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Although indepth research is vital in his line of work, Wyll tries wherever possible never to see an individual’s face before he talks to them.
Habituation of all types is dangerous, and when he grows used to a person’s face the specifics fade from his attention, he might not notice the tightening of an eyelid, the twitch of a lip, the hints of a deeper feeling like a flash of scales in dark, clear water. His mind too quickly categorises them and ceases to see them in all their vital, composit parts.
But in October, taking the 17:34 Deutsche Bahn from Frankfurt Central Station to Gare de l’Est, Paris, Astarion Ancunín makes himself impossible to avoid. Waiting on the platform, Wyll avoids looking at the long Yves Saint Laurent advertisement pasted into the subway tunnel that shows that pale man rolling in a bed as snow-white as he is, his luminous eyes crinkled with a smile. For five minutes as the train passes through Clermont-en-Argonne, Wyll turns his eyes aware from a billboard where Ancunín laughs silently, obscured by the white feather boa he wears thrown over his shapely shoulders, Scene. 14, it’s like burning… Even when he arrives in Paris, stretching his stiff spine after four hours on the train, Wyll has to glance away to avoid Ancunín’s flirtatious stare from the pages of another commuter’s fashion magazine.
Wyll fights other pedestrians for a taxi and finally secures one which agrees to drive him through the late-night traffic to Montparnasse.
“American, yes?” The taxi driver smiles exaggerately wide at him when he climbs into the cab. “Montparnasse, c'est noté, do you have a hotel there? On the journey, you want to see le Panthéon, it would only be—”
“Non, je suis allemand, et je suis ici pour affaires,” Wyll tells him. No, I’m German and I’m here on business.
The taxi driver tuts in annoyance, probably wishing he had picked up one of the ditzy American tourists he could drive around Paris for hours and charge sixty euros for the journey, plus gratuity. Because he was Black, Wyll was used to people, especially the French, assuming he was American. This time, to maintain a good mood, he preferred to think it was his international sense of style which led the driver to this belief, rather than the standard French racism.
When the taxi reaches Montparnasse district, the driver overcharges him by ten euros and Wyll is not interested in having the argument and pays him anyway.
Montparnasse, Paris, is breezy, with wide, dark grey tiled roads and leaf-litter which was forming a hem on the broad pavement. Night had recently fallen, closing in on the tall white tenement buildings. In the centre of a closed public park, a dark bronze statue of a lion sleeps in the golden leaves.
Using the road signs to guide him, Wyll crosses the street and walks up the Rue Boulard. He stares through wrought-iron gates and the black lace of trees to find discrete bronze house numbers, doubling back twice.
Eventually he finds it and rings the bell.
The man who opens the door is not as perfect as advertised. Without the concealer and post-production airbrush, Monsieur Ancunín has dark purple marks under his eyes, freckles over the brow of his nose, moles on his collarbone, long permenant dimples in his cheeks.
“Allez-vous-en. Vous n'êtes pas au bon endroit,” Monsieur Ancunín says. His voice is sharp and sour, like dry wine.
Wyll takes a slight step back, boots rasping on the stone stoop. “I am sorry. Do you speak English a little?”
“Allemand?” Monsieur Ancunín reads his accent and points a sharp finger at him. “Verlassen, bitte.”
“Ah, sprechen Sie Deutsch?” Wyll smiles wide, as if relieved.
“Nein, nur ein bisschen,” Monsieur Ancunín shakes his head. His english comes fast and thickened with his accent: “You are in the wrong place. Beat it.”
“Are you Herr Astarion Ancunín?” Wyll asks, slipping his identification papers out of his long black trenchcoat. He flips them open for the model. “I am Wyll Ravengard, I am an agent of Interpol. I have authorisation to ask you a few questions, if now is a good time to speak.”
Monsieur Ancunín pulls back from the doorframe, glaring at Wyll’s papers. He is probably regretting answering the door at all, especially so late at night with a bare face. He rubs his bare foot on his soft silk pantaloons. With a growl he abandons the front door, leaving it open, and stalks into his house.
Wyll takes this an invitation to step inside, closing the door neatly behind him.
Monsieur Ancunín’s house is tall but lean like a cat with its back arched. The buildings on this road had all been bisected vertically, like a loaf of bread being sliced, so that the stairs take up half of the corridor and the bedroom upstairs was long and thin.
In the kitchen, Monsieur Ancunín pours two glasses of red wine. “If we are to speak English, then I need a drink.”
Wyll lifts a hand to politely decline. “Nein, danke. I am on duty.”
“So what?” Monsieur Ancunín holds the glass out. “When you are in Paris, you do as a Parisian.”
“Is the English expression not when you are in Rome, you do as the Romans?”
“How like a German bastard to side with the Italians,” Monsieur Ancunín has a mean tone to his voice.
In order to head off the discussion of geopolitics, Wyll accepts the wine glass without taking a sip.
Monsieur Ancunín peers out of the corner of his luminous eyes. He sips his wine and looks mollified. “At least you know to hold the glass by the stem.”
Wyll raises his dark eyebrows. He looks around the kitchen. It is sparse and elegant, the art on the wall all generic classics of the French romantics. “You have a beautiful home, Herr Ancunín.”
“How did you find me?” Monsieur Ancunín asks. “Not even my manager knows where I am.”
“Yes. I am a detective,” Wyll says.
Monsieur Ancunín waves a hand at him. He takes another drink of wine. “Then act like one. Start your questions.”
“Have you always lived in Paris, Herr Ancunín?” Wyll asks.
“Not those kinds of questions,” Monsieur Ancunín says. He pours himself another glass of wine. “I know you’re going to ask about him, so just do it already.”
“Who?” Wyll asks, tilting his head.
Monsieur Ancunín sends him a withering look. Without his makeup, he is no less beautiful — only now his beauty is vicious and cutting, like the edge of a very sharp knife.
“Alright. When you lived in Strasbourg, you shared a large house with a number of other tenants. Would you mind talking for a while about how you came to stay there?” Wyll asks.
“It was a cult,” Monsieur Ancunín says. His voice is as bitter as black coffee. “How do most people end up in a cult? I was an nineteen year old who cut off all my family ties to follow a man I thought… well, we were all stupid once, weren’t we?”
“And the leader, by the name of Cazador Szarr?” Wyll asks. “Can you talk about him?”
“Am I being recorded?”
“No.”
Monsieur Ancunín drank more wine. “This is all ancient history. And, besides, I didn’t kill him, they cleared me of that at the time.”
“I am not here to arrest you of this crime,” Wyll says, mildly.
“And I don’t know who did,” Monsieur Ancunín said, refilling his glass. “So talking to me is pointless. You might as well leave and get some sleep, it would be more beneficial to your investigation.”
“It is my job to be thorough.”
Monsieur Ancunín grumbles and leaves. His footsteps sound through the wall and then the ceiling as he retrieves something from his bedroom.
Wyll sets the untouched wine glass down and runs a hand over the spines of the books in the kitchen. All of them are recipe books covering french cuisine, mostly sugary baked goods. He doubts they belong to Monsieur Ancunín, who is as skinny as a greyhound.
“Herr Ancunín,” Wyll says as the model returns to the kitchen.
“Please, call me Astarion,” Monsieur Ancunín says. He has changed from his sleepwear to an unbuttoned shirt and silk slacks. His chest hair is fine and pale, like spun sugar.
“Herr Astarion,” Wyll says. “You knew I would be asking about Szarr when I arrived. Why is that?”
“Stupid question. Because he’s all over the news right now, since they dug up all of those bodies,” Astarion says. He leans over the marble counter towards Wyll, letting the long line of his white body rest against the cool stone. “But my story is staying straight, as they say. I left three weeks before he got what was coming to him.”
“Do you think he deserved his fate?”
“He deserved worse. Whoever killed him, I’d like to shake their hand.”
Wyll nodded. “And you do not like him because he raped you.”
Astarion’s face is grey.
“Six weeks after Szarr’s death, you were in Thailand. Correct? For what reason?”
“It’s personal,” Astarion says. But his eyes are viciously bright, like razor. “Something tells me you already know. The investigation was never able to find out where I had been — you’ve figured it out?”
“It was hard,” Wyll says. “I have only the paystubs to go off. Your procedure was phenomenally expensive, in a facility that deals with traumatic injury reconstruction surgery. I imagine that it was the same back injury that your, ah, colleagues also suffered? The sigil across your back.”
“You’re wrong,” Astarion says, confidentally. “I was having reconstructive surgery on my lower stomach and upper thighs. I had sustained several deep tissue wounds there.”
“I am not wrong,” Wyll says.
He carefully withdraws a small pack of photos from the inside of his coat and sets them delicately on the kitchen counter top.
Astarion picks them up and sorts through them, eyes wide with a destructive hunger. He drinks his wine and pours himself more with shaking hands.
“You suffered as your companions suffered,” Wyll says. “You did not leave the cult so early. You were there, at the latest, the day before he died.”
“It has been three decades. You can forgive my memory being fuzzy,” Astarion says, even though his hands and shaking so badly the glossy photos slip through his fingers.
“You lied,” Wyll says. “Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Astarion hisses. “Anyway, Petras, Darylia and the others were all cleared, so I would’ve been cleared too.”
“No,” Wyll says. “They were cleared because they were all weak and emaciated, and had been restrained for two days when the police arrived. You were not.”
Astarion’s eyes are wide. He is albino, and his red eyes faded to pink at the edges, like light passing through a rose petal.
Wyll rests his hands flat on the cold stone countertop. “You may want to be honest with me now, Herr Ancunín.”
Astarion wipes his face. He paces around the kitchen, hands squeezing shut and flexing them open. His neck is very long and shapely, his shoulders smooth and sloped like the wings of a white bird.
“I, I know I should have…” Astarion murmurs to himself. “The police, c'est plus facile à dire qu'à faire — ah, excuse me, I mean it’s easier said than done. Going to the police.”
“I understand,” Wyll says. His voice is merciful.
“There’s, that Sartre quote that time makes me think of,” Astarion says. “Something about the crazy making sense to themselves, or their perceptions…”
“Les discours d’un fou, par exemple, sont absurdes par rapport à la situation où il se trouve mais non par rapport à son délire,” Wyll recites, fluidly. “A madman's ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness. It’s from his book, Nausea.”
Astarion is startled out of his pacing. He regards Wyll with new eyes. “Oui… That’s the one.”
Wyll rubbed his eyebrow. The late hour makes his false eye dry and itchy, but his eyedrops are on his bedside table in his unheated studio apartment in Frankfurt, six-hundred kilometres away.
“The Sûreté Nationale have always been so obsessive to find Szarr’s killer,” Astarion murmurs. He crosses his arms. “Despite the fact that he… well, Cazador had a lot of powerful friends. It upsets them that he might be murdered, and it makes them fear the own people they keep prisoner. It is the cow getting up to kill the butcher?”
Astarion returns to the counter, peering down at the glossy photos. He frowns and picks one up. Cazador was obsessive, and he labelled each photo his short, squarish cyrillic.
“Hold on,” Astarion feels the indents left by the ballpoint pen on the photos. “These are the originals. This is the actual evidence. How do you… I’m absolutely sure you are not supposed to bring these out of storage, no?”
“I told you I am not here to arrest you of this crime,” Wyll says. “However, it is clear that you are guilty.”
“So what?” Astarion asks with a snort. “It was thirty-two years ago. The statute of limitations has passed, I can’t be prosecuted.”
“You are not correct,” Wyll says. “The statute of limitiations is thirty years in this country, but he did not die in Stasbourg, France. On that night, the ambulance took him half an hour across the border to the Ortenau Klinikum Offenburg-Kehl in Kehl, Germany.”
“And the…” Astarion straightens up. “The statute of limitations on murder in Germany is?”
“We do not have one,” Wyll admits.
Astarion’s back hit the fridge. He looks as if Wyll had levelled a loaded rifle at him. Wyll carefully picks up all of the glossy photographs and packs them back together, sliding them into his inside coat pocket.
“You said you weren’t going to arrest me,” Astarion says, half a beg.
“I was not lying,” Wyll says. “I oversee a lot of these cases. Sometimes, one crosses my desk where no punishment is justified. A crime you can commit and remain innocent of wrongdoing, yes?”
“Yes,” Astarion echoes. “But — you were sent here, you can’t just let me go.”
“I was not sent here by Interpol,” Wyll says. “I merely jumped the gun. They will arrive here in around half an hour, depending on traffic.”
Astarion is rooted to the spot.
Wyll withdrew another small packet from his coat. He set it on the kitchen island. “I know a woman who is good at forging papers. I’m afraid your career of advertisement is over, which is a shame. Du bist sehr wunderschön.”
Astarion picked up the papers with numb fingers. The glossy new passport had his photograph and an unfamiliar name. “Birthplace… Corsica? And are these, train tickets to Lyon…”
“You have a villa there,” Wyll said. “The bureau does not know about it yet, but you will have to re-register it in your new name.”
Astarion looks up at him with large, pale red eyes. He looks almost childlike, big eyed, face awash with wonderment.
Astarion leans over the counter and kisses him.
It is a parisian kiss, filthy but suave, wine-soaked and hot. Astarion rolls Wyll’s lower lip between his sharp white teeth and licks into his mouth. He groans through his nose.
Wyll breaks away. His eyes are the colour of steeped tea, the false one a few shades too pale. “You must leave at once, Herr Ancunín.”
Astarion dashes out of the kitchen and throws a few essentials, mostly money, into a bag. He isn’t foolish enough to try to take anything large, only credit cards, shoes and some spare clothes and a bit of food. Wyll washes up the second wine glass and sets it back in the cupboard, disguising the only evidence of his presence in the house.
Before he leaves, Astarion kisses the sense out of him again.
“Visit me,” Astarion says into his mouth, breathlessly. “You must.”
“That would be a very bad idea,” Wyll says. But he doesn’t say no.
They part.
Wyll uses the front entrance, Astarion slips out through the back. The street outside is cold. Stars gleam like bayonet points. Car headlights blaze high and slide past.
Police sirens ring out in the empty street as Wyll turns the corner. Vehicles swing into view.
An officer catches Wyll by the elbow. “Pas un geste! Arrêtez-vous!”
Wyll looks down at him and quirks his eyebrow.
The officer releases his elbow awkwardly. “Sorry, ah… enjoy your holiday, Monsieur.”
“Thanks, mate,” Wyll says.
Police vehicles gather in the deserted street, late to the party. Two officers approach the handsome black mahogany door in formation, checking with their superior over their shoulder before slamming their fist on the wood and calling out. There is, of course, no response.
Night breeze blows cold and lonely through the bare tree branches, frothing up the piles of golden leaves on the pavement. Wyll takes out a cigarette and cups a hand against the wind to light it. The end of his cigarette glows, tiny and cherry red. He draws it in.
Smoking is a terrible habit. An addiction, like an old allegation or the memory of love, follows its prey everywhere. He breathes out and the smoke melts away.