Read Online Dog Will Have His Day by Fred Vargas - Free Book Online Page A

routine enquiries about the deaths of people living alone haven’t shown up anything relevant. I found the bone on Thursday night. No, Marc, it isn’t normal.’
    Marc wondered why Kehlweiler was telling him all this. He wasn’t put out by it, though. It was pleasant to listen to him talking, he had a calm, deep voice, very soothing for the nerves. But as for this dog shit, well, what could he contribute? It was beginning to feel really cold on the bench, but Marc didn’t dare say, ‘I’m cold, I’m going home.’ He pulled his jacket round him.
    ‘You’re cold?’ asked Louis.
    ‘A bit.’
    ‘Me too, it’s November, nothing to be done.’
    Yes there is, thought Marc, we could go to a cafe. Though of course it might be a bit tricky to talk about this in a cafe.
    ‘We’ll have to wait,’ Kehlweiler went on. ‘There are some people who’ll wait a week before reporting someone missing.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Marc, ‘but why are you so concerned?’
    ‘I’m concerned because I don’t think it’s normal, like I told you. Somewhere, some nasty murder has taken place, that’s what I think. The bone, the woman, the murder, the nastiness, it’s all got inside my head, too late to stop, now I have to know, I have to find out.’
    ‘That’s a vice.’
    ‘No, it’s an art. It’s an irrepressible art and it belongs to me. You don’t have something like that?’
    Yes, Marc did: but for the Middle Ages, not for a toe joint found at the bottom of a tree.
    ‘It’s my art,’ repeated Kehlweiler. ‘If after a week Paris doesn’t come up with anything, the problem will become much more complicated.’
    ‘Yes, of course. Dogs can travel.’
    ‘Precisely.’
    Kehlweiler unfolded his long body and got to his feet. Marc looked up at him.
    ‘This dog,’ Kehlweiler said, ‘could have travelled kilometres that night in a car. It could have eaten a toe in the provinces somewhere and deposited it in Paris. All we can suppose, thanks to this dog, is that there’s a woman’s body somewhere, but it could be anywhere. France isn’t as small as all that, and that’s just France. A body somewhere, but nowhere to look.’
    ‘What a lot to come out of a piece of dog shit,’ Marc said quietly.
    ‘You didn’t see anything in the regional papers, did you? Murders, accidents?’
    ‘No murders. A few accidents as usual. But nothing about a foot, I’m sure of that.’
    ‘Well, keep looking and be vigilant, foot or no foot.’
    ‘OK,’ said Marc, standing up.
    He’d got the point, his fingers were freezing, he wanted to get away.
    ‘Wait,’ said Kehlweiler. ‘I need someone to help, someone who can run. I’m slowed down by my leg, I can’t follow this bone all on my own. Could you just lend me a hand for a few days? But I can’t afford to pay you.’
    ‘To do what?’
    ‘To follow people who walk their dogs near this bench. Note their names, addresses, movements. I don’t want to waste too much time, just in case.’
    This idea did not appeal to Marc at all. He’d been a lookout man for his uncle once, and that was enough. It wasn’t his kind of thing.
    ‘My uncle says you have men all over Paris.’
    ‘They’re fixed points, bartenders, newspaper sellers, cops, people who don’t move around. They keep their eyes open and alert me when it’s necessary, but they’re not mobile, do you see? I just need someone who can move about.’
    ‘I don’t do running, I just climb trees. I run about after the Middle Ages, but not after people.’
    Kehlweiler was going to get upset, it was clear. This guy was even nuttier than his uncle. All artists are nutty. Artists sweating away about paint, the Middle Ages, sculpture, criminology, all mad, he had experience.
    But Kehlweiler didn’t get upset. He just sat down again on the bench. Slowly.
    ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Forget it, it doesn’t matter.’
    He replaced the scrap of newspaper in his pocket.
    Good. All Marc had to do was what he’d been wanting, go