The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (12 page)

‘Are his prints on the bag and the shoes?’

‘We’re waiting for the analysis. Momo says they will be, because he’d handled them. Because he found the bag in his cupboard and looked to see what was in it. Or so he says.’

‘Right size?’

‘Yes, 43.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything, average size.’

Adamsberg rubbed the back of his neck again to try and catch the bubble of electricity wandering about there.

‘It gets worse,’ Danglard went on. ‘The old man hadn’t slipped down in the seat, he wasn’t asleep. He was sitting upright in the passenger seat when the fire began. So the arsonist must have seen him. We’re moving away from a manslaughter charge.’

‘Were they brand new?’ Adamsberg asked.

‘Were what brand new?’

‘The shoes.’

‘Yes, but why?’

‘Tell me, commandant, why would Momo have set fire to a car and at the same time made a mess of his new shoes, and if he did, why didn’t he get rid of them? Did you look at his hands? Were there traces of petrol on them?’

‘Forensics are expected any minute now. We’ve had instructions to move fast. Look, when you hear the name you’ll know why we had to get a move on. The old man who died was Antoine Clermont-Brasseur.’

‘No less,’ said Adamsberg after a silence.

‘You’ve got it,’ said Danglard gravely.

‘And Momo just came across him by chance?’

‘What kind of chance would that be? If he killed Clermont-Brasseur, he’d be striking a blow at the heart of capitalism. Perhaps that’s what he wanted.’

Adamsberg let Danglard go on talking for a few moments, while putting his socks and shoes back on with his other hand.

‘Has the examining magistrate been informed?’

‘We’re just waiting for the results of the tests on Momo’s hands.’

‘Danglard, whatever the result, don’t ask for the charges to be lodged yet. Wait for me.’

‘I don’t see how we can. If the judge finds out we’ve dragged our feet, with a name like Clermont-Brasseur, the minister will be down on us
within the hour. The prefect’s chief of staff has already called for information. He wants the murderer under lock and key within twenty-four hours.’

‘Who’s in charge of the Clermont industrial group now?’

‘The father was still holding two-thirds of the shares. His two sons have the rest between them. That’s putting it simply. In fact the father had two-thirds of the building and metal industry. One of the sons has the majority in the IT sector and the other handles the property development. But overall, the old man was in charge, and he didn’t want his sons running it on their own. There’d been rumours over the last year that Antoine had started to make some blunders, and that the older son, Christian, was thinking of getting power of attorney in order to protect the group. The old man was furious and had made up his mind to marry his housekeeper next month: she’s from Ivory Coast, forty years younger than him, and she’s been looking after him and sharing his bed for the last ten years. She’s got two children, a son and daughter, and old Antoine was planning to adopt them. It may have been pure provocation perhaps, but the determination of an old man can be a hundred times more implacable than the passion of a young one.’

‘And you checked the alibis of the sons?’

‘Total veto,’ said Danglard between clenched teeth. ‘They’re too shocked to talk to the police, we’ve been asked to wait.’

‘Danglard, which technician is the lab sending us?’

‘Enzo Lalonde. He’s good. Don’t go there, commissaire. The ground under our feet is already starting to smoulder.’

‘Don’t go where?’

‘Anywhere.’

Adamsberg ended the call, rubbed his neck, and flung out his arm towards the hills to throw the bubble of electricity into the landscape. It seemed to work. He walked quite quickly through the little streets of Ordebec, his laces trailing, heading straight for a telephone box he had noticed on the way from Léo’s house to the town centre. A cabin that was not overlooked at all, surrounded by giant hogweed plants. He called the lab and asked to speak to Enzo Lalonde.

‘Don’t worry, commissaire,’ said Lalonde at once, apologetically. ‘I’ll be over there in forty-five minutes. I’m on my way now.’

‘No, that’s just it, I don’t want you to be on your way. You’ve been held up at the lab, then your car won’t start, you’ve got stuck in traffic, if possible an accident, something like a headlight against a lamp post would be ideal. Or a bumper. I’ll let you improvise, I gather you’re a bright lad.’

‘Something wrong, commissaire?’

‘I need time. Do the analysis as late as you can, then say that some accidental contamination has ruined it and you’ll have to start again tomorrow.’

‘Commissaire,’ said Lalonde after a silence, ‘do you realise what you’re asking me to do?’

‘Just a few hours, no more. On the orders of your superior and in the interests of the investigation. The man under arrest is going to prison in any case. But you can just give him an extra day.’

‘I don’t know, commissaire.’

‘Never mind, Lalonde, no offence taken. Put Dr Roman on and forget this conversation. Roman will do it.’

‘Look, all right, commissaire,’ said Lalonde after another silence. ‘But to ask a favour in return, I was the one who picked up this business with the string round the pigeon’s feet. Can you give me some extra time too? I’ve got a lot on my plate.’

‘As much as you like. Just find some way.’

‘There are scraps of skin on the string. The kid must have scraped his fingers on it, maybe even grazed them. So you need to find someone with a barely visible lesion in the fold of the index finger. But the string might tell you more. It’s unusual.’

‘Good, good,’ Adamsberg congratulated him, sensing that the young Enzo Lalonde was trying to make him forget his earlier reluctance. ‘Now, whatever you do, don’t call me on my mobile or at the squad HQ.’

‘Understood, sir. But one more thing. I can hold back the results till tomorrow. But I will never falsify the results of an analysis. Please don’t ask me to do that. If the guy’s had his chips, I can’t help it.’

‘No, no. No question of falsifying anything. You’re sure to find traces
of petrol on his fingers, whatever happens. And it’ll be the same as on the shoes, because he’s handled them and the same too as was found at the scene of the fire. He’s going to be banged up, no matter what.’

And then everyone will be happy, thought Adamsberg, hanging up and wiping his prints off the receiver with his shirt tail. And young Momo will see his destiny ahead of him, signed, sealed and delivered.

*   *   *

Léone’s farmhouse was now visible in the distance and Adamsberg suddenly stood still, listening. The clear air carried to his ears a long whining sound, the cry of a dog in distress. Adamsberg started running down the road.

X

The dining-room door was wide open. Sweating, Adamsberg stepped into the dark little room, then stopped short. Léone’s long thin body was stretched out on the stone flags, her head in a pool of blood. At her side, Fleg was lying down, whining, one large paw on the old woman’s waist. Adamsberg felt as if a wall was falling inside him from his head to his stomach and crumbling into his legs.

Kneeling by Léone, he put his hand to her neck and wrists, but couldn’t feel the slightest pulse. It wasn’t a simple fall, someone had killed her, having banged her head savagely against the stone floor. Pounding his fist on the ground, he felt himself groan aloud with the dog. The body was warm, the attack could have been carried out only a few minutes before. Perhaps he had even disturbed the killer with the sound of his steps on the pebbles in the path. He opened the back door, looked quickly over the deserted surroundings and ran to the neighbours to get the number of the gendarmerie.

Adamsberg waited for the cops to arrive, sitting cross-legged alongside Léo. Like the dog, he put one hand on her body.

‘Where’s Émeri?’ he asked the officer who came in, accompanied by a woman who had to be the police doctor.

‘He’d gone to see the crazies. He’s on his way.’

‘Ambulance,’ the doctor ordered urgently into her phone. ‘She’s still alive. But maybe only for a few minutes. She’s in a coma.’

Adamsberg looked up. ‘I couldn’t feel a pulse,’ he said.

‘It’s very weak,’ said the doctor, a woman of about forty, attractive and brisk in manner.

‘When did it happen?’ asked the gendarme, waiting for his boss to arrive.

‘Only a few minutes before you reported it,’ said the doctor. ‘No more than five perhaps. She must have hit her head when she fell.’

‘No,’ said Adamsberg, ‘someone banged her head on the floor.’

‘Did you move her?’ asked the woman. ‘Who are you anyway?’

‘No, I didn’t move her, I’m a cop myself. Look at the dog, doctor, he can’t stand up. He was defending Léo and the killer must have hit him.’

‘I looked at the dog, I know Fleg, he’s not hurt. When he doesn’t want to get up, there’s nothing to be done with him. He won’t leave here until they take his mistress away. If then.’

‘She must have fainted,’ said the fat gendarme unhelpfully, ‘or perhaps tripped over a chair. And fallen.’

Adamsberg shook his head, refusing to discuss it. Léone had been hit because of the butterfly in Brazil whose wing she had seen move. But which detail had she seen? And where? The little town of Ordebec itself could offer thousands of details a day, thousands of beats of the butterfly’s wings. And as many linked events. Including the murder of Michel Herbier. And somewhere among this mass of fluttering wings, one had vibrated in front of Léone’s eyes, and she had had the faculty of seeing or hearing it. But which one? Finding a butterfly’s wing in a settlement of two thousand inhabitants was trickier than the proverbial needle in the haystack. Something which had never seemed insurmountable to Adamsberg: all you had to do was burn down the haystack and you’d find the needle.

The ambulance had drawn up in front of the house and its doors clanged open. Adamsberg stood up and went out. He waited until the paramedics had cautiously slid the stretcher into the vehicle, and gently touched the old woman’s hair with the back of his hand.

‘I’ll be back, Léo,’ he said to her. ‘Brigadier, please ask Capitaine Émeri to have her guarded day and night, twenty-four-hour watch.’

‘Right you are, commissaire.’

‘Nobody must get into her room.’

‘Right you are, commissaire.’

‘Waste of effort,’ said the doctor coolly, as she got into the ambulance. ‘She’s unlikely to live beyond nightfall.’

Walking even more slowly than usual, Adamsberg went back into the house which the fat brigadier was now guarding. He ran water over his hands, washing off Léo’s blood, and wiped them with the towel he had used the previous evening to dry the dishes, then draped it neatly over the back of a chair. A blue-and-white tea towel with a pattern of bees on it.

Despite his mistress’s departure, the dog hadn’t moved. He was still whining quietly, with every breath.

‘Take care of him, will you?’ Adamsberg said to the gendarme. ‘Give him some sugar, and don’t leave him here.’

*   *   *

In the train, mud and leaves dried on the soles of his shoes and flaked off in a number of dark clumps, attracting disapproving glances from the woman sitting opposite. Adamsberg picked up a fragment, moulded to the pattern of his boot, and slipped it into his shirt pocket. The woman couldn’t know, he reflected, that she was sitting alongside the sacred remains from the Chemin de Bonneval, trampled by the hooves of the Ghost Riders. Lord Hellequin would be back to strike at Ordebec – he still had three living souls to capture.

XI

It had been two years since Adamsberg had seen Momo, the youth who liked torching fancy cars. He would be about twenty-three now, too old to be still playing with matches, too young to have given up his campaign. There was a shadow of stubble on his cheeks, but the new attempt to look manly didn’t make him look any more impressive.

The young man had been put in the interview room, which had no natural daylight or ventilation. Adamsberg observed him through the two-way mirror, and saw him slumped in his chair, staring at the floor. Lieutenants Noël and Morel were questioning him. Noël was pacing around, playing carelessly with the yo-yo he had confiscated from the young man. Momo had won championships with it.

‘Who put Noël on the job?’ Adamsberg asked.

‘He’s only just taken over,’ explained Danglard, looking uneasy.

The questioning had been going on since morning and Danglard had not yet ordered a halt. Momo had been sticking to the same version of events for hours: he had been waiting on his own in this park in the Fresnay district, he had found these brand-new trainers in his cupboard at home, and had taken them out of the bag. If there was petrol on his hands, it must have come from the shoes. He had no idea who Antoine Clermont-Brasseur was, never heard of him.

‘Has he had anything to eat?’ Adamsberg asked, over the intercom.

‘Yes.’

‘And to drink?’

‘Two Cokes. Good grief, commissaire, what are you imagining? We’re not torturing him.’

‘The prefect called up in person,’ Danglard intervened. ‘We’ve got to get a confession out of him by tonight. Straight from the top, Ministry of the Interior.’

‘And where are these famous trainers?’

‘Here,’ said Danglard, pointing to a desk. ‘They still reek of petrol.’

Adamsberg looked them over without touching them and nodded.

‘Yes, soaked to the ends of the laces,’ he agreed.

Brigadier Estalère hurried in, followed by Mercadet, holding a telephone. Without the unexplained protection of Adamsberg, young Estalère would long ago have left the squad for some little police station in the provinces. All his colleagues more or less thought that Estalère wasn’t up to the job, or indeed that he was completely stupid. His big green eyes were always wide open, as if he were trying to take in everything in the world around him, but he failed to register the most obvious things. The commissaire treated him as if he were a promising youngster, and assured everyone that he would realise his potential one day. And every day the young officer made scrupulous efforts to learn and understand. But over the two years he had been with them, nobody had yet seen this famous promise come to anything much. Estalère followed in Adamsberg’s footsteps like a traveller setting his compass, without any critical spirit; and at the same time he idolised Lieutenant Retancourt. The clash between the procedural methods of his two role models caused him the greatest perplexity, since Adamsberg journeyed by roundabout paths, while Retancourt moved in a straight line towards her objective, with the realistic reflexes of a buffalo heading for a waterhole. So the young brigadier often stopped at the fork in the road, unable to decide which way to go. At such moments of crisis, he went off and fetched coffee for everyone in the squad. This task he carried out to perfection, since he had memorised all the preferences, however minor, of all his colleagues.