“I can’t understand what you’re saying. Was it Sunday? Sunday night?”
“ Tak. Sunday.”
“What time?”
Krzysztof did not understand the question, so Father Kern pointed at his watch. Krzysztof opened his arms in a gesture of powerlessness and also pointed at his bare wrist, deprived of a watch.
“ W nocy.”
“At night? Is that right, Krzysztof? Was it already nighttime when you came across her?”
“Tak. W nocy.”
“Tell me, Krzysztof. Where did you see her? Was she alone? What was she doing exactly?”
Krzysztof made a huge effort to remember. Despite the tiredness, despite the alcohol, despite the thousand difficulties he’d had to tackle since that already seemingly distant Sunday night in order to find food, drink, a place to sleep, and avoid fights, he made an effort to search his memory, and somehow or other managed to put some order in his thoughts. However, just as he was about to convey them, he collided head on with the language barrier. Father Kern was growing impatient. Krzysztof tried to express himself through gestures but his large paws also remained silent.
“Never mind, Krzysztof. Tell me in your own language. You never know, perhaps I’ll understand one or two words. Let’s try.”
Krzysztof took a deep breath then, in an overpoweringly alcoholic whisper, he began. “In garden. I go to sleep, much plants— schowany za roslinami. I see back of katedra. Zauwazylem dziewczyne—girl—open gate from street. She have code for klódki. Ona weszla do ogrodu. Into garden. White, white. All white. She look—Wygladala pieknie w swietle gwiazd. Stairs, she goes up, knock on door. Back of katedra. Door opens, she go inside. Nie wiem, co zdarzylo sie pózniej.”
Father Kern his eyes to the tall vaults, darkened day after day, month after month, year after year, by the sour breath of hundreds of thousands of visitors. He murmured, “Pray for us poor sinners.” He murmured, “Sin has penetrated these walls. It didn’t have to come in through the keyhole because it simply had the key.” And then he murmured again, “This is the meaning of Your sign, O Lord. You have plunged me into darkness in order to push me to find the path of light again. You’ve put the key to the sin into the palm of my hand in order to test my faith. It’s up to me to find out which door it opens. It’s up to me to discover the identity of the killer.”
Looking at the small priest absorbed in his Low Mass, the Polish vagrant, wrapped up in his grimy padded jacket, wondered what all that gibberish was about.
“Luna Hamache. Twenty-one years old, born in Paris, in the eighteenth arrondissement. Studying history at the Villetaneuse university. Living with her parents in Rue Guy-Môquet. Father of Algerian origin, unemployed, mother a care worker in Beaujon. Does that ring any bells, Thibault?”
“No. Who is it?”
“It’s the girl who was strangled on Sunday night right in the middle of Rejoice, Mary. Her father recognized her picture in yesterday’s Le Parisien. Not easy finding out about your daughter’s death by opening a paper on the counter of a café, right, Thibault?
“Yes, it’s terrible.”
“Terrible? Do you know where her parents are right now? They’re at Forensics, in the process of identifying a corpse pulled out of a drawer. Don’t you think it’s time you started being a bit more talkative, Thibault?”
“But I told you, I didn’t do anything to that poor girl.”
“Didn’t do anything? You’re kidding, right? We’ve got about fifty witnesses who saw you hitting that poor girl, as you say, during the procession. And less than five hours later, while the movie session was in full swing in Notre Dame, someone squeezed her neck so tight, she jumped so far out of her skin she landed in heaven. You’ll excuse me if we have good reason to believe that the sicko who did her in is you, Thibault.”
“You have no proof.”
“We’ll have proof enough in less than two hours. And you know why, Thibault? Because in less than two hours, the medical examiner will have finished his postmortem report. In your opinion, whose DNA are we going to find on the poor girl’s clothes? As far as I’m concerned, I’m not too bothered about proof, especially given the porn drawings we found at your place. What I would like to know, however, is why. Why and how?”
“Ask the murderer. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“I’m going to tell you what happened. I’m going to tell you exactly. On Sunday, you went to the cathedral like you always do on the day of the Assumption. Like every year, you had your crucifix in one hand and your dick in the other, if you’ll excuse the expression, so to speak.”
“Honestly, inspector, do you have to use that kind of language?”
“The Day of the Assumption is a bit like New Year’s Day for fetishists of the Virgin Mary. Right, Thibault? It’s the only day of the year when they get the silver statue out. Wipe it off a bit and off we go on a little tour of Paris. Knights, priests, the old pious folks, everyone follows. And among all that crowd, there’s also degenerates like you who take pictures while waiting to go back home and jerk off all night. Right, Thibault?”
“I don’t know.”
“Right, now wait, I haven’t finished my story. Imagine that in the middle of the procession, you come across a second Virgin Mary who looks like the twin of your statue, except that this one isn’t made of silver but flesh and blood, all dressed in white, like the one at Lourdes, except that she’s a bit of a streetwalker type, miniskirt and nice tits, you know who I mean?”
“I think so, yes.”
“And the girl has the right, after all, to air her little ass— after all, shit, this is France, not Saudi Arabia!—and so she excites you so much that you suddenly think in that disgusting little head of yours: fuck, she’d better stop prick-teasing like that, or I’m really going to lose it. So you start hitting her like a punching bag, isn’t that true, Thibault? You hit her until she’s bleeding, until my pal Mourad intervenes with all the subtlety he’s famous for. Am I not right so far, Thibault? Isn’t that exactly what happened?”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“So then you leave and go for a walk until the evening. And then, at about nine or ten, you’re horny again. You need to go and see your Virgin Mary on the big screen. Who knows? Maybe you can even touch yourself a couple of times in the dark. And who should you see, right there in the darkness, in the middle of Notre Dame? Our pretty little thing in a miniskirt. In the dark, you can see nothing but her. I swear she glows in the dark in her white dress, just like an apparition. Right, Thibault? So you wait awhile, you wait for her to get up and go for a stroll, light a candle by some statue or other in a dark corner, and then you pounce on her. And you know what happens next, Thibault? The stupid fool starts screaming. She tries to call for help. So you put your hand over her mouth, your hand over her nose, and then you start panicking. Of course, Rejoice, Mary is blasting from the movie speakers at full volume. But even so, she keeps wriggling around, right, Thibault? So then what do you do? You put your arm around her neck and you pull, you squeeze, you crush as hard as you can. Until your madonna isn’t moving anymore. She’s still, totally still, and beautiful, still and beautiful like a statue. Tell me, Thibault, tell me that’s how it happened.”
“It’s not true, inspector. Your story’s completely off base.”
“You and your mother are beginning to seriously piss me off with this ‘inspector’ business. This isn’t Inspector Maigret! It’s ‘captain!’ From now on you call me ‘captain!’”
“All right, captain.”
“And what happened next? You let them lock you in? Did you hide deep inside one of the chapels with the dead girl in your arms and wait for the cathedral to close? Is that it? You were lucky, you know, Thibault, lucky Mourad didn’t do his rounds that night. Once you were alone with her, you had all the time you wanted to do all that disgusting stuff with the wax. You had all the time in the world to redo her virginity with candles. It’s so much more reassuring for lunatics l
ike you, isn’t it—a woman reduced to the state of a statue, white, virgin, dead, who you can’t do anything to anymore. A relic. Nothing left to do but worship her. And then what? What happened? You calmly waited for the cathedral to reopen in the morning, did you? Is that it? You went out whistling a happy tune, finally calmed down, your hands in your pockets. Is that it?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I was in bed asleep.”
“You’re really starting to tick me off, Thibault. Let’s see how clever you are later, in front of the committing magistrate.”
“What time is it?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“No reason.”
“What time is it, Gombrowicz?”
“It’s after eleven.”
“What’s the smile for?”
“You can only keep me in custody for another hour.”
“You think we’re going to let you go?”
“Twenty-four hours, captain. It’s the law.”
“You wait and see, Thibault. Here, when we like people, we have the right to keep them a little longer. I hope you like your room and your roommates at the prison, because you might just have to spend another night there. Gombrowicz? Call the little magistrate for me, will you?”
He had formed an opinion about their methods. The violence with which he’d seen them arrest their suspect in the glass confessional had inspired in him nothing but fear and contempt. Would Krzysztof, for whom anyone in a uniform was suspect and possibly an enemy, agree to speak to them? Would he repeat what he’d seen in the garden behind the cathedral the night of the murder? The chances were very slim. Nonexistent, in fact. It was quite possible the Polish vagrant would go elsewhere, clear out from the neighborhood of Notre Dame at the slightest prospect of a confrontation with the police, and never reappear.
What could he do? Where could he go? Whom should he talk to? Ever since he’d been chaplain at Poissy, he’d learned to handle this huge machine with caution: French Justice, with its apparently noble goals, its necessary role, but which changed faces depending on who was standing before it. He needed to find the right person to speak to, knock on the right door. The fate of the blond young man, the one they had handcuffed before his eyes and those of Christ, might depend on it.
Father Kern avoided the sacristy and left directly through the door of Saint-Étienne, on the side of the Seine. He walked along the side of the cathedral, past the presbytery, where the rector lived, and looked up at the windows of his apartment. There was no rush to tell him. Besides, he didn’t know what to tell him exactly. Should he mention Krzysztof? And this almost miraculous translation from Polish into French he seemed to have been granted? Strangely, Kern was hesitant about sharing that experience, even with another priest at the cathedral. And yet he was spoiled for choice. Notre Dame had about twenty permanent priests—canons, chaplains, reception priests, student priests—not counting visiting parish priests from France or abroad who came to fill in during the summer. With some of them, Kern had formed bonds that went beyond the spiritual and the professional. A rapport of true friendship had been established. Yet at this precise stage on his path through the cathedral, he chose to take pleasure in a kind of solitude, laden with an as yet imperceptible weight, but which he knew would grow heavier in the hours to come.
He went through the gate that separated him from the square. He walked straight ahead, with a step he hoped was confident but which, yard by yard, was actually becoming more and more undecided.
He stopped right in the middle of the large square, staring at the ground, and was immediately accosted by a Roma beggar woman who held out a frayed postcard on which a no-less frayed appeal for generosity was written. She asked him to help feed her baby, she asked him for money to help her handicapped brother, her bedridden mother. He looked at the plastic sandals and the overly long toenails that had just come into his field of vision, then raised his head and studied the young woman. Under her tousled mop of hair, she had extraordinarily beautiful green eyes. She lowered them and noticed, pinned to his lapel, the small metal cross, the only distinctive sign of his priesthood. She knew only too well that the priests of Notre Dame were generally not the type who put their hands in their pockets in order to finance Romanian charities. Realizing her mistake, she laughed, revealing a set of teeth with a metallic gleam. Father Kern smiled back at her and resumed his walk.
A little farther, he was approached by another woman begging. This one was not from Romania but from the national radio. She held out a rectangle of card with her name printed under the Radio France logo. She asked if he’d witnessed the suspect’s arrest the day before. She asked him for his testimony, and whether the young man in custody was a regular at Notre Dame. He stared at the mic she was holding out to him and replied that all interviews had to be applied for at the cathedral press office. Then he said good-bye to her with a brief nod, and walked away.
He went down Quai du Marché-Neuf, walking against the traffic. He passed the police prefecture on his right, crossed Boulevard du Palais, and stopped once again, a small, motionless figure, lost in the constant flow of visiting tourists. Ahead of him began Quai des Orfèvres. Number 36 was about a hundred yards away. He stuffed his two fists in the pockets of his jacket. With his left hand, he felt the pipe and tobacco pouch he always carried with him. He approached the parapet of Pont Saint-Michel, put his packet of Peterson on it, and began stuffing his pipe while watching the Seine flow by. Below, a bateau-mouche was about to pass under the bridge. From the top gallery of the boat, a little blond girl waved at him. Father Kern responded slightly late, after the child had already disappeared behind the pier of the bridge. He lit his pipe and allowed the taste and smell of tobacco to permeate his nose, mouth, and throat.
He thought about Djibril, and the fate he was now unable to change behind the walls of his prison. He thought of the advice the murderer had given him: pray, yes, but also act before it was too late, act while you still have the freedom of choice and action. Finally, he thought about his brother. To act, act before death comes for us, act before we turn to dust. Act before we’re buried under regrets and shovelfuls of soil.
He put his pouch back into his left pocket and, followed by a trail of fragrant smoke that escaped intermittently from his pipe, he turned right in the direction of the Palais.
The morning court session had ended with a flourish, with the case of a thirty-eight-year-old tile installer. The night before, in an advanced state of drunkenness, he’d hit his wife with a hammer in front of their three children aged twelve, ten, and seven. She was currently in the hospital with a fractured shoulder blade. When Claire Kauffmann asked him the reasons for his act, the man, sitting opposite her in the tiny defendant’s box, had at first shrugged before answering, “Tiredness.”
The deputy magistrate had slammed shut the file with the police report before suggesting an immediate trial.
With her heavy load of papers in the crook of her arm, she went along the endless corridors of the Palais de Justice, climbed steps in every direction, walked through creaking doors, along flaking walls, picking up along the way hastily scribbled bits of paper or Post-it notes that had fallen off doors they’d been stuck on in order to indicate that such-and-such a judge or such-and-such a deputy had been moved elsewhere owing to lack of space or funds. She passed clerks of court, magistrates, and police; defendants who looked distraught, lost in this neon-lit labyrinth where even professionals sometimes struggled to find their bearings, some of them handcuffed and kept on a leash by a gendarme, their staring eyes expressing the boredom, the anxiety, and the tiredness of a night spent in the Palais cells.
She went to her office to put down her stack of files, and immediately grabbed that of young Thibault, the suspect in the Notre Dame murder case, whose twenty-four-hour custody was about to expire and needed to be urgently renewed. As she was going back out, the telephone rang. Her fellow deputy picked up while Claire Kauffmann paused in the doorway. “It’s Rece
ption on the Boulevard du Palais side,” she said. “Apparently there’s a priest from the cathedral who wants to speak with you.”
“Later,” she replied. “Give him my direct line and ask him to call back in two hours’ time.”
Then she left, the file in the crook of her arm, walking in small, quick, high-heeled steps toward the Crime Squad, where Captain Landard and the alleged murderer were waiting for her.
Once in the room, she felt nauseous. The air was unbreathable and the cloud of smoke so thick, she guessed rather than saw that Landard was sitting, as usual, on the corner of his desk. Opposite him, handcuffed to his chair, the suspect seemed to be staring at the policeman’s shoes. Landard got up and went to the deputy magistrate. For a moment, they stood by the door, speaking in hushed tones.
“Is this a new interrogation technique, captain? Do you smoke your suspects like herrings?”
“Absolutely, Mademoiselle Kauffmann. At night, we marinate them in the humid basement of the cells. During the day, we smoke them under the fourth-floor roof. We alternate chill with stifling heat. A little combination that’s already yielded results. The prisoners come out of it—how shall I put it?—softer, wiser, more inclined to talk.”
“Seriously, captain, may I open the window? You can’t breathe here.”
“If you insist. It’s a whole atmosphere I’m only going to have to reconstruct once your charming form is out of here.”
“Where’s Lieutenant Gombrowicz?”
“Down in the courtyard. I sent him out to have his sandwich. Shall we get on with it, madame? Shall we give our little blond angel a second round?”
“Don’t call him that, captain.”
“Does it bother you?”
“You know as well as I do that there’s nothing angelic about this young man.”
“No need to get all hot and bothered. It’s just a friendly little nickname.”
“I’m tired of people giving affectionate nicknames to perverts, you see? I’m tired of rapists being described as libertines or seducers. I’m tired of innuendos like ‘But what was she doing in the guy’s apartment at that time of night?’ I’m tired of gentle euphemisms violent husbands use to explain why they’ve sent their wives to Emergency. I’m tired of hearing ‘Of course I didn’t hit her. It was just a couple of slaps to calm her down.’ In our profession, words are important, captain, words have meaning, they have weight. The terms rape and murder have legal consequences, and I find it especially tendentious that a professional like yourself should call a defendant suspected of sexual assault and murder a ‘little blond angel.’ Have you got the form ready?”
The Madonna of Notre Dame Page 7
