Franck Thilliez - Syndrome E

The officer’s frozen features looked like poured concrete. Sharko leaned forward, his face smug.

“I’ll also forget about that business with the mics. You see, we have to trust each other, you and I.”

He headed toward the door.

“No need to see me out—I know the way. I’ll contact you in a few days. Oh, and one more thing: should I meet with any unfortunate accidents, I’ve taken precautions.”

He jerked his chin toward the Legion’s code of honor.

“Maybe you should reread that.”

He then turned around and left.

No one saw him out.

As he walked past those soldiers, trained and prepared to kill, knives in their belts, he wondered if he hadn’t just signed his death warrant. He now had the Foreign Legion and probably the secret service on his back. He had suspected there was considerable weight behind this affair, and he’d been right. Some very high brass…

He drove pedal to the metal down the long, straight lines of Highway A6. With the back of his hand, he wiped away the small tears that were leaking from the corners of his eyes. He had confided his weaknesses, his deepest wounds, to Henebelle, because he knew she was like him, and a kind of trust had spontaneously grown up between them. He had shown her his psychological scars.

But other ears had been listening. Chastel and his fucking hench-men…

Now he felt exposed, betrayed, almost ashamed.

Seven hours later, he walked through his door. He set about searching his apartment top to bottom and found four listening devices. One hidden in the base of the halogen lamp, and the other three in the radiator thermostats. Standard miniature equipment, available to any police department. He knew he wouldn’t find any prints, and that there would be nothing to learn from them.

In a rage, he threw them onto the floor.

And it was Eugenie who crushed them under her heel.

At that moment, the Sig Sauer resting in his holster and the three dead bolts on the door to his apartment seemed terribly insubstantial.

Lucie had taken an airplane only once before, on a holiday in the Baleares when she was about nine, and she’d loved it. She remembered her father and mother holding her close and petting her hair when the turbulence frightened her. It was one of her last memories of the three of them together, and it was all so far away now.

Lost in thought, she sat with her forehead pressed against the window of the Boeing 747 as it hovered above Quebec. The flight attendant had just woken her and asked her to fasten her seat belt: they were beginning their descent. Lucie had slept most of the way, heavily and, unusually, without waking. Now, in the pale light of the setting sun, she admired the stretches of lakes and forest, rivers and swamps that civilization had still spared. A vast, wild terrain, miraculously preserved. Then the mouth of the Saint Lawrence appeared, with the first major signs of human presence, before the jet flew over the famous lozenge-shaped island.

Montreal: a flare of modernism amid the waters.

The flight attendant verified one more time that everyone’s seat belt was fastened. The passenger seated next to Lucie, a big blond fellow, had practically dug his fingers into the armrests. He stared at her with cocker spaniel eyes.

“Here it comes again—I’m starting to feel like I’m dying. I really envy people like you who can sleep anywhere.”

Lucie gave him a polite smile. Her mouth was pasty and she didn’t feel like making chitchat. The landing at Montreal-Trudeau airport was soft as could be. The ground temperature was about the same as a classic summer in the north of France. No real sense of disorientation, particularly since much of the population was French-speaking. Once the usual business was behind her—customs, verification of the letter rogatory, the wait at baggage claim, currency exchange—Lucie hailed a cab and let herself collapse onto the backseat. Evening was just beginning here, but across the Atlantic night was well under way.

Her first impression of Montreal, in the gathering darkness, was of a modern and incredibly luminous city. The skyscrapers launched their beams of light toward the stars; the many cathedrals and churches played on tones of red, blue, and green projected by spotlights. In the center of town, Lucie was surprised by how wide the avenues were, and the rigorous geometry of the streets. Despite the subway entrances with their very Parisian look and the effervescence of the small cafés and restaurants nearby, you didn’t have the impression of closeness and warmth that animated the French capital on mild evenings.

By the time she arrived at the Delta Montreal, an imposing high-rise with a summit bathed in blue light, Lucie no longer had the energy to go out and see the city—including the famous underground Montreal. Claiming her key, she settled into her room on the fifth floor, put on her bathrobe, and lay down on the bed with a long sigh. She didn’t feel at home in this anonymous place, with its succession of strangers, traveling businesspeople, and vacationing couples. Nothing more depressing than to be alone at night, without a sound outside. Where were her daughters’ laughter and tears, the light daily hubbub of her apartment that had been with her for all those years? How could she let herself go so far away from her ailing little girl? What was Clara doing at camp? Questions that a mother, a good mother, should never have to wonder about.

Despite her worries, she gradually began to doze off. Her eyes fluttered open when the hotel phone rang. She stretched out her hand and brought the receiver to her ear.

“Yes?”

“All settled in, Henebelle?”

A pause.

“Inspector Sharko? Uh… yes, I just got in. But… why didn’t you call on my cell?”

“I tried. No go.”

Lucie picked up the mobile phone that was lying next to her. The battery was charged. The screen showed no calls. She tried to get a dial tone.

“Damn, it must be out of range. Speaking of distance, it must be four or five in the morning for you. You’re already up?”

Sharko was sitting at his kitchen table, in front of an empty cup of coffee and his loaded Sig Sauer. His cheek was in one hand, his elbow resting on the tablecloth, his eye turned toward the entry door in the living room. His telephone was sitting on the table, with the speaker on. On the chair opposite him, Eugenie was humming the latest song by Coeur de Pirate. She was munching on candied chestnuts and sipping a mint soda. Sharko turned his face away.

“How was the trip?”

“In a word, exhausting. Crammed full of vacationers.”

“And how about the hotel—is it nice? You do have a bathtub, at least?”

“A bathtub? Uh… yes. And how about you—what’s new?”

“Here’s a thrill: I’m about to inherit a list of two hundred people who attended a scientific conference in Cairo at the time of the murders. We’ve decided to focus on just the French for now.”

“Two hundred? That’s a lot. How many are working on it?”

“Just one—me. For starters, we should be able to eliminate a good number with the killer’s profile we have from 1993. Pare it down as much as possible, before delving into everyone’s past. You can imagine what a chore it is.”

The sound of an engine rose from the street. Out of reflex, Sharko snatched up his gun and rushed to the window. After shutting off the light, he slightly raised the shade, his throat tight. A truck, topped with an orange revolving light, slowly advanced along the sidewalk. It was just the street sweepers emptying the trash cans, as they did every week, in the early morning torpor. The cop sat back down, half reassured. His temples were beating hard; hypervigilance and paranoia, amplified by his illness, kept him both awake and exhausted.