Veyrenc wasn’t asleep. he was standing up, keeping watch from his window. Danglard had been behaving oddly all evening: anticipating some amusement, a victory over someone: he was planning some kind of coup. A professional coup, Veyrenc guessed, since the commandant wasn’t the kind of man to go round the red-light district of Lisieux, as suggested by Émeri. Or, if so, he would have said as much, without making any secret of it. The bonhomie he had shown towards Veyrenc, suppressing his usual childish jealousy, had put the latter on high alert. He imagined that Danglard was on the point of making some breakthrough in the inquiry without telling anyone, thus overtaking his colleague and scoring extra brownie points with Adamsberg. Tomorrow, he’d proudly present the commissaire with whatever he had found. Well, Veyrenc wasn’t too bothered about that. Nor was he irritated at whatever plan was disturbing the commandant’s usually calm judgement. But in an inquiry where the bodies were piling up, one shouldn’t go venturing out alone.
By 1.30 a.m., Danglard hadn’t appeared. Disappointed, Veyrenc lay down on his bed, fully dressed.
Danglard had set his alarm for 5.50 and had gone to sleep quickly, which was rare for him, except when the prospect of a job to do demanded that he sleep quickly and well. At 6.25, he was in the driver’s seat, releasing the handbrake and letting the car roll silently down the slope, so as not to wake anyone. He started the engine once he was on the road and drove slowly for twenty-two kilometres, with the sunblind down. His correspondent, man or woman, had asked him not to make himself conspicuous. The fact that this correspondent had apparently mistaken him for the commissaire had been a stroke of luck. He had found the message in his jacket the previous day, a clumsily pencilled note, apparently by someone without much education. Comisaire I got something about Glayeux but on condision I stay hidden. Too dangearous. Meet me at Cérenay Station Platform A, 06.50 sharp tomorrow. THANKS. Please be discrete (‘discreet’ and ‘discrete’ had been written and crossed out a couple of times) and don’t be late.
By thinking back over the events of the previous day, Danglard was convinced that the writer of the message could only have slipped it into his jacket pocket when he was standing in the small crowd outside Glayeux’s house. It hadn’t been there earlier, when he was at the hospital.
The commandant parked under a line of trees and went on to Platform A, tiptoeing discreetly round the little station building. It stood outside the village, and was locked and deserted. There was no one on the platforms either. Danglard looked at the timetable and noted that no train would be stopping at Cérenay before 11.12 a.m. So there was no likelihood that anyone would be there for another four hours. The correspondent had chosen one of the few places where isolation was assured.
* * *
At 6.48 by the station clock, Danglard sat down on a bench, hunched over as usual, feeling impatient and somewhat shattered. He had had only a few hours’ sleep and without his usual nine hours his energy was at a low ebb. But the idea of beating Veyrenc to the winning post was a stimulus, making him smile and feel cheerful. He had been working with Adamsberg now for over twenty years, and the spontaneous complicity between the commissaire and Veyrenc made him literally bristle with jealousy. Danglard was too insightful to fool himself: he knew perfectly well that his aversion to Veyrenc was a shameful form of envy. He wasn’t even certain that Veyrenc was trying to take his place, but the temptation was irresistible. Get one over on Veyrenc. Danglard lifted his head, swallowed some saliva and expelled a vague sense of unworthiness. Adamsberg was neither his point of reference nor his model. On the contrary, the behaviour and ideas of his boss often annoyed him. But Adamsberg’s esteem, and indeed affection, were necessary to him, as if that vague individual could somehow protect him or justify his existence. At 6.51 he felt a sharp blow on the side of his neck, put his hand up to feel it, then fell headlong on to the platform. A minute later, the commandant’s body was lying across the rails.
* * *
Visibility along the platform was so clear that Veyrenc had had to hide a couple of hundred metres away, behind the signal box, in order to observe Danglard. His angle of vision was not good, and when he saw him, the unknown assailant was only a couple of metres from the commandant. The blow to Danglard’s neck and Danglard’s collapse took only a couple of seconds. As the man started rolling the body over towards the edge of the platform, Veyrenc had immediately set off at a run. He was still about forty metres away when Danglard fell on to the rails. The assailant was already making his escape, at an athletic pace.
Veyrenc jumped down on to the tracks and grabbed Danglard’s head: his face was livid in the early-morning light, the mouth was open and slack, the eyes closed. Veyrenc found a pulse, then raised the eyelids on unseeing eyes. Danglard was out for the count, drugged or dying. On the side of his neck around a puncture mark, a large bruise was already forming. Grabbing him under the armpits, the lieutenant started to hoist his colleague up on to the platform, but the ninety-five inert kilos of this unconscious body were too much for him to lift. He needed help. He stood up, sweating, and was about to phone Adamsberg, when he heard the unmistakable whistle of a distant train approaching at high speed. Panic-stricken, he could already see the engine coming straight down the line from the left. Veyrenc flung himself on Danglard’s body, and with a supreme effort, managed to lie him between the rails, arms by his sides. The train gave a loud hoot like a cry of despair, Veyrenc hauled himself on to the platform in the nick of time, and rolled away from the edge.
The carriages roared through the station with an ear-splitting noise, quickly fading into the distance, leaving him unable to move, either because his muscles were paralysed by his efforts, or because he couldn’t face looking down at Danglard. Head encircled by his arms, he felt tears pouring down his cheeks. One piece of information was going round inside his head. ‘The space between the surface of the body and the undercarriage of a train is only twenty centimetres.’
* * *
It must have been a quarter of an hour later that the lieutenant was finally able to raise himself on his elbows and crawl to the edge of the platform. Holding his head with his hands, he opened his eyes. Danglard looked like a corpse, neatly lined up in the track between the shining rails as if lying on a luxurious stretcher. But he was untouched. Veyrenc let his head fall on his arms, felt for his mobile and called Adamsberg. Come quickly, Cérenay station. Then he pulled out his gun, slipped off the safety catch and held it in his right hand, finger on trigger. He shut his eyes again. ‘The space between the surface of the body and the undercarriage of the train is only twenty centimetres.’ Now he remembered where he had heard that: last year, on the track between Paris and Granville, a man had fallen on the rails, in such a state of intoxication that the express train had passed clean over him; his absence of reflexes had saved his life. Veyrenc felt pins and needles in his legs and tried to move them slowly. They seemed simultaneously to have turned into cotton wool and to feel like lumps of granite. Twenty centimetres. It was good luck that Danglard’s conspicuous lack of a muscular frame had allowed him to lie flat between the rails like an inert package.
* * *
When he heard running steps behind him, he was still sitting cross-legged on the platform, his gaze fixed on Danglard as if by keeping his attention concentrated on him he could prevent another train from coming along, or Danglard sliding towards death. He had addressed a few words to him – ‘hold on’, ‘don’t move’, ‘take deep breaths’ – but without getting a flicker of response. Now, though, he could see Danglard’s slack lips moving slightly with each breath and he was watching the small movements intently. His mind had started working again. Whoever had arranged to meet Danglard here had planned it carefully, pushing him under the Caen-Paris express at a time when there was no risk of anyone else witnessing it. He would have been found hours later, when any trace of the anaesthetic, whatever it was, had disappeared from his body. And nobody would even have thought of looking for it. What would the inquest have said? That Danglard’s habitual melancholy had got worse lately, that he had been afraid Ordebec would be the death of him. That he had got completely drunk and lain down on the railway line to die. It would certainly have been an extraordinary choice, but the madness of a suicidal man who was dead drunk couldn’t be measured by ordinary standards, and that is what would have been concluded in the end. He turned to look at the hand pressing his shoulder – it belonged to Adamsberg.
‘Down there,’ said Veyrenc. ‘Quick. I can’t move.’
Émeri and Blériot had already taken hold of Danglard’s body under the arms, and Adamsberg jumped down on the track to take his legs. Afterwards, Blériot couldn’t manage to hoist himself on to the platform, and had to be hauled up by grabbing his hands.
‘Dr Turbot is on his way,’ said Émeri, bending over Danglard’s chest. ‘In my view, he’s drugged but not in danger. There’s a pulse, slow but regular. What happened, lieutenant?’
‘This guy,’ said Veyrenc, still struggling to speak.
‘You can’t get up?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘Can’t seem to. You wouldn’t have a drop of something?’
‘Yessir, I have,’ said Blériot, bringing out a cheap hip flask. ‘But it’s not even eight yet, it’ll slam into your guts, it will.’
‘Just what I need,’ Veyrenc assured him.
‘Eaten anything this morning?’
‘No, up all night.’
Veyrenc took a gulp, and pulled a face showing that, yes indeed, it was slamming into his guts. He took another and passed the flask back to Blériot.
‘Can you talk properly now?’ asked Adamsberg, sitting cross-legged beside him and noting the traces of tears on Veyrenc’s cheeks.
‘Yeah, it’s just the shock, that’s all. I’ve used up all my strength.’
‘Why were you up all night?’
‘Because Danglard was plotting some damfool scheme on his own.’
‘Ah, you noticed too?’
‘Yeah. He wanted to steal a march on me, I thought it might be risky. I thought he’d go out late last night, but he only went off at six thirty this morning. I took the other car, and followed him at a distance. We got here,’ Veyrenc said, waving his hand around. ‘Then this guy hit him on the neck, and must have injected him with something, I think, and pushed him down on the track. I started running, the other man got away, and when I tried to haul Danglard up, I just couldn’t. And this train appeared.’
‘The Caen-Paris fast train,’ said Émeri, looking serious. ‘Goes through here at 6.56 every day.’
‘Right,’ said Veyrenc, his head sinking on to his chest, ‘well, it certainly is fast.’
‘Oh shit,’ said Adamsberg through clenched teeth.
Why was it Veyrenc who had been shadowing Danglard? Why not him? Why had he allowed his lieutenant to get into this diabolical situation? Because Danglard’s scheme had been directed at Veyrenc, and Adamsberg had regarded it as of no consequence. Just a bit of macho posturing.
‘I just had time to move Danglard, and lie him down between the rails, don’t know how, and then pull myself up, don’t know how either. Heck, he was really heavy, and the platform’s really high. I felt the air from the train going past. Twenty centimetres. That’s the space between the undercarriage of the train and a body between the rails – if it’s someone drunk or relaxed – just twenty centimetres.’
‘I dunno as I’d have thought of that,’ said Blériot, looking at Veyrenc with a stupefied expression. He was also fascinated by this officer’s hair, dark brown but speckled with a dozen or so abnormal red locks, like poppies on a ploughed field.
‘So this man?’ asked Émeri. ‘Was he big? Like Hippolyte?’
‘Yeah, he looked a big fellow. But I was a long way off and he was wearing a hoodie and gloves.’
‘What else was he wearing?’
‘Trainers, maybe a sweatshirt and jogging pants. Dark green, navy, I don’t know. Help me, Jean-Baptiste, I think I can stand up now.’
‘Louis, why didn’t you call me before you started following him? Why did you go off on your own?’
‘It was between him and me. Some hare-brained plot of Danglard’s, no point getting you involved. I had no idea this would get so heavy. He went off all alone, with a heart full of bile…’
Veyrenc broke off the verse he had started, and shrugged his shoulders.
‘No,’ he said to himself, ‘no stomach for it.’
* * *
Dr Turbot had arrived and was attending to Danglard. He kept shaking his head and muttering ‘went under the train, under the train!’ as if convincing himself of the exceptional nature of the event he was being called to.
‘It was probably a strong dose of anaesthetic,’ he said, looking up and motioning to the two paramedics accompanying him, ‘but I think it’s almost worn off now. We’ll take him back and I’ll go on reviving him, but carefully. He won’t be capable of speaking for a couple of hours, so don’t come before that, commissaire. He’s got some bruising, with the blow to the side of the neck and falling on to the track, but I don’t think anything’s broken. Survived going under the train, can’t get over that!’
Adamsberg watched Danglard being stretchered to the ambulance with a wave of retrospective distress. But the bubble of electricity hadn’t reappeared on his neck. Down to Dr Hellebaud, presumably.
‘And how is Léo?’ he asked the doctor.
‘Last night she sat up and had something to eat. We’ve taken the catheter out. But she can’t speak, she just gives us a smile from time to time. Looking as if she’s got something to say, but she can’t get there. Almost makes me think your Dr Hellebaud has blocked her powers of speech, like turning down a dimmer switch. And he’ll turn it back up again when he sees fit.’
‘That’s pretty much how he operates, yes.’
‘I wrote to him at his Fleury place, to report on her progress. I addressed it to the governor as you suggested.’
‘Fleury jail,’ said Adamsberg meaningfully.
‘I know that, commissaire, but I don’t like saying it or thinking it. Like I know that it was you that arrested him, and I don’t want to hear what he’d done. Not medical malpractice at least?’
‘No.’
‘Under the train, can’t get over that. Only suicides throw themselves under trains.’
‘Quite, doctor. Not a normal MO for murder. But since it is indeed a normal method of killing oneself, Danglard’s death might easily have been thought a suicide. For your hospital staff, the suicide version will be best, and make sure no wind of anything gets outside. I don’t want the murderer to be alerted. Right now, he must be imagining that his victim has been cut to bits by the wheels of an express train. Let’s let him think that for a few hours.’
‘I see,’ said Turbot, taking on a would-be knowing expression by screwing up his eyes. ‘You want to take him by surprise, watch and wait.’
* * *
In fact, Adamsberg did nothing of the kind. As the ambulance moved off, he walked up and down Platform A, on a short stretch of twenty metres, not wanting to go too far from Veyrenc, to whom Blériot – he noticed – had given three or four lumps of sugar. Blériot the sugar carrier. Without intending to, he noticed too that the brigadier didn’t drop the wrappings on the ground, but screwed them up in tiny balls which he put into his trouser pocket. Émeri, whose uniform was less impeccable than usual, since he had had to dress in a hurry when called, came towards him shaking his head.
‘I can’t see any sign of anything on the bench. Nothing, Adamsberg. Nothing to go on.’
Veyrenc gestured to Émeri, asking for a cigarette.
‘I’d be surprised if Danglard can help us,’ Veyrenc said. ‘The attacker came from behind, he didn’t even have time to turn his head.’
‘How come the train driver didn’t see him?’ Blériot asked.
‘This time of day, he’d be driving into the sun, facing due east,’ Adamsberg replied.
‘Well, even if he had seen him,’ Émeri said, ‘he wouldn’t be able stop the train for several hundred metres. Lieutenant, why did you decide to follow him?’
‘Obeying rules, I suppose,’ said Veyrenc with a smile. ‘Saw him go out and decided to tail him. Because you shouldn’t go off alone in a case like this.’
‘But why did he go off alone? He looked the careful type to me.’
‘Yes, but inclined to do things by himself,’ said Adamsberg, trying to excuse Danglard.
‘And whoever arranged this rendezvous probably insisted he come alone,’ sighed Émeri. ‘Always the way. Let’s meet up again back at the gendarmerie to organise surveillance at Mortembot’s place. Adamsberg, can you get the backup from Paris?’
‘Couple of men should be here by two o’clock.’
Veyrenc had recovered enough to drive, and Adamsberg followed him to Léo’s place, where the lieutenant ate some tinned soup and then went straight to bed. As he returned to his room, Adamsberg remembered that he had forgotten to feed the pigeon any birdseed the night before. And the window had been open.
But Hellebaud had nestled into one of Adamsberg’s shoes, the way some of his fellow pigeons might settle on a chimney pot, and was patiently waiting for him.
‘Now come on, Hellebaud,’ said Adamsberg, lifting up the shoe, pigeon and all, and putting it on the windowsill. ‘We need a serious talk. You’re getting away from the state of nature, you’re sliding down the slope towards civilisation. Your feet are better, you can fly. Look out there! Sunshine! Trees! Female pigeons! And all the grubs and insects you want.’
Hellebaud cooed, which seemed a good sign, and Adamsberg placed him more firmly on the windowsill.
‘Take off when you want,’ he said. ‘No need to leave a note, I’ll understand.’