Have Mercy On Us All (30 page)

“Indifference, gentleness, beauty and ease.”

“Bugger.”

“Quite. But it was never discovered what proportions the absent-minded Lord used for His concoction. It remains a major theological mystery down to this day.”

“I don’t want to be involved in the argument, Adrien.”

“That’s only to be expected, Camille. It’s a well-known fact that when God created you, He’d just woken from seventeen hours’ sleep, and was consequently in tip-top shape. He spent a whole blessed day shaping you with His skilled hands.”

Camille smiled.

“And what about you, Adrien? How was God feeling when he made you?”

“He’d spent the whole evening boozing with his mates, Raphael, Michael and Gabriel. They got right pickled. It’s not such a well-known story.”

“The result could have been great.”

“No, it gave the Lord the DTs. That’s why I’ve got this fuzzy, jellywobble look.”

“There’s a reason for everything.”

“Yep. Things aren’t that complicated, really.”

“I’m going out for a walk, Adrien.”

“Are you sure?”

“Have you got a better idea?”

“Drop him.”

“I don’t like dropping people. It makes dents in them.”

“You’re right. I’ve been dropped, once.”

Camille nodded.

“You have to help me. Call me tomorrow when he’s got into the office. Then I can go round and collect my stuff.”

Camille grabbed a third bottle and downed a good part of its liquid contents.

“Where are you off to?” Danglard asked.

“No idea. Where is there room for me?”

Danglard pointed to his own forehead.

“Yes indeed,” Camille said with a smile, “but you’re an old sage, my friend, and I’m quite devoid of wisdom. Adrien?”

“Yes?”

“What can I do with that?”

Camille pointed to a fur ball on the settee. It was actually a kitten.

“It’s been trailing me all evening. I suppose it wanted to help. It’s tiny, but wise and very proud. I can’t take it with me, it’s too delicate.”

“Do you want me to look after that cat?”

Danglard picked it up by the scruff, looked at it, and put it down in alarm.

“I would rather give houseroom to you,” said Danglard. “He’ll miss you.”

“The kitten will miss me?”

“Adamsberg will miss you.”

Camille finished her third beer and put the bottle back down without a sound.

“No, he won’t. He’s not delicate.”

Danglard didn’t try to sway Camille. It’s not a bad idea to take a trip after an accident. He’d keep her cat, it would be a souvenir, as soft and cute as Camille herself, though obviously less spectacular.

“Where are you going to sleep?”

Camille shrugged.

“Here,” Danglard decided. “I’ll make up the sofa bed.”

“Please don’t bother, Adrien. I’ll lie out on the settee, with my boots on.”

“Whatever for? You’ll be uncomfortable.”

“That doesn’t matter. From now on I shall always sleep in my boots.”

“That’s not very hygienic,” said Danglard.

“Better to be upstanding than hygienic.”

“You know, Camille, fine words never did mend broken bones.”

“Yes, sure, I know. It’s just the stupid bit of me that makes me spout sometimes. Or trickle.”

“Spouting words fine or foul won’t give you what you need, my dear. Nor even a Shakespearean soliloquy.”

“What will, Adrien?” said Camille as she began to undo her laces.

“Thinking with your head.”

“OK. I’ll go and get one.”

Camille lay down on her back on the settee with her eyes open. Danglard went to the bathroom and came back with a towel and a bowl of cold water.

“Dab your eyes, it’ll help the swelling go down.”

“Adrien, did God have any soup left when He’d finished making Jean-Baptiste?”

“A bit.”

“What did He do with it?”

“A few bits and pieces, tricksy things like leather soles. They’re great to wear, but they slip on slopes and skid as soon as it gets wet. Mankind has only solved this ancient conundrum in recent years with rubber stick-ons.”

“Can’t we stick rubber soles on Jean-Baptiste?”

“To stop him slipping away? No, can’t do that.”

“What else did He make, Adrien?”

“He didn’t have much soup left, you know.”

“What else?”

“Skittles.”

“There you are, you see. Skittles are really clever.”

Camille dropped off and Danglard stayed up for another half an hour to take off the cold compress and switch off the lights. He looked at the girl in the half-light. He’d give a year’s beer just to be able to stroke her every time Adamsberg forgot to give her a kiss. He picked up the kitten, brought it up to his face and stared in its eyes.

“Accidents are bloody stupid,” he told the cat. “Really stupid. You and me, kid, we’re going to have to get along together for a while. We’ll wait for her to come back, if she does. Won’t we, Woolly?”

Before going to bed Danglard hovered over the phone, wondering whether he should let Adamsberg know. Whether to rat on Camille, or to rat on Adamsberg. He pondered for a good while as he stood at this sombre fork in his path.

As Adamsberg put his clothes on in a rush to go after Camille, the girl didn’t stop firing worried questions at him – how long had he known her, why had he never mentioned her, did he sleep with her, did he love her, what was he thinking of, why was he running after her, when would he come back, why didn’t he stay, she didn’t like to be left on her own. It made Adamsberg dizzy and he didn’t know how to answer a single one of the questions. He left the girl in the flat, confident that she’d still be there when he got back, and left the unopened parcel of questions for later. Camille was much the greater of his worries, because Camille didn’t mind being on her own. She minded it so little that the slightest bump could have her setting off on one of her treks.

Adamsberg strode at a good pace in Bertin’s billowing oilskin with its cold and draughty arms. He knew Camille. She was going to take off, pretty damn quick too. When Camille wanted a change of scenery, she was as hard to pin down as a bird on helium, as hard to catch as her mother Queen Matilda was when she launched herself on to the high seas. Camille would go and potter about in her own far yonder once she’d had enough all of a sudden of the here and now with its twisting paths all awkwardly tangled up with each other. Right now she was probably lacing up her boots, packing her keyboard, shutting her toolbox. Camille relied a great deal on that toolbox to sort her out in life, much more than she relied on him, because she didn’t trust him that much, and quite right too.

Adamsberg came round the corner into her street and looked up at her loft. Lights out. He sat on the bonnet of a parked car to catch his breath and crossed his hands on his waist. Camille hadn’t gone back to her place and she would probably take off without looking over her shoulder. That’s
the
way it was when Camille went walkabout. Who knows when he would see her again? In five years, in ten years, or never. You couldn’t tell.

He walked miserably back home. It wouldn’t have happened if his time and his mind hadn’t been consumed by the plague-monger. He collapsed on to his bed, weary and speechless, while the girl picked up the skein of her worried questions.

“Stop it, please,” he said.

“It’s not my fault!” she protested.

“It’s my fault,” said Adamsberg as he closed his eyes. “But you either stop it or you get out.”

“You don’t care either way?”

“It makes no difference to me. Nothing makes any difference.”

XXIX

DANGLARD WAS QUITE
worried when he went into Adamsberg’s office at 9 a.m., despite knowing that, at bottom, nothing would ever alter the
commissaire principal
’s eternally roving eye, owing to his extremely limited contact with reality. And there indeed sat Adamsberg at his desk, leafing through a heap of morning papers with fairly disastrous front-page headlines, but seeming quite unaffected by them, his face as calm as it ever was, with maybe just a slightly more distant look in the eye.

“Eighteen thousand blocks now daubed,” Danglard said as he put a memo on the chief’s desk.

“That’s fine, Danglard.”

Danglard stood there, speechless.

“I almost caught the man, yesterday, on the square,” Adamsberg said in a rather muted voice.

“The plague-monger?” queried Danglard in surprise.

“The monger himself. But he slipped away. Everything’s slipping out of my hands, Danglard,” he added as he looked up at his deputy and met his eyes.

“Did you see something?”

“No. That’s the point. I didn’t see anything.”

“You didn’t see anything? So how can you say you almost nabbed him, then?”

“Because I felt it.”

“Felt what?”

“I don’t know, Danglard.”

Danglard gave up. It seemed wiser to leave Adamsberg on his own when he was wandering in such dark waters, walking out behind the tide with his feet squelching in the mud up to his ankles. With the shameful feeling of being a spy in his own squad Danglard slipped away to the courtyard entrance to ring Camille.

“Coast clear,” he whispered into his mobile. “He’s down here, he’s got a pile of work as high as the Eiffel Tower.”

“Thanks, Adrien. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Camille.”

Danglard hung up in sadness, went back to his desk, mechanically switched on the computer which gave its usual welcome jingle, too jolly by half for the officer’s glum thoughts. Computers are bloody stupid, they can’t adapt to circumstances. Ninety minutes later he saw Adamsberg passing by, walking quite briskly. Danglard rang Camille’s number again to warn her of a probable home call. But she had already set sail.

Adamsberg encountered a closed door once again but this time he didn’t hesitate. He got out his pass key and undid the lock. A single glance was enough to tell him that Camille had flown the nest. The keyboard was gone, so was the plumbing kit and the backpack. The bed was made, the fridge was empty and the power switched off at the mains. Adamsberg sat down on a chair to survey the abandoned nest and to try to think. He surveyed plenty but no thought came. He was torn from his torpor forty-five minutes later by the beeping of his mobile phone.

“Masséna just called,” Danglard told him. “They’ve got a body in Marseille.”

“That’s fine,” Adamsberg opined, just as he had earlier on. “I’ll be going down. Get me a seat on the first plane.”

Around two, when Adamsberg was about to leave the Brigade in turmoil, he put his bag down next to Danglard’s desk.

“I’m off,” he said.

“Yes,” said Danglard.

“I’m leaving you in charge.”

“Yes.”

Adamsberg was looking for his words and his eyes lighted on Danglard’s feet, half-hiding a round wicker basket with a tiny but similarly circular kitten sleeping in it.

“What’s that, Danglard?”

“It’s a cat.”

“You’re bringing moggies into the office, are you? Don’t you think we’ve got enough mess on our hands already?”

“I can’t leave it at home. It’s too little, it pees everywhere and doesn’t yet quite know how to feed itself.”

“Danglard, you told me you did not want a pet.”

“Well, there’s what you say, and there’s what you do.”

Danglard was curt, somewhat hostile, and keeping his eyes on his monitor. Adamsberg recognised it for what it was, the unspoken disapproval he had to put up with from his deputy now and again. He looked down at the basket and the picture came back to him in clear focus. Camille leaving, seen from behind, with a bomber jacket over one arm and a white and grey kitten in the other. He hadn’t given it a thought as he chased after her.

“She gave it to you, didn’t she, Danglard?”

“Yes,” came the reply from a face still glued to the computer screen.

“What’s its name?”

“Woolly.”

Adamsberg drew up a chair and sat down with his elbows on his knees.

“She’s gone walkabout,” he said.

“Yes,” Danglard said again. This time he turned round and stared at Adamsberg’s weary, washed out face.

“Did she tell you where she was going?”

“No.”

There was a brief silence.

“There was a minor collision,” Adamsberg said.

“I know.”

Adamsberg ran both his hands through his hair, slowly, over and over again, as if he was trying to push his skull back into place. Then he got up and left the building without another word.

XXX

MASSÉNA MET HIS
opposite number at Marignane airport and took him straight to the morgue where the body was being kept. Adamsberg wanted to have a look, as Masséna couldn’t tell whether this was the serial killer or a copycat case.

“He was found naked in his flat,” Masséna explained. “The locks had been picked by a professional. Very neat work. Despite two hefty brand new bolts.”

“Child’s play,” said Adamsberg. “Was there a police guard on the landing?”

“I’ve got four thousand blocks to look after,
commissaire
!”

“Yes. A stroke of genius. It took him just a few days to demolish police protection. ID of the victim?”

“Sylvain Jules Marmot, age thirty-three. Works as a fitter down at the repair yards.”

“Ship repair?” Adamsberg queried. “Any connection with Brittany?”

“How did you know?”

“I don’t know. I’m wondering.”

“When he was seventeen he had a job at Concarneau. That’s where he trained as a fitter. But he dropped it all of a sudden and headed for Paris, where he survived as a jobbing carpenter.”

“Was he living on his own down here?”

“Yes. His girlfriend is a married woman.”

“That’s why the plague-monger killed him at his own flat. He does his research properly. He leaves nothing to chance, Masséna.”

“That’s as may be, but there’s not a single common factor linking Marmot
and
your four victims,
commissaire
. Apart from his life in Paris between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven. Don’t worry about the interviews,
commissaire
, I’ve sent the whole file up to your squad.”

“That’s where it happened. In Paris.”