Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

suggest thunder, lightning, light, or power, like in the case of Maxime Leclerc? Just write down anything you can think of.’

‘No need for a list, commissaire, I can tell you straight off. Do you have a pen?’

‘Go ahead, capitaine,’ said Adamsberg, as usual admiring his deputy’s intellectual powers.

‘There wouldn’t be a lot of possibilities. If you take light as the starting point, from the Latin lux, that would give you surnames like Luce, Lucien, Lucenet, or alternatively Flamme, Flambard. He might go for derivatives of clarus, meaning bright: Clair, Clar, Claret, Clairet. For power, well we already know about Maxime, but there are other versions like Mesme, Mesmin, Maximin, Maximilien. Try Legrand, Mestraud, or Major, because they come from Latin words for superior and excellent. Primat would be a possibility or Primaud, it means “first”. And for forenames, you might try the names of emperors or ancient Romans: Alexandre, Auguste, Cesar, Napoleon even, though that might be a bit too obvious.’

Adamsberg took his list to Josette.

‘What we need to do now is try out some of these combinations on the solicitor’s files, to identify buyers of property in the years between the judge’s death and the date when Maxime Leclerc moved to Alsace. They would have to be big properties, country houses, manors, small chateaux, that kind of thing, in isolated rural areas.’

‘I see,’ said Josette. ‘We’re on the trail of the ghost, are we?’

Adamsberg sat with fists clenching and unclenching as he waited for the old lady to work her keyboard.

‘I’ve got three possibles,’ she reported. ‘There’s a Napoleon Grandin too, but since he bought a little flat in La Courneuve, which is a working-class suburb, I don’t think he’s your man, if I’ve understood you. But here for instance is an Alexandre Clar, who bought a manor in the Vendee in 1988, in the village of Saint-Fulgent, incidentally. Sold it again in 1993. A Lucien Legrand bought a property in the Puy-de-Dome, at Pionsat, in 1993, and sold it in 1997; and an Auguste Primat bought a very grand house up by the English Channel, a place called Solesmes in 1997. He sold it again in 1999. Then you have your Maxime Leclerc, who bought his chateau in 1999. The dates all tally, commissaire. I’ll run you off a printed version of all that. But first give me some time to wipe out our footsteps on the lawyer’s carpet.’

‘I’ve got him, Danglard,’ said Adamsberg, still breathless from this voyage into the underworld. ‘I’ve got some names you need to check against the registration records: Alexandre Clar, born 1935; Lucien Legrand, born 1939, and Auguste Primat, born 1931. And for the crimes, try a sweep of a radius of between five and sixty kilometres around the communes of Saint-Fulgent in the Vendee, Pionsat in the Puy-de-Dome, and Solesmes in the Nord. OK?’

‘That’ll speed things up. What dates for the murders?’

‘The first one’s between 1988 and 1993. The second between 1993 and 1997. The third between 1997 and 1999. Don’t forget that the last crimes probably took place not long before the properties were sold again. That would give us spring 1993, winter 1997 and autumn 1999. Try those dates first.’

‘Always an odd number in the year,’ Danglard commented.

‘Yes, he seems to like odd numbers. Like the number three and a trident.’

‘You know, the idea of a disciple might have something in it after all. It’s beginning to take shape.’

The idea of the phantom, you mean, Adamsberg thought, as he hung up. A spectre which was rapidly gaining in consistency as Josette unearthed its haunts. He waited impatiently for Danglard to call back, pacing round the little house with the list in his hand. Clementine had congratulated him on his bechamel. He’d got something right, at least.

‘I’ve got some bad news,’ announced Danglard. ‘The divisionnaire got in touch with Legalite, I mean Laliberte, he keeps calling him the wrong name, to call him to account. Brezillon tells me that one of the two points in your favour is null and void. Laliberte said he found out about your memory loss through the night janitor. You had told him some yarn about a fight between a gang and the police. But the next day, the janitor said, you’d seemed very surprised when he told you how late it was when you got in. And in any case the story about the fight was untrue, and your hands were covered in blood. That’s how Laliberte decided you must have had a memory blackout for some of the time, because you’d assumed it was earlier, and made up a story for the porter. So there was no anonymous phone call, no traitor, nothing. That whole scenario falls to bits.’

‘And Brezillon’s going to call me in?’ said Adamsberg, stunned.

‘He didn’t say so.’

‘What about the murders. Anything to report?’

‘All I can tell you for now is that your Alexandre Clar never existed, nor did Lucien Legrand or Auguste Primat. They’re all false names. I haven’t had time to do any more, because of this business with the divisionnaire. And we’ve got a homicide, rue du Chateau. Some political connection. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back on to the disciple. Sorry, commissaire.’

Adamsberg hung up, overcome by a wave of despair. Just because the janitor couldn’t sleep. And Laliberte’s conclusions were perfectly logical.

The thin thread of hope to which he had been clinging had snapped. His confidence had collapsed with it. There was no traitor, no conspiracy. Nobody had told the superintendent about his memory loss. So logically, nobody could have taken it from him. There was no third man, plotting away in the dark against him. He had been alone on the trail, with the trident in easy reach, and Noella threatening him with all kinds of things. And he had had that murderous folly in his mind. Like his brother. Or in his brother’s footsteps perhaps.

Clementine came to sit by him, without speaking, bringing him a glass of port.

‘What is it, m’dear?’

Adamsberg told her in a dead voice, staring at the floor.

‘Now that’s the flics’ way of looking at things,’ she said gently. ‘Your ideas are different.’

‘But it means I was the only one there, Clementine.’

‘How do you know that, m’dear, since you can’t remember anything? You’ve got this ghost cornered, you and Josette now, haven’t you?’

‘What does that change though, Clementine? I was on my own.’

‘You’re just tormenting yourself, and that’s the long and short of it,’ said Clementine, putting the glass in his hand, ‘and it’s no good twisting the knife in the wound, m’dear. You’d do better to go back to our Josette and her computer stuff, and drink up this port for me.’

Josette had been standing by the fire, without saying anything. She seemed about to speak, then hesitated.

‘Come on, Josette, out with it,’ said Clementine, shifting the cigarette in her mouth. ‘You know you shouldn’t keep it to yourself.’

‘Well, I’m not sure if I should say,’ Josette explained.

‘M’dear, we’re long past the point of being shy here, can’t you see?’

‘Well, what I thought was that if Monsieur Danglard – that’s his name, isn’t it? – if he can’t look for the murders, we could have a try ourselves. The trouble is, it means, er, going into the records of the gendarmerie.’

‘And what would be wrong with that?’

‘Monsieur here is a commissaire.’

‘Josette, how many times do I have to tell you? He’s no policeman any more. And what’s more, m’dear, the police and the gendarmes, they’re two different systems.’

Adamsberg, looking distracted, glanced up at the little old woman.

‘Could you really do that, Josette?’

‘I did get into the FBI archives once, just for fun,’ she admitted shyly.

‘No need to look so shy, Josette. It’s no sin to do good for other folks.’

Adamsberg looked in even greater astonishment at this frail old woman, one-third society lady, one-third shy little creature, and one-third seasoned hacker.

* * *

After dinner, which Clementine had forced Adamsberg to eat, Josette tried the crime files. She had noted on a