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IV
"I wonder," mused chief inspector adamsberg, "whether spending all this time in the force isn't going to turn me into aflic."
"You've said that before," Danglard remarked. He was trying to set up the paperwork system for the still-empty steel cupboard. Danglard wanted to make a fresh start and keep things neat, like he'd said. Adamsberg entertained no such wish and had already laid out the files on the seats of the chairs around the conference table.
"Do you think there's a risk?"
"Well, it wouldn't be a disaster if twenty-five years in the service did make some kind of aflicout of you."
Adamsberg stuck his hands into his trouser pockets, leaned back against the recently redecorated wall, and cast a nonchalant eye over the new incident room he'd been allocated just a month ago. New case, new room. The Brigade Criminelle attached to the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris. No more cat burglars, handbag-snatchers, alleyway bruisers, idiots with switchblades -- on or off the catch -- and all those tons of papers pertaining thereto. He'd heard that phrase "pertaining thereto" twice over in recent days. Must come from being aflic,he reckoned.
Not that there wouldn't be tons of paper pertaining thereto landing on his desk here as well. But here, like everywhere else, he would find men who liked to chew through paperwork. In his early youth, just when he'd left the Pyrenees, he'd discovered that there really were people who lived on paper, and he'd quickly come to regard them with considerable awe, a degree of pity and boundless gratitude. Adamsberg mostly liked to walk, muse and act, and he knew that his tastes inspired little awe and much pity in many of his colleagues. An eloquent pen-pusher had once explained: "Paperwork, that's to say drafting and then perfecting the charge sheet, is the mother of all Ideas. No Ink means no Idea! Ideas germinate in wordage like beans in damp soil. An action not written down is a bean that can't sprout."
In that case, he thought, he must have left many a bean high and dry in his life as aflic.All the same, his long walks often left him with the feeling that not entirely uninteresting notions had started to squirm inside his head. Maybe they weren't quite as straight up as bean sprouts, maybe they were more slippery and tangled, more like seaweed, but germination is germination whatever you say, and once you've got your idea it doesn't matter two hoots whether it grew in fresh soil or on a rubbish heap. That said, Danglard, his number two, was a paper addict. He loved the stuff in forms high and low, from incunabula to paper towels, including books new and old, handbills, loose sheets and pre-punched bond. He could even think while sitting down, and as long as he had a beer to sip and a pencil to chew, he could be relied upon to germinate a whole tray of sprouts at a time. A worrier like Danglard, with his slack, heavy, slightly weary physique, cultivated fully grown ideas equipped with beginnings, middles and ends, quite unlike those that Adamsberg came up with.
They'd often come into conflict over this. Danglard had no time for ideas not issuing directly from conscious thought and he looked on informal, intuitive reckoning with deep suspicion. Adamsberg didn't try to distinguish the one from the other, and in any case held no strong views. But when he was transferred to the Brigade Criminelle, Adamsberg stamped his foot until they allowed Danglard to come along, with a promotion to boot. He could not manage without that dogged mind and its carborundum edge.
Well, in the new digs they'd got, neither Danglard's trained and powerful mind nor Adamsberg's woolgathering one would be switching between smashed windows and bag-snatchings. Their job had one name and one name only: murder. Murderad infinitum,without a broken pane to let a healthy gust of teenage delinquency take your mind off the subject; murderad aeternam,unrelieved by having to lend a handkerchief to the nice young lady who'd just lost her keys, her address book and a love letter. It would be total immersion in the nightmare of humanity, the killer species.
No, sir, no relief. Violent crimes only. Murder squad.
This unambiguous definition of their duties felt as sharp as a knife. Well, all right then, he'd got what he asked for, what with having solved a score and more mysteries through his walking, dreaming, straggly-thinking method. As a result they had put him right up on the front line. Tracking killers was something he'd been unexpectedly good at. Diabolical, in fact. That was Danglard's term, to account for the surprising results of Adamsberg's impenetrable mental meanderings.
So they there were, at the sharp end, with a squad of twenty-six men and women under their command.
"I was wondering," Adamsberg said as he ran the flat of his hand over the damp plaster, "whether what happens to cliffs doesn't also happen to us."
"What happens to cliffs?" Danglard snapped.
Adamsberg had always been a slow talker, hovering around his main point and sometimes forgetting entirely where it was; Danglard found it increasingly hard to put up with.
"Well, the rock isn't, so to speak, all of a piece, on a cliff by the sea. I don't know, but let's say it's made up of hard stone and soft stone."
"Soft stone isn't a geological term, sir."
"That's as may be. At any rate, there are harder bits and softer bits in a cliff, like there are in all living things, like there are in you and me. So you've got a cliff, all right? And as the sea laps at it, and washes it, and splashes over it, the soft bits begin to melt."
"'Melt' is not the right word, sir."
"That's as may be. At any rate, bits drop off and the harder bits start to stick out. And as the sea and the storms go on bashing away at the cliff, the weaker parts vanish into thin air. When it gets to be an old man, the cliff is all craggy and hollow, like a ruined castle or keep. Like a gaping jaw with a stony bite. What you've got where the soft bits were are gaps, holes and voids."
"Yes, sir?"
"Well, I was wondering whetherflics-- and heaps of other people exposed to life's stormy seas -- don't suffer erosion as well. Lose their soft bits, keep their tough bits, grow hard and craggy and hollow. Basically, fall to pieces."
"So you think you're turning into a stone jaw?"
"I guess so. I could be turning into aflic."
Danglard pondered the point.
"As far as your personal geological makeup is concerned, sir, I reckon you are not eroding normally. I'd put it this way, sir: your soft bits are quite hard and your hard bits are fairly soggy. So the result is rather unique."
"Does that make any difference?"
"All the difference in the world, sir. Soft rocks that resist erosion turn things upside down."
Danglard tried to imagine himself in the same light as he put another clip of papers into a hanging file. "So what would happen, sir, if you had a cliff made entirely of soft rock -- and let's say the cliff is aflicin this case."
"He'd erode into a tiny pebble and then vanish for good."
"How reassuring."
"But I don't think you can get that sort of cliff arising naturally in the environment. Especially not if it's aflic."
"Let's hope you're right, sir."
* * *
A young woman stood uncertainly at the station door. The door did not actually say "Police Station," but there was "Brigade Criminelle" in bright black lettering on a door plate affixed to the lintel. It was the only thing that was clean about this otherwise filthy and dilapidated building, where four workmen with an earsplitting power drill were still putting iron bars on the outside windows. Maryse reckoned that whatever was on the door, there had to be policemen behind it, nearer to hand than at the Commissariat down the road. She took a step towards the door, then checked herself. Paul had warned her that the police would just laugh her off. But she was worried, what with the children and all. What would it cost her? Five minutes of time, no more. She would just say what she had to say, and then go.
"My poor Maryse," Paul had said, "theflicswon't take a blind bit of notice. But if that's what you want to do, go tell them!"
A fellow emerged from the side door, went past her down the street and then turned back. Maryse stood there fiddling with her handbag strap.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
The man was short and dark, and he looked like a pig's breakfast. His hair was all tousled and he'd rolled his jacket sleeves halfway up his unshirted forearms. Looked like a guy with troubles to tell, just like she had. But he was on his way out.
"Are they nice, inside?" Maryse asked him.
The dark fellow shrugged. "Depends on who you get."
"Do they listen?"
"Depends on what you tell them."
"My nephew thinks they'll make fun of me."
The man leaned his head to one side and looked at Maryse attentively.
"So what's this all about?"
"My building, a couple of nights ago. I'm sick with worry because of the kids. If there was a nutter inside the other night, how do I know he's not going to come back? Am I right?"
Maryse was blushing and biting her lip.
"Look, this is the Brigade Criminelle here," the man said, waving at the grimy frontage. "It's for murders. You know, when someone gets killed."
"Oh!" said Maryse in consternation.
"Go down to the station on the boulevard, please. It's lunchtime, they'll not be too busy, and they'll listen to you properly."
Maryse shook her head vigorously. "No, I can't do that. I can't because I've got to be back in the office at two and the manager is a right dragon. Can't the men here pass it all on to their boulevard branch? I mean,flicsall work for the same firm, don't they?"
"Well, not quite," the man answered. "But what's happened? A burglary?"
"Oh no."
"A fight?"
"Oh no."
"Tell us what it was, it'll make it easier to put you on the right track."
"OK, OK," Maryse blurted out, beginning to quake.
The man propped his elbow on a parked car and waited patiently for Maryse to find her words.
"It's black paint," she explained. "Or rather, thirteen black paintings, on all the apartment doors in the building. They scare me. I'm on my own with the kids, you see."
"Paintings? You mean pictures?"
"Oh no, not pictures. They're 4s. Number 4s. Big black 4s, like they were old-fashioned or something. I wondered if it wasn't some gang doing it for a lark. Maybe theflicsknow what it is, maybe they'll understand. But maybe they won't. Paul told me, 'If you want to get laughed at, go tell theflics.'"
The scruffy fellow stood up straight and took Maryse by the arm. "Come on," he said. "Let's go and get that all down, and then you'll have nothing more to worry about."
"Hey, wouldn't it be better to find aflicfirst?"
He looked at her for an instant with his eyebrows raised.
"I am aflic,"he said. "Chief Inspector Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, at your service."
"Oh!" said Maryse in embarrassment. "Excuse me!"
"No harm done, Madame. Incidentally, what did you think I was?"
"I don't dare say."
Adamsberg led the way through his new warren.
"Need a hand, sir?" asked a bleary-eyed sergeant on his way out to lunch. Adamsberg steered the woman gently towards his office and stared at the young man in an attempt to remember who he was. He still hadn't really met all the juniors in his new squad, and he had terrible trouble remembering the names. They had all realized this early on, and now made a point of giving their names every time they said so much as good morning to the boss. Adamsberg hadn't quite decided whether they meant to be kind or to make fun -- but he wasn't very bothered either way.
"Lieutenant Noël," the man said. "A hand, sir?"
"A young woman cracking up, that's all. Some kind of silly joker in her building, or maybe just a wall artist. She just needs a bit of support, that's all."
"We're not supposed to be social workers, are we?"
Lieutenant Noël curtly zipped up his bomber jacket.
"And why shouldn't we be, Lieut..."
"Lieutenant Noël."
"...tenant Noël," Adamsberg finished.
He tried to register the face and the name: box-head, pale face, crew cut, and big ears add up to:Noël.Noël meanstired out, touchyand maybetough.Big ears plus tough guy makeNoël.
"We'll talk about that later, Lieutenant Noël. She's in a hurry."
"If the lady needs supporting," said another and equally unnameable sergeant, "I'm ready and waiting, sir." Then with a smirk he stuck his thumbs in his belt. "I've got all it takes right here."
Adamsberg turned slowly towards the man.
"Sergeant Favre, sir."
"While you're here, Sergeant, you are going to learn something that may surprise you," Adamsberg said slowly. "In this branch, women are not just little dumplings with a hole in the middle. If this comes as news to you, as I fear it might, then let me encourage you to learn a little more about them. Women have legs and feet underneath; you will also find a torso and a head when you look at their upper parts. Think about that, Sergeant Favre. Assuming you have something to think with."
Adamsberg went through his mental memory routine as he entered his own office. Fleshy face, bushy eyebrows, prize beak and birdbrain all add up to:Favre.Favre meansbeak, browsandbirds.
He propped himself up against his office wall so as to face the woman who was now perching almost apologetically on the edge of a chair. "Now tell me all about it. You've got kids, you're on your own. Where exactly do you live?" To calm Maryse down Adamsberg scribbled her name and address and other answers on a notepad.
"So these 4s were painted on the doors, have I got that right? All in one night?"
"Oh yes. Every door had a 4 yesterday morning. Really big ones, as big as this," said Maryse as she showed Adamsberg a distance of maybe two feet between her two hands.
"No signature? No initials?"
"Oh yes, there was something. Underneath each 4 there were three really small capital letters: CTL. Sorry: CLT."
Adamsberg wrote that down. CLT.
"In black like the numbers?"
"Oh yes, black."
"Nothing else? Nothing on the front of the building, nothing in the stairwell?"
"Just the doors. Black paint, like I said."
"The number, was it painted correctly, or was it a bit different or distorted? Like a logo, for instance?"
"Oh yes. I'll draw it if you like. I'm a dab hand at drawing, you know."
Adamsberg passed over his pad and Maryse concentrated on reproducing a large printed 4, with the downstroke splayed at the foot like a Maltese Cross, and two notches on the outer leg of the cross.
"There you are."
"You've done it back to front," Adamsberg said gently as he took back his notepad.
"That's because it is backwards. It's a backwards 4, with a fat foot and two little notches at the end of the crossbar. Do you know what it is? Is it a gang of burglars? Are they called CLT? Or what?"
"Burglars usually leave as few signs on front doors as they can manage. What are you frightened of?"
"I think it'sAli Baba and the Forty Thievesthat put the wind up me. The story about the murderer who marked all the doors with a big X."
"In the story, Ali Baba only marked one door. If I'm not mistaken, it was his wife who marked all the others so as to confuse him."
"That's true," said Maryse, who seemed genuinely comforted.
"It's just graffiti, really," Adamsberg said as he showed Maryse out. "Teenagers from down the street, I should guess."
"The point is I've never seen a 4 like that down our street." Maryse had lowered her voice to a whisper. "Nor have I ever seen graffiti on front doors up the staircase. Because graffiti are supposed to be on the street, aren't they? For everyone to see."
"There's all kinds, you know. Scrub your front door and forget all about it."
* * *
Maryse left and Adamsberg tore the sheets out of his pad, screwed them up into a ball which he then aimed at the trash bin. Then he went back to his leaning wall so as to think while standing about how to pump the mental filth out of people like Favre. Not easy to do. There was something twisted deep down inside the man; and he would hardly be aware of it. All Adamsberg could hope was that the rest of the squad didn't have the same problem. Especially as there were four women in it.
As he always did when he let himself have a good think, Adamsberg quickly lost touch and fell into a kind of void close to sleep. Ten minutes later he came back to the surface with a start, then got the list of his team out of his desk drawer and began a memory session: reciting over and over the names of each one of the twenty-seven members he had to get into his head, with the exception of Danglard's. In the margin he entered next to the name of Noël:Ears, Tough guy,and next to Favre's:Beak, Brows, Birds.
Then he went out to have the coffee that his encounter with Maryse had put off. The coffeemaker and snack dispenser still hadn't been delivered to the office; there were constant squabbles over chairs and writing paper; the electricians were still putting in the computer cables, and workmen had only just started barring up the ground-floor windows. What would crimes be without iron bars? Murderers would just have to control themselves until the Brigade had got itself into shape. So he might as well carry on musing in the fresh air and rescuing damsels in distress. He could have a think about Camille, too; he'd not seen her for more than two months. Unless he was mistaken, she was due back tomorrow, or maybe the day after, as he wasn't sure what day it was anyway.
Copyright © 2001 by Editions Viviane Hamy, Paris
English translation copyright © 2003 by David Bellos
Excerpted from Have Mercy on Us All: A Novel by Fred Vargas
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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