by Fred Vargas
‘OK,’ said Mordent, non-committally. ‘Thanks for the emails. It sounds interesting but not exactly fun, all those cards and discs.’
‘Well, Justin’s in his element, Retancourt can adapt to anything, Voisenet’s supernaturally good at it, Froissy is just going through the motions, Noël is getting impatient, Estalère is perpetually amazed, and Danglard is becoming a concertgoer.’
‘And what about you, commissaire?’
‘Me? Oh I’m the shoveller of clouds. But keep that to yourself, Mordent, same as the article.’
From Mordent, Adamsberg went straight into the arms of Noëlla, whose growing passion was certainly a distraction from the irritating discovery in Montreal. A most determined girl, she had quickly resolved the problem of where to meet. He would pick her up at the Champlain stone, then it took them a quarter of an hour to walk along the cycle track to a bicycle-hire shop; one of its sash windows didn’t shut properly. Noëlla brought in her rucksack everything they needed, sandwiches, hot drinks and a camping mattress. Adamsberg left her at eleven, returning by the portage trail, which he could now walk blindfold, passing the timber site, waving to the watchman and greeting the Ottawa River before going back to sleep.
Work, river, forest, willing partner. Not so bad after all. Forget about the new father, and as for the Trident, keep repeating Sanscartier’s words: ‘You’ve got what it takes, just follow your hunches.’ Sanscartier was the one he wanted most to believe, although from various allusions by Portelance and Ladouceur, he was not thought to be the brains of the group.
There had been a slight shadow cast over the scene that evening by Noëlla. A short exchange, which luckily went no further.
‘Take me back to Paris with you,’ said the young woman, as she lay on the camping mattress.
‘Sorry, I can’t, I’m married,’ said Adamsberg instinctively.
‘You’re lying.’
He had kissed her then, to put a stop to any further conversation.
XXIV
THE DAYS WORKING WITH GINETTE SAINT-PREUX PASSED PEACEABLY, except for the growing complexity of the course, which obliged Adamsberg to start taking notes from his teammate’s dictation. ‘Transfer to amplification chamber, production of copies of the sample by the thermal cycler.’
‘OK, Ginette, whatever you say.’
But Ginette who was as talkative as she was determined, had spotted Adamsberg’s vague expression and was not letting him off the hook.
‘Don’t switch off, it’s not that hard to understand. Imagine a molecular photocopy machine, producing millions of examples of segments. Right?’
‘Right,’ repeated Adamsberg automatically.
‘The products of the amplification carry a fluorescent tag which makes it easy to detect with a laser-scanner. Do you get it now?’
‘Yes, Ginette, I get it fine. Just carry on, I’m watching.’
Noëlla was waiting for him on the Thursday evening, perched on her bike, and smiling broadly with a confident air. Once the mattress had been unrolled on the floor of the shop, she leant up on one elbow, and reached out to take something from her rucksack.
‘Surprise, surprise,’ she said, brandishing an envelope.
She waved it in front of his eyes with a laugh. Adamsberg sat up, apprehensively.
‘She’s managed to get a seat on the same flight as you, next Tuesday.’
‘Are you going back to Paris? Already?’
‘I’m going home with you.’
‘Noëlla, I’ve already told you, I’m married. No way.’
‘Liar.’
He kissed her again, feeling more worried than before.
XXV
ADAMSBERG LINGERED TO HAVE A CHAT WITH THE SQUIRREL ON DUTY outside the RCMP base, in order to put off for a few minutes the day working with Mitch Portelance. Today, the squirrel had recruited a little girlfriend, who was distracting him somewhat from his guard duty. Quite unlike the humourless Portelance, a high-flying scientist who had taken to genetics like a duck to water, and had dedicated his entire professional fervour to molecules of DNA. Unlike Ginette, the inspector failed to realise that Adamsberg could not follow his explanations, let alone find any enthusiasm for them, and he tended to spit out facts with a machine-gun delivery. Adamsberg took some notes now and then, trying to retain elements of this scientific harangue. ‘Deposit of every sample on to a specially-designed membrane sample comb … introduction to the sequencer.’
‘A membrane comb(?)’ Adamsberg was writing. ‘Transfer of the DNA into separator gel with the aid of an electric field. Separator gel(?)’
‘Now look what’s happening!’ said Portelance. ‘We’re witnessing a sort of molecular race, in which the fragments of DNA move through the gel to reach the finishing line.’
‘Er …really?’
‘Which is a detector that picks up the fragments as they emerge from the sequencer, one by one, in increasing order of length.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Adamsberg, drawing in his notebook a huge queen ant, pursued by about a hundred winged males.
‘What’s that you’re drawing?’ asked Portelance, with some irritation in his voice.
‘The fragments racing through the gel. It helps me to get a clearer understanding.’
‘Now, here’s the result,’ said Portelance, pointing to the screen. ‘The profile made up of 28 bands sorted for us by the sequencer. Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Very.’
‘This combination,’ Mitch went on, ‘which is for Jules Saint-Croix’s urine, if you remember, gives us his forensic genetic profile, which is unique in the whole world.’
Adamsberg contemplated the transformation of Jules’s urine into 28 bands. So this was Jules: ecce homo.
‘See, if it was your urine,’ Mitch explained, ‘it would look completely different.’
‘But why 28 strips? And not 142?’
‘Where do you get 142 from?’
‘Nowhere, I’m just asking why 28?’
‘It just is 28, that’s what I’m telling you. So if you kill someone, it’s not a good idea to piss on the body.’
Mitch Portelance gave a shout of laughter.
‘Don’t mind me,’ he said. ‘Just my little joke.’
During the afternoon coffee-break, Adamsberg found Voisenet, drinking a regular, and chatting to Ladouceur. Gesturing to him, he took him aside.
‘Voisenet, can you follow all this stuff? The gel, the race, the 28 bands?’
‘Yeah, pretty much.’
‘Well, I can’t. Can you do me a favour and draw up the day’s report for Mordent, this stuff’s way beyond me.’
‘Does Portelance go too fast for you?’
‘Well, maybe I go too slowly for him. Tell me something, Voisenet,’ said Adamsberg taking out his notebook. ‘See this fish, does it mean anything to you?’
Voisenet looked with interest at the sketch of the creature from the bottom of Pink Lake.
‘No, never seen one,’ he said, intrigued. ‘Is the drawing accurate?’
‘To the nearest fin.’
‘No, not one I know at all,’ said the lieutenant again, shaking his head, ‘and I do know a bit about ichthyofauna.’
‘About what?’
‘Fish.’
‘Can you just call them fish, please? I’m already having enough trouble understanding our Canadian colleagues, don’t you start.’
‘Where’s it from?’
‘From a lake that’s cursed, lieutenant, in fact two lakes, one on top of the other, a living lake on top of a dead lake.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Twenty metres deep, including three metres worth of ancient mud, ten thousand years old. Nothing stirs at the bottom. But this ancient fish lives down there, left over from when the sea covered the area. A sort of living fossil that oughtn’t to be there at all, by rights. Makes you wonder how on earth it survived. Or why. Anyway, there it is, and it’s thrashing round in the lake bottom like a devil in holy water.’
‘Wow,’ said Voisenet, who couldn’t take his eyes off the drawing. ‘Are you sure this isn’t some legend?’
‘The notice board looked pretty official. What were you thinking of? The Loch Ness monster?’
‘Oh, Nessie’s not a fish, she’s supposed to be a reptile. Where’s the lake, commissaire?’
Adamsberg, staring into the distance, did not reply.
‘Where is it?’ Voisenet repeated.
Adamsberg looked up. He had been wondering what would happen if Nessie was stuffed into the west door of Strasbourg Cathedral. That would have been a sight for sore eyes. But while it might be out of the ordinary, it wouldn’t have been too dramatic. Since the Loch Ness Monster didn’t breathe out smoke, she would have been unable to blow up the jewel of Gothic architecture.
‘Sorry, Voisenet, I was miles away. Pink Lake, it’s called, not all that far from here. It’s pink and blue, magnificent on the surface. But don’t be deceived by appearances. And if you see the fish, grab hold of it for me.’
‘Oh no,’ Voisenet protested. ‘I like fish, I’m not going to harm it.’
‘Well, I don’t like this one. Come along, I’ll show you the lake on the map.’
Adamsberg took care not to risk meeting Noëlla, when he had finished work that evening. He parked in a street some blocks away, went through his building by the back door in the basement, then avoided the portage trail altogether. He cut across through the forest, went past the logging site, and met the watchman just starting his shift.
‘Hey man,’ said the watchman with a hearty wave. ‘Still walking everywhere?’
‘Yes, how’s yourself?’ said Adamsberg with a smile, but without stopping.
He only lit his torch when he was safely two-thirds along the trail, well past Noëlla’s stone, and rejoined the path.
Where she was waiting for him, twenty metres further along, leaning against a tree.
‘Come on,’ she said, grabbing his hand. ‘Got something to tell you.’
‘Noëlla, I’m supposed to be having dinner with my colleagues tonight, I can’t come.’
‘This won’t take long.’
Adamsberg allowed himself to be dragged to the bicycle-hire shop and sat down prudently a few feet away from the young woman.
‘You’ve fallen in love with me,’ she declared. ‘I knew it the very first time I saw you on the trail.’
‘Noëlla …’
‘Yes, I knew it,’ she interrupted. ‘That it was you, and that you would fall in love with me. He told me. That was why I came and sat on the stone every night, not just to take the air.’
‘What do you mean, “he”?’
‘This old Indian, Shawi. He told me that the other half of Noëlla would appear to me on the stone of the ancient Ottawa Indians.’
‘What old Indian are you talking about?’
‘In Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts. He’s an Algonquin, a descendant of the ancient Ottawa people. He knows. I waited and you came along.’
‘Good God, Noëlla, you don’t believe that kind of thing?’
‘You, and only you,’ said Noëlla, pointing at him. ‘You love me, as much as I love you. And for as long as the river runs, nothing will separate us now. You are my destiny.’
Nuts, completely nuts.
Laliberté had been right. There was something weird about this girl, all alone at dawn on the portage trail.
‘Noëlla,’ he said, standing up and walking around. ‘Look, you’re a beautiful girl, you’re fantastic, you’re cute, I like you a whole lot – but I am not in love with you. I’m married, and I love my wife. Forgive me, but that’s how it is.’
‘You’re lying. You’re not married at all. Shawi told me. And you love me.’
‘No, Noëlla. We only met a few days ago. You were sad, because of your boyfriend, I was lonely, away from home, and that was how it happened. But it’s over, now. I’m really sorry.’
‘It’s not over, it’s just beginning, for good. Here,’ said the young woman pointing to her abdomen.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Here,’ said Noëlla calmly. ‘Our baby.’
‘Now you’re lying,’ said Adamsberg dully. ‘You can’t know that so soon.’
‘Yes, I can. The tests give a reply in three days. And Shawi told me I would bear your child.’
‘That’s complete rubbish, Noëlla!’
‘No, it’s true. And now you can’t leave Noëlla, who loves you and who’s carrying your child.’
Adamsberg turned instinctively to the sash window. He pushed it up and jumped out.
‘See you on Tuesday, at the airport!’ cried Noëlla.
* * *
Adamsberg reached the cycle track and ran until he was back near the residence. Breathing rapidly, he got into his car and drove off towards the forest, hurtling too fast along dirt roads. He stopped at an isolated bar, and bought a pizza and a glass of beer. He ate hungrily, sitting on a tree stump at the edge of the forest. Trapped, caught like an idiot by that half-crazy girl, who had flung herself round his neck. So unbalanced that he was sure she really would turn up at the airport on Tuesday and insist on coming to his flat in Paris. He ought to have known, or sensed, when he had first seen her sitting on that stone, behaving in such a strange and direct way, that Noëlla was fantasising. He had indeed tried to avoid her for the first few days. But the damned quintet had thrown him, like a brute and a fool, into Noëlla’s tentacular arms.
The food and the night cold restored his energy. His panic turned into blind fury. For Christ’s sake, no one should have the right to trap a man like that! He’d throw her out of the plane! Or if they got to Paris, he’d throw her in the Seine!
Oh God, he thought as he stood up, the number of people he was ready to massacre was growing daily, with all these blind rages. Favre, the Trident, Danglard, the New Father, and now this girl. As Sanscartier would say, he was losing the plot. And he couldn’t make out what was happening to him. Whether with these rages or with the clouds which, for the first time, he had no taste for shovelling. The recurrent images of the dead judge, the trident, the claw marks of the bears, and the evil lake were beginning to weigh heavily on him and it seemed he was losing control of his own clouds. Yes, it was quite possible that he was losing the plot.
He made his way back to his room with a heavy tread, slipping in the back way, like a thief or a man trapped inside himself.
XXVI
VOISENET HAD GONE RUSHING OFF TO PINK LAKE WITH FROISSY AND Retancourt. Another two colleagues had made tracks to the bars of Montreal, dragging the scrupulous Justin with them, and Danglard was catching up on his sleep. Adamsberg meanwhile spent the weekend creeping around surreptitiously. Nature had always been his friend – with the exception of the sinister Pink Lake – and it was better to trust to it than to stay in his room, where Noëlla might turn up at any minute. He slipped out of doors at daybreak, before anyone else was stirring, and drove to Meech Lake.
There he spent long hours, walking across wooden bridges or along the lakeside, plunging his arms up to the elbows in the snow. He thought it wise not to return to Hull overnight, so he slept at an inn in Maniwaki, praying that the dreaded prophetic Shawi would not appear in his bedroom bringing his fervent disciple with him. On the Sunday, he tired himself out hiking all day through the woods, picking up birch bark and redder-than-red maple leaves, and wondering where he would find refuge that night.
Poetry perhaps. Maybe he should go and eat in the poets’ pub? The Quatrain didn’t seem to attract the young, and Noëlla would probably not think of looking for him there. He left the car some distance from the residence again, and went downtown via the big boulevard, not by the wretched trail.
Feeling worn out, and on edge, as well as short of ideas, he swallowed a plateful of French fries, while half listening to the poems being read. Suddenly, Danglard appeared at his side.
‘Good weekend?’ the capitaine asked, trying to be conciliatory.
‘What ab
out you, Danglard? Did you get some sleep?’ said Adamsberg snappily. ‘Treachery can keep you awake sometimes, if your conscience is bothering you.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Treachery. I’m not speaking Algonquin, as Laliberté might say. Months and months of secrecy and silence, not to mention driving six hundred kilometres or more in the last few days, and all because the capitaine likes Vivaldi.’
‘Ah!’ murmured Danglard, laying his hands on the table.
‘As you say, ah! Applauding the concert, fetching and carrying, driving the lady home, opening the door. A proper little knight in shining armour.’
‘Well, after all …’
‘You mean before all, Danglard. You’ve taken his side. The Other One. The one with two labradors and new shoelaces. Against me, Danglard, against me.’
‘You’ve lost me, I’m sorry,’ said Danglard, getting to his feet.
‘Just a minute,’ said Adamsberg, pulling him back by the sleeve. ‘I’m talking about the choice you’ve made. The child, the handshake for the new father, and do come in, welcome to the happy home. That’s it, isn’t it, capitaine.’
Danglard rubbed his fingers across his mouth. Then he leaned towards Adamsberg.
‘In my book, commissaire, as our colleagues here might say, you’re a stupid bastard.’
Adamsberg sat at the table, in shock, letting Danglard walk away. The unexpected insult was echoing round and round his head. Customers trying to listen to the poetry made it clear to him that he and his friend had already disturbed them enough. He left the cafe, looking for the seediest bar he could find downtown, a men-only sort of bar, where crazy Noëlla would not find him. It was a vain hope, since in the clean and tidy streets there were no rundown old bars, whereas in Paris they grew like weeds in the cracks of the pavements. He ended up in a little place called L’Ecluse. Danglard’s words must have hit a nerve, since he could feel a serious headache coming on, something that happened only about once every ten years.
‘Commissaire, in my book you’re a stupid bastard.’
Nor had he forgotten the words of Trabelmann, Brézillon, Favre, or the imagined new father. Not to mention the scary conversation with Noëlla. Insults, betrayals and threats.