‘He was right about that.’
‘So, now, we got to the villa, and he didn’t have to watch the road. He’d got into a worse state, he wasn’t talking properly. He was whispering some stuff I couldn’t hear, then he would like, bellow? He stuck that knife in my hand. He told me about the family tree of the Plogovitches – is that their name?’
‘Plogojowitz.’
Zerk obviously had the same difficulty in remembering names. For a very brief moment, Adamsberg felt he knew him through and through.
‘Yeah, right,’ said Zerk, frowning with his dark joined eyebrows, just like Adamsberg’s father when he was watching his soup cook. ‘So he talked about “inhuman sufferings” and he said he’d never really killed anyone, because these were “creatures from deep in the earth”, not human beings at all, and they were destroying human life. He said it was his job, cos he was this brilliant doctor, to heal wounds, and he was going to rid the world of this “filthy menace”.’
Adamsberg took a cigarette from Zerk’s packet.
‘How did you get my mobile number?’
‘I nicked it from Uncle Louis’ phone, when he was working with you.’
‘Did you intend to use it?’
‘No, I just thought it wasn’t right Louis should have it when I didn’t.’
‘And how did you tap in the number then? Inside your pocket.’
‘I didn’t need to, I’d saved it under number 9. Last of the last, see?’
‘Well, I suppose it’s a start,’ said Adamsberg.
XLVIII
ÉMILE CAME INTO HEADQUARTERS ON CRUTCHES. AT RECEPTION, he had to face Brigadier Gardon, who didn’t understand what this man was doing, asking about a dog. Danglard came up, shambling as usual, but wearing a light-coloured suit, which was unexpected enough to provoke comment, though that came a poor second to the arrest of Paul de Josselin, a descendant of Arnold Paole, the man who had had his life destroyed by the Plogojowitz vampires.
Retancourt, who was still the leader of the rational-positivist movement, had been arguing since the morning with the peacemakers and the cloud-shovellers, who accused her of having kept inquiries narrowed down since Sunday, because she couldn’t accept any explanation to do with vampiri. Whereas there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, as Mercadet had pointed out. Including people who eat wardrobes, Danglard thought. Kernorkian and Froissy were on the point of giving in and believing in vampiri, which complicated matters. This was because they had been persuaded by the state of conservation of the bodies in the story, something which had been empirically observed, historically recorded, and how were you supposed to explain that away? On a small scale, the debate which had excited the whole of Europe in the third decade of the eighteenth century was being reopened in the offices of the Serious Crime Squad in Paris, without having made much progress in almost three hundred years.
It was indeed this detail which had unsettled some members of the squad, the horror aroused by hearing of ‘pink and intact’ corpses, with blood coming from their orifices, and with skin looking fresh and unlined, while their old skin and nails were under them in the grave. Here, Danglard’s superior knowledge came into its own. He had the answer, he knew precisely why and how the bodies had been preserved, a fairly frequent phenomenon in fact, and he could even explain the cry of the vampire when it was pierced with a stake, or the sighs of the shroud-eaters. The others had formed a circle around him and were hanging on his words. They had just reached the moment in the debate when science was going to dispel obscurantism all over again. Danglard was just starting to tell them about the phenomenon of gases which sometimes, depending on the chemical composition of the earth, didn’t come out of the bodies, but inflated them like a balloon, stretching the skin – when he was interrupted by the hullabaloo of a dish being overturned on the floor above, and then Cupid came bounding down the stairs, rushing straight through to reception. Without breaking step, the little dog gave a very particular kind of yap as it rushed past the photocopier, where Snowball was, as usual, stretched out, its paws hanging over the edge.
‘In this case,’ observed Danglard, as he watched the dog going frantic with joy, ‘we have neither knowledge nor fantasy. Simply pure love, unquestioning and unlimited. Very rare in humans, and very dangerous. But Cupid is a tactful dog, because he said goodbye to the cat, with a mixture of admiration and regret.’
The dog had jumped right up into Émile’s arms and was clinging to his chest, panting and licking and scrabbling at his shirt. Émile had had to sit down, pressing his ugly mug against the dog’s back.
‘We ran the tests – the manure on his feet matched the stuff on the floor of your van,’ Danglard told him.
‘What about that love letter from old Vaudel? Did that help the commissaire?’
‘Yes, plenty. It led him almost to his death in a stinking vault. Full of corpses.’
‘And the secret tunnel from Madame Bourlant’s house, that helped him too?’
‘Yes, that got him to Dr Josselin.’
‘Never liked him, poser he was. So where is he, the boss?’
‘You want to see him?’
‘Yeah, I don’t want him to make trouble for me, we can settle it friendly like, if he wants. Help I gave him there, he owes me one.’
‘Settle what?’
‘For his ears only.’
Danglard called Adamsberg’s mobile.
‘Commissaire, we’ve got Cupid here, he’s sitting on Émile’s knee, and Émile wants to talk to you to settle something.’
‘Settle what?’
‘No idea, he says he’ll only speak to you.’
‘Personally,’ insisted Émile self-importantly.
‘How is he?’
‘Looks fine to me – new jacket and blue badge in his lapel. When will you be back?’
‘I’m on a beach in Normandy, Danglard, I’m coming back soon.’
‘But what are you doing there?’
‘I had to talk to my son. We’re neither of us very good at this, but we’ve managed to communicate a bit.’
No, of course, Danglard thought, Tom isn’t a year old, so he can’t talk yet.
‘I told you more than once. They’re in Brittany, not Normandy.’
‘I’m talking about my other son, Danglard.’
‘What-?’ said Danglard, unable to finish his sentence. ‘Wha… other son?’
He was seized with instant rage against Adamsberg. How had he managed to have another child somewhere else, when little Tom was still a baby?
‘How old is this other one?’
‘Eight days.’
‘You are such a bastard,’ Danglard hissed.
‘It’s the way it was, commandant. I didn’t know about him.’
‘No, you never bloody know about anything, do you?’
‘And you never let me finish either, Danglard. He’s eight days old for me, but for other people, he’s twenty-nine. He’s beside me here, smoking a cigarette. His hands are covered in bandages. Paole pinned him to that Louis XIII armchair with a knife last night.’
‘The Zerquetscher?’ asked Danglard weakly.
‘Correct. Or Zerk as I call him. Aka Armel Louvois.’
Danglard looked blankly across at Émile and his dog, while he tried to concentrate on the facts of the situation.