“But what did the law have to do with it?”
She screwed up her face, uncovering teeth that were as perfect as they were false.
“In the last third of the film, you saw a woman impaled on a spike, through her mouth and anus. It was a… an abomination, and so realistic! Jacques had to prove in court that the Colombian actress was still alive, and show how he’d created the illusion.”
She poured herself some more champagne, evidently disturbed. To Sharko she looked like a rumpled bird, just an old woman trying to stop time in its tracks.
“He didn’t come back the same from that miserable place; he had changed. As if the jungle and its shadows had kept their hold on him. Jacques had shot with natives, tribes who were seeing civilized people for the first time ever. I’ve never been able to forget one of the more shocking scenes in the film: heads lined up along the river, planted on pikes. God only knows what really happened there, in the dark reaches of that land of savages…”
She rubbed her arms, as if she’d gotten a sudden chill.
“When that film failed, it was yet another major blow for Jacques. Overnight, he vanished from the French film scene. He and I stayed in touch; we’d remained friends and I still had hopes of winning him back. But after a few months, I stopped hearing from him. One day I went to his studio. Jacques had packed up all his equipment and his films. His former assistant told me he’d left for the United States, just like that, with no warning.”
“Do you know why?”
“It was unclear. The assistant was sure he had a huge project there. Someone had seen his films and wanted to work with him. But we never learned anything more. No one ever heard what had really happened to him.”
“No one… except you.”
She nodded, her eyes vacant.
“It was 1954. Not a word for three years, then out of the blue I got a call. Jacques wanted me to come to Montreal. He had several days’ work for me, and he said he could pay me a fortune. I was busting my ass at the time, taking off my clothes for the camera more often than for a lover, just to earn peanuts. Filming in the nude never bothered me—I figured it was a good way to become a star. But you know how it is—lost illusions… I was experiencing the same setbacks as Jacques, getting parts in only the most pathetic films, for a bunch of real sleazeballs. So I agreed without thinking twice. I needed the cash. And besides, it was a chance to see him again—who knows, maybe even get back together. I asked him to send me the script, but he said I wouldn’t need one. So I took the plunge, sight unseen. He sent me half the fee, a plane ticket, and there I was, in Canada…”
Anxiety had settled into her face. The two cops were hanging on every word. Lucie had stopped taking notes. Judith let herself be carried away by the champagne; her expression veered from anger to tenderness to fear. Everything was resurfacing, after fifty years buried deep.
“The moment I landed in Canada, I knew I’d made a mistake. Jacques wore a look I’d never seen on a man. Lecherous, cold, indifferent. His head was almost shaved, and he looked unhealthy. He didn’t even give me a hug hello, after all the nights we’d spent together. He brought me to the place where they were shooting, without a word of explanation about his long years of absence, what he’d been doing. We came to some abandoned clothing factories just outside Montreal, I don’t know exactly where. There was only him, his camera equipment, and some people wearing gloves, dressed in black. I couldn’t see their faces—they were wearing ski masks. There were also mattresses, and several days’ worth of food. A room had been fitted up at the back of the warehouse… I understood that I was going to spend my days and nights in that dreadful place. And then I heard his voice. ‘Strip down, Judith, dance, and go with whatever happens.’ It was fall, I was cold and afraid, but I obeyed. I was being paid to. It lasted three days. Three days of hell. I suppose you’ve seen the sex scenes in the film, so you know what happened next…”
“We haven’t seen them in their entirety,” Sharko replied. “Just still images, hidden. Subliminal images.”
The old woman swallowed hard.
“More of his tricks.”
The inspector leaned forward.
“Tell us about the other scenes. You lying nude in the field, as if you were dead.”
Judith stiffened.
“That was the second half of the shoot: I had to lie there, naked and motionless, in a field near the factories. It was barely forty degrees out. Two of the men who’d had sex with me painted my stomach like a disgusting wound. But when I was lying in the grass, I was shivering. It was cold and my teeth were chattering. Jacques was furious that I couldn’t keep still enough. He took a syringe from his pocket and told me to hold out my arm. He—” She brought a hand to her mouth. “He told me it would keep me from feeling the cold and from moving too much… And also that it would dilate my pupils, like a real corpse.”
“Did you do it?”
“Yes. I wanted the rest of the fee; I’d come all that way. And I wanted to make Jacques happy. We had lived together! I thought I knew him. When he gave me the shot, I started to feel disconnected from the world. I wasn’t cold anymore but I was practically unable to move. They laid me back down in the grass.”
“Do you know what he injected you with?”
“I think it was LSD. Strangely, those three letters, which didn’t mean anything to me at the time, came into my head whenever I thought about that scene later on. He must have said them while I was drugged.”
The cops’ eyes met. LSD—the experimental drug used during the Artichoke program, the subject of one of the books stolen from Szpilman’s.
“Jacques always liked realism; he was a perfectionist. The makeup wasn’t good enough for him, so…”
Judith stood up and lifted the hem of her dress, unveiling her nudity without shame. Her tanned stomach was covered with white scars, which looked like little bloodsuckers beneath her skin. Sharko fell back in his chair ever so slightly, while Lucie remained frozen, her mouth tense. There was something sinister about seeing this body, so worn down and steeped in past sufferings, under the cheery sunlight of Marseille.
Judith let go of the fabric, which fell back to her knees.
“I didn’t feel any pain while he was cutting me… I couldn’t even understand what was happening. It was like I was having hallucinations. Jacques continued to film for hours on end, constantly making more cuts. They were only skin deep and didn’t draw much blood, so he accentuated them with makeup. There was something terrifying in his eyes while he was slashing me. And at that moment, I realized…”
The two police kept silent, encouraging her to continue.
“I realized that he had actually killed that Colombian actress. He had gone all the way—it was obvious.”
Sharko and Lucie looked briefly at each other. Judith was on the verge of tears.
“I don’t know how he got it past the French authorities. He must have shown them the poor woman’s twin and they were taken in by it. But with me, he didn’t lie. And he was true to his word about the fee.”
Lucie squeezed her pencil harder. Apparently Jacques Lacombe was well off, since he’d paid Judith good money. If he’d managed to get his films known in the States, make a name for himself, what was he doing in some moth-eaten warehouse in Quebec shooting those scenes from hell?
“When I got back to France, I was disfigured, but I had enough to live on decently and keep my head above water. I was lucky enough after that to meet a good man, who had seen my films and loved me regardless.”
Lucie spoke in a gentle voice. The woman, despite all her wealth, filled her with pity.