by Fred Vargas
‘Veyrenc did feel the train go past,’ Adamsberg said meaningfully.
Furious with Danglard’s lamentable behaviour, yes, disappointed, distressed, he was all of those. He felt the need to force his deputy to look him in the eye and be aware of that. He went off all alone, with a heart full of bile.
‘How is he now?’ asked Danglard, articulating scarcely audibly between his teeth.
‘He’s sleeping, he’s getting over it. But we’ll be lucky if he hasn’t got a few more red hairs afterwards. Or white ones.’
‘How did he know?’
‘Same way I did. You’re not much good as a plotter, commandant. Your excitement about some secret project, your pride and joy, could be read all over your face and in your body language right through dinner.’
‘Why did Veyrenc stay up all night?’
‘Because he put two and two together. He thought that if you were so worked up about something, some stunt you were going to keep for yourself, it was probably because you hoped to put one across him. Picking up some new information for instance. Whereas you, commandant, forgot that if an informer really wants to stay anonymous, he doesn’t usually want to meet you. He writes a note but doesn’t give a rendezvous. Even Estalère might have smelt a rat. You didn’t. But Veyrenc did. And finally and most importantly, he thought that, given the body count, it was best not to act alone. Unless, that is, a certain person was keen to win some kind of medal, so much so that he couldn’t see the bleeding obvious. Because you did receive a message didn’t you, Danglard? Giving you a rendezvous at the station?’
‘Yes.’
‘When? Where?’
‘I found this note in my pocket. Someone must have got in among the little crowd outside Glayeux’s house.’
‘And you kept it?’
‘No.’
‘Brilliant. Why not?’
Danglard bit the inside of his cheek several times before replying.
‘I didn’t want anyone to know I’d kept the message for myself. That I was acting with premeditation. What I meant to do, after collecting the information, was invent a plausible version.’
‘Such as?’
‘That I saw someone in the crowd. Asked around about him. And went to Cérenay to find out a bit more. Something banal.’
‘And more dignified, you mean.’
‘Yes,’ sighed Danglard, ‘more dignified.’
‘Didn’t work out, did it?’ said Adamsberg, getting up and pacing the small room, going round the commandant’s bed.
‘OK,’ said Danglard. ‘I fell in the shit. And I’m in it up to my neck.’
‘It happened to me before you, remember that?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you’re not the only one. The difficult bit isn’t falling in, it’s cleaning oneself up afterwards. What did the message say?’
‘It looked as if it was written by someone illiterate, several spelling mistakes. Either real or fake, could be either. But if it was faked, it was quite convincing: crossings-out and so on.’
‘And it said?’
‘That I should be at Cérenay station at 6.50 exactly. I presumed the writer lived there.’
‘I don’t think so. The advantage of Cérenay is that trains go through. At 6.56. The Ordebec branch line is disused now. What did Turbot say about the drug?’
Adamsberg’s eyes had returned more or less to normal. To their underwater, ‘seaweedy’ state as some people called it, inventing a word to describe the melting, vague, almost opaque aspect.
‘According to the first tests, it’s gone from my bloodstream. He thinks it was an anaesthetic vets use: it knocks someone out for about fifteen minutes, then disappears. Probably a weak dose of ketamine chlorohydrate, because I didn’t suffer from hallucinations. Commissaire, can I ask you to do something? I mean, can this whole sorry escapade be kept from the rest of the squad?’
‘I’ve got no objection. But there are three of us who know about it. It’s not me you should ask, but Veyrenc. After all, he might be tempted to take his revenge. Understandably.’
‘Yes.’
‘Shall I tell him to come and see you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘In the end,’ Adamsberg said, as he headed for the door, ‘you weren’t wrong when you imagined your life would be at risk in Ordebec. But as for finding out why someone wanted to kill you, commandant, you’ll have to start thinking, and dredge up all the little clues. Discover what it was about you that scared the killer.’
‘No!’ Danglard almost shouted, as Adamsberg was opening the door. ‘No, not me! The killer mistook me for you. The letter was addressed to the commissaire – even if it was spelt wrong. It was you they wanted to kill. You don’t look like a cop down from Paris, but I do. When I turned up at Glayeux’s house in a dark suit, the killer must have thought I was the commissaire.’
‘Lina thinks the same as you. But I don’t know why she thinks that. I’ll leave you now, Danglard, we need to sort out the shifts round Mortembot’s house.’
‘Will you be seeing Veyrenc?’
‘If he’s awake.’
‘Can you say something to him for me?’
‘Absolutely not, Danglard. That’s something you’ll have to do yourself.’
XXXVIII
The characteristics of the intervention site (as Émeri called it), otherwise known as Mortembot’s house, had been explained at length to the combined team of cops from Ordebec and Paris, and shifts had been drawn up. Émeri’s part-timer, the one he described as half-this and half-that, had been detached full-time by the Saint-Venon gendarmerie, because of the emergency situation. So there were four two-man teams, allowing round-the-clock shifts. One officer would take the back of the house, which gave on to the fields, covering that side and the east wall. The other would take the front of the house overlooking the street, and the west side with its gable. It wasn’t a long house, so every angle would be within a line of sight. At 14.35, Mortembot, having settled his large body on a small plastic chair, was sweating as he listened to his instructions. He was confined to the house until further notice, and was to keep the shutters closed. He had no objection. If he could, he would have begged them to put him inside a concrete drum. They worked out a code so that Mortembot would know when it was a policeman knocking at the door, bringing him food or information. The code would be changed every day. He was of course forbidden to open the door to anyone, the postman, employees from his nurseries, or friends anxious to hear any news. Brigadiers Blériot and Faucheur would handle the first shift until 9 p.m. Justin and Estalère would take over until 3 a.m., Adamsberg and Veyrenc until 9 a.m., and finally Danglard and Émeri would relieve them, staying until 3 p.m. Adamsberg had had to negotiate, using made-up excuses, so that Danglard and Veyrenc would not share a shift: he considered shotgun reconciliations futile and in poor taste. The programme was to last three days.
‘And then what, when three days are up?’ asked Mortembot, running his fingers again and again through his sweat-soaked hair.
‘We’ll just see,’ said Émeri coldly. ‘We won’t need to be watching over you for weeks if we catch the killer.’
‘But you’ll never catch him,’ said Mortembot, almost whining. ‘You can’t catch Lord Hellequin.’
‘So you believe in him? I thought you and your cousin didn’t believe in the supernatural.’
‘Jeannot didn’t. But I’ve always thought there was some power lurking in the Forest of Alance.’
‘Did you say so to Jeannot?’
‘No, no. He thought it was all a lot of nonsense, only idiots believed it.’
‘Well, if you believe it, you must know why Hellequin chose you. You know why you’re frightened of him?’
‘No, no, I’ve no idea.’
‘Oh yeah!’
‘Perhaps because I was close to Jeannot.’
‘And Jeannot killed young Tétard?’
‘Yes,’ said Mortembot, wiping his eyes.
‘And you helped
him?’
‘No, honest to god.’
‘Doesn’t bother you, does it, telling on your cousin now that he’s dead?’
‘Hellequin asks for contrition.’
‘Oh, that’s it, is it? So he’ll spare you. In that case, you’d do well to explain to him what happened with your mother.’
‘No! I never touched her! She was my mother!’
‘You touched something though, you pulled the stool away with a string. You’re a piece of shit, Mortembot. Get up, we’re going to lock you in now. And since you’ll have plenty of time to think, settle your accounts with Hellequin, draw up your confession.’
* * *
Adamsberg went back to the guest house where he found Hellebaud the pigeon nestled into the hollow on his own bed, and Veyrenc up, showered, changed and sitting eating some warmed-up pasta straight from the saucepan.
‘We have to take the shift from 3 a.m. to 9 a.m. Is that OK?’
‘Fine. I think I’m back to normal now. But seeing a train bearing down on you is indescribable. I nearly chickened out, I nearly left Danglard on the rails and got back on the platform.’
‘You’ll get an award,’ said Adamsberg with a brief grin. ‘Police gallantry medal. Solid silver.’
‘No. That would mean reporting the whole thing and stabbing Danglard in the back. I don’t think our poor old colleague would get over it. Albatross fallen to earth, intelligence failed.’
‘He’s already crawling on the ground, Louis. He doesn’t know how to get himself out of this mess.’
‘Yeah, right, normal enough.’
‘Yes.’
‘Want some pasta? I can’t eat all this,’ said Veyrenc, passing over the saucepan.
Adamsberg was still eating the lukewarm spaghetti, when his mobile pinged. He opened it with one hand and read Retancourt’s message. At last.
Sv 1 told butler hair cut 3am Friday cos shock + grief. Sacked chmbrmaid sez hair already cut post-party. But chmbrmd unreliable wtness hates Sv guts. Will check car.
Adamsberg showed the text to Veyrenc, his heart beating fast.
‘Don’t understand,’ said Veyrenc.
‘I’ll tell you.’
‘I’ve got something to explain too,’ said Veyrenc, lowering his girlish eyelashes. ‘They’re off.’
He stopped and drew a map of Africa on a piece of paper they had used for a shopping list.
When did you find out? Adamsberg wrote, under the words cheese, bread, lighter, birdseed.
Text an hour ago, Veyrenc wrote.
From?
Pal of your son.
What happened?
They spotted a cop in Granada.
Where now?
Casares. 15 km from Estepona.
?
Facing the African coast.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I’ve lost my appetite.’
XXXIX
‘Nothing to report,’ said Justin, when Veyrenc and Adamsberg arrived to take over at 3 a.m.
Adamsberg walked round to the back and found Estalère, conscientiously pacing up and down, looking in turn out at the fields and at the house.
‘Nothing,’ Estalère confirmed. ‘But he’s still not asleep,’ he added, pointing to the lights shining through the shutters.
‘He’s got plenty to think about, and it’ll keep him awake.’
‘I guess.’
‘What are you eating?
‘Lump of sugar, good for energy. Want some?’
‘No thanks, Estalère. Just now, when I see a sugar lump, I feel sick.’
‘Allergy?’ asked the young brigadier, opening wide his big green eyes.
Adamsberg hadn’t been able to sleep either, despite having tried to nap before going on duty. Zerk and Mo were in danger, on the verge of disappearing to North Africa, and why was his Zerk going all the way with Mo, sharing his fate? As for the Ordebec killer, he was slipping through his fingers like the ghastly ghost that he was: it was enough to make you think the locals were right and that no one could take hold of Lord Hellequin with his flowing locks. The Clermont family still seemed untouchable, although there was this business of the haircut. Such a fragile clue that it would melt away the moment it was examined. Unless, that is, the sacked chambermaid was telling the truth and Saviour 1, Christian, really had come home that night with his hair already cut. Going out at 8 p.m. with long hair, back at 2 a.m. with short hair. Like Mo, who shaved his head after getting scorched. So that no one could see his singed locks. So that the cops wouldn’t suspect him. But it was Christophe, not Christian, who had been driving their father. And both of them had completely undamaged suits, neither of which had been sent for dry-cleaning.
Adamsberg concentrated on the guard duty. The fields and the edge of the woods were visible by moonlight, although Émeri had announced that clouds were piling up in the west. It seemed that after two weeks of heatwave and no rain, the people of Normandy were at last starting to feel concern at the unusual weather. Those clouds in the west were becoming an obsession.
* * *
At 4 a.m., the lights in the house were still on, in both ground-floor rooms, and the kitchen and bathroom. Mortembot might be awake and that wouldn’t be surprising, but most insomniacs known to Adamsberg turned out the lights except in the room they were in. Perhaps Mortembot was so paralysed with fear that he didn’t want the house to be in darkness. At 5 a.m., Adamsberg went over to meet Veyrenc.
‘Does that look normal to you?’ he asked.
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘Shall we take a look?’
‘Yes.’
Adamsberg knocked at the front door, using the prearranged code: four long, two short, three long. He tried several times, without getting any response.
‘Open up,’ he said to Veyrenc, ‘and have your gun ready. Stay outside, while I check what he’s up to.’
Adamsberg, holding his own gun cocked for action, went through the empty rooms, hugging the walls. No books lying around, no TV on, no sign of Mortembot. In the kitchen were the remains of a cold meal, which he had not had the stomach to finish. In the bathroom, he found the clothes Mortembot had been wearing earlier in the day at the police station. The only way Mortembot could have escaped was through the skylight on the roof, by waiting for one of the cops to go round the corner, and then jumping down to the ground. Perhaps he didn’t trust them, and thought it best to disappear. Then Adamsberg pushed open the door of the lavatory, and Mortembot’s large body collapsed on to the floor, face up, his trousers round his thighs. The tiles were covered with blood: Mortembot’s throat had been pierced by a long steel object. The bolt from a crossbow, if Adamsberg was not mistaken. He had been dead a few hours. The narrow little window was broken, the glass lying on the floor.
The commissaire called Veyrenc.
‘Shot in the neck while he was taking a leak. Look at the angle,’ said Adamsberg, standing outside the lavatory door, looking at the window. ‘The bolt got him in the throat.’
‘Good god, Jean-Baptiste, that window’s barred, the gap’s not more than twenty centimetres either side. What kind of arrow is it? An archer firing through the window – surely Estalère would have seen him?’
‘It’s a bolt, a very powerful crossbow bolt.’
Veyrenc whistled, in either anger or surprise. ‘Well, that’s certainly something from the Middle Ages.’
‘No, not really, Louis. I think, from looking at the way it’s lodged in the wound, it must have been a hunting bolt. Very contemporary. They’re light, solid and accurate, and they have razor-sharp wings that cause a haemorrhage. Deadly, for sure.’
‘Provided you’re a good shot,’ said Veyrenc, moving round the body and peering at the bars on the window. ‘Look how narrow the gap is – I can hardly get my arm through. Even with a bit of luck, whoever shot it would have to be within five metres to get his target and not hit the bar. Estalère would surely have seen him. There’s light here from the street lamp.’
‘You know a lot about crossbows.’
‘On my military service, I had to train as a marksman. They had me learning every kind of weapon in the arsenal.’
‘That’s odd,’ said Veyrenc, turning round. ‘He’s changed.’
Adamsberg was calling Émeri on his phone. ‘Changed what?’
‘His clothes. Mortembot changed his clothes. He’s wearing a grey tracksuit now. But why do that when he was at home?’
‘To feel cleaner after his time in the police cells, probably? Normal enough, surely? Émeri? Did I wake you? Look, get here fast, Mortembot’s dead.’
‘But why didn’t he wait till the morning?’ Veyrenc was asking.
‘What?’
‘To change.’
‘Hell’s bells, Louis, what’s it matter? He went to take a leak, the killer was just waiting for that moment. Mortembot could be seen head-on, through that window, standing still with the light on. Ideal target. He collapsed, didn’t make a sound. Lord Hellequin got him, and in his old-fashioned way, what’s more.’
‘Well, old-fashioned, but updated for commando purposes, you said so yourself.’
‘It’s the only explanation I can see for a shot like that. But still a crossbow’s a heavy thing, weighs more than three kilos and it’s about a metre long. Even if he’s got one that folds up, you can’t hide it under a jacket. The killer must have known how to get rid of it afterwards.’
‘But who’d own a thing like that these days?’
‘Hunters, plenty of them. It’s typically used by big-time poachers, because it’s noiseless. It’s still officially classed as a sixth-category weapon, allowed without a permit because it’s considered suitable for “sport and recreation”. Some sport.’