Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

at the photocopier.’

‘The shit would have hit all right if I hadn’t made the copies. It was Sunday and there was no one else around. I could hear everything you were saying echoing down the corridor. At the least scrape of a chair, I would have been able to get back in position. I know what I’m doing.’

‘I wonder.’

‘They’ve done their homework on you. A lot of it. They know you were sleeping with the girl.’

‘How? From the friends she was staying with?’

‘No. But Noella had a pregnancy test in her handbag, a urine sample.’

‘And was she? Pregnant?’

‘Can’t have been. There aren’t any tests that would give a result in a few days, but men wouldn’t know that.’

‘So why did she have the test in that case? Her old boyfriend?’

‘Just to get you hooked. Find the report, it’s in my bag. Blue file, round about page 10.’

Adamsberg opened Retancourt’s capacious bag which seemed to contain an entire survival kit: pliers, rope, pitons, make-up, knife, flashlight, various plastic bags. Putting on the overhead light, he looked up page 10, analysis of Noella Corderon’s urine, evidence item RRT 3067. ‘Residual traces of semen,’ he read. ‘Comparison with sample STG 6712, taken from the bedding in the apartment of Adamsberg, Jean-Baptiste. DNA comparison positive. Formal identification of sexual partner.’

Underneath the text were two diagrams showing the DNA sequences in 28 strips, one taken from the test tube, one from his own sheets. Exactly the same. Adamsberg put away the file and turned off the light. Although he would not have been over-intimidated by talking about semen to his lieutenant, he was grateful to her for letting him read this stuff in silence.

‘Why didn’t Laliberte say anything about this before?’ he asked quietly.

‘He likes the chase. He’s having fun. He’s watching you get deeper in and he likes that. The more lies you feed him, the bigger his pile of false statements.’

‘Even so,’ sighed Adamsberg. ‘Even if he knows I slept with Noella, he surely can’t link that to her murder. It must be a coincidence.’

‘You don’t believe in coincidence, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Neither does he. Where do you think the girl was found? On your portage trail.’

Adamsberg froze.

‘Oh no, impossible, Retancourt,’ he gasped.

‘Yes. In a little pool near the bank,’ she said gently. ‘Let’s stop and have something to eat.’

‘I couldn’t eat anything,’ said Adamsberg in an exhausted voice.

‘Well, I’m going to, otherwise I can’t carry on, and it would do you good too.’

Retancourt pulled into the next lay-by, and got out some sandwiches and apples. Adamsberg chewed a few mouthfuls mechanically, staring into the distance.

‘Even so,’ he repeated. ‘What does that prove? She was always on that damned path, morning and evening. She said herself it was dangerous. I wasn’t the only person to use it.’

‘In the evening there wasn’t anyone else much. Maybe the odd homosexual who wasn’t interested in Noella Corderon. The cops know a lot. They know that you were on that trail for a long time, from half past ten till half past one.’

‘Well, I didn’t see anything, Retancourt. I was drunk, as I told you. I must have been going up and down. When I fell, I lost my torch. Your torch, I should say.’

Retancourt took out a bottle of wine.

‘Don’t know what this is like,’ she said. ‘But have a little.’

‘I’m never going to drink again.’

‘Just a few mouthfuls. Please.’

Adamsberg obeyed, feeling shattered. Retancourt took back the bottle and corked it carefully.

‘They questioned the barman at L’Ecluse: apparently you said to him: “Any nearer and I’ll spear ye”.’

‘I was talking about my grandmother. She was a tough old bird who said it to the Germans.’

‘Tough old bird or not, they didn’t like the sound of that at all.’

‘Is that all, Retancourt?’

‘No. They also know you can’t remember anything about that night.’

There was a long silence. Adamsberg leaned back in his seat, looking at the roof, in a state of shock.

‘The only person,’ he said, ‘the only person I told that to was Danglard.’

‘Well, anyway, they know.’

‘I was always on the path, every day,’ he went on in the same dull voice. ‘But where’s any motive, or evidence?’

‘Well, there is a motive, isn’t there? The pregnancy test, blackmail.’

‘Unthinkable, Retancourt. A conspiracy, a devilish conspiracy.’

‘By the judge?’

‘Why not?’

‘He’s dead, commissaire.’

‘I don’t care. And they haven’t got any evidence.’

‘Well, yes. The girl was wearing a belt, bought that very day, a leather belt.’

‘So he said. What about it?’

‘They found it lying in leaves near the pool.’

‘And?’

‘I’m sorry, commissaire, but it’s got your fingerprints on it. They compared them with prints from your apartment.’

Adamsberg could no longer move. He was stupefied, powerless under the waves that were crashing one after another over his head.

‘I’ve never seen any belt. I couldn’t have touched it. I hadn’t seen her since the Friday night.’

‘I know,’ murmured Retancourt. ‘But the only suspect you can come up with is an old man who’s dead. Your only alibi is loss of memory. They’ll say you were obsessed with the judge, that your brother had already killed someone, that you were out of control. Placed in the same circumstances as your brother, drunk, in the woods, faced with a girl who said she was pregnant, you did the same as Raphael.’

‘The trap’s closed on me,’ said Adamsberg, shutting his eyes.

‘I’m sorry to give you all this straight, but you needed to know. They’re going to charge you on Tuesday. The warrant’s all ready.’

Retancourt threw her apple core out of the window and drove off again. She didn’t suggest that Adamsberg take the wheel and he did not offer.

‘Retancourt, I did not do this.’

‘It won’t be any good telling Laliberte that. He won’t give a damn, deny it all you like.’

‘Retancourt, Noella was killed with a trident. Where on earth would I have got hold of one? Did it appear on the path, by magic?’

Suddenly, he stopped and slumped back in the seat.

‘What were you going to say, commissaire?’

‘Oh, my God, the logging site.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Half way along. There’s a site with a pick-up, and plenty of tools for guys who come and take out dead trees and plant new ones. I’d seen it, I’d been past it. I could have gone past, seen Noella, seen the weapon and used it. Yes, they could say that. Because there was earth in the wounds. Because it wasn’t the same trident as the judge’s.’

‘Yes, they could say that,’ Retancourt agreed, her voice serious. ‘What you told them about the judge doesn’t help you. On the contrary. They think it’s a crazy story, improbable and obsessive. They’ll use that to charge you. They have the surface motive, you’ve provided them with the deeper motive.’