Syndrome E

by Franck Thilliez

  “Paralyzed” would be the best word to describe it.

  The girl stared at it without blinking. She took a step forward and slid beneath the head of this beast forty or fifty times her weight. Without betraying the slightest emotion, she raised her knife and slit its throat with a clean swipe. A black cascade began to flow and, as if vanquished by a demented matador, the beast fell over onto one side, raising a cloud of dust.

  Suddenly, a black screen, as at the start. Slowly the white circle at the upper right faded out.

  And then flickers in the room, like applause of light. The film was taking a bow.

  Lucie remained frozen in place. She felt shaken to the core, and very cold. She nervously rubbed her forehead. Had she really seen an enraged bull stop short in front of a little girl and let its throat be slashed without reacting, all of it in one continuous shot with no visible edits?

  With a shudder, she returned to the booth and sharply flipped the switch. The rumbling ceased, the neon flickered on again. Lucie felt infinite relief. What twisted mind could have filmed such deliria? She could still see that dingy fog spreading over the screen, those close-ups of the eyes, the opening and closing scenes of such unspeakable violence. There was something in this short that classic horror films couldn’t provide: realism. The girl, seven or eight at most, didn’t appear to be acting. Or if she was, she did it exceptionally well.

  Lucie was about to head back upstairs when she heard a noise above her head. The crunch of a shoe on glass. She held her breath. Had the tension of the film caused her to imagine things? She moved forward cautiously, step-by-step, finally reaching the entrance foyer.

  The door was open.

  Lucie rushed forward, certain she’d locked it when she’d come in.

  No one outside.

  Dumbfounded, she went back in the house and looked around. At first glance, nothing had been touched. She moved on to the main hallway and checked the other rooms. Bathroom, kitchen, and…study.

  The study—where Ludovic kept his many films.

  Here again, the door was open. Lucie ventured into the stacks of reels. Dozens of canisters lay scattered about the floor. Celluloid spilled out in all directions. The cop noticed that only the canisters without labels—the ones that indicated neither title, director, nor year of production—had been disturbed.

  Someone had been in here looking for something specific.

  An anonymous film.

  Ludovic had told her he’d acquired some reels the day before from a collector, including the one she’d just been watching. She hesitated, studied the room. Calling in a team to make a report seemed pointless. There was no break-in or vandalism, no theft. She nonetheless went back down to the cellar and packed up the strange film, so she could bring it to the restorer whose card Ludovic had given her. She couldn’t recall ever having seen such a psychologically taxing piece of work. She—who’d been used to autopsies and crime scenes for years—felt drained.

  Back outside she thought to herself that, all in all, that glare of sunlight in her face wasn’t such a bad thing.

  7

  “What did you do before going to Violent Crimes, Chief Inspector Sharko?”

  “To keep it simple, let’s say I put in a lot of time in CI.”

  “Very well…”

  Georges Péresse, chief of the Criminal Investigations unit in Rouen, which had caught the case, was a hard-faced man. In the car, Lucas Poirier had described him as a rigid, tenacious fellow who hated any sort of intrusion on his turf. Floating in his gray suit, Péresse measured barely five foot three but could boom out a voice like Barry White. It felt like the air was vibrating when he blew his stack.

  “We’re not really accustomed to working with…behavioral analysts. I hope you’ll be able to manage by yourself—we’re understaffed as it is and my men are very busy.”

  Sharko sat opposite, hands on his knees. The heat was stifling.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be as quiet as an autopsy report. In two or three days I’ll probably scram with a stack of Xeroxes under my arm. The main thing is for me to have access to the info”—he pressed his finger against the gleaming desk—“all the info, I mean, and for my hotel room to have a bathtub, because I like to take a cold bath when the temperature gets like this.”

  Chief Inspector Péresse let out a wild burst of laughter. He stood and turned up the fan, placed just in front of President Sarkozy’s portrait.

  “So you want all the info, do you? Well, canvas of the area—nada for the moment. Direct or indirect witnesses—nada. Apart from the rotting corpses, we didn’t pick up a single clue at the scene, which is understandable given they’ve been buried for several months and with the storms we’ve had. The whole medical corps—the ME’s office, forensic anthropologist, entomologist—are squabbling among themselves to figure out what belongs to who. It’s worse than a jigsaw puzzle. They’ll definitely be at it all night again. Our only certainty is that they’re all human adults. Unfortunately, that’s about all you’re likely to leave with, Inspector. In other words, not much.”

  Sharko closed his eyes each time the breeze from the fan lapped at his cheeks.

  “What does the missing persons file say?”

  “Too early to tell. I’m waiting for the medical examiner’s report for the ages and physical characteristics. One thing’s for sure, we haven’t had any specific reports of a group disappearance, either here or anywhere else in the country.”

  “And what about outside the country? What does Interpol say?”

  “First things first. The investigation has only just got under way. First we’ve got to figure out exactly what we’re dealing with here. I’ve got nothing against intel from Interpol, but first we have to know what information we’re asking them for, don’t you think?”

  He crossed his arms and stared out through the smoked-glass window. The central police station, a glass and steel blockhouse, clashed with the rest of the city’s left bank. Péresse turned back to his colleague from Paris.

  “And what are your early deductions?”

  Normally, working from thick dossiers, Sharko started with four basic elements to work up a profile: the crime scene itself, the MO, the killer’s psychological state during the crime, and his psychological state overall. For the moment, he didn’t have a precise starting point. The only plausible hypothesis was that the victims had not been killed on site—slicing open a skull wasn’t the kind of operation you performed on the street corner.

  “Frankly, I don’t have much. It might be worth checking into the delinquents and violent criminals in the area. Recent parolees, for instance. Given the number of bodies, we can’t exclude revenge killings. In most cases, criminals attack people they know. We’re probably looking for somebody with a panel truck or SUV. You can’t cart around five stiffs in a buggy. Maybe check with the local car rentals?”

  “We’ll take care of it.”

  Sharko snatched up his jacket from the chair and slung it over his shoulder.

  “I’ll look in on the ME tomorrow, once all the autopsies are done. Could you make sure they know to expect me?”

  A vague sigh.

  “As you wish. Will there be anything else?”

  Sharko held out a solid hand.

  “See you tomorrow, Inspector. Here’s hoping the corpses are feeling talkative. I used to be in your shoes once upon a time. I know it’s no cakewalk.”

  Half an hour later, Sharko was quietly dining at a sidewalk table outside a restaurant facing the magnificent Rouen cathedral. A trace memory from his school days told him that the crypt housed the ticker of Richard the Lionhearted. Sharko smiled. He still had excellent recall, which he regularly exercised with crossword puzzles. One of his few qualities that hadn’t gone to hell. There, at that moment, he was content, almost happy. Getting out of the capital had done him a world of good. Here life seemed different, more leisurely and restful. To his great satisfaction, he’d discovered his room had a tub, on the fifth flo
or of a certain Hotel Mercure, behind the cathedral.

  He ate pasta until he’d had his fill, followed it with a disgusting Camembert sorbet—clearly meant for tourists—and doused himself with water. This heat, even at night, was definitely going to wind up kicking his ass.

  He went back to the hotel. After an ice-cold bath, he slipped into some undershorts, shined his shoes, and pulled a wrapped package from his duffel bag, along with an old battery-operated tape recorder. He delicately removed the bubble wrap to reveal an O-gauge Ova Hornby locomotive, with its black car for wood and charcoal. One of the front headlights had broken off, but the engine beat all speed records on the wide circuit set up in his apartment.

  The chief inspector placed it on his nightstand, swallowed a Zyprexa with a glass of water, and lay down on top of the sheets, hands folded behind his neck. The hotel, the dampness of an anonymous room…all of that was so far away now, since he’d begun tracking down his suspects from the safety of his leather desk chair.

  Today, he recognized his old self in the contact with the terrain, the blood, the guts. He still didn’t know how it would affect him. He might well get off on it, but the past also threatened to rear its head big-time. Better to keep some distance. Remain procedural, do his job, and stay behind a pane of glass. Otherwise, Eugenie would make him pay. The little girl in his head hated it when he derailed.

  When all the lights were out, he rolled onto his side and turned on the tape recorder. Tonight, Eugenie would certainly not come to visit. Those radiations in his brain would keep her asleep for a bit.

  The rasp of miniature trains, cruising full steam ahead on their tracks, rumbled from the speaker. Sharko fell asleep with a smile on his lips, seeing the faces of his wife and daughter, whom he’d lost five years earlier in horrible circumstances.

  He had come to Rouen to investigate an abominable crime, but no matter. Alone in the middle of his bed, with his trains and a bathtub nearby, he felt just fine.

  8

  After her misadventure at Ludovic Sénéchal’s, Lucie had left that vile film with the restorer, Claude Poignet. Once he had absorbed the news of Ludovic’s blindness, the septuagenarian specialist in film autopsies had taken the reel away with him, promising to look at it first thing.

  For now, Lucie sat with her daughter. Heaving a long sigh, she brought the fork one last time to Juliette’s mouth. The doctors had said to keep pushing; the girl needed to eat. Easier said than done.

  “Come on, just take one bite, just for me.”

  The child shook her head and started to cry. Her complexion was sallow, her cheeks sunken. Lucie pushed away the tray holding the awful dish of pureed peas and held her daughter tight. She felt the little hands slip off her back, their strength gone. It was hard seeing such an energetic and happy kid disappear inside pajamas that were now too big for her, or move around with an IV in her arm.

  “Never mind, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

  “Mom, I want to see Clara.” Her voice was a whisper.

  For the past two days, Lucie had been gauging the breadth of her mistake. She hesitated to call back Juliette’s sister from her first summer camp. Clara had so been looking forward to this vacation with her little chums.

  “Soon, Juliette. Soon. She’s going to send you a beautiful postcard. She promised.”

  Lucie verified that no staff was around and took some chocolate-covered cookies from her pocket.

  “Want one of these?”

  Juliette nodded limply. “Can I?”

  “Yes, of course. But just don’t tell anybody, okay? Cross your heart.”

  Juliette weakly crossed her chest and smiled, then finally swallowed some of the cookie. Her throat got stiff, making her veins and tendons stand out. Lucie made sure to get rid of the wrapper, happy that her daughter finally had something in her stomach.

  Juliette climbed back into bed, exhausted by her illness. When the nurse came to take her vitals, she noted with a frown, “Two spoonsful of puree, half a biscuit, and no ham.” In other words, they weren’t about to take out her IV yet. Which meant bye-bye to even the hope of getting out of there soon.

  Worn out, Lucie remained with her daughter until the little girl fell asleep; her eyes stared blankly at the TV screen.

  The news talked of that sordid affair in Upper Normandy near a pipeline. A bunch of corpses, skulls sawed open…A profiler on the case, whose face she saw onscreen at that instant. A solid-looking guy, built like a cop and definitely not like a shrink. Where did he come from, which school? Had he already had experience with serial killers? In a way, Lucie envied him. This business of bodies with sawed-off skulls was the kind of case that would have got her revved up like nothing else. The thrill of discovery, tracking down a sick and dangerous criminal. But she was on vacation, for God’s sake, and it was the middle of summer. A time when people were supposed to be enjoying themselves, letting go, giving their brains a rest. This evening, alone, with her kid in some lost corner of the hospital, she felt light-years away from people like that.

  Lucie placed a new stuffed toy near Juliette—a blue elephant, brought by her mother—told the nurse she was leaving, then headed over to Salengro Hospital, a hundred yards from the pediatric wing. Dr. Tournelle had news about Ludovic Sénéchal.

  The physician met her in a large room, in which a scanner and cutting-edge equipment were visible behind wide panes of glass. Facing Lucie on a luminescent wall was a spread of X-rays. On a table lay articles and anatomical diagrams of the eye, nervous system, and brain. The doctor was edgily rubbing his chin. Since she’d seen him that morning, his hair had shriveled on his skull and the bags under his eyes had swollen. He wasn’t as seductive as before. Just some overworked guy like anyone else.

  “We spent the day running tests. Ludovic Sénéchal was transferred to the psych ward in Freyrat about an hour ago.”

  Lucie was floored.

  “Psych ward? What for?”

  Tournelle removed his glasses and massaged his temples.

  “Let me try to explain in layman’s terms. Ludovic is not blind, in the physiological sense. As I told you this morning, our evaluation of his pupillary reflexes and ocular structures revealed no significant abnormalities. On the other hand, the patient presents with an unfocused gaze and absence of visual contact.”

  “You mentioned psychiatry. So it wasn’t a tumor?”

  The doctor turned toward the two dozen X-rays depicting Ludovic’s brain and pulled one down.

  “No. Look—it’s all clear. Not the slightest anomaly.”

  He might just as well have been showing her the brain of a cow. Still, Lucie felt reassured: Ludovic wasn’t going to die.

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “We also looked for lesions around the visual cortex, which might have explained a cortical blindness, but we didn’t find anything there either.”

  “Cortical blindness?”

  The doctor gave her a tired smile.

  “We tend to believe that sight is in the eye, but that’s just a tool, a kind of light well. Read this, you’ll understand.”

  Lucie took the printed card that he handed her:

  This txet will demonsrtate that yuor brian dose not trnaslate exaclty waht yuor eye sees. Intsaed, infulecned by waht it has laerend, it reocignzes wrods golbally, wihtuot paynig muhc attnetoin ot teh ordre of teh lettres.

  “Impressive.”

  “Isn’t it? The retina just lends its body, so to speak, to materialize a physical image, like a movie screen. It’s just a passive object, a lens. The brain is what interprets life experience, the cultural context, according to its knowledge. It’s the brain that makes the image what it is: a meaningful object.”

  He put the X-ray back in its place.

  “The remarkable thing about this patient is that he can avoid certain obstacles without seeing them. A box we put in his path, for instance. A chair, a dresser. We filmed it—you can watch the recordings. It’s really amazing.”

  �
��No, thanks. That’s okay. So he sees without seeing. That’s incomprehensible.”

  “Incomprehensible from a medical standpoint. But if we physicians can’t find anything, it means the origin is psychological.”

  “Are you talking about something like…depression, or schizophrenia? Something along those lines, that’s keeping him from seeing?”

  “You’d be closer to the mark talking about neurosis, anxiety, phobia, or hysteria. Personally, we’re leaning toward hysterical blindness. That’s a sensory disturbance that falls under the conversion hysterias: imaginary paralysis, deafness, numbness of the limbs…Perhaps the best-known example is the phantom limb.”

  He shut off the lights and asked Lucie to follow him down the corridors of the neurology ward. The wan lighting gave the place an antiseptic, futuristic look.

  “A psychiatrist could tell you more about this than I can, but hysteria is a defense mechanism meant to protect the psyche from a sudden shock. It can be triggered by an event that has something to do with the patient’s childhood. Some element that was profoundly traumatizing.”

  “Could certain images cause this?”

  “I know what you’re talking about. That film that supposedly drove him blind…Mr. Sénéchal has not stopped talking about it. Yes, in theory that’s possible, and given the circumstances I think the cause comes from there. His blindness occurred in the middle of the viewing. The only hiccup is that the patient claims he wasn’t shocked by the images onscreen. He’s used to watching movies, and the sliced eye he told me about at the beginning apparently didn’t make him blink. As for the rest, nothing traumatic, according to him. He wasn’t even able to see the end of the movie—he was already blind.”

  “So he didn’t see the scene with the bull?”

  “Bull? No, he didn’t mention it. On the other hand, he talked a lot about a feeling of unease, increasing anxiety as the film went on. As if something had grabbed him by the throat and squeezed it until he’d lost his sight.”

  Lucie had felt exactly the same thing, the sensation of suffocating. She rubbed her arms. And yet, between the slicing of the eye and the beast getting its throat slit, which Ludovic hadn’t seen, there wasn’t anything really all that shocking. Just a little girl petting kittens and eating at a table.