The Ghost Riders of Ordebec: A Commissaire Adamsberg Mystery

by Fred Vargas

  The doctor came towards him with his usual mincing gait, looking spruce and well dressed. He hadn’t lost an ounce of weight in prison, indeed it seemed that he had even put some on.

  ‘Thank you for arranging this little excursion, Adamsberg,’ he said, as they shook hands. ‘Very refreshing to see the countryside. But please don’t use my real name in front of these people. I want to preserve my reputation.’

  ‘What are we to call you then? Dr Hellebaud perhaps?’

  ‘Very well. And how is your tinnitus? Come back, no doubt. As I recall, you only had two sessions.’

  ‘Gone, doctor. Just a bit of a whistle in the left ear.’

  ‘Capital. I’ll fix it before I go away again with these gentlemen. And the kitten?’

  ‘She’ll be weaned soon. And how is prison life, doctor? I haven’t had time to visit you since your sentence.’

  ‘What can I say, mon ami? I’m up to my ears in work. I have to treat the governor – very long-standing back trouble; the prisoners – who suffer from depression and childhood traumas of every kind, quite fascinating cases, I confess. And the warders – a lot of them are addicts or suffer from repressed instincts of violence. I only see five patients a day, I’ve been very firm about that. I don’t accept payment of course, I’m not allowed to. But you know how it is, I get plenty of compensation. Nice cell, special treatment, good food, all the books I want, I can’t complain. So with all my cases, I’m writing a book that’s going to be a rather remarkable study of prison trauma. Now tell me about our patient here. What happened to her? What have they diagnosed?’

  Adamsberg spent about a quarter of an hour briefing the doctor in the basement, then they went to the first floor where a reception committee was waiting outside Léone’s room: Capitaine Émeri, Dr Turbot, the Comte de Valleray and Lina Vendermot. Adamsberg introduced them to ‘Dr Paul Hellebaud’ and one of the guards removed the handcuffs with respectful care.

  ‘This guard,’ the doctor whispered to Adamsberg, ‘thinks I saved his life. He’d become impotent. Poor lad was devastated. He brings me my coffee in bed every morning now. Who’s that scrumptious woman, good enough to eat?’

  ‘Lina Vendermot. She’s the one who started it all, causing the first murder.’

  ‘A killer?’ the doctor asked with a surprised and disapproving air.

  ‘We don’t know that. She had this deadly vision, she told people about it, and everything started after that.’

  ‘What kind of vision?’

  ‘It’s an old local legend, about a cavalcade of ghostly riders that have been coming through here for centuries. They’re dead, but they carry with them living people who have sinned.’

  ‘Ah, do you mean Hellequin’s Horde?’ the doctor asked, looking alert.

  ‘Yes indeed. Do you know about them?’

  ‘Who doesn’t, mon ami? So Lord Hellequin comes galloping in these parts, does he?’

  ‘Three kilometres from here.’

  ‘What a fantastic place to find myself,’ said the doctor appreciatively, rubbing his hands, a gesture that reminded Adamsberg of the time the doctor had once served him some excellent wine.

  ‘And the old lady was caught up in the cavalcade?’

  ‘No, no, but we think that she knew something.’

  When the doctor went across to the bed and looked down at Léone, still lying there cold and white, his smile abruptly vanished and Adamsberg brushed away the bubble of electricity that had returned.

  ‘Something bitten you?’ the doctor whispered, without taking his eyes off Léone, as if he were inspecting a programme of works.

  ‘Nothing, a little bubble of electricity that comes now and then.’

  ‘No such thing,’ said the doctor dismissively. ‘We’ll look into that later. The old lady’s case is more touch and go.’

  He asked the four guards to stand back against the wall and not to speak. Dr Turbot was enhancing his reputation as a dratsab by his supercilious and suspicious smile. Émeri was virtually standing to attention as if under review by the Emperor, and the count, for whom a chair had been brought, was clasping his hands together to stop them trembling. Lina stood behind him. Adamsberg felt his mobile vibrate, clandestine phone number two, and glanced at the text message. They are here. Searching Léo’s. LVB. He showed the message discreetly to Danglard. Let them search, he thought, sending a grateful thanks to Lieutenant Veyrenc.

  The doctor had put his large hands on Léo’s cranium, and seemed to be listening for a long time, then he moved to the neck and chest. He went round the bed, without speaking and felt her thin feet, massaging and manipulating them, stopping and starting for a few minutes. Then he came towards Adamsberg.

  ‘The whole mechanism’s stalled, Adamsberg. The fuses have blown, the circuits are disconnected, the mediastinal and encephalic fascias are blocked, the brain’s under-oxygenated, the breathing is decompressed, and the digestive system is in stasis. How old is she?’

  Adamsberg heard the count’s breathing come more quickly.

  ‘Eighty-eight.’

  ‘Right. I’ll have to do a first session of forty-five minutes or so. And another, shorter one at about 5 p.m. Is that all right, René?’ he asked, turning to the senior guard. The formerly impotent guard nodded immediately, with total veneration in his eyes.

  ‘If she responds to the treatment, I’ll need to return in a fortnight to stabilise her.’

  ‘That won’t be a problem,’ said the count, in a strained voice.

  ‘Now if you will all be good enough to leave the room, I should like to be alone with the patient. Dr Turbot can stay if he wishes, provided he can control his sarcastic expression. Or I might ask him to leave too.’

  The four guards consulted each other, checked the imperious look from Valleray and the doubt on Émeri’s face, and in the end, René, the senior one, gave his agreement.

  ‘But we’ll be outside the door, doctor.’

  ‘Naturally, René, that goes without saying. Besides, if I’m not mistaken, there are two CCTV cameras in the room.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said Émeri. ‘For her protection.’

  ‘So I’m not going to fly away. I have no intention of doing so anyway, because it’s a fascinating case. Everything is functioning, but nothing is working. Unquestionably the effect of terror, which through an unconscious survival reflex has paralysed all her functions. She doesn’t want to relive the attack, she doesn’t want to have to come back and face it. You may deduce from that, commissaire, that she may know her assailant and that the knowledge is intolerable. She’s taken flight, very far away, too far away.’

  Two of the guards took up position outside the door, the other two went into the courtyard to stand under the window. The count, limping on his stick into the corridor, took Adamsberg by the elbow.

  ‘He’s going to treat her just with his fingers?’

  ‘Yes, Valleray, I told you.’

  ‘My god.’

  The count looked at his watch.

  ‘Only seven minutes so far, Valleray.’

  ‘Can’t you go in and see how it’s going?’

  ‘When Dr Hellebaud is on a difficult case, he works so intensely that he comes out dripping with sweat. We can’t disturb him.’

  ‘I understand. You haven’t asked how I moved the sword.’

  ‘The sword?’

  ‘The sword of Damocles the Ministry was dangling over your head.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It wasn’t easy to convince Antoine’s sons. But it came through in the end. You’ve got one more week to catch your Mohamed.’

  ‘Thank you, Valleray.’

  ‘But the minister’s private secretary sounded a bit strange. When he agreed, he added, “That is, if they don’t find him today.” About Mohamed. As if he was laughing. Do they have some information about him?’

  Adamsberg felt the bubble of electricity sting his neck more intensely than ever. No such thing, the doctor had told him, it doesn’
t exist.

  ‘I haven’t been informed,’ he said.

  ‘Are they running a parallel search behind your back or something?’

  ‘No idea, Valleray.’

  By now the special team of undercover agents from the Ministry would have finished searching everywhere he had been since he arrived in Ordebec. Léo’s guest house, the Vendermot house – Adamsberg hoped that Hippolyte would have addressed them entirely in backwards-speak – and the gendarmerie – and here he hoped with all his might that Fleg had gone for them. It was very unlikely that they would have visited Herbier’s house, but an abandoned building would always interest police doing a search. He ran through the precautions he and Veyrenc had taken: wiping off all fingerprints, washing the dishes in boiling water, sheets off the bed and the two young ones told to dispose of them once they were well away from Ordebec – and the wax seals replaced. The only thing left was the pigeon’s droppings, which they had cleaned off as best they could, but some stains remained. He had asked Veyrenc if he knew the secret of this phenomenal lasting power of bird droppings, but Veyrenc knew as little as he did about it.

  XXVII

  The two young men had taken turns, through the night, one driving while the other slept. Mo now had much shorter hair and was sporting glasses and an improvised moustache, a hasty but reassuring change, in order to look more like the photo Veyrenc had glued on the false papers. Fascinated by his new ID, Mo kept turning it over, admiring it and saying that the cops were way better at getting round the law than his gang of amateurs in the Cité des Buttes. Zerk had plotted their route to avoid motorway tolls, and they met their first roadblock on the Saumur bypass.

  ‘Pretend to be asleep, Mo,’ Zerk hissed through his teeth. ‘When we stop, I’ll wake you, you faff about in your pocket, pull out the ID. Try to look like you’re dozy and not very bright. Think of something simple, like Hellebaud, just concentrate on him.’

  ‘Or the cows?’ whispered Mo anxiously.

  ‘Yeah, and don’t say anything, just shake your head as if you’re still sleepy.’

  Two gendarmes approached the car slowly, looking bored rigid and pleased to have something to break the monotony. One of them went round the car with his torch, the other flashed his rapidly across the youngsters’ faces, as he looked at their papers.

  ‘New plates, eh?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Zerk. ‘I put ’em on a fortnight ago.’

  ‘Seven-year-old car, new plates?’

  ‘That was in Paris, officer,’ Zerk explained. ‘Plates were knocked in, front and back, had to change ’em.’

  ‘Why, weren’t they readable any more?’

  ‘Yeah, but you know what it’s like, Paris, if your plates are fucked up, they just think they can, like, bash your car any time they park.’

  ‘You’re not from Paris then?’

  ‘O-oh no. Pyrenees, us.’

  ‘Ha, better than Paris, anyway,’ said the gendarme with a hint of a smile as he handed back their papers.

  They drove in silence for a few minutes, letting their heartbeats settle down.

  ‘Hey, you were ace,’ said Mo. ‘I could never have done that.’

  ‘We’d better stop and rearrange the plates a bit. Kick ’em a few times.’

  ‘Put on some soot from the exhaust.’

  ‘We’ll grab a bite same time. Put your ID in your back pocket, so it gets a bit distressed. Looks too new.’

  At 11 a.m. they met a second roadblock at Angoulěme. At four in the afternoon, Zerk stopped the car on a mountain road near Laruns.

  ‘Let’s take an hour to rest here, Mo. But no more. Got to get across now.’

  ‘This is the frontier?’

  ‘Practically. We’ll get into Spain at this crossing point, Les Socques. And then, know what we’ll do? We’ll eat like kings at the cafe in Hoz de Jaca. We’ll stay at Berdún and tomorrow Granada, another twelve hours on the road.’

  ‘Get a shower, too? We both stink.’

  ‘Yeah, we do, and two guys who stink get noticed.’

  ‘Your dad’s going to be in big trouble. All because of me. What’ll he do?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Zerk, between gulps of water from a bottle. ‘I don’t really know him.’

  ‘What?’ said Mo, grabbing the bottle.

  ‘He only found me couple of months ago.’

  ‘He found you? Adopted you? But you look like him.’

  ‘No, I said he found me, when I was twenty-eight. Before that he didn’t know I existed.’

  ‘Shit, man,’ said Mo, rubbing his cheeks. ‘My dad’s the opposite. He knew fine I existed but he didn’t want to know.’

  ‘Nor did mine. I found him first. Fathers. Complicated.’

  ‘We better get some sleep.’

  Mo had the impression that Zerk’s voice had cracked. Maybe talking about his dad. Maybe just from exhaustion. The two young men bumped up against each other trying to find a comfortable position to sleep.

  ‘Zerk.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘There’s one little thing I could do for your dad, make it up to him.’

  ‘Find whoever killed Clermont?’

  ‘No, find whoever tied the pigeon’s feet.’

  ‘Some little toerag.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’d really be something. But you can’t do that.’

  ‘In your house, the basket you brought Hellebaud in?’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Zerk, sitting up.

  ‘There was this string in it, been round his legs.’

  ‘Yeah, my dad kept it, to get it analysed. What about it?’

  ‘Well, it’s string from off a diabolo.’

  Zerk sat up properly, lit a cigarette, gave one to Mo and opened the car window.

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘You use special string. If you don’t, it gets worn out, it frays, and the diabolo won’t work properly.’

  ‘Like a yo-yo or what?’

  ‘No, no, no. Because the diabolo wears out the string in the middle, it can even break, so you need this special strong nylon string.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You can’t get it in just any shop, you have to go to a diabolo store. And there’s not that many in Paris.’

  ‘Well,’ said Zerk, after a moment’s thought, ‘I don’t see you finding whoever tortured our pigeon by watching people going in and out the shops.’

  ‘No, there’s a way,’ Mo insisted. ‘It wasn’t professional string. I don’t think it was heart-woven.’

  ‘What?’ said Zerk.

  ‘Reinforced centre – real pros have this very pricey string. You get it in rolls of ten metres, twenty metres, whatever. But this wasn’t like that. It was just the kind you get in a kit, with a diabolo and sticks.’

  ‘I’m still not with you, Mo.’

  ‘It didn’t look to me like it was worn at all. But maybe the guys that work with your dad, they could look at it with a magnifier?’

  ‘Microscope probably,’ said Zerk. ‘But anyway, what if it was new?’

  ‘Well, why would a kid use the string from his new diabolo set? Why doesn’t he just take some string from round the house?’

  ‘Because he’s got plenty of it?’

  ‘Yeah, see? His dad runs the shop. So he takes some string off of a big roll, and of course he doesn’t take the expensive stuff. So his dad’s maybe a dealer, sells string to people who make the kits? So there, you’re talking, can’t be many of them in Paris. Most likely near your dad’s office, because Hellebaud couldn’t walk after that, could he?’

  Zerk was smoking with his eyes half closed, looking at Mo.

  ‘You must’ve been thinking a lot to come up with that,’ he observed.

  ‘Nothing else to do when I was in that house. But you think it’s rubbish?’

  ‘No, I think if we could get on the Internet, we’d soon get a name and address for the little bastard.’

  ‘But we can’t, it’s too big a risk.’

&
nbsp; ‘Yeah, we could be on the run for ages. Unless you can find whoever tied your legs.’

  ‘It’s not a fair fight, is it? These Clermonts, it’s like we’re taking on the whole country.’

  ‘Quite a few countries, probably.’

  XXVIII

  In the hospital corridor, anxiety had replaced instinctive politeness, and nobody spoke a word. Lina shivered, her shawl slipped off again and fell to the floor. Danglard was quicker than Adamsberg. With two of his clumsy steps, he was behind her, replacing the shawl with old-fashioned fussiness.

  Irradiated, thought Adamsberg, while Émeri, blond eyebrows locked in a frown, looked disapproving. All of us irradiated, Adamsberg concluded. All putty in her hands, she can say what she likes, catch whoever she wants. Then everyone’s eyes once more turned to keep watch on the closed door of Léo’s room, hoping for the handle to turn, as if waiting for the curtain to rise on an exceptional show. They all stood as still as cows in the fields.

  ‘There we are, engine’s turning over again,’ said the doctor simply, as he emerged from the room.

  He pulled a large white handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow methodically, still holding the door back.

  ‘You can go in,’ he said to the count, ‘but don’t say a word. And don’t try to get her to talk either. Not for another two weeks. She needs all that time to come to terms with things, she absolutely mustn’t be rushed, or she’ll go back into the dark again. If I have your solemn word, all of you can look at her.’

  The heads nodded together.

  ‘But who will see that you all do what I ask?’ the doctor insisted.

  ‘I will,’ said Dr Turbot, whom nobody had noticed as he followed Hellebaud out, looking somewhat dazed and overcome.