Syndrome E

by Franck Thilliez

  “I went online and watched all the newscasts from that week. Monday morning, the builders find the five bodies, and that evening it’s the lead story on the news. They talk about several bodies found buried with their skulls open.”

  She pulled a memo book from her backpack. Sharko noted her attention to detail, and the dangerous passion she harbored. A cop’s eyes should never shine, and hers gleamed way too much when she talked about her case.

  “I wrote it down: that Monday night, the report on the corpses started at 8:03 and ended at 8:05. At 8:08, old Szpilman placed a call to Canada. I got the length of the call from his phone log: eleven minutes, which means he hung up at 8:19. At around 8:25, he died trying to get hold of that film.”

  “Were you able to check Szpilman’s other calls?”

  “I haven’t yet put my unit on the case. It would have taken forever to explain it all. The most urgent thing was to meet you first.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Lucie put her cell phone down in front of her.

  “Because the mysterious caller is supposed to ring back in less than fifteen minutes, and if I don’t have something meaty for him by then, that’ll be it.”

  “You could have gotten info from headquarters over the phone. But you wanted to see a real one, right?”

  “A real what?”

  “A real profiler. Somebody who’s been there.”

  Lucie shrugged. “I’d love to flatter your ego, Inspector, but that has nothing to do with it. I’ve told you what I know. Now it’s your turn.”

  She was a straight shooter, with no tricks. Sharko liked the unspoken contest she was proposing. Still, he had to needle her a bit.

  “No, seriously, you think I’m going to just hand over confidential information to some stranger from the land of the caribous? Shall we put up notices at the bus stops too, while we’re at it?”

  Lucie nervously emptied her Perrier into a glass. Skinned alive, thought Sharko.

  “Listen, Inspector. I’ve spent my day on the road and I pissed away almost a hundred euros in train tickets to come drink a Perrier. A friend of mine is locked away in a mental hospital because of this nonsense. I’m hot, I’m tired, I’m supposed to be on vacation, and to top it off, my daughter is very ill. So with all due respect, spare me your lousy jokes.”

  Sharko bit into his lemon slice, then licked his fingers.

  “We’ve all got our little woes. Some time ago I had to stay in a hotel without a bathtub. Last year, I think it was…Yes, last year. Now that was a real problem.”

  Lucie couldn’t believe her ears. A round-trip from Lille to Paris just to listen to this shit?

  “So what am I supposed to do? Just get up and go home?”

  “The brass has been briefed on this case of yours, at least?”

  “I just told you no.”

  Good lord, she was just like him. Sharko tried to get a bead on her.

  “You’re here because you feel life has overtaken you. In your head, pictures of corpses have replaced the photos of your children, am I right? Turn back, or you’ll end up like me. Alone amid a population that’s slowly wasting away.”

  What tragedies had sucked him in and stirred up so many shadows? Lucie recalled the pictures on the news when she’d first seen him, at the pipeline construction site. And that horrible impression he’d left her with: that of a man at the edge of a cliff.

  “I’d like to feel sorry for you, but I can’t. Pity isn’t my strong suit.”

  “I’m finding your tone a bit blunt. Have you forgotten you’re talking to a chief inspector, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m sorry if I—”

  She didn’t have time to finish. Her telephone started ringing. Lucie glanced at her watch—the man was a bit early. She snatched up the cell apprehensively. A number with area code 514. She gave Sharko a somber look.

  “It’s him. What do I do?”

  Sharko held out his hand. Lucie clenched her teeth and slapped the phone into his palm. She swung over to his side to listen in on the conversation. The inspector answered the phone without speaking. The voice at the other end of the line demanded abruptly: “Do you have the information?”

  “I’m the profiler you might have seen on TV. The guy with the shirt that should have been green and who’d had it up to here with reporters and the heat. So, about the information, yeah, I’ve got it.”

  Lucie and Sharko exchanged a tense glance.

  “Prove it.”

  “And this I do how? You want me to take a photo of myself and mail it to you? Let’s quit playing hide-and-seek. The lady cop you talked to on the phone is with me. The poor thing pissed away a hundred euros in train fare because of you. Now tell us what you know.”

  “You first. This is your last chance, or believe me, I’ll hang up.”

  Lucie tapped on Sharko’s shoulder, urging him to accept and soften his tone. The inspector acquiesced, taking care not to reveal too much.

  “We discovered five male individuals. Young adults.”

  “That much I saw on the Net. You’re not telling me anything.”

  “One of them was Asian.”

  “When were they killed?”

  “Between six months and a year ago. Now you. Why are you so interested in this case?”

  There was a palpable tension in the crackling of voices that passed from ear to ear.

  “Because I’ve been investigating this for two years.”

  Two years…Who was he? A cop? A private detective? And what was he investigating?

  “Two years? The corpses were only dug up three days ago, and at worst they’ve been dead for no more than a year. How can you have been investigating for two?”

  “Tell me about the bodies. The skulls, for instance.”

  Lucie didn’t miss a word. Sharko decided to let out a bit more line: negotiations often required concessions.

  “The skulls had been sawed off, very cleanly, with a surgical tool. Someone had removed their eyes, as well as…”

  “…their brains.”

  He knew. Some guy nearly four thousand miles away knew what was going on. Lucie made the connection with the film: the stolen eyes, the iris-shaped scarring. She murmured something to Sharko. He nodded and spoke into the phone:

  “What’s the connection between the bodies in Normandy and Szpilman’s film?”

  “The children and the rabbits.”

  Lucie strained to remember. She shook her head.

  “What children, what rabbits?” asked Sharko. “What do they mean?”

  “They’re the key, the start of the whole thing. And you know it.”

  “The start of what, for Christ’s sake?”

  “What else about the bodies? Any chance of identifying them?”

  “No. The killer eliminated any possibility of identification. Hands cut off, teeth pulled. One of the bodies, better preserved than the others, had large areas of skin missing from his arms and thighs, which he’d torn off himself.”

  “Do you have any leads?”

  Sharko decided to play it coy.

  “You’ll have to ask my colleagues. I’m officially on leave. And I’m about to head off for a little ten-day trip to Egypt, near Cairo.”

  Lucie threw up her arms, furious. Sharko gave her a wink.

  “Cairo…So then, you…No, it couldn’t have gone so fast. You…you’re one of them!”

  He hung up. Sharko crushed his mouth against the speaker.

  “Hello! Hello!”

  A horrible silence. Lucie was virtually glued to his shoulder. Sharko smelled her perfume, felt the dampness of her skin, and couldn’t bring himself to push her away.

  It was over. Sharko put the phone back on the table. Lucie stood up, fit to be tied.

  “I don’t believe it! Jesus, Inspector! Holidays in Cairo! What are we going to do now?”

  The inspector jotted the caller’s number on a corner of his napkin and put it in his pocket.

  “We?”

  “
You, me. Are we playing it solo, or do we eat from the same plate?”

  “A chief inspector never eats from the same plate as a lieutenant.”

  “Please, Inspector.”

  Sharko took a gulp of his beer. Something cool, to clear his mind. The day had been particularly freighted with emotion.

  “Okay. You drop the film restorer and get the reel to the lab. You bring your unit up to speed. Let them do a full workup. And have them send me a copy. Have them also get in touch with the Belgians, to check out this Szpilman. We absolutely have to find out who this Canadian was who just hung up on me.”

  Lucie nodded, feeling like she was crumbling under the weight of her responsibilities.

  “And what about you?”

  Sharko hesitated a moment, then began telling her about the telegram sent by a policeman named Mahmoud Abd el-Aal. He told her about the three girls, skulls sawed off just like here in France, and the mutilations. Lucie hung on every word; the case was burrowing deeper under her skin.

  “He said, ‘You’re one of them,’ ” Sharko added. “That confirms that the killer I’m looking for isn’t working alone. There’s the one who cleanly saws off the skulls, and the butcher, the one who chops them up with a cleaver.”

  Sharko thought for a few seconds more, then handed her his business card. Lucie did the same. He pocketed it, finished his beer, and stood up.

  “I need to go find some bug spray before I turn in. To say that I hate mosquitoes would be an understatement. I hate them more than anything in this world.”

  Lucie looked at Sharko’s card, turned it over. It was completely blank.

  “But…”

  “When you find somebody once, you always find him again. Keep me posted.”

  He left the exact amount of the bill on the table and held out his hand. At the moment Lucie went to shake it, he blocked her thumb and slipped his own on top. Lucie clenched her jaw.

  “Nicely done, Inspector. One to nothing.”

  “Everyone calls me Shark, not Inspector.”

  “Forgive me, but—”

  “I know, you can’t quite do it. In that case, let’s stick with Inspector. For now.”

  He smiled, but Lucie noticed something deeply sad in his dark eyes. Then he turned away and headed off toward Boulevard de Magenta.

  “Inspector Shark?”

  “What?”

  “In Egypt…be careful.”

  He nodded, crossed the station, walked through the entrance, and disappeared.

  Alone. It was the only word that Lucie retained from their meeting.

  A man alone, terribly alone. And wounded. Like her.

  She looked at the blank card, which she held in her fingers; she smiled and wrote, diagonally across one side, “Franck Sharko, alias Shark.” For a few seconds her fingers espoused the letters of that name with its harsh, Germanic consonance. Peculiar fellow. Slowly, she pronounced, stretching out each syllable, “Fran-ck Shar-ko.” The Shark.

  Then she slipped the card into her wallet and stood up in turn. The burning red sun was setting on the capital, ready to set it ablaze.

  She headed for the Lille medical center, 125 miles away. The great divide, as always, between her work and family life. Her daughter needed her back.

  15

  It was after ten when Lucie slipped into Juliette’s room. The antiseptic surroundings were becoming almost familiar. The nurses in the hallways, the carts loaded with diapers and bibs, the hum of neon…Her mother was at the console, neck leaning casually against the headrest of the large brown armchair.

  Marie Henebelle hardly fit the stereotype of a grandmother, or even a mother. Short hair bristling with bleached blond locks, trendy clothes, fully conversant with the latest kids’ gadgets: Wii, PlayStation, Nintendo DS. Moreover, she spent long hours playing Big Brain Academy on DS and Call of Duty on PlayStation, a game in which you had to kill as many enemies as possible. The contamination of the virtual world no longer had any age limit.

  Marie greeted her daughter unsmilingly, stood up quickly, and grabbed her red leather handbag.

  “Juliette threw up two more times this afternoon. Be prepared for a scolding from the doctor.”

  Lucie kissed her sleeping daughter, fragile as an ivory needle, and turned back toward her mother. On the screen, Call of Duty was on pause. Marie had just riddled three soldiers with a pump-action shotgun and seemed frankly annoyed.

  “Scolding? How come?”

  “The chocolate cookies you give her behind his back. You think they don’t know? They see parents like you every day of the week. Parents who don’t listen.”

  “She won’t eat anything else! Seeing the face she makes at that disgusting mush makes my heart ache.”

  “Don’t you get it? Her stomach won’t stand even an ounce of fat. Why do you always insist on breaking the rules?”

  Marie Henebelle’s nerves were on edge. Spending her day shut indoors, the TV, the tears, those video games that hammered on your brain. This kind of hospital was nowhere near as restful as a three-star ocean spa in Saint-Malo.

  “You’re on vacation, you could spend a little time with your girls. But no—you ship one off to camp and you go running around Belgium and Paris while your other daughter pukes up her guts.”

  Lucie had had enough; the last few hours had already pushed her to her limit.

  “Mom, I’ve got more time off coming in August and the three of us will go on vacation together. It’s already planned—that’s going to be our real family time.”

  Marie headed toward the door.

  “All time is real family time, Lucie. I thought you had priorities in life, but I guess I was wrong. And now, I’m going home to bed. Because, if I’m not mistaken, I have to be back here in a few hours. Good thing Gramma Marie is here, right?”

  She left. Lucie ran a hand over her face, exhausted, and turned off the television. The image of the pixilated soldier immediately vanished. Lucie thought of what Claude Poignet the restorer had said: violent imagery could strike anywhere, even in this children’s room in the depths of a hospital. Wasn’t there enough hostility on the streets, without having to bring it into the heart of a family’s privacy?

  Darkness fell, for once bringing peace.

  In her pajamas, Lucie pulled the chair up to the bed and gently settled next to Juliette. Tomorrow morning she’d stop by the station to inform her superiors about this business with the film, even if no DA would launch an official investigation over a fifty-year-old movie. That Inspector Sharko was full of big ideas: send the reel to the lab, search Szpilman’s place! As if it were all so easy. Where did they find him, that odd duck of a cop with his Bermuda shorts and docksiders? Curiously, Lucie couldn’t shake the impression he’d left her with: of a guy who had more crimes under his belt than she’d see in a lifetime, but who didn’t want to let anything show. What horrors were lurking in the back of his head? What had been his worst case? Had he already run across serial killers? How many?

  She finally drifted off to sleep, her head filled with dark images, her hand resting in her child’s.

  Her awakening, yet again, was sudden: neons snapping on and tearing through her lids. In her half-sleep, Lucie didn’t bother opening her eyes. It was probably a nurse, coming in for the nth time to make sure all was well. She was curling up tighter in her chair when a heavy voice yanked her from her slumbers once and for all.

  “Get up, Henebelle.”

  Lucie grumbled softly. Could it be…?

  “Captain?”

  Kashmareck was standing in front of her. Forty-six, stiff as a crowbar. The stark light chiseled his features and etched areas of shadow into his juglike face. He nodded toward the still-sleeping child, nestled under the blankets.

  “How’s she doing?”

  Lucie covered herself with a sheet, embarrassed at being seen by him in such a scanty outfit. Too much intimacy.

  “Oh, well…You didn’t come here just to hear about her. What’s going on?”


  “What do you think? We’ve caught a murder. Something rather…unusual.”

  Lucie still couldn’t figure out the reason for his visit. She sat up a bit and stuffed her feet into the rabbit slippers.

  “What sort?”

  “Bloody. This morning, a newspaper deliveryman calls us. He was in the habit of going to his customer’s house every morning at six for a cup of coffee. Except this time, he finds the customer hanging from the kitchen chandelier, hands tied behind his back. And gutted, among other things…”

  Lucie was talking to herself. She still couldn’t understand what was going on.

  “Forgive me, Captain, but…how does this relate to me? I’m on vacation and—”

  “We found your business card in his mouth.”

  16

  Police cars and the CSI van were still parked along Rue Gambetta when Lucie arrived. She had waited for her mother to show up, at nine o’clock, and taken a half hour to spend with Juliette, telling her that very soon they’d be going to the Vendée together, just the three of them, that they’d build hundreds of sand castles right near the ocean and eat ice cream cones until the sun went down.

  But for the moment she had to let go the sand castles and ice cream cones. Make way for something sticky and twisted: the stench of a crime scene.

  Kashmareck was already at the scene. At the hospital, Lucie had explained to him about the film, as she’d done with Inspector Sharko. But her meeting with the Paris cop the evening before, along with her call to Violent Crimes without clearing it upstairs, had made her boss livid. They’d settle this one later.

  Lucie walked into Claude Poignet’s living room, a lump in her throat. The room was lifeless, powerfully lit by the crime lab’s halogens to leave no clue undetected. The man or men who had shown up at Ludovic’s, then at Szpilman’s, had finally managed to get hold of their film. According to the colleagues who were combing over the upper floor, there wasn’t a trace of the mysterious reel. Lucie shook her head, lips pinched.