An Uncertain Place

III

DCI RADSTOCK WAS UTTERING A CONSTANT STREAM OF growls and grumbles, and gripping the wheel tightly, as he drove fast up to the old cemetery in north London. Of all things, they had had to bump into Clyde-Fox. First this nutter wanted them to check whether someone else’s foot had got into his shoes. And now they were on their way to Highgate because His Lordship had fallen off his ridge and had a vision. There wouldn’t be any shoes in front of the cemetery, any more than there were strange feet in Clyde-Fox’s own footwear.

But Radstock certainly didn’t want to go up there alone. Not when he was a few months from retirement. He had had some difficulty persuading the amiable ‘Donglarde’ to go with him: it was as if the Frenchman was reluctant to embark on this particular expedition. But how would a Frenchman know anything about Highgate, anyway? On the other hand, he had had no trouble with Adamsberg, who was perfectly willing to agree to a detour. This French commissaire seemed to go around in a peaceful and conciliatory state of being only half awake. One wondered whether even his profession engaged his attention. Their young colleague, however, was the exact opposite: his wide eyes were glued to the window, as he goggled at the sights of London. In Radstock’s view, this Estalère fellow was a halfwit: it was a wonder they had let him come to the conference at all.

‘Couldn’t you have sent a couple of your men?’ asked Danglard, who was still looking vexed.

‘I can’t send a team off just because Clyde-Fox has started seeing things, Donglarde. After all, he’s a man who tried to eat pictures of his mother. But we do have to go and check, don’t we?’

No, Danglard didn’t think they were obliged to do any such thing. He was happy to be in London, happy to be dressed like an Englishman, and especially happy that a woman had been paying him attention, from the first day of the conference. He had given up expecting such a miracle years ago, and having fatalistically accepted that he would never have any more dealings with women, had not made the first approach himself. She had come up to him, had smiled at him, and found excuses to meet up with him at the conference. If he was not much mistaken, that is. Danglard was wondering how such a thing could be possible, torturing himself with questions. He found himself endlessly going over the tiniest signs that could confirm or invalidate his hopes. He classified them, estimated them, manipulated them to see how reliable they were, as one tries the ice gingerly before venturing on to it. He was examining them for consistency, for possible meaning and trying to decide whether they were encouraging, yes or no. So much so that the signs were becoming more insubstantial the more he worried away at them. He needed some further clues. And at this very moment, the woman in question was no doubt in the hotel bar with the other people from the conference. Now that he had been whisked off on Radstock’s expedition, he would miss her.

‘Why do we need to check? Your Lord Clyde-Fox was indeed as drunk as a lord,’ said Danglard, proud of his command of English idiom.

‘Because it’s Highgate,’ said the chief inspector through gritted teeth.

Danglard gave a start, feeling cross with himself. His intense speculation about the woman at the conference had prevented him reacting to the name ‘Highgate’. He looked up as if to reply, but Radstock cut him off with a wave of the hand.

‘No, Donglarde, you wouldn’t understand,’ he said in the sad, bitter and resigned tones of an old soldier, who can’t expect other people to share his war memories. ‘You weren’t at Highgate. I was.’

‘But I do understand. Both why you didn’t want to go there, and why you’re going there all the same.’

‘With respect, Donglarde, that would very much surprise me.’

‘I know what happened at Highgate Cemetery.’

Radstock shot him a look of astonishment.

‘Danglard knows everything,’ Estalère explained contentedly from the back of the car.

Sitting next to his young colleague on the back seat, Adamsberg was listening to the conversation, picking up the odd word. It was clear that Danglard knew quantities of things about this ‘Highgate’, of which he, Adamsberg, was quite ignorant. That was normal, as long as you regarded the prodigious extent of Danglard’s knowledge as normal. Commandant Danglard was very different from what might be called a ‘normal educated man’. He was a man of phenomenal erudition, controlling a complex network of infinite and encyclopedic knowledge which, in Adamsberg’s opinion, had ended up by taking over his entire being, replacing each of his organs one by one, so that you wondered how Danglard managed to move around like an ordinary mortal. Perhaps that was why he did find it hard to walk, and never strolled. On the other hand, he was sure to be able to tell you the name of the man who had eaten his wardrobe. Adamsberg looked at Danglard’s imprecise profile, at that moment subject to a kind of trembling which indicated the ongoing process of knowledge retrieval. No doubt about it, the commandant was quickly passing in review his compendious collection of facts about Highgate. At the same time he was desperately preoccupied by something else: the woman at the conference of course, on account of whom his mind was dealing with a whirlwind of questions. Adamsberg turned towards the British colleague whose name he could never remember. Something Stock. He was not thinking about a woman, nor scanning his mind for information. Stock was quite simply scared.

‘Danglard,’ said Adamsberg, tapping him on the shoulder, ‘Stock doesn’t want to go and see these shoes.’

‘I’ve already told you that he can pick up bits of French. Speak in code please.’

Adamsberg obeyed. In order not to be understood by Radstock, Danglard had advised him to speak very fast and in an even tone, slurring his syllables, but this kind of exercise was impossible for Adamsberg, who pronounced his words as slowly as he placed his feet when pacing about.

‘No, he doesn’t want to go at all,’ said Danglard in this same fastspeak. ‘He has certain memories of the place and he wants nothing to do with it.’

‘What do you mean, “the place”?’

‘One of the most romantic and baroque cemeteries in the Western world, absolutely over the top, an artistic and macabre fantasy. It’s full of Gothic tombs, burial vaults, Egyptian sculptures, excommunicated people and murderers. All tangled together in one of those rambling English gardens. It’s unique, a bit too unique, a place where madness lurks.’

‘OK, I get it, Danglard. But what happened in this tangled garden?’

‘Ghastly events, and yet nothing much. But it’s the kind of “nothing much” that can traumatise anyone who witnesses it. That’s why they put watchmen on it at night. That’s why our colleague doesn’t want to go there on his own, that’s why we’re in this car, instead of having a nice quiet drink in our hotel.’

‘A nice quiet drink. Who with, Danglard?’

Danglard pulled a face. The complex threads of other people’s lives did not escape the notice of Adamsberg, even if those threads were whispers, minute sensations, puffs of air. The commissaire had spotted the woman at the conference. And while Danglard had been going over every little incident obsessively, so much so as to blank them out, Adamsberg must already have formed a firm impression.

‘With her,’ said Adamsberg into the silence. ‘The woman who chews the arms of her red spectacles, the woman who keeps looking at you. It says “Abstract” on her badge. Is that her first name?’

Danglard smiled. If the only woman who had ever made eyes at him in ten years was called ‘Abstract’, that would have been painfully appropriate.

‘No, it’s her job. She’s supposed to collect and distribute summaries of the papers. They call them “abstracts”.’

‘Ah, I see. So what is her name?’

‘I haven’t asked.’

‘But you need to know her name before anything else.’

‘No, before anything else I want to know what’s going on inside her head.’

‘Because you don’t know?’ asked Adamsberg, genuinely surprised.

‘How would I know? I’d have to ask her. And I’d have to know whether I could ask her. And I wonder how I would know that.’

Adamsberg sighed, giving up the struggle when faced with Danglard’s intellectual ramblings.

‘Well, she certainly has something serious going on inside her head,’ he began again. ‘And one drink more or less at the hotel bar won’t change that.’

‘What woman are you talking about?’ asked Radstock in French, exasperated by the other two excluding him from their conversation, and in particular realising that the little commissaire with dark untidy hair had guessed at his fear.

By now the car was going past the cemetery, and Radstock suddenly wished that the scenario painted by Clyde-Fox would not turn out to be imaginary after all. Then that laid-back little Frenchman, Adamsberg, would be drawn into the nightmare of Highgate Cemetery. Let him get involved, by God, and we’d soon see if the little cop was as calm as he made out. Radstock pulled up at the kerb, but didn’t get out. He lowered the window a few inches and poked his torch out.

‘OK,’ he said, looking in the mirror at Adamsberg. ‘Let’s all share this.’

‘What’s he saying?’

‘He says he wants you to share Highgate.’

‘I didn’t ask to do anything.’

‘You’ve no choice,’ said Radstock grimly, opening the driver’s door.

‘I get it,’ said Adamsberg, silencing Danglard with a gesture.

The smell was ghastly, the scene was appalling, and even Adamsberg stiffened, standing back a little behind his English colleague. From the ancient shoes, with their cracked leather and trailing laces, projected decomposed ankles, showing dark flesh and white shinbones which had been cleanly chopped off. The only thing that didn’t match Clyde-Fox’s account was that the feet were not trying to get into the cemetery. They were just there, on the pavement, terrible and provocative, sitting inside their shoes at the historic gateway to Highgate Cemetery. They formed a carefully arranged and unspeakable pile. Radstock held a torch in his outstretched hand, face twisted in denial, lighting up the damaged ankles emerging from the shoes, and vainly trying to sweep away the smell of death in the air.

‘You see,’ said Radstock, in a resigned yet aggressive voice, turning to Adamsberg. ‘You see. That’s Highgate for you. A place of the damned, and has been for a hundred years.’

‘A hundred and seventy years in fact,’ said Danglard quietly.

‘Right,’ said Radstock, seeking to pull himself together. ‘You can go back to your hotel, I’m putting a call through to the Yard.’

He took out his mobile and smiled uneasily at his colleagues.

‘The shoes look pretty cheap,’ he said, as he punched in the call. ‘With any luck they’ll be French.’

‘And if the shoes are, so are the feet,’ Danglard completed the thought.

‘Yes, Donglarde. What Englishman would bother to buy French shoes?’

‘So if it was up to you, you’d bounce this horrific case across the Channel?’

‘You bet! Dennison? Radstock here. Send a homicide team to the old gate of Highgate Cemetery. No, no actual body, but a pile of rotten shoes, about twenty of them. With feet inside. Yes, a whole crime scene team, Dennison. OK,’ the chief inspector finished in a weary tone, ‘put him on.’

Superintendent Clems was at the Yard; it was a busy night. It sounded as if some discussion was going on, as Radstock waited, holding his phone. Danglard took advantage of it to explain to Adamsberg that only French feet would fit French shoes, and that DCI Radstock fervently wished to send them this case across the Channel, straight to Paris. Adamsberg nodded, his hands clasped behind his back, and walked slowly round the macabre deposit, looking up from time to time to the high cemetery wall, as much to give his mind some air as to imagine where these dead feet wanted to go. They knew things that he didn’t.

‘About twenty, sir,’ Radstock was repeating. ‘I’m standing right here looking at them.’

‘Radstock!’ came the sceptical voice of Superintendent Clems. ‘What the hell is all this rubbish about shoes with feet inside them?’

‘Give me patience,’ muttered Radstock to himself. ‘I’m in Highgate, sir, not Queen’s Lane. Are you going to send me some men, or are you going to leave me alone with this monstrosity?’

‘Highgate? Oh, you should have said so before, Radstock.’

‘That’s what I’ve been saying for the past twenty minutes.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Clems, suddenly conciliatory, as if the word Highgate had set off alarm bells. ‘The team’s on its way. Are we talking about men or women?’

‘Both. Adult feet. In the shoes.’

‘Who put you on to it?’

‘Lord Clyde-Fox. He stumbled across this horror, and went off to down several pints to get over it.’

‘Right,’ said Clems quickly. ‘And the shoes. Quality? Age?’

‘I’d say about twenty years old. And they’re shoddy-looking too,’ he went on sarcastically. ‘With a bit of luck we might be able to palm this off on the Frenchies -’

‘None of that nonsense, Radstock!’ Clems interrupted him. ‘We’re in the middle of an international conference and waiting for results.’

‘I know, sir, I’ve got the policemen from Paris with me now.’

Radstock laughed briefly again, and looked at Adamsberg before adopting the same linguistic device as his colleagues, speaking spectacularly fast. It was obvious to Danglard that the chief inspector, feeling humiliated now that he had asked them to accompany him, was aiming a volley of cheap shots at Adamsberg by way of revenge.

‘Did you say Adamsberg himself was with you?’ Clems cut him off.

‘Yep, that’s him, little fellow, looks half asleep most of the time.’

‘In that case, hold your tongue and keep your distance, Radstock,’ Clems ordered him. ‘The little fellow, as you call him, is a walking timebomb.’

Danglard might look passive but he was not a calm man, and few nuances in the English language escaped him, despite Radstock’s precautions. His defence of Adamsberg was unwavering, except for any criticisms he might formulate himself. He snatched the mobile from Radstock’s hand and introduced himself to the superintendent, walking away from the smell of decaying feet. It appeared to Adamsberg that gradually the man at the other end of the line was turning into a better potential fishing companion than Radstock.

‘As you say,’ said Danglard sharply.

‘Nothing personal, Commandant Danglard,’ said Clems. ‘I’m not trying to excuse Radstock, but he was there thirty years ago. It’s bad luck coming across this when he’s six months off retirement.’

‘That was all a long time ago, sir.’

‘Nothing worse than things from a long time ago, as you well know. Ancient stumps poke up through the grass and they can last centuries. A little sympathy for Radstock, please, because you don’t understand.’

‘Yes, I do. I know about the Highgate affair.’

‘I’m not talking about the murder of the hiker.’

‘Neither am I, sir. We’re talking about historical Highgate, 160,800 bodies, 51,800 tombs. We’re talking about the nocturnal hunts in the 1970s, and even about Lizzie Siddal.’

‘All right,’ said the superintendent after a pause. ‘Well, if you know about that, you should also know that Radstock was there for the last escapade, and at the time he was young and new to the job. So cut him a little slack.’

The crime scene investigation team had arrived. Radstock took charge. Without a word, Danglard switched off the phone and slipped it in his British colleague’s pocket. Then he rejoined Adamsberg, who was leaning on a black car and seemed to be supporting Estalère. The young officer was in a state of shock.

‘What are they going to do with them?’ asked Estalère in a shaky voice. ‘Find twenty people without feet and stick them back on? How would they do that?’

‘Ten people,’ Danglard pointed out. ‘Twenty feet, ten people.’

‘All right,’ admitted Estalère.

‘In fact, it appears there are just eighteen, so nine people.’

‘Yes. OK. But if the English had already found nine people whose feet had been cut off, they’d know about it, wouldn’t they?’

‘If they were living people, yes,’ said Adamsberg. ‘But if the feet came from corpses, they might not necessarily.’

Estalère shook his head.

‘If the feet had been cut from dead bodies,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘that would mean nine corpses. The Brits may well have nine corpses somewhere without feet, but there’s no way they would know that. I wonder,’ he went on, ‘if there’s a special word for cutting off feet. We say decapitate for heads, eviscerate for innards, emasculate for testicles, but there isn’t a special word for feet, or is there?’

‘No, there isn’t,’ said Danglard. ‘The word doesn’t exist because the act doesn’t exist. Well, not until now. But one individual has just created it, on the dark continent.’

‘Like the wardrobe-eater – there isn’t a proper word for that either.’

‘A thekophagist?’ suggested Danglard.