He got out of the vehicle and took a few steps in the driveway.
The rain had left the ground slimy. His military boots made sucking noises with every step.
He reached the front door. That very door where Claude Salaville had shot him. He noticed that the crime- scene seals were still intact. Obviously, no family members had seen fit to claim this inheritance. No one could blame them.
The giant inspector considered ripping off the crime-scene tape but changed his mind. He started walking around the house, aware that he was following steps he had taken before.
The barbed wire-topped gates were closed, but no one had replaced the padlock, snapped by the response team during the raid. Vauvert leaned with all his weight against the gates. They creaked and moaned until they opened just enough to let him slip through.
26
Like everything else, the farmyard had not changed. It was deserted and muddy, engulfed in that same unreal silence.
But there was one notable difference. Time had washed the ground clean. A few faint stains were all that remained of the blood that had been spilled there. Or perhaps the stains were just a vague memory.
A memory that Alexandre Vauvert was reliving with unpleasant clarity.
He tried to chase the thoughts away.
Because the place had remained untouched, maybe there was still some evidence here, preserved all this time. That was what he wanted to focus on.
He headed toward the barn.
The seals on the door had been ripped off. That was the first anomaly.
The door was ajar. An invitation.
His heart beat faster.
It was too late to retreat. He had to know.
He pulled on the wooden handle, sensing something familiar and terrible.
The door creaked open.
Deja-vu.
The suffocating smell seized his throat.
Vauvert immediately took a step back, drawing his gun.
The barn was still. The only sound was the wind blowing in the trees. But maybe he was imagining it.
Vauvert took the handle again and opened the right door wide before doing the same with the left door. Light poured into the barn, illuminating every corner.
His weapon in hand, Vauvert took position in the entryway, trying to determine the cause of the stench.
The barn looked deserted. The shelves were empty. The chains hanging from the beams were gone, as were the butcher hooks and bloody buckets. It had all been taken away, tagged, and filed as evidence.
All what was left was a vast space, the ground layered with moldy hay, and the leprous stone walls.
So where was this pestilential smell coming from?
He stepped into the barn and saw the small black mounds all over the ground. That was the source of the stink: feces. Just excrement. Animals had made their home in the barn and had done their business all over the place.
Whatever they were, it didn’t seem that they were there any longer.
His gun still raised, Alexandre Vauvert surveyed the rest of the barn.
The walls were still covered with nonsensical inscriptions, faded memories that time was slowly erasing from the stone.
Except for the wall on the far end.
There, the words were perfectly legible.
The blood the words were written in was still red and wet.
Vauvert froze.
Still wielding his gun with his right hand, he took out his cell phone to call this in. On the screen, a series of letters were scrolling.
“What the fuck?”
He turned the phone off and then turned it back on again. The letters were gone, but there was still no signal.
“Shit.”
He used it anyway to take a picture of the inscription on the wall. Then he turned around and took more pictures of the piles of excrement. It was all he could do for now.
His stomach was churning.
He turned around to leave, still on the lookout.
Outside, the light was declining. Thick black clouds were gathering in the sky. A storm would break soon, and it would probably be as violent as the one the night before.
Vauvert jogged across the yard toward the house.
Then he saw the back door. It, too, was ajar. The police tape looked like it had been ripped off a good while ago.
Vauvert raised his weapon. He pushed the door open with his foot.
The inside of the house lay in darkness.
A flash of lightning crossed the sky, followed by thunder-rolling, heavy, distant, like a demon approaching.
Vauvert stepped inside.
The smell assailed him. The stink of shit.
The house seemed deserted.
He unsnapped the flashlight from his belt and pointed the ray of light at the floor. Black droppings were all over the tiles.
There was something else, something underneath the stench.
“Can’t you smell it? The smell of blood.”
Those were Eva’s words last year.
But now? Was he really smelling blood? Or was his mind playing tricks?
He didn’t know anymore.
He wasn’t sure of anything.
Outside, it thundered again.
He focused, pointing the flashlight at the walls. The inscriptions were still there, overlapping each other. He recognized some of the names that had been frenetically scribbled on the wallpaper. Sekhmet, Adonai and other names borrowed from all religions. And in the middle, the large circle drawn in blood. He guessed it more than he could see it, brown and faded now, in the beam of light.
He swept the walls with the flashlight, looking for more recent marks. He found none.
At frequent intervals, he glanced at his phone.
Still no signal.
He carefully scanned the living room. No movement, just the dust particles dancing in the waning light. This was where Eva had discovered the girl with the knife planted in her vagina.
On that sofa, still in the center of the room.
Vauvert aimed his light on it, taking a step forward.
And stopped in his tracks.
