‘This is a figure of speech, isn’t it? You’ve adopted him, or some crazy stunt like that?’
‘No, no, Danglard, he’s my son. That’s why Josselin had a lot of fun choosing him as a scapegoat.’
‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Look, you’d believe Veyrenc, wouldn’t you? Ask him. He’s his uncle and he’ll give you a glowing report on him.’
Adamsberg was half reclining on the sand, drawing on it with his finger. Zerk was lying down, his arms across his body, his hands now numbed, thanks to a local anaesthetic, and was soaking up the sun and relaxing like the cat on the photocopier. Danglard ran through his head all those photographs of the Zerk from the papers, and at once realised how familiar that face had been. Yes. It had to be the truth, but it was a shock.
‘Not to worry, commandant. Put Émile on, will you?’
Without a word, Danglard handed the phone to Émile, who hobbled away towards the door.
‘This colleague of yours is stupid,’ he began. ‘It’s not a badge, it’s my winkle pin. I went and fetched it from the house.’
‘Because you’re nostalgic.’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘So what deal is this you want to settle?’ said Adamsberg sitting up.
‘I kept a record. Nine hundred and thirty-seven euros. Now I’ve got plenty of cash, I can pay it back, and then you don’t know nothing about it. Because I got you that stuff about the postcard, and the door in the cellar. Savvy?’
‘What don’t I “know nothing about”?’
‘Vaudel’s money, for fuck’s sake. Bit here, bit there, total nine hundred and thirty seven. I kept a record.’
‘I’m with you now, Émile. Well, for a start, I’ve got nothing to do with that money, like I said. And in any case, it’s too late. I don’t think Pierre junior, since you’re already getting half his inheritance, will be too happy to find out that you were pinching his old man’s money and that you want to pay him nine hundred and thirty-seven euros.’
‘Ha,’ said Émile pensively.
‘So just keep the money, and shut up about it.’
‘Got you,’ said Émile, and Adamsberg reflected that he must have picked up the expression at the hospital in Châteaudun from that tall paramedic, André.
‘You’ve got another son?’ asked Zerk, as they got back in the car.
‘He’s very, very small,’ said Adamsberg, demonstrating with his hands apart, as if that made it less of a fact. ‘Does it bother you?’
‘Nope.’
No doubt about it, Zerk was an accommodating sort of chap.
XLIX
THE PARIS CENTRAL LAW COURTS WERE UNDER A CLOUD, WHICH was entirely appropriate to the place and the time. Adamsberg and Danglard, sitting at the terrace of the cafe opposite, were waiting for people to emerge from the trial of Mordent’s daughter. It was ten to eleven by Danglard’s watch. Adamsberg was looking at the gold-tipped railings which had been carefully repainted.
‘When you scratch the gold, what do you find underneath, Danglard?’
‘Nolet would say: the scales of the snake.’
‘Coiled round the Sainte-Chapelle. Not a very suitable combination.’
‘It’s not such a contrast as you might think. There are two chapels there one on top of the other and quite separate. The bottom one was reserved for the common people and the top one for the king and his courtiers. Everything leads back to that in the end.’
‘The great snake was already there in the fourteenth century then,’ said Adamsberg, looking up at the top of the steep Gothic spire.
‘Thirteenth century,’ Danglard corrected him. ‘Built by Pierre de Montreuil between 1242 and 1248.’
‘Did you get in touch with Nolet?’
‘Yes. The school friend was indeed a witness to the wedding between Emma Carnot and a young man aged twenty-four, Paul de Josselin Cressent, at the town hall in Auxerre, twenty-nine years ago. Emma had fallen for him, her mother was impressed by the name with a “de” in it, but she told us that Paul was the last of a damaged line. The marriage didn’t last three years. There were no children.’
‘Just as well. Josselin would hardly have been a good father.’
Danglard chose not to pursue that line of thought. He would wait and see what Zerk was like.
‘There would have been another little Paole loose in the world,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘and God only knows what he would have got up to. But no, this is the end of the Paoles, the doctor said so.’
‘I’m going to help Radstock dispose of the feet. Then I’m taking a week off.’
‘Going fishing in that loch perhaps?’
‘No,’ said Danglard evasively, ‘I think I’ll probably stay on in London.’
‘With a rather abstract sort of plan in mind.’
‘Yes.’
‘When Mordent has got his daughter back, which will be tonight, we’ll unleash the torrent of mud in the Emma Carnot affair. It’ll run from the Council of State to the Appeal Court, then to the public prosecutor and the Gavernan Assize Court, and it will stop there. We won’t let it reach down as far as the junior judge and Mordent, since that is no consequence to anyone but us.’
‘It’ll cause an almighty row.’
‘Of course. People will be shocked, they’ll propose a far-reaching reform of the judicial system, then it will all be forgotten when they dig up some other scandal. And you know what will happen then.’
‘The great snake will have lost three of its scales, after an attack, but it will have regrown them again in a couple of months.’
‘Or less. We’ll set in motion the counter-offensive, using the Weill technique. We won’t release anything to the press about the link to the judge at Gavernan, or name him. We’ll keep him in reserve for our own protection, and in order to protect Nolet and Mordent. And we’ll use the Weill technique to get the pencil shavings and the cartridge from Avignon to the quai des Orfèvres. Where they can moulder away in a cupboard.’
‘Why should we protect Mordent? He’s acted like an arsehole.’
‘Because the straight and narrow is never straight. Mordent’s not part of the snake. He was swallowed whole. He’s in its belly, like Jonah in the whale.’
‘Or the uncle in the bear.’
‘Aha,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I knew you’d show some interest in that story one day.’
‘But what sort of idea of Mordent will be left inside the great snake?’
‘A thorn in the side, and the memory of failure. That’s something at least.’
‘So what are we going to do about Mordent?’
‘Whatever he thinks he will do himself. If he wants to, we’ll take him back. A damaged man is worth ten. You and I are the only people who know about this. The others all think he’s had a nervous breakdown because of his daughter, and that that explains his mistakes. They’ve also heard he’s recovered his testicles intact, and that’s as much as they know. Nobody knows that he went to Pierre Vaudel’s place.’
‘Why didn’t Pierre Vaudel tell you about going to racecourses and the horse manure?’
‘His wife was not supposed to know he was involved with the bookies.’
‘And who paid the concierge, Francisco Delfino, to give Josselin a false alibi. Josselin himself or Emma Carnot?’
‘Nobody. Josselin simply sent Francisco on holiday. For the first few days after the Garches murder, Josselin impersonated Francisco. He took his place, knowing there’d be a visit from the police sooner or later. When I saw him, the lodge was dark, he was wrapped up in a blanket, including his hands. All he had to do after that was nip back up to his apartment via the service stairs and get changed to welcome me in.’
‘Sophisticated.’
‘Yes. He’d thought of everything, except his ex-wife. As soon as Emma discovered that Josselin was Vaudel’s doctor, she realised before us. Right away.’
‘Here he comes,’ Danglard interrupted. ‘Justice has been pronounced.’