Seven Days

by Patrick Senécal

  Under the painting, in a white box that took up the whole bottom part of the poster, was written in big black letters: PICASSO. And, in smaller letters: Guernica. Of course, he knew who Picasso was, but the title of the work meant nothing to him. He looked at it again, fascinated, and wrote down the title in his notebook.

  Before going downstairs, he took a glance at the little girl’s bedroom. Bright, sunny yellow walls, a single bed with a comforter that had images of horses on it. On one wall, in multicolored wooden letters, the name “Jasmine.” Shelves with a rag doll, a clown doll, and a bag of marbles. An open toy chest. An enormous koala bear in one corner. A dream catcher in front of the window. Two pictures on the walls, one of a galloping horse and one of a unicorn. A poster showing five boys singing, the New Kids on the Block or the Backstreet Boys, Mercure always got them mixed up. A family photo on the desk.

  Mercure left the room, his head down, his hands in the pockets of his long coat.

  “There’s nothing missing from his stuff?” he asked Sylvie when he got back downstairs.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t even think he . . . he took any clothes.”

  “And in his office?”

  “I took a quick look. I really didn’t know Bruno’s office well. I hardly ever went in there. It was his den, when he wanted to fool around by himself on his computer. He even took an evening class on computers last year, he liked it so much. And an advanced class too. He was really a computer nut . . . Well, he still is, it’s just that . . .”

  She stopped and rubbed her forehead with a painful sigh.

  Mercure glanced around the living room, looking for other details related to Hamel. He saw some videocassettes and asked what they were.

  “Home videos. We have a little camera and . . .”

  “Can I take them?”

  Sylvie looked at him for a moment before answering, “If you like, but there are eighteen . . .”

  “Let’s say the ones from”—he thought for a moment and shrugged—“the last couple of years.”

  Sylvie picked up four cassettes. As she handed them to the detective sergeant, she said, “You have a funny way of investigating.”

  There was no sarcasm or reproach in her tone. On the contrary, she said it gently, in almost a friendly way. Mercure smiled at her as he took the videos, and thanked her, promising he would keep her up-to-date.

  “And thank you, Ms. Jutras, for keeping your sister company during this difficult time.”

  Josée nodded, still embarrassed because of the scene earlier.

  As he was walking to the car, he saw a man with a child walking on the sidewalk. The man glanced toward Hamel’s house and asked Mercure if he was with the police. The detective sergeant said yes.

  “I heard about it on the news. It’s . . . it’s really horrendous. Poor Bruno.” He held out his hand. “Denis Bédard. I live on the corner, just over there.”

  Mercure introduced himself and shook his hand.

  “And this is my son, Frédéric.”

  The child, about ten, smiled shyly. Mercure greeted him, thinking to himself that the boy would have been handsome without those terrible scars on his face.

  “I saw Bruno the other day in a park. He was so somber, so strange . . . So aggressive . . . full of hate . . .”

  “Does it surprise you that he went that far?”

  “You can never be surprised by the reactions of a parent whose child has been killed or attacked . . .”

  As he said this, he glanced sadly at his son and gently put his hand on his shoulder. The boy stood there meekly, impressed by the big policeman. Mercure saw the melancholy in Bédard’s face, the love in his gesture toward his son.

  “Well, good luck, Inspector. I sincerely hope you find him before the seven days are up.”

  He looked sadly at the boy again, turned back to the policeman, and repeated, looking into his eyes, “Sincerely.”

  He walked away holding his son’s hand, while the boy kept staring at the policeman. Mercure took one last look at his scars, obviously old but still hard to bear.

  In his car, he thought as he smoothed his hair. He looked at his calendar and saw that he was supposed to go to Montreal this week. One of his three annual visits to Demers.

  He wondered if he should put it off until this whole business was over. At the same time, he knew he needed those visits.

  Well, he thought he did.

  He looked at his watch: one thirty. A little lunch at the Charlemagne would do him good.

  He drove off.

  * * *

  At two o’clock, Bruno entered the room holding a big glass of water.

  The monster’s eyes shone. His body, slumped against the table, straightened up; he almost stuck out his tongue in excitement. Bruno handed him the glass. The monster seized it from his hands and gulped it down. Bruno glanced at the smashed knee. It was bigger and more purple than before. He was bending over the leg when two hands grabbed his throat and squeezed hard, and a hysterical voice screamed, “Let me go! You hear me, you sick bastard? Unchain me. Let me go or I’ll strangle you!”

  Bruno struggled. When he was close to suffocation, he punched the swollen knee. The blow wasn’t very hard, but it was enough to make the monster let go and start screaming. Wild with rage, Bruno took hold of his prisoner’s skull and smashed it against the table. The monster’s body went limp. Stunned, he started moaning and slowly moving his head from side to side.

  After catching his breath, Bruno took advantage of his prisoner’s semiconscious state to examine the leg. He felt the thigh and gently touched the knee with his fingers. For the time being, it would be okay. But the monster was burning up with fever. Bruno stood up and went over to his two medical bags in the corner. He opened one and came back to his prisoner with a pill. He put it in the mouth of the monster, who was still half knocked out, and forced him to swallow it by making him drink the rest of the water.

  The idea was not to alleviate the monster’s suffering, but to prevent his condition from deteriorating too quickly. Because if he got too weak, he wouldn’t be able to tolerate anything . . .

  . . . and he wouldn’t last a week.

  The water woke the monster up completely, and Bruno stood up, on his guard. Fear returned to the monster’s eyes when he saw Bruno. And Bruno again imagined the eyes of his little Jasmine, full of that powerless fear. He kicked the monster hard in the belly, causing him to double over and cough painfully. There, let him try to smile now! If he still could! A red cloud came over Bruno. He grabbed the sledgehammer and turned toward the monster. The monster, still grimacing with pain and holding his belly, looked at the tool with terror and cowered against the table. The red cloud dissipated and Bruno stood motionless.

  No, not right away. Savor the wait. And the spectacle of the monster, naked, suffocating, paralyzed with terror, was already very satisfying.

  For now.

  He left the room, closed the door, went and got a beer, and drank it slowly, sitting in the living room.

  Suddenly the monster began to scream. Not screams of suffering or fear, or specific words; just an overflowing, as if a valve had given way.

  The monster screamed, screamed, screamed . . .

  And Bruno drank his beer.

  * * *

  Back at the station, Mercure asked, just as a formality, if anyone had been able to reach Hamel. The answer was no.

  “When Bolduc and Pleau come in, send them straight to me.”

  Around three o’clock, Mercure received a distressing telephone call—from Lemaire’s mother. In a feeble, unsteady voice that betrayed her state of advanced inebriation, she asked if they had found her son. Mercure told her they had no leads. Mrs. Lemaire became surly and aggressive.

  “You’re not finding him on purpose! You’re just as happy if someone tortures and kills him for you! Admit it, goddammit!”

  In less than a month, this woman had just suffered the two greatest shocks of her life: the first, discoveri
ng that her son was a child rapist and murderer; the second, knowing he was in the hands of a vengeful father who was going to torture him and then kill him after seven days. So how could Mercure blame her for being upset?

  Then she just broke down and cried.

  “Don’t forget that before being a killer my son is a human being, Inspector! A human being who is capable of love . . . and of being loved too! Who loves me, and who I love too! Don’t forget it!”

  He could have said (judging from Anthony Lemaire’s file) that she hadn’t been such a loving mother, that she had ignored her son for years and had basically abdicated her maternal role. Had she forgotten that? Of course, he didn’t say anything like that to her. It would have been pointless, childish, and above all, unfair. Because now, this woman, regardless of whether or not she had been a bad mother, was miserable. And that was all that counted for the moment. So all he said, in an understanding tone of voice, was, “I won’t forget it, madam.”

  He hung up, and suddenly realized he had a headache.

  The two officers returned to the station around four o’clock, and rather sheepishly admitted they had come up empty-handed. Hamel’s friends and colleagues were shocked, but had no idea where he could be hiding. And at the service stations, the employees had practically laughed at the cops. According to them, a customer’s anonymous face was as distinct in their memories as an individual blade of grass in a lawn. “Unless,” one of them had said, “he looked like Brad Pitt. Which is certainly not the case with your guy!” he had added, looking at the photo.

  Mercure was not really disappointed. What else could he have expected? Pleau handed him a transparent plastic bag containing a thin little rectangle of dark paper.

  “A sample of the nitro pieces stuck to the steering wheel,” she said. “The forensic guys examined them. They say they’re not conventional patches, that they were made to order, probably by a pharmacist. They would be surprised if a surgeon like Hamel could have made them himself.”

  Mercure took the bag. There might be a lead here. He wrote in his little notebook: “Hospital—pharmacists re patches.”

  When the two police officers were about to leave, the detective sergeant asked them if they knew Picasso.

  “Sure, he was a painter,” Bolduc answered spontaneously.

  “Yes, I know that, but do you know his paintings at all, in particular the one called . . .” He checked his notebook. “Guernica, that’s it. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Bolduc shrugged. Pleau knew which painting it was, but had no idea what it meant.

  Mercure left his office a little later to report to Wagner. The chief was in his standard pose—standing behind his chair with both hands on the back.

  Wagner grumbled about the report, but he couldn’t blame Mercure. He knew he had almost nothing to go on.

  “Say, Greg, do you know Picasso?”

  “Of course. He delivers my paper. Very nice guy.”

  Mercure, taken aback, did not react. Wagner got angry. “Of course I know who he is! Why are you interested in Picasso?”

  “There’s a painting by him that I saw in Hamel’s house.”

  Wagner did not object. He knew his inspector’s methods. In some cases, they were a complete waste of time, but they had sometimes led to surprising results.

  “Guernica. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “It’s his most powerful painting. One of his most famous. And one of his most violent too. It’s about the Spanish Civil War. Picasso wanted to show the horrors of war, the pain and misery men could create . . .”

  Mercure stood there openmouthed.

  “I’m impressed, Greg!”

  “You’re forgetting that my wife teaches art history,” sighed the chief, his hands in his pockets. “If you only knew how many museums I’ve had to visit on our trips.”

  “Oh yes! I was also thinking . . .”

  Wagner gave him a funny look, not knowing how to take that remark, but Mercure had already left.

  He told his colleagues in the squad room that he would be in the screening room for a few hours. If Hamel called, they should let him know immediately. Carrying the videocassettes, he shut himself up in the small room containing two chairs, a table, a TV, and an ancient video machine.

  * * *

  At five forty-five, Bruno cooked some pasta, which he intended to eat while watching the six o’clock news on TV. Obviously, his story would make the headlines, although he did not particularly want it to. If he’d had a choice, he would have done without the publicity, but since it was inevitable, he might as well see how they were covering it.

  At five fifty-five, he walked into the monster’s room, carrying a glass of water and a plate of pasta. The fast had gone on long enough. If the monster didn’t eat, he would become too weak.

  The monster fell on the food. He grabbed the hot pasta with his bare hands, stuck his nose in it, and got his long blond hair in the sauce. Bruno watched him eat for a moment, and then thought again: This is your daughter’s rapist, her murderer, here he is, the bastard. He had clenched his fist, ready to strike, when the monster raised his reddened chin and, with eyes full of hope and a nervous smile on his lips, mumbled, “That was nice, that was . . . very kind of you. You . . . you’re being nicer to me now. Maybe . . . maybe . . . it’s almost over, huh? You’re going to free me? You’ve finally realized it wasn’t me, right? Huh?”

  At first, Bruno was so surprised that he didn’t even hit him; then he became pensive. Letting the monster feel some hope was not a bad thing. The more he hoped, the more terrible his despair would be afterward. Yes, letting him hope was an excellent idea. So much so that Bruno made a superhuman effort to indulge him with a reassuring smile, and he became even more excited. Then Bruno left the room, glancing back one last time at his prisoner, who was absorbed in his food again.

  Back in the living room, Bruno burst out laughing. Once again, he noticed the strange tone, and this time he was able to put his finger on what it was: there was no real joy in his laughter. He was laughing, he wanted to laugh, but his laughter sounded hollow.

  Troubled, he went and got himself a plate of pasta, and sat down in front of the TV. He didn’t turn the sound up too much, because he didn’t want the monster to hear it. Since the TV was not on cable, the picture from Radio-Canada was a little snowy, but it was clear enough to see everything and hear everything. They talked about politics and international affairs for the first five minutes, and then they came to his story:

  “Still no leads on the whereabouts of Bruno Hamel, the thirty-eight-year-old doctor who . . .”

  Behind the news anchor, there was an inset of a photo of Bruno. Fascinated in spite of himself, Bruno took a bite of his food, his eyes riveted to the TV. They talked about his seven-day ultimatum. They showed images of the monster going into the courthouse flanked by two police officers. Bruno had already seen them several times. He smiled when he saw the monster’s arrogant expression. Since the day before, he no longer looked like that. The off-camera voice of the reporter explained, “It all began on October seventh, when the Drummondville police arrested a young man and charged him with the rape and murder of young Jasmine Jutras-Hamel . . .”

  Then a photo of Jasmine filled the screen. Smiling, lovely, fragile. The mouthful of pasta stuck in Bruno’s throat.

  “The young man in question, Anthony Lemaire, pleaded guilty one week ago, and . . .”

  Bruno gave a scream and, without even realizing it, sent his plate flying off his knees as he frantically grabbed the remote control to mute the sound. On the TV, the images of the monster continued to go by, but in silence.

  No personal information on the monster! He didn’t want to know anything about his life, nothing! And he had just learned his name! That was already too much!

  On the TV, there was a photo of Bruno and then images of Sylvie running away from the reporters, but Bruno didn’t dare turn up the sound again for fear of learning more about Lem—about the mo
nster.

  Too bad, then! He just wouldn’t watch the news anymore! After all, he didn’t care, did he?

  Well, he did now . . . now that he’d seen the first images, heard the first words. Now he wanted to know. But especially, it was the only way he had to keep up with developments. Because, of course, the police were investigating, and only the TV could provide him with information on that.

  Unless he listened with the remote control in his hand, ready to mute the sound every time they were about to divulge information about the monster? Ridiculous and risky . . .

  Suddenly he had an idea.

  He put on his disguise and left the house.

  * * *

  On the screen of the old TV, Jasmine, dressed up as a sheep, was doing a simple dance with four other little girls in similar costumes. She was a bit awkward, but her enthusiasm was a pleasure to see. To Mercure, she was neither the best of the five little dancers, nor even the prettiest. But he was sure that to Bruno Hamel, Jasmine had been the best and most beautiful dancer in the world.

  Mercure finished his club sandwich. He had been watching the first of the four cassettes for close to two hours. At the bottom of the screen, the date stamp read April 12, 2000, therefore six months earlier. He had also witnessed two birthday parties, an outing to the zoo, a camping weekend, and various other little slices of an ordinary life.

  He had watched it all closely. As he would watch the other three cassettes. He was particularly interested when Hamel appeared on the screen—almost always in a good mood, spontaneous, sometimes a little tipsy, but never behaving inappropriately. And crazy about his daughter. He was a little less demonstrative with Sylvie, on the other hand. Not cold or indifferent, but . . . they seemed like an old couple. Already.

  Wagner rushed into the room. He was relieved to see Mercure.

  “Ah! You’re still here! Perfect!”