The Whisperer (8 page)

The reason for so much media euphoria was simple. The graveyard of arms had been a public relations disaster, but now at last they had a name to give the nightmare.

Mila had seen it happen on other occasions. The press had clung tenaciously to the story and in a very short time they would be trampling indiscriminately over every aspect of Bermann’s life. His suicide amounted to an admission of guilt. For that reason the media would insist on their version. They would put him in the role of monster without allowing any contradiction, trusting solely in the force of their unanimity. They would cruelly tear him to pieces, just as he was supposed to have done to his little victims, but without seeing the irony of the parallel. They would extract liters of blood from the whole business, just to spice up the headlines and make them more enticing. Without respect, without fairness. And even when someone was bold enough to point it out, they would take refuge behind the handy idea of “press freedom” to conceal their unnatural prurience.

Mila and Boris made their way through the little crowd, entered the exclusion zone set up by the law-enforcement officers and walked quickly along the drive to the front door of the house, unable to avoid being dazzled by a few camera flashes. At that moment Mila caught Goran’s eyes on the other side of the window. She felt absurdly guilty because he had seen her arriving with Boris. And then stupid for having thought such a thing.

Goran turned his attention back to the inside of the house. Shortly afterwards, Mila stepped through the door.

Stern and Sarah Rosa, with the help of other detectives, had already been there for a while, and were bustling around like worker ants. Everything had been turned upside down. The officers were painstakingly examining furniture, walls and anything else that might be able to reveal a clue to the mystery.

Once again, Mila had been unable to join in the search. Besides, Sarah Rosa had immediately barked in her face that she had only observation rights. So she started looking around, keeping her hands in her pockets so that she didn’t have to justify the bandages wrapped around them.

What attracted her attention were the photographs.

There were dozens of them arranged around the place on tables and chests of drawers, in elegant walnut or silver frames. They showed Bermann and his wife in happy times. A life that now seemed far away and impossible. They had done a lot of traveling, Mila noticed. There were pictures from all over the world. But as the pictures became more recent and their faces older, their expressions seemed veiled. There was something in those photographs, Mila was sure of it. But she couldn’t say what it was. She had had a strange feeling as she walked into that house. Now she thought she had a clearer sense of what it might be.

A presence.

Amidst all the comings and goings of the police officers, there was another spectator. Mila recognized the woman in the photographs: Veronica Bermann, the wife of the alleged murderer. She could tell immediately that the woman was proud by nature. She maintained an attitude of decorous detachment as those strangers touched her things without asking her permission, violating the intimacy of those objects, those memories, with their invasive presence. She seemed not so much resigned as consenting. She had offered to cooperate with Chief Inspector Roche, confidently asserting that her husband had nothing to do with those terrible accusations.

Mila was still watching her when, turning round, she found herself confronted with an unexpected spectacle.

There was an entire wall covered with
preserved butterflies
.

They were in glass frames. There were strange ones and beautiful ones. Some of them had exotic names, which were quoted along with the place of origin on a bronze plate. The most fascinating ones came from Africa and Japan.

“They’re beautiful because they’re dead.”

It was Goran who said it. The criminologist was wearing a black jumper and wool trousers. Part of his shirt collar stuck out of the neck of his pullover. He came and stood next to her to get a better look at the butterfly wall.

“When we see something like this we forget the most important and most obvious thing…those butterflies will never fly again.”

“It’s unnatural,” Mila agreed. “And yet it’s so seductive…”

“That’s exactly the effect that death has on some individuals. That’s why serial killers exist.”

Goran made a small gesture. That was all it took for all the members of the team to gather around him immediately. A sign that even if they seemed entirely absorbed in their own tasks, they were really still looking at him, waiting for him to say or do something.

Mila had confirmation of the great trust that they placed in his hunches. Goran guided them. It was very strange, because he wasn’t a police officer, and cops—at least the ones she knew—had always resisted putting their trust in civilians. It would have been more accurate for the group to call themselves “the Gavila team” than “the Roche team,” particularly since Roche, as usual, wasn’t there. He would only appear if incontestable evidence appeared that would nail Bermann once and for all.

Stern, Boris and Rosa took up their positions around the criminologist, according to their usual pattern. Mila remained a step behind: afraid of feeling excluded, she excluded herself.

Goran spoke in a low voice, immediately catching the tone with which he wanted the conversation to proceed. He probably didn’t want to disturb Veronica Bermann.

“So, what have we got?”

Stern was the first to reply with a shake of his head: “There’s nothing in the house to link Bermann to the six little girls.”

“His wife seems to be in the dark about everything. I asked her a few questions, and I didn’t have the feeling that she was lying,” added Boris.

“Our men are going over the garden with the corpse dogs,” said Rosa. “But there’s nothing so far.”

“We’ll have to reconstruct all of Bermann’s movements over the past six weeks,” observed Goran and everyone agreed, even though they knew it would be an almost impossible task.

“Stern, is there anything else?”

“No strange movements of money in his account. The biggest bill that Bermann has had to foot over the past year was a course of artificial insemination for his wife, which set him back a fair bit.”

Listening to Stern’s words, Mila realized what it was that she had felt just before entering the house and then looking at the photographs. Not a presence, as she had thought at first. She had been wrong.

It was more of an
absence
.

What she had noticed was the lack of children in this house, which, with its expensive and impersonal furnishings, was a house created for two individuals who feel destined to remain alone. That was why the course of artificial insemination mentioned by Officer Stern seemed contradictory, since in that place you couldn’t even feel the anxiety of someone expecting the gift of a child.

Stern concluded his exposition with a quick sketch of Bermann’s private life. “He didn’t use drugs, he didn’t drink and he didn’t smoke. He had a card for a gym and one for a video store, but he only rented documentaries about insects. He went to the local Lutheran church and, twice a month, worked as a volunteer at a rest home.”

“A saintly man,” said Boris sarcastically.

Goran turned towards Veronica Bermann to check if she had heard that last remark. Then he turned to look at Rosa: “Is there anything else?”

“I’ve scanned the hard disk of the home and office computers. I’ve also recovered all deleted files. But there was nothing of interest. Just work, work, work. The guy was fixated on his job.”

Mila noticed that Goran had suddenly become distracted. It didn’t last long, and he soon returned to concentrate on the conversation. “What do we know about his Internet use?”

“I called his web server and they gave me a list of the web pages he had visited over the last six months. Nothing there, either…It seems he has a passion for sites dedicated to nature, travel and animals. And he bought antiques online and, on eBay, mostly collectible butterflies.” When Rosa had finished her report, Goran folded his arms again and started looking at his colleagues, one by one. That brief look took in Mila, too, and at last she felt involved.

“So, what do you think?” he asked.

“I feel as if I’ve been dazzled,” Boris said suddenly, emphatically underlining the phrase with a hand screening his eyes. “He’s too
clean
.” The others nodded.

Mila didn’t know what he was referring to, but she didn’t want to ask. Goran slid a hand over his forehead and rubbed his weary eyes. Then that
distraction
appeared on his face once again…it was a thought that took him elsewhere for a second or two, and suggested that the criminologist was filing something away for future reference. “What’s the first reason for investigating a suspect?”

“We all have secrets,” said the diligent Boris.

“Exactly,” said Goran. “We all have a weakness, at least once in our lives. Each of us has one secret, big or small, that we can’t own up to…and yet look around: that man is the prototype of the good husband, the good believer, the great worker,” he said, marking out each word on his fingers. “He’s a philanthropist, a health fanatic, he only rents documentaries, he has no vices of any kind, he
collects butterflies
…Can you believe in a man like that?”

This time the reply was taken for granted. No, you couldn’t.

“So what’s a man like that doing with the corpse of a little girl in his boot?”

Stern cut in: “He’s having a cleanup…”

Goran agreed: “He casts a spell on us with all this perfection to keep us from looking elsewhere…and where are we not looking at this moment?”

“So what do we have to do?” asked Rosa.

“Start from the beginning. The answer is there, among the things you’ve already examined. Go through everything again. You’ve got to remove that brilliant coating covering it all. Don’t be deceived by the glare of the perfect life: that glitter is only there to distract us and muddle our ideas. And then you’ve got to…”

Goran wandered off again.
His attention was elsewhere.
This time they all noticed. Something was finally materializing in his head, and growing.

Mila decided to follow the criminologist’s eyes as they moved around the room. They weren’t simply lost in the void. She noticed that he was looking at something…

The little red LED flashed intermittently, marking out a rhythm of its own as a way of attracting attention.

Gavila asked in a loud voice: “Has anyone listened to the messages on the answering machine?”

The room instantly froze. They stared at the phone, winking its red eye at everyone, and immediately felt guilty, exposed by that glaring oversight. Goran paid no attention, and simply went and pressed the button that activated the little digital recorder.

A moment later, the darkness regurgitated a dead man’s words.

And Alexander Bermann entered his house for the last time.

“Erm…It’s me…Erm…I haven’t much time…But I wanted to tell you I’m sorry…I’m sorry, for everything…I should have done it before, but I didn’t…Try to forgive me. It was all my fault…”

The communication broke off and a stony silence fell over the room. Everyone’s eyes, inevitably, came to rest on Veronica Bermann, who was as impassive as a statue.

Goran Gavila was the only one who moved. He walked towards her and gripped her shoulders, entrusting her to a policewoman to lead her into another room.

It was Stern who spoke for everyone: “Well, ladies and gentlemen, we would seem to have a confession.”

S
he would call her
Priscilla
.

She would adopt the method used by Goran Gavila, who gave an identity to the murderers he was hunting down. To humanize them, to make them more real in his eyes, more than just fleeting shadows. So Mila would christen victim number six, giving her the name of a luckier little girl who was now—somewhere, who knows where—going on being a little girl like so many others, unaware of what she had escaped.

Mila took the decision on the way back to the motel. An officer had been given the task of taking her there. Boris hadn’t offered his services this time, and Mila didn’t blame him, having rejected him so abruptly that morning.

The choice of the name Priscilla for the sixth child was not due solely to the need to give her a sense of humanity. There was another reason, too: Mila couldn’t go on referring to her with a number. Now she felt she was the only one who still had the girl’s identity at heart, because after hearing Bermann’s phone call, finding her was no longer a priority.

They had a corpse in a car and, on a telephone voice-mail tape, what sounded to all intents and purposes like a confession. There was no need to take any further trouble. All that had to be done was to link the sales rep to the other victims. And then come up with a motive. But perhaps there already was one…

The victims aren’t the children. They are the families…

It was Goran who had given her this explanation as they studied the little girls’ families from behind the glass in the morgue. Parents who, for various reasons, had had only one child. A mother long past forty and hence no longer biologically capable of hoping for another pregnancy…
They are his true victims. He studied them, he chose them.
And then:
An only daughter. He wanted to strip them of all hope of getting over their grief, of trying to forget their loss. They will have to remember what he did to them for the rest of their days…

Alexander Bermann had no children. He had tried to have them, but it hadn’t worked. Perhaps that was why he had wanted to unleash his rage on those poor families. Perhaps he had used them to take his revenge on his fate of infertility.

No, it wasn’t revenge,
Mila thought.
There’s something else
…She wasn’t giving up, but she didn’t know where that feeling came from.

The car arrived near the motel and Mila got out, saying good-bye to the officer who had been her driver. He exchanged a nod with her and turned his car before heading back, leaving her alone in the middle of the big gravel yard, a strip of forest behind her with bungalows poking out of it here and there. It was cold, and the only light came from the neon sign announcing vacancies and pay TV. Mila headed towards her room. All the windows were in darkness.

She was the only guest.

She walked past the porter’s office, which was plunged in the bluish darkness of a flickering television set. The sound was turned off and the man wasn’t there. Perhaps he had gone to the toilet, Mila thought, and continued on her way. Luckily she had kept the key, or else she would have had to wait for the porter to come back.

She had a paper bag containing a fizzy drink and two cheese toasted sandwiches—her dinner for the evening—and a tub of ointment that she would later spread on the little burns on her hands. Her breath condensed in the cold air. Mila quickened her pace; she was starving. Her footsteps on the gravel were the only sound that filled the night. Her bungalow was the last in the row.

Priscilla,
she thought as she walked. And she remembered the words spoken by Chang, the medical examiner: that it had been even worse for the sixth one…

That phrase was what had obsessed Mila.

But not just because of the idea that the sixth girl had had to pay a higher price than the others—
He slowed down the bleeding to make her die more slowly…He wanted to enjoy the show
…—No, there was something else. Why had the murderer changed his modus operandi? As she had during her meeting with Chang, Mila felt a tickle at the base of her neck.

By now her room was only a few meters away, and she was concentrating on that sensation, sure this time that she would be able to grasp its cause. A little dip in the ground nearly made her trip.

It was then that she heard it.

The brief sound behind her swept her thoughts away in an instant. Steps on the gravel. Someone was “copying” her walk. He was coordinating his footsteps with hers to get close to her without her noticing. When she had tripped, her pursuer had lost the rhythm, thus revealing his presence.

Mila didn’t get flustered, she didn’t slow down. Her pursuer’s footsteps were lost once more in hers. She calculated that he was about ten meters behind her. Meanwhile she started trying to come up with possible solutions. No point drawing the gun she wore behind her back—if the person behind her was armed they would have plenty of time to shoot first.
The porter,
she thought. The television left on in the empty office.
He’s killed him already. Now it’s my turn
. By now it wasn’t far to the door of the bungalow. She had to make her mind up. And she did. She had no other choice.

She rummaged in her pocket for her key, and quickly climbed the three steps leading to the porch. She opened the door after turning the key a couple of times, her heart thumping in her chest, and slipped into the room. She drew her gun and reached her other hand towards the light switch. Her bedside light came on. Mila didn’t move from her position, frozen, her back flattened against the door and her ears pricked.
He hasn’t attacked me,
she thought. Then she heard footsteps moving on the planks of the porch.

Boris had told her the keys of the motel were all skeleton keys, since the owner had got fed up replacing them because guests took them with them when they left without paying.
Does the person who’s following me know that? He’s probably got a key like mine
. And she thought that if he tried to get in she could take him by surprise from behind.

She fell onto her knees and slid along the stained carpet until she reached the window. She flattened herself against the wall and raised her hand to open it. It was so cold that the hinges stuck. With a bit of effort she opened one of the panels. She got to her feet, took a jump and found herself outside, back in the dark.

In front of her was the forest. The high treetops swayed rhythmically together. To the rear of the motel there was a concrete platform connecting all the bungalows. Mila crept over to it, keeping low to the ground and trying to catch every movement, every sound around her. She quickly reached the bungalow next to hers, and the one next to that. Then she stopped and entered the narrow gap that separated one from the other.

At that point she could have leaned out to get a glimpse of the porch of the bungalow. But it would have been a risk. She wrapped the fingers of both hands around her pistol to improve her grip, forgetting the pain of her burns. She quickly counted to three, taking three big breaths as well, and sprang around the corner with her weapon raised. No one. It couldn’t have been her imagination. She was convinced that someone had been following her. Someone perfectly capable of moving behind his target, concealing the acoustic shadow of his footsteps.

A predator.

Mila searched for some sign of the enemy in the square. He seemed to have vanished into the wind, to the repetitive concert of the yielding trees surrounding the motel.

“Excuse me…”

Mila leapt back and looked at the man without raising her pistol, paralyzed by those two simple words. It took her a few seconds to work out that it was the porter. He realized that he had frightened her and repeated, “Excuse me,” this time only by way of apology.

“What’s going on?” asked Mila, who still hadn’t managed to get her heart rate back to normal.

“There’s a call for you…”

The man pointed to his booth and Mila set off in that direction without waiting for him to show her the way.

“Mila Vasquez,” she said into the receiver.

“Hi, Stern here…Dr. Gavila wants to see you.”

“Me?” she asked, surprised but with a hint of pride.

“Yes. We called the officer who drove you there, he’s coming back to pick you up.”

“Fine.” Mila was puzzled Stern said nothing more, so she ventured to ask, “Has anything turned up?”

“Alexander Bermann was hiding something from us.”

Boris tried to set the SatNav without taking his eyes off the road. Mila stared straight ahead without saying anything. Gavila was in the backseat, huddled in his crumpled coat, eyes closed. They had been sent to the house of Veronica Bermann’s sister, where Veronica had sought refuge from the journalists.

Goran had reached the conclusion that Bermann had been trying to cover something up. Everything on the basis of that message on the answering machine:
Erm…It’s me…Erm…I haven’t much time…But I wanted to tell you I’m sorry…I’m sorry, for everything…I should have done it before, but I didn’t…Try to forgive me. It was all my fault…

They had established from the phone records that Bermann had made the call when they were at the traffic police station, more or less at the same time as the corpse of little Debby Gordon had been found.

Goran wondered why a man in Alexander Bermann’s situation—with a corpse in the boot and the intention of getting away as quickly as possible—should have made a call to his wife.

Serial killers don’t apologize. If they do, it’s because they want to create a different image of themselves, it’s part of their mystifying nature. Their purpose is to muddy the truth, to feed the curtain of smoke that surrounds them. But with Bermann it seemed different. There was an urgency in his voice. There was something he had to finish before it was too late.

What did Alexander Bermann want to be forgiven for?

Goran was convinced that it had something to do with his wife, with their relationship as a couple.

“Could you repeat that for me, please, Dr. Gavila…?”

Goran opened his eyes and saw Mila turned in her seat, staring at him as she waited for a reply.

“Veronica Bermann may have discovered something. That probably caused arguments between her and her husband. I reckon he wanted to ask her forgiveness for that.”

“And what makes that information so important for us?”

“I don’t know if it really is…but a man in his situation doesn’t waste time resolving a simple marital row if he doesn’t have an ulterior motive.”

“And what might that be?”

“Perhaps his wife isn’t entirely aware of what she knows.”

“And with that phone call he wanted to damp down the situation, to stop her getting to the bottom of it. Or telling us…”

“Yes, that’s what I think…Veronica Bermann has been very cooperative until now, there would be no point in her hiding anything from us if she thought the information had nothing to do with the crimes, but concerned only the two of them.”

Now Mila was quite clear about everything. Dr. Gavila’s hunch would inevitably lead to a change of direction for the investigation. But first it had to be checked. That was why Goran hadn’t yet spoken to Roche.

They hoped to extract significant clues from the meeting with Veronica Bermann. Boris, as an expert in the interrogation of witnesses and people with information about particular crimes, would have had to have a kind of informal chat with her. But Goran had decided that only he and Mila would meet with Bermann’s wife. Boris had agreed as if the order had come from a superior and not a civilian adviser. But his hostility towards Mila had grown. He didn’t see why she had to be present.

Mila was aware of the tension and, in reality, she herself didn’t fully understand what it was that had led Gavila to prefer her. Boris had been left only with the task of instructing her in how to guide the conversation. And that was exactly what he had done, before fiddling with the SatNav in search of their destination.

Mila remembered Boris’s comment as Stern and Rosa drew a portrait of Alexander Bermann:
I feel as if I’ve been dazzled. He’s too
clean.

That perfection was hardly credible. It seemed to have been prepared for someone.

We all have a secret,
Mila repeated to herself.
Even me.

There’s always something to hide. Her father had said to her when she was young: “We all stick our fingers in our noses. We might do it when no one else is watching, but we do do it.”

So what was Alexander Bermann’s secret?

What did his wife know?

What was the name of child number six?

It was almost dawn when they got there. The village lay behind a church, on the curve of an embankment overlooking the river.

Veronica Bermann’s sister lived in a flat over a pub. Sarah Rosa had phoned Veronica to tell her about the visit she was about to receive. Predictably enough, she hadn’t objected, and had shown no unwillingness to talk. The fact that she had been given notice was intended to make it clear to her that she wasn’t going to face an interrogation. But Veronica Bermann wasn’t interested in Special Agent Rosa’s precautions, she would probably have agreed to a grilling.

It was almost seven o’clock in the morning when the woman welcomed Mila and Goran, perfectly at ease in dressing gown and slippers. She invited them into the living room, with visible beams in the ceiling and carved furniture, and offered them some freshly made coffee. Mila took time to savor her coffee. She was in no hurry, she wanted the woman to lower her defenses completely before she began. Boris had warned her: in some cases it only takes a word out of place for the other person to close up and refuse to go on cooperating.

“Mrs. Bermann, all this must be very hard, and we’re sorry to descend on you so early.”

“Don’t worry, I always get up early.”

“We need to find out more about your husband, not least because it’s only by knowing him better that we’ll be able to establish how deeply involved he really was. And believe me, there are still plenty of dark sides to this business. Could you tell us about him…?”