Daniel Silva - The Kill Artist

“We’ll have a good shoot today, yes? I can feel it.”

“I hope so.”

She entered a changing room, undressed, and studied her appearance in the mirror with professional dispassion. Physically she was a stunning woman: tall, graceful arms and legs, elegant waist, pale olive skin. Her breasts were aesthetically perfect: firm, rounded, neither too small nor abnormally large. The photographers had always loved her breasts. Most models detested lingerie work, but it never bothered Jacqueline. She’d always had more offers for work than she could fit into her schedule.

Her gaze moved from her body to her face. She had curly raven hair that fell about her shoulders, dark eyes, a long, slender nose. Her cheekbones were wide and even, her jawline angular, her lips full. She was proud of the fact that her face had never been altered by a surgeon’s scalpel. She leaned forward, probed at the skin around her eyes. She didn’t like what she saw. It wasn’t a line, really-something more subtle and insidious. The intangible sign of aging. She no longer had the eyes of a child. She had the eyes of a thirty-three-year-old woman.

You’re still beautiful, but face facts, Jacqueline. You’re getting old.

She pulled on a white robe, went into the next room, and sat down. The makeup artist began applying a base to her cheek. Jacqueline watched in the mirror as her face was slowly transformed into that of someone she didn’t quite recognize. She wondered what her grandfather would think if could see this.

He’d probably be ashamed…

When the makeup artist and hairstylist finished, Jacqueline looked at herself in the mirror. Had it not been for the courage of those three remarkable people-her grandparents and Anne-Marie Delacroix-she would not be here today.

And look at what you’ve become-an exquisite clothes hanger.

She stood up, walked back to the changing room. The dress, a black strapless evening gown, waited for her. She removed her robe, stepped into the gown, and pulled it up over her bare breasts. Then she glanced at herself in the mirror. Devastating.

A knock at the door. “Michel is ready for you, Miss Delacroix.”

“Tell Michel I’ll be out in a moment.”

Miss Delacroix…

Even after all these years she was still not used to it: Jacqueline Delacroix. Her agent, Marcel Lambert, was the one who had changed her name-“Sarah Halévy sounds too… well… you know what I mean, mon chou. Don’t make me say it out loud. So vulgar, but such is the way of the world.” Sometimes the sound of her French name made her skin crawl. When she learned what had happened to her grandparents in the war, she had burned with hatred and suspicion of all French people. Whenever she saw an old man, she would wonder what he had done during the war. Had he been a guard at Gurs or Les Milles or one of the other detention camps? Had he been a gendarme who helped the Germans round up her family? Had he been a bureaucrat who stamped and processed the paperwork of death? Or had he simply stood by in silence and done nothing? Secretly it gave her intense delight that she was deceiving the fashion world. Imagine their reaction if they found out the lanky, raven-haired beauty from Marseilles was in fact a Provençale Jew whose grandparents had been gassed at Sobibor. In a way being a model, the very image of French beauty, was her revenge.

She took one last look at herself, lowering her chin toward her chest, parting her lips slightly, bringing fire to her coal-black eyes.

Now she was ready.

They worked for thirty minutes without stopping. Jacqueline adopted several poses. She sprawled across a simple wooden chair. She sat on the floor, leaning back on her hands, with her head tilted upward and her eyes closed. She stood with her hands on her hips and her eyes boring through the lens of Michel’s camera. Michel seemed to like what he was seeing. They were in sync. Every few minutes he would pause for a few seconds to change his film, then quickly resume shooting. Jacqueline had been in the business long enough to know when a shoot was working.

So she was surprised when he suddenly stepped from behind the camera and ran a hand through his hair. He was frowning. “Clear the studio, please. I need some privacy.”

Jacqueline thought: Oh, Christ. Here we go.

Michel said, “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me!”

“Nothing? You’re flat, Jacqueline. The pictures are flat. I might as well be taking pictures of a mannequin wearing the dress. I can’t afford to give Givenchy a set of flat prints. And from what I hear on the street, you can’t afford it either.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re getting old, darling. It means that no one’s quite sure whether you have what it takes anymore.”

“Just get back behind the camera, and I’ll show you I have what it takes.”

“I’ve seen enough. It’s just not there today.”

“Bullshit!”

“You want me to get you a drink? Maybe a glass of wine will help loosen you up.”

“I don’t need a drink.”

“How about some coke?”

“You know I don’t do that anymore.”

“Well, I do.”

“Some things never change.”

Michel produced a small bag of cocaine from his shirt pocket. Jacqueline sat down in the prop chair while he prepared two lines on a glass-topped table. He snorted one, then offered her the rolled-up hundred-franc note. “Feel like being a bad girl today?”

“All yours, Michel. Not interested.”

He leaned over and snorted the second line. Then he wiped the glass with his finger and spread the residue over his gums. “If you’re not going to have a drink or do a line, maybe we need to think of some other way to light a fire in you.”

“Like what?” she said, but she knew what Michel had on his mind.

He stood behind her, placed his hands lightly on her bare shoulders. “Maybe you need to be thinking about getting fucked.” His hands moved from her shoulders, and he stroked the skin just above her breasts. “Maybe we can do something to make the idea a little more realistic in your imagination.”

He pressed his pelvis against her back, so that she could feel his erection beneath his leather trousers.

She drew away.

“I’m just trying to help, Jacqueline. I want to make sure these pictures come out well. I don’t want to see your career crash and burn. My motives are purely selfless.”

“I never knew you were such a philanthropist, Michel.”

He laughed. “Come with me. I want to show you something.” He took her by the hand and pulled her off the set. They walked down a hallway and entered a room furnished with nothing but a large bed. Michel pulled off his shirt and began unbuttoning his trousers.

Jacqueline said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“You want good pictures, I want good pictures. Let’s get in the right frame of mind. Take off the dress so it doesn’t get ruined.”

“Go fuck yourself, Michel. I’m leaving.”

“Come on, Jacqueline. Stop fooling around and get into bed.”

“No!”

“What’s the big deal? You slept with Robert Leboucher, so he would give you that swimwear shoot in Mustique.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because he told me.”

“You’re a bastard, and so is he! I’m not some seventeen-year-old who’s going to spread her legs for you because she wants good pictures from the great Michel Duval.”

“If you walk out of here, your career is over.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

He pointed at his erection. “What am I supposed to do about this?”

Marcel Lambert lived a short distance away, on the rue de Tournon, in the Luxembourg Quarter. Jacqueline needed time to herself, so she walked, taking her time in the narrow side streets of the Latin Quarter. Darkness falling, lights coming on in the bistros and the cafés, the smell of cigarettes and frying garlic on the chill air.