This Night's Foul Work (32 page)

‘Long enough to pick up information, then. Do we know why she left?'

‘No.'

‘Let's just drop it,' said Justin, who had crossed over into the positivist camp during the rebellion.

‘Drop what,
lieutenant?'
said Adamsberg in a faraway voice.

‘Everything. The book, the cat, the third virgin, the bits of bone, the whole bloody lot. It's a complete load of bollocks.'

‘I don't need any more men on this business,' said Adamsberg, sitting down in the middle of the room with everyone looking at him. ‘All the
facts have been assembled. We can't do any more, either through the files or on the ground.'

‘Well, how do we proceed, then?' asked Gardon, still hoping for a lead.

‘Intellectually,' hazarded Estalère, imprudently joining the discussion.

‘You're the intellectual genius who's going to find the solution, are you, Estalère?' asked Mordent.

‘Anyone who wants to be taken off this case can go,' said Adamsberg in the same tired voice. ‘In fact, they're needed elsewhere. We need someone to look at the death in the rue de Miromesnil and the fight at Alésia. And there needs to be an inquiry into the outbreak of food poisoning at the nursing home in Auteuil. We're behind on all these cases.'

‘I think Justin's got a point,' said Mordent, in a level tone. ‘I think we're on the wrong track,
commissaire
. After all, if you take the long view, it started with a cat that some kids could have been tormenting.'

‘A penile bone taken from a cat,' said Kernorkian defensively.

‘I just don't believe in the third virgin,' said Mordent.

‘I don't even believe in the first,' said Justin gloomily.

‘Oh, come on,' said Lamarre. ‘That Elisabeth woman was dead all right.'

‘I meant the Virgin Mary.'

‘I'll leave you to it,' said Adamsberg, putting on his jacket. ‘But the third virgin's out there somewhere, drinking her little cup of coffee, and I'm not going to let her die.'

‘What little cup of coffee?' asked Estalère, but Adamsberg had already left the building.

‘Nothing,' said Mordent. ‘It's just a way of saying she's carrying on with her life.'

F
RANCINE DIDN'T LIKE OLD THINGS
. T
HEY WERE DIRTY AND RICKETY
. S
HE
really felt happy only in the immaculate universe of the pharmacy where she did the cleaning and laundry and stacked the shelves. But she didn't like returning to the old family home, which was dirt-encrusted and tumbledown. When he was alive, Honoré Bidault wouldn't let anyone touch it, but now what difference could it make? For the last two years, Francine had been planning her move away, far from the old farmhouse, to a brand-new flat in town. And she would leave everything here – the crocks, the battered saucepans, the big old wardrobes – everything.

Half past eight in the evening was the best moment of the day. Francine had finished the dishes, closed the plastic rubbish bag firmly and taken it out to the doorstep. Dustbins attracted any number of insects – best not to keep them inside the house at night. She checked the kitchen, always with the fear that she might find a mouse or some disgusting insect, a caterpillar or spider – the house was crawling with nasty creatures like this that kept making their way in and out when you weren't looking, and there was no way of getting rid of them because of the fields outside, the attic up above and the cellar down below. The only bunker which she had succeeded in protecting from these intruders was
her bedroom. She had spent months blocking the chimney, cementing up all the cracks in the walls and the gaps under the windows and round the doors, and had put her bed up on bricks. She preferred to leave the room unaired rather than let anything get in while she was asleep. But there was nothing she could do about the woodworms which were eating their way through the ancient beams overhead all night. Every evening, Francine watched the little holes over her bed, fearing to see the head of a worm poking out. She didn't know what the horrid creatures looked like – earthworms? centipedes? earwigs? But every morning she had to brush away in disgust the little piles of sawdust that had fallen on her bedspread.

Francine poured some hot coffee into a large cup, added a lump of sugar and two capfuls of rum. The best moment of the day. Then she carried the cup into the bedroom, with the little bottle of rum, ready to watch two films one after the other. Her collection of eight hundred and twelve tapes, all labelled and in order, was stacked in the other room, her father's bedroom, and sooner or later the damp would start to damage them. She had decided to leave the farm the day a woodwork expert had come to inspect the house, five months after her father's death. In the cross-beams he had detected seven holes made by death-watch beetles. Seven. Huge holes you could put your little finger into. ‘If you listen hard, you can hear them munching away,' the man had said with a laugh.

It ought to be treated, the expert had said. But as soon as she had seen the size of the beetle holes, Francine had made up her mind. She would move out. She sometimes wondered, with horror, what a death-watch beetle looked like. Like a big worm, or a beetle with a drill in its head?

At one in the morning, Francine looked up at the woodworm holes and checked, thanks to the marks she had made, that they had not moved too much further across the beam. She put out the light, hoping not to hear the snuffling of the hedgehog outside. It was a horrid sound, almost like a human being snorting away in the night. She lay on her stomach, pulling the blankets over her head, just leaving a little space to breathe through. ‘Francine, you're thirty-five years old and you still act like a child,' the priest had said. Well, so what? In another two months, she wouldn't have to see this house, or the priest in her village of Otton, ever again. She wouldn't spend another summer here. It was even worse in summer, with the big moths that came in – goodness knew how – banging their huge floppy bodies against the blinds and lampshades. And then there were bluebottles, hornets, horseflies, field mice and harvest-mites. People said that harvest mite larvae dug little holes in your skin and laid eggs in them. Yuk.

In order to get to sleep, Francine went through the countdown to her removal day, the first of June. She had been told over and over that she was getting a bad deal, exchanging this enormous eighteenth-century farmhouse for a two-room balcony flat in Evreux. But as far as she was concerned, it was the best deal she'd made in her life. In two months' time she'd be safe with her eight hundred and twelve films in a clean white apartment, just along the street from the pharmacy. She'd be sitting on a nice new blue cushion on a floor covered with shiny lino, in front of her TV set, with her coffee and her rum, and without the least little woodworm to bother her. Only two months to go. She'd sleep in a high bunk bed, away from the wall, with a varnished ladder to climb into it. There would be pastel-coloured sheets, which would stay clean without flies coming and leaving spots on them. Acting like a child or not, she'd be happy at last. Francine snuggled under the bedclothes and put her fingers in her ears. She didn't want to hear the hedgehog.

A
S SOON AS HE HAD CLOSED HIS FRONT DOOR BEHIND HIM
, A
DAMSBERG
made for the shower. He shampooed his hair, rubbing as hard as he could, then leaned against the tiled wall and let the warm water run over his closed eyes and dangling arms. Stay in the river like that, his mother used to say, and you'll come out white as snow.

An image of Ariane flashed across his mind, refreshingly. Good idea, he said to himself, turning off the taps. He could invite her out to dinner, and then see if anything happened, yes or no. He dried himself quickly, put his clothes back on over his still-damp skin, and went past the tracking console which was at the end of his bed. Tomorrow he would ask Froissy to come and disconnect this infernal machine and carry off in its wires the image of the damned Béarnais with his crooked smile. He picked up the pile of recordings of Veyrenc, and broke the disks one by one, throwing the shiny fragments round the room. Then he put them all in a bag which he carefully sealed. Next, he ate some sardines, tomatoes and cheese. Feeling both purified and well fed, he decided to call Camille as an indication of his goodwill, and enquire about Tom's cold.

The line was engaged. He sat on the edge of the bed, chewing the rest of his bread, and tried again ten minutes later. Still engaged. Chatting to Veyrenc, no doubt. The transmitter with its regularly flashing red
light offered a last temptation. He switched it on with a brusque gesture.

Nothing, except the sound of the television and a vacuum cleaner. Adamsberg turned up the sound. Veyrenc was listening to a discussion about jealousy, by some irony of fate, while vacuuming his room. To be listening to this programme in his house through Veyrenc's set, and indirectly in his company, seemed somewhat pernicious. A psychiatrist was explaining the causes and effects of compulsive possessiveness and Adamsberg, stretching out drowsily on his bed, was relieved to find that in spite of his recent attack of jealousy he displayed none of the symptoms described.

A shout awoke him suddenly. He jumped up to turn off the television in his room, which was now blaring out.

‘Don't move, motherfucker!'

Adamsberg took three paces into the room, having already realised his mistake. It wasn't his own television but the transmitter which was sending him a gangster film directly from Veyrenc's flat. Sleepily, he reached out to turn it off, but halted when he heard Veyrenc reply to the previous speaker. And Veyrenc's voice was too distinctive to be that of a television actor. Adamsberg looked at his watches. Two in the morning. Veyrenc had a nocturnal visitor.

Adamsberg hurriedly rang the squad.

‘Maurel, who's there with you?'

‘Mordent.'

‘Get over to Veyrenc's flat this instant – he's had a break-in, there are two of them, they're armed. Quick as you can, Maurel, they're threatening him.'

He rang off and called Danglard, while trying to do up his shoelaces with the other hand.

‘Danglard? Two guys are threatening Veyrenc in his flat. Get over to the squad and take over the phone tap. Don't leave it on any account. I'm on my way.'

‘What phone tap?'

‘Bloody hell, the one on Veyrenc!'

‘I don't have his mobile number – how can I put a tap on him?'

‘I'm not asking you to
do
it but to take it over. The gear's in Froissy's cupboard, the one on the left. Get a move on, for Christ's sake, and call Retancourt.'

‘Froissy's cupboard's locked,
commissaire.'

‘Get the spare key from my drawer, for God's sake,' cried Adamsberg, as he ran downstairs.

‘Right,' said Danglard.

There was a phone tap, there was a hold-up, and as he hurriedly pulled on his shirt Danglard trembled, as he understood why. Twenty minutes later, he was switching on the receiver, kneeling in front of
Froissy's cupboard. He heard running footsteps as Adamsberg arrived behind him.

‘Where are they now?' the
commissaire
asked. ‘Have they left the house?'

‘No, not yet. Veyrenc's deliberately taking his time getting dressed and finding his car keys.'

‘They're taking his car?'

‘Yes. He's found the keys now, the men were getting –'

‘Shut up, Danglard.'

The two men knelt down and leaned to listen to the transmitter.

‘They've ditched the mobile,' said Danglard. ‘We'll lose their signal now.'

‘Switch on that other mike.'

‘What other mike?'

‘The one for the car, dammit! And switch on the screen – we'll be able to follow them with the GPS.'

‘Nothing showing. They must be between the flat and the car.'

‘Mordent?' Adamsberg was calling. ‘They're down in the street outside his house.'