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

Curious Army? Mean anything to you?’
    ‘No, hombre .’
    *   *   *
    Sitting in his kitchen were Lieutenant Retancourt and Adamsberg’s grownup son, known to him as ‘Zerk’. (The commissaire couldn’t get used to his given name, Armel, having been aware of his son’s existence for only seven weeks: the nickname had its origin in the previous case, which had brought them together.) Cigarettes dangling from mouths, the pair were both peering into a basket lined with cotton wool. They didn’t look up when Adamsberg came in.
    ‘Have you got that?’ Retancourt was asking the young man sternly. ‘What you do is, you dip little bits of biscotte in water and you feed him gently with them. And a little water using the dropper, not too much at first. And you add one drop of the stuff in this bottle, it’s a tonic.’
    ‘Still alive?’ Adamsberg asked, feeling himself oddly a stranger in his own kitchen, which had been invaded by this large woman and his previously unsuspected son aged twenty-eight.
    Retancourt stood up, hands on hips. ‘I don’t know if he’ll survive the night. Story so far: it took over an hour to peel the string off his legs, it’s cut right down to the bone, he must have been pecking at it for days. But it didn’t break. I’ve disinfected the wounds, and you’ll have to change the dressing every morning. There’s some gauze in here,’ she went on, tapping a little box on the table. ‘And he’s been treated with flea powder, should take care of that problem.’
    ‘Thanks, Retancourt. Did the young lad from forensics take the string?’
    ‘Yes, after a bit of fuss, because the lab isn’t paid to analyse string from pigeons. This one’s a male by the way. Voisenet identified it.’
    Lieutenant Voisenet had missed his vocation as a zoologist, because his father had high-handedly decided he should join the police. Voisenet was really a specialist on fish, saltwater, and especially freshwater, and ichthyological journals were always strewn around his desk. But he knew a lot about other fauna, from insects to bats, by way of gnus, and his scientific interests sometimes distracted him from his duties. The chief superintendent, Divisionnaire Brézillon, who was well aware of this, had sent him a warning, as he already had to Mercadet, who suffered from narcolepsy. But then, Adamsberg wondered, who in his squad didn’t have some peculiarity? Apart from Retancourt, but then her capacities and energy were also a major deviation from the norm.
    After she had left, Zerk stayed standing, arms dangling, and staring at the door.
    ‘Impressive, isn’t she?’ said Adamsberg. ‘It gets everyone that way the first time they meet her. And every other time as well.’
    ‘She’s really, really beautiful,’ said Zerk.
    Adamsberg looked at his son in surprise, for beauty wasn’t the firstthing that came to mind on meeting Violette Retancourt. Or grace, subtlety or indeed affability. In every way she was the opposite of the charming and fragile delicacy of her first name. Although she had fine features, they were framed by broad cheeks and powerful jaws, mounted on a neck like a bull’s.
    ‘If you say so,’ Adamsberg agreed, not wishing to argue about the tastes of this young man he didn’t really know yet.
    He wasn’t even sure about his son’s level of intelligence. High? Low? One thing reassured the commissaire. Most people, including himself, were still undecided about his own level of intelligence. He didn’t query his own intellectual capacity, so why start worrying about Zerk’s? Veyrenc had assured him that the young man was talented, but Adamsberg had yet to discover at what.
    *   *   *
    ‘The Curious Army. Mean anything to you?’ asked Adamsberg, as he carefully placed the basket holding the pigeon on the sideboard.
    ‘The what?’ said Zerk, who was laying the table, putting forks on the right, knives on the left, just like his father.
    ‘Never mind. We’ll ask