Have Mercy On Us All (34 page)

“Hell,” he said, “are you going to bed down here?”

“In case he sings.”

Danglard made no comment and went on his way. What comment could he make, anyway? He knew Adamsberg wasn’t keen on going back to his flat where the wreck of his collision was still smouldering. He’d be over it by tomorrow. Adamsberg could bounce back with incredible speed.

Adamsberg set up the camp bed and folded the blanket to make a pillow. He had the monger a few feet away. The fourmonger, the scary lettermonger, the rat-flea-monger, the plague-monger, the monger who choked and charcoaled his victims. The charcoal was his final touch. And his only
great howler
.

He took off his jacket and his trousers and put his mobile phone on the chair. Ring, for heaven’s sake.

XXXIII

THE MAIN BELL
rang in the dark of night, repeatedly, insistently, urgently.
Brigadier
Estalère unbolted the side door and found before him a man in a great sweat wearing a hastily buttoned two-piece suit and a tieless shirt revealing a chestful of thick black hair.

“Let me in, quick,” the man said as he barged in to the shelter of the Brigade Criminelle. “I want to make a statement. About the killer, the plague-man.”

Estalère didn’t dare alert the
commissaire principal
so he woke up his deputy Danglard.

“Bloody hell, Estalère,” said Danglard into the phone by his bed. “Why did you call me? Rouse Adamsberg, he’s napping in his office.”

“That’s just it,
commissaire
. I’m afraid of getting a row from the chief if it’s not important.”

“And you’re not so frightened of me, is that it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re wrong. You’ve been working for Adamsberg for six weeks now. In all that time, have you once heard him shout or scream?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, you can stay on for the next thirty years and you still won’t hear him let rip. But you’re about to get the wrong side of my tongue, young man. Fucking well wake the man up. Anyway, he doesn’t need much sleep. And I do.”

“Got that, sir.”

“Wait a minute. What does the guy want?”

“He’s in a blue funk, he thinks the killer is going to kill him.”

“We decided ages ago to stop looking after scaredy-cats. Ten a penny all over Paris. Chuck him out and leave Adamsberg alone.”

“He says he’s a special case, sir.”

“Chickenhearts always think they’re special cases. If they didn’t they wouldn’t panic.”

“No, sir, but he says he’s just been bitten by fleas.”

“When?” Danglard sat up in bed.

“Just now.”

“OK, Estalère. Wake him up. I’ll come over too.”

Adamsberg splashed cold water on his face and chest, told Estalère to get him a black coffee (the dispenser had at last been installed, less than twenty-four hours ago) and shoved the camp bed to the back of his office.

“Bring him in,
brigadier
.”

“
Brigadier
Estalère,”
brigadier
Estalère added.

Adamsberg nodded and took out his memory-jogger. With the monger locked up in a cell, he might have time to get to grips with his nameless horde of a squad. He entered:
baby face, green eyes, scaredy-cat
adds up to
Estalère
. Which prompted him to add:
entomology
plus
fleas
plus
Adam’s apple
equals
Martin
.

“What’s his name?”

“Roubaud, forename Kevin,” the
brigadier
supplied.

“How old?”

“Around thirty,” Estalère guessed.

“Got a flea bite in the night, is that the story?”

“Yes, sir, and he’s doing it in his pants.”

“As he should be.”

Estalère showed Kevin Roubaud to Adamsberg’s office while balancing a cup of sugarless black coffee in his left hand. Adamsberg took no sugar. Unlike his chief, Estalère liked personal quirks, he liked remembering them, and he liked showing that he remembered them.

“I didn’t put any sugar in,
commissaire
,” he said as he put the coffee on the desk and Roubaud into a chair.

“Thanks, Estalère.”

The customer sat there in a sweat and a fuss, running his fingers back and forth through the mat of hair on his chest. You could smell his sweat and his sweat smelled of booze.

“Never previously had fleas?” Adamsberg queried.

“Never.”

“Are you sure the bites are fresh tonight?”

“I was bitten less than two hours ago, it was the bite that woke me up. That’s why I rushed round here to let you know.”

“Are there any 4s on the doors of your stair, Mr Roubaud?”

“Two of them. The janitor put one on her window, in felt pen, and so did the guy on the fifth floor left.”

“Then it isn’t the killer. And these aren’t his fleas. You can go back to bed.”

“Are you joking?” Roubaud raised his voice. “I demand police protection.”

“The monger daubs every door on a stair save for one before he lets out his fleas,” Adamsberg said insistently and slowly. “Your fleas are of a different kind. Did anyone come to stay in the past few days? Did anyone drop in with a pet?”

“Yes.” The man’s face fell. “A friend of mine came by the day before yesterday. With his dog.”

“So there you are. Go home, Mr Roubaud, and get back to sleep. We’re all going to nap for the next hour or two, it’ll do us all good.”

“No, I don’t want to.”

“If you’re that worried,” Adamsberg said as he stood up, “call in pest control and be done with it.”

“That won’t be any use. The killer has got his finger on me, and he’s going to get me, fleas or no. I demand police protection.”

Adamsberg went round behind his desk, moved back to lean on his wall and took a better look at Kevin Roubaud. Thirty-ish, a bruiser and a worrier. There was something shifty about the look in his big, dark, slightly bulging eyes.

“All right,” said Adamsberg. “Let’s say he’s fingered you. There’s not a
single
4 worth the name on your staircase, but you know he’s got you on his list.”

“It’s the fleas,” Roubaud grunted. “It was in the papers. All the targets had fleas.”

“And your friend’s dog?”

“No, that’s not what it was.”

“How come you’re so sure?”

Adamsberg’s tone of voice had softened and Roubaud noticed. He pulled himself together and sat up straighter.

“It was in the papers,” he repeated.

“No, Roubaud, that’s not the reason. There’s something else.”

Danglard had just come in, at five past six in the morning, and Adamsberg motioned him to join in. Danglard walked across the room without a word and sat down at the workstation.

“Fuck that,” said Roubaud with renewed self-confidence. “I’m under threat, a nutter’s trying to kill me, and it’s me the police want to mess around with?”

“What’s your line, Roubaud?”

“I sell flooring materials in a furniture store behind Gare de l’Est.”

“Married?”

“Divorced, two years ago.”

“Children?”

“Two.”

“Do they stay with you?”

“With their mother. I have access rights at the weekend.”

“Do you eat out? Or in the flat? Can you cook?”

“It varies,” Roubaud said, rather nonplussed. “Sometimes I heat up a plate of soup and a frozen dinner. Sometimes I go down to the café. Proper restaurants are too expensive.”

“Do you like music?”

“Yes,” said Roubaud, now quite at sea.

“Have you got a hi-fi and a telly?”

“Yes.”

“Do you watch soccer?”

“Yes, obviously.”

“Do you follow it?”

“I’m quite keen, yes.”

“Did you watch the Nantes–Bordeaux?”

“Yes.”

“Pretty cool playing, wasn’t it?” said Adamsberg, who’d not watched the match.

“Well, up to a point,” Roubaud said with a pained expression on his face. “They took it easy and it ended in a nil-nil draw. You could see it coming in the first half.”

“Did you the watch the news bulletin at half-time?”

“Sure,” Roubaud answered without thinking.

“So,” Adamsberg said as he sat down opposite, “you know we brought in the plague-monger last night.”

“So they said,” the man muttered uneasily.

“In that case, what’s making you so scared?”

Roubaud bit his lip.

“What are you frightened of, Mr Roubaud?” Adamsberg repeated.

His voice was unsteady when he answered.

“I don’t think you’ve got the right man.”

“Oh, really? We can spot killers, can we?”

Roubaud almost swallowed his lip and massaged his chest hair again.

“So you’re giving me the second degree, when I’m the one at risk?” he repeated. “I should have known. As soon as you go to the
flics
you get jumped on, that’s the only thing they know how to do. I should have sorted it on my own. You try to help the law, and that’s all the thanks you get.”

“But you are going to help us, Roubaud, you’re going to help us a great deal.”

“Is that right,
commissaire
? You’re kidding yourself right and proper.”

“Come off it, Roubaud. You know you’re not smart enough to play the clever guy.”

“You think?”

“Yes, I do. But if you don’t want to help us with our inquiries, then off
you
go, Roubaud. Back home, back to bed. And if you try to give us the slip, we’ll give you an escort. All the way to the morgue.”

“Since when do
flics
tell me where I have to go?”

“Since you got up my nose. Off you go, Roubaud. You’re a free man. Scram.”

He did not move.

“You’re scared, aren’t you? You’re scared he’ll get you in the neck with a nylon tie, like he got the others. You know there’s no defence. You know he’ll catch up with you, in Lyon, Nice, Berlin, wherever. You are the target. And
you know why
.”

Adamsberg opened his desk drawer and got out the photographs of the five victims to date.

“You know you’ll be number six, don’t you? You know all of them, that’s why you’re shitting yourself.”

“Fuck off,” said Roubaud, turning his head to the side.

“Then push off. Get the hell out.”

Two minutes passed in silence.

“All right,” said Roubaud.

“You know these people?”

“Yes and no.”

“Explain.”

“It’s like, I met them all a long while back, one evening, it must have been seven or eight years ago. We had a drink.”

“I see. You all had a drink together, and that’s why someone’s knocking you off one by one.”

Roubaud was sweating heavily and the whole room reeked of his body odour.

“Do you want some coffee?” Adamsberg asked.

“Thanks.”

“Something to eat?”

“Thanks.”

“Danglard, tell Estalère to get some food and coffee.”

“And some fags,” Roubaud added.

* * *

“So tell me,” Adamsberg continued as Roubaud restored himself with sweet milky coffee. “How many of you were there?”

“Seven,” Roubaud mumbled. “We met in a bar, honest.”

Adamsberg glanced at the man’s big black eyes and reckoned there was a sliver of truth in that “honest”.

“What were you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Roubaud, I’ve got the monger in a cell. If you like, I’ll bung you in too, leave you there and close my eyes. End of story. In a half an hour from now you’re a dead man.”

“It’s like, we pushed a guy around.”

“What for?”

“It was a long time ago. We were being paid to make the guy sing, that’s all. He’d nicked a heap of stuff and he was supposed to give it back. We pushed him around, that was the deal.”

“What deal?”

“Like, we had a contract. No big deal.”

“Where did you ‘push him around’?”

“In a gym. We’d been given the address, the guy’s name and the bar where we were supposed to rendezvous. Because we’d never met.”

“None of you knew each other beforehand?”

“Nope. There was seven of us, and none of us knew any of the others. He’d got hold of us separately. Clever bugger.”

“Where did he get hold of you?”

Roubaud shrugged his shoulders.

“Places where you find blokes who’ll do a bit of rough stuff for bread. No great shakes. He picked me up in a shithole in the red-light district. I got out of that kind of stuff years ago, honest. I mean that,
commissaire
.”

“Who picked you up?”

“I dunno, it was all done in writing. One of the girls passed on a letter. Classy paper, it was. I fell for it.”

“Who wrote the letter?”

“Honest, I never found out who was behind the deal. He was too smart for that, the bugger. In case we asked for more cash.”

“So the seven of you got together and went off to nab the guy.”

“Yep.”

“When?”

“It was 17 March, a Thursday.”

“So you took him down to the gym. Then?”

“I told you already, bloody hell,” said Roubaud, twisting around on his chair. “We roughed him up.”

“Did it work? Did he split what he was supposed to split?”

“Yep. He made a phone call in the end. He spilled all the beans.”

“What was it about? Loot? Shit?”

“I wasn’t in on that, guvnor. But it must have been what the big man wanted, because we never heard from him again.”

“Did it pay well?”

“Sure.”

“Roughed him up, did we? And the guy split nice and easy? Or was it more like, you gave him the third degree?”

“No. We thumped him.”

“And am I supposed to believe that the guy you roughed up is making you all pay for it eight years down the road?”

“That’s what I think.”

“For bumps and bruises? You’re pulling the wool, Roubaud. Go home.”

“It’s the truth,” Roubaud said, and gripped the side bars of his chair. “Fucking hell, why should we have tortured them? They were chickens, they were shitting themselves as soon as they clapped eyes on us.”

“You said ‘they’?”

Roubaud bit his lower lip again.

“There was more than one, wasn’t there? Get a move on, Roubaud, things are speeding up.”

“There was a girl as well,” Roubaud grunted. “We had no choice. When we went to get the guy, he had his girl with him, and so what? We took the pair of them down to the gym.”