This Night’s Foul Work

to form after the shocks which had almost stripped him of his reason. And it seemed to Danglard that everything had gone back to normal fairly quickly, or at any rate to what passed for normal in Adamsberg’s case. He felt his fears creeping up again. Perhaps Adamsberg wasn’t so far away from the abyss into which he had almost fallen.

‘Since when?’ he asked.

‘A few days after I got back,’ replied Adamsberg, suddenly opening his eyes and sitting up straight. ‘Perhaps it was waiting, prowling around us.’

‘Us?’

‘The Squad. Our base. That’s the Shade’s territory too. When I go away – when I went to Normandy, for instance – I don’t sense it any more. When I get back, there it is again, quiet and grey. Perhaps it’s the Silent Sister.’

‘And who might that be?’

‘Sister Clarisse, the nun who was killed by the tanner.’

‘You believe in her?’

Adamsberg smiled.

‘I heard her the other night,’ he said, quite cheerfully. ‘She was walking about in the attic, with a sound like a robe sweeping the ground. I got up and went to have a look.’

‘And there was nothing there?’

‘No, stands to reason,’ said Adamsberg, with a fleeting memory of the punctuator of Haroncourt.

The commissaire looked all round the little room.

‘And does she bother you?’ asked Danglard carefully, feeling he was stepping into a minefield.

‘No, but this isn’t a friendly ghost, Danglard, bear that in mind. Not there to help us.’

‘Since you got back, nothing special’s happened, except we’ve got this New Recruit.’

‘Veyrenc de Bilhc.’

‘Does he bother you? Did he bring the Shade with him?’

Adamsberg thought over Danglard’s suggestion.

‘Well, he does bother me a bit. He comes from the valley next to mine. Did he tell you about it? The Ossau valley? And about his hair?’

‘No. Why should he?’

‘When he was a little kid, five other boys attacked him. They slashed his stomach and cut up his scalp.’

‘And?’

‘And these boys came from my village, and he knows that. He pretended he was only just discovering it, but he was perfectly aware of it before he got here. And if you ask me, that’s why he’s here at all.’

‘But why?’

‘Chasing memories, Danglard.’

Adamsberg lay back again on the cushions.

‘Remember that woman we arrested a couple of years ago? The district nurse? I’d never had to arrest an old woman before. I hated that case.’

‘She was a monster,’ said Danglard in a shocked voice.

‘According to our pathologist, she was a dissociated killer. With her Alpha self, which went about its everyday business, and her Omega self, which was an angel of death. What are Alpha and Omega, anyway?’

‘Letters from the Greek alphabet.’

‘If you say so. She was seventy-three years old. Remember what she looked like when we arrested her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not a happy memory was it, capitaine? Do you think she’s still spying on us? Do you think she could be the Shade? Cast your mind back to the case.’

Yes, Danglard could perfectly well cast his mind back. It had begun at the home of an elderly woman who had apparently died of natural causes, and there was a routine procedure to determine the cause of death. The local GP and the police pathologist, Dr Roman, at that stage not having a fit of the vapours, had reached agreement in fifteen minutes. A cardiac arrest. The television was still on. Two months later, Lamarre and Danglard had been in attendance for another routine formality, this time concerning a man of ninety-one who had died sitting in his armchair, his hand still holding a book, curiously enough entitled The Art of Being a Grandmother. Adamsberg had arrived just as the two doctors were agreeing the certificate.

‘An aneurysm, I’d say,’ said the man’s own physician. ‘You can never predict them, but when they strike, they strike. Any objection, doctor?’

‘None at all,’ Roman had replied.

‘OK, let’s do the paperwork.’

The GP had already pulled out his pen and was about to sign the certificate.

‘Stop,’ said Adamsberg.

They both looked at the commissaire, who was standing against the wall, arms folded, looking at them.

‘Anything wrong?’ Roman had asked.

‘Can’t you smell anything?’

Adamsberg moved away from the wall and approached the body. He sniffed close to the old man’s face and vaguely patted his sparse hair. Then he walked around the small two-room flat, his nose in the air.

‘It’s in the air, Roman. Look around, instead of at the body.’

‘Around where?’ asked Roman looking up through his glasses at the ceiling.

‘Roman, this old man was murdered.’

The GP looked impatient as he pocketed his fat fountain pen. This little man with vague eyes who had just turned up, hands thrust in the pockets of a scruffy pair of trousers, and whose arms were as brown as if he spent his life out of doors, did not inspire him with confidence.

‘My patient was worn out, like an old workhorse. Like I said, when it strikes, it strikes.’

‘It strikes all right, but not necessarily from heaven. Can you smell it, doctor? It’s not a perfume, not a medicine. It’s something like camphor, camomile, pepper, orange blossom.’

‘We’ve made our diagnosis, and you’re not a doctor as far as I know.’

‘No, I’m a policeman.’

‘I dare say. But if you’re not satisfied, go and tell your commissaire.’

‘I am the commissaire.’

‘He is the commissaire,’ Roman confirmed.

‘Oh, bloody hell,’ said the doctor.

Danglard, who had been there before, had watched as the GP gradually responded to Adamsberg’s voice and manner, yielding to the persuasiveness that seemed to flow out of him like an insidious breath. He had seen the doctor bend and submit, like a tree in the wind, as so many others had before him, men of bronze and women of steel, seduced by a charm that was neither brilliant nor showy, but which obeyed no rhyme or reason. It was an arrogant phenomenon, which always left Danglard both satisfied and irritated, divided between his affection for Adamsberg and his pity for himself.

‘Yes,’ said Danglard sniffing the air. ‘I know this smell. It’s some expensive sort of oil, they sell it in little capsules at aromatherapists. It’s supposed to settle the nerves. You put a drop on each temple and one at the back of the neck, and it works wonders. Kernorkian in our office uses it.’

‘That’s what it is, Danglard, you’re right. That must be why I recognised it. And I don’t suppose your patient was in the habit of buying it.’

The doctor looked round the two poor little rooms, which indicated near-abject poverty rather than the means to buy expensive aromatherapy products.

‘But it doesn’t mean anything,’ he said tentatively.

‘That’s because you weren’t attending a woman who died a month or two back. Same smell there. Do you remember it, Danglard? You were there.’

‘I didn’t notice anything.’

‘Roman, what about you?’

‘Sorry, nothing.’