Free An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas

clearly.
    They must have let him into the room with the piano.
    ‘Have you visited the crime scene, commandant ?’
    ‘No, the photos are quite enough. But it’s just been confirmed, the shoes are French.’
    ‘The boots you mean?’
    ‘No, the shoes. And there’s something worse. And when I saw that, it was as if someone had lit a match in the catacomb, as if someone had cut off my uncle’s feet. But we don’t have any choice, I’m on my way now.’
    More than three drinks, Adamsberg guessed, and knocked back in short order. He looked at his watches: only four o’clock. Danglard would be no good to anyone for the rest of the day. ‘Don’t worry, Danglard, just leave the villa, I’ll catch up with you later.’
    ‘That’s what I’m saying.’
    Adamsberg put the phone away, wondering absurdly what was becoming of the cat and kittens. He had told Retancourt that the mother was recovering, but one of the kittens, one of the two he had delivered, a female, was not doing well. Had he squeezed her too hard? Had he damaged something?
    ‘Jean-Christophe Réal,’ Pierre reminded him insistently, as if he feared the commissaire wouldn’t find his way back alone.
    ‘The artist,’ Adamsberg agreed.
    ‘He worked with horses, he used to hire them. The first time it was to cover a horse with bronze paint to make a sort of living statue. The owner sued him, but that’s how he made his name. He did more after that. He painted everything, it took colossal amounts of paint: grass, trees, stones, leaves one by one, as if he was petrifying the whole landscape.’
    ‘That won’t interest the commissaire , Pierre,’ said Hélène.
    ‘Did you know Réal at all?’
    ‘I visited him in prison. Actually, I was determined to get him released.’
    ‘What did your father accuse him of?’
    ‘Of painting this woman – she was his patron – who had left him money in her will.’
    ‘I don’t get it.’
    ‘He painted her, literally, with bronze paint, and sat her on one of these horses to be a living equestrian statue. But the paint blocked her pores, and before they could clean it off, she died of asphyxiation on horseback. Réal did inherit.’
    ‘How weird,’ said Adamsberg. ‘And the horse – that died too, I suppose?’
    ‘No, it didn’t, that’s the whole problem. Réal knew perfectly well what he was doing, of course, he used porous paint. He wasn’t mad.’
    ‘No,’ said Adamsberg sceptically.
    ‘Some forensic scientist said the paint must have reacted with her make-up and that led to the poisoning. But my father claimed to have proof that Réal had switched the paint after doing the horse, and that he had set out to kill her.’
    ‘And you didn’t agree.’
    ‘No,’ said Pierre, thrusting out his chin.
    ‘And was your father’s claim founded?’
    ‘Maybe, who knows? My father was abnormally fixated on this guy. He hated him for no obvious reason. He just set out to destroy him.’
    ‘No, you’re wrong,’ said Hélène, suddenly disagreeing. ‘You knew Réal was a megalomaniac, and he was deep in debt. He must have killed that woman.’
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Pierre. ‘My father went after him to get at m e. When I was eighteen, I wanted to be a painter. Réal was a few years older than me, I admired his work, I’d been to see him twice. When my father found out, he went berserk. He thought Réal was a greedy ignoramus, that’s what he called him, whose grotesque artworks were destabilising civilisation as we know it. My father was a man from the dark ages, he believed in the ancient foundations of the world, and Réal infuriated him. So with his notoriety in legal matters, the old bastard pestered the authorities, had him charged, and caused his death.’
    ‘ The old bastard ?’ repeated Adamsberg.
    ‘Yes,’ said Pierre unblinkingly. ‘If you really want to know, my father was a chateau-bottled shit.’

VIII
     
    T HE NAMES HAD BEEN NOTED OF ALL THE RESIDENTS IN THE nearby