Syndrome E

35

Leaping from the taxi, they sprinted for the train station. The traffic and the heat were as infernal as ever. Lucie ran ahead; Sharko followed behind, his steps heavier but keeping up all the same. No hot pursuit of a killer, no criminal to arrest or bomb to defuse, just the 7:32 express to catch.

They dashed onto the train at 7:31. Ten seconds later, the conductor blew his whistle. The air-conditioning in the cars finally gave the two detectives some oxygen. Panting, they headed for the bar car and ordered cold drinks while mopping their faces with paper napkins. Sharko could barely catch his breath.

“One week… with you, Henebelle, and I’ll… lose ten pounds…”

Lucie downed her orange juice with noisy swallows. She finally took a minute to breathe, running a hand over her soaked neck.

“Especially if… you come running with me at… the Citadelle in Lille… Six miles, Tuesdays and Fridays…”

“I used to run too, back when. And I guarantee you… that I would have kept up…”

“You didn’t do so bad this evening…”

Their hearts resumed their normal rhythms. Sharko clanked his empty Coke can on the bar.

“Let’s go sit down.”

They found their seats. After a few minutes, Lucie made a brief recap, eyes glued to her notes. In her mind, the sea and sun of Marseille were already far behind.

“So this one expression kept coming up: Syndrome E. You have no idea what that could mean?”

“None.”

“In any case, we now have a name, an important one: Jacques Lacombe.”

“A doctor, a filmmaker… Science and art…”

“The eye and the brain… The film, Syndrome E.”

Sharko rubbed his chin for a long time, lost in thought.

“We should get in touch with the Sûreté in Quebec. We need to know who this Jacques Lacombe really was, what he went over there to do, in the States and Montreal. We need to trace this back to those children. They’re the key to this, and my sense is they should still be alive. There have to be traces of them somewhere. People who can tell us. Help us understand… understand…”

The words were like a dark warning in the back of his throat. His fingers scratched at the seat in front of him. He stopped when he noticed Lucie looking at him curiously.

“This stuff really seems to have a hold on you,” she said.

Sharko clenched his jaws, then turned his face toward the center aisle. Lucie sensed that he didn’t want to look back on his life, so she fell silent and thought about the case. Judith Sagnol’s hoarse voice echoed in her head. Jacques Lacombe had made this film to feed perverse minds, she’d confided. A way for the director to express and immortalize his madness. What kind of monster had Lacombe been? What sort of animal had he become in the jungles of Colombia? What had he carried along in his wake, so that even today people were willing to kill to get their hands on his “oeuvre”? Had he really killed and decapitated people in the Amazon just to make a movie? How deep had he gone into horror and insanity?

The landscape sped by, mountainous when the train left the Alpine foothills to its right, then flat and unvarying once past Lyon. Lucie was half dozing off, lulled by the slow rocking of the steel mastodon slicing through the countryside. Several times, coming out of her daze, she noticed Sharko staring at the empty seats in the other row and muttering things she couldn’t understand. He was sweating excessively. He got up at least five or six times during the trip, heading for the toilets or the bar car, to come back about ten minutes later looking either angry or appeased, mopping his forehead and neck with a paper napkin. Lucie pretended to be asleep.

They arrived at Gare de Lyon at 11:03. Night had fallen, faces were sallow with fatigue, and sticky air flowed into the station, carrying the effluvia of the city. The first train to Lille departed the next morning at 6:58. Eight hours is a long time when you have nothing to do and nowhere to go. Lucie’s thoughts drifted. No way she was going to wander around Paris at night. On the other hand, she felt funny about going to a hotel, with her ridiculous backpack and no change of clothes. Still, some cheap hotel was certainly the best solution. She turned to Sharko to say good-bye, but he was no longer there. He had stopped about ten yards behind and his hands were spread in front of him; his brow was furrowed and he was looking toward the ground, throwing glances Lucie’s way, making her feel like the topic of a heated argument. Finally he smiled, brushing the air with his fingers as if he were high-fiving someone. Lucie went toward him.

“Whatever are you doing?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets.

“I was negotiating…” His face beamed. “Listen, you don’t have anywhere to go. I can put you up for the night. I have a big couch, which is certainly more comfortable than an Egyptian bed.”

“I don’t know anything about Egyptian beds, and I wouldn’t want—”

“It’s no bother at all. Yes or no.”

“In that case, yes.”

“Great. Now let’s try to catch the commuter rail before it stops running.”

And he started walking toward the turnstiles. Before heading after him, Lucie turned one last time toward the place where he’d been standing alone several seconds earlier. Sharko, noting this, took his hands from his pockets and showed her his cell phone with a smile.

“What, you didn’t think I was talking to myself, did you?”