An Uncertain Place (9 page)

‘The boots you mean?’

‘No, the shoes. And there’s something worse. And when I saw that, it was as if someone had lit a match in the catacomb, as if someone had cut off my uncle’s feet. But we don’t have any choice, I’m on my way now.’

More than three drinks, Adamsberg guessed, and knocked back in short order. He looked at his watches: only four o’clock. Danglard would be no good to anyone for the rest of the day. ‘Don’t worry, Danglard, just leave the villa, I’ll catch up with you later.’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

Adamsberg put the phone away, wondering absurdly what was becoming of the cat and kittens. He had told Retancourt that the mother was recovering, but one of the kittens, one of the two he had delivered, a female, was not doing well. Had he squeezed her too hard? Had he damaged something?

‘Jean-Christophe Réal,’ Pierre reminded him insistently, as if he feared the
commissaire
wouldn’t find his way back alone.

‘The artist,’ Adamsberg agreed.

‘He worked with horses, he used to hire them. The first time it was to cover a horse with bronze paint to make a sort of living statue. The owner sued him, but that’s how he made his name. He did more after that. He painted everything, it took colossal amounts of paint: grass, trees, stones, leaves one by one, as if he was petrifying the whole landscape.’

‘That won’t interest the
commissaire
, Pierre,’ said Hélène.

‘Did you know Réal at all?’

‘I visited him in prison. Actually, I was determined to get him released.’

‘What did your father accuse him of?’

‘Of painting this woman – she was his patron – who had left him money in her will.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘He painted her, literally, with bronze paint, and sat her on one of these horses to be a living equestrian statue. But the paint blocked her pores, and before they could clean it off, she died of asphyxiation on horseback. Réal did inherit.’

‘How weird,’ said Adamsberg. ‘And the horse – that died too, I suppose?’

‘No, it didn’t, that’s the whole problem. Réal knew perfectly well what he was doing, of course, he used porous paint. He wasn’t mad.’

‘No,’ said Adamsberg sceptically.

‘Some forensic scientist said the paint must have reacted with her make-up and that led to the poisoning. But my father claimed to have proof that Réal had switched the paint after doing the horse, and that he had set out to kill her.’

‘And you didn’t agree.’

‘No,’ said Pierre, thrusting out his chin.

‘And was your father’s claim founded?’

‘Maybe, who knows? My father was abnormally fixated on this guy. He hated him for no obvious reason. He just set out to destroy him.’

‘No, you’re wrong,’ said Hélène, suddenly disagreeing. ‘You knew Réal was a megalomaniac, and he was deep in debt. He must have killed that woman.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Pierre. ‘My father went after him to get at
m
e. When I was eighteen, I wanted to be a painter. Réal was a few years older than me, I admired his work, I’d been to see him twice. When my father found out, he went berserk. He thought Réal was a greedy ignoramus, that’s what he called him, whose grotesque artworks were destabilising civilisation as we know it. My father was a man from the dark ages, he believed in the ancient foundations of the world, and Réal infuriated him. So with his notoriety in legal matters, the old bastard pestered the authorities, had him charged, and caused his death.’

‘
The old bastard
?’ repeated Adamsberg.

‘Yes,’ said Pierre unblinkingly. ‘If you really want to know, my father was a chateau-bottled shit.’

T
HE NAMES HAD BEEN NOTED OF ALL THE RESIDENTS IN THE
nearby villas, and inquiries in the neighbourhood had begun, a necessary and wearisome task. Nothing they found so far contradicted what Pierre had said. No one else quite dared describe Pierre Vaudel as a chateau-bottled shit, but the witness statements all portrayed him latterly as a withdrawn, eccentric, intolerant man, entirely self-sufficient. He was clever, but to no one else’s advantage. He avoided people and by the same token didn’t bother anyone. The police went from door to door, explaining that an unpleasant murder had taken place, but without telling them that the old man had been butchered. Would he have opened the door to his attacker? Yes, if the reason had been something technical, like repairs, but not just to have a chat. Even after dark? Yes, he wouldn’t have been afraid, he was, well, sort of invulnerable. Or that was the impression he gave.

Only one man, the gardener, Émile, described him in any other terms. No, he said, Vaudel wasn’t a curmudgeon. His only suspicions were of himself and that was why he didn’t want to see people. How did the gardener know that? Because Vaudel said so himself, with a funny little smile sometimes. How had they met? In court, when Émile was up for the ninth time for GBH, about fifteen years ago. Vaudel had taken an interest in his violent career, and gradually they had become acquainted. Until in the end he had hired him to look after the garden, fetch logs for the fire, and later on to do shopping and odd jobs. Émile suited him because he didn’t try to chat. When the neighbours had found out about the gardener’s past, they had not been best pleased.

‘Can’t blame ’em. Put yourself in their place. “Basher”, that’s what they call me. So course, the people round here, they keep out of me way.’

‘They don’t want to meet you at all?’ asked Adamsberg.

The gardener was sitting on the top step of the stairs up to the house, where the June sun had warmed the stone. He was a small, wiry man, his overalls hanging loosely off him, and did not look particularly threatening. His lived-in face was worn and rather ugly, expressing neither strong will nor confidence. He kept up a series of defensive gestures, wiping his nose, which was crooked from previous violent encounters, and shading his eyes. One ear was bigger than the other, and he rubbed that too, rather like a nervous dog, and this movement alone indicated either that he was upset, or perhaps that he was bewildered. Adamsberg sat down beside him.

‘You from the cops?’ asked the man, looking intrigued at Adamsberg’s clothes.

‘Yes, and my colleague says you don’t agree with the neighbours about Monsieur Vaudel. I don’t know your name.’

‘I told them about twenty times: Émile Feuillant.’

‘Émile,’ Adamsberg repeated, trying to fix it in his mind.

‘Aren’t you going to write it down? The others, that’s what they done. Stands to reason, I suppose, or you keep telling ’em the same thing over. Course,
they
keep saying the same thing. Always gets me going, that. Why do cops always have to say everything twice. You tell ’em, Friday night I was down the Parrot, and the cop goes: “So where were you Friday?” Just gets you all worked up.’

‘Yes, that’s the point, it gets you worked up, so in the end the man stops talking about the Parrot, and tells the cops what they want to hear.’

‘Yeah, stands to reason. I get it.’

Stands to reason, doesn’t stand to reason, Émile seemed to divide the world up on either side of this demarcation line. By the way he was looking at him, Adamsberg had the feeling that Émile was not putting him on the side of things that stood to reason.

‘Are they all afraid of you round here?’

‘Yeah, suppose so, except for Madame Bourlant next door. See, I’ve been in a hundred and thirty-eight street fights, not counting when I was a kid. So there you are.’

‘Is that why you’re saying the opposite of the neighbours? Because they don’t like you.’

This question seemed to surprise Émile.

‘See if I care if they
like
me or not. Just I know more than they do about old Vaudel. Can’t blame ’em, stands to reason they’re afraid of me. I’m a man with “a violent past of the most reprehensible kind”. That’s what he used to say,’ he added, with a laugh that revealed a couple of missing teeth. ‘Mind, he was a bit out of order, cos I never
killed
nobody. But “violent past”, yeah, he wasn’t far wrong.’

Émile brought out a packet of tobacco and efficiently rolled himself a cigarette.

‘This violent past, how much time have you done for it?’

‘Eleven years and six months, seven different sentences. That wears you out. Well, now I’m over fifty, it’s not so bad. Just the odd fight now and then. No more. And I’ve paid the price, haven’t I? No wife, no kids. Like kids all right, but I wouldn’t want any myself. When you’re like me, quick with my fists, wouldn’t be such a good idea. Stands to reason. That was something else we had in common, Monsieur Vaudel and me. He didn’t want no kids either. Well, not that he said it like that. What he said in his plummy voice was: “No descendants, Émile.” Still, he did have a kid an’ all, without meaning to.’

‘Do you know why?’

Émile dragged on his cigarette and looked at Adamsberg in surprise.

‘Didn’t mind out, did he?’

‘But why didn’t he want “descendants”?’

‘Just didn’t. But what I’m thinking now is what’m I going to do? I’ve not got a job, or a roof over my head no more, I used to live in the shed.’

‘And Vaudel wasn’t afraid of you?’

‘Not him. He wasn’t afraid of anything, even dying. He used to say, only thing about dying, it takes too long.’

‘And you never felt like being violent towards him?’

‘Yeah, sometimes, at first. But I preferred to get him at noughts and crosses. I taught him how to play. I never thought to find someone didn’t know how to play noughts and crosses. I’d come in the evening, light the fire, pour out a couple of Guignolets. That’s something he showed
me
, drinking Guignolet. And we’d sit down and play noughts and crosses.’

‘And who won?’

‘Two times out of three it was him in the end. Because he was really crafty, and he invented this special version, very big, with long pieces of paper. Really hard, you see?’

‘Yes.’

‘So he wanted to go even bigger, but I didn’t.’

‘Did you do a lot of drinking together?’

‘No, just a couple of Guignolets, that was it. But what I’ll miss is the winkles we used to eat with it. He used to order them every Friday, we had a little pin each, mine had a blue top, his had an orange top, never mix them up. He said I’d be …’

Émile rubbed his nose trying to remember a word. Adamsberg recognised this kind of search.

‘Yeah, that I’d be nost-al-gic when he weren’t there no more. But he was right an’ all, crafty old thing. I
am
nostalgic.’

Adamsberg had the sense that Émile was proudly assuming the complex state of nostalgia and the unfamiliar word to honour it.

‘When you were violent in the past, was it when you were drunk?’

‘Nah, that’s just it. Sometimes I’d have a drink
after
, to get over it, like. And yeah, before you ask, I seen lots of shrinks, they made me see ’em, like it or not, ten or more. They didn’t know what I was doing it for. They poked about, asking about my parents, father, mother, nothing. I was happy enough as a kid. That’s why Monsieur Vaudel, he used to say, nothing to be done about it, Émile, it’s in your genes. Do you know what that is, genes?’

‘Sort of.’

‘No, properly?’

‘No.’

‘Well,
I
know, it’s bad seed as comes down to you. So, you see. It wasn’t any point him and me trying to live like other people. It was down to genes.’

‘You think Vaudel had genes too?’

‘Of course,’ said Émile with an air of annoyance, as if Adamsberg was making no effort to understand. ‘But like I said, I don’t know what I’m going to do now.’

He concentrated on cleaning his nails with the end of a matchstick.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘He wouldn’t have anyone talk about it.’

‘Émile, what
were
you doing on Saturday night?’

‘Told you, I was at the Parrot.’

Émile gave a wide provocative grin as he threw away his match. He was no halfwit.

‘Come on.’

‘I took me mother out for supper in this cafe. Always the same place, it’s near Chartres. I told ’em, the cops, the name an’ all. They’ll tell you. I go there every Saturday. And let me tell you, me mum, I’ve never lifted a finger against her. Well, would be the end, wouldn’t it? And me mum, she thinks the world of me. Stands to reason, don’t it?’

‘But your mother doesn’t stay out till four in the morning, does she? And you got home at five.’

‘Yeah, and that’s when I saw there wasn’t no lights on at the house. He always left his lights on all night.’

‘When did you leave your mother?’

‘Ten o’clock on the dot,’ said Émile. ‘Like every Saturday. I went to see me dog after.’

Émile pulled out a wallet and showed a well-thumbed photograph.

‘That’s him,’ he said. ‘Sit in my pocket, he could, like a kangaroo, when he was little. When I was in prison the third time, my sister she said she didn’t want to look after him no more, so she gave him away. But I knew where he was. With these cousins, Gérault their name is, it’s a farm out Châteaudun way. So after supper with me mum, I take me van and go and see him, with dog food and presents and stuff. He knows I’m coming. He waits for me in the dark, he jumps the gate, and he comes and sits all night in the van with me. Rain or shine. He knows I’ll be there. And he’s no bigger than that an’ all.’