This Night's Foul Work Read Online Free PDF Page B

studies.’
    â€˜Yes,’ admitted Ariane.
    â€˜So I reckon you owe me a beer.’
    â€˜Certainly.’
    â€˜By the Seine.’
    â€˜OK, if you like.’
    â€˜And, of course, you won’t hand these guys over to the Drug Squad?’
    â€˜It’s the bodies that will decide that, Jean-Baptiste, not you and not me.’
    â€˜The syringe mark, Ariane, and the earth under their nails. Take a look at the earth for me. Tell me if that’s what it is.’
    They got up together, as if Adamsberg’s words had been a signal for them to leave. The
commissaire
walked along the street as if he was strolling aimlessly, and the doctor tried to follow his slow pace, her mind already on the autopsies awaiting her. Adamsberg’s preoccupation puzzled her.
    â€˜There’s something about those bodies that bothers you, isn’t there?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Not just because of the Drug Squad?’
    â€˜No. It’s just …’ Adamsberg broke off. ‘I’m going this way. I’ll see you tomorrow, Ariane.’
    â€˜It’s just …?’ the doctor insisted.
    â€˜Nothing that will help your analysis.’
    â€˜But tell me anyway.’
    â€˜Just a shade, Ariane, a shade hovering over them, or over me.’
    Ariane watched Adamsberg walk away down the avenue, a wayward silhouette, taking no notice of anyone else. She recognised his style from twenty-three years back. The gentle voice, the slow gestures. She had not paid much attention to him when he was young, so she had understood nothing. If she was starting over again, she would listen to his story about the rats. She plunged her hands in the pockets of her overall and set off towards the two bodies waiting to take their place in history. Just a shade hovering over them. Today she could understand that kind of strange remark.

VI
    L IEUTENANT
V EYRENC TOOK ADVANTAGE OF HIS LONG HOURS IN THE BROOM cupboard to copy out in large handwriting one of Racine’s plays for his grandmother, whose sight was going.
    Nobody had ever understood the exclusive passion his grandmother had declared for this author, and no other, when she had been left a war orphan. The family knew that when there was a fire at her convent school, she had rescued a complete edition of Racine, except for the volume containing
Phèdre, Esther
and
Athalie
. As if the books had been granted to her by divine intervention, the little country girl had read them over and over, for eleven years. When she’d left the convent, the mother superior had given the volumes to her as a sort of vade-mecum, and his grandmother had gone on reading them, over and over, without changing the order, or ever having the curiosity to seek out
Phèdre, Esther
and
Athalie
. She would recite the speeches of this lifelong companion all the time, and the young Veyrenc had grown up hearing the twelve-syllable alexandrines, which had become as natural to his childish ears as if someone were singing around the house.
    Unfortunately, he had picked up the habit as well, replying to his grandmother in the same mode – lines twelve syllables long. But since he had not had thousands of verses ingrained in his mind, night after night, he had to invent them. As long as he was living in the familyhome, it had hardly mattered. But once he was out in the world, this Racinian reflex had cost him dear. He had tried to suppress it by various methods, without success, then had given up the attempt and had gone on versifying unstoppably, muttering like his grandmother, a habit which had exasperated his superior officers. But it had also preserved him in some ways, since encapsulating life in twelve syllables had introduced an extraordinary distance –
‘to no other compared’ –
between himself and the hurly-burly of the world. The effort of standing back had always brought him into a calmer and more reflective state and had above all stopped him making