This Night’s Foul Work

From time to time, Noel would impatiently and fruitlessly grip Retancourt’s arm to try and hurry up the process, stir her blood, get the system going again, restart the engine.

‘Come on, big girl, for Chrissake, get moving!’

On edge and unable to stand still without moving and speaking, Noel paced from one end of the bed to the other, rubbing Retancourt’s feet to warm them up, then tried her hands, checked the drip, patted her head.

‘That’s not helping,’ said the doctor irritably.

The heartbeat on the screen suddenly accelerated.

‘Here she comes now,’ said the doctor, as if announcing the arrival of a train.

‘Come on, big girl,’ repeated Noel for the tenth time. ‘Make an effort.’

‘We have to hope,’ said Lavoisier, with the involuntary brutality that doctors display, ‘that she’s not going to wake up with brain damage.’

Retancourt opened her blue eyes weakly and looked blankly at the ceiling.

‘What’s her first name?’ asked Lavoisier.

‘Violette,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Like the flower,’ added Noel.

Lavoisier sat on the bed, turned Retancourt’s face towards him and took her hand.

‘Is your name Violette?’ he asked. ‘If yes, blink your eyes for me.’

‘Come on, big girl,’ said Noel.

‘Don’t try to help her, Noel,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Nothing to do with help or not,’ said Lavoisier, running out of patience. ‘She’s got to understand the question. For pity’s sake, shut up – she’s got to concentrate. Violette, tell me, is that your name?’

Ten agonising seconds passed before Retancourt unmistakably blinked her eyes.

‘She’s understood,’ said Lavoisier.

‘Of course she understood,’ said Noel. ‘You should make the question harder, doc.’

‘That’s already a hard question, when you’re coming back from where she’s been,’ said the doctor.

‘Look, I think we’re in the way,’ said Adamsberg.

Lieutenant Noel was incapable of sitting and listening to the sound of the fountain like Adamsberg. The commissaire watched him pacing up and down the little garden, where the two policemen seemed to be in a tiny circus ring, lit from ground level by blue lights.

‘Who told you, lieutenant?’

‘Estalere phoned me from the restaurant. He knew my blood group would be compatible. He’s the kind of guy who remembers personal details. Whether you take sugar in your coffee, whether you’re A, B or O. Tell me what’s happened, commissaire, I’ve missed out on a lot of this.’

Adamsberg summarised, in his own haphazard fashion, the elements Noel had missed while he was out consulting the seagulls. Curiously, the lieutenant, who was in theory a hardcore positivist, asked him to repeat twice the De sanctis reliquis recipe. And he was opposed to Adamsberg’s proposal to give up on the third virgin. Nor did he make any inappropriate jokes about the cat’s penile bone or the quick of virgins.

‘We can’t just allow some girl to get knocked off without lifting a finger, commissaire.’

‘But I was probably mistaken when I thought the third virgin had already been chosen.’

‘Why?’

‘Because in the end, I think the killer chose Retancourt for that.’

‘But that wouldn’t make sense,’ said Noel, stopping short.

‘Why not? She meets the requirements of the recipe.’

Noel looked across at Adamsberg through the darkness.

‘Well, for a start, commissaire, Retancourt would have to be a virgin.’

‘Yes, well, I think she is.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You’d be the only one to think that, Noel.’

‘I don’t think. I know. She’s not a virgin. Not at all.’

Noel sat down on the bench, looking pleased with himself, while Adamsberg in turn started walking round the garden.

‘Surely you’re the last person Retancourt would take into her confidence.’

‘We yell at each other so much that we end up telling each other the story of our lives. She’s not a virgin, full stop.’

‘So that means that there is a third virgin. Somewhere else. And that Retancourt did understand something we didn’t.’

‘And before we find that out,’ said Noel, ‘a lot of water’s going to flow under the bridge.’

‘We’ll have to wait a month for her to recover properly, according to Lariboisier.’

‘Lavoisier,’ said Noel. ‘Maybe a month for someone normal, but probably a week for Retancourt. Funny to think of your blood and mine circulating through her veins.’

‘And the blood of the third donor.’

‘Who’s the third donor, anyway?’

‘He’s a cattle farmer, I believe.’

‘That’ll be a weird mixture,’ said Noel, with a pensive shake of his head.

In his chilly hotel bed, Adamsberg could not close his eyes without seeing himself once more lying wired up alongside Retancourt and going back over the vertiginous thoughts that had flashed through his head during the transfusion. Retancourt’s dyed hair, the quick of virgins, the horns of the ibex. There was a persistent alarm bell ringing through this combination of ideas, which would not be silenced. It must be something to do with the blood passing from him into her, recharging her heartbeats, rescuing her from the clutches of death. It must be something to do with the virgin’s hair, of course. But what was the ibex doing there? That reminded him that the horns of the ibex were simply the same thing as hair in a very compressed form, or, looking at it another way, that his own hair was simply a very dispersed kind of horn. They were all the same thing. But so what? He would have to try and remember tomorrow.

LII

A PEAL OF CHURCH BELLS WOKE ADAMSBERG AT MIDDAY. NO PEACE FOR the wicked, his mother used to say. He called the hospital at once and listened as Lavoisier gave a positive report.

‘She’s talking?’ he asked

‘No, she’s sleeping soundly now,’ said the doctor, ‘and probably will for some time. Remember, she’s also got concussion.’

‘Is she saying anything in her sleep?’

‘Yes, she mutters stuff from time to time. But it’s not really conscious or even intelligible. Don’t get excited.’

‘I’m quite calm, doctor. But I just want to know what she says.’

‘She keeps saying the same thing over and over. A bit of poetry that everyone knows.’

Poetry? Was Retancourt dreaming about Veyrenc? Or had he somehow infected her? Seducing all the women into his entourage one after the other?

‘So what poetry would that be?’ asked Adamsberg, with some annoyance.

‘Lines by Corneille we all learned at school:

To see the last Roman, as he draws his last breath,

Myself to die happy, as the cause of this death.’

They were indeed two of the few lines of verse that even Adamsberg knew by heart.

‘That’s not her style,’ he muttered. ‘Is that really what she’s saying?’