by Fred Vargas
Clémentine smiled.
“Then number seven, I’ve forgotten his name, and lastly Rodolphe Messelet, barely an hour ago. Keeled over like a ninepin.”
“Warms the cockles of me heart, that does.” Clémentine grinned. “Things do turn out right in the end. Only thing is, it can take a long time.”
“Clémentine, remind me of the name of number seven, it’s plain slipped my mind.”
“It ain’t likely to slip mine in a month of Sundays. Henri Tomé, he lives in Rue de Grenelle. The worst scoundrel on God’s earth.”
“That’s it, thanks.”
“What about the boy?”
“He’s gone back to sleep.”
“Of course he has, he’s bound to be tired what with all of you harassing him. Tell him he’s expected for Sunday lunch, as usual.”
“He’ll be there.”
“Well, commissaire, I reckon we’ve said all there is to say.” The old lady gave him her sturdy hand to shake. “I’ll write a note for your Gardon to thank him for the playing cards, and a word for the other man, the tall, podgy fellow who’s losing his hair, the sharp dresser.”
“Danglard?”
“Yes, he’s a man of good taste, he’d like to have my girdle cake recipe. He didn’t actually say as much, but I knew what he meant. Looked like it mattered quite a lot to him.”
“That could be so.”
“He knows what the good things in life are,” Clémentine said with a knowing nod of her head. “’Scuse me, I’ll go out first.”
Adamsberg took Clémentine Courbet back to the main door and gave a wave to Ferez who was on his way in.
“Is that him?” asked Ferez, pointing to the cell where Hurfin lay doubled up.
“He’s the murderer. Big family business, Ferez. He’ll probably spend the rest of his days in a lunatic asylum.”
“We don’t call them ‘lunatic’ any more, Adamsberg.”
Adamsberg gestured to Damascus.
“But that one must be let out, and he’s not up to it. It really would be a good turn, Ferez, a good turn indeed, if you could give him some help and keep an eye on him. Return to real world. A huge jump for him, from the tenth floor, very painful.”
“He’s the fellow with the phantom?”
“The very one.”
While Ferez tried to get Damascus to unwind, Adamsberg sent two officers off to find Henri Tomé and he set the press on to Rodolphe Messelet. Then he called Decambrais, who was going to be discharged that afternoon, as well as Lizbeth and Bertin, to alert them to the need to give Damascus a gentle let-down. He ended up with a call to Masséna and one to Vandoosler, whom he told about the outcome of the great howler.
“I can’t hear you properly, Vandoosler.”
“Lucien’s emptying the shopping trolley on to the refectory table. Makes a hell of a racket.”
On the other hand Adamsberg could hear Lucien’s loud voice declaiming in the fine acoustics of the dining room:
“Among all the fruits of the earth we often fail to recognise the amazing potential of the vegetable marrow.”
He hung up thinking that Lucien’s point would make a good item in the town crier’s newscast. A clear and healthy message, with a good rhythm and no baggage, a million miles from those sinister but now fading echoes of the plague. He put his mobile back on the desk, in the middle, and looked at it for a minute. Danglard came in bearing a manila file and followed his commissaire’s eyes. He too stared at the small plastic object.
“Anything wrong with your handset, sir?”
“Nothing wrong,” Adamsberg said. “It hasn’t rung.”
Danglard put the file labelled “Romorantin” in the in-tray and went out without another word. Adamsberg put the file in front of him, lay down on it with his head in the crook of his arm and dropped off.
XXXVIII
AT SEVEN THIRTY in the evening Adamsberg set an unhurried foot on Place Edgar-Quinet, feeling less weighed down than he’d felt for two long weeks. Lighter and also emptier. He entered Hotel Decambrais and went up to the door of the cubbyhole with its sign saying “Even Keel Counselling”. Decambrais, still pale but sitting up much straighter now, was at his job, lending his ear to a fat red-faced fellow in a stew.
“Well, well,” the old man said as he looked first at Adamsberg and then at his footwear. “A messenger from the gods. Hermes, I presume? Bearing tidings of what?”
“Tidings of peace and goodwill, Decambrais.”
“Give me a few moments, commissaire. I have a client with me.”
Adamsberg drifted down the corridor where snippets of the counselling session reached his ears.
“It’s bust for good, it really is,” the fat fellow was saying.
“You’ve patched it up before,” Decambrais replied.
“Bust.”
Ten minutes later Decambrais showed Adamsberg in and sat him down in an armchair still warm from the previous occupant.
“What was that about? A piece of furniture? A limb?”
“An affair. Twenty-seven break-ups and twenty-six patchings-up with the same woman, it’s a record, at least among my clients. We call him Break-and-Mend.”
“And what advice do you give him?”
“None at all. I try to understand what people want and to help them to do it. That’s what counselling is, commissaire. If a client wants to break up, I help him to break up. If he comes back in the morning wanting to start over, I help him start over. And you, commissaire, what is your problem?”
“I don’t know. And if I did, who cares anyway.”
“In that case I can’t help you.”
“No. Nobody can. That’s how it’s always been.”
A smile flickered on the old man’s face as he leaned back in his chair.
“Was I wrong about Damascus?”
“No. You’re a good counsellor.”
“He could not kill for real, that’s what I knew for sure. Because he did not want it for real.”
“Have you seen him?”
“He went into Rolaride about an hour ago. But he hasn’t pulled up the shutters.”
“Did he listen to the town crier?”
“He missed the newscast, commissaire. The late final is at six ten on weekdays.”
“Sorry. I’m not too hot on times and dates.”
“That’s nothing to worry about.”
“Sometimes it is. I’ve fixed Damascus up with a doctor.”
“You did well. He’s taken a great fall off a cloud and down to earth. That can’t be much fun. Up there, things don’t break. That’s why he lived there.”
“Lizbeth?”
“She went in to see him as soon as he got back.”
“Ah.”
“Eva’s going to find this hard.”
“Naturally,” said Adamsberg.
An angel passed. Adamsberg moved around in the armchair so as to face the old man straight on.
“You see, Ducouëdic, Damascus did five years’ prison for a crime that never happened. Today he’s been released for crimes he only thought he committed. Marie-Belle is on the run for carnage that she ordered. Antoine will be sentenced for murders he didn’t choose.”
“Guilt versus the appearance of guilt,” Decambrais muttered. “Does the issue interest you?”
“Yes.” Adamsberg’s eyes met Decambrais’s. “It’s the only issue.”
Decambrais held Adamsberg’s stare for a few minutes, and then nodded his head.
“I did not lay a finger on that girl, Adamsberg. The three schoolboys were on top of her in the lavatory. I lashed out with all I had, picked her up and got out. It was evidence from witnesses who saw me rush out that got me cornered.”
Adamsberg batted his eyelids by way of agreement.
“Is that what you thought at the time?” asked Decambrais.
“Yes.”
“Well, you’d make a good counsellor too, then. I’d already become virtually impotent. Did you think that too at the time?”
/>
“No.”
“And now, I don’t mind at all,” Decambrais said as he crossed his arms on his chest. “Almost not at all.”
At that moment the Norseman’s thunder rolled out across the square.
“Calva,” said Decambrais with his little finger in the air. “Hot dish. Not to be sniffed at.”
At the Viking Bertin was serving a free round in honour of Damascus, who was leaning his weary head on Lizbeth’s shoulder. Le Guern got up and came over to shake Adamsberg’s hand.
“The breach has been mended,” Joss opined. “‘Specials’ have stopped. Ads for fresh veg have taken over.”
“Among all the fruits of the earth,” Adamsberg said, “we often fail to recognise the amazing potential of the vegetable marrow.”
“True enough,” Joss said pensively. “I’ve seen marrows grow from nothing to the size of rugby balls in two nights.”
Adamsberg slipped into the group as it was starting to tuck in. Lizbeth pulled up a chair for him and gave him a smile. He was overcome with the desire to hug her, but her bosom was already occupied by Damascus.
“He’ll fall asleep in my arms,” she said, pointing to the young man.
“That’s only to be expected, Lizbeth. He’ll sleep for ages.”
With a ceremonial flourish Bertin brought an extra plate and put it in front of the commissaire. Not to be sniffed at.
Danglard swung through The Viking’s door as they were all having dessert. He leaned on the bar, put Woolly down at his feet, and beckoned discreetly to Adamsberg.
“I can’t stay long. The kids are expecting me home.”
“Did it all go OK with Hurfin?” Adamsberg asked.
“No. Ferez went to see him. Gave him a tranquilliser. He took it and is now resting.”
“Fine. The sum total is, everyone’s going to get some shut-eye tonight.”
Danglard ordered a glass of wine from Bertin.
“Aren’t you going to get some sleep too?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go for a walk.”
Danglard downed half his glass and looked at Woolly, who’d perched on his shoe.
“She’s getting bigger, isn’t she?” Adamsberg said.
“Yes.”
Danglard finished his glass and quietly put it back down on the bar.
“Lisbon,” he said as he slid a scrap of paper along the counter. “Hotel São Jorge. Room 302.”
“Marie-Belle?”
“Camille.”
Adamsberg felt his body tense up as if he’d been shoved in the back. He crossed his arms tightly and leaned on to the counter.
“How do you know that, Danglard?”
“I put a tail on her,” he said as he leaned down to snatch up the kitten, or else to hide his eyes. “Right from the start. Like a rotter. She must never know.”
“A police tail?”
“It was Villeneuve, he’s retired, used to be attached to the fifth arrondissement.”
Adamsberg stood stock still with his eyes on the scrap.
“There’ll be other collisions,” he said.
“I know.”
“And anyway …”
“I know. Anyway.”
Adamsberg carried on staring at the address, then put out his hand and clenched the scrap of paper in his fist.
“Thank you, Danglard.”
Danglard settled the kitten under his arm and left the Viking with a wave of his hand, from behind.
“He works with you, does he?” asked Bertin.
“A messenger. From the gods.”
When it was pitch dark on the square Adamsberg propped himself up against his leaning tree, opened his notebook and tore out a page. He thought, then wrote down Camille. He paused for a moment and then wrote down I.
You can begin a sentence like that, he thought. Not a bad way to begin.
Ten minutes later, seeing as the rest of the sentence just would not come, he put a full stop after I and folded the sheet around a five-franc coin.
Then he slowly went over and dropped his wish into the blue urn that belonged to Joss Le Guern.
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781446449431
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Vintage 2004
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Copyright © Éditions Viviane Hamy, Paris, 2001
English translation copyright © David Bellos, 2003
Maps drawn by Emily Hare
Fred Vargas has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain in 2003 by
The Harvill Press
Originally published with the title
Pars vite et reviens tard by
Éditions Viviane Hamy, Paris, 2001
Vintage
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ISBN 9780099453642
This book is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the Burgess Programme headed for the French embassy in London by the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni
Ouvrage publié avec le concours du ministère français chargé de la Culture – Centre National du Livre
This book is published with support from the French Ministry of Culture – Centre National du Livre
