Syndrome E

by Franck Thilliez

  The children’s features tensed further, their shoulders drooped, their terror burst forth. One of the girls rushed out from the group with a howl and leaped at the animal hopping in front of her. She grabbed it by the ears and slammed it against a wall.

  The next pictures defied anything the human spirit could conceive.

  Carnage, hecatomb, madness: this is what emerged from the horrifying sequence. One by one, the little girls set about slaughtering the animals. Spurts of silent shouts, blood, bodies flying, crashing against walls, or being trampled. No limit to the horror, the barbarity. The image wavered as the camera hesitated, not knowing where to turn next. The cameraman tried to catch the girls’ faces and movements, zooming in and out to capture the dizzying quality of the scene.

  In less than a minute, the forty or so rabbits had been massacred. Dark spots polluted faces and clothes. The children were panting, on their feet, on all fours, squatting, completely disunited from one another. Their faces had become haggard, their eyes staring at guts and blood.

  The film ended. Black screen on the computer.

  Lucie folded down her laptop with a long sigh. She opened her hands, palms stretched toward her face: her fingers were still shaking. Uncontrollable tremors that hadn’t left her since the day before. Once again, she felt a physical need to hold her sick daughter. In pajamas, she rushed toward Juliette’s bed and hugged the sleeping child in her arms. On the verge of tears, she caressed her hair tenderly. She rarely wept these past years. You can sob so much during a period of depression that it seems like you’re all cried out. But here, she felt the faucets threatening to open again, that a rain of grief could submerge her. A cop’s equilibrium is so fragile. It’s like a nutshell that slowly cracks open, with every tap of a manhunt or crime scene.

  Feeling an irrepressible need, Lucie got up suddenly, picked up her cell phone, and dialed Sharko’s number, which she’d gotten from administrative services. She had to talk about this case with someone. Spew it all up into an understanding ear, someone who could listen, who was in tune with her. Or so she hoped. To her great dismay, she got his voice mail. She took a breath and blurted out:

  “Henebelle here. We’ve got some news about the film—I’d like to talk to you about it. How’s it going in Egypt? Call me when you can.”

  She hung up, stretched out on her back, and closed her eyes. The film was her obsession, its images seared into her brain. Kashmareck hadn’t been very talkative on the way back either. Though they should have been going over the case in detail, each one preferred to concentrate on the strip of asphalt, lost in private thoughts. The captain had merely said, “We’ll talk about this tomorrow, Lucie. Tomorrow, okay?”

  Okay, tomorrow. It was already tomorrow. A sleepless night populated with monstrosities.

  Juliette suddenly turned and nestled against her mother’s chest.

  “Mom…”

  “It’s okay, baby, it’s all okay. Go back to sleep. It’s still early.”

  Sleepy voice, full of love.

  “Will you stay with me?”

  “I’ll stay with you. Forever.”

  “I’m hungry, Mom.”

  Lucie’s face beamed.

  “You’re hungry? That’s great! You want me to—?”

  But the girl had already fallen back asleep. Lucie sank into a sigh of relief. Maybe the end of the tunnel. This particular one, at least.

  Children, she thought, returning to her case. Hardly older than Juliette. What monster could have forced them to act that way? What mechanism could have triggered such violence in them? Lucie could still see the room, the outfits, the antiseptic environment. Was it a children’s hospital, like this one? Were those girls patients suffering from some commonplace illness, or a serious mental disturbance? Was the man who always kept out of camera range a doctor? A scientist?

  The doctor and the filmmaker. A cursed pair, who had worked together some fifty-five years ago. And whose ghosts had perhaps returned.

  These unanswered questions circulated endlessly in her head. Flashes popped before her eyes, while dawn gradually spread its first colors over the steel and concrete of the medical center.

  Who had created that sick film, and for what reason?

  What had they put those poor girls through, lost in the thankless anonymity of concealed images?

  If there had been a large cave nearby, Lucie would have taken refuge in the darkest corner, knees huddled against her chest, and thought, thought, and thought some more. She would have tried to give the killer a face, flesh out the silhouette. She liked to feel the killer she was tracking, smell the odor he left in his wake. And she was pretty good at that game; Kashmareck could attest to that. Beckers, with his scanners, would surely have seen in her brain an area that didn’t light up in anyone else when confronted with a scene of violence: that of pleasure and reward. Not that she felt any pleasure; she pretty much felt like puking at each new investigation, vomiting to the death before the horrors that humans were capable of inflicting. But an invisible lure snared her every time. A hook that ripped out her throat and destroyed her inside, but she couldn’t get rid of.

  This time, it wasn’t a little fishing gear that had titillated her.

  No, the line was much heavier than that.

  Perfect for going after sharks.

  26

  They must have been driving for a good half hour. Since the car had started jostling about, Sharko couldn’t make out the sound of traffic. Just a sizzling noise beneath the tires. Then, more and more, it seemed that the end of the world was taking place, behind the metal of the trunk lid. A demonic wind howled, a spluttering rain crashed down from all sides with a sort of chiming sound.

  A sandstorm.

  Atef was bringing him into the desert.

  He tried every way he could to free himself, to no avail. The layers of packing tape cut into his wrists. The filthy rag stuffed in the back of his throat had made him feel more than once like throwing up. Fuel shook around in a can, under his nose. Was he going to die like a dog? How? Were they going to pour gasoline over his head and incinerate him, just like Mahmoud? He was scared, with a stark fear of suffering before passing to the other side. He could stand a lot, and death came with the territory, but not suffering. Today, the great shadowy hand was going to close over him like a sarcophagus.

  Join Suzanne and Eloise, but from the bad end of the road.

  The 4×4 stopped. As a gray light filtered in, kilos of sand rushed into the recess and stung him in the face. The wind trembled. His nose covered with a cloth, Atef Abd el-Aal yanked him from the trunk and pulled him by the arms. It felt as if someone were whipping his cheeks, his forehead, his eyes. They walked for two minutes, straight ahead. In the haze of dust and sand, Sharko could make out a stone ruin with caved-in roof, buffeted by storms and wear. A long-abandoned shelter.

  His tomb. The most miserable, anonymous place in the world.

  Once inside, Atef released him. He collapsed, coughing into his gag.

  A splash of water to the face. The sand dribbled down his collar. Atef swore in Arabic.

  The Egyptian ripped open the inspector’s shirt and wrapped several layers of tape around his chest, attaching him to a metal chair. Sharko breathed with difficulty through his nostrils. Thirst gripped his insides. Atef ripped off his gag. The cop coughed up repeatedly, before spitting out in a thread of bile:

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Atef gave him a shot in the nose with his fist. His features were twisted with hatred.

  “Because they asked me to. And they’re paying me like a sultan for it.”

  He waved Sharko’s cell phone.

  “You got a message.”

  He listened and snapped the phone shut.

  “A woman from your country, nice voice…You getting it off with her? Is she good, you son of a dog?”

  He let out a great burst of laughter and began scrolling through the call log.

  “You haven’t called anyon
e since yesterday—that’s good. You’re a man of your word, which is unusual for you Westerners. And for your information, my uncle’s been dead for the past ten years.”

  The torturer disappeared into another room. Around the stone structure, the wind roared; the skin of the desert adhered to the exits and slid into the cracks. Windows were broken, loose tiles littered the floor, iron bars jutted from the walls like daggers. Sharko tried the tape around his wrists: it burned.

  The Egyptian returned with a large battery, alligator clamps, knives with curved tips, and a jerry can of gasoline. At that moment, the cop knew he was done for. He struggled, receiving in exchange a punch in the stomach. He slowly lifted his chin. Blood was running from his nose.

  “Your brother. It was you…”

  “He could never accept my homosexuality. I owe him four days in the putrid jail at Qasr el-Nil. One thing they’re especially fond of over there is hanging you on the falaka, whipping the soles of your feet, and shoving their nightsticks up your ass.”

  From a small bag he pulled a miniature tape recorder and a water gourd. He took a swallow.

  “I took care of him myself. It was child’s play. He had to be stopped from looking into that affair.”

  “Who’s giving the orders?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I said I have no idea. But so what? Those people gave me a life, they allowed me to be a person of respect. And now, you’re going to tell this tape recorder everything the French police know about the case. You will answer my questions. If you don’t, I will cut you up piece by piece.”

  He rubbed his mouth, his eyes demented. The grains of sand whipped across the hovel, crackled on the walls. He barked something in Arabic, then turned on the battery. The clamps snickered in a bouquet of sparks; the air seemed to crackle. Suddenly, without warning, the Egyptian shoved them onto Sharko’s chest.

  His screams mixed with the wail of the desert.

  Atef pushed a button on the recorder. The asswipe was getting off on this.

  “Tell me about the unearthed bodies. Do you have any way of identifying them?”

  Tears welled in the policeman’s eyes.

  “Go…fuck yourself. Snuff me if you want…I don’t give a shit anymore.”

  Atef shook his jerry can.

  “I’m going to burn you a little, play around with my knives, then leave you here in the desert—alive. The hyenas and vultures will make a meal of you within hours. Your body will never be found.”

  He smacked Sharko across the face with the gas can.

  A crack, a spurt of blood.

  “They want the recordings, do you understand? I have to prove I did my job, that they can trust in me. If you weren’t so tenacious, this wouldn’t be happening. But you—you’re like my brother, you’d have taken this all the way to the end. By digging around, talking to the right people, you would have ended up coming across the trail of the hospitals on your own.”

  The voltage needle on the battery spun across the dial in a tenth of a second. Sharko contorted, teeth clenched. A fat vein swelled on his forehead, and his organs felt like they wanted to leave his body. When the electrical storm passed, he felt his head droop to one side. A violent slap made him come to.

  “How much do you know about Syndrome E?”

  The inspector raised his chin, at the limit of unconsciousness. His entire body tormented him.

  “More than…you could ever imagine.”

  Another slap. His eyes shot toward the back of the room. Eugenie was sitting cross-legged in a corner, rubbing grains of sand between her fingers. She was giving him her harshest stare.

  “Can you tell me what the hell we’re doing here, my dear Franck?”

  Sharko couldn’t see clearly; he was blinded by tears. His lips opened in a sad smile. Blood began pouring from his nostrils and gums.

  “You really think I had a choice?”

  Atef knit his brow. He brandished his clamps again threateningly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Eugenie stood up, eyes blazing.

  “You always have a choice!”

  “Not with my hands tied behind my back.”

  Sharko’s eyes were rolling in their sockets, following the girl’s movements around the room. Atef took a step back and turned around. Then the inspector leaped up and charged forward, headfirst, while still bound to his chair. He butted Atef in midabdomen with all his strength. The blow sent the Arab flying backward. There was a sharp intake of breath as he hit the wall. A steel spike jutted out of his left breast. His limbs went limp, but he wasn’t dead. His face was contorted in pain and his mouth gave no sound. He raised his hands to the metal rod, but had no strength to do anything more. Blood began flowing from his lips. Surely a perforated lung.

  Sharko let himself fall on his side, exhausted, his back aching horribly. Eugenie had moved closer to Abd el-Aal and looked at him with a grimace.

  “That’s your life all over. Corpses, fear, suffering…I’m not even ten yet, Franck, and just look at what you’ve made me witness in all these years. It’s disgusting.”

  In his ungainly position, Sharko had dragged himself to the knives, clutching onto them with his fingers.

  “I’ve never kept you here. I never forced you to come with me. Don’t say it isn’t true.”

  He managed without too much difficulty to undo his bonds. Standing up, he leaped at the fat water gourd and drank until his thirst was slaked. The liquid dribbled down his chin and chest, where the clumps of hair had been singed. He smelled of char, of cinder. With a piece of cloth, he wiped his nose and walked up to the still-breathing Atef. Sharko looked through his torturer’s pockets: papers, wallet, a cigarette lighter. He took the keys to the car, reclaimed his cell phone, and poured gasoline over the Arab’s head. The dying man’s eyes still found the strength to open wide.

  Sharko turned toward Eugenie, sitting in a corner.

  “You don’t have to watch this.”

  “I want to watch you. I want to see what horrors you feed on to keep living.”

  “He deserves it. Can you understand that?”

  Sharko clenched his jaws, hesitating. Slowly, his furious eyes rose toward Atef’s. He came within inches of his lips.

  “I’ve hunted down garbage like you all my life. I would have killed every last one of you if I’d had the chance. I loathe people like you from the depths of my soul.”

  He flicked the lighter and smiled:

  “Thanks for the clue about the hospitals. And this is for your brother, you son of a dog.”

  He stood there, not moving. He wanted the Arab to go to hell with the image of his face as the last thing he saw. He was still smiling when Atef contorted in a final breath, when his skin began to crackle. Then, with no longer a thought for Eugenie, he charged forward, head down. All around him was the apocalypse. The desert was churning; you couldn’t see farther than ten yards. The black smoke mixed with the swirling sand. Sharko spotted the 4×4 and took shelter in it. He had to wait half an hour for the sandstorm to end, which headed off west like a giant steamroller. A search of the car hadn’t yielded anything—not a cell phone, not a handwritten note. Just a pen and some Post-its. The caramelized pig had been careful. As for the message on his own phone, it was just Henebelle. Sharko would call her when he got back to Paris.

  The vehicle contained a GPS that could be set to English. The policeman tried out “Cairo center.” And crazy as it seemed, the machine calculated and indicated a direction—some ten miles away, six of them over the burning stones of the desert. They wouldn’t find Abd el-Aal for quite some time.

  He looked at his hands. They weren’t trembling. Steady. He had burned a man alive in cold blood, without repulsion, driven by no more than a dangerous hatred. He hadn’t thought he was still capable of it, but the shadows were still within him, alive as ever. You never got rid of things like that.

  Before setting off, Sharko carefully noted the GPS coordinates of where he was, though he do
ubted he’d ever have to come back here.

  Very soon, he recognized the first foothills of the Mokattam Mountains, as well as the Saladin Citadel. Once in the city, he tossed the GPS out the window and stashed the 4×4 in an abandoned corner near the Necropolis, leaving its doors unlocked. Given the area and the number of auto parts resellers per square yard, it would take less than an hour for the vehicle to be stripped.

  He was lucky. In France, he would have had trouble getting away with such a crime, with the police force’s technical know-how and its doggedness in uncovering the truth. But here, between the heat, the desert, the vultures, and above all the incompetent cops…

  On foot, Sharko rejoined the wider streets on the other side of the citadel. For once, the rumble of traffic had a calming effect. A taxi honked, and Sharko raised his arm. The driver stared at him strangely when he climbed in back.

  “That’s okay?”

  “That’s okay.”

  Sharko asked for the Salaam Center, in Ezbet el-Nakhl.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  He rubbed a handkerchief over his face and it came away covered in sand and blood. Every time he moved he heard a whining sound, even down in his shoes.

  Initially, he’d considered telling everything to Lebrun, then thought better of it. He couldn’t quite picture himself confessing to the French embassy that he’d killed a man in self-defense on Egyptian soil. No one would believe his story; Noureddine had it in for him. He wouldn’t get any special treatment. He’d be risking a diplomatic incident, prison time. Egyptian jail—no, thanks, he’d had enough torture. No choice in the matter: he had to keep his secret, act alone. And, consequently, forgo the chance to gain information by digging into Atef Abd el-Aal’s past.

  On the way, he tried to put some order into that convoluted story.

  Fifteen years ago, a killer with medical training violently murdered three girls, leaving behind no visible traces. The case quiets down, but a scrupulous Egyptian policeman persists, picks up the trail, and fires off a telegram to Interpol. The killer, or people in contact with the killer, become aware of it. Are they cops? Politicians? Top-level executives with access to privileged information? Whatever the case, these people decide to make Mahmoud disappear along with most of his evidence. They employ his brother, who essentially becomes their lookout on Egyptian soil. Here, anything can be bought. The silent partners know what hatred lies between the brothers. Time goes by. The discovery at Gravenchon gives a new kick to the anthill. The link with Egypt, tenuous as it might be, is established. Sharko flies over; the Arab contacts his employers, probably after the meeting on the building rooftop. “They” ask him to dig a little deeper, try to find out what the French cop intends to do. And they probably give him final instructions: eliminate the policeman if he sticks his nose any deeper into the case. To capture Sharko and make him fall into the net, Abd el-Aal tells him about his uncle before trying to get rid of him the next day.