The cop still didn’t understand. Poignet had pored through every frame without noticing anything. So then what?
Clumsily, Ludovic picked up his bottle of water and took a few swallows.
“You saw the film. Tell me what you found. Were you able to show it to my friend the restorer?”
Lucie looked him in the eyes and blurted out, “Claude Poignet is dead.”
Ludovic’s fists clenched on the sheets. A long silence.
“How?”
“He was murdered. The ones who did it came looking for the film.”
Ludovic straightened up and brushed his hair back, heavily. He was on the verge of tears.
“Not him. Not Claude. He was just an old man who didn’t bother anybody.”
Feeling his way, Ludovic walked toward the Plexiglas window, his eyes vacant. Lucie could see from the reflection that he was crying.
She needed to keep herself from pity, from feeling. “I promise you we’ll find the people who did this. We’re going to find out what happened.”
She stayed with him for some time, explaining the early stages of their investigation. She even told him about the unknown person who had rifled through his film collection. Ludovic should know the whole truth.
“I feel so alone, Lucie…”
“The psychiatrists are here to help you.”
“I don’t give a damn about the psychiatrists.”
He sighed.
“Why didn’t it work out with us?”
“It wasn’t your fault. It’s never really worked out with anyone for me.”
“Why not?”
“Because sooner or later, the person always starts asking me why.”
She felt uneasy; the heat was getting on her nerves. And that chemical stench…
“The man I spend the rest of my life with will have to take me as I am, here and now. And not keep trying to bring up the past. Questioning me about this or that. I’m a cop because I’m a cop—that’s the way it is, you just have to deal. The past is dead and buried, okay?”
Ludovic shrugged.
“Listen, I should let you go. I’m sure you’ve got things to do.”
“I’ll visit again.”
“Sure, you’ll visit again.”
He leaned his forehead against the window. Sadly, Lucie went out and sucked in a large breath of fresh air. She was mad at herself for having been so short with him, with men in general. But those were the stigmata of her past sufferings. The first man she had truly loved had abandoned her all too abruptly, her and her girls.
In the parking lot, watching visitors come and go, she thought it might not be a bad idea to put a watch on Ludovic’s room—and maybe Juliette’s as well. She’d talk to her boss about it.
She returned to Criminal Investigations headquarters late that afternoon, on Boulevard de la Liberté, a hundred yards or so from the center of Lille. Up there, information was being exchanged at a healthy clip between the Violent Crimes unit in Paris, CID in Rouen, and the Lille teams. For the moment, they were using e-mail and phones. The various data would soon be integrated into computer files that all the officers could access. Cross-references would be noted; the info would circulate at its best. It seemed that every chance was on the side of the law.
Lucie walked into her captain’s office. Kashmareck was talking with Lieutenant Madelin. The young hotshot, no more than twenty-five, face like a class valedictorian, had just finished going over Claude Poignet’s autopsy. The triple fracture of the hyoid bone suggested strangulation, and the presence of lividity—an accumulation of blood on the pressure points between body and floor—on the left deltoid and hip proved that Poignet had been murdered while on his side: the killers had left him lying that way at least a half hour before hanging him.
Kashmareck emptied his coffee cup. He ran on caffeine the way others did on water.
“A half hour… The time it took to rewind the film and poke around a bit to stage their scene. Killers who kept their cool, didn’t panic.”
Lucie barged into their ruminations:
“So Poignet didn’t die by hanging but by strangulation.”
The captain picked up a photo of the studio and pointed to the floor in one corner of the room.
“Yes, right there. We found drops of blood. Probably a nosebleed caused by asphyxiation. What else did the autopsy show?”
Madelin skimmed through his notes.
“Knife to open his chest—whatever the kind of blade, it was sharp, that’s for certain. According to the ME, the removal of the eye was very… professional. I’ll read what it says: ‘Circular opening of the transparent membrane that covers the eye, slicing of the oculomotor muscles, then of the optic nerve, and finally removal of the eyeball. Much like a surgical procedure.’”
The captain nodded in agreement.
“That fits perfectly with the data I’m starting to get from Rouen. The skulls of the five bodies, sawed open with professional skill… which supports the theory that it’s the same killers. Go on.”
“For the rest… it’s technical, but nothing very revealing. Samples were sent to toxicology, just in case. But I doubt Poignet was drugged.”
“Fine. We’ll all get to read the report. We’re expecting the international warrant from the judge—the request has been sent to the Belgian authorities to search Szpilman’s place. It won’t be our show over there—they’re in charge, we just watch, but it’s better than nothing… What else? Uh… We’re checking the Canadian phone numbers you gave us, Henebelle, just to make sure we can’t reach your anonymous tipster from Montreal.”
He put his hands to his face and heaved a sigh, gazing at his notes in dry-erase marker on a not very white board. A labyrinth of arrows.
“Madelin, go over the calls Poignet made or received in the twenty-four hours before his death. Henebelle, you go next door. The lab made blowups of the pieces of film the victim had instead of eyes. Bring the info back here and see what else they have to say. Fingerprints, other clues… I’m going to reach out to the guys canvassing the neighborhood to see if they’ve got anything new. Tonight we’ll throw it all into the hat and cross our fingers. For now, I need something concrete, something solid, before we have to start thinking.”
20
The image Sharko had formed of Cairo changed like the shimmering water on the surface of the Nile. The taxi driver, an osta bil-fitra, or “born cabbie,” who spoke a little French, had taken him via the city’s narrow roads. The Egyptian populace lived outdoors, in a state of excitement and nonchalance. Every one of life’s scenes was an excuse for communication. Butchers cut their meat on the sidewalk, women peeled vegetables in front of their houses, bread was sold in the street, right from the ground. Sharko felt like he was moving through a living tableau when, in the midst of the chaotic traffic, he was dazzled by the perfect movement of a cotton galabia, swaying to its owner’s regal gait. He felt the breath of Islam in the overheated streets; the mosques were ablaze with beauty, and in their excess they aimed an eye at their single god. There is no other god than God.
Then Coptic Cairo appeared around him. There, young people wearing plain leather sandals asked for neither money nor pens, but offered you images of the Virgin Mary. There, the walls were redolent of ancient Rome, and the Bible seemed to peel open its parchment writings. Peaceful, ocher-colored alleyways, with only the crunch of sand brought in by the hot winds of the hamsin. In the middle of the most populous city in Africa, Sharko finally felt at peace. Alone in the world. He tapped into the city’s great ambiguity.
He paid the driver—an amazing guy, brimming with funny stories—and called Leclerc to keep him abreast of his inquiries. In exchange, he learned about the death of the old film restorer and the theft of the reel. Things were hopping in France, but not the way he would have wished. The investigation was taking on apocalyptic proportions, bodies were piling up, the mystery was deepening.