The Devil's Sanctuary (36 page)
“Why did you buy me this?”
She leaned down to her son and caressed his face.
“Listen, Martin, times are hard, as you well know. Your father has abandoned us and I have to get by on just my own salary, so…”
“That’s not true! You’re talking rubbish!”
On the verge of tears, Martin threw the box and its contents on the ground, then ran out and shut himself in his room. His mother’s voice echoed up the stairs:
“Come now, try to be reasonable, Martin! You need a hat much more than an Erector set!”
April 2,1979
Sir,
Allow me to bring your attention to a sect that appears to be operating in Seine-Saint-Denis and with which I have unfortunately been in contact several times following a family tragedy.
This organization pretends to heal psychological damage and serious illness through nutrition and extreme fasting. Without a doubt, they encourage cultlike behavior.
I had the opportunity to test several of their methods, including instinctotherapy, and I can report that the practices suggested reduce the patient to an extremely fragile mental state. The patient can become obsessed with the healing methodology, sometimes leading to a breakdown in social and family relationships—often in cases where these relationships were not the original causes of the patient’s isolation.
Certain individuals call themselves shamans, but they are nothing but frauds. This is the case with the person whose name and address I have attached herewith. He is currently offering wildly expensive weekends at his farm in Neufmoutiers-en-Brie, where they are holding seminars on Peru on the pretext of helping his followers to reach, and I quote, “salvation through self-knowledge.” I think that this person is a charlatan. Personally, I have given him a great deal of money, thinking that he would help my father to overcome his cancer. Result: my father had a brutal relapse due to a massive vitamin B deficiency. I have already filed a report with social services and at my local police station, but the man is well established here and gains new followers daily in market squares across the region—that’s where he’s based, behind the counter at his supposedly organic fruit and vegetable stall.
Dreadful scammers are hiding behind this facade of “getting back to nature” and “alternative psychology.” We cannot allow not only a great many adults, but their children, too, to be subjected to such danger. As the headmistress of a junior high school, I know certain parents who are in thrall to this gentleman, and who swear by him and him alone to heal their relatives. I could not let such instances with medical and social implications go unreported.
I am depending upon your swift intervention in this matter.
Yours faithfully, with respect,
Mme. Elsa Préau
Headmistress of Blaise Pascal Junior High School
P. S.—I have copied the Minister of Health and the Police Commissioner.
On the third floor of the Seine-Saint-Denis hospital complex, an overweight female doctor sat in a narrow room behind a desk groaning with files. She was speaking to Mme. Préau, and Mme. Préau was listening to her as closely as she could, her hands folded and her legs crossed. She had the distinct feeling that there were other people standing around her—medical personnel, nurses, orderlies with mocking expressions. The woman in the white blouse was explaining something very important. It was precisely for this reason that there were so many people in this room watching her.
“The battle is over, Mme. Préau. What you have done for your father all these years is outstanding. You have managed to keep him in the best possible physical condition, well beyond the prognosis that we gave him after his remission.”
What was worrying Mme. Préau was her ability to take in what this pink-cheeked woman was going to tell her. These past years had been difficult, and her nerves were frayed. Martin’s departure for Canada hadn’t helped things. But she understood that her son’s studies took precedence over his mother and that he needed to be closer to his father.
“I know that it is difficult to hear this, but I am confident that you can handle it. If we look at the MRI …”
Mme. Préau turned toward the window and concentrated on the view of the park. Poplars quivered in the rays of the setting sun. It would be so lovely to walk along there right just now, and leave behind this hearing with the doctor, this sentencing.
“Overall, his health has declined greatly. We will give him the best possible care, but you should know that he will continue to suffer.”
Her mother would have so loved those walkways of white flowers, the foliage turning inky in the shadow of the beech trees. Mme. Préau would take her father there twice a week, pushing the wheelchair to a bench where, in the shade of a honeysuckle, she would sit, the invalid by her side. She would read the paper to her father, commenting passionately about the first measures put in place by the new government—measures that might give the French people optimism for the future.
“If he should fall victim to respiratory failure, we need your authorization—do you understand?”
The new government didn’t waste any time: raising minimum wage, increasing the payout for the old age pension and benefits for children, temporarily suspending the deportation of foreigners … And then there was that astonishing festival dreamed up by the Ministry for Culture, a national day dedicated to music! Mme. Préau asked suddenly:
“What is the date today?”
“The twenty-first of June.”
“Yes of course. Where is my head …”
“Mme. Préau, do you give us your consent so that we could let him
go
?”
At the junior high school today, they had celebrated the first day of summer in the schoolyard. Mme. Préau had arranged for the children to have songs and dancing at recess. A tiring day. They hadn’t heard shouts of joy like that since the last school fête. The headmistress was still smiling to herself with happiness.
“Mme. Préau, please, we need your consent.”
The ill man’s daughter turned to face the doctor and noticed her hostile expression. Pink and white scrubs moved back and forth behind her restlessly, sharpening their syringes.
“Tell me, Doctor,” whispered Mme. Préau, “this evening for the music festival, what if your devoted orderlies sang the latest hits to the patients just before they gave them the lethal injection?”
March 13, 1997
Audrette,
I am sorry to have to write you this letter, but you have given me no choice.
You cannot get away with this just because you’re my daughter-in-law. Refusing to let me see my grandson is enormously cruel. I do not see how his spending Wednesday afternoons with his granny poses such a problem for you. Bastien is a charming child, he’s very intelligent, and he’s my only grandchild. I’m also very concerned about his health; Bastien has lots of bruises. Does he have trouble with his balance? Does he fall often? If not, do you see any reason for his contusions?
I think that you are under a bad influence at the moment, one that is altering your perception of things. I have another hypothesis about your situation, but I would rather discuss it face-to-face. And I don’t see how keeping a goat and a baboon in my garden could possibly be harmful to my grandson. To the contrary; it has been proven that contact with animals is particularly beneficial to children. And besides, Bamboo never gets out of his cage.
I should warn you, however, that if you prevent me from seeing Bastien, I will be obliged to contact the judge at family court. I intend to exercise my visitation rights just like any other grandmother.
Kiss Bastien and Martin for me.
Elsa Préau
The scrawny daisies had been pulled up by the roots. The dandelions too. Parched by the heat, the earth crumbled at the slightest touch.
“Are they for me, Bastien?” asked Mme. Préau.
“No, they’re for Mommy.”
The little boy held the makeshift bouquet tightly in his left hand. He walked with his head bobbing, one palm against his granny’s, which was damp with sweat. Not even the slightest breath of wind to chase the scorching heat away.
“I really like Captain Cousteau.”
“Me too, Bastien.”
“Why did he die?”
“Because the Good Lord needed him.”
“It’s not fair. Who’s going to take care of the whales now?”
“You, when you’re older.”
“Granny Elsa?”
“Yes, Bastien?”
“Why did you come to school to pick me up and not Mommy?”
“Because she had to work. She’ll come later.”
On the path, between two wisps of yellow grass that had grown up through the tarmac, a colony of fireflies had caught the child’s eye. He stopped for a moment to watch the insects mating happily.
“What kind of insects are these, Granny Elsa?”
Mme. Préau raised an eyebrow.
“Not God’s creatures, certainly.”
“Oh?”
“Come on, Bastien, let’s cross.”
“But that’s not the way home.”
“We’re not going home. We’re going to have a picnic in Courbet Park with our after-school snack.”
“Great!”
“I made chocolate cake.”
The little boy’s face lit up. He readjusted one of the straps of his schoolbag and pulled at the elastic of his shorts before stepping out onto the crosswalk.
Twenty minutes later, Mme. Préau and her grandson were picnicking on the grass in the shade of the big chestnut trees. Bastien made a face. He put what was left of his cake down on a paper napkin.
“I don’t feel good, Granny.”
He ran his hand through his hair.
“Did you eat too quickly?”
“No, I’m dizzy.”
She put a hand to his burning forehead.
“I told you not to stay on the swing for too long in the sun. Have some cordial.”
Bastien drank straight from the plastic bottle. Soon he was sleeping, his cheek pressed against his granny’s skirt, listening to a story about goblins.
“… they wore hats as tall as they were wide and big belts made of wolf skin across their black woolen coats. Everyone in the village was afraid of their nasty tricks. They were the ones who would drop things in the middle of the night, or crack the floorboards in people’s houses. They could open any door. No lock could keep them out. They were so ugly that when women saw them, they would faint from fright. Even the strongest men and the bravest children would take to their heels when they crossed paths with a goblin.”
Bastien’s grandmother brought the last piece of cake to her lips. Her arm was shaking gently, trailing crumbs across her blouse.
“They were very nasty goblins sent by the County Council. The same ones who spoke to your lovely mommy in her sleep, all the better to manipulate her, and to make her do very nasty things to her family, and most of all to you, my little Bastien.”
Nodding off, the grandmother closed her eyes too.
“But you, my dear, they’ll never have you. Your granny won’t let her grandson be part of anything wicked. No one will lay a finger on any blood of mine. Sleep, my Bastien, sleep tight. Granny Elsa is watching over you …”
Submerged in water in a cup propped up against his schoolbag, the flowers that the little boy had picked were wilting like a forgotten promise. Lulled by the children’s shouts echoing across the park, stretched out against each other, Bastien and his grandmother looked like they were sleeping.
It all begins with a call to the police. A sixteen-year-old boy, Roger Eriksson, has gone missing in the town of Västerås. A search is organized, and a group of young scouts makes an awful discovery in a marsh: Roger is dead.
Meanwhile, Sebastian Bergman, psychologist, criminal profiler, and one of Sweden's top experts on serial killers, is in Västerås to settle his mother's estate. Sebastian has withdrawn from police work after the death of his wife and daughter in the 2004 tsunami.
When the Crime Investigation Department asks Sebastian for his help in Roger's case, his arrogant manner at first alienates the rest of the team. Pushing forward, though, they begin to make disturbing discoveries about the private school Roger attendedâ¦
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