Fred Vargas - An Uncertain Place

‘That sounded like me?’

‘Very. “ Everyone will know that Adamsberg abandoned his kid, and how the kid turned out. Because of you. You .” It sounded pretty convincing.’

‘And you thought it was me ?’

‘Naturally I did. Like the little shit you were when you came to see me, “to fuck up my life”. That’s what you promised, wasn’t it?’

‘So what did you do in the vault?’

‘I practically suffocated in there until the morning.’

‘And who found you?’

‘Veyrenc. He’d been tailing me all the time to try and stop me arresting you. Did you know that?’

Zerk looked out of the window. It was broad daylight by now.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Where are we going now? Fucking police headquarters, I suppose.’

‘Did you not notice that we’re driving away from Paris?’

‘So where’re we going?’

‘Where the road runs out. The seaside.’

‘OK,’ said Zerk, closing his eyes. ‘And what are we supposed to do there?’

‘Eat something. Warm ourselves by the sun. Look at the water.’

‘I’m in pain . That asshole really hurt me.’

‘I can’t give you any more painkillers for an hour or two. Try to sleep.’

Adamsberg stopped the car facing the sea, when the road ran into the sand. His wristwatches and the height of the sun indicated that it was about half past seven. The beach was smooth and deserted, stretching out into the distance, with no sign of life except for a few groups of silent white birds. He got out of the car quietly. The calm sea and cloudless blue sky seemed very provocative, not at all suited to these last ten days of savage turmoil. They were inappropriate too for the state of things between himself and Zerk, with distress and bemusement sprouting like wild grass on a rubbish heap. A great storm over the sea would have been better, with the dawn coming up like thunder and a mist hiding the horizon. But nature had decided otherwise, and if she had chosen this still perfection, he would absorb it for an hour. Anyway, his fatigue had left him now, and he felt wide awake. He lay down on the sand which was still cool from the night, and raised himself on one elbow. At this hour, Vlad would be at the kruchema . Possibly as high as a kite. He punched in his number.

‘ Dobro jutro , Vlad.’

‘ Dobro jutro , Adamsberg.’

‘Where’s your phone? I can’t hear you very well.’

‘On my pillow.’

‘Put it closer to your head.’

‘OK.’

‘ Hvala . Please tell Arandjel that Arnold Paole’s wild ride came to an end last night. But I think he’s satisfied, because he has massacred five great Plogojowitzes: Plögener, Vaudel-Plog, Plogerstein and two Plogans, a father and daughter in Finland. And the feet of Plogodrescu. The curse of the Paoles is at an end, and according to him, they’re all away now. Free. And on Highgate Hill, the tree is dying.’

‘Plog.’

‘There are two shroud-eaters left.’

‘They don’t trouble anyone. Arandjel says you just have to turn them face down and they’ll drop like mercury to the centre of the earth.’

‘I don’t intend to have anything to do with them.’

‘Wow,’ said Vlad, apropos of nothing.

‘Tell Arandjel, without fail. Are you going to stay in Kisilova for ever now?’

‘No, I’m expected at a conference in Munich tomorrow. I’m getting back on the straight and narrow, which as you know does not exist and is neither straight nor narrow.’

‘Plog. What does “ Loša sreća ” mean, Vlad? Paole said it when he fell to the ground.’

‘It means “bad luck”.’

Zerk was now sitting on the sand a few metres away, watching him patiently.

‘We’ll go to a medical centre to get your hands seen to,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Then we’ll go and have some coffee.’

‘What does “plog” mean?’

‘It’s like a drop of truth falling to earth,’ said Adamsberg, miming the action by raising and dropping his hand vertically. ‘And it falls in exactly the right spot,’ he said, plunging his index finger into the sand.

‘Oh,’ said Zerk, looking at the little hole. ‘And what if it falls here or here?’ he asked, plunging in a finger at random. ‘Not a real plog then?’

‘No, I suppose not.’

ADAMSBERG HAD STUCK A STRAW IN ZERK’S BOWL OF COFFEE, and buttered his bread for him.

‘Tell me about Josselin, Zerk.’

‘My name’s not Zerk.’

‘It’s the baptismal name I’ve given you. For me, just think about it, you’re only a week old. Like a newborn baby crying in a cot. Nothing more.’

‘Makes you only a week old too, so you’re no better’n me.’

‘So what will you call me?’

‘Don’t want to call you anything.’

Zerk sucked up some coffee through his straw and smiled unexpectedly, rather like Vlad’s sudden way of smiling, whether at his reply or the sound of the straw. His mother had been just the same, readily distracted from the business in hand at awkward moments. Which explained why he had been able to make love to her by the bridge over the Jaussène in the rain. Zerk was the product of a moment of distraction.

‘I don’t want to question you back at headquarters.’

‘But you’re going to question me all the same?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m going to answer like I would to the cops because, for me, that’s what you’ve been for twenty-nine years. A cop.’

‘That’s what I am, and that’s what I want. I want you to answer my questions just as you would the police.’

‘Well, I really liked Josselin. I met him in Paris four years ago, when he put my head right. Six months ago, things began to change.’

‘In what way?’

‘He started to go on at me that until I’d killed my father, I’d always amount to nothing. No, well, not literally kill, if you get my meaning.’

‘All right, I understand, Zerk.’

‘Before that I never bothered much about my father. I did think about it sometimes, but a cop’s son? Better forget it. Now and then, there’d be something about you in the papers, and my mother would be all proud, but not me. That’s it. But then Josselin started on at me. He said you were the root of all my problems and the reason I was such a failure, he could see all that in my head.’

‘How a failure?’

‘I dunno,’ said Zerk, sucking some more on the straw. ‘I don’t get bothered about anything much. Maybe like you and the light bulb in your house.’

‘So what did Josselin say?’

‘He said I should “confront” you and do you down. “Purge the system” he called it, as if there was all this rotten stuff inside me, and the rotten stuff was you. I didn’t like that idea.’

‘Why not?’

‘Dunno. I didn’t really feel like it – all this purging stuff seemed a lot of hassle to me. And I couldn’t feel any big heap of rubbish anyway, I didn’t know where it was supposed to be. But Josselin said, oh yes, it was right there inside me, and if I didn’t get rid of it, it would start to rot me from within. So I stopped arguing with him, because it made him cross, and he was cleverer than me. I listened. Few more sessions like that, I started to believe him. In the end, I really did believe him.’

‘So what did you decide to do?’

‘Get rid of the rubbish, but I didn’t know how you did something like that. He never told me. He said he’d help me. But he said, one way or another, I’d bump into you one day. And he was right, I did.’

‘Well, naturally, Zerk, because he’d planned it all out.’

‘Yeah, suppose so,’ said Zerk, after a moment.

Not a quick thinker, said Adamsberg to himself, feeling rather annoyed to be even a little in agreement with Josselin. Because if Zerk wasn’t very bright, whose fault was that? His gestures were slow too. He had only drunk half his coffee, but then so had Adamsberg.