An Uncertain Place

we can handle this.’

‘No, probably not,’ said Adamsberg, thinking of the blood on the piano.

‘Have you got your gun?’

‘It’s downstairs.’

‘Well, keep it by your bed.’

XXIII

THE STAIRS IN THE OLD HOUSE WERE COLD ON THE FEET, being made of traditional red tiles and wood, but Adamsberg didn’t mind. It was 6.15 a.m., and he was coming down in peaceful mood, as he did every morning, having quite forgotten his tinnitus, Kisilova and the rest of the world, as if sleep had restored him to a naive, absurd and illiterate state, with his waking thoughts directed exclusively at eating, drinking and washing. He stopped on the last but one stair, as he saw in his kitchen a man with his back to him, framed in the morning sun, and wreathed in cigarette smoke. The intruder was of slight build with dark, curly, shoulder-length hair. Probably young, he was wearing a black T-shirt that looked new, decorated with a white design showing a ribcage from which drops of red blood were dripping.

The silhouette was unfamiliar, and alarm bells went off in his vacant brain. This man’s arms looked strong, and he was waiting with a definite purpose. Plus he was fully clothed, whereas Adamsberg was naked, on the stairs, without a plan and without a weapon. The gun that Danglard had advised him to put by his bed was lying on the table within reach of the stranger. If Adamsberg could manage to turn left to the bathroom without making a sound, he would be able to get to his clothes and the P38 wedged between the lavatory cistern and the wall.

‘Put some clothes on, scumbag,’ said the man without turning round. ‘And forget about the gun, I’ve got it.’

He had quite a high-pitched voice but was talking tough-guy stuff, a bit too tough- guy, signalling danger. The man lifted the back of his T-shirt to show the butt of the P38 jammed into the top of his jeans, against his tanned back.

There was no way out through the bathroom, and no way out via the study. The man was blocking the front door. Adamsberg slipped his clothes on, unscrewed the blade from his razor and put it in his pocket. Was there anything else? A nail clipper. Into the other pocket. Laughable, because the guy now had two guns. And if he was not much mistaken, he was face to face with the Zerquetscher. The thick hair, the rather short neck. And on this June morning, it was the end of the road. He had not followed Danglard’s anxious advice and now daybreak was here, blocked by the outline of the Zerquetscher under his repulsive T-shirt. Just on this very midsummer morning, when the light was falling on every blade of grass, on the bark of every tree, with its exalting and universal precision. Yesterday too, the light had been like that. But he could see it better this morning.

Adamsberg was not a fearful man, through some lack of anticipation or emotion, or perhaps because of his way of opening his arms to the chances life offered. He went into the kitchen and around the table. How was it that at this moment he should be capable of thinking of coffee, of wanting to brew some and drink it?

The Zerquetscher. So young, good Lord, that was his first thought. So young, but with a face deeply marked, angular, bony and lined. So young, but his features altered by the choice of a fixed path. He was concealing his anger with a mocking smile, just showing off really, a boastful kid. Mocking death too, a mortal combat which gave him that pale complexion and that cruel and stupid expression. Death was displayed on the T-shirt, with another ribcage design on the chest. Under the breastbone, the legend was a mock-dictionary definition: ‘Death: end of life, marked by the extinction of breath and the rotting of the flesh. Dead: finished, nothing.’ This individual was already dead and he meant to take others with him.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ Adamsberg said.

‘Don’t play the fool, mister,’ said the young man, drawing on his cigarette and putting one hand on the gun. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know who I am.’

‘Of course I know. You’re the Zerquetscher.’

‘The what?’

‘The Crusher, the most vicious killer of the new century.’

The man smiled, satisfied.

‘I would like some coffee,’ Adamsberg said. ‘You can shoot me first or after, it doesn’t matter. You’ve got the guns, you’re blocking the way out.’

‘Huh,’ said the man, ‘you make me laugh.’ He moved the revolver nearer the edge of the table.

Adamsberg put a filter paper in the funnel with three heaped tablespoons of coffee. He measured two bowlfuls of water and poured them into a saucepan. Better to be doing something than nothing.

‘You don’t have a proper coffee-maker?’

‘Tastes better this way. You haven’t had any breakfast? As you like,’ said Adamsberg into the silence, ‘but I’m going to eat something.’

‘You’ll eat if I say so.’

‘If I don’t eat anything, I won’t understand what you’re saying. I imagine you came here to say something.’

‘You think you’re so high and mighty,’ said the man. The smell of coffee began to fill the kitchen.

‘No, I’m just preparing my last breakfast. Does that bother you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK, go ahead and shoot then.’

Adamsberg put two bowls on the table with sugar, bread, butter, jam and milk. He had not the slightest desire to die from a bullet fired by this sinister character who was blocked somewhere, as Josselin might say. Or to get to know him. But talk and get them talking, that was the first rule you learned, before even learning to handle a gun. ‘Words,’ the instructor had said, ‘are the deadliest weapons if you know exactly where to aim them.’ He also said it was quite difficult to find the right place in the head to aim the words, and if you were off target the enemy tended to shoot at once.

Adamsberg poured the coffee into the two bowls, pushed some sugar and bread towards the enemy, whose eyes did not move under the black bar of his eyebrows meeting across the middle.

‘Tell me at least what you think of it,’ Adamsberg said. ‘Apparently you’re quite a cook.’

‘How would you know that?’

‘Through Monsieur Weill, your downstairs neighbour. He’s a friend of mine. He also likes you, Zerquetscher. I’ll say Zerketch if you don’t mind.’

‘I know what you’re up to, scumbag. You’re trying to make me talk, tell you the story of my life, fucking stuff like that, like the fucking over-the-hill cop you are, and then you’ll try to confuse me and kick me in the balls.’

‘Story of your life, sorry, I don’t give a damn.’

‘Huh, really?’

‘No,’ said Adamsberg sincerely, regretting the fact.

‘Well, you’re wrong,’ said the young man through clenched teeth.

‘Maybe so. But that’s the way I am. Couldn’t give a damn about anything really.’

‘Not about me?’

‘Not about you.’

‘So what does interest you, scumbag?’

‘Nothing. I must have missed out on something when I was born. See that light bulb up there?’

‘Ha, don’t try to make me look up!’

‘It hasn’t worked for months. I haven’t changed it, I just get on with things in the dark.’

‘Just what I thought about you. Useless fucking wanker.’

‘Well, a wanker does want something, doesn’t he?’

‘Yeah,’ admitted the young man after a moment.

‘But I don’t. Otherwise, yes, I agree with you.’

‘And you’re chicken, you remind me of this old geezer I know, a real bullshitter, he thinks he knows it all.’