Killer Critique

by Alexander Campion

  “It’s about a serial killer—”

  “Ah, my little specialty, as I’m sure your cousin told you.”

  “No, he told me nothing at all about you. Nothing.”

  “Just as well. Let’s get back to your concern. Tell me about it.”

  Capucine spoke steadily for half an hour, systematically detailing the three murders, the interviews of the suspects, the background checks her officers had undertaken, winding up with a summary of the two police profilers.

  “Ah yes, the good professors Caillot and Caillaud. I’ve read their books.” Capucine could hear the chuckle in his voice. “Their latest one is really very entertaining. I’d lend it to you, but one of my flatmates is reading it.

  “Let’s focus on your case. It’s far too early to even guess at an etiology, but I think you can begin to draw some conclusions.”

  “Me?”

  “Of course. The solution can come only from your head. Certainly not mine. Why do you think the deaths all take place in restaurants or, in the case of the third one, a quasi restaurant?”

  “I have no idea. I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been far more easy to kill these people somewhere else?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Good. If you search out the reason, if you understand the symbolism, you will be a good way toward the solution.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lacan explained that much of the effort in human comportment was directed at a validation of what he called the Mirror Image. Man is unlike the animals because he can see and recognize his image in the mirror. It is from this image that he forms a perception of himself. His life is a quest to prove the reality of this perception. It’s close to Freud’s notion of ego but more complex.”

  “I think I remember that from school. But isn’t there something that can block that validation?”

  “Yes. Very good. Lacan called it the big Other. It is a transcending symbol that actively prevents the little other, the patient, from becoming his or her true self, the Mirror Image. It can be any governing force, a person in a position of power, a social system, even language itself.”

  “I thought the big Other is supposed to be the father.”

  “The father is the most frequent example, but it can also be any number of other things. What is important is that the big Other can prevent the patient from attaining his Mirror Image, his true, desired, self. That blockage can be so psychologically crippling that the patient will go to any lengths to remove, or at least weaken, the big Other.”

  “Even serial killings.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So you don’t agree that the killer is a man with possible homosexual tendencies who likes to dress in bright colors and who has a masculinity index of precisely zero-point-six-five ?”

  “I’d agree with that only if you wanted to inculpate your cousin.”

  Capucine attempted to stifle her giggles. She chalked it off to the half bottle of Krug she had just consumed. Losing the battle, she erupted in an explosive fou rire. After a few seconds Vavasseur joined in.

  Capucine was the first to become serious. “So it’s impossible to form a stereotype at this stage?”

  “I’m afraid so. Of course, there’s a wealth of data, most of it from the Americans. But we live in a very different world from them. The key point is that the killer is acting out a personal form of intense psychodrama. It is the reaction of his audience that is all-important to him.”

  “Audience?”

  “Of course. If the murders were committed in a vacuum, there would be no point to them. The murderer needs someone to assure him that they are effective for his psychological needs. Ironically, frequently the police are often viewed as the best audience, and the classic etiology often includes a desire to establish a relationship with the investigating officers.”

  “You mean like Raskolnikov?”

  “Just the opposite. Raskolnikov sought the release of confession. The serial killer wants the adulation of a knowledgeable specialist. If his murders are perceived to be brilliantly executed and unsolvable by an expert, it significantly enhances their symbolic psychological value to him.”

  Capucine nodded.

  “Let’s talk about the poison aspect of the murders. What do you think about that?”

  “That puzzles me. The poison killed only in the first case. In the second two they seem purely symbolic.”

  “Of course, but symbols of what?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It’s good that you’re so frank with yourself. Let’s keep an eye on that aspect. It may turn out to be highly relevant.”

  “Turn out? Do you think there will be more killings?”

  “I’m sad to say your case is still very young. Serial killing is a form of addiction. It is the consumption that makes the addict. It’s quite possible his appetite will grow. Particularly as the killer becomes more and more skilled at adapting his method to his psychological need.”

  “What do you think about the perpetrator killing outside of Paris?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m not sure. It takes a great deal of specific knowledge to commit these crimes. It’s obviously someone who knows the Paris restaurant scene extremely well. But of course, most of the restaurant personnel here started elsewhere. It seems possible that the killer would know enough about the restaurant world in the town where he started out to kill there.”

  “That’s a very valuable observation. You’re making a great deal of progress.”

  Vavasseur looked up sharply.

  “Come and see me whenever you like. Right now, I’d suggest you be on your way.”

  “Why? I thought we were just getting going.”

  “Indeed. But two members of the Paris constabulary are coming down the walkway. They invariably ask for papers. I think they would find it highly amusing that a commissaire of the Police Judiciaire was stretched out on my bed.”

  Capucine leaped up and ran up the steep stairway and paused halfway to wave at Vavasseur, thank him loudly, and blow him a kiss. One of the officers ran after her, shouting, ordering her to stop, but stopped short at the bottom of the steep stairs. One look at his belly told her she was completely safe from pursuit.

  CHAPTER 22

  Capucine barely remembered Tanguy from the night of the murder at Chez Béatrice. In preparation for her interview, she had read his book that had won the Prix Goncourt. It turned out to be a grotesque, dystopian, end-of-the-world tale, populated with malfunctioning, rusting androids slogging aimlessly through mud, slime, and charred, burning vegetation, morbidly fascinated with the spectacle of festering, dying animals screaming their last in muddy, excrement-filled shell craters. It had given Capucine nightmares.

  Responding to her knock, he opened the door, blinking myopically, revealing a flat moon face made distinctive by an enormous pair of perfectly round tortoiseshell glasses.

  “Com ... Commissaire Le Tellier?” he asked with a slight stammer. “Please come in. I’ve been waiting for your call. I saw the murderer. I tried to explain to that juge d’instruction who convoked me to his office, but he thought I was joking with him. I’m so glad you’re finally here. Please come in.”

  Tanguy’s apartment was the antithesis of his book. True, it was a fifth-floor walk-up in the drab Eleventh Arrondissement, but once there the rooms were large and white, the sun streamed in, the furniture was pleasantly minimalist—brilliantly colored directors’ chairs, large bright vases holding two or three elegantly arranged branches, a long glass table with a huge, flat-screened computer, a single thick book by its side, the almost catatonically boring Le Bon Usage, the canonic manual of French usage and grammar.

  They sat face-to-face in the middle of the stark room. But the second Tanguy eased himself into his chair he jumped up.

  “How rude of me! I’ll be right back.” He disappeared into the kitchen.

  Tanguy reappeared, holding two
short-stemmed Spanish copita sherry glasses filled with a flaxen liquid.

  “Wine is my péché mignon. This is an Amontillado fino. It’s a pale sherry that has been aged in Canadian casks for a short while. It’s halfway between a true fino and an Amontillado. A friend of mine in Cáadiz sends me a case every Christmas. I find it vastly better than the usual flinty fino.”

  Just as he handed Capucine her glass, he jerked it away. “Oh, I’m so s ... sorry!” he said, blinking and stuttering. “In mystery novels police officers are not allowed to drink on duty.”

  Capucine laughed. “The police in mystery novels have very little to do with real flics, I’m afraid,” she said.

  The liquid was the color of raw umber, opaque and murky, what Alexandre would have called “troubled.” It tasted as delicious as promised. The fact that Tanguy was able to converse in Alexandrespeak was somehow even more surprising than his anodyne appearance.

  “So you saw the murder?”

  “Oh no. Not the murder, the murderer.”

  Capucine understood immediately. “One of the people you examined that night must have done the killing. Is that the idea? Looking at it that way, I saw him, too. But it doesn’t put me any closer to an arrest.”

  Tanguy peered at her like an owl through his enormous glassed eyes but said nothing.

  “You were dining alone that night. Do you frequently go to expensive restaurants by yourself?”

  “Of course. I have no one to go with. And it’s important for me to observe the bourgeoisie. You see, I write about them and so I need to understand them.”

  “And you gain your insights from just observing people eat their dinner?”

  “Naturally. That great American turned Englishman, Henry James, said that if a virginal young girl, if she was really a writer, walked by an army barracks and heard just a snatch of expletive-laden conversation, she would be able to write an entire novel about army life. And he was perfectly right. I understand the bourgeoisie perfectly. Would you like some more sherry?”

  Capucine laughed in delight as she accepted the sherry. She was going to have to grit her teeth and finish his book.

  “And in material terms, what did you see that night?”

  “There was a cacophonous symphony of chatter and a jerky ballet of bourgeois motion.”

  “You mean people talking and the waiters moving around.”

  “Not just the waiters. The customers moved about during almost the entire meal.”

  “Are you sure? Almost all the customers we interviewed insisted that they had not seen anyone leave the tables.”

  “The bourgeois are blind to life. When I was a child, my father always told me to make a pee-pee before I went out, but I always forgot. I still do. So I had to go to the WC between courses. There were two other people waiting when I got there.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “I have no idea. My eyes were glued to the dining room. It’s the interaction among people that matters. Not their appearance.”

  “I see. And how long before the victim keeled over was this?”

  “Not long. Five, ten minutes. It’s hard to keep track of the time when there is so much to observe.”

  “And so you stood patiently as these two gentlemen waited for the WC?”

  “I’m not really sure. Perhaps they had already left when I arrived at the WC, and I only saw them waiting from my table. Who knows? What difference does it make?”

  Capucine decided to take a new tack.

  “Your family must be extremely proud of your award, aren’t they?”

  Tanguy recoiled in clear distaste. He got up, collected their glasses, and left the room.

  In a few minutes he returned with more sherry. His stay in the kitchen seemed longer than necessary to refill the two glasses.

  “There’s only my father left,” Tanguy said. “My mother died when I was a child. My brothers and sisters have moved away. We don’t even exchange Christmas cards. Our childhood was not happy.” He gave Capucine an intense, emotionally charged look that was indecipherable, other than the fact that she might possibly be to blame for some unnamed sin. “My father was beyond thrilled. He told all his friends at the factory, even though none of them had any idea what he was talking about. Of course, he didn’t either.”

  “Your father still works?”

  “Naturally. He’s only fifty-five. In a steel mill in Lorraine. I was born when he was eighteen.”

  “And your mother passed away?”

  “She died when I was nine. Cervical cancer. My father remarried. He needed someone to cook and clean and look after his children for him. None of us could stand our stepmother. Happily, the feeling was mutual. But despite all the yelling, accusations, slammed doors, and whippings, I’m still my father’s pride and joy,” he said, frowning. It was impossible to tell if he was being cynical.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. My father’s a die-hard Communist, a militant. He sees me as an intellectual in the Marxist definition of the word. Marx placed value on intellectuals, so the fact that I won an award for my book pleases him.”

  “That must be satisfying.”

  “It would be more satisfying if he related in any way to what I write. But he’s never read a single word. In fact, I doubt he’s ever read a book in his life. Can you imagine his reaction if he ever cracked one of my books open?

  “Actually, I don’t know if you’ve read La Nature des Particules, but the vision comes from my father’s steel mill. Ever since I was a child the clair-obscur of that light of the fires drowning in the smoke seemed to me what the end of the world would be like.”

  “But there are no screaming animals and piles of excrement.”

  Tanguy smiled happily. “There are. You just don’t know how to see them. But enough about my books. I hate authors who feel obliged to explain their works. I want to hear about the case. Is it true that the murderer I saw with my very own eyes committed two more crimes?”

  “It’s very likely.”

  “I think so, too. I’ve been reading the press very carefully. The symbolic content of the crimes is very appealing to an author. Do you want to hear my views?”

  Assuming the answer would be automatically affirmative, he went back to the kitchen for more sherry. As she waited, it struck Capucine that the two director’s chairs resembled a stage set for a TV interview. It was as if they were slightly angled toward an imaginary camera. It was not clear who was intended to be interviewing whom.

  “I think,” Tanguy said, sitting down and handing Capucine her glass, “you need to look at the case through a writer’s eyes. The MO is evolving very gradually. In the first case there was a component of violence—the shot from the pellet gun—but it was the poison that killed the victim. In the second case, it was the violent act—the stabbing with the basting needle—that killed the victim, but the poison was also potentially lethal. In the third case, the poison was purely symbolic since the victim had already been strangled. The progression is very clear. The poison has evolved progressively from being the active agent to becoming entirely symbolic. Clearly that is the message. Did you notice that?”

  “I did, actually. But I’m not sure it’s all that important. Why do you see it as so vital?”

  “Writers don’t always have to know the meaning of what they write. Like musical composers they know what works and what doesn’t. And this story works for me. It really does.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Cécile looked longingly at the little domed plastic dish of sushi as it traveled down on the little conveyor belt. It was an asatsuki shake—salmon tartare. Just as she reached out to grab it, she caught sight of a tal shiso—sea bream dotted with salmon eggs. She hesitated indecisively, reached out for the bream, pulled away, extended an arm toward the salmon, pulled back, and then it was too late. Both had gone by.

  “Merde, merde, merde!” she said, almost shouting. “I can never make up my mind in this place. Capucine, I don’t know why
on earth I suggested we eat here. I don’t know why you let us come. It’s like being trapped in an evil video game.”

  In Japan, kaiten-style sushi restaurants were distinctly at the bottom end of the spectrum, but somehow a Paris restaurateur had succeeded in elevating the technique to the ne plus ultra of chic. Little dishes of single sushis snaked slowly down a counter on a miniature conveyor belt. Customers chose what they liked and stacked the color-coded saucers for a waiter to tot up when they were ready to go. At the head of the conveyor five chefs cut fish and wrapped rice balls feverishly, making sushis, popping them into little black bowls, topping them with clear plastic domes, depositing them on colored dishes, and placing them on the belt, where they sallied forth bravely like railroad cars of an endless electric train.

  Cécile focused on another little plastic dome, uni—sea urchin eggs. She raised her hand, lowered it, raised it again. Her lower lip began to quiver, and tears formed in her eyes. As the sushi passed in front of Capucine, she snatched it up with the vigor of a bear clawing a salmon out of an Alaskan rapid and, with her other hand, grabbed a negi maguro—chopped tuna topped with finely julienned leeks—tooting along bravely behind. She placed the tuna in front of Cécile.

  “I’ve never really been all that fond of leeks,” Cécile said, her plaintive voice stammering through a quivering smile.

  “Cécile, just taste it. You’ll love it.”

  “You can’t just taste sushi. You have to put the whole thing in your mouth. And then it’s too late,” Cécile said. “Can we swap?”

  Capucine exchanged the little plastic bowls and scowled at her friend, whose lower lip began to tremble again.

  “I’m coming apart,” Cécile almost wailed. “I really am. If this keeps up, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”

  “You’re dating yourself. Nowadays they’re called ‘depressive syndromes,’ ” Capucine said, smiling because she had just caught sight of another asatsuki shake finally coming down the conveyor. She had no intention of letting this one escape.