Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (3 page)

The fourth tornado pounced on him about an hour later, as he was going up the boulevard Saint-Paul, a few yards from home. He flinched under the attack, and leaned against a lamp post, freezing like a statue as the wind passed over him. He closed his eyes and waited. Less than a minute later, he slowly lifted his head, shifted his shoulders, and flexed his fingers in his pockets, but was then assailed by the feeling of profound unease the storm had left in its wake for the fourth time that day. A distress which brought tears to his eyes, a sorrow without a name.

He had to put a name to it. To this red alert, this torture he was undergoing. Because the day that had begun so normally, with him walking in as he did every day to his headquarters, had left him a changed man, unable to contemplate resuming his routine. An ordinary human being in the morning, and by the evening a nervous wreck, paralysed by a volcano that had opened up under his feet, its fiery mouth containing an undecipherable enigma.

Peeling himself away from the lamp post, he examined his surroundings, as he would a crime scene of which he was himself the victim, seeking to identify the killer who had stabbed him in the back. He retreated a metre or so and stood again in the exact spot where he had been at the moment of impact. He looked along the empty pavement, the darkened shop window on the right, the advertising hoarding on the left. Nothing else. Only the advertising poster was clearly visible through the dark, since it was lit up inside its glass case. That must have been the last thing he saw before the assault. He looked at it carefully. It was a reproduction of a classical sort of painting, with a strip across it announcing ‘Nineteenth-century paintings in the academic tradition. Temporary exhibition. Grand Palais, 18 October–17 December.’

The painting depicted a muscular figure with pale skin and a dark beard, sitting comfortably on a huge shell in the middle of the ocean, and surrounded by nymphs. Adamsberg stared for a long moment at the picture, trying to work out what it might have done to unleash the whirlwind, in the same way as his conversation with Danglard, his office armchair and the smoke-filled
Liffey Water
bar. But surely a man can’t fall from normality into chaos with a snap of the fingers. There must be some kind of transition, some way through. Here, as in the D’Hernoncourt case, what was missing was the set of nuances, the bridge between the two river banks, one deep in shadow, the other brightly sunlit. Sighing with frustration, he bit his lip and peered out into the darkness, in search of a cruising taxi. He hailed one, climbed into the cab and gave the driver the address of Adrien Danglard.

IV

HE HAD TO RING THE BELL THREE TIMES BEFORE DANGLARD
, befuddled with sleep, opened the door. The
capitaine
gave a start at the sight of Adamsberg, whose features seemed to have become more drawn, the nose more arched, the dark shadows under his high cheekbones more pronounced. So the
commissaire
had not been able to relax as quickly as usual after a tense moment. Danglard knew he had overstepped the line, earlier in the day. Ever since, he had been mulling over the possibility of a confrontation, a reprimand perhaps. Or a punishment? Or worse. Unable to stop the deep waves of pessimism, he had been thinking about his growing fears all through supper, trying not to let anything show in front of the children, about this concern or indeed about the aeroplane engine. The best distraction was to tell them another story about
Lieutenant
Retancourt, which would certainly amuse them, especially since this massive woman – who seemed to have been painted by Michelangelo, a painter whose mighty genius had not been at its best in rendering the supple uncertainties of the female body – had the name of a delicate wild flower: Violette. That day, Violette had been talking quietly with Hélène Froissy, who was suffering from an unhappy love affair. Violette had emphasised one of her remarks by bringing the palm of her hand down sharply on the photocopier, and it had immediately started working again, after having been stuck for five days.

One of the older children had asked what would have happened if Retancourt had banged Hélène Froissy’s head instead of the photocopier.
Could she have sent her unhappy colleague’s mind off in a more positive direction? Could Violette change people and things by knocking on them? All the children had then tried their luck with the family television set, which was also out of order, to test their strength. Danglard allowed them only one go each, but alas, no image appeared, and the youngest one had hurt his finger. Once they were all in bed, his pessimism had once more overtaken him with dark forebodings.

Faced with his superior officer, Danglard scratched his chest in a gesture of illusory self-defence.

‘Quick, Danglard,’ whispered Adamsberg. ‘I need you. There’s a taxi waiting.’

His head cleared by this sudden return to calm, the
capitaine
hurriedly pulled on a jacket and trousers. Adamsberg evidently wasn’t bearing a grudge, his anger being already forgotten, swallowed up in the clouds of his habitual indulgence or indifference. If the
commissaire
had come to fetch him late at night, it must mean the squad had another murder to deal with.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Saint-Paul.’

The two men went downstairs, Danglard trying to tie his tie as well as putting on a thick scarf.

‘Is there a victim?’

‘Just get a move on,
mon vieux
, it’s urgent.’

The taxi dropped them off by the poster. Adamsberg paid the fare, while Danglard was looking in surprise down the empty street. No flashing lights, no technical team, just a deserted pavement and sleeping buildings. Adamsberg caught his arm and pulled him hurriedly towards the advertisement. Without letting go, he pointed to the picture.

‘Danglard, tell me, what’s that?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Danglard, in puzzlement.

‘The painting, for God’s sake. I’m asking you what it is. What’s it about?’

‘But where’s the murder?’ asked Danglard turning round. ‘Where’s the victim?’

‘Here,’ said Adamsberg pointing at his own chest. ‘Just give me an answer. What is it?’

Danglard shook his head, half shocked, half confused. Then the surreal absurdity of the situation seemed so funny to him that a pure feeling of hilarity swept away his black mood. He felt full of gratitude to Adamsberg, who not only seemed to be overlooking the earlier insults, but was also quite involuntarily offering him a moment of exceptional extravagance this evening. Only Adamsberg was capable of squeezing ordinary life to extract these escapades, these shafts of weird beauty. So what did it matter that he had been woken up in the middle of the night and dragged off in the freezing cold to stand looking at a picture of Neptune?

‘Who’s that man?’ Adamsberg was repeating, without letting go of his arm.

‘Neptune rising from the waves,’ Danglard said with a smile.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Neptune, or Poseidon if you prefer.’

‘Is he the god of the sea, or of the underworld, or what?’

‘They’re brothers,’ Danglard explained, delighted to be able to give a midnight lesson in mythology. ‘Three brothers, Hades, Zeus and Poseidon. Poseidon reigns over the seas, with all their storms and calms, but also over what lies under the sea, the vasty deeps.’

Adamsberg had let his arm go by now and was listening hard, his hands clasped behind his back.

‘In the picture,’ Danglard went on, moving his finger across the poster, ‘we see him surrounded by his court and his demons. Here are Neptune’s benign actions, and here is his power to punish mortals, represented by his trident and the evil serpent who drags men under the sea. This is an academic painting, sentimental and unremarkable. I can’t identify the painter. Some artist long forgotten, who did pictures for the walls of bourgeois householders and probably …’

‘So that’s Neptune,’ Adamsberg interrupted in a thoughtful voice. ‘OK, Danglard, thanks a million. Go home, go back to bed. My apologies for waking you up.’

Before Danglard could even ask what it was all about, Adamsberg had
stopped another taxi and pushed his deputy inside. Through the car window, he watched his
commissaire
walking away slowly, a thin, dark, stooping figure, steering a slightly irregular course through the night. He smiled, automatically put his hand to his head and found the remains of the pompom on his woolly hat. Suddenly anxious, he touched it three times for luck.

V

BACK HOME, ADAMSBERG LOOKED THROUGH HIS HAPHAZARD
collection of books to find one that might tell him more about Neptune/Poseidon. He found an old schoolbook where on page 67 the sea god appeared in all his glory, brandishing his divine weapon. He looked at it for a moment, read the little caption describing the bas-relief, then still holding the book, he collapsed on to his bed, fully dressed but worn out with exhaustion and worry.

He was woken at about four in the morning by a cat miauling on the rooftops. He opened his eyes in the darkness and stared at the lighter rectangle of the window opposite his bed. His jacket, hanging from the window catch, looked like a broad-shouldered, motionless silhouette, an intruder who had crept into his bedroom to watch him sleeping. It was the stowaway who had penetrated his secret cave and wasn’t letting him escape. Adamsberg closed his eyes then opened them again. Neptune and his trident.

This time, his arms started to tremble, and his heart beat faster. This was nothing like the previous four attacks, but sheer stupefaction and terror.

He took a long drink from the kitchen tap and splashed cold water on to his face and hair. Then he opened all the cupboards, looking for some alcohol, the stronger the better, a liqueur, anything. There must be something of the kind, the remains of an evening with Danglard, for instance. In the end, he found an unfamiliar earthenware bottle and uncorked it.
Sniffing the neck, he looked at the label. Gin, 44 degrees proof. His hands holding the heavy bottle were trembling. He filled a glass and drank it straight off. Twice. Adamsberg felt his body loosen up and let himself fall into an old armchair, leaving only a reading lamp alight.

Now that the alcohol had deadened his muscles, he could start thinking, begin again, and try to face the monster that the image of Neptune had finally called up from his own vasty deeps. The stowaway, the dreadful intruder. The invincible and arrogant killer, whom he used to call ‘The Trident’. The murderer who always escaped, and who, thirty years earlier, had thrown his life off course. For fourteen years after that, Adamsberg had been chasing after him, following his tracks, hoping each time to catch him and then losing his moving target. He had run, fallen headlong, and run again.

And had ended by falling once more. In the course of this pursuit, he had given up hope and, above all, had lost his brother. The Trident had escaped, every time. He was a Titan, a devil, a Poseidon from hell. Raising his three-pronged weapon and killing with a single blow to the belly. Leaving his impaled victims with three bloody wounds in a straight line.

Adamsberg sat up in the chair. The three red drawing pins in his office, the three bleeding holes. Enid’s long three-pronged fork, echoing the trident’s three points. And Neptune raising his trident-sceptre. These were the images which had given him such pain, dredging up a great sorrow, and then, in a single stream of mud, liberating his resurrected anguish.

He ought to have guessed, he thought now. He ought to have linked these violent shocks to the long and painful trajectory of his pursuit of the Trident. Because no other living being had caused him more pain and dread, distress and fury than this man. Sixteen years earlier, he had had to close up the gaping wound the killer had made in his life, seal it up, cover it over, and forget about it. And suddenly, without rhyme or reason, it had opened up under his feet.

* * *

Adamsberg stood up and paced round the room, with folded arms. On the one hand, he felt relieved and almost peaceful, since he had identified what lay at the eye of the cyclone. The tornadoes would not catch him out again. But this sudden reappearance of the Trident alarmed him. This Monday 6 October, he had risen up like a ghost bursting through the walls. It was a troubling revival, an inexplicable return. He put the bottle of gin back in the cupboard and carefully rinsed out the glass. Unless, that is, he did somehow know, unless he did understand why the old man had risen from the past. Between his calm everyday arrival at the office and the spectre of the Trident, there was some missing connection.

He sat on the floor, back to the radiator, hugging his knees and thinking of his great-uncle, curled up like that in the rocks. He needed to concentrate, peer into the deepest recesses of his mind without giving up. Return to the first appearance of the Trident, the initial tornado. So, he had been talking about Rembrandt while he explained to Danglard what he saw as the flaw in the D’Hernoncourt case. He tried to relive this scene again. Although he always found it difficult to remember words, images invariably imprinted themselves on his memory like pebbles on soft mud. He saw himself sitting on the corner of Danglard’s desk, and he saw the grumpy face of his deputy, under the sailor’s cap with its remains of a pompom. He saw the plastic cup of white wine, and the light falling from the left. And he was talking about light and shade. How was he sitting? With arms folded? Hands on knees? Hands on the table? Or in his pockets? What had he been doing with his hands?

He had been holding a newspaper. He had picked it up off the table, and had been leafing through it, without really reading it, during their conversation. Had he really not been reading it? Or had he seen something there? Something so powerful that a tidal wave had surged up out of his memory?

Adamsberg looked at his watch. Five-twenty in the morning. Getting quickly to his feet, he smoothed down his rumpled jacket and left the house. A short time later, he was neutralising the alarm on the front
entrance and walking into the Crime Squad offices. The hall was freezing cold. The engineer who was supposed to have come at seven the previous evening had still not arrived.