Dog Will Have His Day (7 page)

There was no point checking the morning dog walkers – the grid round the tree had been clean when he left the bench at 2 p.m. on Thursday. The dog had come along afterwards. And if there was at least one thing you could count on, it was that dog walkers are regular in their habits. Always at the same time, and one or two possible routes, ending back at the start. As for the dogs’ habits, that was trickier. Degenerate creatures that they were, town dogs didn’t mark out their territories any more, they did their business on any old spot, but obviously it was on their owner’s route.

So there were very good chances the same dog would return to this grid. Dogs like grids, even better than the tyres on cars. But even if he managed to identify twenty-five dog owners, how could he get their names and addresses without spending a whole month on it? Especially since these days he wasn’t too good at tailing people. With his stiff leg, he walked more slowly and was more easily spotted. Being so tall didn’t help.

He needed someone to give him a hand, but he had no money for that now. It was over, missions with all expenses paid. He was alone, he should really give up. So he’d found a piece of bone on a grid round a tree, he should just get over it.

For a long stretch of the night he’d tried to force himself to forget it. It could just be left to the police. Who couldn’t give a toss. As if, every day, dogs swallowed bits of someone’s toe which they then excreted here and there. Kehlweiler shrugged. The cops would never mobilise unless they had a body, or a missing person was reported. And a stray little toe joint is not a corpse, it’s just an isolated bit of bone. But no, he wasn’t going to drop it. He looked at his watch. He just had time to catch Marc Vandoosler in the bunker.

Marc was leaving the office when Kehlweiler called out to him in the street. He stiffened. What did Kehlweiler have to say to him on a Saturday? He usually dropped by on a Tuesday, to pick up the previous week’s report. Had that old Marthe woman said something? Reported the questions he’d asked? Very quickly, Marc, who didn’t want to lose this job, concocted in his head a rapid web of defensive lies. He was gifted at this, could do it in a flash. Being fast at defending yourself was a useful skill when you were bad at attacking. When Kehlweiler was close enough for him to see his face, Marc realised that there was no attack to parry, and he relaxed. One day, as the next new year’s resolution perhaps, he’d try to stop getting so worked up. Or the year after that – the way things were, there was no hurry.

Marc listened and replied. Yes, he had time, yes, OK, he could go along with him for half an hour, what was it about?

Kehlweiler dragged him to a nearby bench. Marc would have preferred to go to a nice warm cafe, but this big fellow seemed to have an irritating fondness for benches.

‘Take a look,’ said Kehlweiler, pulling a crumpled ball of newspaper from his pocket. ‘Open it carefully and tell me what you think.’ He had started to address Marc familiarly as ‘tu’.

Though
why
he was asking this question, Louis wondered, since he himself knew perfectly well what he thought about the bone. Probably so that Marc could start at the exact point he had started from himself. The young relation of the elder Vandoosler intrigued him. The summary reports he had provided so far were excellent. And he had solved the Simeonidis affair, two terrible crimes, six months ago. But Vandoosler had warned him: his nephew was only interested in the Middle Ages and unrequited love. St Mark, he called him. Apparently he was very good in his field. But it might transfer to other things, might it not? Louis had learned three days ago that the painter Delacroix was thought to be the son of Talleyrand, and this combination had given him much pleasure. Genius for genius, painting and diplomacy, incompatible itineraries might fit together.

‘Well?’ Louis asked.

‘Where was this found?’

‘Paris, grid round tree near bench number 102, the Contrescarpe. What do you think?’

‘At first sight, I’d say it’s a piece of bone, extracted from some dog shit.’

Kehlweiler gave a start and looked at Marc carefully. Yes, this guy interested him.

‘No?’ asked Marc. ‘Am I way off beam?’

‘Not off beam at all. But how did you know? You have a dog?’

‘No, but I do have a hunter-gatherer housemate from the palaeolithic period. He’s a prehistorian, very into all that, so don’t tease him about the subject. And he may be a prehistorian and obsessed, but he’s a good friend. I’ve taken an interest in the kind of remains he digs up, because he’s sensitive actually, and I don’t want to offend him.’

‘Is he the one your uncle calls “St Luke”?’

‘No, that’s Lucien, he’s a historian who specialises in the Great War, he’s obsessive about that too. There are four of us in our lodgings, Mathias, Lucien and me, plus my uncle. And the Vandoosler ancestor, who insists on calling us St Matthew, St Mark and St Luke, makes us sound like we’re crazies. It wouldn’t take much to get the old man calling himself God. Well, that’s just my uncle’s bullshit. But Mathias’s little obsessions are different. In the things he digs up, there are bones like that, with tiny holes in. Mathias tells us they come from the droppings of prehistoric hyenas, and on no account to confuse them with what the hunter-gatherers ate. He used to have this stuff all out on the kitchen table, until Lucien got mad because it was getting too close to his food, and Lucien likes his food. Well, none of that’s important, but since there are no prehistoric hyenas prowling round the trees of Paris and their metal grids, I imagine it came from a dog.’

Kehlweiler nodded. He was smiling.

‘Only,’ Marc went on, ‘what of it? Dogs gnaw bones, that’s what they do, and they come out looking like that, porous and with holes in. Unless . . .’ he added after a silence.

‘Unless,’ Kehlweiler repeated. ‘Because that’s a human bone, the top joint of a big toe.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Certain. I got it confirmed at the Natural History Museum by someone who knows. It’s from the toe of a woman, quite an old one.’

‘Obviously,’ said Marc after another silence, ‘that doesn’t happen every day.’

‘It didn’t bother the cops. The local commissaire doesn’t believe it’s a bone, he’s never seen one like this. I realise that this fragment is in an unusual condition, and that I cornered him into making the mistake. He thinks I’m trying to trap him, which is quite true, but not in the way he thinks. Nobody has been reported missing from round here, so they’re not going to open an investigation because of a bone covered in dog shit.’

‘But what do you think then?’

Marc addressed anyone who called him ‘tu’ in the same way. Kehlweiler stretched out his long legs and clasped his hands behind his head.

‘I think this toe joint belongs to someone, and I’m not sure that the person on the end of it is still alive. I’m ruling out an accident, that’s too unlikely. It’s true weird things can happen, but still. I think the dog helped itself to a corpse. Dogs are carrion eaters, like hyenas. And we can forget about corpses held legally in a house or a hospital. I don’t imagine a dog would be allowed into a laying-out room.’

‘What if some old woman died alone in her room, with her dog beside her?’

‘How did the dog get out then? No, it’s impossible, the corpse must have been in the open air. A corpse that has been forgotten somewhere, or killed somewhere, a cellar, a building site, a patch of waste ground. That way a dog could have come past. The dog swallows the bone, digests it, excretes it and the torrential rain from the other night gives it a wash.’

‘A corpse abandoned on some waste ground somewhere doesn’t necessarily mean a murder.’

‘But the bone was found in Paris and that’s what bothers me. Parisian dogs don’t go exploring far from their habitat, and a corpse couldn’t remain unnoticed for long in the city. They should have found it by now. I saw Inspector Lanquetot this morning, still nothing, not the slightest hint of a body lying around in the capital. No missing persons reported either. And routine enquiries about the deaths of people living alone haven’t shown up anything relevant. I found the bone on Thursday night. No, Marc, it isn’t normal.’

Marc wondered why Kehlweiler was telling him all this. He wasn’t put out by it, though. It was pleasant to listen to him talking, he had a calm, deep voice, very soothing for the nerves. But as for this dog shit, well, what could he contribute? It was beginning to feel really cold on the bench, but Marc didn’t dare say, ‘I’m cold, I’m going home.’ He pulled his jacket round him.

‘You’re cold?’ asked Louis.

‘A bit.’

‘Me too, it’s November, nothing to be done.’

Yes there is, thought Marc, we could go to a cafe. Though of course it might be a bit tricky to talk about this in a cafe.

‘We’ll have to wait,’ Kehlweiler went on. ‘There are some people who’ll wait a week before reporting someone missing.’

‘Yes,’ said Marc, ‘but why are you so concerned?’

‘I’m concerned because I don’t think it’s normal, like I told you. Somewhere, some nasty murder has taken place, that’s what I think. The bone, the woman, the murder, the nastiness, it’s all got inside my head, too late to stop, now I have to know, I have to find out.’

‘That’s a vice.’

‘No, it’s an art. It’s an irrepressible art and it belongs to me. You don’t have something like that?’

Yes, Marc did: but for the Middle Ages, not for a toe joint found at the bottom of a tree.

‘It’s my art,’ repeated Kehlweiler. ‘If after a week Paris doesn’t come up with anything, the problem will become much more complicated.’

‘Yes, of course. Dogs can travel.’

‘Precisely.’

Kehlweiler unfolded his long body and got to his feet. Marc looked up at him.

‘This dog,’ Kehlweiler said, ‘could have travelled kilometres that night in a car. It could have eaten a toe in the provinces somewhere and deposited it in Paris. All we can suppose, thanks to this dog, is that there’s a woman’s body somewhere, but it could be anywhere. France isn’t as small as all that, and that’s just France. A body somewhere, but nowhere to look.’

‘What a lot to come out of a piece of dog shit,’ Marc said quietly.

‘You didn’t see anything in the regional papers, did you? Murders, accidents?’

‘No murders. A few accidents as usual. But nothing about a foot, I’m sure of that.’

‘Well, keep looking and be vigilant, foot or no foot.’

‘OK,’ said Marc, standing up.

He’d got the point, his fingers were freezing, he wanted to get away.

‘Wait,’ said Kehlweiler. ‘I need someone to help, someone who can run. I’m slowed down by my leg, I can’t follow this bone all on my own. Could you just lend me a hand for a few days? But I can’t afford to pay you.’

‘To do what?’

‘To follow people who walk their dogs near this bench. Note their names, addresses, movements. I don’t want to waste too much time, just in case.’

This idea did not appeal to Marc at all. He’d been a lookout man for his uncle once, and that was enough. It wasn’t his kind of thing.

‘My uncle says you have men all over Paris.’

‘They’re fixed points, bartenders, newspaper sellers, cops, people who don’t move around. They keep their eyes open and alert me when it’s necessary, but they’re not mobile, do you see? I just need someone who can move about.’

‘I don’t do running, I just climb trees. I run about after the Middle Ages, but not after people.’

Kehlweiler was going to get upset, it was clear. This guy was even nuttier than his uncle. All artists are nutty. Artists sweating away about paint, the Middle Ages, sculpture, criminology, all mad, he had experience.

But Kehlweiler didn’t get upset. He just sat down again on the bench. Slowly.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Forget it, it doesn’t matter.’

He replaced the scrap of newspaper in his pocket.

Good. All Marc had to do was what he’d been wanting, go and get warmed up in a cafe, have a bite to eat, and go back to the shabby lodgings in the rue Chasle. He said goodbye and strode off down the avenue.

MARC VANDOOSLER HAD
eaten a sandwich in the street, and was back in his room by early afternoon. Nobody was home in the ramshackle house. Lucien was off giving a lecture on some aspect or another of the Great War, Mathias was classifying artefacts from his autumn dig in the basement of a museum, and the elder Vandoosler must have gone for a walk. Marc’s godfather always had to be outdoors, and wasn’t bothered by the cold.

Pity. Marc would have liked to ask him a few questions about Louis Kehlweiler, his incomprehensible shadowing of various people, and his interchangeable first names. Just a thought. He couldn’t really care less, but still, just a thought. It could wait, of course.

Marc was working just now on a bundle of archives from Burgundy, from a place called Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye to be precise. He needed to finish a chapter in his book on the Burgundian economy in the thirteenth century. Marc would continue with his damned Middle Ages until he could make a living out of it, he’d sworn as much to himself. Well, he hadn’t exactly sworn, he’d just told himself. At any rate, this was the only thing in his life that gave him wings, or let’s say feathers, that and the women with whom he had been in love. All gone, even his wife, who had walked out on him. He must be too nervy, it probably put them off. If he’d been calm, like Kehlweiler, things might have worked out better. Though he suspected Kehlweiler wasn’t as calm as he looked. Slow-moving, certainly. But that wasn’t right either. From time to time, he turned his head to look at people with amazing rapidity. And he wasn’t always calm. His face sometimes tensed up, his eyes focused into the distance, it wasn’t as simple as that. Anyway, who’d said it would be simple? No one. This guy who went looking for improbable murderers, because of some dog shit on a pavement, couldn’t function like everyone else. But he gave the impression of being calm, strong even, and Marc would have liked to be able to do the same. It must make things easier with women. Stop thinking about women. He’d been on his own for months now, and it wasn’t worth twisting the knife in the damned wound.