It was the first day of a week he would never forget, and yet he didn’t notice anything special. He woke up at four in the morning, convinced that the phone was about to ring. He got up and took the handset with him into the kitchen. Even before he’d lit the gas burner, the ring shattered the silence.
“Hi, chief. Sorry to wake you.”
“Don’t worry; I was expecting your call. Has he struck again?”
“A young woman and a baby this time,” answered Ken, no longer surprised by his boss’s strange abilities. “Should I come by and get you?”
“I’m ready.”
Mallock hung up. His weekend had ended in the best way possible; it almost seemed normal for the week to begin with news of the worst. Tossing a couple of children’s toys into the backseat, he got into his colleague’s little Renault, grim-faced. Ken didn’t even try to lighten the mood. He was none too happy himself; he was just as tired of counting bodies. His wife was just about to give birth again, and he would rather have devoted himself to thinking about life.
Without exchanging a word, they drove to the crime scene. Parking in front of the police station on the Rue Bonaparte, which overlooked the square, Ken said simply:
“First indications point to the murder’s happening two days ago.”
He led them toward the church of Saint-Sulpice, crossing the vast esplanade with its two fountains.
“Don’t tell me he’s managed to hide in there! It’s always jammed with people,” said Mallock.
“The bastard staged his scene in the crypt. It was closed for renovations and no one thought to go down and check on it.”
Mallock felt like he’d been slapped in the face. He knew the Saint-Sulpice crypt. At his wife’s insistence, Thomas had been baptized there.
As Ken spoke, he pulled out a jar of Vicks. “Want some, boss?”
Mallock took a dab of the camphor-eucalyptus jelly on the tip of his index finger and smeared it under his nose. He’d cut his upper lip shaving that morning. The Vicks made it sting cruelly.
There was something nightmarish about the atmosphere that reigned in the crypt. Besides the light given off by hundreds of flickering candles, one element gave the scene a particularly theatrical air: a sort of white calm, compact and oily. They were in a church crypt, which was a reason to whisper his orders as well as his curses. The noise of shoes scraping on the stone, and the voices distorted by individual radios linked to the central command post, only gave more weight and significance to this pallid silence.
In front of Mallock were the sacrificed bodies of a mother and her baby. He had actually been expecting something like this for several days now. The mother and child, the Madonna and Christ, an emblematic and recurring theme in religious imagery. It also reminded him, for the first time, of Russian icons.
Contrary to what some people thought at the time, the strand of iron around the child’s arms wasn’t a remnant of torture; just a simple brace to hold the subject, arms raised, in the position of the benedictory infant. But the most astonishing aspect was the gold covering the baby’s entire body. Mallock was certain now that the Makeup Artist must be creating images, duplicating existing ones. It was incredible that he was able to make them up more and more while they were alive, or almost.
“As soon as we get back to the Fort,” he murmured to Ken, “put one of the guys on the purchase of decorative gold leaf. There’s a ton of it here; we’ve got a chance. Then have him put the list of major buyers in the database, as usual.”
Then he turned his attention back to the victims.
The woman’s arms were raised heavenward. She was draped in floor-length blue and white veils. But her stomach was bare. Worse, it had been hollowed out like a cave. The Makeup Artist had eviscerated and disemboweled her. In the empty space, where only the spinal column and a few ribs remained, he had placed two candles. Their flickering light danced on the bloody walls around them and on the group of small, traditional Christmas figurines that also filled the cavity: a cow, a donkey, Joseph, the three Kings, and, on a bed of straw, a little pink baby Jesus.
Mallock turned his head to look at the baby. He wanted to say goodbye to the little martyred body, whisper a few snatches of prayer over it. He moved closer to it. No one had dared to do that yet. A smell of sweat and feces rose from it. He thought at first of the putrefaction of death, but one detail stunned him. The golden stomach was moving. It was almost imperceptible, but he had to be sure. He put his ear up to the baby’s mouth. Nothing. But he felt compelled to hold the lenses of his glasses right up against the child’s lips.
“For the love of Christ!”
The curse echoed in the crypt, immediately followed by orders.
“Call the paramedics, quickly. He’s still breathing! Pulse very weak, respiration almost nil, but there’s something alive in there. Move your asses!”
To the astonishment of the two priests and everyone else present, he began ripping the gold leaf off the child’s body. Ken joined him and removed the iron brace. Like damned souls hovering over the poor golden angel, they looked like two birds of prey tearing apart their victim. Flakes of gold floated in the air of the crypt, gleaming in the light of the candles, like so many miniature suns.
While Ken continued to pull off all the gold leaf he could, Amédée began artificial resuscitation. His big body breathed air into the child’s lungs, like a giant blowing up a balloon. One deep breath and then three chest compressions, gently, using two fingers. He tried to get a look at the baby’s eyes, verify the presence of movement, but the butcher had glued his eyelids shut.
Fifteen minutes later, exhausted, Amédée left the crypt. There had been nothing he could do. Near the door he stepped on a little rubber giraffe, undoubtedly left there during a previous christening. The toy let out a ridiculous squeak, punctuated by the superintendent’s low “Shit.” More than the repulsive spectacle or the smell coming from the corpses, it was this noise, the cry of Sophia the giraffe, that made him want to throw up.
Ken stayed on to coordinate operations, but Mallock went straight back to the office. He could have used a short break to get a grip on his emotions, but there wasn’t time. If he wanted to capture the monster he would have to start moving even faster.
The Makeup Artist seemed to be sailing through.
And yet, the police weren’t exactly doing nothing. Fort Mallock was like a beehive. Dozens of inspectors and computer techs in shirtsleeves were coming and going in every direction. Faxes, printers, telephones, and other technological aids were each contributing their own particular brand of racket to the unusual hubbub in the superintendent’s department. “Work in silence” was one of his favorite instructions, but this morning he didn’t have the strength or even the desire to quiet down the cacophony. He gave Bob his request concerning the gold leaf.
“Ken will speak to you about it again, but go ahead and make a start. Call the main suppliers of gilding necessities and have them give you a list of their clients, with each one marked: ‘new customer,’ ‘larger order than usual,’ and so on.”
Then he went to see Francis. The young lieutenant looked absolutely terrible. Had he slept at all in the last forty-eight hours?
“Will you be ready soon?” was all Mallock said by way of encouragement.
“Just about, boss. I just started the overall comparison of the five lists. The answers will be on your desk in twenty minutes.”
“You’ve done a good job.”
Even so, Francis thought.
Bob, who had joined them, couldn’t resist asking:
“Are we going to catch him, boss?”
“What do you think?” Mallock barked. “Go work on the gold.”
In the corridor that led to his office, he realized that his anger hadn’t cooled at all. It was even keeping him from walking upright. He was broken, head bowed, teeth gritted, aching. His feet dragged slightly on the floor, betrayed by his knees.
A baby covered in gold. My God.
He had pinned all his hopes on his list idea. If the comparison results didn’t turn up anything he’d be right back where he started, but with the weight of the whole world on his shoulders and—he had no doubt—a lot of explaining to do to the mob of spectators. And to himself.
Worse yet, the Makeup Artist would have a wide-open path ahead of him.
In his office he poured himself a generous glass of single-malt, hoping the liquor might untie the inextricable knots in his stomach. Francis had said twenty minutes, and Mallock started counting them down. He didn’t even try to think anymore. It was too late.
The roulette wheel was already spinning.
The die was cast. No more bets, please. He couldn’t change anything now; there would be no changing of bets, no altering the track, no adding chips to a number that was suddenly obvious. Nothing.
Nothing but the clicking sound of that fucking roulette wheel.
All he could do was count down the minutes. Still ten to go. He’d never been in this situation before, at the mercy of a goddamn printout of a list. It was a bizarre feeling. Then, a flash of inspiration: light a cigar. That would take up a good three minutes.
When Francis came in with the computer printout in his arms, Amédée didn’t try to read the results of the database-matching in his eyes. He listened, pulling slowly on his Havana cigar. Francis was stunned by his superintendent’s calm. If only he’d known!
“Here it is. I assigned a sort of coefficient to each of the lists, according to their importance. I gave four points to the names present in the Maurel notebook; four as well for people who own the famous tripod; two points to people listed in the supermarket file, two for the list generated by the door-to-door questioning, and finally two for all the suspects in the police files. That gives us a grade out of fourteen.”
Francis turned the page. His hands were shaking.
“I didn’t get any fourteens. No twelves, no tens—”
“It’s fucking worthless,” Mallock burst out.
He had rarely felt a failure so cruelly. He could have cried.
“But I did get three sixes. One of them is on both the tripod list and in our files. The two others are in Amélie’s notebook and their names came up during the door-to-door investigation.”
“It’s not enough.”
“Wait! I saved the best for last! We also have an eight. This guy is on the supermarket list, the tripod list, and both police lists. Interesting, right?”
Nose buried in his papers, Francis didn’t dare look up at his boss. “He isn’t on Amélie’s list though, unfortunately,” he admitted.
“It’s not your fault; it’s mine,” sighed Mallock. “You did a fine job, but I don’t think there’s much to your eight. It’s crucial for the name to be in Amélie’s book. Shit, shit, shit! Call Ken and the others; have them verify the eight and the three sixes anyway. See if you can get with Bob too, for the gold leaf list.”
Francis was relieved for a few seconds, before realizing that he would almost have preferred a dressing-down. He started for the door, but Mallock called him back.
“Don’t tell the others I know about this, okay? We need to keep morale up.”
Francis agreed, wondering how much good the morale of the Fort’s inspectors would be without their boss’s own.
Half an hour later, Bob and Julie were standing in front of Mallock. Jules was too busy checking and sorting the hundreds of complaints that had flooded into the Fort over the past three days; apparently everyone in France had spent their weekend adding to the stream of invective. When Ken joined them in the office he had come straight from the crypt, and the others were surprised to see him covered in flakes of gold.
Mallock gave them a quick rundown without letting them in on his disappointment. They weren’t fooled, but they all pretended to be.
“I’ll have to call home,” said Ken. “We might be here all night.”
He picked up the phone and stood, his gaze unfocused, without dialing. “Shit. What’s my home number again?”
“You forgot your own phone number?”
“Oh, like it’s never happened to you. We changed it three months ago, and it’s not like I call myself very often.”
“Look in your address book, dummy,” Julie advised.
A minute later Ken snapped the notebook shut, swearing. “This is so goddamn stupid. It’s not in there. I never put it in. Usually I can remember it.”
“You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to buy you a pretty little bracelet with your name and address engraved on it, and a little note underneath that saying: ‘Reward to anyone who brings little Ken back to the police station.’”
Mallock put an end to the teasing by shooing them out of his office. “Get a move on; I want be absolutely sure. If none of these suspects is our bastard, we’re back to square one.”
When his colleagues had gone he realized that he was hungry and exhausted. Waking up at dawn, the sight of the corpses, the lack of breakfast, and the panicked fear of failure were taking their toll. But his troubles weren’t over yet. At twelve-thirty came the call to battle stations. There was a big meeting at one o’clock sharp with the biggest boss of all, the honorable Secretary of the Interior.
A motorcycle cop in an impeccable uniform came to give him the secretary’s invitation, and Mallock knew he was about to find out the true limits of this unusual politician’s friendship. The telephone rang a few seconds later. It was Dublin.
“Shall we go over together? I’ve already called my car.”
His voice was shaking. He was sitting on an ejection seat, and those weren’t made to hold civil servants—even when they were members of the police force. Mallock let the ghost of a smile cross his lips. He would have to hold his hand in front of the big boss. He imagined it moist and trembling. In Dublin’s defense, he, like the other directors of the 36, had always refused promotion to stay in his job. Mallock had certainly made the most of that.
“I’ll meet you downstairs in three minutes,” were the only words of comfort he could offer.
It was six o’clock in the evening.
When he thought about it, it hadn’t really gone all that badly, Mallock told himself as he headed home. Dublin had been a bit of a chickenshit, naturally, but not too much. The secretary had raised his voice, naturally, but only moderately. Everyone had tried to avoid being blamed, naturally, and naturally, the final responsibility had fallen right on him. He hadn’t been fazed. After more than an hour of buck-passing, when the secretary and the whole audience had turned on their freshly and unanimously nominated scapegoat, he had faced them head-on.
“It is my fault,” he had said, to general astonishment. “I have no excuses to make. If it’ll make you feel better, I’m happy to accept all your complaints. Frankly, I don’t give a damn. On the other hand, I’m still convinced that searching for the killer should be the principal and only concern of this venerable assembly, rather than pointing fingers and coming after me with torches and pitchforks. Think less about your salaries and more about this butcher, and things might go much better.”
Dublin’s face had gone from milk-white to a lovely pastel green, while the yes-men were bright red. The Secretary of the Interior, undoubtedly because he was an old hand, gave Mallock his support.
“You’ve run a good investigation. Criticism is easy, gentlemen, but apprehending an individual as formidable as this . . . Makeup Artist . . . is a whole different ball game.”
After that, the meeting had gone in a much more constructive direction. They tried to answer one question together: what could be done to improve the system while satisfying the press at the same time?
A series of measures were taken, and Mallock couldn’t escape what looked very much like a competitive pitch. Particularly the involvement on the ground, and even in the investigation, of outside authorities answerable directly to the secretary.
Though some of these decisions were intended to boost the effectiveness of the search, most of them, as always, were as demagogic as they were useless, and were made only to give the newspapers and the politicians something to chew on. They created SCAG, the Specific Coordinated Action Group, for some reason no one would ever figure out, and also a group for the Ethical Computer Information Research Collective, or ECIRC. The call for Mallock’s resignation put forward by a television program was rejected at the last minute, as was some overzealous attaché’s heat-of-the-moment suggestion of a referendum to declare a countrywide state of emergency. At the time no one could have suspected that, one day, a measure like that would in fact be taken for a simple police investigation—least of all Mallock, who would be the one to initiate it.17
During the entire meeting and on his drive home, Amédée couldn’t shake the niggling worry that he’d forgotten something. Something someone had said or done that afternoon; something extremely important. A number, maybe. He was virtually certain that it was crucial. He’d been given the solution to the mystery, and he’d shoved it aside.
Home at last, he decided, cigar and whiskey in hand, to settle into a comfortable armchair and try to locate the stowaway passenger hiding somewhere in the back of his mind.
He fell asleep on the sofa without finding it.
The helpless, powerless Mallock, the unconscious one, was finally going to pay the price for his inadequacies. The latest of them, falling asleep like that in his apartment without locking the door, had made it possible for the Makeup Artist to capture him, as if he were a complete novice.
Amédée was trussed up hand and foot now, a spectator of the Makeup Artist’s latest relaxation exercise. In front of him, clamped to the wall by means of a neoprene adhesive, was a woman bound in the shape of a cross, her eyes bulging with terror, begging mutely, desperately for his help. Mallock tried to move, but with no success at all.
Without even a glance at his old enemy, the Makeup Artist approached the cross-shaped body and, empty-eyed, began with jerky movements to beat the woman to a pulp. First he explained, in a metallic-sounding voice, that the first thing was to tenderize the flesh so it would be easier to remove the skin. Then, without waiting, without hearing the sacrificed woman’s screams, he began beating her with all his strength using an iron bar. That voice! Mallock screamed. He recognized it. My God, it was Julie!
He tried again to free himself, but nothing made any difference. He could only watch. Robotically, with somewhat clumsy regularity, the Makeup Artist pounded his weapon against what no longer bore any resemblance to skin. The petite Julie’s flesh and muscles, fat, bones, and bodily fluids were now just one indistinguishable, nauseating mass.
After long minutes punctuated by rhythmic cracking sounds, Mallock suddenly realized that he must be dreaming. But how could he hear the cracks so distinctly, as if they were coming from inside the room? He opened his eyes.
*
A snowstorm had broken over Paris, and one of the living-room shutters had come loose. He had been hearing its regular banging noises, even in his dream. Relieved, he got up to pull the shutters closed.
It was then, standing naked in front of his window, letting his gaze wander among the millions of crystalline snowflakes, that he realized the solution to his mystery. It was simple and complicated, cold and ephemeral like the snowflakes whirling before his eyes. He murmured a thank you; then, before the revelation could melt away, he closed the window again.
On a piece of paper, he wrote the Makeup Artist’s name.
It was only five in the morning but he got dressed, downed a cup of boiling coffee, and ran for his garage. Paris was completely white, with a violent wind whistling through the narrow streets. He turned up the collar of his coat. For once, he had deigned to bundle up. Bluish vapor puffed from his mouth. He thought of Tom, and the six Christmases they had spent together. He loved the wind, for a bunch of reasons he’d never tried to analyze. Now, he thought, there was a new reason.
Little Tom was here, in this wind.
Like all the life energy in the world, all the lives of the pure and the just. It was their breath.