An Uncertain Place

XLVIII

ÉMILE CAME INTO HEADQUARTERS ON CRUTCHES. AT RECEPTION, he had to face Brigadier Gardon, who didn’t understand what this man was doing, asking about a dog. Danglard came up, shambling as usual, but wearing a light-coloured suit, which was unexpected enough to provoke comment, though that came a poor second to the arrest of Paul de Josselin, a descendant of Arnold Paole, the man who had had his life destroyed by the Plogojowitz vampires.

Retancourt, who was still the leader of the rational-positivist movement, had been arguing since the morning with the peacemakers and the cloud-shovellers, who accused her of having kept inquiries narrowed down since Sunday, because she couldn’t accept any explanation to do with vampiri. Whereas there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, as Mercadet had pointed out. Including people who eat wardrobes, Danglard thought. Kernorkian and Froissy were on the point of giving in and believing in vampiri, which complicated matters. This was because they had been persuaded by the state of conservation of the bodies in the story, something which had been empirically observed, historically recorded, and how were you supposed to explain that away? On a small scale, the debate which had excited the whole of Europe in the third decade of the eighteenth century was being reopened in the offices of the Serious Crime Squad in Paris, without having made much progress in almost three hundred years.

It was indeed this detail which had unsettled some members of the squad, the horror aroused by hearing of ‘pink and intact’ corpses, with blood coming from their orifices, and with skin looking fresh and unlined, while their old skin and nails were under them in the grave. Here, Danglard’s superior knowledge came into its own. He had the answer, he knew precisely why and how the bodies had been preserved, a fairly frequent phenomenon in fact, and he could even explain the cry of the vampire when it was pierced with a stake, or the sighs of the shroud-eaters. The others had formed a circle around him and were hanging on his words. They had just reached the moment in the debate when science was going to dispel obscurantism all over again. Danglard was just starting to tell them about the phenomenon of gases which sometimes, depending on the chemical composition of the earth, didn’t come out of the bodies, but inflated them like a balloon, stretching the skin – when he was interrupted by the hullabaloo of a dish being overturned on the floor above, and then Cupid came bounding down the stairs, rushing straight through to reception. Without breaking step, the little dog gave a very particular kind of yap as it rushed past the photocopier, where Snowball was, as usual, stretched out, its paws hanging over the edge.

‘In this case,’ observed Danglard, as he watched the dog going frantic with joy, ‘we have neither knowledge nor fantasy. Simply pure love, unquestioning and unlimited. Very rare in humans, and very dangerous. But Cupid is a tactful dog, because he said goodbye to the cat, with a mixture of admiration and regret.’

The dog had jumped right up into Émile’s arms and was clinging to his chest, panting and licking and scrabbling at his shirt. Émile had had to sit down, pressing his ugly mug against the dog’s back.

‘We ran the tests – the manure on his feet matched the stuff on the floor of your van,’ Danglard told him.

‘What about that love letter from old Vaudel? Did that help the commissaire?’

‘Yes, plenty. It led him almost to his death in a stinking vault. Full of corpses.’

‘And the secret tunnel from Madame Bourlant’s house, that helped him too?’

‘Yes, that got him to Dr Josselin.’

‘Never liked him, poser he was. So where is he, the boss?’

‘You want to see him?’

‘Yeah, I don’t want him to make trouble for me, we can settle it friendly like, if he wants. Help I gave him there, he owes me one.’

‘Settle what?’

‘For his ears only.’

Danglard called Adamsberg’s mobile.

‘Commissaire, we’ve got Cupid here, he’s sitting on Émile’s knee, and Émile wants to talk to you to settle something.’

‘Settle what?’

‘No idea, he says he’ll only speak to you.’

‘Personally,’ insisted Émile self-importantly.

‘How is he?’

‘Looks fine to me – new jacket and blue badge in his lapel. When will you be back?’

‘I’m on a beach in Normandy, Danglard, I’m coming back soon.’

‘But what are you doing there?’

‘I had to talk to my son. We’re neither of us very good at this, but we’ve managed to communicate a bit.’

No, of course, Danglard thought, Tom isn’t a year old, so he can’t talk yet.

‘I told you more than once. They’re in Brittany, not Normandy.’

‘I’m talking about my other son, Danglard.’

‘What-?’ said Danglard, unable to finish his sentence. ‘Wha… other son?’

He was seized with instant rage against Adamsberg. How had he managed to have another child somewhere else, when little Tom was still a baby?

‘How old is this other one?’

‘Eight days.’

‘You are such a bastard,’ Danglard hissed.

‘It’s the way it was, commandant. I didn’t know about him.’

‘No, you never bloody know about anything, do you?’

‘And you never let me finish either, Danglard. He’s eight days old for me, but for other people, he’s twenty-nine. He’s beside me here, smoking a cigarette. His hands are covered in bandages. Paole pinned him to that Louis XIII armchair with a knife last night.’

‘The Zerquetscher?’ asked Danglard weakly.

‘Correct. Or Zerk as I call him. Aka Armel Louvois.’

Danglard looked blankly across at Émile and his dog, while he tried to concentrate on the facts of the situation.

‘This is a figure of speech, isn’t it? You’ve adopted him, or some crazy stunt like that?’

‘No, no, Danglard, he’s my son. That’s why Josselin had a lot of fun choosing him as a scapegoat.’

‘I don’t believe this.’

‘Look, you’d believe Veyrenc, wouldn’t you? Ask him. He’s his uncle and he’ll give you a glowing report on him.’

Adamsberg was half reclining on the sand, drawing on it with his finger. Zerk was lying down, his arms across his body, his hands now numbed, thanks to a local anaesthetic, and was soaking up the sun and relaxing like the cat on the photocopier. Danglard ran through his head all those photographs of the Zerk from the papers, and at once realised how familiar that face had been. Yes. It had to be the truth, but it was a shock.

‘Not to worry, commandant. Put Émile on, will you?’

Without a word, Danglard handed the phone to Émile, who hobbled away towards the door.

‘This colleague of yours is stupid,’ he began. ‘It’s not a badge, it’s my winkle pin. I went and fetched it from the house.’

‘Because you’re nostalgic.’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’

‘So what deal is this you want to settle?’ said Adamsberg sitting up.

‘I kept a record. Nine hundred and thirty-seven euros. Now I’ve got plenty of cash, I can pay it back, and then you don’t know nothing about it. Because I got you that stuff about the postcard, and the door in the cellar. Savvy?’

‘What don’t I “know nothing about”?’

‘Vaudel’s money, for fuck’s sake. Bit here, bit there, total nine hundred and thirty seven. I kept a record.’

‘I’m with you now, Émile. Well, for a start, I’ve got nothing to do with that money, like I said. And in any case, it’s too late. I don’t think Pierre junior, since you’re already getting half his inheritance, will be too happy to find out that you were pinching his old man’s money and that you want to pay him nine hundred and thirty-seven euros.’

‘Ha,’ said Émile pensively.

‘So just keep the money, and shut up about it.’

‘Got you,’ said Émile, and Adamsberg reflected that he must have picked up the expression at the hospital in Châteaudun from that tall paramedic, André.

‘You’ve got another son?’ asked Zerk, as they got back in the car.

‘He’s very, very small,’ said Adamsberg, demonstrating with his hands apart, as if that made it less of a fact. ‘Does it bother you?’

‘Nope.’

No doubt about it, Zerk was an accommodating sort of chap.