The Faces of God

by Mallock;

  “I’ll try.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  Half an hour later Amédée was standing despondently at Amélie’s door. He didn’t have very much trouble locating the various documents. Her home was neat as a pin, arranged very much like her notebook, with fanatical precision. In her wallet, which was in the pocket of a raincoat, he found her ID—and a photo of himself. She’d taken it when she visited him for the third time.

  “It’s for my notebook,” she had explained. “It helps me remember each client.”

  But she had never put this photo in her planner. It seemed almost worn out, as if she’d often taken it out of her wallet and held it between her beautiful fingers so she could look at it more closely. That meant . . . he hadn’t known . . . Amélie had always kept Amédée’s face within reach.

  He put the picture back in her wallet.

  Her condition once again made any hope illusory that she would be able to give evidence or describe the face of her attacker. She was the only one of the Makeup Artist’s victims who was still alive. Had she seen him? Would she recognize him again? Could she give them any physical description to go on?

  His back had been hurting him again since noon. He decided to replenish his stock of painkillers in the little pharmacy on the ground floor of the same building. His young friend, Amélie’s patient, was behind the counter.

  “How are you, Superintendent?”

  The youth seemed happy to see Mallock again. They loved the same woman, and instead of pitting them against each other, the feeling had brought them together—undoubtedly because neither of them could hold her in his arms now.

  “I could be better, if my back didn’t hurt so much.”

  The handsome young man bent his athletic six-foot-three-inch frame toward the tile floor. His eyes were glistening. “We miss her too,” he murmured. He hesitated for a few seconds, then asked: “Is there any news?”

  He still seemed deeply upset. Mercifully, Mallock lied to him, as he would have liked to be lied to himself: “She’s doing better. Don’t worry. I think I may even be able to question her soon.”

  The apprentice pharmacist’s emotions kept him speechless for a brief instant. Mallock thought he might start crying again.

  “Thank God,” the boy said eventually. “Do you still have your prescription?”

  Mallock handed it over, and he went off in search of the life-saving pills. From the back of the pharmacy he called out:

  “Do you want a care sheet?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  He filled the form out once, made a mistake, tossed it into a garbage can behind him, started over. As he was leaving, the young man walked him out and held the door for him.

  “Thank you . . . Didier,” said Amédée, proud of himself for remembering this time.

  38.

  Saturday, January 15th. In the crypt

  The Makeup Artist didn’t understand it. Some days he was so cold that nothing could warm him up. It wasn’t the temperature, but solitude that chilled his bones. As far back as he could remember he had been alone, shut away with his mother, who was always calm and never got angry and never kissed him. Alone, with the ugliness he and everyone else pretended not to see. All alone, with the hands he had so much trouble keeping busy. So alone that the cold froze his heart and put a coating of frost on his guts and his forehead. And his cock.

  Why wasn’t he dead? Why did he have to do what he did? Why didn’t he have any love in him, or around him? Why could his life only happen through the death of others? His only company was these thousands of whys and the silence that answered them.

  Why live alone, and why cry?

  Why did the great “not even” have a father who never appeared? Who didn’t love him, who had hidden himself away out of guilt after ejaculating in his mother’s womb?

  The dirty, lying whore.

  One day all these whys would come flooding out of him like rain on the earth, rivers in the sea. The question marks would float for a few seconds and then sink, screaming in terror.

  Everyone had their turn to be afraid.

  The great “not even” normally used water for gilding, but today he had decided to try it with oil. What he had come up with this time was very different from his usual creations, and he thought he’d have better results this way.

  This time the circumstances, which he had organized himself, would give him all the time he needed. With the movie star at the Crillon he’d had to hurry, and he hated that. Rushing your work was a crime. Here, safe in the crypt of the church, he could take his time.

  He had prepared the surfaces for this new staging. The blood had been drawn, and he had even injected a condensed formalin-based solution, which would extend the subject’s life. A bolt of rage sizzled through him. He knew that when the bodies were found, after the autopsy, the families would surely opt for cremation. The idiots! But those iconoclasts weren’t worth making himself sick over. He waited for his hands to stop shaking. To relax himself, he pulled a picture of his next face from his pocket.

  The young woman had been photographed with a telephoto lens. A huge guy was walking next to her with heavy strides. It was the man he called his hunter, Superintendent Amédée Mallock. The Makeup Artist had no interest in him. It was his colleague, Julie. She was an angel. Her face would be perfect for completing the quest, and he had a very special treatment in store for her. He had planned everything needed to trap her. It was foolproof. He was the only person in the world who knew that she was going to die, and that gave him immense satisfaction, almost like a penetration, but without the unclean things that went along with that. Possessing the power of death over her . . . that was possessing her.

  The Makeup Artist tenderly kissed the photo before tucking it back in his pocket.

  For the woman he had prepared yesterday, he’d brought white and sky-blue veils today. As if dressing a doll, he transformed her smoothly into the Virgin Mary in a matter of seconds. He’d always been talented with fabric.

  “It’s too bad; you could have been a great designer,” his mother had reproached him more than once.

  Not a designer, not a dancer, not a hairdresser. The Makeup Artist, forgetting his American activities, never missed an opportunity to express his hatred of queers.

  His Virgin Mary was already made up; the only thing left now was to put her in place. Using metal rods, he managed without too much effort to get her in the perfect position. It was harder with her face. She had to be looking up at the sky, with her mouth and eyes open. In the end he had to remove her eyeballs and replace them with glass marbles.

  Yes—that made it look so much more lifelike!

  Somewhat irritated, he reapplied her makeup, making it a bit more over-the-top to hide the unfortunate condition of her eyelids. Two coats of foundation on her hands. Powder and clear polish on her nails. Done. He backed away to look at his handiwork.

  She was splendid. He smiled.

  There was another body waiting for him. A baby’s. He was excited.

  He was going to try a new technique for the first time: gilding with oil. The whole body, from head to toe, would be completely covered with twenty-four-carat gold leaf. No one had ever done anything like it. Not on wood, but on a real baby, and he had thought for a long time about the best technique to use. Because the skin was so soft, he had decided on oil.

  The crypt was perfectly silent. All around him hundreds of candles were burning, opening their fiery little mouths to exclaim:

  “Oh! How incredible! Marvelous! So beautiful!” they seemed to be singing in concert, their little amber lips quivering with admiration.

  The yellow adhesive, made of glue and pigments heated together, was the first coat he applied to the baby. Next came a coat of blended Armenian bole and rabbit-skin glue, painted on using a “dog.” Determined to perfect his masterpiece,
he applied a coat of flatting lacquer to make sure he would be able to achieve simili brunis, in which the shiniest parts imitated what was naturally obtained with water gilding. It held, especially on the forehead, eyelids, and belly. It was incredibly sensual, the meeting of his materials with the baby’s skin. The pores were so fine that he only needed one coat of primer.

  Patiently, he waited for the mixture to be “in love”—that is, dry and sticky enough for the three-inch square sheets of gold leaf to stay in place. Abandoning his usual technique of using a cushion to place them, he employed the booklet technique, applying whole sheets without cutting them up beforehand. He had large surfaces to cover—stomach, back, thighs, and calves—and they were wide and smooth. Perfect for this new technique.

  It took him almost three hours to transform the baby into a golden angel.

  Sleep, golden child. Mama will be back soon, sang the great “not even” to his creation.

  Then, exhausted, he left the crypt, locking its three heavy padlocks behind him.

  39.

  Sunday, January 16th

  Amédée had meant to spend his Sunday at the office, but his friends decided otherwise. Six of them descended on his apartment. They had all read the papers, and they were absolutely furious. None of them had a single doubt about their Amédée’s morals, and they had plotted together to come and cheer him up.

  “We’re sick of not having any news, and of not seeing Your Majesty much anymore, so we decided to come harass you a bit.”

  “I’m thrilled to see you, but . . . ”

  “No discussion, no debate; I don’t care if you’re Chief Superintendent. Put on your swimming trunks and some casual clothes and follow us.”

  Mallock didn’t try to argue. He knew this outing with his friends would do him a lot of good. This wasn’t the first time the clan of seven had come beating on the hermit-superintendent’s door. Their friendship had often been the best remedy for the miseries he suffered. For a long time he had taken care of himself, preferring to believe that you can and must pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. When Thomas died, he had given up the fight. You needed other people. And his friends had risen to the challenge with tenderness and discretion. They had done everything anyone could do in that type of situation. Made sure he knew they were there, and that they loved him. The simple fact that Mallock was still alive today was proof of their delicate effectiveness.

  With what had happened to Amélie, he really needed them now.

  He went into his bedroom to change, thinking that sometimes it was nice to obey without discussion, to let himself be carried along by the will of others. All he asked was for them to stop by his office so he could give instructions to his team. At ten o’clock, leaving his colleagues to work and not without feeling guilty, he got back into one of his friends’ two cars. Without asking him anything, either about his preference of restaurant or the case that was on the front page of every newspaper, they headed for the Bois de Boulogne.

  They had a long ramble and then a wonderful meal with wine at Pétrus, followed by a film. At five o’clock they decided to go swim a few laps before heading back. When they split up, Amédée decided to stay in the water a little longer.

  The pool was practically deserted and, through a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, he could see snow drifting lazily onto the street. What would his friends think if they knew the exact nature of his dreams? For days now, he had been giving the hardest part of the investigation over to the night. Before falling asleep, in the little coma that preceded drowsiness, he went over all the horrors he had seen since the start of the investigation. Once asleep he visited a terrible world, populated with evil and terrifying fantasies. In the morning he wasn’t sure anymore what came from the killer and what was just the expression of his own impulses. But he had learned a few small things which, put together, were beginning to yield results.

  This cocksucker wasn’t just highly intelligent; he hadn’t committed all of these crimes alone. He had also sensed around the Makeup Artist an idea of cleanliness, a great ugliness, the color green, and the haunting presence of a cross. There were also the bags, and the piece of furniture with the buttons. A snake.

  He couldn’t tolerate the visions this investigation was forcing on him anymore. For them, and for all the innocent people who had been sacrificed, he bore the Makeup Artist a burning hatred. Outside, the night and the snow had covered up the warmth of the automobiles. After one last lap, Mallock pulled himself easily out of the water. His towel was rough. He dried himself off slowly, sloshing through the water pooled on the tiles.

  He would never have moved so calmly if he’d known about Julie.

  40.

  Monday, January 17th. Dawn

  It was the first day of a week he would never forget, and yet he didn’t notice anything special. He woke up at four in the morning, convinced that the phone was about to ring. He got up and took the handset with him into the kitchen. Even before he’d lit the gas burner, the ring shattered the silence.

  “Hi, chief. Sorry to wake you.”

  “Don’t worry; I was expecting your call. Has he struck again?”

  “A young woman and a baby this time,” answered Ken, no longer surprised by his boss’s strange abilities. “Should I come by and get you?”

  “I’m ready.”

  Mallock hung up. His weekend had ended in the best way possible; it almost seemed normal for the week to begin with news of the worst. Tossing a couple of children’s toys into the backseat, he got into his colleague’s little Renault, grim-faced. Ken didn’t even try to lighten the mood. He was none too happy himself; he was just as tired of counting bodies. His wife was just about to give birth again, and he would rather have devoted himself to thinking about life.

  Without exchanging a word, they drove to the crime scene. Parking in front of the police station on the Rue Bonaparte, which overlooked the square, Ken said simply:

  “First indications point to the murder’s happening two days ago.”

  He led them toward the church of Saint-Sulpice, crossing the vast esplanade with its two fountains.

  “Don’t tell me he’s managed to hide in there! It’s always jammed with people,” said Mallock.

  “The bastard staged his scene in the crypt. It was closed for renovations and no one thought to go down and check on it.”

  Mallock felt like he’d been slapped in the face. He knew the Saint-Sulpice crypt. At his wife’s insistence, Thomas had been baptized there.

  As Ken spoke, he pulled out a jar of Vicks. “Want some, boss?”

  Mallock took a dab of the camphor-eucalyptus jelly on the tip of his index finger and smeared it under his nose. He’d cut his upper lip shaving that morning. The Vicks made it sting cruelly.

  There was something nightmarish about the atmosphere that reigned in the crypt. Besides the light given off by hundreds of flickering candles, one element gave the scene a particularly theatrical air: a sort of white calm, compact and oily. They were in a church crypt, which was a reason to whisper his orders as well as his curses. The noise of shoes scraping on the stone, and the voices distorted by individual radios linked to the central command post, only gave more weight and significance to this pallid silence.

  In front of Mallock were the sacrificed bodies of a mother and her baby. He had actually been expecting something like this for several days now. The mother and child, the Madonna and Christ, an emblematic and recurring theme in religious imagery. It also reminded him, for the first time, of Russian icons.

  Contrary to what some people thought at the time, the strand of iron around the child’s arms wasn’t a remnant of torture; just a simple brace to hold the subject, arms raised, in the position of the benedictory infant. But the most astonishing aspect was the gold covering the baby’s entire body. Mallock was certain now that the Makeup Artist must be creating images, duplicating existing one
s. It was incredible that he was able to make them up more and more while they were alive, or almost.

  “As soon as we get back to the Fort,” he murmured to Ken, “put one of the guys on the purchase of decorative gold leaf. There’s a ton of it here; we’ve got a chance. Then have him put the list of major buyers in the database, as usual.”

  Then he turned his attention back to the victims.

  The woman’s arms were raised heavenward. She was draped in floor-length blue and white veils. But her stomach was bare. Worse, it had been hollowed out like a cave. The Makeup Artist had eviscerated and disemboweled her. In the empty space, where only the spinal column and a few ribs remained, he had placed two candles. Their flickering light danced on the bloody walls around them and on the group of small, traditional Christmas figurines that also filled the cavity: a cow, a donkey, Joseph, the three Kings, and, on a bed of straw, a little pink baby Jesus.

  Mallock turned his head to look at the baby. He wanted to say goodbye to the little martyred body, whisper a few snatches of prayer over it. He moved closer to it. No one had dared to do that yet. A smell of sweat and feces rose from it. He thought at first of the putrefaction of death, but one detail stunned him. The golden stomach was moving. It was almost imperceptible, but he had to be sure. He put his ear up to the baby’s mouth. Nothing. But he felt compelled to hold the lenses of his glasses right up against the child’s lips.

  “For the love of Christ!”

  The curse echoed in the crypt, immediately followed by orders.

  “Call the paramedics, quickly. He’s still breathing! Pulse very weak, respiration almost nil, but there’s something alive in there. Move your asses!”

  To the astonishment of the two priests and everyone else present, he began ripping the gold leaf off the child’s body. Ken joined him and removed the iron brace. Like damned souls hovering over the poor golden angel, they looked like two birds of prey tearing apart their victim. Flakes of gold floated in the air of the crypt, gleaming in the light of the candles, like so many miniature suns.