Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (15 page)

It was in fact, much the same kind of pep-talk Adamsberg had given his team a few days earlier.

During the rather tedious tour of the premises, Adamsberg took care to locate the drinks machine, which supplied ‘soups’, but also cups of coffee about the size of a glass of beer. He scanned the faces of his temporary colleagues. He felt an immediate rapport with Sergeant Fernand Sanscartier, the only unpromoted officer, whose chubby pink face, with its wide-open innocent-looking brown eyes, seemed to mark him out as a number one good guy. He would have liked to be partnered with him, but for the first three days, hierarchy had to be observed, so he would be working with the energetic Aurèle Laliberté. The French visitors were allowed to leave at six, and shown out to their official cars, which were equipped with snow tyres. Only the
commissaire
had a car to himself.

‘So why do you wear two watches?’ asked Laliberté, as Adamsberg seated himself in the driving seat.

Adamsberg hesitated.

‘Because of the time difference,’ he explained suddenly. ‘I’ve got to follow some enquiries back home in France.’

‘Can’t you do it in your head like everyone else?’

‘It’s quicker this way,’ Adamsberg prevaricated.

‘Suit yourself. OK, welcome to Canada, man, and see you tomorrow, nine sharp.’

Adamsberg drove slowly, looking at the trees, the streets, the people. Once out of Gatineau Park, he entered Ottawa’s twin town of Hull, which he would not personally have called a town: it was spread over kilometres of flat land, divided up in a grid plan of clean and deserted streets, lined with wood frame houses. There was nothing old or decrepit in sight, not even the churches, which looked like the icing sugar ornaments on wedding cakes rather than Strasbourg Cathedral. No one seemed to be in a hurry, and most people seemed to drive around in big pick-up trucks, capable of carrying several cubic metres of timber.

There appeared to be no cafes, restaurants or department stores. Adamsberg spotted a few isolated shops, all-purpose corner stores, which sold a bit of everything, one of them a hundred metres from their residence. He enjoyed walking over to it, feeling the snow crunching under his feet, and watching the squirrels which did not move away at his approach. A significant difference from sparrows.

‘Where will I find a bar or a restaurant?’ he asked the cashier at reception.

‘All the late-night stuff’s downtown,’ she replied kindly. ‘It’s about five kilometres, you’ll have to take the car. Bye, have a nice evening now.’

The downtown area was not large and Adamsberg had walked round it in under a quarter of an hour. He went into a cafe called the
Quatrain
, but found he was interrupting a poetry reading attended by a silent and intense audience, so he tiptoed out again, closing the door carefully. One to tell Danglard about. In the end he went into an American bar called
Les Cinq Dimanches
, a huge overheated saloon, decorated with the stuffed heads of caribou and bear, and sporting Québécois flags. The waiter brought him some food in a leisurely way, chatting about this and that.
The plateful was big enough for two. Everything’s bigger in Canada, and more easy-going.

At the far end of the bar, a hand waved to him. Ginette Saint-Preux, carrying her plate, came and sat down at his table without embarrassment.

‘Do you mind if I sit here, Jean-Baptiste?’ she asked. ‘I’m dining alone too.’

Ginette, who was very pretty, chatty and vivacious, started firing questions at him. What did he think of Quebec? Was it very different from France? Flatter? Oh really? What was Paris like? What was work like there? Fun? And what about you? Oh, really? She had children and ‘hobbies’, especially music. But for a good concert, you had to go to Montreal, would that interest him? Did he have any hobbies? Oh really? Drawing, walking, dreaming? Funny hobbies. How could you do those in Paris?

At about eleven o’clock, Ginette asked about his two watches.

‘Poor you,’ she said, getting up. ‘Of course with the time difference, it’s five o’clock in the morning for you now.’

Ginette had left on the table a green brochure, which she had been rolling up and unrolling during their conversation. Adamsberg unfolded it sleepily, his eyes drooping with fatigue. Some Vivaldi concerts in Montreal, between 17 and 21 October, a string quintet, with flute and harpsichord. Ginette must have some energy, to drive four hundred kilometres, just to listen to a quintet.

XVIII

ADAMSBERG DID NOT INTEND TO SPEND HIS ENTIRE CANADIAN VISIT
with his eyes fixed on test tubes and barcodes. By seven in the morning, he was already outside, drawn by the river. Or rather the tributary as Danglard called it, the immense tributary of the St Lawrence, home of the Ottawa Indians. He walked along the bank until he reached a footpath. A sign informed him that it was the ‘Portage trail used by Samuel de Champlain in 1613’. He started off along it, happy to be following in the footsteps of men of long ago, Indians and travellers, carrying their canoes on their backs. The track was not easy to follow, as the path often dipped more than a metre into hollows. The landscape was spectacular: foaming waters, noisy waterfalls, colonies of birds, red-leaved maples along the banks. He stopped in front of a commemorative tablet planted in a clearing, giving a potted history of Champlain’s achievements.

‘Hey, good morning!’ said a voice behind him.

A young woman in jeans was sitting on a flat rock overlooking the river, smoking an early-morning cigarette. Adamsberg had detected a Parisian accent.

‘Morning to you,’ he replied.

‘French,’ stated the woman. ‘What are you doing here? Tourist?’

‘No, work.’

The young woman inhaled and threw the rest of her cigarette into the water. ‘I’m lost. So I’m just waiting.’

‘Lost? Literally?’ asked Adamsberg carefully, while looking at the inscription on the Champlain stone.

‘I met this guy? In law school, in Paris? Canadian. He said why didn’t I come out here with him and I said yes. He seemed like a regular chum.’

‘Chum?’

‘Friend, boyfriend. The idea was to live together.’

‘I see,’ said Adamsberg, retreating.

‘And after six months, what do you think the chum did? He dumped Noëlla and she found herself all washed up.’

‘Noëlla, that’s you?’

‘Yes. In the end, she found a girlfriend to take her in.’

‘I see,’ said Adamsberg again, having already listened to more than he needed to.

‘So I’m waiting,’ she went on, lighting another cigarette. ‘I’m making some quick bucks working in a bar in Ottawa, and as soon as I’ve saved up enough, I’m going back to Paris. Not very bright, eh?’

‘Why are you out here so early?’

‘She comes to listen to the wind. She comes here often, morning and evening. I tell myself that even if you’re lost, you have to find somewhere to be. I’ve chosen this stone. What’s your name?’

‘Jean-Baptiste.’

‘And your other name?’

‘Adamsberg.’

‘And what do you do?’

‘I’m a cop.’

‘That’s a laugh! Here they call them pigs. My chum, he’d say, oh-oh, here come the pigs, and you wouldn’t see him for dust. Are you working with the Gatineau cops?’

Adamsberg nodded and took advantage of the sleet that was beginning to fall, to get away.

‘Bye for now,’ she said, without budging from her stone.

* * *

At two minutes to nine o’clock, he was parking in front of the RCMP. Laliberté gave him a hearty wave from the doorway.

‘Come on in!’ he shouted. ‘What about this weather! Hey, man, what have you been up to, with all that mud on your pants?’

‘I fell over on the portage path by the river,’ explained Adamsberg, rubbing at the marks.

‘You been out walking already? No kidding?’

‘I wanted to see the river, the rapids, the trees, the old portage.’

‘Hey, an outdoor freak,’ cried Laliberté with a laugh. ‘So you took a dive?’

‘A dive? In the river? No, sorry, I don’t always understand, you mean a fall?’

‘Right, don’t apologise, I won’t take it personally. Hey, call me Aurèle. I mean, yeah, how d’you come to fall?’

‘The path’s steep in places, I slipped on a stone.’

‘No bones broken at least.’

‘No, no, I’m fine.’

‘One of your men is here already, the big slouch.’

‘Don’t call him that, Aurèle, he knows what it means.’

‘How come?’

‘He reads books. He may look sloppy, but there’s not an ounce of slackness in that head. Only he does find it a bit hard getting up in the morning.’

‘Let’s grab a coffee while we wait,’ said the superintendent heading for the machine. ‘Got some change?’

Adamsberg took a handful of unfamiliar coins from his pocket and Laliberté extracted the right one.

‘Decaff or regular?’

‘Regular,’ Adamsberg chose, hopefully.

‘This’ll set you up,’ said Aurèle, handing him a huge plastic cup full of very hot coffee. ‘So you go out for a breath of fresh air every morning, do you?’

‘I go walking. Morning, daytime, evening, doesn’t matter when. I just need to walk.’

‘Right,’ said Aurèle with a smile. ‘Or perhaps you’re on the lookout for a girl?’

‘No, I’m not. But since you mention it, there was one, funnily enough, sitting by the Champlain stone, at eight in the morning. Seemed a bit odd.’

‘Pretty weird, I’d say. A chick on her own, on the trail, could be a hooker. Nobody goes there. Don’t get hooked, Adamsberg. It could be big trouble.’

Usual conversation of men round the coffee machine, thought Adamsberg, here or anywhere else.

‘OK, off we go,’ concluded the superintendent. ‘No more talk about girls, we’ve got work to do.’

Laliberté gave out instructions to the teams of two in the big room. Danglard had been assigned to the innocent-looking Sanscartier. Laliberté had paired the women with each other, probably out of a feeling that it would be more correct, allocating the large Retancourt to the slim Louisseize, and Froissy to Ginette Saint-Preux. Today’s task was on-the-spot collection. They would visit eight houses belonging to public-spirited citizens who had agreed to take part in the experiment. Each officer had a DNA collection kit. They would place their samples on a special card for collecting body fluids, said Laliberté, holding this object high in the air as if it was a sacred Host. It neutralised any bacterial or viral contamination, without the need for freezing.

‘A new technique, which gives us an economy, one, of time, two, of money, three, of space.’

While listening to the strict instructions of the superintendent, Adamsberg was leaning forward on his chair, his hands in his pockets, which were still damp from the walk. His fingers encountered the green brochure he had picked up from the table, in order to return it to Ginette Saint-Preux. It was by now damp and crumpled and he took it out carefully, trying not to tear it. Discreetly, he spread it out on a table with the palm of his hand, to smooth it back into shape.

‘Today,’ Laliberté continued, ‘we will collect, one, sweat, two, saliva, and three, blood. Tomorrow, tears, urine, snot and dirt from under the nails. And semen from those citizens who have agreed to fill a test tube.’

Adamsberg gave a start, not because of the public-spirited citizens and
their test tubes, but because of what he had just read on the damp brochure.

‘Check properly,’ Laliberté said loudly, turning to the Paris team, ‘that the codes of the cards correspond to those on the kits. As I always say, you have to remember three things: rigour, rigour and more rigour. That’s the only way to get the job done.’

The eight teams moved towards the cars, armed with the addresses of the citizens who were obligingly lending their homes and their bodies to the series of samples. Adamsberg stopped Ginette as she went by.

‘I wanted to give you this back,’ he said, handing her the green brochure. ‘You left it in the restaurant but I thought you’d be needing it.’

‘Goodness, yes, I wondered where I’d put it.’

‘I’m sorry, it’s got wet.’

‘Never mind. I’ll take it to the office. Can you tell Hélène I’ll be right back?’

‘Ginette,’ said Adamsberg, holding her back by the arm and pointing to the brochure. ‘That Camille Forestier, the viola player, is she always in the Montreal quintet?’

‘No, she isn’t. Alban told me their viola player’s on maternity leave. She was already six months pregnant when they needed to start rehearsals.’

‘Alban?’

‘The first violin, a friend of mine. He met this Camille Forestier, who’s French, and auditioned her. She was good, so he took her on at once.’

‘Hey, Adamsberg,’ called Laliberté, ‘get a move on there.’

‘Thanks, Ginette,’ said Adamsberg, joining his partner.

‘What did I say?’ said the superintendent, as he climbed into the car, laughing once more. ‘Always after the ladies, aren’t you? And with one of my inspectors too, on your second day here. Fast worker or what?’

‘It’s not what you think, Aurèle, we were talking about music. Classical music,’ added Adamsberg, as if ‘classical’ somehow lent respectability to their conversation.

‘Music, my eye!’ laughed the superintendent, switching on the engine.
‘Don’t play the little plaster saint with me. You saw her downtown last night, right?’

‘It was quite by chance. I was eating at the
Cinq Dimanches
, and she came over to my table.’

‘Drop it with Ginette, she’s married. And happily married.’

‘I was just giving her back a concert programme. You can believe me or not, please yourself.’

‘No need to take offence. Only kidding.’

By the end of the long day, punctuated by the loud voice of the superintendent, and when all the samples had been taken from the public-spirited Jules and Linda Saint-Croix, Adamsberg got back into his official car.

‘What are you doing tonight?’ asked Laliberté, putting his head through the window.

‘I’m going to look at the river again, go for a walk. Then go downtown for something to eat.’

‘You’re real antsy, Jean-Baptiste, you gotta be moving all the time.’

‘I told you, I like walking.’