The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) Read Online Free PDF

that brings pride. And since it’s easier to give up a virtue than a vice, he has no choice. I’m off to see this so-called great-uncle in hospital at Versailles.’
    ‘What shall we do with this pigeon? I can’t have it at home, my brother’s allergic to feathers.’
    ‘Your brother’s staying with you?’
    ‘Just for now. He lost his job, he nicked a case of bolts and some oil cans from the garage.’
    ‘Can you drop him off at my place tonight then? The bird, I mean.’
    ‘I suppose so,’ Retancourt grumbled.
    ‘Watch out, we have cats patrolling our garden.’
    The little woman’s hand was placed timidly on his shoulder. Adamsberg turned round.
    ‘That night,’ she said slowly, ‘Lina saw the Furious Army.’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘The Furious Army,’ the woman repeated, in a whisper. ‘And Herbier was with them. And he was screaming. And three others with him.’
    ‘Is it a club? Something to do with hunting?’
    Madame Vendermot was staring at Adamsberg in disbelief.
    ‘The Furious Army,’ she whispered again. ‘The Great Hunt. The Ghost Riders. Haven’t you heard of them?’
    ‘No,’ said Adamsberg, staring back at her stupefied gaze. ‘Come back some other time and you can tell me all about it.’
    ‘But you don’t even recognise the name? Hellequin’s Horde,’ she whispered.
    ‘Look, I’m very sorry,’ said Adamsberg, taking her back into his office. ‘Veyrenc, do you know anything about some curious army?’ he asked, pocketing his keys and his mobile.
    ‘Not curious, Furious,’ the woman corrected him.
    ‘Yes. Madame Vendermot’s daughter saw the missing man riding with it.’
    ‘And some other people,’ she insisted. ‘Jean Glayeux, and Michel Mortembot. But my daughter didn’t recognise the fourth.’
    An expression of astonishment appeared on Veyrenc’s face, then he smiled slightly with that raised lip. Like a man who has just been offered an unexpected treat.
    ‘Your daughter really saw all this?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘The usual place where people see it. On a road near Ordebec, the Chemin de Bonneval, in the Forest of Alance. It’s always passed that way.’
    ‘Is that near where she lives?’
    ‘No, we live a few kilometres away.’
    ‘And she went to try and see it?’
    ‘No, no, certainly not. Lina’s a very sensible girl, very down to earth. She just happened to be there, that’s all.’
    ‘At night?’
    ‘It’s only ever seen at night.’
    Adamsberg was leading the little woman out of the office and asking her again to come back the next day, or to telephone him another time, when she’d sorted it all out more clearly in her mind. Veyrenc held him back discreetly, chewing on a pen.
    ‘Jean-Baptiste,’ he said, ‘do you really not know what she’s talking about? The Furious Army? The Ghost Riders?’
    Adamsberg shook his head, rapidly combing his hair with his fingers.
    ‘Well, ask Danglard,’ Veyrenc insisted. ‘It’ll interest him a lot.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because, as far as I know, if anyone sees them, it foretells disaster. Perhaps some big disaster.’
    Veyrenc smiled again, and as if the intrusion of the Furious Army had made up his mind for him, he signed up to re-enlist.

IV
    When Adamsberg arrived home, later than he intended, since the great-uncle had turned out to be complicated, his neighbour, the elderly Spaniard Lucio, was pissing noisily against a tree in the little garden, in the warm evening.
    ‘ Salud, hombre ,’ said the old man, without interrupting what he was doing, ‘one of your lieutenants is waiting for you. This big fat woman, tall as a house. Your boy let her in.’
    ‘She’s not a big fat woman, Lucio, she’s a goddess, a polyvalent goddess.’
    ‘Oh, that one?’ said Lucio, buttoning his trousers. ‘The one you’re always going on about?’
    ‘That’s the one. The goddess. So naturally she doesn’t look just like everyone else. Have you ever heard of something called the