The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (16 page)

Adamsberg called the entire team together in the big meeting space to which Danglard had given the erudite name of chapter room. Before
leaving home, he had aggravated the injury to his chin by rubbing it with a dish scrubber, making more red scratches on his face. Very good, Zerk had said appreciatively, as he dabbed scarlet Mercurochrome on the bruise to make it more obvious.

It was not something he enjoyed doing, sending his agents off on a wild goose chase after Mo, when he knew him to be sitting at his own kitchen table, but the situation left him no choice. He assigned tasks and the officers all looked at their instructions in silence. He took in the expressions of the nineteen colleagues present: they all seemed stunned by the new turn of events. Only Retancourt looked secretly amused, which caused him some anxiety. Mercadet’s expression of total consternation reawakened the sharp feeling at the back of his neck. He had caught this bubble of electricity from Capitaine Émeri, and it would have to be returned to him sooner or later.

‘A week?’ repeated Lamarre. ‘What’s the point of that? If he’s run off into the woods somewhere, we could be a month or more trying to find him.’

‘The week’s for me,’ said Adamsberg, without mentioning the precarious status of Mercadet and Estalère. ‘If I can’t deliver, Danglard will probably have to take over the leadership of the squad and the work will continue.’

‘I really don’t remember dropping off in the interview room,’ Mercadet said, his voice choking with guilt. ‘It’s all my fault. But I don’t remember it. If I’ve started falling asleep without realising it, I’d better give up the job.’

‘We were all at fault, Mercadet. You went to sleep, Estalère left the room, we didn’t search Mo, and I took him into my office alone.’

‘Even if we find him in a week, they’ll probably sack you to make an example,’ said Noël.

‘Quite possible, Noël. But we’ve got a window of opportunity. And if not, well, I’ll be happy enough in my mountains. So, it’s not a catastrophe. The first thing is, you’d better be prepared for an unannounced inspection of our office sometime today. So everything has got to be absolutely impeccable. Mercadet, go and have forty winks now, you’ll have to look wide awake when they arrive. And get rid of the cushions. Voisenet, put
away your fish magazines. Froissy, not a crumb of food must be left in any cupboard, and your watercolours must be out of sight too. Danglard, your stashes of wine will disappear. Retancourt, please take the cat and its dishes out to one of the cars. We’ve got to pay attention to every detail.’

‘What about the string?’ asked Morel.

‘What string?’

‘The one from the pigeon’s feet. The lab sent it back, it’s on the sample table with the other forensic results. If they ask, it might not be the moment to tell them about the bird.’

‘I’ll handle the string,’ said Adamsberg, noting as he spoke Froissy’s distress at the idea of getting rid of her hidden rations. ‘But there’s one piece of good news. For once, Divisionnaire Brézillon is on our side. We won’t get any trouble from him.’

‘Why not?’ asked Mordent.

‘The Clermont-Brasseur combine ruined his father’s firm, which was importing Bolivian minerals. It was a stock-market raid, he’s never forgiven them. He just wants one thing, “to see those bastards squirming in the hot seat”, those were his words.’

‘There’s no hot seat waiting,’ said Retancourt. ‘It wasn’t the Clermont family that burnt the car.’

‘I was just giving you an idea of the divisionnaire’s state of mind.’

Retancourt’s gaze once more registered some irony, if he was not mistaken.

‘Right, off you go,’ said Adamsberg, standing up and throwing his bubble of electricity to the ground at the same time. ‘Clean up the place. Mercadet, can you come with me for a moment?’

*   *   *

Sitting opposite Adamsberg, Mercadet was twisting his tiny hands round each other. He was an honest, scrupulous but also fragile person, whom Adamsberg was pushing to the edge of depression and self-hate.

‘I’d rather be sacked right away,’ said Mercadet with dignity, rubbing the dark rings under his eyes. ‘That kid could have killed you. If I’m
capable of dropping off without realising it, it’s time to quit my job. I was pretty unreliable before but now I’m dangerous, unable to control myself.’

‘Lieutenant,’ said Adamsberg, leaning across the table. ‘I said you had fallen asleep. But you didn’t. Mo didn’t take your gun.’

‘Commissaire, it’s kind of you to try and help me. But when I woke up upstairs, I didn’t have my gun or my phone. And Mo had them.’

‘He had them because I gave them to him. I gave them to him because I took them from you. Upstairs, in the coffee room. Do you get it?’

‘No!’ said Mercadet, looking up in consternation.

‘It was me, Mercadet. I had to get Mo out of there before he was put into a detention centre. Mo has never killed anyone. I didn’t have any other way to do it, and I landed you in the shit.’

‘Mo didn’t threaten you?’

‘No.’

‘You opened the gates?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wow.’

Leaning back, Adamsberg waited for Mercadet to digest the information, something he usually did quite quickly.

‘OK,’ said Mercadet, looking up again. ‘I much prefer that to the idea that I dropped off in the interview room. And if you’re sure Mo didn’t kill the old man, it was the only thing to do.’

‘And to keep quiet about, Mercadet. Danglard is the only one who’s got an inkling about it. But you, me and Estalère, we could probably all be in big trouble within a week. And I didn’t consult you about it.’

‘It was the only thing to do,’ repeated Mercadet. ‘Well, at least my sleeping turned out useful for once.’

‘That’s true. If you hadn’t been there, I don’t think I would have been able to come up with anything.’

The butterfly’s wing. Mercadet blinks his eyes in Brazil and Mo escapes to Texas.

‘Is that why you kept me back doing overtime yesterday?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I thought you had it in for me.’

‘We’re both in for it now, lieutenant.’

‘Unless you can pin it on one of the Clermont sons.’

‘Is that how you see it?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘Could be. A youngster like Mo would have tied his laces front and back. I didn’t understand why his laces were soaked with petrol.’

‘Bravo.’

‘You saw it too?’

‘Yes. But why did you immediately think of the old man’s sons?’

‘Well, think of the fallout if the father went ahead and married his housekeeper and adopted her children. People say his sons don’t have old Antoine’s diabolical business savvy. They’ve taken a few dodgy decisions. Especially Christian. He’s a hothead, likes to live it up, known to spend the daily output of an oil well in twenty-four hours.’ Mercadet shook his head with a sigh. ‘But we don’t even know if it was him driving the car,’ he said, getting to his feet.

‘Lieutenant,’ said Adamsberg, ‘we need absolute secrecy about this, and that means this secret is never to be revealed. To anyone.’

‘It’s OK, sir. I live on my own.’

*   *   *

When Mercadet had gone, Adamsberg paced around his office and replaced the antlers along the wall. Brézillon and his hatred of the Clermont-Brasseur bastards. The divisionnaire might be attracted by the idea of getting at them via the Comte d’Ordebec. In which case there was a good chance that the Normandy business might be allocated to him. In which case, he’d be facing the Ghost Riders. A prospect that exerted an indefinable attraction for him, welling up from some ancestral depths. He remembered seeing a very young man, one evening, leaning over the parapet of a bridge and staring at the water as it rushed by underneath. He was holding his cap in his hand, and his problem, he confided in Adamsberg, was the overwhelming temptation to throw the cap into the water, although he was fond of it. The young man was trying to understand why he was so strongly drawn to commit an action he didn’t actually want to do. In
the end he had run off, without letting go of the cap, as if he had had to tear himself away from some magnetic force. Now Adamsberg understood better the odd incident of the cap on the bridge. The cavalcade of black horses was galloping through his thoughts, issuing obscure and pressing invitations, to the point where he felt that the bitter realism surrounding the politico-financial affairs of the Clermont-Brasseur dynasty was but a distraction. Only the memory of Mo’s stricken face, a straw being trampled under their feet, gave him the energy to work on it. The Clermont secrets were unsurprising, wearyingly pragmatic, and that only made the horrible death of the aged industrialist more appalling. Whereas the secret of Ordebec was emitting strains of music, unintelligible and dissonant, a composition of fantasy and illusion drawing him towards it like the water under the bridge.

He couldn’t allow himself to leave the squad unattended for long on this momentous day, so he took one of the cars to go and see Brézillon. Only at the second traffic lights did he realise he’d taken the one containing the cat and its feeding dishes. He slowed down so as not to spill any water from the bowl. Retancourt would never forgive him if the cat became dehydrated.

Brézillon received him with an impatient smile, and a sympathetic clap on the shoulder. An unusual atmosphere, but that didn’t stop him greeting the commissaire with the words he invariably pronounced:

‘You know I don’t really approve of your methods, Adamsberg. Too much informality, too little clarity either for your superiors or your staff, and not enough factual elements along the way. But your methods might have something to be said for them in present circumstances, since we’re navigating in the dark anyway.’

Adamsberg let this opening pass, and embarked instead on the excellent factual element provided by the laces of the trainers, wrongly tied by the arsonist. It wasn’t easy to break into the divisionnaire’s long monologues.

‘I hear you,’ said Brézillon, stubbing out his cigarette with one thumb, his usual gesture. ‘You’d do well to turn off your mobile before we go any further. Your phones have been tapped since the suspect escaped, i.e. since you showed such pathetic lack of determination to recapture this
Mohamed. That is to say the sacrificial lamb,’ he went on, when Adamsberg had turned off the mobile. ‘We’re in agreement there, are we? I didn’t for a moment believe this insignificant young man could have accidentally caused the death of one of the country’s top industrialists. They’ve given you a week, yes, I know, and I can’t see you getting very far in that time. For one thing because you’re a slow worker, and for another, the road has been blocked. Nevertheless, I’m prepared to support you in any reasonable and
legal
way to try and get under the defence of those brothers. It goes without saying, Adamsberg, that in the meantime I totally subscribe to the official version that this Arab boy is guilty, and whatever happens to the Clermont clan, don’t expect any approval from me if you cause a scandal. Up to you to find a way out.’

XVI

At 5 p.m., Adamsberg returned to headquarters, with the cat folded in two over his arm, like a huge floorcloth; he deposited it back on the warm lid of the photocopier. The Inspection team had indeed descended on the offices two hours earlier, scouring the premises ruthlessly and without comment, but had found nothing untoward. Between times, reports had come in from the gendarmeries and police stations, and still Momo was missing. Several officers were out checking the homes of his known contacts. A larger operation was planned for the evening, a complete search of all the flats in the Cité des Buttes, the tower block where Momo lived, and which, unsurprisingly, had a record of torched cars above the national average. They were waiting for reinforcements to arrive from three Paris police stations to surround the block.

Adamsberg motioned to Veyrenc, Morel and Noël, and sat sideways on Retancourt’s desk.

‘Here’s the address of the two Clermont sons. Christian and Christophe: the “two Christs” they call them.’

‘Hardly up to the reputation of the Saviour,’ remarked Retancourt.

‘Their father expected too much of them.’

‘He weeps as he sees them, these men of no worth / His own sons whose virtues he had stifled at birth,’
commented Veyrenc. ‘Are you hoping the Clermonts are going to let us in now?’

‘No. But I want you to watch them night and day. They both live at
the same address, a huge Paris mansion, with two wings on the same site. You’ll have to keep changing cars and appearance and, Veyrenc, you’ll have to dye your hair.’

‘Noël isn’t the best choice for a tail,’ observed Morel. ‘Too easily spotted at a distance.’

‘But we need him. Noël may be difficult and grouchy but he doesn’t give up. We need his persistence.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Noël, but without irony, because he was well aware of his negative traits.

‘Here are photos of them,’ said Adamsberg, handing round a few snapshots. ‘Their features are fairly alike, but one’s on the heavy side and the other’s thin. Ages: sixty and fifty-eight. The thin one is the older brother, Christian, to whom we’ll give the code name Saviour One. He has thick grey hair and wears it rather long. Elegant, distinguished, a man about town who wears expensive clothes. The tubby one is more reserved, more sober in his habits and he’s going bald. Christophe will be Saviour Two. The Mercedes that was burnt belonged to him. So we’ve got a playboy on the one hand and a workaholic on the other. Not that that means one is better than the other. We still don’t know what they were doing the night of the fire, or who was driving the car.’

‘So what’s going on?’ asked Retancourt. ‘Are we giving up on Momo?’

Adamsberg glanced at Retancourt and met once more that slightly amused and unreadable expression of disbelief.

‘We’re looking for Momo, lieutenant, at this very moment, and we’re calling on reinforcements to step it up tonight. But we have a problem with the ends of the shoelaces.’

‘When did you think of this?’ asked Noël, after Adamsberg had explained to them about the shoelaces.

‘Last night,’ replied Adamsberg nonchalantly.