet, lit it and paced around the room like an obstinate wild boar. All the sweetness had vanished from his face. Adamsberg observed him. Veyrenc was protecting Zerk. So Veyrenc must be in league with Emma Carnot. Veyrenc must be waiting to push him into a hole, like all those others. But in that case, why rescue him from the vault? To get him eliminated legally?

‘Let me tell you something, Adamsberg. Thirty years ago, a certain Gisèle Louvois got herself pregnant, down by the little bridge over the Jaussène. You know where I mean. And let me tell you that she went to Pau to hide the pregnancy, and gave birth there to a boy, Armel Louvois.’

‘Zerk. Yes, I know all that, Veyrenc.’

‘Because he told you.’

‘No.’

‘Yes, he did. Because he’s got it into his head that it was you that made his mother pregnant. He must have talked to you about it when he came. He’s thought of nothing else for months.’

‘All right, yes, he did. All right, he’s got it into his head. Or rather his mother must have put it into his head.’

‘And rightly so.’

Veyrenc came back to the fireplace, threw his cigarette into the flames and knelt down to poke the fire. Adamsberg now felt no gratitude at all for his former colleague. He had certainly torn off all that tape, but now he was trying to tie him up all over again.