Have Mercy On Us All (24 page)

“Smart? He didn’t need to paint his bloody 4s. He didn’t need to single out his victims for us. The trap was entirely of his own making.”

“He wanted to get us to think plague.”

“But he could have done that by putting a red cross on the door after the murder.”

“True enough. But his plague is targeted, not random. He picks his victims, then does his best to protect bystanders from contagion. That’s also joined-up practical thinking.”

“Joined up inside a completely loopy mind. He could have murdered people without setting up any of this bloody antique scourge nonsense.”

“But it’s not
him
who wants to kill. He wants people to be killed. He wants to be the agent directing where the curse will strike, but not the curse itself. That must be a hugely meaningful difference for our killer. In his own mind, he’s not responsible.”

“Good Lord, but why does it have to be an outbreak of plague? It’s grotesque! Where’s this man coming from? The loony bin? Or has he crawled out of a grave?”

“Danglard, I’ve said this before. When we can understand where our man’s coming from, we’ll have him. But yes, of course the plague’s a grotesque idea. All the same, don’t underestimate the old bogey, the plague’s got life in it yet. You’d be surprised how many people are still bewitched. OK, so it’s an outdated old bogey all tattered and torn, but nobody thinks it looks remotely funny. The scare may be grotesque, but we have to handle it with care.”

Adamsberg got in the car. On the way to Avenue de Suffren he called the entomologist to ask him to go over to the last victim’s flat in Rue du Temple with a guinea pig.
Nosopsyllus fasciatus
had been found in the flats of Viard and Clerc – fourteen in the former, nine in the latter – plus some more in the clothing that the plague-monger had dumped alongside them. All healthy fleas. All released from a large ivory envelope slit open with a
paperknife
. Then he rang the AFP wire service. Anyone receiving an envelope of that description should contact the police immediately. And please get a picture of the envelope on to the lunchtime television news.

Adamsberg was deeply saddened by the sight of the naked woman. She was disfigured by strangulation and almost entirely black from charcoal and truck dirt; the small heap of clothes beside her looked quite pathetic. Rubbernecks were now being kept at bay behind a cordon but hundreds of passers-by had already seen the sight. Not a chance of keeping this out of the limelight. Adamsberg thrust his hands into his trouser pockets in a gesture of despair. His intuitions were deserting him. He couldn’t get a fix on the plague-monger, couldn’t see where he was going. Whereas the killer was deadly effective. He announced his moves openly, he was master of the media and, despite a massive police operation that was supposed to have him cornered, he killed where and when he pleased. There were now four victims that Adamsberg had failed to protect even though he’d been on the alert well ahead of the murders. When was it he’d first sniffed what was in the air? When Maryse, the woman with kids on the verge of a breakdown, had come back to see him a second time. He remembered precisely when he’d started worrying. But he couldn’t recall exactly when he’d begun to lose the thread, the point at which he’d got lost in a fog of detail and sank in a sea of facts.

He stayed to see Marianne Bardou bagged and loaded on to the hearse. He gave a few curt orders and lent an inattentive ear to officers reporting back from Rue du Temple. The woman hadn’t gone out for the evening, she simply didn’t go home from work. He sent two
lieutenants
off to see her boss, though he’d didn’t expect to get much out of that, and walked back to the Brigade. He walked for over an hour and then cut off towards Montparnasse. If only he could summon up the memory of the exact moment when he lost the thread of this case.

He walked down Rue de la Gaîté and sauntered into the Viking. He ordered a sandwich and took a seat at the table by the window which was always empty because you had to bend low when approaching it to avoid banging your head on the fake longboat prow sticking out of the wall. He’d not had more than two bites when Bertin stood up and gave a sudden
blow
to a brass plate over the bar, setting off a great thunder-roll. Adamsberg was taken aback. There was a great flutter of pigeonry in the square as all the birds flew off, whereas customers flocked into the restaurant part of the bar. Le Guern was among them, and Adamsberg caught his eye. Without a question, the town crier came and sat down opposite the
commissaire
.

“You’re down in the dumps,
commissaire
.”

“I am pretty down, Le Guern. Is it really obvious?”

“Yeah. Lost at sea?”

“Could not put it better myself.”

“That happened to me three times in all. We went round and round in the fog, just missing one disaster after another. On two occasions it was the equipment that had gone wrong. But once, it was my fault. I’d misread the sextant after a sleepless night. When you’re overtired you can easily get it wrong, you can make a really bad howler. And you don’t ever get away with that.”

Adamsberg sat up straight and Joss saw in those seaweed eyes the same flame he’d seen come alight when he first encountered Adamsberg at the Brigade.

“Say that again, Le Guern. In the same words.”

“You mean about the sextant?”

“Yes.”

“Well, OK, it was the sextant. You get it wrong, you make a howler, you don’t get away with it, ever.”

Adamsberg stayed stock still, staring hard at a fixed point on the café table, with an arm stretched out as if to silence the town crier. Joss didn’t dare open his mouth as he watched Adamsberg’s clenched fist slowly compress the remnants of a sandwich.

“I’ve got it, Le Guern. I know when I lost the thread, when I stopped being able to see the fellow.”

“What fellow?”

“The plague-monger. I stopped being able to see him, I lost my bearings. But now I know
when
that happened.”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters as much as being able to go back to get a proper reading on your sextant and start over from where you were before you got lost.”

“In that case,
commissaire
, it matters.”

“I must go,” said Adamsberg as he put money down on the table.

“Watch out for the longboat!” Joss warned him. “You could brain yourself.”

“I’m not that tall. Was there a ‘special’ this morning?”

“You would have been told if there had been.”

As Adamsberg stepped out on to the street, Joss asked, “Are you off to find your bearing?”

“That’s right, Captain.”

“Do you really know how to find it?”

Adamsberg pointed a finger to his forehead, and off he went.

It was when he heard about the howler. When Marc Vandoosler had explained the howler. That’s when he lost the thread. As he walked along the street, Adamsberg tried to reconstruct the exact words Vandoosler had used. He scanned the recent images in his memory and tried turning up the sound. Vandoosler leaning on the doorpost, Vandoosler with his clunky trouser belt, Vandoosler gesticulating, Vandoosler with his slender hand and his silver rings, one two three silver rings. That’s right, they were on to the charcoal.
When your bod smudged his victim’s corpse with charcoal, he was making a big mistake. A bloody great howler, if I may say so
.

Adamsberg gave a great sigh of relief. He sat on the first bench he could find, wrote Marc Vandoosler’s remembered words in his notebook and munched through the rest of his sandwich. He still had no idea what course to set, but at least he now knew where he was starting from. Where his sextant had let him down. He also reckoned that from now on the mist might lift. He felt a sharp pang of gratitude for sailorman Joss Le Guern.

He wandered peacefully back to the office, though he could not keep his eyes from being accosted by headlines at every newsvendor’s kiosk on his route. This evening, or maybe tomorrow. If the plague-monger sends his vicious
direction concerning the pestilence
to the AFP. And when the fourth
murder
gets out. Could happen this evening, could happen tomorrow. That’s when the plague of gossip and rumour would run amok, and no press conference in the world would hold it back. The monger had mongered, and won hands down.

Could be tonight, could be tomorrow.

XXIII

“IS THAT YOU?”

“It’s me, Narnie. Open up,” he said insistently.

As soon as he was inside he buried himself in the old woman’s bosom, twisting gently from side to side.

“It’s working, Narnie. It’s working!”

“They’re falling like flies. Like flies!”

“They wriggle and then die, Narnie. Do you remember how in the old days the sick went crazy, tore off their clothes and ran into the river to drown themselves? Bashed their brains out on brick walls?”

“Come on in,” the old woman said as she tugged him by the hand. “Let’s not stay here in the dark.”

Narnie led the way to the lounge by the light of her torch.

“Settle down, I’ve made you some girdle cakes. Have a glass of Madeira.”

“In the old days there were so many affected they got thrown out of windows on to the street like piles of rubbish. That was sad, wasn’t it, Narnie? Parents, brothers, sisters, all thrown out with the rubbish.”

“They’re not your brothers or sisters. They’re wild animals who don’t deserve to breathe the same air as you do. Later, when it’s over, you’ll recuperate. It’s your turn now.”

Arnaud smiled. “You know they go dizzy and collapse within a few days?”

“The scourge of God will strike them down where’er they may hide.
Where’er
they flee they’ll not be saved. I think they’ve realised.”

“Sure they’ve twigged, and they’re scared, Narnie. Their turn now,” Arnaud added as he emptied his glass.

“Now no more of this nonsense. You’ve come for the necessary?”

“I need lots of it. I’ll be out and about from now on, Narnie. I’ll be moving around.”

“The necessary was all right, wasn’t it, my boy?”

The old woman moved between the cages in the attic amid squealing and scratching.

“Now, now, my dearies,” she mumbled, “are we going to stop making such a fuss? Doesn’t Narnie give you enough to eat?”

She picked up a small, tightly sealed bag which she handed to Arnaud.

“Here you are. Give me a surprise.”

Arnaud went down the ladder ahead of Narnie to save her from a fall, and he felt deeply moved by the bag with the dead rat in it that he held well away from his body. Narnie was a fantastic ratter, the best in the world. He would never have managed it all without her. He was in charge, of course, he thought as he twiddled the ring on his finger, and that was now plain to see. All the same, he would have wasted ten years of his life if Narnie hadn’t been around to help. He needed all the life he had, and he needed it now.

Arnaud left the tumbledown house in the black of night. In his pockets were secreted five envelopes full of wriggling
Nosopsyllus fasciatus
, full to the brim with the power of death. He mumbled to himself as he picked his way down the dark alley. Ingluvies. Median stylet of the oral apparatus. Proboscis, probe, insertion. Arnaud loved fleas and Narnie was the only person he could talk to about the vast universe of their anatomy. Not cat fleas, though. They were out of the question. Frivolous, ineffective insects which he held in utter contempt. As did Narnie.

XXIV

EVERYONE IN THE
squad who could do overtime had been asked to stay on throughout Saturday and, save for three members with insuperable domestic problems, the team with the twelve extra officers was at full strength at the start of the weekend. Adamsberg had been at his desk since 7 a.m., sifting through the pile of papers in his in-box. He cast a dreary eye over the latest lab reports and then got down to the morning newspapers. Actually, he tried to keep the word “in-box” out of his mind. It rhymed with cell blocks, door-locks, stocks. “In-tray” wasn’t a lot better but it had a less gloomy assonance, struck a less burdensome chord. You could stray with a tray. Imagine a surfboard or a sleigh. Whereas “in-box” felt like a ton of rocks.

He put to one side the recent forensic reports which only confirmed what was known or supposed already: Marianne Bardou had not been raped; her boss had stated she had changed in the back room for an evening in town but hadn’t said where she was going. The boss’s alibi was watertight; Marianne’s two lovers, idem. Death by strangulation had occurred around 10 p.m. Like Viard and Clerc she’d also had a whiff of tear gas. Bacillus test, negative. Zero flea bites found on the corpse, and the same for François Clerc. But nine
Nosopsyllus fasciatus
had been found in Bardou’s flat, bacillus negative. Type of charcoal used – apple wood. No trace of grease or oily substance found on any of the doors.

It was 7.30 a.m. and phones began ringing all over the building. Adamsberg had put his own line on divert and was relying on his mobile
to
keep in touch. He turned to the pile of morning papers. The front page facing him did not bode well. He had warned Brézillon after news of the fourth “black death” had gone out on television on Friday evening: if the plague-monger had sent the press his “instructions concerning preservatives and antidotes,” then the police would no longer be able to offer protection to potential victims.

“What about the envelopes?” Brézillon queried. “We’ve highlighted that aspect so far.”

“He could change stationery. Not to mention the jokers and score-settlers who’ll be slipping dozens of the things under their best friends’ doors.”

“And the fleas? Shouldn’t we ask anyone who gets bitten by a flea to report to a commissariat, for their own safety?”

“Fleas don’t always bite straight away,” Adamsberg told the Chief Superintendent. “Clerc and Bardou had no bites at all. If we do what you’re suggesting, sir, we’ll have thousands of panicky walk-ins fussing about bites that turn out to be just human fleas or cat fleas or dog fleas. That way we’d probably miss all the real targets.”