by Fred Vargas
‘Well, Danglard?’
‘I only see it because you pointed it out. Christian’s two suits are very alike, both navy, but not quite the same.’
‘See.’
‘The pinstripe is a bit thicker on the second one, the lapels are a bit wider, the sleeves a bit narrower.’
‘There you are,’ said Adamsberg with a smile, getting up and taking long strides between the fireplace and the door. ‘There you are. Between the time Christian left the reception, at about midnight, and the time he got home, at about two, he’d changed his clothes. Very close match, hardly noticeable, but there it is. The suit he sent to the cleaners next day wasn’t the one he was wearing when he got back, Retancourt wasn’t wrong. But it was the one he wore to the party. And why, Danglard?’
‘Because it smelt of petrol,’ said the commandant, managing a weak smile once more.
‘And it stank of petrol because Christian had bloody well torched the Mercedes with his father strapped inside. And another thing,’ he said, striking the table with his fist. ‘He cut his hair before he went home. Look at the photos again. At the party, his hair is fairly long and he has a bit of a fringe. But when he returned, according to the sacked chambermaid, his hair was very short. Because, as has happened before to Mo, the fierce flames singed his hair and it was obvious. So he cut it, made it look the same all over, and he put on a different suit. And what does he tell his valet next morning? That in the night he cut his hair short as a grief reflex, an act of despair. Christian the Skinhead.’
‘There’s no direct evidence,’ Danglard said. ‘Retancourt’s photo wasn’t taken the same night and nothing proves either she or the chambermaid who told her didn’t make a mistake. The suits are very similar.’
‘We might find some hairs in the car.’
‘It’ll have been cleaned since then.’
‘Not necessarily. It’s very hard to remove all the tiny hairs after a haircut, especially if we’re lucky and the headrests are made of cloth. We can suppose Christian would have done it in haste, not thinking he was taking a risk. He probably didn’t think he’d even be questioned. Retancourt will have to examine the car.’
‘But how will she get permission to get inside it?’
‘She won’t. And a third thing, Danglard, the dog and the sugar.’
‘That’s your business with Léo.’
‘No, I’m talking about another dog, another lump of sugar. We’re going through a period infested with sugar lumps, commandant. Some years there are plagues of ladybirds, other times sugar lumps.’
Adamsberg looked up the messages from Retancourt about the sacked chambermaid and got the commandant to read them.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Danglard.
‘That’s because you’ve been under a train. Yesterday on the road, Blériot asked me to give some sugar to Léo’s dog, Fleg. He’d just been fixing the engine in the police car and explained that Fleg wouldn’t touch the sugar if his hands smelt of petrol.’
‘Ah, very good,’ said Danglard, more alert now, getting up to fetch some Calvados from the cupboard.
‘What are you doing, Danglard?’
‘I’m just getting a wee drop, to cheer up my coffee and the cesspit as well.’
‘Dammit, commandant, that’s Léo’s Calva, the one Valleray gives her. What will it look like when she gets back? Like some soldiers from an occupying army have been billeted here.’
‘OK, you’re right,’ said Danglard, quickly putting a drop in his coffee, as Adamsberg turned away to start pacing towards the fireplace.
‘That’s why the chambermaid was fired. Christian had changed his clothes, and cleaned himself up, but his hands still smelt of petrol. It can cling to your skin for hours. And a dog would sniff it out, no trouble. Which is what Christian realised when his pet refused the sugar. A lump of sugar that the chambermaid had picked up. And which she criticised. He had to get rid of the contaminated sugar lump. And the chambermaid, so he sacked her on the spot.’
‘She’ll need to be called as a witness.’
‘About that and the haircut. She’s not the only person to have seen Christian that evening. There were the two cops who came to inform him of the news. And then he went and shut himself in his room. We need to know more about what Retancourt says here: Chmbrmaid criticsed sugar – what was she criticising? Get Retancourt to work on it tonight.’
‘Tonight?’
‘In Paris. You’re going back, Danglard, to brief Retancourt, and then you’re going to vanish like a shadow.’
‘To Ordebec?’
‘No.’
Danglard drank his coffee-Calva and thought for a moment.
Adamsberg was fiddling with the two mobiles, taking out the batteries.
‘You want me to go after the two kids? That it?’
‘Yes. You should find them quite quickly in Casares. Once they get to North Africa, though, it would be another matter. If the cops spotted them in Granada, they might well be looking in all the towns on the coast, as we speak. You’ve got to get there before them, Danglard. Get down there fast and bring them back.’
‘It seems a bit premature to me.’
‘No, I think our case will stand up. But we need to organise their return carefully. Zerk has to look as if he’s back from Italy, after some girlfriend trouble, and Mo will have to be picked up hiding out in the home of one of his friends. The friend’s father cracks and reports him. It has to look plausible.’
‘How will I contact you?’
‘Call the Blue Boar, but use coded messages. I’ll say that from tomorrow either Veyrenc or I will eat there every night.’
‘Running Boar,’ Danglard corrected automatically, then he slumped dramatically, his long arms at his sides. ‘But for god’s sake, Adamsberg, it was Christophe who was driving the Mercedes, Christian had already left the party.’
‘They must both be in it together. Christian took his own car earlier, and parked it near the Mercedes, then he waited for his brother to come along. He’d be all ready, wearing the new trainers. But he laced them like an oldster. When Christophe walked away from the Mercedes, leaving their father belted into the front seat, supposedly to look for his lost mobile – which he had indeed deliberately dropped on the pavement – Christian poured the petrol over the car, lit it and then ran back to his own car. Christophe was a safe distance away when it caught fire, he called the police, and he even ran to help, as the witnesses said. Christian then finished off the operation. He dumped the trainers at Mo’s place, having lured him away. The door of Mo’s flat is easy to force. Then he changed his suit, putting the one he was wearing into the car boot. He realised some of his hair was singed. So he cut it himself. Next day he retrieves his suit and sends it to the cleaners. All that remains to do then is to get Mo arrested.’
‘And why would Christian have scissors or a razor with him?’
‘These guys always have a travelling bag with them in the boot of the car. They have to be ready to catch a plane at the drop of a hat. So he’d have had them.’
‘No examining magistrate will listen to this,’ said Danglard, shaking his head. ‘They’ve put up a big wall round it, the system’s impregnable.’
‘Well, we’ll get in through the system. I don’t think the Comte de Valleray would appreciate the fact that the brothers killed his old friend Antoine. So he can pull some strings.’
‘When should I go?’
‘Right now, I think, Danglard.’
‘I don’t like leaving you alone to face Lord Hellequin.’
‘I don’t think it’s Lord Hellequin who tries to kill people with the Paris express. Or with a commando-style crossbow.’
‘A bit tasteless. Not his style.’
‘Exactly.’
XLII
Danglard was putting his bags in the boot of one of the cars when he saw Veyrenc in the courtyard. He had not yet found either the strength or the words, still less the humility, to speak to the lieutenant. Mortembot�
��s death had made it possible to put off the reckoning. The idea of simply holding out his hand and saying ‘Thank you’ seemed to him to be ridiculously pompous.
‘I’m going to pick up the kids,’ he said, rather shamefacedly, as he came up beside him.
‘Risky,’ said Veyrenc.
‘Adamsberg has found a way through, a rat run to get into the Clermonts. We may be able to build the case against the two brothers.’
Veyrenc’s expression lightened, his lip lifted in that dangerously girlish smile. Danglard remembered that Veyrenc loved his nephew, Armel, aka Zerk, like a son.
‘When you get there,’ said Veyrenc, ‘check something. That Armel hasn’t nicked his grandfather’s pistol.’
‘Adamsberg said he didn’t know how to use a gun.’
‘He doesn’t know the boy at all. He can handle a gun all right.’
‘Oh my god, Veyrenc,’ said Danglard, forgetting for a moment the embarrassment which was inhibiting his powers of conversation. ‘I meant to tell Adamsberg something, nothing to do with the case, but all the same. Can you give him a message?’
‘What is it?’
‘In the hospital, I picked up the shawl that Lina let fall from her shoulders. However hot it is, she always wears it. And later I helped the doctor to carry Valleray out, when he had a fainting fit. He had his shirt taken off and he was trying to resist as hard as he could. And here,’ Danglard said, putting his finger on his shoulder blade, ‘he has a rather disfiguring birthmark, a port wine stain, looks a bit like a woodlouse, about two centimetres long. And the thing is, Lina has one just the same.’
The two men looked at each other, almost directly.
‘Lina Vendermot is Valleray’s daughter,’ said Danglard. ‘I’m as sure of that as of the shit I’ve been going through. And since she and her brother Hippo look as alike as two peas, with their fair hair, they make a pair. But the two darker ones, Martin and Antonin, must be Vendermot’s children.’
‘My god. Do they know?’
‘Well, the count must know. That’s why he was struggling not to have his shoulder exposed. I wouldn’t know about the children. Doesn’t look like it.’
‘But why would Lina hide her birthmark?’
‘She’s a woman. The birthmark’s rather ugly.’
‘I’m trying to think of any way this might change the Hellequin manoeuvres.’
‘Haven’t had time to think about that, Veyrenc. I leave it all to you,’ Danglard said, holding out his hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
He’d done it. He’d said it.
Like the most ordinary of people. Like any common mortal for a mediocre resolution of a drama, he thought, wiping his damp palm before getting into the car. To shake hands and say thank you was easy perhaps, and banal, possibly taking some courage, but now it was done, and deserved. He would say more at some later stage, if he could manage it. A sudden feeling of angry pleasure came over him and made him sit up straighter as he drove off, at the thought that Adamsberg had nailed the murderers of Clermont père. Thanks to Mortembot’s jacket, and never mind what the reasoning was, since Danglard hadn’t really been able to follow the logic. But the means were in place now and for the moment that consoled him for all the moral failings of the world, and even to some extent for his own.
* * *
At nine in the evening he had joined Retancourt on the terrace of the cafe outside her flat in Seine-Saint-Denis. Every time he saw Violette again, even after three days, he found her taller and more solid than in his memory and was impressed. She was sitting on a plastic chair, the legs of which splayed under her weight.
‘Three things,’ said Retancourt, who had spent only a short time enquiring after the feelings of her colleagues dealing with the Ordebec quagmire, since empathy wasn’t her thing. ‘The car belonging to Saviour 1, Christian. I found out that it’s parked in their private garage with the cars of his brother and their wives. If I’m to examine it, I’ll have to get it out of there. So I’ll have to immobilise the alarm and jump-start it. No bother, Noël can do that. But I won’t take the risk of getting it back, they’ll have to work it out themselves, it’s not our problem.’
‘We won’t be able to use the samples if we don’t go through official channels.’
‘Yeah, but we’d never get permission. So we go with plan B. Illegal collection of clues, put together the file and then charge head-on.’
‘If you say so,’ said Danglard, who rarely challenged Retancourt’s somewhat strong-arm tactics.
‘Second point,’ she said, putting her powerful index finger on the table, ‘the suit. The one he sent to the cleaners discreetly. Petrol vapour, like hair, is very hard to eliminate completely. With a bit of luck, there should be some left in the cloth. Of course, that means stealing the suit.’
‘Difficult.’
‘Not really. I know the daily routine. I know when Vincent, the butler, is on the door. I turn up with a bag, saying I’ve left behind a jacket or some other clothes on the first floor, and I follow my nose.’
Improvisation, cheek and confidence, all means that Danglard never employed.
‘What excuse did you give for leaving?’
‘My husband was trying to find me, he’d caught up with me and I had to get away, in my own interests. Vincent expressed sympathy, though he seemed surprised that I was married and even more that a husband was chasing me with such determination. But I don’t think Christian even noticed I’d gone. Third point, the sugar. The chambermaid, Leila. She’s really pissed off, she’ll certainly talk if she can remember anything. Whether the sugar or the haircut. How did Adamsberg get the idea of the changed suit?’
‘I can’t tell you exactly, Violette. It was all held together by some kind of spider’s web, incomplete and rather mixed up.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Retancourt, who had often argued against the commissaire’s nebulous mental system.
‘Here’s to the arrest of the Clermont-Brasseur brothers,’ said Danglard, filling up Retancourt’s glass, simply for an excuse to replenish his own. ‘It will be great to see, ethically correct, hygienic and satisfying, but it won’t last long. The empire will be passed on to some nephew and it’ll all start again. Don’t try to call me on my mobile. Report to Adamsberg at this restaurant called the Running Boar in the evenings. It’s in Ordebec. If he tells you to call him at the Blue Boar, don’t worry, it’s the same place, but he never gets the name right. I don’t know why he keeps thinking the boar is blue. I’ll write down the number for you.’
‘You’re off somewhere, commandant?’
‘Yes, tonight.’
‘Somewhere we can’t reach you. I mean, we won’t know where you are?’
‘Right.’
Retancourt nodded without showing surprise, which made Danglard fear that she had understood the whole business with Mo.
‘And you want to get away without anyone knowing?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how do you think you’re going to do that?’
‘Well, I’ll sneak away. On foot, taxi, not sure yet.’
‘Bad idea,’ said Retancourt, shaking her head disapprovingly.
‘Well, I can’t think of anything better.’
‘I can. We’ll go upstairs to my place for a last drink, looks quite natural. And my brother will drive you. You know Bruno’s got a police record? Well known to all the cops round here.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s so harmless and dumb that if ever they stop him when he’s in a car, they just give him a little sign of recognition and wave him on. He’s no good at anything much except driving. He can take you tonight wherever you want to go. Strasbourg, Lille, Toulouse, Lyon, wherever. What direction are you going in?’
‘Let’s say Toulouse?’
‘Right. You can get a train on from there to your mystery destination.’
‘Sounds perfect, Violette.’
‘Except for your clothes. Wherever you’re going, I presume you don’t want ever
yone to know you’re from Paris, not a good idea. Take a couple of Bruno’s outfits, they might be a bit long in the leg and tight in the waist but they’ll do. They’ll be a bit showy. You won’t like them. You’ll look a bit flash, that’s good.’
‘Vulgar, you mean?’
‘Yep, pretty much.’
‘That’ll be fine.’
‘One last thing. When you get to Toulouse, let Bruno get away fast. Don’t get him mixed up in whatever mess you’re sorting out, he’s got enough on his plate.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of getting anyone into trouble,’ said Danglard, but he couldn’t help thinking at the same time that he had almost got Veyrenc killed.
‘And how’s the pigeon doing?’ Retancourt asked simply as she stood up.
* * *
Thirty-five minutes later, Danglard was leaving Paris lying on the back seat of her brother’s car, wearing a cheap suit that was too tight in the sleeves and carrying a new mobile. Bruno had said he could sleep if he wanted. Danglard closed his eyes and felt that at least until he reached Toulouse he would be protected by the powerful sovereign arm of Violette Retancourt.
XLIII
‘Like a wooddlouse?’ Adamsberg repeated a second time.
He had returned from the gendarmerie and the hospital only at 7 p.m. Veyrenc was waiting for him at the end of the path to the guest house and summed up the essentials of the inquiry so far. The analysis by the technicians from Lisieux had yielded little. The killer had had a very common type of camping stool, the sort used by all fishermen, and the crossbow was indeed Herbier’s and carried only his fingerprints. Estalère and Justin had returned to the squad in Paris, and Léone had recovered a little more strength but had still said nothing.
‘A woodlouse two centimetres long. On Valleray’s left shoulder, and on Lina’s.’
‘Like a sort of big insect painted on their backs?’
‘I don’t want to sound as pedantic as Danglard, but a woodlouse isn’t actually an insect, it’s a crustacean.’
‘A crustacean? Like a shrimp, you mean, a shrimp out of water?’