Bred to Kill

by Franck Thilliez

  42

  Lucie woke to a smell of warm milk and croissants. She stretched languorously, put something on, and walked out into the kitchen, where Sharko was waiting for her. He had on a nice white shirt under his suit and he smelled good. Lucie kissed him on the lips before sitting down to the breakfast he’d prepared for her.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve had croissants,” she admitted.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve gone out to get any . . .”

  She loved rediscovering these simple, shared habits, things she’d almost forgotten. She dipped the pastry into the milk, to which she’d added a bit of cocoa. She tried to check her cell phone, but the battery was flat dead. She noticed that Sharko, who was standing opposite her, was nervously fiddling with his own cell. His breakfast had just been some coffee and dry biscuits.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I reached out to a colleague in Narc to get the addresses of Lambert’s family.”

  “And?”

  “And I have the address of his sister. She lives in the fourth arrondissement. I called and got the grandfather. They’re all a wreck and he didn’t want to talk to me. He said he didn’t understand why we were persecuting them, the cops had already been by yesterday, and the Lamberts needed to be left in peace. Then he hung up.”

  Lucie took a healthy bite of her croissant.

  “Okay. Let me just finish breakfast, hop in the shower, and off we go.”

  • • •

  About a dozen persons with drawn faces were gathered in a large apartment on the fifth floor of a Haussmann-style building, located near Île de la Cité. An upscale home, and no doubt an outsized rent. Lucie and Sharko had remained at the entrance, facing a man of about sixty-five or seventy, well-trimmed gray mustache, black suit, and hard face. Behind him, the family was in mourning, under the shock of recent events, struggling to understand the carnage that had taken place in Fontainebleau. Puffy, red-rimmed eyes turned toward them.

  The man with the mustache, who had already spoken to Sharko on the phone, immediately went on the attack.

  “Leave us the hell alone! I don’t care if you’re with the police, can’t you see you’re not welcome here?”

  He was about to slam the door, but Lucie stepped forward.

  “Listen, sir. We understand what a painful time this is, but we’ll only be a moment. We believe your grandson was not entirely responsible for what he did, and we need to talk to you.”

  Lucie had weighed her words carefully. She imagined herself in the man’s place, the reaction she’d have had if someone had come to tell her Clara’s killer wasn’t responsible. She probably would have gutted him then and there. But then, this was a different situation: his son’s killer was his own grandson.

  “Not completely responsible? What are you talking about?”

  The voice had come not from the grandfather but from behind him. A young woman appeared in the doorway. She must have been about twenty and seemed very weak. Lucie noted her round, swollen belly: she was pregnant and clearly due to deliver soon.

  “Pay no attention, Coralie,” said the older man. “The lady and gentleman were just leaving.”

  “I want to know what they have to say. Can you give us a few minutes, Grandpa?”

  Grinding his jaws, the man freed the way. The young woman had to lean against the door, stumbling slightly. Her grandfather held her up and glared at the cops.

  “Her child is due in less than two weeks, for God’s sake! And you want to interrogate her? Fine, but I’m staying within earshot. And don’t you dare get her more upset with your questions.”

  The young woman wore a gold chain with a crucifix over her dark clothes. She wiped her nose with a handkerchief and spoke in a weak, almost imperceptible voice.

  “Félix is . . . Félix was my brother.”

  Lucie put a hand on her shoulder and led her into a larger area, near the stairwell, where several chairs were scattered about. Sharko and the grandfather remained behind. The man with the mustache leaned against the railing and heaved a long sigh. Sharko realized he would soon be a great-grandfather, though he was barely seventy. Had it not been for the tragedy, he would have left a large, beautiful family behind him.

  Coralie Lambert let herself drop slowly into a chair. Unconsciously, she fingered the pendant on her chain.

  “How . . . how can you say Félix wasn’t responsible for what he did? He killed my father and two strangers in cold blood.”

  Sharko kept to the background. He sensed that Coralie Lambert would speak more freely to another woman, who could better understand her suffering. Lucie, for her part, was aware that she must not talk about the autopsy or their findings; she had gone over this with Sharko before arriving. Saying too much risked ruining the whole thing. The old man, who was watching over his granddaughter like a hawk, would be quite capable of calling the police to complain, and she and Sharko would immediately be blown. She had to remain neutral, invisible.

  “It’s just a theory for the moment,” said Lucie, trying not to commit herself. “Your brother seemed perfectly normal. No previous history of violence. To suddenly commit acts of such cruelty, for no reason, can sometimes have long-standing psychiatric or neurological causes.”

  “We’ve never had anything like that in our . . .”

  Sharko cut off the grandfather, who was moving to intervene.

  “Let my colleague do her job and please stay out of it.”

  The man glared at him. Lucie continued:

  “We have to explore every trail. To your knowledge, did your brother show any particular signs of health problems?”

  Lucie was feeling her way forward. She knew nothing of Félix Lambert’s life but hoped this would provoke a reaction from the sister.

  “No. I always got along well with Félix, we grew up together until we were eighteen. I’m a year older than he is, and I can assure you we had a wonderful childhood, very happy.”

  Her words were intercut by brief sobs.

  “Félix was always . . . very even-tempered. What happened—I just don’t understand it. He was finishing up his architecture studies. He . . . he had so many plans for the future.”

  “Did you see each other often?”

  “Oh, maybe once a month. It’s true that I hadn’t seen him as much lately. He . . . said he wasn’t feeling so well, he complained about being tired, getting headaches.”

  Lucie recalled the state of his brain, like a sponge. How could it have been otherwise?

  “Was he living with your parents?”

  “The house belonged to my . . . father. He’s . . . he was a businessman and wasn’t home much. He’d just come back from China, where he’d been for almost a year.”

  “What about your mother?”

  Coralie Lambert suddenly caressed her belly, with small, precise, unconscious movements. The belly, the crucifix . . . the crucifix, the belly . . . Lucie knew that the future baby and God would help her get through this. Coralie would talk to them when she felt low, and one would listen more than the other.

  After a long silence, she looked over at her grandfather, at a loss. Despite Sharko’s exhortations, the man couldn’t help coming to her aid.

  “Her mother, my daughter, died in childbirth.”

  Lucie stood up and approached the man, a feverish look in her eye.

  “When she gave birth to your grandson Félix, is that right?”

  The old man nodded, lips pinched. Lucie gave Sharko a deadly serious look, then said slowly and clearly:

  “It is very important that you tell us everything you know about that birth.”

  “Why?” the man answered harshly. “What does that have to do with anything? My daughter died twenty-two years ago and . . .”

  “Please. We can’t afford to leave any stone unturned. The roots of you
r grandson’s actions might stretch back to his birth.”

  “What do you want me to say? There’s nothing to tell. It’s too personal, and . . . Do you have any idea what we’re going through right now?”

  He held out his hand to his granddaughter.

  “Come, Coralie, let’s go in now.”

  Coralie didn’t move. Everything was so shaken up in her head that she couldn’t think straight.

  “My father used to talk about my mother a lot . . .” she finally murmured. “He loved her very much.”

  Lucie turned toward her.

  “Please, go on.”

  “He wanted her to stay alive in our minds. He wanted us to . . . to understand her death . . . From what he told me, the doctors concluded it was severe preeclampsia, which caused massive internal bleeding. My mother . . . my mother bled to death in the delivery room, and the doctors couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

  Lucie could barely swallow. Amanda Potier had died in exactly the same way.

  “Does the name Stéphane Terney mean anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? He was an obstetrician.”

  “Absolutely certain. I’ve never heard that name.”

  “What about you?” Lucie asked the grandfather.

  The man shook his head. Lucie turned back to Coralie.

  “Where did your mother give birth?”

  “In a clinic in Sydney.”

  “Sydney . . . Australia?”

  “Yes. My brother and I were both born there. My father worked there for three years, and my mother went with him. After the tragedy, Poppa came back to live in France, in the family house in Fontainebleau.”

  Lucie straightened up, nervously putting her hand in front of her mouth.

  “And . . . did your father tell you about any problems your mother might have had during her pregnancy? Was she seeing a doctor?”

  The expectant mother shook her head.

  “My father always said my mother never took so much as an aspirin. She had a remarkably strong constitution, Grandpa could tell you. She didn’t believe in medicines or in anything that had been synthesized or manipulated by science. She wanted to give birth the natural way, in water, and she refused to be treated during her pregnancy. It was how she chose to live her life. For both pregnancies, she didn’t know if she was carrying a girl or a boy. All the advances of science were of no interest to her. She believed in the magic of procreation, of birth, and she knew it would all turn out well because she was devout and put her faith in God . . .”

  Her eyes drifted off into space for a long time. Lucie had no further questions to ask; her theories had crumbled. If Terney had ever gotten to know Félix Lambert, it was after his birth, perhaps during a regular exam, a routine blood test, or any number of other ways. But certainly not beforehand.

  Coralie finally reacted when she felt a little kick in her womb. She tried to stand, and her grandfather rushed forward to help her.

  “Don’t you see how you need rest? Let’s go in now.”

  “Just one last thing,” Sharko interrupted. “Does anyone in your family have Amerindian roots or come from South America? Perhaps Venezuela, Brazil, or the Amazon?”

  The grandfather gave the cop a scathing look.

  “Do we look like Indians to you? We’ve been pure-blooded French for generations and generations! I promise you, you haven’t heard the last of this.”

  Lucie quickly jotted down her cell phone number on a card and slipped it into the man’s breast pocket.

  “We can’t wait.”

  Without answering, the two Lamberts disappeared into the apartment. The door slowly closed behind them.

  “People are born and they die,” Lucie said sadly, “and God’s got nothing to do with it. God’s got a big strip of packing tape over his mouth and his hands tied behind his back.”

  Sharko chose not to answer. Lucie’s nerves were on edge. He pulled out his cell phone, which had started vibrating.

  “Terney didn’t manipulate the birth of Félix Lambert, the way he did with Carnot. He didn’t create this particular monster.”

  “Apparently, the monster created himself. And Terney might simply have been content to find out and add him to the list.”

  Sharko showed Lucie the display screen.

  “It’s Clémentine Jaspar.”

  The inspector moved away down the hall, answered, and returned a few minutes later. Lucie gave him a questioning look, and Sharko nodded.

  “Yes . . . Her anthropologist friend came through.”

  Lucie closed her eyes in relief. Sharko continued:

  “He wants to meet us in Vémars, some backwater a few miles from De Gaulle Airport, at around eleven. Let’s get going.”

  43

  It was raining when the two ex-cops pulled up at a house located near a grain silo slightly outside of town. Beneath a gray sky with diffuse clouds, before a horizon of dull green and yellow fields, the dwelling looked like a sleeping, wounded animal. The garden had gone to seed, the paint was peeling from the walls in fat tongues, and some of the windows had been smashed.

  An abandoned property. Sharko and Lucie shot each other a surprised glance.

  The inspector parked the car at the end of a dirt road, behind an old Renault hatchback in a long-discontinued model. A man got out and came toward them. They shook hands.

  The anthropologist Yves Lenoir, about fifty years old, seemed a plainspoken sort of fellow. Dressed unfashionably in brown suede trousers, red wool sweater, and a checked shirt, with a white beard and salt-and-pepper hair, he immediately inspired trust. His deep green eyes shone under the thick line of his light-colored eyebrows, osmotically reflecting all the jungles whose populations he had surely studied. Leaning on a cane—he had a pronounced limp in his left leg—he walked toward the carriage gate, which turned out to be unlocked and opened with a simple push.

  “Clémentine told me how important this case was to you. I wanted to meet here, where Napoléon Chimaux used to live. In fact, this was originally his father’s house.”

  “Who’s Napoléon Chimaux?”

  “An anthropologist. I’m certain he’s the one who shot the film Clémentine lent me. He’s also the one who discovered the tribe on the DVD.”

  Lucie’s fists tightened. She had one immediate question:

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Yes, last I heard.”

  They entered the house through a large glass door on the side, off of what must have been the living room. A few ghosts of furniture still lay around, armchairs with cracked plastic covers, layered with dust. Dampness had warped much of the woodwork. Not a single trinket or picture to be found; the drawers and doors were wide open, the cabinets completely empty. The light had dimmed, as if night had decided to fall earlier here than elsewhere.

  “Everyone in the village must have been in here at some point or other. Out of curiosity. You know how people are.”

  “I can see that they made off with everything,” said Sharko.

  “Oh, well, that . . .”

  Yves Lenoir walked up to a ruined table, blew off some of the dust, and set down his cane and a brown shoulder bag, from which he pulled the DVD.

  “If possible, I’d like to keep a copy of this precious film and show it to various anthropological societies, especially in Brazil and Venezuela.”

  Sharko now understood what the man was after. He was offering them a guided tour of Napoléon Chimaux’s world, but in return he had a few requests of his own. The inspector decided to play along.

  “Sure. You can have an exclusive on it when the time comes.” He saw a thrill flash through Lenoir’s eyes. “But for now, I’ll have to ask you not to breathe a word of this until we’ve finished our investigation.”

  The anthropologist nodded and put the
DVD in the inspector’s outstretched hand.

  “Of course. Forgive me for pressing the point, but . . . I’d love to know how you came by this extraordinary document. Where did it come from? Who gave it to you?”

  Sharko reined in his impatience and briefly sketched out the broad strokes of the investigation, while Lucie looked around the room. Lenoir had never heard of Stéphane Terney, or Eva Louts, or Phoenix.

  “Now we’d like to ask you a few questions,” Lucie interrupted, walking up to the two men. “We’d like to know everything you can tell us about Napoléon Chimaux and that tribe.”

  Their voices echoed, while outside the rain drummed more and more insistently against the roof. Lenoir gazed at the sky for a few seconds.

  “The tribe you’re asking about is called the Ururu. An Amazonian tribe that remains largely unknown, still to this day.”

  He took a book from his bag, along with a map that he unfolded. The book was thick and heavily thumbed through, its cover worn and faded. The author was Napoléon Chimaux.

  “Napoléon Chimaux,” murmured Lenoir.

  He had pronounced the name as if it were distasteful. He handed Sharko a color photocopy of the man’s portrait.

  “This is one of the few recent photos anyone has seen of him. It was taken secretly, with a telephoto lens, about a year ago in the jungle. Chimaux is the French anthropologist who discovered the Ururu in 1964, in one of the most remote and unexplored areas of the Amazon. He was only twenty-three at the time, which was during the darkest period of the Brazilian dictatorship. He was following in his father’s footsteps. Arthur Chimaux was one of the greatest explorers of the last century, but also one of the most unscrupulous. When Arthur came back between expeditions, it was here, to Vémars. Despite all the marvels he’d seen, I think he appreciated the simplicity of a place like this.”

  Sharko gazed at the picture. Napoléon Chimaux seemed unaware of the photographer. He was next to a waterway, makeup on his face and dressed in khaki like a soldier. Despite being nearly seventy years old, he looked a good ten years younger, with dark brown hair and a face as smooth and polished as steel. Sharko couldn’t say exactly what it was about the photo that gave him the creeps.