This Night’s Foul Work

‘ But Madame,

Your words are so bitter, with scorn for all the crew,

Does each one have some fault, or does blame lie with you?’

Retancourt smiled, then looked sternly at Veyrenc.

‘What did you just say?’

‘You turn on your fellows so pitiless a gaze.

However can they hope one day to win your praise?’

‘Why do you talk like that?’

‘It’s a habit,’ said Veyrenc, smiling in turn.

‘What happened to your hair?’

‘A car crash – I went head first though the windscreen.’

‘Ah,’ said Retancourt. ‘You tell lies too.’

Estalere came back into the cafe and strode up to their table on his long thin legs. He pushed back the empty beer glasses, felt in his pocket and put three small grey stones on the table. Retancourt examined them without changing position.

‘He said “white,” and he said “one”,’ she said.

‘There are three of them and they’re grey.’

Retancourt picked up the stones and rolled them around in the palm of her hand.

‘Give those back to me, Violette. You’re quite capable of keeping them from him.’

Retancourt jerked her head upright, clenching the stones firmly.

‘Don’t push me too far, Estalere.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because if it wasn’t for me, Adamsberg wouldn’t be with us at all. I rescued him from the clutches of the Canadian police. And you don’t know, and never will know, what I had to do to get him out of there. So, brigadier, when you have proved yourself worthy of Him with some similar act of devotion, you’ll have the right to shout at me. Not before.’

Retancourt put the stones rather roughly into Estalere’s outstretched hand. Veyrenc saw the young man’s lip start to tremble, and made a sign to Retancourt to go easy on him.

‘OK, let’s call a truce,’ she said, lightly tapping the brigadier’s shoulder.

‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Estalere. ‘I wanted those stones.’

‘Are you sure they’re the right ones?’

‘Yes.’

‘But for the last thirteen days, Emilio has been sweeping out the cafe at night, and the dustbins are emptied every morning.’

‘That night, it was very late. Emilio just swept the floor very quickly to get the mud and gravel up, and brushed it all outside into the street. I went looking where any stones would have ended up, by the wall, against the next- door step, where no one ever goes.’

‘Back to base,’ said Retancourt, putting her jacket back on. ‘Only another day and a half before the drugs people grab the case from us.’

XIII

IN THE LITTLE ROOM WITH THE DRINKS MACHINE, ADAMSBERG HAD FOUND on the floor two big foam cushions covered with an old blanket, creating a makeshift bed and transforming the area into a refuge for the homeless. It was no doubt the work of Mercadet, who was bordering on the narcoleptic, and whose need for sleep was agonising to his professional conscience.

Adamsberg served himself a coffee from the kindly machine and decided to try out the bed. He sat down, pushed a cushion behind his back and stretched out his legs.

Yes, one could have a nap there, no doubt about it. The warm foam wrapped itself round one’s body insidiously, almost giving the feeling of having company in bed. Perhaps one could do some thinking there, but Adamsberg was only capable of thinking when he was out for a stroll. If you could call it thinking. He had long ago been forced to the conclusion that in his case it did not correspond to the normal definition of thought: to shape and combine ideas and judgements. It was not for want of trying: sitting on a proper chair, elbows leaning on a table, without distractions, pen and paper to hand, pressing his fingers to his forehead. An approach which merely succeeded in disconnecting his logical circuits. His unstructured mind was like an unreadable map, a magma in which nothing clear emerged to be identified as an Idea. Everything always seemed to be linked to everything else, in a network of little pathways where sounds, smells, flashes of light, memories, images, echoes and grains of dust mingled together. And that was all he had at his disposal to act as Commissaire Adamsberg, running the twenty-seven officers in his outfit and obtaining, as his divisionnaire was always reminding him, Results. He ought to have been anxious. But that day, other floating bodies were taking up all the space in his mind.

He stretched out his arms, then folded them behind his head, appreciating the initiative of his drowsy colleague. Outside, rain and shadows. Which had nothing to do with each other.

Danglard stopped short before operating the machine when he found the commissaire asleep, and tiptoed backwards out of the room.

‘I’m not asleep, Danglard,’ Adamsberg said, without opening his eyes. ‘Go ahead and get your coffee.’

‘This bedding’s Mercadet’s is it?’

‘I imagine so, capitaine. I’m trying it out.’

‘You may have some competition there.’

‘Or multiplication. Another six couches in the corners if we don’t watch out.’

‘There are only four corners,’ objected Danglard, hoisting himself on to one of the high bar stools and swinging his legs.

‘Well, it’s more comfortable than those damn bar stools. I don’t know who produces them but they’re too tall. I can’t even reach the foot rest. We look like a lot of storks on chimney pots.’

‘They’re Swedish.’

‘The Swedes must be taller than us. Do you think that makes a difference?’

‘What?’

‘Size. Do you think it makes a difference if your head is nearly two metres above your feet? If the blood has such a long way to go up and down all the time? Do you think it makes the thought process purer if the feet are too far away to matter? Or would a little man think better, because the circulation would be more rapid and concentrated?’

‘Immanuel Kant,’ said Danglard without enthusiasm, ‘was only one metre fifty tall. He was all thought, impeccably constructed.’

‘What about his body?’

‘He never bothered to use it.’

‘But that’s no good either,’ murmured Adamsberg, closing his eyes again.

Danglard considered it more prudent and useful to head back to his office.

‘Danglard. Can you see it?’ said Adamsberg in a level tone of voice. ‘The Shade?’

The commandant turned back, and looked towards the rain which darkened the window. But he was too much of a connoisseur of Adamsberg to think the commissaire was talking about the weather.

‘It’s there, Danglard. It’s hiding the light. Feel it? It’s surrounding us, looking at us.’

‘A dark presence?’ he suggested.

‘Something like that. All round us.’

Danglard took time to think, rubbing the back of his neck. What Shade could this be? When and how had ‘it’ appeared? Since the traumatic events which had befallen Adamsberg in Quebec and had forced him to take more than a month’s leave to recover, Danglard had been watching him closely. He had been following his quick return