The Map and the Territory (34 page)

This time, they discovered in the car’s trunk a stiff attaché case covered with supple leather and pierced with lots of airholes; the perforations were almost invisible, and at first glance the object could easily pass for an ordinary attaché case. Inside, however, separated by Plexiglas walls, there were about fifty insects, among which the gendarmes immediately recognized a scolopendrid, a tarantula, and a giant earwig; the others were identified only a few days later by the Natural History Museum in Nice. They then sent the list to an expert—in fact, the only French expert on this kind of criminal behavior—who made a rapid estimate: at market prices, the whole package could be sold for around one hundred thousand euros.

Le Braouzec owned up. He was having a dispute with one of his clients—a surgeon from Cannes—about the payment for a previous delivery. He had agreed to return and negotiate with the extra specimens. The discussion had turned nasty and he’d hit the man, who’d fallen headfirst onto a marble coffee table. Le Braouzec thought he was dead. “It was an accident,” he said in his defense, “I had no intention of killing him.” He’d panicked, and instead of calling a taxi to return home, as he’d done on the way there, he had stolen his victim’s car. Thus, his criminal career ended as it had begun: in stupidity and violence.

It was the regional crime department at Nice who went to the villa of Adolphe Petissaud, the practitioner in Cannes. He lived in the avenue de la Californie, overlooking the town, and owned eighty percent of shares in his own clinic, which specialized in male reconstructive and plastic surgery. He lived alone. Obviously he was a man of means: the lawn and the swimming pool were impeccably maintained, there were easily ten bedrooms there.

The rooms on the ground floor and upstairs told them almost nothing. It was the classical, predictable living space of a hedonistic and not very refined upper-class man who now lay on the living-room carpet, with a smashed skull in a pool of blood. Le Braouzec had probably told the truth: you were dealing with a business discussion that had, quite stupidly, turned out badly; no premeditation could be held against him. However, he would, most probably, be given at least ten years.

That said, the basement had a real surprise in store for them. They were almost all hardened, experienced policemen; the Nice region has long been known for its high crime rate, and has become even more violent with the appearance of the Russian mafia; but neither Commander Bardèche, who was heading the team, nor any of his men had ever seen anything remotely like this.

The four walls of the room, which was twenty meters by ten, were almost entirely covered with glass shelves two meters high. Regularly arranged inside these shelves, lit by spotlights, stood monstrous human chimera. Genitalia were grafted into torsos, and minuscule arms of fetuses prolonged noses, forming sorts of elephant trunks. Other compositions were magmas of human limbs, attached, intermingled, and sutured, surrounding grimacing heads. They had no idea how such creations had been preserved, but the representations were unbearably realistic; the slashed and often enucleated faces were frozen in atrocious rictuses of pain, crowns of dried blood surrounded the amputations. Petissaud was a serious pervert, who carried out his perversion to an unusual level; there must have been accomplices, a traffic in corpses, and probably also of fetuses, that was going to mean a long investigation, thought Bardèche at the same time as one of his deputies, a young brigadier who’d just joined the team, fainted and fell slowly, gracefully, like a cut flower, onto the floor a few meters in front of him.

He also thought, fleetingly, that this was excellent news for Le
Braouzec: a good lawyer would have no problem exploiting the facts, depicting the monstrous character of the victim. That would certainly influence the jury’s decision.

The center of the room was filled by an immense light table, about five feet by ten. Inside it, separated by transparent walls, moved hundreds of insects, grouped by species. Accidentally activating a switch placed on the edge of the table, one of the policemen triggered the opening of a wall: about ten tarantulas rushed on their hairy legs into the neighboring compartment and started to tear to pieces the insects occupying it—big red centipedes. So that’s how Petissaud spent his evenings, instead of enjoying himself, like the majority of his colleagues, in anodyne orgies with Slavic prostitutes. He took himself for God, quite simply, and he acted with these populations of insects like God did with human populations.

Things probably would have stayed as they were without the intervention of Le Guern, a young Breton brigadier, recently transferred to Nice, whom Bardèche was particularly delighted to have taken into his team. Before joining the police, Le Guern had done two years of study at the Beaux-Arts de Rennes, and he recognized a small charcoal drawing hanging on the wall as a sketch by Francis Bacon. In fact, four artworks were arranged in the cellar, almost exactly at the four corners of the room. In addition to the Bacon sketch, there were two plastinations by von Hagens—two works which themselves were quite repellent. Finally, there was a canvas which Le Guern thought he recognized as the last known work by Jed Martin,
Michel Houellebecq, Writer
.

Back at the police station, Bardèche immediately consulted the stolen artworks database: Le Guern had been right, on all counts. The two plastinations had apparently been acquired completely legally; the sketch by Bacon had, however, been stolen, about ten years before, from a museum in Chicago. The thieves had been arrested a few years previously, and had been noteworthy for their systematic refusal to give the names of their buyers, which was quite rare in this milieu. It was a drawing of modest format, acquired at a time when Bacon’s market rating was in slight decline, and Petissaud had no doubt paid less than the market price. It was the ratio that was normally used. For a man
of his level of income it was a big item of expenditure, but still possible. Bardèche was, however, terrified by the values now attained by the works of Jed Martin; even at half price, the surgeon would never have had the means to purchase a canvas of this stature.

He immediately phoned the Central Office for the Struggle Against the Traffic in Artworks and Cultural Goods, where his call triggered considerable agitation: this was, quite simply, the biggest case they’d had on their hands in the last five years. As the value of Jed Martin increased in vertiginous proportions, they expected the canvas to reappear, imminently, on the market; but that didn’t happen, which left them more and more perplexed.

There was another positive point for Le Braouzec, thought Bardèche: he leaves with a case of insects valued at one hundred thousand euros, and a Porsche that was scarcely worth more, while leaving behind a painting valued at twelve million euros. That’s what denoted panic, improvisation, random crime: a good lawyer would have no problem pointing that out, even if the adventurer probably hadn’t been aware of the fortune he had in his grasp.

A quarter of an hour later the director of the Central Office phoned him in person, to warmly congratulate him and give him the cell phone and office numbers of Commander Ferber, who was in charge of the crime squad investigation.

He immediately called him. It was just after nine, but he was still in his office, which he was about to leave. He too seemed deeply relieved by the news; he was beginning to think that they would never succeed; he thought, an unsolved case is like an old wound; he added, half joking, it never leaves you completely at peace—well, he supposed Bardèche would know that.

Yes, Bardèche knew that; he promised to send him a succinct report the following day, before hanging up.

Late the following morning, Ferber received an e-mail summarizing their discoveries. The clinic of the doctor, Petissaud, was one of those which had replied to their queries, he remarked in passing; they admitted
possessing a laser cutter, but asserted that the equipment was still on their premises. He found the letter: it was signed by Petissaud himself. They could have, he thought for a moment, been astonished that a clinic specializing in reconstructive plastic surgery would possess a machine for amputations; but, in truth, nothing about the name of the clinic indicated its specialty; and they’d received hundreds of responses. No, he concluded, they had no serious criticism to make of themselves in this affair. Before calling Jasselin at his home in Brittany, he lingered for a few moments on the physiognomy of the two murderers. Le Braouzec had the physique of a basic brute, without scruples, without any genuine cruelty, either. He was an ordinary criminal, a criminal like those you meet every day. Petissaud was more surprising: quite handsome, tanned in a way you guessed was permament, he smiled to the lens, displaying an unabashed self-assurance. Basically, he had exactly the physique you associated with a cosmetic surgeon from Cannes living in the avenue de la Californie. Bardèche was right: he was the kind of guy who was, from time to time, caught in the nets of the vice squad, but never in those of the crime squad. Mankind is sometimes strange, he thought as he dialed the number; but unfortunately it was more often in the category of
strange and repugnant
, rarely in the category of
strange and admirable
. Yet he felt appeased, serene, and he knew that Jasselin would be even more so; it was only now that he could really
enjoy his retirement
. Even if it was in an indirect and abnormal way, the guilty man had been punished; balance had been re-established. The cut could now close.

In his last will and testament, Houellebecq’s instructions were clear: if he were to die before Jed Martin, the painting should be returned to him. Ferber had no difficulty getting Jed on the phone: he was at home; no, he was not disturbing him. In reality, yes he was, a little bit, as Jed was watching an anthology of
DuckTales
on the Disney Channel, but he abstained from adding that.

This painting, which had already been mixed up in two murders, arrived at Jed’s home without any particular precaution, in an ordinary police van. He put it on his easel, in the center of the room, before returning to his usual occupations, which were for the moment rather quiet: he cleaned his lenses and did a bit of tidying up. His brain functioned
more or less in slow motion, and it was only after a few days that he became aware that the painting
bothered
him, that he felt ill at ease in its presence. It wasn’t only the smell of blood which seemed to float around it, as it floats around certain famous jewels, and objects in general which have unleashed human passions; it was above all Houellebecq’s eyes, whose blazing expressiveness seemed to him incongruous, abnormal, now that the author was dead and he had seen shovelfuls of earth fall one by one on his coffin, in the middle of Montparnasse cemetery. Even if he could no longer bear it, it was without question a good painting—the impression of life given by the writer was stupefying, false modesty would have been ridiculous. But from there to its being worth twelve million euros was another matter, one he had always refused to give an opinion on, just once saying to a particularly insistent journalist: “You mustn’t look for meaning in something that has none,” thus echoing, without being fully aware of it, the conclusion to Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus:
“What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”

He phoned Franz that very evening to explain to him what had happened, and his intention to put
Michel Houellebecq, Writer
on the market.

On arriving at Chez Claude, in the rue du Château-des-Rentiers, he had the clear and irrefutable sensation that it was the last time he was going into the establishment; he also knew that it was to be his last meeting with Franz. The latter, slumped in his chair, was sitting at his usual place in front of a glass of red wine; he had aged a lot, as if great worries had fallen on him. Sure, he had made a lot of money, but he had to tell himself that by waiting for a few more years he could have made ten times more; and no doubt he had also made
investments
, an unavoidable source of problems. More generally, he seemed to have difficulty living with his new wealth, as is often the case with people from poor backgrounds: wealth only makes happy those who have always known a certain material comfort, who are prepared for it since childhood; when it befalls someone who has had a difficult start in life, the first feeling that invades him, which he occasionally manages to fight off, albeit temporarily, before it returns to submerge him completely, is quite simply
fear
. Jed, for his part, born into a well-off background, and having known
success very quickly, easily accepted having a credit of fourteen million euros in his current account. He wasn’t even seriously bothered by his banker. Since the last financial crisis, far worse than that of 2008, which had bankrupted Crédit Suisse and the Royal Bank of Scotland, not to mention lots of other, less important establishments, bankers were
keeping their heads down
. That was the least you could say. Certainly, they held in reserve the sales patter that their training had conditioned them to serve up; but when you indicated to them that you were interested in none of their investment products, they gave up immediately, uttered a resigned sigh, quietly put away the file they had prepared, and almost said sorry; only one last remnant of professional pride stopped them from proposing a savings account remunerated at 0.45 percent. More generally, you were living in an ideologically strange period, when everyone in Western Europe seemed persuaded that capitalism was doomed, and even doomed in the short term, that it was living through its very last years, without, however, the ultra-left parties managing to attract anyone beyond their usual clientele of spiteful masochists. A veil of ashes seemed to have spread over people’s minds.