Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

by Fred Vargas

  Adamsberg drove slowly, looking at the trees, the streets, the people. Once out of Gatineau Park, he entered Ottawa’s twin town of Hull, which he would not personally have called a town: it was spread over kilometres of flat land, divided up in a grid plan of clean and deserted streets, lined with wood frame houses. There was nothing old or decrepit in sight, not even the churches, which looked like the icing sugar ornaments on wedding cakes rather than Strasbourg Cathedral. No one seemed to be in a hurry, and most people seemed to drive around in big pick-up trucks, capable of carrying several cubic metres of timber.

  There appeared to be no cafes, restaurants or department stores. Adamsberg spotted a few isolated shops, all-purpose corner stores, which sold a bit of everything, one of them a hundred metres from their residence. He enjoyed walking over to it, feeling the snow crunching under his feet, and watching the squirrels which did not move away at his approach. A significant difference from sparrows.

  ‘Where will I find a bar or a restaurant?’ he asked the cashier at reception.

  ‘All the late-night stuff’s downtown,’ she replied kindly. ‘It’s about five kilometres, you’ll have to take the car. Bye, have a nice evening now.’

  The downtown area was not large and Adamsberg had walked round it in under a quarter of an hour. He went into a cafe called the Quatrain, but found he was interrupting a poetry reading attended by a silent and intense audience, so he tiptoed out again, closing the door carefully. One to tell Danglard about. In the end he went into an American bar called Les Cinq Dimanches, a huge overheated saloon, decorated with the stuffed heads of caribou and bear, and sporting Québécois flags. The waiter brought him some food in a leisurely way, chatting about this and that. The plateful was big enough for two. Everything’s bigger in Canada, and more easy-going.

  At the far end of the bar, a hand waved to him. Ginette Saint-Preux, carrying her plate, came and sat down at his table without embarrassment.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit here, Jean-Baptiste?’ she asked. ‘I’m dining alone too.’

  Ginette, who was very pretty, chatty and vivacious, started firing questions at him. What did he think of Quebec? Was it very different from France? Flatter? Oh really? What was Paris like? What was work like there? Fun? And what about you? Oh, really? She had children and ‘hobbies’, especially music. But for a good concert, you had to go to Montreal, would that interest him? Did he have any hobbies? Oh really? Drawing, walking, dreaming? Funny hobbies. How could you do those in Paris?

  At about eleven o’clock, Ginette asked about his two watches.

  ‘Poor you,’ she said, getting up. ‘Of course with the time difference, it’s five o’clock in the morning for you now.’

  Ginette had left on the table a green brochure, which she had been rolling up and unrolling during their conversation. Adamsberg unfolded it sleepily, his eyes drooping with fatigue. Some Vivaldi concerts in Montreal, between 17 and 21 October, a string quintet, with flute and harpsichord. Ginette must have some energy, to drive four hundred kilometres, just to listen to a quintet.

  XVIII

  ADAMSBERG DID NOT INTEND TO SPEND HIS ENTIRE CANADIAN VISIT with his eyes fixed on test tubes and barcodes. By seven in the morning, he was already outside, drawn by the river. Or rather the tributary as Danglard called it, the immense tributary of the St Lawrence, home of the Ottawa Indians. He walked along the bank until he reached a footpath. A sign informed him that it was the ‘Portage trail used by Samuel de Champlain in 1613’. He started off along it, happy to be following in the footsteps of men of long ago, Indians and travellers, carrying their canoes on their backs. The track was not easy to follow, as the path often dipped more than a metre into hollows. The landscape was spectacular: foaming waters, noisy waterfalls, colonies of birds, red-leaved maples along the banks. He stopped in front of a commemorative tablet planted in a clearing, giving a potted history of Champlain’s achievements.

  ‘Hey, good morning!’ said a voice behind him.

  A young woman in jeans was sitting on a flat rock overlooking the river, smoking an early-morning cigarette. Adamsberg had detected a Parisian accent.

  ‘Morning to you,’ he replied.

  ‘French,’ stated the woman. ‘What are you doing here? Tourist?’

  ‘No, work.’

  The young woman inhaled and threw the rest of her cigarette into the water. ‘I’m lost. So I’m just waiting.’

  ‘Lost? Literally?’ asked Adamsberg carefully, while looking at the inscription on the Champlain stone.

  ‘I met this guy? In law school, in Paris? Canadian. He said why didn’t I come out here with him and I said yes. He seemed like a regular chum.’

  ‘Chum?’

  ‘Friend, boyfriend. The idea was to live together.’

  ‘I see,’ said Adamsberg, retreating.

  ‘And after six months, what do you think the chum did? He dumped Noëlla and she found herself all washed up.’

  ‘Noëlla, that’s you?’

  ‘Yes. In the end, she found a girlfriend to take her in.’

  ‘I see,’ said Adamsberg again, having already listened to more than he needed to.

  ‘So I’m waiting,’ she went on, lighting another cigarette. ‘I’m making some quick bucks working in a bar in Ottawa, and as soon as I’ve saved up enough, I’m going back to Paris. Not very bright, eh?’

  ‘Why are you out here so early?’

  ‘She comes to listen to the wind. She comes here often, morning and evening. I tell myself that even if you’re lost, you have to find somewhere to be. I’ve chosen this stone. What’s your name?’

  ‘Jean-Baptiste.’

  ‘And your other name?’

  ‘Adamsberg.’

  ‘And what do you do?’

  ‘I’m a cop.’

  ‘That’s a laugh! Here they call them pigs. My chum, he’d say, oh-oh, here come the pigs, and you wouldn’t see him for dust. Are you working with the Gatineau cops?’

  Adamsberg nodded and took advantage of the sleet that was beginning to fall, to get away.

  ‘Bye for now,’ she said, without budging from her stone.

  * * *

  At two minutes to nine o’clock, he was parking in front of the RCMP. Laliberté gave him a hearty wave from the doorway.

  ‘Come on in!’ he shouted. ‘What about this weather! Hey, man, what have you been up to, with all that mud on your pants?’

  ‘I fell over on the portage path by the river,’ explained Adamsberg, rubbing at the marks.

  ‘You been out walking already? No kidding?’

  ‘I wanted to see the river, the rapids, the trees, the old portage.’

  ‘Hey, an outdoor freak,’ cried Laliberté with a laugh. ‘So you took a dive?’

  ‘A dive? In the river? No, sorry, I don’t always understand, you mean a fall?’

  ‘Right, don’t apologise, I won’t take it personally. Hey, call me Aurèle. I mean, yeah, how d’you come to fall?’

  ‘The path’s steep in places, I slipped on a stone.’

  ‘No bones broken at least.’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine.’

  ‘One of your men is here already, the big slouch.’

  ‘Don’t call him that, Aurèle, he knows what it means.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘He reads books. He may look sloppy, but there’s not an ounce of slackness in that head. Only he does find it a bit hard getting up in the morning.’

  ‘Let’s grab a coffee while we wait,’ said the superintendent heading for the machine. ‘Got some change?’

  Adamsberg took a handful of unfamiliar coins from his pocket and Laliberté extracted the right one.

  ‘Decaff or regular?’

  ‘Regular,’ Adamsberg chose, hopefully.

  ‘This’ll set you up,’ said Aurèle, handing him a huge plastic cup full of very hot coffee. ‘So you go out for a breath of fresh air every morning, do you?’

  ‘I go walking. Morning, daytime, evening, doesn’t matter
when. I just need to walk.’

  ‘Right,’ said Aurèle with a smile. ‘Or perhaps you’re on the lookout for a girl?’

  ‘No, I’m not. But since you mention it, there was one, funnily enough, sitting by the Champlain stone, at eight in the morning. Seemed a bit odd.’

  ‘Pretty weird, I’d say. A chick on her own, on the trail, could be a hooker. Nobody goes there. Don’t get hooked, Adamsberg. It could be big trouble.’

  Usual conversation of men round the coffee machine, thought Adamsberg, here or anywhere else.

  ‘OK, off we go,’ concluded the superintendent. ‘No more talk about girls, we’ve got work to do.’

  Laliberté gave out instructions to the teams of two in the big room. Danglard had been assigned to the innocent-looking Sanscartier. Laliberté had paired the women with each other, probably out of a feeling that it would be more correct, allocating the large Retancourt to the slim Louisseize, and Froissy to Ginette Saint-Preux. Today’s task was on-the-spot collection. They would visit eight houses belonging to public-spirited citizens who had agreed to take part in the experiment. Each officer had a DNA collection kit. They would place their samples on a special card for collecting body fluids, said Laliberté, holding this object high in the air as if it was a sacred Host. It neutralised any bacterial or viral contamination, without the need for freezing.

  ‘A new technique, which gives us an economy, one, of time, two, of money, three, of space.’

  While listening to the strict instructions of the superintendent, Adamsberg was leaning forward on his chair, his hands in his pockets, which were still damp from the walk. His fingers encountered the green brochure he had picked up from the table, in order to return it to Ginette Saint-Preux. It was by now damp and crumpled and he took it out carefully, trying not to tear it. Discreetly, he spread it out on a table with the palm of his hand, to smooth it back into shape.

  ‘Today,’ Laliberté continued, ‘we will collect, one, sweat, two, saliva, and three, blood. Tomorrow, tears, urine, snot and dirt from under the nails. And semen from those citizens who have agreed to fill a test tube.’

  Adamsberg gave a start, not because of the public-spirited citizens and their test tubes, but because of what he had just read on the damp brochure.

  ‘Check properly,’ Laliberté said loudly, turning to the Paris team, ‘that the codes of the cards correspond to those on the kits. As I always say, you have to remember three things: rigour, rigour and more rigour. That’s the only way to get the job done.’

  The eight teams moved towards the cars, armed with the addresses of the citizens who were obligingly lending their homes and their bodies to the series of samples. Adamsberg stopped Ginette as she went by.

  ‘I wanted to give you this back,’ he said, handing her the green brochure. ‘You left it in the restaurant but I thought you’d be needing it.’

  ‘Goodness, yes, I wondered where I’d put it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s got wet.’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll take it to the office. Can you tell Hélène I’ll be right back?’

  ‘Ginette,’ said Adamsberg, holding her back by the arm and pointing to the brochure. ‘That Camille Forestier, the viola player, is she always in the Montreal quintet?’

  ‘No, she isn’t. Alban told me their viola player’s on maternity leave. She was already six months pregnant when they needed to start rehearsals.’

  ‘Alban?’

  ‘The first violin, a friend of mine. He met this Camille Forestier, who’s French, and auditioned her. She was good, so he took her on at once.’

  ‘Hey, Adamsberg,’ called Laliberté, ‘get a move on there.’

  ‘Thanks, Ginette,’ said Adamsberg, joining his partner.

  ‘What did I say?’ said the superintendent, as he climbed into the car, laughing once more. ‘Always after the ladies, aren’t you? And with one of my inspectors too, on your second day here. Fast worker or what?’

  ‘It’s not what you think, Aurèle, we were talking about music. Classical music,’ added Adamsberg, as if ‘classical’ somehow lent respectability to their conversation.

  ‘Music, my eye!’ laughed the superintendent, switching on the engine. ‘Don’t play the little plaster saint with me. You saw her downtown last night, right?’

  ‘It was quite by chance. I was eating at the Cinq Dimanches, and she came over to my table.’

  ‘Drop it with Ginette, she’s married. And happily married.’

  ‘I was just giving her back a concert programme. You can believe me or not, please yourself.’

  ‘No need to take offence. Only kidding.’

  By the end of the long day, punctuated by the loud voice of the superintendent, and when all the samples had been taken from the public-spirited Jules and Linda Saint-Croix, Adamsberg got back into his official car.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ asked Laliberté, putting his head through the window.

  ‘I’m going to look at the river again, go for a walk. Then go downtown for something to eat.’

  ‘You’re real antsy, Jean-Baptiste, you gotta be moving all the time.’

  ‘I told you, I like walking.’

  ‘You like checking out the talent, that’s what. Me, I never go downtown looking for a woman. I’m too recognisable. When I want some fun, I take off for Ottawa. Go on, man, best of luck!’ he added, slapping the door with his hand. ‘Ciao till tomorrow.’

  ‘Tears, urine, snot, dirt and semen,’ recited Adamsberg.

  ‘Semen, I wish,’ said Laliberté frowning, his professional concerns returning. ‘If Jules Saint-Croix can make a bit of an effort tonight. He said yes at the start, but I get the feeling he’s gone off the idea. Well, we can’t force people, for God’s sake.’

  Adamsberg left Laliberté to his test tube worries and set off for the river.

  After listening for a long while to the sound of the Ottawa, he took the portage trail to make his way downtown on foot. If he had read the map right, the path ought to come out by the big bridge across the Chaudière Falls. From there, it was only a quarter of an hour to the centre. The rocky path was separated from a cycle track by a strip of forest which plunged him into complete darkness. He had borrowed a flashlight from Retancourt, the only member of the mission likely to have thought of bringing one. He made more or less good progress, managing to avoid a small pool the river made at one point and dodging low branches. He no longer felt the cold when he came out near the bridge, a huge metal structure whose crossbars made him think of a triple Eiffel Tower fallen across the Ottawa river.

  The Breton pancake house downtown had made an effort to recall the owner’s ancestors’ native heath, with fishing nets, buoys and dried fish. And, indeed, a trident. Adamsberg froze when he saw the implement with its three points staring him in the face from the wall. A sea-trident, a fishing spear for Neptune, with its three fine blades ending in fishhooks. Very different in fact from his personal trident, which was a farmworker’s tool, solid and heavy, an earth-trident so to speak. As one might talk of an earthworm or even an earth-toad. But all that was a long way off, murderous tridents, exploding toads, left behind in the mists across the Atlantic.

  The waiter brought him an outsize pancake, while chatting about life in general.

  Yes, far across the Atlantic: tridents, toads, judges, cathedrals and the locked chamber of Bluebeard’s castle.

  Left behind, but waiting for his return. All those faces, all those wounds, all those fears, attached to his footsteps by the untiring thread of memory. As for Camille, she had reappeared to him here on the spot, right in the middle of a town lost in the huge wastes of Canada. The idea of the five concerts about to be given, two hundred kilometres from the RCMP post, worried him, as if he would be able to hear the viola from his balcony. He prayed that Danglard would not get to hear of this. The capitaine would be quite capable of rushing off full tilt to Montreal and then giving him dirty looks all the next day.

  He chose to have a coffee and a
glass of wine instead of dessert, and without looking up from the menu, he became aware that someone had sat down at his table uninvited. It was the young woman from the Champlain stone, and she called the waiter back to order another coffee.

  ‘Good day?’ she enquired, smiling.

  She lit a cigarette and stared at him straight in the eyes.

  ‘Oh shit,’ thought Adamsberg and then wondered why. Any other time, he might have jumped at a chance like this. But he felt no desire to take this girl to bed, either because the torments of the past week were still affecting him, or perhaps because he was trying to disprove the intuition of the superintendent.

  ‘I’m bothering you, Jean Baptiste,’ she stated. ‘You look tired. The pigs have given you a hard time.’

  ‘That’s it,’ he replied, and realised he had forgotten her name.

  ‘Your jacket’s soaked,’ she said feeling it. ‘Does your car let in the rain? Or did you come on a bike?’

  Did she want to know everything about him?

  ‘I walked.’

  ‘You walked? Nobody does that here. Hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘Yes. But I came along the portage trail.’

  ‘The whole way? How long did it take you?’

  ‘Just over an hour.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got some nerve, as my chum would say.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because that path at night, it’s a homosexual cruising place.’

  ‘So what? What harm would they do me?’

  ‘Well, rapists too. I don’t know, it’s what people say. But when Noëlla goes there at night, she doesn’t go farther than the Champlain stone. That’s far enough to look at the river.’ Noëlla yawned. ‘I’ve been serving dumb French people all day, I’m worn out. I work at the Caribou, did I say? I don’t like the French, when they all start shouting in a group, I prefer the Québécois, they’re nicer. Except for my boyfriend. I told you about him, didn’t I? He chucked me out, the bastard.’

  The young woman was launched once more on her story, and Adamsberg couldn’t think how to get rid of her.

  ‘See, here’s his photo. Good-looker, wouldn’t you say? Though you’re not bad yourself, of your type. You’re unusual-looking, and you’re not so young. But you’ve got a nice nose and eyes. And a nice smile,’ she said, running a finger across his eyelids and lips. ‘And when you talk, your voice is lovely, did you know that?’