One o’clock in the morning, French time. Earlier that evening, Sharko had received in his in-box the list of attendees at the SIGN conference in 1994.
The inspector had printed out the document and gone back to his kitchen table, discreetly lit by a small lamp. From the outside, it had to look like he was asleep.
According to the information supplied by the ministry of health, the conference had lasted from March 7 to 14. The select participants had arrived and returned on an airplane specially chartered by the Egyptian government. It wasn’t exactly the VIP tour, but it wasn’t far off.
By a disturbing coincidence, the murders had all taken place between March 10 and 12, in the midst of the conference. According to the profile drawn up early in the investigation, one of the killers had a knowledge of medicine. The use of ketamine, the slicing of the skulls, the enucleation…The problem with this list was that the 217 French men and women in Egypt at that moment—not counting those from the humanitarian aid organizations, a whole other story—all had some notion of medicine, and the term “notion” was putting it mildly. Neurosurgeons, professors of psychiatry, medical students, researchers and department heads, biologists, most of whom had lived at the time in Paris or its environs. The cream of the French research community, individuals who seemed above reproach.
Two hundred seventeen lives—one hundred sixteen men and one hundred and one women—that he had to dissect in detail, on the basis of fifteen-year-old suppositions.
From the moment he held the sheets in his hand, Sharko felt increasingly certain that one of these individuals, aware of the phenomenon of mass hysteria that had afflicted Egypt in 1993, had made the trip a year later, using the conference as a pretext, with the sole aim of slaughtering three innocent girls in order to steal their brains and eyes.
The name of the killer or killers must have been hiding in these papers.
The questions that tormented him, the late hour, Eugenie’s constant visits, and the palpable tension in the apartment prevented him from really concentrating on the list. His head was full of shadows.
Sharko sighed. He finished his mint tea, staring into space. The military, medicine, filmmaking, this business about Syndrome E…The cop knew he was involved in a case that went far beyond the standard manhunt. Something monstrous, the likes of which he’d never seen. And yet he’d confronted his share of monstrosities, more than he could count on both hands.
In the dead of night, his keen senses suddenly focused on the entry door.
An infinitesimal sound of metal pierced the silence in the hallway.
Immediately, Sharko turned off the light and grabbed up his Sig.
Here they were.
Beneath his door, he saw, very briefly, the beam of a flashlight, before everything went black again.
His jaw set, he slowly got up from his chair and crept toward the living room.
On the other side, the linoleum floor creaked slightly. Sharko felt the edge of his sofa and crouched down, his gun aimed blindly in front of him. He could have attacked from the front, by surprise, but he didn’t know how many there were. One thing was for sure: they rarely went out alone.
The creaking in the hall stopped. The cop’s palms were moist on the grip of his gun. He suddenly thought of the photos of the film restorer’s body: hanging from the ceiling, disemboweled and stuffed with film. Not an enviable fate.
The door handle turned, very slowly, before returning to its initial position. In the following seconds, Sharko expected them to go for the lock, then burst in armed with knives or silencers.
Time stretched out forever.
Suddenly he heard a rustle under the door.
The creaking started up again, then decreased in a regular rhythm.
Sharko rushed to the door and gave the dead bolt a precise twist. The next second, he was in the hallway, barrel pointed forward. With his fist, he banged on the light switch and flew into the stairwell. Downstairs, the main door slammed shut. Sharko took the stairs two at a time, almost unable to breathe. The foyer, then the street. A long line of pallid streetlamps ran down the asphalt. Left, right—not a soul. Just the murmur of a slight breeze and the slow breath of night.
Behind him, the building’s entry door flapped shut but didn’t close completely. Sharko noted a small square of cardboard taped to the plate, preventing the bolt from going in. Whoever it was must have put it there earlier in the evening after a resident had gone through, and could therefore come back at any time without having to buzz in. Basic, but smart.
The detective ran back upstairs to his apartment. He switched on the lights, turned the locks, and, with his foot, pushed the white envelope that had been slid under the door into his living room. He did not pick it up until he’d put on a pair of latex gloves, which he kept in boxes of one hundred under the sink—can’t be too careful.
The envelope looked elegant, lightweight, the kind used for correspondence. With a tightness in his throat, Sharko looked it over completely, then opened it with a knife blade.
He had a very bad intuition.
Inside, he found only a photo.
It showed Lucie Henebelle and himself coming out of his apartment. The morning after the night they’d spent here.
Lucie’s head was circled in red marker.
Sharko leaped onto his cell phone and punched in the woman’s number.
Still no ring, as if the number simply didn’t exist.
It was them. Sharko was certain of it. Somehow or other, they had neutralized the SIM card of her cell phone.
The next moment, with trembling fingers, he dialed the number of the Delta Montreal. The hotel staff informed him that there was no one in Mme. Henebelle’s room; the key was still at reception. Sharko told the operator that he had an urgent message for Lucie Henebelle, that she absolutely had to call him the moment she returned.
He’d thought he was putting her out of harm’s way by sending her across the ocean.
But he had completely isolated her.
Thrown her into the lion’s den.
Half an hour later, not knowing what else to do, he knocked at Martin Leclerc’s door in the twelfth arrondissement, near the Bastille.
It was not quite two in the morning.