Adamsberg put his hands on Josette’s shoulders. He could feel her slender bones.
‘These last few days, my life has been in the hands of magical women. They’ve been tossing me from one to another, and every time they save me from falling into the abyss.’
‘Is that a problem?’ asked Josette, seriously.
He woke his deputy up at two in the morning.
‘Stay where you are, Danglard. I just want to give you a message.’
‘I’m still sleeping. Fire away.’
‘When the judge died, there must have been some press photos. Can you get me four, two in profile, one full-face, and one three-quarters, if they exist, and get the lab to age the face for me.’
‘There are plenty of drawings of skull types in any good dictionary.’
‘Danglard, this is serious, and it’s urgent. Can you get a fifth picture, full face, and have them augment it with swellings, as if the man had been stung by wasps.’
‘If it amuses you,’ said Danglard, resignedly.
‘Can you get them to me as quickly as possible? Don’t bother about the missing murders. I’ve got them, all three, and I’ll send you the names of the new victims. For now, go back to sleep, capitaine.’
‘I already have.’
XLV
FOR HIS FALSE POLICE BADGE, BRÉZILLON HAD GIVEN HIM A NAME HE found hard to remember. Adamsberg repeated it to himself under his breath, before he called the doctor. He took out his mobile carefully. Since his hacker had ‘improved’ his phone, it had six bits of red and green wire sticking out of it like an insect’s legs, and two little switches, to change frequency, which looked like eyes on each side. Adamsberg handled it as if it was a mysterious scarab beetle. When he called, on Saturday at ten in the morning, he found Dr Courtin at home.
‘Commissaire Denis Lamproie,’ Adamsberg announced, ‘Paris Serious Crime Squad.’
Doctors, from long experience of being called on in connection with autopsies and burials, generally react calmly to a call from the police.
‘How can I help you?’ Dr Courtin said, without enthusiasm.
‘Two years ago, on 17 August, you treated an emergency patient about twenty kilometres from Schiltigheim, in a property called Das Schloss.’
‘I’ll stop you right there, commissaire. I can’t recall the names of my emergency patients. I sometimes do up to twenty calls a day and I hardly ever see those people again.’
‘I realise that, but this man had seven wasp stings. He had an allergic reaction and needed two injections, one in the afternoon and again in the evening.’
‘Ah, yes, I do remember that one, because you don’t usually get a lot of wasp stings all at once. Tell you the truth, I was quite anxious about the old guy. He lived alone. He was as stubborn as hell, and didn’t want me to see him again after the first injection. But I called back at the end of the day, and he had to let me in, because he was still having difficulty breathing.’
‘Could you describe him, doctor?’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that. I see hundreds of faces. He was elderly, tall, white hair, rather offhand in manner I seem to recall. I couldn’t say more, because of course his face was all swollen with the stings.’
‘I have some photos.’
‘Frankly, commissaire, you’d be wasting your time. I can’t remember much about him, it’s just that the wasp stings did stick in my mind.’
By early afternoon, Adamsberg was on his way to the Gare de l’Est, with his photographs of the judge, artificially aged. Off to Strasbourg again. In order to keep his face and his bald patch hidden, he had put on a Canadian lumberman’s cap with earflaps which Basile had bought him in Montreal. It was too warm for the milder temperatures which had returned to France. The doctor would probably think it odd if he kept it on. Courtin did not appreciate having this forced consultation, and Adamsberg had the impression he was spoiling his weekend.
The two men sat down at a table covered with papers. Courtin was quite young, though already putting on weight, and his normal expression seemed to be grumpy. The old man and the wasps did not inspire him with any curiosity, and he did not ask the reason for the enquiries. Adamsberg spread out the photographs of the judge. ‘The ageing and the swelling are artificial,’ he explained. ‘Does he look familiar?’
‘Commissaire,’ the doctor asked, ‘don’t you want to take off your hat?’
‘Yes, I do, actually,’ said Adamsberg who was dripping with sweat under the Arctic headgear. ‘To tell you the truth, I caught fleas from a prisoner in a cell, and half of my hair has been shaved off.’
‘Funny way of dealing with it,’ said the doctor, after Adamsberg had taken off the cap. ‘Why didn’t they shave the whole head?’
‘A friend did it for me, an ex-monk.’
‘Oh,’ said the doctor with a shrug. He shook himself and turned back to the photographs.
‘This one,’ he said, pointing to a photograph of the judge in left profile. ‘That’s the fellow with the wasps.’
‘I thought you only had a vague memory of him.’
‘Him yes, but his ear I remember very well. Doctors tend to remember abnormalities. And I certainly remember his left ear.’
‘What’s the matter with it?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘Look at the way it’s lying. He must have had protruding ears in his youth. In those days, the operation was a bit dodgy. The scar has turned into a lump and the outer surface of the ear is deformed.’
The press photographs dated from the time when the judge was still in post. He had had short hair in those days, and his ears were clearly visible. Adamsberg had known him only when he had retired, and his hair was longer.
‘He had long hair, but I had to lift it up to see how far the swelling went,’ the doctor explained, ’so I noticed the malformation. As for the rest of the face, well it could be him, I suppose, same type.’
‘Are you absolutely sure, doctor?’
‘I’m sure that that ear has been operated on, and that the scar didn’t heal properly. And I’m also sure that the right ear wasn’t the same way, as you can see in the photos. I remember looking at the left one with some curiosity. But he wouldn’t be the only man in France with a misshapen left ear. See what I mean? Still, it’s not all that common. Normally, both ears would have been left looking the same shape after the operation. You don’t often get a bad reaction on one side and not the other. So all I can say is that this corresponds to my memory of your Maxime Leclerc.’
‘Two years ago, he would have been about ninety-seven. Very old indeed. Does that correspond too?’
At this, the doctor shook his head in disbelief.
‘Good Lord, no! He couldn’t have been over, oh say, eighty-five.’ The doctor looked incredulous. ‘Never in his nineties.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Adamsberg in surprise.
‘Absolutely. If he’d been ninety-seven, I’d never have left him on his own with seven wasp stings. I’d have hospitalised him right away.’
‘But Maxime Leclerc was born in 1904,’ Adamsberg insisted. ‘He’d been retired about thirty years.’
‘No, no,’ said the doctor. ‘No doubt whatsoever in my mind. Take off about fifteen years.’
Adamsberg avoided the cathedral, for fear of seeing Nessie in the doorway, along with the dragon or the fish from Pink Lake swimming out of a window.
He stopped and rubbed his eyes. Lift leaf after leaf in the dark hidden places, Clémentine had said, to find the mushrooms of truth. For now he had to follow up the malformed ear. It was rather like a mushroom in fact. He would have to remain alert, and not let the dark clouds of his thoughts obscure the narrow trail he had to follow. But the categorical affirmation by the doctor about Maxime Leclerc’s age had unsettled him. Same ear, different age. But still, Dr Courtin judged the age of human beings, not ghosts.