Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (41 page)

He put on his coat and his Arctic cap, and slipped out into the night. The shabby streets of Clignancourt were dark and empty, and the street-lamps gave only fitful light. He took Josette’s old moped, which was painted in two shades of blue, and twenty-five minutes later, he braked to a halt outside Camille’s windows. What was driving him was an urge to find a different refuge, and the desire to breathe, if only from outside the building, a little of the clear and healthy air that came to him from Camille, or rather that formed when he and Camille were together. It takes two windows to make a draught, as Clémentine would have put it. He had a shock on looking up to the seventh floor. The lights were on. She must have come back from Montreal. Unless she had let the flat. Or maybe the new father was up there, acting as if he owned the place, with his two labradors, one of them drooling under the sink and the other by Camille’s synthesiser. Adamsberg looked up at the provocative square of light, watching for the new father’s shadow. The idea of someone else taking possession went through him like a drill, conjuring up the vision of a muscular man, walking about in the nude with his firm buttocks and flat stomach, an image that burned itself into his brain.

From the little cafe at street level came welcoming smells, and the hum of people drinking. Just like
L’Ecluse
. Perfect, thought Adamsberg nervously, as he locked up the moped. A good glass of cognac, that would drown the image of the naked he-man allowing his dogs to drool all over Camille’s studio floor. He would use the same technique as the late lamented Cargo: he’d transform the intruder into a sticky wad of blotting paper.

This was the second time in his life he had deliberately got drunk, or at least since he was a teenager, thought Adamsberg, pushing open the steamed-up cafe door. Perhaps he would not try mixing his drinks tonight. Or again, perhaps he should. After all, in another five weeks he
would be sitting in Brézillon’s armchair, having lost his memory, his job, his brother, his girl from the north, and his freedom. It was hardly the moment to be scared of mixing his drinks. Bloody labradors, he thought, downing his first cognac, and he decided to stuff them into some of the windows on the cathedral façade, with their back legs kicking in the air. When he had succeeded in filling all the orifices of the jewel of Gothic architecture with his imaginary menagerie, what would happen to the monument? Perhaps it would choke for lack of air and fall down. Or perhaps puff, puff, it would explode. Would it just collapse inwards, he wondered, ordering his second cognac, And what would they do with the ruins, not to speak of all the creatures lying beneath the masonry? Big problem for the canons of Strasbourg.

How about stuffing the windows of the Mounties’ headquarters with surplus animals while he was at it? Starving the atmosphere of oxygen and filling it with the stinking breath of the beasts. Laliberté would drop dead. He would have to save Sanscartier the Good of course, and the kindly Ginette. But would there be enough animals? It was a serious question, since you needed really big creatures. Moths and snails wouldn’t do. Good big creatures, preferably spitting smoke like dragons. But you couldn’t easily locate a dragon, they hide away sneakily in caves.

Well, of course he knew where to find some dragons, in a Mah Jong set, he thought, hitting the counter with his fist. All he knew about the Chinese game was that there were dragons in it, of various colours. He would just have to find some, like old Guillaumond with his three fingers, and push the reptiles in randomly, into all the doors and windows. Red ones for Strasbourg, green ones for Ottawa.

Adamsberg was unable to finish his fourth glass and staggered out to the moped. He couldn’t undo the lock, so instead he pushed open the door of Camille’s block of flats, and climbed up the seven storeys, clinging on to the bannister. He’d have a word with the new father, give him a piece of his mind, that’s what he’d do, and see him off. Might keep his labradors though, and add them to the judge’s dobermans. They’d do very well for some of the cathedral windows. But not Cargo, he was a good dog, and on Adamsberg’s side in all this, as was his little beetle-mobile
phone. A foolproof plan, he thought as he leaned on Camille’s door. But a thought stopped him as he was about to ring the bell. A pang of memory. Look out. Last time you were drunk, you killed Noëlla. Don’t go in. You don’t know who you are, you don’t know what you’re capable of. Yes, but he really needed those labradors.

Camille opened the door, and was amazed to find him on the landing.

‘Are you alone?’ he asked.

She nodded.

‘No dogs?’

He was having difficulty forming his words. Do not go in, roared the waters of the Ottawa River. Do not go in.

‘What dogs?’ asked Camille. ‘Jean-Baptiste, you’re drunk. You turn up out of the blue at midnight, and you start babbling about dogs.’

‘I’m talking about Mah Jong. Let me in.’

Unable to react quickly enough to stop him, Camille stood aside. He sat down clumsily on a stool at the bar in the kitchen, where the remains of her supper were still lying. He fiddled with the glass, the water jug, the fork, feeling its points. Camille, looking perplexed, had gone to sit crosslegged on her piano stool in the middle of the room.

‘I know your grandmother had a Mah Jong set,’ Adamsberg began again stumbling over the words. ‘I bet she didn’t let you dilute, did she? Dilute an’ I’ll shoot you!’

Ah, grandmothers, always good for a laugh, eh?

LII

JOSETTE SLEPT BADLY AND WAS WOKEN AT ONE IN THE MORNING BY A
nightmare: out of her printer, pages of paper, all of them bright red, were spilling all over the room. Nothing could be read on them, because of their glossy red surface.

She got up quietly and tiptoed into the kitchen, where she helped herself to some cookies and maple syrup. Clémentine came to join her, wrapped up in a huge dressing gown, like a nightwatchwoman.

‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ Josette pleaded.

‘Something going on in that little head, isn’t there,’ declared Clémentine.

‘It’s just that I couldn’t sleep. Nothing really, Clemmie.’

‘Not your machine giving you headaches?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is. In my dream, I couldn’t read anything it printed.’

‘You’ll manage it, Josette, m’dear. I’m sure you can.’

But manage what, Josette wondered.

‘Clemmie, I thought I was dreaming about blood. All the paper was red.’

‘Was the machine leaking red ink?’

‘No, just the sheets of paper.’

‘Well then, it couldn’t be blood.’

‘Has he gone out?’ asked Josette, realising that Adamsberg was not sleeping on the couch.

‘Suppose so. He must be worrying about something. He’s fretting away too. Eat up and drink this too, m’dear, it’ll help you sleep,’ she said, offering Josette a bowl of warm milk.

* * *

After putting away the biscuit tin, Josette was still wondering what, if anything, she was going to manage. She put a sweater on over her pyjamas and sat brooding over the computer, without switching it on. Michel’s laptop was alongside, a useless but irritating ruin. She would have to get to the real answer, Josette thought, the one she was trying to chase unsuccessfully in her dream. The unreadable pages were a sign that she had not decoded Michel’s scraps of message properly. A big mistake crossed out in red.

Well, that must be it, she thought, going back to her version of the fractured sentence. It was silly to think people would put in those details if they were really talking about a drugs deal. You wouldn’t put the town, the kind of drug and so on. A dealer surely wouldn’t put out an email message like that. He might as well have put his name and address on the internet. She had set off completely along the wrong track, and her book had been corrected in red.

Josette patiently took up the succession of letters and tried various combinations without success:
dam ea ezv ort la ero
. Her failure irritated her. Clémentine came and looked over her shoulder, holding a bowl of milk. ‘That’s what’s bothering you?’

‘I must have gone wrong, and I’m trying to understand why.’

‘Do you know what I think?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Well it looks like double Dutch to me. In some other language from some other country. Would you like some more hot milk?’

‘No thanks, Clemmie, I need to concentrate.’

Clémentine tiptoed away quietly. One shouldn’t bother Josette when she was working.

Josette looked back at the letters again. Another country. Yes. And what other country was involved in this case? Canada. She suddenly had a thought. What if this referred to the events in Canada? What was the name of the place where Adamsberg had stayed? Gatineau? That gave an ‘ea’. A slight chance of course. Then she suddenly had the feeling that ‘dam’ was simply part of Adamsberg’s name, nothing to do with
Amsterdam or Rotterdam. How odd it is, she thought, that you can be up against something and not see it. But she had seen it, in her sleep she had seen red leaves, red sheets of paper. Not blood, Clémentine was right, but the red maple leaves of Canada, falling on the portage trail in autumn. So ‘ort’ could be portage, ‘ero’ could be Corderon, Noëlla’s name. Rendezvous would still be the only possibility for ‘ezv’. Biting her lips, Josette tried to see where an alternative reading could lead her. She had the sudden warm feeling of a hacker breaking through a stubborn obstacle.

A few minutes later, exhausted and now at last ready for sleep, she was looking at another sentence:
dam ea ezv ort la ero
. ‘Adamsberg – Gatineau – rendezvous – portage trail – Noëlla Corderon.’

She put the sheet of paper on her knee.

Adamsberg must have been followed out to Quebec by Michel Sartonna. It didn’t prove anything about the murder, but what it did show was that the young man was watching Adamsberg’s movements and reporting on his meetings on the portage trail, sending word of them to somebody else. Josette stuck the paper on the keyboard and went back to snuggle under her blankets. So it hadn’t been a hacking mistake, just a matter of straightforward code-breaking.

LIII

‘YOUR MAH JONG SET,’ ADAMSBERG WAS REPEATING
.

Camille hesitated, then joined him in the kitchen. In drink, Adamsberg’s voice had lost all its charm, becoming harsher and less strong. She dissolved two tablets in a glass of water and handed it to him.

‘Drink this,’ she said.

‘I need dragons, you see, very, very big dragons,’ Adamsberg explained, before draining the glass.

‘Shh. Don’t talk so loudly. What do you want dragons for?’

‘I need them to stuff into some windows.’

‘Mmm,’ said Camille. ‘All right, you do that.’

‘And that guy’s labradors as well.’

‘Yes, OK. Please don’t talk so loudly.’

‘Why?’

Camille did not reply but Adamsberg followed her glance. At the back of the studio he could vaguely make out a little cot.

‘Aha! Yes, of course,’ he declared, raising one finger. ‘Mustn’t wake the baby. Oh no! Or its father, the one with the dogs.’

‘You know then?’ said Camille in a neutral voice.

‘I’m a cop. I know everything. Montreal, the baby, the new father and his bloody dogs.’

‘Right. How did you get here? Did you walk?’

‘On someone’s moped.’

Shit, thought Camille. She couldn’t let him go out on the road in this state. She got out her grandmother’s old Mah Jong set.

‘Here you are, play if you like,’ she said, putting the box on the bar. ‘You have fun with the tiles, I’m going to read.’

‘Don’t leave me. I’m lost and I’ve killed a woman. Explain this Mah Jong to me, I need some dragons.’

Camille looked sharply at Jean-Baptiste. The best thing to do at present, it seemed to her, was to get his attention firmly fixed on the tiles. Until the pills started working and he could be sent away. She’d make some strong coffee too, to stop him going to sleep on the bar.

‘Where are the dragons?’

‘There are three suits,’ Camille explained, soothingly, with the prudence of all women who are approached in the street by a man in an aggressive state. Humour him, distract him, and get away as soon as you can. Get him interested in your grandmother’s Mah Jong tiles. She poured him some coffee.

‘This suit is the Circles, this one the Characters, this one the Bamboos. They go from 1 to 9, see?’

‘What’s all that for?’

‘To play with. And these are the honours: East, West, North and South, and your dragons.’

‘Ah,’ said Adamsberg satisfied.

‘Four green dragons,’ said Camille putting them together for him to see, ‘four red ones and four virgins. That makes twelve dragons all together, OK? Is that enough?’

‘What’s that one?’ he asked, pointing a wavering finger at a tile covered with decorations.

‘That’s a Flower. There are eight of them. They don’t count except as extras, like ornaments.’

‘And what do you do with all this stuff?’

‘You play the game,’ Camille went on patiently. ‘You have to try and make up a special hand, or a sequence of three tiles, depending on what you pick up. The special hands carry the most points. Are you still interested?’

Adamsberg nodded vaguely and sipped the coffee.

‘What you have to do is keep picking up tiles till you get a full hand. Without diluting if possible. Then you go Mah Jong.’

‘Aha, “dilute, and I’ll shoot you”. Like my grandmother. “Any nearer and I’ll spear ye.”’

‘OK. Now you know how to play. If you like it so much, you can have the rule book.’

Camille went to sit at the far end of the room with a book. She would wait until it had passed. Adamsberg was building little columns of tiles until they fell over, then he rebuilt them, muttering to himself, wiping his eyes from time to time as if the collapses caused him deep sorrow. Alcohol brought out various emotions and outbursts from him, to which Camille replied by reassuring signs. After more than an hour, she closed her book.

‘If you’re feeling better now,’ she said.

‘I want to see the guy with the dogs first,’ said Adamsberg, jumping to his feet.