Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

VIII

ADAMSBERG HAD GONE HOME WITH HIS ARM IN A SLING, AND PUMPED full of the antibiotics and painkillers that Dr Romain, the staff doctor, had made him swallow. The cut had needed six stitches.

His left arm being numb because of the local anaesthetic, he opened his bedroom cupboard clumsily with one hand, and called Danglard to help him pick up a box file from the lower shelf where it was sitting among old pairs of socks. Danglard put the box on a coffee table and the two men sat down facing each other.

‘Can you take out the papers, Danglard? Sorry, I can’t do anything with this arm.’

‘Why in heaven’s name did you break the bottle?’

‘Are you defending that scumbag?’

‘I agree, Favre’s full of shit. But when you smashed the bottle, you drove him to violence. He’s that kind of character. And as a rule, you’re not.’

‘Well, maybe when I come across that kind of character, I change my habits.’

‘Why didn’t you simply suspend him, like you did last time?’

Adamsberg made a gesture of impotence.

‘Pressure?’ suggested Danglard cautiously. ‘Neptune?’

‘Could be.’

Meanwhile Danglard had pulled eight files out of the box, all labelled with a title: ‘Trident no. 1’, ‘Trident no. 2’, and so on up to 8.

‘And talking of the bottle in your briefcase, things are going too far on that front.’

‘And that’s none of your business,’ said Danglard using the commissaire’s own words.

Adamsberg nodded agreement.

‘Anyway,’ Danglard went on, ‘I’ve made a new resolution.’

Touching his pompom, but deeming it best not to mention that, he announced, ‘If I get back from Quebec alive, I’ll only drink one glass at a time.’

‘Of course you’ll get back, because I’ll be holding the string. So you can start on the new regime right now.’

Danglard nodded vaguely. In the commotion of the last few hours, he had forgotten that Adamsberg would be keeping the plane in the air. But just now, Danglard had more confidence in his pompom than in his superior officer. He wondered fleetingly if a sawn-off pompom was quite as powerful as the real thing, a bit like asking whether a eunuch was still potent.

‘I’m going to tell you a story, Danglard. I warn you, it’s a long one. It lasted fourteen years. It began when I was ten, it exploded when I was eighteen, and went on simmering until I was thirty-two. Don’t forget, by the way, that people sometimes fall asleep when I’m talking to them.’

‘No chance of that today,’ said Danglard. ‘But is there a chance of a little drink? I’m feeling a bit shaken after all that.’

‘There’s some gin, behind the olive oil, in the top cupboard in the kitchen.’

Danglard came back looking happier, with a glass and the heavy earthenware bottle. He helped himself, then went to put the bottle back.

‘See,’ he said. ‘I’m starting. Just one glass at a time.’

‘That stuff’s 44 per cent proof.’

‘It’s the thought that counts.’

‘Oh well, that’s different then.’

‘Yes, it’s different. And is that any of your business?’

‘All right, I’m poking my nose in, like you did. Even when they’re over, accidents leave their traces.’

‘Very true,’ said Danglard.

Adamsberg let his deputy take a few sips.

‘In my village in the Pyrenees,’ he began, ‘there was this old man. When we were kids we called him “the Lord and Master”. Grown-ups called him by his name and title: Judge Fulgence. He lived alone in Le Manoir, a big house surrounded by trees and walls. He didn’t socialise with anyone, he didn’t talk to anyone, he hated us boys and we were scared stiff of him. We would gang up to look out for him at night, when he went into the forest to take his dogs for a walk, two great big alsatians. How can I describe him to you, Danglard? I was just a kid of ten or twelve at the time. He seemed old to us, very tall, white hair brushed back, the best cared-for hands in the village, and the most elegant clothes ever seen there. As if the man were coming back from the opera every night, according to our parish priest – and priests are supposed to be indulgent on principle. Judge Fulgence always wore a white shirt, an expensive tie, a dark suit, and a grey or black woollen cape, short or long, depending on the season.’

‘A dandy then, a poser?’

‘No, Danglard. A very cold fish. When he walked into the village square, old men sitting on benches would greet him with respect, in a murmur that ran round the edge of the square, and every conversation stopped. It was more than respect, it was fascination, almost cowardice. Judge Fulgence left behind him a trail of slaves, never bothering to spare them a glance, like a ship ploughing on and leaving a wake behind it. You would have thought he was still dispensing justice in the olden days, sitting on a stone bench with the poor peasants crawling at his feet. But above all, people were afraid of him. Old and young, everyone was afraid. And nobody knew exactly why. My mother forbade us to go near the Manor, so of course we dared each other to get as close as we could. We tried some new trick every week, to see if we had balls, I suppose. The worst part, was that although he was getting on, Judge Fulgence was a man of striking beauty. Old women would whisper, hoping that heaven wasn’t listening, that he had the beauty of the devil.’

‘Perhaps that’s just the imagination of a twelve-year-old?’

With his good arm, Adamsberg felt among the files and pulled out two black and white photographs. He leaned forward and threw them on to Danglard’s knee.

‘Take a look, mon vieux, and tell me if that’s just the imagination of a child.’

Danglard studied the photographs of the judge, one three-quarters profile, the other full profile. He whistled softly.

‘Impressive, isn’t he? Film star looks?’ said Adamsberg.

‘Yes, very,’ said Danglard, putting the photographs back.

‘But no woman in sight. A loner. That’s how he was. But the way we kids were, we couldn’t leave him alone. Saturday nights, we’d dare each other to do something. Pull stones out of his walls, write graffiti on his gate, or chuck rubbish into his garden, jam jars, dead toads, birds. That’s how children are in the country, Danglard, and that’s the way I was too. In our gang there were boys who would put a lighted cigarette in the mouth of a toad, and after two or three breaths it would explode, like a firework, guts all over the place. I just used to watch. Am I boring you?’

‘No,’ said Danglard, swallowing a tiny sip of gin, trying to make it last with a mournful look, as if he had no money for more.

Adamsberg wasn’t concerned on that score, since he had observed Danglard fill the glass to the brim in the first place.

‘No, no,’ said Danglard. ‘Go on.’

‘Nobody knew anything about his past or his family. We only knew, and this was like a warning bang on the gong, that he had once been a judge. Such a powerful judge that his influence still ran in the land. Jeannot, one of the most daring boys in our gang-’

‘Sorry, can I just ask,’ said Danglard with a concerned look. ‘The toad, did it really explode, or was that just a figure of speech?’

‘It really exploded. It would puff up to the size of a melon and then suddenly, bang, it exploded. Where was I?’

‘You’d got to Jeannot.’

‘Yes, so Jeannot, bit of a daredevil, we all looked up to him, climbed right over the wall of the Manor. And when he got among the trees, he chucked a stone through a window of the Lord and Master’s house. Well, the upshot of that was, Jeannot got hauled in front of a court in Tarbes. When his trial came up, he still had the scars from where the alsatians had almost torn him to pieces. The magistrate gave him six months in an approved school. Just for a stone, thrown by a kid of eleven. That was how powerful Judge Fulgence was. His arm was so long that he could just bend the entire judicial system any way he liked with a wave of his hand.’

‘But how did the toad manage to smoke the cigarette?’

‘Danglard, are you listening to me at all? I’m telling you about a man sent by the devil, and you’re fussing about the blasted toad.’

‘Yes, of course I’m listening, but I was curious about the toad smoking.’

‘Well, it just did. If you put a lighted cigarette in its mouth, the toad would begin to swallow smoke, not like a chap leaning nonchalantly up against a bar, no. Like a toad, puffing and puffing without stopping. Puff, puff, puff, and then bang, it exploded.’

Adamsberg waved his good arm in the air to illustrate the toad’s entrails flying about. Danglard followed the curve with his eyes and shook his head as if he was registering something of great importance. Then he apologised again.

‘Carry on,’ he said, taking another mouthful of gin. ‘So, Judge Fulgence was powerful. Was Fulgence his first name or his surname?’

‘His surname. Honoré Guillaume Fulgence.’

‘It’s an odd name, Fulgence. It comes from the Latin fulgur, thunderbolt, or lightning strike. I suppose it suited him down to the ground.’

‘I think that’s what our old priest used to say. In our house we were non-believers, but I spent a lot of time in the priest’s house. First of all because there was sheep’s cheese and honey to eat there, which is very good to eat combined. And then he had masses of leatherbound books. Most of them were religious, of course, with big illuminated pictures, red and gold. I just loved those pictures. I copied dozens of them. There wasn’t much else to copy in our village.’

‘Was everyone old in your village?’

‘That’s what it seems like when you’re little.’

‘But why, when they gave him a cigarette, did the toad start puffing at it, puff, puff, till it burst?’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, I don’t know, Danglard,’ said Adamsberg raising his arms in the air.

The instinctive movement brought a spasm of pain. He quickly lowered his left arm and put his hand on the dressing.

‘Time for another painkiller,’ said Danglard, looking at his watch. ‘I’ll fetch it.’

Adamsberg nodded, wiping sweat from his forehead. That bastard Favre.

Danglard disappeared into the kitchen with his glass, made a lot of noise with cupboards and taps, and came back with some water and two tablets for Adamsberg. Adamsberg swallowed them, noting out of the corner of his eye that the level of gin in the glass had magically risen.

‘Where were we?’

‘You were talking about the old priest’s illuminated books.’

‘Yes. There were other books there too, poetry, picture books. I would copy and draw things from them and read a bit here and there. I was still doing it at eighteen. One evening I was sitting at his big kitchen table with its greasy surface, reading and scribbling, when it happened. That’s why I still remember, word for word, a bit out of a poem. It’s like a bullet embedded in my skull that I can’t get out. I’d put the book back and gone out for a walk on the mountainside at about ten o’clock. I climbed up to the Conche de Sauzec.’

‘Eh?’

‘Sorry, a little hill overlooking our village. I was sitting there on a rock, repeating to myself these lines I’d just read and that I was sure I would have forgotten by the next day.’

‘And they were?’

‘What god, what harvester of eternal summertime,

Had, as he strolled away, carelessly thrown down

That golden sickle in the field of the stars?’

‘It’s by Victor Hugo.’

‘Ah. And who asks the question?’

‘Ruth, the woman who bares her breast.’

‘Ruth? I always thought I asked the same question myself.’

‘No, it was Ruth. Hugo wasn’t to know you would come along. It’s the end of a long poem, Boaz asleep, it’s famous. But tell me something. Did it work for frogs too? Puff, puff, bang? Or was it just toads?’

Adamsberg threw him a look of despair.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Danglard, gulping another mouthful of gin.

‘I was reciting this to myself anyway, because I liked the sound of it. I had just done my first year as a probationer at the police station at Tarbes. I was back in the village on leave. It was late August, the nights were beginning to get cool, and I started off home. I was washing my face at the sink as quietly as I could – there were nine of us in a couple of rooms – when Raphaël came rushing in like a madman, with blood on his hands.’

‘Raphaël?’

‘My younger brother. He was sixteen.’

Danglard put the glass down, open-mouthed.

‘Your brother? I thought you only had sisters. Five of them.’

‘I did have a brother, Danglard, almost like a twin, we were so close. It must be almost thirty years ago now that I lost him.’

Stunned, Danglard maintained a respectful silence.

‘He was seeing a girl from the village, in the evenings, up by the water-tower. It wasn’t just a teenage fling, they really loved each other. Lise, the girl, wanted to get married as soon as they were of age. But that was a nightmare for my mother, and as for Lise’s family, they were furious. They really didn’t want their little girl to get involved with the likes of our Raphaël. We were the lowest of the low. And her father was the mayor. So you see.’

Adamsberg stopped for a moment before he could carry on.

‘Raphaël grabbed my arm and said: “She’s dead, Jean-Baptiste, she’s dead, she’s been killed.” I put my hand over his mouth, washed the blood off him and pulled him outside. He was crying. I asked him over and over, “What happened, Raphaël, tell me for God’s sake.” He just kept saying: “I don’t know, I don’t know.” Finally he said, “I found myself on my knees, up there by the water-tower, with blood all over me, and this big screwdriver in my hand, and she was dead, Jean-Baptiste, dead, with three stab wounds in her stomach.” I begged him not to shout, or cry, I didn’t want the family to hear. I asked him if the screwdriver belonged to him. “I don’t know, it was just in my hand.” “But what were you doing before that, Raphaël?” “I can’t remember, Jean-Baptiste, I swear to God. But I know I’d gone out and got drunk with my pals.” “Why?” “Because she was pregnant. I was beside myself, but I’d never have touched a hair of her head.” “But then what happened, Raphaël? Between drinking with your pals and the water-tower.” “I went through the wood to meet her as usual. And because I was frightened, or because I was drunk, I was running and I hit my head on the sign.” “What do you mean?” “The sign to Emeriac, it must have been across the path. Next thing, I found myself by the water-tower. Three red wounds, Jean-Baptiste, and I was holding this screwdriver.” “And you can’t remember what happened in between?” “No, not a thing. Maybe the blow on my head made me go out of my mind, or maybe I am out of my mind, or maybe I’m a monster. I can’t remember… I can’t remember hitting her.”

So I asked him what he had done with the screwdriver. He’d left it up there, by her body. I looked at the sky and I thought, we’re in luck, it’s going to rain. Then I told Raphaël to wash himself properly, to get into bed, and if anyone asked him later, to say that we’d been playing cards in our little backyard since quarter-past ten, when he left his friends – have you got that, Raphaël? We were playing écarté, you won five games and I won four.’

‘Providing a false alibi,’ remarked Danglard.

‘Absolutely, and you’re the only person who knows about it. I went running up there and Lise was lying just as he had described, with those stab wounds in her stomach. I found the weapon, sticky with blood up to the hilt, and the handle covered with bloody fingerprints. I pressed it on to my shirt to get its measurements, then I put it under my coat. It was raining a bit by then, enough to muddy the footprints near the body. I went and threw the weapon into a pool in the Torque.’

‘The what?’

‘The Torque, the river that runs nearby and forms big pools, we call them launes. Anyway I threw it in where the water’s quite deep, and chucked a lot of stones on top of it. It wasn’t going to surface for some time.’

‘False alibi, plus concealing material evidence.’

‘Exactly, and I’ve never regretted it. I’ve never, ever, had the slightest remorse. I loved my brother better than myself. Do you think I was going to let him go down?’

‘That’s for you to say.’

‘But something else I can say, is that I’d seen Judge Fulgence out that night. Because while I’d been up on the mountain earlier, on the Conche de Sauzec, I could see down into the valley, and I’d seen him going past. It was him all right. I remembered that later, while I was holding my brother’s hand to get him off to sleep.’

‘Could you really see that well?’

‘Yes, you could see the path through the trees, silhouettes stood out against it.’

‘Did he have the dogs? Was that how you recognised him?’

‘No, it was because he was wearing the summer cape. His outline was like a triangle. Most of the men in the village were stocky and much shorter than him. It was the judge for sure, Danglard, walking along the track to the water-tower.’

‘Raphaël was out that night too, and so were his pals. Who were blind drunk. And you were out yourself.’

‘Never mind. Listen to the rest, and you’ll understand. The next day, I climbed the wall of the Manor and went poking about the outbuildings. And in the barn, with a lot of spades and shovels, I found a three-pronged garden fork. A trident, Danglard.’

Adamsberg raised his right hand with three fingers up.

‘Three prongs, three holes in a row. Look at the photo of Lise’s body,’ he said, taking it out of the file. ‘Look at that straight line of puncture marks. How could my brother, who was in a state of panic and very drunk, possibly have made three stab wounds in a perfectly straight line?’

Danglard examined the picture. It was true that the wounds ran in an absolutely straight line. He understood now why Adamsberg had been using a ruler to measure the Schiltigheim pictures.

‘How did you get hold of this picture? You were just a trainee policeman, a probationer.’

‘I pinched it,’ said Adamsberg calmly. ‘The fork was a very old garden tool, Danglard, it had a handle that was polished and decorated, and the crossbar was rusty. But the prongs were clean and shiny, without a trace of soil or a mark of any kind. Cleaned, polished, smooth as could be. What does that tell you?’

‘Well, it’s suggestive, but it’s not clear proof of anything.’

‘It’s as clear as the water in the pool. As soon as I saw that fork, the evidence exploded in my face.’

‘Like the toad’s guts?’

‘If you must. An outpouring of vice and wickedness, the real insides of the Lord and Master of the Manor. But then there he was at the barn door, watching me, holding his two dogs on the leash, the terrifying dogs who had torn Jeannot to bits. And when Judge Fulgence was watching you, Danglard, even when you were eighteen years old, it put the fear of God into you. He asked me what I thought I was doing, with that contained anger in his voice that was second nature to him. I said I’d come to play a trick on him, to unscrew the bolts in his workbench. I’d done that kind of thing so often over the years that he believed me, and with a royal wave of his hand he pointed to the way out and said, “I’ll count to four, young man, to give you a start.” I ran like crazy towards the garden wall, because I knew that on the count of four he would unleash the dogs. One of them got hold of my clothes, but I was able to pull myself free and get over the wall.’

Adamsberg pulled up his trouser leg and showed a long scar on his calf.

‘Judge Fulgence’s teethmarks are still there.’

‘His dog’s, you mean.’

‘Same thing.’

Adamsberg took a sip of the gin from Danglard’s glass.

‘At the trial, they took no account of my having seen Fulgence in the woods. I was too subjective a witness. But in particular, they didn’t accept the trident as the murder weapon. And yes, the spacing of the prongs was exactly the same as the wounds. That coincidence held them up a bit, and they took expert evidence again, because they were terrified of the judge, who was starting to make threats. But their second examination relieved them. The depth of the perforations didn’t correspond. They were too deep by half a centimetre. What cretins! As if it wasn’t easy enough to have plunged the screwdriver into each of the wounds and then put it in my brother’s hand. They weren’t just fools, they were cowards. The examining magistrate in charge of the case was just a lackey in the hands of Fulgence. They preferred to believe it was the work of a kid of sixteen.’

‘And did the depth of the wounds correspond to the screwdriver?’

‘Yes. But of course I couldn’t suggest that, since the weapon had mysteriously disappeared.’

‘Yes, very mysteriously.’

‘Raphaël had everything stacked against him. She was his girlfriend, he met her there regularly every night, and she’d just announced she was pregnant. According to the magistrate, he was panicked by the news, so he killed her. But you see, Danglard, there was vital evidence missing, if they were going to convict. No weapon, because it had disappeared, and no witness to testify that Raphaël was up there at the time. And he wasn’t there, because he had been playing cards with me, since leaving his friends. I swore that under oath.’

‘And as a policeman, your word counted double?’

‘Yes, I took advantage of that. I lied from start to finish. And now if you want to go and fish the murder weapon out of the pool, go ahead.’

Adamsberg looked at his deputy through half-closed eyes and smiled a little for the first time since he had been speaking.

‘You’d be wasting your time of course,’ he said. ‘I went and pulled it out later and threw it into a dustbin in Nîmes. Because water is not to be relied on, nor is its god.’

‘So he was acquitted then, your brother?’

‘Yes. But the rumours went on, getting worse and worse. Nobody would speak to him in the village, they avoided him, out of fear. And he was haunted by this black hole in his memory, and didn’t know whether he really had done it or not. Do you see, Danglard? He honestly didn’t know whether he had murdered the girl he loved. So he dared not go near anyone. I ruined half a dozen cushions, trying to prove to him that if you stab someone three times, you simply can’t do it in a straight line. I must have given hundreds of demonstrations. But it was no good, he was completely destroyed, he kept his distance from everyone. I was away in Tarbes, I couldn’t hold his hand every day. And that’s how I lost my brother, Danglard.’

Danglard passed him the glass and Adamsberg swallowed two mouthfuls.

‘After that, I had just one idea in my head, to bring the judge to justice. He left our region, because he too was affected by rumours surrounding the case. I wanted to track him down, and get him prosecuted, so as to clear my brother’s name. Because I knew, and I was the only one who knew, that Fulgence was guilty. Guilty of the murder and guilty of destroying Raphaël too. I followed him relentlessly for fourteen years, all over the country, chasing him through press reports and archives.’

Adamsberg put his hand on the files.

‘Eight murders, eight people stabbed, with three wounds in a row. Between the years 1949 and 1983. Lise was killed in 1973. All eight murders had been solved, eight culprits easily caught, virtually weapon in hand. Seven poor sods in jail, as well as my brother, gone to perdition. Fulgence always escaped. The devil always escapes. Read the files, take them back home with you, Danglard. I’m going to the office to see Retancourt. I’ll call round at your place late tonight, OK?’