An Uncertain Place

ancestor. Who has identified some other person as the source of his own suffering, and who has decided it must be the old enemy, Plogojowitz. And who has set about destroying all the remaining descendants of that man, in order to escape from his own destiny. If a man went around killing black cats because he was convinced they were bringing him bad luck, you wouldn’t think that absurd, would you, lieutenant? Unthinkable? Impossible to understand?’

‘No-oo,’ admitted Retancourt, encouraged by a few grunts from other positivists.

‘Well, it’s the same thing. But on a much bigger, monumental scale.’

After the second coffee break, Adamsberg set out his instructions. They were to trace the Plogojowitz line, find any possible members of the family, and put them under police protection. They should alert Kommissar Thalberg and have him move Frau Abster to a safe place.

‘Too late,’ came Justin’s high-pitched voice, laden with regret.

‘What, like the others?’ asked Adamsberg, after a silence.

‘Same thing. Thalberg called us this morning.’

‘It must be the work of Arnold Paole,’ said Adamsberg, deliberately looking Retancourt in the eye. ‘So let’s protect the others. Work with Thalberg to find out if there are any more members of the family.’

‘What about Zerk?’ asked Lamarre. ‘Do we get reinforcements in? Showing the photos around hasn’t brought any results yet.’

‘This bastard’s good at slipping the net,’ said Voisenet. ‘He must be on his way back from Cologne now, but where’s he going? Who’s he going to dismember next?’

‘It’s possible,’ said Adamsberg hesitantly, ‘that the bastard is only Paole’s executioner, a henchman. He doesn’t have any Paoles in the maternal line.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Noel, ‘but what about his father’s family?’

‘Could be,’ said Adamsberg in a whisper.

Zerk’s photo had been circulated to all police stations, gendarme headquarters, stations, airports and public spaces, in both France and Austria. In Germany, where the massacre of the old lady in Cologne had caused an outcry, the same was being done. Adamsberg didn’t see how the young man would be able to escape the net.

‘We need a rapid and thorough investigation of this choirmaster, Father Germain. Maurel and Mercadet, can you get on with it?’

‘What about Vaudel junior?’

‘Still at liberty,’ said Maurel, ‘and he’s got a very loudmouthed lawyer.’

‘What does Avignon say?’

‘Oh, that shower that managed to lose the samples,’ said Noel.

‘What samples?’ asked Adamsberg innocently.

‘Some pencil shavings left by whoever planted the cartridge case that rolled under the fridge.’

‘They’ve lost them, have they?’

‘No, found ’em in some lieutenant’s pocket. It’s not a station down there, it’s a holiday camp. They got them off to the lab in the end. Three days lost like that, pff!’

‘Pff,’ echoed Adamsberg, hearing in his ears Vladislav’s ‘plog’.

‘And Emile?’

‘Professor Lavoisier sent us a secret note, very conspiratorial. Emile’s being rehabilitated. He even asked for winkles to eat – which he didn’t get, naturally – and he’ll be out in a few days. But not before there’s some way to keep him secure, the doctor says. He’s waiting for instructions.’

‘Not before we find Paole.’

‘Why would Emile be in any danger from Paole?’ asked Mercadet.

‘Because he’s the only person that Vaudel-Plogojowitz really talked to.’

A danger both for Paole and for Emma Carnot, Adamsberg thought. The clumsy shooting near Chateaudun was looking like an operation on behalf of the hierarchy.

‘We don’t call him Zerk any more, do we?’ Estalere asked his neighbour, Mercadet. ‘We call him Paole?’

‘One and the same, Estalere.’

‘Oh, all right.’

‘Or not.’

‘I see.’

XLIII

DANGLARD, VEYRENC AND ADAMSBERG ARRANGED TO MEET discreetly for dinner in a restaurant some distance from the squad, like three conspirators. Veyrenc had told Danglard about the question marks looming over Weill’s interest in the case. The commandant ran his fingers over his fleshy cheeks and Veyrenc found that he looked different. Must be the Abstract effect, Adamsberg had warned him. There was more energy in Danglard’s pale eyes, his shoulders were more firmly squared, taking up the cut of his suit better. Neither of them knew that in his anguish at Adamsberg’s possible death, Danglard had postponed a visit from Abstract.

‘Shall we just call Weill?’ said Veyrenc.

Adamsberg had ordered stuffed cabbage to rekindle Kisilova memories, but it was so inadequate that he was regretting his choice.

‘Risky,’ he said.

‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ said Danglard.

The three heads nodded and Adamsberg tapped in Weill’s number, signing to the others to stop talking.

‘The Avignon sample went off to the lab yesterday,’ said Adamsberg into his phone. ‘Just two days left. Where are we now, Weill?’

‘Just a moment, while I rescue my lamb roast.’

Adamsberg put his hand over the phone.

‘He’s seeing to his lamb.’

The other two nodded, understandingly.

Adamsberg switched on the loudspeaker.

‘I don’t like interrupting the flow when I’m cooking,’ said Weill, coming back on. ‘You never know how it will turn out.’

‘Weill, Emma Carnot knows who the Garches killer is. But only indirectly. The man she has really latched on to is the one who put seventeen severed feet outside Higg-gate Cemetery.’

‘Highgate you mean.’

‘We forgot about the eighteenth foot. I think that’s the one she saw.’

‘If you won’t let me tell you anything myself, Adamsberg, I’ll get back to the lamb.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Right. I got on to someone from the police in Auxerre, the place where the marriage register was clipped. A rather intriguing report was made there twelve years ago. A woman had been shocked by finding a severed foot, still in its shoe, lying on a path in the woods, no less. The foot was decomposed and had been attacked by birds and animals. This woman, according to the officer I spoke to, had just evicted her ex-husband from her country house. She was only going down there, after he’d left, to change the locks. And she found this foot about fifteen metres from the front door, on the path leading to the house.’

‘And at the time, Carnot didn’t suspect the ex-husband?’

‘No, or she wouldn’t have gone to the police. But there were several reasons why she ought to have been suspicious. It was a private path, no one else would normally be there. The husband made use of the house at weekends, and had been doing so for over fifteen years. He liked hunting there. And this husband, a lonely oddball, according to the people in the village, used to keep his game in a locked freezer. He wouldn’t accept any help from the locals when Emma Carnot finally forced him to move out. You can imagine what the freezer held. One foot must have got dislodged when he was in a hurry, loading his van on his own. Emma Carnot must surely