Free Have Mercy On Us All by Fred Vargas

thought.
    Joss unhitched his urn in high dudgeon and manhandled it on to the table at Rolaride. If there was another slur on the old bookworm in the trawl, then maybe he would not keep his mouth shut this morning. Why shouldn’t he be a bigger louse than Decambrais? He rifled through the ads but didn’t find anything of that kind. On the other hand the fat ivory envelope was there, with its thirty-franc fee.
    “This fellow,” Joss muttered as he smoothed out the sheet, “isn’t going to stop for a good long while.”
    But he could hardly grumble about it from a business point of view. The nutcase was bringing him in almost a hundred francs a day, all by himself. Joss furrowed his brow as he read:
    Videbis animalia generata ex corruptione multiplicari in terra ut vermes, ranas et muscas; et si sit a causa subterranea videbis reptilia habitantia in cabernis exire ad superficiem terrae et dimittere ova sua et aliquando mori. Et si est a causa celesti, similiter volatilia
.
    “Bugger that,” said Joss. “Now he’s writing Italian.”
    Joss climbed up on to his stand at 0828 and the first thing he did was to make sure Decambrais was standing at his customary doorpost. It was the first time in two years that he was keen to see him in the audience. Yes, there he was, in his grey suit, groomed to perfection, slicking back a wisp of his white hair and pretending to read his leather-bound tome. Joss cast him an evil glance, and then launched into item number one in his fine and resonant voice.
    He felt he’d rushed through the newscast faster than usual in his haste to find out how Decambrais was going to eat his words. He almost bungled his closing
Everyman’s History of France
as a result, and resented Decambrais all the more for it. “French steamer,” he concluded brusquely, “300 tons, struck the rocks of Penmarch and then drifted as far as La Torche, where it sank at anchor. All lost.”
    When the newscast was over Joss made himself hump his tackle back to the shop, where Damascus was just raising the steel shutters. They shook hands, and Damascus’s felt unnaturally cold – as well it might, given the weather and the fact that the young man went around in nothing more than a vest. If he carried on like that he was going to catch his death.
    “Decambrais is expecting you at eight this evening at the Viking,” said Damascus as he laid out the coffee cups.
    “So he can’t send his own messages?”
    “He’s got appointments all day long.”
    “Maybe he has, but I’m not at his beck and call. He doesn’t call all the shots just because he’s a toff.”
    “Why do you call him a toff?” asked Damascus with surprise.
    “Come on, lad, wake up.
De
Cambrais has to be an aristocratic name, doesn’t it?”
    “I’ve no idea. Never thought about it. In any case, he’s flat broke.”
    “There are plenty of penniless aristocrats, you know. Actually, they’re the best kind.”
    “Oh, right,” said Damascus. “I didn’t know that.”
    Damascus poured hot coffee into the cups and didn’t seem to notice the scowl on the sea dog’s face.
    “Are you going to put that pullover on today or tomorrow?” Joss asked rather crossly. “Did you know that your sister is worried sick about you?”
    “I will soon, Joss, I will.”
    “Don’t get me wrong, lad, but while you’re at it, why don’t you wash your hair as well?”
    Damascus raised his face in astonishment and shook his long, brown, wavy hair back over his shoulders.
    “My mother used to say that a man’s hair is his fortune,” Joss said. “You could hardly claim to be looking after your assets properly, now could you?”
    “Is my hair dirty, then?” the younger man asked in genuine puzzlement.
    “Well, yes, it is a bit. Don’t get me wrong, now. I’m saying this for your own good, Damascus. You’ve got lovely hair and you should take better care of it. Doesn’t your sister ever tell you?”
    “Sure she does. Just that I forget.”
    Damascus