Of Fever and Blood

and missed opportunities. He could not see his way out.

Mechanically, he opened one of the folders and realized it contained his reports on a doctor who had kept a child in his basement for three years. The man had murdered several people in order to protect his macabre secret. It had been one of the strangest cases in his career. Still, it had been solved a while ago. All these documents had no reason to sit there anymore.

He put them on a chair, which itself held a teetering pile of papers.

His laptop was still nowhere to be seen. It was buried under the files on his desk. Including the file of the Salaville brothers.

Vauvert had been through this one quite often, both at the office and during his lonely hours. He could quote every last bit of evidence from memory, as well as the name of each victim. Not that it had been of any use. Nothing more had surfaced in the case. The magistrate had closed the investigation. But Vauvert was not satisfied.

“God dammit, it’s been a year already.”

He opened the thick cardboard folder as he had done so many times before, glancing with a distracted eye at the medical files and the countless press clippings. In many of them, he himself appeared.

And there also was the photo that ran in Le Temps Reel, a double-page spread. The picture showed him talking with Eva Svarta at the farm. The paparazzi had been kept at a distance, but the telephoto lens had captured their features with great sharpness. Inspector Svarta was putting her sunglasses on after showing him her tears. Vauvert remembered the moment well. It could have happened just yesterday. He had felt like taking her in his arms. He wondered if anything would be different today if he had actually done it. He knew full well that the answer was no.

Then he wondered if the inspector also had a copy of the newspaper. And if so, what had she thought about that picture?

Truth was, he knew nothing about her personal life. Did she have a family? Did she have children to hold in her arms? They never talked about their personal lives during their brief phone calls.

All of a sudden, he wanted to talk to her. To talk the storm and the night away with someone who could understand him. Someone who knew how it felt to shoot another person, hating yourself for it but having no damn choice. Someone who knew how helpless it felt to be confronted with the despair of families, to take on their anger and be able to do nothing to help.

Realizing how stupid his thoughts were, he grabbed the Salaville folder, along with several other older files, and stuffed them all into the garbage can.

That’s where they belong.

“And all is well that ends well,” he said.

He settled back on the couch, in front of the erotic movie, and raised his beer to his mouth as thunder shook his apartment windows again.

15

Blood.

All this blood.

Spurting from the body on the table.

The blood splattered the walls, the carpet, and the leather armchairs. Some of it had traveled as far as the window. In the lightning’s glow, it dripped down the glass, mimicking the rain outside.

All this wonderful blood.

This immortal source of power.

The weary fingers relaxed and dropped the scalpel. It was important to remember to pick it up later. Nothing implicating could be left behind.

The figure stooped over the dead woman. Like her, naked. Smooth and animal-like and covered entirely in blood.

With a step back, the blood-soaked carpet made soft, sucking sounds.

Now the white porcelain mask, immaculate and radiant in the bluish light of the storm. Worn elsewhere, it would have been a party mask covering the eyes but leaving the mouth and chin visible.

The porcelain was delightfully cold, delightfully pure.

Looking through it, the world-transfigured-reappeared.

Walking toward the window, step by step, over the blood spatters. Watching the nocturnal world. Below, so far below, cars were going by, but no one was looking up at the eighth-floor, where the figure was looking down and smiling. No one could see the fingers smeared with blood being licked clean, and the impassive, serein mask.

A few more moments of rapture, then it would be time to make sure no evidence was left behind. The police would come, of course. But they wouldn’t find anything, as usual. They never found anything. They never understood anything. And it was all so obvious. It was right before their eyes.

Outside, the rain poured down harder.

It was fine weather for the gods. Every day they drew closer.

Finding her took awhile, but it was done now, and the gods were listening. They were closer than ever. The gods had been fed.

In hand was the flaccid skin that was once the face of this woman, yes. The face of this very woman, lying there, dismembered, torn apart on the big boardroom table.

An offering. Another one.

Before leaving, there was one last task, thanking the gods for their patience.

Under the woman’s head, beneath her slit throat, blood had been dripping into a plastic bucket.

A hand sank into the thick liquid, which had already begun to coagulate. The blood glistened on the fingers, which then started to draw the circle.

16

Saturday

Eva Svarta thrashed in her sweat-soaked bed sheets.

Outside, the ferocious rain pummeled the windows.

She blinked her scarlet eyes. She had had a nightmare. She could not remember it, but it had left a taste of metal in her mouth. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she felt as though the darkness was trying to catch up to her. Memories she had been trying to outrun all these years, like tentacles clutching at her thighs, looking for some way in.

Calm down.

Turning to one side, she pushed a strand of white hair away from her eyes and took in the familiar interior of her darkened bedroom: opera-red walls, modern paintings, dark wood furniture that had cost her a fortune, and impeccably clean black lacquered floors. The room ended in an open archway, through which Eva could see part of the living room. Across from her bed, she could make out her carefully folded skirt on the chaise lounge. She pictured her tailored suits perfectly organized in the closet. Her books, lined meticulously in her wooden bookshelves. Yes, everything was fine.

It helped her, always, knowing that her personal universe was in order.

Somewhere, her phone was ringing with insistence.

That’s what woke me up, right? Not the nightmare.

She turned toward the illuminated numbers of the alarm clock.

Six in the morning.

Don’t pick up, she thought, even as she knew she was going to. Her hand reached