The Lost Goddess

17

Julia dropped the printed sheet on the café table.

“That’s where it ends?”

“Yes.”

“And she was about to send this e-mail? To me?”

“Of course. Yes.”

“But how…”

Rouvier set down his absurdly large cup of latte and explained:

“The murderer reached her before she could finish, or even get halfway through, perhaps. However, she was using webmail. The draft message was, therefore, automatically saved. We retrieved it yesterday.”

Julia stared at the table, at her coffee, at nothing. Trying not to reveal her deepening disquiet. But it was impossible. This new revelation destabilized everything.

Ghislaine’s death had been ghastly enough — but she had not been emotionally close to her boss. She was, moreover, able to rationalize that crime: she had pretty much convinced herself his death was a unique, if horrible, atrocity. An ex lover taking mad revenge, maybe. Or just a robbery gone wrong.

But Annika? Julia had cared for the woman; they had been real friends. This murder therefore grieved Julia, very badly; it also forced her into fiercer, more horrifying speculations.

The murders.

The brutal murder of Annika following the brutal murder of Ghislaine, that really did mean a chain, a link, a series of crimes — perhaps interwoven with all these mysterious secrets. And a series of crimes implied there would be more crimes. There would be further killings. She shuddered, inwardly.

Rouvier carefully stirred his coffee.

They were in a suitably discreet corner of the bland and busy coffee shop. Julia had suggested Starbucks, by the Gare du Nord, because Rouvier had said he was en route to London by train. She’d also chosen Starbucks quite deliberately, because it was so ordinary and non-French and it reminded her of Michigan.

This is what she wanted right now. Michigan, college football, meat loaf, Tim Horton’s. And this place was the closest she could get: the sofas, the menus, the vast and oversweet cinnamon buns: they were comforting, so very North American. Insipidly safe. Nursery food for the soul.

Rouvier gazed at her, knowingly, as if he could see her fear.

“Miss Kerrigan, I do not think the killer is after you.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Why not read the e-mail again.”

She snatched up the sheet of paper.

Chère Julia…

Engaging with the puzzle — shunting emotion aside as best she could — Julia deconstructed the information, more slowly this time: trying to grasp the hidden and curtailed meanings; trying not to imagine Annika’s obvious fear and distress. The e-mail spoke of a very troubled mind, struggling to confess. Bewildered, frightened, and almost waiting to die, almost yearning to die. And also confessing. But confessing what? What had happened in Cambodia?

She set down the piece of paper on the table, next to her undrunk cappuccino. For a moment she visualized, helplessly, the ensuing scene in the little cottage on the Cham des Bondons. The killing of her friend, her head smashed against a pillar of rock. Smashed to death. She fought back a surge of near-tears, and said, slowly, “I do know the name. Hector Trewin. He is, or he was, quite old, a Marxist anthropologist at Balliol. Respected. Famous in his time, in the 1960s and ’70s.”

Rouvier nodded. “Yes. I am meeting the English police today to go over such matters. But yes, you are quite right about Trewin. Furthermore, Annika Neuman speaks correctly of their shared connection. Our researches prove this.”

“It does?”

“Here. We have a photo.” Rouvier was reaching for his briefcase once more. He extracted a large scan of a color photo and laid it on the table, facing Julia. “We found it among Miss Neuman’s files.”

It was like a school photo, a group photo: a party of people, with some sitting, some standing behind, all smiling at the camera.

The photo was so obviously taken in the 1970s: it ached with nostalgia for itself. Lots of flared trousers, wide neckties, short, vivid dresses on the women. The faces were mostly young; all of them were keen, hopeful, idealistic, squinting a little in the sun. So many years ago.

Julia touched the photo. There: she could see Annika Neuman. Beautiful, blond, Dutch-Belgian, in a summer dress and sandals. Ghislaine was next to her, his arm around her, slightly awkward, slightly proud. His hair did not look absurd. Leaning closer to the photo, Julia tried to assess where it had been taken: the sun was harsh, tropical. Behind them was a strangely empty city street, distant shadows of palm trees. It was Cambodia, for sure: one of the empty, desolate boulevards of Phnom Penh. How could they be smiling?

“Yes,” said Rouvier. “It is Phnom Penh, 1976, a few months after Year Zero, after the genocides had already begun. Rather disturbing, no?”

The policeman laid a finger on the photo. “This is Hector Trewin.”

Julia frowned. She vaguely recognized the face: it provoked distant memories of textbooks, maybe an ancient, pompously serious BBC TV program. Trewin was older than most of the others in the photos; but he was also smiling. His smile was even more ardent.

“So,” said Julia. “They all went to Cambodia. As she said. But…” Julia glanced back at the e-mail. “What does this bit mean. This word revenge?”

“Miss Neuman’s intention is, to me at least, quite clear.” Rouvier placed his fingertips on the photo, gently pinning it down. “Lewin was electrocuted, in various parts of the body, while he was alive. He was finally dispatched with a terrible blow to the back of the head, with a metal bar. Victims of the Khmer Rouge were tormented and then killed in precisely this way.”

The puzzle cohered; the logic emerged.

“You mean… the murderer is… a Cambodian? A survivor of the Khmer Rouge?”

“Very possibly.”

“I get it. The killer is taking revenge on these old academics, old Communists, who went to Phnom Penh in 1976. And supported the regime. It’s vengeance! Of course!”

“It seems something of that nature. Yes. I think so.”

Julia was somewhat gratified by this solution. It finally made sense, after so much disorientating, seemingly arbitrary violence. The murders were just basic human revenge, exacted on old Western Communists, by a victim of the most evil of Communist regimes. She could almost understand it; she could almost empathize. If the murderer hadn’t brutally killed her friends and colleagues.

She also liked this solution for the most grisly and selfish of reasons: because she was cut out of the picture. She wasn’t a target. It had nothing to do with her job, her discoveries, the skulls and the bones.

And yet, a still and persistent voice inside her told her the skulls and the bones were connected. Annika specifically mentioned them. There must be a link, then? But a link meant a link to Julia herself.

She was still confused, and she was definitely frightened; she sipped her milky coffee.

Rouvier sat forward. “There is more, naturally. There are many aspects to these murders that still puzzle me.”

The coffee was going cold already.

Julia stammered, “A aspects like what?”

“For a start, there is the sheer skill of the intrusion, the enormous strength, the necessary athleticism — we believe the killer gained entry through a small cottage window at Miss Neuman’s house.”

Julia remembered the window. It was small. How did the killer get through that? A slender young woman could do it, or a boy, maybe; a small Asian man.

“Are you guys sure it is a woman?”

Rouvier smiled approvingly, as if Julia were an elder daughter who had asked a clever question.

“A most important point. Our sole reliable description is of a pale woman with long dark hair. But the kind of expertise we see here must surely come from training, the army, maybe special forces. And a man is much more likely to have this kind of strength and background, this capability. So a man, or a woman. Or what? Who is this?”

Rouvier was frowning through the window at the grand stone façade of the Gare du Nord. It was a bright autumn day in Paris, the streets busy with taxis and tourists.

He turned.

“Miss Kerrigan, this is where you come in, once more. When I considered all this yesterday, I recalled our conversation outside the hospital that night. Your questions.”

“Our conversation?”

“Cast your mind back. You asked me about the research of Ghislaine’s grandfather, the great professor. I told you it was about crossbreeding, between men and animals.”

Julia took another quick sip of her enormous cappuccino. It was completely cold now. She put the coffee down, and protested.

“But I was feeling kinda disturbed, that evening. Just asking questions for the sake of it.”

Rouvier smiled, very soberly. “Exactly so, Miss Kerrigan, but it is a notion that has some folkloric resonance in Lozère. The werewolves of the Margeride, no? Therefore, two days ago, as I thought of the animal savagery of the attacks and so forth, I recalled your question. This is why I asked my assistant to investigate the backgrounds of these academics, these Communists who went to Cambodia.”

“Their backgrounds?”

Rouvier once more pointed to the photo. He was indicating another face, a young man, sitting at the front. “This is Marcel Barnier. From Sciences Po.”

“And?”

“He was, and maybe still is, an expert in animal science, in hybridization.”

“Meaning?”

“Expert in breeding between species.”

Julia gripped her coffee spoon. Hard.

“You’re saying… you’re surely not saying…?”

Julia couldn’t even begin to articulate it. The idea was insane. But the faces were smiling at her, in the bright Phnom Penh sun, in the dark heart of all that evil, as millions died around them—smiling.

Rouvier sat back.

“I’m certainly not claiming that la Bête de Gévaudan has returned to prey upon us.” He shook his head. “No. That is clearly absurd. But then, what are we to think? There is this strange network of facts. It cannot be disputed.”

The policeman took up the sheets of paper, folded them carefully, and returned them to his briefcase.

“Now I must meet my junior. We catch the train for London. I hope I have not unnerved you?”

She shook her head. He smiled quietly.

“Good. That is good. You are staying in Paris?”

“Alex’s brother has a flat here. It’s empty. We’re here to do some… research. Archaeology.”

Julia wondered if she should tell Rouvier about their pursuit, the hunt for Prunières. Maybe she should tell him about her skulls, the trepanations, the wounds in the vertebrae. The needling and insistent evidence was speaking to the trepanations, and to the injuries to Annika’s head, and to Annika’s references. But maybe it was still, just about, coincidence; possibly her idea was insane. Possibly it was irrelevant? Possibly?

Whatever the answer, she didn’t have the emotional energy to explain her findings and anxieties now. Not the energy, nor the time, nor the courage. She just wanted to get the hell out.

The policeman opened the door of the café to allow Julia through. The morning air was mild, for early November, wistful. He shook her hand. Then he said, “There is one more curiosity.”

Julia had already sensed there was more; with a creeping sense of dread, she asked: “Yes?”

“I was prepared to dismiss the crossbreeding as sheer speculation. A fanciful idea. But then, yesterday, my junior made another discovery.” His smile was bleak. “It seems there was a serious attempt in the 1920s to crossbreed man and animals, man and the higher apes specifically. And Professor Quoinelles, the grandfather, he was part of that. The leader, in fact.”

A flock of dirty city pigeons clapped into the air behind Rouvier, as if applauding this revelation.

“Why the hell would you do that?”

“Military purposes. Supposedly they wanted to create a soldier with the brain of a man and the strength of a wild animal. A real killer. They actually made the attempt! We must remember this was the 1920s, different morals would apply, eugenics was still permissible. But the lengths they went to — they are still incredible, repulsive. They used apes imported from French colonies, and human women. They seized African women, imprisoned them, and tried to impregnate them with animal sperm. We know this happened.”

“The French army did this? The French government? My God.”

“Ah no, not the French. I have misled you, sorry.” He hesitated, then explained: “Albert Quoinelles, Ghislaine’s grandpère, was another well-known leftist. A sympathizer with Bolshevism. Quoinelles did his experiments for Stalin, he was recruited by Moscow. He did his experiments for the Communists.”

He bowed her way, then turned and crossed the busy street, heading for the dark, mouthlike arches of the Gare du Nord.