Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

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 Noella, 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 Noella’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.’

‘Noella, 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.’

‘Noella…’

‘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 Noella 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, Noella, you don’t believe that kind of thing?’

‘You, and only you,’ said Noella, 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.

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

‘Noella,’ 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, Noella. 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 Noella 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, Noella!’