Seeking Whom He May Devour (12 page)

The conscript went off and came back five minutes later.

“The Head Deputy is ready to see you,” he said, pointing the way to a door.

“You can go in on your own,” Camille said abruptly to Johnstone. “I don’t like grassing on people. I’ll wait for you in reception.”

“Bloody hell, you’re deserting me so I play the part of the bastard solo, right? You really don’t want to share the part, do you?”

Camille shrugged.

“Shit, Camille, this isn’t about giving a man away. This is about stopping a lunatic.”

“I know.”

“So come in with me.”

“I can’t. Don’t ask.”

“You know you’re ratting on Suzanne.”

“Emotional blackmail won’t work, Lawrence. Go on in on your own. I’ll be waiting.”

“Do you disapprove of my doing this?”

“No.”

“Then you’re a coward.”

“I am a coward.”

“Have you always known?”

“For heaven’s sake! Of course I’ve always known.”

Johnstone smiled and followed the conscript. Just before Johnstone went in to see the Head Deputy, the conscript tugged at his sleeve and said in a whisper:

“Seriously, though, is it a real werewolf? A bloke who when you open him up he’s got . . .”

“Too soon to say,” said Johnstone. “That’s the kind of thing you can only prove at the very end, if you get my meaning.”

“Receiving you loud and clear, sir.”

“Glad to know that.”

The Head Deputy was a well-groomed man with a thin yet flabby face, leaning back in his plastic chair with his hands folded on his stomach and a sardonic curl to his lips. Johnstone recognised the man sitting at a side table with a typewriter – it was Justin Lemirail, the medium
gendarme
. Johnstone greeted him with a gesture.

“So we’ve come across a . . . how should I say . . . a lycanthrope, have we?” asked the Head Deputy with a sly grin.

“Don’t see what’s funny about that,” Johnstone answered gruffly.

“Now, now,” said the Head Deputy in the sugary tone that people use to mollify half-wits. “Where did you come across your lycanthrope, then?”

“At Saint-Victor-du-Mont. Five sheep were savaged there last week, on Suzanne Rosselin’s farm. Your assistant was there.”

The Head Deputy gestured towards the Canadian with an arm movement more likely to be seen at a
thé dansant
than in the paramilitary police.

“Family name, given name, ID,” he requested without ceasing to beam.

“Lawrence Donald Johnstone. Canadian citizen.”

Johnstone hauled a wodge of papers from his jacket pocket and put them on the table. Passport, visa, residence permit.

“Are you the scientist who’s working on the Mercantour?”

Johnstone nodded.

“I see there are . . . how should I say? . . . extension requests. Run into trouble, have we?”

“No problems. I’m hanging around, that’s all. Rooting in.”

“Can you say why?”

“Wolves, insects, woman.”

“As good a set of reasons as any.”

“Guess so,” said Johnstone.

The Head Deputy signalled to Lemirail to start typing.

“You know who Suzanne Rosselin is?” asked Johnstone.

“But of course, M. Johnstone. It’s that poor woman who was killed . . . how should I say? . . . on Sunday.”

“And you know who Auguste Massart is?”

“We’ve been looking for M. Massart since yesterday.”

“Last Wednesday, Suzanne Rosselin accused Massart of being a werewolf.”

“Any witnesses?”

“I was.”

“You and who else?”

“No-one else.”

“What a pity. Can you give me a reason why the good lady should have confided in you alone?”

“Two good reasons. Suzanne believed that anyone from Saint-Victor was by definition an ignorant blockhead.”

“I can confirm that,” Lemirail interrupted.

“So in the first place I’m an outsider, and in the second place I know about wolves,” Johnstone concluded.

“And on what did Mme Rosselin base her . . . how should I say? . . . accusation?”

“On the fact that Massart has no body hair.”

The Head Deputy furrowed his brow.

“Suzanne was murdered,” Johnstone continued, “during the night of Saturday to Sunday. Massart went AWOL on Sunday.”

The deputy smiled. “Or got lost in the hills,” he said.

“If Massart had got lost or trapped or whatever,” Johnstone objected, “his mastiff would not have gone missing as well.”

“The mastiff is surely at his side, guarding his master.”

“But he’d have been heard. He’d be howling.”

“Are you insinuating that a lycanthrope named Massart murdered a woman called Rosselin and thereafter . . . how shall I say? . . . ran away?”

“I’m insinuating that he killed Suzanne, yes.”

“And are you proposing we should take hold of this individual and then slice him open from the neck to the . . .”

“Bugger that,” said Johnstone. “That’s bullshit. This is a serious matter.”

“That’s better. Now lay out your case and support it with convincing arguments.”

“I think Suzanne was not killed by a wolf, because Suzanne would never have pushed a wolf into a corner. I think Massart is not lost in the hills but on the run. I think Massart is not a werewolf but a hairless lunatic who kills sheep with his mastiff or with Crassus the Bald.”

“And who might that be?”

“Crassus is a very large wolf who’s not been spotted for two years. I think Massart caught him when he was still a cub and tamed him. I think Massart lost control of his bloodlust when the wolves came over into the Mercantour. I think he domesticated the cub and trained it to attack. I think that now he’s murdered a woman, the floodgates are wide open. I think he could kill again, especially women. I think that Crassus is an exceptionally large wolf and very dangerous. I think you must stop combing Mont Vence and hunt for Massart further north, above La Castille, which is where he was last night.”

Johnstone stopped and took a deep breath. That was
a
whole lot of speaking. Lemirail was typing away at high speed.

“To my mind,” said the Head Deputy, “things are not quite so involved. We have enough on our hands dealing with the wolves, M. Johnstone, and we can do without imaginary wolf-tamers into the bargain. Wolves, M. Johnstone, are not liked in these parts. And in these parts, people do not kill sheep.”

“But Massart kills sheep, at the slaughterhouse.”

“That is to confuse killing and slaughtering. You don’t believe Suzanne Rosselin died accidentally, but I do. That Rosselin woman was the sort of person who might well provoke a wild animal without thinking of – how shall I say? – the consequences. She was also likely to swallow almost any story doing the rounds. You don’t believe Massart has got lost in the hills, but you don’t know the area, believe you me. In the last fifteen years three experienced hikers have died around here from accidental falls. One of them has never been found. Massart’s shack has been properly searched. We found his walking boots missing, as well as his stick, his backpack, his rifle, his ammo pouch and his how shall I say hunting jacket. But he did not take a change of clothes or a toilet bag with him. What that means, M. Johnstone, is that the man Massart has not gone AWOL, as you allege, he went for his how shall I say Sunday stroll in the hills. It’s possible he was out hunting.”

“A man on the run doesn’t always remember to take his toothbrush,” Johnstone said gruffly. “He’s not on an excursion. Did he leave any money in the house?”

“No.”

“Why would he have taken all his money with him if he’d gone out hunting?”

“How do you know there was cash in the house anyway? We have no reason to suppose he took any with him.”

“And the mastiff?”

“The mastiff stayed with his master and fell with him into a ravine. Or else the dog fell and the master tried to save him.”

“Damn it, let’s suppose you’re right,” Johnstone said. “But what about Crassus? How could a wolf like that just disappear at such a young age from the whole Mercantour National Park? He’s never been seen again, anywhere.”

“Crassus no doubt met his maker and his bones lie gleaming somewhere in the Park forest.”

“Damn it,” Johnstone said. “Let’s suppose you’re right.”

“You let your imagination run away with you, M. Johnstone. I don’t know what things are like where you come from, but in this how shall I say country, I have to tell you, there are precisely four causes of criminal violence capable of giving rise to the death of the victim: being betrayed by a spouse, being disappointed by a will, excessive consumption of alcohol, and trouble with the people next door. Wolf-taming and lady-killing are not among them, as you see, M. Johnstone. What exactly do you do for a living, in your own country?”

“Grizzly bears,” Johnstone said, gritting his teeth. “I study grizzly bears.”

“You mean you live among these how shall I say bears?”

“Yeah, right.”

“A team job, I imagine?”

“No. Most of the time I’m on my own.”

The Head Deputy put a look on his face that said “Poor fellow, now I can see why you went off the rails like that.” In fury, Johnstone got Massart’s road map out of his pocket and laid it on the desk.

“Look at this, Head Deputy,” he said slowly and deliberately. “Here is a map that I found in Massart’s shack yesterday morning.”

“Did you of your own free will enter the Massart residence in the absence of the owner?”

“The door wasn’t locked. I was worried. Could have been dead in bed. Duty to help. There’s a witness.”

“And you knowingly purloined this map?”

“No. I looked at it and put it back in my pocket without realising. Later on, at home, I noticed these markings.”

The Head Deputy pulled the map over to his side of the desk and inspected it with care. After a few minutes he pushed it back to Johnstone’s side, with no comment.

“These five
X
s mark the hamlets where the latest sheep savagings have taken place,” Johnstone explained as he pointed them out. “The
X
s for Guillos and La Castille were marked
before
the attacks took place yesterday and last night.”

“And then there’s a whole itinerary to England,” the Head Deputy observed.

“Could be his way of leaving the country. The marked route stays off all main roads. He’d thought it all through.”

“Hadn’t he just!” the
gendarme
laughed, leaning right back in his chair.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, M. Johnstone, that M. Massart has a kind of brother in how shall I say England, where he runs the main slaughterhouse in Manchester. The trade runs in the family. Massart had long been planning to join his brother over there.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’m a Head Deputy in the
gendarmerie
, M. Johnstone. Anyway, it’s common knowledge in these parts.”

“In that case, why did he work out a route on minor roads?”

The deputy beamed even more broadly.

“It’s quite unbelievable how much I have to teach you, M. Johnstone! Where you come from people do five hundred kilometres of motorway just to have a beer. But over here people do not necessarily go from A to B in a straight line. Massart spent twenty years as an itinerant bottomer, working the markets, with one day here and one day there. He knows hundreds of villages and thousands of people. The minor roads of France are his home patch.”

“Why did he give up rushing chairs?”

“He wanted to come back to his roots. He found a job at the slaughterhouse and came back here six years ago. But you can’t say people put out the flags for him. Hatred of the Massart clan has deep roots around here. It must go back to an old and ugly story that has to do with his how shall I say father, or grandfather, I don’t recall.”

Johnstone shook his head in a way that showed his impatience.

“And the
X
s?” he asked.

The Head Deputy smiled as he tapped the map with his fingertip.

“This whole rectangle here – between the mountain range and the main road, and the gorges of the rivers Daluis and La Tinée – is Massart’s pick-up area for the abattoir at Digne. Saint-Victor, Pierrefort, Guillos, Ventebrune and La Castille are where you’ll find his main suppliers of lambs for the slaughter. That’s what your
X
s are.”

Johnstone folded up his map without saying a word.

“Ignorance, M. Johnstone, is the mother of the maddest ideas.”

Johnstone put the map back in his pocket and gathered up his documents.

“So there’s not the faintest chance of an investigation?”

The Head Deputy shook his head.

“Not the faintest,” he agreed. “We’ll proceed in the normal way with a search that we’ll keep up until there’s no chance of finding him alive. But I fear that the how shall I say mountain has already had the better of him.”

He held out his hand to Johnstone without standing up. The trapper shook it in silence and began to leave the room.

“One moment, please,” said the Head Deputy.

“Yes?’

“What exactly does ‘bullshit’ mean?”

“It means cow-crap, bison-dung, and bloody nonsense.”

“Thank you for this information.”

“You’re welcome.”

Johnstone opened the door and went out.

“He’s not very civilised,” the Head Deputy remarked.

“They’re all like that over there,” Lemirail explained to his superior. “All of them. They’re not bad folk, but they’re rough. Not refined. Not at all.”

“Plain ignorant,” said the Head Deputy.

XV

CAMILLE DID NOT
switch on the light. Johnstone was grabbing a bite in the greyness before setting off again to the Mercantour. Mercier was expecting him, so were Augustus and Electre, so was the whole crowd. He wanted to trap rabbits for the old paterfamilias and to see the others at sunrise. He would come back down later for the fat lady’s funeral, or so he had said. He was grim-faced and sick at heart as he chewed his sandwich.

“That stupid Head Deputy is too big for his bloody boots,” he muttered to himself. “He can’t bear anyone knowing more than he does. Can’t stomach an ignorant Canadian having anything at all to teach him about a local. Because he thinks all Canadians are ignorant and smear themselves with bear-fat. But
he
stinks of sweat.”