The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (36 page)

‘Danglard,’ said Adamsberg, ‘what colour jacket was Mortembot wearing when he was up at the gendarmerie?’

‘Brown.’

‘Exactly. But I saw it as blue. Or rather, when I thought about it later, I remembered it as blue.’

‘Yes?’ said Danglard prudently, more alarmed at Adamsberg’s moments of concentration than when the gleam flashed in his seaweedy eyes.

‘But why, Danglard?’

The commandant raised his cup to his lips but said nothing. He was tempted by the idea of adding a drop of Calvados to it as people round here did, ‘as a heart-starter’, but he had the feeling that at this time of day such an action would reawaken Adamsberg’s anger, which had barely subsided. Especially since the
Ordebec Reporter
was saying that the Paris cops were a waste of space and (he had spared the commissaire this) that they didn’t give a damn about the case anyway. On the other hand, Adamsberg would be so far away he might not notice. He was just about to get up and fetch his little drop, when Adamsberg took a packet of photographs out of his pocket and spread them in front of him.

‘The Clermont-Brasseur brothers,’ he said.

‘Right,’ said Danglard. ‘The photos the count gave you.’

‘Quite. Dressed as for this famous evening party. Christian here in a blue jacket with a pinstripe and there’s Christophe wearing a yachting blazer.’

‘Bit vulgar,’ said Danglard, sotto voce.

Adamsberg got out his mobile, flipped across a few images and held it out to Danglard.

‘Here’s the photo Retancourt sent, showing the suit Christian was wearing when he got back that evening. The one that was
not
sent to the cleaners. Neither were his brother’s clothes. She checked.’

‘So we have to believe her,’ said Danglard, looking at the small image.

‘Navy pinstripe for Christian, see? Not brown.’

‘No.’

‘So why did I think Mortembot’s jacket was navy?’

‘By mistake?’

‘Because he
changed
, Danglard. See the connection?’

‘Frankly, no.’

‘Because I knew, somewhere in my mind, that Christian must have changed. Like Mortembot.’

‘But why did Mortembot change?’

‘Mortembot doesn’t matter, dammit,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Anyone would think you were trying on purpose not to understand.’

‘Well, don’t forget I’ve been under a train.’

‘OK, granted,’ Adamsberg acknowledged. ‘Well, Christian Clermont
changed his clothes
, it’s been staring me in the face for days. So much so that when I thought about Mortembot’s jacket I saw it as navy too. Like Christian’s. Look at them carefully, Danglard: the suit he was wearing during the reception, and the one photographed by Retancourt, that is, the one he wore to come home.’

Adamsberg placed in front of Danglard the photo he had received from the count, and the one on the mobile. He seemed only then to notice the coffee in front of him and swallowed half a cup.

‘Well, Danglard?’

‘I only see it because you pointed it out. Christian’s two suits are very alike, both navy, but not quite the same.’

‘See.’

‘The pinstripe is a bit thicker on the second one, the lapels are a bit wider, the sleeves a bit narrower.’

‘There you are,’ said Adamsberg with a smile, getting up and taking long strides between the fireplace and the door. ‘There you are. Between the time Christian left the reception, at about midnight, and the time he got home, at about two, he’d changed his clothes. Very close match, hardly noticeable, but there it is. The suit he sent to the cleaners next day
wasn’t
the one he was wearing when he got back, Retancourt wasn’t wrong. But it
was
the one he wore to the party. And why, Danglard?’

‘Because it smelt of petrol,’ said the commandant, managing a weak smile once more.

‘And it stank of petrol because Christian had bloody well torched the Mercedes with his father strapped inside. And another thing,’ he said, striking the table with his fist. ‘He cut his hair before he went home. Look at the photos again. At the party, his hair is fairly long and he has a bit of a fringe. But when he returned, according to the sacked chambermaid, his hair was very short. Because, as has happened before to Mo, the fierce flames singed his hair and it was obvious. So he cut it, made it look the same all over, and he put on a different suit. And what does he tell his valet next morning? That in the night he cut his hair short as a grief reflex, an act of despair. Christian the Skinhead.’

‘There’s no direct evidence,’ Danglard said. ‘Retancourt’s photo wasn’t taken the same night and nothing proves either she or the chambermaid who told her didn’t make a mistake. The suits are very similar.’

‘We might find some hairs in the car.’

‘It’ll have been cleaned since then.’

‘Not necessarily. It’s very hard to remove all the tiny hairs after a haircut, especially if we’re lucky and the headrests are made of cloth. We can suppose Christian would have done it in haste, not thinking he was taking a risk. He probably didn’t think he’d even be questioned. Retancourt will have to examine the car.’

‘But how will she get permission to get inside it?’

‘She won’t. And a third thing, Danglard, the dog and the sugar.’

‘That’s your business with Léo.’

‘No, I’m talking about another dog, another lump of sugar. We’re going through a period infested with sugar lumps, commandant. Some years there are plagues of ladybirds, other times sugar lumps.’

Adamsberg looked up the messages from Retancourt about the sacked chambermaid and got the commandant to read them.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Danglard.

‘That’s because you’ve been under a train. Yesterday on the road, Blériot asked me to give some sugar to Léo’s dog, Fleg. He’d just been fixing the engine in the police car and explained that Fleg wouldn’t touch the sugar if his hands smelt of petrol.’

‘Ah, very good,’ said Danglard, more alert now, getting up to fetch some Calvados from the cupboard.

‘What are you doing, Danglard?’

‘I’m just getting a wee drop, to cheer up my coffee and the cesspit as well.’

‘Dammit, commandant, that’s Léo’s Calva, the one Valleray gives her. What will it look like when she gets back? Like some soldiers from an occupying army have been billeted here.’

‘OK, you’re right,’ said Danglard, quickly putting a drop in his coffee, as Adamsberg turned away to start pacing towards the fireplace.

‘That’s why the chambermaid was fired. Christian had changed his clothes, and cleaned himself up, but his hands still smelt of petrol. It can cling to your skin for hours. And a dog would sniff it out, no trouble. Which is what Christian realised when his pet refused the sugar. A lump of sugar that the chambermaid had picked up. And which she criticised. He had to get rid of the contaminated sugar lump.
And
the chambermaid, so he sacked her on the spot.’

‘She’ll need to be called as a witness.’

‘About that and the haircut. She’s not the only person to have seen Christian that evening. There were the two cops who came to inform him of the news. And then he went and shut himself in his room. We need to
know more about what Retancourt says here:
Chmbrmaid criticsed sugar
– what was she criticising? Get Retancourt to work on it tonight.’

‘Tonight?’

‘In Paris. You’re going back, Danglard, to brief Retancourt, and then you’re going to vanish like a shadow.’

‘To Ordebec?’

‘No.’

Danglard drank his coffee-Calva and thought for a moment.

Adamsberg was fiddling with the two mobiles, taking out the batteries.

‘You want me to go after the two kids? That it?’

‘Yes. You should find them quite quickly in Casares. Once they get to North Africa, though, it would be another matter. If the cops spotted them in Granada, they might well be looking in all the towns on the coast, as we speak. You’ve got to get there before them, Danglard. Get down there fast and bring them back.’

‘It seems a bit premature to me.’

‘No, I think our case will stand up. But we need to organise their return carefully. Zerk has to look as if he’s back from Italy, after some girlfriend trouble, and Mo will have to be picked up hiding out in the home of one of his friends. The friend’s father cracks and reports him. It has to look plausible.’

‘How will I contact you?’

‘Call the Blue Boar, but use coded messages. I’ll say that from tomorrow either Veyrenc or I will eat there every night.’

‘Running Boar,’ Danglard corrected automatically, then he slumped dramatically, his long arms at his sides. ‘But for god’s sake, Adamsberg, it was
Christophe
who was driving the Mercedes, Christian had already left the party.’

‘They must both be in it together. Christian took his own car earlier, and parked it near the Mercedes, then he waited for his brother to come along. He’d be all ready, wearing the new trainers. But he laced them like an oldster. When Christophe walked away from the Mercedes, leaving their father belted into the front seat, supposedly to look for his lost mobile – which he had indeed deliberately dropped on the pavement – Christian
poured the petrol over the car, lit it and then ran back to his own car. Christophe was a safe distance away when it caught fire, he called the police, and he even ran to help, as the witnesses said. Christian then finished off the operation. He dumped the trainers at Mo’s place, having lured him away. The door of Mo’s flat is easy to force. Then he changed his suit, putting the one he was wearing into the car boot. He realised some of his hair was singed. So he cut it himself. Next day he retrieves his suit and sends it to the cleaners. All that remains to do then is to get Mo arrested.’

‘And why would Christian have scissors or a razor with him?’

‘These guys always have a travelling bag with them in the boot of the car. They have to be ready to catch a plane at the drop of a hat. So he’d have had them.’

‘No examining magistrate will listen to this,’ said Danglard, shaking his head. ‘They’ve put up a big wall round it, the system’s impregnable.’

‘Well, we’ll get in through the system. I don’t think the Comte de Valleray would appreciate the fact that the brothers killed his old friend Antoine. So he can pull some strings.’

‘When should I go?’

‘Right now, I think, Danglard.’

‘I don’t like leaving you alone to face Lord Hellequin.’

‘I don’t think it’s Lord Hellequin who tries to kill people with the Paris express. Or with a commando-style crossbow.’

‘A bit tasteless. Not his style.’

‘Exactly.’

XLII

Danglard was putting his bags in the boot of one of the cars when he saw Veyrenc in the courtyard. He had not yet found either the strength or the words, still less the humility, to speak to the lieutenant. Mortembot’s death had made it possible to put off the reckoning. The idea of simply holding out his hand and saying ‘Thank you’ seemed to him to be ridiculously pompous.

‘I’m going to pick up the kids,’ he said, rather shamefacedly, as he came up beside him.

‘Risky,’ said Veyrenc.

‘Adamsberg has found a way through, a rat run to get into the Clermonts. We may be able to build the case against the two brothers.’

Veyrenc’s expression lightened, his lip lifted in that dangerously girlish smile. Danglard remembered that Veyrenc loved his nephew, Armel, aka Zerk, like a son.

‘When you get there,’ said Veyrenc, ‘check something. That Armel hasn’t nicked his grandfather’s pistol.’

‘Adamsberg said he didn’t know how to use a gun.’

‘He doesn’t know the boy at all. He can handle a gun all right.’

‘Oh my god, Veyrenc,’ said Danglard, forgetting for a moment the embarrassment which was inhibiting his powers of conversation. ‘I meant to tell Adamsberg something, nothing to do with the case, but all the same. Can you give him a message?’

‘What is it?’

‘In the hospital, I picked up the shawl that Lina let fall from her shoulders. However hot it is, she always wears it. And later I helped the doctor to carry Valleray out, when he had a fainting fit. He had his shirt taken off and he was trying to resist as hard as he could. And here,’ Danglard said, putting his finger on his shoulder blade, ‘he has a rather disfiguring birthmark, a port wine stain, looks a bit like a woodlouse, about two centimetres long. And the thing is, Lina has one just the same.’

The two men looked at each other, almost directly.

‘Lina Vendermot is Valleray’s daughter,’ said Danglard. ‘I’m as sure of that as of the shit I’ve been going through. And since she and her brother Hippo look as alike as two peas, with their fair hair, they make a pair. But the two darker ones, Martin and Antonin, must be Vendermot’s children.’

‘My god. Do they know?’

‘Well, the count must know. That’s why he was struggling not to have his shoulder exposed. I wouldn’t know about the children. Doesn’t look like it.’

‘But why would Lina hide her birthmark?’

‘She’s a woman. The birthmark’s rather ugly.’

‘I’m trying to think of any way this might change the Hellequin manoeuvres.’

‘Haven’t had time to think about that, Veyrenc. I leave it all to you,’ Danglard said, holding out his hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

He’d done it. He’d said it.

Like the most ordinary of people. Like any common mortal for a mediocre resolution of a drama, he thought, wiping his damp palm before getting into the car. To shake hands and say thank you was easy perhaps, and banal, possibly taking some courage, but now it was done, and deserved. He would say more at some later stage, if he could manage it. A sudden feeling of angry pleasure came over him and made him sit up straighter as he drove off, at the thought that Adamsberg had nailed the murderers of Clermont
père.
Thanks to Mortembot’s jacket, and never mind what the reasoning was, since Danglard hadn’t really been able to follow the logic. But the means were in place now and for the moment
that consoled him for all the moral failings of the world, and even to some extent for his own.

*   *   *

At nine in the evening he had joined Retancourt on the terrace of the cafe outside her flat in Seine-Saint-Denis. Every time he saw Violette again, even after three days, he found her taller and more solid than in his memory and was impressed. She was sitting on a plastic chair, the legs of which splayed under her weight.