by Fred Vargas
‘They want to see if I have any papers indicating an unofficial investigation into the Clermont-Brasseur family. They want to break in while we’re out. So there’s no way Mo can go on staying here.’
‘Do we have to move him tonight?’
‘There are roadblocks everywhere, Zerk. We’ll have to think a bit,’ he repeated.
Frowning, Zerk drew on his cigarette. ‘If they’re watching the street, we can’t get Mo into a car.’
Adamsberg kept pacing round, simultaneously registering that his son was capable of fast action and even of a pragmatic approach.
‘We’ll go out through Lucio’s place, and then into the street behind these houses.’
Adamsberg stiffened, as he heard the grass outside being trampled. There came an immediate knock on the door. Mo had already jumped to his feet holding his plate and moved towards the stairs.
‘It’s Retancourt,’ came the loud voice of the lieutenant. ‘Can I come in, commissaire?’
With his thumb, Adamsberg directed Mo to the cellar, before opening the door. It was an old house, and the lieutenant had to bend down to avoid hitting her head on the lintel as she stepped in. The kitchen suddenly seemed smaller once Retancourt was inside.
‘It’s important,’ she said.
‘Have you had your supper, Violette?’ asked Zerk, whose face had lit up at her arrival.
‘Not so important.’
‘I’ll warm some up for you,’ said Zerk, busying himself at the cooker.
The pigeon jumped up on to the table and walked to within a few centimetres of Retancourt’s arm.
‘He recognises me a bit, don’t you think? He looks better.’
‘Yes, but he can’t fly.’
‘We don’t know if it’s physical or mental,’ explained Zerk very seriously. ‘I tried taking him into the garden, but he just stayed pecking about as if he’d forgotten how to take off.’
‘OK,’ said Retancourt, seating herself on the most solid of Adamsberg’s chairs. ‘I’ve got an alteration to your plan for trailing the Clermont brothers.’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘No. Too classic, too long-term, too risky, and precious little hope of getting anywhere.’
‘You could be right,’ admitted Adamsberg, who was aware that since the previous day he had had to take a whole series of hasty and ill-judged decisions. He was never upset by criticism from Retancourt.
‘Have you got a better idea?’ he asked.
‘Insider intelligence. Can’t see any other way.’
‘Also classic,’ Adamsberg rejoined. ‘But impossible. We can’t get inside their house.’
Zerk put a plate of reheated pasta and tuna in front of Retancourt. Adamsberg presumed that Violette would get through the fish without even noticing.
‘You don’t have a spot of wine to go with this, do you?’ she asked. ‘No, don’t bother getting up, I know where it is, I’ll fetch it.’
‘No, no, let me,’ said Zerk quickly.
‘Well, virtually impossible, yes, so I’ve taken a risk.’
Adamsberg shuddered. ‘You should have consulted me, lieutenant.’
‘You said your phone was tapped,’ said Retancourt, plunging her fork into a large piece of fish which gave her no trouble to demolish. ‘By the way, I’ve brought you a clean mobile, with a changeable SIM card. It used to belong to this fence in La Garenne, “the Shark”, remember him? But anyway, no matter, he’s dead. And I also have a personal message for you; it came to the office this evening. From the divisionnaire.’
‘Retancourt, what have you been doing?’
‘Nothing special. I went round to the Clermont house and told the concierge that I’d heard there was a job going. I don’t know why, but I impressed him and he didn’t just tell me to get lost.’
‘I’ll bet he didn’t,’ admitted Adamsberg. ‘But he must have asked where you got your information from.’
‘Of course. I told him it was via Clara de Verdier, who’s a friend of Christophe Clermont’s daughter.’
‘They’ll check that kind of thing, Retancourt.’
‘Yes, maybe they will,’ said the lieutenant, helping herself from the bottle which Zerk had uncorked. ‘Delicious, this dinner, Zerk. Well, they can check all they like, because it’s true. Also true that there was a job going. In big houses like that they have so many staff there’s always a service job going somewhere. Especially since Christian Saviour One has a reputation for being hard on his employees. There’s a very quick turnover. The Clara I mentioned used to be my brother Bruno’s girlfriend, and I got her out of trouble once over an armed robbery. I called her up, and she’ll confirm it if she has to.’
‘Uh, yeah, right,’ said Adamsberg, feeling somewhat stunned. He was the first to revere Retancourt’s abnormal problem-solving powers, all-purpose and adaptable for any kind of work, but he always felt a bit taken aback when he was actually confronted with them.
‘So, in that case,’ said Retancourt, wiping up the last of the sauce with some bread, ‘if you have no objection, I start tomorrow.’
‘A bit more detail, lieutenant. The concierge let you in?’
‘Naturally. And I got to see Christian Saviour One’s PA, a rather disagreeable little Napoleon, who wasn’t disposed to give me the job at first.’
‘What kind of job is it?’
‘Managing the household accounts on a computer. To cut a long story short, I demonstrated my talents rather forcefully, and in the end the guy hired me.’
‘He probably didn’t have any choice,’ said Adamsberg softly.
‘Probably not.’
Retancourt finished her glass and put it on the table noisily.
‘Your tablecloth isn’t very clean,’ she remarked.
‘It’s the pigeon. Zerk cleans it as best he can, but pigeon shit leaves a stain on the plastic. I wonder what chemicals it contains.’
‘Acid or something. So. Do I take this job or not?’
* * *
In the middle of the night, Adamsberg woke up and went down to the kitchen. He had forgotten the message from the divisionnaire, delivered by Retancourt, which was still sitting on the table. He read it, smiled, and burnt it in the fireplace. Brézillon was handing him the Ordebec investigation.
Now he had to face the Ghost Riders.
At six thirty, he woke Zerk and Mo.
‘Lord Hellequin has come to our aid,’ he said, and Zerk thought this announcement sounded rather like a sentence heard in church.
‘So has Violette,’ Zerk said.
‘Yes, but she always does. I’ve been put in charge of the Ordebec affair. Be ready to leave today. Before you go, clean the house thoroughly, disinfect the whole bathroom, wash Mo’s sheets, wipe down any surface where he might have left prints. We’ll take him in my police car and put him in a safe house up there in Normandy. Zerk, you go and fetch my own car from the garage and buy a birdcage for Hellebaud. Money on the sideboard.’
‘Will there be prints on pigeon feathers? Hellebaud doesn’t like me rubbing him with a cloth.’
‘No, no need to clean him.’
‘Why? Are we taking him with us?’
‘If you go, he’ll have to go. I’ll need you up there to look after Mo in his hiding place.’
Zerk nodded agreement.
‘I don’t know whether it’s best if you come with me too, or come separately in my car.’
‘You still have to think about it?’
‘Yes, and I’ve got to think fast.’
‘Tricky,’ said Zerk, fully appreciating the problem.
XVIII
Once more the members of the squad were meeting in the chapter room, with the ceiling fans going full blast. It was Sunday, but all leave had been cancelled on the Minister of the Interior’s orders, until the Mohamed case was resolved. For once, Danglard had managed to get there in the morning, which made him look as though he had already given up on life. Everyone knew that his face would be inside out until
about midday. Adamsberg had had time to pretend to read the reports on the police raid on the Cité des Buttes which had gone on until 2.20 a.m. without result.
‘Where’s Violette?’ asked Estalère as he served the first round of coffees.
‘She’s on a mission inside the Clermont-Brasseur household, she’s got herself taken on to the staff.’
Noël gave a long appreciative whistle.
‘None of us must mention that, or try to contact her. Officially she’s gone to Toulon, for a crash course on computers.’
‘How did she get herself in there?’ asked Noël.
‘She was determined to do it, and she put her intention into practice.’
‘A very stimulating example,’ drawled Voisenet. ‘If only we could all put our intentions into practice.’
‘Forget it, Voisenet,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Retancourt isn’t a role model for anyone, she’s a one-off: her faculties are unique.’
‘You said it,’ said Mordent, seriously.
‘Therefore, we call off the previous surveillance plan. We move on to something else.’
‘But we keep searching for Mo, surely?’ said Morel.
‘Yes, of course, that has to be the number-one priority. But I need a few people to be available. We’re off to Normandy: we’ve been assigned to the Ordebec affair.’
Danglard’s head shot up and a frown of displeasure crumpled his face.
‘You fixed this, commissaire?’
‘No, it wasn’t me. Capitaine Émeri is on his knees. He had attributed one murder to a suicide and an attempted murder to an accident, and he’s been taken off the case.’
‘But why has it landed on us?’ asked Justin. ‘And not the local gendarmes?’
‘Because I happened to be there both when the first body was found and when the second victim was attacked. Because Capitaine Émeri pressed for it. And because there is a possibility of finding another route into the Clermont-Brasseur fortress from up there.’
Adamsberg was lying. He didn’t believe in the miraculous string-pulling capacities of the Comte d’Ordebec. Émeri had simply dangled the idea under his nose as a pretext. Adamsberg was going to Ordebec because the Ghost Riders were drawing him there almost irresistibly. And because it would make a good place for Mo to go to ground.
‘I don’t see the link to the Clermonts,’ remarked Mordent.
‘Well, there’s some old nobleman there who might be able to open a few doors for us. He used to do business with Antoine Clermont.’
‘Even if that’s so,’ said Morel, ‘what’s it all about? What’s happened up there?’
‘There’s been one murder, of a man, and an attempted murder of an old woman. She’s not expected to survive. And three more deaths have been foretold.’
‘Foretold?’
‘Yes. Because these crimes are directly linked to a sort of cavalcade of horsemen; it’s a very old story.’
‘A cavalcade of what?’
‘Armed corpses. It’s been roaming round the countryside there for centuries and it carries off guilty mortals.’
‘Fine,’ said Noël. ‘It can do our job for us.’
‘A bit more than that, it kills them. Danglard, could you explain quickly about the Ghost Riders?’
‘I don’t agree with us getting mixed up in this,’ Danglard grumbled. ‘You must have been meddling somehow, for us to be assigned to the case. And I’m not in favour of it, not at all.’
Danglard put up his hands in a gesture of refusal, wondering at the same time where his repugnance for the Ordebec affair was coming from. He had dreamed twice now about Hellequin’s Horde since the evening when he had quite enjoyed himself describing it to Zerk and Adamsberg. But he had definitely not enjoyed the dreams, where he was fighting the troubling feeling that he was racing towards his destruction.
‘Tell the story all the same,’ said Adamsberg, looking affectionately at his deputy, and sensing fear in his reluctance. In Danglard’s mind, for all he was an authentic atheist, not inclined to mysticism, superstition could still find a clear way in, by taking the broad pathways of his perpetual anxiety.
The commandant shrugged, assumed a confident air and stood up, as was his habit, to explain the medieval situation to the officers of the squad.
‘The short version please, Danglard,’ Adamsberg asked. ‘No need to quote the documents.’
This was a fruitless request, as Danglard’s presentation took forty minutes and distracted the squad from the gloomy reality of the Clermont affair. Only Froissy slipped away for a few moments to go and eat some pâté and crackers. There were a few complicit nods. People knew that she had just renewed her store with some delicious terrines, including hare pâté with truffles, which tempted some of the others. When Froissy sat back down, Danglard’s eloquence was holding the entire attention of the squad, as was the story of Hellequin’s ghostly band of riders – a formidable sight in the literal sense of the word, the commandant told them, that is such as to inspire terror.
‘Could it be this Lina that killed the hunter then?’ asked Lamarre. ‘Perhaps she’s going to kill all the people she saw in her vision?’
‘Perhaps she’s obeying it, in some way?’ suggested Justin.
‘Maybe,’ said Adamsberg. ‘In Ordebec they say the entire Vendermot family is wrong in the head. But in the village, everyone feels the influence of the Riders. The legend’s been in the region too long, and these aren’t the army’s first victims. Nobody feels at ease, and a lot of them are genuinely terrified by it. If another victim dies, the whole place will have a panic attack. Especially when it comes to the fourth victim as yet unnamed.’
‘So plenty of people might imagine they’re in line to be number four,’ remarked Mordent, who was taking notes.
‘People with a guilty conscience?’
‘No, people who are really guilty,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Criminals, killers who have gone unsuspected and unpunished, sinners who are more terrified of Hellequin coming to get them than of the arrival of the police. Because in Ordebec, they are convinced that Hellequin knows everything, can see everything.’
‘The exact opposite of what they think of the cops then,’ said Noël.
‘Let’s just suppose,’ said Justin, who liked precision, ‘that some person is afraid of being the fourth victim picked out by Hellequin. The fourth “seized” person, you called him. It’s still hard to see why he would kill the other three.’
‘Yes, there could be a reason,’ said Danglard, ‘because there’s a subsidiary tradition, though not everyone agrees, that anyone who executes Hellequin’s plans might be saved from his own fate.’
‘In exchange for services rendered,’ commented Mordent, who collected tales and legends and was still taking notes about this one, which he had not encountered.
‘A collaborator getting his reward, eh?’ said Noël.
‘Yes, that’s the idea,’ Danglard agreed. ‘But that only appears from the early nineteenth century. Another dangerous hypothesis is that some other person, who doesn’t think they’re in line to be “seized”, believes Hellequin’s accusations and wants to carry out his orders. So as to render “true and faithfulle justice”.
‘This Léo person, what would she know about it?’
‘We can’t tell. She was alone when she found Herbier’s body.’
‘So what’s the plan?’ Justin asked. ‘Who does what?’
‘There is no plan. I haven’t had time to make plans for anything for a while.’
You never have, thought Danglard, his revulsion for the whole Ordebec operation aggravating his bad temper.
‘I’ll go up to Ordebec, with Danglard if he agrees, and call on some of the others as I need you.’
‘And we’re still under orders to find Mo?’
‘Exactly. Find that kid for me. Keep a permanent link open to the national network.’
Adamsberg took Danglard aside after the meeting.
‘Come with me to see what sort of state L�
�o is in,’ he said, ‘and then you’ll really feel like taking on the Riders. Some maniac has been carrying out the desires of Lord Hellequin.’
‘It makes no sense,’ said Danglard, shaking his head. ‘We need someone to be in charge of the squad here.’
‘Danglard, what are you scared of?’
‘I’m not scared.’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘All right,’ Danglard admitted. ‘I have this feeling I’ll leave my bones in Ordebec. It’ll be my last case.’
‘Good Lord above, Danglard! What makes you think that?’
‘I’ve dreamed about it twice. About a horse with only three legs.’ Danglard shivered, and almost vomited.
‘Come and sit down,’ said Adamsberg, pulling him gently by the sleeve.
‘It’s being ridden by a man in black,’ Danglard went on, ‘he hits me, I go down, I’m dead, and that’s it. I know, I know, commissaire, we don’t believe in dreams.’
‘Well then.’
‘What it is, I feel somehow I set all this in motion by telling you the story of the Furious Army. If I hadn’t, you’d have gone on thinking it was “curious” and it would have stopped there. But I opened up the box, for fun, to show off my knowledge. And that was the challenge. Hellequin is after my skin now. He doesn’t like people trifling with him.’
‘No-o, I should think not. He doesn’t sound like a guy with a great sense of humour.’
‘No jokes please, commissaire.’
‘You can’t be serious, Danglard. Not that serious. Surely.’
Danglard shrugged his shoulders with lassitude. ‘No, of course not.
But I wake up obsessed by this idea and it haunts me when I go to bed.’
‘Danglard, this is the first time I’ve seen you afraid of anything except yourself. That gives you two enemies. Too many to face.’
‘So what do you suggest?’
‘We’ll go there this afternoon. And we’ll have dinner in a local restaurant. With a good bottle of wine?’
‘And if I die there?’
‘That’ll just be too bad.’
Danglard smiled and looked at the commissaire with a changed expression. ‘That’ll just be too bad.’ The kind of answer that suited him, ending his complaint, as if Adamsberg had pressed a button, disconnecting him from his fears.
