This Night’s Foul Work

XXXV

LIEUTENANT HÉLÈNE FROISSY, SO SELF-EFFACING, QUIET AND GENTLE THAT she tended to melt into the background, a woman with unremarkable features but a very shapely figure, had three special qualities. The first was that she could be seen eating from morning to night, without putting on any weight; secondly, she painted in watercolours, the only hobby she was known to have. Adamsberg, who filled entire notebooks with sketches during meetings, had taken over a year to notice Froissy’s little paintings. One night the previous spring, he had been looking in the lieutenant‘s cupboard for something to eat. Froissy’s office was considered by the whole squad as a back-up supply of groceries and you were sure to find a great variety of foodstuffs there: fresh and dried fruit, biscuits, dairy products, cereal, pâté, Turkish delight – a resource in cases of unforeseen pangs of hunger. Froissy was well aware of these depredations and laid in stocks accordingly. When foraging about, Adamsberg had stopped to leaf through a sheaf of watercolours and had discovered the darkness of her colours and subjects, the desolate silhouettes and mournful landscapes under lowering skies. Since then, they had occasionally exchanged paintings and drawings without speaking, slipped into a report here and there. Froissy’s third characteristic, however, was that she had a degree in electronics and had worked for eight years in the transmission-reception services, otherwise known as telephone tapping, and had accomplished marvels of speed and efficiency in this post.

She joined Adamsberg at seven in the morning, as soon as the rather scruffy little bar opposite the Brasserie des Philosophes opened its doors. The Brasserie, being opulent and catering for a largely bourgeois clientele, never opened before nine, whereas the workmen’s cafe raised the blinds at dawn. The croissants had just appeared in a wire basket on the counter and Froissy took advantage of this to order her second breakfast.

‘It’s illegal, of course,’ she said.

‘Naturally.’

Froissy pulled a face as she dipped her croissant in her cup of tea.

‘I need to know a bit more,’ she said.

‘Froissy, I can’t take the risk that a rogue cop has infiltrated the squad.’

‘What would he be up to?’

‘That’s what I don’t know. If I’m wrong, we’ll forget it – you know nothing about it.’

‘But I’ll still have placed bugs without knowing why. Veyrenc lives alone. What do you expect to get by listening in?’

‘His telephone conversations.’

‘So what? If he’s plotting anything, he’s hardly going to talk about it on the phone.’

‘If he is plotting anything, it would be extremely serious.’

‘All the more reason for him to keep quiet.’

‘All the less. You’re forgetting the golden rule of secrecy.’

‘And that is?’ asked Hélène, sweeping up her crumbs into one hand with the other, so as to leave the table looking clean.

‘Someone who has a secret, a secret so important that this person has sworn by all that’s holy not to tell a single soul, always does in fact tell one other person.’

‘Where does that rule come from?’ asked Froissy, rubbing her hands together.

‘From human nature. Nobody, with very rare exceptions, can keep a secret entirely to themselves. The bigger the secret, the more reliable the rule. That’s how secrets leak out, Froissy, being passed from one person who’s sworn not to tell to another person who swears not to tell, and so on. If Veyrenc has a secret, at least one other person must be in on it. And he’ll talk to that person, which is what I want to hear.’

That and something else, thought Adamsberg, feeling uncomfortable at misleading an honest person like Hélène Froissy. His resolve of the previous evening had not diminished, and he had only to think of Veyrenc laying hands on Camille – or, worse still, their inevitable coupling – for his entire being to be transformed into a war machine. In his dealings with Froissy, though, he simply felt a bit shabby, and he could deal with that.

‘Veyrenc’s secret,’ Froissy repeated, dropping her crumbs neatly into her empty cup. ‘Does it have anything to do with his poems?’

‘No, not at all’

‘With his stripy hair?’

‘Yes,’ admitted Adamsberg, realising that Froissy would not cross over the bounds of legality unless he gave her a bit of help.

‘He was attacked?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘And he’s looking for revenge?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Deadly revenge?’

‘That I can’t say.’

‘I see,’ said the lieutenant, continuing to smooth the table with her hand, and looking vaguely puzzled to find nothing left there. ‘So it amounts to protecting him from himself in the end?’

‘You’ve got it,’ said Adamsberg, delighted that Froissy had managed unaided to find that the end might justify the means. ‘Afterwards, we’ll dismantle the listening equipment and everyone will be OK.’

‘All right, then,’ said Froissy, pulling out her notebook and pen. ‘Let’s go. Targets? Objectives?’

In an instant, the self-effacing and morally anxious woman had disappeared, transformed into the formidable technician that she could be.

‘It would be enough for me if you bug his mobile. Here’s the number.’

While he was feeling in his pocket for Veyrenc’s number, Adamsberg found the little bottle Camille had given him. Contrary to his promise, he had failed to remember to give Tom his nose drops.

‘Bug all his calls and have them connected through to my home number.’

‘I’ll have to make them transit through the squad headquarters, then be transferred to you.’

‘Where will the transmitter be at headquarters?’

‘In my cupboard.’

‘But everyone goes looking in there for food, Froissy.’

‘I’m talking about the other food cupboard, to the left of the window. I keep it locked.’

‘So the first one is a decoy, is it? What do you keep in the other one?’

‘Turkish delight, direct from Lebanon. I’ll give you a spare key.’

‘Fine. Here are the keys to my house. Install the speaker in the bedroom upstairs, away from the window.’

‘Obviously.’

‘I don’t just need sound, I need a screen too, to follow where he goes.’

‘Long distances?’

‘Could be.’

To see whether Veyrenc would take Camille away somewhere. A weekend in the country, a fairytale inn in the woods, the baby playing happily in the grass at their feet. Oh no, no fucking way! The bastard was not going to take Tom away from him.

‘Is it important to follow his movements?’

‘Essential.’

‘Well, in that case, we’ll have to do more than bug the mobile. We’ll put a GPS under his car. And do you want a mike in the car too?’

‘While we’re at it. How long do you need?’

‘I’ll have it done by five this evening.’