The First Fingerprint (43 page)

“Facts, nothing but facts,” as Barbieri would say. “Proof, and only proof,” he said aloud. “But you might not have any proof,” he went on in a whisper. Justice suddenly seemed too rapid to him. Barbieri would tie the whole thing up. The jury, “good little French people like you and me,” would have no doubts when confronted by such pure horror. His lawyer would probably appeal. Recent legislation meant that he would be able to. After a quarter of a century on the crime squad, issues like this no longer bothered him.

He remembered his early cases. At the time, the men and women he put on trial were literally risking their necks. And these necks were being gambled on a dice throw. He thought of Robert Ferrandi; his last death penalty. An ordinary man he had hunted for several years. A shabby fifty-year-old who crucified the women he loved. De Palma had got to know him over a period of forty-eight hours and despite his barbaric crimes had ended up liking this sincere, solid, little man with the round face, who had left his lawyer speechless by asking the judge for the death sentence himself. To put a stop to his madness.

Possessed, insane Ferrandi. The death penalty had been announced that evening, and this had disgusted de Palma. He felt responsible, guilty about not having been able to prove that Ferrandi acted under another person's authority. In this case, his brother's.

He remembered the words of his old mentor at headquarters in Paris: “It doesn't matter if the law is just or not, the law is valid not because it's just, but because it's the law. As a matter of fact, this isn't your problem. Your problem is putting the guilty on trial and trying not to make mistakes.”

The next day, if the grim gods presiding over police affairs had not been mistaken, he would arrest a man and hand him over to be tried.
And the justice system would not fail him. His long years on the force had worn him down so much that he no longer gave a damn. All that interested him was catching his man. And finding Sylvie alive. That at least made sense.

He stood up, stiff from the chill that had gripped him, and poured himself a whisky which he knocked back in one. He poured another and went back on to the balcony. The night was receding into stardust. The hills of Saint-Loup were beginning to lighten as the day dawned, somewhere far away, in the mysteries of the Levant. He thought to himself that the man he had been tracking for months must be looking up at the same sky.

Perhaps at that precise moment this redoubtable killer was doubting his own powers?

Perhaps reason and madness were struggling with each other in his poor head, as on a battlefield where the enemy has taken the initiative.

He would be invoking the spirits of prehistory.

Leaning on the gray metal rail that had been corroded by the sun and sea air, de Palma realized that his legs could barely support him. Fatigue and whisky had overwhelmed his being and his thoughts.

Society baffled him. First, there had been little Samir's murder in a block of flats to the north of the city. And now a man was asserting his barbarity. Never had de Palma been confronted by such a killer, and a voice whispered to him that he would not be the last, but rather the first in a new wave of criminals. It occurred to him that a society ultimately has the murderers it deserves. Even the mobsters had evolved toward heightened barbarity. Gangland killings had speeded up to a regularity never known before. Each time, the law of the mob broke down slightly and gangster society became more corrupt.

What new killer would arise at the night's end? Only yesterday, an eight-year-old child had gone missing from an estate in Aix, the seventh since the start of the year. It seemed to him that the thick layer of morality covering the surface of society was cracking more and more, and was now coming away in pieces. He did not like morality, but that was another story.

A vision obscured the darkness of the city: Ferrandi's round face,
his small, dry eyes and the terror which had filled them every time he spoke about his brother.

Then he saw the face of his twin, Julien de Palma. Julien was staring at him, and his eyes were showing him the way.

A thought which had plagued him for days now returned. “He's not alone,” he said to the night.

This thought became a certainty and he took it to bed with him.

Everything was clear now.

“As time goes on running from the stars
,

so the blood of a hundred throats will burst up from the tomb!

It will spread as though from spilled amphoras
,

the blood of enchained killers
,

like a stream in spate, in floods, it will spring from their lives.”

For some time, a diffuse glow had been spreading from Mont Puget to the east as far as the Sugiton pass. To the left, through a gash in the cliffs, they could see mighty Marseille, shifting slowly, turning its heavy body this way and that in its stone sheets, trying to sleep in this long night. A few, barely audible sounds reached the creeks. In its dream, Marseille was gasping, as though tormented by illusions of grandeur.

To the right, the sea was silent, magnificent in its ancient, silver robe. Not even the slight motion of the waves could be heard. Two days without a breath of wind had been enough for
mare nostrum
to fall asleep, as melancholic and languorous as a beautiful lady clad in a rare, silk lamé dress.

De Palma looked at his watch. It was 12:40 a.m. From the corner of his eye, he looked at Vidal, who seemed to be shivering slightly in the milky night.

“We'll wait for the moon. Then we'll go down to the bottom. O.K., Maxime?”

“I just hope he'll turn up.”

“In theory, he's got to. As long as he didn't spot us this morning. But I reckon he'll come.”

A barely perceptible breeze arrived with the moon. De Palma stood like a basalt statue in the middle of the path.

A discreet crackling broke the silence.

“Green on Green to All Powerful. A car's just parked. Someone's getting out … I think it's Spectacles. Over.”

“All Powerful here. O.K., Christian, take it easy now. Follow him on foot after twenty minutes. But before you set off, puncture his tires.
That way he won't be able to get away. O.K.? Over.”

“Message received. What if he turns back? Over.”

“You cry for help. Over.”

“What? Over.”

“Don't worry, Christian. He won't turn back. Just follow him after twenty minutes, like I told you. Over and out.”

“O.K.”

“Time to go, Maxime. We're at least an hour ahead of him.”

They went down the slope. Forty minutes later, they were facing the limestone blocks that filled Sugiton creek. They gave themselves a moment's rest before clambering across the fallen stones until they were just above the pebble beach.

De Palma's guts were in knots. He had eaten nothing since that morning, and all the coffee he had drunk throughout the day was making him jumpy. He picked up his walkie-talkie.

“Red on Red from All Powerful.”

Moracchini's voice echoed slightly in the creek.

“Red on Red. I receive you loud and clear. Over.”

“He left the car park forty minutes ago. He'll pass at ten o'clock from you in ten or fifteen minutes. Over.”

“Message received. Over.”

“Over and out.”

“O.K.”

“Hey, Michel, what's all this about green and red and being all powerful?”

“A hangover from the army. I'll explain later …”

De Palma leaped down on to the beach and set off toward the cliff-face. He produced a torch from his bag and pointed it at the base of the large rocks.

“Let's see now. Palestro said up toward the left … You have to go beneath the rock. You might have to dig a little in the pebbles if the sea's been strong … Then you have to crawl for a few meters. The entrance is to the right, beneath a barrier of stone. So, Maxime, station yourself where we agreed. And quickly. I'm going down. Don't forget: when he arrives, give him fifteen minutes, then follow him.”

“For Christ's sake, be careful Michel.”

“Don't worry.”

Pebbles were not blocking the access beneath the slab of stone. The Baron went head first through a hole which was about eighty centimeters wide. He crawled for two meters before finding the barrier of stones and the entry to the passage.

A cool odor rose from the earth's intestines. Without pausing for breath, he put a miner's lamp on his head and slipped into the gap feet first. He slithered down for about three meters, slowing himself with his knees and elbows until his feet came to rest on a flat surface.

He was in an approximately oval cavity measuring about twenty square meters. At the far end, to the right, he saw a narrow opening which led to the second chamber: Le Guen's Cave. Without wasting any time, he crossed the oval antechamber and, on reaching the entrance, put down his bag and took out a climbing rope coiled in two loops. He knotted it around a rocky spike and checked that it slid correctly. With his back to the opening, he passed the two loops of rope between his legs and over his left shoulder. He then abseiled down through the gap, allowing his feet to slide along the rock face which ran down toward the murky depths.

A few meters further down, he found himself waist-deep in water. He looked up and saw the rope rise above him. He pulled on one coil, gathered in the entire length, rolled it up carefully, then emerged from the water and sat down on a red rock which had been smoothed by the sea. He put his damp rope back into his bag and took out a second torch which was more powerful than his miner's lamp.

In front of him was a huge, cold, damp gap which opened like a slit into absolute darkness. He advanced gingerly between the limestone stalactites and stalagmites. Drops of water were falling rhythmically on the floor or into puddles, filling the cave with a mournful pitter-patter. He stopped when he saw in front of him a gleaming slab of rock which sloped gently toward the inky sea.

He remembered what Le Guen had told him years earlier, and his heart started beating madly. In vain, he tried to calm it and pointed his torch to the left, running its beam over the rugged limestone until he saw what he had been waiting months for: a negative hand on an outcrop of rock.

This little hand seemed to be waving in friendship at everyone who entered the dark salon. On a limestone slab there was another larger one, presumably of an adult, making a gesture of peace. Further on, positive hands decorated a rocky shelf a meter off the floor.

He played his torch to the right and, in the distance, almost beyond the beam's range, he picked out horses swimming calmly in a line. One of them was observing him cheekily, acknowledging his discovery. De Palma breathed deeply and tears of emotion filled his eyes. A gust of cold air penetrated his bones and made him shiver. He stood up, his legs wobbling.

He walked toward the far end of the cave and stopped when the ceiling, hacked away by the first men, became too low for him to stand. He aimed his torch at the far wall and saw a series of positive hands decorating a huge column of rust-colored rock. Awakened by the electric light, the spirits of prehistory had begun to converse in the secret language of hands, some with their little fingers bent, others showing only their thumbs and index fingers. The first man was watching him from beyond time. Further on, other hands responded from shafts of reddish stone. De Palma felt a kind of vertigo. The shadows of the great hunters enveloped him.

It was then that he heard breathing. He withdrew into the darkness, turned off his torch and put all his senses on alert. Initially he thought it was the gentle motion of the sea as it lapped at the rocks. But then he noticed that the sound was coming from somewhere only a few meters in front of him. The breathing was human, and it was quickening. He drew his Bodyguard.

De Palma tried to reconstruct the last thing he had seen before turning off the torch. Ahead of him there was a relatively long, flat surface. Without switching on his light, he crawled forward for a few meters until his arm hit an obstacle. He paused. The sound was clearer than ever. Someone was there, in the darkness, just beside him.

De Palma rapidly flashed his torch. Two meters away sat a human form, leaning against a stalagmite. He crawled on for another meter and flashed his torch again. Sylvie Maurel had been gagged and tied to a column of stone. A terrible fear radiated from her shattered features. Her eyes were wide open, her pupils dilated fully. She had been
positioned between two negative hands, to the left of a bison and an ibex. On the ceiling, crude lines were carved into the limestone. In the beam of his torch he could make out the shape of a head, then a torso and legs. With a few blows from a flint, a prehistoric sculptor had engraved the figure of a man. His body was crisscrossed by several lines that ran from one side to the other.

THE SLAIN MAN.

The first depiction of a murder.

De Palma was about to rush toward Sylvie when he realized that a trap had been laid for him. All of a sudden, the paintings seemed to free themselves from the walls and dash toward him. A hand brushed against him. The great bison raised its head and hammered the floor with its hoof. The ibex leaped into the void of the night. The spirit of the hunt was sounding the alert. De Palma quickly drew back and turned off his torch.

He heard a short whistle and the sound of a small object falling into the water, followed by more whistling and a slapping sound which reverberated in this cathedral of stone. De Palma made the most of the disturbance by moving as far as he could away from his present position. When he hit an obstacle, he lay down on the cold, damp floor.

A tinkling of metal objects rose from the main chamber. Suddenly, light from a flame, presumably a burning torch, made the rippling rocks dance in a ballet of dark shadows. De Palma was now in a kind of vestibule two meters above the chamber. Trying not to make the slightest noise, he moved over to the edge of his hiding place.