Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (17 page)

‘What site?’

‘Can’t you see?’ asked the man, waving his flashlight behind him.

In the section of forest above the path, Adamsberg could just make out through the darkness a pick-up truck, a mobile trailer, and various tools leaning against tree trunks.

‘What sort of site is it?’ he asked politely. It seemed to be expected in Quebec to make conversation.

‘Taking out dead trees and replanting more maples,’ the watchman explained. ‘I thought you were after the equipment. Sorry to challenge you, buddy, but, hell, it’s my job. Make a habit of walking here at night, do you?’

‘I just like it.’

‘You visiting?’

‘I’m a cop. I’m working with the Mounties at Gatineau.’

This admission removed the last suspicions of the watchman.

‘Hey, that’s fine. Want to come and share a beer in the cab?’

‘Thanks all the same, but I’ve still got work to do. Must get back.’

‘Too bad. So long, buddy.’

Adamsberg slowed down as he approached the Champlain tablet. Yes, Noëlla was there on her stone, muffled up in a bulky anorak. He could see the glowing tip of her cigarette. He climbed quietly back into the forest and made a long detour, reaching the path again about thirty metres further along, then hurried towards his residence. Damned girl, after all it wasn’t as if she was the devil. The devil suddenly reminded him of Judge Fulgence. You think your thoughts have gone to sleep, but there they are, planted right in the middle of your forehead, three holes in a line. They’re just veiled by a transitory Atlantic fog.

XX

VOISENET HAD PLANNED TO SPEND THE WEEKEND OFF IN THE FORESTS
and lakes, with his binoculars and camera. Because of the need to share cars, he was taking Justin and Retancourt with him. The other four had chosen the big city, and were leaving for Ottawa and Montreal. Adamsberg had decided to head off alone for the north. Before leaving in the morning, he went to check whether the noisy goose of the day before had handed over to another leader. He was certain it was a gander in fact.

No, the despotic gander had not yielded an inch. The other geese were following him like sheep, swerving whenever the leader changed direction, and waiting in complete stillness when he went into action, flapping along the surface of the water towards the ducks, wings outspread and feathers ruffled to make him look even bigger. Adamsberg shouted an insult at him and shook his fist before going back to the car. Before moving off, he knelt down to check that no squirrels were underneath.

He headed due north, lunched at Kazabazua, and then drove along an endless succession of dirt roads. Ten kilometres or so out of town, the Québécois didn’t bother to asphalt the roads, since the frost broke up the surface every year. If he went on driving in a straight line, he thought, with immense pleasure, he would end up looking across to Greenland. That’s something you can’t say in Paris when you go out after work. Or in Bordeaux. He allowed himself to wander along, taking side-roads when
they tempted him, finally turning south again before parking at the edge of a forest by Pink Lake. The woods were deserted, the ground strewn with red maple leaves and occasional patches of snow. Here and there, a notice told travellers to watch out for bears and to recognise their claw marks on the trunks of beech trees. ‘Warning: black bears climb trees in order to eat beech nuts.’ ‘Good,’ thought Adamsberg, looking up and feeling with his finger the scars left by the claws of bears, peering to see if any beast was overhead. Up till now, he had only seen some beaver dams and some tracks left by deer. Just footprints and traces, but no animals were visible. A bit like Maxime Leclerc in his Haguenau
Schloss
.

Stop thinking about the
Schloss
and go and take a look at this pink lake instead.

Pink Lake was marked on the map as being a small example of the half-million or so lakes in Quebec province, but Adamsberg found it large and beautiful. Because he had taken to reading notices in the days since visiting Strasbourg, he read the information board about Pink Lake. He discovered therefore that he had chanced upon a unique lake.

He recoiled a little. This recent propensity to come across exceptions was unsettling. Waving these thoughts away, with his habitual gesture, he read on. Pink Lake was twenty metres deep and its bed was covered with three metres of mud. So far, so normal perhaps. But because of the great depth, the surface waters did not mix with the lower ones. From fifteen metres down, they did not move, were never disturbed or oxygenated, any more than the mud on the lake bed which enclosed its 10,600 years of history. The lake might look normal, Adamsberg concluded, and indeed it seemed to be reflecting blue and pink colours, but its smooth surface covered a second lake, one that was perpetually stagnant, airless and dead, a fossil. Worst of all, a saltwater fish still lived down there, from the era when the sea had covered it. Adamsberg examined the drawing of the fish, which seemed to be a sort of cross between a carp and a trout, but smaller and with spines. He looked in vain for its name on the notice; it didn’t seem to have one.

A living lake lying over a dead one. Harbouring a nameless creature, of which only a sketch or image was available. Adamsberg leaned over
the wooden fence to try to glimpse the dead lower waters under the shimmering pink surface. Why did all his thoughts keep leading him back to the Trident? Like the marks of the bears’ claws on tree trunks? Like this dead lake, muddy and grey, surviving silently underneath an apparently living surface, and home to a strange creature left over from a bygone era.

Adamsberg hesitated, then got his sketchpad out of his anorak. Warming his hands, he copied as precisely as possible the artist’s impression of the damned fish which seemed to swim between heaven and hell. He had intended to spend a long time in the forest, but Pink Lake made him go back. Everywhere he found himself facing the long-dead judge, everywhere he found himself touching the threatening waters of Neptune and the traces of his accursed trident. What would Laliberté have done in the face of this torment that dogged him so continuously? Would he have laughed it off with a wave of his huge hand, opting instead for rigour, rigour and more rigour? Or would he have pounced on his prey and never let it go? Walking away from the lake, Adamsberg had the sensation that the pursuit was the other way round, that the hunter was becoming the hunted, and that the prey was itself sinking its teeth into him. Its spines, claws, and prongs. In that case, Danglard would be right to suspect that he was now becoming obsessive.

He walked slowly back to the car. By his two watches, which he had altered to read local time, while still respecting their five minutes difference, it was twelve and a half minutes past four in the afternoon. He drove along the empty roads, searching for indifference in the uniform immensity of the forests, then decided to turn back towards civilisation. He slowed down as he approached the parking lot of his residence, then gradually speeded up, leaving Hull behind him and heading for Montreal. This was precisely what he had not wanted to do, as he kept telling himself the whole two hundred kilometres of the way. But the car was just taking him there, as if it were radio-controlled, at a speed of ninety kilometres an hour, following the tail-lights of the pick-up trunk in front.

Just as the car knew it was going to Montreal, Adamsberg remembered perfectly the directions from the green brochure, the time and the place. Or perhaps, he thought as he approached the city, he ought to opt for a film or a play, why not? If he could, he ought perhaps to get rid of this damned car and find one that didn’t drive him to Pink Lake or to concerts by the Montreal quintet. But at 10.36 that evening, he was slipping into the church, just after the interval. He went to sit on one of the forward pews, behind a white pillar.

XXI

VIVALDI’S MUSIC UNFURLED AROUND HIM, RELEASING SPIRALS OF
thought, profuse and confused. The sight of Camille wrestling with her viola affected him more than he would have wished, but this was merely a stolen hour, and an incognito emotion which committed him to nothing. Transferring his professional habits to the music, he heard the thread of the composition stretch as if it were an insoluble enigma, almost reach the point of screaming with impotence, and then resolve itself into an unexpected and fluid harmony, as if it were alternating complexities and resolutions, questions and answers.

It was at one of the moments when the string players had begun a ‘resolution’ that his thoughts shot back to the hasty departure of the Trident from the Haguenau
Schloss
. He was following the trail, as he watched Camille’s bow move. By pursuing the judge, Adamsberg had always forced him to move on, that being the only slight power he had ever acquired over the magistrate. He had arrived in Schiltigheim on the Wednesday, and it was the next day that Trabelmann had exploded with anger at him. There would have been plenty of time for the event to become known and to appear by Friday in the local papers. Which was the very day that Maxime Leclerc had put his house on the market and cleared out. If that was so, both of them were involved now. Adamsberg was once more chasing the dead man, but the dead man knew that his pursuer had reappeared. In that case, Adamsberg had lost his only advantage, and the power of the dead man could block his way at any time.
Forewarned is always forearmed, but the judge’s foresight was potent to the power of a hundred. Back in Paris, Adamsberg would have to adapt his strategy to this new threat and escape the alsatians snapping at his legs. ‘I’ll give you a start, young man. I’ll count to four.’ Run, Adamsberg, run for your life.

Unless he was totally mistaken. He spared a thought for Vivaldi who was sending him this danger signal across the centuries. A good guy, Vivaldi, a real buddy, and the quintet were doing him proud. It was not for nothing then that his car had driven him here, to steal an hour out of Camille’s life, and to receive a precious warning from the composer. Since he was apparently hearing from the dead, he might very well hear a whispered message from Antonio Vivaldi, and he was sure the Venetian musician had been good company. A guy who writes music of such beauty is bound to give you excellent advice.

It was only at the end of the concert that Adamsberg spotted Danglard, whose eyes were fixed on his protégée. The sight immediately destroyed all his pleasure. What the devil was Danglard up to now? Was he going to meet him at every turn? Interfering with his whole life? Obviously he knew all about the concerts and was faithfully at his post, the dependable, loyal and irreproachable Adrien Danglard. Well, shit. Camille didn’t belong to him, for God’s sake. So what was the
capitaine
planning with this close surveillance? Was he trying to creep into Adamsberg’s life? Real anger towards his deputy rose within him. The grey-haired benefactor, slipping in through the door left open by Camille’s heartbreak.

The speed with which Danglard then disappeared surprised Adamsberg. The
capitaine
had gone round the back of the church and was waiting at the artists’ entrance. To offer congratulations, no doubt. But no, Danglard was loading stuff into a car, and then taking the wheel, and Camille was with him. Adamsberg drove off behind them, anxious to see how far his deputy would take this secret solicitude. After a halt, then a further ten minutes’ drive, Danglard parked the car, then opened the door for Camille, who handed him a bundle wrapped in a blanket.
The blanket, and the fact that the bundle made a noise, communicated to Adamsberg, in a spasmodic shock, the extent of the situation.

A child, a baby. And going by the small size of the bundle and the voice, perhaps no more than a month old. Motionless, he watched the door of the house close behind the couple. Danglard, the bastard, the thief in the night.

But Danglard reappeared quickly, gave Camille a friendly wave, and hailed a taxi.

Good God, a child, thought Adamsberg on the long drive back to Hull. Now that Danglard had been absolved from the role of treacherous bastard and had once more become the loyal and dependable friend – which by no means lessened his resentment towards him – his thoughts were concentrated on the young woman. How on earth had Camille ended up with a child? Inevitably, he thought with a pang, that meant some kind of connection with a man. If the baby was a month old, that meant nine plus one, say ten months. So Camille had waited only a few weeks before finding his successor. He trod on the accelerator, suddenly impatient to overtake the damned cars rolling peacefully along at the sacred speed of ninety kilometres an hour. Anyway, that was the situation, and Danglard must have been informed early on, and hadn’t breathed a word about it to him. Still, he understood why his deputy had spared him this news, which even now stung him deeply. But why? What had he, Adamsberg, been hoping? That Camille would weep for a thousand years and never forsake her lost love? That she would turn into a statue whom he could bring back to life whenever he wanted to? Like in a fairy story, as Trabelmann would have said. No, she had stumbled, but survived, and then met some other man, it was as simple as that. A harsh reality which he had to digest with difficulty.

No, he thought later, lying on top of his bed, no, he had never really taken on board that he would lose Camille when he lost Camille. It was logical
enough after all, but he couldn’t handle it. And now there was this bastard of a new father, who was driving him out of the picture. Even Danglard had taken the side of the other man against him. He could easily imagine the
capitaine
walking into the maternity ward and shaking hands with the newcomer, who would be a reliable sort of chap, safe as houses, offering all his uprightness and benevolence in contrast to him, Adamsberg. A man of irreproachable habits and morality, a businessman, with a labrador, no, two labradors, and polished shoes with new laces.

Adamsberg hated him fiercely. That night, he would have massacred the man and his dogs, without hesitation. He, the
flic
, the cop, the pig, would have gladly committed murder. With a trident too, why not?