The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (41 page)

‘Yes, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s not my arm that’s itching, it’s inside my head. Like a door banging somewhere, a door I didn’t close properly.’

‘You’ll have to go back then,
hombre.
Or it’ll go on banging all your life. You know the principle.’

‘The case is closed, Lucio. I don’t have anything more to do there. Or perhaps it was because I didn’t see any cows move. In the Pyrenees, yes. But up there, no, nothing doing.’

‘You can’t get off with the woman? Rather than watch cows?’

‘I don’t want to, Lucio.’

‘Ah.’

Lucio drank off half his bottle of beer, swilling it down noisily, then belched, reflecting on the difficult case Adamsberg had presented to him. He was extremely sensitive to things that hadn’t stopped itching. This was his home ground, his speciality.

‘When you think about her, do you think of any food in particular?’

‘Yes, a
kouglof
with almonds and honey.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A sort of special cake.’

‘Well, that’s very definite,’ said Lucio, with the air of a connoisseur. ‘But insect bites always are well defined. You should try and get hold of one of these
kouglofs.
That should do it.’

‘You can’t find real ones in Paris. It’s a speciality of eastern France.’

‘I could always ask Maria to make one for you. There must be some recipes, surely?’

XLIX

The debriefing session started in the squad headquarters on the Sunday morning, 15 August, at nine thirty, with fourteen members present. Adamsberg had been waiting impatiently for Retancourt, and as a sign of gratitude and admiration, had squeezed her shoulder in a bluff, rather military show of emotion, a gesture Émeri might have approved of. An accolade for the most brilliant of his troops. Retancourt, who lost any subtlety when on emotional ground, had tossed her head like a sulky and evasive child, keeping her satisfaction for later, that is for herself alone.

The officers were seated round the large table. Mercadet and Mordent were taking notes, for the minutes. Adamsberg wasn’t keen on these big meetings when he had to sum up, explain, give orders and conclude. His attention would wander at the slightest pretext, neglecting his immediate duty, and Danglard was always at his side to bring him back to reality when necessary. But just now, Danglard was in Porto with Momo, having dispatched Zerk to Rome, and was no doubt preparing to return to Paris. Adamsberg was hoping that would be by the end of the day. Then they would wait a few days to make it look less unlikely, and the pseudo-informer would alert the squad. Mo would be brought back as a trophy in Adamsberg’s hands. Adamsberg was revising his part in this charade, while Lieutenant Froissy was reporting on the tasks carried out in the previous few days, among other things a bloody confrontation between
two employees of an insurance company, when one had called the other a ‘lunary perv’ and had ended up with a ruptured spleen, having been stabbed with a paperknife, and only just escaping with his life.

‘Apparently,’ said Justin with his usual attention to detail, ‘it wasn’t the perv that was the problem but the lunary.’

‘But what is a lunary perv?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘Nobody knows, not even the man who said it. We asked.’

‘OK,’ said Adamsberg, already starting to doodle on the notepad he was resting on his knees. ‘And what about the little girl with the gerbil?’

‘The tribunal agreed that she can be taken in by a half-sister who lives in the Vendée. The judge ordered psychiatric counselling for the little girl. The half-sister has agreed to take the gerbil. Which is also a girl, according to the vet.’

‘Brave woman,’ pronounced Mordent, twisting his long thin neck as he did every time he passed a comment, as if to mark it. Since Mordent always looked to Adamsberg like an old heron with bedraggled plumage, this gesture reminded him of the bird swallowing a fish. If, that is, the heron was a bird and the fish a fish.

‘And the great-uncle?’

‘In detention. The charges are kidnapping, holding against her will, violence and ill-treatment. But no sexual offences, at least. The thing is, the great-uncle didn’t want anyone else to have her.’

‘Right,’ said Adamsberg, who was sketching the apple tree under which he used to eat his breakfast. Although he could barely remember the doctor’s report for more than a few seconds, every branch and twig of the apple tree remained precise and intact in his memory.

‘Now, Monsieur Tuilot, first name Julien,’ announced Noël.

‘The breadcrumb murderer.’

‘Exactly.’

‘A unique weapon,’ remarked Adamsberg, turning over another leaf in his notebook. ‘As silent and effective as a crossbow, but requiring close proximity.’

‘What’s a crossbow got to do with it?’ asked Retancourt. Adamsberg
signalled to her that he’d explain later, and began to sketch a portrait of Dr Turbot.

‘He’s under arrest,’ Noël said. ‘A cousin is prepared to pay a defence lawyer, on the grounds that his wife’s tyranny made his life a misery.’

‘Madame Tuilot, Lucette.’

‘Yes. The cousin has brought him crosswords in prison. He’s only been there twelve days, and has already organised a tournament for some of the promising remand prisoners, beginner level.’

‘So he’s on good form, if I understand you.’

‘Never so blooming, according to the cousin.’

A silence fell next, as everyone looked towards Retancourt, knowing as they did, though without the details, her key role in the Clermont-Brasseur case. Adamsberg signalled to Estalère to bring them all some coffee.

‘We’re still searching for Momo,’ Adamsberg began, ‘but it wasn’t him that burnt the Mercedes.’

During Retancourt’s lengthy account – covering the first pinstripe suit of clothes, the second suit, the haircut, the chambermaid, the Labrador, the smell of petrol – Estalère served everyone coffee, and offered his colleagues milk and sugar, going round the table carefully and attentively. Lieutenant Mercadet raised his hand without speaking to refuse sugar, which mortified Estalère, who prided himself on knowing which colleagues, in this case the lieutenant, usually took sugar.

‘Given it up,’ Mercadet explained in an undertone. ‘Dieting,’ he said, patting his stomach.

Reassured, Estalère was finishing his round, while Adamsberg suddenly froze, for no reason. A question from Morel surprised him and he realised that Retancourt was finishing her recital and that he’d missed some of it.

‘Where’s Danglard?’ Morel repeated.

‘He’s taking a rest,’ Adamsberg said quickly. ‘He went under a train. He wasn’t hurt, but it’s a shock, takes some getting over.’

‘He went under a
train
?’ asked Froissy, with the same admiring and stupefied expression as Dr Turbot.

‘Yes, Veyrenc acted quickly and pushed him between the rails.’

‘There are twenty centimetres between the surface of a body and the underside of a train,’ Veyrenc explained. ‘He wasn’t conscious.’

*   *   *

Adamsberg rose clumsily to his feet, leaving his notebook on the table.

‘Veyrenc will take over and do the Ordebec report,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’

‘I’ll be back,’ he always said, as if it was highly possible that one day he would go away and never come back. He went out of the room with a lighter step than usual and escaped into the street. He knew that he had been struck stock-still all of a sudden, like one of the Ordebec cows, and had lost about five or six minutes of the meeting. Why, he couldn’t say, and that was what he set out to discover by walking the pavements. He wasn’t troubled by these sudden gaps in his consciousness, he was used to them. He didn’t know the reason for this one, but he knew the cause. Something had passed through his mind, like the bolt from a crossbow, so fast that he hadn’t had time to get hold of it. But it had been enough to turn him to stone. It was an experience like that time he had seen the sparkle on the waters in the port of Marseille, or the poster on a bus shelter in Paris, or when he had been unable to sleep on the Paris-Venice express. And the invisible image which had flashed across had drained the watery morass of his brain, bringing along with it other imperceptible images attached to each other as if in a magnetic chain. He couldn’t see either the beginning or the end of it, but he could see Ordebec, and more precisely a car door, the one on Blériot’s old banger, a door hanging open to which he hadn’t paid any particular attention. It was as he had said to Lucio the day before, as if there was a door somewhere that hadn’t been closed properly, a door that was banging, an insect bite that he hadn’t finished scratching.

He walked slowly through the streets, going carefully, towards the Seine, where his footsteps always took him when he was troubled. It was at such moments that Adamsberg, normally almost impervious to anxiety or any strong emotion, became as tense as a guyrope, clenched his fists and tried to recapture what he had seen without seeing it, or thought without thinking it. There was no method by which he would succeed in extracting
this pearl from the shapeless heap of thoughts inside him. He simply knew that he had to do it quickly, because his mind was so made that everything disappeared in the end. Sometimes he had managed it by standing absolutely still, waiting for the faint image to come trembling back to the surface, and sometimes it was by walking, stirring up his random memories, and sometimes going to sleep and allowing the laws of gravity to operate. And he feared, if he chose a theoretical strategy in advance, that he would miss his target.

After walking for over an hour he sat on a bench in the shade, and cupped his chin in his hands. He had completely lost the thread of the discussion during Retancourt’s report. What had happened? Nothing. They had all been sitting still, listening attentively to what she was telling them. Mercadet was fighting sleep and taking notes with difficulty. Everyone had been sitting down, except one. Estalère had moved. Of course, he had been handing round coffees with his habitual punctiliousness. The young man had been a bit miffed because Mercadet had refused sugar even though he always took it, and the lieutenant had patted his stomach. Adamsberg dropped his hands from his chin on to his knees. Mercadet had made another gesture. He had lifted one hand, signifying his refusal. And it was at that moment that the shot had flashed through his brain. Sugar. Damn sugar, there’d been something about it from the very start. The commissaire lifted his hand, imitating Mercadet’s gesture. He repeated the gesture several times and saw once more the car door swinging open. Blériot, standing in front of the car when it had broken down. Blériot. Blériot had also refused sugar when Émeri offered him some. He had raised his hand silently, just like Mercadet. In the gendarmerie, the day they had been talking about Denis de Valleray. Blériot, the man whose pockets were always bulging with lumps of sugar, but who didn’t take it in his coffee. Blériot.

Adamsberg stopped moving his hand. The pearl was lying there, in the hollow of a rock. The door he hadn’t closed. Fifteen minutes later, he stood up, gently, so as not to disturb the still unformed and as yet incompletely understood sensations in his head, and went back to his house, on foot. He hadn’t unpacked his rucksack from the day before. He picked
it up, put Hellebaud inside the shoe and loaded everything as quietly as he could back into his car. He didn’t want to make any noise, fearing that speaking out loud would perturb the particles of his thoughts which were clumsily trying to assemble themselves. So he sent a simple message to Danglard on the mobile Retancourt had given him.

Going back to O: if necesary cntct same place same time.
He wasn’t sure how to spell ‘necesary’ and changed it to ‘needed’:
if needed cntct same place same time.
Then he sent a text to Veyrenc.
Come Léo house 20.30. Essential bring Retancourt + avoid being seen forest entrance bring rope + food.

L

Adamsberg entered Ordebec discreetly, once more at two in the afternoon, a good time on a Sunday when the streets were empty. He took the path through the woods to Léo’s house, and opened up the room he considered his. Lying down in the hollow in the woollen mattress seemed to be a first priority. He placed the now tame Hellebaud on the windowsill, and curled up on the bed without sleeping, listening to the cooing of the pigeon, which seemed well satisfied to be back in its place. He let his thoughts wander as they would without trying to organise them. He had recently seen a photograph that had struck him as a clear illustration of his own idea of his brain. It showed the contents of a fishing net unloaded on the deck of a large vessel, a pile taller than the fishermen themselves, a heap of all kinds of things defying identification, in which the silvery colours of the fish mingled with the dark brown of seaweed, the grey of the crustaceans – marine ones, not that damned woodlouse – the blue of lobsters, the white of seashells, making it hard to distinguish the different elements. That was what he was always fighting, the confused, multiform and shifting mass, always ready to change or vanish, and float off again into the sea. The sailors were sorting out the pile, throwing back creatures that were too small, lumps of seaweed or detritus, and saving the familiar useful species. Adamsberg, it seemed to him, did the opposite, throwing out all the sensible items and then looking at the irrelevant fragments of his personal collection.

*   *   *

He went back to the beginning, to Blériot raising his hand to refuse sugar in his coffee, and allowed himself to associate freely the sights and sounds of Ordebec, the decomposed yet handsome face of Lord Hellequin, Léo waiting for him in the forest, the bonbonnière on Émeri’s Empire table, Hippo shaking out his sister’s wet dress, the mare whose nose he had patted, Mo and his coloured pencils, the ointment being rubbed into Antonin’s bony ribs, the blood on the sketch of the madonna by Glayeux, Veyrenc in a state of collapse on the station platform, the cows and the woodlouse, the bubbles of electricity, the Battle of Eylau which Émeri had managed to tell him about three times, the count’s cane tapping the old parquet floor, the sound of the crickets in the Vendermot house, the herd of wild boar on the Chemin de Bonneval. He turned over, put his hands behind his head and looked up at the beams in the roof. Sugar. Sugar, that had been irritating him all day and every day, giving him a feeling of intense annoyance, so much so that he had stopped taking it in his coffee.