They arrived at Gare de Lyon at 11:03. Night had fallen, faces were sallow with fatigue, and sticky air flowed into the station, carrying the effluvia of the city. The first train to Lille departed the next morning at 6:58. Eight hours is a long time when you have nothing to do and nowhere to go. Lucie’s thoughts drifted. No way she was going to wander around Paris at night. On the other hand, she felt funny about going to a hotel, with her ridiculous backpack and no change of clothes. Still, some cheap hotel was certainly the best solution. She turned to Sharko to say good-bye, but he was no longer there. He had stopped about ten yards behind and his hands were spread in front of him; his brow was furrowed and he was looking toward the ground, throwing glances Lucie’s way, making her feel like the topic of a heated argument. Finally he smiled, brushing the air with his fingers as if he were high-fiving someone. Lucie went toward him.
“Whatever are you doing?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets.
“I was negotiating…” His face beamed. “Listen, you don’t have anywhere to go. I can put you up for the night. I have a big couch, which is certainly more comfortable than an Egyptian bed.”
“I don’t know anything about Egyptian beds, and I wouldn’t want—”
“It’s no bother at all. Yes or no.”
“In that case, yes.”
“Great. Now let’s try to catch the commuter rail before it stops running.”
And he started walking toward the turnstiles. Before heading after him, Lucie turned one last time toward the place where he’d been standing alone several seconds earlier. Sharko, noting this, took his hands from his pockets and showed her his cell phone with a smile.
“What, you didn’t think I was talking to myself, did you?”
36
After the telephone call in the train station, Lucie expected to find Sharko’s wife when they entered the apartment. The entire way there, she had tried to imagine what kind of woman could stick to a man of his breadth. Did she have the bearing and disposition of a lion tamer staring down a wild beast, or on the contrary was she docile and sweet, prepared every evening to take the full brunt of the tensions cops built up over the course of their endless days?
As soon as the inspector opened the door, Lucie realized that there was no one to greet them. Not a soul. Sharko removed his shoes before going in, an oddly dignified gesture. Lucie started to do the same.
“No, no, keep your shoes on. It’s just a habit of mine. I have a lot of habits I can’t manage to break, which is sort of a pain in the ass, but what can you do?”
He closed the door and turned all the locks. At a glance, Lucie noted that it wasn’t really the apartment of a single man. Several feminine touches—thick plants all around, a pair of rather retro high heels in a corner. But there was only one place setting on the table in the dining area, already set for a meal, facing the wall. She thought of Luc Besson’s film The Professional. In some ways, Sharko gave off the same sadness as Léon, the contract killer, but also an incomprehensible sympathy that made you want to learn more about him.
Photos of a beautiful woman, old yellowing pictures stuck in frames, confirmed that the cop was probably a widower. What divorced man would keep wearing his wedding band? Farther back in the living room, other photos hung on the walclass="underline" dozens of glossy paper rectangles arranged haphazardly, showing a little girl from infancy to the age of five or six. In some pictures, there were three of them: him, the woman, the kid. The mother was smiling, but Lucie—she couldn’t explain why—sensed a kind of absence in her gaze. Everywhere, Sharko seemed to be squeezing his two loved ones against him, so strongly that their cheeks were pressed tightly together. Lucie felt a shiver as the truth suddenly dawned on her: something must have happened to Sharko’s family. A horrible, unspeakable tragedy.
“Please, have a seat,” said the inspector. “I’m dying of thirst… How does a nice cold beer sound?”
He was talking from the kitchen. A bit troubled, Lucie set her bag down on the carpet and walked into the room. A large living room, almost too spacious. She noticed cocktail sauce and candied chestnuts on a low coffee table, then the computer in a corner.
“Anything cold is fine for me, thank you… Hey, can I use your Internet? I’d like to do a search for Jacques Lacombe and Syndrome E.”
Sharko returned with two bottles and handed her one. He put his down on the coffee table, then shot an odd glance off to the side.
“Excuse me a moment.”
He disappeared down the hallway. Ten seconds later, Lucie heard whistling, then a rattling sound, just like what she’d been hearing in the express for three and a half hours. Miniature trains—she could have sworn it…
Sharko returned and sat in a chair, Lucie following suit. He emptied half his beer in one gulp, as if it were nothing.
“It’s after midnight. My boss has already got someone working on Syndrome E. You can do your search tomorrow.”
“Why waste time?”
“You’re not wasting time. On the contrary, you’re saving it. You’re giving yourself time to sleep, think of your loved ones, and remember that there’s more to life than work. Seems so simple, doesn’t it? But by the time you realize it, all you have left are old photos.”
Lucie was silent a moment.
“I take a lot of photos too, trying to preserve traces of time… We keep coming back to images, no matter what. Images, as a way of conveying emotion, penetrating everyone’s most intimate thoughts.” She tipped her chin toward the haphazard arrangement. “I understand you better now. I think I get why you’re like this.”
Sharko was already finishing his beer. He wanted to let himself go, float on a cloud and forget the hardships of the past several days. The charred face of Atef Abd el-Aal, the slums of Cairo, the abominable eye-shaped scars on Judith Sagnol’s wrinkled flesh… Too many shadows—way too many.
“What do you mean, ‘like this’?”
“Cold. Distant at first. The kind of guy people think they should avoid. It’s only when you dig a little deeper that you realize there’s a heart beneath the tough outer shell.”
Sharko squeezed the empty beer bottle.
“And those photos—what do they tell you?”
“A lot.”
“Such as?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Show me what you’ve got, Lieutenant Henebelle.”
Lucie accepted the challenge with a look. She raised her bottle in front of her and waved her arm at the door.
“The first thing that’s interesting is their location. They’re on full display in your living room, turned toward the entrance. Why not the bedroom, or somewhere more private?”
She nodded toward a garbage can in the kitchen, where two boxes and the remains of a pizza were in plain sight.
“When a deliveryman or a stranger comes to the door, you open slightly, with exact change in hand. You never let them past the threshold; there’s no rug for wiping your feet, outside or inside. The photos are in their line of sight; a visitor can see them without seeing the rest. You, your family, the impression of happiness and normalcy. Do you turn on your toy trains to make it seem a child is playing in the other room?”
Sharko’s eyes narrowed.
“You’ve got my interest. Keep going…”
“Your past is something you don’t like to talk about outside of your apartment. But when someone is here, on this chair, those photos shout out loud that something tragic happened to your family. There are no new photos of your wife or child. You’re several years younger on the most recent ones, and you look a lot happier. At the time your daughter was five or six. It’s the age of the first big change, the first separation. School, playdates, kids going off in the morning and not coming back till evening. So we try to compensate, take pictures—lots of pictures—to slow their departure, to keep them at home and make up for their absence by artificial means. But you— No more memories, as if… life had suddenly stopped dead. Theirs, and then yours. That’s why you quit working the streets and took a desk job. The streets stole your family from you.”