The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (42 page)

*   *   *

Adamsberg got up after two hours, his cheeks ablaze. Now he had just one person to see: Hippolyte. He’d wait till seven in the evening, when all the inhabitants of Ordebec would be in their kitchens or taking an aperitif in the cafe. Going round the edge of the village, he could reach the Vendermot house with no risk of meeting anyone. The Vendermots would also be taking their aperitif, and perhaps they’d be finishing up the dreadful port they had bought specially to entertain him. He would gently make Hippo come round to his view, get him to go straight to the particular place he had in mind. ‘We’re nice people.’ A rather peremptory definition for a child with amputated fingers who had terrorised his classmates for years.
We’re nice people.
He consulted his watches. He had three calls to make to confirm things. One to the Comte de Valleray, one to Danglard and finally one to Dr Turbot. Then he’d set out in two and a half hours.

He slipped out of the bedroom and went to the cellar. There, by climbing on a cask, he could reach a dusty little window, the only one in the house
that looked out on to a meadow with cows in it. He had plenty of time, he’d wait.

As he made his way cautiously towards the Vendermot house, hearing the angelus ringing, he felt satisfied. No fewer than three cows had moved. And they’d moved several metres as well. Without lifting their muzzles from the grass. Which seemed an excellent sign for Ordebec’s future.

LI

‘Couldn’t shop for food, everything was shut,’ said Veyrenc, emptying a bag of provisions on to the table. ‘Had to raid Froissy’s cupboard, we’ll have to replace this double quick.’

Retancourt was leaning against the fireplace, now containing cold ashes, her blonde head reaching far above the stone mantelshelf. Adamsberg wondered where he would be able to lodge her in this house, with its ancient beds that were too short for her outsize dimensions. She was watching Adamsberg and Veyrenc prepare sandwiches of hare pâté and truffles, with a cheerful expression. Nobody knew why some days Retancourt was amiable, other days disgruntled, and they didn’t try to find out. Even when she was smiling, this large woman’s bearing had something tough and pretty impressive about it, which dissuaded people from opening up to her or asking silly questions. Any more than you would give a friendly slap – a basic lack of respect – to an age-old giant redwood tree. Whatever her mood, Retancourt inspired deference and sometimes devotion.

After their hasty meal – but Froissy’s pâté was undeniably very succulent – Adamsberg drew the layout of the site for them. From Léo’s house, they would take a path south-east, then cut across some fields, find a path called the Chemin de la Bessonnière and follow it to the old well.

‘It’s a bit of a hike, six kilometres. The old well was the best place I could find. The Oison Well. I noticed it when I took a walk along the Touques.’

‘The Touques?’ asked Retancourt, always needing exact information.

‘The river here. The well’s on the land of the next parish, it’s been abandoned for forty years, and it’s about twelve metres deep. It would be easy, and tempting, to tip a man in.’

‘If the man was leaning over the edge,’ said Veyrenc.

‘That’s what I’m counting on. Because the killer’s already done a manoeuvre like that by tipping Denis’s body out of the window. He knows how to do it.’

‘You mean Denis didn’t kill himself?’ said Veyrenc.

‘No, he was killed, he was the fourth victim.’

‘And not the last?’

‘No.’

Adamsberg put down his pencil and explained his final arguments – if that was the word for them. Retancourt wrinkled her nose several times, disconcerted as always by the commissaire’s methods of reaching his objective. But he had reached it, she had to admit that.

‘That explains how he never left a single clue,’ commented Veyrenc, looking thoughtful on hearing the new elements.

Retancourt by contrast was more concerned with the practical side of the action.

‘Is it wide? The coping round the well?’

‘No, thirty centimetres or so. And it’s low, that’s crucial.’

‘Could work,’ agreed Retancourt.

‘And the diameter of the well?’

‘Enough.’

‘How will we operate?’

‘Twenty-five metres away there’s an old farm building, a barn, and it has two big wooden doors, very dilapidated. We can hide in there, no way of getting any nearer. Be careful. Hippo’s a big lad. It’s very risky.’

‘It’s dangerous,’ said Veyrenc. ‘We’re putting a life at stake.’

‘We’ve got no choice, there’s no evidence except for a few old sugar wrappers, and no context for them.’

‘You kept them?’

‘Yes; they’re in a barrel in the cellar.’

‘They might have fingerprints. It hasn’t rained for weeks.’

‘But that wouldn’t prove anything either – sitting on a tree trunk eating sugar isn’t against the law.’

‘There are Léo’s words.’

‘The words of a very old woman in a state of shock. And I was the only person who heard them.’

‘Danglard did too.’

‘He wasn’t paying attention.’

‘No, there’s no case there,’ agreed Retancourt. ‘The only way is to catch him in the act.’

‘Dangerous,’ Veyrenc repeated.

‘That’s why we’ve got Retancourt here, Louis. She’s quicker and more accurate. She’ll catch him if he starts to fall. And she’ll have the rope if we need it.’

Veyrenc lit a cigarette, shaking his head without protesting. Placing Retancourt’s abilities higher than his own was something so obvious you didn’t argue about it. She would probably have been able to hoist Danglard on to the station platform.

‘If we screw up,’ he said, ‘a man could die, and us with him.’

‘We won’t screw up,’ said Retancourt calmly. ‘If this plan happens at all.’

‘Yes. It’ll happen,’ Adamsberg assured them. ‘He has no choice. And to kill this particular man would give him a lot of satisfaction.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Retancourt, holding out her glass for a refill.

‘Violette,’ said Adamsberg gently, while obeying her request, ‘that’s your third glass. We need all our strength.’

Retancourt shrugged, as if the commissaire had made a remark so stupid as to be unworthy of comment.

LII

Retancourt had taken up position behind the left-hand door of the barn, the two men on the right. Nothing must impede her passage towards the well. In the dim light, Adamsberg held up both hands to his colleagues, all ten fingers splayed: ten minutes to go. Veyrenc crushed out his cigarette and put his eye to a large slit in the wooden wall. Solidly built, the lieutenant was flexing his muscles ready to move, while Retancourt, leaning on the door jamb and in spite of the fifteen metres of mountaineering cord coiled round her torso, gave an impression of total relaxation. Adamsberg was rather concerned at this, given the three glasses of wine.

Hippolyte arrived first and sat on the edge of the well, hands in pockets.

‘Tough and self-confident, eh?’ Veyrenc murmured.

‘Watch out by the dovecote, that’s the way Émeri will arrive.’

Three minutes later, the capitaine turned up, walking in his usual very upright way, his uniform buttoned up, but his footsteps a little hesitant.

‘That’s the problem,’ whispered Adamsberg. ‘He’s more worried.’

‘Could give him the advantage.’

The two men started to talk to each other, but their words were inaudible from the barn. They were standing less than a metre apart, looking suspicious and aggressive. Hippolyte was talking more than Émeri. And more rapidly, with aggressive intonations. Adamsberg looked anxiously at Retancourt, who was still leaning on the jamb, not having modified
her stance one iota. That wasn’t entirely reassuring, since Retancourt was capable of going to sleep standing up, like a horse.

Hippolyte’s laugh rang out in the night, a harsh and unkind laugh. He tapped Émeri on the back, but it was not a friendly gesture. Then he leaned over the coping of the well, stretching out an arm, as if to point to something. Émeri raised his voice, shouting something like ‘Stupid bugger’. And also leaned over.

‘Watch out,’ whispered Adamsberg.

The move was more expert and faster than he had anticipated – one man passing his arm under his opponent’s legs and sweeping him off his feet – and his own reaction slower than he had hoped. He took off a good second behind Veyrenc, who had hurled himself into motion. Retancourt had already reached the well, while he was still three metres away. With a technique peculiar to herself, Retancourt had thrown Émeri to the ground, and was sitting astride him, keeping his arms pinned to the ground, and implacably blocking his ribcage as he groaned under her weight. Hippolyte was getting up, breathing heavily, his knuckles grazed by the stones he had been flung against.

‘Close thing,’ he said.

‘You weren’t in danger,’ said Adamsberg, pointing to Retancourt.

He caught the capitaine’s wrists, and handcuffed them behind his back, while Veyrenc attached his legs.

‘Don’t try to move, Émeri. Violette could crush you like a woodlouse, believe me. Like a land shrimp.’

Adamsberg, sweating, and his heart beating fast, called Blériot on his mobile, as Retancourt got up, sat on the coping and lit a cigarette as calmly as if she had just got back from the shops. Veyrenc was pacing up and down swinging his arms, getting rid of the tension. From a distance, his outline faded from view, and only the gleam of his auburn locks shone out.

‘Come and join us at the old Oison Well, Blériot,’ said Adamsberg. ‘We’ve got him.’

‘Got who?’ said Blériot, who had only answered after about ten rings and then sounded only half awake.

‘The Ordebec murderer.’

‘But Valleray…?’

‘It wasn’t Valleray. Hurry up, brigadier.’

‘Where to? Are you in Paris?’

‘The Oison Well isn’t in Paris, Blériot. Wake up!’

‘But who is it?’ asked Blériot, after clearing his throat.

‘It’s Émeri. I’m really sorry, brigadier.’

And he really was. He had worked with this man, they’d walked, drunk and eaten together, they’d toasted victory round his table. That day – only yesterday in fact, as Adamsberg recalled – Émeri had been convivial, chatty, charming. He had killed four men, pushed Danglard on to the rails and knocked Léo’s head on the floor. Old Léo who had saved him from the frozen pond. Yesterday, Émeri had raised his glass to the memory of his ancestor, he’d been confident: they’d identified a culprit, even if he wasn’t the one expected. His work wasn’t over yet: there were two more deaths to be arranged, three if Léo should regain her powers of speech. But things were going well. Four deaths had been accomplished. Two attempts had been thwarted, true, but three others remained to be seen to: well, he had his plan. Seven deaths, a big total for a proud soldier. Adamsberg would soon be on his way back to Paris, convinced that the culprit was Denis de Valleray: case closed, field of battle wide open.

Adamsberg sat down cross-legged on the ground beside him. Émeri, eyes directed up at the sky, was composing his features into those of a combatant who does not flinch before the enemy.

‘Eylau,’ said Adamsberg. ‘One of your ancestor’s most famous victories and one of your favourites. You know the strategy by heart, you’ll talk about it to anyone, whether they want to listen or not. That’s what Léo said: “Eylau”. Not “Hello”. “Eylau, Fleg, sugar.” You were the one she was pointing to.’

‘You’re making the biggest mistake of your life, Adamsberg,’ said Émeri in a hoarse voice.

‘Three of us were witnesses. You tried to tip Hippo into the well.’

‘Because he’s a murderer, a devil! I always told you he was. He threatened me, and I defended myself.’

‘He didn’t threaten you, he said he knew you were guilty.’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Yes, he did, Émeri. I told him what to say to you. He had to say he’d seen a body in the well, and call you to come and see for yourself. You were anxious. Why was he calling you to meet him at night? What was this story about a body in the well? So you came.’

‘Of course I bloody came. If there was a corpse somewhere, it was my duty to turn up. Whatever the time.’

‘But there was no corpse. Just Hippo, who accused you of murder.’

‘On the basis of no evidence whatsoever,’ said Émeri.

‘Exactly. Since the beginning of the whole thing, there’s been no evidence, no clues. Not for Herbier, not for Léo, Glayeux, Mortembot, Danglard, Valleray. Six victims, four deaths and not a single clue. That’s rare, a murderer who comes and goes like a ghost. Or like a cop. Because who better than a cop to get rid of any traces? You handled the technical side of things, you passed me the results. Sum total: not a thing, not a fingerprint, not a single clue.’

‘There aren’t any clues, Adamsberg.’

‘I can well believe you’ve destroyed them all. But there’s still the sugar.’

*   *   *

Blériot parked his car near the dovecote, and came running up, flashlight in hand, his great belly before him. He looked down at his capitaine lying handcuffed on the ground, glanced in alarm and anger at Adamsberg, but held himself back from speaking. He didn’t know whether he should say anything, he didn’t know now who was a friend and who an enemy.

‘Brigadier, get me away from these idiots,’ Émeri commanded. ‘Hippo called me out here, pretending there was a body in the well, he threatened me and I had to defend myself.’

‘By trying to push me into the well,’ said Hippo.

‘I didn’t have a gun on me,’ said Émeri. ‘I’d have raised the alarm at once to get you out. Even if devils like you absolutely deserve to die like that, down in the bowels of the earth.’

Blériot looked from Émeri to Adamsberg, still unable to choose his camp.

‘Brigadier,’ said Adamsberg, getting to his feet, ‘you don’t take sugar in your coffee, do you? So all that sugar you keep in your pockets is for your capitaine, isn’t it? Not for you.’

‘I always have some sugar on me,’ said Blériot in a tight, neutral voice.

‘To give him some when he has an attack. When his legs fail him and he starts shaking and sweating?’

‘We’re not supposed to mention it.’