Alex (11 page)

“A
fillette
,” Louis says.

“A what? What are you talking about?”

“The cage. It’s a
fillette
.”

And seeing that Camille is still puzzled: “A cage that makes it impossible to stand or sit.”

Louis stops. He doesn’t like to flaunt his cleverness; he knows what Camille’s like … But this time Camille gives an exasperated nod – come on, get on with it.

“It’s an instrument of torture created under Louis XI for the bishop of Verdun. He was kept in it for ten years. It’s a passive but very effective torture. The joints fuse, the muscles atrophy … and it drives the victim insane.”

They can see the girl’s hands frantically gripping the slats. It’s enough to turn your stomach. The last photograph shows only part of her face and three large rats scuttling across the top of the cage.

“Fucking hell …”

Camille tosses the phone to Louis as though afraid of burning his fingers.

“Check the date and time of the images.”

Camille’s not much use when it comes to technology. It takes Louis precisely four seconds.

“The last photograph was taken three hours ago.”

“What about calls? The calls!”

“Last call was ten days ago …”

Not a single call since he abducted the girl.

Silence.

No-one knows who this girl is or where he’s been keeping her.
The one person who did know has just been hit by an articulated lorry.

Camille picks two images from Trarieux’s mobile, including the one with the huge rats. He types a text to the magistrate, copying the message to Le Guen:

Now that the “criminal” is dead, how do you suggest we focus on the victim?

When Alex opened her eyes, the rat was staring at her centimetres from her face, so close it seemed three or four times its actual size.

She screamed, and it scurried back to the basket then darted up the rope where it hung for a long time, whiskers twitching, uncertain as to its next course of action, gauging the level of the threat. And the potential benefits of the situation. She screamed and swore, but the rat ignored her efforts, clinging to the rope, head down, staring at her. The pinkish nose, the glittering eyes, the glossy coat, the long white whiskers and that tail that seems to go on for ever. Alex is numb with terror, unable to catch her breath. She shouted herself hoarse, but, being very weak now, eventually she had to stop and the two stared at each other for a long time.

Motionless, the rat dangles about forty centimetres above her then, cautiously, climbs down into the basket and starts eating
the kibble, shooting frequent looks at Alex. From time to time, suddenly panicked, it scampers away to take cover only to quickly return. It seems to realise she is no threat. It is hungry. It’s an adult rat, about thirty centimetres long. Alex crouches down in her cage, as far away as possible. She stares at the rat with a fury all the more absurd since it is intended to keep the animal at bay. It’s eaten the dog food now, but it doesn’t scamper back up the rope. Instead it moves towards her. This time Alex doesn’t scream, she squeezes her eyes shut and cries. When she opens them again, the rat is gone.

*

Pascal Trarieux’s father. How did he find her? If her brain weren’t so slow she might be able to think of an answer, but her thoughts now are frozen images, like photographs: nothing is moving. Besides, what does it matter how he found her? She has to negotiate; it’s her only option. She has to come up with a story, something credible, anything that will persuade him to let her out of this crate – after that, she’ll think of something. Alex gathers all the information she can, but her thought process goes no further. A second rat has just appeared.

A bigger rat.

The king rat, maybe. Its coat is much darker.

This one did not crawl down the rope to the basket, no, it darted down the rope supporting the cage and appeared just above Alex’s head. And unlike the previous rat, it didn’t scurry away when she screamed and swore at it, simply moving in short, fitful bursts, until it could rest its forepaws on the top of the crate. Alex can smell the acrid stench of it; it is a fat, sleek rat with long white whiskers and deep black eyes. Its tail is so long that it dangles between the slats and touches Alex’s shoulder.

She screams. The rat turns unhurriedly to look at her, then paces up and down the slat three or four times, stopping from time to time to stare at her as though taking measurements. Alex follows it with her eyes, her whole body tensed, her breathing ragged, her heart beating fit to burst.

That’s what I smell like, she thinks; I smell of shit and piss and vomit. It smells carrion.

The rat rears up on his hind paws, sniffing.

Alex’s eyes move up along the rope.

Two other rats have just begun their descent towards the cage.

The building site at the old outpatient clinic looks as if it’s been overrun by a film crew. The R.A.I.D. team have left, forensics have laid dozens of metres of cable, and the courtyard is flooded by the glare of spotlights. It’s the middle of the night, but there’s not an inch of shadow anywhere. Sterile walkways have been created, marked off with red and white police tape, making it possible to walk around without contaminating the scene. The forensics crew are collecting evidence.

What they need to find out is whether Trarieux brought the girl here at any point after the abduction.

Armand likes to have people milling around. As far as he’s concerned, a crowd is first and foremost a ready supply of
cigarettes. He glides easily past those he’s already scrounged off too often before they get a chance to warn newcomers; he’s already stocked up enough to last him four days.

Standing in the courtyard, he finishes a cigarette whose stub has begun to burn his fingers and gazes perplexedly over all this activity.

“Well?” Camille says. “I’m guessing the magistrate didn’t hang around?”

Armand thinks about saying something, but he’s philosophical; he’s learned the virtue of patience.

“It’s not like he came out to the crime scene on the Périphérique either,” Camille goes on. “Pity, because it’s not every day you get to see a criminal apprehended by an articulated lorry. Still …”

Camille deliberately checks his watch. Armand, unflappable, stares at his shoelaces. Louis seems to be mesmerised by the outline of an excavator.

“Still, at three in the morning, he’s probably getting some kip. I mean, coming out with that level of bullshit all day long must take it out of a man.”

Armand drops the microscopic remnant of the cigarette butt and sighs.

“What? What did I say?” Camille says.

“Nothing,” Armand says, “nothing. So are we going to do some fucking work or what?”

He’s right. Camille and Louis elbow their way through to Trarieux’s apartment, which is also crawling with techs from
l’identité judiciaire
, and since the place isn’t exactly roomy, everyone tries to rub along.

Verhœven takes a general overview. It’s a smallish apartment, rooms tidy, crockery tidied away, tools set out like a hardware
shop window and an impressive stockpile of beer. Enough to get all of Nicaragua pissed. Apart from that, no papers, no books, not even a notepad: an illiterate’s apartment.

There is one curious thing about the scene: a teenager’s bedroom.

“The son, Pascal,” Louis says, checking his notes.

Unlike the rest of the apartment, this room obviously hasn’t been cleaned in ages; it smells of must and damp mouldering laundry. There’s an Xbox 360 with a wireless controller caked with dust. Only the huge screen of the state-of-the-art computer looks as though it’s been recently cleaned, probably a quick wipe with the back of a sleeve. A crime scene examiner is already checking the contents of the hard drive before it’s taken away for a thorough analysis.

“Games, games, more games,” the tech reports, “internet connection …”

Camille goes on listening as he checks out the contents of a wardrobe being photographed by another officer.

“Porn sites …” adds the guy checking out the computer. “Video games and porn. My kid’s just the same.”

“Thirty-six.”

Everyone turns to look at Louis.

“Trarieux’s son is thirty-six,” Louis says.

“O.K.,” the C.S.E. says. “Well, that obviously puts things in a different light …”

In the wardrobe, Camille itemises Trarieux’s arsenal. The building site security manager plainly took his job very seriously: baseball bat, cosh, knuckledusters – he went on his rounds fully equipped. Surprising not to find a pit bull.

“The pit bull here is Trarieux,” Camille says to Louis, who
had made the observation. Then, to the officer checking the computer: “Anything else?”

“Couple of e-mails. Not many. Then again, given the guy’s spelling …”

“Your kid’s just the same?”

This time the officer looks irked. It’s different when he says it.

Camille peers at the monitor. The guy’s got a point. From what he can see the messages are inoffensive, the spelling almost phonetic.

Camille snaps on the latex gloves proffered by Louis and picks up a photograph someone has found in a chest of drawers. A snapshot clearly taken a couple of months ago since it shows the son with his father on the building site; you can see the site and the bulldozer through the window. Not exactly a handsome lad, tall and lanky with the face of a spoiled brat, a long nose. He thinks of the images of the girl in the cage. Distraught but still pretty. Not exactly a matching pair.

“Looks thick as pigshit,” Camille mutters.

She’s remembered something, something she heard somewhere. Whenever you see a rat, there’s nine others nearby. So far she’s seen seven. They’ve fought over the rope, but especially over the kibble. Strangely, the biggest rats don’t seem to be the most
voracious. They seem to be strategists. Two in particular. Utterly oblivious to Alex’s screams, her insults, they spend most of their time on the top of the cage. The thing she finds most terrifying is when they sit up on their hind paws and sniff the air. They’re huge, monstrous. Over time, some of the rats become more insistent as though they’ve worked out that she does not represent a threat. They become bolder. Earlier this evening a medium-sized rat, trying to scrabble over the others, fell through the slats and landed on her back. Nauseated by the physical contact, she let out a scream – there was a brief uncertainty among the other rats, but the disturbance didn’t last long. A few minutes later, they were back in their serried ranks. One of the rats – a young one, Alex suspects – is particularly persistent, particularly greedy; it creeps right up and sniffs her, she inches away, but it just keeps coming – it retreats only when she screams at the top of her lungs and spits at it.

Trarieux hasn’t been for a long time now, a day at least, maybe two. Now another day drags on. If only she could know what day it is, what time it is … She’s surprised he hasn’t been, surprised he’s missed three or four visits in a row. What worries her is that she might run out of water. She tries to save as much as she can and, fortunately, managed to drink very little yesterday. She has almost half a bottle left, but she was relying on him to bring more. And the rats are less skittish when they’ve got dog food; when there’s none, they become irritable and impatient.

Ironically, what panics Alex is the thought of Trarieux abandoning her. Of him leaving her in this cage to die of starvation, of thirst, watched by the beady eyes of rats that will surely become more daring before long. The larger rats are already
looking at her in a worrying way; she can’t help but ascribe intentions to their behaviour.

Since she saw the first rat there’s never been a period of more than twenty minutes when one or other of them didn’t scuttle across the top of the cage or scrabble down the rope to check for kibble.

Some of them swing in the wicker basket, staring at her.

Seven o’clock in the morning.

The divisionnaire has taken Camille to one side.

“Listen, this case – I need you to play it straight, O.K.?”

Camille doesn’t promise anything.

“Well, that’s a good start …” Le Guen says.

And he’s right. From the moment Vidard shows up, Camille can’t help throwing the door open, gesturing to the photographs of the young woman that have now been pinned to the wall and announcing: “Since you’re so focused on the victim,
monsieur le juge
, this should make your day. She seems perfect.”

The pictures have been enlarged and plastered on the wall so that they look like S.&M. porn. They truly turn your stomach. In one shot, all that is visible of the girl’s haunted face is a horizontal strip framed by two slats; her body, curled into a foetal position, looks broken, the head tilted, pressed against the top
of the cage. In another, a close-up of her hands, the fingernails bleeding probably from clawing at the wood. Another shot of her hands, clutching a bottle of water clearly too big to fit between the slats. You can picture the prisoner having to drink out of the palm of her hand like a castaway. Clearly she’s not been allowed out of the cage because she’s been forced to relieve herself as she squats there and her legs are spattered with filth. Dirty, bruised, she’s been beaten, probably raped. But the pictures are all the more disturbing because she is still alive. It’s impossible to imagine what lies in store for her.

But faced with this spectacle, and in spite of Camille’s taunting, the magistrate remains calm, studies the photographs one by one.

Everyone falls silent. Everyone meaning Armand, Louis and the six detectives Le Guen has seconded to the case. Coming up with a team like that at a moment’s notice took some doing.

The magistrate, his face solemn and pensive, moves slowly along the line of photographs. He might be a junior minister opening an exhibition. He may be a stupid little fool and a bastard, but he’s not a coward, Camille thinks as the man turns to face him.

“Commandant Verhœven,” he says, “I know you disagree with my decision to storm Trarieux’s residence; for my part I disagree with the way you have been running this investigation from the beginning.”