Bred to Kill

by Franck Thilliez

  It was now 4:45. Although she was very late for the end of the school day, she parked on Boulevard Vauban and ran up to the building. The gates were locked, parents and children having already deserted the place for the weekend. In front of her, the playground was dismally empty. But it didn’t matter. Lucie liked this school; she could have spent hours there, alone, basking in her own childhood memories. She gazed at the stretch of blacktop with delighted eyes.

  Then she rushed home to her apartment. For the first time in many months, she was happy to return to that familiar structure with its brick walls, to see the faces of the students who lived in the neighborhood. Was it because of Sharko, their night of lovemaking, their shared confidences? Because she felt she was still able to love, and could tell herself everything wasn’t over? When she opened the door, she saw Marie Henebelle sitting on the couch, watching TV. Toys, dolls, and notebooks from summer vacation were still there, on the floor, scattered about in duplicate. There was a wonderful smell of childhood, laughter, a joyful presence.

  Lucie greeted Klark, who slobbered all over her face, then rushed over and kissed her mother on the cheeks.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, Lucie . . .”

  They gave each other slightly strained smiles.

  “I’ll be right back, I’m just going to say hi to you-know-who,” said Lucie.

  Marie noticed she was holding a present. One of those create-your-own-fashion kits. In high spirits, Lucie headed toward her daughter’s room. Her heart was pounding. She opened the door and saw Juliette greet her with a lovely smile.

  Lucie beamed at her daughter, then noticed the cell phone she had bought, lying in a corner. She picked it up and checked the liquid crystal screen. None of her messages had been listened to.

  “Didn’t you get all those messages I left you?”

  “Gramma didn’t show me how it worked. I don’t think she likes it.”

  “Gramma can be a bit old-fashioned,” Lucie told her daughter with a wink.

  She didn’t hear her mother come into the room behind her.

  Marie stood there stiffly, a desolate look on her face.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but a policeman from Paris came by this morning. Don’t you think you owe me a few explanations?”

  Lucie stood up, frowning, then looked at her daughter with a smile.

  “I’ll be back in just a minute, my lamb.”

  She went out, closing the door behind her. The two women walked back to the living room.

  “What do you mean, a policeman was here?” she said in a whisper. “Who?”

  “His name is Bertrand Manien. He came up from Paris. He asked me a lot of questions about Franck Sharko and you. And what happened last year.”

  Lucie recognized the name: Sharko had told her about him.

  “Manien is Sharko’s former boss. Why did he come here?”

  “I don’t know, he didn’t say. He just asked questions.”

  “And you answered them, just like that? Our relationship and . . . what happened afterward?”

  “What was I supposed to do? He was a detective, and not a very nice one. The odd thing is that he wanted to know all about Clara and Juliette, and how they got along with Sharko.”

  Lucie started unpacking her travel bag, deep in thought. Manien had driven all the way from Paris; he’d come here, to her home. He’d been alone . . . so he was investigating unofficially. What was he looking for? Why was he so interested in the twins? What was Sharko concealing from her?

  She went to pour herself a Coke from the refrigerator, suddenly feeling less warmly toward the chief inspector: she and he would be having a long talk about this on the plane. For now, she made sure Juliette wasn’t within earshot, collapsed into an armchair, and began telling her mother the broad strokes of her last few days. She described how deep the investigation had sunk in its claws, compelling her to see it all the way to the end—which unfortunately meant having to leave again the day after tomorrow.

  “So,” Marie said sarcastically, “what hellhole are you visiting this time?”

  “The Amazon.”

  Her mother stood up, hands to her face.

  “You’re out of your mind. Completely out of your mind.”

  Lucie tried to reassure her the best she could.

  “I won’t be alone. Franck is coming with me, and we’ll be going with a tour group, with a guide and everything. People go there all the time, you know? Besides, I . . . I must have the e-ticket in my in-box already. Franck is very organized. I’ll be safe with him. We’re just going to land in Manaus, go meet with an anthropologist, and come back. Nothing more.”

  “Nothing more? Do you hear what you’re saying?”

  Lucie clenched her jaws.

  “Yes, I hear it just fine. You can scream and yell all you want, but nothing is going to stop me from going there.”

  She lowered her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Mom, but . . . I’m going to have to ask you to take care of Juliette a few more days.”

  Marie sighed through trembling fingers. Tears streamed down her face, and the words, the secret words she had kept buried in herself for so long, tumbled out as if by themselves:

  “Take care of Juliette? Don’t you know it’s you I’ve been taking care of for the past year? That it’s you and you alone I’ve been trying to protect from . . . from your head?”

  Lucie stared at her in astonishment.

  “What are you saying?”

  Marie paused for a long moment, trying to get hold of herself.

  “I’m saying that everything is exploding in your head, and I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing. So yes, maybe you should go there, to the other end of the world, to find your own answers. Maybe that’s your path to recovery after all.”

  “Recovery from what, for God’s sake?”

  Without answering, Marie went to fetch her handbag and her shoes, which she set down by the door. She wiped her nose with a handkerchief.

  “Do what you have to. I’m going to gather up a few things that have been lying around here too long and go spend some time at home. I’ll come back before you leave to say good-bye and look after . . . your dog.”

  In the hallway, Marie choked back a sob. She went into her room, pulled out her small wheeled suitcase, and threw in some jumbled clothes from the closet.

  Lucie gave a long sigh at the closed door of Juliette’s room. That damned cell phone was ringing again. It was probably voice mail pinging over and over, until someone finally decided to check the messages.

  She opened the door wide.

  She walked past the bed and picked up the phone. She erased all her messages without listening to them. Then she put away the fashion kit that was lying on the floor next to a still-wrapped school bag and a pile of untouched objects: a pearl necklace kit; a scooter bought for Christmas, still in its box; a dress encased in plastic, still with its price tag.

  There was no child anywhere in the room.

  Nor anywhere else in the apartment.

  45

  Saturday evening

  Sharko pushed his old leather suitcase into a corner of the bedroom and reassured himself that everything was finally ready for their adventure in the Amazon. He’d been surprised how easy it was to find a tour operator through a “last-minute bookings” site. Thank you, economic crisis. Officially, he and Lucie were going on a trek—medium difficulty—up Pico da Neblina, called the “Cloud Trek.” The person on the phone had barely asked what kind of shape they were in (fortunately) and had given him a list of equipment to bring along. Sharko had paid for the ten-day expedition, including fees, food, miscellaneous costs, and insurance for two. Money spent for nothing, but no matter.

  Despite the short notice, he’d tried to think of everything. Medicines, bug repellent, antiseptics, toiletry kit,
knee socks for hiking, thick pants, new backpack, miner’s lamp, mosquito netting . . . On the bedside table lay his passport and a printout of his e-ticket. Lucie had received hers, in an e-mail that also contained the same list of items to pack.

  He had added that he was thinking of her.

  She had answered that she was too.

  They were to meet at the airport at 8:30 the next morning, two hours before takeoff. The tour operator would be responsible for getting the group to São Gabriel, lodging them for the night in a hotel, then guiding them down the Rio Negro toward the tallest peaks in Brazil. Except that at that point, Lucie and Sharko would split away from the group and get their own guide to lead them to the Ururu.

  Just a stroll through a giant natural park, he sighed to himself.

  Finally, he headed off to bed, knowing sleep wouldn’t come easily. So many shadows surrounding him. He was dying to call Lucie, hear her voice, tell her how much he missed her. He was dying to take care of her, shelter her from the storm raging in her head.

  Two cursed lovers, he thought. He had finally driven his imaginary Eugenie out of his own head, and now Lucie was picking up where he’d left off, as if this particular evil simply bounced from one person to another, without ever fading away. Sharko knew all too well the vile outlines of that hidden curse. After his daughter Eloise had died, miserable little Eugenie had begun visiting him unannounced, appearing to him off and on for more than three years, resisting every attempt to dislodge her. At first, they had probably tried to tell Lucie that her little Juliette didn’t exist—or no longer existed—that she was the product of Lucie’s imagination, but it had done no good: her mind blocked it out, created its own reality, and rejected anything that threatened it, setting up a wall of tantrums, denials, and refusals. And so her loved ones—her mother—had probably decided to play along, both hoping for and dreading the moment when Lucie would finally be able to confront reality.

  For the reality was that Clara and Juliette were both dead, victims of Carnot’s madness.

  Since the beginning, Sharko had known exactly what had happened that night in late August 2009, seven days after the discovery of Clara’s body in the forest. The investigation was about to break open. Thanks to cross-checks, witness statements, and composite sketches, they were on the point of arresting Grégory Carnot. Despite the hellish suffering she was going through, Lucie had followed the case, stayed with the teams. The night of the arrest, she had run upstairs with the other police, toward the small light coming from the bedroom. She had found the incinerated body on the floor—Juliette’s body—and had collapsed, to wake up two days later in a hospital. Her mind had shattered. Partial amnesia due to severe psychological shock, among other ills . . . In Lucie’s head, Juliette had progressively returned in the days following the tragedy.

  Juliette had become a hallucination. A little ghost that only Lucie saw at certain moments, when her mind tried to remember. In the little girl’s room, near the school, walking beside her.

  Alone in his large bed, huddled under the blankets, Sharko felt terribly cold. Lucie, this investigation, his own demons . . . The night before, he had read Napoléon Chimaux’s book, discovering for himself the violence of the Ururu, their barbarous, inhuman rituals, but also the ambition and cruelty of the book’s young author. As he had written, “The chief organized a raid to capture the women of a distant tribe. They went to the place and asked the natives to teach them how to pray, using gestures and grunts. When the men knelt down and bowed their heads, they decapitated them with axes made of sharpened stone, grabbed their women, and fled.”

  What were they like today? How, in forty years, had this tribe evolved in the presence of the French explorer? Internet searches hadn’t turned up anything; the Ururu, like their white chief, remained a mystery, unapproachable, prey to legends and questions. He told himself once again that seeking them out might be pure folly.

  But everything had already been taken from Lucie and from him.

  They had nothing left to lose.

  In the haziness of his thoughts, at the borderline of sleep, the inspector couldn’t help thinking of Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now: the viscous plunge into the bowels of human madness, showing itself more nakedly as the heroes venture deeper into the jungle. He imagined Chimaux as a kind of Colonel Kurtz, covered in blood and guts, howling to the sky and subjugating a horde of savages. He could clearly hear the word repeated at the end of the film, in that haunted, sepulchral voice: the horror . . . the horror . . .

  After a while, sounds and images blended together in his head. He was unable to tell whether he was dreaming or awake. But he started up in a fright when he heard the dull knocks at the door of his apartment. In a daze, he glanced at the alarm clock. It was exactly six in the morning. Not 6:01, not 5:59. Sharko felt his throat constrict. Six a.m. on the dot had a particular meaning, known to any police officer.

  He got up, threw on a pair of pants and a T-shirt. He hid his passport and e-ticket as best he could, shoved his suitcase in the closet, and slowly walked to the door.

  When he opened, not a word. Two dark silhouettes flattened him against the wall. With precise, brutal movements, they wrenched his hands behind his back and cuffed him. They waved a duly executed arrest warrant in front of his face.

  Then they led him out into the rising dawn.

  46

  Charles de Gaulle Airport, Terminal 2F

  Thousands of electrons gravitating around atoms of steel. Gallons of stress, billions of interconnected neurons, a compacted view of the world via huge electronic boards: Bangkok, Los Angeles, Beijing, Moscow . . .

  Lucie nervously glanced at her watch next to the check-in counters. She was surrounded by adventurers of all stripes, mostly young, some of them couples, or singles out for a thrill. Twenty-two people—including her and Sharko—en route for a ten-day expedition in the heart of the jungle, watched over by Maxime, their guide. Some were already trying to chat him up, get on his good side, but Lucie’s mind was elsewhere.

  She had taken her place in line because the plane was due to depart in less than an hour and a quarter and Maxime had insisted. What the hell was Sharko doing? He wasn’t answering his phone and hadn’t sent any word. Was he having trouble with his phone? Caught in traffic? Lucie reassured herself he’d have to show up. So when it was her turn, she went ahead and put her suitcase on the scale. The attendant checked her ticket and passport, slapped a label on the brand-new duffel bag, and pushed a button. Her belongings disappeared behind strips of rubber, heading for the cargo hold.

  Lucie moved apart from the group, excited and nervous, keeping to herself. A little later they heard an announcement: passengers for Manaus were kindly requested to proceed to the departure gate. Lucie crushed her coffee cup in her hand and, after a long hesitation, went up to a bank machine. She withdrew the maximum allowed on her credit card, twenty-five hundred euros. It would put her account seriously in the red, but too bad. She nervously passed through the security check, constantly turning around, scanning the crowd, craning her neck. She was still expecting a sign, a voice calling out her name. Once past the security scanner, she stood indecisively for a few more minutes, then followed the last stragglers to the departure lounge, where the stewards were already boarding passengers: her group of adventurers, simple tourists of all ages, Brazilians heading back home . . . Once more, Lucie considered dropping the whole thing and going back.

  Swept forward by the flow of bodies, she moved closer to the airline personnel. She waited for the last possible instant before finally holding out her boarding pass.

  There were two announcements: passenger Franck Sharko was asked to proceed immediately to Gate 43 for final boarding call. Lucie found herself still hoping and tried to make one last call before cell phones had to be switched off.

  Then they closed the airplane doors.

  Twenty minutes later, the A
irbus A330 took off from the Paris airport. A guy of about twenty-five who looked like Tintin took advantage of the empty seat to sit next to Lucie. A clingy single man who started in about treks and camping gear. Lucie politely dismissed him.

  Her forehead glued to the window, she thought to herself that she could never, ever catch a break in this miserable life.

  Like Eva Louts, she was heading off to meet the savages with a huge question hanging on her lips: what could have happened to Franck Sharko to make him miss one of the most important rendezvous of his life?

  47

  The “interrogation rooms” at number 36 are not at all as we imagine them. No one-way mirror, no sophisticated equipment, no lie detectors. Just an absurd little garret office, in which the ceiling looks like it’s about to come down on your head and the cabinets stuffed with case files press in as if to choke you.

  Sharko was alone, perched on a basic wooden chair, cuffs on his wrists, facing a wall with a calendar and a small desk lamp. Manien and Leblond had let him stew for a few hours, locked in there like a caged lion. It was Sunday. The hallways were empty, and Manien had chosen an office on the administrative floor, below Homicide, ensuring that no one would bother them. No water, no coffee, no phone. Those bastards didn’t respect any of the protocols. They wanted him nervous, tense, and especially they wanted him to wonder. An old cop’s tactic, which forced the suspect to ask himself a thousand questions and start doubting himself.

  The inspector had had enough. It was almost noon. Six hours, handcuffed, ass on this rock-hard chair, in a stifling office that stank of acrimony. He thought of Lucie and his insides twisted up. She must have tried calling his cell over and over, worried and impatient. And she had finally left for Manaus, he was sure of it.