Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

lieutenant that they profit from his last hours of freedom under the incognito of Jean- Pierre Emile, to go and have lunch in a cafe, like normal people. Retancourt hesitated, then accepted, feeling relieved that their escape had proceeded so incredibly successfully, as well as by seeing the hordes of people in the streets.

‘We’ll pretend everything’s OK,’ said Adamsberg, once he was sitting bolt upright as Jean-Pierre would, in front of his plate. ‘We’ll pretend I’m not him. That I never did anything.’

‘The episode is over,’ said Retancourt sternly which made Henriette Emma’s expression look suddenly different. ‘It’s over, and you didn’t do it. We’re in Paris, on your own territory and you’re a policeman. I can’t go on believing for both of us. We may have got away with close combat, but I can’t do close thinking. You’ll have to get your brain back.’

‘Why do you believe in me so firmly, Retancourt?’

‘We’ve already discussed that.’

‘But why?’ Adamsberg insisted. ‘Since you don’t really like me?’

Retancourt gave an impatient sigh.

‘What does it matter?’

‘It’s important to me. I need to understand. Really.’

‘I don’t know if it’s relevant now. Or later, even.’

‘Because of my trouble in Quebec?’

‘Among other things. I don’t know.’

‘Even so, Retancourt, I need to know.’

Retancourt thought a moment, twisting her empty coffee cup.

‘Look,’ Adamsberg said, ‘we may never see one another again. These are extreme circumstances. Rank doesn’t matter. I will always regret not having understood.’

‘OK, extreme circumstances. What the others in the squad all thought was so marvellous about you got up my nose. The casual way you wandered in and solved cases like a lone ranger, or a Zen archer who went straight to the target. It was certainly impressive, but I could see something else, the way you were so calmly confident of your own internal certainty. You were always right. Yes, you were an independent thinker, but you were royally indifferent to what anyone else might have to contribute.’

She stopped, hesitating.

‘Go on,’ said Adamsberg.

‘I admired your flair of course, everyone did, but not the air of detachment it seemed to give you, the way you disregarded anything your deputies said, since you only half listened to them anyway. I didn’t like your isolation, your high-handed indifference. Perhaps I’m not expressing myself well. The sand dunes are smooth and the desert feels soft, but for someone obliged to cross it, it’s arid. You can cross a desert, but you can’t live there. It isn’t very generous, it won’t support you.’

Adamsberg was listening attentively. Trabelmann’s harsh words came back to him, and the resemblance to what he was hearing formed a great shadow which passed over his brow with the flapping of dark wings. Following his own inclination, leaving other people aside, not bothering to distinguish between them, discarding them as distant interchangeable figures, whose names he couldn’t even remember. And yet he was sure the commandant of gendarmes had been wrong about him.

‘Makes me sound a miserable bastard, doesn’t it,’ he said without looking up.

‘Yes, I suppose so. But perhaps you were really always somewhere else, far away, with Raphael, just in a twosome with him. I thought about it in the plane. When you were in the cafe where you met him, you formed a circle, an exclusive circle.’

She drew a circle on the table with her finger and Adamsberg knotted his thin, newly-white brows.

‘You were with your brother,’ she explained. ‘You didn’t want to abandon him, you were with him, wherever he’d gone. In the desert with him.’

‘In the mud of the Torque,’ said Adamsberg, drawing another circle.

‘If you like.’

‘What else do you see in your analysis of me?’

‘Well, for the same reasons, you ought to listen when I say you didn’t murder anyone. To kill, you need to be emotionally involved with other people, you need to get drawn into their troubles and even be obsessed by what they represent. Killing means interfering with some kind of bond, an excessive reaction, a sort of mingling with someone else. So that the other person doesn’t exist as themselves, but as something that belongs to you, that you can treat as a victim. I don’t think you’re remotely capable of that. A man like you, who wanders through the world without any meaningful contact with other people, doesn’t kill. He’s not close enough to them, he can’t be bothered to sacrifice them to an act of passion. I don’t say you can’t love anyone, but you certainly didn’t love Noella. You’d never have taken the trouble to kill her.’

‘Go on,’ said Adamsberg, resting his cheek on his hand.

‘Watch out, you’re messing up your make-up, I told you not to touch it!’

‘Sorry. Carry on.’

‘Well, that’s all really. Someone who has a meaningless affair is not involved enough to kill.’

‘Retancourt,’ said Adamsberg forcefully.

‘Shh, Henriette,’ his lieutenant corrected him. ‘Be careful, someone might hear you.’

‘Henriette, I hope one day I will deserve the help you’ve given me. But for now, please go on believing in me about that night I can’t remember. Please believe I didn’t kill, channel all your energy into that. Be a pylon, be a mountain of belief. Then I’ll be able to as well.’

‘Well, use your own brain,’ Retancourt insisted. ‘I told you. Your inner confidence. Now is the time to count on it.’

‘I hear what you’re saying,’ said Adamsberg, holding her arm, ‘but your energy will be a lever. Just keep it there for me, for a while.’

‘I’ve no reason to change my mind.’

Adamsberg released her arm with reluctance, as if he were jumping down from a tree, and left.

XL

THE COMMISSAIRE, HAVING CHECKED IN A GLASS DOOR THAT HIS makeup was still intact, stationed himself from six that evening on the homeward route of Adrien Danglard. He spotted from a distance Danglard’s large shambling figure, but the capitaine gave no sign of recognition as he walked past Jean- Pierre Emile Roger Feuillet. Adamsberg caught him by the arm.

‘Don’t say anything, Danglard, just keep walking.’

‘Good God, who are you? What do you want?’ said Danglard trying to pull free.

‘It’s me, Adamsberg, got up like a salesman.’

‘Shit,’ Danglard gasped, staring at the face in front of him and trying to make it fit Adamsberg’s features behind the pale skin, red-rimmed eyes and balding hairline.

‘OK now, Danglard?’

‘I’ve got to talk to you,’ said the capitaine, looking around.

‘Me too. Let’s turn here and go to your place. No funny business.’

‘No, not my place,’ said Danglard in a low, firm voice. ‘Pretend you were asking me the way and leave me. I’ll see you in five minutes, in my son’s school, second street right. Tell the janitor you’ve come to see me, and I’ll be in the games room.’

Danglard pulled away his arm and the commissaire watched as he went down the street and turned a corner.

* * *