Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

piece of paper spring 1993, winter 1997 and autumn 1999. From time to time, Adamsberg went over to see how she was getting on. In the evenings, she changed from her tennis shoes into huge velvety grey slippers, which made her feet look like those of a baby elephant.

‘Very well protected, I guess,’ he said.

‘Firewalls everywhere, but you’d expect that. If they had a dossier on me, I wouldn’t like it to be available to the first old lady who comes along.’

Clementine had gone to bed, and Adamsberg stood by the chimney, twisting his hands and staring into the embers. He did not hear Josette come up behind him in her big slippers. With her hacker’s silent footsteps.

‘Here you are, commissaire,’ she said, handing him a sheet of paper with the modesty of one who has done a good job of work, and does not realise how talented she is, as if she had simply been stirring a bechamel sauce. In March 1993, thirty-three kilometres from Saint-Fulgent, a 40-year-old woman, Ghislaine Matere, had been killed in her house, stabbed three times. She lived alone, out in the country. In February 1997, twenty-four kilometres from Pionsat, a girl had been killed with three blows to the stomach. Sylviane Brasillier had been waiting at a bus stop late on a Sunday evening. In September 1999, 66-year-old Joseph Fevre had been murdered, thirty kilometres from Solesmes. With three stab wounds.

‘And was anyone charged?’ asked Adamsberg, looking at the sheet.

‘Here we are. In the first case, a woman, who lived in a forest hut. She was generally regarded as a witch in the neighbourhood, and was certainly a bit touched, and given to drink. In the second case, they arrested an unemployed man who was always round the bars in Saint-Eloy-les-Mines. For the Fevre murder, they found a gamekeeper, out for the count on a bench in a suburb of Cambrai, dead drunk and with the knife in his pocket.’

‘Memory loss?’

‘All three.’

‘New weapons?’

‘All three.’

‘Brilliant, Josette! We’ve got a trail as clear as daylight now, from Le Castelet-les- Ormes in 1949 to Schiltigheim. Twelve murders. Twelve, Josette! Good God!’

‘Thirteen, with the one in Quebec.’

‘I was alone there though, Josette.’

‘You and your colleague were talking about a disciple. If he did four murders after the judge died, why mightn’t he have been able to kill someone in Quebec?’

‘For a very simple reason, Josette. If he bothered to come all the way to Quebec, it would be in order to trap me, like the other scapegoats. And if a disciple had taken over Fulgence’s mission, it would be out of veneration for the judge and a wish to complete his wishes. But whoever it was, even a fanatical follower of his couldn’t have the same thought processes as Fulgence himself. The judge hated me personally. He wanted me out of the way. But a disciple couldn’t have hated me as much, he wouldn’t know me. Finishing some kind of series is one thing, but killing someone to do a favour for a dead man doesn’t make sense. I don’t buy that. That’s why I tell you, I was alone on that path.’

‘Clementine says that’s depression talking.’

‘Maybe, but it’s got something real behind it. And if there is a disciple, he can’t be very old. Veneration is a youthful emotion. He might be, say, thirty to forty years old. Men of that generation don’t smoke pipes, or hardly ever. The man who lived in the Schloss smoked a pipe, and his hair was white. Josette, I have to tell you, I don’t believe in a disciple. I’ve reached a dead end.’

Josette twitched her grey slipper up and down on the ancient brick floor.

‘Unless,’ she said after a minute or two, ‘you believe in people coming back from the dead.’

‘Unless, as you say.’

They both fell silent for some time. Josette poked the fire.

‘Are you tired, Josette, my dear?’ asked Adamsberg, surprised to find himself falling into Clementine’s way of speaking.

‘I’m often up all night.’

‘Take this man, Maxime Leclerc, Auguste Primat, whatever he calls himself. Since the judge’s death, he’s been invisible. Either the disciple wants to prolong the image of Fulgence in some way, or our back-from-the-dead person doesn’t want anyone to see his face.’

‘Because he’s dead.’

‘Yes. In four years, nobody clapped eyes on Maxime Leclerc. Not the estate agents, not the cleaning lady, not the gardener, not the postman. Every contact outside the house was through the cleaning lady. The owner of the house communicated with her by notes, occasionally by phone. So it is possible to avoid being seen, because he managed it successfully. But you see, Josette, I don’t think it’s possible for someone to stay totally invisible. Maybe for two years, but surely not for five, let alone sixteen. It could work, but only if nothing unexpected ever happened, none of the little accidents of everyday life. In sixteen years, something like that has got to have happened. If we go back over the sixteen years, we ought to be able to find something.’

Josette was listening, in conscientious hacker mode, for more precise instructions, her head and her grey slippers making little movements.

‘I’m thinking maybe a doctor, Josette. Let’s suppose our man has some health problem, a fall for instance, or an injury. If something serious happens, you have to make an emergency call. But our man wouldn’t call the local doctor. He’d call one of those telephone services, SOS-Medecins or something, where you get a stranger, a mobile team. You see them once, and then they forget all about you.’

‘I see. But they probably don’t keep much in the way of records, certainly not more than a few years.’

‘Well, that means concentrating on Maxime Leclerc. So if we tried a search for the emergency services of the Bas-Rhin departement, we might unearth a doctor’s visit to the Schloss.’

Josette put the poker down, adjusted her earrings and pushed up the sleeves of her cashmere sweater. It was one in the morning when she switched the computer back on. Adamsberg stayed by the fire, piling on a couple more logs, as tense as an expectant father. His new superstition was to keep away from Josette while she operated her magic lamp. If he stood over her, he was afraid of witnessing the expressions of disappointment on her face. He sat motionless, still plunged into the hell of the portage trail. His only hope was the tiny glimmer resulting from these painstaking explorations by the old lady. Which he was carefully gathering, and putting into the process wells of his mind. Hoping that the protective devices would all crumble, as his little hacker went about her work with her magic lantern. He had noted the various terms she used to describe the levels of resistance in ascending order of difficulty: password protected, locked, key-chained, firewalled, barbed wire, concrete. And she had tunnelled under the defences of the FBI. He raised his head as he heard the shuffle of slippers in the narrow corridor.

‘Here you are,’ said Josette. ‘It was locked, but not impregnable.’

‘Tell me quickly, what did you get?’ said Adamsberg, his heart pounding.

‘Maxime Leclerc called the emergency services two years ago, on 17 August at 14.40. He had seven wasp stings, which had made his neck and jaw swell up. Seven, that’s a lot. The doctor arrived very fast. He came back again at eight o’clock, and gave him another anti-histamine injection. I’ve got the name of the doctor, Vincent Courtin. I took the liberty of finding out his address and telephone number.’

Adamsberg put his hands on Josette’s shoulders. He could feel her slender bones.

‘These last few days, my life has been in the hands of magical women. They’ve been tossing me from one to another, and every time they save me from falling into the abyss.’

‘Is that a problem?’ asked Josette, seriously.

He woke his deputy up at two in the morning.

‘Stay where you are, Danglard. I just want to give you a message.’

‘I’m still sleeping. Fire away.’

‘When the judge died, there must have been some press photos. Can you get me four, two in profile, one full- face, and one three-quarters, if they exist, and get the lab to age the face for me.’

‘There are plenty of drawings of skull types in any good dictionary.’

‘Danglard, this is serious, and it’s urgent. Can you get a fifth picture, full face, and have them augment it with swellings, as if the man had been stung by wasps.’

‘If it amuses you,’ said Danglard, resignedly.