Free Have Mercy On Us All by Fred Vargas Page B

moment. But I will track them down, Le Guern, I will. The man’s playing cat and mouse with us, but one day, I’m quite sure, he’ll let something out that will tell us what we want to know.”
    “And what’s that?
    “Knowing what he’s after.”
    Joss shrugged. “With your cast of mind you could never have been a crier. Because if you stop to think about everything you have to read out, well, you’re finished. You can’t do the newscasting because you get all clogged up. A crier has to be above all that. I’ve seen some right loonies come through the urn, you know. Only I never saw any who paid over the going rate. Or any who spoke Latin. Or who wrote ‘s’ in the old way like an ‘f’. What’s that all about, I ask you.”
    “He’s doing it to keep under cover. In the first place it means he’s not saying anything for himself, since the messages are all quotations. A clever ploy, as he’s not giving himself away.”
    “I don’t trust guys who keep their noses that clean.”
    “And in the second place he quotes passages from the distant past, whose meaning is clear to no-one but himself. That’s called deep cover.”
    “Mind you,” said Joss with a wave of his knife, “I’ve nothing against the past. I even put a chapter from
Everyman’s History of France
into the newscasts, as you well know. It goes back to my schooldays. I used to like history lessons. I didn’t pay attention, but I liked them.”
    Joss finished his plate, and Decambrais ordered a fourth carafe. Joss glanced at the toff. He was putting it away by the gallon, not counting all that he must have drunk while waiting for Joss to turn up. Joss could stay the pace, but even so he could feel his grip slipping. He looked hard at Decambrais. Yes, the aristo was beginning to wobble. He must have been drinking so as to summon up courage to broach the question of the room. Joss realised that he was backing off as well. As long as they kept on talking about this and that, they weren’t talking about the hotel, and that was a step in the right direction.
    “It was the teacher I really liked,” Joss added. “I’d have liked it even if he’d been talking Chinese. He was the only one I missed after I got thrown out . There wasn’t much milk of human kindness at Tréguier, believe you me.”
    “What the hell were you doing at Tréguier? I thought you were from Le Guilvenec.”
    “I was doing bugger all, and that’s a fact. They’d put me in the boarding school to straighten me out. A waste of ammo, because Tréguier threw me out two years later and sent me back to Le Guilvenec, seeing as what a bad influence I’d been on the other boys.”
    “I know Tréguier,” Decambrais said off-handedly as he filled another glass.
    Joss gave him a quizzical glance.
    “You know Rue de la Liberté, then?”
    “Certainly.”
    “Well, that’s where it was, the boys’ boarding school.”
    “Yes.”
    “Just after the church.”
    “Yes.”
    “Are you going to say ‘yes’ to everything?”
    Decambrais looked like he was falling asleep. He shrugged his shoulders. Joss shook his head.
    “You’re full to the gills, Decambrais. You can’t take any more.”
    “Yes, I am pissed, and I do know Tréguier. The two assertions are neither incompatible nor contradictory.”
    Decambrais drained his glass and motioned to Joss to replenish it.
    “Bullshit,” said Joss as he acceded to the aristo’s silent request. “It’s all bullshit, you just want to give me the soap. But if you think I’m going to roll over on my back just because some boozer confesses to having been to Brittany, then you’re making a big mistake. I’m not a patriot, I’m a sailor. I know Bretons with brains no bigger than any foreigner’s.”
    “So do I.”
    “Do you mean me to take that personally?”
    Decambrais shook his head unconvincingly. A rather long silence ensued.
    “But tell me the truth, do you really know Tréguier?” Joss asked with the persistence of a