An Uncertain Place

evidence. Justin and Estalere, you start investigating the personal background. Accounts, diary, notebooks, wallet, telephone, family photos, medicines, all that stuff. Who he knew, who he called, what he bought, clothes, food, what he liked doing. Get everything you can, we’ll have to reconstruct it as fully as possible. This old man wasn’t just killed, he was reduced to nothingness. He didn’t simply have his life taken, he was literally demolished, wiped out.’

The image of the polar bear flashed suddenly into his mind. The bear must have left the uncle’s body in a state something like this, but cleaner. Nothing left to bring back or bury. And the son Pierre would certainly be unable to bring the murderer’s skin back to the widow as a trophy.

‘I don’t think what he ate is going to be very relevant,’ said Mordent. ‘It would be more to the point to see what legal cases he wrote about. And his family and financial situation. We don’t even know if he was married. We still don’t even know it’s him.’

Adamsberg looked around at the tired faces of the men standing on platforms.

‘Break for everyone,’ he said. ‘There’s a cafe down the road. Retancourt and Roman will stay on duty.’

Retancourt walked Adamsberg to his car.

‘When the place has been cleaned up a bit, call Danglard. Get him working on the victim’s background, but don’t let him near the crime scene.’

‘Of course not.’

Danglard’s squeamishness at the sight of blood or death was well known and uncritically accepted in the squad. They usually didn’t call him in until the worst had been cleaned up.

‘What’s eating Mordent?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘No idea.’

‘He doesn’t seem himself at all. Putting on a front and making snide remarks.’

‘Yes, I noticed.’

‘The way the killer threw everything around, does it ring any bells?’

‘Reminds me of my grandmother, not that she’s got anything to do with it.’

‘Tell me all the same.’

‘When she was losing her marbles, she started laying things out in patterns. She couldn’t bear one thing touching another. She separated newspapers, clothes, shoes.’

‘Shoes?’

‘Anything made of cloth, paper or leather. Shoes had to be ten centimetres apart; she lined them up on the ground.’

‘Did she say why? Was there some reason?’

‘An excellent reason. She thought that if these objects touched each other they might catch fire because of the friction. As I said, nothing to do with this Vaudel business.’

Adamsberg raised his hand to indicate he was taking a message, listened carefully, then pocketed his phone.

‘A few days ago,’ he explained, ‘I helped deliver two kittens. It was a difficult birth. The message says the cat is doing OK.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Retancourt after a pause. ‘I suppose that has to be good news.’

‘The killer might have been like your grandmother. He might have wanted there to be no contact, to keep all the elements separate. But that’s the opposite of making a collection,’ he added, thinking of the London feet again. ‘He crushed everything to bits, destroying any coherence. And I wonder why Mordent is being such a pain in the backside today.’

Retancourt didn’t like it when Adamsberg’s remarks became inconsequential. These non sequiturs and distractions might make him deviate from his purpose. With a wave, she went back to the house.

VII

ADAMSBERG ALWAYS READ THE NEWSPAPER STANDING UP, while he took a turn around the desk in his office. It wasn’t even his own newspaper. He borrowed it every day from Danglard, and gave it back in a crumpled state.

An article on page 12 described the progress made by a police investigation in Nantes. Adamsberg knew the commissaire in charge quite well: a solitary and tight-lipped man when on the job, but the life and soul of the party after work. Adamsberg tried to recall his name as a mental exercise. Since London, and perhaps since Danglard had presented such an encyclopedic account of Highgate Cemetery, the commissaire had been feeling he ought perhaps to try harder to remember names, phrases, sentences. His memory for them had always been poor, though he could recall a sound, a facial expression or a trick of the light years later. What was that cop’s name? Bollet? Rollet? He could keep a tableful of twenty people amused, something Adamsberg admired. And just now he felt envious of this Nolet (having just read his name in the article) because he was dealing with a nice obvious murder, whereas Adamsberg couldn’t rid his mind of the Louis XIII armchair with its stained velvet seat. Compared with the chaos in Garches, Nolet’s inquiry was bracing. A clean killing, two bullets to the head, the victim had opened the door to the killer. No complications, no rape, no madness, a woman of fifty killed, a professional job: you’ve-pissed-me-off-I’m-going-to-kill-you. Nolet just had to find a husband or lover and tie the case up, without having to wander over several square metres of carpet covered with flesh. Without venturing into the territory of madness, Stock’s dark continent. Stock wasn’t his real name either, Adamsberg knew that, the British cop who wanted to retire and go fishing. With Danglard perhaps, who knew? Unless that woman, Abstract, succeeded in hauling Danglard off somewhere else.

Adamsberg raised his head as the office clock made a click. Pierre Vaudel, son of Pierre Vaudel, would be here in a few minutes. The commissaire went up the wooden stairs, avoiding the irregular step which made people trip, and went into the annexe with the coffee machine to get himself a strong espresso. The little room was more or less the den of Lieutenant Mercadet, a man with a gift for statistics and various logical exercises, but suffering from mild narcolepsy. Some cushions in a corner allowed him to take a nap every now and again to refresh himself. Just now he was folding his blanket and rubbing his eyes.

‘Sounds like we’re wading through a bloodbath out there,’ he commented.

‘Not exactly wading, we’re using platforms six centimetres above the floor.’

‘Yeah, but we’ve got to deal with it, haven’t we? Sounds a God-awful case.’

‘Yes. If you’ve got the stomach for it, go and see it before they’re out of there. It’s slaughter without any rhyme or reason. But there is some obsessive idea behind it. As Lieutenant Veyrenc might say: a steel thread vibrating in the depths of the pit. I don’t know, some kind of invisible motive, perhaps only poetry could reveal it.’

‘Veyrenc would have come up with something better than that. We miss him, don’t we?’

Adamsberg swallowed down his coffee, surprised. He hadn’t thought about Veyrenc since he had left the squad. He was not inclined to dwell on the stormy events that had set them against each other in a previous case.

‘Perhaps you’re not bothered though,’ said Mercadet.

‘Perhaps. Mainly it’s that we don’t have time for that sort of thing, lieutenant.’

‘I’ll get over there,’ said Mercadet with a nod. ‘Danglard left a message for you. Nothing to do with the Garches affair.’

Adamsberg finished page 12 as he went down the stairs. Aha, the witty Nolet was not getting on as well as all that. The ex-husband had an alibi, the inquiry was at a standstill. Adamsberg folded up the paper contentedly. In reception, the son of Pierre Vaudel was waiting for him, sitting upright, alongside his wife. He looked no more than thirty-five. Adamsberg paused. How do you tell a man his father has been chopped into pieces?

The commissaire avoided getting to the point for some time, as he went through the formalities of identity and family. Pierre was an only child, and a late one. His mother had become pregnant after sixteen years of marriage, when his father had been forty-four. And Pierre Vaudel senior had been unrelentingly furious about this pregnancy, without giving his wife any reason. He was implacably opposed to having children,