Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand Read Online Free PDF

versatile lieutenant , as if devoting himself to some powerful goddess, a mighty Juno combined with Diana the huntress and twelve-armed Shiva. Retancourt spoke eloquently, cajoling, giving examples and concluding. Today she had visibly channelled her energy into persuasion, and Adamsberg, with a smile, let her take the lead. In spite of his disturbed night, he felt relaxed and back on form. He didn’t even have a hangover from the gin.
    Danglard observed the commissaire , who was tilting his chair backwards, apparently quite restored to his usual nonchalance and having forgotten both his irritation of the previous day and even their nocturnal conversation about the god of the sea. Retancourt was still speaking, challenging negative arguments, and Danglard felt he was losing ground: an irresistible force was propelling him in through the doors of a Boeing condemned to be hit by a flock of starlings.
    Retancourt won the day. At ten past midday, the decision to go on the RCMP course in Gatineau was carried by seven to one. Adamsberg closed the session and went to convey their decision to the prefect of police. He caught up with Danglard in the corridor.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll hold the string. I’m good at it.’
    ‘What string?’
    ‘The one that holds the plane up,’ Adamsberg explained, pinching his thumb and forefinger together.
    Adamsberg gave a nod to confirm his promise and walked off. Danglard wondered if the commissaire was mocking him. But he had looked serious, as if he really thought he could hold the strings to keep planes in the air and stop them crashing. Danglard touched his pompom, which had now become a calming talisman. Curiously, the idea of the piece of string and Adamsberg holding it, brought him some reassurance.
    On one street corner near the office was a large brasserie where the atmosphere was cheery, but the food was terrible, while on the opposite side was a small cafe where the seating was less comfortable, but the food was good. The fairly crucial choice between the two was faced almost every day by the staff of the Crime Squad, who were torn between eating well in a dark and draughty restaurant, and the comforting warmth of the old brasserie, which had kept its 1930s-style seats but had hired a disastrous new chef. Today the heating question won out over any other considerations, so about twenty officers headed for the Brasserie des Philosophes , a rather incongruous name since about sixty Paris flics , little given to conceptual acrobatics, ate there most days. Noting the direction taken by the majority, Adamsberg took himself to the under-heated cafe known as Le Buisson . He had eaten hardly anything in twenty-four hours, since abandoning his Irish meal when the tornado had struck.
    As he finished the day’s special, he pulled out of his inside pocket the crumpled page from the newspaper and spread it on the table, curiousabout the murder in Alsace which had provoked such a tumult in his head. The victim, Elisabeth Wind, twenty-two years old, had probably been killed at about midnight, when she was returning home on her bike from Schiltigheim to her village, about three kilometres away, a trip she made every Saturday night. Her body had been found in undergrowth about ten metres from the road. The first indications were that she had been knocked unconscious and the cause of death was the three stab wounds in the abdomen. The young woman had not been sexually assaulted, nor had any of her clothing been removed. A suspect was being held, one Bernard Vétilleux, unmarried and of no fixed address, who had quickly been discovered a few hundred metres from the scene of the crime, dead drunk, and fast asleep by the side of the road. The gendarmes reported that they had conclusive proof against Vétilleux, but according to the accused man, he had no memory of the night of the murder.
    Adamsberg read through the article twice. He shook his head slowly, looking at the blue sweater,