An Uncertain Place

‘Joder! Go on, pull!’

Six minutes later, Adamsberg was putting two red and squeaking little rats alongside the others on an old blanket. Lucio cut the cords and placed them one by one at their mother’s teats. He looked anxiously at the mother cat, which was whimpering.

‘What did you mean about your hand? You put people to sleep?’

Adamsberg shook his head.

‘I don’t know how. If I put my hand on their heads they go to sleep. That’s all.’

‘And you do that with your own kid?’

‘Yes. And people go to sleep when I’m talking too. I even have suspects drop off when I’m questioning them.’

‘Well, do it for this mother cat. Apurate! Make her sleep.’

‘Good grief, Lucio, can’t you get it into your head that I’ve got a train to catch?!’

‘We’ve got to calm the mother down.’

Adamsberg couldn’t have cared less about the cat, but he did care about the black look his old neighbour was giving him. He stroked the – very soft – head of the cat since, it was true, he really had no choice. The animal’s panting gradually subsided as his fingers rolled like marbles from its muzzle to its ears. Lucio nodded his approval.

‘Yes, she’s sleeping, hombre.’

Adamsberg gently removed his hand, wiped it on some wet grass and backed away quietly.

As he went up the escalator at the Gare du Nord, he could still feel something sticky drying on his fingers and under his nails. He was twenty minutes later than agreed for the rdv. Danglard hurried towards him. Danglard’s legs always looked as if they had been wrongly assembled, and that they would be dislocated from the knee if he tried to run.

Adamsberg raised a hand to pre-empt his reproaches, and stop him running.

‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘Something crossed my path and I had to deal with it, or I’d have had to scratch it for the rest of my days.’

Danglard was so used to Adamsberg’s incomprehensible sentences that he rarely bothered to ask questions. Like others in the squad, he let it pass, knowing how to separate the interesting from the useful. Puffing, he pointed to the departure gate, and set off back in that direction. As he followed without haste, Adamsberg tried to recall what colour the cat had been. White with grey patches? Ginger patches?

II

‘YOU GET SOME WEIRD GOINGS-ON IN FRANCE TOO, DON’T you?’ remarked Detective Chief Inspector Radstock, in English, to his Parisian colleagues.

‘What did he say?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘He said we get weird things happening back home as well,’ Danglard translated.

‘Very true,’ said Adamsberg, without taking much interest in the conversation.

What concerned him just now was the possibility of taking a stroll. He was in London, it was a fine evening in June, and he wanted to walk about a bit. The two days of conference he had sat through were beginning to get on his nerves. Staying seated for hours on end was one of the rare experiences that disrupted his habitual calm, and made him undergo the strange state other people called ‘impatience’ or ‘feverishness’, usually foreign to his nature. The previous day he had managed to escape three times, and had explored the surrounding district, after a fashion, committing to memory the brick housefronts, the white columns, the black-and-gold lamp posts. He had taken a few steps into a little street called St John’s Mews, though heaven only knew how you were meant to pronounce ‘Mews’. A flock of seagulls had flown up in the air, calling (mewing indeed) in English. But his absences had been noticed. So today he had had to stay the course, sitting in his place, unresponsive to the speeches of his colleagues and unable to keep up with the rapid translation by a simultaneous interpreter. The hall was crammed full of police officers, all of whom were displaying much ingenuity in devising a grid intended to ‘harmonise the flow of migrants’, and to cover Europe with a net through whose meshes it would be impossible to slip. Since he had always preferred fluids to solids, the flexible to the rigid, Adamsberg naturally identified with the movements of the ‘flow’ and was inventing ways of outflanking the fortifications which were being perfected under his very eyes.

This colleague from New Scotland Yard, DCI Radstock, seemed to know all about nets, but did not seem to be fanatical about their efficiency. He would be retiring in under a year, and cherished the very British notion of spending his time fishing in some northern loch, according to Danglard, who understood everything and translated everything, including things that Adamsberg had no wish to know. He would have liked to tell his deputy not to bother with these superfluous translations, but Danglard had so few treats and he seemed so happy revelling in the English language, rather like a wild boar wallowing in a favoured spot of mud, that Adamsberg hadn’t the heart to deprive him of the least scrap of enjoyment. At this point, the commandant seemed to have attained a state of bliss, almost to have taken wing, his usually shambling body gaining stature, his drooping shoulders squared, displaying a posture which almost made him impressive. Perhaps he was nursing a plan to retire one day with this new-found friend, and go fishing for something or other in the northern loch.

Radstock was taking advantage of Danglard’s bonhomie to describe to him what it was like working in Scotland Yard, but he was also regaling him with a string of the kind of ‘spicy’ stories he thought suitable for his French guests. Danglard had listened to him throughout their lunch without any sign of boredom, while making sure to check the quality of the wine. Radstock called him ‘Donglarde’, and the two policemen were matching each other anecdote for anecdote, drink for drink, leaving Adamsberg far behind. Of all the hundred officers at the conference, Adamsberg was the only one who didn’t have even the slightest grasp of the English language. So he was following along in a marginal way, exactly as he had hoped, and few people had gathered quite who he was. At his side was the young junior officer, brigadier Estalere, with his wide-open green eyes, which made him look perpetually surprised. Adamsberg had insisted on taking him along on the mission. He maintained that Estalere would wise up one of these days, and from time to time he expended some energy trying to bring this about.

Hands in pockets and for once smartly turned out, Adamsberg was taking full advantage of this long stroll, as Radstock paraded them round the streets to show them the oddities of London by night. Such as a woman sleeping under a canopy of umbrellas sewn together, and clutching in her arms a three-foot-high object described as a ‘teddy bear’. ‘It’s a toy bear,’ Danglard had translated. ‘Yes, I did gather that,’ said Adamsberg.

‘And here,’ said Radstock, pointing down a long, straight avenue, ‘we have Lord Clyde-Fox. He’s an example of what you might call an eccentric English aristocrat. Not many left. They don’t make ’em like this any more. Quite a young specimen.’

Radstock stopped to allow them time to observe this individual, with the satisfaction of someone showing off a rather unusual phenomenon to his guests. Adamsberg and Danglard obediently observed him. Tall and thin, Lord Clyde-Fox was hopping clumsily about on the spot, first on one foot then on the other, barely avoiding falling over. Another man was smoking a cigar about ten feet away, swaying slightly and contemplating his companion’s trouble.

‘Er, interesting,’ said Danglard politely.

‘He’s quite often around here, but not every evening,’ said Radstock, as if his colleagues were benefiting from a rare sighting. ‘We get on all right. He’s very amiable, always a friendly word. He’s a sort of fixture, a familiar figure of the night. Seeing the time it is, he’s probably had an evening out and is trying to get home.’

‘He’s drunk?’ queried Danglard.

‘Not quite. He makes it a point of honour to see how far he can go, finds his limit, and then hangs on there. He says that if he walks along a ridge, balancing between one slope and another, he may suffer but he will never be bored. Everything all right, sir?’

‘Everything all right with you, Radstock?’ rejoined the man, waving a hand.

‘A joker,’ the chief inspector confided. ‘Well, if he wants to be. When his mother died, two years ago, he tried to eat a whole box of photos of her. His sister barged in to stop him, and it turned nasty. She finished up in