The Frozen Dead (62 page)

‘But Maud Lombard never stayed at the holiday camp.'

‘So what? She'd run away several times. She often hung out with people who were a bit sketchy. And got home late. She must have encountered them somewhere, the way I did.'

Servaz was thinking on his feet. His theory was getting sharper. An incredible solution … He had no more questions. His head was spinning again. He massaged his temples and stood up painfully.

‘There might be another idea we haven't envisaged,' he said.

*   *   *

D'Humières and Confiant were waiting for him in the corridor. Servaz walked up to them, struggling with the sensation that the walls and the floor were moving and he was going to lose his balance. He massaged the back of his neck and took a deep breath – but it wasn't enough to rid himself of the strange feeling that his shoes were filled with air.

‘Well?' said the prosecutor.

‘I don't think she did it.'

‘What?' exclaimed Confiant. ‘You're joking, I hope!'

‘I don't have time to explain it to you now: we have to move fast. In the meantime, keep her in custody if you want. Where's Chaperon?'

‘We're trying to get him to confess to the rape of the teenagers at the holiday camp,' replied d'Humières frostily. ‘But he refuses to say a thing.'

‘There's no statute of limitations, is there?'

‘Not in so far as new evidence will let us reopen the investigation. Martin, I hope you know what you're doing.'

They exchanged a look.

‘I hope so too,' he said.

His head was spinning; his skull was pounding. He headed towards the reception and asked for a bottle of water, and took one of the tablets Xavier had given him before going out to the Jeep.

How could he tell them his theory without infuriating Confiant and putting the prosecutor in an awkward position? There was one question still nagging him. He wanted to be absolutely sure before he laid his cards on the table. And he needed a second opinion – from someone who could tell him if he were on the right track, above all someone who would tell him how far he could go without overreaching. He looked at his watch. Twelve minutes past nine in the evening.

*   *   *

The computer.

She switched it on. Unlike Xavier's, it required a password.
Well, well.
She checked the time. She'd already been in the office for an hour.

Problem: she was no hacker. For ten minutes or more, she racked her brains in search of a password, tried keying in various versions of Julian Hirtmann and Lisa Ferney, but none of her pathetic attempts worked. She went back to the drawer where she had seen a folder containing personal documents and started with telephone and Social Security numbers, trying forwards and backwards, then date of birth, a combination of the head nurse's first and middle names, a mix of her initials and her date of birth, all to no avail.
Shit!

Her gaze fell on the salamander.

She typed ‘salamander' and ‘rednamalas'.

Nothing.

She looked one more time at the animal. With a sudden wild thought she picked it up and turned it over. On its belly was inscribed, ‘Van Cleef & Arpels, New York.' She keyed the names into the computer. Nothing.
Shit! This is ridiculous! Like one of those stupid spy films!
She tried reversing the names. Nothing there either.
What did you expect, girl? We're not at the cinema!
At a total loss, she tried the initials on their own: VC&ANY. Nothing. So, backwards now: YNA&CV.

Suddenly the screen began blinking, then loaded the operating system. Bingo! Diane could not believe her eyes. She waited for the desktop to appear.

The game can begin.
But time was passing. Nine thirty-two.

She prayed that Lisa Ferney really would be out all night long.

*   *   *

The emails.

There were over a hundred, from a mysterious Demetrius.

For each of them, in the subject column was written: ‘Encrypted email.'

She opened one and found nothing but incomprehensible symbols. Diane knew what this meant, for it had happened to her at university: the certificate used to encrypt the message had expired and as a result it was no longer possible for the recipient to decrypt it.

Her mind was racing.

As a rule, to avoid this problem, the recipient was advised to save the messages right away. That is what she would have done in Lisa Ferney's shoes. She opened ‘My Documents' and then ‘My Inbox' and saw it at once: a folder entitled ‘Demetrius'.

Lisa Ferney had not taken any further precautions: her computer was already locked and she knew that no one would have dared to go into it anyway.

Lisa

I'm in New York until Sunday. Central Park is all white and there's an arctic cold. It's magnificent. I think about you. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat and I know that I've been dreaming about your body, your lips. I hope to be in Saint-Martin in ten days' time.

Éric

Lisa

I'm leaving Friday for Kuala Lumpur. Can we meet before that? I'll be at the chateau. Come.

Éric

Where are you, Lisa?

Why haven't I heard from you? Are you still angry with me? I have a present for you. I bought it at Boucheron. Very pricey. You'll love it.

Love letters. Well, emails. There were dozens of them. Perhaps even hundreds. Spread over several years.

Lisa Ferney had carefully saved them. All of them. And they were all signed by ‘Éric'. Éric travelled a great deal, Éric was rich, and Éric's wishes were more like commands. Éric favoured striking images and was a pathologically jealous lover.

Waves of jealousy wash over me and every one leaves me gasping for breath. I wonder who you're fucking. I know you, Lisa: how long can you go without a piece of meat to stuff between your thighs? Swear to me that there is no one else.

And sometimes, when neither threats nor grievances seemed to work, Éric would indulge in self-mortification.

You must think I'm a filthy bastard, a complete idiot. I don't deserve you, Lisa. I was wrong to think I could buy you. Can you forgive me?

Diane scrolled down to the end, moving forward in time to the present day. She saw that his tone had changed in the more recent emails. It was no longer just a love story. Something else was going on.

You're right. The time has come to take action. I've waited too long: if we don't do it now, we'll never do it. I haven't forgotten our pact, Lisa. And you know that my word is my bond.

Seeing you so strong and determined gives me courage. I think you're right: no legal system on earth will give us peace of mind. We have to do it ourselves.

We have waited so long. But I think the time is ripe.

Suddenly her finger froze on the mouse. Footsteps in the corridor. She held her breath. Whoever was coming knew that Lisa had gone out; they would be surprised to see a light under the door.

But the footsteps went by without stopping.

She exhaled and went on scrolling through the messages, swearing softly to herself. She felt more and more frustrated. So far she had absolutely nothing concrete, only allusions and innuendos.

Five more minutes and she'd get out of there. She went through the last thirty messages systematically.

We have to talk. I have a plan. A terrible plan. You know what a gambit is, Lisa? In chess, a gambit is the sacrifice of a pawn at the beginning of the game in order to gain a strategic advantage. That is what I'm getting ready to do. The gambit of a horse. But the sacrifice breaks my heart.

The horse,
she thought, holding her breath.

Her heart felt as if it were going to burst out of her chest, but when she opened the next message, she went deeper into the darkness.

Did you get the order? Are you sure he won't notice that you made it using his name?

Her eyes wide open, her mouth dry, Diane looked at the date: 6 December … There was no answer in the folder, for this or any other messages, but she didn't need one: the last piece of the puzzle had slotted into place. Now her two theories were one. Xavier was investigating for the simple reason that he was innocent and knew nothing: he hadn't placed the order for the anaesthetics. It was Lisa Ferney, in his name.

Diane leaned back in the chair and thought hard. The answer was obvious. Lisa and this man Éric had killed the horse – and probably the chemist as well.

In the name of a pact they had made together long ago – a pact they had finally decided to honour.

Her thoughts were racing. Time was short.

With what she knew now, she had enough to go to the police. What was the name of that cop who had come to the Institute? Servaz. She sent the last message to the printer under the desk and reached for her phone.

*   *   *

In the headlights the trees emerged from the night like a hostile army. This valley loved darkness and secrecy; it hated outsiders nosing around. Servaz blinked, his eyeballs aching, and stared through the windscreen at the narrow road winding through the woods. His temples felt like they were about to explode. Snowflakes were hurling towards the car, where they were lit like brief comets as they passed. He had Mahler on full volume, the Sixth Symphony. With its air of pessimism and foreboding it was the perfect accompaniment to the blizzard's howls.

How much sleep had he got in the last forty-eight hours? He was exhausted. For no apparent reason he thought about Charlène again. This, and the tenderness she'd shown him in the art gallery, warmed him slightly. His phone began to buzz.

*   *   *

‘I'd like to speak to Commandant Servaz.'

‘Who's calling?'

‘My name is Diane Berg. I'm a psychologist at the Wargnier Institute and I—'

‘He can't be reached at the moment,' interrupted the gendarme at the other end of the line.

‘But I have to speak to him!'

‘Leave me your number; he'll call you back.'

‘It's urgent!'

‘Sorry, he's gone out.'

‘Maybe you could give me his number.'

‘Listen, I—'

‘I work at the Institute,' she said, her voice as reasonable and firm as possible, ‘and I know who it was who got Julian Hirtmann's DNA out. Do you understand what that means?'

There was a long silence at the other end of the line.

‘Could you say that again?'

She complied.

‘Just a minute. I'll connect you with someone.'

The line rang three times, then: ‘Captain Maillard, how can I help?'

‘Look,' she declared, ‘I don't know who you are, but I need to speak to Commandant Servaz. It's extremely important.'

‘Who are you?'

She explained for the second time.

‘What do you want from him, Dr Berg?'

‘It's about the deaths in Saint-Martin. As I just told you, I work at the Institute – and I know who got Hirtmann's DNA out of there.'

This last piece of information left the captain speechless. Diane wondered if he had hung up.

‘Good,' he said finally. ‘Do you have something to write on? I'll give you his number.'

*   *   *

‘Servaz.'

‘Good evening,' said a woman's voice on the other end. ‘My name is Diane Berg. I'm a psychologist at the Wargnier Institute. You don't know me, but I know you: I was in the room next door when you were in Dr Xavier's office and I overheard your entire conversation.'

Servaz almost told her that he had no time, but something about her tone kept him from interrupting.

‘Can you hear me?'

‘I'm listening. What do you want, Madame Berg?'

‘Mademoiselle. I know who killed the horse. And it's almost certainly the same person who got Julian Hirtmann's DNA out of there. Would you like to know who it is?'

‘Just a minute,' he said.

He slowed down and pulled over onto the verge, in the middle of the woods. All around him the wind was twisting the trees; branches clawed against the light of the headlights, like in an old German Expressionist film.

‘Go ahead. Tell me everything.'

*   *   *

‘You say that the author of the emails is called Éric?'

‘Yes. Do you know who it is?'

‘I think so, yes.'

Parked at the edge of the road, in the middle of the forest, he thought about what this woman had just told him. The idea he had begun to entertain after the cemetery, and which had become even more plausible when Irène Ziegler revealed that Maud had surely been raped, had just been reconfirmed. And what a confirmation.
Éric Lombard
 … He thought again about the watchmen at the power plant, their silence, their lies. Right from the start he had been certain they were hiding something. Now he knew that it wasn't guilt that had made them lie; they had lied because they'd been forced to. Either they'd been blackmailed or their silence had been bought – probably both at the same time. They had seen something but had preferred to stay silent and to lie, even if it meant drawing suspicion upon themselves, because they knew they weren't equal to the situation.

‘Have you been digging into this for long, Mademoiselle Berg?'

She took a moment to reply.

‘I've only been at the Institute for a few days,' she said.

‘It could be dangerous.'

A new silence. Servaz wondered how much danger she was in. She was no cop; she had probably made mistakes. And she found herself in an inherently violent environment, where anything could happen.

‘Have you told anyone else?'

‘No.'

‘Listen carefully,' he said. ‘This is what you're going to do: do you have a car?'

‘Yes.'

‘Fine. Leave the Institute at once, get into your car and drive down to Saint-Martin before the snowstorm stops you. Go directly to the gendarmerie and ask to speak to the chief prosecutor. Tell her I sent you. And tell her everything you just told me. Do you understand?'