Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

‘It just bothers me. And the next day, no bruises, no pain?’

‘My forehead was hurting, I had a headache, and I felt sick, I told you. What’s bothering you about the legs?’

‘Let’s just say it’s a missing link in my logic. Forget it for now.’

‘Capitaine, can you give me your pass-key?’

Danglard hesitated, then opened his bag and took it out, slipping it into Adamsberg’s pocket.

‘Don’t go taking risks. And you’d better have this,’ he said passing him some banknotes. ‘You can’t go near a cash machine.’

‘Thanks, Danglard.’

‘Do you mind giving me back my kid before you go?’

‘Sorry,’ said Adamsberg passing the child across.

Neither man said ‘au revoir’. An indecent expression, if you don’t know whether you will ever meet again. An ordinary everyday expression, Adamsberg thought, as he went off into the night, but which he would not now be able to use.

XLI

CLEMENTINE HAD TAKEN IN THE EXHAUSTED COMMISSAIRE WITHOUT showing the least surprise. She had settled him in front of the fire and forced him to eat up some pasta and ham.

‘This time, Clementine, I haven’t just come for supper,’ Adamsberg said. ‘I need a safe house. I’ve got every flic in France after me.’

‘It happens,’ said Clementine calmly, passing him a pot of yoghurt with a spoon planted in it. ‘The police don’t always think the same way we do, it’s their job. Is that why your face is all made up?’

‘Yes, I had to escape from Canada.’

‘That’s a smart suit you’re wearing.’

‘And I’m a flic too,’ said Adamsberg, going on with his idea. ‘So I’m chasing myself. I’ve been so stupid, you can’t imagine, Clementine.’

‘How was that?’

‘By doing something very, very stupid. In Quebec, I got roaring drunk, met a girl and killed her with a trident.’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Clementine. ‘We’ll pull out the sofa and put it near the fire with two nice quilts, you’ll sleep like a prince. I’ve already got Josette sleeping in the little office, so that’s all I can offer you.’

‘Perfect, Clementine. Your friend Josette – can we can count on her keeping her mouth shut?’

‘Josette’s seen better days. When she was young, she was a real lady, rich, you can’t imagine. Not like now. She won’t talk about you, any more than you will about her. And that’s enough of your nonsense about tridents, m’dear, it sounds to me like your monster’s been at it again.’

‘I just don’t know, Clementine. It’s between him and me now.’

‘That’s good, a real fight,’ said Clementine approvingly, as she fetched the quilts. ‘That’ll buck you up.’

‘I hadn’t looked at it that way.’

‘Of course it will, or else you’d get bored. You can’t spend all day sitting here eating pasta. But do you perhaps have some idea whether it was him or you?’

‘Trouble is,’ said Adamsberg as he helped pull the sofa over, ‘I’d drunk so much that I can’t remember a thing about it.’

‘Something like that happened to me when I was expecting my daughter. I tripped on the pavement and afterwards I couldn’t remember anything at all.’

‘Were your legs too wobbly to carry you?’

‘Oh no. Apparently I went running all over the place afterwards like a rabbit. What was I running after? Goodness knows.’

‘Goodness knows,’ repeated Adamsberg.

‘Well, what’s it matter, m’dear? We never know what we’re running after in this life. So if you run a bit more or a bit less, makes no difference.’

‘Are you sure it’s all right for me to stay, Clementine? I won’t be in your way?’

‘Ah no, m’dear, not at all, I’m going to fatten you up. You’ll need your strength to run.’

Adamsberg opened his bag and gave her the bottle of maple syrup.

‘I brought it from Quebec for you. You can eat it with yoghurt or bread or pancakes. It would go well with your cookies too.’

‘Now, that’s really kind of you. With all your troubles, that touches my old heart. It’s pretty, that bottle. They get it from trees, I do hear.’

‘Yes. Actually the bottle is the most difficult thing to make. For the syrup, they just cut the tree trunks and out it comes.’

‘Now that’s practical, if you like. If only pork chops grew on trees.’

‘Yes. Or truth.’

‘Oh truth, you won’t find that so easily. Truth now, it hides away like mushrooms, and no one knows why.’

‘How do you get at it then, Clementine?’

‘It’s the same as mushrooms. You have to lift up the leaves, one by one, in dark places. It can take a long time.’

For the first time in his life, Adamsberg slept until midday. Clementine had re-lit the fire and was tiptoeing around to do her cooking.

‘I need to make an important visit, Clementine,’ said Adamsberg as he drank his coffee. ‘Can you help me get the make-up right? I can shave my head, but I don’t know how to put this foundation stuff on my hands.’

The shower had left his complexion streaky, as his own dark skin showed through.

‘Not my department, dear,’ said Clementine. ‘You’d do better to ask Josette. She’s got lots of make-up. She takes an hour in the morning doing her face.’

Josette, with somewhat trembling hands, set about applying the light-coloured foundation to the commissaire’s hands and then touched up his face and neck. She helped him replace the cushion round his waist, which made him look portly.

‘What do you do all day on your computer, Josette?’ asked Adamsberg as the old woman carefully arranged his bleached hair.

‘Oh, I transfer stuff, I balance it up, I share it out.’

Adamsberg did not try to explore this enigmatic answer. Any other time, Josette’s activities might have interested him, but not in extreme circumstances. He was chatting with her out of politeness, and because he had taken in what Retancourt said about him. Josette’s quavery voice was delicately modulated, and Adamsberg recognised the remnants of her upper-class intonations.

‘Have you been in computers a long time?’

‘I started when I was sixty-five.’

‘Not so easy to get the hang of it then, I suppose?’

‘Oh, I manage,’ said the old woman, in her fragile voice.

XLII

DIVISIONNAIRE BREZILLON HAD SUMPTUOUS QUARTERS ON THE AVENUE de Breteuil, and was never home before six or seven o’clock. Furthermore, it was known in the Chat Room that his wife had gone to spend autumn in the mists and mellow fruitfulness of England. If there was one place in France where the flics would not go looking for a fugitive, it was the avenue de Breteuil.

Using his pass-key, Adamsberg entered the apartment quietly at five-thirty that afternoon. He sat down in an