by Fred Vargas
‘He had them because I gave them to him. I gave them to him because I took them from you. Upstairs, in the coffee room. Do you get it?’
‘No!’ said Mercadet, looking up in consternation.
‘It was me, Mercadet. I had to get Mo out of there before he was put into a detention centre. Mo has never killed anyone. I didn’t have any other way to do it, and I landed you in the shit.’
‘Mo didn’t threaten you?’
‘No.’
‘You opened the gates?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wow.’
Leaning back, Adamsberg waited for Mercadet to digest the information, something he usually did quite quickly.
‘OK,’ said Mercadet, looking up again. ‘I much prefer that to the idea that I dropped off in the interview room. And if you’re sure Mo didn’t kill the old man, it was the only thing to do.’
‘And to keep quiet about, Mercadet. Danglard is the only one who’s got an inkling about it. But you, me and Estalère, we could probably all be in big trouble within a week. And I didn’t consult you about it.’
‘It was the only thing to do,’ repeated Mercadet. ‘Well, at least my sleeping turned out useful for once.’
‘That’s true. If you hadn’t been there, I don’t think I would have been able to come up with anything.’
The butterfly’s wing. Mercadet blinks his eyes in Brazil and Mo escapes to Texas.
‘Is that why you kept me back doing overtime yesterday?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I thought you had it in for me.’
‘We’re both in for it now, lieutenant.’
‘Unless you can pin it on one of the Clermont sons.’
‘Is that how you see it?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘Could be. A youngster like Mo would have tied his laces front and back. I didn’t understand why his laces were soaked with petrol.’
‘Bravo.’
‘You saw it too?’
‘Yes. But why did you immediately think of the old man’s sons?’
‘Well, think of the fallout if the father went ahead and married his housekeeper and adopted her children. People say his sons don’t have old Antoine’s diabolical business savvy. They’ve taken a few dodgy decisions. Especially Christian. He’s a hothead, likes to live it up, known to spend the daily output of an oil well in twenty-four hours.’ Mercadet shook his head with a sigh. ‘But we don’t even know if it was him driving the car,’ he said, getting to his feet.
‘Lieutenant,’ said Adamsberg, ‘we need absolute secrecy about this, and that means this secret is never to be revealed. To anyone.’
‘It’s OK, sir. I live on my own.’
* * *
When Mercadet had gone, Adamsberg paced around his office and replaced the antlers along the wall. Brézillon and his hatred of the Clermont-Brasseur bastards. The divisionnaire might be attracted by the idea of getting at them via the Comte d’Ordebec. In which case there was a good chance that the Normandy business might be allocated to him. In which case, he’d be facing the Ghost Riders. A prospect that exerted an indefinable attraction for him, welling up from some ancestral depths. He remembered seeing a very young man, one evening, leaning over the parapet of a bridge and staring at the water as it rushed by underneath. He was holding his cap in his hand, and his problem, he confided in Adamsberg, was the overwhelming temptation to throw the cap into the water, although he was fond of it. The young man was trying to understand why he was so strongly drawn to commit an action he didn’t actually want to do. In the end he had run off, without letting go of the cap, as if he had had to tear himself away from some magnetic force. Now Adamsberg understood better the odd incident of the cap on the bridge. The cavalcade of black horses was galloping through his thoughts, issuing obscure and pressing invitations, to the point where he felt that the bitter realism surrounding the politico-financial affairs of the Clermont-Brasseur dynasty was but a distraction. Only the memory of Mo’s stricken face, a straw being trampled under their feet, gave him the energy to work on it. The Clermont secrets were unsurprising, wearyingly pragmatic, and that only made the horrible death of the aged industrialist more appalling. Whereas the secret of Ordebec was emitting strains of music, unintelligible and dissonant, a composition of fantasy and illusion drawing him towards it like the water under the bridge.
He couldn’t allow himself to leave the squad unattended for long on this momentous day, so he took one of the cars to go and see Brézillon. Only at the second traffic lights did he realise he’d taken the one containing the cat and its feeding dishes. He slowed down so as not to spill any water from the bowl. Retancourt would never forgive him if the cat became dehydrated.
Brézillon received him with an impatient smile, and a sympathetic clap on the shoulder. An unusual atmosphere, but that didn’t stop him greeting the commissaire with the words he invariably pronounced:
‘You know I don’t really approve of your methods, Adamsberg. Too much informality, too little clarity either for your superiors or your staff, and not enough factual elements along the way. But your methods might have something to be said for them in present circumstances, since we’re navigating in the dark anyway.’
Adamsberg let this opening pass, and embarked instead on the excellent factual element provided by the laces of the trainers, wrongly tied by the arsonist. It wasn’t easy to break into the divisionnaire’s long monologues.
‘I hear you,’ said Brézillon, stubbing out his cigarette with one thumb, his usual gesture. ‘You’d do well to turn off your mobile before we go any further. Your phones have been tapped since the suspect escaped, i.e. since you showed such pathetic lack of determination to recapture this Mohamed. That is to say the sacrificial lamb,’ he went on, when Adamsberg had turned off the mobile. ‘We’re in agreement there, are we? I didn’t for a moment believe this insignificant young man could have accidentally caused the death of one of the country’s top industrialists. They’ve given you a week, yes, I know, and I can’t see you getting very far in that time. For one thing because you’re a slow worker, and for another, the road has been blocked. Nevertheless, I’m prepared to support you in any reasonable and legal way to try and get under the defence of those brothers. It goes without saying, Adamsberg, that in the meantime I totally subscribe to the official version that this Arab boy is guilty, and whatever happens to the Clermont clan, don’t expect any approval from me if you cause a scandal. Up to you to find a way out.’
XVI
At 5 p.m., Adamsberg returned to headquarters, with the cat folded in two over his arm, like a huge floorcloth; he deposited it back on the warm lid of the photocopier. The Inspection team had indeed descended on the offices two hours earlier, scouring the premises ruthlessly and without comment, but had found nothing untoward. Between times, reports had come in from the gendarmeries and police stations, and still Momo was missing. Several officers were out checking the homes of his known contacts. A larger operation was planned for the evening, a complete search of all the flats in the Cité des Buttes, the tower block where Momo lived, and which, unsurprisingly, had a record of torched cars above the national average. They were waiting for reinforcements to arrive from three Paris police stations to surround the block.
Adamsberg motioned to Veyrenc, Morel and Noël, and sat sideways on Retancourt’s desk.
‘Here’s the address of the two Clermont sons. Christian and Christophe: the “two Christs” they call them.’
‘Hardly up to the reputation of the Saviour,’ remarked Retancourt.
‘Their father expected too much of them.’
‘He weeps as he sees them, these men of no worth / His own sons whose virtues he had stifled at birth,’ commented Veyrenc. ‘Are you hoping the Clermonts are going to let us in now?’
‘No. But I want you to watch them night and day. They both live at the same address, a huge Paris mansion, with two wings on the same site. You’ll have to keep changing cars and appearance and, Veyrenc, you�
��ll have to dye your hair.’
‘Noël isn’t the best choice for a tail,’ observed Morel. ‘Too easily spotted at a distance.’
‘But we need him. Noël may be difficult and grouchy but he doesn’t give up. We need his persistence.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ said Noël, but without irony, because he was well aware of his negative traits.
‘Here are photos of them,’ said Adamsberg, handing round a few snapshots. ‘Their features are fairly alike, but one’s on the heavy side and the other’s thin. Ages: sixty and fifty-eight. The thin one is the older brother, Christian, to whom we’ll give the code name Saviour One. He has thick grey hair and wears it rather long. Elegant, distinguished, a man about town who wears expensive clothes. The tubby one is more reserved, more sober in his habits and he’s going bald. Christophe will be Saviour Two. The Mercedes that was burnt belonged to him. So we’ve got a playboy on the one hand and a workaholic on the other. Not that that means one is better than the other. We still don’t know what they were doing the night of the fire, or who was driving the car.’
‘So what’s going on?’ asked Retancourt. ‘Are we giving up on Momo?’
Adamsberg glanced at Retancourt and met once more that slightly amused and unreadable expression of disbelief.
‘We’re looking for Momo, lieutenant, at this very moment, and we’re calling on reinforcements to step it up tonight. But we have a problem with the ends of the shoelaces.’
‘When did you think of this?’ asked Noël, after Adamsberg had explained to them about the shoelaces.
‘Last night,’ replied Adamsberg nonchalantly.
‘So why did you ask him to put one of the shoes on yesterday?’
‘Just checking his size.’
‘Oh, really,’ said Retancourt, injecting all her scepticism into the word.
‘It doesn’t mean Mo is innocent,’ Adamsberg went on. ‘But it’s still a bit of a glitch.’
‘Quite a big one,’ agreed Noël. ‘If it was one of the two Christs that torched the car but wanted Mo to carry the can, the case would be holed below the waterline.’
‘It is anyway,’ said Veyrenc. ‘No sooner had the boat pulled away from the shore / Than through cracks in its timbers, the water did pour.’
Since rejoining the force, Lieutenant Veyrenc had already spouted dozens of bad alexandrines. But nowadays nobody paid him much attention, as if he had become part of the soundtrack, like Mercadet’s snores, or the cat’s mewing, merging into the everyday background music in the squad.
‘If one of the Christs was behind it – but we don’t know that, and we don’t even think it – the suit he was wearing would have had residual traces of petrol vapour.’
‘Heavier than air,’ Veyrenc agreed.
‘And there must also have been a bag or a briefcase he carried to switch the shoes,’ said Morel.
‘Or why not his front doorknob when he got back home?’ said Noël.
‘Or his keys?’
‘Not if he wiped everything down,’ objected Veyrenc.
‘We need to check whether one of the brothers had to get rid of a suit. Or sent it to the cleaners.’
‘So the long and short of it, commissaire,’ said Retancourt, ‘is that you want us to check up on the two Christs as if they were murderers, while asking us not to believe that.’
‘Exactly,’ said Adamsberg with a grin. ‘Mo is guilty, and we’re searching for him. But your job is to stick to the Clermonts like ticks.’
‘Just for the beauty of the manoeuvre,’ said Retancourt.
‘A little beauty never comes amiss. An aesthetic pleasure will make up for our raid on the Cité des Buttes tonight, which will not be a pretty sight. Retancourt and Noël, you can take the older brother, Christian, aka Saviour One, and Morel and Veyrenc, you take Christophe, Saviour Two. Use the code, because my phones are being tapped.’
‘We ought to have two night teams.’
‘We’ll have Froissy taking care of multidirectional mikes, and Lamarre, Mordent and Justin can relieve you. Their town house has security protection.’
‘What if we’re spotted?’
Adamsberg thought for a few minutes then shook his head, unable to come up with an answer.
‘We won’t be spotted,’ Veyrenc concluded.
XVII
His neighbour, Lucio, stopped Adamsberg as he was crossing the little garden on the way to his house.
‘Hola, hombre!’ the old man called.
‘Hola, Lucio.’
‘A nice cool beer would do you good. In this heat.’
‘Not now, Lucio.’
‘And with all the trouble you’re in.’
‘I’m in trouble?’
‘You certainly are, hombre.’
Adamsberg never disregarded Lucio’s pronouncements and he waited in the garden until the old Spaniard returned with two chilled beers. Lucio was in the habit of pissing against the beech tree and Adamsberg wondered if that was why the grass was dying at the base of the trunk. Or perhaps it was just the heat.
The old man took the tops off the bottles – never any cans for him – and held one out.
‘Two men came prowling around,’ Lucio said between swigs.
‘Here?’
‘Yes. Pretending not to. Trying to look like ordinary passers-by. But the more casual you try to look, the more you look like something else. Shit-stirrers, they were. Shit-stirrers never walk with their heads up or looking down like ordinary people. Their eyes are everywhere, as if they were tourists. But our street isn’t a tourist attraction, is it, eh, hombre?’
‘No.’
‘Shit-stirrers, they were, and your house was what interested them.’
‘Staking it out?’
‘Noting when your son came and went, maybe to know when the house was empty.’
‘Shit-stirrers, eh,’ murmured Adamsberg. ‘People who’ll end up being choked with a mouthful of bread.’
‘Why do you want to choke them with bread?’
Adamsberg simply spread his arms wide.
‘Well, I’m telling you,’ Lucio carried on, ‘if some shit-stirrers are hoping to get into your place, it means you’ve got problems.’
Adamsberg blew on the mouth of the bottle to make a little whistling noise – something you can’t do to a beer can, as Lucio rightly pointed out – and sat down on an old packing case his neighbour had placed under the tree.
‘Have you done something stupid, hombre?’
‘No.’
‘Who are you going after?’
‘I’m going into unknown territory.’
‘Not a good plan, amigo. If you need it, and if you’ve got someone or something you need to put in a safe place, you know where my spare key is.’
‘Yes, under the bucket of gravel behind the shed.’
‘You’d better put it in your pocket. Up to you, hombre,’ said Lucio, moving off.
The table had been laid, using the plastic sheet still stained by Hellebaud. Zerk and Momo were waiting for Adamsberg before starting their supper. Zerk had cooked pasta with steamed tuna chunks and tomato sauce, a variant of the rice with tuna and tomato sauce he had served up a day or two earlier. Adamsberg thought of asking him to ring the changes a bit, but immediately rejected the thought, there was no point criticising his previously unknown son over a bit of tuna. Still less in front of an unknown Mo. Zerk put some bits of fish on the side of his plate and Hellebaud attacked them with gusto.
‘He looks a lot better,’ said Adamsberg.
‘Yep,’ Zerk confirmed.
Adamsberg was never concerned by silence falling in company and felt no need to try and make conversation come what may. Angels could pass and pass again as far as he was concerned. His son appeared to be of similar disposition, and Mo was at first too intimidated to try and launch a subject for table talk. But he was the kind of person who was bothered by the angels passing.
‘Are you a diabolist?’ he asked the commissaire in a hesitant voic
e.
Adamsberg looked at the young man in incomprehension, chewing on his mouthful. Steamed tuna fish is dense and dry and that was what he had been thinking about when Mo put the question.
‘I don’t understand, Mo.’
‘Do you like playing diabolo?’
Adamsberg poured some more tomato sauce over his tuna and thought that perhaps being a diabolist or playing diabolo might mean something like ‘playing with the devil’ in the youth slang of Mo’s milieu.
‘Sometimes you have to,’ he replied.
‘But not professionally?’
Adamsberg stopped chewing and swallowed some water.
‘I don’t think we can be talking about the same thing. What do you mean by “diabolo”?’
‘It’s a game,’ Mo explained, blushing. ‘This double cone made of rubber, you roll it on a string with two handles,’ he said, miming the action.
‘Oh, I get it, diabolo,’ said Adamsberg. ‘No, I don’t play that. Or yo-yos either.’
Mo plunged his nose back in his food, disappointed with the failure of his initiative, and casting about for something else to say.
‘Is he really important to you? The pigeon?’
‘Well, Mo, they’ve tied your feet together too.’
‘Who’s “they”?’
‘The powers that be, they’ve got their eye on you.’
Adamsberg got up, moved aside a corner of the curtain pinned across the door, and looked out on the garden as night fell. Lucio was sitting on the packing case, reading his newspaper.
‘We’re going to have to think a bit,’ he said, starting to pace round the table. ‘Two shit-stirrers were seen in the street today. Don’t worry, Mo, we’ve got a bit of time, they weren’t actually looking for you.’
‘Cops?’
‘More likely someone attached to the Ministry. They want to know what I’ve got in mind for the Clermont-Brasseurs. They’re worried about the shoelaces. I’ll explain later. It’s the weak point in their armour. Your escape has panicked them.’
‘What are they looking for here?’ asked Zerk.