Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

‘Last night we had a bit of a to-do on.’

‘This morning then?’

‘Yes, OK, I did leave him in the dark. For eight hours.’

‘Some pal, you are,’ said Sanscartier in disapproval. ‘Why didn’t you tell him?’

‘So that he would really know what it was like for Raphael. Being afraid of your own shadow, being in exile, unable to face the world. It was necessary. Just eight hours, Sanscartier, not a life sentence, so that he’d be able to catch up with his brother.’

Sanscartier turned to Adamsberg, and banged his box on the table. ‘Some hairs from the head of your devil,’ he said. ‘Which had to be found in six cubic metres of rotten leaves.’

Adamsberg understood at that moment that Sanscartier was engaged in hauling him to the surface, to the fresh air of the atmosphere, from the mud at the bottom of Pink Lake. That he had been working for Danglard, not for Laliberte.

‘It wasn’t easy either,’ Sanscartier went on. ‘Because I had to do it all outside office hours. In the evenings, or early in the morning. Without the boss catching me. Your capitaine here was the one who pushed me. He couldn’t believe the business of your cotton-wool legs after hitting the branch. I went down the path and tried to find the place where you fell. I walked from L’Ecluse, at the time you said. I went a hundred yards. I found a lot of newly broken twigs and overturned stones just by the timber site. The men had struck camp but there were new maple saplings there.’

‘I said it was near the site,’ said Adamsberg, breathing fast. He had folded his arms, clutching his sleeves in his fingers, hanging on to the sergeant’s words.

‘But there were no low branches round there, chum. Whatever you hit, it couldn’t have been a branch. So your capitaine asked me to find the nightwatchman. He was the only possible witness after all.’

‘I see, but did you find him?’ asked Adamsberg, through lips stiff with anguish, hardly able to speak.

Danglard stopped a waiter and ordered water, more coffee, beer and croissants.

‘Jeez, that was the worst bit. I had to take a sickie to get off work and first of all I asked at the town hall. But no, it was a federal camp. So second of all, I had to go to Montreal to find the name of the lumber outfit. Laliberte was getting fed up with my sick leaves, I can tell you. And your capitaine was on at me the whole time by phone. I got the watchman’s name. He was up the Ottawa River somewhere by then, so I had to take more leave to go there. Thought the super was going to burst a blood vessel.’

‘And you found him?’ asked Adamsberg swallowing a glass of water in a single gulp.

‘Don’t worry, I nabbed him in his pick-up. But getting him to say anything was another matter. He spun me yarn after yarn. Finally I threatened him with the cells if he didn’t come clean. Withholding information, hiding vital evidence. I’m a bit embarrassed to tell you what he said. Adrien, can you go on?’

‘The watchman, Jean-Gilles Boisvenu, saw a man crouching by the path that Sunday night,’ said Danglard. ‘He took out his binoculars and had a good look.’

‘A good look?’

‘Boisvenu was sure that he was waiting for another homosexual,’ Sanscartier explained. ‘You know the portage trail was supposed to be a gay pick-up place after dark?’

‘Yes, he asked me if that was why I was there.’

‘He was interested, sort of a voyeur,’ Danglard explained, ‘so he was glued to his windscreen. A very good witness, because he was paying close attention. He was delighted when he heard someone else coming, he could see quite well. But it didn’t work out as he was hoping.’

‘How did he know it was the Sunday night, the 26th?’

‘Because he was on duty when he should have been off, and furious with the weekend watchman who had called in sick. He saw the first man, who was tall with white hair, hit the other guy on the head with a sawn-off branch. The other one, that’s you, commissaire, fell to the ground. Boisvenu crouched down in the truck. The big guy looked mean and he didn’t want to get involved in a lover’s tiff, if that’s what it was. But he went on looking.’

‘Rooted to the spot.’

‘Yes, he was thinking, well hoping, in fact, that it might turn into a rape of the victim.’

‘Understand now?’ said Sanscartier, his cheeks bright red.

‘Well, the big guy started to take the scarf off the other one and undo his jacket. Boisvenu went on looking. And what he saw was that the big guy took your hands and pressed them on something like a strap.’

‘The belt,’ said Sanscartier.

‘Exactly, the belt. But he didn’t do anything else to your clothing. He injected something into your neck. Boisvenu is absolutely certain about that. He saw him take a syringe out of his pocket and test the pressure.’

‘Cotton-wool legs,’ said Adamsberg.

‘I told you I couldn’t get my head round that,’ said Danglard. ‘Until the branch, even if you were drunk, you were walking normally. But when you woke up, your legs could hardly carry you. And they were still not normal in the morning. On alcohol, I’m an expert, I know what it can do. Amnesia’s not a regular effect, and as for the legs, I just thought that was very odd. I needed to see if something else was involved.’

‘That was his hunch,’ Sanscartier explained.

‘Some drug,’ Danglard explained, ‘something which would give you memory loss, like all the other people who’d been arrested.’

‘Anyway,’ Sanscartier went on, ‘the old guy got up, and left you where you were. At that point, Boisvenu thought he’d better do something, after seeing the syringe. He’s tough, not a nightwatchman for nothing, but he couldn’t get out of his truck right away. Can you tell him why, please, Adrien?’

‘Well his legs were caught in his pants,’ Danglard explained. ‘He’d got himself all ready for a peepshow, and he’d pulled his dungarees down to his ankles.’

‘Boisvenu was embarrassed to tell me that,’ Sanscartier went on. ‘By the time he was decent, the old man had gone. The watchman found you lying there, out for the count and covered in blood. He dragged you over to his truck and put you inside with a blanket over you. And he waited.’

‘Why did he wait. Why didn’t he call the police?’

‘He didn’t want people asking him why he hadn’t done anything. He didn’t want to say what he was doing. If he said he was scared, or hadn’t seen the attack because he was asleep, it might have cost him his job. They don’t recruit nightwatchmen to panic or go to sleep. He preferred to keep mum and put you in the truck.’

‘He could have just left me there and washed his hands of me.’

‘Well yes, theoretically. But he couldn’t square that with God and his conscience, leaving someone to die, and he wanted to retrieve himself. With the temperature that night, you would have frozen to death. He decided to see if you were coming to after the knock on the head and the injection. He didn’t know whether it was just a tranquilliser or a poison. If it looked bad, he’d call the cops and invent something. He watched you for two hours, and since you were sleeping with a regular pulse, he decided you’d be OK. When you seemed to be waking up, he drove off up the cycle track and put you down on the road. He knew you’d come from there, he recognised you.’

‘Why did he drive me back?’

‘He thought you wouldn’t be in a fit state to get back along the path under your own steam, you might fall in the river.’

‘A good egg in the end then,’ said Adamsberg.

‘There was still a tiny drop of dried blood in the back of his pick-up truck. I took a sample, well, you know our methods. The guy wasn’t lying, it was your DNA, OK. I compared it with…’ Sanscartier hesitated.

‘Your semen,’ Danglard completed the sentence. ‘So between eleven and one-thirty in the morning, you weren’t on the path, you were in Boisvenu’s pick-up truck.’

‘But before that?’ asked Adamsberg, rubbing his cold lips. ‘Between ten-thirty and eleven?’

‘You left L’Ecluse at ten-fifteen. By half-past, you had started down the path. You couldn’t have reached the work site and picked up any trident before eleven, which is when Boisvenu saw you coming. And you didn’t take a fork from the site. Nothing was missing. The judge had his weapon already.’

‘Brand new, bought on the spot?’

‘Yes, we traced it. Sartonna was sent to buy it.’