The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (17 page)

‘So why did you ask him to put one of the shoes on
yesterday
?’

‘Just checking his size.’

‘Oh,
really
,’ said Retancourt, injecting all her scepticism into the word.

‘It doesn’t mean Mo is innocent,’ Adamsberg went on. ‘But it’s still a bit of a glitch.’

‘Quite a big one,’ agreed Noël. ‘If it was one of the two Christs that torched the car but wanted Mo to carry the can, the case would be holed below the waterline.’

‘It is anyway,’ said Veyrenc.
‘No sooner had the boat pulled away from the shore / Than through cracks in its timbers, the water did pour.’

Since rejoining the force, Lieutenant Veyrenc had already spouted dozens of bad alexandrines. But nowadays nobody paid him much attention, as if he had become part of the soundtrack, like Mercadet’s snores, or the cat’s mewing, merging into the everyday background music in the squad.

‘If one of the Christs
was
behind it – but we don’t know that, and we don’t even think it – the suit he was wearing would have had residual traces of petrol vapour.’

‘Heavier than air,’ Veyrenc agreed.

‘And there must also have been a bag or a briefcase he carried to switch the shoes,’ said Morel.

‘Or why not his front doorknob when he got back home?’ said Noël.

‘Or his keys?’

‘Not if he wiped everything down,’ objected Veyrenc.

‘We need to check whether one of the brothers had to get rid of a suit. Or sent it to the cleaners.’

‘So the long and short of it, commissaire,’ said Retancourt, ‘is that you want us to check up on the two Christs
as if
they were murderers, while asking us not to believe that.’

‘Exactly,’ said Adamsberg with a grin. ‘Mo is guilty, and we’re searching for him. But your job is to stick to the Clermonts like ticks.’

‘Just for the beauty of the manoeuvre,’ said Retancourt.

‘A little beauty never comes amiss. An aesthetic pleasure will make up for our raid on the Cité des Buttes tonight, which will not be a pretty sight. Retancourt and Noël, you can take the older brother, Christian, aka Saviour One, and Morel and Veyrenc, you take Christophe, Saviour Two. Use the code, because my phones are being tapped.’

‘We ought to have two night teams.’

‘We’ll have Froissy taking care of multidirectional mikes, and Lamarre,
Mordent and Justin can relieve you. Their town house has security protection.’

‘What if we’re spotted?’

Adamsberg thought for a few minutes then shook his head, unable to come up with an answer.

‘We won’t be spotted,’ Veyrenc concluded.

XVII

His neighbour, Lucio, stopped Adamsberg as he was crossing the little garden on the way to his house.

‘Hola, hombre!’
the old man called.

‘Hola
, Lucio.’

‘A nice cool beer would do you good. In this heat.’

‘Not now, Lucio.’

‘And with all the trouble you’re in.’

‘I’m in trouble?’

‘You certainly are,
hombre.’

Adamsberg never disregarded Lucio’s pronouncements and he waited in the garden until the old Spaniard returned with two chilled beers. Lucio was in the habit of pissing against the beech tree and Adamsberg wondered if that was why the grass was dying at the base of the trunk. Or perhaps it was just the heat.

The old man took the tops off the bottles – never any cans for him – and held one out.

‘Two men came prowling around,’ Lucio said between swigs.

‘Here?’

‘Yes. Pretending not to. Trying to look like ordinary passers-by. But the more casual you try to look, the more you look like something else. Shit-stirrers, they were. Shit-stirrers never walk with their heads up or looking down like ordinary people. Their eyes are everywhere, as if they were tourists. But our street isn’t a tourist attraction, is it, eh,
hombre
?’

‘No.’

‘Shit-stirrers, they were, and your house was what interested them.’

‘Staking it out?’

‘Noting when your son came and went, maybe to know when the house was empty.’

‘Shit-stirrers, eh,’ murmured Adamsberg. ‘People who’ll end up being choked with a mouthful of bread.’

‘Why do you want to choke them with bread?’

Adamsberg simply spread his arms wide.

‘Well, I’m telling you,’ Lucio carried on, ‘if some shit-stirrers are hoping to get into your place, it means you’ve got problems.’

Adamsberg blew on the mouth of the bottle to make a little whistling noise – something you can’t do to a beer can, as Lucio rightly pointed out – and sat down on an old packing case his neighbour had placed under the tree.

‘Have you done something stupid,
hombre
?’

‘No.’

‘Who are you going after?’

‘I’m going into unknown territory.’

‘Not a good plan,
amigo.
If you need it, and if you’ve got someone or something you need to put in a safe place, you know where my spare key is.’

‘Yes, under the bucket of gravel behind the shed.’

‘You’d better put it in your pocket. Up to you,
hombre
,’ said Lucio, moving off.

The table had been laid, using the plastic sheet still stained by Hellebaud. Zerk and Momo were waiting for Adamsberg before starting their supper. Zerk had cooked pasta with steamed tuna chunks and tomato sauce, a variant of the rice with tuna and tomato sauce he had served up a day or two earlier. Adamsberg thought of asking him to ring the changes a bit, but immediately rejected the thought, there was no point criticising his previously unknown son over a bit of tuna. Still less in front of an unknown Mo. Zerk put some bits of fish on the side of his plate and Hellebaud attacked them with gusto.

‘He looks a lot better,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Yep,’ Zerk confirmed.

Adamsberg was never concerned by silence falling in company and felt no need to try and make conversation come what may. Angels could pass and pass again as far as he was concerned. His son appeared to be of similar disposition, and Mo was at first too intimidated to try and launch a subject for table talk. But he was the kind of person who was bothered by the angels passing.

‘Are you a diabolist?’ he asked the commissaire in a hesitant voice.

Adamsberg looked at the young man in incomprehension, chewing on his mouthful. Steamed tuna fish is dense and dry and that was what he had been thinking about when Mo put the question.

‘I don’t understand, Mo.’

‘Do you like playing diabolo?’

Adamsberg poured some more tomato sauce over his tuna and thought that perhaps being a diabolist or playing diabolo might mean something like ‘playing with the devil’ in the youth slang of Mo’s milieu.

‘Sometimes you have to,’ he replied.

‘But not professionally?’

Adamsberg stopped chewing and swallowed some water.

‘I don’t think we can be talking about the same thing. What do you mean by “diabolo”?’

‘It’s a game,’ Mo explained, blushing. ‘This double cone made of rubber, you roll it on a string with two handles,’ he said, miming the action.

‘Oh, I get it, diabolo,’ said Adamsberg. ‘No, I don’t play that. Or yo-yos either.’

Mo plunged his nose back in his food, disappointed with the failure of his initiative, and casting about for something else to say.

‘Is he really important to you? The pigeon?’

‘Well, Mo, they’ve tied
your
feet together too.’

‘Who’s “they”?’

‘The powers that be, they’ve got their eye on you.’

Adamsberg got up, moved aside a corner of the curtain pinned across
the door, and looked out on the garden as night fell. Lucio was sitting on the packing case, reading his newspaper.

‘We’re going to have to think a bit,’ he said, starting to pace round the table. ‘Two shit-stirrers were seen in the street today. Don’t worry, Mo, we’ve got a bit of time, they weren’t actually looking for you.’

‘Cops?’

‘More likely someone attached to the Ministry. They want to know what I’ve got in mind for the Clermont-Brasseurs. They’re worried about the shoelaces. I’ll explain later. It’s the weak point in their armour. Your escape has panicked them.’

‘What are they looking for here?’ asked Zerk.

‘They want to see if I have any papers indicating an unofficial investigation into the Clermont-Brasseur family. They want to break in while we’re out. So there’s no way Mo can go on staying here.’

‘Do we have to move him tonight?’

‘There are roadblocks everywhere, Zerk. We’ll have to think a bit,’ he repeated.

Frowning, Zerk drew on his cigarette. ‘If they’re watching the street, we can’t get Mo into a car.’

Adamsberg kept pacing round, simultaneously registering that his son was capable of fast action and even of a pragmatic approach.

‘We’ll go out through Lucio’s place, and then into the street behind these houses.’

Adamsberg stiffened, as he heard the grass outside being trampled. There came an immediate knock on the door. Mo had already jumped to his feet holding his plate and moved towards the stairs.

‘It’s Retancourt,’ came the loud voice of the lieutenant. ‘Can I come in, commissaire?’

With his thumb, Adamsberg directed Mo to the cellar, before opening the door. It was an old house, and the lieutenant had to bend down to avoid hitting her head on the lintel as she stepped in. The kitchen suddenly seemed smaller once Retancourt was inside.

‘It’s important,’ she said.

‘Have you had your supper, Violette?’ asked Zerk, whose face had lit up at her arrival.

‘Not so important.’

‘I’ll warm some up for you,’ said Zerk, busying himself at the cooker.

The pigeon jumped up on to the table and walked to within a few centimetres of Retancourt’s arm.

‘He recognises me a bit, don’t you think? He looks better.’

‘Yes, but he can’t fly.’

‘We don’t know if it’s physical or mental,’ explained Zerk very seriously. ‘I tried taking him into the garden, but he just stayed pecking about as if he’d forgotten how to take off.’

‘OK,’ said Retancourt, seating herself on the most solid of Adamsberg’s chairs. ‘I’ve got an alteration to your plan for trailing the Clermont brothers.’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘No. Too classic, too long-term, too risky, and precious little hope of getting anywhere.’

‘You could be right,’ admitted Adamsberg, who was aware that since the previous day he had had to take a whole series of hasty and ill-judged decisions. He was never upset by criticism from Retancourt.

‘Have you got a better idea?’ he asked.

‘Insider intelligence. Can’t see any other way.’

‘Also classic,’ Adamsberg rejoined. ‘But impossible. We can’t get inside their house.’

Zerk put a plate of reheated pasta and tuna in front of Retancourt. Adamsberg presumed that Violette would get through the fish without even noticing.

‘You don’t have a spot of wine to go with this, do you?’ she asked. ‘No, don’t bother getting up, I know where it is, I’ll fetch it.’

‘No, no, let me,’ said Zerk quickly.

‘Well, virtually impossible, yes, so I’ve taken a risk.’

Adamsberg shuddered. ‘You should have consulted me, lieutenant.’

‘You said your phone was tapped,’ said Retancourt, plunging her fork into a large piece of fish which gave her no trouble to demolish. ‘By the
way, I’ve brought you a clean mobile, with a changeable SIM card. It used to belong to this fence in La Garenne, “the Shark”, remember him? But anyway, no matter, he’s dead. And I also have a personal message for you; it came to the office this evening. From the divisionnaire.’

‘Retancourt, what have you been doing?’

‘Nothing special. I went round to the Clermont house and told the concierge that I’d heard there was a job going. I don’t know why, but I impressed him and he didn’t just tell me to get lost.’

‘I’ll bet he didn’t,’ admitted Adamsberg. ‘But he must have asked where you got your information from.’

‘Of course. I told him it was via Clara de Verdier, who’s a friend of Christophe Clermont’s daughter.’

‘They’ll check that kind of thing, Retancourt.’

‘Yes, maybe they will,’ said the lieutenant, helping herself from the bottle which Zerk had uncorked. ‘Delicious, this dinner, Zerk. Well, they can check all they like, because it’s true. Also true that there was a job going. In big houses like that they have so many staff there’s always a service job going somewhere. Especially since Christian Saviour One has a reputation for being hard on his employees. There’s a very quick turnover. The Clara I mentioned used to be my brother Bruno’s girlfriend, and I got her out of trouble once over an armed robbery. I called her up, and she’ll confirm it if she has to.’

‘Uh, yeah, right,’ said Adamsberg, feeling somewhat stunned. He was the first to revere Retancourt’s abnormal problem-solving powers, all-purpose and adaptable for any kind of work, but he always felt a bit taken aback when he was actually confronted with them.

‘So, in that case,’ said Retancourt, wiping up the last of the sauce with some bread, ‘if you have no objection, I start tomorrow.’

‘A bit more detail, lieutenant. The concierge let you in?’

‘Naturally. And I got to see Christian Saviour One’s PA, a rather disagreeable little Napoleon, who wasn’t disposed to give me the job at first.’

‘What kind of job is it?’

‘Managing the household accounts on a computer. To cut a long story
short, I demonstrated my talents rather forcefully, and in the end the guy hired me.’

‘He probably didn’t have any choice,’ said Adamsberg softly.

‘Probably not.’

Retancourt finished her glass and put it on the table noisily.

‘Your tablecloth isn’t very clean,’ she remarked.

‘It’s the pigeon. Zerk cleans it as best he can, but pigeon shit leaves a stain on the plastic. I wonder what chemicals it contains.’

‘Acid or something. So. Do I take this job or not?’

*   *   *

In the middle of the night, Adamsberg woke up and went down to the kitchen. He had forgotten the message from the divisionnaire, delivered by Retancourt, which was still sitting on the table. He read it, smiled, and burnt it in the fireplace. Brézillon was handing him the Ordebec investigation.