Syndrome E

29

The police academy in Liège—the administrative headquarters of the local police force—had requisitioned a locksmith, a sergeant, and two detective trainees to accompany Lucie to Szpilman’s. In principle, the Frenchwoman didn’t have the right to touch a thing. She was there solely to help advise the local police and take notes.

Lucie was not feeling particularly reassured by the closed door of the Liège residence. Since the previous day, Luc Szpilman had failed to answer the phone calls informing him of the impending search, nor had he answered the summons to the police station to help establish a composite sketch of the man in combat boots. The cops’ insistent ringing of the doorbell didn’t help matters. When the locksmith came forward with his tool kit to pick the lock, Lucie moved to block him, arms outstretched.

“It’s no use.”

She nodded toward the lock, which looked broken.

“Don’t touch the doorknob. Did you bring gloves?”

Debroeck, leading the unit, took several pairs out of his uniform pocket. He distributed them to his colleagues and offered a pair to Lucie. No words were exchanged. The men unholstered their Glock 9s and entered the house, followed by Lucie brandishing her Sig Sauer. The locksmith remained outside.

Inside the house, flies were buzzing.

The coldness of the crime lay before them, suddenly and without warning. Lucie wrinkled her nose.

Luc Szpilman’s body was splayed behind the sofa, and the body of his girlfriend on the steps leading to the kitchen. A trail of blood spread behind her.

Stabbed in the back, both of them, multiple times.

Ten, twenty, thirty stabs each, slicing through pajamas and nightgown, from calves to shoulder blades. Not easy to count.

Lucie ran her hand heavily over her face. Three days that she’d been groping her way through this macabre terrain, and it was beginning to affect her nerves. This gruesome spectacle was like a frozen tableau, as if the bodies might suddenly revive and continue trying to flee. Because that’s what they were trying to do. It wasn’t hard to imagine the scene. Night, probably. The killers force the lock, at the other end of the large house, and enter. It’s maybe two, three o’clock in the morning; they think Luc Szpilman is alone and asleep. But—surprise—the kid is right in front of them, sitting on the couch with his girlfriend, rolling a joint, which was still there on the coffee table in the living room. Luc suddenly recognizes one of them, the guy in combat boots who’d come for the film. The kids panic, try to run away. The killers catch them and stab them in the back, once, twice.

And then that inexplicable frenzy.

Lucie and the police remained frozen in place, keeping their own thoughts. The youngest of them, a trainee barely twenty-five years old, excused himself to go outside, his face white. He worked for the local police, not the feds, and wasn’t used to this kind of case. You come to search a house, easy peasy, and find yourself looking at two corpses riddled with stab wounds and already covered in flies.

Thinking quickly, Debroeck moved to protect the crime scene from contamination: the Belgian police force trains its officers well. Lucie, for her part, tried to look past the corpses and made a mental grid of the surroundings. Open drawers, furniture tipped over. She noted the presence of a smashed wall safe. The frame of the painting that had hidden it lay shattered on the floor.

“First, they keep Luc Szpilman from helping with the composite sketch, and second, they make off with anything that can compromise them.”

“What could have compromised them?”

“The discoveries his father had surely made about the anonymous film. The documents he might have exchanged with the Canadian informant. They came to do some housecleaning. God dammit!”

Lucie turned around and went out, needing to breathe in some fresh air.

It was them. Claude Poignet’s murderers had continued mopping things up. No ritual or theatrical display this time.

Just a senseless act committed by wild animals.