Dog Will Have His Day (28 page)

Louis returned to Lina and took her face in his hands to see if her terror had passed.

‘Let’s pick up your bag,’ he said, ‘and go.’

This time Lina said something. Or rather she said yes by nodding her head.

LOUIS SLEPT IN
until ten o’clock.

Then he picked up Marc and Mathias to go to Blanchet’s house.

Since Louis had referred to him as a Sioux warrior, Marc was intent on looking the part, without going over the top. For once, when he fitted the appearance of his boots, it would have been a pity not to play the game. Mathias was also smiling, the annihilation of the former member of the
milice
had pleased him, though Louis’s description of him as having the ‘hands of a gorilla’ had rather shocked him. No one had more sensitive fingers for uncovering fragile prehistoric remains and the tiny flint tools of the Magdalenians. Mathias hadn’t combed his hair that morning, and he ran his hands through his blond thatch. He was prepared to admit to himself, however, that he wouldn’t greatly have minded putting his sensitive fists together to knock Blanchet over the head.

But no one had to do anything of the kind.

‘I’ve come to pick up my order,’ said Louis.

Blanchet had everything ready. He passed over without a word two old briefcases tied with string and a small cardboard box, then his door closed.

‘Shall we go to the cafe before we leave?’ asked Marc, who was holding the box.

‘Give me till this evening to round everything off,’ said Louis. ‘And I need to see Pauline. I’ll just say hello, then we’ll go.’

‘OK,’ sighed Marc. ‘Well
I’ll
just take my medieval accounts to the cafe and you’ll find me there.’

Louis went off to find Guerrec. Marc put his pile of papers on a table which Antoinette cleared for him, and began a game of table football with Mathias. Louis had said there was no need for secrecy any more, they could tell anyone anything in the cafe, and nothing could have helped Marc to relax better than that. Mathias raised no objection to Marc’s elaborate explanations. Mathias acted the perfect gent. He waited as Marc talked, while continuing to play, watched by all the fishermen, the clerks from the town hall and old Antoinette, who kept an eye on the number of glasses of white wine being drunk. It meant Mathias won every game, but Marc’s ego wasn’t dependent on the tiny football.

Louis came to the cafe at about one o’clock. Sevran, after a fit of rage during the night so alarming that a doctor had been called, had agreed to be questioned in the morning by Guerrec and, trembling with hate and scorn, had thrown him scraps of information, like meat to a dog.

It didn’t bother Guerrec to be constantly called ‘you pathetic little man’, as long as he got the information he wanted. To get Marcel Thomas to fall from the balcony, Sevran had used a simple method. He had come back to the house, once Diego was asleep in the hotel. Thomas was waiting on the terrace, they had made an arrangement between them. Lina had never taken any interest in typewriters, except for one unique model called the Hurter, simply for the childish reason that it was supposed to be impossible to track down. Nobody had ever possessed a Hurter. Sevran had got hold of one, and they thought he would give it to Lina for her birthday, a very special gift, a secret between the two enthusiasts. Sevran had brought along this heavy machine, wrapped it in a blanket and attached it to a long leather strap which he threw up to Thomas. ‘Put it round your wrist to secure it.’ Thomas buckled it round his wrist and began to haul the machine up, and when it was about two metres above the ground, Sevran leapt up, hung on to it, and pulled. Thomas fell over the edge and Sevran finished him off by banging his head on the ground. He cut off the strap round his wrist and was already out in the street before Lina rushed on to the balcony. The typewriter was damaged, a detail he vouchsafed, but it was actually a big old Olympia from the 1930s. The Hurter, no, you pathetic little man, he had never found one. And if he did, he certainly wouldn’t tell anyone.

Louis took the mayor – it was aperitif time – into the back room and stood warming himself at the fire. The mayor listened to Louis’s account, and a few movements appeared below the surface of the pool. The carp were stirring.

‘What exactly does it mean, “non-aligned”?’ Louis asked.

Chevalier shifted from one foot to another, twisting his hands.

‘Look here, Chevalier,’ said Louis, who had ended up calling everyone in the village ‘tu’, ‘if you want to do me a favour now and then, take a little time in bed in the morning, or over your cognac at night, whatever you like, I don’t mind, and think about the Piss-master for instance, and try to draw your political conclusions,
not
too non-aligned, for a change, and that will make me feel better, but it’s up to you. I’m going to do you a favour now, I’m giving you the entire file Blanchet had compiled about you.’

Chevalier looked worried.

‘Yes, of course I’ve read it,’ said Louis, ‘I’ve read it and I’m leaving it with you. It’s pretty well researched. Blanchet was good at digging the dirt, like I told you. Your scandals are rather negligible, non-aligned so to speak, nothing too serious, and they don’t interest me, but yes, they could have cost you the town hall, that’s quite possible. I’m giving it all to you, you can read it, burn it, and clean up your act. I’m giving you everything, nothing left out, you have my word. You don’t believe me when I say that, Chevalier?’

Chevalier stopped writhing, and looked at Louis.

‘Yes, I do,’ he said.

Louis put a large file into the hand the mayor held out, and his arm dropped under its weight.

‘Heavy, eh?’ said Chevalier, with a nervous grin.

He leafed through it, and the carp started bumping into each other in the depths of the pond. They were seriously bothered, the carp, and it showed. A little more readability appeared on the surface.

‘Thank you, Kehlweiler. I
will
think of you perhaps, but in the evenings. Don’t count on me to start being an early riser.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Louis. ‘Not before midday, if we ever need to talk to each other.’

Louis came back to the bar, and asked Antoinette for the telephone. She gave him a disc – that was how the phone worked then in the Market Cafe – and brought him a beer without his having asked for it. Details like that let you know a cafe has entered your soul.

‘Lanquetot? Hello, it’s the German speaking . . . Murder, murder and blue murder, case closed, we’ll try to put Paquelin on the spot. I need to contact a few people in the Ministry and I’ll be over to see you the day after tomorrow with my sandwich . . . No, not before eleven.’

Louis looked round as he hung up. Jean, wan, red-eyed, and his body more shapeless than ever in his would-be clerical clothes, was hesitating in the doorway of the cafe. Struck by a sudden fear, Louis went to the door and caught his arm.

‘What is it? Is it Gaël?’ he asked, shaking him.

Jean looked at him without a word, and Louis dragged him over to the counter.

‘Come on, say something, for fuck’s sake!’

‘Gaël is better, he’s eaten something,’ said Jean with a shaky smile. ‘It was the Virgin Mary who spoke to me this morning, that’s what made me cry, she says she forgives me.’

Louis gave a sigh of relief. He hadn’t realised how much he had wanted Sevran’s last victim to survive the massacre. That they let the kid live was all he would ask of Port-Nicolas now.

‘The Virgin Mary –’ Jean began.

‘Yes,’ said Louis, ‘the Virgin Mary is quite happy, she says you’ve a perfect right to see Gaël again, that’s OK with her, she’s a kind woman at heart. Have a drink.’

‘No,’ said Jean anxiously, ‘she didn’t say that, she –’

‘No, no, no, Jean, you heard wrong. What she told you is what I just said. You trust me, don’t you? You’re not under arrest, you’re not going to spend the rest of your life in the church, are you? You’re going to live a bit outside as well. Trust me?’

Jean smiled a bit more.

‘Are you sure?’ he said.

‘Of course. Cut off my leg if I’m not. Right, have a drink.’

Jean nodded. It was at that moment that Louis realised by the silence reigning in the cafe, apart from the noise of the table football, that if he hadn’t gone to fetch Jean from the doorway it wasn’t evident that the wall of glances would have let him come in.

‘Antoinette,’ he said, ‘Jean could do with a drink.’

Antoinette poured out a glass of Muscadet and put it in Jean’s hand.

Louis went over to see Lina; her children had arrived home that morning, things would settle down. Then he found himself once more on the empty road to the health spa. He had to go and say hello. He hadn’t dared ask Marc to push him there on the bike, but the icy bath in the miraculous spring had done his knee no good whatsoever. He’d just go and say hello. And perhaps ask if it was because of the leg that she’d left. Perhaps ask for more, and too bad for Darnas. Too bad for Darnas if she said yes. If she said no, of course, that would be different. Or perhaps just say goodbye and leave. Louis stopped halfway down the wet road. Or perhaps just leave a note, something mean like ‘my toad is misbehaving in the bathroom, got to go’. Like plenty of other people would do, and just move on. Because if Pauline really had left him because of the knee, or, worse, if she didn’t love him, and she really preferred Darnas, best not to know. Or perhaps it was. Or not. Or just say hello. Louis looked at the large spa building in its vast grounds, turned back and went as far as Sevran’s machine. It was surrounded by police – they were going to excavate Diego’s grave. He pushed aside a cop standing in front of the handle, without taking any notice of the dirty looks he received. He worked the mechanism, and picked up his strip of paper. ‘
Why hesitate? Souvenir from Port-Nicolas
.’ ‘Bloody fool,’ said Louis between gritted teeth.

He went slowly back to the cafe, sat at the counter and asked Antoinette for some paper. He wrote half a page, folded it and taped it down.

‘Antoinette,’ he said, ‘could you give this to Pauline Darnas when you see her?’

Antoinette put the paper inside the cash register. Marc came over from the football.

‘So you’re not going to say hello and off we go?’

‘I don’t want to hear hello, well, well, now, and bon voyage. I’m packing my doubts in my case and we’re leaving.’

‘That’s funny,’ said Marc, ‘that’s my system too. Do you want me to explain it again?’

‘No. Look out, your medieval lord is getting soaked.’

Marc turned round and ran to the table where he had left his papers: a glass had been knocked over, and liquid was running gently over them.

‘It does it on purpose,’ cried Marc, as he wiped the damp papers with the edge of his jacket. ‘History gets wet, and crumpled, and wiped out, so it panics, it starts crying like a child, and you go rushing to help it, and you don’t even know why. That’s the way I always fall for it.’

Mathias nodded. Louis watched as Marc desperately tried to rescue the wrinkled papers. He was unsticking and unfolding the accounts of Hugues de Puisaye. Antoinette and Jean helped him, bringing cloths and blowing on the pages. Mathias put the saved sheets over the backs of cafe chairs. Louis would tell his old man about that, over in Lörrach. He’d like that. And then the old man would tell the Rhine, you could bet on that.

‘I could do with a beer,’ he said.

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Epub ISBN: 9781448190188

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Harvill Secker 2014

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Copyright © Éditions Viviane Hamy, Paris, 1996

English translation copyright © Siân Reynolds 2014

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
Un peu plus loin sur la droite
in 1996

by Éditions Viviane Hamy, Paris

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

H
ARVILL
S
ECKER

Random House

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London SW1V 2SA

www.vintage-books.co.uk

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781846558191

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)