Fred Vargas - An Uncertain Place

‘When did you bump into me then?’

‘The first thing was this phone call, in the night of Monday to Tuesday, after that nasty murder in Garches. This man I didn’t know, he told me my photo would be in the papers next day, and I was going to be accused of the murder, and I’d better beat it and vanish from sight. And after that, things would be sorted out, and he’d get back to me.’

‘That will have been Mordent. One of my officers.’

‘Ah, so he wasn’t lying. He was like, “I’m a friend of your father’s, so for Pete’s sake do what I say.” Because I was thinking I should just go to the cops, and say there must have been some mistake. But Louis always told me to keep my distance from the cops as much as I could.’

‘Louis?’

Zerk looked up in amazement. ‘Louis. Louis Veyrenc.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Adamsberg, ‘Veyrenc.’

‘He should know, shouldn’t he? So I left home and I went to Josselin’s. Where else could I go? My mother lives in Poland now, and Louis was down in Laubazac. Josselin always said his door was open to me if ever I was in trouble. And that’s when he put the knife in. But I was up for it, that’s for sure.’

‘How did he put it?’

‘He said it was now or never. He said to take advantage of this misunderstanding, it must be destiny. Destiny only stops for a minute in the station, so jump on the train. Only idiots stay on the platform. That’s what he said.’

‘Well put.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’

‘But wrong. Anyway, did he rehearse you what to say?’

‘No, but he told me how to act, really make you see that I existed, and you had to understand that I was stronger than you. He said what that would do would be, it’d make you feel really guilty, that was bound to happen. He was like, “This is your day, Armel. After this you’ll be a new man. Go ahead, don’t be afraid to come on strong.” I liked that. “Go ahead, purge, exist, it’s your day.” I’d never heard anything like that – go ahead, purge, exist. I really liked how that sounded.’

‘Where did you get the T-shirt?’

‘He went out and bought it for me, he said I wouldn’t be impressive enough in my scruffy old shirt. I spent the night at his place, but I was too worked up to sleep. I was going over stuff in my head. He gave me some pills.’

‘Uppers?’

‘Dunno, didn’t ask. One pill at night, and two in the morning before I went out. I was already feeling like a new man. And the pile of rubbish, yeah, I could see that, plain as daylight. This feeling, it kept getting stronger. I could really have murdered you. And you’d have killed me,’ he added, suddenly sounding like the gothic Zerk.

The young man looked away. He took a cigarette and Adamsberg lit it for him.

‘Would you really have killed me with that horrible potion?’

‘What did it look like to you?’

‘Some fucking poison in a bottle.’

‘Nitrocitraminic acid.’

‘Yeah, if you say so.’

‘But what else did it look like?’

‘Dunno. Free sample of aftershave or something.’

‘That’s exactly what it was.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ gasped Zerk. ‘You’re just saying that because today, now, you’re ashamed. You were locked in your study. You wouldn’t keep aftershave in your study, would you?’

‘You locked me up, forgetting that cops have pass keys. I went into the bathroom to get it. Nitrocitraminic acid doesn’t exist. You can check.’

‘Shit,’ said Zerk, sucking up more coffee.

‘What is perfectly true on the other hand is that you shouldn’t push a gun so far down your trousers.’

‘Yeah, I can see that.’

‘Did you really have TB, only one kidney, all that stuff?’

‘No. I did have ringworm once.’

‘OK, go on.’

‘Well, when I had to fish the cat out from under the boxes, that distracted me. Or maybe it was that old Spanish guy and his arm. I sort of came round as if I’d been drunk. I was getting a bit tired of all this ranting. But I did want to go on, all the same. I wanted to carry on bullshitting until you fell on your knees and begged me to stop. Josselin told me that if I didn’t keep yelling at you, I was finished. If I didn’t get you down on the floor, it was all over with me. I’d have that shit inside me for ever. And it’s true, I did feel better afterwards.’

‘But you were still in deep trouble.’

‘Bloody right I was, like the cat in the garden. I was waiting for them to find the DNA didn’t match. Or for this mystery man to call me back. But nothing happened.’

‘You never thought it might be a trap set by Josselin?’

‘No. He was hiding me, wasn’t he? I was in this box room in his apartment, strict orders not to come out because of his patients.’

‘After you left me, if you’d come out of your room between nine and midday, you’d have found me with him. I came to talk to him. I imagine Josselin must have appreciated the situation. He had us both under his roof, and he was manipulating the pair of us. But he did make me feel better and he got rid of my tinnitus. We’re going to miss him, Zerk, he really has got golden fingers.’

‘No way will I miss him. No way.’

‘So what happened next? That day?’

‘He came to fetch me out at lunchtime, he made me tell him everything, he wanted all the details, what I’d said exactly, he was having a great time, he seemed happy for me. He took away the T-shirt and cooked a nice meal to celebrate. He said not to worry about the DNA, it would just be a wrong analysis and that the cops would take some time to spot it. But I was starting not to believe that. I wanted to call Louis but I couldn’t switch on my mobile. Yeah, Josselin had a landline, but if the cops knew Louis was my uncle, they might have been listening in. I started to think someone was after me, trying to ruin my life. Was it him got the tissue?’

‘Yes, it was easy, and the hairs from your dog, Tintin. We found them on the chair in Garches. The same chair he pinned you to yesterday. I wondered where he could have got them, though. Did he ever come to see you at home?’

‘No, never.’

‘When you went to see him, did he take your coat?’

‘I just left my shoes in the hall, nothing else.’

‘Nothing else? Think.’

‘No. Yeah. A couple of times, he got me to take off my trousers to check my knees.’

‘Recently?’

‘No, couple of months ago.’

‘That’d be when he got hold of the handkerchief and the dog hairs. You never thought anything of it?’

‘No, why would I? Josselin had been helping me get my head straight for four years, why would I think he would harm me? He was on my side, with his wretched golden fingers. He got me to think he really liked me, but the truth was he thought I was a pathetic dickhead. Nobody cares if you live or die, was what he said to me last night.’

‘ Loša sreća , Zerk, he had taken on himself the destiny of Arnold Paole.’

‘He wasn’t making that up, it was the truth. He really was a descendant of Paole. He told me that in the car when we were driving to Garches. He wasn’t kidding.’

‘No, I know that. He’s an authentic Paole, in the direct paternal line. What I mean is, he became as sick as the great-great-whatever-grandfather, the one who ate earth from the graveyard to protect himself against Peter Plogojowitz. What else did he tell you?’

‘That I was going to die, but by dying I’d be part of his great scheme for exterminating all these people who were under a curse, and that this would be a good death for a useless person like me. What he said was, there was this horrible other family, and it had been infecting his family for three hundred years, so he was going to put a stop to it. He said he was born with two teeth, and that was proof that he had this evil in him, but it was all these other people’s fault. But I couldn’t understand everything he was saying. He was like, talking too quickly, and I was afraid the car was going to crash.’