This Night’s Foul Work

the means. ‘Afterwards, we’ll dismantle the listening equipment and everyone will be OK.’

‘All right, then,’ said Froissy, pulling out her notebook and pen. ‘Let’s go. Targets? Objectives?’

In an instant, the self-effacing and morally anxious woman had disappeared, transformed into the formidable technician that she could be.

‘It would be enough for me if you bug his mobile. Here’s the number.’

While he was feeling in his pocket for Veyrenc’s number, Adamsberg found the little bottle Camille had given him. Contrary to his promise, he had failed to remember to give Tom his nose drops.

‘Bug all his calls and have them connected through to my home number.’

‘I’ll have to make them transit through the squad headquarters, then be transferred to you.’

‘Where will the transmitter be at headquarters?’

‘In my cupboard.’

‘But everyone goes looking in there for food, Froissy.’

‘I’m talking about the other food cupboard, to the left of the window. I keep it locked.’

‘So the first one is a decoy, is it? What do you keep in the other one?’

‘Turkish delight, direct from Lebanon. I’ll give you a spare key.’

‘Fine. Here are the keys to my house. Install the speaker in the bedroom upstairs, away from the window.’

‘Obviously.’

‘I don’t just need sound, I need a screen too, to follow where he goes.’

‘Long distances?’

‘Could be.’

To see whether Veyrenc would take Camille away somewhere. A weekend in the country, a fairytale inn in the woods, the baby playing happily in the grass at their feet. Oh no, no fucking way! The bastard was not going to take Tom away from him.

‘Is it important to follow his movements?’

‘Essential.’

‘Well, in that case, we’ll have to do more than bug the mobile. We’ll put a GPS under his car. And do you want a mike in the car too?’

‘While we’re at it. How long do you need?’

‘I’ll have it done by five this evening.’

XXXVI

BY FOUR-FORTY THAT AFTERNOON HELENE FROISSY WAS FINE-TUNING THE reception for the receiver she had installed in Adamsberg’s bedroom. She could hear Veyrenc’s voice quite well, although it was overlaid by the voices around and by sounds of chairs scraping, footsteps and papers rustling. The microphone was too powerful, the bug on the mobile only needed to pick up sound from a radius of five metres. That would be enough to cover Veyrenc’s small flat, and it would allow her to tune out much of the interference.

Now she could hear Veyrenc’s voice quite distinctly. He was talking to Retancourt and Justin. Froissy listened in for a few moments to the light tone and husky sound of the lieutenant’s voice while eliminating the last remnants of outside interference. Now Veyrenc was sitting down at his desk. She heard the click of a keyboard and then he said quietly to himself: ‘I have no place to go to bury deep my pain.’ Froissy glanced angrily at the bug she had just installed, at the diabolical device that could pour Veyrenc’s innermost thoughts direct into Adamsberg’s room. There was something violent about putting these tracking devices on Veyrenc. Froissy hesitated before setting everything to ‘go’, then turned all the switches on, one by one. A battle between macho boys, she thought as she closed the door, and she had been drawn into it on her full responsibility.

XXXVII

ON MONDAY, 4 APRIL, DANGLARD PINNED UP A MAP OF THE EURE departement in Normandy on the wall of the Council Chamber. In his hand he was holding a list of the twenty-nine women assumed to be virgins, aged between thirty and forty, living within twenty kilometres of Le Mesnil-Beauchamp. Their addresses had been located, and Justin was marking their homes on the map with red drawing pins.

‘You should have used white ones,’ said Voisenet.

‘Oh, bugger off,’ said Justin. ‘Haven’t got any.’

The men were all tired. They had spent a week checking lists and combing the area, interviewing all the parish priests. One thing seemed certain. No other woman corresponding to their criteria had died accidentally in recent months. So the third virgin must still be alive. This certainty weighed as heavily on the shoulders of the officers as their doubts concerning the direction in which their boss had taken the investigation. They were inclined to question the very basis of their work – namely the link between the profanation of the graves and the recipe in De reliquis.

The opposition had divided into different groups. The most hard-nosed among them thought that traces of lichen on a stone were insufficient evidence of murder. And that, seen from one point of view, the whole structure which Adamsberg had built up was as flimsy as a dream, a fantasy into which he had drawn them all during that extraordinary conference. Others, more hesitant, were prepared to accept that both Pascaline and Elisabeth had been murdered, and agreed that their deaths might somehow be related to the mutilated cat and the theft of the relics. But they refused to follow the commissaire in his view of the medieval potion. And even among those, finally, who accepted the De reliquis theory, its interpretation was subject to much discussion and analysis. After all, the text didn’t say anything about cats, and the male principle could just as well, for all they knew, refer to the semen of a bull. There was nothing to indicate the contrary, just as there was no precise indication that three separate virgins were required to provide ingredients. Maybe two were enough, and all this labour was for nothing. And nothing proved, either, that the third virgin would be killed three months, or six months, before the new wine was ready. The whole thing, from insubstantial beginnings to improbable reasoning, made a completely unbelievable farrago, detached from reality.

With the passage of time, an unprecedented rebellion was brewing in the squad, drawing in more recruits as the hours passed and their fatigue grew. People remembered the hasty rustication of Lieutenant Noel, from whom nothing had been heard. And this punishment appeared all the more incomprehensible since Adamsberg was now treating the New Recruit very offhandedly, and avoiding him as much as possible. Murmurings were heard that the commissaire had still not recovered from his traumatic Quebec experience, from his separation from Camille, or from the death of his father and the birth of his son, events which had suddenly precipitated him into the the ranks of older men. People remembered the pebbles he had placed on their desks, and somebody suggested that Adamsberg was veering towards mysticism. Once he was on such slippery territory, he would send the whole investigation plunging into the abyss, with all hands.

Such discontent would not have gone beyond the usual level of grumbling if Adamsberg had seemed his normal self. But since the day after the conference about the Three Virgins, the commissaire had become inaccessible, sending out brief, morose messages, never setting foot in the Council Chamber. It was as if his veins had frozen. The rebellion had revived the old debate between the positivists and the cloud shovellers, the latter becoming fewer in number as Adamsberg remained cold and distant.

Two days earlier, a fierce argument over whether they ought simply to stop looking for the damned relics and all the rest of the ridiculous ingredients had once more stimulated these antagonisms. Mercadet, Kernorkian, Maurel, Lamarre, Gardon, and Estalere were, of course, solidly behind the commissaire,