your suspect inside for the night, then tell Delpiano that youâve got a migraine and come and eat with me.â
âMichel, you know perfectly well that I canât do that.â
He hung up and gazed round his three-room flat. His ex-wife, Marie, had left with the walnut bookcase she had inherited from her mother, who had had it from her own mother, and so on for generations. As a result, the Baronâs criminology books were now piled up on the carpet in two stacks a meter high. On top of one was
Précis dâanalyse criminelle
, and on the other
Crime et psychiatrie
, which he must have read a good twenty times.
In place of the bookcase and sofa, which had also disappeared in the divorce, two big rectangular patches divided the space like archaeological remains. They were just about all that was left of ten years of marriage. Two rectangular marks and a few poorly framed photos.
Only the C.D.s and unobtainable vinyl had been given new shelves. Dozens and dozens of bootlegs of opera greats sung in marvelous theaters: Del Monaco and Callas in Verona in a superheated
Aïda
, Flagstad and Melchior in a forgotten
Tristan
⦠Then the collectorâs albums of the Stones bought in London in his carefree youth; all of Muddy Waters which he had brought back from the States; Jimi Hendrix ⦠they all meant as much to him as his .45, the legendary piece concealed behind the boxed sets of the Beatles and of Rossini, whom he disliked and never listened to.
He slipped Straussâs last
lieder
into his C.D. player and sat down in front of it, his eyes fixed on the crystal display. Tomova-Sintowâs vibrato flowed over his tired skin. He remembered that Marie hadgiven him this record on a wedding anniversary. He could picture her with her brilliant smile revealing her extraordinarily white teeth, as she waved the little package at the end of her long fingers. That night, they had made love several times, and she had admitted that she had not used any form of contraception for a month. But nothing happened. The child de Palma wanted and dreaded had not arrived. He would never arrive.
He lay down on the carpet, his hands clasped behind his neck, and fell asleep before the third
lied
, his mouth bitter with alcohol, with a deep crease down his forehead, alongside a faint scar shaped like a question mark.
A scar that hours of surgery had reduced.
A few months before, the Baron had been disfigured, his fine features split open.
Luckily for him, his nose had not been totally demolished and the bone of his forehead had mended. For the rest, the surgeon had removed strips of skin from his backside and stitched him back together patiently, over several hours, like an old granny patching some workaday jeans.
Looks wise, things had not turned out too badly: a remodeled nose that took a few years off him, and a scar ringed with pale purple streaks on his forehead which made him look dangerous when he scowled.
Inside, it was a different story. Migraines that wouldnât stop any more and that made him fear the worst of his demons, crude blood-red snapshots of agonies that came back more and more.
In Le Guenâs cave, he had been afraid, with this fear he could no longer expel from inside him. It was a fear that invaded the hazy zone of his awareness, the zone he hardly ever dared to enter. If the Baron had never thought about revenge, it was no doubt to avoid transgressing his own prohibitions, gambling with his own taboos. The incubation time for revenge was far too long. He was a man of anger and storms, not a sneaky obsessive with no statute of psychic limitations.
In the middle of the night, a nightmare caught de Palma in the depths of sleep.
September 15, 1982. 9:30 a.m
.
The first anonymous call. A raucous voice
.
A supermarket bag hung from a green oak on the hill of Notre Dame
.
Inside the bag, a head
.
The neck has been severed just under the chin
.
He and Maistre examine it: there is a
âMichel, you know perfectly well that I canât do that.â
He hung up and gazed round his three-room flat. His ex-wife, Marie, had left with the walnut bookcase she had inherited from her mother, who had had it from her own mother, and so on for generations. As a result, the Baronâs criminology books were now piled up on the carpet in two stacks a meter high. On top of one was
Précis dâanalyse criminelle
, and on the other
Crime et psychiatrie
, which he must have read a good twenty times.
In place of the bookcase and sofa, which had also disappeared in the divorce, two big rectangular patches divided the space like archaeological remains. They were just about all that was left of ten years of marriage. Two rectangular marks and a few poorly framed photos.
Only the C.D.s and unobtainable vinyl had been given new shelves. Dozens and dozens of bootlegs of opera greats sung in marvelous theaters: Del Monaco and Callas in Verona in a superheated
Aïda
, Flagstad and Melchior in a forgotten
Tristan
⦠Then the collectorâs albums of the Stones bought in London in his carefree youth; all of Muddy Waters which he had brought back from the States; Jimi Hendrix ⦠they all meant as much to him as his .45, the legendary piece concealed behind the boxed sets of the Beatles and of Rossini, whom he disliked and never listened to.
He slipped Straussâs last
lieder
into his C.D. player and sat down in front of it, his eyes fixed on the crystal display. Tomova-Sintowâs vibrato flowed over his tired skin. He remembered that Marie hadgiven him this record on a wedding anniversary. He could picture her with her brilliant smile revealing her extraordinarily white teeth, as she waved the little package at the end of her long fingers. That night, they had made love several times, and she had admitted that she had not used any form of contraception for a month. But nothing happened. The child de Palma wanted and dreaded had not arrived. He would never arrive.
He lay down on the carpet, his hands clasped behind his neck, and fell asleep before the third
lied
, his mouth bitter with alcohol, with a deep crease down his forehead, alongside a faint scar shaped like a question mark.
A scar that hours of surgery had reduced.
A few months before, the Baron had been disfigured, his fine features split open.
Luckily for him, his nose had not been totally demolished and the bone of his forehead had mended. For the rest, the surgeon had removed strips of skin from his backside and stitched him back together patiently, over several hours, like an old granny patching some workaday jeans.
Looks wise, things had not turned out too badly: a remodeled nose that took a few years off him, and a scar ringed with pale purple streaks on his forehead which made him look dangerous when he scowled.
Inside, it was a different story. Migraines that wouldnât stop any more and that made him fear the worst of his demons, crude blood-red snapshots of agonies that came back more and more.
In Le Guenâs cave, he had been afraid, with this fear he could no longer expel from inside him. It was a fear that invaded the hazy zone of his awareness, the zone he hardly ever dared to enter. If the Baron had never thought about revenge, it was no doubt to avoid transgressing his own prohibitions, gambling with his own taboos. The incubation time for revenge was far too long. He was a man of anger and storms, not a sneaky obsessive with no statute of psychic limitations.
In the middle of the night, a nightmare caught de Palma in the depths of sleep.
September 15, 1982. 9:30 a.m
.
The first anonymous call. A raucous voice
.
A supermarket bag hung from a green oak on the hill of Notre Dame
.
Inside the bag, a head
.
The neck has been severed just under the chin
.
He and Maistre examine it: there is a
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