This Night's Foul Work (31 page)

‘From human nature. Nobody, with very rare exceptions, can keep a secret entirely to themselves. The bigger the secret, the more reliable the rule. That's how secrets leak out, Froissy, being passed from one person who's sworn not to tell to another person who swears not to tell, and so on. If Veyrenc has a secret, at least one other person must be in on it. And he'll talk to that person, which is what I want to hear.'

That and something else, thought Adamsberg, feeling uncomfortable at misleading an honest person like Hélène Froissy. His resolve of the previous evening had not diminished, and he had only to think of Veyrenc laying hands on Camille – or, worse still, their inevitable coupling – for his entire being to be transformed into a war machine. In his dealings with Froissy, though, he simply felt a bit shabby, and he could deal with that.

‘Veyrenc's secret,' Froissy repeated, dropping her crumbs neatly into her empty cup. ‘Does it have anything to do with his poems?'

‘No, not at all'

‘With his stripy hair?'

‘Yes,' admitted Adamsberg, realising that Froissy would not cross over the bounds of legality unless he gave her a bit of help.

‘He was attacked?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘And he's looking for revenge?'

‘Possibly.'

‘Deadly revenge?'

‘That I can't say.'

‘I see,' said the
lieutenant
, continuing to smooth the table with her hand, and looking vaguely puzzled to find nothing left there. ‘So it amounts to protecting him from himself in the end?'

‘You've got it,' said Adamsberg, delighted that Froissy had managed unaided to find that the end might justify the means. ‘Afterwards, we'll dismantle the listening equipment and everyone will be OK.'

‘All right, then,' said Froissy, pulling out her notebook and pen. ‘Let's go. Targets? Objectives?'

In an instant, the self-effacing and morally anxious woman had disappeared, transformed into the formidable technician that she could be.

‘It would be enough for me if you bug his mobile. Here's the number.'

While he was feeling in his pocket for Veyrenc's number, Adamsberg found the little bottle Camille had given him. Contrary to his promise, he had failed to remember to give Tom his nose drops.

‘Bug all his calls and have them connected through to my home number.'

‘I'll have to make them transit through the squad headquarters, then be transferred to you.'

‘Where will the transmitter be at headquarters?'

‘In my cupboard.'

‘But everyone goes looking in there for food, Froissy.'

‘I'm talking about the
other
food cupboard, to the left of the window. I keep it locked.'

‘So the first one is a decoy, is it? What do you keep in the other one?'

‘Turkish delight, direct from Lebanon. I'll give you a spare key.'

‘Fine. Here are the keys to my house. Install the speaker in the bedroom upstairs, away from the window.'

‘Obviously.'

‘I don't just need sound, I need a screen too, to follow where he goes.'

‘Long distances?'

‘Could be.'

To see whether Veyrenc would take Camille away somewhere. A weekend in the country, a fairytale inn in the woods, the baby playing happily in the grass at their feet. Oh no, no
fucking
way! The bastard was not going to take Tom away from him.

‘Is it important to follow his movements?'

‘Essential.'

‘Well, in that case, we'll have to do more than bug the mobile. We'll put a GPS under his car. And do you want a mike in the car too?'

‘While we're at it. How long do you need?'

‘I'll have it done by five this evening.'

B
Y FOUR-FORTY THAT AFTERNOON
H
ÉLÈNE
F
ROISSY WAS FINE-TUNING THE
reception for the receiver she had installed in Adamsberg's bedroom. She could hear Veyrenc's voice quite well, although it was overlaid by the voices around and by sounds of chairs scraping, footsteps and papers rustling. The microphone was too powerful, the bug on the mobile only needed to pick up sound from a radius of five metres. That would be enough to cover Veyrenc's small flat, and it would allow her to tune out much of the interference.

Now she could hear Veyrenc's voice quite distinctly. He was talking to Retancourt and Justin. Froissy listened in for a few moments to the light tone and husky sound of the
lieutenant's
voice while eliminating the last remnants of outside interference. Now Veyrenc was sitting down at his desk. She heard the click of a keyboard and then he said quietly to himself:
‘I have no place to go to bury deep my pain.'
Froissy glanced angrily at the bug she had just installed, at the diabolical device that could pour Veyrenc's innermost thoughts direct into Adamsberg's room. There was something violent about putting these tracking devices on Veyrenc. Froissy hesitated before setting everything to ‘go', then turned all the switches on, one by one. A battle between macho boys, she thought as she closed the door, and she had been drawn into it on her full responsibility.

O
N
M
ONDAY
, 4 A
PRIL
, D
ANGLARD PINNED UP A MAP OF THE
E
URE
département
in Normandy on the wall of the Council Chamber. In his hand he was holding a list of the twenty-nine women assumed to be virgins, aged between thirty and forty, living within twenty kilometres of Le Mesnil-Beauchamp. Their addresses had been located, and Justin was marking their homes on the map with red drawing pins.

‘You should have used white ones,' said Voisenet.

‘Oh, bugger off,' said Justin. ‘Haven't got any.'

The men were all tired. They had spent a week checking lists and combing the area, interviewing all the parish priests. One thing seemed certain. No other woman corresponding to their criteria had died accidentally in recent months. So the third virgin must still be alive. This certainty weighed as heavily on the shoulders of the officers as their doubts concerning the direction in which their boss had taken the investigation. They were inclined to question the very basis of their work – namely the link between the profanation of the graves and the recipe in
De reliquis
.

The opposition had divided into different groups. The most hard-nosed among them thought that traces of lichen on a stone were insufficient evidence of murder. And that, seen from one point of view, the whole structure which Adamsberg had built up was as flimsy as a dream,
a fantasy into which he had drawn them all during that extraordinary conference. Others, more hesitant, were prepared to accept that both Pascaline and Elisabeth had been murdered, and agreed that their deaths might somehow be related to the mutilated cat and the theft of the relics. But they refused to follow the
commissaire
in his view of the medieval potion. And even among those, finally, who accepted the
De reliquis
theory, its interpretation was subject to much discussion and analysis. After all, the text didn't say anything about cats, and the male principle could just as well, for all they knew, refer to the semen of a bull. There was nothing to indicate the contrary, just as there was no precise indication that three separate virgins were required to provide ingredients. Maybe two were enough, and all this labour was for nothing. And nothing proved, either, that the third virgin would be killed three months, or six months, before the new wine was ready. The whole thing, from insubstantial beginnings to improbable reasoning, made a completely unbelievable farrago, detached from reality.

With the passage of time, an unprecedented rebellion was brewing in the squad, drawing in more recruits as the hours passed and their fatigue grew. People remembered the hasty rustication of
Lieutenant
Noël, from whom nothing had been heard. And this punishment appeared all the more incomprehensible since Adamsberg was now treating the New Recruit very offhandedly, and avoiding him as much as possible. Murmurings were heard that the
commissaire
had still not recovered from his traumatic Quebec experience, from his separation from Camille, or from the death of his father and the birth of his son, events which had suddenly precipitated him into the the ranks of older men. People remembered the pebbles he had placed on their desks, and somebody suggested that Adamsberg was veering towards mysticism. Once he was on such slippery territory, he would send the whole investigation plunging into the abyss, with all hands.

Such discontent would not have gone beyond the usual level of grumbling if Adamsberg had seemed his normal self. But since the day after
the conference about the Three Virgins, the
commissaire
had become inaccessible, sending out brief, morose messages, never setting foot in the Council Chamber. It was as if his veins had frozen. The rebellion had revived the old debate between the positivists and the cloud shovellers, the latter becoming fewer in number as Adamsberg remained cold and distant.

Two days earlier, a fierce argument over whether they ought simply to stop looking for the damned relics and all the rest of the ridiculous ingredients had once more stimulated these antagonisms. Mercadet, Kernorkian, Maurel, Lamarre, Gardon, and Estalère were, of course, solidly behind the
commissaire
, who did not himself appear to be preoccupied by the potential mutiny in the squad. Danglard, stony-faced, was still holding the bridge, although he was one of those who had the gravest doubts about Adamsberg's orders. But in the face of a mutiny, he would have allowed himself to be chopped into tiny pieces rather than admit this; and he continued stolidly defending the
De reliquis
theory, though without placing any faith in it. Veyrenc had not taken sides, contenting himself with carrying out his duties and trying to keep a low profile. Since the conference of the Three Virgins, he and the
commissaire
had suddenly been placed on a war footing, but he had no idea why.

Strangely enough, Retancourt, one of the leading positivists in the squad, had remained neutral throughout, like a blasé supervisor on duty in a rowdy playground. Quieter than usual and deep in concentration, Retancourt had appeared to be absorbed in a problem known only to herself. She had not even turned up for work on Monday morning. Puzzled at this, Danglard had consulted Estalère, who was reckoned to be the expert on the polyvalent goddess.

‘She's channelling all her energy in one direction,' was Estalère's diagnosis. ‘There's not an ounce left for us, and hardly any for the cat.'

‘And what's she channelling it into, in your opinion?'

‘It's not administrative, not family, nothing physical. Not technical,'
said Estalère, ticking off the possibilities, I think it's, how shall I put it … ?' Estalère pointed to his forehead.

‘Intellectual,' said Danglard

‘Yes,' said Estalère. ‘It's something she's thinking about. Something's intrigued her.'

Adamsberg was in fact acutely conscious of the climate which he had produced in the squad, and he was attempting to control it. But the recordings of Veyrenc had seriously upset him, and he was having difficulty regaining his equilibrium. The phone-tapping had not taken him one step further in his research into the war of the two valleys and the deaths of Fernand and Big Georges. Veyrenc called nobody except one or two relatives and friends, and never commented on his work with the squad. On the other hand, Adamsberg had twice overheard Veyrenc and Camille in bed, and was crushed by the thought of their two bodies, wounded by the crudity of real lives when they are those of other people. And now he deeply regretted his action. Their relationship, far from enabling him to get close to them and control them, was in fact driving him ever further from them. He wasn't there in that bedroom, it wasn't his space. He had invaded it like an intruder and he would have to leave it. The disappointed recognition that there was an inaccessible space belonging only to Camille and which did not concern him at all was gradually beginning to replace his anger. All that was left for him to do was return to his own territory, chastened and soiled, encrusted with memories that he would have to destroy. He had spent a long time walking around listening to the seagulls, in order to understand that he would have to give up his siege of an imaginary citadel.

Feeling relieved and as if recovering from a fever which had left him drained, he crossed the Council Chamber and looked at the map which Justin was completing. On seeing him come in, Veyrenc had immediately withdrawn into a defensive posture.

‘Twenty-nine,' said Adamsberg, reckoning up the red drawing pins.

‘We'll never manage it,' said Danglard. ‘We'll have to narrow down the criteria to keep it more controllable.'

‘What about their way of life?' suggested Maurel. ‘We could rule out the ones who live with someone else – parents, brother, aunt – because they'd be less accessible to a killer.'

‘No, we can't assume that,' said Danglard. ‘Elisabeth was killed on her way to work.'

‘What about the wood of the Cross? Any joy there?' wondered Adamsberg in a husky voice, as if he had had a cough for a week.

‘There are no other relics in the whole of Upper Normandy,' replied Mercadet. ‘And there've been no thefts during the period in question. The last dodgy sale reported was of some relics of Saint Demetrius of Salonika, fifty-four years ago.'

‘And the angel of death. Any sightings of her in the area?'

‘There is one possibility,' said Gardon. ‘But we've only got three witnesses. A district nurse came to live in Vecquigny six years ago. That's only three kilometres north-east of Le Mesnil. The description's a bit vague. A woman between sixty and seventy, small, neat, chatty. Could be just about anyone. They remembered her in Le Mesnil, Vecquigny and Meillères. She was practising there about a year.'