by Fred Vargas
‘He’d got hold of Mercadet’s phone too. He texted some pal while I was sitting there. So what shall we say in this report? To avoid letting on that Mercadet had gone to sleep?’
‘Yes, good question, what indeed shall we say in our report?’ said Danglard, articulating each word clearly.
‘We’ll cheat a bit about the time. We’ll say Mo was still in the interview room at 9 p.m. If an officer nods off when he’s doing overtime, it’s not so bad. I think the colleagues will show solidarity.’
‘Who with?’ asked Danglard. ‘Mercadet or you?’
‘Well, what do you suggest I should have done, Danglard? Got myself shot?’
‘Go on, it wouldn’t have reached that stage.’
‘Yes it would, Mo was like a man possessed.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Danglard, taking another mouthful of wine.
And Adamsberg read his defeat in his deputy’s clear-eyed gaze.
‘All right,’ he admitted.
‘All right,’ Danglard confirmed.
‘But you’re too late. You got here too late, show’s over. I was afraid you’d catch on earlier. You took your time, actually,’ he added, sounding disappointed.
‘True. You had me going there for three hours.’
‘Exactly what I needed.’
‘Adamsberg, you are completely crazy.’
Adamsberg took another sip of his half-glass and swilled it around his mouth.
‘Doesn’t bother me,’ he said, swallowing.
‘And you’ll drag me down with you.’
‘No. You’re not obliged to have understood what happened. You still have a chance to look like an unsuspecting idiot, commandant. Make your choice. Go or stay.’
‘I’ll stay, if you have a single thing to dispose me in his favour. Not counting “the way his eyes look”.’
‘Nope. If you stay, no strings.’
‘And if not?’
‘If not, life won’t have much interest any more.’
Danglard suppressed a movement of protest, as he gripped his glass. His anger now was much less painful, he reflected, than when he had imagined Adamsberg was becoming despicable. He took some time to think in silence. It was a formality and he knew it.
‘Right,’ he said.
It was the briefest expression he could find to express his surrender.
‘Remember the trainers?’ Adamsberg asked. ‘The laces?’
‘Mo’s exact size. What about them?’
‘I’m talking about the laces, Danglard. The ends had soaked up petrol for several centimetres.’
‘So?’
‘They’re those high-sided trainers teenagers wear, with really long laces.’
‘Yeah, my kids have them too.’
‘And how do your kids do them up? Think about it, Danglard.’
‘They take them once round the ankle and tie them in front.’
‘There you are. It used to be the fashion to leave the laces undone. Now the fashion is to have very long laces and take them round the back before tying them. So they don’t drag on the ground, do they? Only some older guy would put them on without knowing what you’re supposed to do.’
‘Shit.’
‘My feelings exactly. This older guy, Mr Not-so-cool, fifty or sixty years old, let’s say one of the Clermont-Brasseur sons, buys some teenage trainers. And he just ties the laces in front, like he would have done in his time, so the ends trail into the petrol. I asked Mo to put them on, remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he tied them like you said, round the back and in front. If Mo had really torched the car, there’d have been some petrol on the soles, yes, but not on the laces.’
Danglard filled up the glass he had just emptied.
‘And that’s your evidence?’
‘Yes, and it’s worth its weight in gold.’
‘Right. But you started this play-acting before that. You knew before.’
‘Mo’s not a killer. I never had any intention of letting him fall into their clutches.’
‘So which of the Clermont sons do you suspect?’
‘Christian. He’s been a calculating bastard since he was twenty.’
‘You won’t get away with it. They’ll catch Mo, wherever he is. That’s their only hope. Who picked him up in the car?’
Adamsberg finished his glass without replying.
‘Ah. Like father, like son,’ said Danglard, standing up heavily.
‘We’ve already got one lame pigeon, might as well have another.’
‘You won’t be able to keep him long at your place.’
‘Don’t intend to.’
‘Good. But what next?’
‘The usual,’ said Adamsberg, extracting himself from between the stags’ antlers. ‘A report. We’ll write a report. That’s what you’re good at, Danglard.’ His mobile rang just then, with an unknown number. Adamsberg consulted his two watches. Five past ten. He frowned. Danglard was already tackling the falsified report, with his unshakeable devotion to the commissaire, considering the extremities in which they now found themselves.
‘Adamsberg speaking,’ the commissaire said cautiously.
‘Louis Nicolas Émeri,’ said the capitaine in a hollow voice. ‘Did I wake you up?’
‘No, one of my suspects has just got away.’
‘Right,’ said Émeri, not understanding.
‘Is it about Léo? Has she died?’
‘No, still holding out. I’m not though, I’m being taken off the case, Adamsberg.’
‘Officially?’
‘No, not yet. But a colleague from the IGN tipped me off in advance. Tomorrow. They’re jackals, those s.o.b.s.’
‘We did guess it might happen, Émeri. Is it a suspension or a transfer?’
‘Just a temporary suspension, while they do a report.’
‘Ah, always a report.’
‘Jackals, sons of bitches,’ Émeri said again.
‘So why are you calling me?’
‘I’d rather die than see the capitaine from Lisieux take over the investigation. St Teresa of Lisieux herself would pack him off with Hellequin’s lot, no bother.’
‘One second, Émeri.’
Adamsberg covered the phone.
‘Danglard, what’s the name of the capitaine in the Lisieux gendarmerie?’
‘Dominique Barrefond, bastard of the worst kind.’
‘So what is it you want, Émeri?’ said Adamsberg into the phone.
‘I want you to take the case. It’s yours anyway.’
‘Mine? Since when?’
‘From the start, before it became a case at all. When you took a walk on the Chemin de Bonneval without knowing anything about it.’
‘I was just taking the air. And eating blackberries.’
‘Don’t give me that. It’s your case,’ Émeri stated. ‘But if you’re in charge, I can help you unofficially, and you won’t kick me out of the way. Whereas that bastard in Lisieux wants my guts for garters.’
‘That’s the reason?’
‘That and the fact that the case has picked you out and nobody else. It’s your destiny to deal with the ghostly army.’
‘Oh, come off it, Émeri!’
‘That’s the way it is. He’s galloping towards you.’
‘Who?’
‘Lord Hellequin.’
‘You don’t believe that for a second, you just want to save your skin!’
‘Quite right.’
‘Look. I’m sorry, Émeri, but you know I can’t get this assigned to me, I’ve got no pretext at all for getting involved.’
‘I’m not talking about pretexts, I’m talking about pulling strings. I can get the Comte d’Ordebec to wangle something. See what you can do your end.’
‘Why should I do this, Émeri? I don’t want any aggro from the Lisieux gendarmes. I’ve got enough trouble on my hands right here.’
‘But you’re not up against it.’
‘What do you know about that? Like I jus
t told you, one of my suspects has got clean away. From my own office, using a gun he’d taken from one of my own juniors.’
‘Good reason to pick up some credit somewhere else.’
Not wrong, thought Adamsberg. But who could tackle the leader of the Furious Army?
‘Is your escaped suspect involved in the Clermont-Brasseur affair, by any chance?’ Émeri was asking.
‘Correct. So you see, there’s going to be hell to pay, and I’ll have to face the music myself.’
‘The Clermont sons, you’re interested in them?’
‘Naturally. But we can’t get near them.’
‘The Comte d’Ordebec can. He sold his steelworks to their father, Antoine. They went on safari in Africa together in the fifties. The count was a friend of his. When Léo pulled me out of the duck pond, she was still married to him.’
‘Forget the Clermonts. We know who started the fire.’
‘Glad to hear it. It’s just that, sometimes, you feel like cleaning up around the edges to get a clearer picture. Just a matter of professional hygiene, of no great consequence.’
Adamsberg moved the phone from his ear and folded his arms. His fingers came across the little piece of earth he had slipped into his shirt pocket. Only at noon that day.
‘Let me think about it,’ he said.
‘Yes, but get a move on.’
‘I never think quickly, Émeri.’
No, sometimes you don’t think at all, thought Danglard, without voicing it. This whole business of Mo’s escape was utter madness.
‘Off to Ordebec then?’ the commandant asked out loud. ‘As soon as it’s light you’ll have the entire government against you, and now you want to take on the Furious Army as well?’
‘The great-great-grandson of Marshal Davout has just surrendered. The fortress is there to be stormed. Quite a swashbuckling mission, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Since when have you been into swashbuckling?’
Adamsberg collected his things in silence. ‘Since I promised Léo I’d be back.’
‘She’s in a coma, she can’t possibly care one way or the other, and she won’t even remember you.’
‘But I remember her.’
And after all, thought Adamsberg as he walked home, perhaps Émeri was right. It was his case. He made a detour along the Seine and threw Mercadet’s mobile phone into the water.
XV
By 2 a.m., Danglard had finished writing the report. At 6.30 a.m., Adamsberg took a call at home from the secretary general at the prefecture of police, followed by one from the director of the same, then the minister’s secretary, and finally from the Minister of the Interior himself at 9.15. At that moment, Mo walked into his kitchen, wearing a T-shirt of Zerk’s that was too big for him, and timidly looking for something to eat. Zerk, with the pigeon perched on his arm, got up to reheat some coffee. The shutters on the garden side were still closed and Zerk had pinned a garish length of chintz across the glass pane of the garden door – because of the heat, he had told Lucio. Mo had been ordered not to go near any of the upstairs windows. With a couple of gestures, Adamsberg signalled to the two young men to keep quiet and leave the room.
‘No, monsieur le ministre, he won’t get away. Yes, all the gendarmeries have been on the alert since 9.40 last night. Yes, the frontier posts too. No, I don’t think that’s necessary, monsieur le ministre, it wasn’t Lieutenant Mercadet’s fault.’
‘Heads are going to roll, and so they bloody well should, Commissaire Adamsberg, as you must well know. The Clermont-Brasseur family is appalled at the laid-back attitude apparent in your squad. And so am I. It’s come to my attention that you’ve kept a sick man on your staff, in what’s supposed to be a crack outfit.’
‘A sick man, sir?’
‘A narcoleptic, a hypersomniac. A man so incompetent that he allowed his weapon to be taken from him. Going to sleep while guarding a suspect – you call that normal? I call it a dereliction of duty, Adamsberg, nothing less.’
‘Monsieur le ministre, perhaps you haven’t been fully briefed. Lieutenant Mercadet is one of the best men in the team. But he had had only two hours’ sleep the night before and was doing overtime. It was almost thirty-four degrees in the interview room.’
‘And who else was on guard?’
‘Brigadier Estalère.’
‘Reliable?’
‘Excellent.’
‘Then why did he leave the room. The report doesn’t say.’
‘To fetch some cold drinks.’
‘Total dereliction of duty, heads will roll! Cold drinks for the suspect, Mohamed Issam Benatmane, not the best way to get him to talk.’
‘The refreshments were just for the officers, monsieur le ministre.’
‘Well, he should have asked a colleague to do it. A grave professional error. An officer should never be left alone with a suspect. And that goes for you too, commissaire, when you had him in your office for questioning, without any backup. And then you didn’t even manage to disarm a twenty-year-old street gangster. It was incalculable negligence.’
‘Yes, monsieur le ministre. It was.’
Adamsberg was absent-mindedly drawing lines in the drops of coffee on the plastic sheeting, tracing routes between the deposits made by Hellebaud. He pondered for a moment on the extreme resistance bird droppings offer to washing. That was a chemical enigma which Danglard would be unable to solve, he wasn’t much good at science.
‘Christian Clermont-Brasseur has called for you to be dismissed with immediate effect, and your two incompetent officers as well, and I’m tempted to agree with him. But for some reason, the thinking over here is that you could still be useful. So you’ve got a week, Adamsberg, not a day more.’
* * *
Adamsberg called the entire team together in the big meeting space to which Danglard had given the erudite name of chapter room. Before leaving home, he had aggravated the injury to his chin by rubbing it with a dish scrubber, making more red scratches on his face. Very good, Zerk had said appreciatively, as he dabbed scarlet Mercurochrome on the bruise to make it more obvious.
It was not something he enjoyed doing, sending his agents off on a wild goose chase after Mo, when he knew him to be sitting at his own kitchen table, but the situation left him no choice. He assigned tasks and the officers all looked at their instructions in silence. He took in the expressions of the nineteen colleagues present: they all seemed stunned by the new turn of events. Only Retancourt looked secretly amused, which caused him some anxiety. Mercadet’s expression of total consternation reawakened the sharp feeling at the back of his neck. He had caught this bubble of electricity from Capitaine Émeri, and it would have to be returned to him sooner or later.
‘A week?’ repeated Lamarre. ‘What’s the point of that? If he’s run off into the woods somewhere, we could be a month or more trying to find him.’
‘The week’s for me,’ said Adamsberg, without mentioning the precarious status of Mercadet and Estalère. ‘If I can’t deliver, Danglard will probably have to take over the leadership of the squad and the work will continue.’
‘I really don’t remember dropping off in the interview room,’ Mercadet said, his voice choking with guilt. ‘It’s all my fault. But I don’t remember it. If I’ve started falling asleep without realising it, I’d better give up the job.’
‘We were all at fault, Mercadet. You went to sleep, Estalère left the room, we didn’t search Mo, and I took him into my office alone.’
‘Even if we find him in a week, they’ll probably sack you to make an example,’ said Noël.
‘Quite possible, Noël. But we’ve got a window of opportunity. And if not, well, I’ll be happy enough in my mountains. So, it’s not a catastrophe. The first thing is, you’d better be prepared for an unannounced inspection of our office sometime today. So everything has got to be absolutely impeccable. Mercadet, go and have forty winks now, you’ll have to look wide awake when they arrive. And get rid of the cushions. Voisenet, put a
way your fish magazines. Froissy, not a crumb of food must be left in any cupboard, and your watercolours must be out of sight too. Danglard, your stashes of wine will disappear. Retancourt, please take the cat and its dishes out to one of the cars. We’ve got to pay attention to every detail.’
‘What about the string?’ asked Morel.
‘What string?’
‘The one from the pigeon’s feet. The lab sent it back, it’s on the sample table with the other forensic results. If they ask, it might not be the moment to tell them about the bird.’
‘I’ll handle the string,’ said Adamsberg, noting as he spoke Froissy’s distress at the idea of getting rid of her hidden rations. ‘But there’s one piece of good news. For once, Divisionnaire Brézillon is on our side. We won’t get any trouble from him.’
‘Why not?’ asked Mordent.
‘The Clermont-Brasseur combine ruined his father’s firm, which was importing Bolivian minerals. It was a stock-market raid, he’s never forgiven them. He just wants one thing, “to see those bastards squirming in the hot seat”, those were his words.’
‘There’s no hot seat waiting,’ said Retancourt. ‘It wasn’t the Clermont family that burnt the car.’
‘I was just giving you an idea of the divisionnaire’s state of mind.’
Retancourt’s gaze once more registered some irony, if he was not mistaken.
‘Right, off you go,’ said Adamsberg, standing up and throwing his bubble of electricity to the ground at the same time. ‘Clean up the place. Mercadet, can you come with me for a moment?’
* * *
Sitting opposite Adamsberg, Mercadet was twisting his tiny hands round each other. He was an honest, scrupulous but also fragile person, whom Adamsberg was pushing to the edge of depression and self-hate.
‘I’d rather be sacked right away,’ said Mercadet with dignity, rubbing the dark rings under his eyes. ‘That kid could have killed you. If I’m capable of dropping off without realising it, it’s time to quit my job. I was pretty unreliable before but now I’m dangerous, unable to control myself.’
‘Lieutenant,’ said Adamsberg, leaning across the table. ‘I said you had fallen asleep. But you didn’t. Mo didn’t take your gun.’
‘Commissaire, it’s kind of you to try and help me. But when I woke up upstairs, I didn’t have my gun or my phone. And Mo had them.’