‘This time,’ Danglard said, ‘there’ll be no witnesses. It’s a quiet spot with no cinema or café that might be open late. People go to bed early round here. He’s becoming more discreet now, the circle man.’
For the rest of the morning, Danglard tried to stay quietly applying pressure to his head. After lunch, he felt a little better. He was able to spend all afternoon with Adamsberg organising the extra officers who were being asked to patrol Paris that night. Danglard shook his head, wondering what the point of all this was. But he recognised that Adamsberg had been right about that morning’s circle.
By about eight o’clock, everything was in position. The area of the city was so immense, of course, that the network of surveillance was stretched very wide.
‘If he’s cunning,’ Adamsberg said, ‘he’ll slip through the mesh, obviously. And we know he’s cunning.’
‘Given where we are now, perhaps we should keep an eye on Mathilde Forestier’s house?’ Danglard suggested.
‘Yes,’Adamsberg replied, ‘but for heaven’s sake have the surveillance people stay out of sight.’
He waited for Danglard to leave the room before he called Mathilde. He simply asked her to stay in that evening and on no account to try any escapades or to follow anyone.
‘Just do me a favour,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to understand. Is Reyer home?’
‘Probably,’ said Mathilde. ‘I’m not his keeper, I don’t watch his comings and goings.’
‘And Clémence?’
‘No, as usual Clémence went trotting off to meet one of her lonely hearts. It never comes to anything. Either she sits waiting in a café for someone who doesn’t turn up, or else the minute the guy sees her he pushes off fast. Either way, she gets back in tears. It’s completely ridiculous. She shouldn’t do this sort of thing in the evening, it just depresses her.’
‘OK. Just stay at home till tomorrow, Madame Forestier.’
‘Are you afraid that something’s going to happen?’
‘I don’t know,’ Adamsberg replied.
‘As per usual,’ said Mathilde.
Adamsberg decided to stay in the station overnight. Danglard chose to stay with him. The commissaire was silently scribbling away, with a pad on his knee, his legs outstretched and resting on the waste-paper basket. Danglard was chewing at some ancient toffees he’d found in Florence’s desk, to try to stop himself drinking.
A uniformed policeman was walking up and down the boulevard du Port-Royal beween the little station building at the top of the boulevard Saint-Michel, and the corner of the rue Bertholet. His colleague was doing the same thing from the Gobelins end.
Since ten that evening, he had paced up and down his beat eleven times and couldn’t stop himself counting, although it annoyed him. But what else was there to do? For an hour now, there had been few passers-by on the boulevard. It was early July and Paris was starting to empty for the holidays.
Just then a young woman in a leather jacket went past, walking a little uncertainly. She had a pretty face and was probably on her way home. It was about quarter past one, and the policeman wanted to tell her to hurry up. She looked vulnerable, and he felt concerned for her. He ran after her.
‘Mademoiselle, are you going far?’
‘No, just to the Raspail metro station.’
‘Raspail, oh that’s a bit far,’ the policeman said. ‘Perhaps I’ll just see you down the street. There isn’t another man on duty before Vavin.’
The girl had short bobbed hair. Her jawline was clear and attractive. No, he certainly didn’t want anyone to touch that throat. But this girl looked quite untroubled. She seemed perfectly at home in the city by night.
The girl lit a cigarette. She didn’t seem too comfortable in his company.
‘What is it? Is something happening?’ she asked.
‘Apparently it’s not safe tonight. I’ll just walk you some of the way.’
‘If you like,’ she replied. But it was clear that she would have preferred to be alone and they walked along in silence.
A few minutes later, the policeman left her at the corner and came back towards the little Port-Royal station. He started off back along the boulevard towards the rue Bertholet. Twelfth time. By talking to the young woman and walking along with her, he’d lost about ten minutes. But it seemed to him that was part of his job.
Ten minutes. But it had been enough. As he glanced down the length of the rue Bertholet, he saw a long shape on the pavement.
Oh no, he thought despairingly. My bad luck.
He broke into a run. Perhaps it was just a roll of carpet. But no, a stream of blood was trickling towards him. He touched the arm outstretched on the ground. Still warm. It must have just happened. A woman.
His radio crackled. He contacted his colleagues at the Gobelins, Vavin, Saint-Jacques, Cochin, Raspail and Denfert, asking them to pass the news on, not to leave their post and to stop anyone they saw. But if the murderer had been in a car, for instance, he would have got away. The policeman didn’t feel guilty for having left his beat to accompany the young woman. Possibly he had saved the life of the girl with the beautiful jawline.
But he hadn’t been able to save this woman. Sometimes a life could hang by a thread. There was nothing of the victim’s jawline to see. Standing there alone, and feeling revolted, the policeman directed his torch away from the corpse, alerted his superiors and waited, his hand on his pistol. It had been a long time since he had been so distressed by the night.
When the phone rang, Adamsberg looked up at Danglard but didn’t give a start.
‘Here we go,’ he said.
Picking up the telephone, he bit his lip.
‘Where? Say that again,’ he said after a minute. ‘Rue Bertholet? But the 5th should be crawling with men. There should have been four along the boulevard Port-Royal alone. What the devil’s happened?’
Adamsberg’s voice had risen in pitch. He plugged in the earpiece so that Danglard could hear what the young policeman was saying.
‘There were just the two of us on Port-Royal, sir. There was an accident at the Bonne-Nouvelle metro, two trains collided at about eleven-fifteen. No serious casualties, but we had to send some men over.’
‘But they should have taken men from the outer districts and sent more to the 5th! I gave explicit instructions that the 5th was to be closely patrolled! I ordered it!’
‘Sorry, sir, I can’t do anything about that. I didn’t get any instructions.’
It was the first time that Danglard had seen Adamsberg almost beside himself with rage. It was true that they had heard about the accident at Bonne-Nouvelle, but both of them had assumed that nobody would be called away from the 5th or the 14th. Some counter-order must have gone out, or perhaps the network Adamsberg had asked for had not been thought so indispensable by someone higher up.
‘Well, anyway,’ said Adamsberg, with a shake of his head, ‘he would have struck, sooner or later. In this street or that, he’d have managed to do it in the end. This man’s a monster. We couldn’t have prevented it – no use getting worked up. Come on, Danglard, we’d better get over there.’
Over there they found flashing lights, arc lamps, a stretcher, and the police doctor, all for the third time surrounding a body whose throat had been cut, lying inside a blue chalk circle.
‘Victor, woe’s in store…’ muttered Adamsberg.
He looked at the latest victim.
‘Slashed as viciously as the other one,’ the doctor said. ‘The killer really went for the cervical vertebrae. The weapon wasn’t sharp enough to cut through them, but that was the intention.’
‘OK, doc, put it all in writing for us,’ said Adamsberg, who could see sweat breaking out on Danglard’s face. ‘And it wasn’t long ago, you reckon?’
‘That’s right, between about five past one and one thirty-five, if the officer is correct about his beat.’