Dog Will Have His Day by Fred Vargas

‘Medium-sized, beige, short hair, big teeth, could be a pit bull, nasty-looking anyway.’ That didn’t attract you to its owner. The man: ‘Fortyish, light brown hair, brown eyes, receding chinline but otherwise quite nice-looking, bit of a paunch, name . . .’ What was the name? Sevran. Lionel Sevran. So the man with the dog had gone back yesterday morning to Brittany, with his dog, and he’d stay there till next Thursday. All he had to do was follow him. Louis drove at a moderate speed, holding the car back a bit. He had thought about taking someone with him so that the quixotic venture would be less lonely and his leg less stiff, but who? The people who sent him news from the four Breton
départements
were all resident there, rooted in their port, their business, their newspapers, they wouldn’t budge. Sonia? No, Sonia had left, he wasn’t going to mope over her all day. Next time he’d try to be a better lover. Louis pulled a face. He didn’t fall in love easily. Of all the women he’d had – because when you’re driving along on your own, you’re allowed to say ‘had’ – how many had he really loved? Three, three and a half. No, it wasn’t his strong point. Or perhaps he wasn’t keen to sign up for it any more. He tried to be moderately in love, not to exaggerate, keeping away from wild passions. Because he was the kind of man who would stay upset for two years after a love affair had gone wrong, and brood at length over his regrets before deciding to move on. And since he didn’t rush into half-hearted affairs either, he was doomed to long stretches of solitude, which Marthe called his ice ages. She wasn’t in favour. When you’re freezing cold, she would say, where will that get you?
    Louis smiled. With his right hand, he felt for a cigarette and lit it. Look for someone new to love. Look for someone, look for someone, always the same old story. Right, that would do, the world was full of horrors and bloodshed, he’d think about that later, he was entering one of the ice ages.
    He stopped in a service area and closed his eyes. Ten minutes’ rest. Anyway, he was grateful to all the women who had passed through his life, whether he’d loved them or not, simply for passing through. In the end, he loved all women, because when you’re on your own in the car you have the right to generalise, all of them, and especially the three and a half. In the end, he felt an indistinct kind of gratitude to them, he admired their ability to love men, something that seemed pretty damn difficult to him, even worse someone with an ugly mug like himself. With his rough-hewn and discouraging features, which he spent as little time as possible looking at in the morning, he should by rights have been alone all his life. And no, he hadn’t been. You couldn’t make it up, women are the only creatures who could find an ugly man handsome. Frankly, yes, he was grateful. It seemed to him that Marc, too, had a problem with his love life. That nervy character, Vandoosler junior. He could have brought
him
along for the ride, he’d thought of it, they could both have gone searching for women together at the far tip of Finistère. But he had been well aware of how Marc had tensed up at the table when he’d started talking about the trip. For him, this business with the bone had no head nor tail to it – and he was mistaken, because they did have the tail, and were looking precisely for the head. But Marc couldn’t see that yet, or was afraid of making a fool of himself, or perhaps the idea of doing something off the wall didn’t appeal to Marc Vandoosler – unless
he’d
thought of it first. That’s why he hadn’t asked him. And anyway young Vandoosler was better off staying in Paris for now, since there was no need at present for someone who could run. He’d therefore thought it best to leave him in peace. Marc was at once very likely to crumple and very strong – like linen. If we started talking fabric, what