This Night's Foul Work (28 page)

‘That's just how it is – it's nature's way. And nature knows what it's doing: it's giving a bit of help to the carnivores. They're rare, so they have to spend a lot of energy reproducing and surviving.'

‘And why is this bone so special?'

‘Because it's unique, it doesn't have any symmetry, bilateral or axial. It's twisted, a bit curved, has no articulation at top or bottom, and it has a swelling at its distal extremity.'

‘What's that mean?'

‘At the end.'

‘Would you say it was as bizarre as the one in the pig's snout?'

‘Yes, if you like. Because there isn't an equivalent in humans, so when medieval people found the penile bone of a walrus or a bear, they were puzzled by it. Just like you are.'

‘Why a bear or a walrus?'

‘Because they're big animals it's a bigger bone, and turns up more easily. In a forest, on a beach. But they weren't any better at identifying the penile bone of a cat. Since cats aren't eaten for food, their skeleton is less well known.'

‘But people eat pork. Why don't they know about the one in the snout of the pig?'

‘Because it's enclosed inside cartilage.'

‘Capitaine
, do you think the person who stole Narcissus's penis was a collector of some kind?'

‘No idea.'

‘Let me put it another way: do you think this bone might be thought valuable by certain people?'

Danglard made a sound that might have indicated doubt, or weariness.

‘Well, like anything that's rare, or puzzling, it might have
some
value. There are some people who pick up pebbles out of streams. Or cut antlers off stags. We're never very far away from superstition. Which is the glory and the tragedy of the human race.'

‘You don't like your pebble, then,
capitaine?'

‘What bothers me is that you picked one with a black stripe down the middle.'

‘It's because of the line on your forehead when you're worried.'

‘Are you coming back for the conference?'

‘See, you're worried now. Of course I am.'

Adamsberg climbed back up the stone steps, hands in pockets. Danglard wasn't mistaken. What had he been doing when he'd picked up the pebbles? And what value had he attached to them, being himself a freethinker, who had never been tempted by superstition? The only times when he thought of a god was when he felt godlike himself. It happened on very rare occasions, when he found himself out alone during a violent thunderstorm, preferably at night. Then he liked to rule the sky, directing thunderbolts, summoning up torrential rain, conducting the music of the cloudburst. These were passing crises, exhilarating, and perhaps convenient outlets for the masculine libido. Adamsberg stopped suddenly in the street. Masculine libido. The male principle. The cat. the pig. The reliquary. His thoughts once more shot up into the air like a flock of birds.

T
HE OFFICERS IN THE
S
ERIOUS
C
RIME
S
QUAD WERE ARRANGING THE CHAIRS
in the Council Chamber when Adamsberg walked across the large communal room without saying a word. Danglard gave him a quick look, and from the glow circulating under the
commissaire
‘s skin like radioactive material he deduced that something critical had happened.

‘What is it?' asked Veyrenc.

‘He's plucked an idea out of the air,' Danglard explained, ‘from the seagulls. You could call it a celestial bird-dropping. It falls on him, with a flurry of wings, between earth and heaven.'

Veyrenc glanced admiringly at Adamsberg, momentarily unsettling Dangard's suspicions. But the
commandant
quickly corrected the impression. Admiring one's enemy doesn't make him any less an enemy, on the contrary. Danglard remained convinced that Veyrenc had found in Adamsberg his quarry of choice, an enemy to be reckoned with, the little gang-leader of long ago, standing in the shade of the walnut tree, and the chief of the squad today.

Adamsberg opened the meeting by distributing to everyone the photographs of the exhumation at Opportune, which were particularly horrific. His movements were quick and concentrated, and everyone understood that the investigation had taken a new turn. Their chief rarely made them stay for conferences at the end of the afternoon.

‘We didn't have victims, murderer, or motive with these graves. Now we have all three.'

Adamsberg rubbed his cheeks, wondering how to proceed. He didn't like summing up, not being gifted at the task. Danglard always helped him out in this respect, rather like the punctuator in the village, providing links, transitions and repetitions in the conversation.

‘The victims,' Danglard proposed.

‘Neither Elisabeth Châtel nor Pascale Villemot died by accident. Both of them were murdered. Retancourt has brought the evidence back from the Evreux
gendarmerie
this afternoon. The stone which had supposedly “fallen” out of the south wall of the church, fracturing Pascaline's skull, had been lying on the ground for at least a couple of months. While it was there, it had acquired a deposit of dark lichen on one of its surfaces.'

‘And the stone couldn't have jumped up off the ground to hit her,' observed Estalère attentively.

‘Correct,
brigadier
. Someone used it to bash her head in. That enables us to deduce that someone had most likely tampered with Elisabeth Châtel's car as well, causing a fatal accident once she drove it on the main road.'

‘Devalon's not going to be happy about this,' observed Mercadet. ‘It's what you could call rubbishing his investigation.'

Danglard smiled as he chewed his pencil, feeling pleased that Devalon's aggressive refusal to listen had led him straight into trouble.

‘But why didn't Devalon think of examining the stone?' Voisenet asked.

‘Because he's as thick as two planks, according to local opinion,' explained Adamsberg. ‘But also because there was no reason in the world to think anyone would murder Pascaline.'

‘How did you find her grave?' asked Maurel.

‘By chance, apparently.'

‘That's impossible.'

‘Correct. I think we were deliberately pointed in the direction of the graveyard at Opportune. The murderer is telling us where to look, but from way ahead.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Back to the victims, then,' prompted Danglard. ‘Pascaline and Elisabeth.'

‘They were about the same age. They both led very quiet lives and there was no man in sight. Both of them were virgins. Pascaline's grave had been treated in exactly the same way as Elisabeth's. The coffin had been broken open, but the body hadn't been touched.'

‘Was their virginity something to do with the motive for the killings?' asked Lamarre.

‘No, it was the criterion for choosing the victims, but not the motive.'

‘I don't get it,' said Lamarre, frowning. ‘This murderer, she kills virgins, but her aim isn't to kill virgins?'

The interruption had disturbed Adamsberg's concentration, so he signed to Danglard to carry on.

‘Remember what the pathologist told us,' the
commandant
said. ‘Diala and La Paille were killed by a woman, measuring about one metre sixty-two or so, someone who was a perfectionist, who knew how to use both a scalpel and a syringe, and wore navy-blue leather shoes. The shoes had been polished under the soles, indicating a possible dissociative pathology, or at least a desire to provide a protective layer between herself and the ground on which the crimes were committed. Claire Langevin, the angel of death, presents all these characteristics.'

Adamsberg had opened his notebook without noting anything in it. He doodled as he listened to the summary by Danglard, who would, in his opinion, have made a better chief of squad than him.

‘Retancourt has found a pair of shoes that belonged to her,' Danglard added. ‘They were made of navy-blue leather. That's not enough to
provide any certainty, but in the meantime we're still closely investigating this nurse.'

‘She finds everything, Retancourt,' muttered Veyrenc.

‘She can channel her energy,' Estalère responded passionately.

‘This angel of death is a fantasy,' said Mordent irritably. ‘Nobody ever saw her talking to Diala or La Paille at the Flea Market. She's invisible, she's vanished into thin air.'

‘That's how she used to operate all her life,' said Adamsberg. ‘Like a ghost.'

‘No, it doesn't fit,' Mordent persisted, stretching his long heron-like neck out of his grey pullover. ‘This woman killed thirty-three old people, always the same method, never changing it at all. And suddenly she's transformed herself into a different kind of monster, she goes chasing after virgins, opens graves, cuts the throats of two big lads. No, it just doesn't fit. You can't change a square into a circle, and someone who goes round quietly killing off helpless elderly folk doesn't turn into a wild necrophiliac. Shoes or no shoes.'

‘I agree it doesn't fit,' said Adamsberg, nodding. ‘Unless, that is, some profound shock might have opened up a different crater in the volcano. The lava of madness might have flowed in a different direction. Maybe her stay in prison could have had a strong effect, or the fact that her Alpha caught sight of her Omega.'

‘I know about Alpha and Omega,' piped up Estalère. ‘They're the two halves of a dissociating murderer, one each side of the wall.'

‘The angel of death is a dissociator. Her arrest may have broken down her inner wall. After that, any kind of change is conceivable.'

‘All the same,' said Mordent, ‘it doesn't tell us what she's after with her virgins, or what she's looking for in their graves.'

‘That's the black hole,' said Adamsberg. ‘To get in there, we can only work backwards, since we have traces of her actions. Pascaline owned four cats. Three months before her death, one of them was killed. The only male among them.'

‘Was that some kind of early threat to Pascaline?' asked Justin.

‘No, I don't think so. It was killed to get at its genitals. Since it was already a neutered tom, its penis was the part that was taken. Danglard, explain about the bone.'

The
commandant
repeated his lesson about penile bones in carnivores – all pinnipeds, felids, etc.

‘Anyone else here know about that before?' asked Adamsberg.

Only Voisenet and Veyrenc raised their hands.

‘Voisenet, that figures, since you're a zoologist. But Veyrenc, how did you know that?'

‘My grandfather told me. When he was a boy, a bear was killed in the valley. Its corpse was dragged around the villages. My grandfather kept the bone from its penis. He said it shouldn't be lost or sold at any price.'

‘Do you still have it?'

‘Yes, it's still there, back home.'

‘Do you know why he valued it so much?'

‘He just said it kept the house standing and the family safe.'

‘How big is the penile bone of a cat?' asked Mordent.

‘This big,' said Danglard, showing about two or three centimetres between finger and thumb.

‘Not enough to keep a house standing,' remarked Justin.

‘It's symbolic,' said Mordent.

‘I dare say,' said Justin.

Adamsberg shook his head, without pushing back the hair that was falling into his eyes.

‘No, I think this cat's bone has some precise significance for whoever took it. I think it's something to do with the male principle.'

‘Contradiction with the value of the virgins, then,' objected Mordent.

‘Depends what she's looking for,' said Voisenet.

‘She's looking for eternal life,' said Adamsberg. ‘And that's the motive.'

‘I don't get it,' said Estalère after a silence.

And for once, something Estalère didn't get corresponded to incomprehension all round.

‘At the same time the cat was mutilated,' Adamsberg said, ‘it was discovered that a reliquary had been looted, in the church at Le Mesnil, just a few kilometres away from Opportune and Villeneuve. Oswald was right, that's a lot of disturbance for a small area. From the reliquary the thief took only the human bones belonging, supposedly, to Saint Jerome, but left behind various sheep bones, plus the bone from the snout of a pig.'

‘Must have been a connoisseur, then,' remarked Danglard. ‘It's not everyone who could recognise the bone from a pig's snout.'

‘There's a bone in a pig's snout?'

‘So it would seem, Estalère.'

‘The same way, it's not everyone would know that the cat has a penile bone. So one way or another, we're dealing with a woman who knows what she's doing.'

‘I don't see the link,' Froissy said, ‘between the relics, the cat and the graves. Except that there are bones in all three cases.'

‘That in itself is something,' said Adamsberg. ‘The relics of the saint, the relics of a male animal, and the relics of virgins. In the priest's residence in Le Mesnil, alongside Saint Jerome, they have a very old book, which is open and available for anyone to see, where these three elements are combined in a kind of recipe.'

‘More like a remedy or a potion,' Danglard corrected.

‘What for?' asked Mordent.

‘To obtain eternal life, with various ingredients. In the priest's house, the book was open at the page of this recipe. He's very proud of it, and I think he shows it to all his visitors. So did his predecessor, Father Raymond. This recipe must have been known to about thirty parishes in the area, and over many generations.'

‘And nowhere else?'

‘Oh yes,' said Danglard. ‘The book's famous, and especially this con-coction. It's the
De sanctis reliquis
, in the 1663 edition.'