Cemetery of Swallows (23 page)

His bones and his certainties had started to crack like the beams of a ship caught in a tidal wave. A slight whistling had begun in his ears and his throat dried out in a few seconds. “Good God, for shit's sake,” was the only idea of which he was still capable. KKK, Klaus KrinKle. “Good God, for shit's sake,” his mind repeated to him, decidedly very inspired.

Ken continued:

“This information has never been made public. I had to really lean on them to get it. Where did you learn about it? Is it connected with Julie's brother's case?”

Mallock did not reply. He preferred to take refuge in silence.

Ken made up his mind:

“Boss, if you told me what this is all about, I'd look less like a dolt and who knows, I might even be able to help you. Even a big ship needs a bell!”

Distracted, Mallock looked at him. This last sentence deserved at least a smile or a word of encouragement. But he preferred to end the moment of silence he'd begun in honor of his convictions that had died on rationality's field of horror.

“I don't know what's going on, Ken. And so far as the bell is concerned, as Shakespeare said, ‘If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the widow weeps.'”

Ken looked at his boss.

“OK, if you say so, but what's the connection, Boss?”

“There isn't one, Ken. Just an association of ideas. Do you have anything else for me?”

“Yes, I do! Regarding hiring. Do you remember Jo?”

“Jo? The guy who slipped through our fingers in the case of Nadine's murder?”

“No, Jo, the person who worked for us on the poisoner case. Marie-Joséphine Maêcka Demaya, the big woman from Martinique?”

“Ah! Yes, the wonderful computer-criminologist and so on and so on.”

Ken smiled.

“Sort of. Well, she's supposed to be available for another assignment with us, but I don't know what you want to do about it, or if we have the funds to bring her in . . . ”

Mallock took only a few seconds to respond:

“So far as her professional profile goes, it's more than acceptable. But I haven't yet formed an opinion about her. Send her to me as soon as you can, I'll use my famous talents as a psychologist. You know, the ones that served me so well with Frank.”

Ken risked a slightly sly smile of complicity.

“No problem, Marie-Joséphine is reliable. Very intelligent, even brilliant. Her competencies would be useful to us all, to the group.”

For a second, Mallock thought about his “major,” a post that had remained vacant.

“It's been quite a while since Frank was let go,” Ken continued. “Even if he really screwed up, he did his part of the work. Given the whole raft of diplomas Jo has racked up in the area of legal experience, plus her competence in computer science, her sense of humor, and her reputation for hard work—”

“Okay, that's enough. Bring her in, then. Friday morning would be good. In the afternoon I've got the fourth interrogation with Manu and Kong Long, starting at 3
P.M.
So, let's say morning . . . ”

Mallock was already staring into space. Ken left his superintendent to his thoughts. He would have bet that he was already working on one of the crazy hypotheses he was so good at weaving.

He would have been wrong.

Amédée was simply wondering how to get to the forest of Biellanie. The streets of Paris were more snowed in than a mountain village. As for the suburbs and the main thoroughfares, the officials in charge of street maintenance and the management of the autoroutes had either resigned or hanged themselves. In this kind of weather, the little trip he planned to take was like an expedition to the Antarctic.

Then he remembered seeing a big, luxurious 4x4 under a blue tarp. It had been parked for several weeks in the third subsurface level of the parking lot reserved for police headquarters.

War booty, Dublin had called it. Well, he was fully at war. He decided unilaterally to requisition the vehicle. It would be his personal car from then on.

Amédée had decided to skip lunch. He'd gone to pick up Julie. At noon, they were both in the coveted vehicle, a big mustard-colored Toyota with snow tires and a ridiculous bull-bar. They were headed for the forest of Biellanie, in the middle of the Pays d'Auge.

Mallock took advantage of the situation to bring his assistant up to date on the latest information, particularly the information Ken had provided regarding the names mentioned and the military men's serial numbers. They agreed in thinking that this was not enough. It was, to be sure, very strange, and it could offer the beginning of a proof, but no more than that. Even though this glorious event had remained unknown to the general public, since Ken had found the information, Manu could have learned about it through a combination of circumstances. On the other hand, if they found something in the forest of Biellanie that had a direct connection with the revelations he had just made, they would be confronted by a very different situation.

As implausible as the facts might appear, Mallock had decided to have done, once and for all, with this nonsense about wells, Nazis, and swallows. Even if Léon's testimony had perturbed him, it was not enough to lead him to make a religion out of it. It has to be said that it took a lot to have any hope of converting a Mallock.

“In a mile and a half, you have to turn right. We're almost there.”

Julie smelled good, and just for good measure she also read maps very well. Or, on the contrary, she knew how to use maps, and it was just for good measure that she smelled good.

In any case, it was a stroke of luck for Mallock. Without a GPS, but with a pretty Julie: he had a winner. The superintendent had never known how to use Michelin maps, with their complicated system of folding and their illegible hieroglyphs. This was a failing, or worse, a defect. “Look at the map before you leave” was an integral part of the complete panoply of the basic male, along with knowing how to light a barbecue, carve the Sunday leg of lamb, and knock back beers while watching soccer on television.

Julie said in a loud voice:

“We're coming into Saint-Lyon, the village closest to the forest. But the forest of Biellanie covers more than 1,500 acres. We'll have to find someone to tell us where to go.”

They entered the village at 3
P.M.

It was silent under the snow.

The flakes were falling, heavy and slow, orange in the streets where the electric lamps were helping out the sky, which was now failing to do the job. Elsewhere, everything was blue. Julie and Mallock got out of their rolling fortress and ploughed their way down the main street. For the first time since the beginning of the investigation, luck was on their side. At the third house they came to, they found an old couple who said they knew the forest well.

“So far as it can be known, that place,” the man said, insinuating much more.

The woman had been going into the forest for years to gather herbs, but not everywhere and never at night.

“It's not a forest where you go for walks. There are even areas where you can't go!” she explained in what was almost French.

Stirring a horrible substitute for coffee, Julie and Mallock learned a little more about the Coudret couple. After having poached for twenty years, the husband had been named game warden by the commune's mayor. He'd really had no choice, since no one but Charles Coudret dared enter into what had become a foul and inextricable jungle.

The former poacher, who was now on the right side of the law, took loving care of the forest's flora and fauna, in exchange for authorization to do a little hunting solely for his personal use.

“A well, you say?”

Mallock's first question had been direct.

“There is in fact one, but it has been centuries since it has had any water in it. It's not only filled in but practically invisible now. There must be not more than three of us in the village who know it exists. Who could have mentioned it to you?”

“A fellow who died and has been buried in it for half a century,” Amédée couldn't keep from replying.

Julie went pale, whereas the man broke into laughter.

“OK, OK, it's secret, I understand! Would you like a little Calvados?”

After an undrinkable coffee whose disgusting bitterness had stuck to the insides of their mouths, Mallock and Julie accepted his offer. That might go down better. At worst, it would serve as a mouthwash and a disinfectant.

The Calvados was pink. Pink candy!

“My husband makes it,” the old woman explained. “This year, the big lout used an old wine barrel. That colored it and as a result we're having trouble selling it, but . . . ”

The husband, who obviously didn't like his wife to discuss this thorny subject with strangers, interrupted her:

“This business of the well reminds me of the old legend of the cemetery of the swallows.”

Mallock and Julie were stunned. The nightmare persisted. Without realizing the effect that his words had had on his listeners, the repentant poacher went on:

“My grandmother told me that swallows used to come to drink at that well. They flew by and dipped up a little water. Then there was less and less water, so it was deeper in the well. One day, a swallow who couldn't fly back up drowned. Then another, and another, until they completely covered the surface of the water. The birds made this well a cemetery. When one of them was sick, it went to the well to die. I resolved to check out that legend, but I always hesitated to do it, I don't know why. The fear of being disappointed, maybe. And then it's in the middle of the forest. I avoid going there because it's a little dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Mallock asked.

“There've been wild dogs around there for years. People have even talked about wolves, but it seems that's not possible. In the 1950s, well before the forest was fenced off and entrusted to my care, there were deaths. That much is certain. At the time, hunts were organized, but they didn't catch anything except for some lousy wild pigs.”

He poured more Calvados for himself, and didn't forget Mallock and Julie. In return, they gave him timid gestures of gratitude.

“If you want, I'll take you to the well. You'll never find it by yourselves. What do you say? Are you armed?”

 

Pick and shovel in hand, and equipped with yellow waxed coats lent by the couple, Mallock and Julie plunged into the forest, following a resolute Charles Coudret, who was carrying a wooden ladder and a hunting rifle.

The whole forest was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and no-trespassing signs. A genuine barrier. The only practicable entry was itself barred by an enormous gate with three padlocks that the former poacher opened and then closed again after him.

Inside, the forest was in a state of complete abandonment. Trees had fallen and others had grown, intertwining with each other. Only the little trail Coudret had blazed and maintained made it possible to penetrate this wall of vegetation. More recently, the great storm that had marked the end of the last millennium had uprooted the oldest trees. In each overturned stump little frozen lakes had formed in which the roots of the dethroned kings of the forest were reflected.

“You haven't yet cleaned up after the storm?”

“It hasn't been maintained for years. Explosives would have to be used to clear out the biggest stuff, and then you'd have to go in with a bulldozer. Besides, I don't have anyone to help me!” He paused. “You've chosen your day well. People no longer know how to dress . . . ”

They heard three howls in the distance. Coudret pretended he hadn't heard anything, unless it was just habit.

“Not too cold today,” he went on. “Have to say that with the snow that's falling, it must be around freezing.”

Julie, with a twinkle in her eye, offered a lovely climatic joke in turn:

“Still, we little old ladies don't mind wearing gloves!”

At any other time, Mallock would have smiled at this, but the place was too sinister. Like this whole investigation, in fact. Like the forest, it was inextricable and full of claws.

Charles Coudret seemed to know what he was doing. He slipped his hunting rifle under his right arm and, turning around, reassured Julie:

“Another eight minutes and we'll be there!”

But it was Mallock's painful back that received that news with the gratitude it deserved.

 

In fact, it was at least another quarter of an hour before they reached the clearing. Two trees had fallen across the path since Coudret's last visit.

“I'll come back with my chainsaw,” he grumbled as he helped Julie climb over the obstacle.

The clearing where the well was looked different from the rest of the forest. There was practically no snow in this forgotten place, just a thick layer of muddy clay, smooth and oily. Patches of moss, greenish crusts, covered parts of this diseased skin. The whole of the leprous surface must have covered some five hundred square yards, and one really had to know the place to locate what remained of the well. A granite mouth screaming at the stars, the circle of stone hardly projected from the ground. The circumference of its teeth was six to seven yards.

Their impatience to find out what was there and the imminence of nightfall made Julie and her two companions go to work immediately, without even having agreed to do so.

With their shovels scraping and the pick screeching, they dug for a good hour without saying a word. The soil was friable and the work went fast. Around the edges of the clearing, while the sun was struggling to help the three workers see what they were doing, other howls resounded.

Coudret grabbed his rifle:

“Those are the wild dogs I told you about. We're right in the middle of their territory. Watch out, they're dangerous.”