An Uncertain Place

XLIX

THE PARIS CENTRAL LAW COURTS WERE UNDER A CLOUD, WHICH was entirely appropriate to the place and the time. Adamsberg and Danglard, sitting at the terrace of the cafe opposite, were waiting for people to emerge from the trial of Mordent’s daughter. It was ten to eleven by Danglard’s watch. Adamsberg was looking at the gold-tipped railings which had been carefully repainted.

‘When you scratch the gold, what do you find underneath, Danglard?’

‘Nolet would say: the scales of the snake.’

‘Coiled round the Sainte-Chapelle. Not a very suitable combination.’

‘It’s not such a contrast as you might think. There are two chapels there one on top of the other and quite separate. The bottom one was reserved for the common people and the top one for the king and his courtiers. Everything leads back to that in the end.’

‘The great snake was already there in the fourteenth century then,’ said Adamsberg, looking up at the top of the steep Gothic spire.

‘Thirteenth century,’ Danglard corrected him. ‘Built by Pierre de Montreuil between 1242 and 1248.’

‘Did you get in touch with Nolet?’

‘Yes. The school friend was indeed a witness to the wedding between Emma Carnot and a young man aged twenty-four, Paul de Josselin Cressent, at the town hall in Auxerre, twenty-nine years ago. Emma had fallen for him, her mother was impressed by the name with a “de” in it, but she told us that Paul was the last of a damaged line. The marriage didn’t last three years. There were no children.’

‘Just as well. Josselin would hardly have been a good father.’

Danglard chose not to pursue that line of thought. He would wait and see what Zerk was like.

‘There would have been another little Paole loose in the world,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘and God only knows what he would have got up to. But no, this is the end of the Paoles, the doctor said so.’

‘I’m going to help Radstock dispose of the feet. Then I’m taking a week off.’

‘Going fishing in that loch perhaps?’

‘No,’ said Danglard evasively, ‘I think I’ll probably stay on in London.’

‘With a rather abstract sort of plan in mind.’

‘Yes.’

‘When Mordent has got his daughter back, which will be tonight, we’ll unleash the torrent of mud in the Emma Carnot affair. It’ll run from the Council of State to the Appeal Court, then to the public prosecutor and the Gavernan Assize Court, and it will stop there. We won’t let it reach down as far as the junior judge and Mordent, since that is no consequence to anyone but us.’

‘It’ll cause an almighty row.’

‘Of course. People will be shocked, they’ll propose a far-reaching reform of the judicial system, then it will all be forgotten when they dig up some other scandal. And you know what will happen then.’

‘The great snake will have lost three of its scales, after an attack, but it will have regrown them again in a couple of months.’

‘Or less. We’ll set in motion the counter-offensive, using the Weill technique. We won’t release anything to the press about the link to the judge at Gavernan, or name him. We’ll keep him in reserve for our own protection, and in order to protect Nolet and Mordent. And we’ll use the Weill technique to get the pencil shavings and the cartridge from Avignon to the quai des Orfèvres. Where they can moulder away in a cupboard.’

‘Why should we protect Mordent? He’s acted like an arsehole.’

‘Because the straight and narrow is never straight. Mordent’s not part of the snake. He was swallowed whole. He’s in its belly, like Jonah in the whale.’

‘Or the uncle in the bear.’

‘Aha,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I knew you’d show some interest in that story one day.’

‘But what sort of idea of Mordent will be left inside the great snake?’

‘A thorn in the side, and the memory of failure. That’s something at least.’

‘So what are we going to do about Mordent?’

‘Whatever he thinks he will do himself. If he wants to, we’ll take him back. A damaged man is worth ten. You and I are the only people who know about this. The others all think he’s had a nervous breakdown because of his daughter, and that that explains his mistakes. They’ve also heard he’s recovered his testicles intact, and that’s as much as they know. Nobody knows that he went to Pierre Vaudel’s place.’

‘Why didn’t Pierre Vaudel tell you about going to racecourses and the horse manure?’

‘His wife was not supposed to know he was involved with the bookies.’

‘And who paid the concierge, Francisco Delfino, to give Josselin a false alibi. Josselin himself or Emma Carnot?’

‘Nobody. Josselin simply sent Francisco on holiday. For the first few days after the Garches murder, Josselin impersonated Francisco. He took his place, knowing there’d be a visit from the police sooner or later. When I saw him, the lodge was dark, he was wrapped up in a blanket, including his hands. All he had to do after that was nip back up to his apartment via the service stairs and get changed to welcome me in.’

‘Sophisticated.’

‘Yes. He’d thought of everything, except his ex-wife. As soon as Emma discovered that Josselin was Vaudel’s doctor, she realised before us. Right away.’

‘Here he comes,’ Danglard interrupted. ‘Justice has been pronounced.’

Mordent was emerging alone, under the cloudy sky. The children have eaten sour grapes and the father’s teeth have been set on edge. His daughter, a free woman now, would have to go back to Fresnes for the paperwork and to pick up her things. She would eat her supper at home that night, he had already done the shopping.

Adamsberg caught Mordent under one arm, and Danglard took the other. The commandant looked from side to side, like an old heron trapped by the disciplinary police. A heron having lost its prestige and its feathers, condemned to fish alone and in disgrace.

‘We’ve come to celebrate the triumph of justice, Mordent,’ said Adamsberg. ‘And to celebrate the arrest of Josselin, and the liberation of the Paole clan, who will now return to their uncomplicated destiny of being ordinary human beings, and to celebrate the birth of my elder son. Plenty to celebrate. We left our beers on the table.’

Adamsberg’s grip was firm, his face was tilted sideways and he was smiling. Light flickered under his skin, his expression was lit up, and Mordent well knew that when Adamsberg’s cloudy eyes became gleaming orbs, he was approaching his prey or some great truth. The commissaire marched him over to the cafe.

‘Celebrate?’ said Mordent in a blank voice, unable to find anything else to say.

‘Yes, celebrate. And we’re also celebrating the disappearance of a certain scatter of pencil shavings and a cartridge case under a fridge. We’re celebrating my freedom, Mordent.’

The commandant’s arm barely moved in Adamsberg’s grip. The old heron had lost all his strength. Adamsberg sat him down between them, as if dropping a bundle. The F3 fuse has gone, he thought, a psycho-emotional shock, inhibited action. No Dr Josselin around to heal it either. With the departure of Arnold Paole’s descendant, medicine was losing one of its great practitioners.

‘I’m up to my neck in it, aren’t I?’ murmured Mordent. ‘Deservedly,’ he went on, ruffling his grey hair and stretching his long neck, with that movement of a wading bird that was peculiar to him.

‘Yes, you are. But a cunningly constructed dam has been built, which is going to block the mud outside the doors of the Gavernan Assize Court. From there on down, there will be no visible traces of betrayal, nothing but innocent procedures. In the squad nobody else knows anything. Your job’s still there. It’s up to you. On the other hand, Emma Carnot is going to go up in smoke. You were taking orders directly from her?’

Mordent nodded.

‘On a special mobile?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which is where now?’

‘I destroyed it last night.’

‘Good. Don’t try to protect yourself by rushing to help her, Mordent. She’s killed one woman, she had Émile shot at and then tried to poison him. She was on her way to bump off the other witness to her marriage.’

Ever vigilant, Danglard had ordered a third beer which he put in front of Mordent, with a gesture as authoritarian as Adamsberg’s arm, meaning ‘Drink up!’

‘And don’t think about doing away with yourself either,’ Adamsberg went on. ‘That would be irrelevant, as Danglard might put it, when Elaine needs you most.’ Adamsberg stood up. The Seine was flowing a few metres away from them, flowing to the sea, flowing towards America, then to the Pacific, then back here again.

‘Vratiću,’ he said. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Mordent, looking surprised, and for a moment back to normal, which seemed to Danglard to be a good sign.

‘He’s still got a little bit of the Kisilova vampiri inside him. It’ll disappear in the end. Or not. You never know with him.’

Adamsberg came back towards them, looking preoccupied.

‘Danglard, I know you’ve told me this before, but where does the Seine rise?’

‘On the Langres plateau.’

‘Not Mont Gerbier de Jonc?’

‘No, that’s the Loire.’

‘Hvala, Danglard.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘That means “thank you”,’ Danglard told Mordent. Adamsberg walked off again towards the river, with jaunty steps and holding his jacket over his shoulder with one finger. Mordent raised his glass clumsily, like a man who is not sure if he has the right to do so, and moved it first in the direction of Adamsberg then towards Danglard sitting beside him.

‘Hvala,’ he said.