The First Fingerprint (17 page)

Professor Palestro stood up and paced sonorously over to the edge of the podium, standing straight as a poker in front of his students. He looked amazingly young for his sixty-three years. Deep-sea diving had preserved him so well that he could easily have passed for forty: with his sportsman's physique, his easy smile and huge cultural knowledge, he was a man who must appeal to the ladies a great deal.

“He's as tall as I am, do you see? And he presents a mixture of modern and archaic characteristics—unlike me on that point—as you'll see later on the slide … But there's something else I'd like to add, and as my late lamented colleague, Christine Autran, and I have always emphasized, in western Europe there was also another type of human, the Combe Capelle man, who was shorter, standing at about a meter sixty-five. He was more widespread in central Europe, where he is often called Brno man. In my opinion, he could well have been the origin of the Mediterranean peoples. He would have been the first of us Provençals … Which perhaps, I repeat perhaps, explains a certain particularity in the Mediterranean art of the time. It features animals which look stiff, as though stuck on to their stone backing, with legs that end in sticks and no further detail. There was a real school here in Provence … This was also the opinion of Christine Autran. Poor Christine.”

Palestro looked visibly moved. He tried to hide his grief by leaning on the back of his chair.

“During the course of the technological evolutions in the Upper Paleolithic, around 18,000 years ago, a new industry appeared in western and central France, and more precisely to the west of the rivers Saone and Rhône. It was distinct from the Aurignacian and Upper Perigordian. And I can tell you that it sparked off a great deal of discussion about its origins. I am talking about the Solutreans, who were remarkable for their highly specific tools such as bifacial points, willow leaves and, to a lesser degree, bay leaves … These tools had particularly elegant decorations, generally covering one or both of the faces. There have been various studies to find the origins of this beautiful industry, and it is now thought—and I share this view—that it was autochthonous in France. The Solutrean then suddenly disappeared, to be replaced by the Magdalenian. This was the zenith of Paleolithic civilization, a particularly brilliant period which developed during the course of the last phase of Wurmian glaciation. Or, to be more precise, Dyras I and II between the interglacial periods of Lascaux and Allerod, in other words between 15,000 and 9,000 years B.C.E. Of course, as you all know, here in Provence we have one of the finest examples of this stunning civilization, Le Guen's Cave, in the creeks by the city of Marseille.”

Palestro lectured for an hour. De Palma listened to him, gripped by this teacher's generous voice and attentive as a kid suspended on every word of a beautiful yarn. When he heard: “Now, shall we have a short break?” he emerged from his reverie. Palestro looked at him and motioned him over. The policeman walked down the steps.

“Good morning, sir. You're here earlier than expected.”

De Palma shook the hand which the prehistorian was warmly offering him. It was firm, muscular and a little rough. A real sportsman's handshake.

“And I've learned a lot,” said de Palma.

“The second part is far more interesting. I'm going to show them some slides. Many of them were taken by Christine, you know,” he said sadly. “After that, we can have a quiet chat in my office.”

Palestro disappeared down the corridor. Five minutes later he was back, his arms weighed down by boxes of slides. They closed the curtains in Room 105.

“We shall now devote the second part of the lecture to a study of Marseille's coast and, to conclude, Le Guen's Cave.”

Palestro's face was lit up from below by the projector, making him look like a devil. He pressed the remote control, and a metallic click cast light on to the screen. The slide brought together flints of assorted sizes.

“Here, then, are some typical characteristics of the industries of the Upper Paleolithic. At the top, the flints numbered from 1 to 8 are Aurignacian; from 9 to 13 Gravettian; from 14 to 17 you will notice a slight evolution, they are from the Solutrean, while 18 to 22 are Magdalenian.”

Palestro leaped to his feet and approached the screen. He passed his finger over the Solutrean and Magdalenian flints.

“Look at how finely they are cut. If you compare them with the ones in the top left-hand corner, which date to the Aurignacian, you will see what incredible progress had been made since the first man. But don't forget that everything is relative. Prehistoric time is not like our time. The Aurignacian pieces date to about 36,000 years ago, and the Magdalenian to 18,000. So the first men needed some 18,000 years to make this progress, which seems so slight to us. As for the Aurignacian, in Provence we have Baume-Périgaud—there we have found lots of scrapers, but very few burins. This is far from the case with the Gravettian and even less so with the Solutrean—named after Solutré in the department of Saône-et-Loire—where we have found many more articles and, of course, the Magdalenian, named after La Madeleine rock shelter in Dordogne. There, we have found assegais, harpoons with one or two rows of teeth … Plenty of flint tools …”

Palestro changed slides. They showed tools of far more elaborate shapes. De Palma listened. He had forgotten all about his investigation, the police, the public prosecutor who would soon ask him for a report, and Commissaire Paulin who wanted results.

Another slide.

“Here we have a perforated baton, a harpoon tip and an eyed needle. It was in fact during the Upper Paleolithic that such tools first appeared. They allowed early man to practice new activities such as fishing and sewing, presumably for clothes made of animal skins,
like for example the squirrel-skin tunics of the children in Grimaldi, Italy. The harpoon tip is the major invention of the Magdalenian, but we shall come back to it another time. On the left, there is a perforated baton whose use is not really understood: to hold an assegai perhaps, or the handle of a sling … it's a mystery. In any case, this one is made of bone, but others are made from the antlers of deer, generally of reindeer. Musical instruments were also made from bones, especially of birds, and whistles were carved from the phalanges of herbivores. As you can see, the first men took a leap forward, so to speak, during the Magdalenian. It has been said again and again that the Magdalenian is the apogee of prehistoric art. Just think of Altamira in Spain, Lascaux in Dordogne, Niaux in Ariège and, of course, Le Guen in Provence.”

The next slide showed a cross section of Sugiton creek and the sea. The policeman in de Palma stirred and he observed the drawing. It was an ordinary vertical section of a cave.

“Here is the entrance through which the diver Charles Le Guen went into the cave. You might not be able to see it from this drawing, but the entrance is only one meter in diameter. Having been there myself, I can assure you that it's extremely scary. You have the impression of entering Purgatory. The tunnel is more than a hundred and fifty meters long, as you can see. And believe me, underwater that's a long way! Here is the sunken chamber, and here is where Le Guen found those famous paintings.”

There followed images of positive and negative hands as he lectured on. He lingered for some time over a bison and some penguins. De Palma recognized the photo he had seen in Christine Autran's flat, but this one was of far better quality. He realized that Autran's photo must have been taken by an amateur. But why?

Then Palestro launched into a long presentation of the engravings in Le Guen's Cave. He showed the students a series of photographs taken using frontal lighting, and then with low-angle or oblique light sources. Each method revealed new shapes. The engravings, which initially looked uninteresting, slowly revealed the range of what they depicted. The professor had to admit that science had not yet been able to explain this type of engraving. He asked someone to open the curtains.

“See you next Thursday. We'll talk about all those famous hands in Le Guen's Cave.”

Palestro took de Palma by the arm.

“Let's slip away, otherwise the students will corner me and we'll be stuck here for an hour.”

The prehistorian's office lay on the far side of the faculty of literature, on the first floor, at the end of a corridor lit by windows as narrow as loopholes.

From his briefcase, Palestro removed an extraordinarily large bunch of keys, which he twisted around before picking out a bronze-colored one. De Palma glanced at the various types of key. None corresponded to the lock on the door to Christine Autran's flat.

The office was spacious but terribly cluttered, with two gray metal tables facing each other. As he put down his case and files, Palestro indicated Autran's former desk with a wave of his hand.

“You know, it's rather untidy because we don't come here very often,” remarked Palestro, to break the silence. “Christine was here only two or three times a week, on Tuesdays when she lectured, on Thursdays to see her postgraduate students. And sometimes on Monday afternoons.”

“What did she do the rest of the time?”

“She often went to the marine archaeology laboratory in Marseille. It's in Fort Saint-Jean.”

“What about the creeks?”

“She didn't go there to work. I know she particularly liked walking there. In fact, she knew them like the back of her hand. She preferred going on foot rather than by boat.”

“And yet, you often took her with you, by boat.”

Professor Palestro blushed. He stared at the floor, as though conjuring up the moments he had spent in his colleague's company, then he looked back up at the policeman. There was an expression of infinite sadness in his gray eyes.

Palestro clearly knew a number of things, but he was not going to talk that easily. He was psychologically smart, despite his apparently jovial behavior and winning ways. He had had an affair with
Autran. It was obvious, despite all his attempts to conceal it. De Palma saw that this relationship must have been one-way. Autran had been an ambitious woman who did not burden herself with unnecessary emotions. The sort of person who only kissed those people she could not tread on.

“Did you notice anything odd before her death? The slightest detail might be important.”

“No … I don't think so.”

“Try to remember. It's vital. You didn't bump into anyone you didn't know?”

“That's hard to say. There are so many people around here!”

“In your immediate circle?”

Palestro racked his brains.

“No, nobody,” he said, shaking his head.

De Palma walked over to the shelves. They held a few books, files of various colors left there any old how, as well as a stack of communications and publications.

“None of your papers has been disturbed? Nothing was missing? I don't know … some detail that surprised you?”

“I'd have to check, but I don't think so.”

“We're in the dark, Professor. Any small detail could be important.”

“There's nothing particularly important here. Or nothing that's likely to be stolen.”

Palestro slipped a few pieces of paper into a folder, then placed it in a drawer of his desk.

“But last winter,” he said wrinkling his brow, “we were burgled … but I don't think it could have had anything to do with Christine's death.”

“What was stolen?”

“Some collector's items, so to speak.”

“Art work?”

“No, not really. They were pieces of flint. Beautiful pieces, all dating back to the Magdalenian. In particular, a rather rare ax blade.”

“Why didn't you report it?”

“I wanted to inform the police, but Christine talked me out of it. She said that if we did, then word would get out because the police don't know
how to hold their tongues. Then there'd be the press, and so on …”

“Where did these pieces come from?”

“Le Guen's Cave … They weren't very valuable. There was also a blade of white chalcedony, about fifteen centimeters long … You must understand, in our little world, such thefts go down extremely badly. We would have been the laughing stock of the profession. I suppose you remember all the media attention about Le Guen's Cave, about how much the big-wigs at Le Musée de l'Homme hated us … The people in the prehistory world are at war with one another, you know, just like the first men were. It's a real battle … Before the discovery of Le Guen's Cave, we were nothing in this little universe. There were the Parisians and the researchers in the south-west. Then suddenly we had our own Lascaux, and I was the only specialist qualified to study the site. So people got jealous … Just imagine what would happen if they discovered we were now losing the pieces we found during the fieldwork!”

“Did you suspect anyone at the time?”

“No, no-one.”

“Come on, Professor, you must surely have had your suspicions! There aren't that many people who have access to such a collection …”

Palestro hunched his shoulders and looked apologetic.

“That's exactly what I said to myself. But I don't have any answers to your question. I really don't.”

De Palma took a photograph of Christine Autran from a shelf.

“Did you take this photo?”

“Yes, I did. Why?”

“No reason … I have one last question, Professor. Can you explain this to me?”

De Palma handed him a transparent plastic bag. Inside was a color photocopy of the negative hand found beside Hélène Weill. The Professor held it up between his fingers.

“As you can see, it's a negative hand. Of the same type as those we find in many of the decorated caves. Except this is a reproduction, or even a reconstitution. Two of the fingers are bent over.”

“What does that mean?”

Palestro looked up at the policeman.