This Night’s Foul Work

the answer, if one didn’t know anything, why bother one’s head about it at all?

The sharp conflicts between Danglard’s precise ‘Why?’ and the commissaire’s nonchalant ‘I don’t know’ punctuated the squad’s investigations. None of the others tried to understand the core of this bitter struggle between accuracy and vagueness, but they all favoured one side or another. The positivists thought that Adamsberg dragged out investigations, taking them wilfully into the fog, leaving his colleagues trailing behind him without instructions or road maps. The others, the cloud shovellers – thus named after a traumatic visit by the squad to Quebec – thought that the commissaire‘s results quite justified the vagaries of the investigation, even if the essentials of his work methods escaped them. According to mood, or to the circumstances of the moment, which might inspire either jumpiness or relaxation, someone could be a positivist one day and a cloud shoveller the next or vice versa. Only Adamsberg and Danglard, the two principal antagonists, never varied their position.

Among the more anodyne Unsolved Questions there was still that wedding ring glinting on the commissaire’s finger. Danglard chose the day of the hailstorm to ask Adamsberg about it, simply by looking pointedly at the ring. The commissaire took off his wet jacket, sat sideways and stretched out his hand. The hand, too big for the size of his body, weighed down at the wrist with two watches which rattled together, and now further embellished with the gold ring, did not match the way he dressed, which was negligent, bordering on the scruffy. It was as if the richly adorned hand of some old-fashioned aristocrat were attached to the body of a peasant, excessive elegance conjoined with the sunburnt skin of a mountain villager.

‘My father died, Danglard,’ Adamsberg explained calmly. ‘We were both sitting under a pigeon-shooting hide, and watching a buzzard circling in the sky over our heads. The sun was very bright, and he just keeled over.’

‘You never told me,’ muttered Danglard, who found the commissaire‘s secrets irritating, for no reason.

‘I stayed there until evening, lying beside him, holding his head against my shoulder. We might be there yet, but some hunters came across us at nightfall. Before they closed his coffin, I took his wedding ring. Did you think I had got married? To Camille?’

‘I had wondered.’

Adamsberg smiled.

‘That’s a Question Resolved, Danglard. You know better than I do that I’ve let Camille go ten times, thinking that the train would come along for the eleventh time on a day that suited me. But that’s just when it stops coming along.’

‘You never know, the points might change.’

‘Trains are like people, they don’t like going round in circles. In the end it gets on their nerves. After we buried my father, I amused myself picking up pebbles from the river bed. That’s something I can do. Think about the infinite patience of the water, running over the stones. And the stones allow it to run, but the river is gradually wearing away all their rough edges, without seeming to. The water wins in the end.’

‘If it comes to a fight, I’d prefer stones to water.’

‘As you like,’ Adamsberg replied with a shrug. ‘But talking of stones and water, there are two things to report, Danglard. First, I’ve got a ghost in my new house. A bloodthirsty and avaricious nun, who was killed by a tanner in 1771. He murdered her with his bare fists. Just like that. She’s taken up residence in a fluid sort of way in my attic. That’s the water.’

‘I see,’ said Danglard, prudently. ‘And the stones?’

‘I’ve seen the new pathologist.’

‘Elegant woman, bit stand-offish, but works hard at her job, they say.’

‘And very talented, Danglard. Have you read her thesis about murderers who are split in two?’

A pointless question, since Danglard had read everything, even the fire-evacuation instructions in hotel bedrooms.

‘On dissociated murderers, you mean,’ Danglard corrected. ‘Either Side of the Crime Wall. Yes, the book made quite a stir.’

‘Well, it turns out she and I had a major bust-up over twenty years ago, in a cafe in Le Havre.’

‘So you’re enemies?’

‘No, that kind of clash can sometimes create a close friendship. But I don’t advise you to go to a cafe with her – she mixes drinks that would knock out a Breton fisherman. She’s taken charge of those two men killed at La Chapelle. She seems to think a woman killed them. She’s going to refine her preliminary conclusions this evening.’

‘A woman?’

The usually languid Danglard sat up, in shock. He hated the idea that women might be killers.

‘Has she seen the size of those two guys? Is she joking?’

‘Not so fast, Danglard. Dr Lagarde doesn’t make mistakes, or hardly ever. Suggest her hypothesis to the Drug Squad, anyway – it’ll keep them off our backs for a bit.’

‘You won’t be able to hold Mortier off at all. He’s been getting nowhere with the dealer networks in Clignancourt-La Chapelle for months. It’s not looking good and he needs results. He’s called in twice already this morning. I warn you, he’s screaming blue murder.’

‘Let him scream. The water will win in the end.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘About my nun?’

‘No, about Diala and La Paille.’

Adamsberg looked at Danglard in bewilderment.

‘Those are their names,’ Danglard explained. ‘The two victims. Diala Tounde and Didier Paillot, known as “La Paille”. So should we go to the morgue tonight?’

‘No, I’m in Normandy tonight. For a concert.’

‘Ah,’ said Danglard, heaving himself to his feet. ‘You’re hoping for the points to change?’

‘I’m humbler than that, capitaine. I’m just going to look after the baby while she plays.’

‘Commandant, I’m a commandant now. Don’t you remember? You were at my promotion ceremony. What concert, anyway?’ asked Danglard, who always took Camille’s interests to heart.

‘It must be something important. It’s some British orchestra with period instruments.’

‘The Leeds Baroque Ensemble?’

‘It’s some name like that,’ said Adamsberg, who had never managed to learn a word of English. ‘Don’t ask me what she’s playing, I’ve no idea.’

Adamsberg stood up, and flung his damp jacket over his shoulder. ‘While I’m away, can you look after the cat, and Mortier, the two bodies, and the temper of Lieutenant Noel, who is getting more and more difficult? I can’t be everywhere, and duty calls just now.’

‘Since you’re being a responsible father,’ muttered Danglard.

‘If you say so, capitaine.’

Adamsberg accepted without demur Danglard’s grumbling reproaches which he considered almost always to be justified. A single parent, the commandant was bringing up his five children like a mother hen, whereas Adamsberg had hardly registered that Camille’s newborn baby was his. At least he had memorised his name: Thomas Adamsberg, known as Tom. That was at least one point in his favour, thought Danglard, who never completely despaired of the commissaire.

VIII

BY THE TIME HE HAD DRIVEN THE 136 KILOMETRES TO THE VILLAGE OF Haroncourt in the departement of the Eure, Adamsberg’s clothes had dried in the car. He had only to