Franck Thilliez - Syndrome E

He was about to hang up. Lucie decided to bet all her chips.

“Is there a link between that case and the film?”

“You know there is. Good-b—”

“Wait! How can I reach you?”

“Your number came up when you called. I’ll reach you .” A moment’s pause. “I’ll call you back at 8:00 p.m., French time. Have the info, or you’ll never hear from me again.”

Call ended. Silence. Lucie stood there, mouth agape. That had certainly been the densest and most intriguing phone call of her entire life.

After thanking Luc for the use of the phone, she settled deeply into the front seat of her car, hands on her forehead. She thought about that voice separated from hers by some thirty-five hundred miles. Clearly, her interlocutor was scared stiff of being identified; he hid behind stolen phone numbers and abbreviated any form of exchange. Why was he hiding? And from whom? How had he got in touch with Vlad Szpilman? But the question that nagged at her the most was to find out what invisible connection could possibly exist between the anonymous film and the bodies unearthed in Normandy.

That evil reel might have been the tree that hid the forest.

Caught up, Lucie knew at that moment that she had no choice. Her conscience forbade her to call it quits or drop the bone. It was always like that, in a snap, that she decided to pursue her cases to the end. That same relentlessness that had pushed her to wear the badge. And sometimes, to go too far.

As of now, time was of the essence. She had until eight o’clock to find the right contact in Paris and ferret out the info demanded of her.

Aschizophrenic’s apartment tends to be messy. The internal personality disorder—the mental fracture—often manifests in an external disorder, to the point where some schizophrenics engage the services of a housekeeper. On the other hand, the apartment of a behavioral analyst demands a certain rigor, mirroring a rectilinear mind accustomed to compartmentalizing pieces of information the way you’d arrange shoes in a storage cubby. As such, Sharko’s apartment pulled in two different directions. While the coffee cups piled up in the sink and the wrinkled suits and ties amassed in a corner of the bathroom, various other rooms, all very neat and tidy, made it look like the residence of a peaceful family. A lot of photos in frames, a small plant, a child’s room with old stuffed toys, the yellow wallpaper with its frieze of dolphins.

On the floor of this latter room, a magnificent railway sprawled out its vintage tracks and locomotives, bordered by landscapes made of foam, cork, or resin. Restoring life to this miniature world, which had once required hundreds—thousands—of hours of assembly, painting, and gluing, was the first thing Sharko had done on his return from Rouen two hours earlier. The locomotives sent joyous whistles into the air and emitted their good, steamy smell, mixed with his wife Suzanne’s perfume, which he’d added to the water tank. As always, Eugenie sat amid the tracks, smiling; at moments like these, the cop was glad to have her around.

When she decided to leave, Sharko stood up and retrieved a dusty old suitcase from the top of a closet. The smells of the past poured out as he opened it, laden with nostalgia. Sharko’s heavy heart felt a pang.

His departure for Cairo was scheduled for the next morning, on Egyptair out of Orly. Economy class, the bastards. By prearrangement, the police inspector attached to the French embassy would be waiting for him. Sharko had checked online for the local temperature: celestial fires torched the country, a veritable sauna, which wouldn’t help matters. He packed his suitcase with plain short-sleeved shirts, two bathing suits—you never know—two pairs of twill trousers, and Bermuda shorts. He didn’t forget his tape recorder, cocktail sauce, candied chestnuts, or O-gauge Ova Hornby locomotive, with its black car for wood and charcoal.

His phone rang the moment he shut the valise, left half empty to make room for presents. It was Leclerc; Sharko picked up with a smile.

“Some cartons of cigarettes, Egyptian whiskey whose name I already don’t remember, perfume burner for Kathia… So what else do you want now, a cardboard pyramid?”

“Have you got time to swing over to Gare du Nord?”

Sharko glanced at his watch: 6:30. Normally he’d be having dinner in a half hour, reading the paper or doing the crosswords, and he hated disrupting his routine.

“Depends.”

“A colleague from Lille CID wants to meet you. She’s already on the TGV.”

“Is this a joke?”

“Supposedly it has some bearing on our case.”

A pause.

“What kind of bearing?”

“A rather strange and unexpected kind. She called me, on my direct line, if you can believe the nerve of this one. Go find out if it’s just a load of crap. You’ve already got something in common: you’re both supposed to be on vacation.”

“Some coincidence.”

“Her train gets in at 7:31. She’s blond, thirty-seven. She’ll be wearing a blue tunic and tan pedal pushers. Anyway, she’ll recognize you—she saw you on TV. You’ve become something of a star.”

Sharko rubbed his temples.

“Thanks for nothing. Tell me about her.”

“I’m sending you some background. Print it out and get moving.”

Sharko had his electronic plane tickets in front of him.

“Aye, aye, Chief. At your service, Chief. By the way, two measly days in Cairo is a bit short, don’t you think?”

“The locals don’t want us there any longer than that. We have to follow protocol.”

“Why are you sending me ? Protocol isn’t exactly my thing. And besides, what if I backslide? You remember that little green light in my brain?”

“It’s when that little green light goes on that you’re at your best. Your illness does some funny things to your head, a kind of stew that lets you grasp things nobody else can sense.”

“If you wouldn’t mind saying that to the big boss, he might treat me a little better.”

“The less we tell him, the better off you are. By the way: Auld Stag.”

“What?”

“The Egyptian whiskey—it’s called Auld Stag. Write it down, for goodness’ sake. For Kathia, find the most expensive perfume burner you can. I want to give her something nice.”

“How’s she doing? It’s been a while since I’ve been to see her. I hope she doesn’t hold it against me too much and that—”

“And don’t forget the bug spray, or you’ll really be sorry.”

He hung up sharply, as if to cut the conversation short.

Fifteen minutes later, Sharko settled into the commuter train at Bourg-la-Reine, printed sheets on his knees. He pored over the brief report his boss had sent. Lucie Henebelle… Single, two daughters, father died from lung cancer when she was ten, mother a homemaker. Police sergeant in Dunkirk in the early 2000s. Assigned a desk job, she’d found herself caught up in a sordid case, the “death chamber,” which had shaken the northern part of the country. Sharko was all too familiar with the hierarchic barriers back then between the rank of sergeant and that of detective. How had a simple paper-pusher managed to become the lead on such an investigation, which involved psychopaths and rituals? What inner forces had driven this mother of two to the other side ?

After that, she’d been transferred to Criminal Investigations in Lille, with a rank of lieutenant. Nice promotion. She’d opted for the big city, where she’d have many more opportunities to come face-to-face with the worst. Spotless record so far. A driven, punctilious woman, according to her supervisors, but with an increasing tendency to go off the rails. Rushing in without backup, frequent shouting matches with the brass, and a worrisome habit of zeroing in on violent cases, especially murders. Kashmareck, her superior officer, described her as “encyclopedic, possessed, a good psychologist in the field, but sometimes out of control.” Sharko dug deeper into the file. It was like reading his own story. In 2006, she had apparently taken a tumble: an intense manhunt to the far end of Brittany that in the end had put her on medical leave for three weeks. The official reason was “overwork.” In cop speak, that meant depression.