This Night’s Foul Work

LVIII

WITHOUT STARTING THE CAR, ADAMSBERG SAT ALONGSIDE DANGLARD AS THEY both watched the wipers try to deal with the torrential rain battering the windscreen. Adamsberg liked the regular sound they made as they groaned against the deluge.

‘I think we’re thinking the same thing, capitaine,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Commandant,’ corrected Danglard gloomily.

‘To try and send us on the trail of the nurse, the killer must have known a lot about me. He had to know I’d arrested her, and that I’d be upset to learn she was out of jail. And he also had to be able to follow the investigation, step by step. To know that we were looking for navy-blue shoes and traces of polish from the soles. He also had to be well-informed about Retancourt’s movements. He must have wanted to destroy me. He provided everything – the syringe, the shoes, the scalpel, the shoe polish. An extraordinary manipulation of the inquiry, Danglard, carried out by someone of remarkable intelligence and efficiency.’

‘By a man in our squad.’

‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg sadly, leaning back in his seat. ‘By one of our own, a black ibex on the mountain.’

‘What’s it got to do with an ibex?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘I don’t want to believe this.’

‘We didn’t want to believe there was a bone in a pig’s snout, but there is one. Like there’s a bone in the squad, Danglard. Stuck in its throat.’

The rain slackened off and Adamsberg slowed the pace of the wind-creen wipers.

‘I did tell you he was lying,’ Danglard went on. ‘Nobody could have remembered that text from the De reliquis unless they already knew it. He must have known the recipe for the potion by heart.’

‘But in that case, why did he tell us it?’

‘Provocation. He thinks he’s invincible.’

‘The child on the ground,’ murmured Adamsberg. ‘The lost vineyard, poverty, years of humiliation. I used to see him around, Danglard. He used to pull a beret right down to his nose to cover up the ginger streaks. He used to limp after the accident with the horse, he would blush to meet people, and he skulked along by the walls, with other boys calling him names.’

‘He can still get to you, then.’

‘Yes.’

‘But it’s the child that touches you. And the adult has grown up twisted. He’s trying to turn the tables on you, because you were the little gang-leader of the village, responsible for his tragic lot, as he would put it in his verses. He’s making the wheel of fortune spin round. It’s your turn to fall, while he’s moving up the ranks. He’s turning into what he spouts about all day long, a Racinian hero, caught in a torrent of hate and ambition, plotting the deaths of other people and the day of his own apotheosis. From the start, you knew he’d come here to get his revenge for the fight between the two valleys.’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s put his plan into action, one thing after another, driving you in the wrong direction, sending the investigation off track. He’s killed seven times now: Fernand, Big Georges, Elisabeth, Pascaline, Diala, La Paille, Grimal. He almost killed Retancourt. And he’s going to kill the third virgin.’

‘No, Francine’s safe enough.’

‘So you think. But this man’s tough. He’ll kill Francine, then he’ll get you, once you’ve been disgraced. He hates you.’

Adamsberg lowered the window and stretched his arm out of the car palm up, as if to catch the rain.

‘You’re unhappy about it,’ said Danglard.

‘Yes, I am rather.’

‘But you know we’re right.’

‘When Robert called me about the second stag, I was tired and couldn’t really be bothered. It was Veyrenc who offered to drive me up there. And in the cemetery at Opportune it was Veyrenc who pointed out the short grass on Pascaline’s grave. He encouraged me to open it, just as he’d encouraged me to carry on in Montrouge. And he intervened with Brézillon, so that we could continue our investigation. So that he could keep track of it, while I was getting deeper and deeper in the shit.’

‘And,’ Danglard pointed out gently, ‘he took Camille from you. That’s high-level vengeance, like in a play by Racine.’

‘How did you know about that, Danglard?’ said Adamsberg, clenching his fist in the rain.

‘When I had to take over the listening device in Froissy’s cupboard, I had to play a bit of the previous tape to get the soundtrack tuned. I did warn you about him. Intelligent, strong and dangerous.’

‘All the same, I liked him.’

‘Is that why we’re sitting here in Clancy in this car? Instead of getting back to Paris?’

‘No, capitaine. For one thing, it’s because we’ve got no absolute proof of all this. An examining magistrate would release him after twenty-four hours. Veyrenc could tell him about the war between the valleys and say that I was bent on destroying him for private reasons. So that no one would ever know who was the fifth boy under the tree.’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ agreed Danglard. ‘He’s got that over you.’

‘Secondly, I still don’t understand what Retancourt was trying to tell me.’

‘Well, I can’t fathom how the Snowball was able to do those thirty-eight kilometres,’ remarked Danglard, looking thoughtful about this new Unsolved Question.

‘That was an example of the miracles of love, Danglard. And maybe the cat had also picked up some tips from Violette. How to save your strength, bit by bit, to commit it to a single mission, overcoming any obstacle in your path.’

‘She was partnered with Veyrenc at work. That’s why she must have guessed about that damned thing we couldn’t see. He knew she was going to see Roman. He must have waited for her on the way out. And she was rather taken by him, so she would have followed him. The only time in her life when Violette’s instincts let her down.’

‘Love and its disasters, Danglard.’

‘Even Violette can be tricked. By a smile or the sound of a voice.’

‘I want to know what she was trying to tell me, Danglard,’ Adamsberg insisted, pulling his now soaking-wet arm back into the car. ‘In your view, capitaine, what would be the first thing she would do, once she was able to articulate at all?’

‘She’d try to talk to you.’

‘To tell me what?’

‘The truth. And that’s what she did. She talked about the shoes. She said they didn’t matter. So she was telling us it wasn’t the nurse.’

‘But that wasn’t the first thing she said. It was the second.’

‘Before that she didn’t say anything that made sense, just quoted a line or two from Corneille.’

‘Who speaks those lines in Corneille?’

‘Camille. It’s in his play Horace.’

‘Ah, you see, Danglard, that proves it. Retancourt wasn’t just reciting stuff from school. She was trying to send me a message through another Camille. But I don’t know what it means.’

‘Because it wasn’t clear. Retancourt was still only semi-conscious. You can’t treat what she said to an interpretation, like you can for dreams.’

Danglard thought for a few moments.

‘The play goes like this,’ he said. ‘Camille is caught up in a fight between two sets of brothers, who are enemies. The Horatii on one hand and the Curiatii on the other. She’s in love with one of them, but he wants to kill a man from the other side, who’s her brother. Well, around your Camille, we have the same thing, sort of. Two cousins who are enemies, you and Veyrenc. But Veyrenc stands for Racine. And who was Racine’s big enemy and rival? Corneille.’

‘Really?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘Really. Because Racine’s terrific success as a playwright pushed poor old Corneille out of the limelight. They hated each other. Retancourt has chosen Corneille, and is pointing at his enemy: Racine. It must mean Veyrenc. That’s why she spoke in verse, so that you would immediately think of Veyrenc.’

‘Well, that’s just what I did. I wondered if she was dreaming about him, or if he’d infected her with his verse-speaking.’

Adamsberg put the window back up and fastened his seat belt. ‘Let me have a word with him alone first,’ he said, starting the engine.