She preferred to leave the room unaired rather than let anything get in while she was asleep. But there was nothing she could do about the woodworms which were eating their way through the ancient beams overhead all night. Every evening, Francine watched the little holes over her bed, fearing to see the head of a worm poking out. She didn’t know what the horrid creatures looked like – earthworms? centipedes? earwigs? But every morning she had to brush away in disgust the little piles of sawdust that had fallen on her bedspread.
Francine poured some hot coffee into a large cup, added a lump of sugar and two capfuls of rum. The best moment of the day. Then she carried the cup into the bedroom, with the little bottle of rum, ready to watch two films one after the other. Her collection of eight hundred and twelve tapes, all labelled and in order, was stacked in the other room, her father’s bedroom, and sooner or later the damp would start to damage them. She had decided to leave the farm the day a woodwork expert had come to inspect the house, five months after her father’s death. In the cross-beams he had detected seven holes made by death-watch beetles. Seven. Huge holes you could put your little finger into. ‘If you listen hard, you can hear them munching away,’ the man had said with a laugh.
It ought to be treated, the expert had said. But as soon as she had seen the size of the beetle holes, Francine had made up her mind. She would move out. She sometimes wondered, with horror, what a death-watch beetle looked like. Like a big worm, or a beetle with a drill in its head?
At one in the morning, Francine looked up at the woodworm holes and checked, thanks to the marks she had made, that they had not moved too much further across the beam. She put out the light, hoping not to hear the snuffling of the hedgehog outside. It was a horrid sound, almost like a human being snorting away in the night. She lay on her stomach, pulling the blankets over her head, just leaving a little space to breathe through. ‘Francine, you’re thirty-five years old and you still act like a child,’ the priest had said. Well, so what? In another two months, she wouldn’t have to see this house, or the priest in her village of Otton, ever again. She wouldn’t spend another summer here. It was even worse in summer, with the big moths that came in – goodness knew how – banging their huge floppy bodies against the blinds and lampshades. And then there were bluebottles, hornets, horseflies, field mice and harvest-mites. People said that harvest mite larvae dug little holes in your skin and laid eggs in them. Yuk.
In order to get to sleep, Francine went through the countdown to her removal day, the first of June. She had been told over and over that she was getting a bad deal, exchanging this enormous eighteenth-century farmhouse for a two-room balcony flat in Evreux. But as far as she was concerned, it was the best deal she’d made in her life. In two months’ time she’d be safe with her eight hundred and twelve films in a clean white apartment, just along the street from the pharmacy. She’d be sitting on a nice new blue cushion on a floor covered with shiny lino, in front of her TV set, with her coffee and her rum, and without the least little woodworm to bother her. Only two months to go. She’d sleep in a high bunk bed, away from the wall, with a varnished ladder to climb into it. There would be pastel-coloured sheets, which would stay clean without flies coming and leaving spots on them. Acting like a child or not, she’d be happy at last. Francine snuggled under the bedclothes and put her fingers in her ears. She didn’t want to hear the hedgehog.
XXXIX
AS SOON AS HE HAD CLOSED HIS FRONT DOOR BEHIND HIM, ADAMSBERG made for the shower. He shampooed his hair, rubbing as hard as he could, then leaned against the tiled wall and let the warm water run over his closed eyes and dangling arms. Stay in the river like that, his mother used to say, and you’ll come out white as snow.
An image of Ariane flashed across his mind, refreshingly. Good idea, he said to himself, turning off the taps. He could invite her out to dinner, and then see if anything happened, yes or no. He dried himself quickly, put his clothes back on over his still-damp skin, and went past the tracking console which was at the end of his bed. Tomorrow he would ask Froissy to come and disconnect this infernal machine and carry off in its wires the image of the damned Bearnais with his crooked smile. He picked up the pile of recordings of Veyrenc, and broke the disks one by one, throwing the shiny fragments round the room. Then he put them all in a bag which he carefully sealed. Next, he ate some sardines, tomatoes and cheese. Feeling both purified and well fed, he decided to call Camille as an indication of his goodwill, and enquire about Tom’s cold.
The line was engaged. He sat on the edge of the bed, chewing the rest of his bread, and tried again ten minutes later. Still engaged. Chatting to Veyrenc, no doubt. The transmitter with its regularly flashing red light offered a last temptation. He switched it on with a brusque gesture.
Nothing, except the sound of the television and a vacuum cleaner. Adamsberg turned up the sound. Veyrenc was listening to a discussion about jealousy, by some irony of fate, while vacuuming his room. To be listening to this programme in his house through Veyrenc’s set, and indirectly in his company, seemed somewhat pernicious. A psychiatrist was explaining the causes and effects of compulsive possessiveness and Adamsberg, stretching out drowsily on his bed, was relieved to find that in spite of his recent attack of jealousy he displayed none of the symptoms described.
A shout awoke him suddenly. He jumped up to turn off the television in his room, which was now blaring out.
Adamsberg took three paces into the room, having already realised his mistake. It wasn’t his own television but the transmitter which was sending him a gangster film directly from Veyrenc’s flat. Sleepily, he reached out to turn it off, but halted when he heard Veyrenc reply to the previous speaker. And Veyrenc’s voice was too distinctive to be that of a television actor. Adamsberg looked at his watches. Two in the morning. Veyrenc had a nocturnal visitor.
Adamsberg hurriedly rang the squad.
‘Maurel, who’s there with you?’
‘Mordent.’
‘Get over to Veyrenc’s flat this instant – he’s had a break-in, there are two of them, they’re armed. Quick as you can, Maurel, they’re threatening him.’
He rang off and called Danglard, while trying to do up his shoelaces with the other hand.
‘Danglard? Two guys are threatening Veyrenc in his flat. Get over to the squad and take over the phone tap. Don’t leave it on any account. I’m on my way.’
‘What phone tap?’
‘Bloody hell, the one on Veyrenc!’
‘I don’t have his mobile number – how can I put a tap on him?’
‘I’m not asking you to
