An Uncertain Place

XIV

SOMEONE WAS KNOCKING ON THE CAR WINDOW. A MAN IN A white coat was shouting and making signs to him from outside. Sleepily, Adamsberg propped himself up on his elbow and felt a stiffness in his knees.

‘You got a problem?’ the man was saying. He looked on edge. ‘This your car?’

In daylight, as Adamsberg realised at a glance, the car did indeed look as if it had a big problem. Himself for a start, his hands still speckled with dried blood, his clothes mud-spattered and rumpled. And then there was the dog, with its bedraggled fur and muddy muzzle. The front passenger seat was stained, Émile’s clothes were in a blood-drenched bundle, and scattered all around were tins, biscuit packets, an empty ashtray, a knife, and on the car floor the crushed wine carton and his service revolver. It looked like a pigsty belonging to a malefactor on the run. A second paramedic joined the first: he was very tall, very dark and very aggressive.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘we had to do something. My colleague’s calling the police.’

Adamsberg put out his hand towards the car door to lower the window, glancing at his watches. Good grief, almost 9 a.m., and nothing had wakened him, not even the call from Mordent.

‘You stay in the car,’ said the larger man, leaning on the door. Adamsberg pulled out his badge and pressed it to the window, waiting for the two paramedics to hesitate. Then he lowered the window and handed it to them.

‘I am the police,’ he said. ‘Commissaire Adamsberg. I brought a man in last night, with bullet wounds – about one fifteen in the morning, it was. Name of Émile Feuillant – you can check it out.’

The shorter man punched in a three-digit number and moved away to make the call.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ve had confirmation. You can get out.’

Adamsberg flexed his knees and shoulders, standing in the car park, and quickly brushed his jacket.

‘Seems like it was quite a night,’ said the tall one, suddenly curious. ‘You look a bit of a mess. We weren’t to know.’

‘My apologies, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.’

‘There are showers inside, and you can get something to eat if you want. But that’s it,’ he said, eyeing Adamsberg’s clothes, and perhaps his general condition, ‘we can’t help with anything else.’

‘Thanks, I’ll take the offer.’

‘But the dog has to stay outside.’

‘I can’t take him inside to clean him up?’

‘Afraid not.’

‘OK. I’ll just park the car in the shade and I’ll follow you.’

By contrast with the air outside, the car smelt to high heaven. Adamsberg refilled the ashtray with water, got out some biscuits and explained to Cupid that he would be back soon. He took his gun and holster with him. The car was one of Justin’s favourites, and he was very fussy, so it would have to be cleaned to within an inch of its life before he put it back in the car pool.

‘It’s not your fault, but you really stink,’ he said to the dog. ‘But then everything in here stinks, including me. So don’t fret.’

In the shower, it occurred to Adamsberg that it would be best not to clean Cupid. He smelt of dog, but he also smelt of the farmyard and therefore of manure. Perhaps he had some on his paws or his fur. He put his dirty clothes back on, having brushed them as best he could, and made his way to the paramedics’ room. There was some coffee in a Thermos, bread and jam.

‘We checked how he’s doing,’ said the tall man, André, according to his name badge. ‘He must be pretty tough, because he’d lost a lot of blood. He’s got a perforated stomach, and a tear in the iliac psoas muscle, but the bullet just grazed the bone without breaking it. He’s doing pretty well now, apparently out of danger. Did someone try to kill him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah,’ said the paramedic, with a kind of satisfaction.

‘How soon can he be moved? I’ll need to transfer him.’

‘Our hospital’s not good enough, is that it?’

‘On the contrary,’ said Adamsberg, drinking up his coffee. ‘But whoever wanted to kill him may come looking for him.’

‘Got you,’ said André.

‘And he’s to have no visitors. No flowers, no presents. Nothing must get into his room.’

‘Got you, I’ll see to it. Abdominal surgery’s my set of wards. It’ll probably be a day or two before the doctor will let him be moved. Ask for Professor Lavoisier.’

‘Lavoisier like Lavoisier the scientist?’

‘You know him?’

‘If it’s the same one who was at Dourdan three months ago, yes, he got one of my lieutenants out of a coma.’

‘Ah, well, he’s just been appointed head of surgery here. You can’t see him today, he did four operations last night, so he’s sleeping.’

‘Tell him my name – or better still mention Violette Retancourt – can you remember that? And ask him to keep an eye on Émile, and to find somewhere to hide him.’

‘Got you,’ said André. ‘We’ll guard this Émile for you. But if you ask me he looks like a real troublemaker.’

‘You’re right, he is,’ said Adamsberg with a farewell handshake.

In the car park, he switched on his mobile. Battery dead. He went back inside, found a payphone and called the squad. Brigadier Gardon was on the desk. None too bright, but very keen, wearing his heart on his sleeve, Gardon was not ideally suited to police work.

‘Is Mordent about? Put him on, Gardon.’

‘If I may, commissaire, treat him gently. His daughter banged her head against her cell wall last night until she drew blood. It’s not too serious, but the commandant is like a zombie this morning.’

‘What time was that?’

‘About 4 a.m., I think. Noël told me. I’ll put Mordent on.’

‘Mordent, Adamsberg here. You didn’t call me back.’

‘No, really sorry, sir,’ came Mordent’s voice, hollow with depression. ‘They didn’t want to know in Avignon, they grumbled, they had too much on, couple of car crashes, guy up on the ramparts with a rifle. No spare men.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mordent, didn’t you insist? Homicide inquiry?’

‘Yes, I did, but they only got back to me at about seven this morning when they’d just been round to his house. He was there then.’

‘And his wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘Never mind, commandant, too bad.’

Adamsberg went back to the car, brooding, opened the windows and sat down heavily in the driving seat.

‘By 7 a.m.,’ he said to the dog, ‘you can bet your boots Vaudel had had plenty of time to get home. So we’ll never know. Big slip-up. Mordent didn’t insist, you can bet on that too. His mind’s somewhere else, it’s wandering off into the clouds, too distressed to bother. He told the Avignon people to do the check, then he washed his hands of it. I should have guessed that would happen, what with Mordent being so out of it. Even Estalère would have done better.’

When he reached headquarters two hours later, carrying the dog under his arm, nobody really greeted him. An air of suppressed excitement was propelling his colleagues in all directions through the offices like irregular robots. There was a smell of early-morning sweat. They were brushing against each other with curt words and seemed to be avoiding the commissaire.

‘Has something happened?’ he asked Gardon, who did not seem to be affected.

As a rule, disturbances reached this brigadier only a few hours after everyone else and in a milder form, like the wind from Brittany blowing itself out before it reached Paris.

‘It’s the newspaper article,’ he said, ‘and the lab results too, I think.’

‘OK, Gardon. The beige car, number 9, can you send it off for cleaning? Ask for special treatment: there’s blood, mud, awful mess.’

‘That’ll be a problem.’

‘No, it’ll be all right. The seats have plastic covers.’

‘I meant the dog. Did you find this dog somewhere?’

‘Yes, and it’s got farmyard muck all over its feet.’

‘There’ll be trouble with the cat. I don’t think we can manage that.’

Adamsberg felt almost envious.

Gardon had this in common with Estalère, that he had absolutely no sense of proportion. He couldn’t put things in the correct order of priority. And yet he, like everyone else, had seen the awful butchery at Garches. But perhaps this was his own form of defence mechanism, and if so he was no doubt right. He was also right to be worried about how the dog would get on with the cat – although the huge apathetic tomcat which lived in the office was not disposed to move about much, and preferred to lie stretched out on the warm cover of one of the photocopiers. Three times a day, certain officers – usually Retancourt, Danglard or Mercadet, who was sympathetic to the cat’s sleeping habits – took it in turns to lift this huge animal, weighing eleven kilos, down to its feeding dish, then waited while he ate. That was why there was a chair alongside the dish, so that they could carry on working without getting impatient and forcing the cat to hurry up.

This arrangement was organised near the room with the drinks dispenser and it often happened that men, women and office pet all foregathered round the water cooler. Having been told about this unorthodox behaviour, Divisionnaire Brézillon had sent an official note requesting the immediate removal of the cat. Before his quarterly inspection – the function of which was simply to get up everyone’s nose, since he could hardly complain about the squad’s excellent results – there was a rapid tidying up operation. They had to sweep out of sight the cushions Mercadet slept on, Voisenet’s ichthyological journals, Danglard’s wine bottles and Greek dictionaries, Noël’s pornographic magazines, Froissy’s food caches, the cat’s litter and dish, Kernorkian’s aromatherapy oils, Maurel’s Walkman, Retancourt’s cigarettes, until the office looked extremely operational and totally unsuited to everyday life.

During such purges, the only problem was the cat, which miaowed terribly if shut in a cupboard. So someone would carry it out to the courtyard at the back and wait in a car until Brézillon departed. Adamsberg had refused to get rid of the two gigantic antlers in his office, saying that they were key evidence in an investigation. With the passage of time – since the squad had now been in these offices for three years – the camouflage operation had become longer and more difficult. Cupid’s presence would certainly not help, but it could be assumed that he was only there temporarily.