The Chalk Circle Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

of oranges for some reason, although it never ate them, would sometimes jump onto their arms and make a great show of looking for fleas on their wrists, with a concentrated expression and neat little movements. Camille and Jean-Baptiste joined in the game, scratching at the invisible prey on their forearms. But she had run away, his petite chérie . And he, the policeman, had never been able to trace her, despite all the time he had spent searching: a whole year, such a long year, and afterwards his youngest sister had said, ‘Come on, you don’t have any right to do this, leave her in peace!’ ‘ Ma petite chérie ,’ Adamsberg had said. ‘You want to see her again?’ his sister had asked. Only the youngest of his five sisters dared talk to him about his petite chérie . And he had smiled and said, ‘With all my heart, yes, even if it’s just for an hour before I die.’
    Adrien Danglard was waiting for him in the office, a plastic cup of white wine in his hand and a combination of mixed emotions on his face.
    ‘The Vernoux boy’s boots were missing,’ he said. ‘Ankle boots with buckles.’
    Adamsberg stood silently for a moment. He was trying to respect Danglard’s irritation.
    ‘I didn’t mean to give you a demonstration this morning,’ he said. ‘I can’t help it if the Vernoux boy’s the killer. Did you look for the boots?’
    Danglard produced a plastic bag and put it on the table.
    ‘Here they are,’ he sighed. ‘The lab’s started doing tests, but you can see at a glance it’s the mud from that building site on the soles, so sticky that the water in the drain didn’t wash it off. Pity. Nice shoes.’
    ‘They were in the drain then?’
    ‘Yes, twenty-five metres down from the nearest grating to his house.’
    ‘You’re a fast worker, Danglard.’
    Silence fell between the two men. Adamsberg was biting his lip. He had picked up a cigarette, taken a pencil stub out his pocket, and flattened a bit of paper over his knee. He was thinking: He’s going to give me a lecture now, he’s angry and shocked, I should never have told him the story of the dog that drooled, or told him that Patrice Vernoux oozed cruelty like the little kid in the mountains.
    But no. Adamsberg looked at his colleague. Danglard’s long shambling body, which took the shape of a melted bottle when he sat on a chair, was looking relaxed. He had plunged his large hands deep in the pockets of his elegant suit, and put the wine on the floor. He was staring into space, but even like that Adamsberg could see that he was formidably intelligent. Danglard said:
    ‘Congratulations, commissaire .’
    Then he got up, as he had done earlier, first bending the top half of his body forward, then lifting his backside off the chair and finally standing up straight.
    ‘I have to tell you,’ he added, with his back half-turned to Adamsberg, ‘that after four in the afternoon I’m not good for much – best you should know that. So if you want to ask me to do anything, mornings are best. And if you want people for a manhunt, shooting, any of that kind of rubbish, forget it, my hand shakes and my knees give way. Apart from that, my legs and head are usable. I think the head works reasonably well, even if it works very differently from yours. A supercilious colleague told me one day that if I was still in my job as inspector, with the amount of white wine I drink, it’s because my bosses have turned a blind eye to it, and because I have two sets of twins at home, which makes four children to bring up as a single parent, on account of my wife having run off with her lover to study the statues on Easter Island. When I was young, twenty-five that is, I wanted to write either a masterpiece or nothing: something as good as Chateaubriand’s memoirs. You won’t be surprised to learn that that didn’t work out. OK. Now I’m taking the boots, and I’m going to interview Patrice Vernoux and his girlfriend who are waiting next