Syndrome E

32

Under the kiss of dusk, Sharko finally reached his building in L’Haÿles-Roses. Compared with the Egyptian capital, Paris and its outskirts, with their purified subway lines, the calm faces plunged into a book or staring out the window, had become almost reassuring. Once he’d set down his bags, the cop switched on his railroad trains and let himself be carried away by the gentle rattling of the connecting rods and wheels and the whistling of steam. The sounds, smells, and little habits that went with them brought him a measure of comfort.

But the spell of Cairo remained in the pit of his stomach.

As did the delicate prickle of the alligator clamps planted on his skin.

With a sigh, Sharko went back to his living room. He set on the table the jar of cocktail sauce, glazed chestnuts, and his presents, which he’d bought at the duty-free before departure: the bottle of whiskey and carton of Marlboros for Martin Leclerc, the perfume burner for Martin’s wife, Kathia.

Despite the late hour, fatigue, and aching joints from all the transportation, Sharko dragged himself to Roseraie Park, just opposite his building. A tradition, a habit, a need. Marc, the guard, was as usual watching one of his countless police shows. He opened the gate with the friendly smile you give to those you’re used to seeing without really knowing them.

At the far end of the park, his usual bench awaited—an old half cylinder cut from a tree trunk, languishing under the oak where he and Suzanne had carved their initials so long ago: F & S. Facing the tree, eyes vacant, he ran his fingers over his chest. Once again he saw the flame of the cigarette lighter waver before the Arab’s twisted mouth; he remembered the peculiar smoke of burning flesh. His jaws clenched, he used a penknife to carve a small vertical line in the bark, next to seven others.

Eight scumbags who would never harm anyone again.

He folded his blade, then sat on the bench, leaning forward, hands joined between his slightly parted knees. Seeing himself like this, he thought that he really had aged prematurely. Not physically, but emotionally. The warm air brushed over his neck like a child’s caress. Shadows were settling on the capital, a large sleeping cat that you saw from below. And with them, their nauseating cloud of crimes and assaults.

He stared sadly at a patch of grass. It was precisely here that he’d first met Eugenie. At the time, sitting cross-legged, she was reading The Adventures of Fantômette, his daughter’s favorite book, and she’d smiled at him. A poisoned smile, the initial signs of paranoid schizophrenia. The beginning of his torture, as if the deaths of Suzanne and Eloise hadn’t been enough.

Even in the worst moments of his illness, Sharko had always enjoyed the support of Kathia and Martin, the man who, despite administrative and personal difficulties, had managed to keep him afloat. In 2006, Leclerc had become head of a new department, the Bureau of Violent Crimes, and offered him a job as behavioral analyst—a relatively recent position in the police force that consisted of investigating unsolved violent crimes without leaving one’s desk, at least in theory. Cross-referencing information, establishing a psychological profile, and using computer and informational tools as a way of determining the killer’s motives—tools such as ViCLAS (Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System), Interpol, or STIC (Information and Communications Technology Resource). On the strength of his degree in psychocriminology and his twenty years on the job, Sharko, a paranoid schizophrenic cop, had conducted a different sort of manhunt, outside the mainstream.

He sighed when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. The screen read “Lucie Henebelle.” It was almost midnight. Sharko answered with a tempered smile. The woman should have been asleep like everyone else. But no, there she was, on her phone.

“It’s a bit late to be calling, Lieutenant Henebelle.”

“But never too late to answer… I knew your plane landed at Orly at 9:30. I figured you wouldn’t be asleep yet.”

“That’s quite a gift for divination. Do you also know what they served on board?”

Lucie was getting some fresh air outside the children’s hospital.

“I left you a message yesterday. You didn’t call back.”

“Sorry, but someone was serving grilled fish on my chest.”

A silence. Lucie took back the reins of the conversation.

“I have new information for you. They’ve—”

“I’m already up to speed. I called my boss when I got in. The murder of Szpilman Junior and his girlfriend, the theft of the film, and the hidden film they found inside the original. I haven’t yet downloaded it from the server. At the moment, I’m on something else.”

“On what else?”

“A bench. I’ve just covered two thousand miles, my body looks like a calculator because of the mosquitoes, and I’m trying not to think about the case for a little while, if it’s all right with you.”

Sharko lodged the phone between his ear and shoulder, then wiped off the toe of his shoes with a paper napkin. He looked under his sole and discovered that there were still grains of sand encrusted in the grooves. He dug a few out with his fingers and studied them attentively.

“Why are you calling?”

“I told you, I—”

“You what? You need to talk about corpses even at night? You want to know what I found out over there to feed your own obsessions? Is this what you run on, what keeps you moving forward day after day? I’d be curious to know what you dream about, Henebelle.”

Lucie had stopped in the middle of the ambulance lane. White and blue lights danced on the low northern sky.

“Leave my dreams out of this, Inspector, if you don’t mind, and you can also take your two-cent psychologizing and shove it. I was going to suggest a quick round-trip to Marseille regarding our case, but apparently that doesn’t turn you on. After all, I’m just a lieutenant, and you’re a chief inspector.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t turn me on. Good night, Henebelle.”

He snapped the phone shut. Lucie stared at hers for several seconds, livid. The guy was a flaming asshole. And that was the last time she’d be calling him—he could go fuck himself! Seething with rage, she bought a chocolate bar at the vending machine and downed it in two bites.

“Thanks for the extra calories, you goddamn effing shark!”

Then she headed for the stairs. A wide smile stretched across her lips when her phone started ringing and she read the name: “Sharko.” She waited until the last ring before taking the call.

“So? You want to know after all?”

“What’s in Marseille, Lieutenant Henebelle?”

Lucie waited a moment before answering.

“A specialist in fifties-era films called a little while ago. He managed to identify the actress in the short. Her name is Judith Sagnol. She’s still alive, Inspector.”

Sharko stood up from his bench with a grimace. He sighed.

“All right… I’m going to download the film tonight. Finally see what all this is about. What time can you be in Paris tomorrow?”

“Arrival Gare du Nord at 10:52. Departure Gare de Lyon at 11:36, to get to Marseille at 2:57. Sagnol has been contacted—she’ll be waiting for us at her hotel. I told her we were reporters doing a story on vintage porno films.”

“Great topic. But change the time of your departure. I’m going to arrange for you to attend the morning meeting in Nanterre, with your boss. We’ll leave together from there.”

“Fine. And now tell me what you discovered in Egypt.”

“Three beautiful pyramids called Cheops, Khafre, and Menkaure. See you tomorrow, Henebelle.”

Before leaving the park, he ran his fingers one last time over the eight vertical bars etched in the trunk.

And there, alone in the dark, he gritted his teeth.