Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

XLIV

FASCINATED BY JOSETTE’S UNSUSPECTED DEXTERITY AND EXPERTISE, Adamsberg sat alongside her and watched her operate the computer, her tiny wrinkled hands trembling over the keyboard. On the screen, an endless series of numbers and letters flashed up in quick succession, and Josette responded with equally hermetic contributions of her own. To Adamsberg, the computer now seemed no longer an everyday tool, but a sort of gigantic Aladdin’s lamp, from which a genie might emerge at any time and offer him three wishes. But one had to know the secrets of operating it, whereas in the old stories, any ignorant boy could come along with a rag and shine up the lamp. Things were certainly more complicated these days, if you wanted to make a wish.

‘Your man is very protected,’ Josette commented, in her quavery voice, which had however lost its timidity once she was on her own ground. ‘All these extra codes and passwords seem excessive for a country solicitor’s office.’

‘It’s no ordinary solicitor’s office. A ghost’s got him by the balls.’

‘Ah, in that case.’

‘Can you get in, Josette?’

‘There are four levels of protection. It’s going to take some time.’

Like her hands, the old woman’s head was shaky, and Adamsberg wondered whether these effects of age hampered her reading of the screen. Clémentine, who was still intent on fattening up the commissaire, had come in with a plate of cookies and maple syrup. Adamsberg looked at Josette’s clothes: an elegant beige ensemble, combined with an old pair of tennis shoes.

‘Why do you wear those shoes? So as not to make any noise when you tiptoe into secret passages?’

Josette smiled. Maybe. A burglar’s equipment, flexible and practical.

‘She just likes to be comfortable, that’s all,’ said Clémentine.

‘In the old days,’ said Josette, ‘when I was married to my shipbuilder, I wore court shoes. With twin-sets and pearls. Real ones.’

‘Very chic,’ commented Clémentine approvingly.

‘He was rich?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘So rich, he didn’t know what to do with it. But he kept control of it all himself. I used to lift small sums now and then, from his account, to help out my friends. That was how it started. I wasn’t very good at it in those days, and he caught me at it.’

‘And that led to a bust-up?’

‘The bust-up, as you call it, was messy. There was a lot of publicity. After the divorce, I started to explore his bank accounts more systematically, but I said to myself, Josette, if you’re going to be any good at this, you have to learn about finance and think big. And it just grew from there. By the time I was sixty-five, with computers around, I was ready for the big time.’

‘Where did you meet Clémentine?’

‘In the fleamarket, oh, thirty-five years ago. I used to run a little antique shop my husband had set up for me.’

‘He wanted her to have something to occupy her,’ Clémentine said, as she stood over Adamsberg seeing that he was eating up as instructed. ‘Only the best stuff, mind, nothing tatty. We had fun in those days, didn’t we, Josette, m’dear?’

‘Here’s our solicitor,’ said Josette, pointing to the screen.

‘About time too,’ said Clémentine, who had never touched a keyboard in her life.

‘This is the right name, yes? Maître Jérôme Desseveaux and Partners, Boulevard Suchet in Paris.’

‘You’ve got into his files?’ said Adamsberg, fascinated, pulling his chair closer.

‘Yes, it’s as if we were walking round the room. He’s got a very big practice now, seventeen partners and thousands of files. Put your tennis shoes on, commissaire, we’re going hunting. What was the name again?’

‘Fulgence, Honoré Guillaume.’

‘Several files here for that name,’ said Josette after a few moments. ‘But nothing dated later than 1987.’

‘That’s when he died. He must have changed his name.’

‘Do you have to do that if you die?’

‘Depends on what work you have on hand, I guess. Try Maxime Leclerc, who might have bought a property in 1999.’

‘Yes, here he is,’ said Josette. ‘He bought a property called Das Schloss in the Bas-Rhin département. That’s the only file in that name.’

Fifteen minutes later, Josette had provided Adamsberg with a list of all the properties bought by the Trident between 1949 and 1987, the Desseveaux office having taken over the earlier files. So the same vassal had been taking charge of the judge’s affairs not only up to his death, but also in his afterlife, since he had handled the recent purchase of Das Schloss.

Adamsberg was in the kitchen, stirring a bechamel sauce with a wooden spoon, under Clémentine’s orders. That is to say, he had to keep stirring at constant speed, making figures of eight in the pan. Those were her express instructions, to prevent lumps from forming. The location and names of the properties bought by the judge confirmed strikingly what he already knew about Fulgence’s past. They each corresponded to one of the murders with three stab wounds which he had collected during his long inquiry. For ten years, the judge had been on circuit in Loire-Atlantique, in north-west France, living at a house called Le Castelet-les-Ormes. In 1949, he had killed his first victim, about thirty kilometres away, a 28-year-old man, Jean-Pierre Espir. Four years later, in 1953, in the same sector, a young girl, Annie Lefebure, had been murdered in circumstances very like those of Elisabeth Wind. The judge had struck again six years later, in 1959, and this time his victim was a young man, Dominique Ventou. At which point he had prudently decided to sell Le Castelet. And Fulgence had moved to his second circuit, in Indre-et-Loire, also in the west. The lawyer’s files recorded the purchase of a small seventeenth-century chateau, Les Tourelles. In this area, he had killed two men, 47-year-old Julien Soubise and, four years later, an older man, Roger Lentretien. In 1967, he had left the region and moved to Le Manoir, in Adamsberg’s native village in the Pyrenees. He had waited six years before killing Lise Autan. This time, the threat from the vengeful young Adamsberg had obliged him to move on at once, and he had relocated to the Dordogne, living in a large farm called Le Pigeonnier. Adamsberg actually knew this aristocratic property, since he had located it and turned up there, but too late, as in Schiltigheim. The judge had already left before he traced him, following the murder of 35-year-old Daniel Mestre.

Adamsberg had then followed his trail to the Charente, still in the west, after the case of the murder of Jeanne Lessard, aged 56, in 1983. He had been quick off the mark, and had confronted Fulgence in his new address, La Tour-Maufourt. It was the first time that he had seen the man in ten years, and his haughty imperiousness had not changed. The judge had laughed at the accusations of the young policeman, and threatened him with every kind of harassment and the destruction of his career if he went on pestering him. He had another two dogs by then, dobermans, who could be heard barking in their kennel. Adamsberg had been intimidated by the judge, who was no easier to confront now than when he had been a teenager back at the Manoir. He had however listed the eight murders of which he was accusing him, from Jean-Pierre Espir to Jeanne Lessard. Fulgence had pressed the end of his cane into Adamsberg’s chest, and shoved him backwards pronouncing a few final words, calmly and courteously as if he were wishing him farewell.

‘Do not touch me, do not attempt to come near me. I can bring a thunderbolt down on your head whenever I please.’

Then putting down the cane, he had taken out the keys to the kennel, and repeated the exact formula he had used ten years earlier.

‘I’ll give you a start, young man. I will count to four.’

And as in the past, Adamsberg had had to run for it, followed by the frantic barking of the dobermans. In the train, as he recovered, he had done his best to react with disdain to the judge’s high and mighty airs. He was not going to allow himself to be reduced to ashes by the pressure of a cane on his chest from this would-be aristocrat. He had carried on with his enquiries, but the sudden departure of Fulgence from La Tour-Maufourt had taken him by surprise. It was only when the judge’s death was reported, four years later, that Adamsberg had discovered the name of his final retreat, a town house in Richelieu, Indre-et-Loire.

Adamsberg carried on stirring his figures of eight in the bechamel. In a way this activity helped him to keep going, and not to visualise himself in the demoniacal skin of the Trident, attacking Noëlla on the portage trail as Fulgence would have done.

While manipulating his wooden spoon and listening to its comfortable sound, he planned the next sortie into the underground internet he would have to make with Josette. He had had doubts about her expertise, imagining that she was exaggerating her powers: the fantasy life of an old woman in her final years. But no, he really did have access to a bold and practised hacker, in the shape of this former high-society lady. He was simply filled with admiration. He took the pan off the fire, as the sauce reached the desired consistency. At least he had managed not to ruin the bechamel sauce.

He picked up Josette’s Mafia-style mobile to call Danglard.

‘Nothing to report yet,’ came the reply. ‘It’s going to take a long time.’

‘I’ve found a short cut, capitaine.’

‘What do you mean, a way through the ice?’

‘I’ve got some solid information. The same lawyer acted for Fulgence, buying all his properties up to the date of his death. but he’s also handled the house purchases of… er, the disciple.’ Adamsberg was prudent enough to add, ‘Or at any rate the Haguenau Schloss.’

‘Where are you, commissaire?’

‘I’m in a solicitor’s office on the Boulevard Suchet. I can get into it easily. I’m wearing tennis shoes, so as not to make a noise. Deep-pile carpets, modern filing cabinets, ventilator fans. Very chic.’

‘Ah.’

‘But since his death, the properties have all been bought under other names, like Maxime Leclerc. So I might be able to trace them over the last sixteen years, but I’d need to imagine the kind of names Fulgence might choose.’

‘Yes, I suppose that’s right,’ Danglard agreed, doubtfully.

‘But I can’t do that. I don’t know much about etymology and names. Can you give me a list of names that might suggest thunder, lightning, light, or power, like in the case of Maxime Leclerc? Just write down anything you can think of.’

‘No need for a list, commissaire, I can tell you straight off. Do you have a pen?’

‘Go ahead, capitaine,’ said Adamsberg, as usual admiring his deputy’s intellectual powers.

‘There wouldn’t be a lot of possibilities. If you take light as the starting point, from the Latin lux, that would give you surnames like Luce, Lucien, Lucenet, or alternatively Flamme, Flambard. He might go for derivatives of clarus, meaning bright: Clair, Clar, Claret, Clairet. For power, well we already know about Maxime, but there are other versions like Mesme, Mesmin, Maximin, Maximilien. Try Legrand, Mestraud, or Major, because they come from Latin words for superior and excellent. Primat would be a possibility or Primaud, it means “first”. And for forenames, you might try the names of emperors or ancient Romans: Alexandre, Auguste, César, Napoléon even, though that might be a bit too obvious.’

Adamsberg took his list to Josette.

‘What we need to do now is try out some of these combinations on the solicitor’s files, to identify buyers of property in the years between the judge’s death and the date when Maxime Leclerc moved to Alsace. They would have to be big properties, country houses, manors, small chateaux, that kind of thing, in isolated rural areas.’

‘I see,’ said Josette. ‘We’re on the trail of the ghost, are we?’

Adamsberg sat with fists clenching and unclenching as he waited for the old lady to work her keyboard.

‘I’ve got three possibles,’ she reported. ‘There’s a Napoléon Grandin too, but since he bought a little flat in La Courneuve, which is a working-class suburb, I don’t think he’s your man, if I’ve understood you. But here for instance is an Alexandre Clar, who bought a manor in the Vendée in 1988, in the village of Saint-Fulgent, incidentally. Sold it again in 1993. A Lucien Legrand bought a property in the Puy-de-Dôme, at Pionsat, in 1993, and sold it in 1997; and an Auguste Primat bought a very grand house up by the English Channel, a place called Solesmes in 1997. He sold it again in 1999. Then you have your Maxime Leclerc, who bought his chateau in 1999. The dates all tally, commissaire. I’ll run you off a printed version of all that. But first give me some time to wipe out our footsteps on the lawyer’s carpet.’

‘I’ve got him, Danglard,’ said Adamsberg, still breathless from this voyage into the underworld. ‘I’ve got some names you need to check against the registration records: Alexandre Clar, born 1935; Lucien Legrand, born 1939, and Auguste Primat, born 1931. And for the crimes, try a sweep of a radius of between five and sixty kilometres around the communes of Saint-Fulgent in the Vendée, Pionsat in the Puy-de-Dôme, and Solesmes in the Nord. OK?’

‘That’ll speed things up. What dates for the murders?’

‘The first one’s between 1988 and 1993. The second between 1993 and 1997. The third between 1997 and 1999. Don’t forget that the last crimes probably took place not long before the properties were sold again. That would give us spring 1993, winter 1997 and autumn 1999. Try those dates first.’

‘Always an odd number in the year,’ Danglard commented.

‘Yes, he seems to like odd numbers. Like the number three and a trident.’

‘You know, the idea of a disciple might have something in it after all. It’s beginning to take shape.’

The idea of the phantom, you mean, Adamsberg thought, as he hung up. A spectre which was rapidly gaining in consistency as Josette unearthed its haunts. He waited impatiently for Danglard to call back, pacing round the little house with the list in his hand. Clémentine had congratulated him on his bechamel. He’d got something right, at least.

‘I’ve got some bad news,’ announced Danglard. ‘The divisionnaire got in touch with Légalité, I mean Laliberté, he keeps calling him the wrong name, to call him to account. Brézillon tells me that one of the two points in your favour is null and void. Laliberté said he found out about your memory loss through the night janitor. You had told him some yarn about a fight between a gang and the police. But the next day, the janitor said, you’d seemed very surprised when he told you how late it was when you got in. And in any case the story about the fight was untrue, and your hands were covered in blood. That’s how Laliberté decided you must have had a memory blackout for some of the time, because you’d assumed it was earlier, and made up a story for the porter. So there was no anonymous phone call, no traitor, nothing. That whole scenario falls to bits.’

‘And Brézillon’s going to call me in?’ said Adamsberg, stunned.

‘He didn’t say so.’

‘What about the murders. Anything to report?’

‘All I can tell you for now is that your Alexandre Clar never existed, nor did Lucien Legrand or Auguste Primat. They’re all false names. I haven’t had time to do any more, because of this business with the divisionnaire. And we’ve got a homicide, rue du Château. Some political connection. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back on to the disciple. Sorry, commissaire.’

Adamsberg hung up, overcome by a wave of despair. Just because the janitor couldn’t sleep. And Laliberté’s conclusions were perfectly logical.

The thin thread of hope to which he had been clinging had snapped. His confidence had collapsed with it. There was no traitor, no conspiracy. Nobody had told the superintendent about his memory loss. So logically, nobody could have taken it from him. There was no third man, plotting away in the dark against him. He had been alone on the trail, with the trident in easy reach, and Noëlla threatening him with all kinds of things. And he had had that murderous folly in his mind. Like his brother. Or in his brother’s footsteps perhaps.

Clémentine came to sit by him, without speaking, bringing him a glass of port.

‘What is it, m’dear?’

Adamsberg told her in a dead voice, staring at the floor.

‘Now that’s the flics’ way of looking at things,’ she said gently. ‘Your ideas are different.’

‘But it means I was the only one there, Clémentine.’

‘How do you know that, m’dear, since you can’t remember anything? You’ve got this ghost cornered, you and Josette now, haven’t you?’

‘What does that change though, Clémentine? I was on my own.’

‘You’re just tormenting yourself, and that’s the long and short of it,’ said Clémentine, putting the glass in his hand, ‘and it’s no good twisting the knife in the wound, m’dear. You’d do better to go back to our Josette and her computer stuff, and drink up this port for me.’

Josette had been standing by the fire, without saying anything. She seemed about to speak, then hesitated.

‘Come on, Josette, out with it,’ said Clémentine, shifting the cigarette in her mouth. ‘You know you shouldn’t keep it to yourself.’

‘Well, I’m not sure if I should say,’ Josette explained.

‘M’dear, we’re long past the point of being shy here, can’t you see?’

‘Well, what I thought was that if Monsieur Danglard – that’s his name, isn’t it? – if he can’t look for the murders, we could have a try ourselves. The trouble is, it means, er, going into the records of the gendarmerie.’

‘And what would be wrong with that?’

‘Monsieur here is a commissaire.’

‘Josette, how many times do I have to tell you? He’s no policeman any more. And what’s more, m’dear, the police and the gendarmes, they’re two different systems.’

Adamsberg, looking distracted, glanced up at the little old woman.

‘Could you really do that, Josette?’

‘I did get into the FBI archives once, just for fun,’ she admitted shyly.

‘No need to look so shy, Josette. It’s no sin to do good for other folks.’

Adamsberg looked in even greater astonishment at this frail old woman, one-third society lady, one-third shy little creature, and one-third seasoned hacker.

After dinner, which Clémentine had forced Adamsberg to eat, Josette tried the crime files. She had noted on a piece of paper spring 1993, winter 1997 and autumn 1999. From time to time, Adamsberg went over to see how she was getting on. In the evenings, she changed from her tennis shoes into huge velvety grey slippers, which made her feet look like those of a baby elephant.

‘Very well protected, I guess,’ he said.

‘Firewalls everywhere, but you’d expect that. If they had a dossier on me, I wouldn’t like it to be available to the first old lady who comes along.’

Clémentine had gone to bed, and Adamsberg stood by the chimney, twisting his hands and staring into the embers. He did not hear Josette come up behind him in her big slippers. With her hacker’s silent footsteps.

‘Here you are, commissaire,’ she said, handing him a sheet of paper with the modesty of one who has done a good job of work, and does not realise how talented she is, as if she had simply been stirring a bechamel sauce. In March 1993, thirty-three kilometres from Saint-Fulgent, a 40-year-old woman, Ghislaine Matère, had been killed in her house, stabbed three times. She lived alone, out in the country. In February 1997, twenty-four kilometres from Pionsat, a girl had been killed with three blows to the stomach. Sylviane Brasillier had been waiting at a bus stop late on a Sunday evening. In September 1999, 66-year-old Joseph Fevre had been murdered, thirty kilometres from Solesmes. With three stab wounds.

‘And was anyone charged?’ asked Adamsberg, looking at the sheet.

‘Here we are. In the first case, a woman, who lived in a forest hut. She was generally regarded as a witch in the neighbourhood, and was certainly a bit touched, and given to drink. In the second case, they arrested an unemployed man who was always round the bars in Saint-Eloy-les-Mines. For the Fevre murder, they found a gamekeeper, out for the count on a bench in a suburb of Cambrai, dead drunk and with the knife in his pocket.’

‘Memory loss?’

‘All three.’

‘New weapons?’

‘All three.’

‘Brilliant, Josette! We’ve got a trail as clear as daylight now, from Le Castelet-les-Ormes in 1949 to Schiltigheim. Twelve murders. Twelve, Josette! Good God!’

‘Thirteen, with the one in Quebec.’

‘I was alone there though, Josette.’

‘You and your colleague were talking about a disciple. If he did four murders after the judge died, why mightn’t he have been able to kill someone in Quebec?’

‘For a very simple reason, Josette. If he bothered to come all the way to Quebec, it would be in order to trap me, like the other scapegoats. And if a disciple had taken over Fulgence’s mission, it would be out of veneration for the judge and a wish to complete his wishes. But whoever it was, even a fanatical follower of his couldn’t have the same thought processes as Fulgence himself. The judge hated me personally. He wanted me out of the way. But a disciple couldn’t have hated me as much, he wouldn’t know me. Finishing some kind of series is one thing, but killing someone to do a favour for a dead man doesn’t make sense. I don’t buy that. That’s why I tell you, I was alone on that path.’

‘Clémentine says that’s depression talking.’

‘Maybe, but it’s got something real behind it. And if there is a disciple, he can’t be very old. Veneration is a youthful emotion. He might be, say, thirty to forty years old. Men of that generation don’t smoke pipes, or hardly ever. The man who lived in the Schloss smoked a pipe, and his hair was white. Josette, I have to tell you, I don’t believe in a disciple. I’ve reached a dead end.’

Josette twitched her grey slipper up and down on the ancient brick floor.

‘Unless,’ she said after a minute or two, ‘you believe in people coming back from the dead.’

‘Unless, as you say.’

They both fell silent for some time. Josette poked the fire.

‘Are you tired, Josette, my dear?’ asked Adamsberg, surprised to find himself falling into Clémentine’s way of speaking.

‘I’m often up all night.’

‘Take this man, Maxime Leclerc, Auguste Primat, whatever he calls himself. Since the judge’s death, he’s been invisible. Either the disciple wants to prolong the image of Fulgence in some way, or our back-from-the-dead person doesn’t want anyone to see his face.’

‘Because he’s dead.’

‘Yes. In four years, nobody clapped eyes on Maxime Leclerc. Not the estate agents, not the cleaning lady, not the gardener, not the postman. Every contact outside the house was through the cleaning lady. The owner of the house communicated with her by notes, occasionally by phone. So it is possible to avoid being seen, because he managed it successfully. But you see, Josette, I don’t think it’s possible for someone to stay totally invisible. Maybe for two years, but surely not for five, let alone sixteen. It could work, but only if nothing unexpected ever happened, none of the little accidents of everyday life. In sixteen years, something like that has got to have happened. If we go back over the sixteen years, we ought to be able to find something.’

Josette was listening, in conscientious hacker mode, for more precise instructions, her head and her grey slippers making little movements.

‘I’m thinking maybe a doctor, Josette. Let’s suppose our man has some health problem, a fall for instance, or an injury. If something serious happens, you have to make an emergency call. But our man wouldn’t call the local doctor. He’d call one of those telephone services, SOS-Médecins or something, where you get a stranger, a mobile team. You see them once, and then they forget all about you.’

‘I see. But they probably don’t keep much in the way of records, certainly not more than a few years.’

‘Well, that means concentrating on Maxime Leclerc. So if we tried a search for the emergency services of the Bas-Rhin département, we might unearth a doctor’s visit to the Schloss.’

Josette put the poker down, adjusted her earrings and pushed up the sleeves of her cashmere sweater. It was one in the morning when she switched the computer back on. Adamsberg stayed by the fire, piling on a couple more logs, as tense as an expectant father. His new superstition was to keep away from Josette while she operated her magic lamp. If he stood over her, he was afraid of witnessing the expressions of disappointment on her face. He sat motionless, still plunged into the hell of the portage trail. His only hope was the tiny glimmer resulting from these painstaking explorations by the old lady. Which he was carefully gathering, and putting into the process wells of his mind. Hoping that the protective devices would all crumble, as his little hacker went about her work with her magic lantern. He had noted the various terms she used to describe the levels of resistance in ascending order of difficulty: password protected, locked, key-chained, firewalled, barbed wire, concrete. And she had tunnelled under the defences of the FBI. He raised his head as he heard the shuffle of slippers in the narrow corridor.

‘Here you are,’ said Josette. ‘It was locked, but not impregnable.’

‘Tell me quickly, what did you get?’ said Adamsberg, his heart pounding.

‘Maxime Leclerc called the emergency services two years ago, on 17 August at 14.40. He had seven wasp stings, which had made his neck and jaw swell up. Seven, that’s a lot. The doctor arrived very fast. He came back again at eight o’clock, and gave him another anti-histamine injection. I’ve got the name of the doctor, Vincent Courtin. I took the liberty of finding out his address and telephone number.’

Adamsberg put his hands on Josette’s shoulders. He could feel her slender bones.

‘These last few days, my life has been in the hands of magical women. They’ve been tossing me from one to another, and every time they save me from falling into the abyss.’

‘Is that a problem?’ asked Josette, seriously.

He woke his deputy up at two in the morning.

‘Stay where you are, Danglard. I just want to give you a message.’

‘I’m still sleeping. Fire away.’

‘When the judge died, there must have been some press photos. Can you get me four, two in profile, one full-face, and one three-quarters, if they exist, and get the lab to age the face for me.’

‘There are plenty of drawings of skull types in any good dictionary.’

‘Danglard, this is serious, and it’s urgent. Can you get a fifth picture, full face, and have them augment it with swellings, as if the man had been stung by wasps.’

‘If it amuses you,’ said Danglard, resignedly.

‘Can you get them to me as quickly as possible? Don’t bother about the missing murders. I’ve got them, all three, and I’ll send you the names of the new victims. For now, go back to sleep, capitaine.’

‘I already have.’