For three days the mistral had been shaking the city by its mighty shoulders. Up in Saint-Julien, the wind doubled in violence before plunging toward the Huveaune valley and invading, gust by gust, the large, white estates of the southern quartiers.
He had not slept all night. He had smelled the dusty air which was blowing around the presbytery like a ravenous beast, banging on the shutters before leaving and coming back again in a further fit of rage. In the early hours, he went out into the yard to unwind a little. He sat down on the small, green, metal bench between the large pine trees with their silver trunks, and stared into the infinity of that weary night.
For a long time he watched the bristly crowns of the trees brushing the great void of the sky with each blast of wind. The last scraps of cloud had finally disappeared behind the limestone bastions of Saint-Loup. The immaculate blue swelled, without a single mark, as virgin as in the dawn of time. In three days, it would be full moon. The mistral would probably last until then. Then the weather would change. Summer would arrive, and reign supreme until the autumn. After consulting the spirits, the goddess would claim another victim.
In the middle of the village, they have set up the fetish with its multicolored feathers. The enemy ghosts now know that the warrior’s soul is being protected.
All day, the men and women of the clan have wept. Now, on the funerary fire, they are burning the warrior’s body. His spirit is free and has gone to the enemy territory to cause the most terrible tortures. In the next season, the spirit will return to its own. It will wander around the water gourd which its brother has left under a tree, near the border that separates the two territories.
He breathed in the air. It was heavy with the smells of the city, and he stared at the sharp gravel on the ground in front of him. His thoughts focused on the policeman he had tailed.
Time was running out. It would not take the detective long to track him down. In this respect, he had not underestimated him. And sooner or later the young officer who had come to the parish might make the connection too.
Full moon was approaching. He had to strike. His trap was ready. Sylvie Maurel began her day’s work at the marine archaeology laboratory at 9:00 a.m. She was never late. He would do nothing until she had breakfast. Then, at about 2:00 p.m., he would carry out the first part of his plan. Methodically.
He went back into the presbytery and down to the cellar. He switched on an ancient light, and a yellow gleam shone from a bulb fixed to the vaulted ceiling by two old wires wrapped in moldy cloth. At the end of the corridor, he opened a door and went into a tiny room, with plain stone walls. It was piled high with all sorts of objects: old Christmas cribs which were no longer used; large notices made by children for the spring fair; a stack of cardboard boxes containing knickknacks collected by previous priests. He deftly slipped a hand under one of the boxes and removed a long packet wrapped in cloth and secured by two pieces of string. He undid the knots and laid out its contents on the floor.
He breathed deeply, looking with delight at each of the objects in front of him: an ax and two pieces of sharpened flint. Nothing more.
He picked up the ax and made two large, circular movements in the air, as though testing its solidity, then he inspected the strips of gut which attached its stone head to the ash-wood handle. It was all in perfect condition. He picked up the two blades and inspected the edges. The flint had not been damaged during his previous hunts. All was well.
He opened another cardboard box, removed a plain sheet of paper and laid it on the floor. From the same box, he took out a bottle containing a yellow liquid, with an ochre deposit in the lower third. He shook it vigorously until the mixture was perfect. He poured some of the liquid into his mouth, placed his left hand on the paper and sprayed it with the ochre earth and water. After a moment, he removed his hand and examined the print of his palm and fingers. The little and ring fingers were cut in half. Perfect. The first man could not have done it better.
He stood up, closed his eyes and performed the ritual.
“Spirit of the hunt
Goddess of life
Here is the hunter’s sign
Take her life to fortify mine
May her death be swift
May I not make her suffer
May your spirit guide me in the shadows
May the force of her blood enter into my blood
May her flesh fortify the first man”
He remained motionless for a while with his eyes closed. Then he suddenly came to life, picked up the sheet of paper, the ax and the two blades, and went back up to the ground floor.
Fifteen minutes later he was walking rapidly along avenue Saint-Julien toward the vast city. He was wearing faded jeans, a baggy T-shirt and a baseball cap which barely concealed his large bifocals. These glasses deformed his face so much that no-one would recognize him. He had to wear them on the end of his nose when he was walking because, in fact, his vision was perfect.
When he got to avenue Saint-Barnabé it was almost deserted, and the sun was already high in the sky. Violent blasts from the mistral were blowing bin-liners about and he had to lean forward. He looked at his watch. It was now 8:00 a.m. If he walked at this speed, he would be at Fort Saint-Jean in an hour.
His plan was simple: kill Sylvie then draw the policeman into his trap. Then he would sacrifice him on the altar to appease the goddess’s anger.
A few days earlier, the goddess had appeared to him in a dream. She had spoken to him from the spirit world and reproached him for not having been careful enough about the girl in Saint-Julien. It could turn out to be a fatal mistake if he did not eliminate the only man capable of tracking him down. He would have to trap him and then vanish. Forever.
Beside the clan’s flat, green, sacred stone, the valiant band have come together around the enemy’s body. They will devour it. In supreme vengeance.
At 7:00 a.m., police headquarters resounded with a din that de Palma knew well. Hulks from special branch were on their way in through the courtyard, followed by two journalists from the local telly. The serious crime squad were hauling in three people responsible for the bloody hold-up in La Viste: two adults and a minor.
There was hatred in the corridors, crawling like a rattlesnake, ready to bite anyone unwise enough to tread on its tail. De Palma leaned out the window. He saw Big Zuccarelli and an officer he did not recognize, presumably a new recruit, accompanying a figure covered by a jacket. This was the first gunman; the second and the third would soon follow.
When he heard footsteps, de Palma went out into the corridor. Zuccarelli was pushing the figure ahead of him. He stopped in front of the Baron and took the jacket off the man’s head to reveal a brown face with matte skin and a childish grin. He was wearing trainers which looked too big for him, and a tracksuit left open to reveal a huge crucifix. His small eyes sent off sparks in all directions, without ever coming to rest on the police officers. He was hunched, aware that he was going into the ring for the final combat. After the last round there would be prison, with a minimum sentence of twenty-five years. No problem.
“This is the motherfucker who shot Richard,” Zuccarelli said. “The little shit.”
The Baron’s slap went off on its own, like an extraordinarily powerful mechanism. A sharp, cold clack echoed down the corridor. Moracchini and Vidal, who had just arrived, recoiled. The gunman began to shake all over. Zuccarelli shoved him into his office. Duriez, the departmental head, arrived completely out of breath.
“Go and get some rest, Zuccarelli. Your men, too,” he said. “Let the pressure drop. We’ve nailed them, and now I’ll take over. Come back this afternoon. We’ve got the press downstairs …”
The Baron turned on his heel and disappeared into his office.
“O.K.,” he said, without looking at Moracchini and Vidal. “We’ve learned a few things. After the hospital, he convalesced with priests. Then he worked in one of their institutions. So far so good. He went to Australia and then, nothing. In my opinion, it was there that he started making up his little scenario about prehistory.”
When he had returned from Les Baumettes the previous day, de Palma had spent a couple of hours telling his teammates about the interrogation he had conducted with Barbieri. Moracchini had made several objections, all of which came back to the same question: why would a killer like that frame Caillol? De Palma’s explanations had failed to convince his two colleagues. Something did not gel.
De Palma had spent all night turning the shaman story this way and that. His first step had been to convince himself that the most widespread ritual, apart from those associated with hunting or mastering the elements, was healing. A second step had led him toward Christine and her brother. By combining all these elements, he had reached the conclusion that Christine had practiced healing rituals on Thomas to save him from insanity. Christine’s death, for as yet unknown reasons, had liberated her brother’s instincts because she was no longer there to control him. The scenario was now starting to stand up, despite a few gray areas. It was clear that everything depended on the relationship between the twins but, before he talked to his teammates, he wanted the fog to lift a little more.
The phone rang. Vidal answered it.
“Yes, Father. You’re an early riser! I’ll hand you over to Capitaine Moracchini.”
“What a day of grace!” said de Palma, turning on the loudspeaker.
“Good morning to you, Madame. I’ve found the postcard … It came from the Queensland Catholic Mission, in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The town’s called Kajabbi. I think you’ll be able to find it easily enough. That’s all. I can’t do anything more for you.”
“But that’s already plenty! Thanks again, Father, and don’t hesitate to call me if even the slightest detail occurs to you.”
Moracchini hung up.
“Well, well, new leads are springing up all over! Maxime, do you know what time it is in Australia?”
“No, early evening I should think. Hang on, I’ll look in my dairy. Here … If it’s 9:00 a.m. here, then in Australia it’s about 8:00 p.m. But it depends on the region.”
“Good, we’ll have to call them up. Can you do it Maxime? After all, you do speak English.”
De Palma called Sylvie’s mobile and got her answerphone. He called her landline and got her answerphone there too. Each time, he left a message. He then tried the laboratory at Fort Saint-Jean. A researcher by the name of Pierre Craven told him that she had just gone out to buy croissants from the bakery on rue Caisserie, and that she would be back soon, because she had to finish preparing a meeting scheduled for 11:00 a.m.
The Baron frowned.
“Our man is convinced that he reasons like a Paleolithic hunter,” he said. “From what I know, cannibals obey a ritual, or a code if you like. They eat their enemies’ flesh to absorb their strength. That’s all. There’s no pleasure in it. In this respect, his behavior is consistent.”
“If I follow you,” Moracchini said, “he’s eating these women because he thinks they’re his enemies, but at the same time he’s trying to capture their strength. Is that it?”
“Yes, that’s what I think. And I also think that he’s obeying some kind of shaman, who might be either real or virtual. This being tells him that these sacrifices have to be made if the community is going to recover its harmony. That’s where the hands come in. It’s a ritual!”
“Yes, why ever not?”
“Anne, this is just a feeling I have. You don’t know what twins are like … We now know that his sister was into shamanistic rituals and that she also experimented with them. It could be that, after her death, her brother decided that he had to re-establish some sort of harmony. Let’s imagine that he’s been unable to accept her death, and that he thinks his sister is talking to him from the spirit world. Do you see what I mean?”
“Of course. But these are just hypotheses.”
“Yes, they’re hypotheses … but we need a scenario if we want to be able to anticipate his actions. And time is running out!”
“There’s a big piece missing from your scenario.”
“What’s that?”
“Who killed Christine? It can’t be him, because according to you he loved her more than anything.”
“I’m beginning to have a few ideas about that.”
“Are you thinking of Caillol or Palestro?”
“Neither.”
“Could you tell us a little more?”
“No, not right now. You’ll think I’m completely crazy.”
“Sometimes you really get on my nerves, Michel!”
“We’ll have to run D.N.A. tests on the negative hands and ask the gendarmes to send us the sample of ochre paint found in Caillol’s place. Then test that for D.N.A. too … then we’ll compare them.”
De Palma rang the number of the archaeology lab. Pierre Craven answered and seemed nervous: Sylvie had not come back and he was worried. It was nearly time for the meeting.
When he hung up, the Baron sensed that something terrible had just happened. Moracchini noticed.
“She’s still not back?”
“No, I’m going to check. Can you try to contact the missionaries in Australia?”
On the way, de Palma called the laboratory once again. Still no Sylvie. He went to the bakery on rue Caisserie. A middle-aged woman behind the counter confirmed that Sylvie had called by at around 9:15. She also said that she had seen a man in the street who had then quickly vanished. When the Baron asked for a description, all she could remember was that he had been wearing a cap. He immediately made the connection with the man Tête had described running into on boulevard Chave.
A shiver ran through him, despite the overpowering heat. Sylvie had been missing for over an hour. Given this sort of killer, he knew that she would not be long for this world. She might be already dead. Images of Hélène’s and Julia’s sliced-up bodies flashed through his mind. He sat down on a doorstep and tried to think fast. But an awful pain in his guts stopped him from concentrating. Ideas spun in his head. He tried to cry, to release his anger, but his anger wanted to stay within and dominate him.
All he could do was phone Moracchini.
“I’ll come at once,” she said.
Five minutes later, she arrived at the bottom of rue Caisserie in an unmarked car.
“What are we going to do, Anne? Shall we put out an A.P.B.?”
“I don’t think so. The press will be on to it within minutes.”
“So what the fuck shall we do?” de Palma yelled.
“Pull yourself together, Michel. Keep calm and cool, just like you taught me.”
“I’d like to see you in my place!”
“But I am here, Michel!”
“And?”
“And, how do you know she’s been kidnapped?”
“The woman in the baker’s saw someone out on the pavement. Exactly his description …”
“Did they leave together?”
“No, but he followed her.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just know, that’s all. She didn’t go back to the lab. Where do you think she is? At the hairdresser’s?”
“It isn’t funny, Michel. I’m just trying to understand.”
De Palma raised his hands toward the sky.
“That’s right,” he said. “Let’s try to understand. Meanwhile, that fucker will be …”
“I don’t think so.”
The Baron wheeled round to face Moracchini.
“No, Michel, I don’t think he’s abducted her. That’s not the way he works. You would have expected him to break into her place, or else draw her into a trap. Like he did with Hélène and Julia. That’s what I think.”
“So you think he kidnapped her to ask for a ransom?”
“Don’t be silly, Michel. If you ask me we still have some time in hand. First, we’ll put out a call, but without explaining exactly why. Then we’ll go to the lab while Maxime is dealing with the Australians. So, teammate, let’s get going,” she ordered.
Two minutes later they were knocking at the door of the marine archaeology laboratory. The man who opened it was clearly put out by their visit, but he calmed down when Moracchini showed him her tricolor card.
“Can I speak to Pierre Craven, please?” de Palma asked over his colleague’s shoulder.
“That’s me.”
“Has Sylvie come back yet?”
“No.”
“And you still have no idea where she could be?”
The only answer he gave was to look up toward the heavens and whistle in exasperation. De Palma moved in front of Moracchini.
“What’s up with this guy. Doesn’t he want to answer our questions?”
Anne tried to push her teammate to one side. Too late. The Baron had already pinned Craven to the stone wall.
“Listen, you fucking pathetic little student, your friend might already be dead. Got me? So please be good enough to tell us everything you know, or I promise you’ll soon have a good conversation piece about police violence for your zit-head parties.”
Moracchini’s mobile rang. She stood to one side to take the call.
“I’ve got nothing to tell you,” Craven replied, trembling from head to foot.
“No unusual phone calls this morning?”
“No.”
“How many people came here this morning, between 9:00 and 9:30?”
“Just Sylvie and me.”
“Did she seem nervous?”
“No.”
“When you arrived, was there anyone waiting by the door? Anything odd?”
“No.”
“What about the past few days? Any strange phone calls?”
“Who’s here now?”
“Only the lab team, that’s all.”
“O.K.”
“Has she been …?”
“I don’t know. But she certainly seems to have disappeared. Maybe she’ll resurface again any moment. We’re a bit tense right now.”
“Is it to do with all those murders?”
“No, it’s because of the thirty-five-hour working week, what do you think?”
“I don’t know!”
“O.K., here’s my card. If anything unusual happens, call me.”
“I will,” said Craven.
De Palma turned and went to join Moracchini, who had just finished her call.
“That was Maxime. He’s managed to get in touch with the Australians.”
“Anything new?”
“Yes. Thomas Autran was indeed in Australia from 1992 until last year, when he returned to France.”
De Palma did not listen to her answer. He was already thinking about something else. The worst thing of all.
“Right, I’m going to Sylvie’s flat. Are you coming?”
“Do you want me to call for reinforcements?”
“We haven’t got enough time, Anne.”
As he emerged from the lift, de Palma drew his Bodyguard. The corridor was twelve meters long, ending in a broad window that looked out over the sea. He nodded toward the door of Sylvie’s flat. It did not have a spyhole.
They crept toward it. De Palma stood to its right. With the tip of her finger, Moracchini rang the bell and leaned against the wall to the left. Once, twice … No answer.
The last time he was there, de Palma had noticed that the door was reinforced. It was impossible to break in. He rapidly tried to think of a plan. Calling a locksmith from headquarters would take too long. But they had to get inside Sylvie’s flat. Even if the worst scenario was waiting for them. He rang her neighbor’s bell. No-one. Another neighbor. Again no-one. He was beginning to feel desperate when he caught sight of the window in the corridor. It opened on to the front of the building and Sylvie’s balcony might well connect with it.
He walked down the corridor, opened the window and looked to see if he could reach Sylvie’s balcony. By stepping on to a fifty-centimeter-deep cement ledge, he could make it easily.
Moracchini did not have time to stop him. De Palma clambered out the window, put one foot on the ledge and grabbed the guardrail of Sylvie’s balcony, while still holding on to the corridor window with his left hand.
He closed his eyes. The void attracted him inexorably. His legs quivered. He made a superhuman effort not to climb back into the corridor. The noises of the city reached his ears, though they sounded distant, wrapped in cotton. He opened his eyes and saw the steeple of La Major in a blur—drops of sweat were obscuring his vision. He gathered all his strength in a crouch, like a wild cat. In one bound he landed on the balcony, completely out of breath and trembling all over.
Sylvie had not closed the shutters. He burst into the living room, gun in hand. The room looked just as it had the last time: cozy and tidy. Nothing had been disturbed.
In the hallway, he found a rack with a spare set of keys. He opened the front door and Moracchini stepped inside.
Gingerly, he walked toward the bedroom and pushed open the door with his foot, expecting the worst. The bed was still unmade. He breathed in deeply and smelled the body lotion Sylvie used. The sight of this empty bedroom both reassured and terrified him.
“I’ve checked out the other rooms,” Moracchini said. “Nothing and no-one. No clues. Do you want us to call in forensics?”
“No. I think she was picked up between the bakery and the lab.”
Moracchini put away her revolver.
“If you say so,” she said. “But … when she was just walking in the street?”
“Let’s see if we can find her car.”
They went down to the ground floor and wandered around for a while looking for the concierge.
“I was delivering the mail and, as there was a parcel, I went up the eighth floor. What can I do for you?”
“We’re from the police, Monsieur,” Moracchini said. “We’d like to know if you saw Sylvie Maurel leave in her car this morning.”
The concierge was a short man aged about fifty, with slicked-down hair and a small mustache which made him look like a tango dancer attempting a comeback. He eyed the two officers warily.
“The police? So what’s going on?”
“We asked you a question,” de Palma said angrily.
“In her car …? I’ve no idea.”
“Do you know which is her car?”
“Yes.”
“Can we take a look?”
“O.K., we’ll go down to the car park.”
Space 138 was empty.
“She doesn’t often use her car on weekdays,” said the concierge.
“Did you see her come back this morning at about 9:00?” Moracchini asked.
“No.”
“Can you get into the car park without going past your lodge?”
“Yes, you just have to come through the door from the street … At the back there, you see? It takes you straight out on to esplanade de la Tourette. Assuming you have the key …”
“Can you tell me the make of her car?”
“I don’t know,” the concierge said, apologetically. “I think it’s an Audi. A big car, but I don’t know which model it is. There are more than 150 cars in this building.”
For the past fifteen minutes, Vidal had been pacing up and down in front of the coffee machine. He was relieved to see his two teammates arrive.
“I’ve spoken to the mission in Queensland!”
“And?” asked de Palma, throwing his jacket on to a chair.
“Two things. First, they had a sort of handyman who came from France and who answers our description. But according to them, he never showed the slightest sign of madness … He behaved more like a holy man.”
“What else?”
“The man in question didn’t have the same name.”
“Not the same name?”
“That’s right. When I mentioned Thomas Autran, they told me they’d never heard of anyone by that name. Their man was called Luc Chauvy.”
“So?”
Vidal started paced up and down.
“So I described Autran to them in detail—I even emailed the photo of his sister—and they positively identified him as Luc Chauvy. Which means that our man has changed identities.”
“That’s not possible,” Moracchini said. “You can’t change your identity just like that. It takes time … The Church isn’t the Foreign Legion!”
De Palma leaped up, and as he did so, he knocked over a cup of cold coffee.
“Maxime, think fast. You too, Anne. Let’s drop our wonderful logical scenarios and get our brains in order. When you think about these three murders, is there anything that strikes you?”
“I don’t think so,” Vidal said.
“What about you, Anne?”
“Nothing.”
“There must be a detail we’ve overlooked. A detail which could take on real significance, given what we now know. There must be something that opens up the whole case.”
Moracchini and Vidal were silent.
“He’s holding Sylvie. In my opinion, we’ve only got a few hours. I just have to nail this fucker.”
De Palma sat down again in exasperation.
“He’s got her, but you’re right, Anne. He won’t do anything until there’s a full moon. All the murders took place on nights when the moon was full. He has to be performing a ritual, and let’s suppose he consults the spirits. That’s why his sister wanted to find the other entrance to the cave.”
“Hang on, Michel,” said Moracchini. “Try to be coherent.”
“I’m being perfectly coherent. She wanted to find the entrance so she could contact the spirit world. She thought she was a shaman too.”
“What about her brother?”
“He’s taken her place. Maybe he’s even found the entrance.”
“That’s quite possible, isn’t it?” Vidal said, with a hint of irony. “But to commune with the spirits, she could have gone to Lascaux, or any old cave.”
“The Slain Man …” the Baron murmured.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a picture which occurs in only three caves … I can’t remember the other two, but the only one the specialists are certain shows the victim of a ritual killing is in Le Guen’s Cave.”
Vidal and Moracchini stared doubtfully at the Baron and said nothing.
“I can’t see any connection to the Church.” Moracchini asked. “Let’s go back over it. Maxime, what about the first murder?”
“Hélène Weill. She lived alone. He followed her and managed to frame Caillol. I can’t see any connection to the Church.”
“What about in his modus operandi?”
“No, nothing.”
“O.K.! On to the second murder.”
“Julia Chevallier. Let’s skip her age and so on. The modus operandi doesn’t teach us anything new. And here, too, he framed Caillol.”
“Hang on,” said de Palma. “He got into her house, just like that. He knew her. He killed her and then left. We followed his tracks and they ended up in the cemetery.”
“That’s something which has always puzzled me,” Moracchini suddenly said. “I can’t imagine how he knew there was a door at the bottom of the garden.”
“That’s my point,” said de Palma. “He got into her house via the garden, then left the same way.”
“Before Barbieri took us off the case, I checked out everything,” said Vidal. “No-one I questioned in Saint-Julien knew about that pathway. No-one. Not even the old guys. You’d have to live next to the canal to know about it. So I think he must live, or have lived, in Saint-Julien”
“Yes, that’s always bugged me,” said Moracchini.
“And the path ends up in the cemetery,” said Vidal.
“And at the far end of the cemetery, there’s the church. And Father Paul was the last person to see her alive. But we can’t accuse the poor man, not at his age.”
De Palma leaned his elbows on the table and rubbed his eyes. He was beginning to have doubts about himself. The worst of it was he was beginning to question his intuition. When he opened his eyes, Vidal was staring at him with a strange expression.
“If only we had the model of her car,” said de Palma, “we could put out a call to every unit in this fucking city.”
“Let’s try anyway,” said Moracchini. “I’ll deal with it.”
She was on her way out of the office when Maxime started hammering madly on the edge of the desk. Then all at once he spat out the tension which he had been building up over the past few months:
“LUC CHAUVY!” he yelled.
“What’s the matter, Maxime?”
Vidal frantically searched for his notepad in his jacket pockets.
“Luc Chauvy, for fuck’s sake. He was the man there with Father Paul when I went to the presbytery. Shit.”
There was a long silence as Vidal flicked through the pages of his notepad.
“Now that I think about it, he fitted the description pretty well: tall, blond … but he wasn’t wearing glasses.”
He slapped his notepad with the back of his hand.
“Luc Chauvy … IT’S HIM!”
The Baron stared straight at Vidal. For a few seconds, they confronted each other.
“I couldn’t have known, Michel, I …”
“It’s nothing, kid. It happens to the best of us.”
If the man he had seen at Saint-Julien was their killer, then they would have to go together. Arresting him was not going to be easy, and the young officer might have to use his weapon. A baptism of fire. However ambitious he was, he still needed the old guard.
“Let’s go, Maxime. Anne, stake out the cemetery. If he tries to jump you …”
“Don’t worry, teammate. I was the best shot in the academy.”
When the two officers parked their unmarked Megane in front of the church, the only people on the square were two old timers talking in whispers, like sextons.
Moracchini arrived two minutes later in a Golf and parked twenty meters away from the cemetery entrance. She felt nervous; if things went wrong, the killer might well come her way. Then she would shoot, as she had already done once. She opened her jacket, placed her hand on her revolver and tried to calm down.
She went into the cemetery, without taking her eyes off the church, and spotted a door in the presbytery which led directly out to the graves. She proceeded slowly and took up position beside a burial vault at the end of the graveyard, where a low wall ran alongside the canal. She pretended to be in silent prayer.
De Palma walked toward the church and leaned on the heavy, cast-iron door handle. It was locked. He went round the right-hand side of the building, followed by the censorious eyes of the two old boys, and rang the presbytery bell with his other hand on his Bodyguard. As he waited for an answer, he read the cellophane-wrapped sign which had been pinned up beneath the bell:
Lower down were the times of masses written in a neat, regular hand.
“Locked?” Vidal asked.
“Yes.”
“So what do we do now?”
“What do you think? We’re going inside.”
“Just like that!”
“Too right!”
“Hang on, Michel. That’s not legal …”
“Get out of my face. This isn’t the moment.”
Vidal drew back as the Baron took a piece of twisted thick metal wire from his pocket. He shoved his improvised tool into the lock, which gave way after a few clumsy twists.
The officers entered the vast, gravel courtyard with its two large pine trees.
“Michel, I’m going to head for that half-open window over there, the second one along … can you see it? Cover me.”
“No, Maxime, I’ll go. He hasn’t been armed before now. So you cover me.”
Vidal quietly drew his gun and held it against his thigh. De Palma headed straight toward the window, and managed to clamber inside without having to break it.
The room smelled of stale cooking. He looked for the switch, which was to the left of the sink, half hanging off the door frame. Vidal joined him.
They were in fact in the presbytery’s dining room. In its center stood a table covered with an oilcloth which was so worn that its bright-red cherry pattern could only be seen on the edges that hung over the sides. On the wall were several yellowed photos showing catechism classes. De Palma glanced at the faces and captions: J4 Skiing Group, Orcières Merlette, 1988; Confirmation class, Cotignac 1990 … In each of the photos stood the parish priest, a slight man with a piercing stare, despite his ruddy, peasant-like features. He was clearly not the person they were after. In the penultimate photo, labeled J2 Class in Paris, 2000 Jubilee, there was another man standing beside the priest. De Palma took it down from the wall and laid it on the table.
“There’s no-one upstairs. Have you found anything?” Vidal asked.
“I don’t know. Come and see. Your eyes are better than mine.”
Vidal bent over the picture and almost yelled:
“I think it’s him, Michel!”
“So he looks like Christine Autran, and like the man you saw?”
“Absolutely. It’s him.”
“Let’s give the place a thorough search. Go and see if there’s a cellar.”
“I’ve already been all round. There’s the cellar door, under the stairs.”
De Palma drew his Bodyguard and headed toward the door. It was ajar.
“Stay here for the moment,” he told Vidal. “You never know.”
He slowly went down the staircase to the basement and paused at the bottom. A vision of the Dustman came into his mind like a cannonball. Icy sweat poured down his back. He found a switch and turned on the light.
A corridor about eight meters long led to four little rooms, two on each side. The first was empty. He pushed open the door of the second but all he could see were ancient prayer books lined up on rusty metal shelves. The third contained stacks of boxes. Their contents were marked with a red felt-tip pen: “candles,” “old missals,” and so on.
He went into the last room. It was far smaller than the others and had not been tidied. The remains of an old crib balanced on top of some rickety chairs. On the left-hand wall were two large notices for the parish fair. One read ‘Aunt Sally,’ the other said ‘Raffle.’ There was a wobbly pile of cardboard boxes in the middle of the room.
De Palma noticed that the room had a clay floor. He crouched down and made out a print of a bare foot. When he examined the ground and the boxes, he noticed that someone had been rummaging around in the center of the pile: the clay had been scuffed up, cobwebs had been pushed aside, and a fine black dust covered all of the boxes except the two in the middle. He moved over to them, careful not to disturb the footprint, and opened one. It was empty. He opened the second. It contained a half-liter bottle of strange-colored liquid with a thick layer of deposit on the bottom. He put the bottle in his pocket and went back upstairs.
Vidal had searched the ground floor thoroughly and had found nothing, apart from a number of fingerprints.
“Found anything, Michel?”
“I’m not sure.”
De Palma removed the bottle from his pocket and raised it to eye level.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t think it’s altar wine. I’d guess it’s a mixture of water and powdered earth … making a … what’s it called?”
“A pigment.”
“Yes, that’s it. An ochre pigment.”
“What shall we do now?”
“Behave like serious police officers. We take this to forensics for the fingerprints. We’ll get the result this afternoon.”
“I wanted to tell you …”
“It’s O.K., Maxime, don’t bother. Just call Anne and tell her to move off without drawing any attention to herself.”
“I wanted to tell you that I’ve thought things over, and I’ve been unfair on you.”
“It doesn’t matter, kid. Simply leave the force at once, or else give up on the idea of staying normal. Call Anne.”
The little old men were still sitting there when they left the presbytery.
“Just look at those two,” the Baron said as they pulled away. “They see two suspicious-looking characters break into a presbytery and they don’t even call the police. And then they start complaining … Fuck them.”
The first results from forensics arrived at the end of the afternoon. All of the fingerprints taken from the presbytery matched those found in Chevallier’s house and Autran’s car.
Commissioner Paulin came into the office without knocking.
“Where are you at, de Palma?”
“We’ve located him. I mean, we’ve put a name to a face.”
“Moracchini has already told me. Do you think …?”
“I don’t think,” de Palma butted in. “The only thing we’re sure about is that the fog we’ve been walking through is less dense. We can now see shadows. The outlines are less hazy, but they’re still only shadows. With a third of a fingerprint, we’ve got nothing. He can always say that he paid a visit to a member of the congregation. There’s the bottle, but that’s not enough. We’ll have to run D.N.A. tests and compare them with the samples we got from Caillol’s place—the gendarmes omitted to do that as well. The fact that he’s Christine’s brother doesn’t make him guilty. We need more: a confession, or else the kind of solid evidence that they like in Aix.”
“I’ll put as many men at your disposal as you want.”
“Thanks, but we still have to find out where he’s hiding.”
“How are you going to proceed?”
“First, we’ll have to watch the presbytery and Saint-Julien church. You never know. Second, we’ll have to stop him from leaving the city. In other words, distribute his description and an identikit photo to all units, the airport, railway stations and so on. For once, the anti-terrorism law might serve another purpose than pissing off Blacks and Arabs.”
“And then?” asked Paulin, frowning.
“Then, I reckon we’ve been lucky once and won’t be lucky a second time. We’ll have to think things through. Rack our brains. Figure out the sort of place where he could be hiding, and where he could have taken Sylvie Maurel. Anne, take care of the description, please. But don’t spend too much time on it. We need your brains. That’s all for now.”
“I have to congratulate you, de Palma, and your teammates too. I was beginning to lose hope.”
“The fact that we know what he looks like doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to catch him like a goby. Far from it.”
“Allow me to trust you! I’m sure you’ve got a good idea.”
“I’m afraid not. Nothing at all. Not the slightest hint of a lead.”
“I’ll let you get on with it,” said Paulin on his way out. “See you later.”
Just as he was closing the door, he added:
“By the way, de Palma, an old acquaintance of yours died in an occupational accident this morning.”
“Who’s that?”
“Francis Le Blond. Two charges of buckshot and six bullets from an 11.43. Yet another settling of old scores. But done in real Sicilian mafia style. Not a clumsy local job.”
“At least this time you can’t say it’s the gambling syndicates.”
“Who knows?” said Paulin, closing the door.
De Palma stretched in his chair. He sensed that Vidal was thinking back over their meeting with Lolo and analyzing it. He did not dare look at him, and tried to take refuge in Moracchini’s eyes, but she was staring at her trainers.
“I think he’s using Sylvie Maurel as bait,” she said, “as something which will lead us to him. He must have realized that it’s all up. He’s just too intelligent not to know that. I think he wants to get this business over with.”
“Logically speaking,” de Palma said, “he’ll probably go to Le Guen’s Cave. It’s his sanctuary.”
“But how would he take her there?” Moracchini asked.
“I’ve got no idea. He kidnapped her outside the lab and forced her to use her car. But to get to Sugiton creek is another matter altogether! You have to go by foot, and he couldn’t take that risk.”
“You’re right, Michel,” she replied. “But you never know what people like that are capable of. He might have found a solution which you could never imagine.”
“There aren’t that many ways to get to Sugiton creek,” Vidal said. “Either you go on foot or by boat. Unless you fly there. Anyway, it would be practically impossible to take someone along against their will.”
“Unless you’re not alone,” observed de Palma suddenly.
“What do you mean?” asked Moracchini.
“I mean that I’ve always suspected that he’s not working on his own. For a time, I even thought Sylvie was with him.”
“And who do you imagine this second loony might be?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“Let me tell you something,” Moracchini said. “To work with someone like that, you’d have to share his madness … just think about it! There aren’t that many people around who eat their victims. It’s the first time it’s ever happened in Marseille.”
“Still, I don’t think he’s alone.”
“O.K., but I reckon you’re on to a false lead.”
“Whatever,” said the Baron, shoving his computer keyboard away. “Logically he would have gone to Sugiton. That would be the most obvious thing for him to do.”
“But he can’t have gone there … At least not if he were taking Sylvie Maurel.”
“What do you mean by that?” de Palma snapped, more aggressive than ever.
“I mean that he would either have gone there without her, or …”
“WITH SOMEONE ELSE!” yelled the Baron.
“Calm down, Michel,” shouted Anne. “Calm down for Christ’s sake! It’s a point we can’t neglect. Maxime’s right.”
The Baron got up. For the first time, he really imagined that Sylvie might be dead and sliced up, like Hélène and Julia. He had been haunted by the idea since 11:00 that morning, but had refused to admit it. He felt bile rise in his throat.
“Maxime, look at your diary and tell me when the next full moon is.”
“I’ve already checked. It’s tomorrow!”
“Right, in that case, if this loony raises his head, it will be then.”
“What do you suggest?” Vidal asked.
“Tomorrow, we’ll go to Sugiton. Just a small group, four or five at most. Too bad if we’ve got it wrong.”
“What should we do in the meantime?”
“What do you expect me to say? We’ll try to force the hand of chance again. If a patrol happens to spot him …”
De Palma slumped in his chair. He felt all in. Moracchini had never seen him in such a state, looking so beaten.
“Professor Palestro told me he was the only person who knew where the second entrance was—even Christine Autran didn’t know,” he added. “So, in theory, she can’t have told her brother. In that case, he might think that Sylvie is one of the few people who knows, and try to force her to speak.”
“Does Sylvie know where it is?”
“She told me she didn’t. But I’m not so sure.”
“So, supposing that he wants to find the entrance, why take her and not Palestro?”
“You’re right, I’d start with him. You’re quite right … but that’s why I’m sure that he’s going to try to get into Le Guen’s Cave—I reckon that he thinks that his sister’s talking to him from there. He’s going to invoke her spirit …”
De Palma paused for a moment before adding softly:
“And, obviously, the spirit will tell him to kill Sylvie.”
He withdrew momentarily, faced with his own powerlessness. No terrible visions had haunted him over the past few days; it was as though his ghosts had taken a break. He just felt powerless; and it tormented him.
“Your idea of trapping him in Sugiton creek sounds like a good one to me,” said Moracchini. “Our only good one!”
“What about Sylvie? What shall we do?”
“I can’t answer that, Michel. We’re up against a wall. We’ve got no choice. All we can do is hope that everything turns out well.”
“If I’ve understood correctly, you’re going to catch our man tomorrow.”
“I hope so, Commissaire, I hope so …” de Palma said.
Paulin enjoyed these briefing sessions before an arrest. They made him feel important, and he liked them to be marked by a certain solemnity. He paced up and down behind his desk, glancing occasionally at his three bloodhounds.
“What’s the plan?”
“We’re going to catch him in Sugiton creek,” said de Palma.
“That won’t be easy! I don’t know the creeks well, but I do know that the terrain is difficult.”
“We’ll have to be discreet. I don’t want anyone else to be there. We’ll go at night, just the three of us.”
“O.K., just the three of you. But what if he slips through your fingers?”
“Sugiton is a dead end. It’s impossible to escape, except by sea.”
“That’s one way already!”
“Of course, if you put it like that …”
Paulin tried to look important.
“I can give you as many men as you want. And boats, a helicopter, anything … anything you want.”
“I don’t think all that will be necessary.”
“Listen, de Palma, I don’t want him to elude you. Don’t try anything if you’re not sure of the result. What do you think, Moracchini?”
“I think we’ll need about ten men, in case …”
“I think so too. But Michel’s right. We’ll have to be more or less invisible. We’re dealing with someone who knows this place from old. If he hears the slightest suspicious noise, he’ll find a way to vanish before we can catch him.”
“As a matter of interest, de Palma, why Sugiton?”
“That’s where his sister died … I think each time he commits a murder, he goes there to invoke the spirits.”
“His brains really are messed up,” Paulin said, shrugging his shoulders to push up his jacket collar. “So, you need a dozen men.”
“O.K.,” de Palma conceded, realizing that this would not be the right time to fall out with his superior. “We’ll set off from the Luminy car park at dusk. Or at nightfall, to be exact. We’ll need five men: two to stay in the car park until he arrives—they’ll let him go then follow him twenty minutes later; the other three will be stationed on the path. We’ll have to check out the scene tomorrow morning. Anne, you’ll position yourself around Sugiton pass with another five men, in case he decides to backtrack. I’ll go down into the creek with Maxime.”
“Good, de Palma.”
The commissaire clapped his hands.
“Tomorrow morning,” he said, sitting down, “at 9:00, we’ll go and take a look with the boys from the flying squad. Then be back here at noon. O.K.?”
“Fine, boss.”
“Go and get some rest. It feels like I’ve got three ghost officers here.”
*
“They struck you in your bath, your blood
ran over your eyes,
and the bath steamed with your blood…”
It was hot. De Palma sat exhausted on his balcony and let Elektra’s sad voice take hold of him. Through the open windows, the low and middle register notes of Birgit Nilsson mingled with the subdued symphony made up of the sounds of his neighborhood at night. He had come home late, thinking that he would be able to sleep for a few hours.
“…So, he took you
by your shoulders, the coward, and dragged
you out of the room, head first,
your legs trailing behind, your eyes open
staring at the interior of the house …”
The siren of a distant patrol car broke the atmosphere. It was probably coming from one of the Pont-de-Vivaux estates. A madman in the asylum opposite began to moan dully. De Palma knew this faceless voice; he had known it for years.
That week—he had forgotten which day—he had got a letter from Marie. In it, she told him she had found work in the suburbs of Grenoble. There was a new man in her life, he could tell by reading between the lines. He had felt neither sad nor angry.
Sleep would not come. As the night progressed, he felt his body grow colder; his joints cracked like old beams. This investigation was coming to an end. Never in his long career had an attempt to understand a killer, and himself, given him so much pause for thought.
Tomorrow he would find himself face-to-face with the sickest murderer he had encountered since the Dustman. What would he do? Kill him? He could telephone Jo Luccioni. He had been thinking about that since the day before. Jo had the necessary fury, that hatred of the human species which must haunt his mind. This thought chilled him even more, so he cast it aside.
“And so you come back, putting one foot in front of the other,
and suddenly you appear,
a purple crown on your head,
fed by the gaping wound in your forehead.”
He thought of Sylvie and tried to imagine the situation she must be in, but he failed to build a mental image of it. His inability to visualize the horror made him shudder. This was something new to him; usually, he managed to picture the darker side of his investigations. His ability to imagine a perfectly precise scenario was the secret of his legendary intuition. But that night he did not have a storyboard, or any images. Sylvie had become an element, a cog in the mechanism which was grinding his consciousness. Each time he conjured up Sylvie’s face, his brain rejected it as though trying to impose the cold reality of the facts.
“Facts, nothing but facts,” as Barbieri would say. “Proof, and only proof,” he said aloud. “But you might not have any proof,” he went on in a whisper. Justice suddenly seemed too rapid to him. Barbieri would tie the whole thing up. The jury, “good little French people like you and me,” would have no doubts when confronted by such pure horror. His lawyer would probably appeal. Recent legislation meant that he would be able to. After a quarter of a century on the crime squad, issues like this no longer bothered him.
He remembered his early cases. At the time, the men and women he put on trial were literally risking their necks. And these necks were being gambled on a dice throw. He thought of Robert Ferrandi; his last death penalty. An ordinary man he had hunted for several years. A shabby fifty-year-old who crucified the women he loved. De Palma had got to know him over a period of forty-eight hours and despite his barbaric crimes had ended up liking this sincere, solid, little man with the round face, who had left his lawyer speechless by asking the judge for the death sentence himself. To put a stop to his madness.
Possessed, insane Ferrandi. The death penalty had been announced that evening, and this had disgusted de Palma. He felt responsible, guilty about not having been able to prove that Ferrandi acted under another person’s authority. In this case, his brother’s.
He remembered the words of his old mentor at headquarters in Paris: “It doesn’t matter if the law is just or not, the law is valid not because it’s just, but because it’s the law. As a matter of fact, this isn’t your problem. Your problem is putting the guilty on trial and trying not to make mistakes.”
The next day, if the grim gods presiding over police affairs had not been mistaken, he would arrest a man and hand him over to be tried. And the justice system would not fail him. His long years on the force had worn him down so much that he no longer gave a damn. All that interested him was catching his man. And finding Sylvie alive. That at least made sense.
He stood up, stiff from the chill that had gripped him, and poured himself a whisky which he knocked back in one. He poured another and went back on to the balcony. The night was receding into stardust. The hills of Saint-Loup were beginning to lighten as the day dawned, somewhere far away, in the mysteries of the Levant. He thought to himself that the man he had been tracking for months must be looking up at the same sky.
Perhaps at that precise moment this redoubtable killer was doubting his own powers?
Perhaps reason and madness were struggling with each other in his poor head, as on a battlefield where the enemy has taken the initiative.
He would be invoking the spirits of prehistory.
Leaning on the gray metal rail that had been corroded by the sun and sea air, de Palma realized that his legs could barely support him. Fatigue and whisky had overwhelmed his being and his thoughts.
Society baffled him. First, there had been little Samir’s murder in a block of flats to the north of the city. And now a man was asserting his barbarity. Never had de Palma been confronted by such a killer, and a voice whispered to him that he would not be the last, but rather the first in a new wave of criminals. It occurred to him that a society ultimately has the murderers it deserves. Even the mobsters had evolved toward heightened barbarity. Gangland killings had speeded up to a regularity never known before. Each time, the law of the mob broke down slightly and gangster society became more corrupt.
What new killer would arise at the night’s end? Only yesterday, an eight-year-old child had gone missing from an estate in Aix, the seventh since the start of the year. It seemed to him that the thick layer of morality covering the surface of society was cracking more and more, and was now coming away in pieces. He did not like morality, but that was another story.
A vision obscured the darkness of the city: Ferrandi’s round face, his small, dry eyes and the terror which had filled them every time he spoke about his brother.
Then he saw the face of his twin, Julien de Palma. Julien was staring at him, and his eyes were showing him the way.
A thought which had plagued him for days now returned. “He’s not alone,” he said to the night.
This thought became a certainty and he took it to bed with him.
Everything was clear now.
“As time goes on running from the stars,
so the blood of a hundred throats will burst up from the tomb!
It will spread as though from spilled amphoras,
the blood of enchained killers,
like a stream in spate, in floods, it will spring from their lives.”