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get to?’ asked Estalère, meanwhile closely observing the effect the champagne was having on Danglard.
    ‘He’ll go on until he reaches some unspeakable, cruel, devastating event, the one that has triggered the whole story, a story that ends in cut-off feet, or eating wardrobes. Then the dark tunnel opens up with its stairways and its caves, and Stock will have to go down into it.’
    Adamsberg closed his eyes, passing without any visible transition to an apparent state of sleep or escape.
    ‘We can’t say that the foot-chopper has moved on to a new phase,’ Danglard interjected, before Adamsberg escaped from him altogether. ‘Or that he is getting rid of his collection. What we do know is that he deposited it outside Highgate Cemetery. And, good grief, that’s not a matter of indifference. It’s almost as if he were making an offering.’
    The Eurostar sped out into the daylight, and Danglard’s brow cleared. His smile encouraged Estalère.
    ‘But, commandant ,’ Estalère whispered, ‘what did happen in Highgate?’
    As so often and without meaning to, Estalère was putting his finger on the crucial spot.

V
     
    ‘I DON’T KNOW THAT IT’S A GOOD IDEA TO TELL THE H IGHGATE story,’ said Danglard, who had by now ordered a third glass of champagne, for Estalère, and was drinking it on his behalf. ‘Perhaps it’s better not to keep telling it. It’s one of those dark tunnels people dig, isn’t it, commissaire , and this one is very old and long-forgotten. Perhaps we should just let it collapse into itself. Because the problem, when some madman opens up a tunnel, is that other people can get into it, which is really what Radstock was telling us in his own way. And that’s what happened in Highgate.’
    Estalère was waiting for him to go on, with the happy expression of a man who is about to hear a good story. Danglard looked at his bland, naive face and was unsure what he should do. If he took Estalère into the Highgate tunnel, he might damage that innocence. In the squad they tended to refer to Estalère’s ‘innocence’ rather than to his stupidity. Four times out of five, Estalère just didn’t get it. But his naivety sometimes generated the unexpected benefits of unsullied innocence. His blunders sometimes opened up avenues so obvious that nobody else had thought of them. Most of the time, though, Estalère’s questions merely held things up. People tried to treat them with patience, partly because they liked Estalère, and partly because Adamsberg had decreed that one of these days he’d come out of it. The others made an effort to believe this, and the collective effort had become a habit. In fact, Danglard liked talking to Estalère when he had plenty of time, because he could expound vast quantities of knowledge without the young man becoming impatient. He glanced over at Adamsberg, whose eyes were closed. But he knew the commissaire wasn’t sleeping and could hear every word he said.
    ‘Why do you want to know?’ he asked. ‘The feet are for Radstock to deal with. They’re behind us on the other side of the Channel now.’
    ‘You said it might be an offering. Who to? Is the cemetery owned by someone?’
    ‘In a manner of speaking. There’s a master.’
    ‘What’s he called?’
    ‘The Entity,’ replied Danglard with a smile.
    ‘Since when?’
    ‘The west end of the cemetery, the oldest part, where we were the day before yesterday, was opened in 1839. But of course the master might have lived there before that.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Some people say that it was because the Entity lived there already in the ancient chapel on Highgate Hill that the place was chosen as a site for a cemetery.’
    ‘A woman?’
    ‘No, a man. More or less. And it was his power that drew the dead and the cemetery towards him, you see?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘They don’t bury anyone now in the west section, it’s become a well-known historical site, it’s famous. There are extraordinary monuments there,