‘And Vaudel?’
‘Ah, we’re getting to the point.’
‘Yes.’
‘Since the press has revealed so many details, the police can’t keep it a secret any more. Can you tell me about it now? Vaudel was horribly chopped up, is what they seem to say. But how, why, what was the killer after? Did you discover any logic, some sort of ritual?’
‘No, just a sort of unending panic, a fury that couldn’t be resolved. There must be a system there somewhere, but what it is we don’t know.’
Adamsberg got out his notebook and drew from memory the diagram showing the points the murderer had attacked most fiercely.
‘You’re good at drawing,’ said the doctor, ‘I can’t even draw a duck.’
‘Ducks are difficult.’
‘Go on, draw me one. I’ll be thinking about this diagram and the system while you do it.’
‘What sort of duck – flying, roosting, diving?’
‘Wait,’ said the doctor, smiling. ‘I’ll fetch some proper paper.’
He came back with some sheets of paper and moved the plates aside.
‘A duck in flight.’
‘Male or female?’
‘Both if you can.’
Then he asked Adamsberg to draw a rocky coastline, a pensive woman and a Giacometti sculpture, if possible. He waved the drawings about to dry the ink, and propped them up under the lamp.
‘Now you really have got golden fingers, commissaire. I would like to examine you. But you don’t want that. We’ve all got closed rooms we don’t want strangers to walk into, don’t you think? Don’t worry, I’m not a clairvoyant, I’m just a pragmatic practitioner with no imagination. You’re different.’
Carefully putting the drawings on the windowsill, the doctor carried the bottle and glasses through to his sitting room, along with the Vaudel diagrams.
‘What did you make of this?’ he asked, pointing with his large fingers at the elbows, ankles, knees and skull on the diagram.
‘Well, we thought the killer destroyed what made the body work, the joints, the feet. But it doesn’t take us very far.’
‘But also the brain, liver and heart. He was also intent on demolishing the soul, don’t you think?’
‘That’s what my deputy thought. More than a murderer, he’s a destroyer, a Zerquetscher, as the Austrian policeman said. Because he destroyed someone else, outside Vienna.’
‘Someone related to Vaudel, by any chance?’
‘Why?’
The doctor hesitated, then, noticing the wine was finished, took out a green bottle from a cupboard.
‘Some poire eau de vie – like a drop?’
No, he wouldn’t like a drop, after such a long day, but it would spoil the atmosphere, if he let Josselin drink the liqueur alone, so Adamsberg watched him fill two small glasses.
‘It wasn’t a single blocked zone I found in Vaudel’s skull, it was much worse.’
The doctor fell silent, hesitating again, as if wondering whether he should go on, then raised his glass and put it down again.
‘So what was there inside his skull?’
‘A hermetically sealed cage, a haunted room, a black dungeon. He was obsessed with what was in there.’
‘And that was…?’
‘Himself. With his entire family and their secret. All locked up inside there, silent, away from the rest of the world.’
‘He thought someone was locking him in?’
‘No, you don’t understand. He locked himself in, he was hidden away, removed from anyone’s view. He was protecting the other occupants of the cell.’
‘From death?’
‘From annihilation. There were three other clear factors in his case. He was fanatically attached to his name, his family name. And an unresolved tension over his son: he was torn between pride and rejection. He loved Pierre, but he didn’t want him to have been born.’
‘He didn’t leave his property to him, he left it to the gardener.’
‘Logical. If he left him nothing, then he had no son.’
‘I don’t think Pierre junior saw it that way.’
‘No, of course not. And thirdly, Vaudel was full of boundless arrogance, so total that he generated a feeling of invincibility. I’ve never seen anything like it before. That’s what I can tell you as a doctor, and you’ll understand perhaps why I was so interested in this patient. But Vaudel was very strong-minded, and he resisted my treatment fiercely. He didn’t mind if I treated him for a stiff neck or a sprain, and he was even very pleased when I helped him get rid of vertigo and helped with his approaching deafness. Here,’ the doctor said, tapping his ear. ‘The little bones in his middle ear were blocked solid. But he hated it if I tried to get near to the black dungeon and the enemies he thought were all around.’
‘And who were these enemies?’
‘All those who wanted to destroy his power.’
‘He was afraid of them?’
‘On the one hand, he was afraid enough not to want any children, so as not to expose them to danger. On the other hand, he wasn’t personally afraid at all, because of that sense of superiority I told you about. It was a sense he had in his dealings with the law courts, when he seemed to have the power of life and death over people. Be careful, commissaire, what I’m saying here isn’t objective reality, it’s what he saw as reality.’
‘Was he mad?’
‘Totally, if you consider that it’s mad to live by a logic that’s different from the logic of the rest of the world. But not at all, in the sense that within his own scheme of things he was completely rigorous and coherent, and he was able to make it fit inside the basic framework of the general social order.’
‘Had he identified these enemies?’
‘All he would say seemed to point to some kind of gang warfare, a sort of endless vendetta. With some kind of power game thrown in.’
‘He knew their names?’
‘Yes. These weren’t enemies who changed, random demons waiting to pounce on him from round some corner. Their location inside his head never varied. He was paranoid, at least in this sense of his power and his increasing isolation. Yet everything about this war he was living was rational and realistic, and he could certainly put names and faces to his adversaries.’
‘A secret war and enemies who are fantasies. And then one night, reality strikes, walks on to his private stage, and kills him.’
‘Yes. Did he end up by threatening his “enemies” in real life? Did he speak to them, or become aggressive? You know the standard formula, I expect: paranoid people end up by creating the persecution they always suspected. His invention came to life.’
Josselin offered another drop of alcohol, which Adamsberg refused. The doctor went nimbly over to the cupboard and carefully put the bottle back.
‘I don’t imagine our paths will automatically cross again, commissaire, because I’ve told you all I know about Vaudel. But would it perhaps be too much to ask of you to come back one day?’
‘You want to look inside my head, don’t you?’
‘Yes, indeed. But we might find a less intimidating problem. No back pains? Stiffness, oppression, digestive troubles, circulation problems, sinusitis, neuralgia? No, none of those.’
Adamsberg shook his head, smiling.
The doctor screwed up his eyes.
‘Tinnitus?’ he suggested, almost like a street trader offering something for sale.
‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg. ‘How did you know?’
‘No magic! The way you keep rubbing your ears!’
‘I have been to someone. Nothing to be done about it, apparently, I just have to live with it and try to forget it. Which I’m quite good at.’
‘You’re indifferent, you don’t mind too much,’ said the doctor, as he accompanied Adamsberg into the hall. ‘But tinnitus doesn’t fade away like a memory. I could help you with it. Only if you want me to, of course. Why should we carry our burdens round with us?’