by Fred Vargas
‘Yeah, good thinking,’ Basile said. ‘By then they’ll be looking for a couple. Makes sense to split up.’
‘We’ll reimburse you from Paris. You’re going to have to look after us till then, like the brigand’s mother in the story.’
‘Yeah, right, no way you can go out for now,’ said Basile, ‘and you can’t go paying with your credit cards. The commissaire’s photo is sure to be in Le Devoir by tomorrow – and yours too, is my guess, Violette. You left the hotel without saying goodbye, so you’re not much better off than he is.’
‘Seven days confined to barracks then,’ Adamsberg said.
‘It’s no big deal,’ said Basile. ‘You’ve got all you need here. We can read the papers. They’ll all be talking about us, it’ll be a laugh.’
Basile didn’t seem to take anything seriously, even sheltering a potential murderer in his flat. Violette’s word appeared to be good enough for him.
‘I like to walk,’ said Adamsberg with a wry smile.
‘There’s a long corridor in the flat. You’ll just have to use it for exercise. Violette, I think we’d better turn you into a desperate housewife, OK? I’ll get you a smart suit and a necklace and we’ll dye your hair darker.’
‘OK. For the commissaire, I thought we should shave his head about three quarters, make him look bald.’
‘Good idea,’ said Basile. ‘It would really change the way he looks. Tweed suit, beige check I think, receding hairline, and a bit of a pot-belly.’
‘We’ll whiten the rest of his hair,’ said Retancourt. ‘Get some foundation too, I think we ought to make his complexion paler. And some lemon juice. It needs to be professional quality make-up.’
‘I gotta colleague does the cinema column, he’ll know where to get studio make-up. I’ll fetch some stuff tomorrow and develop the photos in our lab.’
‘Basile is a photographer,’ Retancourt explained. ‘For Le Devoir.’
‘A journalist?’
‘Yup,’ said Basile with a friendly pat on his shoulder. ‘And here’s a godalmighty scoop sitting at my table. You’re in a hornets’ nest now. Scarey, eh?’
‘It’s a risk,’ said Adamsberg, smiling faintly.
Basile burst out laughing.
‘It’s OK, commissaire, I know when to keep my mouth shut. And I’m less dangerous than you.’
XXXIX
ADAMSBERG MUST HAVE COVERED SOMETHING LIKE TEN KILOMETRES over the week, pacing up and down in Basile’s corridor. After being cooped up for seven days, he was almost able to take pleasure in walking freely in the Montreal airport terminal. But the place was crawling with cops, which took away his appetite for relaxation.
He glanced at himself sideways in a glass door, to check if he passed muster as a salesman aged about sixty. Retancourt had done a fantastic job, and he had let her manipulate him like a puppet. The transformation had tickled Basile. ‘Make him look depressed,’ he had advised Violette, so that was what they had done. His expression was much altered, under eyebrows which had been whitened and plucked. Retancourt had taken the trouble even to dye his eyelashes and half an hour before they left the house, she put a drop of lemon juice in the corner of each eye. His bloodshot gaze and pale complexion made him look tired and unhealthy. His nose, lips and ears remained unchangeable however, and seemed to him to betray his identity at every turn.
He felt for his new ID papers in his pocket, checking now and then to make sure they were there. Jean-Pierre Emile Roger Feuillet was the name Violette’s brother had provided for him, in an impeccably forged passport. It included stamps from Roissy and Montreal attesting to his voyage out. Professional stuff. If the brother was as capable as the sister, the Retancourts were a family of experts.
His real papers had been left with Basile, in case his bags were examined. What a pal Basile had been. He had fetched the Canadian newspapers every day. The virulent articles about the runaway murderer and his accomplice had delighted him. And he was considerate too. So that Adamsberg should not feel too lonely, he had often walked up and down the corridor with him. He liked going on outdoor hikes himself and understood that the prisoner felt cooped up. They would chat as they walked, and after a week Adamsberg had heard all about Basile’s various girlfriends, as well as the geography of Canada from Vancouver to the Gaspé peninsula. Still, Basile had never heard about the fish in Pink Lake and promised he’d go and take a look. You should see Strasbourg Cathedral too, if ever you come to little old France, Adamsberg had told him.
He went through security, trying to empty his mind of worries, as Jean-Pierre Emile Roger Feuillet would have, if he were on his way back to France to interest his company in placing orders for maple syrup. But strangely, the faculty of emptying his mind, which normally came to him quite naturally and spontaneously, seemed very hard to achieve that day. He, who could usually daydream at any moment and miss whole chunks of other people’s conversations, who was forever shovelling clouds, now found himself breathing rapidly and processing a thousand jumbled thoughts in his head as he went through the routine baggage checks.
But the officials showed no interest in Jean-Pierre Emile Roger Feuillet and once he was in the departure lounge, Adamsberg forced himself to relax and buy a bottle of maple syrup. A very typical gesture on the part of Feuillet, taking a present for his mother. The sound of jet engines starting up and then taxi-ing to take-off produced in him a relief that Danglard would never have been able to conceive. He watched the Canadian landscape disappear beneath them, imagining that there were hundreds of Mounties down there, engaged in their fruitless search.
Now all he had to do was get through immigration at Roissy. And of course Retancourt still had to make her getaway, after an interval of two and a half hours. Adamsberg was worried for her. Her new persona as a rich suburban housewife was unsettling – and had given Basile plenty of fun – but Adamsberg was afraid that her figure would give her away. The image of her naked body flashed in front of his eyes. Impressive, yes, but well-proportioned. Raphaël was right, Retancourt was indeed a beautiful woman, and he reproached himself for not having seen this before, preoccupied as he was with her vigour and determination. Raphaël had always been more sensitive than he.
Seven hours later, the plane touched down on French soil at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport. He went through customs and passport control and for a moment felt ridiculously free. It was a mistake. The nightmare was going to continue now in another country. In front of him, the future was as empty and white as an icefield. Retancourt could at least go back to the office, arguing that she had been afraid that the Mounties would arrest her for complicity. But for him a journey to nowhere was about to begin. Accompanied only by the aching doubt about his forgotten actions. He would almost rather have been guilty and killed someone, than have to carry around the terrible vagueness about what had happened on the night of October 26.
Jean-Pierre Emile Roger Feuillet went through all the checks at Roissy, but Adamsberg could not bring himself to leave the airport until he knew whether Retancourt had arrived safely. He wandered about for a couple of hours in the terminal buildings, trying to make himself inconspicuous, and imitating Retancourt’s invisibility at RCMP headquarters. But he need not have bothered, since Jean-Pierre was obviously of no interest to anyone, just as in Montreal. He kept checking the arrivals boards, to see when the jumbo jets were arriving on long-haul flights. His own jumbo jet, he thought: Retancourt. Without whom he would now be rotting in a Canadian jail, and completely without hope. Retancourt, his escape route on a 747.
The inconspicuous Jean-Pierre therefore stationed himself without too much panic about twenty metres from the arrivals gate. Retancourt must have channelled all her energy into becoming Henriette Emma Marie Parillon. He clenched his fists, as the passengers started pouring into the hall, but couldn’t see her anywhere. Had she been picked up at the airport? Taken back to headquarters? Grilled all night? And what if she had cracked? Mentioned Raphaël’s name? Or her brother’s? A
damsberg grew irritated at all the strangers as they walked past him looking relieved that their flight was over, clutching their bags full of maple syrup and fluffy caribous. He was angry that they were not Retancourt. A hand caught his arm and drew him further into the hall. It was Henriette Emma Marie Parillon.
‘You must be nuts!’ whispered Retancourt, while maintaining the haughty expression of Henriette.
They travelled together as far as Châtelet metro station, where Adamsberg suggested to his lieutenant that they profit from his last hours of freedom under the incognito of Jean-Pierre Emile, to go and have lunch in a cafe, like normal people. Retancourt hesitated, then accepted, feeling relieved that their escape had proceeded so incredibly successfully, as well as by seeing the hordes of people in the streets.
‘We’ll pretend everything’s OK,’ said Adamsberg, once he was sitting bolt upright as Jean-Pierre would, in front of his plate. ‘We’ll pretend I’m not him. That I never did anything.’
‘The episode is over,’ said Retancourt sternly which made Henriette Emma’s expression look suddenly different. ‘It’s over, and you didn’t do it. We’re in Paris, on your own territory and you’re a policeman. I can’t go on believing for both of us. We may have got away with close combat, but I can’t do close thinking. You’ll have to get your brain back.’
‘Why do you believe in me so firmly, Retancourt?’
‘We’ve already discussed that.’
‘But why?’ Adamsberg insisted. ‘Since you don’t really like me?’
Retancourt gave an impatient sigh.
‘What does it matter?’
‘It’s important to me. I need to understand. Really.’
‘I don’t know if it’s relevant now. Or later, even.’
‘Because of my trouble in Quebec?’
‘Among other things. I don’t know.’
‘Even so, Retancourt, I need to know.’
Retancourt thought a moment, twisting her empty coffee cup.
‘Look,’ Adamsberg said, ‘we may never see one another again. These are extreme circumstances. Rank doesn’t matter. I will always regret not having understood.’
‘OK, extreme circumstances. What the others in the squad all thought was so marvellous about you got up my nose. The casual way you wandered in and solved cases like a lone ranger, or a Zen archer who went straight to the target. It was certainly impressive, but I could see something else, the way you were so calmly confident of your own internal certainty. You were always right. Yes, you were an independent thinker, but you were royally indifferent to what anyone else might have to contribute.’
She stopped, hesitating.
‘Go on,’ said Adamsberg.
‘I admired your flair of course, everyone did, but not the air of detachment it seemed to give you, the way you disregarded anything your deputies said, since you only half listened to them anyway. I didn’t like your isolation, your high-handed indifference. Perhaps I’m not expressing myself well. The sand dunes are smooth and the desert feels soft, but for someone obliged to cross it, it’s arid. You can cross a desert, but you can’t live there. It isn’t very generous, it won’t support you.’
Adamsberg was listening attentively. Trabelmann’s harsh words came back to him, and the resemblance to what he was hearing formed a great shadow which passed over his brow with the flapping of dark wings. Following his own inclination, leaving other people aside, not bothering to distinguish between them, discarding them as distant interchangeable figures, whose names he couldn’t even remember. And yet he was sure the commandant of gendarmes had been wrong about him.
‘Makes me sound a miserable bastard, doesn’t it,’ he said without looking up.
‘Yes, I suppose so. But perhaps you were really always somewhere else, far away, with Raphaël, just in a twosome with him. I thought about it in the plane. When you were in the cafe where you met him, you formed a circle, an exclusive circle.’
She drew a circle on the table with her finger and Adamsberg knotted his thin, newly-white brows.
‘You were with your brother,’ she explained. ‘You didn’t want to abandon him, you were with him, wherever he’d gone. In the desert with him.’
‘In the mud of the Torque,’ said Adamsberg, drawing another circle.
‘If you like.’
‘What else do you see in your analysis of me?’
‘Well, for the same reasons, you ought to listen when I say you didn’t murder anyone. To kill, you need to be emotionally involved with other people, you need to get drawn into their troubles and even be obsessed by what they represent. Killing means interfering with some kind of bond, an excessive reaction, a sort of mingling with someone else. So that the other person doesn’t exist as themselves, but as something that belongs to you, that you can treat as a victim. I don’t think you’re remotely capable of that. A man like you, who wanders through the world without any meaningful contact with other people, doesn’t kill. He’s not close enough to them, he can’t be bothered to sacrifice them to an act of passion. I don’t say you can’t love anyone, but you certainly didn’t love Noëlla. You’d never have taken the trouble to kill her.’
‘Go on,’ said Adamsberg, resting his cheek on his hand.
‘Watch out, you’re messing up your make-up, I told you not to touch it!’
‘Sorry. Carry on.’
‘Well, that’s all really. Someone who has a meaningless affair is not involved enough to kill.’
‘Retancourt,’ said Adamsberg forcefully.
‘Shh, Henriette,’ his lieutenant corrected him. ‘Be careful, someone might hear you.’
‘Henriette, I hope one day I will deserve the help you’ve given me. But for now, please go on believing in me about that night I can’t remember. Please believe I didn’t kill, channel all your energy into that. Be a pylon, be a mountain of belief. Then I’ll be able to as well.’
‘Well, use your own brain,’ Retancourt insisted. ‘I told you. Your inner confidence. Now is the time to count on it.’
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ said Adamsberg, holding her arm, ‘but your energy will be a lever. Just keep it there for me, for a while.’
‘I’ve no reason to change my mind.’
Adamsberg released her arm with reluctance, as if he were jumping down from a tree, and left.
XL
THE COMMISSAIRE, HAVING CHECKED IN A GLASS DOOR THAT HIS makeup was still intact, stationed himself from six that evening on the homeward route of Adrien Danglard. He spotted from a distance Danglard’s large shambling figure, but the capitaine gave no sign of recognition as he walked past Jean-Pierre Emile Roger Feuillet. Adamsberg caught him by the arm.
‘Don’t say anything, Danglard, just keep walking.’
‘Good God, who are you? What do you want?’ said Danglard trying to pull free.
‘It’s me, Adamsberg, got up like a salesman.’
‘Shit,’ Danglard gasped, staring at the face in front of him and trying to make it fit Adamsberg’s features behind the pale skin, red-rimmed eyes and balding hairline.
‘OK now, Danglard?’
‘I’ve got to talk to you,’ said the capitaine, looking around.
‘Me too. Let’s turn here and go to your place. No funny business.’
‘No, not my place,’ said Danglard in a low, firm voice. ‘Pretend you were asking me the way and leave me. I’ll see you in five minutes, in my son’s school, second street right. Tell the janitor you’ve come to see me, and I’ll be in the games room.’
Danglard pulled away his arm and the commissaire watched as he went down the street and turned a corner.
* * *
In the school, he found his deputy sitting on a child’s blue plastic chair, surrounded by a confusion of balls, books, cubes and little tables. Perched thirty centimetres above the floor, Danglard looked ridiculous. But Adamsberg had no choice but to take another chair, a red one, and sit down beside him.
‘Surprised to see I’ve got aw
ay from the Mounties?’
‘Yes, I have to say.’
‘Disappointed? Anxious?’
Danglard looked at him without a word. This pale-faced balding creature, with Adamsberg’s voice coming from his mouth, fascinated him. His youngest child was looking by turns at his father and at the funny man in a beige tweed suit.
‘I’m going to tell you another story now, Danglard, but ask your little boy to go away. It’s unsuitable for children.’
Danglard whispered to the child and sent him off across the room, still looking at Adamsberg.
‘It’s like a cops and robbers movie, Danglard. With a chase. But perhaps you’ve heard it?’
‘I’ve read the papers,’ said Danglard prudently, watchful of his boss’s fixed gaze. ‘I saw the charges that they’d brought against you, and that you’d escaped police surveillance.’
‘So you don’t know any more than the man in the street?’
‘If you like.’
‘Well, I’ll fill you in on the detail,’ said Adamsberg, pulling his chair closer.
During the entire time he was telling his tale, omitting nothing, from his first meeting with Laliberté to the stay at Basile’s flat, Adamsberg examined the expressions on the capitaine’s face. But Danglard’s face reflected nothing but concern, scrupulous attention and at times astonishment.
‘I told you she was an exceptional woman,’ he said when Adamsberg had finished.
‘I didn’t come here to talk about Retancourt. Let’s talk about Laliberté. Pretty quick off the mark, wasn’t he? All that stuff he’d been able to collect on me in such a short time. Including the fact that I had no memory at all of the two and a half hours on the trail. That amnesia was the fatal piece of evidence in his file.’
‘Obviously.’
