by Cédric Sire
“Yeah. And you’re starting to get on my nerves, now,” Deveraux snapped. “Inspector Svärta was attacked in her home at five thirty-six precisely. She called Dispatch, and it was all recorded, you see? We know it was you, son. All we want is for you to tell us where you took her.”
“I didn’t do anything. I was already gone by that time!”
“Yeah, right. Because she kicked you out. That’s what you told us, is that it?”
“Yes, that’s what happened.”
“Except you didn’t tell us why she did that.”
“I…”
“The night didn’t go as you expected?”
Deveraux leaned over the table, bringing his angular face toward the young man.
“You guys had a fight? You can tell me.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“You didn’t realize at first how much of a self-centered bitch she was, right? What did she do, make you feel like a piece of shit? She insulted you? She just laughed at you? Your dick wasn’t big enough? Is that what made you fly off the handle?”
“We did not fight! She just wanted me to leave. It happens, okay? I’ve done it to plenty of girls myself. I just never realized how humiliating it is, that’s all. I did as she asked me. There’s no crime in that.”
The policeman took a last gulp of coffee and licked his lips. After setting the mug on the table, he adjusted his tie.
“Delicious. It’s too bad you can’t have any.”
The young man swallowed.
“I don’t know anything else, sir. I was gone.”
“But you just said that she humiliated you.”
“I… no… that’s not…”
“I bet it doesn’t happen to you often, some chick treating you like that, right?”
“But…”
“Is that why you hit her? So she would stop making fun of you? So she couldn’t humiliate you anymore? You wanted to teach her a lesson she wouldn’t forget. Is that it?”
“I never fucking hit her!” the boy shouted, losing his temper.
The door opened, and Chief Ô walked in.
“Losing our cool?” he said, taking a seat across the table from Anthony. “No need to get that worked up, young man.”
“I’m getting nowhere here, boss,” Deveraux said. “That goddamn kid is pigheaded.”
The boy looked at both officers, then pressed his hands to his head.
“I didn’t touch her,” he repeated in a broken voice. “Whatever it is that you blame me for, I’m innocent. I slept with that chick, and then I left. That’s the truth.”
“That chick, she’s our colleague, and she was kidnapped,” the unit chief said in a dry voice. “We know she was beaten. We found her blood on the floor, you understand? Her blood and your fingerprints.”
“We fucked, sir,” the boy said. “So it’s sort of expected that my prints would be all over the place! Christ, I don’t know what more to say! If she was attacked like you say, then it happened after I left. Maybe your dude was already in the building? Have you even thought of that?”
The unit chief stared at him, his face solemn, and the boy felt like the man was reading his thoughts.
“Let’s pretend that’s the case, Anthony. Did you see anyone else there when you left? In the hallway or in the lobby?”
Anthony tried to remember. A waste of time.
“I’m not sure, sir. I took the elevator. There was nobody.”
“On the street, then?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And when you opened the door to get out of the building, you are sure you didn’t let anyone in?”
“Yes, I’m sure of that.”
Ô folded his hands. His eyes had shadows under them, but they expressed boundless determination.
“Then we have a problem, don’t you think?”
Anthony lowered his head, his serpentine hair falling in his face.
“Oh, fuck,” he muttered. “Fucking shit.”
Stepping out of the room, Ô gestured at Detective Benavente.
“Florian, he’s all yours. You make him start from scratch again.”
The policeman nodded and pushed open the door to meet their prisoner. Then Ô walked away, Deveraux on his heels.
“Jesus Christ!” the chief exploded when he reached the stairs. “She’s been gone seven hours! We’re too slow!”
He pointed his chin toward the interrogation room at the end of the hallway.
“Is it him?”
“No, boss. I wish it was, just like I would love to shave that junkie’s head. But he really does look lost. I think he’s telling the truth. We don’t have the right guy.” Deveraux hesitated, then added, “It’s the same MO. Like it or not, it’s our murderer who kidnapped her. And if he proceeds the way he usually does…”
Holding onto the stairway banister, Ô watched the officers coming and going down below.
“So did the neighborhood canvassing uncover anything?” Deveraux asked.
“Nothing. We’re getting nowhere.”
They spotted Detective Leroy running up the stairs.
“Good, you guys are here! I’ve got the hematology results. The blood on the floor is Eva’s.”
He met them at the top of the stairs, a stack of papers in hand. “But the blood on the broken mirrors belongs to someone else. It’s a woman, and her type is AB negative. It is, by far, the rarest type of blood type. Less than one percent of the population has it. At least we have something.”
“We have nothing at all,” Ô interrupted. His face was chalky. He looked like a statue. “Man or woman, it’s our killer who’s done this, right? Maybe he wanted to teach us a lesson, or else he simply found himself some big game this time. Either way, if we don’t find Eva within twenty-four hours, she’s dead. We have no time for speculation.”
Neither Deveraux nor Leroy could think of anything to add.
Suddenly, there was an outburst below. The three men leaned over the banister and saw Detective Mangin running up the stairs behind a man in a dark suit that barely contained his huge body.
“Stop! Now! It’s an order!” Mangin kept repeating.
“Are you completely fucking stupid? I need to see the chief. And I’m going to see him right now!”
The man got to the third-floor landing and planted himself in front of the three stunned officers. He was at least a head taller than any of them. He had heavy features that looked chiseled, a dark complexion, and a crooked nose, which was probably the result of an old fracture. His deep black eyes looked feverish.
“I’m looking for Chief Ô,” he said. “It’s very important.”
Detective Mangin spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness.
“I’m sorry, boss! There’s no reasoning with the guy. He wouldn’t even wait to get his visitor’s badge.”
“I don’t have time for this bullshit!” the man exclaimed. “I told you I’m a fucking cop already.”
Ô took a step forward, running a hand over his mouth. He knew who the man was. He had seen his picture plenty of times in the paper.
“I know you are, Inspector Vauvert, but that doesn’t exempt you from procedures. I am Rudy Ô. Now what the hell are you doing here?”
38
In his office, Ô listened to Vauvert without interrupting him. This is going to be one hell of a long day, he thought, massaging his temples.
“Good. So you left Toulouse and flew all the way up here, just like that?”
“No, I didn’t leave just like that. I’m working a case. I tried to call your department, but a dickhead hung up on me. Some Devout guy.”
“Deveraux.”
“Yes, whatever. A year ago, you sent Inspector Svärta down to help us, and she’s the one who put us on the Salaville lead. It stands to reason that I would want to do everything for her now.”
Ô, inscrutable, stared at the giant as though trying to decipher his thoughts. Vauvert knew the man was trying to probe his mind, but he did not blink.
“With all due respect, sir, we are wasting precious time here. You and I both know what happens in cases like these. Past the first twenty-four hours…”
“I know,” Ô said. He hesitated, then he added, “She might already be dead. You are aware of that, aren’t you? If it is revenge the psychopath wanted.”
“So let me help you!” Vauvert interrupted. “What’s the problem? We’re on the same team, aren’t we?”
He leaned forward, towering over the unit chief, and looked him in the eye.
“I’m begging you,” he said.
“Very well then,” the chief answered.
The look on his face was heavy with worry.
39
Eva clenches her teeth.
The pain is unbearable.
Beyond anything she has ever experienced. It’s as if hundreds of hooks are digging into the flesh of her thigh.
She is not sure what is worse, though. That pain or the thought of what will follow—what will inevitably follow.
The ropes are hurting her wrists. Her outstretched arms are cramping. She does not dare pull on the bonds, for fear of constricting her circulation even more.
Her eyes misty with tears, she utters a faint small-animal whimper.
What could she do now? How could she possibly endure this a second time without going insane? She can’t, right? Nobody could. Panic floods her mind. She can’t think straight anymore, and she grits her teeth even harder.
“Please,” she begs.
The masked woman produces an oddly soft laugh.
“Struggling won’t help,” she says. Her voice, just like her laughter, is deep and velvety. It’s the laughter of a mature woman who knows what she wants. “You are completely mine, my little tiger that needs to be tamed. Oh, yes.”
Eva whips her head to one side, then the other. No. No. NO.
But the woman is drawing closer, her black satin dress flowing over her shapely figure. Her black curly hair cascades over her shoulders and down to her buttocks. It frames the white mask on her face. But when she tilts her head, the hair moves in an odd way, like a movie playing at the wrong speed. Eva realizes that the hair is fake. The fucking psycho is wearing a wig.
The eyes in the porcelain mask are fixed on her. They are bright flames searing the darkness. The woman brings her hand to her mouth and runs her tongue over her red fingers, wet with Eva’s blood.
“Do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve given me? No, of course you don’t. You can’t understand the importance of what you’ve tried to interfere with.”
Eva has no clue what she is talking about, this woman, this insane bitch, this monster dressed up like a human being. Her thoughts have gone wild. They’re spinning faster and faster in her head, and she is six years old again.
Like it or not, Eva has always been six deep inside. All the nonsense she said during therapy is forgotten, vanished. Any trace of self-confidence she might have had has been swept away, like a fragile sand drawing erased by the tide, nothing more. She is six years old, and she never was a woman, never knew the reassuring joy of controlling every detail of her life. She is six and, yes, she is still trapped in that basement, still in the clutches of a monster dressed up like a human being.
She always knew that this moment would come, sooner or later.
The first time, the monster only took Justyna.
Now it has come back for her.
The monster is leaning over her.
Its mouth is huge, its eyes two chasms filled with stars behind the marble-like mask.
“So? You’re not screaming? You’re not crying?” the monster asks.
Wanting to scream? Wanting to shriek, yes.
And cry.
Oh, wanting so much.
Eva shuts her eyes. Tremors run through her body. Her biceps tense like cables. But her wrists and feet remain trapped. There’s nothing she can do. Her body remains laid out like a cross, offered for its own destruction. Even so, she has to keep resisting if she intends to live a bit longer. Gain a few hours, maybe.
“You will have to cry. You will have to beg. That’s how the ritual goes. It is the pain that calls them. The pain and the tears.”
Eva gulps, and it is like she’s swallowing razors. The pounding of her heart is deafening.
“No,” she manages to utter as an ultimate defiance.
“You will come to it. There are no options for you.”
She raises the scalpel, and again Eva pulls at her ties, even though she knows she cannot avoid the inevitable.
She clenches her jaw. As hard as possible.
The blade presses against her abdomen.
Just below her belly button.
Her skin breaks open, and the blade sinks into her flesh a half-inch maybe. Maybe more.
This time, Eva howls.
“Ah, you see?” the woman says, raising the blade.
She brings the scalpel to her mouth. The tip of her tongue catches a drop of blood.
The smile is radiant below the porcelain mask.
Eva is gagging. The world is spinning, all around her. She can feel the black river coming back, the darkness waiting to engulf her and drown her, once and for all. The burning sensation devours her belly. Her whole body screams with pain, this too-intense pain. Her blood runs slowly down her sides. Her life becomes a river churning against her naked skin, against her goose pimples, following the shape of her hips, and puddling under her buttocks. She can hear the dripping in a metal container.
As it was with the others.
The container that collected their blood.
That’s what the crazy bitch is doing. She is going to bleed me like she did the others.
“You know that this is going to go on for a while, don’t you? It’s important. The ritual must be done correctly.”
Eva tries to catch her breath. Her throat is filled with blood. She spits it out, sending a ruby splash onto the immaculate whiteness of the mask in front of her.
In her mind’s eye, the details stream past, all that this woman has done to her previous victims. She has studied the photos of their bodies, mutilated beyond imagination. She knows all the specialists’ reports by heart. She knows precisely what the women went through. Stabbed thirty times, some of them. More than sixty times, others. Their faces cut. The eyes gouged out. Their skin ripped off. While they were still alive.
This last thought is like a trigger, and all Eva can perceive is this pain pulsing through the wounds in her thigh and her belly and the blood oozing out of her. She cracks. Absolute panic takes over. She lets out a scream that rises and turns into a howl, louder and higher-pitched, and even that doesn’t stifle the sound of the blood dripping into the container. She arches her back, pulls on the ropes.
Until the hand of the woman rises over her again.
Eva can see the glittering blade. She can see the arc that the scalpel makes as it comes down toward her hip, and she can see the red splashes in front of her eyes or inside her eyes—she can no longer tell.
She keeps on screaming.
Until her vocal chords snap. The pain devours her and chews her up with fangs of red fire.
Above the fiery smile, the hand goes up again.
The blade comes down again.
Her eyes roll back in her head.
She cannot even see the woman anymore as she raises the blade yet again, casting fresh arcs of blood.
But she can feel the explosion of pain when the blade strikes. Yet again.
Until Eva, finally sinking into unconsciousness, stops screaming.
40
2 p.m.
Erwan Leroy was waiting for them in the hallway, a cloud of smoke around him. When the office door opened, he dropped the cigarette into his coffee cup and tossed everything in the trash can.
The chief pointed at Vauvert.
“He’s with us. I’m expecting full cooperation. Understood?”
“Loud and clear, boss. I was actually thinking of going back to
Eva’s apartment, in case we overlooked anything.”
“Both of you go,” Ô said, heading for the interrogation room. “Bring back something.”
Vauvert shook the young detective’s hand.
“Thank you, Erwan.”
“Any time,” Leroy said. “We need all the help we can get. Besides, Eva talked about you often.”
“Oh, really?”
Vauvert waited for him to say more. But he did not. Leroy just walked toward the stairs. Vauvert followed, burning to ask why she had mentioned him, and what had she said about him. Instead, he bit his tongue and followed Leroy down the black linoleum stairs.
They crossed the inner courtyard and climbed into a white Peugeot. Inside, the smell was a mix of tobacco and sweet perfume.
Vauvert stole a glance at the officer: his fashionable vest under his leather coat, his pale-gray Hugo Boss T-shirt. He looked like a typical playboy, barely thirty, blond hair falling over his eyes, wrestler’s shoulders, and gleaming-white smile. More often than not, Vauvert felt an instant dislike for this kind of guy. But not this time. He noticed that the young man’s hands shook almost imperceptibly on the steering wheel. There was an old wound, carefully hidden behind Leroy’s pretty-boy looks.
They drove along the Seine River until they reached the Bastille and then took Avenue Ledru Rollin. Traffic was light for a Monday. Leroy gave Vauvert a rundown of the past two days’ events and told him about the few bits of evidence they had so far. Broken mirrors. Blood belonging to an unknown woman, AB negative. He also shared the link that Eva had made with the crimes committed by Countess Bathory, who tortured her handmaids until they died.
“As creepy as the story is, it’s true,” Leroy said. “I spent a good chunk of last night reading up on that countess. She mutilated those poor girls with extreme perversity, exactly like our killer. She stuck needles all over their bodies, and she carved up their skin with razors.”
“So she could drink their blood like some kind of vampire?” Vauvert asked.
He could not help thinking about what Mira had told him. The parallel between the Salaville brothers and Dracula’s servants. But he chose to set aside those thoughts for the time being.