by Fred Vargas
He watched as the train came into the station. That was a deep and dark question that took him straight back to the horrors of the portage trail. Where there was no evidence that the Trident had ever set foot.
As he turned into Clémentine’s little sidestreet, he snapped his fingers. He must tell Danglard about the frogs in Collery. He would certainly be glad to hear it worked with frogs as well. Ploff, bang! A slightly different sound.
L
BUT IT WASN’T THE MOMENT TO TALK ABOUT FROGS. ALMOST AS SOON as he got in, a call from Retancourt informed him that Michel Sartonna, the young man in charge of cleaning the departmental office, had been found murdered. He normally came in to work between five and nine in the evening. When he had not been seen for two days, someone was sent round to his flat. He had been shot dead, with two bullets in the chest from a handgun with a silencer, some time between Monday night and Tuesday morning.
‘Could it have been a gangland killing, lieutenant? I had the feeling Michel was into drug dealing.’
‘If so, he wasn’t rich. Except for a large sum of money deposited in his bank on 13 October, four days after the news item appeared in the Nouvelles d’Alsace. And there was a brand new laptop in his flat. I should also say that he’d put in for two weeks’ leave, without warning, which exactly tallies with the dates we were in Quebec.’
‘You’re thinking he was the mole, Retancourt? But I thought we’d established there wasn’t one.’
‘Well, we might have to think again. Michel could have been contacted after Schiltigheim, and been paid to do some spying, and perhaps follow us out to Quebec. And it might have been him who got into your flat.’
‘And then killed Noëlla on the path?’
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t believe that, Retancourt. Even if we suppose there was someone else there, the judge would hardly have left it to someone like Michel to carry out such a refined kind of vengeance. And certainly not with the trident.’
‘Danglard doesn’t think so either, actually.’
‘As for murder with a gun, that doesn’t sound like the judge.’
‘I’ve told you what I think about that. A gun is OK for outsiders, murders that don’t fit the scheme. No need to use the trident on Michel. My guess is that the stupid boy misjudged his contact, asked for too much money or maybe even threatened blackmail. Or perhaps the judge just wanted to get him out of the way.’
‘If it was the judge.’
‘We took a look at Michel’s laptop. The hard disk’s empty, or rather it’s been wiped. Our computer people are coming tomorrow to see if they can resurrect anything.’
‘What about his dog?’ Adamsberg asked, surprising himself by his concern for the large dog that went everywhere with Michel.
‘Shot as well.’
‘Retancourt, since you’re going to send me the bullet-proof vest, can you send over the laptop? I’ve got a Grade A hacker here.’
‘Mm-hm, how’m I going to do that? You’re not a commissaire at the moment.’
‘Yes, I do realise that,’ said Adamsberg, seeming to hear Clémentine’s voice reminding him of it. ‘Ask Danglard, convince him, you’re good at that. Since the exhumation, Brézillon’s more favourably inclined to me, and Danglard knows it.’
‘All right, I’ll try, but he’s the boss for now.’
LI
JOSETTE TOOK POSSESSION OF MICHEL SARTONNA’S LAPTOP WITH HUGE delight. Adamsberg felt that he could hardly have made her happier than with this suspect machine, a real gift for a hacker. It had not arrived at Clignancourt until the late afternoon, and Adamsberg suspected that Danglard had had it checked out by his own computer people first. That was perfectly logical and normal, since he was the acting head of the department. The courier who delivered it also brought a note from Retancourt, saying that as far as they could see the hard disk was as clean as a whistle. This had only spurred Josette on to greater efforts.
She spent a long time trying to penetrate the lost memory of the computer, and confirmed that someone else had already had a try.
‘Your men didn’t bother to wipe out their footsteps. That’s fair enough, they weren’t doing anything illegal.’
The last defence came down only with Michel’s dog’s name spelt backwards: ograc. He had often brought the dog into the office, a huge but harmless beast, as unthreatening as a snail, hence its name, Escargot, shortened to Cargo. It liked eating any papers it found lying around, and could transform a report into a wet soggy ball in no time. So it was perhaps a good code name for the mysterious transmutations that took place inside computers.
But once inside, Josette came up against the same blank wall as the police had.
‘Nothing at all, wiped clean, scraped with wire wool,’ she said.
Well, that figured. If the police specialists hadn’t been able to find anything, there was no reason to think Josette would fare any better. But she kept tapping doggedly with her shaky little hands on the keyboard.
‘I’ll keep trying,’ she said obstinately.
‘Don’t bother, Josette, they’ve obviously tried everything in the lab.’
It was time for their ritual glass of port, and Clémentine summoned Adamsberg to come and have his aperitif, as if he was a teenager being called to do his homework. She added an egg yolk, beating it up in the sweet wine. Egg-flip with port was supposed to give him strength.
‘Josette’s still at it,’ he explained as he accepted the glass filled with the opaque mixture to which he was becoming accustomed.
‘To look at her, you’d think you could knock her over with a feather, wouldn’t you,’ said Clémentine clinking her glass against Adamsberg’s.
‘But you can’t.’
‘No. Not like that,’ Clémentine interrupted him to stop him putting the glass to his lips. ‘When you clink glasses, you have to look at the other person. I told you that already. Then drink it off without putting the glass down. Elsewise it won’t work.’
‘What won’t work?’
She shook her head as if that was a supremely silly question.
‘Start again,’ she said sternly. ‘Now what was I saying?’
‘We were saying Josette couldn’t be knocked over with a feather.’
‘Right. Now then. Inside my little Josette there’s a compass, and it’s fixed on the north. She’s taken thousands and thousands from those fat cats. So she won’t just give up on it.’
Adamsberg took a glass of the health-giving mixture into the computer room. Josette clinked glasses properly, with a smile.
‘I found the fragments of one line,’ she said in her quavery voice. ‘It’s the ruins of a message that’s broken up. Your men didn’t find this,’ she said rather proudly. ‘There are always a few corners people don’t manage to go through with a toothcomb.’
‘Like the space between the wall and the washbasin.’
‘Yes, that’s right. I always clean things thoroughly, and my husband thought I was fussy. Come and have a look.’
Adamsberg came over to the screen and read a meaningless series of letters, all that had survived the crash: dam ea ezv ort la ero.
‘Is that all?’ he asked in disappointment.
‘That’s all, but it’s better than nothing,’ said Josette, who was still elated. ‘ezv could only be from “rendezvous,” for instance.’
‘I’m sure Michel was involved with drugs, I often thought so,’ Adamsberg said. ‘So dam is most likely from Amsterdam or Rotterdam. Classic drugs centres.’
‘And the ea could be from “deal” or “dealer”?’
‘Yes, Josette, it looks like a message about dealing to me. From what’s left.’
Josette noted down the letters on a piece of paper and looked at it in silence.
‘I suppose you could make it something like: “Amsterdam – dealer – rendezvous – port – heroin,” for instance,’ she suggested reluctantly.
‘I don’t see how it can have anything to do with the Trident,’
said Adamsberg in a defeated voice. ‘It looks as if Michel simply got involved in something too heavy for him. We should probably pass it over to the drugs squad, Josette.’
Josette sipped her port-flip delicately, but her little face expressed frustration.
Retancourt must be wrong about the mole, Adamsberg thought, as he stirred the fire. The two women had gone to bed and he was alone by the hearth, unable to sleep. He would never succeed in identifying the mole, who had probably never existed. It was after all the janitor who had given Laliberté the key information. And as for believing someone had searched his flat, well that was based on the flimsiest evidence. A key in the wrong place, perhaps, and a box file not quite in the same position, when Danglard thought he had put it away more tidily. Not much to go on. He would never find the unlikely second man on the portage trail. Even if he traced all Fulgence’s crimes, he would be forever alone on that sinister path. Adamsberg felt all the threads snapping one after another, cutting him off from the world, as if he were a ferocious bear on an ice floe, floating away from land. He was isolated here with Clémentine’s egg-flips and Josette’s grey slippers.
He put on his coat and his Arctic cap, and slipped out into the night. The shabby streets of Clignancourt were dark and empty, and the street-lamps gave only fitful light. He took Josette’s old moped, which was painted in two shades of blue, and twenty-five minutes later, he braked to a halt outside Camille’s windows. What was driving him was an urge to find a different refuge, and the desire to breathe, if only from outside the building, a little of the clear and healthy air that came to him from Camille, or rather that formed when he and Camille were together. It takes two windows to make a draught, as Clémentine would have put it. He had a shock on looking up to the seventh floor. The lights were on. She must have come back from Montreal. Unless she had let the flat. Or maybe the new father was up there, acting as if he owned the place, with his two labradors, one of them drooling under the sink and the other by Camille’s synthesiser. Adamsberg looked up at the provocative square of light, watching for the new father’s shadow. The idea of someone else taking possession went through him like a drill, conjuring up the vision of a muscular man, walking about in the nude with his firm buttocks and flat stomach, an image that burned itself into his brain.
From the little cafe at street level came welcoming smells, and the hum of people drinking. Just like L’Ecluse. Perfect, thought Adamsberg nervously, as he locked up the moped. A good glass of cognac, that would drown the image of the naked he-man allowing his dogs to drool all over Camille’s studio floor. He would use the same technique as the late lamented Cargo: he’d transform the intruder into a sticky wad of blotting paper.
This was the second time in his life he had deliberately got drunk, or at least since he was a teenager, thought Adamsberg, pushing open the steamed-up cafe door. Perhaps he would not try mixing his drinks tonight. Or again, perhaps he should. After all, in another five weeks he would be sitting in Brézillon’s armchair, having lost his memory, his job, his brother, his girl from the north, and his freedom. It was hardly the moment to be scared of mixing his drinks. Bloody labradors, he thought, downing his first cognac, and he decided to stuff them into some of the windows on the cathedral façade, with their back legs kicking in the air. When he had succeeded in filling all the orifices of the jewel of Gothic architecture with his imaginary menagerie, what would happen to the monument? Perhaps it would choke for lack of air and fall down. Or perhaps puff, puff, it would explode. Would it just collapse inwards, he wondered, ordering his second cognac, And what would they do with the ruins, not to speak of all the creatures lying beneath the masonry? Big problem for the canons of Strasbourg.
How about stuffing the windows of the Mounties’ headquarters with surplus animals while he was at it? Starving the atmosphere of oxygen and filling it with the stinking breath of the beasts. Laliberté would drop dead. He would have to save Sanscartier the Good of course, and the kindly Ginette. But would there be enough animals? It was a serious question, since you needed really big creatures. Moths and snails wouldn’t do. Good big creatures, preferably spitting smoke like dragons. But you couldn’t easily locate a dragon, they hide away sneakily in caves.
Well, of course he knew where to find some dragons, in a Mah Jong set, he thought, hitting the counter with his fist. All he knew about the Chinese game was that there were dragons in it, of various colours. He would just have to find some, like old Guillaumond with his three fingers, and push the reptiles in randomly, into all the doors and windows. Red ones for Strasbourg, green ones for Ottawa.
Adamsberg was unable to finish his fourth glass and staggered out to the moped. He couldn’t undo the lock, so instead he pushed open the door of Camille’s block of flats, and climbed up the seven storeys, clinging on to the bannister. He’d have a word with the new father, give him a piece of his mind, that’s what he’d do, and see him off. Might keep his labradors though, and add them to the judge’s dobermans. They’d do very well for some of the cathedral windows. But not Cargo, he was a good dog, and on Adamsberg’s side in all this, as was his little beetle-mobile phone. A foolproof plan, he thought as he leaned on Camille’s door. But a thought stopped him as he was about to ring the bell. A pang of memory. Look out. Last time you were drunk, you killed Noëlla. Don’t go in. You don’t know who you are, you don’t know what you’re capable of. Yes, but he really needed those labradors.
Camille opened the door, and was amazed to find him on the landing.
‘Are you alone?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘No dogs?’
He was having difficulty forming his words. Do not go in, roared the waters of the Ottawa River. Do not go in.
‘What dogs?’ asked Camille. ‘Jean-Baptiste, you’re drunk. You turn up out of the blue at midnight, and you start babbling about dogs.’
‘I’m talking about Mah Jong. Let me in.’
Unable to react quickly enough to stop him, Camille stood aside. He sat down clumsily on a stool at the bar in the kitchen, where the remains of her supper were still lying. He fiddled with the glass, the water jug, the fork, feeling its points. Camille, looking perplexed, had gone to sit crosslegged on her piano stool in the middle of the room.
‘I know your grandmother had a Mah Jong set,’ Adamsberg began again stumbling over the words. ‘I bet she didn’t let you dilute, did she? Dilute an’ I’ll shoot you!’
Ah, grandmothers, always good for a laugh, eh?
LII
JOSETTE SLEPT BADLY AND WAS WOKEN AT ONE IN THE MORNING BY A nightmare: out of her printer, pages of paper, all of them bright red, were spilling all over the room. Nothing could be read on them, because of their glossy red surface.
She got up quietly and tiptoed into the kitchen, where she helped herself to some cookies and maple syrup. Clémentine came to join her, wrapped up in a huge dressing gown, like a nightwatchwoman.
‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ Josette pleaded.
‘Something going on in that little head, isn’t there,’ declared Clémentine.
‘It’s just that I couldn’t sleep. Nothing really, Clemmie.’
‘Not your machine giving you headaches?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is. In my dream, I couldn’t read anything it printed.’
‘You’ll manage it, Josette, m’dear. I’m sure you can.’
But manage what, Josette wondered.
‘Clemmie, I thought I was dreaming about blood. All the paper was red.’
‘Was the machine leaking red ink?’
‘No, just the sheets of paper.’
‘Well then, it couldn’t be blood.’
‘Has he gone out?’ asked Josette, realising that Adamsberg was not sleeping on the couch.
‘Suppose so. He must be worrying about something. He’s fretting away too. Eat up and drink this too, m’dear, it’ll help you sleep,’ she said, offering Josette a bowl of warm milk.
* * *
After p
utting away the biscuit tin, Josette was still wondering what, if anything, she was going to manage. She put a sweater on over her pyjamas and sat brooding over the computer, without switching it on. Michel’s laptop was alongside, a useless but irritating ruin. She would have to get to the real answer, Josette thought, the one she was trying to chase unsuccessfully in her dream. The unreadable pages were a sign that she had not decoded Michel’s scraps of message properly. A big mistake crossed out in red.
Well, that must be it, she thought, going back to her version of the fractured sentence. It was silly to think people would put in those details if they were really talking about a drugs deal. You wouldn’t put the town, the kind of drug and so on. A dealer surely wouldn’t put out an email message like that. He might as well have put his name and address on the internet. She had set off completely along the wrong track, and her book had been corrected in red.
Josette patiently took up the succession of letters and tried various combinations without success: dam ea ezv ort la ero. Her failure irritated her. Clémentine came and looked over her shoulder, holding a bowl of milk. ‘That’s what’s bothering you?’
‘I must have gone wrong, and I’m trying to understand why.’
‘Do you know what I think?’
‘Tell me.’
‘Well it looks like double Dutch to me. In some other language from some other country. Would you like some more hot milk?’