by Mallock;
Before leaving, Mallock instructed that a whole sophisticated search procedure be put in place, almost like an archaeological dig. Nothing could be overlooked. “I want you to sift through the dust,” he said. Then he turned his back on the busy men, on the impaled woman, on the something that had kept on rising in him since the beginning of this whole thing, which he refused to identify.
Behind the outrage and the anger a morbid fascination was hiding, throbbing, growing stronger and stronger with every murder, every corpse. Something else he would never be able to forgive himself for.
Stepping outside the factory, Mallock raised his head to look at the drawing and the two broken windows on either side of it. He took this route three times a month, and he always braked right before the big curve in the highway. The Makeup Artist had wanted to get his attention. It was obvious now.
Mallock took the highway toward Paris. He thought about Ken, saw again his face, his disbelief, his suffering. A car passed him and he had time to see a little boy smiling at him, nose pressed against the frosty rear window.
His mood shifted away from anguish and sadness, flitting from this unknown child to his own, vanished boy. Tom would never grow up. Never again stand in the sun; never again fall asleep at night. At that moment, watching him sleep was the only thing that could have calmed Mallock’s rage and soothed his horror. But Tom wasn’t here anymore.
Hadn’t Tom escaped life? Escaped what men do to get revenge for being born, too much of this or not enough of that?
Eight-thirty. Amélie was waiting for him. He realized with dismay that he’d completely forgotten their appointment. He babbled excuses, convinced that nothing could absolve him of such a mortal sin.
But Amélie didn’t feel that way.
“Don’t worry about it. It gave me the time to have a nice cup of tea in the square and rest a little bit between clients.”
It occurred to Mallock that he didn’t like it at all when Amélie referred to him as a client. And he liked it even less when he was lumped together with the client before him and the one after him.
“Do you still have time, or should we reschedule?”
“I have time. I’ve got the whole evening, actually. I cancelled my next appointment, which was the last one of the day.”
Opening the front door for her, Amédée apologized to Amélie again. It really was not needed.
“You’ve never been late before, and I’m sure you must have a good reason,” she said. The image of the impaled woman flashed through Mallock’s mind. It was a good excuse, he thought, but there was no way he could talk about it with such a lovely and delicate girl.
“Not really,” he lied eventually. “Just paperwork to sign.”
He felt dreadfully dirty as they entered his apartment. The day’s sweat, of course, but also the dust and grime of the factory—and, worse, the smells of the deceased, of female decomposition. The microscopic scarlet stars of her blood flying up in the factory’s air to fall back down onto her hair, her eyelashes, her lips. Alone, he would have fallen apart already. But with Amélie there . . .
It was a bit uncomfortable, but he had to ask. “Would you just give me a few minutes? I absolutely have to have a shower.”
Amélie acquiesced with a smile, reassuring him: “Don’t worry. I’m used to it. Especially at the end of the day, and with older people.”
Mallock took the last sentence as an insult, which wasn’t how Amélie had intended it. Realizing her blunder, she hurried to explain. “I don’t mean you! It isn’t like that with you . . . ”
Amédée reassured her by laughing and claiming he hadn’t thought she was talking about him. He left to take a shower, but not without supplying Amélie with tea and cakes first.
The water streamed over his body, washing away the particles of filth. He watched them whirl around the drain as if trying to avoid being drowned, these drops of blood, drunk with rage at being evicted this way. He even imagined he could hear them screaming.
When he returned to the living room ten minutes later, Amélie was standing in front of the bay window. She hadn’t turned on the big light and was in almost complete darkness. Two streetlamps glowed in the courtyard outside, and the perfection of her body was outlined for Mallock in silhouette.
She was gorgeous.
He came up behind her and put his big hands on her shoulders. Amélie didn’t turn around. She did the one thing Amédée wanted most; she tilted her head slowly to the side until her cheek touched his right hand. He pressed gently against her and kissed her neck.
At around two o’clock in the morning, Amélie Maurel embraced him one last time. She had to get back. Amédée didn’t ask why.
After she had gone, Mallock slept like a rock. In his dreams, a messenger came down to see him on the beach at Andernos-les-Bains.
The celestial angel looked like a combination of a manatee and a dolphin, but he couldn’t really see its body; only its face, iridescent and disturbing. They began walking together along the shore, side by side, Mallock and the big, transparent figure. Only the four parallel prints of their feet in the sand behind them attested to the angel’s presence on earth. He told the angel about all his pain and anger. The despair that was stiffening his back and his soul. He screamed out his sadness, the feeling of injustice eating away at his heart. Thomas gone. His fears. The greed and jealousy of men. All his anger against God. He released his tears, his resentment; the ache gnawing at his heart. Then, suddenly, he realized that the large transparent being wasn’t answering him anymore. Filled with apprehension, he turned. There was only one trail of footprints left behind him, his own steps. They were sunk deeper into the sand, weighed down by his pain, but they were alone.
He lifted his eyes toward the sky, begging for an explanation. Why had his companion disappeared? The angel spoke. It was still there, just a few centimeters from his ear.
“I’m always here,” it said. “Can’t you feel my arms around you? These deep prints in the sand were made by my feet, not yours.
“If there is only one set, it’s because I am carrying you.”
19.
Tuesday, January 4th
Amédée woke with a start. For an agnostic, he’d had a lot to do with religion lately. He identified the source of his dream immediately: a Brazilian poem a friend had recited to him. But did it also have another meaning, a coded message related to the investigation? He put it to one side of his mind, to think about later. This morning he needed to focus on the torture, and the different theories and rituals surrounding it. After what he’d seen yesterday, he wanted to do some research on stakes, partly by consulting two books by Léon Bloy, which he’d already been thinking about for a a few days.
Looking through them, he stumbled on a rare example of a weekly magazine called—it was almost too perfect—The Stake. The cover of this issue, the third one edited by Bloy, showed four men impaled on a single rod. Examining their positions carefully, Amédée saw that the man closest to the ground was curled in the fetal position, staring at the ground. The man above him was beginning to look at the clouds, and the third man’s gaze was turned toward the sky. The fourth man was extending his arms toward God. It was a perfect illustration of reversibility, the link between individual torture and collective salvation. The Makeup Artist was undoubtedly an insane mystic modeled on Bloy—only he had shifted from words to action.
It was almost eight o’clock. If he was going to get any further in his research he needed to see one person: Léon. Not the writer; the other one, his friend with the bookshop. He hesitated for a few moments. He really wanted to show Léon the photos taken at the different murder scenes, to get his opinion on them. But hadn’t his friend lived through enough horror?
The best thing to do, he finally decided, was ask Léon.
Key. Door. Run. Cross the little square.
Léon was already outside. Havi
ng already shoveled the snow from the sidewalk in front of his shop, he was now scattering handfuls of coarse salt.
“Your timing is perfect, Superintendent! Mind giving me a hand? A lady with a walker and no teeth fell down yesterday, right where you’re standing.” Without waiting for a response, Léon handed him a plastic bag filled with grayish grains. Mallock was in a rush, but courtesy won out. It took them five minutes to complete the task.
“You came to see me?” asked Léon as they went into the shop.
“No, I just had an urge to scatter some salt on the Parisian asphalt.”
“Okay, okay. New question: would the superintendent care for a little coffee?”
“A big one, actually, please. And a favor.”
Mallock asked Léon if he felt able to look at the Makeup Artist’s horrors, to discuss his tortures. The answer that came back was clear and concise and brooked no argument.
“Don’t be an idiot.”
So as not to influence him, Mallock displayed the various photos, including the one of the baby, without making any comment. Time slowed down. Mallock sat down in a deep armchair, suddenly patient. Léon picked up the snapshots one by one. He studied them calmly, sometimes with a magnifying glass. The proceedings took around fifteen minutes. Amédée, sipping his coffee, never took his eyes off Léon’s face.
“So?” he asked, when the bookseller had set down the last picture.
“So . . . so. It’s not clear.” Léon rubbed the corners of his eyes.
“Is that all? You’ve studied this subject for a long time. It’s that culture of suffering, inflicted voluntarily by one person on another, that I need your help with. I know it’s not clear, as you say. If it were I wouldn’t be here.”
Léon clasped his hands behind his neck. Took a deep breath. Held it. Looked at the ceiling with a perplexed frown. Released the air in his lungs with a sigh. “You want me to give you a lesson ex cathedra, is that it?”
“I don’t care. Talk to me. Tell me everything that’s going through your head. Do you think there are multiple types of torture happening here? Do you think it’s the same person? Do you see different reasons for going to such extremes?”
“Ah, that; yes, there are many reasons for torturing a fellow human being. And believe me, mankind has a hell of an imagination for constantly coming up with new ones. Even morality can be twisted for this purpose.”
“Meaning?”
“Let’s say you capture a guy who’s planted a bomb on the metro. Do you talk to him nicely or do you burn his balls to make him talk before women and children are blown to bits all over the tiles? What does the good cop do in this case, eh?”
“Look, this isn’t what I need from you right now. No philosophy lessons.”
“I just wanted to make you understand that nothing is simple, even when you’re talking about torture. There’s more than one way to look at the subject. The number one reason to torture someone, if I can say it, is to get information. The army, the police, and intelligence organizations use it for that. You’ll find all kinds of books about it—I’ve even got some here—but I don’t think they’d apply to your raging madman. The second reason is to obtain confessions and religious conversions, like during the inquisitions, with all the lovely methods introduced in the twelfth century by everyone’s favorite funnyman, Pope Innocent III. Right here in the shop I’ve got the Malleus Maleficarum, Le Marteau des sorcières—reprinted in paperback, not expensive; Le Manuel des Inquisiteurs, and the Histoire de l’Inquisition au Moyen ge. I’ll put them aside for you.”
“And the third reason?”
“The third? Ah yes . . . thirdly, we have the kind of pure, unadulterated torture that is practiced for the simple pleasure of making others suffer: sadism and bondage. I’ve got books on that too, of course. A great set of volumes on basic sadomasochism and onanism. I’ve got S&M for Dummies on order,” Léon joked, before turning serious again. “It’s quite possible that your Makeup Artist falls into this category. I can’t really see him doing what he does unless he finds it exciting.”
“Me neither,” murmured Mallock.
“And to these three,” resumed Léon, “we can add a fourth reason, a really crazy one. The aesthetics of torture. I have books on the work of Soutine and Goya here. You should definitely have a look at Saturn Devouring his Son, which is really something, and of course Bosch. Your Makeup Artist is absolutely staging scenes here, which we can imagine are motivated by some kind of artistic desire. There is a certain aesthetic appeal, if not beauty, in what you’ve shown me.”
Amédée looked at Léon, feeling something almost like relief. He felt some emotion at seeing these horrifying perversions too, then. Now he could ask the question that had been burning in him since he woke up. “I think there’s another intention at work here . . . something more mystical about what he’s doing. Don’t you see a theological aspect to these sacrifices? The sanctifying value of pain?”
“The sacrality of the torturer, eh? His redemptive function? Regenerative bloodshed? The splendor of ‘the Massacre of the innocents, the rain of rosy blood that kills only the tenderest of bodies’? I know the whole thing by heart: ‘They will go nearby, preparing for the killing on the next horizon, where millions of soldiers crouch, drawn by their metal affinity toward the masses of throat-slitters. It will be the Pentecost of slaughter and extermination, the cleansing of excessive and crumbling societies by fire . . . ’ I’ve read and reread Léon Bloy a thousand times. You see, Amédée, I was even named after him. My father was one of that great insane mystic’s few admirers. You’re right; I should have thought of that. There is definitely some Bloy in these images of . . . piety turned upside down . . . it’s the dogma of reversibility. In his madness, your Makeup Artist must really be convinced that he’s participating in the salvation of the world. He undoubtedly believes in the Mystical Body. The only thing he hasn’t done yet is impale one of his victims!”
Mallock stared openmouthed at his friend. “Why do you say that?”
“For Bloy, that’s the ultimate torture. Perfection. You also find it with Bosch, and the precision he uses to inflict on the eye of the spectator—who might also be a penitent himself—the inexhaustible variety of sins, and of the sinners who have these punishments to look forward to if they don’t repent. All these characters being boiled alive, drowned in barrels, dismembered. And for the most deserving: ‘The indisputable beauty of the stake surpasses all in its symbolism. From the perspective of the aesthetic torturer, besides the incandescence of the tool, its verticality is vital. The man must be upright, and he must die from the bottom up.’ I can’t guarantee that my memory is one hundred percent accurate, but at any rate that’s not far off the original text. Against the tautological and spiraling circularity of a society that has become a howling pile of shit, soulless and helpless in a rising tide of mediocrity, the stake’s verticality is, for Bloy, the sanctifying stopping point, the new axis around which society is called to change direction. It’s the exclamation point that comes after the screamed-out word ‘Stop.’ But why does it surprise you that I mentioned the stake?”
“The most recent victim, who I haven’t had a chance to tell you about yet, was impaled.”
Now it was Léon’s turn to stand openmouthed. “Impaled vertically?”
“Exactly. But I have to go now; I need to see the murder site near La Chapelle again, and finish my observations.”
“Good God,” murmured Léon, still in the grip of emotion.
There were two problems to solve: how had the Makeup Artist impaled the young woman, and how had he managed to erase his footprints on the floor?
For the first question, the technicians were theorizing that the impalement had been done horizontally, on the floor, and then the whole thing raised upright. This clearly suggested a group of killers. Two, or most likely three, the experts had estimated. But then there was Mall
ock’s vision. He had seen her dropped violently from the air to be impaled on a pike that was already set in the floor. True, it had only been in his dream, but he was beginning to trust those experiences more and more.
He tried to combine the two puzzles in his mind; the mysterious method of impalement, and the miraculously disappearing footprints. It often happened like this; two “impossibles” could somehow be put together to create a “possible,” like the technique where magicians force their audience to resolve one question while at the same time discouraging them by moving on rapidly to a different question.
Deductive reasoning led him to the spot on the floor where the Makeup Artist’s footprints suddenly disappeared. As it turned out, he only needed to look up to find the answer. There, high overhead, was the start of the network of chains, motors, pulleys, and hoists that ran along the factory ceiling to be used for moving towers and the heaviest machine parts from one place to another. In all likelihood, it was this vertical and horizontal hydraulic lift that the Makeup Artist—Mallock was beginning to lean toward the singular—had used to mystify the police yet again. To further muddy the waters, before the machinery set him down he had programmed it to conceal itself at the farthest end of the factory. Even now, you could only see the horizontal rails above the footprints and the site of the sacrifice.
Amédée bent over the last two footprints. One right foot, one left foot. They were blurred. So his dream had pointed him in the right direction—unless it was the power of his conscious thoughts that had supplied the material for the dream. The chicken or the egg? Whatever the case, it had led him to the solution once again.
The Makeup Artist had arrived at the . . . takeoff site, for lack of a better word . . . carrying his victim. Then he had come back to the same spot and left the room walking backward. Mallock recreated the rest of the process in his mind. Vibration of the electric motor. Nathalie Grandet—that had been the victim’s name—had felt her arms rising. Her body, attached to the freight hoist, had been lifted four meters above the floor and carried through the icy air of the factory. When she had finally realized what the monster had in mind, it was too late. Her brain fuddled with terror, she had heard the motor stop; she was suspended above the steel pike. Then the monster had released her and she had plunged downward with a scream of horror.