Evangelium - Book 2 E-Book

Laporte Gilbert

• Herausgeber: Le Tram Noir - INT
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Evangelium
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 185

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A series of murders motivated by the theft of ancient manuscripts...

The discovery of a new corpse pushes Lieutenant Martin Delpech to search for leads in the abandoned lair of the former psychopath who the police had already killed.
In the absence of concrete evidence, the detective will play a dangerous game, outside of the law.
Meanwhile, the apocryphal gospels are turning neighbors and enemies alike covetous..

Join Lieutenant Delpech in the second volume of his gripping new investigation, which will bring him face to face with the violence of a fundamentalist psychopath, Vatican henchmen, religious extremists, and a messianic sect. Will he manage to escape this nightmarish struggle?

WHAT THE CRITICS THINK

A deep dive into the world of Catholic fundamentalism. For those with a thirst for theology.- HannibaLectrice,

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gilbert Laporte was born in Paris and lives in the south of France. He completed his higher education in Nice and worked as an executive at several large companies. He divides his leisure time between reading history, cinema, music, travel, and writing.

Leseprobe

Cover

Title page

1

ANTRUM

Claire felt abandoned by her husband, who was spending more and more time at conferences. She suddenly became pensive and gazed sorrowfully at her long, slender fingers, which she chewed down until they bledW.

It can’t go on like this…

Would she be capable of returning to work one day? Of having a social life again? She doubted it.

Mmmmmmh…

A moan from upstairs startled her. She listened anxiously for another noise. She was terrified at the thought of hearing voices again.

DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI.

DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI.

DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI…

The sound she had perceived was probably just the wind on the roof. However, the creaking resumed several times in a regular rhythm. For a moment, she imagined that the doll was walking back and forth across the rotting floor of the attic.

It was absurd.

Mmmmmmh… mmmmmmh…

Crazy. You’re going to end up going crazy. Crazy…

The whistling in the living room chimney confirmed to her that the wind had begun to blow in gusts. She got up to observe the trees at the back of the garden. Night was beginning to fall. The bare branches twisted violently, as if frenzied by the impending storm. Even the trunks swayed dangerously. It seemed as if the trees were desperately trying to flee from a heavy threat.

Claire squinted to better examine the darkness, apprehensive of catching a glimpse of the shining gaze that had frightened her so much.

Nothing…

The young woman realized that she could not live in anxiety and fear forever. She felt that she absolutely had to fight to avoid gradually sinking into madness.

It can’t go on like this… you’re going to ruin your marriage and your professional career. Do you want the kindest and gentlest of husband to leave you? For what? To wander around your home like a madwoman? Is that your existence? Do you want to destroy yourself when you’re young, and men find you beautiful? To gnaw your nails the nub? To toss and turn in your bed constantly, terrified of being sucked into a nightmare? To jump at every noise? To endlessly replay the same dark thoughts? To hear voices?

It’s stupid!

Claire sighed wearily, sat down on the living room sofa, and began to reread the letters she had received from her mother when she was ill. The paper had already started to yellow, as if to mark the time they’d been separated. Claire’s heart tightened as she saw that the handwriting, initially so controlled, became more and more shaky as the disease progressed. Her mother confessed in those lines the intensity of her love for her and her regret for not being able to give her a brother in the time she had left, which she now knew was very short. She also shared her fear of dying. She knew that her last breath would be in the pain of a body rebelling against the attacks of an incurable evil.

Claire had admired how her mother had fought until the end. As the end approached, the sick woman had tenderly recounted to her daughter all the memories she had of her childhood. Things that Claire, the young woman of today, knew, but also very old anecdotes that came back to life in the mind of a mother afflicted by a terminal illness.

Mom, I love you…

The computer scientist felt her heart warm even as it bled again from the wound of those lost moments. She threw the bundle of letters to the other end of the couch where she was sitting and tilted her head back to look at the ceiling, the green of her eyes lost in the void.

Not really a good idea to stir up the past in the state I’m in…

She rose painfully to head toward the desk facing the living room. Her head spun. She leaned against the wall for a moment to regain her composure. A lack of appetite had weakened her. From her usually slim build, she had become downright skinny. At this rate, anorexia was looming. She didn’t even dare look at herself naked in a mirror, she was so frightened by her hollow thighs and protruding ribs.

I wasn’t exactly chubby to begin with…

She couldn’t continue living like this. Her body disgusted her. Moreover, she realized that her sexual relationship with her husband was suffering. She could no longer find pleasure and wanted nothing from her husband except tenderness and a reassuring presence. Pierre was aware of this, and no longer sought her physically so as not to disturb her, but she knew that the situation could not last. She had to recover. She couldn’t let herself go, she had to rediscover the taste for battle.

But what was her daily life now? What did she do with her days?

Monday? I cried.

Tuesday? I cried again.

Wednesday? I wallowed in darkness…

Thursday? I cried again like a Mary Magdalene (as her scholarly husband would say)…

Friday? Total depression.

Etc.

I’m certain. It can’t go on like this…

Claire had a moment of emptiness, then an idea suddenly sprang to her wounded thoughts.

A crazy idea.

A mad idea!

At that moment, she saw only the solution of fighting evil with evil. To chase away her old demons once and for all, to start off on the right foot.

She had just made a decision.

INSANE!

To successfully confront her deepest fears, to extract them from herself and defeat them once and for all, she needed to return to the place where she had been held captive. She was certain that, thus confronted with the reality of the present, she would no longer relive the nightmare that had occurred in that place.

She decided to go to the basement of the abandoned factory.

To the former lair of the psychopath.

Into hell!…

2

FUMUS

It was very early on that Monday morning when Martin Delpech burst onto the sidewalk, beneath his Parisian home. He had barely had time to get dressed, gulp down a cold leftover coffee from the day before, and had rush down the stairs of his building.

About ten minutes earlier, Gilles Contassot had ordered him to eject himself from bed imediately. A new corpse had just been discovered with the infamous 666 mark on its forehead. The series of murders was indeed restarting. The lieutenant had expected it, but remained perplexed.

A brain as sick as Michel Valade’s was already exceptional, but two killers of that ilk…

A psychopath who copied another’s criminal methods exactly would be a first. Martin knew that this kind of individual generally had such an oversized ego that he wouldn’t accept playing the simple imitator. So, who could have an interest in committing these murders by staging them with similar religious symbolism? The policeman had the intuition that it might be another member of the same sect, but he still had difficulty imagining that two men could share such violent and cruel practices.

Shrek’s vehicle suddenly appeared at the corner of the street, interrupting his thoughts. Contassot had come with his personal car. Martin was surprised to discover a flashy red sports model, complete with a rear spoiler and chrome hubcaps.

The commander honked at Martin and rolled down the window to greet him.

““Get in the back, hurry up…”

The lieutenant complied, muttering grumpily:

“Good morning. I’m fine too, thanks…”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. I’m in a bad mood. I slept poorly, barely ate, and I’m cold. Other than that, everything is fine…”

As he sat down on the bench seat, he noticed his partner in the front right seat.

“Hello Farida.”

“Hello Marcel, I’m Djamila…”

“Oh!… Sorry…”

“No problem, but it’s going to be hard to learn the job with someone who has no memory…”

He didn’t even respond to his partner’s ironic jab, as he was too busy carefully buckling his seatbelt. Martin indeed hated things he could not control: going on amusement park rides or being a passenger in a vehicle twisted his fragile stomach with apprehension.

And with Contassot, he knew he was in for a ride…

The latter had a habit of driving roughly and aggressively tailgating the car in front of him. To add a little spice to the whole drama, he held the steering wheel with only his left hand, the right usually occupied with a sandwich or pastry, if not a beer…

The commander took off with a roar, leaving Martin glued to his seat.

“Did you see? My car is awesome!” Shrek exclaimed, like a delighted child.

This is starting off badly. He’s going to want to show off in front of the corporalcorporal…

The young policeman felt he was indeed in for a rough ride. Contassot had just turned on his car radio and cranked up the volume. He smoothed his mustache with satisfaction.

“Listen to this, he trumpeted. It’s too Top of the Pope!” he added in a rough approximation of English.

A powerful hard rock song suddenly roared in all four speakers, filling the cabin with distorted electric sounds. Delpech withdrew his head into his shoulders, grimacing under the assault of this morning’s aggression.

“It’s Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple,” Contassot shouted, struggling to be heard. “Live version, made in Japan, the best of all! The Tokyo concert in 1972. Fabulous! The sound is killer for its time… Those Japs are something else! No doubt about it.”

He raised both fists like a fan intoxicated by the music and slammed the brake pedal hard to avoid crashing into the vehicle ahead. He then waved his fingers in the air to play chords on an imaginary guitar neck and imitated the fierce and overamplified sound of Ritchie Blackmore’s Stratocaster, with fine spittle splattering on the windshield.

“Tcheu, tcheu, tcheu. Tcheu, cheu, cheu-cheu… »

Contassot suddenly raised an imperious index finger in the air.

“Listen to the bass coming in!”

At the same time, his car brushed against a pedestrian who insulted him profusely. He ignored him, too busy making the deep sounds of the electric bass by puffing out his flushed cheeks.

He then mimicked the cymbals that entered the scene in a mechanical rhythm.

“Tchin, tchin, tchin…”

Then he continued on to the drums, which supported the two string instruments with its powerful rhythm.

“Boum-tchac, boum-tchac…”

Martin was sinking deeper into his seat.

Unbearable!

WE ALL CAME OUT TO MONTREUX…

Shrek was now rhythmically clapping his hands on the steering wheel. The vehicle lurched abruptly in time with the saturated riffs.

“When I think that Ritchie Blackmore devoted himself to medieval music and performs on stage in tights and a feathered hat… him, the inventor of neo-classical hard rock. What a waste!…”

ON THE LAKE GENEVA SHORELINE…

He shrugged, looking disgusted.

“Medieval music… pfff… music for sissies, yeah…”

Martin, who preferred jazz, and wasn’t a morning person, closed his eyes to seek a modicum of isolation.

Damn it, it can’t be true! He’s on fire this morning, the boss…

Djamila, for her part, was half-worried by the vehicle’s rapid and swaying course, and half-amused by her brigade chief’s behavior. She constantly watched him out of the corner of her eye and tried to imagine him thirty-five years younger, with long hair and dressed like a rock star.

Difficult, though…

BUT SOME STUPID WITH A FLARE GUN…

She jumped and let out a small frightened cry; at the same time her seatbelt suddenly restrained her in her forward lurch. Contassot had slammed on the brakes once again. The tires groaned in a cloud of smoke and the smell of burnt rubber.

BURNED THE PLACE TO THE GROUND…

A motorcyclist stopped alongside the vehicle to call the commander a “jerk” and reproach him for his dangerous erratic driving. The policeman gave him a pronounced middle finger that offended the man. The latter immediately dismounted his motorcycle, ready to confront him.

Shrek rolled down his door window and waved his police badge under the man’s nose.

“Get lost, jerk, or I’ll haul you into the station!”

The other, his paperwork probably not totally in order, turned around muttering and got back on his two-wheeler. Martin rolled his eyes in exasperation, while Djamila struggled to stifle a laugh at her chief’s grotesque driving. The latter noticed it almost immediately.

“What’s wrong?” he grumbled. Do I have a runny nose?

He took off again with a roar, which immediately wiped the half-smile off the young woman’s face.

SMOOOOKE ON THE WAAAATER,

A FIRE IN THE SKY…

Hard music does not have a reputation for softening manners. Indeed, it only excited Contassot’s explosive nature. He drove roughly the whole way. Delpech was starting to feel nauseous and opened the back window to cool his face. After two red lights skipped, a cyclist who had narrowly escaped death, and a winding drive along a sidewalk in the heart of Nanterre, the policemen finally arrived on a quiet alley along the Seine upstream of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.

Djamila noticed the sign reserving the road for bicycles.

“It’s prohibited for cars,” she indicated.

“I don’t care, we’re cops,” replied her chief graciously, as hard rocks riffs surged once again…

HIGHWAY TO HELL!

He parked the vehicle on the sandy roadside and turned off the music player.

DON’T NEED REASON, DON’T…

Of course, Captain Salvat was already on site, trying to keep his spot at the top of the class. Waiting for the arrival of the forensic police, he was examining the victim from two meters away to avoid contaminating the crime scene.

The naked, bloodied body lay on the sloping bank, with its feet soaking in the river.

“So, Spock, first deductions?” Contassot asked, observing the fully tortured corpse.

“It’s either a guy who bites his nails down to the bone with very pronounced eczema, or someone ripped his nails and pieces of flesh off with pliers all over his body, including his face. He stinks too! It’s disgusting; it looks like he took a bath in shit… we’re lucky it’s not fly season…

The forehead of the dead bore the usual 666 mark burned into it.

“Ze noumbere of the beaste,” Contassot announced, his accent rendering his attempt at English incomprehensible.

“Excuse me?

“Ze noumbere of the beaste.” It’s a song by Iron Maiden.

???

“Ironne Maidene,” the commander insisted with his thick rural accent. It’s a hard rock band. I’m not surprised you don’t know. You look like you listen to rap.”

“Rap? Certainly not! That’s music for n…”

“OK, we get it, racist,” Djamila cut in, shooting him a glare.

Shrek turned to Martin Delpech, who was swaying and pale as a sheet.

“What do you think?”

“The throat was sliced open with a scalpel, but the wound is not bloody and must have been made post-mortem.”

“If it’s an imitation of the surgeon, why did he kill him, in your opinion?” Djamila asked.

“I think it’s obvious. Sin of the flesh…” Martin replied before running to vomit at the foot of a tree.

Contassot looked at the scene with surprise.

“What’s happening to him? He’s becoming very sensitive…”

“Maybe he can’t stand sitting in the back of the car,” Djamila proposed ironically, bringing a paper tissue to her partner.

“Yet the road to get here wasn’t winding…” Contassot noted with a doubtful look.

3

DAEMON

Claire found herself comfortably settled on the couch in her living room, quietly engrossed in a historical novel, when she thought she heard her mother calling her. The voice seemed to come from upstairs.

“Mom?” Claire asked, her tone high-pitched like it had been in her childhood.

She approached the staircase and peered anxiously up to the upper level. Her mother appeared, standing on the landing, motionless and pale in her blue hospital gown.

She beckoned Claire to come up.

“Come,” she said in a pleading tone, without moving her lips.

Claire blinked, trying to confirm that this was not a mere apparition.

“Mom?” she repeated in her childlike voice.

She jumped. Her mother suddenly vanished, but the attic hatch was now open, and the access ladder leaned against the wall as an invitation to climb.

“Come, don’t be afraid,” reassured the voice.

Claire climbed the rungs with apprehension and flipped the switch for the attic light. She squinted, trying to better see inside. The room was barely illuminated by the dim glow of the bulb, dust particles dancing around it.

She moved cautiously.

“Come,” whispered the voice, now seeming to come from the dark depths of the room.

Claire took a few steps forward, her arms extended to avoid hitting a support beam. As she passed by her doll, she didn’t notice that its crushed head was slowly turning to follow her steps with its only remaining eye.

Claire let out a small cry of surprise.

A frantic metallic sound echoed behind her. The sewing machine started stitching furiously into the void...

Claire screamed again and spun around to escape this place of madness.

Run!

She abruptly halted her movement.

The mannequin stood directly in front of her, its bare torso blocking her way out. She was stunned and fell heavily backward into some boxes she knocked over. Meanwhile, the hatch slammed shut with a dull thud, and a metallic creak made her understand that the lock had closed, sealing her in the attic. Her mother’s laughter escaped from the doll’s mouth.

I’m going crazy...

The bulb on the ceiling began to swing at the end of its cord, taking on a rapid pendulum motion. The light created a ballet of furtive shadows that began to glide sneakily behind the boxes and the dusty old furniture. The bulb eventually struck a beam, shattering in a shower of sparks. The attic was then plunged into darkness, barely pierced by thin rays of sunlight filtering through the tiles.

The worst was yet to come.

Near the hatch, in the dim light, stood Michel Valade in his blue surgeon’s coat, wearing his face mask and splash goggles. He held a scalpel in his left hand and, in his right, a branding iron, glowing with the three digits of the demon.

666.

Claire panicked.

She was cornered at the back of the attic. Trapped. She shot frantic glances around her. She had to find a solution. Urgently. Valade moved towards her mechanically, slicing the air with his sharp blade. Claire grabbed a few vinyl records from a stack and hurled them at the killer’s face. It was a gesture as desperate as it was ineffective. The surgeon dodged with his head and took another step toward her. The young woman seized an old toaster beside her and threw it with all the energy her survival instinct could muster. The psychopath took the appliance full in the face and seemed dazed. She seized the opportunity to push him. He toppled backward. Claire took the chance to slip between him and a large moving box. She thought she was saved. It was not to be. Valade managed to grab her arm as she passed. He pulled her down with him. Claire desperately tried to cling to a stack of books. They toppled onto her. She took a heavy old dictionary to her chest, knocking the wind out of her. The back of her head then struck the ground. She was now half-stunned, at Valade’s mercy. She vaguely saw the surgeon rise and make a circular motion with his wrist to slash her face. She protected herself with the flat of her left hand. The scalpel tore into her palm. A gaping wound opened in her flesh. Blood splattered onto her white polo shirt. Already the attacker was charging again. This time he aimed for her throat.

A sharp crack suddenly echoed.

The silhouette of the killer evaporated.

The grim attic setting was immediately replaced by the more reassuring decor of the Demange couple’s bedroom.

Claire awoke shivering. She had dozed off in her bed, and the sound of her book falling to the floor had fortunately ended her hallucinations.

What a horrible nightmare!

She had a vague awareness of having dreamed, but everything had seemed so real that she could no longer discern the boundaries between reality and the fantasies swirling in her tormented brain. Yet she remained convinced that Valade was rising from the grave to haunt her. This man was an archangel of death, and he would never stop torturing and killing those who did not believe in God. He had to return to persecute the living...

Heart still racing and back drenched in sweat, she reached out her hand to find her husband’s body in the left side of the mattress.

…

He’s gone!

The bed was empty.

She pressed her hand flat against the sheet.

The right side of the bed where her husband had slept was cold.

After a brief moment of confusion in her mind, she remembered that Pierre was away in Marseille for a conference. She also recalled that she had decided to take advantage of his absence to visit the abandoned factory.

Claire sat up on the bed and began to hastily style her hair with her fingers. Her night had truly been terrible.

I’m going to look awful again…

She yawned wide and jumped up suddenly to give herself courage. With Pierre having taken the car to the Gare de Lyon, she had a long bike ride ahead of her to get to the old factory. As she opened the shutters, she saw a sky dressed in a beautiful bright blue. She thought it must be cold, but at least it wouldn’t rain on her way.

That’s something…

She quickly took a hot shower, put on a tracksuit and sneakers, and grabbed a small green backpack she had prepared the day before, keeping it a secret from her husband.

Claire hurried down the wooden stairs leading to the ground floor of the house and went to the kitchen to drink some piping hot tea and nibble on a bit of toast with jam. She then stuffed a few chocolate cereal bars into her pocket, in case hunger struck her on the way.

Courage, my girl!

It was time for her to face her demons and put an end to her anxieties once and for all.

At least, I hope so…