The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (26 page)

‘You said yourself – once the examining magistrate gets his claws into him, he’ll never get out. He’s being framed.’

‘So what’s the solution?’

‘Zerk must leave tonight. There are fewer roadblocks at night. And most of them aren’t serious. The guys are tired.’

‘I’m up for it,’ said Zerk. ‘No, don’t stop me,’ he insisted, pulling Adamsberg’s arm, ‘I’ll take him. But where, Louis?’

‘You know the Pyrenees as well as we do, you know the crossing points into Spain. Head for Granada.’

‘Then what?’

‘Hole up there and wait for instructions. I’ve got the names of a few hotels. I’ve also brought two number plates for the car, insurance, some money, two ID cards and a credit card. When you’ve got some distance from here, go off the road somewhere and get Mo to cut his hair so he looks more respectable.’

‘That’s proof enough he didn’t torch the Merc,’ said Zerk. ‘His hair’s quite long at the moment.’

‘So what?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘Well, he told me, when he’s torched a car, his hair always gets singed, so he shaves his head afterwards for it not to show. His mates call him Skinhead Mo.’

‘All right, Armel,’ said Veyrenc, ‘but we’ve got to get a move on. Where’ve you put him? Is it far?’

‘Three kilometres,’ said Adamsberg, who was feeling dazed. ‘Two through the woods.’

‘We should get moving right away. While the boys pack up, you and I can change the plates and wipe off any prints.’

‘Just when he was taking to drawing,’ said Zerk.

‘And just when it looks as though the Clermont brothers are off the hook,’ added Adamsberg, treading out his cigarette.

‘What about the pigeon?’ asked Zerk suddenly in alarm.

‘What do you mean, what about him? You’re taking him to Granada.’

‘No, the actual pigeon, Hellebaud.’

‘Leave him here with us. It’ll make you look suspicious.’

‘He still needs antiseptic on his feet every couple of days. Promise me you’ll do it, promise me you’ll remember.’

*   *   *

It was almost four in the morning as Adamsberg and Veyrenc watched the rear lights of the car fade away. The pigeon was cooing gently in its cage at their feet. Adamsberg had filled a Thermos of coffee for his son.

‘I hope you haven’t sent him off for no good reason,’ he said quietly. ‘And I hope you haven’t sent him straight into a trap. They’re going to have to drive all night and all tomorrow. They’re going to be exhausted.’

‘You’re worrying about Armel?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’ll manage.
The project’s audacious, of his courage a test / But your brave-hearted son with good luck will be blessed
.’

‘Why did they get suspicious about Mo?’

‘You went at it too fast. Well played, yes, but too quick off the mark.’

‘Not enough time, no choice.’

‘I know. But you played it too much as a lone star as well.
All alone without help, how could you see it through? / Call first on your comrades, they were all there for you.
You should have called me.’

XXVI

Late that night and early next morning, the count went into action to impressive effect, indicating how strongly he cared for his dear Léone: the doctor arrived discreetly at Ordebec hospital at eleven thirty. Valleray had woken the elderly judge at 6 a.m., issued his orders, and the gates of Fleury prison had opened at nine to let out a convoy escorting the prisoner to Normandy.

The two unmarked cars drove into the staff car park, out of sight of passers-by. Surrounded by four men, the doctor got out, wearing handcuffs, but with a satisfied and even jovial air, which reassured Adamsberg. He had still heard nothing from Zerk, and not a word from Retancourt. For once, he thought his Retancourt torpedo must have been disarmed and was inoperable. And that might confirm the count’s theory. If Retancourt didn’t find anything, that meant there was nothing to find. Apart from the fact that Christian had come home late – the only thing he could now hang on to – there was no reason to suspect either of the Clermont brothers.

The doctor came towards him with his usual mincing gait, looking spruce and well dressed. He hadn’t lost an ounce of weight in prison, indeed it seemed that he had even put some on.

‘Thank you for arranging this little excursion, Adamsberg,’ he said, as they shook hands. ‘Very refreshing to see the countryside. But please don’t use my real name in front of these people. I want to preserve my reputation.’

‘What are we to call you then? Dr Hellebaud perhaps?’

‘Very well. And how is your tinnitus? Come back, no doubt. As I recall, you only had two sessions.’

‘Gone, doctor. Just a bit of a whistle in the left ear.’

‘Capital. I’ll fix it before I go away again with these gentlemen. And the kitten?’

‘She’ll be weaned soon. And how is prison life, doctor? I haven’t had time to visit you since your sentence.’

‘What can I say,
mon ami
? I’m up to my ears in work. I have to treat the governor – very long-standing back trouble; the prisoners – who suffer from depression and childhood traumas of every kind, quite fascinating cases, I confess. And the warders – a lot of them are addicts or suffer from repressed instincts of violence. I only see five patients a day, I’ve been very firm about that. I don’t accept payment of course, I’m not allowed to. But you know how it is, I get plenty of compensation. Nice cell, special treatment, good food, all the books I want, I can’t complain. So with all my cases, I’m writing a book that’s going to be a rather remarkable study of prison trauma. Now tell me about our patient here. What happened to her? What have they diagnosed?’

Adamsberg spent about a quarter of an hour briefing the doctor in the basement, then they went to the first floor where a reception committee was waiting outside Léone’s room: Capitaine Émeri, Dr Turbot, the Comte de Valleray and Lina Vendermot. Adamsberg introduced them to ‘Dr Paul Hellebaud’ and one of the guards removed the handcuffs with respectful care.

‘This guard,’ the doctor whispered to Adamsberg, ‘thinks I saved his life. He’d become impotent. Poor lad was devastated. He brings me my coffee in bed every morning now. Who’s that scrumptious woman, good enough to eat?’

‘Lina Vendermot. She’s the one who started it all, causing the first murder.’

‘A killer?’ the doctor asked with a surprised and disapproving air.

‘We don’t know that. She had this deadly vision, she told people about it, and everything started after that.’

‘What kind of vision?’

‘It’s an old local legend, about a cavalcade of ghostly riders that have been coming through here for centuries. They’re dead, but they carry with them living people who have sinned.’

‘Ah, do you mean Hellequin’s Horde?’ the doctor asked, looking alert.

‘Yes indeed. Do you know about them?’

‘Who doesn’t,
mon ami
? So Lord Hellequin comes galloping in these parts, does he?’

‘Three kilometres from here.’

‘What a fantastic place to find myself,’ said the doctor appreciatively, rubbing his hands, a gesture that reminded Adamsberg of the time the doctor had once served him some excellent wine.

‘And the old lady was caught up in the cavalcade?’

‘No, no, but we think that she knew something.’

When the doctor went across to the bed and looked down at Léone, still lying there cold and white, his smile abruptly vanished and Adamsberg brushed away the bubble of electricity that had returned.

‘Something bitten you?’ the doctor whispered, without taking his eyes off Léone, as if he were inspecting a programme of works.

‘Nothing, a little bubble of electricity that comes now and then.’

‘No such thing,’ said the doctor dismissively. ‘We’ll look into that later. The old lady’s case is more touch and go.’

He asked the four guards to stand back against the wall and not to speak. Dr Turbot was enhancing his reputation as a
dratsab
by his supercilious and suspicious smile. Émeri was virtually standing to attention as if under review by the Emperor, and the count, for whom a chair had been brought, was clasping his hands together to stop them trembling. Lina stood behind him. Adamsberg felt his mobile vibrate, clandestine phone number two, and glanced at the text message.
They are here. Searching Léo’s. LVB.
He showed the message discreetly to Danglard. Let them search, he thought, sending a grateful thanks to Lieutenant Veyrenc.

The doctor had put his large hands on Léo’s cranium, and seemed to be listening for a long time, then he moved to the neck and chest. He went round the bed, without speaking and felt her thin feet, massaging
and manipulating them, stopping and starting for a few minutes. Then he came towards Adamsberg.

‘The whole mechanism’s stalled, Adamsberg. The fuses have blown, the circuits are disconnected, the mediastinal and encephalic fascias are blocked, the brain’s under-oxygenated, the breathing is decompressed, and the digestive system is in stasis. How old is she?’

Adamsberg heard the count’s breathing come more quickly.

‘Eighty-eight.’

‘Right. I’ll have to do a first session of forty-five minutes or so. And another, shorter one at about 5 p.m. Is that all right, René?’ he asked, turning to the senior guard. The formerly impotent guard nodded immediately, with total veneration in his eyes.

‘If she responds to the treatment, I’ll need to return in a fortnight to stabilise her.’

‘That won’t be a problem,’ said the count, in a strained voice.

‘Now if you will all be good enough to leave the room, I should like to be alone with the patient. Dr Turbot can stay if he wishes, provided he can control his sarcastic expression. Or I might ask him to leave too.’

The four guards consulted each other, checked the imperious look from Valleray and the doubt on Émeri’s face, and in the end, René, the senior one, gave his agreement.

‘But we’ll be outside the door, doctor.’

‘Naturally, René, that goes without saying. Besides, if I’m not mistaken, there are two CCTV cameras in the room.’

‘That’s correct,’ said Émeri. ‘For her protection.’

‘So I’m not going to fly away. I have no intention of doing so anyway, because it’s a fascinating case. Everything is functioning, but nothing is working. Unquestionably the effect of terror, which through an unconscious survival reflex has paralysed all her functions. She doesn’t want to relive the attack, she doesn’t want to have to come back and face it. You may deduce from that, commissaire, that she may know her assailant and that the knowledge is intolerable. She’s taken flight, very far away, too far away.’

Two of the guards took up position outside the door, the other two
went into the courtyard to stand under the window. The count, limping on his stick into the corridor, took Adamsberg by the elbow.

‘He’s going to treat her just with his fingers?’

‘Yes, Valleray, I told you.’

‘My god.’

The count looked at his watch.

‘Only seven minutes so far, Valleray.’

‘Can’t you go in and see how it’s going?’

‘When Dr Hellebaud is on a difficult case, he works so intensely that he comes out dripping with sweat. We can’t disturb him.’

‘I understand. You haven’t asked how I moved the sword.’

‘The sword?’

‘The sword of Damocles the Ministry was dangling over your head.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It wasn’t easy to convince Antoine’s sons. But it came through in the end. You’ve got one more week to catch your Mohamed.’

‘Thank you, Valleray.’

‘But the minister’s private secretary sounded a bit strange. When he agreed, he added, “That is, if they don’t find him today.” About Mohamed. As if he was laughing. Do they have some information about him?’

Adamsberg felt the bubble of electricity sting his neck more intensely than ever. No such thing, the doctor had told him, it doesn’t exist.

‘I haven’t been informed,’ he said.

‘Are they running a parallel search behind your back or something?’

‘No idea, Valleray.’

By now the special team of undercover agents from the Ministry would have finished searching everywhere he had been since he arrived in Ordebec. Léo’s guest house, the Vendermot house – Adamsberg hoped that Hippolyte would have addressed them entirely in backwards-speak – and the gendarmerie – and here he hoped with all his might that Fleg had gone for them. It was very unlikely that they would have visited Herbier’s house, but an abandoned building would always interest police doing a search. He ran through the precautions he and Veyrenc had taken: wiping off all fingerprints, washing the dishes in boiling water, sheets off
the bed and the two young ones told to dispose of them once they were well away from Ordebec – and the wax seals replaced. The only thing left was the pigeon’s droppings, which they had cleaned off as best they could, but some stains remained. He had asked Veyrenc if he knew the secret of this phenomenal lasting power of bird droppings, but Veyrenc knew as little as he did about it.

XXVII

The two young men had taken turns, through the night, one driving while the other slept. Mo now had much shorter hair and was sporting glasses and an improvised moustache, a hasty but reassuring change, in order to look more like the photo Veyrenc had glued on the false papers. Fascinated by his new ID, Mo kept turning it over, admiring it and saying that the cops were way better at getting round the law than his gang of amateurs in the Cité des Buttes. Zerk had plotted their route to avoid motorway tolls, and they met their first roadblock on the Saumur bypass.

‘Pretend to be asleep, Mo,’ Zerk hissed through his teeth. ‘When we stop, I’ll wake you, you faff about in your pocket, pull out the ID. Try to look like you’re dozy and not very bright. Think of something simple, like Hellebaud, just concentrate on him.’

‘Or the cows?’ whispered Mo anxiously.

‘Yeah, and don’t say anything, just shake your head as if you’re still sleepy.’

Two gendarmes approached the car slowly, looking bored rigid and pleased to have something to break the monotony. One of them went round the car with his torch, the other flashed his rapidly across the youngsters’ faces, as he looked at their papers.