Saturday evening
Sharko pushed his old leather suitcase into a corner of the bedroom and reassured himself that everything was finally ready for their adventure in the Amazon. He’d been surprised how easy it was to find a tour operator through a “last-minute bookings” site. Thank you, economic crisis. Officially, he and Lucie were going on a trek—medium difficulty—up Pico da Neblina, called the “Cloud Trek.” The person on the phone had barely asked what kind of shape they were in (fortunately) and had given him a list of equipment to bring along. Sharko had paid for the ten-day expedition, including fees, food, miscellaneous costs, and insurance for two. Money spent for nothing, but no matter.
Despite the short notice, he’d tried to think of everything. Medicines, bug repellent, antiseptics, toiletry kit, knee socks for hiking, thick pants, new backpack, miner’s lamp, mosquito netting . . . On the bedside table lay his passport and a printout of his e-ticket. Lucie had received hers, in an e-mail that also contained the same list of items to pack.
He had added that he was thinking of her.
She had answered that she was too.
They were to meet at the airport at 8:30 the next morning, two hours before takeoff. The tour operator would be responsible for getting the group to São Gabriel, lodging them for the night in a hotel, then guiding them down the Rio Negro toward the tallest peaks in Brazil. Except that at that point, Lucie and Sharko would split away from the group and get their own guide to lead them to the Ururu.
Just a stroll through a giant natural park, he sighed to himself.
Finally, he headed off to bed, knowing sleep wouldn’t come easily. So many shadows surrounding him. He was dying to call Lucie, hear her voice, tell her how much he missed her. He was dying to take care of her, shelter her from the storm raging in her head.
Two cursed lovers, he thought. He had finally driven his imaginary Eugenie out of his own head, and now Lucie was picking up where he’d left off, as if this particular evil simply bounced from one person to another, without ever fading away. Sharko knew all too well the vile outlines of that hidden curse. After his daughter Eloise had died, miserable little Eugenie had begun visiting him unannounced, appearing to him off and on for more than three years, resisting every attempt to dislodge her. At first, they had probably tried to tell Lucie that her little Juliette didn’t exist—or no longer existed—that she was the product of Lucie’s imagination, but it had done no good: her mind blocked it out, created its own reality, and rejected anything that threatened it, setting up a wall of tantrums, denials, and refusals. And so her loved ones—her mother—had probably decided to play along, both hoping for and dreading the moment when Lucie would finally be able to confront reality.
For the reality was that Clara and Juliette were both dead, victims of Carnot’s madness.
Since the beginning, Sharko had known exactly what had happened that night in late August 2009, seven days after the discovery of Clara’s body in the forest. The investigation was about to break open. Thanks to cross-checks, witness statements, and composite sketches, they were on the point of arresting Grégory Carnot. Despite the hellish suffering she was going through, Lucie had followed the case, stayed with the teams. The night of the arrest, she had run upstairs with the other police, toward the small light coming from the bedroom. She had found the incinerated body on the floor—Juliette’s body—and had collapsed, to wake up two days later in a hospital. Her mind had shattered. Partial amnesia due to severe psychological shock, among other ills . . . In Lucie’s head, Juliette had progressively returned in the days following the tragedy.
Juliette had become a hallucination. A little ghost that only Lucie saw at certain moments, when her mind tried to remember. In the little girl’s room, near the school, walking beside her.
Alone in his large bed, huddled under the blankets, Sharko felt terribly cold. Lucie, this investigation, his own demons . . . The night before, he had read Napoléon Chimaux’s book, discovering for himself the violence of the Ururu, their barbarous, inhuman rituals, but also the ambition and cruelty of the book’s young author. As he had written, “The chief organized a raid to capture the women of a distant tribe. They went to the place and asked the natives to teach them how to pray, using gestures and grunts. When the men knelt down and bowed their heads, they decapitated them with axes made of sharpened stone, grabbed their women, and fled.”
What were they like today? How, in forty years, had this tribe evolved in the presence of the French explorer? Internet searches hadn’t turned up anything; the Ururu, like their white chief, remained a mystery, unapproachable, prey to legends and questions. He told himself once again that seeking them out might be pure folly.
But everything had already been taken from Lucie and from him.
They had nothing left to lose.
In the haziness of his thoughts, at the borderline of sleep, the inspector couldn’t help thinking of Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now: the viscous plunge into the bowels of human madness, showing itself more nakedly as the heroes venture deeper into the jungle. He imagined Chimaux as a kind of Colonel Kurtz, covered in blood and guts, howling to the sky and subjugating a horde of savages. He could clearly hear the word repeated at the end of the film, in that haunted, sepulchral voice: the horror . . . the horror . . .
After a while, sounds and images blended together in his head. He was unable to tell whether he was dreaming or awake. But he started up in a fright when he heard the dull knocks at the door of his apartment. In a daze, he glanced at the alarm clock. It was exactly six in the morning. Not 6:01, not 5:59. Sharko felt his throat constrict. Six a.m. on the dot had a particular meaning, known to any police officer.
He got up, threw on a pair of pants and a T-shirt. He hid his passport and e-ticket as best he could, shoved his suitcase in the closet, and slowly walked to the door.
When he opened, not a word. Two dark silhouettes flattened him against the wall. With precise, brutal movements, they wrenched his hands behind his back and cuffed him. They waved a duly executed arrest warrant in front of his face.
Then they led him out into the rising dawn.