She watched the sights of her adopted and temporary hometown flee past the windows. The cathedral, the museum, the Hotel Lion d’Or. Why did every French town have a Hotel Lion d’Or?
And then the hospital. Julia had never visited the hospital before, but it was just like any hospital. It could have been a hospital in Chicago.
“Par là… je connais bien la route.”
Doors opened, nurses passed, old people lay on gurneys, staring grimly at nothing: people cuckolded by their own bodies, betrayed.
The four of them took an enormous steel elevator to the basement. Again Julia felt the absurd urge to fill conversational silence. What could she say: Hey, isn’t this a big elevator?
She said nothing. Shut her eyes. Tried not to think of what they were about to see. Would she even see anything, would they allow her in as well? Ghoulishly, Julia wanted to observe the body. She had never seen a murdered person. She desired the unique experience even as she despaired at her own heartlessness. Poor Annika. Poor Ghislaine.
The French being spoken was urgent, but whispered, like they were in church, as they walked the long corridor to the mortuary. Julia asked herself why people always whispered in the presence of the dead. The dead, she thought, are also deaf.
A wide door swung open automatically. As they crossed the threshold, a man in light-blue rubber gloves came over, briefly smiled at Rouvier, scanned the other faces, and met Annika’s eyes with his own. She nodded.
He motioned: this way.
It was all happening very quickly. Julia had expected more of a palaver, a prologue, some polite and ritual ablutions. But this was brisk French efficiency, verging on harsh unsentimentality. The four of them filed through a wide, overbright room, full of gurneys and the vague forms of bodies under plastic sheets — the sleeping dead, all patiently waiting.
Now they paused, but only for a fraction of a second, and then the doctor pulled the top of the plastic sheet down to the neck.
It was Ghislaine’s face. He seemed almost calm. The eyes were shut, with just a smudge of blood on the nose. The skin was ghastly pale, but the relaxation of death gave the professor, oddly, a more youthful appearance. No longer straining and posing; the absurd hair was tousled, like a young man’s hair, charmingly unkempt. It looked better that way.
What a horrible, horrible pity. A huge, engulfing wave of sadness and pity nearly knocked Julia down. She steadied herself, gripped her feelings. Poor Ghislaine. Why had he died? How? Who?
“Oui. C’est lui.” Annika had spoken; she had identified le corps. The doctor went to pull the sheet back, but Annika reached out a dignified arm and gripped his wrist.
“Non, laissez-moi voir—”
She wanted to see the rest of the body. The doctor threw an anxious glance at Officer Rouvier, who hesitated — and then nodded, discreetly.
The doctor pulled back the sheet. They stared.
And they recoiled. Even the two men, who must have seen the body before.
Ghislaine had been almost ripped apart. That was the only description: he had been cut up with such savagery it was practically a dismemberment. The blood was splattered on the underside of the plastic sheet; so much blood was smeared on his wounded corpse that he looked like he was tattooed red and purple, all over.
Whoever had knifed him to death had done it with wild anger, lust even. Slashing his arms and legs, plunging a knife into the groin — several times, cutting and slashing. A bestial attack. Revoltingly pornographic.
Lost in her own thoughts, Julia only now realized that Annika was sobbing.
Softly, but wrenchingly, the Belgian woman was crying, trying to hide her flowing tears behind her hands. Rouvier gestured to his junior officer and requested, in French, that Annika be driven back to her cottage. The junior obeyed, taking Annika gently by the arm. The doctor did his duty and wheeled away the transformed and brutalized corpse of Professeur Ghislaine Quoinelles.
Rouvier and Julia were alone in the mortuary. He sighed.
“These places. Always I think — one day I shall come in here, and I will never come out again. But, let us be thankful, not today.”
They took the elevator to the ground floor. Rouvier seemed keen to talk, lingering by the front door of the hospital, where a few patients in dressing gowns were smoking the midnight hours away under a steel-and-glass awning.
“There is a machine over there with the most terrible coffee. I believe I need one. And for you?”
“Black. Thanks.”
Rouvier jangled some coins and went to the machine.
Julia breathed in the rainy night. In the chaos and confusion she had left her car at Annika’s. She had quite forgotten. But she couldn’t be bothered to arrange a wearying or expensive lift to the Cham now — especially as she’d just have to drive all the way back, the same night.
She would sleep here in Mende, in her nearby apartment, and maybe get a lift from Alex in the morning. After all, he would want to go and see Annika. Offer comfort.
Moreover, she was happy to be right here, at the hospital, surrounded by people. She didn’t want to go home alone to her empty rooms, not right now, not immediately. She was actually scared. Who did that appalling killing? The randomness and barbarity was frightening. Julia noticed her hand was shaking as she reached to accept the white plastic cup of coffee from Rouvier.
She sipped.
“You’re right. It’s disgusting coffee.”
“It is a miracle, non? To make coffee this bad is practically a biblical event.”
“And stupidly hot, too.”
He nodded and smiled. She noticed he had very neatly manicured hands. She liked Rouvier. He reminded her of her father at his nicest: gentle, clever, protective.
It seemed a shame not to take this opportunity to ask him a few questions. Julia’s scientific brain was keen to take control again, to exert a grip on her febrile emotions. That way she could fend off the sadness, and fear, and memories. The raped body of Ghislaine chimed unhappily in her mind. That day her father drove her back from Sarnia. Sobbing.
She purged her thoughts and asked, “Do you have any theories? Any suspects?”
Rouvier shook his head, blowing cold air on the coffee.
“No. But there are some clues. The arrangement of the knife blows is interesting. He has many, many cuts on the hands and fingers.”
“I saw.”
“The distribution of the cuts shows he had his arms, hmm, what is the word… elevated. Elevated. To protect himself.”
This was a little mysterious.
“Protect himself. How?”
“Maybe the killer was trying to stab him high in the head. That is our suspicion. The front of the head. The forehead or the eyes. Naturally, there is a reflex: to lift your hands. In that situation.”
It was a horrible image.
“How do you know it was one killer?”
“We don’t. But I think, just a guess, I think I am right. One big man, frustrated, and then frenzied. Yes, that is a very good English word. Frenzied.”
“Who found the body?”
“A neighbor. I understand she is very upset.”
“Not surprised. Jesus. Jesus.” Julia was gulping her coffee now; it was cooler, and she needed it. The bitter taste was apposite. “So. Do you have any theories about motivations? Did Ghislaine have enemies?”
“Motivations?” said Rouvier, half smiling, half avoiding her gaze. “No. Yes. No. A man with no close family? No girlfriend. No rivals in his small field. Yet a man with a famous name.”