This Night's Foul Work (27 page)

‘Who?'

‘Him. The stag.'

‘Why would someone do that? Do you think it was a lure, to get you to go to the graveyard at Opportune?'

‘Possibly.'

Retancourt lifted up one of the antlers, weighed it and put it down delicately.

‘You're not supposed to separate them,' she said. ‘So what else did you pick up there?'

‘I learned that there's a bone in the snout of a pig.'

Retancourt let this remark pass, hoisting the cat up on her shoulder.

‘It's in the shape of a double heart,' Adamsberg went on. ‘I also learned that one could cure the vapours with a saint's relics, and acquire eternal life for centuries and centuries, and that the remains of Saint Jerome might include some sheep's bones.'

‘Anything else?' asked Retancourt, patiently waiting for the information that really interested her.

‘That the two men who dug out the grave of Pascaline Villemot were probably our Diala and La Paille. That Pascaline died of a fractured skull, caused by a stone falling from the church, that one of her cats was slaughtered and emasculated three months before her death, and had been left in that state on her doorstep.'

Adamsberg suddenly raised his hand, twined his legs round the foot of the stool and called up a number on his mobile.

‘Oswald? Did you know that Pascaline's cat had been left bleeding at her door?'

‘Narcissus? Reckon everyone knew about him in Opportune. Famous for his weight, he was. Over eleven kilos. He nearly won a prize at the show. But that was last year. Hermance gave her a new cat. Hermance likes cats, they're nice clean creatures.'

‘Were Pascaline's other cats male too, do you know?'

‘No, all girls, they were. Narcissus's daughters. Not important, is it?'

Another trick of the Normans, Adamsberg reflected, consisted of putting a question while apparently not being interested in the reply. As Oswald just had.

‘I was just wondering why whoever killed Narcissus went to the trouble of cutting his balls off.'

‘Whoever told you that don't know his arse from his elbow. Narcissus was neutered, oh, years ago. He used to sleep all day. A cat that weighs eleven kilos, ever seen that happen by chance?'

‘Are you sure about that?'

‘Course I am, ‘cos Hermance chose a tomcat for her, so the other cats could have kittens.'

Frowning, Adamsberg called another number, while Retancourt picked up the bag of shoes, looking annoyed. After twelve hours of difficult investigation, she had turned up a spectacular link between the district nurse and the recent deaths in La Chapelle, but the
commissaire
was off on quite a different track, wandering down country lanes.

‘This cat's balls are a matter of urgency, are they?' she asked sharply.

Adamsberg motioned her to take a seat. He had the parish priest of Le Mesnil on the line.

‘Listen, Oswald tells me that that cat, Narcissus, had already been neutered. So he couldn't have been castrated when he was killed.'

‘Well, I tell you I saw it with my own eyes,
commissaire
. Pascaline brought his body up to the church in a cat basket, to ask me to bless it. I had to have a long argument with her, to explain why I couldn't do
it. The cat had had its throat cut and its parts were a bloody mess. What else do you want me to say?'

Adamsberg heard a sharp slap at the other end and wondered whether the priest was still catching flies.

‘In that case, I don't understand,' he said. ‘In Opportune, apparently everyone knew that the cat had been neutered.'

‘Maybe whoever did it didn't know that, perhaps they weren't from the village. Or it could be this person had a thing against males, if I can add an opinion to your investigation.'

Adamsberg snapped off his phone and started swinging his legs again in perplexity.

‘A thing against males
,' he repeated to himself. ‘The trouble is, Retancourt, that even people who don't know anything about it would guess that a cat weighing eleven kilos and sleeping all day would have to have been neutered.'

‘Not the Snowball.'

‘The Snowball's a special case, let's leave him out of it. The problem's still the same. Why did Narcissus's killer try to castrate a cat that had already had its balls cut off?'

‘What if we were to concern ourselves more with whoever killed Diala?'

‘We are. Being fixated on virgins and castrating a male must have some connection. This cat belonged to Pascaline, and only the tom was killed. As if someone wanted to eliminate all masculine presence surrounding Pascaline. To purify her environment, perhaps. Maybe they were trying to purify the graves as well, by putting some invisible potion in there.'

‘As long as we don't know whether these two women were deliberately killed, we won't get anywhere. Accidents or murders, a killer or a grave-robber, that's a huge difference. But we've no way of telling.'

Adamsberg slid off the stool and paced round the room.

‘There is a way,' he said. ‘If you can face it.'

‘Carry on.'

‘If we could find the stone that fractured Pascaline's skull. If it was an accident, it must have been loose and got dislodged from the wall of the church. But if it was a murder, the stone could already have been on the ground, and the killer would have used it to hit her with. Either a falling stone or a murder weapon. If it was the latter, the stone would surely show some sign of having been exposed to the air. The accident is supposed to have happened on the south side of the church. So there would be no reason for a stone out of the wall to have any moss on it. But if it was lying in the grass, some moss might have grown on its north face. It rains a lot up there, so that would be bound to happen quite quickly. Knowing Devalon, I doubt whether he would have looked for lichen on the stone.'

‘So where's the stone now?' asked Retancourt.

‘It must either be in the
gendarmerie
in Evreux or have been thrown out. Devalon's an aggressive cop, Retancourt, and an incompetent one. You might have to fight your way to get to the stone. Best not to give him any warning, he's quite capable of getting rid of it just to bugger us up. Especially since he's already made some mistakes in this inquiry.'

The cat miaowed anxiously. The Snowball could always sense the moment when his preferred shelter was going to disappear. Three hours later, while Retancourt was making her inquiries in Evreux, the cat was still mewing, its nose glued to the front door of the squad's office, an obstacle between its little body and the absent woman to whom it was devoted. Adamsberg forcibly dragged the animal over to Danglard.

‘Capitaine
, since you seem to have some pull over this creature, can you tell it that Retancourt will be back soon? Give it a glass of wine or something, but for pity's sake stop it making this din.'

Adamsberg broke off sharply.

‘Shee-it,' he muttered, letting the Snowball fall heavily to the ground with another pitiful mew.

‘What is it?' asked Danglard, by now preoccupied with the despairing cat, which had jumped on to his knee.

‘I've suddenly understood the story about Narcissus.'

‘About time,' muttered the
commandant
.

Just then Retancourt called in. Her voice could be heard clearly on the mobile, and Adamsberg couldn't guess which of the two, Danglard or the cat, was listening more attentively.

‘Devalon didn't want me to see the stone. He's an obstinate man – he would have fought me with his bare fists to stop me getting to it.'

‘You'll have to find a way,
lieutenant.'

‘Don't worry, the stone's safe in the boot of my car. One of its surfaces is covered in lichen.'

Danglard wondered whether Retancourt's methods had been even more physical than Devalon's fists.

‘I'm on to something else,' said Adamsberg. ‘I know what happened to Narcissus.'

Yes, thought Danglard resignedly, everybody has known that for about two thousand years. Narcissus fell in love with his reflection in the water, and drowned when he tried to get close to it.

‘It wasn't his balls they cut off, it was his penis,' Adamsberg explained.

‘Ah,' said Retancourt. ‘So where does that get us, sir?'

‘To the very centre of an abomination. Get back here quickly,
lieutenant
, the cat's pining for you.'

‘That's because I went without saying goodbye. Put him on the line.'

Adamsberg knelt down and put the mobile close to the cat's ear. He had once met a shepherd who telephoned to his bell-wether to keep it calm, so this kind of thing no longer surprised him. He could even remember the ewe's name: George Sand. Maybe one day George Sand's bones would find their way into a sacred reliquary. Lying on its back, the cat listened while Retancourt explained that she was on her way home.

‘Can you tell me what this is all about?' asked Danglard.

‘Both those women were murdered,' said Adamsberg, getting to his feet. ‘Call everyone together. Conference in two hours.'

‘Murdered? Just for the pleasure of opening their graves three months later?'

‘I know, Danglard, it doesn't make sense. But it doesn't make sense to cut off a cat's penis, either.'

‘That makes more sense,' retorted Danglard, who always retreated into his bottomless fund of knowledge when he was lost, as another might retreat to a convent. ‘I've known zoologists who would think it quite important.'

‘Why?'

‘To get at the bone. There's a bone in a cat's penis.'

‘Danglard, you're having me on.'

‘There's a bone in a pig's snout, isn't there? Well, then.'

A
DAMSBERG ALLOWED HIMSELF TO WANDER DOWN TO THE
S
EINE, FOLLOWING
the seagulls wheeling in the distance. Paris's river, although polluted and evil-smelling on certain days, was his watery refuge, the place where he could allow his thoughts to float free. It released them like a flock of birds, and they scattered into the sky, enjoying themselves, allowing the wind to blow them here and there, disorganised and unconscious. Paradoxical though it might sound, producing disorganised thoughts was Adamsberg's most important activity. It became particularly necessary when too many elements were blocking his mind, piling up in compact bundles and petrifying his actions. The only thing to do then was to open his head and let everything spill out. This happened effortlessly as he walked down the steps to the waterside.

In this general release, there was always one idea more tenacious than the others, like the seagull that marshals the rest of the group. A sort of head prefect, or gendarme, spending all its energy supervising the others and stopping them flying outside the boundaries of the real. The
commissaire
looked up into the sky to identify which gull was currently acting as this single-minded gendarme. He quickly found one, harrying a giddy juvenile that was playing at confronting the wind instead of its responsibilities. Then the gendarme swooped down on another thoughtless bird that was skimming over the dirty waters. The gendarme-gull
was screaming without intermission. Just now his own gendarme-thought, equally monomaniac, was flying to and fro inside his head, squawking, ‘There's a bone in the snout of a pig, and there's a bone in the penis of a cat.'

These new pieces of knowledge were preoccupying Adamsberg greatly as he strolled along beside the river, which today was dark green, its surface ruffled with waves. There couldn't be that many people who knew about the bone in a cat's penis. What was it called? No idea. What shape was it? Again, no idea. Perhaps it was odd, like the one in the pig's snout. So people who found one must have wondered where to place it in the great jigsaw puzzle of nature. On the animal's head, perhaps. Or they thought it was sacred, like the narwhal's tusk that people used to think grew on the head of the unicorn. Whoever had taken it from Narcissus must obviously be a specialist, possibly a collector, like some people collect shells. But what for? And why do people collect shells, for that matter? For their beauty? Their rarity value? To bring good luck? Adamsberg decided to take the advice he had given his son, and pulled out his mobile to call Danglard.

‘Capitaine
, can you tell me what it looks like, this bone from a cat's penis? Does it have some special beautiful shape?'

‘No, not particularly. It's just odd, like all penile bones.'

‘
All
penile bones?' said Adamsberg to himself, disconcerted by the thought that some element of human anatomy might also have eluded him. He could hear Danglard tapping on his keyboard, probably writing up the trip to Opportune. It wasn't a good moment to disturb him.

‘Good grief,' Danglard was saying. ‘We're not going to have to deal with this wretched cat for ever, are we? Even if his name was Narcissus.'

‘Just a few minutes. This thing is worrying me.'

‘Well, it doesn't worry cats. In fact, it makes life easier for them.'

‘That wasn't what I meant. Why did you say “all penile bones”?'

Resignedly, Danglard tore himself away from the computer screen. He could hear the cries of seagulls at the other end of the phone and
knew perfectly well where the
commissaire
was, and in what state of mind, his thoughts blowing about over the river.

‘Like all penile bones, that is to say the penile bones of all carnivorous animals,' he said, enunciating clearly as if talking to a dull schoolboy. ‘All carnivores have one,' he went on, underlining the point. ‘Pinnipeds, felids, viverids, mustelids …'

‘Stop, Danglard, you've lost me.'

‘All carnivores, then: walrus family, weasel family, badgers, polecats, bears, lions, what have you.'

‘So why isn't this generally known?' Adamsberg asked, for once feeling shocked at his own ignorance. ‘And why is it just carnivores?'