Syndrome E

34

Later that afternoon, the mistral was blowing hard over Marseille, a hot slap that deposited the Mediterranean ocean spray onto tanned faces. Sharko and Lucie walked down the Canebière, patched sunglasses and shoulder bag for him, small backpack for her. At that time of day and year, it was impossible to approach the Old Port in a car because of the mass of tourists. The sidewalk cafés were overflowing, faces and yachts paraded by, the atmosphere was festive.

Or almost. Not for a second, during their trip down from Paris, had the two cops talked about anything but the case. The deadly reel, Szpilman’s paranoid behavior, the mysterious Canadian informant… An inextricable tangle of knots, where the leads and their conclusions never quite seemed to match up.

Their hopes of unraveling the mess were now pinned on Judith Sagnol.

She was living at the Sofitel, a four-star hotel that offered a fabulous view of the entrance to the Old Port and the magnificent minor Catholic basilica called Bonne Mère. In front of the establishment were palm trees, porters, and luxury cars. At the reception desk, the hostess informed the two “reporters” that Judith Sagnol had gone for a walk but had asked them to wait for her in the hotel bar. Lucie glanced anxiously at her watch.

“Less than two hours before we have to head back… The last train to Lille leaves Paris at eleven. If we miss the 6:28 at Saint-Charles, I won’t be able to get home.”

Sharko headed toward the bar.

“These people like to make you wait. Come on, we can at least enjoy the view.”

The receptionist came to find them around 5:30 at the poolside terrace to let them know Mme. Sagnol was expecting them in her room. Lucie was boiling mad. She went off to get some privacy, cell phone at her ear. The conversation with her mother was less difficult than she’d feared: Juliette had eaten well and her digestive system was more or less back to normal. If everything kept on like this, she’d be out the day after tomorrow. Finally, the end of the tunnel.

“Will you manage by yourself until tomorrow?” Marie Henebelle asked her daughter.

That was just like her mother. Lucie looked around toward Sharko, who was sitting alone at their table.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Where will you sleep?”

“I’ll figure it out. Can I talk to Juliette?”

She exchanged a few affectionate words with her daughter. A smile now on her lips, Lucie returned to Sharko just as he was taking out his wallet.

“Leave it,” she said. “This is on me.”

“Suit yourself. I had just enough to cover it.”

She paid for the beer and mint soda with a grimace: twenty-six euros and fifty cents. No standing on ceremony in this joint! They headed for the elevator.

“How’s the kid?”

“She should be out soon.”

The inspector nodded slowly; he almost managed to smile.

“That’s good.”

“Do you have children?”

“Nice elevator, this…”

They did not exchange a look or another word on the way up. Sharko stared at the buttons as they progressively lit, and seemed relieved when the door finally slid open. They walked down a long, muffled hallway, still silent.

Lucie felt a shock when Judith appeared in the doorway. At almost eighty, the 1950s pinup had kept that dark, penetrating gaze she displayed in the film. Her irises were deep black, and her wavy, steel-colored hair fell onto bare, tanned shoulders. Plastic surgery had wreaked havoc, but couldn’t hide the fact that this woman had once been beautiful.

Dressed lightly—plain blue silk dress, bare feet with nails polished cherry red—she invited them onto the balcony and ordered up a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. The bedsheets were unmade, and Lucie noted the presence of a man’s underwear at the foot of a sink. No doubt a gigolo whose services she paid for.

Once seated, Judith crossed her legs in the manner of a bored starlet. She did not apologize for keeping them waiting. Sharko didn’t beat around the bush and showed his official ID.

“We’re not reporters but police. We’ve come to ask you about an old film you appeared in.”

Lucie sighed discreetly, while Judith gave a mocking smile.

“I figured as much. The reporter interested in my career hasn’t been born…”

She looked at her manicured nails for a few seconds.

“I quit acting in 1955. That goes back quite a way for stirring up old memories.”

Sharko took a DVD out of his bag and put it on the table.

“Nineteen fifty-five is perfect. It’s about the film burned onto this DVD. My colleague got the original from a collector named Vlad Szpilman. Does the name mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing.”

“I noticed a DVD player and TV in your living room. May we show you the film?”

She gave Sharko the once-over, with the same arrogant expression she’d used on the cameraman at the beginning of the famous short.

“You’re not really leaving me a choice, are you?”

Judith slid the disk into the drive. Seconds later, the film began. Close-up of the actress, twentysomething years old, dark lipstick, Chanel suit, looking straight at the camera. Clearly, seeing this was not to the septuagenarian’s liking. Her features tightened in an anxious expression. After the scene of the slit eyeball, she grabbed up the remote and hit STOP. She stood up sharply and went outside to pour herself some more champagne. Sharko and Lucie glanced at each other, then joined her on the balcony.

The old voice was harsh, dry:

“What do you want?”

Sharko leaned against the railing, his back to the port and the amateur sailors polishing their craft down below. A hellish sun beat against his neck.

“So was that your last film?”

She nodded, her lips still pressed together.

“We’ve come for information. Anything you can tell us about making the film. Its intent. About the little girl, the children, and the rabbits.”

“What are you talking about? What children?”

Lucie took out a photo of the girl on the swing and handed it to her.

“This one. You’ve never seen her?”

“No, no, never… Was she in the film too?”

Lucie pocketed the photo with an aftertaste of disappointment. The part involving Sagnol must have been shot separately. Judith brought the flute to her lips, took a small sip, then put her glass back down, eyes empty.

“I didn’t know, and still don’t know, what kind of film Jacques asked me to be in. I was to shoot some sex scenes, and he paid me handsomely for it. I needed money. Any part was good enough for me. What they did with the images afterward wasn’t my business. When you’re in a trade like mine, you don’t ask questions.”

She pointed to the champagne.

“Help yourselves. It won’t stay chilled very long in this heat. There was a time when I’d have to work a month to afford a bottle of that stuff.”

Sharko didn’t have to be asked twice. He refilled two glasses and handed one to Lucie, who thanked him with a movement of her chin. All things considered, a little alcohol wouldn’t hurt, after the ups and downs of the past few days. Judith let the memories seep in slowly.

“I never thought I’d see those images again…”

“Who made the film?”

“Jacques Lacombe.”

Lucie quickly jotted down the name in her memo book. They finally had a name: that, in itself, made their trip to Marseille worthwhile.

“I met him in 1948. He was barely eighteen and he had a headful of big ideas. At the time, he was filming magic shows at a Paris music hall, the Trois Sous. He had an ETM P16 camera. I dressed and made up the dancers for the show.”

She acted out the movements.

“Bright red lipstick, blond wigs, see-through black lace dresses, not to mention the long Vogue cigarette… That was my idea, the cigarette—did you know that? It was all the rage at the time.”

Her eyes wandered for a few seconds.

“Jacques and I had a beautiful affair that lasted a year. I discovered a brilliant man, far ahead of his time. Tall, dark, eyes like the ocean. Very Delon.”

She took a swallow of champagne without seeming to notice.

“Jacques was a real cinematic innovator; he thought outside the box. For him, there were two ways to see a film: through the plot and the screenplay, or else, and more importantly, by the medium itself, which other filmmakers underused or didn’t know a thing about. He worked on the film itself. He’d scratch it, or poke holes in it, or streak it, or mark it up, or even burn it. For him, film wasn’t so much a surface to record images on but a virgin territory that he could inscribe to convey art. You should have seen him with a piece of celluloid. It was like he was holding a woman.”

She smiled to herself.

“Jacques was influenced by the early techniques of European avant-garde cinema, like double exposure, which was used by surrealist filmmakers like Luis Buñuel and Germaine Dulac. The slit eyeball at the beginning is taken directly from Dalí and Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou… It was a little tip of the cap to his influences.”

Lucie was trying to write down as much as possible, but the old woman was speaking too fast.

“He also hung out with magicians and became part of their inner circle. Houdini fascinated him, even though he was long dead. I remember how Jacques used the camera in fast motion to break down the movements of the magicians, pierce their secrets. He spent hours, days poring through the rushes, shut up in his little studio in Bagnolet. Pornography was another big interest of his; he dissected every shot, the mechanics of how images inspired pleasure. He had a phenomenal knowledge of montage, at a time when the available materials were pretty rudimentary, and he’d also invented a system of masks he attached to the lens. He made countless experimental mini-films, no more than a few minutes long, in which he managed to capture the viewer’s attention and unmask our relation to violence and art. Every time, I was captivated, shocked, amazed. But the public and the film world didn’t care for his genius or his work. Jacques really suffered from that lack of recognition.”

Lucie cut in, taking advantage of this rush of memories.

“Did he ever describe his techniques? Did he talk to you about subliminal imagery?”

“No, he kept all his experiments secret. It was his private preserve. Still today, in the films of his that have been rediscovered, he did things even contemporary experimental filmmakers can’t figure out.”

“So then what happened?”

“Jacques wasn’t doing so well; he couldn’t catch a break. Producers gave him the cold shoulder. I watched him down gallons of vodka and live on hard drugs to keep going, working day and night. He lost interest in me, and we split up… It broke my heart.”

She turned her eyes to the horizon, watched a cruise liner leaving the port, then returned to the conversation.

“In the time we were together, he had introduced me to the mysteries of the cinema, but also to some rather disreputable characters. I was pretty well-endowed, with a slightly concave bust, like Garbo—people loved that at the time. So I started acting in erotic films to make a living.”

She sighed. Sharko, wanting to take maximum advantage of the champagne, poured himself another flute. He calculated that each glassful was worth about thirty euros, which made it taste all the sweeter.

“A year later, in 1950, Jacques went to Colombia to make The Eyes of the Forest, his one and only full-length feature. He’d managed to raise some paltry amount that barely covered his equipment and a small Colombian crew. The film ruined him for good. Because of it, Jacques got into all sorts of trouble with the French authorities and almost landed in jail.”

“I’ve never heard of it. The Eyes of the Forest, you said?”

“Yes. It was never officially released. Banned from the start. Today, you can’t find it; the existing copies were either destroyed or disappeared into the woodwork. Jacques had shown it to me once the editing was completed…” She grimaced. “It was a film about cannibals, one of the first of its kind, and he was very proud of it. But how could he be proud of such a horror? I had never seen such a vile, repulsive film in all my life.”

Judith’s voice had become throaty. Sharko went to sit at the table, next to Lucie.

“Why did he have troubles with the law?”

“The Eyes of the Forest required weeks of shooting in the middle of the jungle, with the rain, the heat, and swarms of insects. The crews were completely cut off from the world. Filming conditions weren’t as comfortable back then as they are now. You went off with your camera equipment and a few tents over your shoulder. Some of the crew came down with various illnesses, from what Jacques told me. Malaria, leish-maniasis…”

“But what did the law have to do with it?”

She screwed up her face, uncovering teeth that were as perfect as they were false.

“In the last third of the film, you saw a woman impaled on a spike, through her mouth and anus. It was a… an abomination, and so realistic! Jacques had to prove in court that the Colombian actress was still alive, and show how he’d created the illusion.”

She poured herself some more champagne, evidently disturbed. To Sharko she looked like a rumpled bird, just an old woman trying to stop time in its tracks.

“He didn’t come back the same from that miserable place; he had changed. As if the jungle and its shadows had kept their hold on him. Jacques had shot with natives, tribes who were seeing civilized people for the first time ever. I’ve never been able to forget one of the more shocking scenes in the film: heads lined up along the river, planted on pikes. God only knows what really happened there, in the dark reaches of that land of savages…”

She rubbed her arms, as if she’d gotten a sudden chill.

“When that film failed, it was yet another major blow for Jacques. Overnight, he vanished from the French film scene. He and I stayed in touch; we’d remained friends and I still had hopes of winning him back. But after a few months, I stopped hearing from him. One day I went to his studio. Jacques had packed up all his equipment and his films. His former assistant told me he’d left for the United States, just like that, with no warning.”

“Do you know why?”

“It was unclear. The assistant was sure he had a huge project there. Someone had seen his films and wanted to work with him. But we never learned anything more. No one ever heard what had really happened to him.”

“No one… except you.”

She nodded, her eyes vacant.

“It was 1954. Not a word for three years, then out of the blue I got a call. Jacques wanted me to come to Montreal. He had several days’ work for me, and he said he could pay me a fortune. I was busting my ass at the time, taking off my clothes for the camera more often than for a lover, just to earn peanuts. Filming in the nude never bothered me—I figured it was a good way to become a star. But you know how it is—lost illusions… I was experiencing the same setbacks as Jacques, getting parts in only the most pathetic films, for a bunch of real sleazeballs. So I agreed without thinking twice. I needed the cash. And besides, it was a chance to see him again—who knows, maybe even get back together. I asked him to send me the script, but he said I wouldn’t need one. So I took the plunge, sight unseen. He sent me half the fee, a plane ticket, and there I was, in Canada…”

Anxiety had settled into her face. The two cops were hanging on every word. Lucie had stopped taking notes. Judith let herself be carried away by the champagne; her expression veered from anger to tenderness to fear. Everything was resurfacing, after fifty years buried deep.

“The moment I landed in Canada, I knew I’d made a mistake. Jacques wore a look I’d never seen on a man. Lecherous, cold, indifferent. His head was almost shaved, and he looked unhealthy. He didn’t even give me a hug hello, after all the nights we’d spent together. He brought me to the place where they were shooting, without a word of explanation about his long years of absence, what he’d been doing. We came to some abandoned clothing factories just outside Montreal, I don’t know exactly where. There was only him, his camera equipment, and some people wearing gloves, dressed in black. I couldn’t see their faces—they were wearing ski masks. There were also mattresses, and several days’ worth of food. A room had been fitted up at the back of the warehouse… I understood that I was going to spend my days and nights in that dreadful place. And then I heard his voice. ‘Strip down, Judith, dance, and go with whatever happens.’ It was fall, I was cold and afraid, but I obeyed. I was being paid to. It lasted three days. Three days of hell. I suppose you’ve seen the sex scenes in the film, so you know what happened next…”

“We haven’t seen them in their entirety,” Sharko replied. “Just still images, hidden. Subliminal images.”

The old woman swallowed hard.

“More of his tricks.”

The inspector leaned forward.

“Tell us about the other scenes. You lying nude in the field, as if you were dead.”

Judith stiffened.

“That was the second half of the shoot: I had to lie there, naked and motionless, in a field near the factories. It was barely forty degrees out. Two of the men who’d had sex with me painted my stomach like a disgusting wound. But when I was lying in the grass, I was shivering. It was cold and my teeth were chattering. Jacques was furious that I couldn’t keep still enough. He took a syringe from his pocket and told me to hold out my arm. He—” She brought a hand to her mouth. “He told me it would keep me from feeling the cold and from moving too much… And also that it would dilate my pupils, like a real corpse.”

“Did you do it?”

“Yes. I wanted the rest of the fee; I’d come all that way. And I wanted to make Jacques happy. We had lived together! I thought I knew him. When he gave me the shot, I started to feel disconnected from the world. I wasn’t cold anymore but I was practically unable to move. They laid me back down in the grass.”

“Do you know what he injected you with?”

“I think it was LSD. Strangely, those three letters, which didn’t mean anything to me at the time, came into my head whenever I thought about that scene later on. He must have said them while I was drugged.”

The cops’ eyes met. LSD—the experimental drug used during the Artichoke program, the subject of one of the books stolen from Szpilman’s.

“Jacques always liked realism; he was a perfectionist. The makeup wasn’t good enough for him, so…”

Judith stood up and lifted the hem of her dress, unveiling her nudity without shame. Her tanned stomach was covered with white scars, which looked like little bloodsuckers beneath her skin. Sharko fell back in his chair ever so slightly, while Lucie remained frozen, her mouth tense. There was something sinister about seeing this body, so worn down and steeped in past sufferings, under the cheery sunlight of Marseille.

Judith let go of the fabric, which fell back to her knees.

“I didn’t feel any pain while he was cutting me… I couldn’t even understand what was happening. It was like I was having hallucinations. Jacques continued to film for hours on end, constantly making more cuts. They were only skin deep and didn’t draw much blood, so he accentuated them with makeup. There was something terrifying in his eyes while he was slashing me. And at that moment, I realized…”

The two police kept silent, encouraging her to continue.

“I realized that he had actually killed that Colombian actress. He had gone all the way—it was obvious.”

Sharko and Lucie looked briefly at each other. Judith was on the verge of tears.

“I don’t know how he got it past the French authorities. He must have shown them the poor woman’s twin and they were taken in by it. But with me, he didn’t lie. And he was true to his word about the fee.”

Lucie squeezed her pencil harder. Apparently Jacques Lacombe was well off, since he’d paid Judith good money. If he’d managed to get his films known in the States, make a name for himself, what was he doing in some moth-eaten warehouse in Quebec shooting those scenes from hell?

“When I got back to France, I was disfigured, but I had enough to live on decently and keep my head above water. I was lucky enough after that to meet a good man, who had seen my films and loved me regardless.”

Lucie spoke in a gentle voice. The woman, despite all her wealth, filled her with pity.

“And you never reported any of this to the police? You never brought charges?”

“What was the point? My body was ruined, and I wouldn’t even have gotten the second half of the money. I would have lost everything.”

The inspector looked Judith straight in the eye.

“Do you know why he shot those scenes, Madame Sagnol?”

“No. I told you, I didn’t know what the content of—”

“I’m not talking about the content of the film. I’m talking about Jacques Lacombe. Jacques Lacombe, who called you—you specifically—after several years of total silence. Who leaned in close to mutilate you. Who filmed you in the most provocative postures… Why make a film with scenes like that? What was the point, do you think?”

She thought for a moment. Her fingers squeezed the large sapphire on her ring finger.

“To feed perverse minds, Inspector.”

She sank into a long silence before continuing.

“To offer them power, sex, and death through film. Jacques didn’t want to just provoke or shock with images. He wanted the image to alter human behavior. That was the point of his entire body of work. It’s probably why he was so interested in pornography. When a man watches a porno film, what does he do?”

She made an unambiguous hand gesture.

“The image acts directly on his impulses, his libido; the image penetrates him and dictates his actions. That, ultimately, is what Jacques was looking for. Over there, he kept mentioning this weird thing when he talked about the power of the image.”

“What weird thing?”

“Syndrome E. Yes, that’s right—Syndrome E.”

Sharko felt his chest tighten. It was the second time the expression had come up, and always in sinister circumstances.

“What does that mean?”

“I have absolutely no idea. He kept repeating it. Syndrome E, Syndrome E, as if it were an obsession. An unattainable quest.”

Lucie jotted down the phrase and circled it, before asking Judith:

“Did it seem that Lacombe was working with a partner? A doctor, maybe, or a scientist?”

She nodded.

“A man also came to see me, a doctor—there’s no doubt about it. He supplied the shots of LSD. The two of them clearly knew each other well; they were complicit.”

The filmmaker and the doctor. It corresponded to the profile of the Cairo murders, to the killing of Claude Poignet as well. Luc Szpilman had mentioned a man in his early thirties: that couldn’t possibly be Lacombe, who would have been too old by now. So who, then? Someone obsessed with his work? An heir to his insanity?

“But all that was a long time ago, too long for me to tell you anymore. Half a century ago, and whatever happened over there is just vague fragments in my head. Now that we know what harm that horrible LSD has caused, I suppose I’m lucky to be alive.”

Sharko emptied his flute and stood up.

“We’d still like you to watch the entire film, in case certain details come back to you.”

She nodded limply. The cops could tell she was overcome with emotion.

“What did Jacques do for you to be so interested in him after fifty years?”

“We’re not sure yet, unfortunately, but there’s an ongoing investigation that has to do with this film.”

Once the viewing was over, Judith sighed deeply. She lit a long cigarette at the end of a holder and blew out a curlicue of smoke.

“That’s just like him, that way of filming—the obsession with the senses, his use of masks, the lighting, and that viscous atmosphere. Try to see his short films, the ‘crash movies,’ and you’ll understand.”

“We will. The film doesn’t remind you of anything else? The settings, the faces of those children?”

“No, sorry.”

She seemed sincere. Sharko took a blank calling card from his wallet, on which he wrote his name and number.

“In case you think of anything else.”

Lucie also handed her a card.

“Please don’t hesitate.”

“Is Jacques still alive?”

Sharko answered without a moment’s hesitation.

“Finding that out and locating him are our top priorities.”