Syndrome E

by Franck Thilliez

  “Yeah, it’s still pretty rank. They were soaking in muck, and the heat didn’t help. You can imagine how much CSI and the ME are digging this.”

  The chief inspector drew a sharp breath, then studied the bottom of the pit.

  “So what were they? Men, women, children? Any clue to their ages?”

  “All men—you’ll get all that from the forensic anthropologist. Four of them in pieces. The dampness of the ground and proximity of the Seine must have sped up the decomp. They were practically just skeletons, though there was still some putrefied flesh, fluids, you get the—”

  “And the fifth?”

  Poirier nervously squeezed his water bottle. Beneath his T-shirt, he was drenched. His forehead was dripping, his skin releasing ounces of water and salt.

  “Also male, fairly well preserved. Comparatively speaking. With the other bodies above and below, it must have created a kind of insulating layer.”

  “Any body bags or special wrapping around the bodies?”

  “No. No clothes either. They were completely naked. The guy who was better preserved had been…had scrape marks over part of his body. Arms, chest. Shit, I saw it with my own eyes…He was like a peeled orange. You can’t imagine.”

  Actually, he could. He sighed. The case promised to be a tricky one, another file that would stack up with so many others in Nanterre, and that they’d churn through the computer now and then. He held his hand out to the lieutenant.

  “Help me get down.”

  The detective did as asked. Sharko had the feeling the young man had already seen too much, so early in his career. He was in the quagmire from which he wouldn’t emerge unscathed a few years down the road. All cops followed the same trail, the one that hurtled toward the abyss and didn’t let you turn back. Because this bitch of a job chewed you up and ground you down, guts to nuts.

  The chief inspector let go of Poirier’s grip and stood in the pit. He brushed some soil from his shirt with the back of his hand. The air reeked of morgue drawers, the sun was fading, and over it all floated a sickly swelter. The cop squatted down and crumbled some dirt between his fingers. It had been sifted so as not to miss the slightest clue: small bones, bits of cartilage, insect pupae. CSI had done a thorough job. Sharko stood back up, lifting his eyes toward the ocher dirt walls. Six feet deep meant some serious digging to bury these corpses. Meticulous fellow…

  “My chief mentioned something about skulls sawed open.”

  Poirier leaned over the top. A bead of sweat pearled on his forehead and dripped into the trench.

  “That’s true, and the press has been on it like white on rice. It’s been causing quite a stir. They’re talking about a serial killer and the whole shebang, pure craziness. We couldn’t find any of the skull tops. Just vanished.”

  “What about the brains?”

  “There wasn’t a thing in the skulls. Except dirt. The medical examiner is still working on it. Seems the brain and eyes are the first things to decompose and disappear after death. So for now, we have no idea.”

  He stuck out his tongue and dripped the last dribble of water onto it from his bottle.

  “Fucking heat!”

  Feeling edgy, the young man crushed the container in his palm.

  “Listen, Inspector, how about if we get out of here? I’ve been hanging around for two hours and I could use some fresh air. We can talk on the road—I have to go back with you anyway.”

  Sharko looked around the place one last time. For now, there was nothing left to see or discover. The crime scene photos, the close-ups and aerial views of the surroundings, if there were any, would certainly tell him more.

  “Anything else peculiar about the bodies? Had their teeth been pulled out?”

  A pause. The young man gave a nod, amazed.

  “You’re right. No teeth. And the hands had been cut off too. How did you—?”

  “All five?”

  “I think so, yeah. I— Excuse me a minute.”

  Poirier disappeared from Sharko’s field of vision. A hell of a day for him, no doubt about it. The chief inspector slowly paced along the trench. In the distance, he could see the two nitwits from the TV news most likely zooming in on him. They discreetly moved away toward their rental car. The cop remained alone, staring at the empty space. He imagined the corpses, stacked five high…One had been skinned over part of his body—why? Had he been shown special treatment? Pre- or postmortem? All the questions inherent to a crime scene rushed to his lips. Had the victims met each other? Did they know their killer? Had they died at the same time? Under what circumstances?

  Once again Sharko felt the first shivers of a new investigation, the most exciting part. It stank of death, backhoe fuel, and humidity, but he still caught himself loving those nauseating odors. There had been a period when he got off on adrenaline and shadows. When he lost count of the times he returned home in the middle of the night to find Suzanne sleeping on the couch, huddled up and in tears.

  He loathed that past life as much as he missed it.

  Farther on he found a construction ladder leaning against a wall of the trench and easily climbed out. A blacktopped road ran about thirty yards beyond it—no doubt the one the killer or killers had taken to dump the bodies. Rouen police must have started making inquiries in the area, questioning the factory staff just in case. But given the spot, they’d have had to figure they’d come up empty-handed.

  A ways over, Lucas Poirier was sitting beside the Seine, cell phone at his ear. He was probably calling his wife to say it was looking like he’d be home late that evening. Soon he wouldn’t bother calling at all, and his prolonged absences would become just part of the job. And years after that, he’d finally realize that what the job really meant was learning how to live alone with your demons. With a sign, Sharko let him know they were heading out. The detective from Rouen hung up and ran to join him.

  “So how did you know about the teeth?”

  “A vision. I’m a profiler, don’t forget.”

  “Are you bullshitting me, Chief Inspector?”

  Sharko favored him with a sincere smile. He liked the naivety of these kids. It proved they still had something pure about them, a glow you couldn’t find in the old-timers, the ones who’d seen it all.

  “The perp stripped his victims. He chose very loose, damp soil near the water to speed up the decomposition. Despite the fact that the spot is isolated and unsuited for building, he was afraid they’d be discovered, which is why he dug so deep. So with all those precautions, he certainly wouldn’t have left identifiable bodies. These days, specialists can lift fingerprints even from wizened corpses. The killer might have known this, so he went at it with a vengeance. Without teeth or hands, these bodies will remain anonymous.”

  “Not entirely—we’ll still get their DNA.”

  “DNA, yeah…You can trust that if you like.”

  They got into the car. Sharko turned the ignition and pulled out.

  “Who should I talk to about my hotel room? I know I sound like a broken record, but I want a large one, with a real bathtub.”

  6

  Ludovic Sénéchal lived behind the Marcq-en-Baroeul racetrack, in a calm town right next to Lille. Discreet neighborhood, “contemporary”-style single-family brick house, lawn small enough so you wouldn’t spend your entire Saturday mowing the grass. Lucie raised her eyes toward the upstairs window, a wry smile on her face. It was in that charming little room that they’d made love the first time. A kind of online dating package: you meet for fake, then for real, you sleep together, and you see how it goes.

  She’d seen. Ludovic was a good man in every respect—serious, attentive, with a heap of other sterling qualities—but he was definitely lacking in the thrills department. Quiet little life spent watching movies, putting in his time at the Social Security office, then watching more movies. Not to mention a real tendency to sink into moods. She had a hard time imagining him as the future father of her twins, the one who’d cheer them on at d
ance competitions or take them bike riding.

  Lucie slid the key into the slot, but saw that the door hadn’t been locked. It was easy to guess why: in his panic, Ludovic had left everything as it was. She entered the house, bolting the door behind her. It was large and handsome, modern, with all the room she and her girls lacked. Someday, perhaps…

  She remembered where to find the cellar. Their private movie screenings, with beer and freshly made popcorn, seemed somehow memorable, timeless. Walking down the hallway, she came across broken or toppled objects. She could easily imagine Ludovic feeling his way upstairs, completely in the dark, knocking everything over before he managed to get her on the phone.

  Lucie went down the flight of stairs that led to the mini-cinema. Nothing had changed since last year. Red carpeting on the walls, the odor of old rugs, seventies ambience…It had its charm. In front of her, the pearlescent screen quivered under the white light from the projector. She opened the door to the minuscule projection room, which was hot as an oven, owing to the powerful xenon lamp. A loud hum filled the space, the take-up reel spun uselessly, the tail of the film clacked in the air at each rotation. Without thinking, Lucie pressed the fat red button of the power unit, a mastodon weighing 130 pounds. The rumbling finally stopped.

  She flipped a switch and a neon light flickered. In the small room, empty film cans, tape recorders, and posters were stacked haphazardly. It was Ludovic to a T: an organized mess. She tried to remember how you went about loading a film: switch the feed and take-up reels by slipping them onto the projector arms, screw on the knobs to keep them in place, press MOTOR, align the film sprockets with the rollers…With all those buttons in front of her, the operation was more complicated than it appeared, but with a certain amount of luck Lucie managed to get the machine working. Through the magic of light and optics, the succession of still images would be transformed into fluid movement. The cinema was born.

  Lucie switched off the neon light, closed the door of the elevated booth, and descended the three steps that led to the screening room. She remained standing against the back wall, her arms folded. This small, empty room, with its twelve green leatherette seats, had something profoundly depressing about it, just like its owner. Staring at the screen, Lucie couldn’t help feeling a vague apprehension. Ludovic had talked about a weird film, and now he was blind…What if there was something dangerous about these images, like…like a light so sharp it could ruin your vision? Lucie shook her head—that was idiotic. Ludovic had a brain tumor, end of story.

  The beam of light titillated the darkness and briefly lit up the white rectangle. Then an image of uniform black spread over it, followed, five or six seconds later, by a white circle that settled into the upper right-hand corner. Suddenly, music rattled the walls—a jolly tune, the kind you used to hear in old street carnivals, among the wooden merry-go-rounds. Lucie smiled at the awkward splutters that were plainly audible; the sound track must have come from an old 45, or even a 78.

  No title or credits. A woman’s face appeared in close-up in an oval that occupied the center of the screen. All around this oval, the image remained dark, a kind of grayish, almost black fog, as if the cameraman had put a mask over the lens. It made you feel like a voyeur peeping through a keyhole.

  The actress struck Lucie as beautiful, hypnotic, with large, enigmatic eyes that gazed directly at the lens. She was about twenty, with dark lipstick, jet hair brushed back, a kiss curl on her forehead. One could glimpse the top of her checked suit and pure, immaculate neck. Lucie was reminded of those family photos, the kind you find inside austere pendants hidden in grandparents’ jewelry boxes. The actress didn’t smile and seemed a bit distant, the kind of femme fatale Hitchcock would have loved on his set. Her lips moved, briefly: she was saying something, but Lucie couldn’t make out what. Two fingers—a man’s fingers—entered the frame from the top and spread the lids of her left eye. Abruptly, jutting from the left, the blade of a scalpel slit the eye in two, rightward, in the throb of circus music and the clash of cymbals.

  Lucie jerked her face away, teeth clenched. Too late: the image had struck her like a blow and it filled her with rage. She had nothing against B horror movies—she often rented them, especially on Saturday evenings—but she despised this method of suddenly splashing something horrific over the screen without any warning. It was cowardly and low.

  Suddenly, the fanfare stopped.

  Not a sound, other than the harrowing thrum of the projector.

  Shaken, Lucie looked back at the screen. One more scene like that and she’d turn the whole thing off. After her time in the ER, she’d had quite enough of blood.

  The tension had ratcheted up a notch. Lucie no longer felt quite so assured.

  The projector continued to send out its cone of light. The next image was the soles of shoes. By a translatory movement, they receded into the distance. The sky shone reassuringly. A well-dressed little girl was on a swing, smiling broadly. It was shot in black and white, silent, even though the girl could be seen talking at various points. She had long, fair hair, blond no doubt, and she radiated liveliness. Her eyes caught the light; the shade patterns from the trees played over her skin. The lighting, the camera angles, and the expressions drawn from her childish face suggested that this was the work of a pro. Most of the time, tracking shots—he must have swiveled around with a handheld camera on his shoulder—stayed on the girl’s eye: clear, pure, and full of life, it palpitated, the pupil contracting and widening like a diaphragm. The white circle did not budge from its position in the upper right, and Lucie found it hard to ignore. It wasn’t that it attracted her—more like it irritated her. She couldn’t say why, but she felt a prickling in her stomach. The scene with the slit eye had definitely affected her.

  Next came some very quick cuts focused on the girl. A jumble of disconnected sequences, as if in a dream, which could be situated in neither time nor space. Certain images skipped, probably because of the quality of the film. It flitted from the slit eye to the swing set, from the swing to the little girl’s hand playing with ants. Close-up of her childish mouth eating, of her eyelids opening and closing. Another, in which she petted two kittens in the grass for two or three minutes. She kissed them and held them tight against her, while fog—Lucie couldn’t help wondering about the technique used here—closed in around her. When the girl raised her eyes to the camera, she wasn’t acting. She was smiling in complicity, speaking to someone she knew. Once she came toward the camera and began spinning around and around. The image spun as well, accompanying the dance and, amid the fog, provoking a sensation of vertigo.

  Next sequence. Something had changed in the little girl’s eyes. A kind of permanent sadness. The image was very dark. All around her swirled the same drenching fog. The camera moved forward, then back, as if taunting her; the girl pushed it away, both hands in front of her, as if she were chasing away an insect. Lucie felt out of place as she viewed the film. She felt like an intruder, a voyeur secretly watching a scene that might be taking place between father and daughter.

  Just as suddenly it tipped into another sequence. Lucie’s eyes widened, taking in the scene: a stretch of grass surrounded by fences, the sky black, stormy, chaotic, and not quite natural—a special effect? At the far end of the pasture, the same girl waited, arms hanging along her body. In her right hand she held a butcher’s knife, so out of proportion to her small, innocent fingers.

  Zoom in on her eyes. They stared at the void, pupils visibly dilated. Something had shattered that child; Lucie could feel it. The camera, placed behind the fences, spun rapidly to the right to focus on a furious bull. The animal, monstrously powerful, foamed at the mouth, pawed at the ground, and butted against the barriers. Its horns pointed forward like sabers.

  Lucie’s hand flew to her mouth. They weren’t really going to…

  She leaned against the back of a seat, head bent toward the screen. Her nails dug into the leatherette.

  Abruptly an unidentified arm entere
d the field of vision and lifted a latch. The person doing this had taken care to remain offscreen. The pen was opened. The overexcited beast charged straight ahead. Its body expressed power of the purest, most violent kind. How much did it weigh—a ton? It stopped in the middle of the field, pivoted around, and then seemed to focus its attention on the little girl, who remained motionless.

  Lucie considered running back into the projection booth and shutting off the film. Playtime was over; it was no longer about swings, smiles, or complicity—this was sinking into the inconceivable. Lucie, a finger on her mouth, could not turn her gaze from that satanic screen. The film was sucking her in. In the sky, the black clouds swelled, grew darker, as if preparing for a tragic ending. Lucie suddenly had the sense of a staged battle: Good versus Evil. An outsized, all-powerful, unassailable Evil. David against Goliath.

  The bull charged.

  The silence of the sound track and the absence of music added to the feeling of suffocation. One could imagine, without hearing it, the sound each hoof made as it fell, the snorting from the animal’s greasy snout. The camera now contained both subjects in its field: the bull on the left, the little girl on the right. The distance between the monster and the stationary child was growing shorter. Thirty yards, twenty…How could the girl not be moving? Why wasn’t she running, screaming for her life? Lucie thought briefly of the kid’s dilated pupils: Drugs? Hypnosis?

  She was going to let herself be gored.

  Ten yards. Nine, eight…

  Five yards.

  Suddenly, the bull came to a halt, its muscles twitching, while clumps of earth flew from the ground. It froze completely, barely one yard away from its target. Lucie thought it must have been a freeze-frame; she couldn’t breathe. Inevitably it would start up again, and the tragedy would occur. But nothing moved. And yet, the monster continued to pant, frothing at the mouth. One could read in its enraged eyes the desire to continue, to kill, but its hulk refused to obey.