An Uncertain Place

XXIV

ADAMSBERG STOPPED IN MID-MOVEMENT, DROPPED HIS ARM, and the bottle rolled on to the red tiled floor.

‘Shit! The bottle!’ shouted the young man.

Adamsberg picked it up automatically. He was looking for a word that meant ‘someone who makes up a story and then believes it’, but he couldn’t think of it. Fatherless kids who go round saying they’re the son of royalty, or the son of Elvis, or a descendant of Julius Caesar. One notorious gangster had had eighteen fathers, including famous politicians like Jean Jaurès, and he changed them all the time. Mythomaniac, that was it. And people said you shouldn’t shatter the illusions of a mythomaniac, it was dangerous, like waking a sleepwalker.

‘Well, while you’re about it,’ he said, ‘you might have found a better father than me. Not very interesting, is it, to be the son of a cop?’

‘So, Commissaire Adamsberg,’ the young man laughed as if he hadn’t heard a word, ‘father of the Zerquetscher! Don’t like that, do you? But that’s how it is, motherfucker. One day the long-lost son comes back, he crushes his father, he takes over the throne. You know stories like that, don’t you? So his father has to go away with nothing, and beg on the streets.’

‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Now I’m going to make the coffee,’ said the young man, mimicking him. ‘Bring your fucking bottle, and watch me.’

Looking at him pouring water into the funnel, the cigarette hanging from his lower lip, one hand scratching his dark hair, Adamsberg felt something like a depth charge in the pit of his stomach, an acid spurt more biting than the awful wine in Froissy’s car, spreading to the roots of his teeth. ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ In his concentration on the coffee, the young man did look very like his own father used to, as he knitted his dark eyebrows while watching a stew on the stove. In fact, he looked like half the young men of the Béarn, or two-thirds of those from the valley of the Gave de Pau: thick curly hair, receding chin, well-shaped lips, a compact body. Louvois, not a name he recognised at all from his home valley. He could equally well be from the other valley where his colleague Veyrenc had been born. Or he could have been from Lille or Reims or Menton. Not London though.

The young man took the bowls and refilled them. The climate had changed since he had dropped his bombshell. He had carelessly tucked the P38 into his back pocket, and put the holster near him on a chair. The confrontational phase was over, like the wind dropping at sea. Neither of them knew what to do, so they stirred their sugar into the coffee. The Zerquetscher, leaning forward, tucked his long hair behind his ear. It fell out and he pushed it back again.

‘All right, it’s quite possible you’re from the Béarn,’ said Adamsberg, ‘but pull the other leg, Zerketch. I haven’t got a son, and I don’t want one. Where were you born?’

‘In Pau. My mother went to town to have me, so people wouldn’t know.’

‘And what’s your mother’s name?’

‘Gisèle Louvois.’

‘No, doesn’t ring a bell at all. And I know everyone in the three valleys.’

‘You screwed her one night, by the bridge over the Jaussène.’

‘A lot of couples went to the bridge over the Jaussène.’

‘Then she wrote to you to ask for your help. And you didn’t answer, because you couldn’t give a damn, or because you’re chicken.’

‘Never got any letter like that.’

‘You probably can’t remember the names of the girls you screwed.’

‘Number one, I do remember their names. And number two, I wasn’t a Jack the Lad in those days. I was shy, and I didn’t have a moped. Other boys like Matt, Pierrot, Loulou, Manu, yes, you might well wonder if one of them’s your father. They could get any girl they wanted. But afterwards, the girls didn’t own up, because it would have ruined their reputations. How do you know your mother’s telling the truth?’

The young man felt in a pocket, frowning, and brought out a little plastic envelope which he waved in front of Adamsberg’s eyes, before putting it on the table. Adamsberg took out an old photo, the faded colours turning purple: it showed a youth leaning up against a plane tree.

‘And who’s that?’ asked the young man.

‘It’s either me or my brother. So what?’

‘It’s you, look on the back.’

His name: J.-B. Adamsberg, written in pencil in small round handwriting.

‘It looks more like my brother, Raphaël. I don’t remember having a shirt like that. So your mother didn’t know us very well, and it proves she’s making things up.’

‘Just shut up – you don’t know what my mother’s like, she doesn’t make things up. If she says you’re my father, then it’s the truth. Why would she make it up? It’s not as if it’s something to be proud of, is it?’

‘True. But in our village, it was probably better to say it was me than to own up to Matt or Loulou, because they were known as local bad boys, good-for-nothings, piss-artists. In fact, they used to piss out of the windows on warm summer nights. The grocer’s wife, they didn’t like her, and she got it in the face once. Not to mention Lucien’s gang. In other words, even if it’s no big deal, it would still be better to pretend it was me than Matt. Look, I’m not your father, I have never known any girl called Gisèle, in my village or in the next one, and she has never written me any letter. The first time a girl wrote a letter to me, I was twenty-three.’

‘Liar.’

The youth clenched his teeth, swaying on the plinth of certainty that had suddenly developed cracks. His imagined father, his long-lost enemy, his target, seemed to want to slip between his fingers.

‘Look, whether I’m a liar or she is, Zerketch, what are we going to do? Stay drinking coffee here for ever?’

‘I always knew it would end like this. Well, you are going to let me go, free as a bird. And you can stay here with your lousy cats, because you can’t do a thing about it. You’ll be reading about me in the papers, believe me. Because there’s more to come. And you’ll be sitting in your office, and you’ll be fucked. You’ll have to resign because even a cop doesn’t shop his own son for a life sentence. When your kid’s involved, there aren’t any rules. And you won’t want to admit you’re the Zerketch’s old dad, will you, and that it’s all your fault that the Zerketch has gone crazy? Because you abandoned him?’

‘I did not abandon you. And I’m not your father in the first place.’

‘But you’re not sure, are you? See your face? See mine?’

‘Yes, we both look like we come from the Béarn, full stop. But there is a way to find out, Zerketch. A way to put an end to your little dream. We’ve got your DNA on file. And we’ve got mine. We take a look.’

The Zerquetscher stood up, put the P38 on the table and smiled calmly.

‘I dare you,’ he said.

Adamsberg watched as he walked unhurriedly towards the door, opened it and went out. Free as a bird. I came here to fuck up your life.

He reached out for the bottle and looked at it. Nitrocitraminic acid. He folded his hands, and dropped his head on to them, closing his eyes. Of course he wasn’t immunised. With his thumbnail, he flicked the top off.