An Uncertain Place

flow, non-existence. To accompany Adamsberg in these extremes of his activity was like swimming into deep water, alongside slow-moving creatures, slimy mud, floating jellyfish, a world of vague outlines and swirling colours. Spend too much time with him and you might go to sleep in the warm water and drown. At these particularly aqueous moments, there was no point in arguing with him any more than with foam, mist or sea spray.

Danglard was furious with his boss for pulling him towards this liquidity just as he was suffering from the double anguish of the Channel Tunnel and uncertainty about Abstract. He was also furious for allowing himself to be drawn so often into Adamsberg’s misty moods.

He swallowed down the second glass of champagne, the one for Adamsberg, and recalled Radstock’s report quickly in order to extract from it some precise, clear and reassuring factual details. Adamsberg could see that, and was himself not anxious to explain to Danglard the state of terror into which the sight of those feet had thrown him. The wardrobe-eater and the story about the polar bear had been trivial distractions to help him blot out the image of what he had seen on the pavement in Highgate, to take him out of himself and away from the impressionable Estalere.

‘There were actually seventeen feet,’ Danglard said. ‘Eight matched pairs and one isolated foot. Nine people then.’

‘People or corpses?’

‘Corpses. It seems that the feet were amputated after death, with a saw. Five men, four women, all adults.’

Danglard paused, but the deep-sea gaze of Adamsberg was intensely waiting for more details.

‘The feet were definitely taken from the cadavers before they were buried. Radstock has made a note “In the morgue? Or in the cold stores of the undertakers?” and also, according to the styles of the shoes, though that has to be checked, it looks as if all this happened between ten and twenty years ago, spread over a long period. In short, this was someone who cut off a pair of feet here, then another there, from time to time.’

‘Until he got tired of his collection.’

‘What’s there to say he got tired?’

‘The event we’ve witnessed. Just cast your mind back, Danglard. This man amasses his trophies for ten or twenty years, a diabolically difficult thing to do. He fanatically stores them in a freezer. Did Stock say anything about that?’

‘Yes, he says they had been frozen and defrosted several times.’

‘So the foot-chopper took them out now and then to look at them for God knows what purpose. Or perhaps to move them.’

Adamsberg leaned back against his seat and Danglard glanced up at the roof again. Another few minutes and they would be out from under the sea.

‘And one night,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘despite all the trouble he had taken to build up his collection, the foot- chopper abandons his precious loot. Just like that, on a public street. He leaves it all behind as if it doesn’t interest him any more. Or – and that would be even more disturbing – as if it wasn’t enough for him any more. Like those collectors who junk one lot of stuff to go off in search of something new, moving up a stage. The foot-chopper switches to a more worthwhile quarry. Something better.’

‘Or worse.’

‘Yes. He’s going deeper into his tunnel. No wonder Stock is upset. If he follows this trail, he’ll get to some worrying levels.’

‘Where will he get to?’ asked Estalere, meanwhile closely observing the effect the champagne was having on Danglard.

‘He’ll go on until he reaches some unspeakable, cruel, devastating event, the one that has triggered the whole story, a story that ends in cut-off feet, or eating wardrobes. Then the dark tunnel opens up with its stairways and its caves, and Stock will have to go down into it.’

Adamsberg closed his eyes, passing without any visible transition to an apparent state of sleep or escape.

‘We can’t say that the foot-chopper has moved on to a new phase,’ Danglard interjected, before Adamsberg escaped from him altogether. ‘Or that he is getting rid of his collection. What we do know is that he deposited it outside Highgate Cemetery. And, good grief, that’s not a matter of indifference. It’s almost as if he were making an offering.’

The Eurostar sped out into the daylight, and Danglard’s brow cleared. His smile encouraged Estalere.

‘But, commandant,’ Estalere whispered, ‘what did happen in Highgate?’

As so often and without meaning to, Estalere was putting his finger on the crucial spot.

V

‘I DON’T KNOW THAT IT’S A GOOD IDEA TO TELL THE HIGHGATE story,’ said Danglard, who had by now ordered a third glass of champagne, for Estalere, and was drinking it on his behalf. ‘Perhaps it’s better not to keep telling it. It’s one of those dark tunnels people dig, isn’t it, commissaire, and this one is very old and long-forgotten. Perhaps we should just let it collapse into itself. Because the problem, when some madman opens up a tunnel, is that other people can get into it, which is really what Radstock was telling us in his own way. And that’s what happened in Highgate.’

Estalere was waiting for him to go on, with the happy expression of a man who is about to hear a good story. Danglard looked at his bland, naive face and was unsure what he should do. If he took Estalere into the Highgate tunnel, he might damage that innocence. In the squad they tended to refer to Estalere’s ‘innocence’ rather than to his stupidity. Four times out of five, Estalere just didn’t get it. But his naivety sometimes generated the unexpected benefits of unsullied innocence. His blunders sometimes opened up avenues so obvious that nobody else had thought of them. Most of the time, though, Estalere’s questions merely held things up. People tried to treat them with patience, partly because they liked Estalere, and partly because Adamsberg had decreed that one of these days he’d come out of it. The others made an effort to believe this, and the collective effort had become a habit. In fact, Danglard liked talking to Estalere when he had plenty of time, because he could expound vast quantities of knowledge without the young man becoming impatient. He glanced over at Adamsberg, whose eyes were closed. But he knew the commissaire wasn’t sleeping and could hear every word he said.

‘Why do you want to know?’ he asked. ‘The feet are for Radstock to deal with. They’re behind us on the other side of the Channel now.’

‘You said it might be an offering. Who to? Is the cemetery owned by someone?’

‘In a manner of speaking. There’s a master.’

‘What’s he called?’

‘The Entity,’ replied Danglard with a smile.

‘Since when?’

‘The west end of the cemetery, the oldest part, where we were the day before yesterday, was opened in 1839. But of course the master might have lived there before that.’

‘Right.’

‘Some people say that it was because the Entity lived there already in the ancient chapel on Highgate Hill that the place was chosen as a site for a cemetery.’

‘A woman?’

‘No, a man. More or less. And it was his power that drew the dead and the cemetery towards him, you see?’

‘Yes.’

‘They don’t bury anyone now in the west section, it’s become a well-known historical site, it’s famous. There are extraordinary monuments there, strange things of all kinds, and the graves of famous people, like Dickens or Marx.’

A flicker of anxiety crossed the face of the young brigadier. Estalere never tried to