Seeking Whom He May Devour (2 page)

But the facts were there. About thirty recorded wolves in the Mercantour, plus maybe a dozen lost cubs, along with feral dogs that were scarcely less threatening. Hundreds of sheep killed last season within a radius of ten kilometres around the Mercantour. These facts weren’t aired in Paris because no-one in Paris gave a damn about stories of wolves and lambs, and Adamsberg was stupefied when he heard the figures. Today’s two savagings in the canton of Auniers had reawakened the conflict.

A vet appeared on screen, pointing in a measured and professional manner at a gaping wound. No, there was not the slightest doubt about it, this is the bite of the upper jaw, fourth premolar on the right-hand side, see, and here, in front, this is the right-hand incisor, look here, and here, and on the underside, here. And do you see how
far
apart they are? These are the jaws of a very large canine.

“Would you say it was a wolf, doctor?”

“Either that or a very large dog.”

“Or a very big wolf?”

Then another close-up of a defiant shepherd. Since those filthy predators had begun stuffing their bellies four years ago with the blessing of the folk up in Paris he had never seen wounds like these. Never. Fangs as big as your hand. The hill farmer gestured towards the mountains on the far horizon. It’s on the prowl, right up there. A monster such as you have never seen before. They can snigger all they like, them folk in Paris, but they’ll stop laughing pretty sharpish when they set their eyes on it.

Adamsberg watched in fascination as he stood eating the last of his cold pasta. The news anchor moved on to the next report. Wars.

Commissaire
Adamsberg sat down slowly and put his plate on the floor. Good lord, those Mercantour wolves. The innocent little pack they’d started with had done a fair bit of growing. It had expanded its hunting ground canton by canton. Now it had overstepped the borders of the department of Alpes-Maritimes. And of the forty or so wolves up there, how many were predators? Did they hunt in packs? Or in pairs? Or was there just one lone wolf doing the damage? Yes, that’s the way it was in stories – a cruel and lonesome rogue, keeping his hindquarters low over his grey hind paws, slithering up to the village in the dark. A large beast. The Monster of Mercantour. And children asleep in the houses. Adamsberg closed his eyes.
They burn bright, my boy. Bright as a flaming brand
.

IV

LAWRENCE DONALD JOHNSTONE
did not go back down to the village until half past eleven on Friday evening.

Between one and four in the afternoon the men of the Mercantour National Park took a long break, to read or to sleep, in the shade of one of the abandoned dry-stone dwellings dotted around the mountainside. Johnstone had taken possession of a disused sheepfold not far from the young Marcus’s new territory. He’d had to clean out the droppings, but they were so old that they hardly had any smell left in them. But even so it had to be done, on principle. The tall Canadian was more accustomed to washing himself from the waist up with fistfuls of snow than to wallowing in sheep shit with his skin all gluey with stale sweat, and he found the French a thoroughly filthy lot. On his swift transit through Paris he had sniffed the heavy odours of piss and sweat overlaid with garlic and wine. But it was in Paris that he had met Camille, so Paris was forgiven. As was the overheated Mercantour and the village of Saint-Victor-du-Mont where he had provisionally
shacked
up with her. But they were a filthy lot nonetheless, especially the men. He could not get used to black fingernails, matted hair, and shapeless, dirty grey T-shirts.

In his cleaned-up old sheepfold, Johnstone would settle himself every afternoon on a big canvas groundsheet laid on the bare, hard-dried earthen floor. He would sort his notes, go over the morning’s shots, prepare for the evening watch. For the last few weeks an old wolf nearing the end of his life – a venerable loner of about fifteen called Augustus – had been hunting on Mont Mounier. He only ever came out of his lair in the cool evening air and Johnstone did not want to miss him. The old paterfamilias was not hunting really, more trying to survive. He was getting so weak he missed even easy prey. Johnstone wondered how much longer the old fellow would hold out, and how it would end. And how long he himself would hold out before he went to poach some meat for old Augustus, in defiance of Park law, which required beasts to cope and die on their own as at the dawn of time. But if Johnstone brought Augustus a hare to eat, that wouldn’t upset the balance of the world – or would it? Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, he would have to do it without the slightest hint to his French colleagues. They were persuaded that giving a beast a helping hand softened it up and distorted the laws of Nature. Sure, but Augustus had already gone soft, and the laws of Nature had long been in shreds. So what difference would it make?

Then, after downing his water, bread and salami, Johnstone stretched out on the ground in the shade, with his hands clasped under his head, and thought of Camille,
her
body and her smile. Camille wore perfume, but what was quite special about her was an unbelievable grace that sent shock waves through your hands, your guts and your lips. Johnstone had never dreamed that he would quiver for a woman so dark, with straight black hair cut short at the back, who looked like Cleopatra. Funny thing, he thought, old Cleo’s been dead two thousand years, but she’s still the archetype for all clear-skinned, fine-necked, straight-nosed and dark-haired beauties. Quite a girl she must have been, old Cleo. But to tell the truth, he did not know much about Queen Cleopatra and hardly more about Camille, except that she wasn’t a royal and earned her living alternately as a musician and as a plumber.

Then he had to drop these mental images that were stopping him from getting any rest, and he concentrated on the clatter of the insects. The little fellows were incredibly energetic. The other day, on the lower slopes, Mercier had shown Johnstone something he had never seen before – a cicada. The size of a fingernail, making lots of noise for no very good reason. Johnstone preferred to live in silence.

He’d annoyed Mercier this morning. But joking aside, it really had been Marcus. No doubt about it.

Marcus with the yellow tuft around his neck. He was a really promising wolf. Lean, persistent, and hungry. Johnstone suspected him of having eaten a fair flock of lambs last autumn in the area around Trévaux. That had been unabashed slaughter, with blood all over the grass and dozens of mangled carcasses – the kind of show that made the wildlife refuge staff despair. Though their financial losses
were
made good, the hill farmers got angry and brought in attack dogs, and in December there had almost been a mass hunt. But after the winter wolf packs had broken up at the end of February, things had calmed down. Peace.

Johnstone was on the side of the wolves. He reckoned that the bold beasts honoured the little land of France by crossing over the Alps like proud ghosts from the distant past. No way could you let them get shot by pint-sized, sun-baked humans. But like all nomadic hunters the Canadian was cautious by nature. Down in the village he never talked about the wolves. He kept quiet, obeying the lesson his father had taught him: “If you want to stay free, keep your mouth shut.”

Johnstone had not been down to Saint-Victor-du-Mont for five days. He had warned Camille that he would be away until Thursday, using his night-vision camera to keep watch on noble Augustus desperately seeking prey in the dark. But as the old wolf had still failed to catch anything by Thursday Johnstone gave in and extended his vigil by one more night so as to find something for the poor creature to eat. He had caught two rabbits in their burrow, slit their throats with his knife, and left the bodies on one of Augustus’s tracks. He hid himself under bracken, wrapped in an oilcloth that was supposed to stop his human scent from escaping, and waited anxiously for the starving animal.

Now he was whistling as he walked through Saint-Victor, mightily relieved. The old fellow had come, and had eaten.

* * *

Camille was a night bird, so when Johnstone opened the door there she still was, with furrowed brow and her mouth half-open, hunched over the keyboard, concentrating on what she could hear through her headphones, with her fingers darting among the notes, hovering over them every now and again. Camille was never so beautiful as when she was concentrating on her work or on love. Johnstone put down his rucksack, sat at the table, and watched her for a while. Camille was shut away from the world and unaware of any noise because of her headphones, and she was now scribbling on manuscript paper. Johnstone knew she was making the music track for a romantic soap in twelve episodes with a deadline in November. The production was a dreadful mess, she’d said. And it was a big job, too. Johnstone did not like talking shop into the small hours. You got on with your work and that was that. That’s what really mattered.

He crossed behind her, looked at the bare nape of her neck beneath her short-cut hair, gave it a quick kiss, mustn’t disturb Camille when she was working, even if he’d been away for five days, he knew that better than anyone. She carried on at the keyboard for another twenty minutes then took off her headphones and came to sit with him at the table. Johnstone played back the shots of Augustus devouring the rabbits and passed her the viewfinder.

“It’s the old fellow tucking in,” he explained.

“You can see he’s still going,” Camille said as she squinted into the monitor.

“I slipped him the meat,” Johnstone said, pursing his lips.

Camille stroked the Canadian’s fair hair, still looking into the camcorder.

“Johnstone,” she said, “things are astir. Be prepared to defend them.”

Johnstone queried Camille in his usual way, an interrogative thrust of his jaw.

“On Tuesday they found four sheep savaged at Ventebrune, and yesterday morning nine more torn to shreds at Pierrefort.”

“Holy Moses,” Johnstone whispered. “Jesus Christ.”

“They’ve never come so far down before.”

“There’s more of them.”

“Julien told me. It got onto the news, it’s becoming a national story. The hill farmers have said they’ll give the Italian wolves such trouble as to make them wish they were vegetarians.”

“Jesus Christ,” Johnstone said again. “Fuck that.”

He glanced at his watch, switched off the camcorder, and with a worried look switched on the portable TV which was on a tea chest in the corner.

“That’s not the worst of it,” Camille added.

Johnstone turned to her with chin raised.

“They’re saying that this time it’s not an ordinary animal.”

“Not ordinary?”

“A different kind of beast. Bigger. A force of nature, with a monster’s jaw. Abnormal, like. In a word, a ghoul.”

“Pull the other one.”

“That’s what they’re saying.”

Johnstone was stunned. He shook his blond locks.

“Your bloody backward country,” he said after a pause, “is populated by nothing but bird-brained yokels.”

He zapped from channel to channel looking for a newsflash. Camille bit her lip, sat cross-legged on the floor in her boots and huddled up to Johnstone. The wolves were all going to get it in the neck. Old Augustus included.

V

JOHNSTONE SPENT THE
weekend collecting the local newspapers, scouring the news, and going down to the café in the village.

“Don’t go,” Camille pleaded. “They’ll tackle you.”

“Why would they do that?” Johnstone asked, with the sulky expression he always put on when he was worried. “The wolves are theirs.”

“No, they’re not. Folk round here reckon the wolves are urban mascots put among their flocks by people up in Paris.”

“I’m not from Paris.”

“But you look after the wolves.”

“I look after grizzly bears. That’s what my job is. Grizzlies.”

“And what about Augustus?”

“Augustus is different. Respect the weak, honour thy elders. Nobody left to look out for him but me.”

Johnstone was not very good with words. He preferred to use gestures, grins and grimaces to express himself, like
all
hunters and divers skilled in making themselves understood without speaking. The hardest for him were the beginnings and ends of sentences. Most often he uttered only the middle bits, more or less audibly, blatantly hoping that someone else would provide the missing parts and complete his labours for him. Perhaps he had sought his Arctic solitude to get away from human chatter; perhaps his long sojourn in the icy wastes had robbed him of a taste for words – absence of function unmaking the faculty; but whichever way it had come about, he spoke as little as he could, with his eyes to the ground, shielded by blond hair falling forward in a fringe.

Camille, who scattered words with cheerful abandon, had found it hard to get used to such sparse communication. Hard, but also comforting. She’d spoken far too much these past three years, all to no avail, and she had grown to be quite sick of it. The silently smiling Canadian thus afforded her an unexpected resting place where she could cleanse herself of bad habits – notably of her indulgence in argument and persuasion, by far the most obnoxious habits she had ever had. Camille could not altogether abandon the profoundly entertaining world of words, but she could at least cast off the great mental machinery that she’d formerly applied to convincing other people. Like some worn-out and disused leviathan it now lay rusting in a corner of her mind, with the wheels of its logic and the mirrors of its metaphors peeling off one by one like so many bits of scrap. Nowadays, with a man who was nothing but gestures and silence, who went on his way without asking anybody’s advice and who wasn’t at all
looking
for an explanation of life’s mysteries, Camille could relax and clear out her head, as if she was sweeping piles of junk out of an attic.

She jotted a line of music on her manuscript book.

“If you don’t give a damn for them, for the wolves that is,” she asked, “why did you bother to come here?”