Fred Vargas - Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

When he was capable of unclenching his hands, he picked up his knife and fork, but could no longer touch the food. The deposit of distress that the tornado had left behind had taken away his appetite. He apologised to Enid and went out into the street, walking at random and without any sense of purpose. The memory flashed into his head of a great-uncle, who when he was ill, would go and curl up in a ball in some hollow rock in the Pyrenees until it was over. Then the old man would uncurl and come back to life, the fever having passed from him and been swallowed by the rock. Adamsberg smiled. In this huge city he could find no den to curl up in like a bear, no hollow in the rock that would drain the fever and eat his stowaway alive. Perhaps in any case the stranger had jumped on to the shoulders of one of his Irish neighbours in the pub.

His friend Ferez, the psychiatrist, would no doubt have tried to identify the mechanism that was provoking the intrusion. He would try to probe the hidden chagrin, the unavowed pain walled up inside Adamsberg and shaking its chains like a prisoner, causing these sudden sweats, clenched muscles and a singing in his ears that made him flinch. That’s what Ferez would have said, with the sympathetic pleasure he took in unusual cases. He would say, now what were you talking about when the first cat jumped on to your shoulders? Perhaps about Camille? Or about Quebec?

Adamsberg stopped on the pavement, searching his memory, trying to think what he had been saying to Danglard when the first cold sweat had broken out on his neck. Rembrandt, yes, that was it. He had been thinking about Rembrandt, and the absence of shades of dark and light in the D’Hernoncourt case. It was just then. So, it was well before any talk of Camille or Canada. Above all, he would have had to explain to Ferez that never before had any worry of that kind made a vicious cat spring on his back. This was something new, never experienced, quite unprecedented. And the shocks had recurred at different times and in different circumstances, without any apparent link between them. What connection could there be between his kindly Enid and Danglard, between the table at the Liffey Water pub and his own bulletin board? Between the noisy crowd in the bar and his quiet office? None at all. Even someone as quick on the uptake as Ferez would be quite lost. And he would refuse to believe that an alien had climbed on board. Adamsberg ran his hands through his hair, then rubbed his arms and legs energetically, trying to revive his body. He set off once more, making an effort to use his normal inner resources: walking round quietly, observing passers-by with detachment, letting his mind float like a log on the surface of the river.

The fourth tornado pounced on him about an hour later, as he was going up the boulevard Saint-Paul, a few yards from home. He flinched under the attack, and leaned against a lamp post, freezing like a statue as the wind passed over him. He closed his eyes and waited. Less than a minute later, he slowly lifted his head, shifted his shoulders, and flexed his fingers in his pockets, but was then assailed by the feeling of profound unease the storm had left in its wake for the fourth time that day. A distress which brought tears to his eyes, a sorrow without a name.

He had to put a name to it. To this red alert, this torture he was undergoing. Because the day that had begun so normally, with him walking in as he did every day to his headquarters, had left him a changed man, unable to contemplate resuming his routine. An ordinary human being in the morning, and by the evening a nervous wreck, paralysed by a volcano that had opened up under his feet, its fiery mouth containing an undecipherable enigma.

Peeling himself away from the lamp post, he examined his surroundings, as he would a crime scene of which he was himself the victim, seeking to identify the killer who had stabbed him in the back. He retreated a metre or so and stood again in the exact spot where he had been at the moment of impact. He looked along the empty pavement, the darkened shop window on the right, the advertising hoarding on the left. Nothing else. Only the advertising poster was clearly visible through the dark, since it was lit up inside its glass case. That must have been the last thing he saw before the assault. He looked at it carefully. It was a reproduction of a classical sort of painting, with a strip across it announcing ‘Nineteenth-century paintings in the academic tradition. Temporary exhibition. Grand Palais, 18 October-17 December.’

The painting depicted a muscular figure with pale skin and a dark beard, sitting comfortably on a huge shell in the middle of the ocean, and surrounded by nymphs. Adamsberg stared for a long moment at the picture, trying to work out what it might have done to unleash the whirlwind, in the same way as his conversation with Danglard, his office armchair and the smoke-filled Liffey Water bar. But surely a man can’t fall from normality into chaos with a snap of the fingers. There must be some kind of transition, some way through. Here, as in the D’Hernoncourt case, what was missing was the set of nuances, the bridge between the two river banks, one deep in shadow, the other brightly sunlit. Sighing with frustration, he bit his lip and peered out into the darkness, in search of a cruising taxi. He hailed one, climbed into the cab and gave the driver the address of Adrien Danglard.

HE HAD TO RING THE BELL THREE TIMES BEFORE DANGLARD, befuddled with sleep, opened the door. The capitaine gave a start at the sight of Adamsberg, whose features seemed to have become more drawn, the nose more arched, the dark shadows under his high cheekbones more pronounced. So the commissaire had not been able to relax as quickly as usual after a tense moment. Danglard knew he had overstepped the line, earlier in the day. Ever since, he had been mulling over the possibility of a confrontation, a reprimand perhaps. Or a punishment? Or worse. Unable to stop the deep waves of pessimism, he had been thinking about his growing fears all through supper, trying not to let anything show in front of the children, about this concern or indeed about the aeroplane engine. The best distraction was to tell them another story about Lieutenant Retancourt, which would certainly amuse them, especially since this massive woman – who seemed to have been painted by Michelangelo, a painter whose mighty genius had not been at its best in rendering the supple uncertainties of the female body – had the name of a delicate wild flower: Violette. That day, Violette had been talking quietly with Hélène Froissy, who was suffering from an unhappy love affair. Violette had emphasised one of her remarks by bringing the palm of her hand down sharply on the photocopier, and it had immediately started working again, after having been stuck for five days.

One of the older children had asked what would have happened if Retancourt had banged Hélène Froissy’s head instead of the photocopier. Could she have sent her unhappy colleague’s mind off in a more positive direction? Could Violette change people and things by knocking on them? All the children had then tried their luck with the family television set, which was also out of order, to test their strength. Danglard allowed them only one go each, but alas, no image appeared, and the youngest one had hurt his finger. Once they were all in bed, his pessimism had once more overtaken him with dark forebodings.

Faced with his superior officer, Danglard scratched his chest in a gesture of illusory self-defence.

‘Quick, Danglard,’ whispered Adamsberg. ‘I need you. There’s a taxi waiting.’

His head cleared by this sudden return to calm, the capitaine hurriedly pulled on a jacket and trousers. Adamsberg evidently wasn’t bearing a grudge, his anger being already forgotten, swallowed up in the clouds of his habitual indulgence or indifference. If the commissaire had come to fetch him late at night, it must mean the squad had another murder to deal with.