An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas Page A

tell?’ asked Justin.
    ‘By the smell.’
    ‘So should we start looking for people who work with horses, racehorse trainers, stud farms, riding stables?’
    ‘Come off it,’ said Mordent. ‘Thousands of people go near horses, the killer could have got that on his boots just walking down any road in the country.’
    ‘Well, that’s already something, commandant ,’ said Adamsberg. ‘We know the killer may have been in the country, or near horses anyway. When does the son get here?’
    ‘He should be at HQ in less than an hour. He’s called Pierre, like his father.’
    Adamsberg looked at his two watches.
    ‘I’ll send you a relief team at midday. Retancourt, Mordent, Lamarre and Voisenet, you deal with collecting evidence. Justin and Estalère, you start investigating the personal background. Accounts, diary, notebooks, wallet, telephone, family photos, medicines, all that stuff. Who he knew, who he called, what he bought, clothes, food, what he liked doing. Get everything you can, we’ll have to reconstruct it as fully as possible. This old man wasn’t just killed, he was reduced to nothingness. He didn’t simply have his life taken, he was literally demolished, wiped out.’
    The image of the polar bear flashed suddenly into his mind. The bear must have left the uncle’s body in a state something like this, but cleaner. Nothing left to bring back or bury. And the son Pierre would certainly be unable to bring the murderer’s skin back to the widow as a trophy.
    ‘I don’t think what he ate is going to be very relevant,’ said Mordent. ‘It would be more to the point to see what legal cases he wrote about. And his family and financial situation. We don’t even know if he was married. We still don’t even know it’s him .’
    Adamsberg looked around at the tired faces of the men standing on platforms.
    ‘Break for everyone,’ he said. ‘There’s a cafe down the road. Retancourt and Roman will stay on duty.’
     
    Retancourt walked Adamsberg to his car.
    ‘When the place has been cleaned up a bit, call Danglard. Get him working on the victim’s background, but don’t let him near the crime scene.’
    ‘Of course not.’
    Danglard’s squeamishness at the sight of blood or death was well known and uncritically accepted in the squad. They usually didn’t call him in until the worst had been cleaned up.
    ‘What’s eating Mordent?’ asked Adamsberg.
    ‘No idea.’
    ‘He doesn’t seem himself at all. Putting on a front and making snide remarks.’
    ‘Yes, I noticed.’
    ‘The way the killer threw everything around, does it ring any bells?’
    ‘Reminds me of my grandmother, not that she’s got anything to do with it.’
    ‘Tell me all the same.’
    ‘When she was losing her marbles, she started laying things out in patterns. She couldn’t bear one thing touching another. She separated newspapers, clothes, shoes.’
    ‘Shoes?’
    ‘Anything made of cloth, paper or leather. Shoes had to be ten centimetres apart; she lined them up on the ground.’
    ‘Did she say why? Was there some reason?’
    ‘An excellent reason. She thought that if these objects touched each other they might catch fire because of the friction. As I said, nothing to do with this Vaudel business.’
    Adamsberg raised his hand to indicate he was taking a message, listened carefully, then pocketed his phone.
    ‘A few days ago,’ he explained, ‘I helped deliver two kittens. It was a difficult birth. The message says the cat is doing OK.’
    ‘Oh, right,’ said Retancourt after a pause. ‘I suppose that has to be good news.’
    ‘The killer might have been like your grandmother. He might have wanted there to be no contact, to keep all the elements separate. But that’s the opposite of making a collection,’ he added, thinking of the London feet again. ‘He crushed everything to bits, destroying any coherence. And I wonder why Mordent is being such a pain in the backside today.’
    Retancourt didn’t like it