Syndrome E

by Franck Thilliez

  Clearly they were leaving nothing to chance. Once he stepped outside, Sharko was engulfed by the sweltering heat and instantly drenched in sweat. The grumbling of motors, the strident shriek of horns, and the odors of exhaust were unbearable. With a sigh, he pulled his suitcase from the trunk. When he turned around, Eugenie was standing in front of the hotel, arms folded, still wearing the same outfit. She was pouting as she watched the cars battle it out on an avenue that rivaled the Champs-Élysées.

  “…spector?”

  Lebrun was waiting, hand outstretched. Sharko regained his wits and shook it nervously. The embassy attaché quickly glanced toward the spot that the French cop had been staring at a few moments before. Nothing there.

  “One final piece of advice. Noureddine is no softy. He’s the kind of guy who thinks you’re betraying Egypt the moment you disagree with him—you get my drift. So try not to offend him, and keep a low profile.”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard to keep a low profile in the land of the hieroglyphs.”

  18

  The central police station of the governorate of Qasr el-Nil looked like the poorly maintained palace of a deceased sheikh. Protected by tall black fences, its dark facade opened onto a garden containing a mix of palm trees and police vehicles, which seemed more like grocers’ delivery vans. Only the large blue two-note revolving lights showed the difference. In front of a long staircase, six military guards—each with white short-sleeved shirt, kepi bearing the insignia of an eagle stamped with the national flag, Misr assault rifle across the shoulder—slapped the edge of their hands against their chests at the exit of a corpulent man endowed with three stars on his epaulettes.

  Hassan Noureddine rested his sausagelike fingers on his hips and sniffed the gas-and-dust-laden air. Small black mustache, eyes dark as overripe dates beneath bushy eyebrows, pockmarked cheeks. He waited for Sharko and Nahed Sayyed to reach his level before greeting them. He politely shook the hand of his French counterpart, even gracing him with a languorous “Welcome.” But he was more interested in the young lady, with whom he exchanged a few words in Arabic. The latter leaned forward with a smile, which was mostly forced. Then the man turned around, torso rigidly straight, and plunged back inside the building. Sharko and Nahed exchanged a look that needed no comment.

  In the giant entrance foyer punctuated with functional offices, stairways guarded by police sunk toward the basement level. A tumult of voices rose, chants in Arabic, litanies repeated by a chorus of women. Sharko crushed a mosquito on his forearm—the fifth one, despite all the lotion he’d slathered on. Those critters dug in everywhere and seemed resistant to any form of protection.

  “What are those women chanting?”

  “ ‘Prison is powerless against ideas,’ ” Nahed murmured. “They’re students. They’re protesting the ban on allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to stand in the elections.”

  Sharko discovered a modern, well-equipped police force—computers, Internet, technical specialties like making composite sketches—but one that still seemed to work by ancient rules. Men and women, most of them veiled, waited in clusters in the foyer; office doors opened as if at the doctor’s, and whoever was fastest got in first. The idea of waiting in line didn’t seem to exist.

  Sharko and his interpreter had to hand over their cell phones—to keep them from taking pictures or recording conversations—and were ushered into an office worthy of a gallery in the Palace of Versailles. Everything was outsized. Marble floors, Canopic and Minoan vases, figural tapestries, gilded bronzes. An immense fan spun on the ceiling, stirring the viscous air. Sharko smiled to himself. National heritage: everything here belonged to the state, and not to the conceited pig who sat heavily in his chair while sucking on a local cigar. While many Cairenes carried their excess weight gracefully, this fellow wasn’t one of them.

  The Egyptian tendered his open palms toward two chairs; in them sat Sharko and Nahed, who took out a small notebook and a pen. She was wearing a long khaki-colored dress and a matching tunic that slightly revealed her tanned neck. The police chief stared at her openly with his large, porcine eyes. Here, people liked to show that they appreciated women, unlike in the street, where a pejorative tsss, tsss hissed whenever some unveiled female crossed a Muslim’s path. The chief rubbed his mustache, then lifted a sheet of paper in front of him. As he spoke, Nahed filled her notebook with stenographic symbols before translating:

  “He says that you’re a specialist in serial killers and complicated crimes. More than twenty years’ service with the French police, in the Criminal Investigations Division. He says it’s very impressive. He asks how things are in Paris.”

  “Paris is having trouble breathing. And how are things in Cairo?”

  The chief of police crushed his Cleopatra between his teeth with a smile as he talked. Nahed picked up the conversation.

  “Pasha Noureddine says that Cairo is trembling at the rate of killings that is shaking the Middle East. He says that Cairo is being strangled by Islamic networks, which are much more of a threat than the swine flu. He says they attacked the wrong target when they burned all those pigs in the municipal ditches.”

  Sharko recalled the distant black smoke that he’d glimpsed at the city outskirts: pigs being incinerated. He answered mechanically, but his words made him want to vomit:

  “I agree with you.”

  Noureddine nodded, continued to blather on for a few minutes, then slid an old envelope toward the inspector.

  “Concerning your case, he says everything is there, in front of you. The file from 1994. Nothing computerized; it’s too old. He says you’re lucky he was still able to find it.”

  “I suppose this is where I should thank him?”

  Nahed translated that Sharko thanked him from the bottom of his heart.

  “He says you can look at the file here and come back tomorrow if you wish. The doors are wide open to you.”

  Open, yes, but armored, with guards who’d be watching his slightest actions and movements. Sharko forced himself to thank the man with a movement of his chin, pulled off the rubber bands, and opened the file. Photos of the crime scene were crammed into a transparent envelope. There were also various reports and information sheets about several girls, including their identities—no doubt the victims. Dozens and dozens of pages written in Arabic.

  “Please ask him to tell me about the case…Just the thought that you’ll have to translate all this for me is making me feel queasy.”

  Nahed did so. Noureddine puffed languidly on his cigar and let out a cloud of smoke.

  “He says it goes back a long way, and that he doesn’t remember much about it. He’s thinking.”

  Sharko felt like he was working his way through one of those old adventures of Tintin, Cigars of the Pharaoh, with fat Rastapopoulos sitting there before him. It bordered on the absurd.

  “Still, young girls whose bodies have been thoroughly mutilated and their skulls sawed open tend to stick in the mind.”

  Nahed contented herself with making eyes at the inspector. The Egyptian officer began speaking slowly, leaving pauses for the young woman to translate.

  “He remembers some of it now. He was already in charge of the brigade. He says they died one or two days apart. The first lived in the Shubra neighborhood, in the north part of the city. Another in a low-rent district near the Tora cement factories, next to the desert. And the third, near the ‘trash cities’ of Ezbet el-Nakhl, the quarter of the garbage collectors…He says the police were never able to establish a connection among the girls. They didn’t know each other and attended different schools.”

  To Sharko, the names of these neighborhoods meant absolutely nothing. He shook his shirt up and down to dry it. Sweat was pouring down his back. The breeze felt good, but he was dying of thirst. Hospitality did not seem to be these policemen’s strong suit.

  “Any suspects? Any witnesses?”

  The fat man shook his head and continued speaking. Nahed hesitated a moment before transla
ting his words.

  “Nothing very specific. We only know that the girls were killed in the evening, as they were returning home, and that they were found near where they were abducted. Several miles from their building each time. The banks of the Nile, the edge of the desert, the sugarcane fields. All these details are in the reports.”

  Not bad for a guy who could barely remember. Sharko thought for a moment. Isolated spots, where the killer could operate in peace. As for the MO, there were as many common points as there were differences with the bodies in Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon.

  “Could you give me a map of the city?”

  “He says he’ll get you one right away.”

  “Thank you. I’d like to study these reports this evening at my hotel. Would that be possible?”

  “He says no. They must not leave the building. It’s procedure. On the other hand, you can take notes, and they’ll fax your office the documents that interest you—after being vetted, of course.”

  Sharko pushed the envelope a bit further. He wanted to test the limits of his investigative territory.

  “Tomorrow I’d like to visit the places where the crimes and the abductions occurred. Can you assign someone to drive me to the spots?”

  The man shrugged his fat, starred shoulders.

  “He says his men are very busy. And that he doesn’t quite understand why you want to go to places that certainly no longer exist. Cairo is expanding like…like a fungus.”

  “Fungus?”

  “Those are his words. He’s asking why you Westerners don’t have any faith in them and feel the need to redo everything your way.”

  The Egyptian’s voice remained casual, weighty, but was full of nuances. Those of domination, authority. Here they were at his place, on his turf.

  “I’d just like to understand how these poor girls found themselves in the hands of the worst kind of killer. Feel how that predator managed to move around in this city. Every killer leaves a smell, even years later. The smell of vice and perversion. I want to get a whiff. I want to walk in the places where he killed.”

  Sharko’s eyes bored darkly at Nahed, as if he were speaking directly to her. The young Egyptian translated his words. With a decisive gesture, Noureddine crushed his barely smoked cigar in an ashtray and stood up.

  “He says he doesn’t understand your job or your methods. The police in this country aren’t here to sniff around like dogs, but to act, to eradicate vermin. He does not wish to revisit things buried in the past nor reopen wounds that Egypt would just as soon forget. Our country already has enough ills to face with terrorism, extremists, and drug traffic.” She tilted her head toward the thin file. “Everything is in there; there’s nothing more he can do for you. The case is way too old. There’s an office next door. He says you’re welcome to get up and go use it…”

  Sharko did as told, but first he plunked the copy of the Interpol telegram in front of the police chief’s nose. He spoke to Nahed, who repeated in Egyptian Arabic:

  “A detective by the name of Mahmoud Abd el-Aal had sent this telegram. He’s the one who was following the case at the time. Chief Inspector Sharko would like to speak with him.”

  Noureddine stiffened, pushed the paper out of his line of sight, and spat out a slew of indistinguishable words.

  “I am translating word for word: ‘That son of a dog Abd el-Aal is dead.’ ”

  Sharko felt like he’d taken an uppercut in the belly.

  “How?”

  The Egyptian officer showed his teeth as he spoke. Above the tight collar of his shirt, the veins in his neck stood out.

  “He says they found him burned to death at the end of a filthy alleyway in the Sayeda Zenab neighborhood, a few months after this affair. Some score settling among Islamic extremists. Pasha Noureddine says that when the police went to Abd el-Aal’s apartment after the tragedy, they discovered the charter of the Islamic Action Party hidden among his papers, with certain passages circled in Abd el-Aal’s own hand. He was a traitor. And in our country, traitors end up ‘croaking’ like dogs.”

  In the foyer, Noureddine firmly adjusted his beret. He leaned toward Nahed’s ear, his hand on her shoulder. The young woman dropped her notebook. The police chief talked to her for a while, then headed off toward the stairs from which the chants could be heard.

  “What did he say?” asked Sharko.

  “That there’s a map of the area in the office where we’re going.”

  “He seemed to say much more than that.”

  She nervously brushed her hair behind her shoulders.

  “That’s just an impression.”

  She led him to a room containing the bare functional necessities. Desk, chairs, dry-erase board, basic office supplies. A closed window looked out on Qasr el-Nil Street. No computer. Sharko flipped a switch that was supposed to turn on the ceiling fan.

  “It’s not working. They palmed this office off on us on purpose.”

  “No, no, what are you imagining? It’s just by chance.”

  “Sure, chance. There are no chances with these guys.”

  “Since you got here, I’ve felt you were a bit…distrustful of us, Inspector.”

  “That’s just an impression.”

  The cop noticed the presence of a guard not far from the door. They were being watched. Clearly, orders had been circulated.

  “Can I make copies?”

  “No. Everything is password protected. Only the officers’ computers have USB ports or CD drives. Nothing ever leaves here.”

  “Defense secrets, of course. Fine, we’ll make do with what we’ve got.”

  Sharko opened the file. He plunged his hand into the sleeve of photos and hesitated before laying them out. He wasn’t in top form, and Nahed seemed disturbed.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  She nodded without answering. The inspector arranged the photos before him. The young woman forced herself to look and brought her hand to her mouth.

  “This is monstrous.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”

  Dozens of photos depicted death in all its guises. Someone had surely photographed the bodies only a few hours after they’d been killed, but the heat had accelerated the damage. Sharko peeled away at the horror. The corpses had been dumped in the open, lacerated, mutilated with a knife, with no particular concern for staging the scene. The cop snatched up the identification sheets, studied the victims’ photos that their families had supplied. Poor-quality photos, shot at school, in the street, at home. They showed the girls as lively, smiling, and young, with things in common—their age (fifteen or sixteen), eyes, and black hair. The inspector handed the sheets to Nahed and asked her to translate. At the same time, he contemplated the map of Cairo pinned to the wall, with all the street names in Arabic. The city was a monster of civilization, ripped open north to south by the Nile, bordered to the east and southeast by the Mokattam mountain range, gnawed to the south by a vast, sandy space littered with the ruins of the ancient city.

  The cop planted further pushpins in the key spots the young woman indicated. The victims’ bodies had been discovered roughly ten miles apart, on a circle peripheral to the city’s main agglomeration. The garbage collectors’ area to the northeast, riverbanks where the Nile widens to the northwest—just a few miles from the police station—and the white desert to the south. Schoolgirls from poor or modest families. Nahed knew Cairo like the back of her hand. She was able to pinpoint each girl’s school and home neighborhood. Sharko was interested in the incredible amount of space occupied by the Tora cement factories, the largest in the world, near which one of the victims had lived.

  “Earlier, you mentioned a makeshift neighborhood near the cement factories. What did you mean?”

  “They’re homestead communities made up of temporary shelters built by the poor, with little regard for city regulations and no access to public services. No drinkable water, no street cleaning, no trash collection. There are a lot of them in Egypt, an
d they’re making the size of the city explode. The state provides about a hundred thousand lodgings a year, when they’d need seven times that much to absorb the population growth.”

  The cop took notes as she went on. Names of the girls, places where discovered, geographic locations…

  “What are these, like slums?”

  “Cairo’s slums are worse. You have to see them to believe it. The second victim, Boussaina, lived near one of them.”

  The inspector looked closely again at the photos, their faces and distinguishing marks. He refused to believe it was just coincidence. The killer had intentionally moved from neighborhood to neighborhood. Poor girls, not especially pretty, who wouldn’t draw attention. Why those three in particular? Was he used to being around poverty, perhaps for his work? Had he already met them? Something in common—they had to have something in common.

  For the next hour, Nahed struggled to highlight the salient points of the autopsy report; it was technical and difficult work for a translator. She revealed that traces of ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, had been found in all three bodies. Estimated times of death showed that the attacks had taken place in the wee hours of the night. As for the actual cause of death, this was the most disturbing of all. The mutilations were due to knife wounds, but all were postmortem. It seemed the deaths themselves resulted from damage caused by the opening of the skulls and, apparently, from the removal of the brain and eyes.

  In all likelihood, the skulls had been cut open while the girls were still alive, and the multiple stab wounds had been inflicted afterward.

  Sharko mopped his brow with a handkerchief, while Nahed sank into silence, her eyes vacant. The policeman could easily imagine the scene. The killer had first kidnapped these girls after dark, anesthetized them, then taken them someplace out of the way to practice his horrors, armed with his instruments of mayhem: the medical saw, scalpels for enucleation, a broad-bladed knife for mutilation. He surely had a car; most likely he knew the city and had done some exploring. Why the posthumous mutilations? An irresistible need to dehumanize the bodies? To possess them? Could he be filled with such hatred that he could get it out only by an act of ultimate destruction?