This Night's Foul Work (11 page)

‘Close the cupboard and go back to the office.
Lieutenant
Retancourt is waiting to take you to Clignancourt.'

Adamsberg made a sign of farewell and went down the first flight of stairs, feeling annoyed. Sufficiently annoyed for him to have forgotten his little sketchbook on the top stair, so that he had to go back up. On the sixth-floor landing, he heard Veyrenc's elegant voice in the semi-darkness:

Adamsberg tiptoed quietly up the last few steps, stupefied.

Veyrenc was leaning against the side of the cupboard, head lowered, auburn tears gleaming through his hair.

Adamsberg watched as his new colleague folded his arms and smiled briefly to himself.

‘I see,' said the
commissaire
slowly.

The
lieutenant
gave a start.

‘It's in my file,' he said, by way of excuse.

‘Under what?'

Veyrenc ran his hands through his hair in embarrassment.

‘The
commissaire
at Bordeaux couldn't stand it. Or the one at Tarbes, or the one at Nevers.'

‘And you couldn't help it?'

‘How the hell do you do that? Waking? Sleeping? Hypnosis?'

‘Well, it runs in the family,' said Veyrenc rather shortly. ‘I just can't help it.'

‘Oh, if it runs in the family, that's different.'

Veyrenc twisted his lip, and spread his hands in a fatalist gesture.

‘Perhaps you'd better come back to the office with me,
lieutenant
. Maybe the broom cupboard wasn't good for you.'

‘That's true,' said Veyrenc, whose heart contracted suddenly as he thought of Camille.

‘You know Retancourt? She's the one who's in charge of your induction.'

‘Something's cropped up in Clignancourt?'

‘It soon will have, if you can find some gravel under a table. She'll tell you about it, and I warn you, she doesn't like the assignment.'

‘Why not hand this one over to the Drug Squad?' asked Veyrenc, as he came downstairs alongside the
commissaire
, carrying his books.

Adamsberg lowered his head without replying.

‘Perhaps you can't tell me?' the
lieutenant
persisted.

‘Yes. But I'm trying to think how to tell you.'

Veyrenc waited, holding the banister. He had heard too much about Adamsberg to be surprised at his odd ways.

‘Those deaths are a matter for us,' Adamsberg finally announced. ‘Those two men were caught up in some web, some machination. There's a shade hovering over them – they're caught in the folds of its robe.'

Adamsberg looked in perplexity at a precise point on the wall, as if to search there for the words he needed to elaborate his idea. Then he gave up, and the two men continued down to the ground floor, where Adamsberg paused once more.

‘Before we go out on to the street, and before we become colleagues, can you tell me where you got the ginger streaks?'

‘I don't think you'll like the story.'

‘Very few things annoy me,
lieutenant
. And relatively few things upset me. Only one or two shock me.'

‘That's what I've heard.'

‘It's true.'

‘All right. I was attacked when I was a child, up in the vineyard. I
was eight years old, and the boys who went for me were about thirteen to fifteen. Five young toughs, a little gang. They hated us.'

‘Who's “us”?'

‘My father owned the vineyard, the wine was getting itself a reputation, it was competing with someone else's. They pinned me down and cut my head with iron scraps. Then they gashed my belly open with a bit of broken glass.'

Adamsberg, who had started to open the door, stopped still, holding the handle.

‘Shall I go on?' asked Veyrenc.

The
commissaire
encouraged him with a nod.

‘They left me there, bleeding from the stomach and with fourteen wounds to the scalp. The hair grew back afterwards, but it came out ginger. No explanation. Just a souvenir.'

Adamsberg looked at the floor for a moment, then raised his eyes to meet the
lieutenant
‘s.

‘And what made you think I wouldn't like the story?'

The New Recruit pursed his lips and Adamsberg observed his dark eyes, which were possibly trying to make him lower his own gaze. They were melancholy, yes, but not always and not with everyone. The two mountain dwellers stood facing each other like two ibex in the Pyrenees, motionless, horns locked in a silent duel. It was the
lieutenant
who, in a movement acknowledging defeat, looked down first.

‘Finish the story, Veyrenc.'

‘Do I have to?'

‘Yes, I think so.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it's our job to finish stories. If you want to start them, go back to teaching. If you want to finish them, stay being a cop.'

‘I see.'

‘Of course you see. That's why you're here.'

Veyrenc hesitated, then raised his lip in a false smile.

‘The five boys were from the Gave de Pau valley.'

‘My valley.'

‘Yes.'

‘Come on, Veyrenc, finish the story.'

‘I have finished it.'

‘No, you haven't. The five boys came from the Gave de Pau valley. And they came from the village of Caldhez.'

Adamsberg turned the door handle.

‘Come along, Veyrenc,' he said softly. ‘We're going to look for a little stone.'

R
ETANCOURT SANK DOWN WITH ALL HER CONSIDERABLE WEIGHT ON AN OLD
plastic chair in Emilio's café.

‘Not wanting to be rude,' said Emilio, ‘but if the cops turn up here too often, I might as well shut up shop.'

‘Just find me a little pebble, Emilio, and we're out of here. Three beers, please.'

‘No, just two,' said Estalère. ‘I can't drink it,' he said looking at Retancourt and the New Recruit to excuse himself. ‘I don't know why, but it goes to my head.'

‘But Estalère, it goes to everyone's head,' said Retancourt, who never ceased to be surprised at the naivety of this twenty-seven-year-old boy.

‘Really?' said Estalère. ‘It's normal?'

‘Not only is it normal, it's the whole point.'

Estalère frowned, not wishing at any price to give Retancourt any hint that he was reproaching her with anything. If Retancourt drank beer during working hours, it was not only permitted but obviously recommended.

‘We're not on duty now.' Retancourt smiled at him. ‘We're looking for a little pebble. Quite different.'

‘You're angry with him,' observed the young man.

Retancourt waited until Emilio had brought their beer. She raised her glass to the New Recruit.

‘Welcome. I still haven't got your name right.'

‘Veyrenc de Bilhc, Louis,' said Estalère, pleased with himself for having remembered the whole name.

‘Let's stick with Veyrenc,' proposed Retancourt.

‘De Bilhc,' said the New Recruit.

‘You're attached to your fancy name?'

‘I'm attached to the wine. It's the name of a vintage.'

Veyrenc moved his glass closer to Retancourt's but without clinking it. He had heard a good deal about the extraordinary qualities of Violette Retancourt, but all he could see at present was a tall, very well-built blonde woman, rather down-to-earth and jolly, displaying nothing that enabled him to understand the fear, respect or devotion which she inspired in the squad.

‘You're angry with him,' Estalère repeated glumly.

Retancourt shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, I've nothing against going for a beer in Clignancourt. If that amuses him.'

‘You're angry with him.'

‘So what?'

Estalère bowed his head unhappily. The difference and indeed frequent incompatibility of behaviour between his
commissaire
and his colleague distressed him deeply. The double veneration he felt for both Adamsberg and Retancourt, the twin compasses of his existence, allowed no compromise. He would not have deserted one for the other. The young man's organism functioned entirely on nervous energy, excluding all other forces such as reason, calculation or intellectual interest. And like an engine which can only run on purified fuel, Estalère's was a rare and fragile system. Retancourt knew this, but had neither the subtlety nor the desire to adapt to it.

‘He's got some idea in his head,' the young man persisted.

‘The file ought to go over to Drugs, Estalère, full stop,' said Retancourt, folding her arms.

‘He says not.'

‘We're not going to find any stones.'

‘He says we will.'

Estalère usually called Adamsberg only by the pronoun – ‘He', ‘Him' – as if he were the living god of their team.

‘Please yourself. Look for this stone wherever you like, but don't expect me to come crawling under the tables with you.'

Retancourt surprised an unexpected sign of revolt in the
brigadier
‘s green eyes.

‘Yes, I will go and look for the stone,' said the young man, standing up brusquely. ‘And not because the entire squad thinks I'm an idiot, you included. But he doesn't. He looks, and he knows. He looks for things.'

Estalère drew breath.

‘He's looking for a stone,' said Retancourt.

‘Because there are things in stones, their colour, their shape, they tell stories. And you don't see that, Violette, you don't see anything at all.'

‘For instance?' asked Retancourt, gripping her glass.

‘Think,
lieutenant.'

And Estalère left the table with a show of teenage rebellion, going to join Emilio who had taken refuge in the back room.

Retancourt swirled her beer round in her glass and looked at the New Recruit.

‘He's on a knife-edge,' she said. ‘He gets carried away sometimes. You have to understand that he worships Adamsberg. How did your interview with him go? Was it OK?'

‘Not exactly.'

‘Did he jump from one subject to another?'

‘Sort of.'

‘He doesn't do it on purpose. He had a very hard time recently in Quebec. What do you think of him?'

Veyrence smiled his crooked smile, and Retancourt appreciated it. She found the New Recruit very attractive, and kept looking at him,
checking over his face and body, seeing through his clothes, reversing the usual gender roles by which men mentally undress a pretty girl they see in the street. At thirty-five, Retancourt behaved like an old bachelor at the theatre. Without any risk of involvement, for she had locked up her emotional space in order to avoid any disillusionment. As a girl, Retancourt had already been massively built and she had decided that defeatism was her only defence against hope. That made her the opposite of
Lieutenant
Froissy, who took it for granted that love was the sweetest thing, and that it was waiting for her round every corner – and who, as a result, had accumulated an impressive number of unhappy love affairs.

‘I've got a different take on him,' said Veyrenc. ‘Adamsberg grew up in the Gave de Pau valley.'

‘When you talk like that, you sound like him.'

‘Possibly. I'm from the next valley along.'

‘Ah,' said Retancourt. ‘they say you should never put two Gascons in the same field.'

Estalère walked past them without a glance and went out of the café, slamming the door.

‘He's shoved off now,' said Retancourt.

‘Gone back without us?'

‘Apparently.'

‘He's in love with you?'

‘He loves me as if I were a man, as if I were what he wants to be and never will be. Big and strong, a tank, a troop carrier. In this outfit, you'd do well to take care of yourself and keep your distance. You've seen them, you've seen us all. Adamsberg and his inaccessible wanderings. Danglard, the walking encyclopedia, who has to run after the
commissaire
to stop the train going off the tracks. Noël, who's a loner and likes being as crude and narrow-minded as he can get away with. Lamarre is so shy he never looks you in the face. Kernorkian's afraid of the dark and germs. Voisenet's a heavyweight, who goes back to his zoology as soon as your back is
turned. Justin's a perfectionist, meticulous to the point of paralysis. Adamsberg doesn't always remember which is Voisenet and which is Justin, he's always calling them by the wrong name, but neither one of them minds. Froissy is always unhappy about something or other, and eats to make up for it. Estalère, whom you've met now, is a worshipper. Mercadet's a genius with figures, but he can't keep his eyes open in the afternoon. Mordent's inclined to take a tragic view, and has hundreds of books on stories and legends. I'm the big fat all-purpose cow of the team, according to Noël. So what the heck are you doing in this outfit?'

‘It's a project,' said Veyrenc, vaguely. ‘You don't like your colleagues, then?'

‘Oh yes, of course I do.'