The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (18 page)

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 Léo 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.

‘What time?’

Adamsberg looked at his two watches.

‘Meet me at my place in two hours. Ask Froissy to give you two new mobiles, and look up the name of a good restaurant.’

*   *   *

When the commissaire got home, the house had been cleaned from top to bottom, Hellebaud’s cage was ready and the rucksacks were almost packed. In Mo’s, Zerk was putting cigarettes, books, coloured pencils and crosswords. Mo was watching, as if the rubber gloves he was wearing prevented him moving. Adamsberg knew that being a wanted man, a hunted beast, can paralyse the body’s natural movements for the first few days. After a month, one hesitates to make a sound underfoot, and after three months, one hardly dares breathe.

‘I bought him a new yo-yo too,’ said Zerk. ‘Not a champion one like
he had before, but I couldn’t go out for long. Lucio took over, and sat in the kitchen with his radio. Why does he always carry around this radio that just buzzes? You can’t make out anything on it.’

‘He likes to hear voices, but not what they’re saying.’

‘Where’m I going?’ asked Mo timidly.

‘To this safe house, it’s just a wooden cabin with concrete floors, a little way out of town. The man who lived there has been killed. So the gendarmerie has put the seals on it, couldn’t be better as a shelter.’

‘But what do we do about the seals?’ asked Zerk.

‘We’ll undo them and do them up again. I’ll show you. Anyway, the gendarmerie won’t have any reason to come back.’

‘Why was this guy killed?’ asked Mo.

‘Some sort of local monster called Hellequin had it in for him. Don’t worry, he’s no cause to be after you. What are these coloured pencils for, Zerk?’

‘In case he wants to do some drawing.’

‘OK. Will you want to do any drawing, Mo?’

‘Dunno. Don’t think so.’

‘OK,’ repeated Adamsberg. ‘Mo will go with me in the squad car, but in the boot. The journey will last about two hours, and it’ll be very hot in there. You’ll have some water to drink. Think you can do it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll hear the voice of another man in the car, it’ll be Commandant Danglard. Don’t worry, he knows you’re on the run under our protection. At least he’s guessed as much and I couldn’t stop him. He doesn’t actually know that I’m taking you up there with us. But he’ll soon work it out, Danglard is brilliant, he foresees and guesses almost everything, even the deadly designs of Lord Hellequin. I’ll drop you in the empty house, before we reach Ordebec. Zerk, you’ll come on with my car and the rest of the luggage. And while we’re there, since you know how to use a camera, we’ll say you’re on a photographic course, and working on a freelance project which means you have to go here and there. Let’s say it’s for a Swedish magazine. Because we’ll have to explain why you disappear from time to time. Unless you can think of a better plan.’