The First Fingerprint (44 page)

In the dim light, he made out a motionless figure crouched in front of Sylvie. A few moments later, the figure picked up the torch and played it around the walls. Then it stood up and placed a hand in one of the negative prints. A strange, raucous voice, the voice of a wild beast, echoed around the walls of the cave.

“Great hunter

Here is the sign

May it make you strong

The spirits are troubled…”

In a flash, de Palma leaped into the main chamber, gun in hand, and pointed his Maglite at the figure.

“Turn round,” he yelled.

The figure did not move.

“Turn round, or you're dead. Understand?”

The figure slowly turned round. In the flickering light a face appeared, zigzagged with shadows. It was a closed, strangely rigid face which seemed possessed by an incredible force.

“Christine Autran,” murmured de Palma.

He was paralyzed by the sight of this woman who stared at him without the slightest expression on her frozen features. She had cut her hair extremely short, and now looked more like a man than the rather reserved prehistory lecturer he had seen in photos. A faint sound nearby chilled his blood. He spun round and fired twice. In the flashes of gunfire, a fleeting apparition emerged from the darkness: Thomas Autran's ghastly face was just a few meters away from him. He shot again and heard a piercing cry.

At that instant a violent pain seized his shoulder and he felt his flesh being torn apart.

Everything went red. A powerful hand struck him in the face and pinned him to the ground. The walls of the cave melted like liquid metal.

Then there was a voice. Far away:

“I am the hunter

May the spirits guide me through the darkness

May my enemy's strength enter my blood …”

Commissaire Paulin raced like a bullet through Accident and Emergency at Timone hospital. He shoved aside a nurse who was pushing a trolley out of lift B, and grunted at the boys from special branch and the flying squad who greeted him with silent nods. Maxime Vidal and Anne Moracchini sat at the end of the corridor looking exhausted. Paulin sidestepped them and pushed open the door of the last room.

It was 5:00 a.m. Thomas Autran was lying on a metal bed, handcuffed at both wrists and both ankles. Paulin adopted his toughest expression and inspected him for a few seconds.

“When can we take him away?” he barked at the doctor who was finishing off a dressing.

“In about a quarter of an hour, after I've signed the necessary papers. The wound is superficial. The bullet didn't touch his kneecap, it just went through the muscles.”

“Very good, I'll arrange the necessary transport.”

Paulin went out into the corridor.

“Don't you want to get some rest, Vidal? You look awful …”

“No thanks, Commissaire. I'd rather stay.”

“What about you, Moracchini?”

“I'll stay with Maxime.”

Paulin leaned on the wall facing them and stuck his hands into his jacket pockets. Moracchini's eyes were red with fatigue and her forehead was creased. Her shoes were stained with the red soil of the creeks. Vidal's face was deathly pale.

“I've just come back from La Conception hospital. He's been in theater for a hour now. That's all I know.”

Anne Moracchini stood up and walked toward the lift to calm
herself down. Vidal kept staring at the corridor's gleaming floor tiles.

“Sylvie is in the psychiatric department,” he stammered. “No-one can see her for the moment.”

“I … It would be better if … I'd rather you waited at headquarters,” muttered Paulin. “There's nothing more you can do here …”

Vidal was lost in the darkest stretches of his conscience. He was playing back over and again the film of that night.

He bursts into the main section of Le Guen's Cave. Thomas Autran raises his tomahawk above the Baron's bloody head. From the end of his rope, Maxime draws and fires once, twice, three times … He aims at the head and torso. The thunder of shots echoes from one vault to the next, making the entire cave quake. He no longer knows how many times he has fired. Thomas Autran bends over and collapses. Two men from special branch rush across and overcome him. There are kicks to his stomach, a boot in his face … Then the clicking of handcuffs
.

De Palma is unrecognizable. He is covered with blood. His forehead has been cut open and his shoulder torn apart. Disfigured. His breathing is weak, almost non-existent, a long rasping sound emerges from his paralyzed throat. His life is wavering between here and the great void beyond. His heart beats irregularly, his chest rises suddenly, then falls again. His body is stiffening, trembling all over, tormented by death which seeks its prey
.

“Luc Chauvy,” Maxime repeated. “Why didn't it occur to me before? Why didn't I say anything to Michel?” He felt nauseous.

“Are you listening to me, Maxime?”

Vidal jumped.

“Yes, Commissaire …”

“I was saying that you should go back to headquarters and get some rest, if you can.”

Moracchini took him by the arm.

“Come on, Maxime. There's nothing more we can do here.”

Before going to headquarters, Moracchini and Vidal spent some time at La Conception. Since 6:00 a.m., Jean-Louis Maistre had been prowling like a wild cat in the waiting room of the Accident and Emergency Department.

“Still nothing,” he yelled, clenching his teeth. “NOTHING AT ALL, for fuck's sake!”

A doctor emerged from the operating theater and took off her mask. She seemed exhausted. The three police officers surrounded her at once.

“I can't tell you anything yet,” she said, raising her hands. “We brought him back from the edge … twice. We've now stabilized his condition and put him in an artificial coma. This means that the surgeons will be able to operate in the best possible circumstances. But the operation could be a long one. A very long one.”

Maistre took the doctor by her arm.

“You're going to save him, aren't you?”

“Are you a member of the family?”

“No, but we'll have to tell his parents. They're old now …”

Maistre squeezed the doctor's arm.

“Please stay calm, sir … I can reassure you that there's now a good chance he'll pull through.”

“Will there be …”

“Any after-effects? Maybe, but I really can't say. That's not my specialty. Anyway, we don't yet know what they might be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that … that we just don't know.”

8:00 a.m. Vidal and Moracchini dashed through the courtyard of headquarters, where swarms of journalists had started to gather. On the murder squad floor, by the planning board, officers were talking in hushed tones. When they caught sight of Vidal, his features twisted in anger, they silently stepped aside. Anne Moracchini passed through the group like a shadow.

The door opened on Paulin and Didier Salerno, a murder squad veteran who knew nothing about the case.

Paulin stood up at once and dragged de Palma's teammates into the corridor.

“I told you to get some rest. I'm looking at the situation with Salerno. The two of them are in their cells, and I'm not going to let you question them in the state you're in now.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Vidal replied coldly. “This is our case,
and we'll see it through to the end.”

Paulin's eyes glittered with anger.

“Maxime means we're the only ones who know the case and …”

“I gave you an order,” he said.

Vidal clenched his fists. He swallowed back his rage and stared at Paulin.

“Commissaire, I don't know what you have in mind …” he retorted in a calm voice which disarmed Paulin. “But let me tell you something. We worked hard on this case, our teammate is now fighting for his life, and you have no right to take this away from us. NO RIGHT AT ALL.”

Paulin cracked his finger joints. Moracchini felt on the verge of oblivion. She observed her superior and barely managed to conceal her scorn.

“O.K., calm down. I'll give you two hours to ask your questions,” Paulin murmured, pointing his index finger at Vidal. “But if there's the slightest irregularity, I'll … I'll take over again. Two hours, and then we'll discuss the situation. Understood? Barbieri will be here at 11:00.”

They brought Thomas and Christine Autran to the offices of the murder squad. The hunter was drained; his lips were drooping slightly and two long wrinkles ran the length of his temples. Moracchini and Vidal decided to separate the twins, and Moracchini led Thomas into her office.

Vidal was left alone with the prehistorian. Since her arrest in the cave, he had not had time to look at her properly. Contrary to what he had feared, he felt nothing for her her, neither hatred nor pity. He sat down opposite her.

“You have been placed in custody on suspicion of murder, aiding and abetting murder and sequestration. I suppose you realize that you risk life imprisonment. Do you have anything to say before we begin?”

Christine remained silent. Vidal had not handcuffed her to the radiator. She was sitting on the edge of her chair, completely self-absorbed, with her knees together and her hands clenched around the chain of her cuffs.

The morning sun shone through the window. Vidal stood up and drew the curtains. He then opened the communicating door between the two offices so that Christine could hear her brother being questioned.

“O.K.,” Moracchini said. “Let's begin at the beginning. I'll go through some of the things you are accused of, as Commandant de Palma, Lieutenant Vidal and I see them. Agreed?”

A long silence, which was unbearable after the tension of the previous night. Moracchini started to prowl around Thomas Autran.

“First point. When Le Guen discovered the cave, your sister soon heard about it … In my opinion, it was Luccioni, who knew the diving community well, who told her what had become an open secret in that small world. But she also told you that Le Guen was going to announce his discovery, and she asked you to be on guard day and night. We've checked, and you were in France at the time. You were supposed to be just passing through … We think that when you saw a group of divers going into the entrance tunnel, you drowned them by stirring up the mud on the seabed—that would have been enough. No-one can see anything through such a murky deposit. That was nine years ago.”

Thomas Autran did not respond. Vidal watched his sister. Her eyes were glazed, and she did not seem to hear what was being said in the next room.

“But,” Moracchini went on, “Le Guen was not one of those in the tunnel, so you failed to stop the existence of the cave being revealed. You left again on your travels, to Australia I believe. During your absence, your sister decided to look for a second entrance. She searched for a long time, but only found it quite recently, just before … her death. Agreed?”

Autran was not looking at her. An image of de Palma on his stretcher flickered across her mind and struck her like a sword. She had to draw on her last reserves to stop herself from exploding.

“Sometime last year, you came back to France. Agnès Féraud, one of your sister's friends, was killed … we think by you … Then everything speeded up. There were the murders of Luccioni, Hélène Weill and Julia Chevallier. Right or wrong?”

Autran remained locked in silence. Moracchini stopped pacing and approached him.

“But by killing Luccioni, you made a terrible mistake, because straight afterward his father, Jo Luccioni, put a contract on your heads … You were being followed and you knew it. Things were getting out of hand. So you both had to disappear, and fast! You then cooked up Christine's fake murder.”

Autran straightened up. His expression softened slightly; the long wrinkles melted into his skin and his lips trembled.

“Thomas,” Moracchini said in a more gentle voice. “I think you're sister's been using you right from the start. She's been manipulating you. She knows all about your fits of madness and how to exploit them.”

With his eyes, Thomas Autran made it clear that he did not want to talk about his sister. Nor his father. Nor his mother. He did not want to talk, and he would not talk.

She did not press the point. The face of the man sitting in front of her was loquacious enough about the sufferings he must have endured all his life.

In the other office, Vidal stared long and hard at Christine. “Christine, you've heard what my colleague has said. What do you think about her version of events?”

She did not react. Her entire body was frozen. For a moment, Vidal wondered if she could hear what he was saying.

“I think it would be better for you if you spoke. In any case, you'll be formally charged, by tomorrow at the latest.”

This dialogue with the deaf continued until 10:00 a.m. Vidal sensed that he had failed to exploit the interrogation. He went to see Moracchini and took her to one side.

“I don't think we're going to get anything out of Christine. I reckon we ought to send for a quack. She's dead on her feet. Come and see.”

“No thanks, she terrifies me. Anyway, we're going to put them up before the judge this afternoon. Just lock her back in her cell and forget it. Jesus Christ. If only Michel was here …”

“We'll have to do our best, for his sake … She's got to speak! Because … apart from the fact that she vanished and is an accomplice, we haven't got much on her.”

“O.K., do you feel up to going on with him?”

“Yes, I'm ready.”

“Perfect. But first, we'll go and see Paulin. We'll give an initial report then start again this afternoon. I need to eat and get some rest.”

At 11:00 a.m., Maistre's mobile rang.

“Jean-Louis, it's Marie … what's happened? My parents were incapable of telling me …”