by Fred Vargas
Adamsberg watched her close the door behind her while the young man went off down the street. No, that wasn’t her lover. Lovers don’t kiss on the cheek, not quickly like that. So it was someone else, maybe a friend. Adamsberg tracked the silhouette until it shrank down the long street, then he crossed over to go up to Marie-Belle’s flat. She hadn’t been ill. She had had an appointment to keep. With who knows who.
With her brother.
Adamsberg stood stock still with his hand on the side door. Her brother. Your little brother. Same hair, same invisible eyebrows, same thin smile. He was Marie-Belle in poor focus, a fuzzy version of his sister. The younger brother from Romorantin who was so scared of the big city. But up in town all the same. It suddenly flashed into Adamsberg’s mind that he’d not picked up a single number in Romorantin, in the department of Loir-et-Cher, on the listing of Damascus’s telephone calls from the flat. Whereas Marie-Belle was supposed to call the young man on a regular basis. The boy was supposed to be not too bright, the boy was supposed to want to keep in touch.
But the boy was in Paris. The third descendant of the Journot clan.
Adamsberg sprinted down Rue de la Convention. It was a long street, and he could see Heller-Deville from afar. When he was thirty yards behind the young man, Adamsberg slowed down and maintained his distance, keeping in the shadows. The boy kept looking out at the road, as if he was hoping to hail a cab. Adamsberg took shelter in a doorway to call for a car. He put the phone back in his pocket, then took it out again and looked at it. The gizmo’s dead eye told him that Camille wouldn’t call. Five years, ten years, maybe for ever. Heigh-ho. Who cares anyway.
He put his thoughts away and carried on tailing Heller-Deville.
It was Heller-Deville Junior, the second man, the man who was going to complete the plague job now that big brother and Granny were in clink. Neither Damascus nor Clémentine doubted for a moment that their baton had been picked up. That was the family saga in all its force. The Journots knew how to work together and mess-ups were out of the question. They were lords not martyrs. And they would wash the damage done to them in the blood of the plague. Marie-Belle had just appointed the youngest of the tribe to the vacant leadership role. Damascus had killed five; he would kill three.
Must avoid losing him, must avoid scaring him. It was hard to keep tailing him because he kept turning round – and so did Adamsberg, because he was afraid that if a taxi did come cruising past, he wouldn’t be able to flag it down without raising the alarm. An off-white four-door driving gently with its lights dipped appeared in the distance, and Adamsberg identified it immediately as one of his squad cars. It came up alongside him and Adamsberg signalled discreetly to the driver, without turning his head, to slow down.
Four minutes later Heller-Deville came out on to the roundabout at Félix-Faure, where he flagged down a cab which then drew up beside him. Adamsberg was thirty yards behind him. He jumped into the off-white squad car.
“Follow that cab,” he blurted out as he closed the door without making it clunk.
“I’d already got that,” replied Lieutenant Violette Retancourt, the hulking great woman who’d harried him at the first emergency meeting of the team.
Green-eyed Estalère was sitting next to her.
“Retancourt,” said the woman.
“Estalère,” said baby-face.
“Tail him gently, there’s no margin for near misses, Retancourt. I want that man like I want a million dollars.”
“Who is he?”
“The second man, a fourth-generation Journot and a lordling of the plague. He’s the one who’s gearing up to chastise a brute in Troyes, an animal in Châtellerault and Kevin Roubaud in Paris, as soon as we let him out.”
“They’re human excrement. I won’t shed no tears.”
“Lieutenant, we can’t sit around playing cards until they get it in the neck,” said Adamsberg.
“Why not?” Retancourt riposted.
“No way are those men going to get out from under, believe you me. If I’m not very much mistaken, the Journot–Heller-Deville clan work on a ladder principle, beginning with the least of the crimes, and going up a step in horror with each of their murders. It seems to me they started the series by knocking off one of the less wicked members of the gang, and they’re going to finish with the top man and the worst bugger of the whole bunch. Bit by bit, you see, the animals began to twig – Sylvain Marmot fitted extra bolts, Kevin Roubaud came to us – that their former victim had returned to haunt them. The last three know what’s in store and they’re frightened to death. It makes vengeance doubly sweet. Left here, Retancourt.”
“I saw.”
“Logically, the last in line should be the man behind the extortion. Must be a physicist working in aeronautics, it has to be, otherwise how would he have understood the value of the thing Damascus worked out. There can’t be a whole heap of aeronautical engineers in Troyes and Châtellerault. I’ve put Danglard on to that. I reckon we’ve got a chance of finding that one.”
“We could just let the man lead us to him.”
“That’s a big risk, Retancourt, as dicey as playing chicken. If we’ve got any other way of doing it, I would prefer to use it.”
“Where’s he taking us now? We’re going due north.”
“To his place, it’ll be a rented room or a hotel. He’s been given his orders, and now he’ll have a sleep. It’ll be all quiet until the sun rises. He’s not going to take that cab all the way to Troyes or Châtellerault. All we really need tonight is his address. But he’ll be on the road at first light. He has to work fast.”
“What about his sister?”
“We know where she is, and we’re keeping an eye on her. Damascus filled her in on all the details so she could pass them on to baby bro if anything went wrong. What they’re set on, lieutenant, is finishing the job. Nothing else matters to them. Finish the job. Because no Journot has ever been defeated since 1914, and no Journot may be defeated, ever.”
Estalère whistled through his teeth.
“Well, that teaches me one thing for sure. I’m not a Journot, and that’s that.”
“Nor am I,” said Adamsberg.
“We’re not far off the railway station,” Retancourt said. “What if he hops on a train tonight?”
“It’s too late. And he hasn’t even got his bag.”
“He could travel light.”
“What about the black paint, detective? And locksmithing tools? The envelopes for the fleas? The tear gas? The nylon tie? The charcoal? He can’t have all that in his back pocket, can he?”
“Do you mean that the younger brother also knows how to pick locks?”
“Definitely. Unless his trick is to entice his victims out of their flats, as was done for Viard and Clerc.”
“That wouldn’t be easy if the targets were on their guard,” said Estalère. “Which they are, according to you, sir.”
“But what about the sister?” Retancourt said again. “It’s much easier for a girl to get a man to come out of doors. Is she pretty?”
“Yes. But I think Marie-Belle’s role is to keep in touch and to pass things on. I’m not sure she knows everything. She’s very naive and a great chatterbox, and I guess Damascus is careful with her, or else tries to shelter her.”
“So this is all a man’s game, like?” Retancourt said rather roughly. “Superman’s game, I should say.”
“That’s the point. Brake, lieutenant, and switch your lights off.”
The taxi had just dropped the young man on a deserted stretch of Quai de Jemmapes, which runs alongside the Saint-Martin Canal.
“This must be the unbusiest street in the whole city,” Adamsberg muttered.
“He’s waiting for the taxi to drive off before he goes home,” Retancourt observed. “He’s a canny little superman. I reckon he didn’t even give his full address. He’ll walk the last yards.”
“Trail him with the lights off, lieutenant” said Adamsberg as he saw the
young man starting to walk away. “Follow him. Stop.”
“Shit, sir. I saw that,” said Retancourt.
Estalère gave his colleague Violette Retancourt a horrified glance. For heaven’s sake, you just could not say “shit” to a commissaire principal.
“Sorry, sir, couldn’t help it,” she muttered. “It’s because I saw. I’ve got very good night vision. The guy’s stopped moving. He’s waiting by the canal. What’s he getting up to? Has he nodded off, or what?”
Adamsberg studied the lie of the land, leaning forward from the rear seat, looking over both his lieutenants’ shoulders.
“I’m going. I’ll get as near as I can, behind that billboard.”
“The one with the coffee-cup poster? And To Die For? Doesn’t exactly cheer you up, does it?”
“You do have night vision, lieutenant.”
“When I need it. I can also tell you there’s a pile of gravel round the billboard, and you’re going to make a noise when you tread on it. Superman’s lighting a fag. I think he’s expecting a visitor.”
“Or else he’s just enjoying the night air and having a think. Get forty yards behind me, at ten o’clock and two o’clock.”
Adamsberg got out of the car without making a sound and made his way towards the slender silhouette beside the canal bank. At minus thirty yards he took off his shoes, tiptoed across the gravel patch and hid right behind To Die For. In this almost entirely unlit area you could hardly make out the water. Adamsberg looked up and saw that the three nearest street lamps were broken; the glass had been smashed. Maybe the guy was not really enjoying the night air. He threw his cigarette butt into the canal, then cracked the joints of his fingers by pulling them out, one hand then the other, and all the while keeping an eye on the canalside street to his left. Adamsberg looked in the same direction. A tall, slender, uncertain shadow was moving towards them in the far distance. A man, an old man, looking where he was putting his feet. Journot number four? An uncle? A great-uncle?
The old man came nearer in the dark and then came to a halt. He was hesitating.
“Is that you?” he asked.
By way of reply he got a straight right to the jaw and a savage left to the gut, which brought him down like a pack of cards.
Adamsberg ran across the ground between his hideout and the canalside as the young man tipped the KO over the parapet. He heard Adamsberg running, and in a flash he took to his heels.
“Estalère! Get him!” Adamsberg yelled before taking a running jump into the water where he found the old man floating face down, giving no sign of life. It took Adamsberg only a few strokes to haul him to the embankment where Estalère was waiting to help him up.
“Damn you, Estalère!” Adamsberg bawled. “Get the guy! You have to get that guy!”
“Retancourt’s doing that,” the lieutenant explained, as if to say he’d let a whole pack of dogs off the leash.
He gave Adamsberg a hand up, and helped him drag the old man’s heavy, slippery body out of the water.
“Mouth-to-mouth,” Adamsberg ordered, and ran off down the canalside street.
He could see the young man’s silhouette speeding away in the distance, as swift as a doe. Retancourt’s broad shadow came clip-clopping behind, with about as much purchase on him as a panzer trying to down a seagull. But the gap between the broader shadow and the slighter one began to narrow. She seemed to be closing in on her prey. Adamsberg slacked off, quite stupefied by what he could see. Twenty jogs later and he heard a crash, then a thump, then a cry of pain. Nobody was running any more.
“Retancourt?” he called out.
“Take it easy, sir,” came the contralto response. “I’ve got him nice and comfortable, like.”
Shortly after Adamsberg came upon Lieutenant Retancourt sitting comfortably, as she said, on the runaway’s chest, with her considerable weight compressing his entire upper ribcage. The young man could hardly breathe and was twisting this way and that in a futile attempt to get out from under the human bombshell that had fallen on top of him. Retancourt hadn’t even bothered to get her pistol out of its holster.
“You’re a good runner, lieutenant. I wouldn’t have bet on you catching him.”
“Because I’ve got a fat behind?”
“No, not at all,” Adamsberg lied.
“You’re wrong. Because it does slow me down.”
“Not so it matters.”
“Let’s say, I’ve got lots of energy,” Retancourt answered. “I can switch it to whatever’s needed.”
“For instance?”
“For instance, right now, I’m concentrating on being heavy.”
“Have you got a torch? Mine’s washed out.”
Retancourt handed him her torch lamp and Adamsberg used it to get a view of his arrestee’s face. Then he handcuffed him to Retancourt. To a tree trunk, that is.
“Young man, last in the Journot line, this is where the vengeance comes to a stop, here, on Quai de Jemmapes.”
The lad looked up at him with bewilderment and hatred in his eyes.
“You’ve got the wrong man,” he said with a scowl. “The old fellow hit out at me, I was just acting in self-defence.”
“I was right behind you. You punched him in the face.”
“Because he had a gun! He said, ‘Is that you?’ and pulled a gun simultaneously! I hit him. I’ve no idea what the old geezer was after! Please, couldn’t you tell your lady officer to get off? I’m suffocating.”
“Sit on his legs, Retancourt.”
Adamsberg searched him, looking for his ID card. He found his wallet in the inside pocket of his jacket, and emptied it on to the ground in the beam of the torch.
“Let me go!” the young man yelled. “He attacked me!”
“Shut up. I’ve had just about enough of that.”
“It’s a case of mistaken identity! I’ve never heard of any Journots!”
Adamsberg furrowed his brow as he read the ID by the light of the torch.
“And you’re not called Heller-Deville either?” he said in surprise.
“No, I’m not! You can see you’ve got it wrong. The old fellow was trying to kill me!”
“Get him up, Retancourt,” Adamsberg said. “Put him in the car.”
Adamsberg stood up in his dripping clothes reeking of dirty canal water, and went over to Estalère with a worried look on his face. The lad was called Antoine Hurfin, born at Vétigny in the department of Loir-et-Cher. Could he be just one of Marie-Belle’s friends from down there? Set upon by an old man?
Estalère seemed to have resuscitated the old fellow, whom he’d propped up into a sitting position and was keeping upright by the shoulders.
“Estalère,” Adamsberg asked as he strode up, “why did you not run when I told you to?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I took a liberty. Retancourt can run three times faster than I can. The guy was already out of my reach, and I thought she was the only chance we had of getting him.”
“Isn’t it odd that her parents called her Violette.”
“You know, sir, a baby isn’t very big, you can’t imagine it developing into an armoured half-track. As well as a nice person.”
“Really?”
“When you get to know her, sir.”
“How is he?”
“He’s breathing, but the water had already got into his lungs. He’s still in a pretty bad way, he’s exhausted, there might be heart trouble. I’ve called in first aid, was that right, sir?”
Adamsberg knelt down and shone the torch on the face of the man leaning on Estalère.
“Bloody hell. Decambrais.”
Adamsberg cupped his chin and waggled it gently back and forth.
“Decambrais, wake up, it’s Adamsberg. Open your eyes, old fellow.”
Decambrais appeared to stir, then to struggle, and then lifted an eyelid.
“It was not Damascus,” he blurted out almost inaudibly. “The charcoal.”
The ambulance braked to a halt alongside and
two men clambered out with a stretcher.
“Where are you taking him?” asked Adamsberg.
“To hospital, Saint-Louis, A & E,” said one of the stretcher-bearers who was lifting the old man on to the canvas.
Adamsberg watched Decambrais being installed on the stretcher and carried off to the waiting ambulance. He got his mobile phone out, and then shook his head.
“Mobile drowned,” he said to Estalère. “Give me yours.”
It struck Adamsberg that if Camille now wanted to ring him, she wouldn’t be able to. Mobile drowned. But who cares anyway, because Camille didn’t want to ring. Fine. So don’t ring. Be on your way, Camille. Be on your way.
Adamsberg rang the Hotel Decambrais and got Eva on the line, as she was still up.
“Eva, get Lizbeth for me, it’s urgent.”
“Lizbeth is on stage,” Eva replied curtly. “She’s singing.”
“Well, give me the cabaret’s number, then.”
“You cannot disturb Lizbeth when she’s performing.”
“That was an order, Eva.”
Adamsberg waited for a moment, wondering if he wasn’t turning just a little bit into a flic. He appreciated that Eva had a pressing need to punish the whole world, but this really was not the right time.
It took him ten minutes to get Lizbeth on the line.
“I was going to give up, commissaire. If you’re ringing to tell me you’re about to release Damascus, I’ll hear you out. Otherwise you’re wasting your time.”
“I’m ringing to say Decambrais has been assaulted. He’s on his way to A & E at Saint-Louis … No, Lizbeth, I think he’ll pull through … No, it was a young man … I don’t know, we’ll be asking him that very soon. Look, be so kind as to put his things in a bag, and don’t forget he’ll want a couple of books, and go down to see him. He’s going to need you.”
“It’s all your fault. Why did you make him come out there?”
