An Uncertain Place (4 page)

By now the car was going past the cemetery, and Radstock suddenly wished that the scenario painted by Clyde-Fox would not turn out to be imaginary after all. Then that laid-back little Frenchman, Adamsberg, would be drawn into the nightmare of Highgate Cemetery. Let him get involved, by God, and we’d soon see if the little cop was as calm as he made out. Radstock pulled up at the kerb, but didn’t get out. He lowered the window a few inches and poked his torch out.

‘OK,’ he said, looking in the mirror at Adamsberg. ‘Let’s all share this.’

‘What’s he saying?’

‘He says he wants you to share Highgate.’

‘I didn’t ask to do anything.’

‘You’ve no choice,’ said Radstock grimly, opening the driver’s door.

‘I get it,’ said Adamsberg, silencing Danglard with a gesture.

The smell was ghastly, the scene was appalling, and even Adamsberg stiffened, standing back a little behind his English colleague. From the ancient shoes, with their cracked leather and trailing laces, projected decomposed ankles, showing dark flesh and white shinbones which had been cleanly chopped off. The only thing that didn’t match Clyde-Fox’s account was that the feet were not trying to get into the cemetery. They were just there, on the pavement, terrible and provocative, sitting inside their shoes at the historic gateway to Highgate Cemetery. They formed a carefully arranged and unspeakable pile. Radstock held a torch in his outstretched hand, face twisted in denial, lighting up the damaged ankles emerging from the shoes, and vainly trying to sweep away the smell of death in the air.

‘You see,’ said Radstock, in a resigned yet aggressive voice, turning to Adamsberg. ‘You see. That’s Highgate for you. A place of the damned, and has been for a hundred years.’

‘A hundred and seventy years in fact,’ said Danglard quietly.

‘Right,’ said Radstock, seeking to pull himself together. ‘You can go back to your hotel, I’m putting a call through to the Yard.’

He took out his mobile and smiled uneasily at his colleagues.

‘The shoes look pretty cheap,’ he said, as he punched in the call. ‘With any luck they’ll be French.’

‘And if the shoes are, so are the feet,’ Danglard completed the thought.

‘Yes, Donglarde. What Englishman would bother to buy French shoes?’

‘So if it was up to you, you’d bounce this horrific case across the Channel?’

‘You bet! Dennison? Radstock here. Send a homicide team to the old gate of Highgate Cemetery. No, no actual body, but a pile of rotten shoes, about twenty of them. With feet inside. Yes, a whole crime scene team, Dennison. OK,’ the chief inspector finished in a weary tone, ‘put him on.’

Superintendent Clems was at the Yard; it was a busy night. It sounded as if some discussion was going on, as Radstock waited, holding his phone. Danglard took advantage of it to explain to Adamsberg that only French feet would fit French shoes, and that DCI Radstock fervently wished to send them this case across the Channel, straight to Paris. Adamsberg nodded, his hands clasped behind his back, and walked slowly round the macabre deposit, looking up from time to time to the high cemetery wall, as much to give his mind some air as to imagine where these dead feet wanted to go. They knew things that he didn’t.

‘About twenty, sir,’ Radstock was repeating. ‘I’m standing right here looking at them.’

‘Radstock!’ came the sceptical voice of Superintendent Clems. ‘What the hell is all this rubbish about shoes with
feet inside them
?’

‘Give me patience,’ muttered Radstock to himself. ‘I’m in Highgate, sir, not Queen’s Lane. Are you going to send me some men, or are you going to leave me alone with this monstrosity?’

‘Highgate? Oh, you should have said so before, Radstock.’

‘That’s what I’ve been saying for the past twenty minutes.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Clems, suddenly conciliatory, as if the word Highgate had set off alarm bells. ‘The team’s on its way. Are we talking about men or women?’

‘Both. Adult feet. In the shoes.’

‘Who put you on to it?’

‘Lord Clyde-Fox. He stumbled across this horror, and went off to down several pints to get over it.’

‘Right,’ said Clems quickly. ‘And the shoes. Quality? Age?’

‘I’d say about twenty years old. And they’re shoddy-looking too,’ he went on sarcastically. ‘With a bit of luck we might be able to palm this off on the Frenchies –’

‘None of that nonsense, Radstock!’ Clems interrupted him. ‘We’re in the middle of an international conference and waiting for results.’

‘I know, sir, I’ve got the policemen from Paris with me now.’

Radstock laughed briefly again, and looked at Adamsberg before adopting the same linguistic device as his colleagues, speaking spectacularly fast. It was obvious to Danglard that the chief inspector, feeling humiliated now that he had asked them to accompany him, was aiming a volley of cheap shots at Adamsberg by way of revenge.

‘Did you say Adamsberg himself was with you?’ Clems cut him off.

‘Yep, that’s him, little fellow, looks half asleep most of the time.’

‘In that case, hold your tongue and keep your distance, Radstock,’ Clems ordered him. ‘The little fellow, as you call him, is a walking timebomb.’

Danglard might look passive but he was not a calm man, and few nuances in the English language escaped him, despite Radstock’s precautions. His defence of Adamsberg was unwavering, except for any criticisms he might formulate himself. He snatched the mobile from Radstock’s hand and introduced himself to the superintendent, walking away from the smell of decaying feet. It appeared to Adamsberg that gradually the man at the other end of the line was turning into a better potential fishing companion than Radstock.

‘As you say,’ said Danglard sharply.

‘Nothing personal,
Commandant
Danglard,’ said Clems. ‘I’m not trying to excuse Radstock, but he was there thirty years ago. It’s bad luck coming across this when he’s six months off retirement.’

‘That was all a long time ago, sir.’

‘Nothing worse than things from a long time ago, as you well know. Ancient stumps poke up through the grass and they can last centuries. A little sympathy for Radstock, please, because you don’t understand.’

‘Yes, I do. I know about the Highgate affair.’

‘I’m not talking about the murder of the hiker.’

‘Neither am I, sir. We’re talking about historical Highgate, 160,800 bodies, 51,800 tombs. We’re talking about the nocturnal hunts in the 1970s, and even about Lizzie Siddal.’

‘All right,’ said the superintendent after a pause. ‘Well, if you know about that, you should also know that Radstock was there for the last escapade, and at the time he was young and new to the job. So cut him a little slack.’

The crime scene investigation team had arrived. Radstock took charge. Without a word, Danglard switched off the phone and slipped it in his British colleague’s pocket. Then he rejoined Adamsberg, who was leaning on a black car and seemed to be supporting Estalère. The young officer was in a state of shock.

‘What are they going to do with them?’ asked Estalère in a shaky voice. ‘Find twenty people without feet and stick them back on? How would they do that?’

‘Ten people,’ Danglard pointed out. ‘Twenty feet, ten people.’

‘All right,’ admitted Estalère.

‘In fact, it appears there are just eighteen, so nine people.’

‘Yes. OK. But if the English had already found nine people whose feet had been cut off, they’d know about it, wouldn’t they?’

‘If they were living people, yes,’ said Adamsberg. ‘But if the feet came from corpses, they might not necessarily.’

Estalère shook his head.

‘If the feet had been cut from dead bodies,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘that would mean nine corpses. The Brits may well have nine corpses somewhere without feet, but there’s no way they would know that. I wonder,’ he went on, ‘if there’s a special word for cutting off feet. We say decapitate for heads, eviscerate for innards, emasculate for testicles, but there isn’t a special word for feet, or is there?’

‘No, there isn’t,’ said Danglard. ‘The word doesn’t exist because the act doesn’t exist. Well, not until now. But one individual has just created it, on the dark continent.’

‘Like the wardrobe-eater – there isn’t a proper word for that either.’

‘A thekophagist?’ suggested Danglard.

W
HEN THE TRAIN ENTERED THE
C
HANNEL
T
UNNEL
, D
ANGLARD
took a deep breath and clenched his teeth. The journey out had not relieved his apprehensions and this passage under water still seemed to him to be unacceptable, and his fellow travellers strangely insouciant. He distinctly pictured himself speeding through this conduit covered by tons of seawater overhead.

‘You can feel the weight of it,’ he said, his eyes fixed to the roof of the carriage.

‘There isn’t any weight,’ said Adamsberg. ‘We’re not under water, we’re under rock.’

Estalère asked how it was possible for the weight of the sea not to press down on the rock so hard that the tunnel collapsed. Adamsberg patiently and determinedly drew a diagram for him on a paper napkin: the water, the rock, the shorelines, the tunnel, the train. Then he did the same diagram without either the tunnel or the train, to show that their existence did not modify anything.

‘All the same,’ said Estalère, ‘the weight of the seawater must be pressing down on something.’

‘Yes, on the rock.’

‘But then the rock must be weighing on the tunnel.’

‘No,’ said Adamsberg, starting another diagram.

Danglard made a gesture of irritation.

‘It’s just that you
imagine
the weight. A monstrous mass of water over our heads. The idea of being swallowed up. Sending a train under the sea is a demented idea.’

‘No more than eating a wardrobe,’ said Adamsberg, perfecting his diagram.

‘What the heck has the wardrobe-eater done to get under your skin? You’ve done nothing but talk about him since yesterday.’

‘I’m just trying to imagine his thought processes, Danglard. I’m trying to see how they think, the wardrobe-eater, the foot-amputator, or that man whose uncle was eaten by a bear. The thoughts of mankind are like drills opening up tunnels under the sea that you never expected to come into existence.’

‘Who was eaten by a bear?’ asked Estalère, suddenly waking up.

‘This guy’s uncle was on an ice floe,’ Adamsberg told him. ‘About a hundred years ago. All that was left of him were his glasses and his shoelaces. And this nephew was fond of his uncle. So he flipped. He killed the bear.’

‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’ commented Estalère.

‘Yes, but then he brought the bearskin back to Geneva, and gave it to his aunt, the widow. Who put it in her sitting room. Danglard, your colleague Stock gave you an envelope at the station. His preliminary report, was it?’

‘Radstock, yes,’ said Danglard gloomily, still looking up at the ceiling of the carriage and watching out for the weight of the sea.

‘Interesting?’

‘What does it matter? They’re his feet, he can keep them.’

Estalère was twisting a paper napkin in his fingers and concentrating hard, looking down at his knees.

‘So I suppose this nephew wanted to bring some relic of his uncle back to the widow?’ he asked.

Adamsberg nodded and turned back to Danglard.

‘Tell me all the same, what does the report say?’

‘When will we get out of the tunnel?’

‘Another sixteen minutes. What did Stock find, Danglard?’

‘But logically,’ Estalère said hesitantly, ‘if the uncle was inside the bear … and the nephew …’

He stopped and looked down again, puzzled and scratching his blond head. Danglard sighed, whether for the sixteen minutes, or the ghastly feet, which he would rather leave far behind, forgetting all about the cemetery gate in Highgate. Or because Estalère, who was as slow-witted as he was curious, was the only member of the squad unable to distinguish between the valuable and the pointless among Adamsberg’s remarks. For the young officer, every word his
commissaire
let drop had meaning and he was now pursuing it. And to Danglard, whose elastic mind leapt over ideas extremely fast, Estalère represented a constant and irritating waste of time.

‘If we hadn’t gone for a walk with Radstock two days ago,’ Danglard said, ‘and if we hadn’t bumped into that crazy Clyde-Fox character, we wouldn’t know a thing about those revolting feet and we’d have left them to rot in peace. They belong to the Brits, full stop.’

‘There’s no rule against being interested,’ said Adamsberg, ‘when something crosses your path.’

He felt pretty sure that Danglard had not parted with the woman in London on as reassuring a note as he might have wished. So his anxiety was taking over again, slipping into the recesses of his being. Adamsberg imagined Danglard’s mind as a block of fine limestone, where rain, in other words questions, had hollowed out countless basins in which his worries gathered, unresolved. Every day, three or four of these basins were active simultaneously. Just now, the journey through the tunnel, the woman in London, the feet in Highgate. As Adamsberg had explained to him, the energy Danglard expended on these questions, seeking to empty out the basins, was a waste of time. Because no sooner had he cleared out one space than it made way for something else, for another set of agonising questions. By digging away at them, he was stopping peaceful sedimentation from taking place, and the natural filling up of the excavations, which would happen if he forgot about them.