The First Fingerprint (19 page)

It was nearly noon.

“Have you got any worms, Le Gros?”

“I bought two.”

“Is that all?”

“We said we were going to try with mussels.”

“Give me a worm. They work better than your carry-on.”

De Palma picked up the long worm and slipped it on to a hook with the help of a piece of metal wire as thin as a needle. He was about to cast out when his mobile rang.

“Michel, it's Maxime. I didn't want to disturb you, but you're going to have to come to Saint-Julien, 36 chemin du Vallon. It's absolute carnage … Jesus … I think it's the same one as at Cadenet. I'm even sure of it.”

“I'll be there in an hour.”

In exasperation, de Palma cast out. The lead and the worm whistled in the air, before falling into the water twenty meters away.

“What's up, Baron?”

“He's struck again.”

“Who?”

“Our Cadenet customer.”

“The fucker!”

“Quite.”

At 12:30, there were not that many people outside 36 chemin du Vallon: a few pensioners and neighbors who had been passing by. Maxime Vidal had parked the police Mégane right in the middle of the street, with its light still flashing on the roof and the windows wide open.

A young officer standing on the threshold with his arms crossed hailed de Palma with a vague gesture and looked at him glumly. In the salon, Vidal was talking to a young woman from forensics. He was wearing latex gloves and gesticulating as he spoke, trying to appear composed.

“Ah, there you are Michel! Unfortunately, Judge Barbieri has just gone … Come and have a look. But I warn you, it's not a pretty sight at all.”

They went down a long corridor cluttered with forensic equipment. De Palma kept his eyes down, noticing traces of vomit on the floorboards and on the blue, Oriental wallpaper. When he entered the bedroom, he could smell recent death, the tenacious odor of blood and the stench of spilled intestines. He swallowed back his bile several times, trying to leave his disgust deep down in
his guts. Lieutenant Agnès Bernal from forensics came over to him. “Hi, Michel. We're done here.”

“Hi Agnès.”

“No joke at all … she was hit in the face and then gutted. Her left leg is missing.”

De Palma slowly approached. Intestines were hanging down to the floor, wobbling slightly every time the photographer bumped into the bed. The skull had been completely smashed in, a mush of shards of bone mixed with brains. There was only one eye left in the middle, where the nose should have been. The other had disappeared.

Her left leg had been severed at the knee. The amputation looked almost perfect, but de Palma noticed that the skin tissue was torn. He mentally compared it with the body of Hélène Weill, and saw that the amputation had been carried out using the same kind of knife, with rather a blunt blade.

He examined the hands: the nails were curiously clean, but that of the middle left finger had been reversed. This was not immediately visible, because the nail had been put back into place, then carefully cleaned with a cotton swab: fiber from it remained stuck to a piece of dead skin.

“The work of a madman. Classic. Cold. No traces. No proof. Not the slightest clue … And yet, he must have left something behind … They all do. But what?”

He stayed for a while in the bedroom, trying to understand this killer who had found his way in, presumably while his victim was asleep. He thought hard.

“He knew his victim. There's no other possibility. He'd known her for at least a few days. Maybe he met her yesterday. But he definitely knew her. He didn't break in. She was asleep and woke up when he was already on top of her. The body hasn't been moved. There are very few signs of a struggle. And no bite marks. It's the same man for sure.”

Vidal broke his train of thought:

“Michel, there are two or three things I have to tell you.”

“I'm coming.”

He stared at the scene once more. He would have liked to have said something to the dead woman, but nothing came to mind. He looked
at what was left of her belly and pubis and thought to himself that she had been an attractive women, with a soft belly, just as he liked. Then he went into the salon, where Vidal was pacing back and forth.

“Jesus Christ, Michel. I've never seen anything like it. How can you possibly stay so long in a room with a thing like that?”

“It's now or never if you want a chance to understand him. Try to imagine: he arrives in the middle of the night, she hears a noise and wakes up, he grabs her, she scratches him. Look at her nail … Then he hits her, once or twice … No more. That's enough. Then he cuts her up. He takes his time. After that, he guts her for good measure. He takes away one of her legs … Because he only eats the muscle. Finally, he cleans up anything that might give him away.”

Agnès Bernal intervened:

“She doesn't seem to have been raped. He didn't torture her or tie her up. Death occurred last night, at about 1:00 a.m. We've been through the place with a fine-tooth comb, but we haven't found much: a few fibers, footprints on the carpet. The most significant item is a shard of stone in the skull. I think it's flint.”

“Did you use your lamp?”

“The Polilight? Of course I did.”

“And?”

“And there are traces of footprints all over the place. We've probably identified his. I'll tell you tomorrow once we've analyzed everything.”

Vidal glanced at de Palma, who said:

“Well, son, what have you found out since you got here?”

“The victim's name is Julia Chevallier. She was born on October 20, 1957, in Marseille. She was an English teacher at Lycée Longchamp. That's all. Apart from that, the door has not been forced, there's no sign of a break-in, and there aren't any fingerprints in the bedroom or salon. According to the neighbors, she lived alone and hardly ever went out. The body was discovered at 10:00 this morning by the cleaning lady. She was murdered during the night. Presumably around 1:00. Nobody saw or heard a thing.”

“Which is only normal in this kind of house.”

“And this was found next to the body.”

Vidal handed the Baron a plastic bag containing a sheet of white
paper: it was an image of a negative hand, just like the one found beside the body of Hélène Weill. The little and ring fingers had been cut almost in half. Professor Palestro had spoken of a hunting code. “A sign language,” de Palma said to himself. “But why these two fingers? There must be a reason! From the depths of his madness, he's trying to tell us something.”

De Palma considered that if one of the victim's hands were missing a finger or two, then that would have provided a rationale for all of this. He was disappointed to see that this was not the case.

“And you've been all over the room, Agnès? Including the armrests of the chairs?”

“Why?”

She sensed immediately that her question had not gone down too well. The Baron's expression became hard and cruel. He raised his voice:

“Because the killer knew his victim. Either he hated her, or he lusted after her, thinking her inaccessible. You see, Agnès—and this applies to you as well, Vidal—he came here and sat down, without his gloves of course, because at that moment he was a friend. He might even have had a drink. So you're going to collect all the fingerprints from every smooth surface in this entire sodding room. Is that clear? And, Agnès, check out the dishwasher.”

“No problem, Michel.”

“You know, Vidal, the worst thing is that even if we do find a print, it won't be on our records. But still, during questioning a print is invaluable; it means you don't have to stay up all night being nice to the fucker so as to make him talk.”

De Palma went out into the garden. It was practically a park, measuring two thousand square meters and surrounded by walls barely higher than he was. It hadn't been looked after, and tall weeds were beginning to swamp the rose bushes. On the paths, a few flowerpots had been blown over by the mistral. De Palma saw a fifty-year-old woman on the patio and approached her. Her eyes were still red, and her expression still reflected the image left behind by this barbaric murder.

“Who are you, Madame?”

“Inès Santamaria, I'm the cleaning lady. I found the body this morning.”

“At what time?”

“A little after 10:00. I'm always here at 10:00 sharp. I'm never late. My God, how horrible! How …”

She started to cry. “Did you notice anything strange?”

“No, nothing.”

“Was the street door locked?”

“All the doors were locked. As usual. She always locks up before going to bed. Imagine, living all alone in a huge house like that!”

“I see … And what's that shed over there?”

“It's a kind of workshop, full of tools. It goes back to the days when her father was still alive.”

The grass in front of the shed was trodden down. Inside, some of the gardening tools had been disturbed. De Palma spotted a door at the back. He opened it and noticed that its lock had been forced. It led out on to a path that ran alongside an irrigation canal, just like many others dating from the time when this part of town had been full of market gardens. He went through the door, stared into the canal and tried to put his thoughts into some kind of order.

Vidal interrupted him.

“You were right, Michel, we've found something on the left armrest of one of the chairs: a fingerprint which has been half rubbed out, but it might be usable. The ones on the right have been wiped off. It's obvious. You can still see the trace of a cloth. There are several glasses in the dishwasher. We're taking them with us. Have you looked at her book shelves? They're groaning with books about prehistory!”

“We might well be on to something, my friend! Sooner or later, we'll get him … Compare the fingerprints with those found in Autran's flat. Have you asked the neighbors if they heard a car, or anything else in the street?”

“I've asked the nearest ones. Nothing. Even the next-door neighbor there, I can't remember his name, he's a professor of medicine, anyway he told me that he was up all night working on a project and he didn't hear a thing.”

“Jesus, our customer's no fool, far from it! He came here on foot, nice and quiet. He came along the canal, then through that door. Then he disappeared the same way. Leaving nothing behind him. Except a fingerprint on a chair, and maybe on a glass, if we're lucky.”

“He must have made at least one mistake!”

“They all do. They all forget something. It's not always easy to see, but there's always something. Their weak point is their arrogance.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because they think they're smarter than us. I'll bet he's had a higher education—you can sense that from the victims he chooses—and it might well have been a degree in prehistory. To gain access and suss out the place, he has to get all matey with his target, chat her up, impress her. Seeing how cultivated the victim was, he would have had to be on a level above her. Bourgeois English teachers don't invite just anybody into their house. You really have to be someone!”

De Palma began to walk toward the house, then stopped, his eyes fixed on the ground.

“Maxime, can you find out where she went to university? I'll bet it was Aix.”

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and arched his shoulders.

“You see, kid? We've already got a profile. You might not think so, but we have. He's a man in good health, a loner, but quite capable of being attractive and seductive. He's even-natured, incredibly cool-headed, he never panics. He's a top-level intellectual with some terrible event in his past, something unbelievable.”

“A rape?”

“No, I know what you're thinking … a rape which is then repeated in later life. It's quite often true. That's what comes to mind. It's like at the police academy when they tell you all murders have a sexual motive. But this time, my boy, it's something different, even though I haven't got the faintest idea what it is. Perhaps frustration, which makes him be murderously covetous and jealous. We do know that he uses rudimentary weapons, like prehistoric man.”

“So what do we do now?”

“The paperwork, as usual. But first of all, could you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Try to see where this canal leads to. I'm going to take another look indoors.”

The sun was beginning to set. A golden light was glittering on the pine needles. Vidal felt a slight breeze work its way beneath his jacket. He gathered his thoughts, went through the shed door and followed the canal.

He did not observe anything unusual, except that some of the tall grasses had been trodden down. He found no footprints or traces of blood. After a while, the canal disappeared into a tunnel, which was far too low for an adult man to enter, whatever his build. Vidal looked around and soon spotted the path taken by the killer. The grass had been flattened leading up to a wall which was about one meter fifty high. He followed the tracks, gripped the top of the wall with both hands, and with one leap was on top of it.

To his astonishment, he saw that he was overlooking the little cemetery that surrounded the church of Saint-Julien.

“So, what are your conclusions, de Palma?”

His lower lip damp and pendulous, Commissaire Paulin had adopted his dark and terrible look. His expressionless, beady eyes were staring at his paperweight, a kind of upward-pointing doornail which his wife, who owed a gallery in Le Panier, had found in a Paris junk shop. This genuine piece of abstract art, cast in bronze, was the only hint of the unusual in the otherwise frigid room. Ever since he had first come into his superior's office to discuss ongoing cases, de Palma had been trying to decide what this strange object might represent. In vain.

The Baron glanced at Vidal, who was trying to look confident as he sat in his chair.