An Uncertain Place

XX

AS HE REACHED THE DOOR OF THE BUILDING, ADAMSBERG realised that he had not memorised the name of Vaudel’s doctor, despite the fact that this man had saved the kitten’s life and that they had all had a drink together in the tool shed. He found the brass plate on the wall, Dr Paul de Josselin Cressent, osteopath and somatopath, and realised he now had a clearer idea why the doctor had seemed so disdainful towards the policemen who had been blocking his way with their brawny arms.

The concierge was watching television, from his wheelchair, muffled in blankets. His hair was long and grey, his moustache grimy. He did not turn his head, not apparently intending to be rude, but because, like Adamsberg himself, he seemed to be incapable of watching a film while listening to a visitor.

‘The doctor’s gone out to see someone with sciatica,’ he finally vouchsafed. ‘He’ll be back in a quarter of an hour.’

‘Are you one of his patients too?’

‘Yes. He’s got magic fingers.’

‘Did he come to see you during the night of last Saturday to Sunday?’

‘Is this important?’

‘Yes it is, if you don’t mind.’

The concierge asked for a few minutes’ grace, to see the end of the soap he was watching, then turned away from the screen without switching it off.

‘I fell on my way to bed,’ he said, pointing to his leg. ‘I just managed to reach the phone.’

‘And you called him out again a couple of hours later?’

‘I did apologise. My knee was puffed up like a football. I did apologise.’

‘The doctor says your name is Francisco.’

‘Francisco, that’s right.’

‘But I need your full name.’

‘Not wanting to refuse, but why is that?’

‘One of Dr Josselin’s patients has been murdered. We have to make inquiries about everything, it’s the rule.’

‘Your job, eh?’

‘Correct. So I need your full name,’ said Adamsberg, taking out his notebook.

‘Francisco Delfino Vinicius Villalonga Franco da Silva.’

‘OK,’ said Adamsberg, who had not managed to get any of this down. ‘Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish. Where does your first name end and your family name begin?’

‘It’s not Spanish, it’s Portuguese,’ said the man, with a snap of his jaw. ‘I’m Brazilian, my parents were deported under the dictatorship of those sons of bitches, God damn them to hell. Never seen again.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault. As long as you’re not a son of a bitch yourself. The family name is Villalonga Franco da Silva. The doctor’s on the second floor. There’s a waiting room on the landing, all you need up there. That’s where I’d live too, if I could.’

It was true, the landing on the second floor was as large as an entrance hall. The doctor had installed a coffee table and armchairs, with magazines and books, an antique lamp and a water cooler. A refined and somewhat ostentatious person. Adamsberg sat down to wait for the man with magic fingers, and called Chateaudun hospital, with apprehension, Retancourt and her team, without hope, and Voisenet’s team, while trying to keep at bay the unworthy reflections of Commandant Danglard.

Professor Lavoisier was slightly more hopeful – ‘Well, he’s hanging on.’ The fever had gone down slightly; the stomach had survived the pumping; the patient had been asking whether the commissaire had found the postcard with the word on it -’ He seems obsessed with that, mon vieux.’ ‘Tell him we’re looking for the postcard,’ said Adamsberg, ‘and that we’re dealing with the dog, the samples of manure. Everything going to plan.’

Must be a coded message, thought Professor Lavoisier, noting down every word. Well, none of my business, I suppose the police have their methods. But with this new inflammation and a perforated stomach, it was still touch and go.

* * *

Retancourt sounded relaxed, almost jovial, whereas all the signs were that Armel Louvois would not be back. He had gone out at 6 a.m. The concierge had seen him leave with a backpack. Instead of their usual friendly morning exchange, the young man had merely waved his hand at her as he went past. It sounded as though he had been heading for a train. Weill was unable to confirm this, since he did not rise until the gentlemanly hour of midday. He turned out to have a certain affection for his young neighbour, and was extremely vexed by the news of the crime. He had fallen silent, appeared to be sulking, and had provided only a few irrelevant scraps of information. Unusually, Retancourt did not seem too affected by this obstruction. It was possible that Weill, who was a connoisseur of fine wines, had distracted the duty patrol by offering them a decent vintage in fancy glasses. With Weill, who had his suits handmade, since he was extremely rich, extremely snobbish and almost spherical in shape, anything was possible, including the suborning of officers on duty, something which would no doubt give him a paradoxical pleasure. Retancourt did not seem to realise she was on guard outside the apartment of a madman, the Zerquetscher who had reduced an old man to mincemeat; indeed, it seemed that Weill’s indulgent attitude to his neighbour had overcome her vigilance. ‘Tell Weill that he dismembered another person in Austria,’ Adamsberg ordered her.

The Voisenet-Kernorkian team, on the other hand, now on its way back, was on its knees. Raymond Real, the father of the artist, had taken ten minutes to put down his shotgun and let them into his semi-basement in Survilliers. Yes, he’d heard the news, and yes, he called down God’s blessings on the guy who had taken revenge and wiped out that old bastard Vaudel, and God willing the cops would never catch him. So, the papers had come out in time to warn him, and he’d got away? Good! Vaudel had at least two deaths on his conscience, Real’s son and his wife, and don’t you forget it. Did he know who might have killed Vaudel? Could he tell them where his sons were? They must be joking if they thought he’d tell them, even if he knew. What fucking planet were they on? Kernorkian had muttered, ‘Planet Deep Shit,’ which had seemed to mollify him somewhat.

In fact, Voisenet was explaining, ‘he scarcely let us say a thing. He had this gun on the table, only a shotgun, OK, but loaded, right? He had three bloody great dogs and his lair, the only word for it, was full of motors, batteries, hunting stuff.’

‘And you don’t know where the sons are?’

‘What he said, and these are his actual words, was: “One’s in the Legion and the other’s a truck driver: Munich- Amsterdam-Rungis, so you can bloody well look for them yourselves.” And he told us to get out, “because you stink to high heaven”. Actually,’ Voisenet added, ‘he wasn’t wrong about that, because Kernorkian had been handling the dog.’

Listening to all this, Adamsberg reached under the glass-topped table to pick up a toy left by one of Dr Josselin’s patients – a little heart made of foam rubber covered in red silk, which you could press inside your hand to calm your nerves. As he made his next call, to Gardon, he twirled it on the table to make it spin. Third time round, he got it to spin for a few seconds. The goal was to get the letters on the front – LOVE – to face the right way when it stopped. He succeeded on the sixth try, as he asked Gardon to get hold of all the postcards from among Vaudel’s papers. The brigadier read him a message from the Avignon police. Pierre Vaudel had been at the law courts all afternoon, preparing a brief. Information not verifiable. He had returned home at 7.12 p.m. Local bigwig, being protected, Adamsberg thought. He closed the phone and went on playing with the little heart. Was the Zerquetscher on the way somewhere else?

‘He got away, did he?’

Adamsberg got up heavily, feeling tired and shook hands with the doctor.

‘Didn’t hear you come in.’