This Night's Foul Work (10 page)

‘Some training in working with all of
you
, Noël, isn't the same thing.'

‘What are we supposed to be looking for at Emilio's?' asked Retancourt.

‘The remains of the gravel they left on the floor.'

‘But
commissaire
, it's almost a fortnight since the men were in the café.'

‘What sort of floor is it? Tiled?'

‘Yes, black and white.'

‘Of course,' said Noël, with a shout of laughter.

‘Ever tried to sweep up gravel? Without losing a single piece? Emilio's bistro won't be a palace. With a bit of luck, some of that gravel will have got into a corner and stuck there, waiting for us to find it.'

‘So if I've got this right,' Retancourt said, ‘we've got to go up there and look for a little bit of stone?'

Sometimes Retancourt's old hostility to Adamsberg surfaced, although their relations had been transformed, during a previous case, by an exceptional episode of close bodily contact which had welded the
lieutenant
and the
commissaire
together for life. But Retancourt was one of the positivists, and considered that Adamsberg's mysterious directives obliged members of the squad to operate too much in the dark.
She reproached the
commissaire
with insulting the intelligence of his colleagues and failing to make the effort to clarify for them where he was heading, or to throw them a gangplank across the marshes of his thoughts. For the simple reason, as she well knew, that he was incapable of it. The
commissaire
smiled at her.

‘You've got it,
lieutenant
. A patient little white stone waiting in the dark forest. It will take us straight to the crime scene, just like the stones in Tom Thumb.'

‘That's not quite right,' pointed out Mordent, who was a specialist in myths, legends and indeed horror stories. ‘The pebbles help Tom Thumb to find his way back
home
, not to the Ogre's house.'

‘OK, Mordent. But what we want to find is the Ogre. So we're doing it the other way round. Didn't the six other boys end up in the Ogre's house anyway?'

‘Seven,' said Mordent pedantically, raising seven fingers. ‘But if they found the Ogre, it was precisely because they couldn't find the pebbles.'

‘Well, we're going to look for them.'

‘If these pebbles exist,' added Retancourt.

‘Of course.'

‘And if they don't?'

‘They do, Retancourt.'

And on this firm statement from Adamsberg's private Mount Olympus, to which no other mortal had access, the conference on La Chapelle ended. There was a scraping of chairs, the plastic cups were thrown away and Adamsberg called Noël over.

‘Noël, stop bellyaching,' he said gently.

‘She didn't need to rescue me. I'd have got out of it by myself.'

‘Three guys with iron bars? Come off it, Noël.'

‘I didn't need Retancourt to go playing the US cavalry.'

‘Yes, you did. There's no dishonour in it just because she's a woman.'

‘I don't consider her a woman. She's the size of an ox, for God's sake – she's a freak of nature. I don't owe her.'

Adamsberg rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand, as if testing his shave, the signal of a crack in his phlegmatic façade.

‘Let me remind you,
lieutenant
, why Favre had to leave this outfit, after his persistent troublemaking. Just because his place is empty, there's no need for someone else to try and fill it.'

‘I'm not taking Favre's place, I've got a perfectly good one of my own, and I'll do things my way.'

‘Not here, Noël. If you do things your way and they clash with ours, you'll have to do it somewhere else. With the more limited members of the force.'

‘Limited? Did you hear Estalère? And Lamarre burbling about statues? And Mordent with his blessed Ogre?'

Adamsberg consulted his two watches.

‘I'll give you two and a half hours to go for a walk and clear your head. Go down to the Seine, take a long look at it and come back.'

‘I've got reports to finish,' said Noël, hunching his shoulders in protest.

‘You didn't understand me,
lieutenant
. That's an order, and a mission. You go out, and you come back in a sane frame of mind. And you'll do it every day if necessary, for a year if necessary, until looking at the sea-gulls over the river tells you something. Just go now, Noël, and keep out of my sight.'

B
EFORE GOING INTO
C
AMILLE'S BLOCK OF FLATS TO EXTRACT THE
N
EW
R
ECRUIT
, Adamsberg peered at his own eyes in a nearby car mirror. OK, he thought, straightening up. If he looks melancholy, I look melancholy in spades.

He climbed the seven floors to Camille's studio and approached her door. There were muffled sounds of life. Camille was trying to get the child to sleep. He had explained to her how to cup the baby's head in her hand, but it didn't seem to work for her. He had an advantage on that score, if nowhere else.

On the other hand, there was no sound coming from the broom cupboard which was being used as the sentry box for the duty officer. The quite good-looking New Recruit with the melancholy air must have gone to sleep. Instead of watching over Camille's safety, as his mission demanded. Adamsberg knocked on the door, tempted to give him an unfair dressing-down – unfair since it was obvious that being cooped up in that little cubicle for hours on end would have made anyone fall asleep, especially someone given to melancholy.

But there was no need. The New Recruit opened the door at once, cigarette in hand, and nodded briefly in recognition. Neither deferential nor nervous, he was simply trying to collect his thoughts rapidly, as one herds sheep into a fold. Adamsberg shook hands with him, while observing him candidly. A mild-looking man, but not all that mild.
Energy and a certain potential for anger lay behind those eyes which were indeed melancholic. As for his features, Danglard had painted too depressing a picture, professional pessimist that he was, giving up the battle before it had started. Yes, he was
quite
good-looking, but only up to a point, and then only if you were disposed in his favour. And this man was hardly any taller than himself. He was certainly more heavily built, both his face and body carrying a certain amount of soft tissue.

‘I'm sorry,' said Adamsberg, ‘I missed our appointment.'

‘It doesn't matter. I was told something urgent had come up.'

The voice was well pitched, light and slightly husky. Quite pleasant. The New Recruit stubbed out his cigarette in a pocket ashtray.

‘Yes, it was very urgent.'

‘Another murder?'

‘No, the first day of spring.'

‘OK,' said the New Recruit, after a slight pause.

‘How's this guard duty going?'

‘Long and monotonous.'

‘Not interesting?'

‘Not at all.'

Perfect, thought Adamsberg. He was in luck. The man was blind, unable to spot that Camille was one in a thousand.

‘We'll suspend it, then. I'll get a team from the thirteenth
arrondissement
to relieve you.'

‘When?'

‘Right away.'

The New Recruit glanced at the broom cupboard and Adamsberg wondered whether he was regretting something. But no, it was just his generally melancholy expression that suggested he clung on to things longer than other people. He picked up his books and came out without looking back, nor did he so much as glance at Camille's door. Blind and probably insensitive too.

Adamsberg pressed the light switch and sat down on the top stair,
gesturing to his colleague to join him there. His tumultuous life with Camille had given him complete familiarity with this landing and with the entire staircase, to every one of whose steps he had given a name: impatience, negligence, infidelity, pain, remorse, infidelity, reconciliation, remorse, and so on for ever in a spiral.

‘How many steps do you think there are on this staircase?' Adamsberg asked. ‘Ninety?'

‘A hundred and eight.'

‘You count stairs do you?'

‘I'm methodical – it's in my file.'

‘Sit down. I've hardly had time to look through your file yet. You know that you're on probation, and this conversation doesn't alter that.'

The New Recruit nodded and sat down on the wooden stairs, with no sign either of insolence or distress. Under the electric light, Adamsberg could see the ginger stripes in his otherwise dark hair, like strange flashes of light. The New Recruit's hair was so thick and curly that it looked as if it would be difficult to get a comb through it.

‘There were plenty of candidates for the job,' Adamsberg began. ‘What were the qualities that helped you get it?'

‘Pulling strings. I know
Divisionnaire
Brézillon very well. I helped his younger son out of trouble once.'

‘A police matter?'

‘No, a sexual matter, in the boarding school where I was teaching.'

‘So you didn't set out to be a cop?'

‘No, I started off in teaching.'

‘What ill wind made you change your mind?'

The New Recruit lit a cigarette. His hands were square and compact. Quite attractive.

‘A love affair,' Adamsberg guessed.

‘Yes, she was in the force, and I thought it would be a good thing to join her. But by trailing after her I lost her, and I got stuck with the police.'

‘Pity.'

‘Yes.'

‘Why did you want this job? To get to Paris?'

‘No.'

‘To join the Serious Crime Squad?'

‘Yes. I made inquiries, and it suited me.'

‘What did your inquiries tell you?'

‘Lots of things, some of them contradictory.'

‘I haven't made any inquiries about you, though. I don't even know your name, because in the office they're still calling you “the New Recruit”.'

‘Veyrenc, Louis Veyrenc.'

‘Veyrenc,' Adamsberg repeated thoughtfully. ‘And where did you get your ginger streaks, Veyrenc? They intrigue me.'

‘Me too,
commissaire.'

The New Recruit had turned his face away quickly, shutting his eyes. The New Recruit had suffered, Adamsberg sensed. Veyrenc blew a puff of smoke up at the ceiling, wondering how to finish his reply and failing to decide. In this arrested pose, his upper lip was raised slightly to the right as if pulled by a thread, a twist which gave him a peculiar charm. That and the dark eyes, reduced to triangles with a comma of long lashes at the corners. A dangerous gift from
Divisionnaire
Brézillon.

‘I'm not obliged to answer that question,' Veyrenc said at last.

‘No.'

Adamsberg, who had come to fetch his new colleague with no other aim than to dislodge him from Camille's door, felt that there was something disturbing about this conversation, without being able to identify why. And yet, he thought, the reason wasn't far away, it was within thinking range. He allowed his gaze to wander over the banisters, the walls, the steps, one by one, down and up again.

He knew that face.

‘What did you say your name was?'

‘Veyrenc.'

‘Veyrenc de Bilhc,' Adamsberg corrected him. ‘Your full name's Louis Veyrenc de Bilhc.'

‘Yes, it's in the file.'

‘Where were you born?'

‘Arras.'

‘An accident of birth, I presume, during an absence from home. You're not a northerner.'

‘Maybe not.'

‘Definitely not. You're a Gascon, a Béarnais.'

‘Yes, that's true.'

‘Of course it's true. A Béarnais from the Gave d'Ossau valley.'

The New Recruit closed his eyes quickly, as if making a tiny movement of retreat.

‘How do you know?'

‘If you have the name of a wine, you're likely to be easy to place. The Veyrenc de Bilhc grapes grow on the slopes of the Ossau valley.'

‘Is that a problem?'

‘Possibly. Gascons aren't the easiest of people to deal with. Melancholy, solitary, mild, hardworking, ironic and stubborn. It's a nature which is quite interesting if you can put up with it. I know some people who can't.'

‘Yourself, for instance? You've got something against the Béarnais?'

‘Obviously. Think,
lieutenant.'

The New Recruit drew back a little, as an animal withdraws better to consider the enemy.

‘The Veyrenc de Bilhc vintage is not very well known,' he said.

‘Not known at all.'

‘Except by a few wine experts, or people who live in the Ossau valley.'

‘And?'

‘And possibly the people in the next valley.'

‘For instance?'

‘The Gave de Pau valley.'

‘It wasn't exactly rocket science, was it? Can't you recognise someone else from the Pyrenees when you've got one in front of you?'

‘It's a bit dark on this landing.'

‘Never mind, I'm not offended.'

‘It's just that I don't go round looking for them.'

‘What do you think happens when someone from the Ossau valley works in the same outfit as someone from the Gave de Pau valley?'

The two men both took a little time to think, staring at the wall opposite.

‘Sometimes,' Adamsberg suggested, ‘it's harder to get on with your neighbour than with a perfect stranger.'

‘There've been run-ins between the two valleys in the past,' agreed the New Recruit, still looking at the wall.

‘Yes. They've been known to kill one another over a scrap of land.'

‘Over a blade of grass.'

‘Yes.'

The New Recruit got to his feet and paced the landing, with his hands in his pockets. Discussion over, thought Adamsberg. They could pick it up again later, on a different footing. He stood up in turn.