After supper, once the children were in their rooms, he sat down at his table, in an anxious frame of mind, having lined up three beers and three files. The children had all gone to bed too late. He had had the badly-timed idea of telling them the story of the toad that smoked cigarettes, puff, puff, puff, bang. The questions had come in thick and fast. Why did the toad smoke? Why did it explode? What size melon did it look like? Did its guts fly very high in the air? Would it work for snakes? Danglard had in the end had to forbid them to carry out any experiments along these lines: they were not to put a cigarette in the mouth of any snake, toad or salamander, lizard, pike or in fact any creature whatsoever.
But finally, by eleven o’clock, the schoolbags were all packed, the dishes had been washed and the lights were out.
Danglard attacked the dossiers in chronological order, memorising the names of the victims, the place and time of the crime, and the identity of the perpetrators. Eight murders, all committed, he noted, when the number of the year was uneven. But after all, odd or even years are a fifty-fifty matter, and can hardly be called a coincidence. The only thing that really linked these various murders was the unshakeable conviction of the commissaire that they were connected; nothing immediately suggested that they were the work of the same man. Eight murders, all in different regions of France: Loire-Atlantique, Touraine, Dordogne, Pyrenees. True, one could imagine that the judge had moved about a lot, to avoid being traced. But the victims were also very diverse, in age, sex and appearance: young, middle-aged and old, male and female, fat and thin, blond and dark. That didn’t seem to fit the obsessional pattern of a serial killer. And the weapons were different in each case: kitchen knives, sharpened screwdrivers, carpenters’ awls, hunting knives, flick knives, chisels.
Danglard shook his head, feeling somewhat discouraged. He had been hoping to follow Adamsberg’s lead, but such a variety of circumstances created a serious obstacle.
It was true that the wounds did present converging features: in every case there were three deep perforations inflicted somewhere on the torso, below the ribs, always preceded by a blow on the head sufficient to render the victim unconscious. But then in all the murders committed in France in half a century, what were the chances of finding three wounds to the abdomen? Very high. The abdomen offered a large, easy and vulnerable target. And as for the three blows, that was not so unusual either. Three blows to make sure of killing the victim. Statistically, the number of cases with three stab wounds was high. It couldn’t be called a signature or a mark of identity. Just three blows, more or less the norm in murder cases.
Opening his second can of beer, Danglard looked attentively at the wounds. He had to do his homework conscientiously, so as to be certain one way or the other. It was unquestionably the case that the three wounds were in a straight line, more or less, in all the murders. And it was true that anyone dealing three separate frenzied blows would be most unlikely to place them in a straight line. That certainly pointed towards a fork or trident. And the wounds were all deep, which could also be explained by the force of a tool with a handle, whereas it was rare for a knife to penetrate three times up to the hilt. But the detailed reports appeared to wipe out that train of thought. The blades used varied in width and length. Furthermore, the spacing between the perforations varied from one case to another, as did the alignment. Not by very much, sometimes just a third or a quarter of a centimetre, with one of the wounds slightly out of line. But such differences appeared to rule out the use of the same weapon in every case. Three very similar blows, but not similar enough to point to a single weapon and a single hand behind it.
What was more, all the cases had been cleared up, the guilty parties having been arrested and sometimes even having confessed. But with the exception of one other teenager just as vulnerable and mixed-up as Raphaël, all those found guilty were individuals on the margins of society, homeless tramps or vagrants, habitual drunkards, and all, at the time of arrest, had presented with a spectacularly high alcohol count in their bloodstream. It would hardly have been difficult to extract confessions from people already so disturbed, and who had so quickly given up on themselves.
Danglard pushed away the large white cat sitting on his feet. The cat was warm and heavy. He hadn’t changed the cat’s name since Camille had left it with him the year before, when she took off for Lisbon. Then the kitten had been a fluffy little ball with blue eyes, and he had called it Snowball. It had grown up sweet-natured, without scratching the furniture or the walls. Danglard could never look at the cat without thinking about Camille, who was similarly not very good at self-defence. He picked up the cat under the stomach, took one of its paws and scratched at the little pad. But the little claws did not come out. Snowball was a one-off. He put it down on the table and finally let it return on top of his feet. If that’s what you want, stay there.
None of those arrested, Danglard noted, could remember having committed the murder. That amounted to an astonishing run of cases of amnesia. In his career in the police, he could think of only two cases where there had been loss of memory after a murder, both caused by a refusal to consider the dreadfulness of the act, as the perpetrator went into denial. But that kind of psychological amnesia could hardly explain eight cases. Alcohol on the other hand, that might do it. As a young man, when he had been a serious drinker, he could recall waking up with no memory of the night before, so that his friends had had to fill him in on it the next day. He had started to cut back after being told that he had stood up on a table in Avignon, stark naked, and declaimed, to much applause, a passage of Virgil. In Latin. He was already starting to put on weight, and the thought of what he must have looked like appalled him. Very merry, according to his friends (male), quite charming according to his friends (female). Yes, alcohol-induced amnesia was something he knew about, but it was unpredictable. Sometimes, if you drank yourself silly, you could remember everything afterwards, and sometimes you couldn’t.
Adamsberg knocked twice quietly at the door. Danglard took the cat under his arm and went to open it. The commissaire glanced at the cat.
‘OK on that front?’ he asked.
‘As well as can be expected,’ said Danglard.
Subject closed, message understood. The two men sat down at the table and Danglard put the cat back to sit on his feet before explaining the doubts he had about this genuine or false string of murders. Adamsberg listened to him, his left arm held tight across his body, his right hand propping up his cheek.
‘I know,’ he interrupted. ‘Do you think I haven’t had all the time in the world to analyse and compare the measurements of the wounds? I know them all by heart. I know how deep they were, the form they took, and all the deviations and differences from case to case. But you have to realise that Judge Fulgence has absolutely nothing in common with an ordinary mortal. He would never be so stupid as to use the same weapon every time. No, Danglard. This man is powerful. But he kills with his trident. It’s the emblem and sceptre of his power.’