‘I do look after Tom,’ said Adamsberg, clenching his fist. ‘I babysit him, I take him out, I tell him stories.’
‘Oh yeah, so where is he now?’
‘None of your business, just stop bugging me, Danglard. He’s on holiday with his mother.’
‘Yes, but where?’
Silence fell on the two men, the dirty table, the empty glasses, the crumpled newspapers and the killer’s photograph. Adamsberg was trying to remember where Camille had gone with little Tom, somewhere healthy, that was for sure. Seaside probably. Normandy, something like that. He called them on the mobile every three days, they were fine.
‘In Normandy,’ he said.
‘In Brittany,’ said Danglard. ‘In Cancale.’
If Adamsberg had been Émile at that moment, he would have punched Danglard on the jaw right away. He imagined the scene, which pleased him. He contented himself with getting up.
‘What you are thinking with respect to Mordent, commandant, is unworthy.’
‘It’s not unworthy to want to save your daughter.’
‘I said what you are thinking is unworthy. It’s what’s in your head that’s unworthy.’
‘Yes, of course it’s unworthy.’
XIX
LAMARRE BURST INTO THE DICE SHAKER.
‘Urgent, commissaire! Vienna wants to talk to you.’
Adamsberg looked at Lamarre in puzzlement. The young brigadier was not good with words, and if he had to make a report, his lack of confidence usually meant he had to speak from notes. Had he got a name wrong?
‘Who’s Vienna?’
‘Vienna, the place. Thalberg, name like yours, with berg on the end, like the composer he said.’
‘Alban Berg, or more likely Sigismund Thalberg, 1812-1871, Austrian composer,’ murmured Danglard.
‘But he’s not a composer, he’s a police chief.’
‘A Viennese police chief,’ said Adamsberg. ‘You might have said so.’
He got up and followed the brigadier across the road.
‘And what does this man from Vienna want?’
‘Didn’t ask, it’s you he wants, sir. Tell me,’ said Lamarre, looking back, ‘why is the cafe called the Dice Shaker when there aren’t any dice players or even tables for them?’
‘Well, why aren’t there any philosophers in the Brasserie des Philosophes?’
‘That’s not an answer, just another question.’
‘Often the way, brigadier.’
Kommissar Thalberg in the Viennese police headquarters had asked for a videoconference, and Adamsberg went into the technical suite, with Froissy to help him get the equipment working. Justin, Estalère, Lamarre and Danglard all squeezed in behind him. Perhaps it was just the mention of the romantic Austrian composer, but it seemed to Adamsberg as if the man who now appeared on screen belonged to an earlier century: a refined and ethereal face, a little pale, set off by his turned-up shirt collar and the perfect blond curls.
‘Do you speak German, Commissaire Adamsberg?’ asked the gracious Viennese colleague, lighting a long cigarette.
‘No, afraid not. But Commandant Danglard will translate.’
‘That is most kind of him, thank you, but I am capable to speak your language. Happy to know you, commissaire, and also happy to share. I saw yesterday your case in Garches. It would have been cleared up quickly if the Blödmänner of the press had keeped their mouths shut. Your man escaped?’
‘What does Blödmänner mean, Danglard?’ Adamsberg whispered.
‘Jackals.’
‘Yes, he has got away,’ Adamsberg confirmed.
‘I am regretful for you, commissaire, and I hope you keep the inquiry, yes?’
‘So far, yes.’
‘So maybe I can help you and you also for me.’
‘You’ve got something on Louvois?’
‘No. I have got something on the crime. That is, I am nearly sure I too have this crime, for it is not usual, no? I send you pictures, better to see what I mean.’
The blond head disappeared and a village house came up on-screen with half-timbering and a gabled roof.
‘This is the place,’ Thalberg’s mellifluous voice continued. ‘Here is Pressbaum, near Vienna, five months and twenty days ago, and one night. A man also, Conrad Plögener, younger than your man, forty-nine only, married with three children. His wife and children had gone for the weekend to Graz, and Plögener was killed. He was a furniture dealer. Killed like this,’ he went on, as a picture appeared of a bloodstained room with no visible body. ‘I don’t know for you, but in Pressbaum the body was so cut up that nothing remained. Also crushed on a stone and scattered in many directions. Do you have similar modus operandi?’
‘Looks the same at first sight, yes.’
‘I can show you some close-ups, commissaire.’
There followed a slide show of about fifteen pictures repeating the nightmarish spectacle of Garches. Conrad Plögener had a more modest lifestyle than Pierre Vaudel, no grand piano or tapestries.
‘I was less fortunate than you, we found no trace of the Zerquetscher.’
‘Crusher,’ Danglard explained, twisting his hands against each other to mime it.
‘Ja,’ Thalberg said. ‘The people here started calling him der Zerquetscher, you know they always like to give a label. I found some footprints of mountain boots. I’m saying that there is a big possibility we have the same Zerquetscher as you, even if it is a great rarity that a killer does not act only in his own country.’
‘Quite. Was the victim Austrian? No trace of French in his background?’
‘I have been to verify that, just now. Plögener was quite Austrian, he was born in Mautern in Styria. Mind you, I am talking just of him, because nobody is completely something, my grandmother came from Romania and so, everybody also. And Vaudel was French? You don’t have any Pfaudel or Waudel or anything else with his name?’
‘No,’ said Adamsberg, sitting chin in hand, and seeming stunned by this new bloodbath at the home of Conrad Plögener. ‘We’ve looked through most of his papers and there’s no connection with Austria. Oh. Wait a minute, Thalberg, there is a German connection. A Frau Abster in Cologne, apparently an old sweetheart of his.’
‘I’ll write down Abster. I check his private papers.’
‘Vaudel wrote her a letter in German to be posted to her after his death. Give me a moment, I’ll get the piece of paper.’
‘I can remember it,’ said Froissy. ‘Bewahre unser Reich, widerstehe, auf dass es unantastbar bleibe.’
‘Then a Russian word that seems to read “kiss lover”.’
‘I’m writing it. A bit solemn I find, but the French are often eternalists in love, opposite to what people say. So perhaps we have a Frau Abster who dismembers her former lovers. I am just making a joke of course.’
Adamsberg made a sign indicating drink to Estalère, who shot out of the room. He was the coffee specialist in the squad, knowing everyone’s preferences – with or without sugar, or milk, espresso or americano. He knew Adamsberg liked the cup with the orange bird on it. Voisenet, who was a bit of an ornithologist, said the bird didn’t look like any existing species, and that was how habits got ingrained. It was not servility that made Estalère memorise everyone’s tastes but a passion for small technical details, however insignificant, and perhaps that was what made him bad at taking an overall view. He came back with a perfect tray, as the Viennese commissaire was offering a diagrammatic image of a body on which the parts most savagely attacked were marked in black. Adamsberg sent in return their own version with red and green.