Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (31 page)

Adamsberg was listening attentively. Trabelmann’s harsh words came back to him, and the resemblance to what he was hearing formed a great shadow which passed over his brow with the flapping of dark wings. Following his own inclination, leaving other people aside, not bothering to distinguish between them, discarding them as distant interchangeable figures, whose names he couldn’t even remember. And yet he was sure the
commandant
of gendarmes had been wrong about him.

‘Makes me sound a miserable bastard, doesn’t it,’ he said without looking up.

‘Yes, I suppose so. But perhaps you were really always somewhere else, far away, with Raphaël, just in a twosome with him. I thought about it
in the plane. When you were in the cafe where you met him, you formed a circle, an exclusive circle.’

She drew a circle on the table with her finger and Adamsberg knotted his thin, newly-white brows.

‘You were with your brother,’ she explained. ‘You didn’t want to abandon him, you were with him, wherever he’d gone. In the desert with him.’

‘In the mud of the Torque,’ said Adamsberg, drawing another circle.

‘If you like.’

‘What else do you see in your analysis of me?’

‘Well, for the same reasons, you ought to listen when I say you didn’t murder anyone. To kill, you need to be emotionally involved with other people, you need to get drawn into their troubles and even be obsessed by what they represent. Killing means interfering with some kind of bond, an excessive reaction, a sort of mingling with someone else. So that the other person doesn’t exist as themselves, but as something that belongs to you, that you can treat as a victim. I don’t think you’re remotely capable of that. A man like you, who wanders through the world without any meaningful contact with other people, doesn’t kill. He’s not close enough to them, he can’t be bothered to sacrifice them to an act of passion. I don’t say you
can’t
love anyone, but you certainly didn’t love Noëlla. You’d never have taken the trouble to kill her.’

‘Go on,’ said Adamsberg, resting his cheek on his hand.

‘Watch out, you’re messing up your make-up, I told you not to touch it!’

‘Sorry. Carry on.’

‘Well, that’s all really. Someone who has a meaningless affair is not involved enough to kill.’

‘Retancourt,’ said Adamsberg forcefully.

‘Shh, Henriette,’ his
lieutenant
corrected him. ‘Be careful, someone might hear you.’

‘Henriette, I hope one day I will deserve the help you’ve given me. But for now, please go on believing in me about that night I can’t remember. Please believe I didn’t kill, channel all your energy into that. Be a pylon, be a mountain of belief. Then I’ll be able to as well.’

‘Well, use your own brain,’ Retancourt insisted. ‘I told you. Your inner confidence. Now is the time to count on it.’

‘I hear what you’re saying,’ said Adamsberg, holding her arm, ‘but your energy will be a lever. Just keep it there for me, for a while.’

‘I’ve no reason to change my mind.’

Adamsberg released her arm with reluctance, as if he were jumping down from a tree, and left.

XL

THE COMMISSAIRE, HAVING CHECKED IN A GLASS DOOR THAT HIS
makeup was still intact, stationed himself from six that evening on the homeward route of Adrien Danglard. He spotted from a distance Danglard’s large shambling figure, but the
capitaine
gave no sign of recognition as he walked past Jean-Pierre Emile Roger Feuillet. Adamsberg caught him by the arm.

‘Don’t say anything, Danglard, just keep walking.’

‘Good God, who are you? What do you want?’ said Danglard trying to pull free.

‘It’s me, Adamsberg, got up like a salesman.’

‘Shit,’ Danglard gasped, staring at the face in front of him and trying to make it fit Adamsberg’s features behind the pale skin, red-rimmed eyes and balding hairline.

‘OK now, Danglard?’

‘I’ve got to talk to you,’ said the
capitaine
, looking around.

‘Me too. Let’s turn here and go to your place. No funny business.’

‘No, not my place,’ said Danglard in a low, firm voice. ‘Pretend you were asking me the way and leave me. I’ll see you in five minutes, in my son’s school, second street right. Tell the janitor you’ve come to see me, and I’ll be in the games room.’

Danglard pulled away his arm and the
commissaire
watched as he went down the street and turned a corner.

* * *

In the school, he found his deputy sitting on a child’s blue plastic chair, surrounded by a confusion of balls, books, cubes and little tables. Perched thirty centimetres above the floor, Danglard looked ridiculous. But Adamsberg had no choice but to take another chair, a red one, and sit down beside him.

‘Surprised to see I’ve got away from the Mounties?’

‘Yes, I have to say.’

‘Disappointed? Anxious?’

Danglard looked at him without a word. This pale-faced balding creature, with Adamsberg’s voice coming from his mouth, fascinated him. His youngest child was looking by turns at his father and at the funny man in a beige tweed suit.

‘I’m going to tell you another story now, Danglard, but ask your little boy to go away. It’s unsuitable for children.’

Danglard whispered to the child and sent him off across the room, still looking at Adamsberg.

‘It’s like a cops and robbers movie, Danglard. With a chase. But perhaps you’ve heard it?’

‘I’ve read the papers,’ said Danglard prudently, watchful of his boss’s fixed gaze. ‘I saw the charges that they’d brought against you, and that you’d escaped police surveillance.’

‘So you don’t know any more than the man in the street?’

‘If you like.’

‘Well, I’ll fill you in on the detail,’ said Adamsberg, pulling his chair closer.

During the entire time he was telling his tale, omitting nothing, from his first meeting with Laliberté to the stay at Basile’s flat, Adamsberg examined the expressions on the
capitaine
’s face. But Danglard’s face reflected nothing but concern, scrupulous attention and at times astonishment.

‘I told you she was an exceptional woman,’ he said when Adamsberg had finished.

‘I didn’t come here to talk about Retancourt. Let’s talk about Laliberté. Pretty quick off the mark, wasn’t he? All that stuff he’d been able to collect on me in such a short time. Including the fact that I had no memory at
all of the two and a half hours on the trail. That amnesia was the fatal piece of evidence in his file.’

‘Obviously.’

‘But who knew about it? Nobody at the Mounties knew, nor anyone in our squad.’

‘Perhaps he was guessing? Perhaps he just assumed it?’

Adamsberg smiled.

‘No, it was down in the file as a certainty. When I said, “nor anyone in our squad,” there was of course an exception. You knew about it, Danglard.’

Danglard nodded slowly.

‘So you think I might have told him?’ he said calmly.

‘Exactly.’

‘It’s logical enough,’ Danglard agreed.

‘For once when I try to be logical, you should be glad.’

‘No, this time, you shouldn’t have tried it.’

‘I’m in hell, Danglard, I have to try everything. Including the damned logic you keep trying to teach me.’

‘Fair enough. But what does your intuition tell you? Your dreams, your imagination? What do they say about me?’

‘You’re asking me to do it my way?’

‘For once, yes.’

His deputy’s calm demeanour and steady gaze shook Adamsberg. He knew by heart Danglard’s washed-out blue eyes, which were unable to conceal any of his emotions. You could read anything in them: fear, disapproval, pleasure, distrust, as easily as fish swimming in a fountain. But he could see nothing there indicating the least hint of withdrawal. Curiosity and wonder were the only fish swimming in Danglard’s eyes at the moment. And possibly a discreet relief at seeing him again.

‘My dreams tell me you don’t know anything about it. But those are just dreams. My imagination tells me you’d never do anything like that, or not in that way.’

‘And your intuition?’

‘Tells me the judge is behind it all.’

‘Pretty stubborn, your intuition, isn’t it?’

‘Well, you asked. And you know you don’t like my answers. Sanscartier told me to keep on sailing and hang on in there. So that’s what I’m doing.’

‘Can I say something?’ asked Danglard.

Meanwhile, the little boy, tired of reading, had come back to them and was sitting on Adamsberg’s knee, having finally managed to identify him.

‘You smell sweaty,’ he said, interrupting the conversation.

‘I expect so,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I’ve been travelling a long time.’

‘Why are you in disguise?’

‘I was playing games in the plane.’

‘What sort of games?’

‘Cops and robbers.’

‘You were the robber?’ the child said.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Adamsberg patted the boy’s hair to indicate the end of the exchange and looked up at Danglard.

‘Someone’s been searching your flat,’ Danglard said. ‘Though I can’t be sure.’

Adamsberg motioned him to go on.

‘It was over a week ago, Monday morning. I found your fax asking me to send the files to the Mounties. With the D’s and R’s written in big letters. I thought it was just for “Danglard” at first. Like a warning. Meaning, Danglard, look out, be careful. Then I thought of “DangeR”.’

‘Well spotted,
capitaine.’

‘So you didn’t suspect me when you sent it?’

‘No, the gift of logic only descended on me the day after that.’

‘Pity,’ muttered Danglard.

‘Go on. The files?’

‘Well, so I was a bit wary. I went to fetch your spare house key where it usually is, in your top drawer, in the box of paper clips.’

Adamsberg nodded.

‘The key was there all right, but it was outside the box. Maybe you had been in a hurry when you left. But I was suspicious. Because of the D’s and R’s.’

‘You were right. I always put the key in the box, because the drawer’s got a crack in it.’

Danglard shot a glance at his pale-faced boss. Adamsberg’s face had almost regained its usual mild expression, and curiously enough the
capitaine
did not resent the suspicion of treachery. He might have gone through the same thought process himself.

‘When I got to your flat, I looked at everything carefully. Remember I put away the files myself for you, and the box they were in?’

‘Yes, because my arm was in a sling.’

‘It seemed to me that I would have put them back more carefully than that. I’m sure I pushed the box to the back of the cupboard. But that morning it wasn’t right up against the back. Maybe you got them out again, for Trabelmann?’

‘No, I didn’t touch the box.’

‘Good heavens! How did you do that?’

‘Do what?’

Danglard pointed to his youngest child who had dropped off to sleep on Adamsberg’s knee, with the
commissaire’s
hand still resting on his head.

‘Well you know, Danglard, I do send people to sleep. It works for kids too.’

Danglard looked at him enviously. Vincent was a hard child to get to sleep.

‘Well,’ he went on, ‘everyone in the office knows where you keep the key.’

‘You think there’s a mole in the squad, Danglard?’

Danglard hesitated and gave a gentle kick to a ball, sending it across the room.

‘Possibly,’ he said.

‘But looking for what? My files on the judge?’

‘That’s what I can’t fathom. What would be the motive? I took prints from the key – just my own. Either I covered up the previous handler’s, or else the visitor wiped the key before putting it back in the drawer.’

Adamsberg half closed his eyes. Who on earth would have been interested in the Trident case? It was not as if he had ever made a mystery of
it. The tension of travelling and a day without sleep were beginning to weigh on his shoulders. But knowing that Danglard was unlikely to have betrayed him was a relief. Not that he had any proof of his deputy’s innocence, apart from the transparency of his expression.

‘You didn’t think of any other way the “DangeR” might have been interpreted?’

‘Well, I thought some elements of the 1973 murder would be better held back from the RCMP. But the visitor had been there before me.’

‘Shit,’ said Adamsberg, with a start, interrupting the child’s sleep.

‘And had put everything back.’

Danglard brought out three folded sheets of paper from his inside pocket.

‘I’ve kept these on me ever since,’ he said handing them to Adamsberg.

The
commissaire
glanced over them. Yes, those were the documents he had been hoping that Danglard would spot. And the
capitaine
had been carrying them round on him ever since, for eleven days. That must be proof that he had not betrayed him to Laliberté. Unless he had sent copies.

‘This time,’ Adamsberg said, handing them back, ‘you understood what I meant when I was thousands of kilometres away, and on the strength of an inconspicuous signal. So why is it that sometimes we can’t communicate when we’re only a metre apart?’

Danglard threw another ball up in the air.

‘A matter of what it’s about, I dare say,’ he said with his thin smile.

‘Why are you keeping the papers on you?’ Adamsberg asked after a pause.

‘Because since your escape, I’ve been under constant surveillance. They’re watching my building, because they’re hoping that if you slip through their fingers, you’ll try to see me. Which is what you were about to do, just now. That’s why we’re sitting in this school.’

‘Brézillon?’

‘Of course. His men went into your flat officially, as soon as the RCMP sounded the alarm. Brézillon has his orders and they’ve turned everything upside down. One of their own
commissaires
a murderer and on the run. The Minister has agreed with the Canadian authorities to arrest you
the minute you set foot in France. The entire French police force is on alert. So you can’t go home. Or to Camille’s studio. Your usual haunts are all watched.’

Adamsberg stroked the child’s head automatically. It seemed to make the little boy sleep more soundly. If Danglard had betrayed him, he wouldn’t have taken him to the school to help him avoid the police.