XVIII
ADAMSBERG DID NOT INTEND TO SPEND HIS ENTIRE CANADIAN VISIT with his eyes fixed on test tubes and barcodes. By seven in the morning, he was already outside, drawn by the river. Or rather the tributary as Danglard called it, the immense tributary of the St Lawrence, home of the Ottawa Indians. He walked along the bank until he reached a footpath. A sign informed him that it was the ‘Portage trail used by Samuel de Champlain in 1613’. He started off along it, happy to be following in the footsteps of men of long ago, Indians and travellers, carrying their canoes on their backs. The track was not easy to follow, as the path often dipped more than a metre into hollows. The landscape was spectacular: foaming waters, noisy waterfalls, colonies of birds, red-leaved maples along the banks. He stopped in front of a commemorative tablet planted in a clearing, giving a potted history of Champlain’s achievements.
‘Hey, good morning!’ said a voice behind him.
A young woman in jeans was sitting on a flat rock overlooking the river, smoking an early-morning cigarette. Adamsberg had detected a Parisian accent.
‘Morning to you,’ he replied.
‘French,’ stated the woman. ‘What are you doing here? Tourist?’
‘No, work.’
The young woman inhaled and threw the rest of her cigarette into the water. ‘I’m lost. So I’m just waiting.’
‘Lost? Literally?’ asked Adamsberg carefully, while looking at the inscription on the Champlain stone.
‘I met this guy? In law school, in Paris? Canadian. He said why didn’t I come out here with him and I said yes. He seemed like a regular chum.’
‘Chum?’
‘Friend, boyfriend. The idea was to live together.’
‘I see,’ said Adamsberg, retreating.
‘And after six months, what do you think the chum did? He dumped Noëlla and she found herself all washed up.’
‘Noëlla, that’s you?’
‘Yes. In the end, she found a girlfriend to take her in.’
‘I see,’ said Adamsberg again, having already listened to more than he needed to.
‘So I’m waiting,’ she went on, lighting another cigarette. ‘I’m making some quick bucks working in a bar in Ottawa, and as soon as I’ve saved up enough, I’m going back to Paris. Not very bright, eh?’
‘Why are you out here so early?’
‘She comes to listen to the wind. She comes here often, morning and evening. I tell myself that even if you’re lost, you have to find somewhere to be. I’ve chosen this stone. What’s your name?’
‘Jean-Baptiste.’
‘And your other name?’
‘Adamsberg.’
‘And what do you do?’
‘I’m a cop.’
‘That’s a laugh! Here they call them pigs. My chum, he’d say, oh-oh, here come the pigs, and you wouldn’t see him for dust. Are you working with the Gatineau cops?’
Adamsberg nodded and took advantage of the sleet that was beginning to fall, to get away.
‘Bye for now,’ she said, without budging from her stone.
At two minutes to nine o’clock, he was parking in front of the RCMP. Laliberté gave him a hearty wave from the doorway.
‘Come on in!’ he shouted. ‘What about this weather! Hey, man, what have you been up to, with all that mud on your pants?’
‘I fell over on the portage path by the river,’ explained Adamsberg, rubbing at the marks.
‘You been out walking already? No kidding?’
‘I wanted to see the river, the rapids, the trees, the old portage.’
‘Hey, an outdoor freak,’ cried Laliberté with a laugh. ‘So you took a dive?’
‘A dive? In the river? No, sorry, I don’t always understand, you mean a fall?’
‘Right, don’t apologise, I won’t take it personally. Hey, call me Aurèle. I mean, yeah, how d’you come to fall?’
‘The path’s steep in places, I slipped on a stone.’
‘No bones broken at least.’
‘No, no, I’m fine.’
‘One of your men is here already, the big slouch.’
‘Don’t call him that, Aurèle, he knows what it means.’
‘How come?’
‘He reads books. He may look sloppy, but there’s not an ounce of slackness in that head. Only he does find it a bit hard getting up in the morning.’
‘Let’s grab a coffee while we wait,’ said the superintendent heading for the machine. ‘Got some change?’
Adamsberg took a handful of unfamiliar coins from his pocket and Laliberté extracted the right one.
‘Decaff or regular?’
‘Regular,’ Adamsberg chose, hopefully.
‘This’ll set you up,’ said Aurèle, handing him a huge plastic cup full of very hot coffee. ‘So you go out for a breath of fresh air every morning, do you?’
‘I go walking. Morning, daytime, evening, doesn’t matter when. I just need to walk.’
‘Right,’ said Aurèle with a smile. ‘Or perhaps you’re on the lookout for a girl?’
‘No, I’m not. But since you mention it, there was one, funnily enough, sitting by the Champlain stone, at eight in the morning. Seemed a bit odd.’
‘Pretty weird, I’d say. A chick on her own, on the trail, could be a hooker. Nobody goes there. Don’t get hooked, Adamsberg. It could be big trouble.’
Usual conversation of men round the coffee machine, thought Adamsberg, here or anywhere else.
‘OK, off we go,’ concluded the superintendent. ‘No more talk about girls, we’ve got work to do.’
Laliberté gave out instructions to the teams of two in the big room. Danglard had been assigned to the innocent-looking Sanscartier. Laliberté had paired the women with each other, probably out of a feeling that it would be more correct, allocating the large Retancourt to the slim Louisseize, and Froissy to Ginette Saint-Preux. Today’s task was on-the-spot collection. They would visit eight houses belonging to public-spirited citizens who had agreed to take part in the experiment. Each officer had a DNA collection kit. They would place their samples on a special card for collecting body fluids, said Laliberté, holding this object high in the air as if it was a sacred Host. It neutralised any bacterial or viral contamination, without the need for freezing.
‘A new technique, which gives us an economy, one, of time, two, of money, three, of space.’
While listening to the strict instructions of the superintendent, Adamsberg was leaning forward on his chair, his hands in his pockets, which were still damp from the walk. His fingers encountered the green brochure he had picked up from the table, in order to return it to Ginette Saint-Preux. It was by now damp and crumpled and he took it out carefully, trying not to tear it. Discreetly, he spread it out on a table with the palm of his hand, to smooth it back into shape.
‘Today,’ Laliberté continued, ‘we will collect, one, sweat, two, saliva, and three, blood. Tomorrow, tears, urine, snot and dirt from under the nails. And semen from those citizens who have agreed to fill a test tube.’
Adamsberg gave a start, not because of the public-spirited citizens and their test tubes, but because of what he had just read on the damp brochure.
‘Check properly,’ Laliberté said loudly, turning to the Paris team, ‘that the codes of the cards correspond to those on the kits. As I always say, you have to remember three things: rigour, rigour and more rigour. That’s the only way to get the job done.’
The eight teams moved towards the cars, armed with the addresses of the citizens who were obligingly lending their homes and their bodies to the series of samples. Adamsberg stopped Ginette as she went by.
‘I wanted to give you this back,’ he said, handing her the green brochure. ‘You left it in the restaurant but I thought you’d be needing it.’