An Uncertain Place

XX

AS HE REACHED THE DOOR OF THE BUILDING, ADAMSBERG realised that he had not memorised the name of Vaudel’s doctor, despite the fact that this man had saved the kitten’s life and that they had all had a drink together in the tool shed. He found the brass plate on the wall, Dr Paul de Josselin Cressent, osteopath and somatopath, and realised he now had a clearer idea why the doctor had seemed so disdainful towards the policemen who had been blocking his way with their brawny arms.

The concierge was watching television, from his wheelchair, muffled in blankets. His hair was long and grey, his moustache grimy. He did not turn his head, not apparently intending to be rude, but because, like Adamsberg himself, he seemed to be incapable of watching a film while listening to a visitor.

‘The doctor’s gone out to see someone with sciatica,’ he finally vouchsafed. ‘He’ll be back in a quarter of an hour.’

‘Are you one of his patients too?’

‘Yes. He’s got magic fingers.’

‘Did he come to see you during the night of last Saturday to Sunday?’

‘Is this important?’

‘Yes it is, if you don’t mind.’

The concierge asked for a few minutes’ grace, to see the end of the soap he was watching, then turned away from the screen without switching it off.

‘I fell on my way to bed,’ he said, pointing to his leg. ‘I just managed to reach the phone.’

‘And you called him out again a couple of hours later?’

‘I did apologise. My knee was puffed up like a football. I did apologise.’

‘The doctor says your name is Francisco.’

‘Francisco, that’s right.’

‘But I need your full name.’

‘Not wanting to refuse, but why is that?’

‘One of Dr Josselin’s patients has been murdered. We have to make inquiries about everything, it’s the rule.’

‘Your job, eh?’

‘Correct. So I need your full name,’ said Adamsberg, taking out his notebook.

‘Francisco Delfino Vinicius Villalonga Franco da Silva.’

‘OK,’ said Adamsberg, who had not managed to get any of this down. ‘Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish. Where does your first name end and your family name begin?’

‘It’s not Spanish, it’s Portuguese,’ said the man, with a snap of his jaw. ‘I’m Brazilian, my parents were deported under the dictatorship of those sons of bitches, God damn them to hell. Never seen again.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault. As long as you’re not a son of a bitch yourself. The family name is Villalonga Franco da Silva. The doctor’s on the second floor. There’s a waiting room on the landing, all you need up there. That’s where I’d live too, if I could.’

It was true, the landing on the second floor was as large as an entrance hall. The doctor had installed a coffee table and armchairs, with magazines and books, an antique lamp and a water cooler. A refined and somewhat ostentatious person. Adamsberg sat down to wait for the man with magic fingers, and called Châteaudun hospital, with apprehension, Retancourt and her team, without hope, and Voisenet’s team, while trying to keep at bay the unworthy reflections of Commandant Danglard.

Professor Lavoisier was slightly more hopeful – ‘Well, he’s hanging on.’ The fever had gone down slightly; the stomach had survived the pumping; the patient had been asking whether the commissaire had found the postcard with the word on it -’ He seems obsessed with that, mon vieux.’ ‘Tell him we’re looking for the postcard,’ said Adamsberg, ‘and that we’re dealing with the dog, the samples of manure. Everything going to plan.’

Must be a coded message, thought Professor Lavoisier, noting down every word. Well, none of my business, I suppose the police have their methods. But with this new inflammation and a perforated stomach, it was still touch and go.

Retancourt sounded relaxed, almost jovial, whereas all the signs were that Armel Louvois would not be back. He had gone out at 6 a.m. The concierge had seen him leave with a backpack. Instead of their usual friendly morning exchange, the young man had merely waved his hand at her as he went past. It sounded as though he had been heading for a train. Weill was unable to confirm this, since he did not rise until the gentlemanly hour of midday. He turned out to have a certain affection for his young neighbour, and was extremely vexed by the news of the crime. He had fallen silent, appeared to be sulking, and had provided only a few irrelevant scraps of information. Unusually, Retancourt did not seem too affected by this obstruction. It was possible that Weill, who was a connoisseur of fine wines, had distracted the duty patrol by offering them a decent vintage in fancy glasses. With Weill, who had his suits handmade, since he was extremely rich, extremely snobbish and almost spherical in shape, anything was possible, including the suborning of officers on duty, something which would no doubt give him a paradoxical pleasure. Retancourt did not seem to realise she was on guard outside the apartment of a madman, the Zerquetscher who had reduced an old man to mincemeat; indeed, it seemed that Weill’s indulgent attitude to his neighbour had overcome her vigilance. ‘Tell Weill that he dismembered another person in Austria,’ Adamsberg ordered her.

The Voisenet-Kernorkian team, on the other hand, now on its way back, was on its knees. Raymond Réal, the father of the artist, had taken ten minutes to put down his shotgun and let them into his semi-basement in Survilliers. Yes, he’d heard the news, and yes, he called down God’s blessings on the guy who had taken revenge and wiped out that old bastard Vaudel, and God willing the cops would never catch him. So, the papers had come out in time to warn him, and he’d got away? Good! Vaudel had at least two deaths on his conscience, Réal’s son and his wife, and don’t you forget it. Did he know who might have killed Vaudel? Could he tell them where his sons were? They must be joking if they thought he’d tell them, even if he knew. What fucking planet were they on? Kernorkian had muttered, ‘Planet Deep Shit,’ which had seemed to mollify him somewhat.

In fact, Voisenet was explaining, ‘he scarcely let us say a thing. He had this gun on the table, only a shotgun, OK, but loaded, right? He had three bloody great dogs and his lair, the only word for it, was full of motors, batteries, hunting stuff.’

‘And you don’t know where the sons are?’

‘What he said, and these are his actual words, was: “One’s in the Legion and the other’s a truck driver: Munich- Amsterdam-Rungis, so you can bloody well look for them yourselves.” And he told us to get out, “because you stink to high heaven”. Actually,’ Voisenet added, ‘he wasn’t wrong about that, because Kernorkian had been handling the dog.’

Listening to all this, Adamsberg reached under the glass-topped table to pick up a toy left by one of Dr Josselin’s patients – a little heart made of foam rubber covered in red silk, which you could press inside your hand to calm your nerves. As he made his next call, to Gardon, he twirled it on the table to make it spin. Third time round, he got it to spin for a few seconds. The goal was to get the letters on the front – LOVE – to face the right way when it stopped. He succeeded on the sixth try, as he asked Gardon to get hold of all the postcards from among Vaudel’s papers. The brigadier read him a message from the Avignon police. Pierre Vaudel had been at the law courts all afternoon, preparing a brief. Information not verifiable. He had returned home at 7.12 p.m. Local bigwig, being protected, Adamsberg thought. He closed the phone and went on playing with the little heart. Was the Zerquetscher on the way somewhere else?

‘He got away, did he?’

Adamsberg got up heavily, feeling tired and shook hands with the doctor.

‘Didn’t hear you come in.’

‘No harm done,’ said Josselin, opening the door to his flat. ‘And how is little Charm? The kitten who wouldn’t feed,’ he explained, seeing that the name hadn’t registered with Adamsberg.

‘All right, I suppose. I haven’t been home since yesterday.’

‘With all this fuss in the press, I’m not surprised. Still, can you let me know how she’s doing, please?’

‘What, now?’

‘It’s important to follow up one’s patients for the first three days. Would you be offended if I receive you in the kitchen? I wasn’t expecting you, and I really need something to eat. Perhaps you haven’t eaten either, I’d guess? In which case we could share a simple meal? Don’t you think?’

I wouldn’t say no, thought Adamsberg, who was searching for an adequate way of talking to Josselin. People who said ‘don’t you think?’ always disconcerted him on first acquaintance. As the doctor took off his jacket and put on an old cardigan, Adamsberg called Lucio, who was astonished that he should be asking after Charm. She was fine, her strength was coming back. Adamsberg passed on the message and the doctor snapped his fingers with satisfaction.

It goes to show that you can’t rely on appearances and, as they say, we never really know other people. Adamsberg had rarely been received with such simple and natural cordiality. The doctor had left his pompous manner behind, like his jacket on the coat stand, and proceeded to lay the table casually – forks on the right, knives on the left – before tossing a salad with grated cheese and pine nuts, cutting a few slices of smoked ham, and putting on to the plates two scoops of rice and one of pureed figs, using an ice-cream scoop, which had been lightly oiled with his finger. Adamsberg watched him move around, fascinated, as he glided like a skater from cupboard to table, deploying his large hands with the utmost grace, a sight combining dexterity, delicacy and precision. The commissaire could have watched him for ever, as one might a dancer accomplishing movements one could never do oneself. But Josselin took a mere ten minutes to get everything on the table. Then he looked critically at the half-full bottle of wine, which was standing on the counter.

‘No,’ he said, putting it down, ‘I so rarely have visitors that it would be a pity.’

He bent down to look under the sink, surveyed what was there, and re-emerged with agility, showing his guest the label on a fresh bottle.

‘Much better, don’t you think? But to drink it all on one’s own would be like having a birthday party with no guests. Rather sad, don’t you think? Good wine tastes a lot better if it’s shared. So if you’ll do me the honour of joining me?’

Sitting down with a contented sigh, he tucked his napkin familiarly into his collar, as Émile might have done. Ten minutes later, the conversation had become as relaxed as his practised gestures.

‘The concierge thinks you’re a guru,’ said Adamsberg. ‘He says you’ve got golden fingers, can put anything right.’

‘Not at all,’ replied Josselin with his mouth full. ‘Francisco likes to believe in something beyond him, and that’s understandable, given that his parents were “disappeared” under the dictators.’

‘The sons-of-bitches-God-damn-them-to-hell.’

‘Just so. I’m spending a lot of time trying to settle the trauma, but he keeps blowing a fuse all the time.’

‘He’s got a fuse?’

‘Everyone does, more than one as a rule. In his case it’s F3. It’s a sort of safety valve, like in a security system. It’s just science, commissaire. Structure, agency, networks, circuits, connections. Bones, organs, connective tissue, the body works like a machine, you understand?’

‘No.’

‘Take this boiler,’ said Josselin, pointing to the wall. ‘Is it just a set of distinct elements, tank, water pipes, pump, joints, burner, safety valve? No, it’s a synergetic whole. If the pump gets furred up, the valve flips, and the burner goes out. You see? It’s all connected, the movement of each element depends on all the others. Well, so if you sprain your ankle, the other leg tries to compensate, you put your back out, your neck gets stiff and gives you a headache, next thing you know you feel sick and lose your appetite, your actions slow down, anxiety creeps in, the fuses blow. I’m simplifying of course.’

‘Why did Francisco’s fuse blow?’

‘He’s got a blocked zone,’ said the doctor, pointing to the back of his own head. ‘It’s his father. That box is shut, the basal-occipital won’t move. More salad?’

He served Adamsberg without waiting for an answer, and refilled his glass.

‘And Émile?’

‘His mother,’ said the doctor, munching noisily, and pointing to the other side of his head. ‘Acute sense of injustice. So he goes round bashing other people. But much less these days.’

‘And Vaudel?’

‘Ah, we’re getting to the point.’

‘Yes.’

‘Since the press has revealed so many details, the police can’t keep it a secret any more. Can you tell me about it now? Vaudel was horribly chopped up, is what they seem to say. But how, why, what was the killer after? Did you discover any logic, some sort of ritual?’

‘No, just a sort of unending panic, a fury that couldn’t be resolved. There must be a system there somewhere, but what it is we don’t know.’

Adamsberg got out his notebook and drew from memory the diagram showing the points the murderer had attacked most fiercely.

‘You’re good at drawing,’ said the doctor, ‘I can’t even draw a duck.’

‘Ducks are difficult.’

‘Go on, draw me one. I’ll be thinking about this diagram and the system while you do it.’

‘What sort of duck – flying, roosting, diving?’

‘Wait,’ said the doctor, smiling. ‘I’ll fetch some proper paper.’

He came back with some sheets of paper and moved the plates aside.

‘A duck in flight.’

‘Male or female?’

‘Both if you can.’

Then he asked Adamsberg to draw a rocky coastline, a pensive woman and a Giacometti sculpture, if possible. He waved the drawings about to dry the ink, and propped them up under the lamp.

‘Now you really have got golden fingers, commissaire. I would like to examine you. But you don’t want that. We’ve all got closed rooms we don’t want strangers to walk into, don’t you think? Don’t worry, I’m not a clairvoyant, I’m just a pragmatic practitioner with no imagination. You’re different.’

Carefully putting the drawings on the windowsill, the doctor carried the bottle and glasses through to his sitting room, along with the Vaudel diagrams.

‘What did you make of this?’ he asked, pointing with his large fingers at the elbows, ankles, knees and skull on the diagram.

‘Well, we thought the killer destroyed what made the body work, the joints, the feet. But it doesn’t take us very far.’

‘But also the brain, liver and heart. He was also intent on demolishing the soul, don’t you think?’

‘That’s what my deputy thought. More than a murderer, he’s a destroyer, a Zerquetscher, as the Austrian policeman said. Because he destroyed someone else, outside Vienna.’

‘Someone related to Vaudel, by any chance?’

‘Why?’

The doctor hesitated, then, noticing the wine was finished, took out a green bottle from a cupboard.

‘Some poire eau de vie – like a drop?’

No, he wouldn’t like a drop, after such a long day, but it would spoil the atmosphere, if he let Josselin drink the liqueur alone, so Adamsberg watched him fill two small glasses.

‘It wasn’t a single blocked zone I found in Vaudel’s skull, it was much worse.’

The doctor fell silent, hesitating again, as if wondering whether he should go on, then raised his glass and put it down again.

‘So what was there inside his skull?’

‘A hermetically sealed cage, a haunted room, a black dungeon. He was obsessed with what was in there.’

‘And that was…?’

‘Himself. With his entire family and their secret. All locked up inside there, silent, away from the rest of the world.’

‘He thought someone was locking him in?’

‘No, you don’t understand. He locked himself in, he was hidden away, removed from anyone’s view. He was protecting the other occupants of the cell.’

‘From death?’

‘From annihilation. There were three other clear factors in his case. He was fanatically attached to his name, his family name. And an unresolved tension over his son: he was torn between pride and rejection. He loved Pierre, but he didn’t want him to have been born.’

‘He didn’t leave his property to him, he left it to the gardener.’

‘Logical. If he left him nothing, then he had no son.’

‘I don’t think Pierre junior saw it that way.’

‘No, of course not. And thirdly, Vaudel was full of boundless arrogance, so total that he generated a feeling of invincibility. I’ve never seen anything like it before. That’s what I can tell you as a doctor, and you’ll understand perhaps why I was so interested in this patient. But Vaudel was very strong-minded, and he resisted my treatment fiercely. He didn’t mind if I treated him for a stiff neck or a sprain, and he was even very pleased when I helped him get rid of vertigo and helped with his approaching deafness. Here,’ the doctor said, tapping his ear. ‘The little bones in his middle ear were blocked solid. But he hated it if I tried to get near to the black dungeon and the enemies he thought were all around.’

‘And who were these enemies?’

‘All those who wanted to destroy his power.’

‘He was afraid of them?’

‘On the one hand, he was afraid enough not to want any children, so as not to expose them to danger. On the other hand, he wasn’t personally afraid at all, because of that sense of superiority I told you about. It was a sense he had in his dealings with the law courts, when he seemed to have the power of life and death over people. Be careful, commissaire, what I’m saying here isn’t objective reality, it’s what he saw as reality.’

‘Was he mad?’

‘Totally, if you consider that it’s mad to live by a logic that’s different from the logic of the rest of the world. But not at all, in the sense that within his own scheme of things he was completely rigorous and coherent, and he was able to make it fit inside the basic framework of the general social order.’

‘Had he identified these enemies?’

‘All he would say seemed to point to some kind of gang warfare, a sort of endless vendetta. With some kind of power game thrown in.’

‘He knew their names?’

‘Yes. These weren’t enemies who changed, random demons waiting to pounce on him from round some corner. Their location inside his head never varied. He was paranoid, at least in this sense of his power and his increasing isolation. Yet everything about this war he was living was rational and realistic, and he could certainly put names and faces to his adversaries.’

‘A secret war and enemies who are fantasies. And then one night, reality strikes, walks on to his private stage, and kills him.’

‘Yes. Did he end up by threatening his “enemies” in real life? Did he speak to them, or become aggressive? You know the standard formula, I expect: paranoid people end up by creating the persecution they always suspected. His invention came to life.’

Josselin offered another drop of alcohol, which Adamsberg refused. The doctor went nimbly over to the cupboard and carefully put the bottle back.

‘I don’t imagine our paths will automatically cross again, commissaire, because I’ve told you all I know about Vaudel. But would it perhaps be too much to ask of you to come back one day?’

‘You want to look inside my head, don’t you?’

‘Yes, indeed. But we might find a less intimidating problem. No back pains? Stiffness, oppression, digestive troubles, circulation problems, sinusitis, neuralgia? No, none of those.’

Adamsberg shook his head, smiling.

The doctor screwed up his eyes.

‘Tinnitus?’ he suggested, almost like a street trader offering something for sale.

‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg. ‘How did you know?’

‘No magic! The way you keep rubbing your ears!’

‘I have been to someone. Nothing to be done about it, apparently, I just have to live with it and try to forget it. Which I’m quite good at.’

‘You’re indifferent, you don’t mind too much,’ said the doctor, as he accompanied Adamsberg into the hall. ‘But tinnitus doesn’t fade away like a memory. I could help you with it. Only if you want me to, of course. Why should we carry our burdens round with us?’