by Mallock;
Spared the flattened cats, the traffic hearings, the evacuation reports and domestic disturbances, he no longer had to intervene in petty squabbles to score points with the higher-ups. For a long time now he had marched to the beat of his own drum. He kept for himself the skinheads; the hunting-down and arresting of gangsters; the most wanted criminals. Professionally speaking he really couldn’t complain; he was generally left in perfect peace, or close to it. By creating his own team and fighting for materials and independence, he had succeeded in keeping useless fighting against the hierarchy, the administration, and all its parasites to a minimum. His group had not only been made more effective; it had managed to avoid dealing with the high-end rent boys, whores, and meth-heads that clogged the corridors of Number 36.
5.
Monday, December 27th. Lunch with RG
Looking for Francis to avoid eating lunch alone, Mallock almost collided with Grimaud.
“Hello, Raymond! It’s late—I was just going to lunch. Maybe we can—”
“I was just coming to ask you to have lunch with me, as a matter of fact. I’d like to brief you on the case over a bite to eat. I’ve got an initial written rundown with me, too.”
“Great! Here, give it to me; I’ll put it away.”
It couldn’t have worked out better. A good Bordeaux has a way of loosening tongues and numbing sensitivities. RG surveyed Mallock. He was relieved to see that the superintendent put the precious rundown in the safe and then double-locked his office door.
Amédée looked at him and smiled.
“Sorry. A leopard can’t change its spots,” Raymond said sheepishly.
Both men laughed as if they were old friends—which they weren’t, but might become in the end.
Outside, the sun was blinding. The cold and the air, still saturated with humidity, were making a joint effort to freeze the city’s pedestrians. The sidewalk outside the station was covered with corn kernels, and the pigeons taking advantage of the bounty skidded aside as the two men passed. They took the Boulevard du Palais and then the Pont au Change. The air was full of lighted garlands and also a kind of nervousness, as if the dust swirling around Paris’s millions of streetlamps was electrified. Somewhere nearby, a murderer was choosing his next victim. Mallock quickened his steps, slapping his arms to warm up.
“You should have worn an overcoat.”
“It’s not that far! I’ll be fine.”
Once again Mallock cursed his phobia of coats and underclothing. He never wore undershirts or sleeveless tops, and very rarely wore socks. His claustrophobia was getting worse and worse as he aged, and it even extended to clothing. The less he had around him, the better he felt.
Arriving in front of the restaurant, they exchanged polite “You first”s before deciding to walk in together, their laughter preceding them.
“Superintendents, hello!”
The owner extended a cordial hand to Mallock. Amédée grasped it in a crushing grip before directing his gaze toward his favorite table.
“It’s all ready for you,” the man confirmed, pulling back the chairs.
They had barely seated themselves when Grimaud began. “Might as well get it all out. I’ve seen Dublin. The big boss would like the official handover of power to happen tonight at midnight—so, tomorrow morning, really. But I’ve been giving it a lot of thought . . . and it can’t wait. We’re dealing with a madman, and the sooner you’re in the know, the better.”
When he wasn’t running his fingers through the superb brush of silvery hair on his head, Raymond was playing nervously with his fork, tracing a series of parallel grooves on the tablecloth. He paused for two or three seconds between each of his sentences; it was more a tic than any real slowness of mind.
“It’s a horrendous case. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Not many clues?”
“None at all! Not one lead; not even a strand of hair. And to be frank with you, it’s worse than that. I don’t have a single idea or personal impression, other than my profound disgust at these murders. I’m not sure how to explain it to you. I’m just relieved you’re taking over the case.”
Grimaud’s manner of addressing Mallock had veered between the informal tu and the formal vous, and even sometimes the hypothetical on, ever since they met. He had never really been comfortable around him, and undoubtedly he never would be. It was nobody’s fault—that was just how things were. Amédée had always been a step ahead of him. Even now he was a chief superintendent, with the salary and expense allowance that came along with leadership, while Grimaud was only a detective chief inspector. Yet he was far from being incompetent.
“RG” wasn’t only his set of initials, but a nickname earned by his obsession—albeit an effective one—for planting bugs and tapping telephone wires. He was also extremely fond of “bargain-hunting and lentil-sorting”—police jargon for searching methodically for information and then examining it with the patience and seriousness of a man panning for gold. Moreover, he was an accomplished midwife of sorts when it came to suspects; men questioned by Father Raymond tended to lie back and give birth to true confessions.
No, RG wasn’t a bad detective—far from it, in fact. He was tough, meticulous, shrewd, and straightforward; qualities that Mallock appreciated greatly. He had put RG on his short list when putting together his team. If Grimaud would only relax a little, he might join the Fort one day—maybe to replace Bob when the latter retired.
“It doesn’t make me particularly happy to have been taken off the case, but it’s just as well,” RG said again. “It’s different with you . . . can’t be offended when it’s Mallock replacing you. I wouldn’t have been too pleased if just anyone had taken over.”
“Thank you, Raymond; that’s a real compliment coming from you. Should we order now?”
Amédée had seen the magic words: “veal head with gribiche sauce.” Grimaud, in keeping with his persona of ascetic simplicity, ordered a grilled steak with green beans. The service was speedy, and seven minutes later the plates were steaming on the table in front of them.
“Bon appétit.”
They ate in silence. Though impatient, Mallock had decided not to rush this meeting—and besides, his veal head was delicious, with the satisfying inclusion of a bit of tongue and brain. Not everything was rotten in God’s kingdom, then. The hubbub of the dining room flowed gently around the bubble of reflection and culinary appreciation enclosing the two men. Grimaud finally set down his fork and took a drink from his glass, then wiped his mouth in a quick, almost violent gesture.
“The worst part of this whole horrible story is that crazy stitching. This guy is a maniac—a real fucking vampire. But I won’t go into detail; the doc will explain it to you better than I can. I still don’t understand how anyone can do this kind of thing. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, but this fucking Makeup Artist has really scared the crap out of me. My file is perfectly up-to-date . . . three binders, each a full foot thick, closed. But to be honest with you, none of it’s terribly useful, aside from the routine investigations, which were all done very thoroughly, as you know I always do. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to start over from scratch. Now, the fourth folder—there’s explosive material in that one, and you need to keep it well protected.”
Mallock’s gaze dropped to Grimaud’s fingers, which were stained with purple ink. “Carbon paper?” he asked. “Is it so secret that you can’t even use a photocopier?”
“Well spotted. But then, nothing escapes our Dédé the Wizard!”
Mallock wasn’t overly fond of that nickname, for a whole variety of reasons, but he smiled at Grimaud anyway.
“You’re right,” RG continued, “it is carbon. To avoid leaks, I’ve only made three copies of the file—I’ve got one at home, one in my safe, and another with the department. We haven’t made any photocopies; I had to slog through it old-style. Carbon paper
for the three copies, and I only made two copies of the photos for myself, and then encrypted the originals in the computer.”
Grimaud seemed relieved to finally be able to tell everything to a colleague, someone who understood the torment he’d been through better than the political higher-ups did.
“I know I don’t need to tell you that what I’m about to say is highly, highly confidential . . . for your ears only, as the English say . . . ”
“For my eyes only,” corrected Mallock.
“Fine, if you like. In any case, this stays in Number 36.”
RG scooted his chair in with a horrible scraping noise and leaned toward Mallock until it looked like he might dislocate his neck. Professional corruption—wiretapping—he was all too familiar with them.
“I’ve spent the last two months of the investigation researching other cases, and I’ve managed—with the help of Mordome, your pathologist buddy—to uncover the exponential aspect of how his modus operandi has developed, as they say. What we really did was work backward, starting from the theory that, at the beginning, the killer must have been less . . . sick. That’s how we rediscovered some older cases involving the murders of—listen to this—a man, and even kids. Everything seems to have started with the murders of two children. They’re the oldest incidents and the most rudimentary ones. Then he killed a man, and then his first woman four years ago. It’s gotten nastier and nastier with each victim.”
At last Grimaud cut to the heart of the matter, with a wealth of details that were slightly incompatible with tête de veau sauce gribiche—luckily Mallock had finished eating.
“He’s atypical—anomic, to use the scholarly term. A genuine psychotic, but he earns perfect marks when it comes to control. Never seen anything like it. Not even the faintest fingerprint found at any scene. No DNA. No noise at all, so no witnesses, no composite sketch. The only area where he fits into the statistics for psychopaths is his IQ. Serial killers are all geniuses, apparently. With him there’s no doubt about it. His intelligence is diabolical, just like his imagination. Our killer’s MO is shocking, both in its diversity and its perversity.”
“Unless we put an ‘s’ on the name, so it’s Makeup Artists?” Mallock suggested. “At least for—”
Their waiter picked up his plate, making him jump. “Would you like to see the dessert menu?”
“No thanks,” said Mallock. “Just coffee.”
“Do you have chocolate liégeois?” asked Grimaud.
“Yes, but it’s not part of the set menu.”
“I don’t care,” RG cut him off. “I’ll have one, with lots of whipped cream.”
It was Mallock who tacked a “Please, thank you” onto the end of Grimaud’s sentence, while the young man scribbled a hieroglyph on his pad, gave Amédée a quick smile, and disappeared with their empty plates.
“I don’t doubt your abilities, but we’re not ready to catch this guy. His rituals are long and complicated—they often take more than an hour, but he doesn’t leave a trace. Zilch. The cocksucker is like a fucking ghost! As I said, we’ve checked every piece of evidence for fingerprints and we haven’t found a single one. There’s absolutely nothing human about this monster. He’s worse than a devil; he is the Devil.”
A former seminarist in the paratroopers, RG was one of the rare devout and practicing superintendents in Number 36.
“You’re still talking about him in the singular. Do you have any real, valid reason for that?”
A cloud passed over Grimaud’s face—a huge cumulonimbus, stuffed full of lightning bolts. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. It was shaking.
“You see, this killer has taken over my life. I’m just so relieved that I don’t have to have anything more to do with him. This whole thing is a curse. You absolutely have to beware.”
“Of him? I don’t doubt it, my friend.”
“No—of yourself. Of what he’ll want you to become. He has shown me things—or rather, made me feel things . . . I’m not explaining it very well. You know I’m a religious man, a devout Catholic. People make fun of me by calling me Raymond the Priest and the Abbot Cop behind my back, as if it’s craziness to have faith. But I’ve always considered it one of my strengths . . . until this assignment, and the . . . the things a case like this puts into our heads . . . ”
Mallock allowed the silence to settle as heavily behind the last sentence as RG wished it to. Looking at Grimaud’s face, he thought he could see some of those horrible things reflected in it. He had seen hints of them in the files.
“Or maybe it’s because of my religious training. I’m undoubtedly more sensitive to some of the signs he leaves . . . more affected by certain symbols, and his sense of torture.”
“I have to go back to this—you always say ‘he,’ singular. Why do you think he’s acting alone? Even though there are various different rituals present?”
Grimaud plunged his spoon violently into his whipped cream. Without realizing it, his choice of dessert had made him even more likable in Amédée’s eyes. There was still some of the child left, a desire for sweetness, in the big, athletic body of this ex-boxer, ex-paratrooper, ex-seminarist, and superintendent with Number 36.
“You’re exactly right. I use the singular—the generic, really. There could very well be two or three murderers; a family, or a cult . . . the name Makeup Artist should be used in the plural, but I started out referring to him in the singular, as if . . . I don’t know . . . to make him more real in my mind, I guess. And maybe, unconsciously, because I don’t want to think there’s more than one person on earth capable of doing such horrible things. One seems like plenty to me. But you are right, there’s a very good chance that the Makeup Artist is several people.”
Mallock didn’t point out that last use of the singular. “Well, you’ve done good work. You’ve got nothing to feel bad about. As soon as I get going, I’ll plow through all the stuff you’ve already figured out.”
RG blushed like a schoolboy, but his honesty quickly won out. “A lot of the credit goes to Mordome, who’s a hell of a guy, between you and me.”
This was a double dose of pleasure for Mallock: a compliment for his friend, and the sight of a man of integrity seated across from him. Grimaud, a large smear of chocolate now adorning his white goatee, continued: “We’re in the process of trying to identify exactly the molecules or the drug cocktail common to all of the cases. He’ll explain it to you better than I can. It’s what the Makeup Artist uses to immobilize his victims, before subjecting them to whatever’s in his head. This fucking drug is all the information we have on him. If we could just find out more . . . ”
“About him?” interjected Amédée, smiling.
“Er . . . or about them.”
“If you’d already gotten to that point, if I’m not asking too much, would you be able to continue? I’d love to have a complete rundown on this famous cocktail.”
“Of course—I’ve already started to do all the research on the products and the laboratories that manufacture them, and the places these drugs are available. I’ll finish that up for you, if it’ll help. I’d planned on adding it to my files anyway when I was done with it.”
“I really appreciate it. Speaking of the files, if it isn’t too much of a bother I’ll send one of my boys over to your office this afternoon for the rest of them, okay?”
“I’ll bring them to you. Go see Mordome at the Institute in the meantime, as soon as you can. After me, he’s the one who knows the most about this case. When it comes to my conclusions, and his, about what we’ve found out already—that’s in a fourth, separate file. There’s only one copy of that and I keep it with me in my briefcase. You can leave with it from here, but promise me you’ll be careful. It’s explosive, this thing.”
RG’s paranoia was no myth. But in this case, this particular personality trait had definitely been a blessing. He put an
ancient-looking leather portfolio on the table; it was actually bulging like a balloon. Explosive, Grimaud had said. Mallock had a vision of an old-fashioned spherical anarchist’s bomb.
“Double-check it; I could be wrong about some of my conclusions. And as you’ll see, it’s far from being complete.”
Mallock waited for RG to take his hand off the file before pulling it toward him. You had to handle these paranoid types with kid gloves. Then the two of them argued over who would pay the check, and Mallock was forced to capitulate. Grimaud wouldn’t have wanted it to seem like he was handing over his goodwill in return for a simple gourmet lunch.
6.
Monday, December 27th. Evening
The sun had almost entirely disappeared behind the buildings—but, perfectionist that it was, it still touched the stones with a last salmon-pink tinge. Between dog and wolf, as the saying went. The superintendent adored this interlude before moonrise, this magic moment when you could sink silently into yourself amid the noise of others, the vast rumble walking along the sidewalks of the world, their torments filed away in the drawers of the earth, their ambitions put off until tomorrow. Sometime after six o’clock a man would go back home, contemplating his life and lingering on thoughts of soup, while God and the Devil crossed paths, keeping pointless hatred for themselves.
Amédée Mallock spent ten minutes searching for a parking spot before he remembered that his garage was waiting for him. He circled one more time, taking the Rue des Mauvais-Garçons and then the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile to reach the private parking structure. Had he paid too much for it? Without a doubt. But when you’re in love, you don’t do the math. He had been especially fed up with losing half an hour every evening scouring the neighborhood looking for a space, and finding one had been more of a miracle every day.