The Madonna of Notre Dame by Alexis Ragougneau, Katherine Gregor Page B

prick-teasing like that, or I’m really going to lose it. So you start hitting her like a punching bag, isn’t that true, Thibault? You hit her until she’s bleeding, until my pal Mourad intervenes with all the subtlety he’s famous for. Am I not right so far, Thibault? Isn’t that exactly what happened?”
    “That doesn’t prove anything.”
    “So then you leave and go for a walk until the evening. And then, at about nine or ten, you’re horny again. You need to go and see your Virgin Mary on the big screen. Who knows? Maybe you can even touch yourself a couple of times in the dark. And who should you see, right there in the darkness, in the middle of Notre Dame? Our pretty little thing in a miniskirt. In the dark, you can see nothing but her. I swear she glows in the dark in her white dress, just like an apparition. Right, Thibault? So you wait awhile, you wait for her to get up and go for a stroll, light a candle by some statue or other in a dark corner, and then you pounce on her. And you know what happens next, Thibault? Thestupid fool starts screaming. She tries to call for help. So you put your hand over her mouth, your hand over her nose, and then you start panicking. Of course, Rejoice, Mary is blasting from the movie speakers at full volume. But even so, she keeps wriggling around, right, Thibault? So then what do you do? You put your arm around her neck and you pull, you squeeze, you crush as hard as you can. Until your madonna isn’t moving anymore. She’s still, totally still, and beautiful, still and beautiful like a statue. Tell me, Thibault, tell me that’s how it happened.”
    “It’s not true, inspector. Your story’s completely off base.”
    “You and your mother are beginning to seriously piss me off with this ‘inspector’ business. This isn’t Inspector Maigret! It’s ‘captain!’ From now on you call me ‘captain!’”
    “All right, captain.”
    “And what happened next? You let them lock you in? Did you hide deep inside one of the chapels with the dead girl in your arms and wait for the cathedral to close? Is that it? You were lucky, you know, Thibault, lucky Mourad didn’t do his rounds that night. Once you were alone with her, you had all the time you wanted to do all that disgusting stuff with the wax. You had all the time in the world to redo her virginity with candles. It’s so much more reassuring for lunatics like you, isn’t it—a woman reduced to the state of a statue, white, virgin, dead, who you can’t do anything to anymore. A relic. Nothing left to do but worship her. And then what? What happened? You calmly waited for the cathedral to reopen in the morning, did you? Is that it? You went out whistling a happy tune, finally calmed down, your hands in your pockets. Is that it?”
    “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I was in bed asleep.”
    “You’re really starting to tick me off, Thibault. Let’s see how clever you are later, in front of the committing magistrate.”
    “What time is it?”
    “Why do you want to know?”
    “No reason.”
    “What time is it, Gombrowicz?”
    “It’s after eleven.”
    “What’s the smile for?”
    “You can only keep me in custody for another hour.”
    “You think we’re going to let you go?”
    “Twenty-four hours, captain. It’s the law.”
    “You wait and see, Thibault. Here, when we like people, we have the right to keep them a little longer. I hope you like your room and your roommates at the prison, because you might just have to spend another night there. Gombrowicz? Call the little magistrate for me, will you?”

    He had formed an opinion about their methods. The violence with which he’d seen them arrest their suspect in the glass confessional had inspired in him nothing but fear and contempt. Would Krzysztof, for whom anyone in a uniform was suspect and possibly an enemy, agree to speak to them? Would he repeat what he’d seen in the garden behind the cathedral the night of the murder? The chances