Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

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.