‘You’re right, he is,’ said Adamsberg with a farewell handshake.
In the car park, he switched on his mobile. Battery dead. He went back inside, found a payphone and called the squad. Brigadier Gardon was on the desk. None too bright, but very keen, wearing his heart on his sleeve, Gardon was not ideally suited to police work.
‘Is Mordent about? Put him on, Gardon.’
‘If I may, commissaire, treat him gently. His daughter banged her head against her cell wall last night until she drew blood. It’s not too serious, but the commandant is like a zombie this morning.’
‘What time was that?’
‘About 4 a.m., I think. Noël told me. I’ll put Mordent on.’
‘Mordent, Adamsberg here. You didn’t call me back.’
‘No, really sorry, sir,’ came Mordent’s voice, hollow with depression. ‘They didn’t want to know in Avignon, they grumbled, they had too much on, couple of car crashes, guy up on the ramparts with a rifle. No spare men.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mordent, didn’t you insist? Homicide inquiry?’
‘Yes, I did, but they only got back to me at about seven this morning when they’d just been round to his house. He was there then.’
‘And his wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Never mind, commandant, too bad.’
Adamsberg went back to the car, brooding, opened the windows and sat down heavily in the driving seat.
‘By 7 a.m.,’ he said to the dog, ‘you can bet your boots Vaudel had had plenty of time to get home. So we’ll never know. Big slip-up. Mordent didn’t insist, you can bet on that too. His mind’s somewhere else, it’s wandering off into the clouds, too distressed to bother. He told the Avignon people to do the check, then he washed his hands of it. I should have guessed that would happen, what with Mordent being so out of it. Even Estalère would have done better.’
When he reached headquarters two hours later, carrying the dog under his arm, nobody really greeted him. An air of suppressed excitement was propelling his colleagues in all directions through the offices like irregular robots. There was a smell of early-morning sweat. They were brushing against each other with curt words and seemed to be avoiding the commissaire.
‘Has something happened?’ he asked Gardon, who did not seem to be affected.
As a rule, disturbances reached this brigadier only a few hours after everyone else and in a milder form, like the wind from Brittany blowing itself out before it reached Paris.
‘It’s the newspaper article,’ he said, ‘and the lab results too, I think.’
‘OK, Gardon. The beige car, number 9, can you send it off for cleaning? Ask for special treatment: there’s blood, mud, awful mess.’
‘That’ll be a problem.’
‘No, it’ll be all right. The seats have plastic covers.’
‘I meant the dog. Did you find this dog somewhere?’
‘Yes, and it’s got farmyard muck all over its feet.’
‘There’ll be trouble with the cat. I don’t think we can manage that.’
Adamsberg felt almost envious.
Gardon had this in common with Estalère, that he had absolutely no sense of proportion. He couldn’t put things in the correct order of priority. And yet he, like everyone else, had seen the awful butchery at Garches. But perhaps this was his own form of defence mechanism, and if so he was no doubt right. He was also right to be worried about how the dog would get on with the cat – although the huge apathetic tomcat which lived in the office was not disposed to move about much, and preferred to lie stretched out on the warm cover of one of the photocopiers. Three times a day, certain officers – usually Retancourt, Danglard or Mercadet, who was sympathetic to the cat’s sleeping habits – took it in turns to lift this huge animal, weighing eleven kilos, down to its feeding dish, then waited while he ate. That was why there was a chair alongside the dish, so that they could carry on working without getting impatient and forcing the cat to hurry up.
This arrangement was organised near the room with the drinks dispenser and it often happened that men, women and office pet all foregathered round the water cooler. Having been told about this unorthodox behaviour, Divisionnaire Brézillon had sent an official note requesting the immediate removal of the cat. Before his quarterly inspection – the function of which was simply to get up everyone’s nose, since he could hardly complain about the squad’s excellent results – there was a rapid tidying up operation. They had to sweep out of sight the cushions Mercadet slept on, Voisenet’s ichthyological journals, Danglard’s wine bottles and Greek dictionaries, Noël’s pornographic magazines, Froissy’s food caches, the cat’s litter and dish, Kernorkian’s aromatherapy oils, Maurel’s Walkman, Retancourt’s cigarettes, until the office looked extremely operational and totally unsuited to everyday life.
During such purges, the only problem was the cat, which miaowed terribly if shut in a cupboard. So someone would carry it out to the courtyard at the back and wait in a car until Brézillon departed. Adamsberg had refused to get rid of the two gigantic antlers in his office, saying that they were key evidence in an investigation. With the passage of time – since the squad had now been in these offices for three years – the camouflage operation had become longer and more difficult. Cupid’s presence would certainly not help, but it could be assumed that he was only there temporarily.
XV
IT WAS ONLY WHEN ADAMSBERG HAD REACHED THE CENTRE of the large hall that people really noticed his filthy clothes, unshaven jowls and the little dog under his arm. A ragged circle of chairs organised itself spontaneously around him. The commissaire summarised the night’s events: Émile, the farm, the hospital, the dog.
‘So you knew where he was going, and let me chase after him?’ said Retancourt crossly.
‘No, I only remembered about the dog much later,’ Adamsberg lied. ‘After Vaudel’s doctor had come along.’
Retancourt tossed her head, indicating that she did not believe this for a second.
‘What did the doctor have to say,’ came Justin’s high-pitched voice.
‘For now he’s not told us any more about Vaudel than we’ve told him about the murder. Professional confidentiality, both of us are stymied.’
‘No secret, game over,’ said Kernorkian under his breath.
‘But the doctor did say that Vaudel had enemies, only he seemed to think they were imaginary. He knows more than he’s saying. He’s a skilled doctor, at least: he reset a dislocated jaw that was interfering with nursing.’
‘Vaudel’s?’
Adamsberg didn’t really want to look at Estalère. Sometimes you wondered if he was doing it on purpose. But he glanced at Maurel, who was scribbling something in a notebook. He knew that Maurel was collecting stories about Estalère, something which Adamsberg did not regard as innocent fun. Maurel saw him looking and closed the notebook.
‘Did someone check whether Pierre junior was in Avignon when Émile was attacked?’ Voisenet asked.
‘Mordent took charge of that, but the Avignon cops dragged their feet, they didn’t check until it was too late to be sure.’
‘Mordent should have insisted.’
‘He did insist,’ said Adamsberg, defending Mordent and his distracted mind. ‘Gardon said there were some results from the lab?’
Danglard stood up automatically. The commandant’s memory, knowledge and powers of synthesis made him the reporter of choice for summing up scientific data. This was a Danglard who stood up almost straight, whose complexion was almost fresh and whose expression was almost animated, having been regenerated by a second immersion in the British climate.
‘Concerning the body, it is estimated that it was cut into about four hundred and sixty fragments, and about three hundred of those were reduced to pulp. Some parts had been hacked off with an axe, others cut off with a chainsaw, using a wooden block as an anvil. The samples show wooden splinters and sawdust. The same block was used to crush body parts. The elements of mica and quartz found in the remains indicate that the killer rested the item on the block, and used a club to beat down on a granite stone. The most savagely attacked parts were the joints: ankles, wrists, knees, elbows, shoulders and hips, as well as the teeth and the feet, tarsals and metatarsals. The big toe had been pounded to pieces, but not the other toes. The least damaged features were the hands, apart from the carpal segments, and the longer bones, the iliac, the ischium, the ribs and breastbone.’