Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

XXV

ADAMSBERG LINGERED TO HAVE A CHAT WITH THE SQUIRREL ON DUTY outside the RCMP base, in order to put off for a few minutes the day working with Mitch Portelance. Today, the squirrel had recruited a little girlfriend, who was distracting him somewhat from his guard duty. Quite unlike the humourless Portelance, a high-flying scientist who had taken to genetics like a duck to water, and had dedicated his entire professional fervour to molecules of DNA. Unlike Ginette, the inspector failed to realise that Adamsberg could not follow his explanations, let alone find any enthusiasm for them, and he tended to spit out facts with a machine-gun delivery. Adamsberg took some notes now and then, trying to retain elements of this scientific harangue. ‘Deposit of every sample on to a specially-designed membrane sample comb… introduction to the sequencer.’

‘A membrane comb(?)’ Adamsberg was writing. ‘Transfer of the DNA into separator gel with the aid of an electric field. Separator gel(?)’

‘Now look what’s happening!’ said Portelance. ‘We’re witnessing a sort of molecular race, in which the fragments of DNA move through the gel to reach the finishing line.’

‘Er…really?’

‘Which is a detector that picks up the fragments as they emerge from the sequencer, one by one, in increasing order of length.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Adamsberg, drawing in his notebook a huge queen ant, pursued by about a hundred winged males.

‘What’s that you’re drawing?’ asked Portelance, with some irritation in his voice.

‘The fragments racing through the gel. It helps me to get a clearer understanding.’

‘Now, here’s the result,’ said Portelance, pointing to the screen. ‘The profile made up of 28 bands sorted for us by the sequencer. Beautiful, isn’t it?’

‘Very.’

‘This combination,’ Mitch went on, ‘which is for Jules Saint-Croix’s urine, if you remember, gives us his forensic genetic profile, which is unique in the whole world.’

Adamsberg contemplated the transformation of Jules’s urine into 28 bands. So this was Jules: ecce homo.

‘See, if it was your urine,’ Mitch explained, ‘it would look completely different.’

‘But why 28 strips? And not 142?’

‘Where do you get 142 from?’

‘Nowhere, I’m just asking why 28?’

‘It just is 28, that’s what I’m telling you. So if you kill someone, it’s not a good idea to piss on the body.’

Mitch Portelance gave a shout of laughter.

‘Don’t mind me,’ he said. ‘Just my little joke.’

During the afternoon coffee-break, Adamsberg found Voisenet, drinking a regular, and chatting to Ladouceur. Gesturing to him, he took him aside.

‘Voisenet, can you follow all this stuff? The gel, the race, the 28 bands?’

‘Yeah, pretty much.’

‘Well, I can’t. Can you do me a favour and draw up the day’s report for Mordent, this stuff’s way beyond me.’

‘Does Portelance go too fast for you?’

‘Well, maybe I go too slowly for him. Tell me something, Voisenet,’ said Adamsberg taking out his notebook. ‘See this fish, does it mean anything to you?’

Voisenet looked with interest at the sketch of the creature from the bottom of Pink Lake.

‘No, never seen one,’ he said, intrigued. ‘Is the drawing accurate?’

‘To the nearest fin.’

‘No, not one I know at all,’ said the lieutenant again, shaking his head, ‘and I do know a bit about ichthyofauna.’

‘About what?’

‘Fish.’

‘Can you just call them fish, please? I’m already having enough trouble understanding our Canadian colleagues, don’t you start.’

‘Where’s it from?’

‘From a lake that’s cursed, lieutenant, in fact two lakes, one on top of the other, a living lake on top of a dead lake.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Twenty metres deep, including three metres worth of ancient mud, ten thousand years old. Nothing stirs at the bottom. But this ancient fish lives down there, left over from when the sea covered the area. A sort of living fossil that oughtn’t to be there at all, by rights. Makes you wonder how on earth it survived. Or why. Anyway, there it is, and it’s thrashing round in the lake bottom like a devil in holy water.’

‘Wow,’ said Voisenet, who couldn’t take his eyes off the drawing. ‘Are you sure this isn’t some legend?’

‘The notice board looked pretty official. What were you thinking of? The Loch Ness monster?’

‘Oh, Nessie’s not a fish, she’s supposed to be a reptile. Where’s the lake, commissaire?’

Adamsberg, staring into the distance, did not reply.

‘Where is it?’ Voisenet repeated.

Adamsberg looked up. He had been wondering what would happen if Nessie was stuffed into the west door of Strasbourg Cathedral. That would have been a sight for sore eyes. But while it might be out of the ordinary, it wouldn’t have been too dramatic. Since the Loch Ness Monster didn’t breathe out smoke, she would have been unable to blow up the jewel of Gothic architecture.

‘Sorry, Voisenet, I was miles away. Pink Lake, it’s called, not all that far from here. It’s pink and blue, magnificent on the surface. But don’t be deceived by appearances. And if you see the fish, grab hold of it for me.’

‘Oh no,’ Voisenet protested. ‘I like fish, I’m not going to harm it.’

‘Well, I don’t like this one. Come along, I’ll show you the lake on the map.’

Adamsberg took care not to risk meeting Noëlla, when he had finished work that evening. He parked in a street some blocks away, went through his building by the back door in the basement, then avoided the portage trail altogether. He cut across through the forest, went past the logging site, and met the watchman just starting his shift.

‘Hey man,’ said the watchman with a hearty wave. ‘Still walking everywhere?’

‘Yes, how’s yourself?’ said Adamsberg with a smile, but without stopping.

He only lit his torch when he was safely two-thirds along the trail, well past Noëlla’s stone, and rejoined the path.

Where she was waiting for him, twenty metres further along, leaning against a tree.

‘Come on,’ she said, grabbing his hand. ‘Got something to tell you.’

‘Noëlla, I’m supposed to be having dinner with my colleagues tonight, I can’t come.’

‘This won’t take long.’

Adamsberg allowed himself to be dragged to the bicycle-hire shop and sat down prudently a few feet away from the young woman.

‘You’ve fallen in love with me,’ she declared. ‘I knew it the very first time I saw you on the trail.’

‘Noëlla…’

‘Yes, I knew it,’ she interrupted. ‘That it was you, and that you would fall in love with me. He told me. That was why I came and sat on the stone every night, not just to take the air.’

‘What do you mean, “he”?’

‘This old Indian, Shawi. He told me that the other half of Noëlla would appear to me on the stone of the ancient Ottawa Indians.’

‘What old Indian are you talking about?’

‘In Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts. He’s an Algonquin, a descendant of the ancient Ottawa people. He knows. I waited and you came along.’

‘Good God, Noëlla, you don’t believe that kind of thing?’

‘You, and only you,’ said Noëlla, pointing at him. ‘You love me, as much as I love you. And for as long as the river runs, nothing will separate us now. You are my destiny.’

Nuts, completely nuts.

Laliberté had been right. There was something weird about this girl, all alone at dawn on the portage trail.

‘Noëlla,’ he said, standing up and walking around. ‘Look, you’re a beautiful girl, you’re fantastic, you’re cute, I like you a whole lot – but I am not in love with you. I’m married, and I love my wife. Forgive me, but that’s how it is.’

‘You’re lying. You’re not married at all. Shawi told me. And you love me.’

‘No, Noëlla. We only met a few days ago. You were sad, because of your boyfriend, I was lonely, away from home, and that was how it happened. But it’s over, now. I’m really sorry.’

‘It’s not over, it’s just beginning, for good. Here,’ said the young woman pointing to her abdomen.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Here,’ said Noëlla calmly. ‘Our baby.’

‘Now you’re lying,’ said Adamsberg dully. ‘You can’t know that so soon.’

‘Yes, I can. The tests give a reply in three days. And Shawi told me I would bear your child.’

‘That’s complete rubbish, Noëlla!’

‘No, it’s true. And now you can’t leave Noëlla, who loves you and who’s carrying your child.’

Adamsberg turned instinctively to the sash window. He pushed it up and jumped out.

‘See you on Tuesday, at the airport!’ cried Noëlla.

Adamsberg reached the cycle track and ran until he was back near the residence. Breathing rapidly, he got into his car and drove off towards the forest, hurtling too fast along dirt roads. He stopped at an isolated bar, and bought a pizza and a glass of beer. He ate hungrily, sitting on a tree stump at the edge of the forest. Trapped, caught like an idiot by that half-crazy girl, who had flung herself round his neck. So unbalanced that he was sure she really would turn up at the airport on Tuesday and insist on coming to his flat in Paris. He ought to have known, or sensed, when he had first seen her sitting on that stone, behaving in such a strange and direct way, that Noëlla was fantasising. He had indeed tried to avoid her for the first few days. But the damned quintet had thrown him, like a brute and a fool, into Noëlla’s tentacular arms.

The food and the night cold restored his energy. His panic turned into blind fury. For Christ’s sake, no one should have the right to trap a man like that! He’d throw her out of the plane! Or if they got to Paris, he’d throw her in the Seine!

Oh God, he thought as he stood up, the number of people he was ready to massacre was growing daily, with all these blind rages. Favre, the Trident, Danglard, the New Father, and now this girl. As Sanscartier would say, he was losing the plot. And he couldn’t make out what was happening to him. Whether with these rages or with the clouds which, for the first time, he had no taste for shovelling. The recurrent images of the dead judge, the trident, the claw marks of the bears, and the evil lake were beginning to weigh heavily on him and it seemed he was losing control of his own clouds. Yes, it was quite possible that he was losing the plot.

He made his way back to his room with a heavy tread, slipping in the back way, like a thief or a man trapped inside himself.