Have Mercy On Us All (38 page)

He got to Rue de la Convention well before eleven. He spotted two of his men slumping in an unmarked squad car not far from the main door. The light was on up top, on the fourth floor. So he could ring Marie-Belle without fear of waking her from her sleep. But Lizbeth had said she was ill. He dallied. Marie-Belle cut his mind in two just as Damascus and Clémentine had, one half softened by their claims of innocence, the other half hardened by his determination to get the plague-monger, however many people he was.

He looked up at the building. A typical late nineteenth-century residential block, quite grand, with a dressed stone façade and caryatids holding up the balconies. The flat had six full windows on to the street. Heller-Deville had made a lot of money, a real pile. Adamsberg wondered why Damascus, if he needed to work at all, hadn’t opened a luxury boutique instead of slaving away in the ill-lit, cluttered, ground-floor hole that he called Rolaride.

While he was standing out of the light trying to make up his mind, Adamsberg saw the side door open. Marie-Belle emerged from it on the arm of a quite short man, and accompanied him a little way down the deserted street. She was talking to him, or rather, expostulating, remonstrating. Must be a lover, thought Adamsberg. A lovers’ tiff, about Damascus. He tailed them, slowly. He could see them clearly by the light of the street lamps. Two heads of fine blond hair. The man turned round to answer back, giving sight of his face. A quite good-looking lad, though rather blank, no eyebrows, a bit fragile. Marie-Belle gripped his forearm tightly, then kissed him on both cheeks and moved away.

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.”