Franck Thilliez - Syndrome E

“It’s simple. There was a sudden, uncontrolled outbreak of Syndrome E at the Legion. Something went wrong, the glitch that led to the murder of five young recruits. Except that Abane, who’d only been wounded in the shoulder, was still alive. No way were they going to let him live because of what had happened, but on the other hand Abane was, like Alice, a Patient Zero. I think that before she had him killed, Alice Tonquin, or Coline Quinat, wanted to experiment on him. She had a living, breathing guinea pig at her disposal, which must not have happened too often. She had her hands on someone who basically was just like her, and who must have made her relive the most painful times of her life. God only knows what tortures she put him through.”

Lucie’s face darkened.

“It’s not only God who knows. We’re going to know soon enough as well.”

She stood up and watched an airplane slicing through the sky. Then she turned back to Sharko, who was nervously fumbling with his cell phone.

“You’re dying to call your chief, aren’t you?”

“I should, yes.”

She gripped his wrists.

“There’s just one thing I’m asking—let me see Alice face-to-face. I need to talk to her, look her in the eye, so that I can get her out of my head. I don’t want to keep thinking of her as a poor innocent, but as the worst sort of killer.”

Sharko recalled his own face-to-face with the dangling body of Atef Abd el-Aal, the morbid sensation of pleasure he’d felt when he’d flicked the lighter and watched the man’s face go up in flames. He leaned closer to Lucie and whispered in her ear:

“This business has been going on for more than half a century. A few more hours won’t make any difference. I’ll call him before we take off. I want to be in the front row and not miss anything either. What did you think?”

They had caught the last flight out that evening, destination: Paris. Since the plane wasn’t entirely full, they could sit next to each other. Her forehead flattened against the window, Lucie watched Montreal turn into a great luminous vessel that gradually let itself be swallowed by the shadows of night. A city that she’d only come to know by its darkest side.

Then came the endless black of the ocean, that unknowable mass that quivers with life and holds our fate in its undulating belly.

Next to her, Sharko had put on his sleeping mask and curled up in his seat. His head was nodding, and he could finally let himself go. They might have taken the eight hours of travel to talk, tell each other about their lives, their pasts, get to know each other better, but they both knew that they understood each other best in silence.

Lucie looked with sorrow and desire at that square jaw, that face that had lived through so much. With the back of her hand she lightly brushed the stubble on his cheek and remembered that their relationship was born in the very heart of their own sufferings. There was hope. Deep down, she wanted to convince herself there was hope, that all scorched earth eventually started yielding grain again, one summer or other. The man must have been through the worst life had to offer; day after day, he must have tried to roll a ball of life that eroded more and more with each new incursion into Evil. But Lucie wanted to try. Try to give him back a tenth, a hundredth of what he had lost; she wanted to be there when things weren’t going well, and also when they were. She wanted him to hug her twins to his heart and, when he buried his face in their hair, perhaps think of his own child. She wanted to be with him, period.

She pulled back her hand, parted her lips just slightly to whisper all that to him, even though he was sleeping, because she now knew that a part of his brain would hear it, and that her words would register somewhere in the back of his mind. But no sound emerged from her mouth.

And so she leaned over and simply planted a kiss on his cheek.

Maybe that was how love began.

The minute they landed at Orly, everything accelerated. As soon as he’d heard, Martin Leclerc alerted Criminal Division headquarters in Grenoble. Without checking in at Number 36, Sharko had claimed his car at airport parking; he and Lucie headed south, their bags in the trunk.

Their final straight line… The last euphoric, destructive line of coke… It would be soon. At six in the morning, the Grenoble police would enter the home of Coline Quinat, age sixty-two, who lived on Voie de Corato, overlooking the Isère River.

Sharko and Lucie would be first in line.

The landscapes flew by, valleys following fields, the mountains growing taller, breaking through the dry earth. Lucie dozed off and started awake by turns, her clothes rumpled, her hair tangled and unwashed. It didn’t matter—they had to see this through to the end. Like this—in one shot, without stopping, without catching their breath, without thinking twice. They had to get it all out. Have done with it once and for all.

Grenoble was a city with rough associations for the inspector. He remembered the shadows that had cast him to the bottom of the abyss only a few years before. Back then, Eugenie had appeared behind him in the car, sleeping soundly on the rear seat. Sharko didn’t dare believe things could be so much better now, that the little phantom had disappeared from his head for good since his night with Lucie. Had he finally managed to close that door, which for so long had been open onto the faces of Eloise and Suzanne? Had he succeeded in wiping from his lips the honey of his unending grief? For the first time in years, he let himself hope so.

To become like everyone else again. At least, sort of.

They joined their Grenoble colleagues at about four in the morning. Introductions, coffee, bringing up to speed.

At 5:30, a dozen officers headed for the home of Coline Quinat. A bloodred sun had barely detached itself from the horizon. The Isère slowly became haloed in silver reflections. Lucie smelled the odor of a manhunt’s end. The best moment for a cop, the final reward. Everything would soon be over.

They arrived at their destination. The facade of the house was large and impressive. The cops were surprised to spot light coming through the slats of the upstairs shutters: Quinat was already awake. Cautiously, the teams got into position. Bodies tense, glances rapid, prickling in the chest. At 6:00 a.m. sharp, five blows of the police battering ram overcame the lock on the heavy front door.

In a flash, the men flew inside like hornets. Lucie and Sharko immediately fell in with the ones dashing up the stairs. The beams from their flashlights danced on the steps, crossing over each other, as heavy boots clattered in sync.

There was no battle, no explosions or gunfire. Nothing to match the incredible surge of horror and violence of the previous days. Just the queasy sensation of invading a lone woman’s privacy.

Coline Quinat had just stood up from her desk, her face pale and calm. She slowly put down her fountain pen and latched her eyes onto Lucie’s, while the men rushed forward to cuff her. She stood quietly as they read her her rights, without resistance or protest. As if this were all following an implacable logic.

Lucie stepped forward, almost hypnotized, so shocked to finally see in the flesh a person lost in the black and white of a fifty-year-old film. Quinat was a head taller than she. She was wearing a blue silk dressing gown. Her short, graying blond hair framed a hard face, perfectly preserved, with a prominent jawline. Her gaze … Lucie became lost in that dark gaze, which had traveled the years without losing any of its severity, its terrifying emptiness. The gaze of that sick little girl that had so upset her. The woman’s lips parted; she spoke: