“It is a problem I will not be able to solve without your help, Commandant.”
“I am only a captain.”
“Ah. My apologies.”
He speaks French passably well, Desfosseux notes. His R’s are a little harsh, and he sometimes hesitates, looking away and frowning as he gropes for words, or simply uses the Spanish equivalent. But he can make himself understood. Much better, Desfosseux has to admit, than his own command of Spanish, which barely extends beyond buenos días señorita, cuánto cuesta? and malditos canallas.
“Are you sure about everything you have told me?”
“I am sure of the facts … seven girls murdered, three of them in places where bombs fell shortly afterward: your bombs.”
The Spaniard is sitting on a rickety chair with a map of Cádiz—which he took from the pocket of the long brown redingote that comes down to his bootlaces—spread out on the table in front of him. Lieutenant Bertoldi, who is standing guard outside to ensure the interview is not interrupted, checked the coat as he arrived, to make sure the man was unarmed. Simon Desfosseux is sitting on an empty crate, leaning back against the peeling walls of the converted munitions depot; it is an old house, just off the road that runs between the Trocadero and El Puerto de Santa María, near the sandbar where the visitor disembarked a little more than an hour ago. Their experience of the Spanish has left the French mistrustful, and the captain is no exception. His hat lies on the table, he wears his military cape around his shoulders, and he has his sword between his legs and a loaded pistol on his hip.
“In each case, the wind was blowing from the east, as I told you,” the policeman continues. “A light breeze. And the shells in question exploded.”
“Would you be so good as to point out the exact locations again?”
They pore over the map once more. In the candlelight, the Spaniard points to the places in the city marked in pencil. Despite his scepticism—this still sounds like nonsense—Desfosseux’s curiosity is piqued. They are, after all, discussing trajectories and impacts. Ballistics. Though what the policeman is showing him seems far-fetched, it clearly relates to the work he does every day. With his calculations, his hopes and frustrations.
“It is absurd,” he says, leaning back again. “There cannot be any connection between—”
“There is. I don’t know what it is, or how it happens, but there is.”
There is something genuine in his expression, Desfosseux notes. If there were some flicker of obsession or fanaticism, it would be easy; he could end the interview right now. Good night, thank you for coming and telling me your bizarre story, señor. Hasta la vista. But that is not the case. What Simon Desfosseux sees in front of him is calm, assured conviction. This does not seem like the fantasy of an unbalanced mind. And there was nothing in the way he recounted his story to suggest there is anything fanciful about this man—something that would, in any case, be uncommon in a policeman. All the more so, to judge by his appearance, in a hard-bitten veteran like this one. In fact, thinks Desfosseux, it is difficult to believe the man has any imagination at all.
“This is why you thought that the man was spying for us …”
“Exactly,” the Spaniard says with a strange half smile. “There was a connection—and I mistakenly thought that Gregorio Fumagal was that connection.”
“What happened to him?”
“He is awaiting trial. Awaiting the fate reserved for spies … You know as well as I do that we are at war …”
“The firing squad?”
“I assume so. It is no longer my concern.”
Desfosseux thinks about the man with the pigeons, a man he has never met—someone he knew only through the messages he sent, until one day they ceased to arrive. He never knew the man’s motives, whether he was spying for France for money or for patriotic reasons. Until today, he did not even know his name, or his nationality. Military intelligence and such matters would be dealt with by General Macquery, the new chief of staff of the Premier Corps since the departure of General Semellé. It is a murky, complicated world and one about which Simon Desfosseux would prefer to know as little as possible. But he misses the pigeons. The dispatches he now receives—the Imperial Army obviously has other informants in the city—lack the rigorous precision of those written by the man who was arrested.
“You took a considerable risk coming here like this.”
“Oh, well …” The policeman gestures vaguely around him. “This is Cádiz, you understand? People cross the bay all the time. I suppose for a French soldier it might be difficult to understand.”
He says this offhandedly. With typical Spanish gall, thinks Desfosseux. The man is watching him carefully.
“Why did you agree to meet me?” he asks finally.
It is the captain’s turn to smile.
“Your letter piqued my curiosity.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” Desfosseux shakes his head. “There’s still time to turn you over to the gendarmes … I don’t much like the idea of finding myself before a court-martial accused of conspiring with the enemy.”
A short, dry laugh.
“Don’t worry about that. My safe conduct has been stamped by imperial headquarters in Chiclana … Besides, I’m only a policeman.”
“I never much cared for policemen.”
“I have never much cared for bastards who kill fifteen-year-old girls.”
The two men stare at each other in silence: the Spaniard calm, unruffled; the Frenchman pensive. Then Desfosseux leans over the map of Cádiz again and stares at the penciled marks, moving from one to the next. Until now, he has thought of them only as points of impact. Successful targets since, in six of the seven cases, the bombs landed and exploded as intended. For the man sitting before him, however, the marks mean something else: they are the concrete reminders of seven girls who were murdered after having been horribly tortured. Whatever his reservations about the way in which the case has been interpreted, at no point does Desfosseux doubt the veracity of the facts. And although he would not give his life or his fortune—if he had one—for this man, still he knows the man is not lying. At least, not consciously.
“It goes without saying that this conversation never took place,” he says finally.
Never, the Spaniard echoes in the tone of one intimately familiar with nonexistent conversations. He has taken out a fine leather cigar case and offers one to the captain, who takes it and slips it into his pocket—he’ll make it last by cutting it up. The wind has a major influence, Desfosseux explains, moving his hand over the map, on both the trajectory and the point of impact. Truth be told, many factors contribute: the temperature, the humidity, the condition of the gunpowder. Even the ambient temperature can cause the bore of the cannon to expand or contract, thereby affecting the shot.
“In fact, one of my problems is that I can’t manage to get bombs to land where I want them to … at least not always.”
The policeman, who has put away his case and is now holding an unlit cigar, points one end of it toward the marks on the map.
“What can you tell me about these?”
“A quick glance says it all. Look: five of the bombs fell within a sector to the south of the city, the area closest to us … Only this one here traveled further, to the outer limit of our range.”
“These days, they go further.”
“Indeed.” Simon Desfosseux has a satisfied expression. “We are gradually getting there. Eventually, we will be able to shell the whole city, take my word for it. But at the time, this shot here …”
“An alley off the Calle del Pasquín, behind the chapel of the Divina Pastora.”
“Precisely. That one was a lucky shot. It was a long time before I was able to achieve such a range again.”
“Are you saying that at the time you were not aiming for that particular spot?”
Desfosseux sits back, slightly irritated.
“I was aiming to hit whatever I could, monsieur.
In fact, sometimes I still fire like that. At random … Accuracy is less important than distance.”
The Spaniard seems disappointed. The unlit cigar now clenched between his teeth, he looks again at the map as if he no longer recognizes it.
“So you’re saying you never know where your bombs are going to fall?”
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. It would be possible to predict if, when the shot was fired, I had all relevant data: the expanding force of the powder charge, temperature, relative air humidity, wind speed and direction, atmospheric pressure … But that is impossible. And even if it were possible, we do not have the capacity to do the calculations.”
The comisario has placed a hand on the table. It is rough and callused, the fingers stubby, nails bitten to the quick. One finger traces the streets as though following a precise route.
“And yet someone does have the capacity: the murderer. He achieves the precision your men cannot.”
“I doubt that he does so consciously.” Desfosseux is irritated by the policeman’s tone. “No one could perform these calculations with such accuracy … no one human.”
This has been one of the fundamental problems of artillery since it was devised, adds the captain, ascertaining the geometric figure traced by a projectile under specific conditions. Galileo himself tackled the problem. And this has been his principal challenge in Cádiz: dealing with those elements of a cannon that alter the trajectory of the bombs. The temperature of the barrel, air resistance and friction. Because still air is one thing, wind is a very different matter. And here it is the wind that matters. Cádiz is a city in which winds weave a veritable labyrinth.
“No doubt about that.”
“I don’t doubt it: I have been shelling the city for months.”
The Spaniard bends down and lights his cigar from the candle in the bottle. Through the closed shutters—there is no glass in the windows—comes the sound of carts rolling along the road outside, the voices of soldiers giving the watchword, and Lieutenant Bertoldi’s reply. Then silence descends again.
“Even if what you have told me is true,” Desfosseux continues, “it can only be a matter of probabilities. I don’t know whether your murderer is a man of science, but his mind is clearly capable of calculations that scientists have been attempting for centuries … He sees the landscape through different eyes. Perhaps he can detect things: constants, curves and points of impact. He may even have intuited a theorem first proposed a century ago by the mathematician Bernoulli: the effects of Nature approach a constant when such effects are studied in large numbers.”
“I’m not sure I follow.” The policeman has taken the cigar from his mouth and is listening intently. “Are you talking about chance?”
Quite the reverse, explains Desfosseux. He is talking about probability. Of mathematical certainty. There is nothing, for example, in what he does—from the direction of the howitzers to the moment they are fired—that does not depend on factors such as night and day, wind, weather conditions and other such things. Consciously or unconsciously, even he and his men act according to these probabilities.
The Spaniard’s face lights up. He understands, and for some reason this seems to reassure him. To confirm what he has been thinking.
“What you are telling me is that, although even you cannot control where your bombs land, they do not fall at random, but in accordance with certain laws of physics?”
“Exactly. According to some code which we are as yet unable to decipher—though modern science is making considerable progress—the curve described by each of my shells is as precisely determined as the orbits of planets. The only difference between the two stems from our ignorance. And, in that case, your murderer—”
“Our murderer,” the Spaniard corrects him. “He is as closely linked to you as to me.”
His tone is not sarcastic—at least, it does not seem so. There’s no way out of this now, thinks Desfosseux. And yet, as he goes deeper into this theory, he experiences a singular pleasure. A new way of looking at things that is appealing, attractive. Not unlike discovering the hidden keys to some cryptogram or some scientific mystery.
“Very well, as you wish … What I was trying to say is that this man is somehow capable of calculating the range of probabilities with considerable accuracy. Imagine you could feed all the data we discussed earlier into a machine that would give you an exact location and an approximate time …”
“Our murderer would be that machine?”
“Yes.”
A cloud of smoke briefly veils the policeman’s face. He leans his elbows on the table, fascinated.
“Probabilities, you say … And this can be calculated?”
“Up to a point. As a young man, I spent some time studying in Paris. I had not yet joined the army, but I was already intrigued by physics and chemistry. In 1795 I attended a number of classes given by Pierre-Simon Laplace at the Arsenal … Have you heard of him?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Desfosseux explains. “Monsieur Laplace is still alive; he is one of the most eminent mathematicians and astronomers in France. At the time, his chief interest was chemistry, including the gunpowder and metallurgy used in the casting of cannons. In one of his classes, he asserted that we know that, of several possible events, a single one ought to occur; but nothing induces us to believe that one of them will occur rather than the others. However, comparing the situation to similar, earlier situations, it becomes clear that some of the possible events will probably not occur.”
Desfosseux pauses for a moment. “I don’t know whether this is too … abstruse for you?”
The policeman gives a twisted smile, his profile lit by the glow of the candle.
“Too complicated for a policeman, you mean? Don’t worry, I can get by. You were saying that the experiment allows one to eliminate possibilities that are less probable than others.”
Desfosseux nods. “That’s correct. The process involves reducing all the events of the same kind to a certain number of equally possible cases, and determining the number of cases favorable to the event whose probability is sought. Do you follow?”
“Yes … more or less.”
“To recapitulate: the murderer must have this mathematical understanding—whether it functions consciously or instinctively. Given predetermined physical conditions, he would rule out all those trajectories and points of impact that are impossible, and reduce the probability to absolute certainty.”
“Ah, coño. Era eso.”
The policeman spoke in Spanish and Desfosseux looks at him, puzzled.
“Excuse me?”
Silence. The comisario pores over the map of Cádiz. “Obviously, this is just a theory,” he murmurs, as though thinking about something else.
“Of course. But it is the only one that, in my view, offers a rational explanation for what you have told me.”
The policeman remains bowed over the map, spellbound. The smoke from his cigar weaves spirals around the candle flame.
“Would it be possible for you to fire at a precise area of the city at a specific time?”
His expression is different now, Desfosseux notes; the eyes seem harder. For a fleeting instant, the captain imagines he sees the glitter of a gold tooth. Like a wolf’s fang.
“I don’t think you are aware of the seriousness of what you are suggesting.”
“You’re wrong,” the policeman replies. “I am all too aware. So, what do you say?”
“I could try to do it, obviously. But as I already told you, as far as accuracy is concerned …”
Another puff on his cigar followed by another cloud of smoke. There are moments when the policeman seems to become animated.
“The bombs are your problem,” he says coolly. “Mine is to track down a murderer. I will give you coordinates of specific locations. Places that are within your range.” He gestures to the map. “Which areas of the city are most accessible?”
Desfosse
ux is flabbergasted. “I don’t know … This is highly irregular. I …”
“What the devil do you mean, irregular? It’s your job.”
Desfosseux ignores the insolent tone. After all, without realizing it, the policeman has hit the mark. Desfosseux now leans over the map, moving the candle closer so he can see more clearly. Lines and curves, weight and fuses. Distances. In his mind, he traces perfect parabolas, precise points of impact. It is like relapsing into a chronic fever, and he allows himself to be swept up by it.
“Given the right conditions, and the range we can currently attain, these would be the most accessible zones.” With his index finger he traces a line along the eastern part of the city. “Almost all this sector, two hundred toises to the west of the city walls.”
“From the cape of San Felipe to the Puerta de Tierra?”
“More or less.”
The Spaniard seems satisfied. He nods, not looking up, then indicates one of the penciled marks.
“This point here is within the zone, the corner of the Calle de San Miguel and the Cuesta de la Murga. Could you target this spot at prearranged days and times?”
“I could. But as I already told you, not accurately …”
Desfosseux does some rapid mental calculations, estimating weight and the necessary powder charge to provide thrust. It could be done, he concludes, given favorable conditions and no strong headwind or crosswind to deflect the shell or reduce its range.
“Do they need to explode?” he asks.
“It would be helpful.”
The captain is already thinking about detonating devices, about the new fuses he designed which burn more steadily. At this distance, they are infallible—almost. He is convinced he can do this. Or at least he can try.