Syndrome E

11

Sharko, beside himself, yanked open the toilet stalls at Rouen police headquarters one after another to make sure no one was inside. Sweat was pouring down his temples and the cursed sun streamed through the windows. It was awful. He spun around suddenly, his eyes full of salt and fury.

“Leave me the fuck alone, Eugenie, okay? I’ll get you your cocktail sauce, but not now! I’m at work, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Eugenie was sitting on the edge of the sink. She wore a short blue dress and red shoes with buckles, and her hair was tied with an elastic. She was taking mischievous pleasure in coiling a lock of it around her fingers. She wasn’t sweating a drop.

“I don’t like it when you do those things, dear Franck. I’m scared of skeletons and dead people. Eloise was scared of them too, so why are you starting up again and putting me through this? Didn’t you like it in your office? Now I don’t want to go away alone. I want to stay with you.”

Sharko paced back and forth, hot as a pressure cooker. He ran to the sink and stuck his head under the freezing tap. When he stood up, Eugenie was still there. He tried elbowing her aside, but she didn’t budge.

“Quit talking about Eloise. Get lost. You should have gone away with the treatment, you should have disap—”

“So then let’s go back to Paris, right away. I want to play with the trains. If you’re mean to me and go see those skeletons again, things won’t be so easy for you. That big dummy Willy can’t come bother you anymore, but I still can. And whenever I want to.”

Worse than a pot of glue. The inspector held his head in his hands. Then he rushed out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. He veered into a hallway. Eugenie was sitting cross-legged in front of him, on the linoleum floor. Sharko walked around her, ignoring her presence, and straight into the office of Georges Péresse. The head of Criminal Investigations was juggling his landline and his cell. Papers had piled up in front of him. He put his hand over the receiver and jerked his chin toward Sharko.

“What is it?”

“Any news from Interpol?”

“Yes, yes. The form was sent to Central last night.” Péresse returned to his conversation. Sharko remained in the doorway.

“Can I see that form?”

“Inspector, please! I’m busy.”

Sharko nodded and went back to his desk, a small area they had allocated him in an open space where five or six police functionaries bustled about. It was July, blue skies, holidays. Despite the importance of the ongoing case, the precinct was running at half speed.

The cop sat in his chair. Eugenie had set his nerves on edge; he hadn’t been able to channel her like at his office in Paris. She came back, her rucksack stuffed with old memories and obsessions that she loaded into his head. She knew perfectly well which buttons to push, and he knew what to expect: basically, she punished him the moment he became too much of a cop again.

He dove back into his files, pen in hand, while the little girl played with a letter opener. She was making noise incessantly, and Sharko knew there was no use stopping up his ears: she was inside him, somewhere under his skull, and wouldn’t clear out until she was good and ready.

Naturally, Sharko did everything he could to make sure no one noticed anything. He had to appear normal, lucid. That was how he’d managed to keep his ass covered in the Nanterre office. When Eugenie finally beat it, he was able to study his notes.

The cops had made good progress in forensics and toxicology. Further analyses of the bones, notably under the scanner, had shown old fractures on four of the five skeletons—wrists, ribs, elbows—with signs of healing, which meant they’d been sustained less than two years previous, and before death, since they were colored. So these unidentified men weren’t the type to rot behind a desk. The injuries might have resulted from falls or hazards of their trade, or from contact sports like rugby, or from fights. Earlier that day, Sharko had suggested cross-checking with the various hospitals and athletic clubs in the area. The investigations were under way.

Despite the lack of head hair, tox screens of the pubic hairs had been extremely fruitful. Three of the five individuals, including the Asian, had been users of cocaine and Subutex, a heroin substitute. Analyzing cross sections of the pubes after cutting them into sections had shown that, for all three, narcotics use had at first strongly declined, then disappeared altogether in the weeks before death. Crushing the insect pupae hadn’t revealed anything: if the men had taken drugs in their final hours, traces of it would have been found in the keratin of the insects’ shells. Given this, the chief inspector had made a note to check releases from detox centers and prisons, as Subutex was a common drug on the inside. Perhaps they were dealing with ex-cons, dealers, or guys who’d gotten mixed up in something to do with drug trafficking. He couldn’t ignore any potential lead.

One final point: the small plastic tube found around the clavicle of the best-preserved corpse. Analysis had not shown the presence of chemo drugs. Alongside the ME’s hypotheses, the report stated that the sheath might also have served to link fine electrodes implanted in the brain to a subcutaneous stimulator. They called this technique deep brain stimulation, and it was used to treat severe depression, limit tremors from Parkinson’s disease, or suppress Tourette’s. That was a key discovery, since the killer seemed to be interested in his victims’ brains.

“Whatcha writing?”

Eugenie had returned. Sharko pointedly ignored her and tried to pursue his thoughts. The little girl tapped on the table with the letter opener, louder and louder.

“Eloise is dea-ead. Your wife is dea-ead. Eloise and your wife are dea-ead. And it shoulda been you instea-ead…”

The conniving little bitch… It was her favorite song, the one that wounded him to the depths of his soul. The cop ground his teeth.

“Shut the fuck up!”

Heads turned toward Sharko. He leapt out of his chair, fists clenched. He rushed over to a desk sergeant who was making photocopies and showed him his police ID.

“Sharko, Violent Crimes.”

“I know, Chief Inspector. Can I help you with something?”

“I need you to go find me candied chestnuts and cocktail sauce. ‘Pink Salad,’ the two-pound jar. Can you do that? For the chestnuts, any brand will do, but for the sauce be sure to get Pink Salad, no substitutes.”

The other man’s eyes widened.

“Well, it’s just that…”

The Paris cop put his hands on his hips and his shoulders swelled. With his added pounds, Sharko, who’d already had a stocky build, commanded respect.

“Yes, Sergeant?”

The young cop left his protest hanging and disappeared. Sharko returned to his spot. Eugenie smiled at him.

“See you later, dear Franck.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Stay home.”

She started running and skipping, then disappeared behind a cork bulletin board. The inspector took a deep breath, eyes closed. His calm was finally returning. The hum of the computers, the creaking soles of his colleagues. He resumed his thoughts, quickly leafed through the technical data in the various reports. In the end, it was only a partial failure. The absence of records meant that these men might have been marginals, illegal aliens, or just foreigners.

Later, Sharko went to get a drink from the water fountain, feeling like his brain was mush. He imagined himself outside, at a sidewalk café. The sergeant had brought him back the jar of cocktail sauce and the glazed chestnuts, and since then Eugenie had left him blissfully in peace. In just a few, he’d head back to the hotel, check in with Leclerc, and probably hightail it back home in another day or two. Because the more time passed, the colder the trail got. Nothing from the hospitals. The detectives who’d returned from canvassing the locals had brought back squat. Out of the hundreds of employees and ex-employees who worked in the industrial zone, not one had seen a thing.

Sharko, plunging one last time into the files, suddenly felt pressure on his shoulder. He turned around. It was Péresse, who stared at the cocktail sauce and chestnuts, then finally said, “We’ve got a real lead. Come take a look.”

Sharko walked with him to his office. The chief inspector from Rouen closed the door and pointed to his computer screen. It showed the scan of a handwritten document in English.

A telegram.

“We got it from Interpol. You won’t believe how this telegram made its way here. Some guy from their shop, name of Sanchez, calls them from where he’s vacationing, some campsite near Bordeaux. He was watching TV, just having a drink before dinner, not a care in the world, when he sees you where the bodies were discovered, next to the pipeline.”

“I was on TV? Jesus, they don’t miss a trick.”

“So at that point, Sanchez calls headquarters to get the lowdown. He wants to know what you’re up to.”

“I know Sanchez. We worked a few cases together in the late nineties, before he swung over to Lyon.”

“He hasn’t been watching much TV these last few days and he missed the media hoopla. So his colleagues tell him about it, the sawed-off skulls and so on. And then something in his head goes tilt. He tells them to look into the Interpol archives, and guess what they turn up?”

“This old telegram.”

“Exactly. A telegram sent from Egypt. Cairo, to be exact.”

Sharko jabbed his finger on the screen.

“Tell me I’m seeing this right.”

“You are. It’s dated 1994. Three Egyptian girls, all violently murdered in Cairo. Skulls sawed off, ‘with a medical saw,’ as it says there, brains removed, eyes gone. Bodies mutilated, multiple stab wounds from head to foot, including the genital areas…”

Sharko felt a morbid giddiness grab hold of him. His rib cage tightened, his chest constricted. The monster of the manhunt reared its head. Péresse kept on reading.

“…All within two days. And no underground burial this time. The bodies were dumped in the open. Our killer wasn’t being particularly subtle.”

The cop from Paris straightened up and lowered his eyes. He imagined the girls spread over the desert sand, covered in lacerations, innards exposed, prey to the buzzards. All these images in his head. He stared at the screen, short of breath.

“That was so long ago. When there are serial killings, they’re normally closer together in time. And in space. Normandy and Cairo aren’t exactly next door… Could we be dealing with an itinerant? Did Interpol turn up any other cases like this?”

“Nothing.”

“Which doesn’t mean anything. As little as ten years ago, this kind of telegram was pretty rare. Spending time on paperwork is the last thing most cops do, and only if they feel like taking the trouble. Our Egyptian colleague was a meticulous policeman. Which is almost a paradox.”

Sharko paused a moment. His eyes continued to run over the telegram while his brain was already in overdrive. Three girls in Africa, five men in France. Lacerations, skulls opened, eyes removed. Sixteen years apart. Why such a long wait between the two series? And especially, why the two series? The inspector returned to the cursory description dispatched to Interpol.

“The author of the report is Mahmoud Abd el-Aal. The name of the Egyptian officer who cast the first stone?”

“So it seems.”

“Is this paper the only thing we’ve got?”

“For now. We first got in touch with Interpol in Egypt, then International Technical Cooperation in Cairo, who shunted us over to an inspector at the French embassy, Michael Lebrun, who’s in direct contact with the authorities over there. The early intel isn’t exactly promising.”

“Why not?”

“This Abd el-Aal apparently hasn’t been active there since this business.”

Sharko paused a moment.

“Can someone get us access to the file?”

“Yes. His name is Hassan Noureddine, and he’s the chief of police in charge of the squad. Something of a dictator, according to Lebrun. The locals are keeping mum—they don’t like having Westerners sticking their noses in their business. Torture of defendants and jail time for dissidents is still common coin in Egypt. We won’t get anywhere on the phone, and they refuse to send their files here, electronically or by mail.”

Sharko sighed. Péresse was right. The police in Arab countries, and especially in Egypt, were still light-years from the Europeans—corrupted by money and power, focused entirely on internal security.

With a click of his mouse, Péresse sent the telegram to the printer.

“I called your boss. He’s okay with us sending you over there. Cairo is four hours away by plane. If you don’t mind, start with the embassy. Michael Lebrun will get you into the Cairo police. He’ll direct you to Hassan Noureddine.”

Eugenie suddenly burst into the room, livid. Sharko turned his head toward the girl, who started yanking on his shirt.

“Come on, come on. Let’s get out of here,” she whined. “No way we’re going to that horrible place. I hate all that heat and sand. And I’m afraid of flying. I don’t want to.”

“…spector? Chief Inspector?”

Sharko turned back toward Péresse, hand on his chin. Egypt… Not quite what he’d been expecting.

“Sounds like a bad James Bond movie.”

“We don’t really have much choice. We handle the groundwork, and you—”

“The paperwork, I know.”

With a sigh, Sharko picked up the printout of the telegram. Several lines sent haphazardly, lost between two continents, with which he was going to have to make do. He thought of Egypt, a country he knew only from travel brochures, back when he still looked at brochures. The Nile, the great pyramids, the crushing heat, the palm groves… A tourist factory. Suzanne had always wanted to go; he’d refused, because of his job. And now that same lousy job was tossing him onto the cursed sands of Africa.

Lost in thought, he stared at Eugenie, who was sitting in the captain’s seat and playing with rubber bands, snapping them against Péresse’s ass.

“What’s so funny?” the Rouen cop asked, turning around.

Sharko raised his head.

“I suppose I’m to leave as soon as possible?”

“Tomorrow at latest. Do you have an official passport?”

“Required. I’m supposed to expedite international investigations, even though that never actually happens.”

“Here’s proof that it does. Watch yourself—in Cairo, you’ll be bound hand and foot. The embassy will saddle you with an interpreter, and you won’t get anywhere unless the locals want you to. You’ll have to walk on eggshells. Keep me posted.”

“Am I allowed to carry a weapon?”

“In Egypt? Are you joking?”

They shook hands politely. Sharko tried to slip out and leave the little girl behind, but Péresse called him back one last time.

“Chief Inspector Sharko?”

“Mmm?”

“Next time, try not to send one of my sergeants to do your shopping for you.”

Sharko left the building and headed for his hotel, Xeroxes of the reports under one arm, the jar of Pink Salad and candied chestnuts in the other. He was heading into an especially unwholesome business, apparently.

And about to dive into the guts of a burning hot city that reeked of spices.

The mythic city of al-Qahira.

Cairo.