Chapter 20

Deep-down, Raoul was a romantic. His early photos were atmospheric, subtle and moody, and all, without exception, rejected: “Not enough blue sky” they said. Readers don’t want reality.
Two years of resentful unemployment followed. Then the penny dropped, or didn’t: he had no money. “If that’s what they want, let them have it.” And the infinite variety of lacewing mist transformed itself into garish butterflies of vulgar obviousness. But they sold. A rainbow for every cloud.
For years, he wandered across the globe taking memorable photos of snow-capped mountains, forests of gold and umber, and shimmering fields bedecked with buttercup and daisy.
Now, he was beginning to saturate. On his returns to civilisation, he called on old friends and colleagues, inquiring, without realising it, into other fields: satisfaction, money, openings...
And Marco was happy to foist off the icy blonde the agency sent round. He was too busy anyway, his hands were full with an Italian starlet of liquid eyes and staggering cleavage.
So while Marco was out splashing around in fountains. Raoul stayed and photographed. Then they had lunch together.
He was amazed: so easy! And so well paid.

The change that came over his studio was miraculous. The backdrops hanging feebly from the ceiling were ripped down in a flurry of dust. Fresh ones were put up. The galoshes, anoraks, umbrellas and hats were tidied away and the walls repainted. It needed it.
When William turned up, his astonishment was shared between the glistening newness and a life-size blow-up on the wall. It was the same photo as in the magazine.
“Well, Raoul, I see you’ve forsaken the unscalable heights of rugged outcrop for somewhat more accessible topographical features.”
Raoul laughed. He loved William’s way of turning a straightforward comment into a flight of pedantic word-mongering.
“Pretty girl, isn’t she?”
“She is indeed, and how long’s this been going on for? Noticed it in one of Amie’s magazines.”
Raoul put some coffee on and told his long and sorry tale of gradual disenchantment.
“You’re not going to stop completely, are you? I’ve got a beautiful project I want to do with you.” To answer the “What’s that?”, William told him about a contact he’d made with somebody from the Regional Tourist Boards, “I mean, have you seen the stuff they produce? You do the landscapes, and I’ll do the wildlife”.
“Maybe. Nothing’s decided yet so I just don’t know. Listen, why don’t you go on ahead and if the worst comes to the worst, we can always use some of my old ones. Got millions of the bloody things.”
“Yes, but the whole point of it all is offering photos especially taken for them by two well-known ‘artists’.”
Raoul looked at him for a minute, pensively, then the shape of a smile escaped the furrowed lines of thought. “They were,” he stated bluntly.
William began to smile too. “Hmm, I see what you mean...”
“Quite honestly,” said Raoul, “if I have to take one more filtered facsimile of a landscape, I’ll go mad.”
“Alright, let’s forget it for the moment, I’ll do the necessary and get back to you on it.”
“OK. And what sort of prices are we talking about anyway? Because I don’t know whether you realise it but I’m getting paid more than twice for this than I ever got for my bloody picture postcards.”
“Umm, see what you mean.”
“Surprises me you’ve never done it yourself, it’s right down your street.”
“Never mix business with pleasure, old boy.”
William had, in fact, been proposed glamour on more than one occasion. He always turned it down. It was not because he couldn’t, he could, and did it well. It was a question of involvement, he didn’t like the artificial relationship between model and photographer. Everything seemed so stiff and strained. For him, it had to be real. The photos he took meant something to him, each one. For him, there was only one moment for doing nudes: afterwards, when they were both relaxed. Again, for his private collection, the photos were in black and white and taken in subdued lighting: not the sort of thing to go down well in the gynaecologicals. So he left the bees where they were and stuck to the birds and beasts.
“Yes,” continued Raoul, “I must admit it wasn’t easy concentrating on the job but then, judging by Marco, I suppose you get used to it.”
“Good God, I hope not!”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, ’course I do. Come on then, let’s have a look at what else you’ve done.”
As they flipped through the pages of his newly-begun book, Raoul commented thoughtfully: “Beautiful, isn’t she? And she’s not even a pro, only does it for pin-money.”
“Really?”
“Yes, she’s a student from Norway, very serious girl she is too, working her way through a Ph.D. on something to do with Norwegian influence on French courtly love or whatnot.”
“Well, give her my telephone number, I have a little influence myself I might be able to use.”
“Yeah,” Raoul smiled back, “and you can keep your grimy mitts off, mate, she’s mine.”
“Oh? Already?...”
“Well...”
“It’s alright, I’m only pulling your leg.”
“I know you are, but I’ve got another job coming up with her soon...”
“Aha!”
“Yup, they make various products so they want a range of positions.”
“Range of positions, eh! Very interesting... Well if you, er, need any help, just give me a call, I’d be perfectly willing to lend a hand.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you would, you dirty bastard, but don’t you worry about me, I can do perfectly well on my own, thank you.”
Upon which, with a friendly grin from each side, William departed.

William was glum. Another of his hare-brained schemes had fallen flat on its face. And with it went a very good excuse for an all-expenses-paid holiday to Africa. He’d spent two weeks doing nothing but read up on it and all the while a vital fact had been staring him in the face: Passion was dead.
Still, some of the stuff he’d read was food for thought, there might be a way out yet. One book he read said that cannibalism was normal in 138 different species. But then perch, damselflies and slugs could hardly be called crowd-pullers.
What about praying mantises? They’re newsworthy little beggars. While he’s slipping the ring on, she’s already at the wedding breakfast. Could easily sell that to one of the women’s weeklies, just the sort of thing they’d like, put it next to the recipes.
No, it’s got to be something with a bit more pizzazz. And it’s got to happen fairly often, you can’t hang about for months on end, so that ruled out gorillas and baboons, and the chimpanzees again. Leopards? No, too solitary. Maybe the lions? Trouble with them is they’ve got such inscrutable expressions compared to the apes.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
“Huh?”
“I said a penny for your thoughts.”
“No, much more than a penny. Fancy a trip to Africa?”
“Not tonight, darling, you promised to take me out.”
He was in one of his moods. Generally, Anne-Marie just left him to get on with it and waited until it blew over or a triumphant look of satisfaction gave the all-clear. But she was getting hungry.
“Well come on, let’s go and eat then you can tell me all about it. And I would like to go to Africa.” Apart from three sweltering days interpreting in Abidjan, she’d never been there.
There was a very interesting-looking Crozes-Hermitages on the wine list. That woke him up a bit and shook off the silent rumination.
“So, where are you thinking of?”
“Not really sure, somewhere in east Africa probably, but I don’t even know whether it’ll work.”
“Whether what will work, my darling? Do you realise you’ve been sulking for three quarters of an hour and I don’t know what you’re talking about?”
“I wasn’t sulking, I was excogitating matters of great intellectual import.”
“She must be very pretty.”
William eyed her in exasperation.
“Sweet child, if you seriously think my attentions are drawn to the great apes, you do yourself no flattery at all. Remember that chimpanzee I told you about?”
“The one that ate babies?”
“Yes, well she’s dead.”
“Good thing too by the sound of it.”
“Well, maybe it is, but it buggers my plans up completely.”
Anne-Marie wasn’t entirely displeased. Going to Africa was one thing, watching animals kill other apart was another.
“I was wondering whether I could do something on lions...”
“Bit dangerous, isn’t it?”
“Maybe, but I’m not sure anyway, it lacks the human element. Just big lions killing little lions and no Greek chorus-line screaming in the background. Can’t see it myself...” He trailed off and sunk into thought again. He wasn’t even concentrating on his food. That was a bad sign. “Damn, it’s such a bloody nuisance, it would have been perfect for my book.”
“Yes, but you don’t want to make it too gruesome, do you?”
“No, I know, but it was the psychological aspect. I mean, I can’t remember the exact words, but when Passion gave birth to her daughter, Pom, Goodall described her maternal behaviour as extraordinarily inefficient and indifferent.”
“Maybe it was, but being a bad mother doesn’t automatically mean you’ll end up being a cannibal.”
“Of course not, no. But... You know that thing I told you about the infant macaque deprived of its mother and being totally incompetent at rearing her own offspring later on. Well, the first thing that struck me about this was that Passion herself must have been rejected by her own mother at a very early age.”
“Oh come on! How on earth can you be so sure?”
“I’m not sure at all, but you could infer it from the macaque’s behaviour. Happens in humans too. The point I’m trying to make is it seems to me that Passion learned to identify babies or the state of being a baby with something violently negative.”
“Well why didn’t she eat her own then?”
“Mm, good point... Hadn’t thought of that. No idea. Maybe she did before the study got going, don’t know. Anyway, the whole thing is pure speculation on my part. Goodall spoke about it as meat-eating behaviour.”
There was silence once again as each of them ate. William continued mulling things over.
“Damn, damn, damn!”
“What’s the matter now?”
“There’s something about it I just can’t figure out. When she attacked the mothers to get the baby, there was all hell let loose and then, as soon as it was over, you know what one of the mothers did? She approached the killers while they were eating her own infant and Passion reached out and embraced her.”
“Crikey, that does sound weird. I know what I’d do if anyone even tried anything like that on me.”
“I can believe you... But the whole thing’s a bit complicated. She was only once seen doing it when there were males around, and then they did get angry with her, but it’s possible they saw her doing it at other times and didn’t. I mean, she wasn’t ostracised or attacked, things just went on more or less as normal.”
“And?...”
“Well, it’s the reactions.”
“What about them?”
It was exactly that the problem: he didn’t know. Since his last blitz on the bookshop, he’d been devouring data on serial killers to see how it applied to Passion. Apart from oddbods like the Bundy groupies and suchlike, serial killers are universally frowned upon. Passion was not. Serial killing is not considered normal, bus she did not seem to be treated as abnormal. But maybe it depends on how you define ‘normal’. In certain tribes of human, cannibalism was normal. Cannibalism was stated as normal for those 138 species. You could hardly accuse a crow of being abnormal for protecting its next year’s territory and getting a meal into the bargain. Domestic pigs might be questionable, they have more than enough food, but who knows what goes on inside a sow’s mind? So where do you draw the line? Between humans and the rest? Too easy. A thousand years ago, rape, pillage and hatchet-work were worth a 2.1 in sociology. What will people think about us eating live oysters a hundred years from now?
“Now what are you thinking about? I wish you’d pay a little attention to me once in a while.”
“I’m sorry, my Plum, I’m not quite with it this evening.”
“I noticed...”
‘Not quite with it’ was right. He knew he was not thinking clearly. There was something wrong somewhere. What logical flaw had he committed? He paused for a moment, then his eyes lit up.
“Got it! Remember that cheese we ate in Sardinia, the Casu Marzu?”
“What, that disgusting thing with maggots in it? You ate, you mean. I wouldn’t go near it with a barge pole.”
“Yes, it was rather strong.”
“Strong’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Exactly, but you eat live oysters, live whelks, live sea urchins...”
“I know, but maggots! Revolting! Horrible squirmy...”
“That’s it! You’re not used to them, that’s all, if you’d been brought up in Sardinia, you’d love ’em.”
“Well, I’m not sure about that...”
“Anyway, forget that. You know what it is? It’s not a question of normality at all, its acceptability, current norms of social acceptability. Passion’s cannibalism was accepted for the wrong reasons: the general act was ‘normal’ and socially acceptable, but her specific act - in which I suspect the meat-eating was incidental and secondarily triggered by ‘normal’ cues - would not have been acceptable if the underlying reasons were perceived.”
“Could you write that down for me?”
“She was a serial killer.”
“I’ll take you word for it.”
“Don’t. Never believe somebody who’s trying to prove something.”
“Especially you?”
“Especially me.”
“Well, now you’ve got that sorted out, what are you going to do, deprive another infant of its mother and wait for thirty years?”
William burst out laughing.
“God knows!”
“Why don’t you do something on serial killers then, if you’re so obsessed with them?”
“I am not obsessed with serial killers. What interests me is the question of normality and social acceptability, and sanity.”
“Sanity? You’re not going to tell me your serial killers aren’t insane, I hope.”
“I wish you’d stop referring to them as mine. By getting caught, they come into the public domain. And they are not all mad.”
“How can you say they’re not mad? They kill people.”
“Gets back to definitions again. How do you define mad? It’s a bit of a blanket-term at the best of times and, at worst, it’s too easy. What about butterfly collectors? Nobody calls them mad, but look at it: the behaviour borders on the obsessive. I mean, discounting the killing aspect, what do you do with a collected butterfly? Look at it? Line it up with others? Count them? And I suspect they’re less numerous than murderers, so it can probably be classed as statistically abnormal.”
“You’re splitting hairs.”
“I know, but seriously, I don’t think that people like Kemper or Bartsch or Gacy and others were mad. They had an understandable logic of revenge, and revenge is a very common human trait.”
“Maybe it is.”
“And there’s another thing too. Everything that’s known is based on those who got caught. What about the ones that didn’t?” William’s brain knee-jerked. “Now, that would make an interesting topic: the one that got away.”
“Wonderful! And how do you propose finding them? Put an ad in Le Monde?”
William smiled. “Yeah, why not? ‘Wanted: unapprehended serial killer to take part in a photo-documentary for worldwide publication, victims provided. Phone Anne-Marie on 42 67...’.”
“No, I think it would be best you use your own phone number, darling, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh go on, be a sport! You’d make excellent bait! And I’d be there to take the photos so you wouldn’t be alone.”
“Delightful! Very kind of you to offer me instant fame but no thanks, you can find somebody else to do your dirty work!”
“Ah, but not as lovely as you, you have that pure feminine radiance, that glamorous, sensual, animal magnetism...”
Anne-Marie listened to his voice as it gradually softened to a deep murmuring caress. She looked into his eyes and, with the faintest of smiles, said “That’s right, lay it on thick... I’m sure that with your charm and power of persuasion you could find someone willing to play the part, couldn’t you, my love? Handsome boy like you...”
Oh God, she’s off again. “Actually, you’re right about the fame bit. I’m convinced that many of them would leap at the opportunity. Anyway, the point is academic. Think of it: a) you’ve got to find somebody willing, and b) present it in such a way as to protect his identity. The whole thing is impossible, completely and utterly impossible.”
“Impossible is not French.”
“Maybe it’s not, but you’d be the first to wish it were if one of them knocked on your door.”
“I’m sure I would, but that’s hardly likely, is it?”
“Aha! You see?”
“Point taken. OK, so if you’ve got no rendezvous intime with an urban werewolf and no little bushbabies waiting for you to point your grubby lens at, what about some of that animal magnetism you mentioned earlier?” ¶ 3:31 AM