This Night's Foul Work (23 page)

‘Danglard,' Adamsberg had said, ‘can you send the team within the hour? I can't hang on to our prehistoric man for long. He's supposed to be on another dig with flint arrowheads.'

‘The prehistorian, you mean,' Danglard had corrected.

‘Call the police doctor too, but not before midday. We need her here when we reach the coffin. She should reckon two and a half hours for us to do the digging.'

‘I'll bring Lamarre and Estalère with me. We'll be at Opportune in an hour and forty minutes.'

‘No, you stay in the office,
capitaine
. We're going to open another sodding grave, and you won't be any use sitting fifty metres away. I just need some hewers of earth and carriers of buckets.'

‘I'll be there,' said Danglard without further explanation. ‘And I have some news for you. You asked me to find out about four men.'

‘It can wait,
capitaine.'

‘Commandant.'

Adamsberg sighed. Dangard often beat about the bush out of delicacy, but some times he beat about it even more out of anxiety, and the
sophisticated process annoyed Adamsberg.

‘I've got a cemetery to cordon off, Danglard,' he said more urgently. ‘We've got to find some stakes and string and so on. Anything else can wait for now.'

Adamsberg switched off his phone and spun it round on the table top.

‘What am I doing,' he commented, more for himself than for Veyrenc, ‘in charge of twenty-seven human beings, when I could be just as happy, in fact a thousand times better off, on my own in the mountains, sitting on a stone with my feet in a stream?'

‘Yes, I know, Veyrenc. But I wish people wouldn't get so worked up. Twenty-seven different people with their worries, all bumping into each other and getting across each other, like boats in a tiny harbour. There ought to be a way to move over the waves.'

‘Let's see which way the aerial points,' said Adamsberg, spinning his phone. ‘Towards people or towards empty space,' he said, pointing first to the street door, then to the window, which looked out on open countryside.

‘People,' said Veyrenc before it had stopped spinning. ‘People,' Adamsberg confirmed, as he watched the phone come to a halt pointing to the door.

‘Anyway, the view wasn't empty. There are six cows in that field and a bull in the next one. That's already enough to start something, isn't it?'

As in Montrouge, Mathias had taken up his position near the grave and was moving his large hands over the surface, his fingers stopping every now and then, as he followed the scars imprinted in the earth. Twenty minutes later he was using a trowel to dig up the trace of a hole 1.60 metres across, at the head of the grave. Adamsberg, Veyrenc and Danglard were standing round, watching him work, while Lamarre and Estalère were fencing off the area with yellow plastic tape.

‘Same thing,' Mathias said, getting to his feet and addressing Adamsberg. ‘I'll leave you to it, you know the rest.'

‘But only you can tell us if it was the same people digging. If we go in, we could destroy the edges of the hole.'

‘Yes, I suppose you would,' Mathias agreed, ‘especially in clay. The loose earth will stick to the walls.'

It was half past five by the time Mathias had finished emptying the hole and the light had begun to fail. According to him, and following the traces left by the tools, two men had been taking it in turns to dig, probably the same ones as in Montrouge.

‘One of them lifts the pick very high and strikes almost vertically, the other doesn't take it back so far and the marks left by his blows are shorter.'

‘Were,' said the pathologist, who had joined the group twenty minutes earlier.

‘From the settlement of the mound and the height of the grass, I'd say this was done about a month ago,' Mathias continued.

‘A bit before the Montrouge job, probably.'

‘When was this woman buried?'

‘Four months ago,' said Adamsberg.

‘In that case, I'll leave you to it,' said Mathias, with a grimace.

‘What's the state of the coffin?' asked Lamarre.

‘The lid's been smashed in. I didn't look beyond that.'

A curious contrast, thought Adamsberg, watching the blond giant withdraw to the car which was to take him back to Evreux, while Ariane came forward to take over, putting on her protective clothing without any apparent apprehension. They didn't have a ladder, so Lamarre and Estalère helped the doctor down into the hole. The wood on the coffin had cracked open in several places, and the two policemen stood back in reaction to the nauseating smell that arose from it.

‘I told you to put masks on first,' said Adamsberg.

‘Light the projectors, please, Jean-Baptiste,' came the doctor's calm voice, ‘and pass me a torch. It looks as if everything's still here, like in the case of Elisabeth Châtel. As if someone had opened both these coffins just to take a look.'

‘Maybe a reader of Maupassant,' muttered Danglard, who had a mask wedged firmly on his face and was trying not to stand too far from the others.

‘Meaning what,
capitaine?'
asked Adamsberg.

‘There's a Maupassant story about a man who's haunted by the death of his sweetheart, and he's in despair that he'll never see her face again. So, since he's determined to look at her one last time, he digs up her grave till he reaches his beloved's face. Which doesn't look anything like the face he adored. All the same, he embraces her in her decayed state, and after that, instead of the perfume of his mistress, it's the odour of her death that he carries round with him.'

‘Oh yes?' said Adamsberg. ‘Charming.'

‘That's Maupassant for you.'

‘Just a story, all the same. And the point of stories is to stop them happening in real life.'

‘Well, you never know.'

‘Jean-Baptiste,' called the doctor. ‘Do you know how this woman died?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Well, I'm going to tell you. She had the back of her skull smashed in. Either she was hit with a heavy weapon, or perhaps something fell on her.'

Adamsberg moved away, lost in thought. An accident in the case of Elisabeth Châtel, and an accident in this case too – unless they were looking at two murders. Suddenly he felt disorientated. To kill two women, in order to open their graves three months later, seemed beyond all understanding. He waited in the damp grass for Ariane to finish her inspection.

‘Nothing else,' said the doctor as she was hauled up out of the grave. ‘They haven't taken so much as a tooth. I got the impression that the digging was aimed at the upper part of the head. Possibly whoever it was wanted some hair from the corpse. Or an eye,' she added calmly. ‘But of course by now …'

‘I know what you're going to say, Ariane,' Adamsberg interrupted. ‘No eyes left.'

Danglard took refuge by the church, feeling thoroughly sick. He sheltered between two buttresses, forcing himself to study the typical construction of the little church, which had a chequerboard pattern of black flint and red brick. But the voices still reached him, despite the distance.

‘Well, if someone wanted a lock of hair,' Adamsberg was saying, ‘why couldn't they have cut it off the body earlier?'

‘If they had access to it.'

‘Look, I can imagine a sort of passion after death, like this Maupassant story, if you like, for
one
woman, Ariane, but hardly for two. Is it possible to see if the hair has been disturbed?'

‘No,' said the doctor, taking off her gloves. ‘She had short hair and there's no sign of it being tampered with. It's possible that you're dealing
with some kind of fetishist tomb-disturber, with such a crazy obession that she has two strong men digging up graves to satisfy it. You can seal it up again whenever you like, Jean-Baptiste, we've seen all there is to see.'

Adamsberg approached the grave and read once more the name of the dead woman: Pascaline Villemot. He had already asked for information on the cause of death. He would probably gather something about it from village gossip before the official data reached him. He picked up the two large antlers which had remained on the ground and gave the men orders to fill the hole in again.

‘What are you doing with those?' asked Ariane in surprise, as she climbed out of the overalls.

‘Stag's antlers.'

‘I can see that, but why are you carrying them?'

‘Because I can't leave them them here, Ariane, or in the café.'

‘As you like,' said the doctor without insisting. She could see from Adamsberg's eyes that his mood had taken him off into the unknown and that it was no use asking him questions.

R
UMOUR HAD GOT TO WORK, RUNNING FROM TREE TO TREE ALONG THE
roads between Opportune-la-Haute and Haroncourt. Robert, Oswald and the punctuator walked into the little café where the police team was eating dinner. As Adamsberg had more or less expected.

‘God's sakes, this grisly stuff's following us round,' said Robert.

‘Going ahead of you, to be more precise,' said Adamsberg. ‘Have a seat,' he went on, moving up to make room.

This time, Adamsberg was in charge of the group of men and the roles were subtly reversed. The three Normans looked discreetly at the strikingly beautiful woman who was eating with relish at the other end of the table, taking alternate sips of wine and water.

‘She's a doctor, the police pathologist,' Adamsberg explained, to help them cut short their usual circumlocutions.

‘And she's working with you?' said Robert.

‘She's just examined the corpse of Pascaline Villemot.'

Robert indicated with a tilt of his chin that he had understood, and that he disapproved of such activity.

‘Did you know that someone had disturbed her grave?' Adamsberg asked him.

‘I just knew Gratien had seen a ghost. You said it was going ahead of us.'

‘Ahead in time, Robert. We're some months too late. We're way behind the events.'

‘You don't seem to be in much of a hurry,' observed Oswald.

Veyrenc, whose nose was in his plate at the other end of the table, confirmed that with a nod of his head.

‘What's he muttering about, that skewbald cop?' asked Robert in a low voice.

‘Careful, Robert, don't ever call him that. It's personal.'

‘OK,' Robert agreed. ‘But I can't understand what he's saying.'

‘He's saying there's no hurry.'

‘He doesn't talk like ordinary folk, your cousin.'

‘No, it runs in the family.'

‘Oh, if it runs in the family, that's different,' said Robert with respect.

‘Stands to reason,' murmured the punctuator.

‘And he's not my cousin,' added Adamsberg.

Robert was nursing a grudge. Adamsberg could work that out easily, from the way he was gripping his glass in his fist and grinding his teeth, as if he were chewing a piece of straw.

‘What's up, Robert?'

‘You came because of Oswald's ghost, not because of the stag.'

‘How do you know that? The two things happened at the same time.'

‘Don't try to fool me, man from the Béarn.'

‘Do you want to take the antlers back?'

Robert hesitated.

‘No, now you've got ‘em, they're yours. But don't separate them. And don't go forgetting them.'

‘I haven't let them out of my sight all day.'

‘Good,' said Robert, reassured. ‘And what is this ghost, anyway? Oswald said it was the figure of Death.'

‘Yes, he's right in one way.'

‘And in another way?'

‘Let's say it's someone or something that doesn't bode any good, far as I can see.'

‘And you come running,' Robert whispered, ‘as soon as an idiot like Oswald tells you someone's seen a ghost. Or when a poor woman like Hermance, who's lost her wits, asks to see you.'

‘Someone else who's not too bright, the caretaker in the cemetery at Montrouge, saw one as well. And in that cemetery too someone had had a grave dug up, and the coffin opened.'

‘Why did you say they'd “had” it dug up?'

‘Because two big lads were paid to do the work, and now they're both dead.'

‘Couldn't this person do it himself?'

‘It was a woman, Robert.'

Robert's mouth fell open and he swallowed a large gulp of wine.

‘I can't believe that,' said Oswald. ‘It's not human.'

‘But that's what happens, Oswald.'

‘And the one who goes around ripping out stag's hearts. That's a woman, too?'

‘What's that got to do with it?' asked Adamsberg.

Oswald thought for a moment, looking into his glass.

‘Too many things going on round here all at once,' he said at last. ‘Maybe they're connected.'

‘Criminals have their preferences, Oswald. The kind of people who rob tombs aren't the same kind of people who kill stags.'

‘Takes all sorts,' said the punctuator.

‘This here ghost,' said Oswald, hazarding a direct question, ‘are we talking about the same one? The one who floats about and then digs up graves?'