Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

LXII

DANGLARD TOOK ADAMSBERG TO ONE OF THE CAFES IN THE TERMINAL building and chose a table off to one side. Adamsberg sat down. His body felt as if it didn’t belong to him, and his eyes were fixed on the silly pompom on Danglard’s cap, a mocking and ridiculous ornament. Retancourt would have grabbed him, and got him over the border, she would have helped him escape. It was still possible. Danglard had been discreet and avoided handcuffs. He could still jump up and run for it, because his capitaine wouldn’t be able to keep up with him. But the image of himself stabbing Noëlla paralysed his capacity to move. What was the point of running, if he couldn’t even walk? Frozen with fear in case he was capable of striking again, finding himself staggering over a corpse on the ground. He might just as well end it here, with Danglard who was morosely sipping a coffee laced with cognac. Hundreds of travellers went past, departing or arriving, with their consciences as spotless as fresh linen. While his own conscience felt repulsive to him, a shred of cloth, stiff with dried blood.

Danglard suddenly waved to someone. Adamsberg made no attempt to look round. The triumphant face of the superintendent was the last thing he wanted to see.

Two large hands landed on his shoulders.

‘I told you we’d catch the sonofabitch,’ he heard someone say.

Adamsberg turned to find himself looking into the face of Fernand Sanscartier. He jumped up and instinctively grabbed his arms. Oh God, why had they done this? Sent Sanscartier to take delivery of the culprit?

‘They gave you this mission?’ he asked, in despair.

‘Just doing what I was told,’ said Sanscartier without losing his benign smile. ‘And we’ve got a lot to talk about,’ he went on, sitting down opposite them.

He shook hands warmly with Danglard.

‘A good job well done, capitaine. Greetings. Jeez, it sure is warm over here,’ he said taking off his padded jacket. ‘Here’s your copy of the file, and the sample.’

He shook a little box in front of Danglard, who nodded approval.

‘We’ve already analysed it. The comparison ought to clinch it.’

‘A sample of what?’ Adamsberg asked.

Sanscartier plucked a hair from Adamsberg’s head.

‘Hair,’ he said. ‘Giveaway stuff, hair. It falls like autumn leaves. But we had to shift six cubic metres of leafmould to find it. Think of that. Just to find a few hairs. Like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

‘You didn’t need it. You already had my prints on the belt.’

‘Yeah, but not his.’

‘What do you mean, not his?’

Sanscartier turned towards Danglard, with a frown in the big kind eyes.

‘Haven’t you told him yet?’ he asked. ‘Have you left him stewing in his own juice all this time?’

‘I couldn’t tell him until we were certain. I don’t like to raise false hopes.’

‘Sure, but last night, damnit? You could have told him then?’

‘Last night we had a bit of a to-do on.’

‘This morning then?’

‘Yes, OK, I did leave him in the dark. For eight hours.’

‘Some pal, you are,’ said Sanscartier in disapproval. ‘Why didn’t you tell him?’

‘So that he would really know what it was like for Raphaël. Being afraid of your own shadow, being in exile, unable to face the world. It was necessary. Just eight hours, Sanscartier, not a life sentence, so that he’d be able to catch up with his brother.’

Sanscartier turned to Adamsberg, and banged his box on the table. ‘Some hairs from the head of your devil,’ he said. ‘Which had to be found in six cubic metres of rotten leaves.’

Adamsberg understood at that moment that Sanscartier was engaged in hauling him to the surface, to the fresh air of the atmosphere, from the mud at the bottom of Pink Lake. That he had been working for Danglard, not for Laliberté.

‘It wasn’t easy either,’ Sanscartier went on. ‘Because I had to do it all outside office hours. In the evenings, or early in the morning. Without the boss catching me. Your capitaine here was the one who pushed me. He couldn’t believe the business of your cotton-wool legs after hitting the branch. I went down the path and tried to find the place where you fell. I walked from L’Ecluse, at the time you said. I went a hundred yards. I found a lot of newly broken twigs and overturned stones just by the timber site. The men had struck camp but there were new maple saplings there.’

‘I said it was near the site,’ said Adamsberg, breathing fast. He had folded his arms, clutching his sleeves in his fingers, hanging on to the sergeant’s words.

‘But there were no low branches round there, chum. Whatever you hit, it couldn’t have been a branch. So your capitaine asked me to find the nightwatchman. He was the only possible witness after all.’

‘I see, but did you find him?’ asked Adamsberg, through lips stiff with anguish, hardly able to speak.

Danglard stopped a waiter and ordered water, more coffee, beer and croissants.

‘Jeez, that was the worst bit. I had to take a sickie to get off work and first of all I asked at the town hall. But no, it was a federal camp. So second of all, I had to go to Montreal to find the name of the lumber outfit. Laliberté was getting fed up with my sick leaves, I can tell you. And your capitaine was on at me the whole time by phone. I got the watchman’s name. He was up the Ottawa River somewhere by then, so I had to take more leave to go there. Thought the super was going to burst a blood vessel.’

‘And you found him?’ asked Adamsberg swallowing a glass of water in a single gulp.

‘Don’t worry, I nabbed him in his pick-up. But getting him to say anything was another matter. He spun me yarn after yarn. Finally I threatened him with the cells if he didn’t come clean. Withholding information, hiding vital evidence. I’m a bit embarrassed to tell you what he said. Adrien, can you go on?’

‘The watchman, Jean-Gilles Boisvenu, saw a man crouching by the path that Sunday night,’ said Danglard. ‘He took out his binoculars and had a good look.’

‘A good look?’

‘Boisvenu was sure that he was waiting for another homosexual,’ Sanscartier explained. ‘You know the portage trail was supposed to be a gay pick-up place after dark?’

‘Yes, he asked me if that was why I was there.’

‘He was interested, sort of a voyeur,’ Danglard explained, ‘so he was glued to his windscreen. A very good witness, because he was paying close attention. He was delighted when he heard someone else coming, he could see quite well. But it didn’t work out as he was hoping.’

‘How did he know it was the Sunday night, the 26th?’

‘Because he was on duty when he should have been off, and furious with the weekend watchman who had called in sick. He saw the first man, who was tall with white hair, hit the other guy on the head with a sawn-off branch. The other one, that’s you, commissaire, fell to the ground. Boisvenu crouched down in the truck. The big guy looked mean and he didn’t want to get involved in a lover’s tiff, if that’s what it was. But he went on looking.’

‘Rooted to the spot.’

‘Yes, he was thinking, well hoping, in fact, that it might turn into a rape of the victim.’

‘Understand now?’ said Sanscartier, his cheeks bright red.

‘Well, the big guy started to take the scarf off the other one and undo his jacket. Boisvenu went on looking. And what he saw was that the big guy took your hands and pressed them on something like a strap.’

‘The belt,’ said Sanscartier.

‘Exactly, the belt. But he didn’t do anything else to your clothing. He injected something into your neck. Boisvenu is absolutely certain about that. He saw him take a syringe out of his pocket and test the pressure.’

‘Cotton-wool legs,’ said Adamsberg.

‘I told you I couldn’t get my head round that,’ said Danglard. ‘Until the branch, even if you were drunk, you were walking normally. But when you woke up, your legs could hardly carry you. And they were still not normal in the morning. On alcohol, I’m an expert, I know what it can do. Amnesia’s not a regular effect, and as for the legs, I just thought that was very odd. I needed to see if something else was involved.’

‘That was his hunch,’ Sanscartier explained.

‘Some drug,’ Danglard explained, ‘something which would give you memory loss, like all the other people who’d been arrested.’

‘Anyway,’ Sanscartier went on, ‘the old guy got up, and left you where you were. At that point, Boisvenu thought he’d better do something, after seeing the syringe. He’s tough, not a nightwatchman for nothing, but he couldn’t get out of his truck right away. Can you tell him why, please, Adrien?’

‘Well his legs were caught in his pants,’ Danglard explained. ‘He’d got himself all ready for a peepshow, and he’d pulled his dungarees down to his ankles.’

‘Boisvenu was embarrassed to tell me that,’ Sanscartier went on. ‘By the time he was decent, the old man had gone. The watchman found you lying there, out for the count and covered in blood. He dragged you over to his truck and put you inside with a blanket over you. And he waited.’

‘Why did he wait. Why didn’t he call the police?’

‘He didn’t want people asking him why he hadn’t done anything. He didn’t want to say what he was doing. If he said he was scared, or hadn’t seen the attack because he was asleep, it might have cost him his job. They don’t recruit nightwatchmen to panic or go to sleep. He preferred to keep mum and put you in the truck.’

‘He could have just left me there and washed his hands of me.’

‘Well yes, theoretically. But he couldn’t square that with God and his conscience, leaving someone to die, and he wanted to retrieve himself. With the temperature that night, you would have frozen to death. He decided to see if you were coming to after the knock on the head and the injection. He didn’t know whether it was just a tranquilliser or a poison. If it looked bad, he’d call the cops and invent something. He watched you for two hours, and since you were sleeping with a regular pulse, he decided you’d be OK. When you seemed to be waking up, he drove off up the cycle track and put you down on the road. He knew you’d come from there, he recognised you.’

‘Why did he drive me back?’

‘He thought you wouldn’t be in a fit state to get back along the path under your own steam, you might fall in the river.’

‘A good egg in the end then,’ said Adamsberg.

‘There was still a tiny drop of dried blood in the back of his pick-up truck. I took a sample, well, you know our methods. The guy wasn’t lying, it was your DNA, OK. I compared it with…’ Sanscartier hesitated.

‘Your semen,’ Danglard completed the sentence. ‘So between eleven and one-thirty in the morning, you weren’t on the path, you were in Boisvenu’s pick-up truck.’

‘But before that?’ asked Adamsberg, rubbing his cold lips. ‘Between ten-thirty and eleven?’

‘You left L’Ecluse at ten-fifteen. By half-past, you had started down the path. You couldn’t have reached the work site and picked up any trident before eleven, which is when Boisvenu saw you coming. And you didn’t take a fork from the site. Nothing was missing. The judge had his weapon already.’

‘Brand new, bought on the spot?’

‘Yes, we traced it. Sartonna was sent to buy it.’

‘But there was earth in the wounds.’

‘You’re not very quick this morning, Jean-Baptiste,’ said Sanscartier with a grin. ‘That’s because you don’t dare believe it. Your devil, you see, he’d knocked the girl unconscious up by the Champlain stone. He’d sent her a message, supposedly from you, to meet her there, and he was waiting for her. He hit her from behind, then dragged her along to the little pool. Before he stabbed her, he’d already had to break the ice on the pool, and the pool was full of mud and leaves. That’s why the prongs had earth on them.’

‘And he killed Noëlla,’ whispered Adamsberg.

‘It must have been before eleven, and well before, ten-thirty maybe. He knew the time you usually came back along the path. He took the belt, he pushed the girl’s body under the ice. Then he came back to surprise you.’

‘Why not wait till I got nearer the body?’

‘There was a greater risk of meeting someone. The site was a good place to wait, plenty of big trees in case anyone else came by. He bashed you on the head, drugged you, and then took the belt back and left it by the body. It was the capitaine who thought of looking for some of his hairs. Because of course nothing so far proved it was the judge, you see. Danglard hoped he might have lost a few hairs between the Champlain stone and the pool, when he was dragging the body over. He could have stopped for breath, put his hand to his head, something like that. So we took up the surface about an inch and a half down. It had frozen over again, which meant the hairs might still be there. So that’s why I found myself with six cubic metres of leafmould and twigs to comb. And the contents of that box,’ said Sanscartier, pointing to it. ‘Apparently you’ve got some of the judge’s hairs over here.’

‘From the Schloss! Shit, Danglard, what about Michel? He could have taken them from my flat, they were in the kitchen cupboard with the bottles.’

‘I took the sachet the same time I weeded the files of documents about Raphaël. Michel didn’t know anything about the hairs.’

‘So how come you looked in the cupboard?’

‘I was looking for a little something to help me think about the papers.’

Adamsberg nodded, thinking how fortunate it was his capitaine knew where to find the gin.

‘And anyway, he left his cape in your flat last night,’ said Danglard. ‘So I got two more hairs from the collar while you were asleep.’

‘What’s happened to the cape? Have you still got it?’

‘Why? Do you want it?’

‘Might do, I don’t know.’

‘I’d rather have caught the devil than his coat.’

‘Danglard, why did he want to pin the murder on me?’

‘To make you suffer, but above all to get you to agree to shoot yourself.’

Adamsberg nodded. It was truly diabolical wickedness at work. He turned to the sergeant.

‘Sanscartier, surely you didn’t search that pile of leaves on your own?’

‘No, at that stage I had to tell Laliberté. I already had the statement from the watchman and the DNA of your blood. Christ, though, he went up the wall when I told him what I’d been doing on the so-called sick leaves. I won’t tell you what he said. He even accused me of having been your accomplice from the start and helping you escape. He went ballistic. Sure, I’d been way out of line. But in the end I got him to calm down and see reason. Because with our boss, you know, it’s rigour, rigour always that counts for him. So he cooled off and he had to admit there was more to the case than met the eye. After that, he moved heaven and earth and authorised us to do the search. And he lifted the warrant that was out for you.’

Adamsberg looked at them in turn. Danglard and Sanscartier. Two men who had not abandoned him for a second.

‘Don’t try to say anything,’ said Sanscartier. ‘It’s too much to take in right now.’

The car was moving slowly through the traffic jams on the outskirts of Paris. Adamsberg was in the back, leaning his head against the window, his eyes half shut, watching the familiar landmarks go by and glancing at the two men in front who had rescued him. The end of Raphaël’s exile. And the end of his own purgatory. The novelty and the relief were so great that they created in him an immense fatigue.

‘Hey, pretty good work, all that stuff about the Mah Jong,’ said Sanscartier. ‘Laliberté was stunned, he said it was a fantastic bit of detection. He’ll tell you so tomorrow.’

‘He’s coming over?’

‘I guess you might not want to see him, but he’s coming for your capitaine’s promotion the next day. Have you forgotten? Your big boss Brézillon asked him over, because they’ve got a few bones to pick and need to make it up.’

Adamsberg found it hard to take it in that now he could just walk into the office if he liked. Without his lumberjack hat, he could just open the door and say hullo, shake people’s hands. Go and buy a loaf of bread. Sit by the banks of the Seine.

‘I’m trying to think how to thank you, Sanscartier, but I can’t find the words.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s all sorted. I’m going to a Toronto posting. Laliberté has promoted me to inspector. And all because you got drunk that night.’

‘But the judge has got away with it,’ said Danglard gloomily.

‘He’ll be found guilty in absentia,’ said Adamsberg. ‘And Vétilleux and those other people will be released. That’s what matters most, after all.’

‘No,’ said Danglard, shaking his head. ‘There’s still the fourteenth victim to think about.’

Adamsberg sat up and leaned forward. Sanscartier smelled of almond soap.

‘I’ve worked out who the fourteenth victim is,’ he said, smiling.

Danglard glanced in the mirror. It was the first time in six weeks that he had seen Adamsberg smile.

‘The last tile is the major element. Until you have that one, the game isn’t over and nothing makes sense. It closes the Hand of Honours, and gives its shape to the whole thing.’

‘OK, that’s logical,’ said Danglard.

‘And that major piece has to be a white dragon. But a dragon that’s white because it’s perfect, honour through excellence. Lightning, white light. It’s himself, Danglard. The Trident will join his father and mother, in a perfect run of white dragons, three tiles, once the whole thing is finished.’

‘He’s going to stab himself with a trident?’ frowned Danglard.

‘No. His natural death will complete the hand. It’s on what you taped, Danglard. “Even in prison, even in the grave, the last one won’t escape me.”’

‘But he always kills everyone with the damn trident,’ Danglard objected.

‘Well, not the last one. The judge is the Trident.’

Adamsberg leaned back in his seat and fell fast asleep. Sanscartier looked round in surprise.

‘Does he often go off to sleep like that?’

‘When he’s bored, or in shock,’ Danglard explained.