‘And the ea could be from “deal” or “dealer”?’
‘Yes, Josette, it looks like a message about dealing to me. From what’s left.’
Josette noted down the letters on a piece of paper and looked at it in silence.
‘I suppose you could make it something like: “Amsterdam – dealer – rendezvous – port – heroin,” for instance,’ she suggested reluctantly.
‘I don’t see how it can have anything to do with the Trident,’ said Adamsberg in a defeated voice. ‘It looks as if Michel simply got involved in something too heavy for him. We should probably pass it over to the drugs squad, Josette.’
Josette sipped her port-flip delicately, but her little face expressed frustration.
Retancourt must be wrong about the mole, Adamsberg thought, as he stirred the fire. The two women had gone to bed and he was alone by the hearth, unable to sleep. He would never succeed in identifying the mole, who had probably never existed. It was after all the janitor who had given Laliberté the key information. And as for believing someone had searched his flat, well that was based on the flimsiest evidence. A key in the wrong place, perhaps, and a box file not quite in the same position, when Danglard thought he had put it away more tidily. Not much to go on. He would never find the unlikely second man on the portage trail. Even if he traced all Fulgence’s crimes, he would be forever alone on that sinister path. Adamsberg felt all the threads snapping one after another, cutting him off from the world, as if he were a ferocious bear on an ice floe, floating away from land. He was isolated here with Clémentine’s egg-flips and Josette’s grey slippers.
He put on his coat and his Arctic cap, and slipped out into the night. The shabby streets of Clignancourt were dark and empty, and the street-lamps gave only fitful light. He took Josette’s old moped, which was painted in two shades of blue, and twenty-five minutes later, he braked to a halt outside Camille’s windows. What was driving him was an urge to find a different refuge, and the desire to breathe, if only from outside the building, a little of the clear and healthy air that came to him from Camille, or rather that formed when he and Camille were together. It takes two windows to make a draught, as Clémentine would have put it. He had a shock on looking up to the seventh floor. The lights were on. She must have come back from Montreal. Unless she had let the flat. Or maybe the new father was up there, acting as if he owned the place, with his two labradors, one of them drooling under the sink and the other by Camille’s synthesiser. Adamsberg looked up at the provocative square of light, watching for the new father’s shadow. The idea of someone else taking possession went through him like a drill, conjuring up the vision of a muscular man, walking about in the nude with his firm buttocks and flat stomach, an image that burned itself into his brain.
From the little cafe at street level came welcoming smells, and the hum of people drinking. Just like L’Ecluse. Perfect, thought Adamsberg nervously, as he locked up the moped. A good glass of cognac, that would drown the image of the naked he-man allowing his dogs to drool all over Camille’s studio floor. He would use the same technique as the late lamented Cargo: he’d transform the intruder into a sticky wad of blotting paper.
This was the second time in his life he had deliberately got drunk, or at least since he was a teenager, thought Adamsberg, pushing open the steamed-up cafe door. Perhaps he would not try mixing his drinks tonight. Or again, perhaps he should. After all, in another five weeks he would be sitting in Brézillon’s armchair, having lost his memory, his job, his brother, his girl from the north, and his freedom. It was hardly the moment to be scared of mixing his drinks. Bloody labradors, he thought, downing his first cognac, and he decided to stuff them into some of the windows on the cathedral façade, with their back legs kicking in the air. When he had succeeded in filling all the orifices of the jewel of Gothic architecture with his imaginary menagerie, what would happen to the monument? Perhaps it would choke for lack of air and fall down. Or perhaps puff, puff, it would explode. Would it just collapse inwards, he wondered, ordering his second cognac, And what would they do with the ruins, not to speak of all the creatures lying beneath the masonry? Big problem for the canons of Strasbourg.
How about stuffing the windows of the Mounties’ headquarters with surplus animals while he was at it? Starving the atmosphere of oxygen and filling it with the stinking breath of the beasts. Laliberté would drop dead. He would have to save Sanscartier the Good of course, and the kindly Ginette. But would there be enough animals? It was a serious question, since you needed really big creatures. Moths and snails wouldn’t do. Good big creatures, preferably spitting smoke like dragons. But you couldn’t easily locate a dragon, they hide away sneakily in caves.
Well, of course he knew where to find some dragons, in a Mah Jong set, he thought, hitting the counter with his fist. All he knew about the Chinese game was that there were dragons in it, of various colours. He would just have to find some, like old Guillaumond with his three fingers, and push the reptiles in randomly, into all the doors and windows. Red ones for Strasbourg, green ones for Ottawa.
Adamsberg was unable to finish his fourth glass and staggered out to the moped. He couldn’t undo the lock, so instead he pushed open the door of Camille’s block of flats, and climbed up the seven storeys, clinging on to the bannister. He’d have a word with the new father, give him a piece of his mind, that’s what he’d do, and see him off. Might keep his labradors though, and add them to the judge’s dobermans. They’d do very well for some of the cathedral windows. But not Cargo, he was a good dog, and on Adamsberg’s side in all this, as was his little beetle-mobile phone. A foolproof plan, he thought as he leaned on Camille’s door. But a thought stopped him as he was about to ring the bell. A pang of memory. Look out. Last time you were drunk, you killed Noëlla. Don’t go in. You don’t know who you are, you don’t know what you’re capable of. Yes, but he really needed those labradors.
Camille opened the door, and was amazed to find him on the landing.
‘Are you alone?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘No dogs?’
He was having difficulty forming his words. Do not go in, roared the waters of the Ottawa River. Do not go in.
‘What dogs?’ asked Camille. ‘Jean-Baptiste, you’re drunk. You turn up out of the blue at midnight, and you start babbling about dogs.’
‘I’m talking about Mah Jong. Let me in.’
Unable to react quickly enough to stop him, Camille stood aside. He sat down clumsily on a stool at the bar in the kitchen, where the remains of her supper were still lying. He fiddled with the glass, the water jug, the fork, feeling its points. Camille, looking perplexed, had gone to sit crosslegged on her piano stool in the middle of the room.
‘I know your grandmother had a Mah Jong set,’ Adamsberg began again stumbling over the words. ‘I bet she didn’t let you dilute, did she? Dilute an’ I’ll shoot you!’
Ah, grandmothers, always good for a laugh, eh?
LII
JOSETTE SLEPT BADLY AND WAS WOKEN AT ONE IN THE MORNING BY A nightmare: out of her printer, pages of paper, all of them bright red, were spilling all over the room. Nothing could be read on them, because of their glossy red surface.
She got up quietly and tiptoed into the kitchen, where she helped herself to some cookies and maple syrup. Clémentine came to join her, wrapped up in a huge dressing gown, like a nightwatchwoman.
‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ Josette pleaded.
‘Something going on in that little head, isn’t there,’ declared Clémentine.