Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (25 page)

‘But it’s exactly what I mean, sir,’ she said waving away the objection. ‘They don’t bother looking at her, she’s just part of the furniture, and they actually forget she’s there. I depend on that. Add a bored expression and hunched shoulders, and you’re sure to be able to see everything without being seen. Not everyone can get away with it, and it’s served me well in the past.’

‘You channelled your energy?’ said Adamsberg with a smile.

‘Into being invisible,’ said Retancourt, quite seriously. ‘I could watch Mitch and Philippe-Auguste quite easily. During the first two acts, when they showed you the wounds, then the face, they were sending each other signals. Same thing when we got to Act Three at headquarters.’

‘When was that?’

‘When Laliberté told you the date of the crime. Your failure to react disappointed them again. I wasn’t fooled. You’re very good at looking phlegmatic,
commissaire
, and it seemed authentic, while at the same time it had a bit of play-acting about it. But I need to know more, if I’m going to work for you.’

‘You’re accompanying me, Retancourt. Your mission is simply that.’

‘I belong to the squad and I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. I think I know what they’re after, but I need your version. You ought to trust me, sir.’

‘But why,
lieutenant?
You don’t really like me, do you?’

This impromptu accusation did not upset Retancourt.

‘Not much,’ she confirmed. ‘But that really doesn’t matter. You’re my boss and I’m doing my job. Laliberté is trying to trap you; he’s sure you knew that girl.’

‘Not true.’

‘You have to trust me,’ Retancourt repeated coolly. ‘You’re relying entirely on yourself. That’s your usual way, but today it would be a bad mistake. Unless, that is, you have a cast-iron alibi for the night of the 26th after ten-thirty.’

‘That bad?’

‘I really think so.’

‘They
suspect me
of killing the girl? You’re imagining things, Retancourt.’

‘Just tell me, yes or no, did you know her?’

Adamsberg remained silent.

‘Come on, tell me,
commissaire
. The bullfighter who doesn’t know his beast is certain to get gored.’

Adamsberg looked at his
lieutenant
’s round, intelligent and determined face.

‘OK,
lieutenant
, yes, I did know her.’

‘Shhhit!’

‘She was waiting for me on the portage trail, from the very first day we were there. I won’t tell you why I ended up taking her back to my apartment on the first Sunday, it has nothing to do with the story. But that’s what I did. More’s the pity, because she turned out to be completely nuts. A few days later, she told me she was pregnant, and started to talk about blackmail.’

‘Uh-oh. Not nice,’ said Retancourt helping herself to another roll.

‘She was determined to catch the same flight as us, follow me to Paris and move in, despite anything I could say. She claimed that some old Indian at Sainte-Agathe had told her I was predestined to be her soulmate. She’d sunk her teeth into me.’

‘This kind of thing hasn’t ever happened to me, but I can imagine it’s no fun. So what did you do?’

‘I argued, I said it wasn’t on, I told her it was over. In the end I just ran away. I jumped out of the window, and ran away into the woods like a squirrel.’

Retancourt nodded, her mouth full.

‘And I never saw her again,’ Adamsberg insisted. ‘I took great pains to avoid her until we’d left the country.’

‘Was that why you were looking jumpy at the airport?’

‘She’d said she’d be there. It’s only now that I know why she didn’t make it.’

‘She’d been dead for two days.’

‘If Laliberté had known about this shortlived fling, he’d have let me have it from the start, surely. So Noëlla didn’t tell anyone, or at least didn’t tell anyone my name. The superintendent can’t be sure. He’s on a fishing expedition.’

‘He must have something else that’s allowing him to grill you: Act Three, I would guess, the night of the 26th.’

Adamsberg stared at Retancourt. The night of the 26th? He hadn’t thought about it, because he was so relieved that the murder hadn’t been committed on the Friday night, after their quarrel.

‘You know what happened that night?’

‘I don’t know anything, except that you came in with a bad bruise in the morning. But since Laliberté was holding this card until last, I presume it must mean something important.’

It was almost time for the RCMP inspectors to pick them up. Adamsberg filled his
lieutenant
in rapidly about his evening’s drinking and the two and a half hours’ memory loss.

‘Oh shit again,’ said Retancourt. ‘That doesn’t help, but what I don’t know is what he’s got to link a girl he’d never heard of before and a man who’d had too much to drink walking home on the portage trail. He’s got something else up his sleeve that he’s not letting on about. Laliberté operates like a stalker. He takes a certain pleasure in the chase. He may drag it out.’

‘Careful, Retancourt, he doesn’t know anything about my lost two hours. Danglard is the only person besides you who knows.’

‘But he’s sure to have looked into it since. You left
L’Ecluse
at ten-fifteen and you arrived back at the residence at ten to two. That’s a long time for a man with nothing on his mind.’

‘Don’t worry. Don’t forget, I know who the real murderer is.’

‘Right,’ said Retancourt. ‘Let’s hope that settles it.’

‘There’s just one snag. It’s a detail compared to what this murderer can do, but I’m afraid it won’t go down well.’

‘You’re not sure about it?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. But the man I’m thinking of has been dead for sixteen years.’

XXXIII

FERNAND SANSCARTIER AND GINETTE SAINT-PREUX WERE THE
accompanying officers this time. Adamsberg imagined that they might perhaps have volunteered to come to work on Sunday to give him some moral support. But his two former allies both seemed embarrassed and constrained. Only the squirrel, still on duty outside the door, with his girlfriend in tow, greeted him by wrinkling its muzzle. A faithful little buddy.

‘Right, Adamsberg, it’s your turn,’ Laliberté greeted him with a cordial expression. ‘Tell me all about it, what you’ve found out, what you know. OK?’

The approach friendly. Laliberté was using all the old techniques. Alternating between hostility and affability. It destabilises the suspect, first reassuring him, then scaring him again, and he becomes disoriented. Adamsberg stiffened his resolve. The superintendent was not going to make him run off course like a frightened animal, still less with Retancourt sitting behind him. He had an odd feeling that she was propping him up.

‘We’re friends today, are we?’ asked Adamsberg with a smile.

‘Today, I’m listening. Just tell me what’s on your mind.’

‘I warn you, Aurèle, it’s a long story.’

‘OK, man, but try not to drag it out too much.’

Adamsberg took his time in describing the judge’s bloody itinerary, from the 1949 murder to the reappearance at Schiltigheim. He omitted
no details about the assassin’s technique, the scapegoats he set up, the measurements of the trident, the changing of the blades. Nor did he conceal his own inability to catch the judge, who was protected by the high walls of his power, his network of contacts and his ability to move around the country. The superintendent took notes, but with a degree of impatience.

‘Call me picky, but I see three flaws in the story,’ he said at the end, holding up three fingers.

‘Rigour, rigour and yet more rigour,’ thought Adamsberg to himself.

‘First, you want me to believe that this murderer’s been running round France for fifty years?’

‘Without getting caught, you mean? I told you about his influence and the way he changes the blades. Nobody has ever thought of challenging the judge’s reputation, nor has anyone ever linked these murders together, except me. Nine, counting Schiltigheim, ten counting Noëlla Corderon.’

‘What I mean is that this guy can’t be a spring chicken.’

‘Well, suppose he started when he was twenty. He’d still only be about seventy.’

‘Second of all,’ said Laliberté, putting a cross against his notes. ‘You went on at length about this trident thing and its crossbar. But the idea of the altered blades is just your own hypothesis. You’ve got no evidence.’

‘Yes I have, the measurements in all directions.’

‘Exactly. But this time, your maniac killer broke his usual practice. As you saw, the line of wounds is longer than your crossbar, 17.2 centimetres, not 16.9. So all of a sudden, the murderer changes his routine. Seventy isn’t the kind of age when a serial killer starts changing a ritual, so how do you explain that?’

‘I thought about that, and I can only come up with one explanation. The airport controls. He couldn’t have brought the original trident, he’d never have been allowed through security. He must have had to buy another over here.’

‘It wasn’t bought, Adamsberg, it was borrowed. It had traces of soil on it. It wasn’t brand new.’

‘That’s true.’

‘So now we’ve got some departures from routine, and not minor ones, for this so-called ritualistic murderer. Add to that that we didn’t find anyone roaming about dead drunk beside the victim, with a murder weapon in his hands. No fall guy. That makes a helluva lot of differences, if you ask my opinion.’

‘Changes of circumstance. Like all super-intelligent people, the judge is adaptable. He had to deal with the ice, since the victim was frozen in for three days before being found. And he had to deal with a foreign country.’

‘I was coming to that,’ said Laliberté, making another cross against his notes. ‘Isn’t there enough room for him back in the old country, your judge? Until now, he’s only been killing people in France, according to you.’

‘I wouldn’t know. I only told you about the French murders because those were the only ones where I could get hold of records. If he’s been off killing people in Sweden or Japan, I don’t know about it.’

‘Christ Almighty, you’re an obstinate bastard. You’ve got an answer for everything, haven’t you?’

‘Isn’t that what you wanted? You wanted me to give you a lead to the murderer, didn’t you? Do you know many people who kill with a trident? Because what I say makes sense for the weapon, doesn’t it?’

‘Yeah, right, it was some kind of fork that killed her. But as for who was on the other end, that’s something else again.’

‘Judge Honoré Guillaume Fulgence. Guaranteed to use a trident. A man I’m going to get my hands on, I promise you.’

‘Well, I’d like to see your files then,’ said Laliberté tipping back his chair. ‘Your nine files.’

‘I’ll have them copied and sent over to you when I get back.’

‘No. I want them now. Can’t you ask one of your men to send them to me by fax or email?’

No choice, thought Adamsberg, as he followed Laliberté and his men into the computer room. He was thinking about Fulgence’s death. Sooner or later Laliberté was going to find out about it, as Trabelmann had. The most worrying aspect though, for the moment, was the file on his brother.
It contained a sketch of the screwdriver which he had thrown into the Torque, and notes about his false alibi during the trial, which were strictly confidential items. Danglard was the only person who could help him out – if he realised that he should weed the files before sending them. But how was he going to tell him that while he was under the superintendent’s eagle eye? He would have liked an hour or so to think it through, but he was going to have to be quicker than that.

‘I just want to fetch something from my coat,’ he said, going out again.

In the superintendent’s now empty office, Retancourt was sitting looking half asleep, slumped in a chair. He took a little time to take a few bags out of his bulging coat pockets, and ambled back in a casual manner, to see the three officers.

‘Here,’ he said to Sanscartier, holding out the bags, with an unobtrusive wink, ‘there are six packs. Share them with Ginette if she likes it. If you need more, give me a call.’

‘What are you giving them?’ grumbled Laliberté. ‘French booze?’

‘Almond-scented soap. I’m not corrupting any public servants, it’s just balm for the soul.’

‘Christ, Adamsberg, less of the bullshit. We’re here on serious business.’

‘It’s after ten at night now in Paris. Danglard is the only one who can find the files. I’d better send him a fax to his home address. He’ll get it when he wakes up and you’ll gain a bit of time that way.’

‘OK, man, go ahead, write something for the big slouch.’

This concession enabled Adamsberg to send Danglard a handwritten message. The only idea he had come up with during the brief soap-fetching sortie was a schoolboy trick, but it might work. He would deform his handwriting, which Danglard knew by heart, by enlarging all the D’s and R’s, the beginning and end of DangeR. That was quite possible in a short message with the words Danglard, Dossier, Address, Adamsberg and Trident. He hoped that Danglard would be wide awake and understand it, or at any rate smell a rat before he scanned the papers in the files.

The fax went off, having been checked by the superintendent, carrying Adamsberg’s hopes with it along the sub-Atlantic cable. He now had to
place his faith in the alert mind of his second-in-command. He thought of Danglard’s angel with the sword and for once prayed that in the morning his deputy would be in full possession of his logical faculties.

‘He’ll get it tomorrow. I can’t do any more for now,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I’ve told you all I know.’

‘I’m not through yet,’ said Laliberté, raising another finger. ‘There’s a fourth point that intrigues me.’

Rigour and yet more rigour. Adamsberg sat down again by the fax machine. Laliberté remained standing. Another old police trick. Adamsberg tried to catch the eye of Sanscartier, who was standing still, clutching his bag of soap. And in those eyes which seemed still to beam out one and the same expression, that of goodness, he seemed to read something else. Trap ahead. Watch your step.

‘Didn’t you say you started chasing this guy when you were only eighteen?’ Laliberté asked.