An Uncertain Place

XL

ARMED WITH A GUN THIS TIME, ADAMSBERG WENT BACK along the riverbank, then towards the forest, avoiding the place of uncertainty. Danica hadn’t wanted to let him go, but the need to walk was more imperative than her anxiety.

‘I have to come back to life, Danica. I have to understand.’

So he had accepted an escort, Bosko and Vukasin following him at a distance. Now and then, he made a little sign to them, without turning round. This was where he should stay, in Kisilova unravished by the flames of war, with these kind and caring people, and not go back to the cities where he would have to dodge the high-ups, try to escape their clutches, and flee from his hellhound of a son. At every step, his thoughts rose and fell in chaos, as they usually did with him, like fish swimming up to the surface then diving back down, and he didn’t try to catch them. This was how he always dealt with the fish swimming round in his brain, he just let them swim anywhere they liked, to the rhythm of his footsteps. Adamsberg had promised Veyrenc he would meet him at the kruchema to eat a meal, and after half an hour’s walking and looking at the hills, the vineyards and the trees, he felt better prepared. He turned round, smiled at Bosko and Vukasin, gesturing ‘thank you’ and ‘let’s go back’.

‘We’ll have to do some thinking now,’ said Veyrenc, unfolding his napkin.

‘Yes.’

‘Or we’ll be here till the end of our days.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Adamsberg, getting up.

Vlad was sitting down at another table, and Adamsberg explained to him that he needed to have a tete-a-tete with Veyrenc.

‘Were you scared?’ asked Vlad, who still seemed impressed at having seen Adamsberg emerge from the earth looking grey and red: he called it ‘the escape from the vault’ as if it was one of his dedo’s stories.

‘Yes, I was scared, and I was in pain.’

‘Did you think you were going to die?’

‘Yes.’

‘Had you lost all hope?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what did you think about?’

‘Kobasice.’

‘No, please,’ Vlad insisted, ‘really, what did you think about?’

‘I swear to you that’s what I was thinking about: kobasice.’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘Yes, I guess so. What are kobasice anyway?’

‘Sausages. What else did you think about?’

‘I was concentrating on breathing one breath at a time. And on a line of poetry – “In the night of the tomb, Thou who consolest me.”’

‘And did anything console you? The thought of heaven?’

‘No heaven.’

‘Or some person?’

‘No, nothing, Vlad. I was alone.’

‘If you were thinking about nothing and nobody,’ said Vlad, with an edge of anger, ‘you wouldn’t have thought of that line. Who or what consoled you?’

‘I don’t have an answer to that. Why does it bother you?’

The young man with the sunny disposition hung his head, mashing up his food with his fork.

‘It bothers me that we looked but we didn’t find you.’

‘You couldn’t have guessed.’

‘I didn’t believe any of it, I didn’t care where you’d gone. It was Danica who forced me to go and look. I should have gone with you when you went out yesterday.’

‘I didn’t want any company then, Vlad.’

‘Arandjel had told me to do it,’ he whispered. ‘Arandjel had told me not to leave you alone for a minute. Because you had gone into the place of uncertainty.’

‘And that made you laugh.’

‘Of course. I didn’t ask myself any questions. I don’t believe in that stuff.’

‘Nor do I.’

The young man nodded.

‘Plog.’

* * *

Danica served the two policemen their meal. Looking anxious, her eyes went from Adamsberg to Veyrenc. Adamsberg guessed that there was a hesitation there, due to the presence of another newcomer. He was not offended, since he had now resolved never to sleep with anyone for the rest of his life.

‘Did you think while you were walking?’ asked Veyrenc.

Adamsberg looked at him in surprise, as if Veyrenc didn’t know him at all, as if he were asking the impossible of him.

‘Sorry,’ said Veyrenc, gesturing that he took back the question. ‘I mean, is there anything you want to say?’

‘Yes. Once you had seen Zerk’s face in the papers, you started following my every move, to stop me setting hands on him. Just because he’s your nephew. So I suppose you’re fond of him, you must know him well.’

‘Yes.’

‘When you heard him talking outside the vault, was that his voice?’

‘I was too far away. What about you, when he locked you in, was that his voice?’

‘He only spoke to me once the door was shut. And the door was too thick to hear through, even if he had shouted, which he didn’t want to do. He slid a little speaker under the door. It altered his voice. But his way of talking was perfectly recognisable: “Know where you are now, scumbag?”’

‘Oh, I don’t think he would say that,’ Veyrenc reacted.

‘He damn well did, and you’d better believe it.’

‘If someone knew him well, they might have imitated him.’

‘Yes, one could imitate him. In fact, you might say he imitates himself, sometimes.’

‘There, you see.’

‘Veyrenc, have you even a shred of evidence on your side?’

‘Well, I smell a rat when a murderer leaves something at a crime scene with his DNA.’

‘Yes, me too,’ agreed Adamsberg, thinking of the cartridge case under the fridge. ‘You mean that convenient little tissue in the garden?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Why would Armel only have spoken to you after he got you locked inside the vault?’

‘So as not to be heard by other people.’

‘Or so that you wouldn’t hear his voice, because it would be a voice you didn’t recognise?’

‘Veyrenc, this kid has never denied doing the murder. How are you going to get him out of this mess?’

‘By knowing what he’s like. I do know him. My sister stayed in Pau after he was born. She couldn’t come back to the village with a baby and no father. I was still at school, and I stopped being a boarder and went to lodge with her for seven years. Then I did my teacher training, and started work. And I stayed with them all that time. I know Armel like the back of my hand.’