Adamsberg nodded. He had been told that Normans never ask a direct question, a myth, as he had thought, but in front of him he had a clear example of their proud silence. If you ask too many questions you reveal yourself, and if you reveal yourself you’re less of a man. Ill at ease, the group turned to the elder statesman. Angelbert tilted his unshaven chin, scratching it with his fingers.
‘Because she’s your wife,’ he asserted.
‘Was,’ said Adamsberg.
‘But you’re still coming along with her.’
‘A question of consideration.’
‘Stands to reason,’ said the punctuator.
‘Women,’ Anglebert said in a low voice. ‘Here one day, gone the next.’
‘You don’t want ‘em when you got ‘em,’ commented Robert. ‘Then when they’ve gone, you do.’
‘You lose them,’ Adamsberg agreed.
‘Dunno how it is,’ said Oswald.
‘Lack of consideration,’ Adamsberg explained. ‘Or at least it was that in my case.’
Here was someone who didn’t make a secret of things, and who’d had woman trouble, which chalked up two good points in this male gathering. Anglebert pointed to a chair.
‘You’ve got time to sit down, pal, haven’t you?’
The familiar tone meant he had been provisionally accepted in this assembly of Normans from the flatlands. A glass of white wine was pushed towards him. This evening the assembly had a new member, and there would be plentiful comment on him next day.
‘Who’s been killed, then? In Bretilly?’ Adamsberg asked, after drinking the requisite number of mouthfuls.
‘Killed? Massacred more like! Shot down like, well, like vermin.’
Oswald brought another paper out of his pocket and handed it to Adamsberg, pointing to a photograph.
‘What it is,’ said Robert, who had not lost the thread of the previous conversation, ‘you’d do better to be not so considerate first, and more considerate after. With women. Less trouble that way.’
‘Never know where you are with ‘em,’ agreed the old man.
‘Never do,’ said the punctuator.
Adamsberg was looking at the newspaper article with a frown. A russet-coloured beast was lying in a pool of blood under the headline ‘Odious massacre at Bretilly’. He turned the paper over to see that it was a monthly magazine, the
‘You a hunter?’ asked Oswald.
‘No.’
‘Well, you won’t understand, then. Stag like that, eight points, you just don’t shoot ‘im like that. Diabolical.’
‘Seven points,’ corrected Hilaire.
‘’Scuse me,’ said Oswald, an edge to his voice, ‘but that one there, he’s got eight points.’
‘Seven.’
Quarrel imminent. Anglebert took control. ‘You can’t tell from the picture,’ he said. ‘Seven or eight.’
Everyone took a drink, feeling relieved. Not that a little discord was unwelcome and indeed necessary in the evening concert. But tonight, with an intruder present, there were other priorities.
‘See that?’ said Robert, pointing with his large finger at the photo. ‘That’s no hunter’s doing. That fellow, he hasn’t touched the carcass, he hasn’t taken the pieces, or the honours or anything.’
‘The honours?’
‘The antlers and the hoof, front right. What he’s done, he’s slit it open, just out of cussedness. A maniac. And what have the Evreux cops done about it? Nothing, that’s what. They couldn’t give a toss.’
‘’Cos it’s not a murder for them,’ a voice said.
‘Want me to tell you what I think? When someone kills an animal like that, he’s wrong in the head. Who’s to say after that he won’t go off and kill a woman? Murderers, they practise on animals, then go on…’
‘True enough,’ said Adamsberg, thinking of the twelve rats in Le Havre.
‘But the cops are so dumb they can’t see it when it’s staring them in the face. Stupid bastards.’
‘It’s only a stag, though,’ objected the objector.
‘You’re stupid too, Alphonse. If I was a cop, I’d get going after this so-and-so – and quickly, too.’
‘Me too,’ murmured Adamsberg.
‘Ah, you see, even this guy from the Pyrenees agrees with me. ‘Cos a massacre like that, Alphonse, you listen to me, it means there’s some maniac loose out there. And you better believe me, I know what I’m talking about – you’ll be hearing more about him before long.’
‘The Pyrenean agrees with that, too,’ said Adamsberg, while the old man started to refill his glass for him.
‘Ah, see that, and he isn’t even a hunter!’
‘Nope,’ said Adamsberg. ‘He’s a cop.’
Anglebert suspended his arm, holding the bottle of white wine over the glass. Adamsberg met his gaze. The challenge began. With a slight nudge, Adamsberg indicated that he would like the glass filled up. Anglebert didn’t move.
‘We’re not big fans of the cops round here,’ said Anglebert, still not moving his arm.
‘Who is?’ Adamsberg rejoined.
‘Ah, but here we’re even less their fans than anywhere else.’
‘I didn’t say I was their fan, I said I was a cop.’
‘You’re not a fan, then?’
‘Wouldn’t be much point, would there?’
The old man screwed up his eyes, concentrating all his attention on this unexpected duel.
‘So why are you a cop, then?’
‘Because of a lack of consideration.’
The rapid reply was above the heads of everyone there, including Adamsberg, who would have been hard put to it to explain what he meant. But nobody dared to reveal his puzzlement.
‘Stands to reason,’ said the punctuator.
And as if a film had been paused for a moment, the movement of Anglebert’s arm resumed, his elbow went up and the wine poured into Adamsberg’s glass.
‘Or, you might say, because of this kind of thing,’ Adamsberg added, pointing to the slaughtered stag. ‘When did it happen?’
‘A month back now. Keep the paper if you’re interested. Because the Evreux cops don’t give a damn.’
‘Stupid pricks,’ said Robert.
‘What’s that?’ said Adamsberg, pointing to a stain on the animal’s side.
‘The heart,’ said Hilaire with disgust. ‘He’s put two bullets into the ribs, than he’s took out the heart with a knife and cut it to bits.’
‘Is that a tradition? To take the heart out?’
There was a fresh moment of indecision.
‘You tell him, Robert,’ Anglebert ordered.
‘Surprises me, all the same,’ said Robert, ‘that you’re from the mountains and you don’t know anything about hunting.’
‘I used to go out with the men on trips,’ Adamsberg admitted. ‘And I went up in the pigeon-shooting hides we have down there, like all the kids.’
‘All the same.’
‘But nothing else.’
‘Well, now. When you make a kill,’ Robert explained, ‘first you take the skin off to make a cover. Then you cut off the honours and the haunches. You don’t touch its innards. You turn it over and you carve the fillets to keep. Then you chop off the head, for the antlers. When you’ve finished, you cover the animal with its skin again.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But bloody hell, you don’t go cutting its heart out. Yeah, in the old days, some people used to. But we’ve moved on from then. Nowadays you leave the heart inside.’
