The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) by Fred Vargas Page A

have read them again.’
    ‘Yeah, but even so, how could he remember them like that, word for word?’
    ‘Don’t ask, Zerk. If you and I could really see inside Danglard’s headand take a walk round it, it would be more terrifying than any hullabaloo from the ghostly cavalcade.’
    *   *   *
    As soon as he arrived at the office, Adamsberg consulted the lists and called Capitaine Louis Nicolas Émeri at the Ordebec gendarmerie. He introduced himself, and sensed a certain hesitancy at the end of the line. Sounds reached him of murmured questions, answers being given, grunts, and chairs being moved round. The intrusion of Adamsberg into a gendarmerie often produced this immediate unease, as people wondered whether they should take his call or find some excuse not to. Louis Nicolas Émeri finally came back on the line.
    ‘What can I do for you, commissaire?’ he said distrustfully.
    ‘Capitaine Émeri, it’s about this missing man, whose freezer was emptied.’
    ‘Herbier?’
    ‘Yes. Any news of him?’
    ‘No, nothing. We visited his home and all the outbuildings. No sign of him.’
    A pleasant voice, a little mannered, clear and courteous intonation.
    ‘Are you taking some interest in this case?’ the capitaine asked. ‘I would be amazed if you had been asked to look into a very ordinary missing-person matter.’
    ‘No, I haven’t been asked to look into it. I was simply wondering what you were thinking of doing about it.’
    ‘Applying the law, commissaire. Nobody has been in to ask us to launch a search, so this individual isn’t officially listed as missing. He went off on his moped, and I don’t have any authority to try and trace him. He’s got a perfect right to his freedom,’ Émeri insisted, rather stiffly. ‘We’ve followed regulations and run checks, no reports of a road accident and his moped hasn’t been sighted anywhere.’
    ‘What do you think about his going off like that, capitaine?’
    ‘Not all that surprising. They don’t like him round here, and some people absolutely hate him. What the freezer might perhaps indicate isthat some individual successfully threatened him, because of his nasty hunting habits, which you may know about?’
    ‘Yes, females and young animals.’
    ‘It’s possible Herbier was intimidated, took fright and left without hanging about for more. Or maybe he had some sort of crisis of remorse, emptied the freezer himself and scarpered.’
    ‘Yes, why not?’
    ‘In any case, he has no relatives or friends in the district. That could be a reason to start again somewhere else. The house isn’t his, he rents it, and since he’d retired, he was getting a bit behind with the rent. Unless the landlord complains, my hands are tied. If you ask me, I think he’s done a moonlight flit.’
    Émeri was open, cooperative, as Danglard had suggested, though he seemed to consider Adamsberg’s call some kind of distant entertainment.
    ‘That’s all quite possible, capitaine. Is there a Chemin de Bonneval in your district?’
    ‘Yes. Why?’
    ‘Where does it run?’
    ‘From a hamlet called Les Illiers about three kilometres from here, through part of the Forest of Alance. After the Croix de Bois, it changes its name.’
    ‘Do many people go there?’
    ‘In the daytime, yes. But people don’t go there at night as a rule. There are a lot of old wives’ tales about it, you know the kind of thing.’
    ‘And you haven’t taken a look there, by any chance?’
    ‘If that’s a suggestion, Commissaire Adamsberg, I have one for you too. I suggest you have received a visit from someone who lives in Ordebec. Am I right?’
    ‘Quite right, capitaine.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘I can’t tell you that. Someone who was worried.’
    ‘And I can well imagine what she told you. About some damned phantom army seen by Lina Vendermot, if you can call it “seeing”. And in among them, she saw this Herbier.’
    ‘Spot on,’ Adamsberg admitted.
    ‘You’re surely not going to get