It reminded Adamsberg that he had still not managed to get any maple syrup for Clémentine. A sort of mission impossible.
‘The Mounties came back at about three. I was on my bed, reading a book, but terribly worried, and convinced you’d met with an accident. A lieutenant, distraught about her superior officer. Poor Ginette, I almost made her cry. Sanscartier was with them.’
‘How did he seem?’ asked Adamsberg eagerly.
‘He looked devastated. I got the impression he liked you.’
‘It’s mutual,’ said Adamsberg, imagining how gut-wrenching it would be for the sergeant to find that his new friend had killed a girl with a trident.
‘Devastated, but not convinced,’ Retancourt went on.
‘In the RCMP, some of them think he’s dumb. Portelance says he’s a wool-gatherer.’
‘Ah well, he’s wrong there.’
‘And Sanscartier didn’t agree with their line?’
‘Looked like he didn’t. He was doing the minimum, as if he was trying not to get his hands dirty. Not taking part in the hunt. He smelled of almond soap.’
Adamsberg refused any more pancakes. The thought that Sanscartier the Good was using the almond soap, and had not yet given up on him, cheered him up.
‘From what I heard in the corridor, Laliberté was fit to be tied. A couple of hours later, they completely abandoned the search and went away. I left without any problem. Raphaël’s car was back in the hotel parking lot. He must have slipped the net too. Good looker, your brother.’
‘Yes.’
‘We can talk in front of Basile,’ said Retancourt, helping herself to wine. ‘For the new ID papers, you don’t want to go to Danglard. OK. But do you have a tame forger anywhere in Paris?’
‘I know a few from the old days, but no one I could trust.’
‘I only know one, but he’s safe as houses. No problems there. Only if we use him, you’ll have to promise me that he won’t get into any trouble. You’ll never ask me any questions and you won’t give my name, even if Brézillon calls you in for a grilling.’
‘Sure, of course.’
‘And he’s given it up now. He used to be in the business but he’ll only do it now if I ask him.’
‘Your brother?’ asked Adamsberg. ‘The one under the dressing gown?’
Retancourt put down her glass. ‘How did you know?’
‘You seem concerned. That was a lot of precautions you mentioned just now.’
‘You’re thinking like a flic again, commissaire.’
‘Maybe. How long would it take him?’
‘Couple of days. Tomorrow, we’ll have to change our appearance and get some new ID photos. We’ll scan them to him by email. The earliest he could get passports for us would be Thursday. So if they send them express, we could have them by next Tuesday and leave at once. Basile will have to get our tickets. On separate flights, Basile.’
‘Yeah, good thinking,’ Basile said. ‘By then they’ll be looking for a couple. Makes sense to split up.’
‘We’ll reimburse you from Paris. You’re going to have to look after us till then, like the brigand’s mother in the story.’
‘Yeah, right, no way you can go out for now,’ said Basile, ‘and you can’t go paying with your credit cards. The commissaire’s photo is sure to be in Le Devoir by tomorrow – and yours too, is my guess, Violette. You left the hotel without saying goodbye, so you’re not much better off than he is.’
‘Seven days confined to barracks then,’ Adamsberg said.
‘It’s no big deal,’ said Basile. ‘You’ve got all you need here. We can read the papers. They’ll all be talking about us, it’ll be a laugh.’
Basile didn’t seem to take anything seriously, even sheltering a potential murderer in his flat. Violette’s word appeared to be good enough for him.
‘I like to walk,’ said Adamsberg with a wry smile.
‘There’s a long corridor in the flat. You’ll just have to use it for exercise. Violette, I think we’d better turn you into a desperate housewife, OK? I’ll get you a smart suit and a necklace and we’ll dye your hair darker.’
‘OK. For the commissaire, I thought we should shave his head about three quarters, make him look bald.’
‘Good idea,’ said Basile. ‘It would really change the way he looks. Tweed suit, beige check I think, receding hairline, and a bit of a pot-belly.’
‘We’ll whiten the rest of his hair,’ said Retancourt. ‘Get some foundation too, I think we ought to make his complexion paler. And some lemon juice. It needs to be professional quality make-up.’
‘I gotta colleague does the cinema column, he’ll know where to get studio make-up. I’ll fetch some stuff tomorrow and develop the photos in our lab.’
‘Basile is a photographer,’ Retancourt explained. ‘For Le Devoir.’
‘A journalist?’
‘Yup,’ said Basile with a friendly pat on his shoulder. ‘And here’s a godalmighty scoop sitting at my table. You’re in a hornets’ nest now. Scarey, eh?’
‘It’s a risk,’ said Adamsberg, smiling faintly.
Basile burst out laughing.
‘It’s OK, commissaire, I know when to keep my mouth shut. And I’m less dangerous than you.’
XXXIX
ADAMSBERG MUST HAVE COVERED SOMETHING LIKE TEN KILOMETRES over the week, pacing up and down in Basile’s corridor. After being cooped up for seven days, he was almost able to take pleasure in walking freely in the Montreal airport terminal. But the place was crawling with cops, which took away his appetite for relaxation.
He glanced at himself sideways in a glass door, to check if he passed muster as a salesman aged about sixty. Retancourt had done a fantastic job, and he had let her manipulate him like a puppet. The transformation had tickled Basile. ‘Make him look depressed,’ he had advised Violette, so that was what they had done. His expression was much altered, under eyebrows which had been whitened and plucked. Retancourt had taken the trouble even to dye his eyelashes and half an hour before they left the house, she put a drop of lemon juice in the corner of each eye. His bloodshot gaze and pale complexion made him look tired and unhealthy. His nose, lips and ears remained unchangeable however, and seemed to him to betray his identity at every turn.
He felt for his new ID papers in his pocket, checking now and then to make sure they were there. Jean-Pierre Emile Roger Feuillet was the name Violette’s brother had provided for him, in an impeccably forged passport. It included stamps from Roissy and Montreal attesting to his voyage out. Professional stuff. If the brother was as capable as the sister, the Retancourts were a family of experts.
His real papers had been left with Basile, in case his bags were examined. What a pal Basile had been. He had fetched the Canadian newspapers every day. The virulent articles about the runaway murderer and his accomplice had delighted him. And he was considerate too. So that Adamsberg should not feel too lonely, he had often walked up and down the corridor with him. He liked going on outdoor hikes himself and understood that the prisoner felt cooped up. They would chat as they walked, and after a week Adamsberg had heard all about Basile’s various girlfriends, as well as the geography of Canada from Vancouver to the Gaspé peninsula. Still, Basile had never heard about the fish in Pink Lake and promised he’d go and take a look. You should see Strasbourg Cathedral too, if ever you come to little old France, Adamsberg had told him.
He went through security, trying to empty his mind of worries, as Jean-Pierre Emile Roger Feuillet would have, if he were on his way back to France to interest his company in placing orders for maple syrup. But strangely, the faculty of emptying his mind, which normally came to him quite naturally and spontaneously, seemed very hard to achieve that day. He, who could usually daydream at any moment and miss whole chunks of other people’s conversations, who was forever shovelling clouds, now found himself breathing rapidly and processing a thousand jumbled thoughts in his head as he went through the routine baggage checks.