Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

XI

ARRIVING AT THE GENDARMERIE AT NINE O’CLOCK NEXT MORNING, Adamsberg saluted the duty officer, the same one who had wanted to know the story about the bear. The officer indicated with a gesture that the storm signals were hoisted. And indeed Trabelmann had lost all his conviviality of the previous day. He was standing waiting in his office, his arms folded and his back ramrod-stiff.

‘What the fuck are you playing at, Adamsberg?’ he said in a voice tense with fury. ‘Paris police think the gendarmes are a bunch of idiots, or what?’

Adamsberg stood facing the commandant without speaking. In this kind of situation, it was best to let people have their say. He guessed what had happened. But he had not imagined Trabelmann would have worked so quickly. He had underestimated him.

‘Judge Fulgence died sixteen years ago!’ Trabelmann shouted. ‘He’s dead, dead and buried, kaput! This isn’t a fairy story, Adamsberg, it’s science fiction. And don’t tell me you didn’t know. Your notes stop in 1987.’

‘Yes, of course I know. I went to his funeral.’

‘And you’ve made me waste a whole day on your crazy story? Just to tell me that this figment of your imagination killed the Wind girl at Schiltigheim? You didn’t think for one minute that a stupid gendarme like Trabelmann might have checked up on the judge’s current whereabouts?’

‘It’s true, I didn’t think you would have got that far yet, and I apologise. But if you took the trouble to check the record, at least it means that you were intrigued enough by the Fulgence story to follow it up.’

‘What the hell is your game, Adamsberg? Are you on a ghost hunt? I hope not, or you shouldn’t be in the police force, but locked up somewhere. So why the fuck did you come all the way out here?’

‘To take the measurements, to get a chance to question Vétilleux, and to tell you about this possibility.’

‘Perhaps you thought he had an imitator? A disciple? A son?’

Adamsberg had the impression he was going back through his conversation with Danglard of two days before.

‘No, I don’t think he has a disciple, and he had no children. Fulgence is a lone wolf.’

‘Do you realise you’re standing there with a straight face and telling me you’re out of your tiny mind?’

‘I realise you think that, commandant. May I have permission to see Vétilleux once more before I leave?’

‘No, you may not!’ shouted Trabelmann.

‘Well, if you want to go ahead and hand an innocent man over to the courts, that’s your business.’

Adamsberg had to go round Trabelmann to pick up his files. He pushed them clumsily into his bag, which took him a little time, one-handed. The commandant did not make a move to help, any more than Danglard had. Adamsberg offered to shake hands, but Trabelmann kept his arms firmly folded.

‘Well, we may meet again one day, Trabelmann. When I bring you the judge’s head on a trident.’

‘Adamsberg, I was wrong.’

The commissaire looked up in surprise.

‘Your ego isn’t as big as a kitchen table, it’s the size of Strasbourg Cathedral.’

‘Which you don’t like?’

‘Affirmative.’

Adamsberg headed for the exit. In the office, the corridors and the hall, silence had fallen like a shower of rain, stifling all movement, voices or footsteps. Outside the doors, he saw the young duty officer, who took a few steps alongside him.

‘Commissaire, that story about the bears?’

‘Don’t come with me, officer, or you might lose your job.’

He winked quickly at the young man and went off on foot, without any car to take him to the station. But unlike Vétilleux, the commissaire was not put off by a few kilometres; the walk was barely long enough for him to rid his mind of the new enemy whom Judge Fulgence had added to Adamsberg’s collection.