During the seventy-two hours that followed, every police officer, legal expert, and journalist in Paris moved heaven and earth to get into the Makeup Artist’s lair for even a second. Mallock’s investigation was described in the minutest detail in the papers, turning him into a national hero. The accolades, coming from the same people who had tried to destroy him, were greeted by Amédée with utter contempt.
He had only one thing on his mind: two days after the guilty party had been identified he was still at large, and only when he had been captured would Mallock relax. Until he locked him up or gunned him down, he could neither rest nor think about anything else.
They had found the photo of Julie, and Mallock, his fears confirmed, had taken drastic steps.
“I don’t give a shit what you or the big bosses think. You’re getting out of here and that’s final. Take Jules as a bodyguard. One condition: don’t tell anyone where you’re hiding.”
“But it’s disgraceful. I—”
“It’s nothing of the kind. This guy is too dangerous. We don’t even know where he is, and you’re his next victim. I don’t want to have to worry about you.”
“So you care about little old Julie after all, Superintendent?”
“What do you think, you little idiot?” Mallock barked.
He knew that sometimes you couldn’t hold back with the people you loved, especially during the good times.
He went to Didier Dôthem’s apartment very early the next morning after a sleepless night, accompanied by a dozen men, to carry away everything that might possibly yield clues or proof: all the computer equipment and backup systems, plus the contents of every closet, drawer, and garbage can. The rest was left in situ to await the specialists.
And then another nightmare began.
Even though every police force in Europe had set out the widest net ever conceived to trap a criminal, blocking train stations and airports. Even though the surveillance system in France had been maintained and expanded. Even though multiple photographs of Dôthem were on the front pages of every newspaper in the country. Even though they had mobilized every yokel in every corner of every shithole town. Twelve days after discovering the killer’s hiding place and his identity, Mallock and his team were still in the same place. There was no trace of the Makeup Artist, not a single tangible sign. The monster had well and truly vanished off the face of the Earth.
“Well, shit! There’s never been this kind of manhunt for anyone before. He can’t get away,” grumbled Ken, whose rage had been building slowly but surely.
“A few more days and the press will eat us alive,” said Bob, who for his part had become much more cheerful. He seemed to be getting real pleasure out of the search operations. Even though they’d been unsuccessful so far, like a good hunter he appreciated the scenery and the outdoor exercise.
Mallock had only one worry. “I don’t give a shit about the press. But if he starts up again . . . ”
“What does your . . . intuition say?” ventured Francis—who had, just yesterday, decided to go by the name “Frank,” with a k.
“There’s no particular reason!” he had barked. “Robert goes by Bob! And ‘Francis’ sounds stupid! I’m just tired of it, okay?”
Childish, Mallock had said to himself. As if this were any time to get all fussy over a name.
For a month now, the setting up of the dragnet and the fantastical reports coming in from all over France had taken up all his attention. The monster had taken the ferry to Corsica. He’d been officially seen in Marseille two days ago. He was in German Switzerland; at the top of the Eiffel Tower; in the Black Forest; on a billionaire’s yacht off Saint Martin.
Every time a sighting was reported Mallock had to check into it, to the detriment of more creative thought. Unconsciously he had disconnected himself from the hell that reigned inside the Makeup Artist’s head, happy to be finished with all the drugs and the nightmares. But he must have done it too soon.
Now, realizing this, he decided to go home early.
He poured himself a glass of his favorite whiskey and lit up a double Corona. Then he watched the sunset, his gaze lost somewhere deep inside himself, in that place where the universe according to Mallock was made and unmade. A fragile heap of feelings and traces, of plastic objects. Of illusions, impulses, and fears. In the deepest part of himself, where the always-dark sky was forever lapped by icy waves. Within his very core, in search of vestiges of the essential, scraps of truth clinging to rotted masts, a shred of reality on the rafts of fortune. Even deeper, in a sort of intoxicating free dive, he traveled immense spaces enclosed by gigantic walls. At the center he saw a pool of translucent water, and at the bottom of it, a marble tomb. The specific shape of the sepulcher reminded him that he was far from being all-knowing.
The next morning he set out for the little square. It was January 30th, and temperatures had gotten milder. His experience of the night before had made him sleep until nine o’clock. As he approached the pharmacy, his back gave a twinge. He looked for a bench to sit down. You can never argue with your own vertebrae.
It was the last day of the month, and city employees were taking down the big blue spruce. They were using long rakes to tear off the tree’s flocking, which was made of several layers of vinyl adhesive mixed with shredded cotton/rayon fabric. It was sad to see such a beautiful tree being skinned alive. The little Styrofoam angels decorating the tree were falling to the ground, one after another.
There were still pretty shades of green under the spruce’s flocking. They could have replanted it. But two gardeners approached the tree in cherry-picker baskets and began cutting off its branches. Mankind has a strange way of thanking the plants and animals that make life more beautiful.
Amédée turned back toward the pharmacy building and looked up at the apartment’s three windows.
The small one on the left corresponded to the bathroom, right next to the front door. The two other, larger ones were the living room and office windows, respectively. Nothing to report. Mallock took out his cigar case and selected an Especial no. 1. He lit it without taking his eyes off the windows. What was he hoping to learn from these old dormers?
Time passed. It could have been a minute or an hour; Mallock couldn’t tell. And then suddenly, everything was clear. Slightly stiff from sitting for so long, he stood up and went into the building. He broke the police tape sealing off the Makeup Artist’s door.
As required by procedure, the main pieces of evidence had been removed from the apartment and stored in a safe place. He’d taken charge of that himself, with his team and the crime-scene techs. Otherwise, after having taken all the necessary photos and samples, dusted for every possible fingerprint, and confiscated objects and documents, the Criminal Investigation Division normally used a specialized Parisian municipal cleaning service to scrub everything, erase the smallest trace of blood and violence, and make the physical memory of the murders perpetrated on these premises disappear forever. Next, more often than not, the place would be resold or rented out and, in time, forgotten.
Here, even though it was practically empty, after the various visits from the superintendent and his men the apartment had been left as it was. The request had come from the great Mallock himself, who, in his wisdom, had given the famous and pithy explanation: “You never know.”
Amédée walked quickly into the other room, the office. Looking at the window, he breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the only other room, after all. There was one more. And then he knew he had finally won. There would be no more killings.
He started playing a bizarre game. Like an Indian on the warpath he crouched on the floor to observe any traces there, then began tapping on the walls.
A few minutes later he gave a triumphant shout. The opening mechanism was perfectly hidden, and there would have been almost no chance of finding the concealed room without really searching for it.
Three facts had put Mallock on the trail of this secret room, the Makeup Artist’s studio. One was the permanent presence of his mother. How had he been able to conduct all his rituals without having a hidey-hole? Another fact was the absence of icons and the originals of the photos Dôthem had digitized on the computer. There was no way he would have been separated from them when they meant to much to him. And finally, there was the location of the office window.
Seen from the outside, there were at least ten feet unaccounted for between the office window and the façade of the next building to the left. But inside the office itself, the wall was only a foot to the right of that same window.
It took him another hour to figure out how to slide open the wall. Once he was finally in the studio, he groped around for a light switch. Light flooded a small space. To the left there was an enormous armoire; to the right a bathroom done in red ceramic tile. A large closet, obviously homemade, took up almost all of the six-and-a-half-foot space noticeable from the outside. Opening the closet switched on another light. The interior held no clothing; it was completely filled with icons.
All of the Makeup Artist’s work was there, as well as the exhibition of his principal victims. It was a terrible sight, an admirable and macabre spectacle: a five-row iconostasis, his masterpiece, including icons of the Virgin of the Sign, an Annunciation, a Moses, a David, several representations of the Madonna and Child, and, in the center, a Christ Pantocrator and an astonishing Deisis, which included the recognizable faces of the two men Dôthem had murdered at the start of his quest and, as Mary, the little Modiano girl, whose gilded braids, pinned high on her head, formed the base of a halo.
Nervously, Mallock drew on his cigar, but it had gone out. The whole display might well have been repugnant, but it exuded an intoxicating blend of spirituality and sensuality. A dazzling cocktail. He recognized certain scenes: a disemboweled saint holding his own head in his hands. A “Saint Mandé” with thighs spread wide and eyes covered in gold leaf. The baby in its sugared shell. The actress, like an empty-hulled boat on the shore of a black lake. A female Jesus, impaled atop a Golgotha made of seashells.
He ran his tongue across his upper lip. There was a perverse pleasure in looking at these icons. He shut the closet door, thinking that you could have terrible suspicions about yourself.
To the right, an odor wafted from the bathroom that was unpleasant, but not quite as bad as he had expected. Like the rest of the space, it was completely red. From the tiles down to the contents of the bathtub, which was filled to the brim with blood. Mallock knew he’d reached the end of his investigation. Here, finally, was the answer to the question of what the Makeup Artist had done with all the blood he took from his victims. He bathed in it.
Mallock thanked his lucky stars and closed his eyes for a few seconds before putting on a pair of elbow-length rubber gloves, leaning over the tub, and pulling its plug. The liquid, which had still been red a month ago, had taken on the brown color and appearance of mud. As the fluid level began slowly to go down, his eyes riveted to the surface of the syrupy substance, Amédée relit his cigar—maybe in part to relax, but mainly to hide the stink coming off this sludge of water, formalin, and decomposing blood. When the tub had drained halfway a long, flat object began to be revealed. A smile of satisfaction and relief, slightly twisted with disgust, appeared on Mallock’s lips. He hadn’t been wrong.
As always, he had doubted his own visions. He shouldn’t have. Feverishly, he heaved the heavy marble slab upward.
It wasn’t as heavy as he had worried it would be, and beneath it he found what he had come looking for.
The Makeup Artist hadn’t left it up to anyone else to seal the door to his tomb. Pulling the marble top of the chest of drawers from the living room over himself, he hadn’t given his body any chance of escaping the sacrifice. So that the smell of his decomposing body wouldn’t give away the location of his lair, he had added several liters of formalin to the blood, then zipped himself into one of the waterproof bags used to transport bodies during wars or major catastrophes. It was a terrible death, but a fitting suicide for the man, drowning in the blood of his last Faces.
Above all, death cannot be gentle, the corpse seemed to whisper to Mallock.
Maybe they would have found this hidden room eventually, and discovered the body, but it would have taken a very long time, and in the meantime his legend, and the uncertainty about his death, would have terrified the whole world. Mallock, fighting his repulsion, decided to open the plastic bag. Dôthem was inside, but he had to be sure. The zipper opened with a soggy ripping noise. It was him, and despite the dreadful death he had inflicted upon himself, despite what he had always thought of himself, he was still beautiful.
So beautiful. Monstrously beautiful.
Contrary to what he had believed all his life, on this point at least, his mother had never lied to him.
Mallock switched on his mobile phone and made a few calls. The body had to be formally identified—not the slightest doubt could be allowed to remain—and autopsied, then cremated. He also called François Modiano, as he had promised to do. The man in loden thanked him. “Courage,” Amédée said, and hung up.
Then he decided to wait for the team downstairs in the square, outside in the fresh air.
His heart full, he closed the front door of the building behind him and went to sit down on the same bench he had occupied that morning. The pharmacy was closed. It would never open again.
Amédée just sat. Breathed. Let his heart slow down. Felt himself grow calmer.
The case was over. He had won. He could let it all go. Lie down and stretch out and sleep deeply at last.
Empty.
But he knew it didn’t work like that. The Mallock machine had a lot of momentum built up in it. The train would keep chugging and chugging, for days and hours, probably even years, carried along by the insane race he had just run. And so would his emotions and his terrors, which would smolder for months.
Little blonde braids . . . a baby’s chest like an island of white sand. Amédée felt tears rising to the surface. The release of pressure after combat has its own dangers.
To distract his mind and force it to dwell on happy things, he thought about Margot. Her loyalty had never faltered, and—it had to be said—she hadn’t exactly been well-rewarded for it. She’d been left empty-handed all throughout this case. He took out his phone and called her. She had earned exclusive rights to the story’s epilogue.
Just as he hung up, a man sat down next to him. Raymond Grimaud had heard the call on his CB.
“Fuck, it’s hard to find a parking space in this neighborhood! Anyway, bravo, Amédée. The knight has slain the dragon.”
Mallock smiled at him. “I don’t know about a knight, but it was a fucking nightmare of a dragon.”
He relit his cigar; RG lit a cigarette. There was a long silence.
“You’re sure he’s dead?”
“He is. Don’t worry.”
A flock of angels went by. This time they were Styrofoam, floating along in the gutter.
“And you’re sure it’s him?”
“Positive.”
Raymond lit another cigarette with the stub of the first. He shifted around on the bench, and finally asked:
“Mind if I just have a look?”
Realizing that Mallock still wasn’t understanding him—the bear could be dense sometimes—he went on:
“Mallock, this guy has been haunting me for so long. He ended up convincing me that he was immortal.”
“But we got him, your piece of shit immortal! You and me, and our teams! He’s up there in his bathtub, underneath a black marble tombstone!”
“So it would bother you if I . . . ”
“No, no! Go ahead!”
RG stood up and went to the little green door on the left of the pharmacy. He felt slightly ridiculous, but he needed to see the body.
Just as he was about to open the door, Mallock called out to him:
“You do have your gun, right? Now that I think about it, he might still have been moving a little!”
Raymond was laughing as he entered the Makeup Artist’s lair.
It was almost noon. A new squadron of city employees had arrived to clean up the last remnants of the Christmas tree. A big black man in an orange parka whistled “Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre, mironton, mironton, mirontaine,” as he swept up little blue angels, the corpses of red balls, and green needles. The clock of the Saint-Gervais church chimed twelve times. Servers in the cafes lining the square began lighting tall torches and setting out tables for the lunch crowd. The clinking of glasses and steel cutlery, punctuated by the regular passage of cars on the Rue de Rivoli, were like a sort of modern symphony.
In Mallock’s head, a phrase repeated itself over and over: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.