An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas Read Free Book Online Page A

of a crime scene by people’s feet. ‘All the platforms’. That meant the whole surface of the crime scene could not be trodden on. Adamsberg had left home hurriedly, avoiding Lucio, the tool shed, and the cat. Up to that point, he had been quite all right, he had not yet entered that room, he had not yet sat down on this chair, in front of carpets soaked in blood and strewn with entrails and splinters of bone, between four walls spattered with organic matter. It was as if the old man’s body had literally exploded. The most revolting thing was perhaps the scraps of flesh on the black shining lid of the half-size grand piano, as if on a butcher’s slab. Blood had also dripped on to the keys. This was another phenomenon for which there was no word: someone had reduced the body of another man to mincemeat. The word ‘killer’ was inadequate and derisory.
     
    Leaving the house, he had called up his most trusty lieutenant , Retancourt, who in his view was the person best able to stand up to anything under creation. To thwart or redirect things as she wished.
    ‘Retancourt, get over there to Justin, they’ve got all the platforms out. I don’t know what’s happened. The address is a villa on a private road in Garches, leafy suburb, old man, and apparently an indescribable scene in the house. From Justin’s voice it sounded really bad. Fast as you can.’
    With Retancourt, Adamsberg alternated between ‘ tu ’ and ‘ vous ’ without thinking about it. Her first name was Violette, an unlikely one for a woman who stood over 1m 80 and weighed 110 kilos. Adamsberg called her by her first name, or her surname, or her rank, depending on which was uppermost in his mind: his respect for her enigmatic abilities or his warm appreciation for the safe refuge she offered him – when she was so moved, and if she was so moved. This morning he was waiting for her, in a passive state, making time stand still, while his men spoke in low voices in the room and the blood dried on the walls. Perhaps she had been held up by something crossing her path. He heard Retancourt’s heavy tread before he saw her.
    ‘Bloody tailback all the way down the boulevard,’ Retancourt was grumbling. She did not appreciate being held up.
    Despite her remarkable size, she trod nimbly over the platforms and sat down heavily at his side. Adamsberg gave her a grateful smile. Did she know that to him she represented his tree of salvation, a tree with tough and miraculous fruit, the kind of tree you put your arms round without being able to encircle it, the kind of tree you climb up into when the mouth of hell opens? You build yourself a tree house in its highest branches. She had the strength, the ruggedness and the self-contained quality of a tree concealing a monumental mystery. Her shrewd gaze now took in the room, the floor, the walls, the men.
    ‘It’s like a slaughterhouse! Where’s the body?’
    ‘Everywhere, lieutenant ,’ said Adamsberg, stretching out his arms to encompass the whole room. ‘It’s been chopped up, pulverised, scattered. Wherever you look, you see parts of it, and when you see it all, you can’t see any of it. There’s nothing but the body, but the body isn’t there.’
    Retancourt inspected the scene in a more systematic manner. From one end of the room to the other, organic fragments were scattered on the carpets, the walls, in ghastly chunks alongside the legs of the furniture. Bones, flesh, blood, something burnt in the fireplace. A disaggregated body, which did not even arouse disgust, in the sense that it was impossible to associate these elements with anything resembling a human being. The officers were moving around cautiously. Every step carried the risk of touching some unseen piece of the invisible corpse. Justin was talking in a low voice to the photographer – the one with freckles whose name Adamsberg could never remember – and his short blond hair was soaked and clinging to his scalp.
    ‘Justin’s in