Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

LV

RAPHAEL ADAMSBERG FOUND THE MESSAGE ON THE FRIDAY MORNING. His brother had given it the name ‘Land!’ which must refer, Raphaël thought, to the cry of sailors when they first see the faint outline of a landmass on the horizon. He had to read the email several times before he dared believe he had understood the meaning of this confusing mixture of dragons and winds, written down in great haste and in a state of exhaustion: the judge’s ear, sand, matricide, Fulgence’s real age, his father’s mutilated hand, the village of Collery, the trident, Mah Jong, the Hand of Honours. Jean-Baptiste had typed so fast that he had missed out letters and even entire words. Raphaël could sense the trembling of his hands, a sensation that came directly from brother to brother, from shore to shore, carried through the waves and ending up in his Detroit bolt-hole, ripping devastatingly through the shadowy network in which he had been living his furtive life. He had not killed Lise. He stayed lying back in his chair, letting his body float along the shore, unable to guess what strange leaps Jean-Baptiste had made in order to exhume the judge’s murderous itinerary. As children once, they had wandered so far into the mountains that they were unable to find the way back to the village or even a path. Jean-Baptiste had climbed on Raphaël’s shoulders. ‘Don’t cry,’ he had said. ‘We’ll try and find the way people went in the olden days.’ Every five hundred metres, Jean-Baptiste would climb up on his back. ‘This way,’ he would say as he jumped down.

So that’s what Jean-Baptiste must have done. Climbed up and seen where the Trident had passed by, following his blood-stained trail. Like a dog, like a god, thought Raphaël. For the second time, Jean-Baptiste was bringing him home to the village.