An Uncertain Place

XXXIX

VEYRENC ALLOWED THE COMMISSAIRE TWO HOURS’ SLEEP, then he walked into his room and drew back the curtains, bringing two chairs from the hearth, where Danica had lit a blazing fire. The temperature in the room was stifling, enough to make a corpse perspire, which was Danica’s aim.

‘How’s the hoof now? Are you going to end up a centaur or will you stay human?’

Adamsberg moved his foot and tried wiggling his toes.

‘Human,’ he said.

‘He rose into the heavens, floating up to the sky

Yet he was but a man and the dream flew too high

Now a mortal at last, he must fall to the earth.

Alas we know not what illusions are worth.’

‘I thought you’d kicked that habit.’

‘Many months did I try, and my hopes were in vain

And my demons of old have me captured again.’

‘Always the way. Danglard says he’s giving up white wine.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘He’s switching to red.’

There was a silence. Veyrenc knew that this light tone couldn’t last and Adamsberg sensed it. A simple handshake before tackling a difficult climb.

‘Ask your questions,’ said Veyrenc, ‘and if I don’t want any more of them, I’ll say so.’

‘All right. Why did you come down from your mountain? To join up again?’

‘One question at a time.’

‘To join up?’

‘No.’

‘So why did you come down from your mountain?’

‘Because I read the papers. An article on the massacre in Garches.’

‘Were you interested in the investigation?’

‘Yes. That’s why I followed the headway you were making on it.’

‘Why didn’t you just come back to the squad?’

‘I was more interested in keeping a watch on you than in saying hello.’

‘You always did put the knife in subtly, Veyrenc. What were you keeping a watch on?’

‘Your investigation, your actions, who you met, the direction you were taking.’

‘But why?’

Veyrenc made a gesture indicating: next question.

‘And you really followed me?’

‘I was here when you got to Belgrade with that young man covered in hair.’

‘Vladislav, the translator. It’s fur really, he inherited it from his mother.’

‘So he said. One of my friends was assigned to eavesdrop on you on the train.’

‘The elegant woman, wealthy-looking. Nice body, pity about the face, was what Vlad said.’

‘She isn’t actually wealthy. She was acting a part.’

‘Well, tell her to try a bit harder, because I spotted her before we left Paris. But when we got to Belgrade, how did you know where I was going? She wasn’t on the bus.’

‘Called a colleague in the Overseas Missions Department, who told me where you were going. An hour after you’d reserved your tickets, I knew your final destination was Kiseljevo.’

‘You can’t trust cops further than you can throw them.’

‘No, as you well know.’

Adamsberg folded his arms, and dropped his head. The white shirt Danica had found for him was embroidered around the collar and on the cuffs and he stared at the shiny lace patterns the yellow and red threads made on his wrists. Perhaps that was what Slavko’s slippers had looked like.

‘Was it by any chance Mordent who passed on the information? And asked you to follow me?’

‘Mordent? Why would it be Mordent?’

‘You don’t know? He’s off work with depression.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘What it’s to do with, is his daughter: she’s due in court. What it’s to do with, is the hierarchy that doesn’t want us to catch the killer. And has somehow corrupted the squad. They’ve got their hooks into Mordent. Every man has his price.’

‘Where would you rate mine?’

‘Pretty high, I’d think.’

‘Thanks very much.’

‘Whereas Mordent’s treachery is utterly cack-handed.’

‘Doesn’t have a vocation for it, I expect.’

‘Still, he gets there in the end. A little cartridge case planted under the fridge, some pencil shavings on the carpet.’

‘No idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know any details about the case. Was that why you let the suspect go? You were under pressure to?’

‘Do you mean Émile?’

‘No, the other one.’

‘I didn’t let Zerk go,’ said Adamsberg firmly.

‘Who’s Zerk?’

‘The Crusher, the Zerquetscher. The man who killed Vaudel and Plögener.’

‘And who’s Plögener?’

‘The Austrian who suffered the same fate five months ago. I see you don’t know anything about all this. And yet it was you that opened the vault in Kisilova.’

Veyrenc smiled. ‘You’ll never really trust me, will you?’

‘If I can get to understand you, I might.’

‘I flew to Belgrade, then I took a taxi and got to Kisilova before you.’

‘How come you weren’t spotted in the village?’

‘I slept in a hut in the clearing. I saw you go past the first day.’

‘When I found Peter Plogojowitz.’

‘Who is he?’

And Veyrenc’s ignorance seemed genuine.

‘Look, Veyrenc,’ said Adamsberg standing up, ‘if you don’t know who Peter Plogojowitz was, you really have no business here. Unless – and please tell me why – you somehow thought I was in danger.’

‘I didn’t come here with any intention of getting you out of the vault. I didn’t come with any idea of helping you. On the contrary.’

‘That’s better,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Now we’re getting warmer, I can understand you better.’

‘But I couldn’t let you die in that tomb. You do believe me about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought the danger came from you. I followed you when you went to the mill, I saw the hire car on the road, registered in Belgrade. I thought it was yours. I didn’t know where you meant to go, so I got into the boot. But I was wrong. I ended up being driven like you to that blessed graveyard. He had a gun and I didn’t. I waited and watched. Like I said, he came back several times to check. I couldn’t do anything till quite well into the morning. Almost too late. Another couple of hours and you really would have been a centaur. A stone one.’

Adamsberg sat down again and re-examined the embroidery on his shirt. He didn’t want to look at Veyrenc’s smile, or allow himself to be enveloped by him as surely as in the rolls of duct tape.

‘So you saw Zerk.’

‘Yes and no. I didn’t get out of the boot until a while after you, and I went some distance away. I could see your outlines, that’s all. I could make out his leather jacket and boots.’

‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg, biting his lips. ‘That’s Zerk.’

‘If by Zerk you mean the Garches murderer, OK, yes, it was Zerk. If by Zerk you mean the young guy who came to see you at home on Wednesday morning, that wasn’t him.’

‘Were you there that morning too?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t do anything? But it was the same man, Veyrenc. Zerk is Zerk.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘You’re not making any more sense than you were.’

‘Have you changed from the past, is clarity your god?’

Adamsberg got up, took the packet of Morava from the mantelpiece, and lit a cigarette from the fire.

‘You smoke now?’

‘Zerk’s fault. He left a packet with me. And I’ll go on smoking till I get him under lock and key.’

‘So why did you let him go?’

‘Just don’t bug me, Veyrenc, he was armed, I wasn’t, I couldn’t do anything.’

‘No? Couldn’t you have called up reinforcements when he’d gone? Surrounded the district? Why didn’t you?’

‘None of your business.’

‘You let him go because you weren’t certain he was the Garches murderer.’

‘I was absolutely certain he was. You don’t know anything about the investigation. So let me tell you, Zerk left his DNA in Garches on a Kleenex. And that was the same DNA that came walking in on two legs to my house on Wednesday, with the clear purpose of killing me, that morning or some other time. And let me tell you that boy is bad through and through. He didn’t once deny the murder.’

‘He didn’t?’

‘On the contrary, he was proud of it. And he went back there just to stamp on a kitten with his boot. And he wears a T-shirt covered with vertebrae and drops of blood.’

‘Yes, I know about that, I watched him go.’

Veyrenc took a cigarette from the packet, lit it and paced around the room like an obstinate wild boar. All the sweetness had vanished from his face. Adamsberg observed him. Veyrenc was protecting Zerk. So Veyrenc must be in league with Emma Carnot. Veyrenc must be waiting to push him into a hole, like all those others. But in that case, why rescue him from the vault? To get him eliminated legally?

‘Let me tell you something, Adamsberg. Thirty years ago, a certain Gisèle Louvois got herself pregnant, down by the little bridge over the Jaussène. You know where I mean. And let me tell you that she went to Pau to hide the pregnancy, and gave birth there to a boy, Armel Louvois.’

‘Zerk. Yes, I know all that, Veyrenc.’

‘Because he told you.’

‘No.’

‘Yes, he did. Because he’s got it into his head that it was you that made his mother pregnant. He must have talked to you about it when he came. He’s thought of nothing else for months.’

‘All right, yes, he did. All right, he’s got it into his head. Or rather his mother must have put it into his head.’

‘And rightly so.’

Veyrenc came back to the fireplace, threw his cigarette into the flames and knelt down to poke the fire. Adamsberg now felt no gratitude at all for his former colleague. He had certainly torn off all that tape, but now he was trying to tie him up all over again.

‘Spit it out, Veyrenc.’

‘Zerk’s right. And his mother’s right. The young man down by the bridge was Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. Without any doubt.’

Veyrenc got up, slight sweat breaking out on his forehead.

‘So that makes you the father of Zerk, or Armel if you prefer.’

Adamsberg clenched his teeth.

‘Look, Veyrenc, how can you know that, if I don’t know it myself?’

‘It often happens. Life’s like that.’

‘Listen, only once have I done something and completely lost any memory of it, and that was in Quebec, when I had had too much to drink. This was thirty years ago you’re talking about, and I didn’t drink then. What are you suggesting? That not only am I amnesiac, but have the power of being everywhere, and I made love to some girl I have never met? In my whole life, I have never slept with or even talked to a girl called Gisèle.’

‘I believe you.’

‘That’s better.’

‘She hated her name, she told boys she was called something else. It wasn’t Gisèle you went with that night, it was a girl called Marie-Ange. Down by the bridge.’

Adamsberg felt himself pitch down a steep slope. His skin was on fire, and his head was throbbing. Veyrenc went out of the room. Adamsberg dug his fingers into his hair. Yes, of course, he had made love to a girl called Marie-Ange, the girl with the urchin haircut, the girl with slightly buck teeth, by the bridge over the Jaussène, a slight rain falling and the wet grass which had almost put an end to it. And yes, of course, there had been a letter, received some time later, a weird letter of which he couldn’t make head nor tail, and that was from her. And yes, of course, Zerk did look like him. So this was what it was like to be in hell. To find you have a son of twenty-nine on your back, and to have that back broken on an anvil. To be the father of the man who had chopped Vaudel into bits, the man who had tied him up in the vault. Know where you are now, scumbag? No, he didn’t know where he was at all, except that he was inside a skin that was sweating and burning, with his head fallen on his knees, and tears stinging his eyes.

Veyrenc had come back in without saying a word, carrying a tray on which were a bottle and some bread and cheese. He put it down looking at Adamsberg, poured out a couple of glasses and spread the cheese on the bread (kajmak, as Adamsberg realised). Head still in hands, he watched. A cheese sandwich, well, why not? The stage he’d reached now.

‘I’m really sorry,’ said Veyrenc, holding out a glass. He pushed it against Adamsberg’s hand, as one tries with a child to get it to unclench its fingers and rescue it from its rage or distress. Adamsberg moved his arm and took the glass.

‘Well, he’s a good-looking boy,’ Veyrenc added pointlessly, as if trying to find a drop of hope in an ocean of calamity.

Adamsberg emptied the glass in a single gulp, an early shot of alcohol, which made him cough. That brought some relief. As long as he could still feel his body, he could at least do something. Which hadn’t been the case last night.

‘How did you know I’d slept with Marie-Ange?’

‘She’s my sister.’

God almighty. Adamsberg held out the glass, and Veyrenc filled it again.

‘Have some bread with it.’

‘Can’t eat a thing.’

‘Try all the same, force yourself. No, I’ve hardly eaten either, since I saw his picture in the paper. You may be Zerk’s father, but I’m his uncle. Not a whole lot better.’

‘Why is your sister called Louvois and not Veyrenc?’

‘She’s my half-sister, from my mother’s first marriage. You don’t remember Louvois? The coalman who went off with an American woman?’

‘No. Why didn’t you ever mention this when you were in the squad?’

‘Because my sister and the kid didn’t want anything to do with you. You weren’t popular.’

‘But why haven’t you been able to eat since seeing the paper? You just said Zerk didn’t kill the old man. So you’re not really sure?’

‘No, not at all.’

Veyrenc put another slice of bread into Adamsberg’s hand and both of them sadly and conscientiously swallowed mouthfuls of bread slowly as the fire died down.