An Uncertain Place

XLVI

DANGLARD’S TEAM WAS FOLLOWING THE AMBULANCE, WHILE Voisenet’s was conducting the inquiry in the Vaudel house. Adamsberg had found Zerk sitting in the next-door living room, looking just as intimidated as he had when faced with Paole, and surrounded by four armed police officers. His hands were swathed in thick bandages, which Madame Bourlant had fastened with safety pins.

‘I’ll look after this one myself,’ said Adamsberg, hauling Zerk to his feet by one arm. ‘Madame Bourlant, have you got any painkillers?’

He made the young man take a couple of pills, and shoved him out towards his car.

‘Put your seat belt on.’

‘Can’t,’ said Zerk, holding up his bandaged hands. Adamsberg nodded, pulled across the seat belt and fastened it. Zerk sat passively wordless, shattered, as if deprived of sense. Adamsberg drove in silence. It was about five in the morning and almost light. He wasn’t sure what to do. He could follow the rules technically, or face what he had to head-on. A third solution, the kind Danglard would always whisper to him, was to steer matters to a compromise, elegantly, English fashion. But that kind of elegance wasn’t in his make-up. Feeling drained and vaguely discouraged, he just drove on without thinking. What did it matter, to have it out or not? What was the point? He could just let Zerk go off and live his life, without taking any further notice of him. Or he could drive to the end of the world without saying a word. Or he could leave him there. Clumsily, with his bandaged hands, Zerk had managed to take out a cigarette. But he couldn’t light it. Adamsberg sighed, pressed the cigarette lighter and handed it to him. Then he picked up the second mobile. Weill was calling.

‘Did I wake you, commissaire?’

‘I haven’t been to bed.’

‘Neither have I. Nolet has found the witness, a man who was in school with Françoise Chevron and Emma Carnot. He got Carnot surrounded half an hour ago. She was armed and on her way in person to her school friend’s apartment.’

‘There are some nights like that, Weill, when hunger stalks the world. Arnold Paole was arrested an hour ago. It was Dr Paul de Josselin. He was about to kill Zerk at the house in Garches.’

‘Any damage?’

‘Zerk’s hands are badly cut, Josselin’s in hospital in Garches with a bullet in his gut. Not life-threatening.’

‘Did you shoot him?’

‘No. The woman next door did. She’s sixty years old, five foot nothing, weighs a handful of kilos and had a.32.’

‘Where’s the young man now?’

‘With me.’

‘Are you bringing him back?’

‘Sort of. He can’t use his hands yet, so he’ll need some help. Tell Nolet to seal off Françoise Chevron’s house, they’ll try everything they can to get Emma Carnot out of the mess she’s in and keep it pinned on Chevron’s husband. And tell them to keep Carnot incommunicado for forty-eight hours. No statement to the press, not a word. The girl will be in court tomorrow. I don’t want Mordent to have been eaten alive for nothing.’

‘Naturally.’

Zerk passed him his cigarette end with a questioning look, and Adamsberg stubbed it out in the ashtray. In profile, as the light of morning came up, Zerk with his beaked nose and weak chin, apparently dreamily pursuing vague ideas, looked remarkably like Adamsberg, so much so it was a wonder that Weill had never noticed it. Josselin had stated confidently that Zerk was an imbecile.

‘I smoked your cigarettes in Kiseljevo,’ said Adamsberg. ‘The packet you left in my house. All but one.’

‘Josselin went on about some place called Kiseljevo.’

‘It’s where Peter Plogojowitz died in 1725. That’s where they built this special vault for his nine victims, and that’s where Josselin imprisoned me.’ Adamsberg felt an icy shiver run down his back.

‘So that bit was true,’ said Zerk.

‘Yes. It was freezing. And every time I think of it, I feel cold again.’ Adamsberg drove for a couple of kilometres without speaking.

‘He shut the door of the vault and he talked to me. He imitated your voice very well: “Know where you are now, scumbag?”’

‘That sounded like me?’

‘Very. “Everyone will know that Adamsberg abandoned his kid, and how the kid turned out. Because of you. You.” It sounded pretty convincing.’

‘And you thought it was me?’

‘Naturally I did. Like the little shit you were when you came to see me, “to fuck up my life”. That’s what you promised, wasn’t it?’

‘So what did you do in the vault?’

‘I practically suffocated in there until the morning.’

‘And who found you?’

‘Veyrenc. He’d been tailing me all the time to try and stop me arresting you. Did you know that?’

Zerk looked out of the window. It was broad daylight by now.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Where are we going now? Fucking police headquarters, I suppose.’

‘Did you not notice that we’re driving away from Paris?’

‘So where’re we going?’

‘Where the road runs out. The seaside.’

‘OK,’ said Zerk, closing his eyes. ‘And what are we supposed to do there?’

‘Eat something. Warm ourselves by the sun. Look at the water.’

‘I’m in pain. That asshole really hurt me.’

‘I can’t give you any more painkillers for an hour or two. Try to sleep.’

Adamsberg stopped the car facing the sea, when the road ran into the sand. His wristwatches and the height of the sun indicated that it was about half past seven. The beach was smooth and deserted, stretching out into the distance, with no sign of life except for a few groups of silent white birds. He got out of the car quietly. The calm sea and cloudless blue sky seemed very provocative, not at all suited to these last ten days of savage turmoil. They were inappropriate too for the state of things between himself and Zerk, with distress and bemusement sprouting like wild grass on a rubbish heap. A great storm over the sea would have been better, with the dawn coming up like thunder and a mist hiding the horizon. But nature had decided otherwise, and if she had chosen this still perfection, he would absorb it for an hour. Anyway, his fatigue had left him now, and he felt wide awake. He lay down on the sand which was still cool from the night, and raised himself on one elbow. At this hour, Vlad would be at the kruchema. Possibly as high as a kite. He punched in his number.

‘Dobro jutro, Vlad.’

‘Dobro jutro, Adamsberg.’

‘Where’s your phone? I can’t hear you very well.’

‘On my pillow.’

‘Put it closer to your head.’

‘OK.’

‘Hvala. Please tell Arandjel that Arnold Paole’s wild ride came to an end last night. But I think he’s satisfied, because he has massacred five great Plogojowitzes: Plögener, Vaudel-Plog, Plogerstein and two Plogans, a father and daughter in Finland. And the feet of Plogodrescu. The curse of the Paoles is at an end, and according to him, they’re all away now. Free. And on Highgate Hill, the tree is dying.’

‘Plog.’

‘There are two shroud-eaters left.’

‘They don’t trouble anyone. Arandjel says you just have to turn them face down and they’ll drop like mercury to the centre of the earth.’

‘I don’t intend to have anything to do with them.’

‘Wow,’ said Vlad, apropos of nothing.

‘Tell Arandjel, without fail. Are you going to stay in Kisilova for ever now?’

‘No, I’m expected at a conference in Munich tomorrow. I’m getting back on the straight and narrow, which as you know does not exist and is neither straight nor narrow.’

‘Plog. What does “Loša sreća” mean, Vlad? Paole said it when he fell to the ground.’

‘It means “bad luck”.’

Zerk was now sitting on the sand a few metres away, watching him patiently.

‘We’ll go to a medical centre to get your hands seen to,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Then we’ll go and have some coffee.’

‘What does “plog” mean?’

‘It’s like a drop of truth falling to earth,’ said Adamsberg, miming the action by raising and dropping his hand vertically. ‘And it falls in exactly the right spot,’ he said, plunging his index finger into the sand.

‘Oh,’ said Zerk, looking at the little hole. ‘And what if it falls here or here?’ he asked, plunging in a finger at random. ‘Not a real plog then?’

‘No, I suppose not.’