Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

You’re very good at looking phlegmatic, commissaire, and it seemed authentic, while at the same time it had a bit of play-acting about it. But I need to know more, if I’m going to work for you.’

‘You’re accompanying me, Retancourt. Your mission is simply that.’

‘I belong to the squad and I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. I think I know what they’re after, but I need your version. You ought to trust me, sir.’

‘But why, lieutenant? You don’t really like me, do you?’

This impromptu accusation did not upset Retancourt.

‘Not much,’ she confirmed. ‘But that really doesn’t matter. You’re my boss and I’m doing my job. Laliberte is trying to trap you; he’s sure you knew that girl.’

‘Not true.’

‘You have to trust me,’ Retancourt repeated coolly. ‘You’re relying entirely on yourself. That’s your usual way, but today it would be a bad mistake. Unless, that is, you have a cast-iron alibi for the night of the 26th after ten- thirty.’

‘That bad?’

‘I really think so.’

‘They suspect me of killing the girl? You’re imagining things, Retancourt.’

‘Just tell me, yes or no, did you know her?’

Adamsberg remained silent.

‘Come on, tell me, commissaire. The bullfighter who doesn’t know his beast is certain to get gored.’

Adamsberg looked at his lieutenant’s round, intelligent and determined face.

‘OK, lieutenant, yes, I did know her.’

‘Shhhit!’

‘She was waiting for me on the portage trail, from the very first day we were there. I won’t tell you why I ended up taking her back to my apartment on the first Sunday, it has nothing to do with the story. But that’s what I did. More’s the pity, because she turned out to be completely nuts. A few days later, she told me she was pregnant, and started to talk about blackmail.’

‘Uh-oh. Not nice,’ said Retancourt helping herself to another roll.

‘She was determined to catch the same flight as us, follow me to Paris and move in, despite anything I could say. She claimed that some old Indian at Sainte-Agathe had told her I was predestined to be her soulmate. She’d sunk her teeth into me.’

‘This kind of thing hasn’t ever happened to me, but I can imagine it’s no fun. So what did you do?’

‘I argued, I said it wasn’t on, I told her it was over. In the end I just ran away. I jumped out of the window, and ran away into the woods like a squirrel.’

Retancourt nodded, her mouth full.

‘And I never saw her again,’ Adamsberg insisted. ‘I took great pains to avoid her until we’d left the country.’

‘Was that why you were looking jumpy at the airport?’

‘She’d said she’d be there. It’s only now that I know why she didn’t make it.’

‘She’d been dead for two days.’

‘If Laliberte had known about this shortlived fling, he’d have let me have it from the start, surely. So Noella didn’t tell anyone, or at least didn’t tell anyone my name. The superintendent can’t be sure. He’s on a fishing expedition.’

‘He must have something else that’s allowing him to grill you: Act Three, I would guess, the night of the 26th.’

Adamsberg stared at Retancourt. The night of the 26th? He hadn’t thought about it, because he was so relieved that the murder hadn’t been committed on the Friday night, after their quarrel.

‘You know what happened that night?’

‘I don’t know anything, except that you came in with a bad bruise in the morning. But since Laliberte was holding this card until last, I presume it must mean something important.’

It was almost time for the RCMP inspectors to pick them up. Adamsberg filled his lieutenant in rapidly about his evening’s drinking and the two and a half hours’ memory loss.

‘Oh shit again,’ said Retancourt. ‘That doesn’t help, but what I don’t know is what he’s got to link a girl he’d never heard of before and a man who’d had too much to drink walking home on the portage trail. He’s got something else up his sleeve that he’s not letting on about. Laliberte operates like a stalker. He takes a certain pleasure in the chase. He may drag it out.’

‘Careful, Retancourt, he doesn’t know anything about my lost two hours. Danglard is the only person besides you who knows.’

‘But he’s sure to have looked into it since. You left L’Ecluse at ten-fifteen and you arrived back at the residence at ten to two. That’s a long time for a man with nothing on his mind.’

‘Don’t worry. Don’t forget, I know who the real murderer is.’

‘Right,’ said Retancourt. ‘Let’s hope that settles it.’

‘There’s just one snag. It’s a detail compared to what this murderer can do, but I’m afraid it won’t go down well.’

‘You’re not sure about it?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. But the man I’m thinking of has been dead for sixteen years.’

XXXIII

FERNAND SANSCARTIER AND GINETTE SAINT-PREUX WERE THE accompanying officers this time. Adamsberg imagined that they might perhaps have volunteered to come to work on Sunday to give him some moral support. But his two former allies both seemed embarrassed and constrained. Only the squirrel, still on duty outside the door, with his girlfriend in tow, greeted him by wrinkling its muzzle. A faithful little buddy.

‘Right, Adamsberg, it’s your turn,’ Laliberte greeted him with a cordial expression. ‘Tell me all about it, what you’ve found out, what you know. OK?’

The approach friendly. Laliberte was using all the old techniques. Alternating between hostility and affability. It destabilises the suspect, first reassuring him, then scaring him again, and he becomes disoriented. Adamsberg stiffened his resolve. The superintendent was not going to make him run off course like a frightened animal, still less with Retancourt sitting behind him. He had an odd feeling that she was propping him up.

‘We’re friends today, are we?’ asked Adamsberg with a smile.

‘Today, I’m listening. Just tell me what’s on your mind.’

‘I warn you, Aurele, it’s a long story.’

‘OK, man, but try not to drag it out too much.’

Adamsberg took his time in describing the judge’s bloody itinerary, from the 1949 murder to the reappearance at Schiltigheim. He omitted no details about the assassin’s technique, the scapegoats he set up, the measurements of the trident, the changing of the blades. Nor did he conceal his own inability to catch the judge, who was protected by the high walls of his power, his network of contacts and his ability to move around the country. The superintendent took notes, but with a degree of impatience.

‘Call me picky, but I see three flaws in the story,’ he said at the end, holding up three fingers.

‘Rigour, rigour and yet more rigour,’ thought Adamsberg to himself.

‘First, you want me to believe that this murderer’s been running round France for fifty years?’

‘Without getting caught, you mean? I told you about his influence and the way he changes the blades. Nobody has ever thought of challenging the judge’s reputation, nor has anyone ever linked these murders together, except me. Nine, counting Schiltigheim, ten counting Noella Corderon.’

‘What I mean is that this guy can’t be a spring chicken.’

‘Well, suppose he started when he was twenty. He’d still only be about seventy.’