“And you never reported any of this to the police? You never brought charges?”
“What was the point? My body was ruined, and I wouldn’t even have gotten the second half of the money. I would have lost everything.”
The inspector looked Judith straight in the eye.
“Do you know why he shot those scenes, Madame Sagnol?”
“No. I told you, I didn’t know what the content of—”
“I’m not talking about the content of the film. I’m talking about Jacques Lacombe. Jacques Lacombe, who called you—you specifically—after several years of total silence. Who leaned in close to mutilate you. Who filmed you in the most provocative postures… Why make a film with scenes like that? What was the point, do you think?”
She thought for a moment. Her fingers squeezed the large sapphire on her ring finger.
“To feed perverse minds, Inspector.”
She sank into a long silence before continuing.
“To offer them power, sex, and death through film. Jacques didn’t want to just provoke or shock with images. He wanted the image to alter human behavior. That was the point of his entire body of work. It’s probably why he was so interested in pornography. When a man watches a porno film, what does he do?”
She made an unambiguous hand gesture.
“The image acts directly on his impulses, his libido; the image penetrates him and dictates his actions. That, ultimately, is what Jacques was looking for. Over there, he kept mentioning this weird thing when he talked about the power of the image.”
“What weird thing?”
“Syndrome E. Yes, that’s right—Syndrome E.”
Sharko felt his chest tighten. It was the second time the expression had come up, and always in sinister circumstances.
“What does that mean?”
“I have absolutely no idea. He kept repeating it. Syndrome E, Syndrome E, as if it were an obsession. An unattainable quest.”
Lucie jotted down the phrase and circled it, before asking Judith:
“Did it seem that Lacombe was working with a partner? A doctor, maybe, or a scientist?”
She nodded.
“A man also came to see me, a doctor—there’s no doubt about it. He supplied the shots of LSD. The two of them clearly knew each other well; they were complicit.”
The filmmaker and the doctor. It corresponded to the profile of the Cairo murders, to the killing of Claude Poignet as well. Luc Szpilman had mentioned a man in his early thirties: that couldn’t possibly be Lacombe, who would have been too old by now. So who, then? Someone obsessed with his work? An heir to his insanity?
“But all that was a long time ago, too long for me to tell you anymore. Half a century ago, and whatever happened over there is just vague fragments in my head. Now that we know what harm that horrible LSD has caused, I suppose I’m lucky to be alive.”
Sharko emptied his flute and stood up.
“We’d still like you to watch the entire film, in case certain details come back to you.”
She nodded limply. The cops could tell she was overcome with emotion.
“What did Jacques do for you to be so interested in him after fifty years?”
“We’re not sure yet, unfortunately, but there’s an ongoing investigation that has to do with this film.”
Once the viewing was over, Judith sighed deeply. She lit a long cigarette at the end of a holder and blew out a curlicue of smoke.
“That’s just like him, that way of filming—the obsession with the senses, his use of masks, the lighting, and that viscous atmosphere. Try to see his short films, the ‘crash movies,’ and you’ll understand.”
“We will. The film doesn’t remind you of anything else? The settings, the faces of those children?”
“No, sorry.”
She seemed sincere. Sharko took a blank calling card from his wallet, on which he wrote his name and number.
“In case you think of anything else.”
Lucie also handed her a card.
“Please don’t hesitate.”
“Is Jacques still alive?”
Sharko answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“Finding that out and locating him are our top priorities.”
35
Leaping from the taxi, they sprinted for the train station. The traffic and the heat were as infernal as ever. Lucie ran ahead; Sharko followed behind, his steps heavier but keeping up all the same. No hot pursuit of a killer, no criminal to arrest or bomb to defuse, just the 7:32 express to catch.
They dashed onto the train at 7:31. Ten seconds later, the conductor blew his whistle. The air-conditioning in the cars finally gave the two detectives some oxygen. Panting, they headed for the bar car and ordered cold drinks while mopping their faces with paper napkins. Sharko could barely catch his breath.
“One week… with you, Henebelle, and I’ll… lose ten pounds…”
Lucie downed her orange juice with noisy swallows. She finally took a minute to breathe, running a hand over her soaked neck.
“Especially if… you come running with me at… the Citadelle in Lille… Six miles, Tuesdays and Fridays…”
“I used to run too, back when. And I guarantee you… that I would have kept up…”
“You didn’t do so bad this evening…”
Their hearts resumed their normal rhythms. Sharko clanked his empty Coke can on the bar.
“Let’s go sit down.”
They found their seats. After a few minutes, Lucie made a brief recap, eyes glued to her notes. In her mind, the sea and sun of Marseille were already far behind.
“So this one expression kept coming up: Syndrome E. You have no idea what that could mean?”
“None.”
“In any case, we now have a name, an important one: Jacques Lacombe.”
“A doctor, a filmmaker… Science and art…”
“The eye and the brain… The film, Syndrome E.”
Sharko rubbed his chin for a long time, lost in thought.
“We should get in touch with the Sûreté in Quebec. We need to know who this Jacques Lacombe really was, what he went over there to do, in the States and Montreal. We need to trace this back to those children. They’re the key to this, and my sense is they should still be alive. There have to be traces of them somewhere. People who can tell us. Help us understand… understand…”
The words were like a dark warning in the back of his throat. His fingers scratched at the seat in front of him. He stopped when he noticed Lucie looking at him curiously.
“This stuff really seems to have a hold on you,” she said.
Sharko clenched his jaws, then turned his face toward the center aisle. Lucie sensed that he didn’t want to look back on his life, so she fell silent and thought about the case. Judith Sagnol’s hoarse voice echoed in her head. Jacques Lacombe had made this film to feed perverse minds, she’d confided. A way for the director to express and immortalize his madness. What kind of monster had Lacombe been? What sort of animal had he become in the jungles of Colombia? What had he carried along in his wake, so that even today people were willing to kill to get their hands on his “oeuvre”? Had he really killed and decapitated people in the Amazon just to make a movie? How deep had he gone into horror and insanity?
The landscape sped by, mountainous when the train left the Alpine foothills to its right, then flat and unvarying once past Lyon. Lucie was half dozing off, lulled by the slow rocking of the steel mastodon slicing through the countryside. Several times, coming out of her daze, she noticed Sharko staring at the empty seats in the other row and muttering things she couldn’t understand. He was sweating excessively. He got up at least five or six times during the trip, heading for the toilets or the bar car, to come back about ten minutes later looking either angry or appeased, mopping his forehead and neck with a paper napkin. Lucie pretended to be asleep.