‘Yes. I don’t do that as a rule, so it went straight to my head.’
‘You were bingeing with your pals?’
‘No, I was on my own in the rue Laval.’
‘Why were you drinking on your own? You had the blues?’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Homesick? Don’t you like it here?’
‘I like it fine here, Aurèle, everything’s been great. I just had a sudden attack of the blues. Not worth talking about.’
‘OK, I won’t pry. So then what?’
‘I took the portage trail to get home, and God help me, I hit my head on a branch.’
‘Christ, where’d it hit you?’
‘Bang in the middle of my forehead.’
‘You saw stars, right?’
‘I just keeled over, knocked right out. After that, I managed to drag myself home to the residence. I’m just waking up now.’
‘Did you go to sleep in your clothes? That bad?’
‘That bad, yes. This morning, my head’s aching and my legs won’t carry me. That’s why I’m phoning you. I shouldn’t drive yet, so I won’t be in till two o’clock.’
‘Don’t be crazy. I’m not a slave driver. Just stay where you are, Jean-Baptiste, relax and take something. Got any pills for the headache?’
‘No.’
Laliberté put the phone down and called Ginette. Adamsberg heard his voice echoing through the office. ‘Ginette, take some medicine round to the commissaire, he’s got the mother of all hangovers, can’t move.’
‘Saint-Preux will bring you some stuff,’ the superintendent said into the telephone. ‘Don’t budge, stay put, OK? See you tomorrow when you feel a bit better.’
Adamsberg took a shower so that Ginette would not see his face and hands covered in dried blood. He brushed underneath his fingernails and, once he was dressed, he looked almost presentable, except for the large purple lump on his forehead.
Ginette gave him various medicaments, for his head, his stomach, his legs. She washed and disinfected the cut on his forehead and applied some ointment. With expert gestures, she looked at his pupils, and checked his reflexes. Adamsberg allowed himself to be dealt with as if he were a stuffed dummy. She was reassured by the examination, and gave him advice for the rest of the day. Take the pills every four hours. Drink a lot, just water of course. Keep the wound clean, and pass plenty of water. Adamsberg agreed, meekly.
Without chatting this time, she left him a few magazines to distract him, if he felt able to read, and some food for the evening. His Canadian colleagues were really very considerate, that had better go into the report.
He left the magazines on the table, and lay down, just as he was. He slept, dreamed, lay looking at the ventilator in the ceiling, got up every four hours to take his pills, had a drink of water, went to the lavatory, and lay down again. By eight in the evening, he was feeling better. The headache had seeped away into the pillow and his legs felt more solid.
Laliberté chose that moment to call and ask how he was, and he was able to get up almost normally to answer the telephone.
‘No worse?’ asked the superintendent.
‘Much better thanks, Aurèle.’
‘Not dizzy any more?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Take your time tomorrow, Jean-Baptiste, someone will drive you to the airport. Do you need any help with your luggage?’
‘No, no, I’m feeling almost back to normal.’
‘Sleep well then, and I hope you’ll be OK for our session tomorrow.’
Adamsberg felt obliged to try and swallow some of the food Ginette had brought him, then decided to risk a short walk as far as the river to see it for the last time. The outside temperature was 10 below.
The janitor stopped him at the door.
‘Feeling better?’ he asked. ‘You were in a helluva state last night. Goddamn gangs. Did you manage to run ’em in?’
‘Yeah, the lot. Sorry to have roused you.’
‘No harm done, I wasn’t asleep. It was nearly two in the morning, but I’m not sleeping well.’
‘Nearly two in the morning?’ asked Adamsberg turning back. ‘Late as that?’
‘Yeah, ten to two, to be precise. I didn’t get to sleep at all last night.’
Feeling rattled, Adamsberg pushed his fists deep into his pockets as he headed down to the river and turned right. He was certainly not going to sit down in the cold, let alone risk meeting the dreaded Noëlla.
Ten to two in the morning. The commissaire paced up and down on the little sandy stretch lining the bank. The geese were there, their commander-in-chief still at it, marshalling his troops for the night, whipping in the stragglers and latecomers. He could hear his imperious cackling behind his back. Well, that was one customer who didn’t get depressed and try to drown his sorrows in a bar in the rue Laval, for sure. It made him hate the well-organised bird even more. A Canada gander, who probably checked every morning to see his feathers were in tiptop condition and his shoelaces properly tied. Adamsberg turned up his collar. Never mind the geese, just put your thinking cap on, as Clémentine would say. It isn’t rocket science. Follow the advice she and Sanscartier had given him. For the moment they were his only guardian angels: an eccentric old woman and an innocent unpromoted sergeant. Well, everyone has his own guardian angels. Just put your thinking cap on.
Ten to two in the morning. Up to when he had crashed into the branch, he could remember everything. He had asked the barman the time. Quarter after ten, way past your bedtime, man. However much he was swaying about, he could hardly have taken more than forty minutes to reach the place on the path where he had hit the branch. Let’s allow three-quarters of an hour maximum, to cover not walking straight. It couldn’t have been more, because his legs were working perfectly well then. So he must have hit the tree at about eleven o’clock. Then allow for waking up on the road, and another twenty minutes to make it to the building. He must have regained consciousness at about one-thirty in the morning. Therefore two and a half hours must have passed between hitting the branch and coming to, feeling sick, at the end of the trail. Two and a half hours, for a journey that usually took him little more than half an hour!
What the hell had he been doing in those two and a half hours? His mind was a complete blank. Had he been unconscious all that time? But the temperature was minus 12 degrees. He would surely have frozen to the spot. He must have been walking, moving about. Perhaps he had dragged himself slowly along the trail, falling then getting up again, making erratic progress, interspersed with fainting fits.
Alcohol and mixed drinks. He knew people who could shout all night without having any memory of it next day. Guys in the cells, who had to be told in the morning what they had been up to: beating the wife, chucking the dog out of the window. Black holes of two or three hours, before falling into a deep sleep. In that time, they’d been responsible for actions, words and gestures, plenty of them, but all lost to conscious memory, since their minds were befuddled with drink. It was as if the alcohol diluted any attempt to record a memory, like the ink from a pen writing on sodden paper.
What had he drunk?
Three whiskies, four glasses of wine and one of cognac. And if the barman, who seemed to know his job, judged the time had come to chuck him out, he no doubt had good reason. Barmen can estimate exactly how many degrees of alcohol you have in your blood, as certainly as the Mounties’ DNA laboratory. The man had seen his customer go over the line, and refused to serve him another glass, even if it would have meant a few more bucks. They’re like that, barmen. They may look like shopkeepers, but they’re really chemists, vigilant philanthropists, lifesavers. And indeed he remembered the barman had even taken care to pull his cap firmly on to his head.
Well, that was all there was to it, Adamsberg concluded, turning homewards. He had got monumentally drunk, and then he had hit his head. Pissed out of his mind and knocked unconscious. After that, he had spent two and a half hours crawling along the path, tripping and falling every few steps. So drunk that his sodden memory couldn’t register anything. He had gone into the bar in search of forgetfulness, the famous oblivion that lies at the bottom of a glass. Well, he had certainly got more than he’d bargained for.