Have Mercy On Us All (25 page)

“And help set off mass psychosis too,” Brézillon added glumly.

“The media are doing their best to get that going in any case,” Adamsberg replied. “We can’t do a thing about it.”

“You do something about it all the same,” was Brézillon’s final command.

Adamsberg had hung up aware that his recent promotion to the Brigade Criminelle was in the balance, with the plague-monger tipping the scales the wrong way. He wouldn’t be especially upset if he lost this job and got transferred somewhere else. But what he would really hate would be to lose the thread of it again, just when he’d remembered when it was that it had all gone haywire.

He spread the papers out and then closed his door so as to muffle the staccato medley of the telephones that were keeping the entire team busy in the conference room.

The plague-monger’s
direction concerning the plague or pestilence for poor or rich
was the lead item in all the papers. Plus photos of the latest victim and background pieces on plague with scary headlines:

C
OULD BE PLAGUE, COULD BE
K
ILLER
D
IVINE
S
COURGE IS
N
UMBER
O
NE
S
USPECT
P
OLICE SAY
M
URDER
, O
THERS
M
ALADY
F
OURTH
S
USPICIOUS
D
EATH IN
P
ARIS

And so on and so forth.

There were articles that tackled and tried to pick holes in the official statement that four cases of death by strangulation were being investigated. Most of the papers rehearsed the facts that Adamsberg had provided at the press conference, but only to question their reliability and to muddy the issue with guesswork. The press seemed altogether less cautious than on Friday. Seasoned reporters and normally unflappable commentators were clearly haunted by the blackened corpses. As if, after lying dormant for three hundred years and more, a headless horseman had galloped out of his hollow and on to the streets of Paris. Despite the fact that the blacking of the bodies was nothing more than an ignorant blunder. A
bloody great howler
, as Marc had said. But it could still send the city howling mad.

Adamsberg looked for the scissors and began to cut out an article that struck him as more disturbing than all the others. Before he had finished, an officer – Justin, probably – knocked and came in. He sounded out of breath.

“Sir, masses of 4s have been found in the area around Place Edgar-Quinet. It goes from Montparnasse to Avenue du Maine and it’s spreading along Boulevard Raspail. Apparently, two or three hundred separate blocks of flats affected, about a thousand doors done. Favre and Estalère are out on a recce. Estalère doesn’t want to pair with Favre any more, he says Favre gets on his tits, what do I do about it, sir?”

“Change the detail and pair up with Favre yourself.”

“He gets on my tits too, sir.”

“
Brigadier
…”

“
Lieutenant
Voisenet,” Voisenet corrected.

“Look here, we’ve not got time for Favre’s tits, your tits or anyone else’s tits!”

“I’m aware of that, sir. We’ll handle that one later.”

“Precisely.”

“Carry on with the patrols, sir?”

“Might as well try to drain the Channel with a chamber pot. And we’ve got spring tides coming. Take a look at that,” Adamsberg said as he shoved the morning papers under Voisenet’s nose. “The plague-monger’s instructions are right up front: paint your own 4s to keep the scourge at bay.”

“I’ve seen it, sir. It’s a disaster. We’ll never be able to cope. We haven’t a clue who needs protection, apart from the first twenty-nine.”

“There’s only twenty-five of them now, Voisenet. Has anyone called about envelopes?”

“Over a hundred calls, sir, to this office alone. We can’t keep up.”

Adamsberg sighed.

“Tell them to come here with their envelopes. And have every one of the things tested. There could be a genuine one among them.”

“Carry on with the patrols, sir?”

“Yes. Try to get an idea of how big this is. Do some sampling.”

“At least we didn’t have a murder overnight, sir. Our twenty-five were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for breakfast.”

“I know, Voisenet.”

Adamsberg finished cutting out the article which had struck him as particularly well-informed and firmly put. It was the last straw, or rather, all that was needed to light the whole haystack. A veritable incendiary device.

D
ISEASE
N
UMBER
9

The police authorities have assured us in the statement put out by Chief Superintendent Pierre Brézillon that four suspicious deaths that have occurred in Paris over the last seven days were murders committed by the same serial killer. The victims are alleged to have died from strangulation, and the detective in charge of the investigation,
Commissaire Principal
Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, has provided journalists with persuasive photographs of the alleged neck wounds. It is, however, common knowledge that an anonymous informant has claimed that these deaths were actually caused by bubonic plague and that an epidemic of this terrible scourge of yesteryear is upon us.

The official position is open to serious question. It is rarely recalled that the last outbreak of plague in Paris took place only eighty years ago, in 1920. This third bubonic pandemic began in China in 1894, ravaged the Indian subcontinent, where it killed a million people, and made its way to all the major European ports – Lisbon, London, Oporto, Hamburg and Barcelona. It reached Paris on a river barge from Le Havre which cleaned out its hold near Levallois. In Paris as elsewhere in Europe, this outbreak did not spread very far and died out within a few years. Nonetheless, 96 people were infected, most of them in the working-class districts to the north and east of the city. Nearly all the victims were indigents and rag pickers living in unsanitary hovels. Even so, the contagion spread into the city centre where it killed 20 people.

The French authorities successfully covered up the outbreak. The press was not allowed to know the true nature of a quite unusual vaccination campaign carried out in vulnerable areas. The Public Health Department and the Police Authority agreed in an exchange of confidential notes that total secrecy had to be maintained, and they referred to the outbreak only under the codename of “Disease Number 9”. As the Chief Medical Officer wrote in 1920:
A number of cases of disease number 9 have been reported at Saint-Ouen, Clichy, Levallois-Perret, and in the nineteenth and twentieth arrondissements […] May I stress that this note is entirely confidential and that unnecessary public alarm must be avoided at all costs
. This leaked document allowed
L’Humanité
to reveal the true story in its issue of 3 December 1920.
The upper chamber spent yesterday’s session debating disease number 9. What is disease number 9? By 3.30 p.m. we had our answer. Senator Gaudin de Villaine let it drop that he was talking about bubonic plague …

We hesitate to accuse police spokesmen of falsifying information so as to hide the true state of affairs. But it has happened before, as we trust this note has demonstrated. It would not be the first time that the truth has been sacrificed to expediency by those who rule over us. The authorities have long known how to be economical with the facts.

This devastating clipping trailed from Adamsberg’s fingers as he put his arm down and plunged into thought. Plague in Paris in 1920. First time he’d heard of it. He dialled Vandoosler.

“I’ve just seen the papers,” Vandoosler said before Adamsberg got a word in. “We’re heading over the edge.”

“At full speed,” Adamsberg agreed. “Is it true, that story about the 1920 plague, or is it bullshit?”

“It’s twenty-four carat. Ninety-six cases, thirty-four of them fatal. Rag pickers from the shanties and a few people in the city centre. Particularly nasty in Clichy, where whole families went down. Their kids used to collect dead rats from the rubbish tips.”

“Why didn’t it get worse?”

“Vaccination and prevention. But the main reason seems to be that rats had acquired much higher resistance to the disease. You could call it the death rattle of European plague. Even so, it didn’t peter out in Corsica until 1945.”

“And is the stuff about the cover-up true as well? And ‘disease number 9’?”

“I’m sorry,
commissaire
, but it’s all true. You can’t deny it, I’m afraid.”

Adamsberg hung up and paced around the room. Something about the 1920 epidemic had clicked in his mind with a noise that sounded like the spinning of a dial that opens a secret passage. Adamsberg had found the starting point. Now he reckoned he had the courage to go through the secret door and down that dark and musty staircase – the back stairs of History. His mobile phone rang and he got an earful of Brézillon ranting on about the morning papers.

“What’s all this rubbish about a police cover-up?” the Super screamed. “What’s all this utter crap about plague in 1920? Influenza epidemic, sure! But plague? Get a rebuttal out to the press this minute, Adamsberg. No discussion.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. It’s all true.”

“Are you trying to take the piss, Adamsberg? Or are you looking forward to spending more time mowing your Pyrenean lawn?”

“I’m not trying anything, sir. There was an outbreak of plague, it happened in 1920, there were ninety-six cases and thirty-four deaths, and the police and the government tried to keep it hush-hush.”

“Put yourself in their shoes, Adamsberg!”

“I am in their shoes, sir.”

A moment’s silence. Then Brézillon slammed the receiver down.

Justin or perhaps Voisenet came in the door. Voisenet, most likely.

“Going up like a volcano, sir. People are calling from all over the place. The whole of Paris knows all about it. People are panicking and painting 4s on anything flat. Don’t know which way to turn, sir.”

“Don’t turn any way. Let it go.”

“If you say so, sir.”

The mobile phone rang again and Adamsberg went back to his wall-prop position. Would it be the Ministry of the Interior? Or the state prosecutor? When all about him were losing their cool, Adamsberg found it easier to keep his head. Ever since he’d got his bearings back, his tenseness had slackened off by degrees.

It was Decambrais on the line. Only he wasn’t ringing to say he’d read the papers and that we were about to fall off a cliff. Decambrais was still focusing on the “specials” that he was the first to see, before they got to the AFP. The plague-monger was still giving the town crier a modest head start, maybe because he felt he owed it to the man who’d given him his first audience, or maybe to say thank you for not having grumbled about it.

“This morning’s ‘special’,” Decambrais said. “A tricky one. It’s long, so get pencil and paper first.”

“I’ve got both.”

Threescore years and ten had passed since the last lash of that fearsome scourge and men went freely about their business when dot dot dot, there came into port dot dot dot, a ship laden with cotton and other merchandise. Dot dot dot.

“
Commissaire
, I’m giving you the suspension points out loud so you can write down the text as it is written.”

“I understand. Go on, please. Slowly.”

But the licence given to voyagers to enter the city with their baggage and their mixing with the inhabitants soon had dire effects. For as
early
as dot dot dot
messire
dot dot dot who were physicians went to warn the aldermen of the city that having been called on the morning of dot dot dot to the side of an ailing sailor, Eissalene by name, they judged him to be sick with the Contagion.

“Is that it?”

“No, there’s a curious epilogue about the aldermen’s state of mind that’s going to make your boss’s day.”

“I’m all ears.”

The aldermen were fearful on receiving such counsel. As if they had already foreseen the misfortunes and dangers which they would soon endure, they fell into a slough of despond which spoke outwardly of the anguish in their souls. Verily, we should not be surprised that fear of the pestilence and its first steps in the city threw their minds into a frenzy, for the Holy Writ doth tell us that of the three plagues that the Lord threatened to visit on His People the Pestilence is the harshest and least forgiving.

“I doubt the Super has fallen into a slough of despond,” Adamsberg remarked. “He’s more inclined to throw other people into a pile of shit.”

“I know what you mean. I’ve been through it myself, in a different context. A fall guy has to be found. Are you nervous about keeping your job?”

“We’ll see about that. What does today’s broadcast say to you, Decambrais?”

“It says that it’s long. It’s long because it has two purposes. One, to make public fear seem justified by showing that the authorities were right to be scared. Two, to forecast more killings. And to forecast them precisely. I’ve got an inkling what’s going on here, Adamsberg, but I have to go and check. I’m not a specialist.”

“How’s Le Guern’s audience doing?”

“Bigger than yesterday evening. It’s getting hard to find standing room in the square at the newscast hour.”

“The captain should start charging admission. Then at least someone would be doing well out of all this.”

“Careful,
commissaire
. I must warn you not to make that kind of joke. The Le Guerns may be rough customers, sir, but they’ve never stolen a farthing.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Well, Joss’s deceased great-great-grandfather is adamant about it. He comes to pay a call every now and again. It’s not like he’s dropping in every afternoon, but it is a fairly regular event.”

“Decambrais, did you paint the 4 shape on your front door this morning?”