The Frozen Dead (54 page)

‘No.'

A shadow passed over the huge man's face. Once again she looked him in the eyes. Mr Atlas shrugged and turned away.

She followed him, her heart pounding.

‘You've got a visitor,' said the guard after opening the cell door.

Diane walked in. She could see the surprise in Hirtmann's gaze when their eyes met.

‘Good morning, Julian.'

The Swiss man didn't answer. He seemed to be in a bad mood. His good spirits from before had vanished. It was all she could do not to turn on her heels and go back out before it was too late.

‘I didn't know I'd have visitors today,' he said finally.

‘I didn't know either,' she replied. ‘At least not until five minutes ago.'

This time he seemed genuinely disconcerted and she felt something almost like satisfaction. She sat down at the little table and spread her papers before her. She waited for him to come and sit opposite, but he didn't; he merely continued to pace in front of the window like a beast in its cage.

‘As we will be meeting regularly,' she began, ‘I would like to clarify a few things, to set up a framework for our sessions and get an idea of how things work here.'

He stopped pacing to give her a long, suspicious look, then started up again wordlessly.

‘You don't mind?'

No answer.

‘Well, for a start, do you get a lot of visits, Julian?'

Once again he stopped to stare at her before continuing to pace to and fro, his hands clasped behind his back.

‘Any visits from outside the Institute?'

No answer.

‘And here, who visits you, Dr Xavier? Élisabeth Ferney? Who else?'

No answer.

‘Do you ever talk with them about what goes on outside?'

‘Has Dr Xavier authorised this visit?' he asked suddenly, stopping right in front of her.

Diane forced herself to raise her head. He looked down on her from his full height.

‘Well, I—'

‘I'll bet he didn't. What exactly are you doing here, Dr Berg?'

‘Well, I just told you, I—'

He tutted. ‘It's incredible how lacking in psychology you psychiatrists are. I may have good manners, Dr Berg, but I don't like to be taken for a fool.'

‘Are you aware of what goes on outside?' she asked, abandoning her professional tone.

He seemed to be thinking. Then he sat down, leaning forward with his forearms on the table, his hands crossed.

‘Do you mean those murders? Yes, I read the papers.'

‘So, you get all your information from the papers?'

‘What are you implying? What is going on outside that has got you in this state?'

‘In what state?'

‘You seem terrified. But not just terrified. You're like someone who's looking for something, or even like an animal, a little burrowing animal, that's what you look like just now, like some dirty rat. If you could see your face! Good God, Dr Berg, what is the matter with you? You can't stand it here, is that it? Aren't you afraid you'll disrupt the smooth running of this place with all your questions?'

‘You sound just like Dr Xavier,' she said mockingly.

He smiled.

‘Oh, no, please! Look, the first time you came in here, I could tell you weren't at home. This place … What did you expect to find? Evil genies? You'll find nothing but sorry psychotics, schizophrenics and pathetic paranoid patients here, Dr Berg. And I include myself in that. The only difference between us and the people outside is the violence. And believe me, it's not just among the patients.'

He spread his hands.

‘Oh, I know that Dr Xavier has a – let's say
romantic
vision of things. That he sees us as maleficent beings, the emanations of Nemesis and other such rubbish. He thinks he has been entrusted with a mission. For him this place is some sort of Holy Grail of psychiatry. It's pure bullshit.'

While he was speaking, his expression grew ever darker and harder, and she could not help but recoil.

‘It's no different here from anywhere else – there's nothing but filth, mediocrity, shoddy treatment and drugs in high doses. Psychiatry is the greatest swindle of the twentieth century. Look at the medication they use: they don't even know why it works! Most of it was discovered by chance.'

She stared at him intensely.

‘Tell me where you get your information,' she said. ‘Does it all come from the papers?'

‘
You're not listening to what I'm saying.
'

He said this in a loud, authoritarian voice. She jumped. She sensed she was going to lose him; she had blundered, missed something. He was going to close himself off.

‘I am, yes, I am listening—'

‘You are not listening to me.'

‘Why do you say that? I—'

Suddenly she understood.

‘What did you mean by “It's not just among the patients”?'

A thin, fierce smile spread across his face.

‘You can see, when you want to.'

‘What is that supposed to mean, “It's not just among the patients”?

What are you talking about? Madmen? Criminals? Murderers? Are there some among the
staff
?'

‘I rather like talking to you, after all.'

‘Who are you talking about, Julian? Who is it?'

‘What do you know, Diane? What have you found out?'

‘If I tell you, how do I know that you won't repeat it?'

He burst out laughing, a horrible, unpleasant laugh.

‘Oh, come now, Diane! This sounds like a bloody film! What do you think? That I'm actually interested? Look at me: I will never get out of here. So there could be an earthquake out there and I wouldn't care one way or the other – or at least as long as it didn't break these walls in two.'

‘They found your DNA at the place where the horse was killed,' she said. ‘Did you know that?'

He observed her for a long time.

‘And how did you know?'

‘It doesn't matter. Well, did you know or not?'

He made a little grimace that might have been a smile.

‘I know what you're looking for,' he said. ‘But you won't find it here. And the answer to your question is: I know everything, Diane. Everything that goes on outside and inside. Rest assured, I won't tell anyone about your visit. I can't be sure that Mr Atlas will be as discreet, though. Unlike me, he is not free to do as he pleases. That's the paradox. And you should go. The head nurse will be here in fifteen minutes. Get out of here! Leave this place, Diane. You're in danger…'

*   *   *

Espérandieu sat thinking at his desk. After Marissa's call an idea had come to him. He couldn't stop thinking about the money she had mentioned: $135,000. What could such an amount correspond to? At first glance, the $135,000 seemed to have nothing to do with their investigation. At first glance … and then he had his idea.

It seemed so ridiculous that he shoved it out of his mind.

But his stubborn idea would not go away. What would it cost to find out? By eleven o'clock he had made up his mind. He picked up the telephone. The first person he called was very reluctant to give him a straight answer at first. Such matters should not be discussed over the phone, even with a cop. When he quoted the figure of $135,000, however, he learned that that was roughly the rate charged for the distance involved.

Espérandieu felt his excitement growing.

Over the next thirty minutes he made half a dozen more calls. The first ones came up with nothing. Every time he got the same answer: no, nothing like that for that particular date. His idea was beginning to seem ridiculous again. The $135,000 could mean so many things. But then he had made one final call and this time, bingo! He listened to the answer with a mixture of incredulity and exhilaration. Had he hit the bullseye? Was it possible? A little voice tried to temper his enthusiasm: it might, of course, simply be a coincidence. But he didn't think so. Not with that exact date. When he hung up, he still couldn't believe it. Incredible! With just a few phone calls, he had progressed the investigation by leaps and bounds.

He looked at his watch: ten to five. He wanted to tell Martin about it, but then he changed his mind: he needed definitive proof. He grabbed the phone and feverishly dialled yet another number. Finally, he had a lead.

*   *   *

‘How are you feeling?'

‘Not great.'

Ziegler was staring at him. She seemed almost as upset as he was. Nurses came in and out. A doctor had examined him and taken several X-rays before wheeling him back to the room on a gurney, even though he was perfectly capable of walking.

Xavier sat waiting in the hospital corridor for Ziegler to take his statement. There was also a gendarme posted outside Servaz's door, which was suddenly flung wide open.

‘What happened, for the love of Christ?' cried Cathy d'Humières as she strode up to the bed.

Servaz tried to keep it short.

‘And you didn't see his face?'

‘No.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘All I can say is that he was bloody strong. And that he knew how to go about attacking someone.'

Cathy d'Humières gave him a long, dark look.

‘This can't go on,' she said. She turned to Ziegler. ‘Put a hold on any case that's not urgent and get all available staff on to this one. What have we got on Chaperon?'

‘His ex-wife has no idea where he might be,' answered Ziegler.

Servaz remembered that Ziegler had gone to Bordeaux to meet her.

‘What is she like?' he asked.

‘Uppity. Snobbish, sunbed tan, too much make-up.'

He couldn't help but smile.

‘Did you ask her about Chaperon's character?'

‘Yes. It's interesting: the minute I mentioned him, she clammed up. All I got was the usual stuff: his mountain-climbing, politics, the friends who monopolised him, their divorce by mutual consent, lives that ended up heading in different directions and so on. But I got the feeling she was hiding something important.'

Servaz remembered Chaperon's house: their separate bedrooms. Like Grimm and his wife. Why? Had their wives discovered their terrible secret? Servaz thought that had to be the truth, one way or another. Perhaps – no, surely – they had merely suspected a fraction of the whole. But the widow Grimm's scorn for her husband, and her suicide attempt, and the former Madame Chaperon's reluctance to talk about her private life came from a common source: these women knew how deeply perverse their husbands were, even if they did not know the extent of their crimes.

‘Did you ask her about what we found in the house?' he asked Ziegler.

‘No.'

‘Do it. There's not a minute to lose. Call her and tell her that if she is hiding something and her husband is found dead, she will be the prime suspect.'

‘All right. I found something else of interest,' she added.

Servaz waited.

‘Élisabeth Ferney, the head nurse at the Institute, had several brushes with the law when she was young. Petty crimes. Stolen scooters, insulting a police officer, drugs, assault and battery, extortion. She was up in court several times.'

‘And she got a job at the Institute in spite of that?'

‘It was a long time ago. She got back on track, did her training. She worked in several other psychiatric hospitals; then Wargnier, Xavier's predecessor, took her under his wing. Everyone is entitled to a second chance.'

‘Interesting.'

‘In addition, Lisa Ferney goes regularly to a bodybuilding club in Saint-Lary, twenty kilometres from here. And she belongs to a rifle club.'

Servaz and d'Humières were instantly on the alert. A thought occurred to Servaz: his intuition at the Institute might have been correct. Lisa Ferney had the profile … Whoever had hung the horse up there had to be very strong. And the head nurse was stronger than some men.

‘Keep digging,' he said. ‘You may be on to something.'

‘Ah, yes, I almost forgot: the tapes.'

‘Yes?'

‘It was just birdsong.'

‘Ah.'

‘Right, I'm off to the town hall to see if they have that list of the children who went to the holiday camp,' she concluded.

‘Ladies, I must ask you to let the commandant get some rest,' boomed a voice from the doorway.

They turned round. A doctor in his thirties wearing a white coat had just come in. He had a dark complexion and thick black eyebrows that almost met in the middle of his forehead. On his coat Servaz read ‘Dr Saadeh.' He came up to them with a smile. But his eyes were not smiling, and his thick brows were knitted together in a stern expression that made clear that in this place, prosecutors and gendarmes must bow to a higher authority, the doctor's. As for Servaz, he had already started pushing back the sheets.

‘There's no way I'm staying here,' he said.

‘And there is no way I am letting you leave just like that,' retorted Dr Saadeh, placing a friendly but firm hand on his shoulder. ‘We haven't finished examining you.'

‘Well then, be quick,' said Servaz, resigned, flopping back against the pillows.

But as soon as they had all left, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

*   *   *

At that very moment, a police officer picked up the phone in the massive stronghold of the Interpol General Secretariat at 200, quai Charles-de-Gaulle in Lyon. The man sat in the middle of a vast open-plan office full of computers and other machines, with a panoramic view over the Rhone. There was also a decorated Christmas tree, whose star rose above the cubicles.

He frowned when he recognised the voice of the person at the other end.

‘Vincent? Is that you? How long has it been, my friend? What are you up to?'

Second only to the UN in terms of membership, Interpol covers 187 countries. Its central services do not, however, constitute an actual police force – it is, rather, an intelligence service consulted by the member states' police forces for its expertise and databases – which include files on 178,000 criminals and 4,500 fugitives. A service that issues several thousand international arrest warrants every year: the famous ‘red notices'. The man who had just answered his phone was called Luc Damblin. Espérandieu had known Damblin, like Marissa, at police academy. The two men exchanged a few polite words; then Espérandieu got straight to the point.