Seven Days

by Patrick Senécal

  Mercure let his eyes wander outside for a moment. He remembered having himself had that feeling of infinite emptiness after Madelaine’s death. The feeling that nothing would have meaning anymore. Except that he had reacted differently from Hamel. And that had made it possible for him to get through it.

  But had he really gotten through it?

  Demers, for example . . .

  He shook his head. This was no time to think about that. Get back to Hamel.

  Because that was the worst thing about it, the most terrible thing: Hamel did not want to get through it. He had no desire to.

  “Something wrong with your coffee, Inspector?”

  The waiter had come over. Mercure reassured him with a smile, took a big swallow, and turned back to the disorganized notes in his notebook.

  Also, in spite of his admirable control, Hamel had lost his cool for a brief moment during each of the two calls: when he had told his partner that now he was the victim of the dog and when he had called Mercure a dog and had even told him to stop barking. Of course, that last comment could simply have been an insult; calling a cop a dog was nothing unusual. But Mercure had trouble imagining a man like Hamel calling police officers dogs or pigs. And in both cases, Hamel had not even seemed aware of the brief loss of control.

  Why these references to dogs that had no relation to the conversation?

  Maybe he was completely on the wrong track. It even seemed a little ridiculous to put so much emphasis on this. But since he had no leads, he didn’t want to leave any stone unturned.

  He put his notebook back in his coat pocket and finally finished his coffee.

  * * *

  Bruno stood on the shore, which was covered in dead leaves, contemplating Lac des Souris, his hands in his coat pockets. The sky had clouded over during the night, but not to the point that it was threatening rain.

  He had gotten up quite late again this morning, still feeling the same heaviness. For the second night in a row, he had dreamed of gaping mouths full of teeth, with sounds like muffled blows. Try as he might, he could find no meaning to that dream.

  This morning, he had finally realized that he hadn’t brought a change of clothes. He looked for some clothes in the cottage, but didn’t find any. Oh well, a week without changing wouldn’t kill him. If his underwear really got dirty, he would do without. He hadn’t brought a razor either, but that too was a detail. On the other hand, he promised himself a nice shower after breakfast.

  He had gone into the monster’s room at ten forty with a meal for him. The monster was fast asleep. Under his closed eyelids, his pupils were moving a lot, indicating troubled sleep. His face was paler than when he had arrived, almost white, and his forehead glistened with sweat. His left knee, which was more swollen than the other one, was purplish right up to the hip. The hemorrhage must be extensive. That could be serious.

  So he had given the monster an injection to make him sleep another two hours. Then he had turned the crank to raise the chains until his body was in a standing position again, with the toes barely touching the floor. He had pushed the tabletop, which was still vertical, against the monster’s back, and he had replaced the chains on his wrists with metal rings that were screwed to one end of the table and shackled his ankles to two rings at the other end. The monster was thus pinned to the vertical tabletop with his arms extended above his head. Bruno had then turned the tabletop back to a horizontal position and pushed it to the back wall of the room. By turning a crank extending from the apparatus, he had lowered the table to about hip height. The monster now looked like a cadaver lying on a table ready to be dissected. Then Bruno had prepared an intravenous bag and a transfusion tube. After hanging the bag from a little hook on the wall, he attached the tube to the monster’s left arm. There. About a dozen hours of intravenous antibiotic should take care of the hemorrhage.

  He had left the room, leaving breakfast behind.

  Then he had called Morin and told him that the money for the day was in a small village close to Grand-Mère.

  “That makes a little more travel for me,” Morin had grumbled.

  “For seven thousand dollars, I think it’ll be worth your while.”

  “Anyway, I’d like it for the other days if the money could be hidden in Grand-Mère.”

  That had really surprised Bruno. So Morin hadn’t realized that all the bundles of money were already hidden? Not very sharp, this guy. All the better, in fact. The less clever he was, the less Bruno had to worry about.

  “The money will be where it will be, Mr. Morin. If you’re not happy, you can always stop going to get it, and I’ll keep it for myself.”

  After the phone call, he had eaten a huge breakfast. He was starving. Then he’d watched the noon news. The same report as the day before. Finally, he had gone outside, completely forgetting to shower.

  He was still contemplating the lake, his new vision making him see only a vast expanse of gray, featureless water. In any case, he thought, this way of seeing things would be completely appropriate for his time in prison . . .

  Prison. About fifteen years, probably. Maybe more. But he didn’t care. When you don’t have a life anymore, you may as well rot away in a cell.

  And it was worth it.

  Of course, he still didn’t feel totally satisfied. That was normal. He was on the way there, certainly. He had climbed the first few rungs, but the ladder of satisfaction was tall. And he still had plenty of time to get to the top. That was precisely why he had allowed a week. So he could take his time.

  The sun peeked briefly through the clouds, and its rays touched Bruno’s balding head. With his eyes on the lake, he barely felt them, and a minute later, the clouds completely covered the sky again.

  * * *

  Christian Bolduc and Anne-Marie Pleau looked like a team coming back from the Olympic Games without a single medal. The day before, they had gone out with the Longueuil police. They had combed the very large neighborhood covered by the telephone cell. They had shown Hamel’s photo to all the merchants, all the landlords, and all the hotel and motel clerks and apartment building janitors. Nothing. Wagner was red-faced with irritation, but Mercure kept his cool.

  “Okay, go back there and continue the search. Take two more guys with you. Are the Longueuil police cooperating?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perfect. Hamel must be in disguise. That’s why no one recognizes him. Go back to the hotels and apartment buildings, and ask if they’ve had any complaints about strange noises in the last two days. Also, ask them if they have any tenants who never go out or who look suspicious.”

  “We’ve already asked them all that, Hervé.”

  “Ask again. Maybe they’ve noticed something new since yesterday. And if they still have nothing to tell you, ask them again tomorrow. And the next day.”

  Bolduc and Pleau nodded without enthusiasm.

  “And don’t come back here. Just call me. I want you to stay in Longueuil until you find him.”

  When they were alone again, Mercure and Wagner remained silent for a little while.

  “If he left his cell phone on,” Mercure said, “we could triangulate the signal . . .”

  “What good would that do? We already know the area where he’s hiding.”

  “But triangulation is more precise, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but it’s complicated to set up. It takes people with equipment, and we can’t put a team on standby when we’re not even sure Hamel will call again. Anyway, if he’s in that area, we’re sure to find him!”

  Mercure shook his head doubtfully.

  “That part of Longueuil is densely populated, it’s very urban. I can’t understand how Hamel could hide there with a hostage without attracting any attention. Maybe he goes to Longueuil to call but he’s hiding somewhere else . . .”

  “That seems pretty risky to me. And if that’s the case, even triangulation wouldn’t give us anything!” sighed the chief.

  After a pause, he asked, “Did you
go to the hospital before?”

  Mercure said yes. He had questioned a few pharmacists. One of them, whose name was Martin Laplante, had seemed particularly nervous, and after Mercure had worked on him gently, he had finally given in. He had made the nitro patches for Hamel and provided him with various antibiotics.

  “Hamel blackmailed him with some old business about drug trafficking.”

  “Did Laplante say anything else?”

  “No. Only that he found Hamel gloomy and not himself.”

  “Nothing new, then.”

  Mercure didn’t say anything. He remembered how desperate Laplante had been, convinced he was going to be considered an accomplice and also because of the trafficking business that had been uncovered. But all the detective sergeant did was thank him and leave while he watched wide-eyed.

  “The chief of surgery also told me that several surgical instruments had gone missing. About the same time Hamel visited the hospital.”

  Wagner paced a few steps, picked up a paper clip from the desk, and asked, “You know what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes.”

  The chief looked up, surprised.

  “You’re wondering what condition Lemaire is in now,” continued Mercure.

  Wagner nodded and looked down at his hands, bending and straightening the paper clip absentmindedly.

  “And you know what? The idea doesn’t really horrify me.”

  He made a face, threw the paper clip on the floor, and loosened his collar, asking, “And you, what are you thinking?”

  “I’d planned to go to Montreal this week. I’m wondering if I shouldn’t put it off.”

  “To see Demers?”

  Mercure nodded. Wagner shook his head, making a face.

  “I don’t understand how you can go see that guy three times a year, Hervé.”

  Mercure did not reply and his superior did not insist. He knew it was a delicate subject, and in any case, he had given up trying to understand.

  Mercure stood up and walked to the door. Wagner asked him what he was going to do.

  “Watch some videos,” he answered, completely serious.

  * * *

  When Bruno walked into the cottage at one forty in the afternoon, he heard the monster calling feebly. He had woken up. Perfect. Bruno suddenly felt excited.

  He hurried out to his car again to get the bag with the purchase he had made the week before in the fetish shop in Montreal. He went back inside, took off his coat, and went to the room where the monster was still calling.

  The monster was stretched out and shackled to the horizontal tabletop. He raised his head when Bruno came in. Bruno went over to him without putting down the bag. There was terror in the monster’s eyes, of course, but also a strange, horrified fascination, as if he had had a disturbing revelation.

  “I want . . . I want . . . to talk to you . . .”

  He was trying to keep his voice calm, but pain and fear made it quaver. He was still very pale, but was not sweating anymore. He grimaced occasionally, no doubt feeling pain in his knees.

  “But first, could . . . could you please give me something to eat? And something to drink?”

  Bruno noticed the polite tone, which he found amusing.

  “I saw that there was a . . . a full plate, there, on the floor . . . with a glass of juice. That’s juice, isn’t it?”

  Bruno didn’t move. He looked at his prisoner and waited for what would come next. The monster gave up on the meal for the time being. He hesitated, his face full of fear, and after licking his lips, said, “I . . . I’m sorry, Dr. Hamel . . .”

  Bruno breathed out sharply through his nose and his whole body stiffened.

  “I’m sorry for the . . . for the horrible thing I did. I . . . I’m sorry.”

  At those words, Bruno pulled the lever on the table and brought it back up to a vertical position. The monster gave an agonized moan.

  “Dr. Hamel, I . . . I understand what you’re trying to do.”

  Bruno pushed the table on its casters to the two chains hanging from the ceiling. The tube in the prisoner’s arm was long enough to stay attached to the intravenous bag.

  “The liquid you’re shooting me up with, it’s . . . it’s some kind of medicine, huh? Because my legs are messed up, and you don’t want me to die . . . ?”

  Bruno stopped the table. He took a small key out of his pocket, detached the monster’s right wrist from the table, and shackled it to one of the two chains hanging from the ceiling.

  “You don’t want me to die, because you want to . . .”

  Another moan. Bruno did the same thing with the left wrist.

  “. . . you want to keep me alive as long as possible so you can . . .”

  The sentence ended in a strangled sound. Bruno bent over and opened the rings at the bottom of the table, freeing the monster’s feet. He had nothing to fear from that quarter: with his two broken knees, the monster couldn’t even have pushed a balloon.

  “It’s really . . . really awful, what I did, I know it. If you only knew how sorry I am for it.”

  His breathing becoming more and more hoarse, Bruno pushed the table to the side. The monster was left hanging two centimeters from the floor, his arms stretched, his body swinging slightly. Grimacing, he continued, in a shrill, almost childlike voice.

  “I need help, do you understand? Psychiatric help! It’s not my fault, I can’t control it, I’ve had such an unhappy life, I’ve been so . . . so humiliated . . . I was even glad I got arrested. It was time that I got . . . got treatment.”

  Bruno took a rectangular cardboard box from his bag, remembering what Mercure had said ten days earlier about the monster’s lack of remorse, his arrogance during questioning, his little chuckle when he realized he was cornered. He was in such a hurry to open the box that his hands were shaking.

  “If you . . . if you torture me, it’s . . . it’s . . . not going to help me! It won’t help me at all. On the contrary, it will make me worse!”

  The box finally opened and Bruno took out a whip, which he unrolled to its full length. Walking stiffly, he placed himself behind the monster.

  “It’s . . . it’s . . . love I need, help and love! I . . . never got enough! Nobody loved me when I was little, nobody! Not even my parents!”

  The more he went on with his psychological clichés, the more Bruno despised the monster and the more abhorrent he found him. Who did this asshole take him for? Some poor fool who wept over the people on reality shows? Did he think he was that stupid? And when he was raping Bruno’s daughter, was he thinking that he lacked love? Was he feeling sorry for himself? While Jasmine was calling with all the strength in her tiny body to her father, who was not there . . . who was not there . . . WHO WAS NOT THERE!!!!

  His first lash was that of a novice, clumsy and poorly controlled. The whip cracked feebly, barely touching the monster’s back, though he still gave a short, sharp scream, more from panic than pain. As he squirmed in vain in his chains, he kept repeating that he was sorry, that he needed help . . .

  “It’s not my fault! I’m sick, it’s not my fault!”

  The second lash, while not impressive, was more successful, and a light mark appeared on the skin of the monster, who cried out again. There was a flash of joy in Bruno’s dark gaze.

  “It’s not my fault!”

  The third lash was perfect: a resounding crack, an immediate impact, and a long red streak on the left shoulder blade. This time the cry expressed real suffering. Encouraged by this success, Bruno lashed faster, with more assurance. More and more streaks appeared, blood started to flow, and the intravenous tube finally came loose. Between screams, the monster kept shouting, “It’s not my fault! Not my fault!”

  And Bruno, his mouth twisted in a horrible grimace, flogged the back and buttocks of his victim, who was being reduced to a mass of lacerated, bleeding flesh. Bruno was aiming to climb up another rung on the ladder of satisfaction.

  Suddenly, under the agonized shouting of the to
rtured man, Bruno heard the strange muted sound he had heard the night before, but now it was stronger and clearer, and he thought he recognized the whimpering of an animal . . .

  . . . the whimpering of a dog.

  He stopped flogging for an instant, perplexed. The dog’s whimpering had stopped. The monster took advantage of this respite to repeat, in a voice so mixed with sobbing that it was barely possible to make out the words, “Not . . . not my fault.”

  Enraged by these obscene words, Bruno began whipping him again. The monster gave another cry, and then, his voice transformed by surprising rage, he suddenly spat out, “It’s not my fault, dammit! It’s those little bitches, prancing around in their short dresses! They’re not even ten years old, and they go around showing their asses. The little cock-teasers!”

  Bruno felt as if he himself had been lashed full in the face. He leapt around to face the monster and looked at him with such fury that the monster’s rage subsided instantly, replaced by panic. He mumbled an excuse, but Bruno didn’t hear it; his ears were still filled with the abomination uttered by his prisoner.

  Drunk with hate, he backed up a few steps and started lashing again. Five lashes struck the monster’s belly and thighs; two hit his face, one slashing his forehead and nose close to one eye, the other cutting his cheek. The monster’s cries were becoming weaker and weaker . . .

  . . . and behind each cry, Bruno could still hear the animal whining, as if he had an invisible double who was simultaneously whipping a dog that was also invisible.

  He stopped, his arm tired. Out of breath, he looked at the monster swinging at the end of his chains and dripping blood. He was only half-conscious; his head was nodding, his eyes were unfocused, and he was moaning a constant piercing moan. Bruno went to the winch and released it. The chains went slack and spun off the winch, and the monster collapsed heavily, legs first. When his broken knees hit the floor, he found the strength to squeal. Huddled on the floor in a puddle of his own blood, he started to cry.