by Knox, Tom
“Ghislaine has no other family?”
“No.” Annika’s reply was curt, and barely softened by her continuance: “There is a sister but she lives in Tahiti. Retired. No one else.”
“But I thought … I thought he had kids from a—”
“No children!” Annika’s composure had fractured, momentarily; and now she turned: “Nothing like that. He was alone.”
Then the studied calmness returned, like the older woman had neatly zipped her unwanted emotions into a bag and dropped this bag disdainfully into a bin. Julia noted that Rouvier had turned to observe this female exchange. His frown was not unhappy, it was the frown of curiosity. Professional and clever.
Julia guessed he was very senior in the Lozère police force, because she likewise surmised that there weren’t many murders, out here in France’s loneliest departement. So any such crime would attract the most senior policemen.
The lights of suburban Mende glowed fizzy-drink orange on the rain-blurred horizon. Rouvier spoke quickly and quietly with Annika. Julia tried to listen in, even as she tried to pretend she was not, out of politeness; she definitely caught the phrase prepare yourself.
For what? How had he died? Who had murdered him?
The shock of the situation kicked in, once again, or maybe for the first time properly. Julia felt a shiver of fear run through her. Murdered.
Now they were in Mende, the car was actually speeding up, emancipated by these empty urban highways, which were virtually deserted at this time of night—and in this type of weather. They slashed through rainy Mende, jumping amber lights, their police siren howling in a satisfying way.
She watched the sights of her adopted and temporary hometown flee past the windows. The cathedral, the museum, the Hotel Lion d’Or. Why did every French town have a Hotel Lion d’Or?
And then the hospital. Julia had never visited the hospital before, but it was just like any hospital. It could have been a hospital in Chicago.
“Par là … je connais bien la route.”
Doors opened, nurses passed, old people lay on gurneys, staring grimly at nothing: people cuckolded by their own bodies, betrayed.
The four of them took an enormous steel elevator to the basement. Again Julia felt the absurd urge to fill conversational silence. What could she say: Hey, isn’t this a big elevator?
She said nothing. Shut her eyes. Tried not to think of what they were about to see. Would she even see anything, would they allow her in as well? Ghoulishly, Julia wanted to observe the body. She had never seen a murdered person. She desired the unique experience even as she despaired at her own heartlessness. Poor Annika. Poor Ghislaine.
The French being spoken was urgent, but whispered, like they were in church, as they walked the long corridor to the mortuary. Julia asked herself why people always whispered in the presence of the dead. The dead, she thought, are also deaf.
A wide door swung open automatically. As they crossed the threshold, a man in light-blue rubber gloves came over, briefly smiled at Rouvier, scanned the other faces, and met Annika’s eyes with his own. She nodded.
He motioned: this way.
It was all happening very quickly. Julia had expected more of a palaver, a prologue, some polite and ritual ablutions. But this was brisk French efficiency, verging on harsh unsentimentality. The four of them filed through a wide, overbright room, full of gurneys and the vague forms of bodies under plastic sheets—the sleeping dead, all patiently waiting.
Now they paused, but only for a fraction of a second, and then the doctor pulled the top of the plastic sheet down to the neck.
It was Ghislaine’s face. He seemed almost calm. The eyes were shut, with just a smudge of blood on the nose. The skin was ghastly pale, but the relaxation of death gave the professor, oddly, a more youthful appearance. No longer straining and posing; the absurd hair was tousled, like a young man’s hair, charmingly unkempt. It looked better that way.
What a horrible, horrible pity. A huge, engulfing wave of sadness and pity nearly knocked Julia down. She steadied herself, gripped her feelings. Poor Ghislaine. Why had he died? How? Who?
“Oui. C’est lui.” Annika had spoken; she had identified le corps. The doctor went to pull the sheet back, but Annika reached out a dignified arm and gripped his wrist.
“Non, laissez-moi voir—”
She wanted to see the rest of the body. The doctor threw an anxious glance at Officer Rouvier, who hesitated—and then nodded, discreetly.
The doctor pulled back the sheet. They stared.
And they recoiled. Even the two men, who must have seen the body before.
Ghislaine had been almost ripped apart. That was the only description: he had been cut up with such savagery it was practically a dismemberment. The blood was splattered on the underside of the plastic sheet; so much blood was smeared on his wounded corpse that he looked like he was tattooed red and purple, all over.
Whoever had knifed him to death had done it with wild anger, lust even. Slashing his arms and legs, plunging a knife into the groin—several times, cutting and slashing. A bestial attack. Revoltingly pornographic.
Lost in her own thoughts, Julia only now realized that Annika was sobbing.
Softly, but wrenchingly, the Belgian woman was crying, trying to hide her flowing tears behind her hands. Rouvier gestured to his junior officer and requested, in French, that Annika be driven back to her cottage. The junior obeyed, taking Annika gently by the arm. The doctor did his duty and wheeled away the transformed and brutalized corpse of Professeur Ghislaine Quoinelles.
Rouvier and Julia were alone in the mortuary. He sighed.
“These places. Always I think—one day I shall come in here, and I will never come out again. But, let us be thankful, not today.”
They took the elevator to the ground floor. Rouvier seemed keen to talk, lingering by the front door of the hospital, where a few patients in dressing gowns were smoking the midnight hours away under a steel-and-glass awning.
“There is a machine over there with the most terrible coffee. I believe I need one. And for you?”
“Black. Thanks.”
Rouvier jangled some coins and went to the machine.
Julia breathed in the rainy night. In the chaos and confusion she had left her car at Annika’s. She had quite forgotten. But she couldn’t be bothered to arrange a wearying or expensive lift to the Cham now—especially as she’d just have to drive all the way back, the same night.
She would sleep here in Mende, in her nearby apartment, and maybe get a lift from Alex in the morning. After all, he would want to go and see Annika. Offer comfort.
Moreover, she was happy to be right here, at the hospital, surrounded by people. She didn’t want to go home alone to her empty rooms, not right now, not immediately. She was actually scared. Who did that appalling killing? The randomness and barbarity was frightening. Julia noticed her hand was shaking as she reached to accept the white plastic cup of coffee from Rouvier.
She sipped.
“You’re right. It’s disgusting coffee.”
“It is a miracle, non? To make coffee this bad is practically a biblical event.”
“And stupidly hot, too.”
He nodded and smiled. She noticed he had very neatly manicured hands. She liked Rouvier. He reminded her of her father at his nicest: gentle, clever, protective.
It seemed a shame not to take this opportunity to ask him a few questions. Julia’s scientific brain was keen to take control again, to exert a grip on her febrile emotions. That way she could fend off the sadness, and fear, and memories. The raped body of Ghislaine chimed unhappily in her mind. That day her father drove her back from Sarnia. Sobbing.
She purged her thoughts and asked, “Do you have any theories? Any suspects?”
Rouvier shook his head, blowing cold air on the coffee.
“No. But there are some clues. The arrangement of the knife blows is interesting. He has many, many cuts on the hands and fingers.”
“The distribution of the cuts shows he had his arms, hmm, what is the word … elevated. Elevated. To protect himself.”
This was a little mysterious.
“Protect himself. How?”
“Maybe the killer was trying to stab him high in the head. That is our suspicion. The front of the head. The forehead or the eyes. Naturally, there is a reflex: to lift your hands. In that situation.”
It was a horrible image.
“How do you know it was one killer?”
“We don’t. But I think, just a guess, I think I am right. One big man, frustrated, and then frenzied. Yes, that is a very good English word. Frenzied.”
“Who found the body?”
“A neighbor. I understand she is very upset.”
“Not surprised. Jesus. Jesus.” Julia was gulping her coffee now; it was cooler, and she needed it. The bitter taste was apposite. “So. Do you have any theories about motivations? Did Ghislaine have enemies?”
“Motivations?” said Rouvier, half smiling, half avoiding her gaze. “No. Yes. No. A man with no close family? No girlfriend. No rivals in his small field. Yet a man with a famous name.”
“Famous?”
“OK, perhaps not famous. But well known.” Rouvier crushed the plastic cup in his hand and chucked it in a trash can from a distance; he smiled at the accuracy of his aim. Then he sobered and turned. “I knew Ghislaine Quoinelles. He was, perhaps, a little haunted by his surname.”
“How?”
“His grandfather was a famous scientist.” Another moue of a shrug. Rouvier was looking ready to leave. “I do not know much more. But I often wondered why he came south, to little Lozère. In France a famous surname can be a wonderful advantage. We are meant to be a meritocracy, the great republic! But énarques descend from énarques. The sons of small Hungarians in the Élysée get to run La Défense at the age of twenty-three. Quoinelles was rich and clever and descended from famous men, politicians, scientists—yet he came here to tiny Mende, where literally nobody lives! For a Parisian, Lozère is like Siberia. Maybe he tried to escape the shadow of his surname.”
Julia absorbed the sudden information. It attained a sort of logic. A hint of a pattern. Perhaps.
“Oedipal. Yes. But what has that got to do with the murder?”
Rouvier smiled in a valedictory way. “Hélas. Nothing. Probably nothing. But we have no clues and no witnesses and no suspects, so I will try anything. Perhaps you can help us?” He warmed to his own theme. “Ask Madame Annika, maybe, she may know more, you are her friend. She is a difficult woman to pry open, like an oyster. Find the pearl. And now I am talking rubbish, is it not so?” He laughed, quite cheerily, and reached in the pocket of his smartly dark uniform. Then he produced a card with a debonair flourish. “Call me, telephone me. Anytime. But now it is late, I go, I must drive a long way home. You live in Mende? You need me to drive you? Let me drive you—” His hand reached for her arm.
She flinched. She couldn’t help it.
“No!”
Her voice was way too sharp—punchy and aggressive.
Rouvier gazed back, perplexed and confused, and Julia winced at what she had said. But she couldn’t help it. The words had ignited the memory. A car, a dark winter night, crossing the border to Ontario, to drink underage. “Hey, babe, let me drive you…” Her resolve never to let that happen again.
“No. Sorry. Please. I…”
His frown was sincerely tinged with hurt.
“I was merely offering to assist. Miss Kerrigan?”
“I know. I know. It’s just that … You know. My apartment is quite near.”
“D’accord.” He gazed her way again, puzzled still. But then his frown subsided and he glanced up at the weeping sky. “And now it is raining. Il pleure dans mon coeur / Comme il pleut sur la ville.”
Julia nodded, keen to move on, to forget. “‘It rains in my heart like it rains on the city’? I know that line. Rimbaud, right?”
“Ah, no. It is in Verlaine, in the works of Verlaine.”
His smile was renewed, but it was sad, and it was distracted; it was obvious he really wanted to leave. Julia focused on the present. She still had questions: she had so many questions, but there was one she needed to ask now; she felt it was important, but didn’t know why.
“Monsieur Rouvier—”
He was actually walking away; but he turned.
“Oui?”
“You said Ghislaine’s grandfather was a famous scientist. What was he famous for?”
The officer stood beneath a streetlight; rain tinseled in the glow as he pondered the question. Then he smiled faintly, his face illuminated by an answer.
“I might be wrong, but I think it was breeding. Yes, something audacious. Like that? Yes—I believe it was crossbreeding.”
“Crossbreeding—between what? What species? What animals?”
His smile faded to nothing. “Men.”
“Sorry?”
“Men and animals. He tried to crossbreed men with animals, or so I believe.” The smile returned. “Au revoir, Miss Kerrigan. Au revoir.”
11
Rising from the bed, Jake slowly approached the door. Hanging from the hook was a terrible thing.
What was it? A tiny dead monkey? A dried fruit bat? What the fuck was this? A brown leathery mammalian corpse just hanging here? Surely it couldn’t be worse, surely it couldn’t be what he most of all feared?
His revulsion mixed with his furious curiosity. He walked closer. And then his stomach surged with the bile of confirmed disgust.
This was no monkey. This was unmistakably not animal.
It was a human embryo.
A human fetus, somehow dried or mummified, was hanging by its own umbilical cord from the coat hook on the door.
The fetus stared at him. Its blank open eyes were milky white.
He heard a scream.
He stared.
The scream didn’t register; it was like a distant car alarm, not really meant for him. He was so transfixed by the sight of those eyes, dead eyes rolled back, like his sister. No, don’t think this way. But he couldn’t help it. Slowly he pulled on his jeans and a shirt, and all the time he kept staring at the baby, the dead fetus, the possessed, horrifyingly white eyes, like his sister’s, lying in the road; until he realized it was Chemda. Screaming.
Chemda!
He kicked open his door and the scream was still loud in his ears—her room was next to his. Shunting through her door, he found her, sitting on her bed, panting and gasping, her face wrought with fear. She was pointing at something, wordless and terrorized.
He didn’t have to guess. Hanging by its umbilical cord, from the rafters of the timbered room, was another fetus.
“Chemda. Come on—”
She was naked, wrapped in sheets. She didn’t move.
“Chemda. Please. Now!”
He walked over to her, took her damp hand; her gaze yearned beyond him, through him, at some fearful horizon. Then a lucidity reappeared; she nodded, dumbly, and he turned away as she hurriedly put on a dress. Before they could open the door a maid was in the room; the maid also screamed. And her scream was unbearable, existential: like she sensed her own approaching death. The maid’s rubber-gloved hand was weakly pointing at the limply hanging fetus; her mop had fallen to the floor. Then she screamed again. A wild klaxon. Shrieking and shuddering.
Jake didn’t know what to do: rescue Chemda, or calm the near-hysterical maid. He grabbed Chemda’s hand once more, and they fled into the garden.
He was agitated for an hour; it took Chemda two hours to calm down. Madame Marconnet brought tea and a blanket and the maid hovered nearby, distraught, her small, dusty hands trembling and shaking as she smoothed down her dirty apron, over and over. Sitting next to Jake, Chemda stared fearfully at the river and the boats and the algae nets and the singing fishermen, and for a hundred minutes she said nothing. And then, finally, she spoke.
“Talism
ans.” The voice from the back of her throat. “They are talismans.”
“What?”
“In Khmer—koh krohen … or kun krak.”
Once more she fell silent.
They were alone again in the secluded riverside garden of the Gauguin. Madame Marconnet had withdrawn, the maids had finally gone back to work—to clean the rooms, to take away those horrible things.
The garden, he now noticed, was beautiful. In front of them the milk-chocolate waters of the Mekong communed with the dark-chocolate waters of the Nam Khan. But all Jake could think about was those cold and dead and horrible milky eyes. Above them the leaves of the tamarinds tinkled and whispered, yet Chemda was still shivering with fright.
He needed to know.
“Talismans. What kind of talismans? How?”
She looked his way; she was visibly struggling to master her emotions. “It will all sound insane. But you must know the Khmers are very superstitious. Ah. For instance, you see the little spirit houses everywhere in Cambodia, to trap evil ghosts, the neak ta? Right? And gangsters with sacred tattoos, to ward off bullets: Phnom Penh is full of them.”
Jake nodded. He had seen these tiny, sinister shrines. And yes, the tattooed gangsters were everywhere, draped with blessed amulets.
“I’ve seen all that. But why here, us, why those things?”
“The belief in spirits goes deep in my culture, Jake.” She shuddered again. “Very deep. Even the Khmer Rouge, for all their atheism, were the same: animist and superstitious. And it’s not just Khmers who believe in the power of Khmer voodoo.”
“Sorry?”
“Khmer voodoo, Khmer black magic, is feared right across Southeast Asia. The Lao hate it, the Thais fear it, the Malays, the Burmese, the Chinese all pay homage. The Thai prime minister is thought, by Thais, to use Khmer talismans, kratha.”
Down by the pier, fishermen were hauling in nets, a meager catch of little silvery fish. Pungent and flapping.
“So what exactly are these talismans in our room? You called them something. Just now.”
“Koh krohen. They could be koh krohen. Ah. Dead babies. Embalmed.”