Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

‘I was just giving her back a concert programme. You can believe me or not, please yourself.’

‘No need to take offence. Only kidding.’

By the end of the long day, punctuated by the loud voice of the superintendent, and when all the samples had been taken from the public-spirited Jules and Linda Saint-Croix, Adamsberg got back into his official car.

‘What are you doing tonight?’ asked Laliberte, putting his head through the window.

‘I’m going to look at the river again, go for a walk. Then go downtown for something to eat.’

‘You’re real antsy, Jean-Baptiste, you gotta be moving all the time.’

‘I told you, I like walking.’

‘You like checking out the talent, that’s what. Me, I never go downtown looking for a woman. I’m too recognisable. When I want some fun, I take off for Ottawa. Go on, man, best of luck!’ he added, slapping the door with his hand. ‘Ciao till tomorrow.’

‘Tears, urine, snot, dirt and semen,’ recited Adamsberg.

‘Semen, I wish,’ said Laliberte frowning, his professional concerns returning. ‘If Jules Saint-Croix can make a bit of an effort tonight. He said yes at the start, but I get the feeling he’s gone off the idea. Well, we can’t force people, for God’s sake.’

Adamsberg left Laliberte to his test tube worries and set off for the river.

After listening for a long while to the sound of the Ottawa, he took the portage trail to make his way downtown on foot. If he had read the map right, the path ought to come out by the big bridge across the Chaudiere Falls. From there, it was only a quarter of an hour to the centre. The rocky path was separated from a cycle track by a strip of forest which plunged him into complete darkness. He had borrowed a flashlight from Retancourt, the only member of the mission likely to have thought of bringing one. He made more or less good progress, managing to avoid a small pool the river made at one point and dodging low branches. He no longer felt the cold when he came out near the bridge, a huge metal structure whose crossbars made him think of a triple Eiffel Tower fallen across the Ottawa river.

The Breton pancake house downtown had made an effort to recall the owner’s ancestors’ native heath, with fishing nets, buoys and dried fish. And, indeed, a trident. Adamsberg froze when he saw the implement with its three points staring him in the face from the wall. A sea-trident, a fishing spear for Neptune, with its three fine blades ending in fishhooks. Very different in fact from his personal trident, which was a farmworker’s tool, solid and heavy, an earth-trident so to speak. As one might talk of an earthworm or even an earth-toad. But all that was a long way off, murderous tridents, exploding toads, left behind in the mists across the Atlantic.

The waiter brought him an outsize pancake, while chatting about life in general.

Yes, far across the Atlantic: tridents, toads, judges, cathedrals and the locked chamber of Bluebeard’s castle.

Left behind, but waiting for his return. All those faces, all those wounds, all those fears, attached to his footsteps by the untiring thread of memory. As for Camille, she had reappeared to him here on the spot, right in the middle of a town lost in the huge wastes of Canada. The idea of the five concerts about to be given, two hundred kilometres from the RCMP post, worried him, as if he would be able to hear the viola from his balcony. He prayed that Danglard would not get to hear of this. The capitaine would be quite capable of rushing off full tilt to Montreal and then giving him dirty looks all the next day.

He chose to have a coffee and a glass of wine instead of dessert, and without looking up from the menu, he became aware that someone had sat down at his table uninvited. It was the young woman from the Champlain stone, and she called the waiter back to order another coffee.

‘Good day?’ she enquired, smiling.

She lit a cigarette and stared at him straight in the eyes.

‘Oh shit,’ thought Adamsberg and then wondered why. Any other time, he might have jumped at a chance like this. But he felt no desire to take this girl to bed, either because the torments of the past week were still affecting him, or perhaps because he was trying to disprove the intuition of the superintendent.

‘I’m bothering you, Jean Baptiste,’ she stated. ‘You look tired. The pigs have given you a hard time.’

‘That’s it,’ he replied, and realised he had forgotten her name.

‘Your jacket’s soaked,’ she said feeling it. ‘Does your car let in the rain? Or did you come on a bike?’

Did she want to know everything about him?

‘I walked.’

‘You walked? Nobody does that here. Hadn’t you noticed?’

‘Yes. But I came along the portage trail.’

‘The whole way? How long did it take you?’

‘Just over an hour.’

‘Well, you’ve got some nerve, as my chum would say.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because that path at night, it’s a homosexual cruising place.’

‘So what? What harm would they do me?’

‘Well, rapists too. I don’t know, it’s what people say. But when Noella goes there at night, she doesn’t go farther than the Champlain stone. That’s far enough to look at the river.’ Noella yawned. ‘I’ve been serving dumb French people all day, I’m worn out. I work at the Caribou, did I say? I don’t like the French, when they all start shouting in a group, I prefer the Quebecois, they’re nicer. Except for my boyfriend. I told you about him, didn’t I? He chucked me out, the bastard.’

The young woman was launched once more on her story, and Adamsberg couldn’t think how to get rid of her.

‘See, here’s his photo. Good-looker, wouldn’t you say? Though you’re not bad yourself, of your type. You’re unusual-looking, and you’re not so young. But you’ve got a nice nose and eyes. And a nice smile,’ she said, running a finger across his eyelids and lips. ‘And when you talk, your voice is lovely, did you know that?’

‘Hey, Noella,’ the waiter interrupted, putting the bills on the table. ‘You still working up at the Caribou?’

‘Yeah, gotta save up for the airfare, Michel.’

‘Still feeling sore about that boyfriend?’

‘Maybe, evenings. Some people get the early morning blues, me it’s the evening.’

‘Well, forget him. The cops have run him in.’

‘You’re kidding!’ said Noella, sitting up straight.

‘I kid you not. He was stealing cars and selling them with new plates, that kind of thing.’

‘No, I don’t believe it,’ said Noella. ‘He’s in computers now.’

‘Wise up, sweetie. Your pal’s a crook. You better believe it, Noella, it was in the papers.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Black and white in the papers. Son of a bitch went too far one time, he’d had a skinful, the cops caught up with him, and he’s in big trouble now. Face it, Noella, he was just no good. You need to put that in your pipe and smoke it. I wanted to tell you, so you’d stop fretting over him. Excuse me, folks, I gotta move on to the other tables.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Noella, wiping the sugar from her cup with a finger. ‘Do you mind if I have a drink with you? That’s thrown me a bit.’

‘OK, ten minutes, then I’m going back.’

‘I get it,’ said Noella as she ordered a drink. ‘You’re spoken for. But gee, think of that. My boyfriend.’

‘What did he mean, about smoking it in your pipe?’ asked Adamsberg. ‘Did he just mean forget it?’

‘No, it means “Stop and have a good think about it”. See, my story’s even dumber than you thought.’ Finishing her glass in a single gulp, Noella went on, ‘I need a bit of distraction, after that. I’ll drive you back to your place.’

Surprised, Adamsberg hesitated to respond.

‘I’m in a car, you’re on foot,’ explained Noella impatiently. ‘You’re surely not going back via the footpath?’

‘I was planning on it.’

‘It’s pouring with rain. Are you scared of me, or what? Does little Noella frighten a big forty-year-old. A cop, what’s more?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Adamsberg, smiling.

‘Well then. Where are you staying?’