Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (12 page)

‘What’s she afraid of?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘And you a policeman,’ sighed Clémentine.

‘Sorry.’

‘We’re talking about your worries, my dear, not Josette’s. It was a good idea to say you were playing cards with your brother. The simple ideas are often the best. And tell me now, did you leave that screwdriver in the pool? Because sooner or later, someone would fish it up.’

Adamsberg carried on, regularly feeding the fire and blessing whichever fair wind had driven him to take refuge with Clémentine.

‘Stupid idiot, your
gendarme,’
Clémentine concluded, throwing away her cigarette end into the fire. ‘Anybody knows Prince Charming
does
sometimes turn into a beast. He can’t be very bright, not to see that.’

Adamsberg relaxed back on the old sofa, holding his injured arm across his stomach. ‘Ten minutes shuteye, Clémentine, and then I’m on my way.’

‘I can see he’s worn you out, this dead man walking. And you’re not out of the wood yet. But follow your hunch, my little Adamsberg. It might not be all right, but it might not be all wrong either.’

By the time Clémentine turned round from stirring the fire, Adamsberg had fallen into a deep sleep. The old woman picked up a tartan rug from a chair and placed it over him.

She met Josette on her way to bed.

‘He’s sleeping on the sofa,’ she explained. ‘He’s got a tale to tell, that one. What bothers me, he’s all skin and bone, these days, did you see?’

‘I wouldn’t know Clemmie, I’ve never seen him before.’

‘Well, I’m telling you, he needs feeding up.’

The
commissaire
was drinking his morning coffee in the kitchen with Clémentine.

‘I’m so sorry, Clémentine, I didn’t realise.’

‘No trouble, my dear. If you slept, it was because you needed to. Now eat up another piece of bread. And if you’re going to see the boss, you better get smartened up. I’m going to give your jacket and trousers a bit of an iron, you can’t go in there with them all crumpled like that.’

Adamsberg passed his hand over his chin.

‘Take one of my boy’s razors from the bathroom,’ she said, carrying off his clothes.

XIV

AT TEN O’CLOCK, ADAMSBERG LEFT CLIGNANCOURT, WELL
breakfasted, shaved, with his clothes ironed, and his mind temporarily smoothed out by Clémentine’s exceptional care. At eighty-six, the old woman was capable of giving herself without stinting. And what could he do? He would bring her a present from Quebec. They probably had some nice warm clothes there you can’t get in Paris. A cosy bearskin jacket or some elkskin slippers – something unusual, like Clémentine herself.

Before presenting himself to the
divisionnaire
, he tried to go over
Lieutenant
Noël’s anxious warnings, which Clémentine had backed up. ‘Telling lies to yourself, that’s one thing, but telling lies to the
flics, well
, sometimes you have to. No point giving yourself the third degree over a matter of honour. Honour, that’s your own business, nothing to do with the cops.’

Divisionnaire
Brézillon appreciated, from the point of view of statistics, the results achieved by
Commissaire
Adamsberg, which were much better than those of his other police chiefs. But he had no great sympathy for the man, or for his manner. Nevertheless, he well remembered the terrible fallout from the recent affair of the painted door signs, which had reached such proportions that the Ministry of the Interior had been on the point of making him resign as the scapegoat. Being a man of the law, extremely
attentive to the scales of justice, Brézillon knew what he owed Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, who had solved that case. But this set-to with a subordinate was embarrassing, and especially surprising on the part of someone who was usually such a cool customer. He had listened to what Favre had to say, and the obtuse vulgarity of the junior officer had deeply displeased him. He had heard six eyewitnesses, who had all doggedly defended Adamsberg. But the detail of the broken bottle was particularly serious. Adamsberg was not without enemies in the police disciplinary commission, and Brézillon’s voice would swing the balance.

The
commissaire
gave him a sober version of the events. The broken glass had been intended to frighten Favre after his insubordination, simply a warning shot. ‘Warning shot’, was a term that had come to Adamsberg as he walked back to headquarters, and he thought it fitted his economical dealing with the truth. Brézillon listened to him with a grave face, and Adamsberg sensed that he was on the whole inclined to help him out of this mess. But it was clear that the matter was not closed.

‘I’m giving you a serious warning,
commissaire,’
said Brézillon, taking his leave. ‘The committee won’t give a ruling for a month or so. In that time, I don’t want to see the slightest stepping out of line, no fuss or bother, no escapades. Keep a low profile, hear me?’

Adamsberg nodded agreement.

‘And congratulations on the D’Hernoncourt case,’ he added. ‘Your arm’s not going to stop you leading the team to Quebec?’

‘No, the police doctor’s given me all I need.’

‘When do you leave?’

‘Four days from now.’

‘No bad thing. Time for your name to be forgotten for a bit.’

With this ambiguous dismissal, Adamsberg left the Quai des Orfèvres: ‘Keep a low profile.’

Trabelmann would have laughed at that. The spire of Strasbourg Cathedral, 142 metres high. ‘At least you gave me something to laugh about, Adamsberg, there’s that about it.’

* * *

By two o’clock, the seven other members of the Quebec mission were assembled for their technical and disciplinary briefing. Adamsberg had distributed reproductions of the different ranks and badges of the RCMP, though he had not yet memorised them himself.

‘Generally speaking, try to avoid mistakes over rank,’ he began. ‘Learn these insignia off by heart. You’ll be dealing with corporals, sergeants, inspectors and superintendents. Don’t mix them up. The officer who will be meeting us is Superintendent Aurèle Laliberté, that’s all one word, not La-space-Liberté.’

There were a few chuckles.

‘That’s exactly what you have to avoid. No sniggers. Québécois surnames and first names are different from French ones. You may find officers called Lafrance or Louisseize. You may meet officers younger than you, with first names you don’t find these days in France, like Ginette and Philibert. And no mocking of the accent. When French-Canadians speak quickly, you may have difficulty following. And they use different expressions. So no stupid remarks please, or you’ll discredit the whole mission.’

‘The Québécois,’ interrupted Danglard, in his gentle voice, ‘consider France as their mother country, but they don’t much like the French, or trust them. They find us arrogant, condescending and mocking, not entirely wrongly, because a lot of French people treat Quebec as if it was some kind of backward province full of country bumpkins and lumberjacks.’

‘I’m counting on you,’ Adamsberg added, ‘not to act like tourists, and especially not like Parisian tourists, talking in loud voices and criticising everything.’

‘Where are we staying?’ asked Noël.

‘In a building in Hull, which is about six kilometres from the RCMP base. You’ll each have a room with a view over the river and the Canada geese. We’ll have some staff cars between us. Over there, no one walks anywhere, they all drive.’

The briefing lasted another hour or so, then the group dispersed in a contented buzz of voices, with the exception of Danglard who dragged
himself out of the room like a condemned man, pale with apprehension. If by some miracle the starlings didn’t get into the starboard engine on the way out, the Canada geese would find their way into the port engine on the way back. And a goose is bigger than a starling. Well, everything’s bigger in Canada.

XV

ADAMSBERG SPENT MOST OF THE SATURDAY TELEPHONING ESTATE
agents on the long list he had drawn up for the country round Strasbourg, leaving out the city itself. It was a tedious task, and he had to ask the same question every time. Had an elderly man, living alone, rented or bought, at some time unspecified, a property on your books, or more precisely a large isolated mansion? And if so, had the said tenant or owner either given up the lease, or put the property on the market very recently?

Until he had given up the chase, sixteen years earlier, Adamsberg’s accusations had sufficiently worried the Trident to make him leave the region after a murder, thus slipping through the policeman’s fingers. Adamsberg wondered whether, even after his death, the judge had retained this prudent reflex. The various residences Adamsberg had known about previously had all been grand and isolated mansions. The judge had acquired a considerable private fortune, and had usually bought his new lodgings rather than rented, since Fulgence preferred not to have a landlord spying on him.

Adamsberg could easily guess how he had acquired his wealth. Fulgence’s remarkable talents, his penetrating analysis of the law, his exceptional skill and memory for precedents, all accompanied by his striking and charismatic looks, had brought him fame and popularity. He had the reputation of being ‘the man who knows everything’, rather like St Louis sitting under his oak tree dispensing justice. And he was as
well-known to the general public as to his colleagues, who were outflanked or irritated by his excessive influence. As a respectable magistrate, he never formally overstepped the boundaries of the law or the professional code of conduct. But if he so chose during a trial, it took only a subtle expression or gesture on his part for it to be known what he thought, and the rumour would quickly circulate, so that juries followed him unanimously. Adamsberg imagined that the families of many a suspect, or even other magistrates, might have made it worth the judge’s while for the rumour to go one way or the other.

He had been doggedly telephoning estate agents for over four hours without any positive sighting. Until his forty-second call, when a young man told him he had handled a gentleman’s residence, set in parkland, deep in the country between Haguenau and Brumath.

‘How far is it from Strasbourg?’

‘About twenty-three kilometres to the north as the crow flies.’

The buyer, a Monsieur Maxime Leclerc, had bought the property, known as
Das Schloss
, the Castle, about four years earlier, but he had put it on the market only twenty-four hours ago, for urgent health reasons. He had moved out very quickly and the agency had just picked up the keys.

‘Did he give them to you himself? Did you see him?’

‘He got the cleaning woman to leave them with us. Nobody at the agency has ever clapped eyes on him. The sale was carried out by his lawyer, by correspondence, and by sending the ID papers and signatures to and fro by post. M. Leclerc was unable to do it in person, as he was recovering from an operation.’

‘Ah,’ said Adamsberg, simply.

‘It’s quite legal,
commissaire
. If the papers are certified in order by the police.’

‘And the cleaning lady, do you have her name and address?’

‘Madame Coutellier in Brumath. I’ll get her number for you.’

* * *

Denise Coutellier had to shout into her phone to rise above the sound of children playing.

‘Madame Coutellier, can you describe your employer for me?’ asked Adamsberg, also at the top of his voice, in unconscious imitation.

‘Well, you see,
commissaire,’
she said, ‘I never used to see the gentleman face to face. I would go in for three hours on Mondays and again on Thursdays, same time as the gardener. I left a meal all ready for him and I got in groceries for the other days. He told me he would be away a lot, he had business to see to. He was something to do with the trade tribunal.’

Of course, thought Adamsberg. A spectre is invisible.

‘Were there any books in the house?’

‘Plenty of them,
commissaire
. What they were I couldn’t say.’

‘Newspapers?’

‘He had them delivered, a daily paper and the
Nouvelles d’Alsace.’

‘Did he get much mail?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir, and his desk was kept locked. I expect with the tribunal papers and all that, it had to be. I was surprised when he left so suddenly. He left me a very nice letter saying thank you and good wishes, with all kinds of instructions and a generous final payment.’

‘What instructions?’

‘I was to come back this Saturday and do a thorough clean of the house, however long it took, because the
Schloss
was going to be sold. Then I had to take the keys to the agency. I’ve just got back from there now.’

‘Was this note handwritten?’

‘Oh no. Monsieur Leclerc always typed his messages, I suppose because he’d do that in his job.’

Adamsberg was about to hang up when the woman went on:

‘It’s not easy to describe him, because I only ever saw him the once, and then not for long. And that was about four years ago.’

‘When he moved in, you mean? You saw him then?’

‘Of course. You can’t work for someone you’ve never seen, can you?’

‘Madame Coutellier,’ said Adamsberg, quickening his voice, ‘can you be as precise as possible?’

‘Has he done something wrong?’

‘On the contrary.’

‘I was going to say, that would surprise me. Such a nice careful gentleman, so particular. It’s a pity his health has let him down. Let me see, as far as I remember, he was about sixty. He was, well, just normal-looking.’

‘Try, all the same. Height, weight, colour of hair.’

‘Just a minute,
commissaire.’
Denise Coutellier hushed the children and came back to the telephone.

‘Not all that tall, rather plump, with a good colour. His hair, oh I think it was grey, going a bit bald on top. He was wearing a brown corduroy suit and a tie, I always remember what people wear.’

‘Hang on, I’m just noting all this down.’

‘But you know, now you ask me, I’m not all that sure,’ cried the woman, who was having to shout again. ‘Memory can play tricks on you, can’t it? I said just now he wasn’t very tall, but I may have got that wrong. Because his suits were bigger than I remembered him. Let’s say they would fit a man of about one metre eighty, not seventy. Perhaps it was because he was plump, so I thought he was smaller. And I said he had grey hair, but when I was cleaning the bathroom or doing the laundry, I only found white hairs. But then of course he probably turned whiter over the four years, old age comes on quickly, doesn’t it? So that’s why I’m saying my memory may be playing me false.’