An Uncertain Place

‘Lieutenant Mai Thien Dinh,’ said Adamsberg, stabbing a name on the list. ‘He wrote to me last December. I knew there was some talk of him going to Avignon. He often sends me a card when he’s on holiday, with mystic Eastern proverbs, like “Don’t eat your hand when there’s no bread left”.’

‘That’s stupid.’

‘Yes, well, he makes them up.’

‘And you write back?’

‘Oh, I can’t make up proverbs,’ said Adamsberg, as he tapped in Lieutenant Mai’s number.

‘Dinh? Hello, it’s Jean-Baptiste. Thanks for the card in December.’

‘This is June. But you’re always slow replying. The slow man goes less quickly than the quick man. You know we’re on the same case, this Vaudel thing?’

‘The little cartridge under the fridge?’

‘Yes, and the dope who dropped it walked across a carpet with some pencil shavings on his shoes. Don’t worry, we’ve let Vaudel go for now, and we’ll catch your pencil man sooner than that.’

‘Yes, well, Dinh, that’s just it. I’d prefer if you didn’t go too fast on this one. Just moderately fast. Or indeed moderately slowly.’

‘Why?’

‘Can’t tell you.’

‘Ah. The wise man gives nothing away to fools. Can’t be done, Jean-Baptiste. Just a minute, I’m going out of the room. Now what do you want me to do?’ said Dinh after a pause.

‘Just to slow things down.’

‘Not on the level.’

‘Not on the level at all, Dinh. Look, some bastard has just dropped me in shit creek.’

‘It happens.’

‘And I’m getting in really deep. See what I mean?’

‘With perfect clarity.’

‘Good. Because imagine that you’re right there on the riverbank. Strolling along, levitating, whatever. You see me, and you stretch out your hand.’

‘So I put my own hand in the shit for you, without knowing why?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Can you be a little more precise?’

‘These pencil shavings. When do they go to the lab?’

‘In an hour, they’re just putting together the other samples.’

‘Can you stop them going? Give them two days’ handicap.’

‘How’m I supposed to do that?’

‘How big is the sample?’

‘Size of a lipstick.’

‘Who goes with the driver to the lab?’

‘Brigadier Kerouan.’

‘Take his place.’

‘We don’t look a bit alike.’

‘Give your Breton a mission, and you escort the driver instead. As you want to take special care of this lipstick, you put it in the pocket of your tunic for greater security.’

‘Then?’

‘Then you fall ill on the way. A touch of fever, a dizzy spell, it just comes over you. You deliver everything safely except the tube, but you tell the office you’re going home. Where you stay in bed for two days, aspirins, nothing to eat, you can’t keep anything down. That’s for your visitors of course. In reality you can get up.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘This attack of sickness made you forget the tube in your pocket. The third day, you’re feeling better, it all comes back to you. The sample, the lab, the pocket. One of two things might have happened. Either some keeno at the station realises the tube hasn’t got to the lab, or nobody has noticed anything. Either way, you bring the tube in, you explain and offer your sincere excuses, but you were ill. That way we’ll have gained one and a half to two and a half days.’

‘Well, you’ll have gained them, Jean-Baptiste. But what’s in it for me? Wise is he who seeks his reward on earth.’

‘You get two days off. Thursday and Friday, then it’s the weekend. Plus it’s a rain check for a future good turn from me.’

‘For instance?’

‘For instance when they find some of your straight black hair at a crime scene.’

‘I see.’

‘Thanks, Dinh.’

During this conversation, Danglard had fetched his bottle directly into Adamsberg’s office.

‘More straightforward that way,’ said Adamsberg, pointing to the bottle.

‘I’ve got to finish it, because I’m going over to red.’

‘Lucio would agree with you. You have to finish it, or else don’t get started.’

‘You’re crazy asking Dinh to do that. Anyone finds out, you’ve comprehensively had it.’

‘I’ve already comprehensively had it. But they won’t find out because the man of the East does not chatter like a frivolous blackbird. As he once wrote to me.’

‘OK,’ said Danglard. ‘Say we’ve got five or six days. Where will you stay in Kiseljevo?’

‘Little hotel, does bed and breakfast.’

‘I don’t like it. Going off on your own.’

‘I’ll have your nephew-several-times-removed with me.’

‘Vladislav’s no fighter. I don’t like it,’ Danglard repeated.

‘Kiseljevo and the dark tunnel.’

‘The edge of the wood,’ said Adamsberg with a smile. ‘You’re still frightened of that. More than of the Zerquetscher.’

Danglard shrugged.

‘Who is on the loose somewhere,’ Adamsberg added in graver tones. ‘Free as a bird.’

‘Not your fault. What shall we do about Mordent? Should we turf him out of his cosy nest? Shake him down, make him spit out everything, how he’s comprehensively betrayed us?’

Adamsberg stood up, put a big elastic band round his green and pink files, lit a cigarette which he left hanging on his lower lip, screwing up his eyes against the smoke. Like his father. Like Zerk.

‘What shall we do about Mordent?’ he repeated slowly. ‘First of all, we let him get his daughter back.’

XXVIII

HIS RUCKSACK WAS BUCKLED, THE FRONT POCKET BULGING with the three files: French, English and Austrian. Finding himself back in the kitchen had brought flooding into his mind, in no particular order, images of Zerk that morning, their long confrontation and the way he had let the man go. Go on, Zerk, off you go. Off you go, cool as you like, to kill again. The commissaire didn’t lift a finger to stop you. ‘Inhibition of action’ was what Josselin had called it. Perhaps it had already been at work when he had stood to one side on Sunday and given Emile his chance to run, if that was really what he had done. But the inhibition was over now, the man with the golden fingers had removed it. Now he had to go down into the Kisilova tunnel, and plunge into this village crouching over its secret. He had had a good report on Emile, his temperature had dropped. He strapped on both watches and lifted the rucksack.

‘You’ve got company,’ said Lucio, knocking on the window.

Weill walked calmly into the room, blocking the exit with his large girth. It was customary for others to make