The next day, Mallock woke up with a throbbing migraine crushing his forehead and the back of his neck. A ray of sunlight was in the process of finishing the insidious hammer job begun by a mixture of insomnia, smoke, and alcohol.
Getting up was painful.
Standing in front of his coffeemaker, he couldn’t keep from grumbling. Nothing was going right this morning. The stupid contraption was taking forever to percolate; his goddamn cup was hiding somewhere; the bloody sugar bowl was empty and the milk sour.
He grabbed the earthenware saucer that belonged with the missing cup and flung it with all his strength down the hallway, hoping it would shatter against the bathroom door. Bingo! It exploded into shards. He felt slightly better, but not enough. The two other cups and saucers, which made up the whole rest of his coffee service, met the same fate, giving the same ceramic shrieks as they smashed on the lacquered wood of the door.
You couldn’t condemn a person for murdering things.
The previous evening, instead of eating a quick dinner and going to bed, Mallock had dived straight into his investigation. With the files in his lap he had begun his journey—the personal itinerary that would lead to him to another man’s murderous insanity.
The forest of articles clipped by Léon was immediately striking in its lack of photos. Most editors wanted illustrations; they’d get a police-artist composite sketch, a snapshot of the crime scene, or a photo of the victim—dressed up for first communion, or smiling and tanned on the beach last summer. Here, there was nothing; no serious imagery apart from a few pictures of the fronts of houses where a “mysterious murder,” a “sadistic crime,” or a “terrible tragedy” had taken place. The titles were as varied as their authors’ imaginations. No matter; Mallock wasn’t expecting them to shed any light on the case.
Of course, he knew the reason for it: the embargo imposed by the higher-ups. The lack of photos was glaring evidence of it, as was the obvious lack of details about the homicides. All the papers had cobbled together fantastical stories apparently supported by an interview with a neighbor or a tearful relative. She didn’t have an enemy in the world . . . it’s the work of a madman . . . I don’t understand; she was such a nice person. The questions, like the photos, seemed as if they were meant to replace the scoops and other earth-shattering revelations that usually surrounded this kind of sensational news item.
The simple idea of serial crime didn’t appear until three months in, at the very beginning of Léon’s second scrapbook. It was in an article signed M.M. for Mallock’s great friend Margot Murât, nicknamed Queen Margot. She had entitled the article “Too many police to be honest.” In it, she described her surprise at the tone of the press conferences given by Number 36, and at their polite eagerness to give the newspapers an amount of information as impressively large as it was useless. “Why do I have the uncomfortable feeling that these gentlemen have just thrown a smokescreen over us?” she finished by wondering, in her inimitable style.
It was past midnight when Mallock picked up Dublin’s file. He stared at it for a while without opening it, wondering if he should get some sleep and start again tomorrow. Hadn’t he done enough for tonight?
But he was as meticulous as he was obstinate, and he jerked the folder open impatiently. Twenty minutes later he closed it, dismayed. He had just seen a glimpse of hell; the belly of the beast. A whole ocean of screams and flesh laid low. This new document was much crueler than Léon’s scrapbooks.
Every page was adorned with grotesque illuminations. Besides the snapshots and horrifying forensic descriptions, there was one morbid detail of the killer’s modus operandi that had never filtered down to the media; a distinctive feature of the ritual, at least with the most recent victims: they had been completely drained of their blood. Exsanguination. Not by a bite in the hollow of the neck in the grand vampirical tradition, but by the use of catheters in multiple strategically-chosen locations. The torturer—or torturers—had to have considerable medical knowledge to get such a perfect result. He would have to keep this information in mind as he pursued his investigation. A surgeon? A doctor or a nurse? A question streaked through his brain.
What had happened to all the blood?
He wouldn’t find out the hideous answer until much later.
Of course, there wasn’t the slightest trace of DNA; not the faintest fingerprint, only a burnt scrap of paper in a fireplace. Still legible was the end of a sentence which, it was believed, might have been written by the murderer: death is life.
Mallock sat up straight. Normally he would have waited, but this was urgent. It was too early; he knew. Dangerous, he suspected; even pointless, but he wanted to try. Starting tonight, against all logic, he would call on his most mysterious abilities—and on the substances that went with them.
To lift his inhibitions and give free rein to what he modestly called his intuitions, he prescribed himself his oldest, most innocent remedy to start with: whiskey and tobacco, as much as he wanted. Three good gulps to start the process and cleanse his mind of parasitic thoughts. Then the first cigar, smoked in little puffs, turning it to ensure slow and regular burning. Three more gulps. Then on to the most dubious part of the process: a sugar lump with three drops of one of his “remedies for melancholy.”
He settled himself deep in an armchair, gazing at the cloud of smoke forming around him, as his whole body began to vibrate gently. Three more swallows of whiskey. Calmly, like other people eased themselves into too-cold water, he began to penetrate the icy universe of the Makeup Artist, taking with him all the data he had gleaned from Léon’s scrapbooks and Dublin’s files along with his own first still-fresh theories. Three more swallows. Cigar smoke like fog on a moor. His mind, skimming the rooftops of the city, disappeared beyond the horizon, into the sunlit sea spray and balmy winds of a waking dream, all above, all inside.
As with each time he plunged into the unknown this way, Mallock perceived strange and sudden things; a mixture of dreams and revelations. This kind of sleep generated images that were difficult to sort and interpret, but which might very well help him, tomorrow, to profile the killer.
The monster was waiting for him. It symbolized the murderer—but in a coded, dreamlike way. Nothing was ever said explicitly during these visions.
Sitting hunched over, damp and reptilian, the thing was writing a curious list of words on little scraps of paper, which it let fall to the ground when they were full—but not without first duly and violently stamping them.
A poppy, some poppies, an elephant, some elephants, a tent, some tents, a horse, some horses, a wop, some pizza-makers . . .
He turned suddenly. A stethoscope hung around his neck. He began talking, absurdly, saying things and then their opposites.
“Death is life. Life is pain. Pain is wine. Wine is blood. Blood is union. Union is death. Death is life.”
Amédée tried to explain to him that he was talking nonsense.
“But Mallock, I’m not the one talking. You are. It’s your dream, isn’t it? So you’re the one talking. It’s your brain spouting this crap.”
He burst out laughing.
“Death, you poor stupid superintendent, is the opposite of life. Life is the opposite of death. Blood is life. Life is God talking to us. Death is emptiness. Life is fullness. Death is emptiness of blood. Blood is death.”
To Mallock, who felt strangely obligated to listen to this torrent of words while trying to assign some meaning to them, it seemed as if the monster was contradicting itself.
“I deny that! If I am contradicting myself it’s because I am many. Like you, Superintendent. Like all of us, isn’t that right?”
Then it screamed: “Look how we swarm!”
Behind it, in the shadows, a dozen forms were jeering.
“God has multiplied us, as he did with the bread and wine. Every day that God makes, we dance and piss on piles of cunts.”
Then it turned suddenly serious again: “Perseverance is a great fighter.”
And it picked up the chant once more: “Wine is blood. Blood is money. Money is fullness . . . ”
Back in the apartment, on the other side of the dream, Mallock’s cigar, having no one to smoke it, had mournfully gone out. The ice cubes in their tray had turned liquid again. And, in the stone fireplace, two poplar logs continued to consume themselves, whispering stories of the forest.
In his nightmare, Mallock found himself wearing clunky, mud-covered shoes and standing on a staircase decorated with photos of children and beaches. On the upstairs landing was a doll dressed in chiffon with hair in two braids, and three stacks of white masks. A low, hoarse voice that sounded like it came from a pus-filled throat was singing in the next room: “Little holes, little holes, more little holes, little holes, little holes . . . ”
Before venturing into the room, Mallock turned around to look for help. He realized that he was alone, and that he had left large pieces of dried mud all over the steps and the new carpet of the pretty house. The monster, emerging from the next room covered in blood, was mocking him:
“I always clean up after I visit pretty ladies.”
When he finally woke up, Amédée thought they might be dealing with a case of multiple personality disorder in their killer: several individuals imprisoned in one bodily envelope. A dissident group of assassins was another possibility. Thinking about it, both theories seemed equally plausible.
After drinking a cup of coffee, Mallock went in search of the vacuum, to deal with the ceramic dust that still glittered on the carpet outside the bathroom. He was annoyed with himself. He usually treated his possessions with great care—he even talked to them sometimes, and they talked back. They’d always given him good advice, and been loyal companions when he was a child.
Amédée went into the living room. It was Sunday, and he didn’t have anything much planned. The fire had gone out after struggling valiantly most of the night. Filled with sudden resolve, he began raking out the ashes choking the fireplace. His little Tom was there, among the cold grey cinders. He had truly believed he would never recover from his son’s death. The pain had stunned him, reduced him to a grief-stricken object. Incapable of rising up against the tragedy, he had found himself prostrate, bone-thin, with tears that never stopped flowing and an uncontrollable trembling that had shaken his body for almost a month.
The memory of Toto’s cremation was worse than any nightmare—a series of horrifying images, a life crumbling to agonized bits. And the grief was always there, would always be there.
“Your death, Thomas . . . you, dead? How can I live with that monstrous thing?”
For a long time Mallock hadn’t known what to do with his arms, or with all that love that he couldn’t give anymore. Three years later, he hadn’t recovered—only begun to get used to the idea that Toto would never be there again.
As he put his thoughts in order, Amédée had reached the bathroom. He shook a tablet and two capsules into his left hand and swallowed them with a mouthful of water straight from the tap. Leaning against the side of the sink, he rubbed his forehead with a bit of tiger balm and essential mint oil, then ran a bath.
Waiting for the tub to fill, he went back to the kitchen. He would stew himself a guinea fowl. Fuck it—it was Sunday!
Lots of leeks, some turnips, two big slices of pumpkin. An onion with three cloves stuck in it. Two little hot chili peppers. A quick stuffing made of chicken liver, port, and bread soaked in milk. A few morsels of black truffle between the skin and flesh of the bird. It reminded him of a black-and-white mask at a Venetian carnival. Half-mourning—that was the gastronomic term.
An unexpected idea occurred to him. Originally, and despite what people thought these days, the purpose of masks was to show another face, not to hide the face of the person wearing it. Another piece of information floated up from the depths of his memory: the Italian word maschera, meaning false face, fancy dress, or disguise. Mallock loved it when he received this kind of mysterious message, even though it sometimes took a while to figure out all the significance of it.
Was it possible that the killer—or killers—was putting a kind of mask on his victims by covering them with that bizarre makeup? And if so, was he veiling them, or assigning them another appearance? If so, which one? Was he erasing something, or presenting something to be seen?
Masks had two completely opposite functions. Hiding and showing.
Lost in his metaphysical wonderings, Mallock dropped the guinea fowl into the pot of stock, almost gently. Sometimes he surprised himself by murmuring a word of thanks, like an Indian after the hunt; an apology, a kind of prayer to the food he was preparing. Only with meat, though, not vegetables—no need to go overboard.
The murdered creature would be ready in an hour. Until then he would simmer in a bath of his own, just like a plump chicken. First, though, he swallowed a double whiskey in a single gulp. Bottoms up.
Too much alcohol to fight too much sadness. It was an equal exchange.
He chose a book from his library at random and put on Brian Eno for background music; then sank into the warm water with a murmur of bliss.