Have Mercy On Us All (11 page)

Danglard saw Adamsberg come back in and shut himself in his office with a silent closing of the door. He wasn’t an oil painting either, but somehow he’d got the rainbow. Actually it would be truer to say that although none of Adamsberg’s features was handsome in itself, their combination paradoxically made him quite a good-looking man. None of the individual traits of his face could be called balanced, harmonious or handsome; in fact, he was a hotchpotch – yet the overall impression he made was attractive, especially when he got excited. Danglard had always found this random outcome quite unfair. His own face was no worse a mishmash than Adamsberg’s, but the cumulative effect was hopeless. Whereas Adamsberg, with no better cards to play, had got trumps.

Because Danglard had made himself read and think a lot since the age of two and a half, he wasn’t jealous. Also because he had his mental slide show. Also because despite the chronic irritation that Adamsberg caused him, Danglard quite liked the man; he even quite liked the way he looked, with his big nose and his odd, sideways smile. He’d not hesitated for a moment when Adamsberg had asked him to join his new murder squad. Adamsberg’s relaxed manner provided a much-needed counterweight to his
own
anxious and sometimes rather brittle hyperactivity; in fact, it calmed him down every day as much as a six-pack did.

Danglard meditated on Adamsberg’s closed door. One way or another the man was going to work on those 4s and was trying not to put his number two’s nose out of joint. He took his hands off the keyboard and leaned back in his chair. He was mildly worried: maybe he had been on the wrong track since yesterday evening. Come to think of it, he had seen those reversed 4s somewhere before. It had come to him in bed, as he was going to sleep, on his own. Somewhere long ago, maybe when he was still a young man, not yet a
flic
, and not in Paris. Danglard hadn’t travelled much in his life, so maybe he could try to track down that memory, assuming that anything of it remained save for an almost entirely obliterated trace.

Adamsberg had actually closed his door so as to be able to call around forty Paris commissariats without feeling the shadow of his deputy’s justified irritation looming over his shoulder. Danglard had plumped for a radical art operation; Adamsberg did not share that view. But to go from disagreeing with Danglard to launching inquiries over the whole metropolitan area of Paris was an illogical leap which Adamsberg preferred to perform on his own. Even this morning he hadn’t been quite sure he would do it. At breakfast, apologising to Camille for bringing work home, he’d opened his notebook and stared at Maryse’s sketch of the 4 as if he was playing double or quits. He asked Camille what she thought of it. “Pretty,” she said. Before she had woken up properly, Camille’s sight was so poor that she couldn’t really distinguish a landscape painting from a strip cartoon. If she’d actually seen the pencil drawing, she wouldn’t have called it pretty. She’d have said: “But that’s ghastly.” Adamsberg replied gently: “No, Camille, it’s not a pretty picture.” That was the moment, the word, the correction that made up his mind in a flash.

Feeling comfortably weary and agreeably woolly after his not very restful night, Adamsberg dialled the first number on his list.

He got to the end of his list by five, and he’d only once been out for a walk, at lunchtime. That was when Camille got him on his mobile, when he was munching a sandwich on a park bench.

It wasn’t her style to rehearse the events of the night before. Camille used words with care and discretion, relying on her body to express feelings. It was up to you to know what they were; it wasn’t easy to be sure.

Adamsberg jotted down on his pad:
woman
plus
smart
plus
desire
equals
Camille
. He broke off, and reread his note. Big words and flat words. But for all their obviousness, when applied to Camille they went into relief. He could almost see them rising like Braille from the surface of the paper. OK. Equals Camille. It was very hard for him to write the word
Love
. His ballpoint made an “L,” but out of sheer anxiety it stalled on the “o”. Adamsberg had long been puzzled by his own reticence until he’d managed to unravel it to its core, or so he thought. He liked loving. But he didn’t like what loving habitually brings in its train. Because love
leads to other things
, he thought. Staying in bed for ever or even for just a couple of days is an impossible dream. Love, hauled by a few common ideas, always
leads on to
four walls and no way out. It flares up out in the open like a grass fire but comes to rest under one roof, warming slippered feet at the stove. A man like Adamsberg could see from afar that the ineluctable train of
other things
was a ghastly trap. He shied away from its earliest symptoms, for he was as alert to its approach as an animal sensing the distant footfall of a predator. But he reckoned Camille was always a step ahead of him in flight. With her periodic leaves of absence, with her guarded emotions, and her boots always set ready in the starting blocks. But Camille played her game under better cover than he did, she did it less roughly, with more kindliness. As a result, unless you took the time to think about it for a while, you would not necessarily divine her imperious instinct for staying wild and free. And Adamsberg had to admit that he did not take enough time to think about Camille. He sometimes began to do so, but then forgot to follow through as other thoughts intervened and jostled him from one idea to another until they all fell into that kaleidoscopic pattern which presaged a moment of total mental blankness.

While hammer drills split his ears as the workmen carried on fixing the window bars, Adamsberg finished writing down the sentence in the notebook on his lap by placing a firm full stop after the L. Camille hadn’t
called
him to gurgle mutual congratulations but to make a serious point about the 4 that he’d shown her that morning. Adamsberg got up and made his way over yet more builders’ rubble into the building and Danglard’s office.

“Did you find that file?” he asked, so as to open a channel.

Danglard nodded and pointed to the screen: fingerprints were scrolling down so fast that they looked like galaxies seen from the Hubble.

Adamsberg went round to the other side of the desk so as to face Danglard.

“If you had to give a figure, how many buildings in Paris would you say had been marked with the number 4?”

“Three.”

Adamsberg raised the fingers of his hands.

“Three plus nine makes twelve. If we allow for the fact that not many people apart from neurotics and idlers would bother to report this sort of thing to the police, though I suppose there are quite a few neurotic idlers around, I would put the figure at a minimum of thirty blocks already ornamented by our action artist.”

“All the same 4s? Same shape, same colour?”

“The very identical.”

“Always on a blank door?”

“We’ll have to check that.”

“You mean you’re going to check?”

“I guess so.”

Danglard put his hands on his knees.

“I’ve seen that 4 somewhere before.”

“So has Camille.”

Danglard raised an eyebrow.

“In a book lying open on a table,” Adamsberg said. “At a friend of a friend’s place.”

“What was the book about?”

“Camille doesn’t know. She supposes it’s a history book, because the fellow who’s her friend’s friend is a cleaner by day and a medievalist by night.”

“Isn’t it normally the other way round?”

“What norm are you referring to?”

Danglard stretched out an arm towards the bottle of beer that was on his desk and raised it to his lips.

“So where did you see it, then?” asked Adamsberg.

“I can’t remember. It was a long time ago and it was not in Paris.”

“If there are previous instances of the reversed 4, then it’s not an original creation.”

“No, it’s not,” Danglard concurred.

“To count as action art, it would have to be original, wouldn’t it?”

“In theory, yes.”

“What are we going to do with your radical action artist, then?”

Danglard pursed his lips. “I think we take him off the board for now.”

“And so what do we put in his place?”

“Some oddbod who’s no business of ours.”

Adamsberg walked up and down and straight through the decorators’ mess on the floor, getting plaster dust on his well-worn shoes.

“May I remind you, sir, that we have been transferred?,” said Danglard. “Transferred to the Brigade Criminelle.”

“I’ve not forgotten that,” said Adamsberg.

“Has any offence been committed in these blocks of flats?”

“No, no offence.”

“Has there been any violence? Any threats of violence? Any intimidation of innocent parties?”

“You know very well there’s been no such thing.”

“So why are we discussing the matter?”

“Because, Danglard, there is a presumption of violence.”

“In those 4s?”

“Yes. We have a silent campaign. A very serious campaign.”

Adamsberg looked at his watch.

“I’ve got time to take …”

He opened his memory-jogger then closed it quickly again.

“… to take Barteneau with me to see some of these places.”

While Adamsberg went to fetch the jacket he’d left all crumpled on a
chair
, Danglard slipped on his own, making sure it hung correctly on his frame. He might not be a handsome man, but that was no reason not to keep himself looking shipshape and Bristol fashion.

XI

DECAMBRAIS CAME HOME
quite late and only just had time before dinner to pick up the evening “special” that Joss had put aside for him.

[…] when come forth toade stooles and when fields and woods be covered in spiderwebs, when oxen ail or die in the meadow, likewise beastes in the forest; when bread doth quickly go mouldie; when new-hatched flies & worms & fleas can be seen on snow […]

He folded up the sheet while Lizbeth was touring the house to call residents down to the dinner table. With a less radiant expression on his face than he’d had that morning, Decambrais put his hand on Joss’s shoulder.

“We must talk,” he said. “Tonight at the Viking. I’d like us not to be overhead.”

“Good trawling?”

“Good but deadly. The fish is too big for us to handle.”

Joss gave the old man a dubious glance.

“No, Le Guern, I’m not exaggerating. Breton’s honour.”

At dinner Joss managed to get a smile out of Eva’s half-hidden face by telling a partly fanciful family story, and he felt mightily pleased with himself. He helped Lizbeth clear the table, out of habit, mainly, but also as an excuse for having her company. He was just ready to set off for the Viking when she came down from her room dressed to kill in a shiny,
tight-fitting
black dress. She bustled past with a smile and Joss’s heart sank to his boots.

Decambrais had stationed himself at the very back of the Viking, and was waiting for Joss in that overheated and smoke-filled room with two glasses of
calva
on the table in front of him.

“Lizbeth went out in full battledress as soon the dishes were done,” Joss said as he pulled up a chair.

“Yes,” said Decambrais without the slightest surprise.

“She has a date?”

“Lizbeth goes out in a gown every night except Tuesdays and Sundays.”

“Is she seeing someone?” Joss asked anxiously.

Decambrais shook his head.

“No, she sings.”

Joss frowned.

“She’s a singer,” Decambrais repeated. “She performs. In a cabaret. Lizbeth has a voice to die for.”

“Since when, dammit?”

“Since she moved in and since I taught her the tonic sol-fa. She pulls in the crowds every night at the Saint-Ambroise. One day, Le Guern, you’ll see the name of Lizbeth Galston in lights. When you do, don’t forget.”

“Can’t imagine I could forget. Where is this cabaret, Decambrais? Can you just go along to listen?”

“Damascus goes along every night.”

“Damascus? Damascus Viguier?”

“Who else? Didn’t he tell you?”

“We have coffee together every day of the week, and he’s never breathed a word about it.”

“That’s only to be expected. He’s in love. Not something to be shared.”

“Bloody hell! Damascus! But he’s thirty years old, he is.”

“So is Lizbeth. Being overweight doesn’t make her any older.”

Joss’s mind wandered for a moment towards the implausible conjunction of Damascus and Lizbeth.

“Could that ever work?” he asked. “Seeing as you’re an expert on keeping an even keel.”

Decambrais smiled sceptically.

“Lizbeth hasn’t been impressed by men’s bodies for a very long time.”

“Damascus is a nice lad, though.”

“That’s not enough.”

“What does Lizbeth want from a man?”

“Not much.”

Decambrais downed a slug of
calva
. “Love’s not the topic of tonight’s seminar, Le Guern.”

“I know. Tell me about it. The big fish you’ve hooked.”

Decambrais’s face darkened.

“Bad as that, is it?”

“I fear it is.”

Decambrais looked around the room and seemed reassured by the racket that people were making. Worse than marauding Norsemen stomping off a longboat.

“I’ve tracked down one of the authors,” he said. “It’s Avicenna. An eleventh-century physician from Persia.”

“Great,” said Joss, who was much more interested in Lizbeth’s affairs than he was in Avicenna’s.

“I’ve found the passage quoted, in his
Liber canonis
.”

“Great,” said Joss again. “Tell me, Decambrais, were you a teacher, like your dad?”

“How did you guess?”

“Easy as that,” said Joss with a snap of his thumb and middle finger. “I’ve knocked about a bit as well, you know.”

“Look, you might be bored by what I’m telling you, Le Guern, but you’d do well to listen properly.”

“All right, then.” Joss felt he’d been whisked back to the classroom and brought to order by Ducouëdic Senior.

“All the other authors he’s quoting are people who rewrote Avicenna. They’re all talking about the same thing. They’re skirting around the subject but not saying its name. Like vultures circling in the air before diving on their prey.”