Cemetery of Swallows (26 page)

Although
. . . a little part of Amédée began to murmur down deep in the great Mallock.

A flash suddenly returned his attention to the road. He let up on the accelerator, slowing the car. Too late, there was a damned radar!

What was it with this shitty society, Mallock began to grumble, in which you can no longer drive, eat, smoke, or work as much as you can, or tell the truth to anyone you want, in the words that come to you? What was this fucking purgatory in which men, reduced to the lowest common denominator, lived only emasculated, assisted, insured, Botoxed, lobotomized, obsessed with lotteries, liposuctioned, and snagged by radars? Goddamn soft life, in which people went with their tails between their legs, self-censored, and with careful steps, to pick up their registered mail or the results, duly reimbursed, of their colonoscopies!

 

When he arrived in Paris, Amédée was still grumbling. The sun had set, and as dark fell snow began to fall on the capital again.

So far as the case was concerned, Amédée's brain had continued to work in the background, and his mind was made up. There was only one place to dig now, and much more deeply than in the clearing: Manu's head! If the truth was to emerge, it wouldn't be from the well, but from his damned noggin. Mallock simply had to be sure that it was the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as the phrase went.

He had an idea of how to do that.

He parked his car on a sidewalk near police headquarters on the Quai des Orfèvres by ramming into a kind of mountain of dirty snow and immaculate new flakes. When he got to his office, he immediately dialed Master Long's number. Long, who wanted to do some Christmas shopping near Châtelet, suggested they meet in Mallock's cavern: the offices of the criminal police.

“It would give me great pleasure to visit Maigret's lair,” he said.

“In half an hour?” Amédée proposed, only too happy not to have to go out.

“Let's say in two hours. I have sixteen grandchildren.” Kong Long hung up with a laugh.

 

While he waited, Mallock opened the report Daranne had just deposited on his desk. The work he'd asked for when he was still in the Dominican Republic. It was, as always, solid investigative work done the old-fashioned way. Bob had looked into what Manuel Gemoni knew. Sixty typed pages, poorly presented and a pain to read, but apparently exhaustive.

The upshot was that nothing connected Manu directly with the Dominican Republic, Darbier, or any Israeli activists. Only the very insular personalities of Julie's and Manu's two grandfathers might offer something to look into. The stories told about the two old men were full of superlatives. They knew the whole world, they had defeated the Nazis practically single-handed, and they had hung out with all the godfathers of all the mafias of Italy and of the universe.

But what could he do with this information?

A single, very complicated hypothesis occurred to Mallock: the idea of a contract put out on Darbier that Manu had agreed to carry out in exchange for a small fortune or a family clan's eternal gratitude. Unless he'd been brainwashed to force him to accomplish this mission? But then why choose Manu, when there were plenty of professional killers? The whole thing just didn't make sense, and Mallock decided to drop it.

He immediately moved on to another hypothesis.

Amédée worked without stopping, and never ceased to learn things. During each investigation, no matter how modest, he analyzed every hypothesis, whether impossible or probable, with the same energy, and never failed to examine systematically all the dead ends and byways. Mallock wasn't always right, but very often he was. Too often, for those who were jealous of him. They were wrong; Mallock didn't compare himself with anyone, he assessed, tested, and challenged himself. For him, the point was not to be better than others, but simply to try to become better than he was, and never to stop trying.

 

Master Long came into Mallock's office carrying big bags filled with presents from the Samaritaine department store. A few pieces of confetti adhering to his goatee showed that he had come by way of the Christmas festivities and display windows. Amédée closed Bob's report and gave the professor a warm welcome. Then, without wasting any time, he began. What he had to say wouldn't please the old man, and Mallock didn't like wounding people unnecessarily.

“As you know, Master, we have obtained authorization for only five interrogations. I want to make them as advantageous as possible for our side. To ensure that, I would like the next interrogation, the fourth, to be conducted after Manu has been injected with benzodiazepines.”

There was a silence that Mallock respected. Each one in his turn.

Now it was for Long to counterattack:

“Have you lost confidence in me?”

“That's not the problem. By combining your procedure with one that is, shall we say, more Western, I could make what Manuel says more credible. That's where we are at this point. We can't worry about personal sensitivities any longer. Believe me, mine have already suffered a great deal!”

Mallock realized he wouldn't have the patience to negotiate at length.

“My reticence is not a matter of defending my . . . procedures,” Long replied. “You know, if hypnosis is the embarrassing past of psychoanalysis, it is also its future. Time is on my side.”

“So what are your objections?”

Long made a doubtful face accentuated by his goatee. Finally he said:

“Well, apart from the fact that I don't much like chemical substances, I don't really have any.”

“So we agree to use benzodiazepine to be sure?”

“What exactly do you want to inject into him? A truth serum?”

Mallock scratched his index finger and the tip of his thumb. In the bottom of the well, a spider must have bitten his fingers, because they were now itching terribly.

“I'm fortunate enough to know a specialist who has devoted his whole life to exploring the concept of reality. Raymond-Roger de Trencavel. This guy has a kind of personal obsession: truth. After thirty years of experimentation and research, he knows everything about his subject, from the precise reliability of the different types of lie detectors to the effects of LSD. Benzodiazepines, used in the dosages he has determined, produce remarkable results, but their use remains illegal, and under normal circumstances I wouldn't resort to him. Here, it's different, and we have the full permission of Manuel, his family, and his lawyer. Just between us, it would be stupid to deprive ourselves of his services. Besides, Trencavel told me that he had heard of your work. He's eager to meet you. When would that be convenient for you?”

“You have a funny way of asking people's opinions,” Long said, shaking his head.

Mallock nobly concealed his personal victory behind a smile of boundless gratitude. He even saw Kong Long out of the building and helped him load all his presents into the taxi.

Nice, no?

Marie-Joséphine Maêcka Demaya breathed health and good humor through every pore of her body. She was pretty as a picture and had come to introduce herself, hoping that Commander Mallock would offer her a job connected with the Fort.

“I'm not picky, Superintendent. A little place in a corner somewhere.”

Mallock couldn't help smiling. A woman like her, with such a physical appearance and an admirable mind, makes an impression. Couldn't fool him. Mallock had before him a strong personality who would never be content with a back seat. At least not for too long. That was just as well; there wasn't a single empty position at the Fort. And then Mallock didn't like back seats. Not for himself, and not for others.

On the other hand, since the sudden departure of Francis, a.k.a. Frank, there had been a chair in the royal box, the vacant place of Mallock's lieutenant, part of his “blood brotherhood,” also called his “right hand,” an indispensable metaphor in the limited circle of the Fort.

A hand of which Ken was the thumb, because he was always ready to participate, always smiling, and gave his “OK” in a flash. Julie, of course, was the little finger. She had the morphology and was capable of digging up the most hidden information. To her companion, Jules, Mallock had attributed the position of the ring finger. Fidelity was inherent in his every fiber. Upright and rigorous, he moved forward without asking any narrow-minded questions about life. He loved duty and work well done. His intellect, though a bit elementary, was brilliant and of the first order. But the twists and turns of the human mind, its calculations and manipulations, were not his thing. And then the index finger was Bob, Robert Daranne.

At the very beginning of Mallock's career, the old inspector, as they were called at the time, had shown him the obstacles, the hidden corners, as well as the vocabulary and the lingo that make a policeman. It was Bob who had pointed out, always with his index finger, the traps to be avoided, the ideas to be kept quiet, the men to fight or get around. Although he was irritable and brusque, there was no real brutality in Bob; instead, there was a great awkwardness, both psychological and physiological, that he had inherited from the 1950s and parents who were probably still more obtuse than he was. He wasn't very bright; his intelligence was more a matter of shrewdness and experience, or more prosaically, memory. In fact, at this point he was no longer anything but that, an old hard disk chock-full of data as precise as it was useless; everything depended on the moment and what others were doing. For a long time, he'd liked playing this role as the living memory of police headquarters. Then, slowly, he'd grown tired of it to the point of feeling as much bitterness toward those who made use of him as he felt resentment of others who thought him superfluous, even for this simple purpose. Bob was a good man who was up against what others thought of him, because he was incapable of seeing himself otherwise than as useful or useless, fit for service or not, on or off.

He was the tired but affectionate index finger of Mallock's big hand.

 

Seeing Joséphine come into his office, Mallock couldn't help thinking of the “middle finger,” the last finger that still remained free on this hand that was virtual, to be sure, but essential for him. Jo had the imposing stature and haughty presence. He surprised himself by smiling. She would know how to stand up to adversity, how to tell people to fuck off when Mallock wasn't there. His group mustn't depend on him too much. It had to be able to exist and resist alone, and never let itself be walked all over.
Even by him
, he thought. His group was not a prosthesis at the end of his arm, but an additional strength. Fort Mallock was him, but him multiplied by five. By them. Something that Mallock wished to be, if not invincible, at least optimized for its mission: hunting down monsters.

Before she arrived, Mallock had glanced at Jo's file. As Ken had explained to him, her training had been, in fact, very extensive, a perfect complement to that of his present collaborators.

“I have trouble understanding. How did you happen to study criminology and computer science? Was there a little voice inside you? Can you tell me a bit about all that?”

Josephine took a deep breath and began:

“My full name is Marie-Joséphine Maêcka Demaya. I'm called ‘Jo,' which you'll have to admit is a serious diminutive.”

Big, brilliant smile.

“I'm now an investigator specialized in computer-aided criminology, an operational member of the Office of Anti-Crime Technology. My background? After two years of graduate study, I took the examination to qualify as a secretary of information and communication systems. An examination that I passed, if I may say so, with flying colors.”

“So information and communication technology no longer has any secrets for you?”

“If I make a serious attempt to keep up with the field. Things move very fast in this area.”

Mallock started scratching his thumb again. Damned spider.

Jo continued the description of her CV:

“One year later, I passed the exam to qualify as an engineer in the technical and scientific police. Then I was at Rosny-sous-Bois, at the National Institute for Criminological Research. There, I joined the division of computer criminology. That helped me perfect my knowledge in the domain of networks and cyber-criminology.”

“You don't have training in the biological or ballistic aspect. Ken—”

“Yes, I do. I studied explosives, ballistics, biology, and microanalysis in the division of physical and chemical criminology. And then I studied drugs and toxicology with your neighbors in the Prefecture of Police's labs. I finished my training by being admitted to the last criminological division, that of human identification.”

“Entomology, biology, fingerprints . . . ”

“Yes, and anthropology, thanatology-odontology, and trace documents.”

“Is that all?” Mallock cried, laughing.

“No. I completed a specialized program at the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts in Aylmer, Ontario, where I learned to read and reconstitute a murder by analyzing bloodstains. I then spent six weeks working for Professor Mordome and three months in the laboratory for the analysis and processing of acoustic and visual signals, at Écully, outside of Lyon. All the questions of noise reduction, voice identification, etc. My knowledge of computer science has been useful to me.”

“It's true that we spent a fascinating hour together in the monitoring room during the case of the poisoner.”

Jo gave him a big smile.

“I'm so happy that you remember that.”

“The honor is all mine. An amazing career, little Jo!”

The adjective “little” had the excuse of being affectionate. At 5'11”, she was almost as tall as Mallock. He was impressed. He didn't know anyone with such broad training.