Read Seeking Whom He May Devour Online
Authors: Fred Vargas
Seeking Whom He May Devour (35 page)
Hermel switched off the tape recorder.
“Did I forget anything?”
“Crassus the Bald and Augustus.”
“Who are they?”
“Two wolves. Johnstone must have disposed of the first one as soon as he got to the Mercantour. Unless Crassus just disappeared of his own accord, and that’s not impossible. It was the largest wolf in the pack. Augustus was an old wolf he took under his wing. When he was on his campaign he wasn’t there to give Augustus his food, so the old wolf died. Johnstone was very sad about that.”
“He murdered five people and cried for a wolf?”
“It was his wolf.”
XXXVI
IT WAS AFTER
one in the morning when adamsberg got back to the lorry. Camille was squatting on her bed reading her
A to Z of Tools for Trade and Craft
by the light of a torch. Adamsberg sat down next to her and looked at the page displaying drills and sanders.
“What do you see in all of that?” he asked.
“Comfort.”
“Is it that bad?”
“Everything is haphazard, confused and precarious, outside the
A to Z
.”
“Are you sure of that?”
Camille shrugged her shoulders and smiled fleetingly.
“Johnstone is being transferred to Paris tomorrow,” Adamsberg said. “I’ll be taking him up.”
“How is he?”
“As ever. At peace. He finds that the
gendarme
s smell of sweat.”
“Is he right?”
“Of course he’s right.”
“I’ll write to him. When I’m back in the Alps.”
“Are you going back to Saint-Victor?”
“I’m driving them back to Les Écarts. And I’m going home too.”
“Yes.”
“I’m the driver.”
“Yes, of course.”
“They can’t drive.”
“Yes. Be careful on that road.”
“Yes.”
“Do be careful.”
“I will be.”
Adamsberg put his good arm around Camille’s shoulder and looked at her by the light of the torch.
“Will you come back?” he asked.
“I’ll stay down there for a few days.”
“And then leave?”
“Yes. I’ll miss them.”
“Will you come back?”
“Where to?”
“Well, I don’t know. Paris?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh sod that, Camille, stop talking like I do. We’ll never get anywhere if you speak like me.”
“Good,” Camille said. “That’s fine by me. Things are fine as they are.”
“But tomorrow or the day after they won’t be the same. No more lay-by, no more lorry, no more just for the time being, no more just making do for now. No more riverbanks, either.”
“I’ll make some more of those.”
“Riverbanks?”
“Yes.”
“What with?”
“With the
A to Z of Tools for Trade and Craft
. You can make anything with an
A to Z
.”
“If you say so. What will you do with a spare riverbank?”
“Go and see if you’re around.”
“I’ll be around.”
“Maybe,” Camille said.
Next morning Camille slid into position behind the steering wheel, switched on the engine, and reversed the lorry into a three-point turn amid the clatter and rattle of old iron. Watchee, as straight-backed as ever though supporting himself on his crook, Soliman and Adamsberg stood in line to one side, solemnly watching the lorry perform this manoeuvre. Camille went forward onto the road, then reversed again with the opposite lock, and then eased the lorry forward into position with its nose to the east on the opposite side of the road, and switched off.
Adamsberg slowly crossed the road, climbed up to the cab, kissed Camille and stroked her hair, and then returned to the field where the other two and Woof stood waiting. He shook Watchee’s hand.
“You look after yourself, young fella,” Watchee said. “I won’t be there to watch out for you.”
“Not everybody needs to have you under their feet,” said Soliman.
Soliman glanced at Camille then shook Adamsberg by the hand.
“Separation,” he said. “‘The action or an act of withdrawing oneself or leaving the company of others.’”
He went over to the lorry, clambered into the cab through the nearside door, hauled Watchee up after him into his seat, and pulled the door shut. Adamsberg raised his hand, and off the livestock transporter rumbled in a clatter of wood and steel. He watched it go, and then halt eighty metres down the road. Soliman fell out of the cab and came running back towards him.
“The bowl, sod it.”
He went straight past Adamsberg and onto the lorry’s parking spot to collect the bowl that had got lost in the grass flattened by the vehicle and trampled by its crew. He walked back with long strides, quite out of breath. When he got as far as Adamsberg he held out his hand once more.
“Fate,” he said. “‘A person’s appointed lot. A fortuitous encounter. Circumstances which cause a person or thing, by chance or otherwise, to cross your path.’”
He smiled and went back to the lorry, graciously swinging the blue plastic bowl up and down. The lorry started up and disappeared around the bend in the road.
Adamsberg got out his jotter and noted down Soliman’s last definition before he forgot it.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
There are two principal organisations ensuring law enforcement in modern France. The
police nationale
operates in cities, whereas the
gendarmerie
is responsible for smaller towns and the countryside. Officers of the
police nationale
– such as Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg – are civil servants, answering ultimately to the Minister of the Interior;
gendarmes
, on the other hand, have military status and are garrisoned in places other than their home towns.
Flics
and
gendarmes
necessarily cooperate on many criminal cases, but do not always overcome mutual rivalry and mistrust.
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781446449455
Published by Vintage 2008
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Copyright © Éditions Viviane Hamy, Paris, 1999
English translation copyright © David Bellos, 2004
Fred Vargas has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published with the title
L’Homme à l’envers
by
Éditions Viviane Hamy, Paris, 1999
First published in Great Britain in 2004 by
The Harvill Press
First published by Vintage in 2005
Vintage
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London SW1V 2SA
Addresses for companies within the Random House Group Limited can be found at:
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Maps drawn by Emily Hare
Ouvrage traduit avec le concours du Ministère Français chargé de la culture – Centre National du Livre.
This work is published with support from the French Ministry of Culture – Centre National du Livre.
This book is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the Burgess Programme headed for the French Embassy in London by the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni
ISBN 9780099515975