‘Nor do I,’ said Adamsberg.
Danglard was annoyed. He would have preferred Adamsberg not to admit his ignorance in front of Reyer. The commissaire had started scribbling on the paper resting on his knee. It was provoking to see Adamsberg taking that casual, vague and passive attitude, not asking any questions to move the situation on.
‘All the same,’ Danglard insisted, ‘why did you want to rent her apartment?’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Charles, exploding with anger. ‘It was Mathilde who came to find me in my hotel to offer me the flat, not the other way round.’
‘But you chose to go and sit by her in the café, before that, didn’t you? And you told her, for some reason, that you were looking for a place to rent.’
‘If you were blind, you’d know it’s beyond my powers to recognise someone sitting on a café terrace.’
‘I think you’re capable of doing plenty that’s so-called beyond your powers.’
‘That’ll do,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Where is Mathilde Forestier now?’
‘She’s off tracking some guy with a bee in his bonnet about the rotation of sunflowers.’
‘Since we can’t do anything and we don’t know anything,’ Adamsberg said, ‘let’s drop it.’
This argument appalled Danglard. He suggested that they search for Mathilde, in order to find out more straight away. They could post a man outside her house to wait for her, or send someone to the Oceanographical Institute.
‘No, Danglard, we’re not going to bother with that. She’ll be back. What we will do, though, is post some men tonight at the metro stations of Saint-Georges, Pigalle and Notre-Dame-de Lorette, with a description of the chalk circle man. That will keep our consciences clear. And then we’ll wait. The man who smells of rotten apples will start his night-time walks again – it’s inevitable. So we’ll wait. But we haven’t any hope of catching him. He’s bound to alter his itinerary.’
‘But what’s the point of our worrying about the circles if he isn’t the killer?’ said Danglard, getting up and pacing awkwardly round the room. ‘The chalk circle man! Again! But surely we don’t give a damn about the poor sod! It’s whoever’s using him that we’re after!’
‘Not me,’ said Adamsberg. ‘So we carry on looking for the circle man.’
Danglard stood up again, wearily. It would take time to get accustomed to Adamsberg.
Charles could sense all the confusion in the room. He perceived Danglard’s vague discomfiture and Adamsberg’s indecision.
‘Which one of us is going into this blind, you or me, commissaire?’ asked Charles.
Adamsberg smiled.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘After the anonymous phone call, I suppose you’ll be wanting me to “help you with your inquiries”,’ Charles went on.
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Adamsberg. ‘But anyway there’s nothing to stop you going to work as usual. Don’t worry.’
‘It’s not my work that worries me, commissaire.’
‘I know. It was just an expression.’
Charles heard the sound of pencil on paper. He imagined that the commissaire must be drawing while he was talking.
‘I don’t know how a blind man could manage to kill someone. But I’m a suspect now, aren’t I?’
Adamsberg made an evasive gesture.
‘Let’s say you picked the wrong moment to go and live at Mathilde Forestier’s house. Let’s say that, for whatever reason, we’ve recently become interested in her and what she knows, that is if she’s told us everything, which may not be the case. Danglard can explain all that to you. Danglard’s incredibly intelligent, you’ll see. It’s a great comfort to work with him. Let’s also say that you seem to be a rather awkward customer, which doesn’t help.’
‘What makes you think that?’ asked Charles, with a smile – a nasty smile, Adamsberg thought.
‘Madame Forestier says so.’
For the first time, Charles felt worried.
‘Yes, that’s what she says,’ Adamsberg repeated. ‘“He’s a bad-tempered so-and-so, but that doesn’t bother me” is what she said. And you like her too. Because being in touch with Mathilde, Monsieur Reyer, would do you a power of good, it would bring back shining black eyes, like patent leather. She’d do plenty of people good. Danglard doesn’t like her, though – no, Danglard, you don’t. He’s taken against her, for reasons that he’ll tell you about. He’s even tempted to cast doubts on her good faith. He’s already finding it odd that our Mathilde turned up at the police station to talk to me about the chalk circle man with or without a smell of apples, long before the murder. And he’s quite right. It is odd. But then, everything’s odd about this case. Even the rotten apples. Anyway, the only thing we can do now is wait.’
Adamsberg started doodling again.
‘All right,’ said Danglard. ‘We’ll wait.’
He was not in a good mood. He saw Charles to the street.
Returning to the corridor, he was still pressing a finger to his forehead. Yes, it was true: because he had this long body in the shape of a skittle he resented Mathilde, who was the kind of woman who’d never go to bed with someone whose body was that shape. So, yes, he would have liked her to be guilty of something. And this business with the newspaper article certainly landed her in it. That would interest the kids, for sure. But he had sworn, since his mistake about the girl in the jeweller’s shop, never to proceed unless he had evidence and hard facts, not some half-baked hunch that wormed its way into your head. So he would have to tread carefully with Mathilde.
Charles remained on edge all morning. His fingers trembled a little as they ran over the Braille perforations.
Mathilde was on edge too. She had just lost sight of the sunflower man. Stupid, really – he had jumped into a taxi. She had found herself standing on the Place de l’Opéra, disappointed and disoriented. If it had been in the first half of the week, she would have sat down immediately and ordered a glass of beer. But since it was the second half, there was no point getting too upset. Should she pick someone at random to follow? Why not? On the other hand, it was almost midday and she wasn’t far from Charles’s office. She could call and take him out to lunch. She had been a bit brusque with him that morning, with the excuse that during a section two you could say what you liked, and she felt rather bad about that now.
She caught Charles by the shoulder just as he came out of the building in the rue Saint-Marc.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Mathilde.
‘Good thing you found me,’ said Charles. ‘All the cops in the world are thinking about you now. You were the subject of a minor denunciation this morning.’
Mathilde had settled herself on a banquette at the back of the restaurant, and nothing in her voice indicated to Charles that this item of news disturbed her.
‘All the same,’ Charles insisted, ‘it wouldn’t take much for the police to start thinking you’re the person best placed to help the murderer. You’re probably the only one who could have told him the time and place to find a circle that would suit his plan to kill someone. Worse still, you could even become a murder suspect yourself. With your bad habits, Mathilde, you’re going to be in deep trouble.’
Mathilde laughed. She ordered several dishes. She really was hungry.
‘Well, that’s just fine,’ said Mathilde. ‘Strange things happen to me all the time. It’s my fate. So one more or less isn’t going to make any difference. The night of the Dodin Bouffant was surely in a section two of the week, and I must have had too much to drink and talked a lot of nonsense. I don’t remember a lot about that evening, to be honest. You’ll see – Adamsberg will understand, he won’t go chasing the impossible all over the world.’