The Frozen Dead

by Bernard Minier

  ‘I’ve heard strange things about the Wargnier Institute,’ Spitzner had said.

  ‘I spoke to Dr Wargnier on the telephone. He made an excellent impression on me.’

  ‘Wargnier is very good,’ Spitzner conceded.

  She knew, however, that Wargnier would not be there to welcome her, that it would be his successor as head of the Institute, Dr Xavier, a Quebecois from the Pinel Institute in Montreal. Wargnier had retired six months earlier. He was the one who had gone over her application and given it his approval, before leaving his post; he had also warned her in the course of their numerous telephone conversations how difficult her task would be.

  ‘It’s not an easy place for a young woman, Dr Berg. And I’m not just referring to the Institute; I mean the area around it. That valley … Saint-Martin … You’re in the Pyrenees, the Comminges region. The winters are long, and there’s not much to do. Unless you like winter sports, of course.’

  ‘I am Swiss, don’t forget,’ she replied, a touch of humour in her voice.

  ‘In that case, I have one piece of advice: don’t let yourself get too absorbed in your work, keep some time for yourself – and spend your free hours outside. It’s a place that can become … disturbing … after a while.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

  ‘And another thing: I won’t be here to help you get settled. My successor, Dr Xavier from Montreal, will have that honour. He’s a practitioner with a very good reputation, very enthusiastic. He’s due to arrive here next week. As you know, they’re ahead of us over there with regard to the treatment of aggressive patients. I think it will be very interesting for you to compare your points of view.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘In any case, we’ve needed an assistant to the director of the establishment for quite a while now. I didn’t delegate enough.’

  Diane was once again driving under a canopy of trees. The road continued to climb until it reached a narrow wooded valley that seemed to be enveloped in a stifling, noxious intimacy. She cracked her window open and a penetrating fragrance of leaves, moss, needles and wet snow tickled her nostrils. The sound of a nearby torrent almost drowned the purr of the engine.

  ‘A lonely place,’ she said out loud, to give herself courage.

  She drove cautiously through the gloom of the winter morning. Her headlights grazed the trunks of fir and beech trees. An electricity cable followed the road; branches leaned against it as if they no longer had the strength to support themselves. From time to time the forest opened out to reveal a barn with a moss-covered slate roof – closed, abandoned.

  She glimpsed some buildings further along, past a bend in the road. They reappeared as she came out of the bend – several houses of concrete and wood with large picture windows, backed up against a forest. To reach them, a drive led down from the road, over a metal bridge above the water then across a snowy meadow. Obviously deserted, run down. She did not know why, but those empty buildings, lost deep in this valley, caused her to shiver.

  Then a rusting sign at the entrance to the drive: ‘LES ISARDS HOLIDAY CAMP.’

  Still no hint of the Institute. Not even a signpost. It looked as if the Wargnier was not exactly looking for publicity. Diane began to wonder if she had taken the wrong road. The National Geographical Institute map, scale 1/25,000, lay open on the passenger seat next to her. One kilometre and a dozen bends further along she spotted a lay-by bordered by a stone parapet. She slowed down and turned the wheel. The Lancia bounced over the potholes, churning up splatters of mud. She grabbed the map and got out of the car. The damp air enveloped her like a clammy sheet.

  Heedless of the falling snow, she unfolded the map. The buildings of the holiday camp were designated by three little rectangles. She gauged the approximate distance she had come, following the winding thread of the départementale road. Two more rectangles appeared slightly further along; they met in the shape of a T, and although there were no indications as to the nature of the buildings, it could hardly be anything else, for the road came to an end at that point, and there were no other symbols on the map.

  She was almost there …

  She turned round, walked as far as the parapet – and saw them.

  Further upstream, on the opposite shore, higher up on the slope: two long stone buildings. In spite of the distance she could tell how huge they were. A giant’s architecture. The same Cyclopean style that was everywhere in the mountains, be it power plants or dams or hotels from an earlier century. That’s what it was: the lair of a Cyclops. Except that there is not just one Polyphemus deep inside that cave – there are several.

  Diane wasn’t the type to be easily daunted; she had often travelled to places where tourists were warned not to go; since adolescence she had taken up sports that entailed a certain amount of risk. As a child and then an adult she had always had a taste for adventure. But something about the view there before her made her stomach lurch. It wasn’t a question of physical risk. No, it was something else. A leap into the unknown …

  She took out her mobile and dialled. She didn’t know whether there would be a mast in the area to relay her call, but after three rings a familiar voice replied.

  ‘Spitzner here.’

  Her sense of relief was instantaneous. His warm, firm, calm voice had always been able to soothe her and banish her doubts. It was Pierre Spitzner – her mentor in the department – who had first got her interested in forensic psychology. An intensive SOCRATES course on children’s rights had brought her closer to this discreet, charming man, devoted husband and father of seven children. The famous psychologist had taken her under his wing in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences; he had enabled the chrysalis to become a butterfly – even if such an image would undoubtedly have seemed far too conventional to Spitzner’s demanding mind.

  ‘It’s Diane. Am I disturbing you?’

  ‘Of course not. How is it going?’

  ‘I’m not there yet … I’m on the road … I can see the Institute from here.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  Good old Pierre. Even over the telephone he could tell from the slightest shift in her voice.

  ‘No, everything’s fine. It’s just that … their aim was to isolate these guys from the outside world. They’ve stuck them in the most sinister, remote place they could find. This valley gives me goosebumps…’

  She was immediately sorry she’d said that. She was behaving like an adolescent left to her own resources for the first time – or a frustrated student in love with her supervisor and doing everything she could to attract his attention. She told herself he must be wondering how she’d manage to cope if the mere sight of the buildings was causing her to panic.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You’ve already seen your fair share of paranoids and schizophrenics and sex offenders, right? Tell yourself that it won’t be any different there.’

  ‘They weren’t all murderers. In fact, only one of them was.’

  His image sprang to mind: a thin face, irises the colour of honey staring at her with a predator’s greed. Kurtz was a genuine sociopath. The only one she had ever met. Cold, manipulative, unstable. Not a trace of remorse. He had raped and killed three mothers; the youngest was forty-six and the eldest seventy-five. That was his thing, mature women. Not to mention the ropes, ties, gags, slipknots … Every time she struggled not to think about him, he would settle into her consciousness, with his ambiguous smile and wildcat gaze. This reminded her of the sign Spitzner had nailed to the door of his office: ‘Don’t think of an elephant.’

  ‘It’s a bit late in the game to be doubting yourself, don’t you think, Diane?’

  His words made her blush.

  ‘You’ll be up to it, I’m sure. You have the dream profile for the job. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but you’ll manage, I know you will.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m being ridiculous.’

  ‘Not at all. Anyone in your shoes would react the same
way. I know the reputation that place has. Don’t let that get to you. Focus on your work. And when you come back to us, you will be the greatest specialist on psychopathic disorders in all the cantons. I have to let you go now, Diane. The dean’s expecting me, to talk about finances. You know what he’s like: I’m going to need all my wits about me. Good luck. Keep me posted.’

  Dial tone. He’d hung up.

  The silence, interrupted only by the sound of the stream, draped itself over her like a wet canvas. The plop of a big clump of snow falling from a branch made her jump. She put her mobile into the pocket of her down jacket, folded the map and climbed back into the car.

  Then she backed round to leave the lay-by.

  A tunnel. The beam of her headlights glanced over the black, streaming walls. No overhead lighting, a bend immediately beyond it. And the first sign, at last, on a white fence: ‘CHARLES WARGNIER INSTITUTE FOR FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY.’ She turned slowly and drove over a bridge. The road climbed suddenly and sharply, following a few hairpin bends through the fir trees and the snowdrifts – she was afraid her old banger might skid on the icy slope. She had neither snow tyres nor chains. But quickly enough the road flattened out.

  One last bend and they were there, very close now.

  She pressed deeper into her seat when the buildings came to meet her through the snow, mist and woods.

  Eleven fifteen in the morning, Wednesday, the tenth of December.

  2

  Snow-covered fir trees. Imagine them from above, from a sheer, vertical perspective. A ribbon of road leading straight and deep between these same fir trees, trunks wrapped in mist. Treetops hurtling by. At the end of the road, among the trees, a Cherokee Jeep like a plump beetle was driving beneath the tall conifers. Its headlights pierced the swirling mists. The snow plough had left huge drifts on either side. In the distance white mountains blocked the horizon. The forest came to an abrupt end. The road wound in a tight bend round a rocky slope before continuing alongside a quick-running stream. The stream met a small weir covered in a rush of roiling water. Beyond the other bank, the black mouth of a hydroelectric power station was visible in the gaping side of the mountain. On the verge, a road sign: ‘SAINT-MARTIN-DE-COMMINGES: BEAR COUNTRY – 7 KM.’

  Servaz looked at the sign as he drove past.

  A Pyrenean bear painted against a background of mountains and fir trees.

  Pyrenean bears, yeah, right! Newly introduced Slovenian bears, more like, which the local shepherds would be only too happy to have at the other end of their rifle.

  According to the shepherds, the bears strayed too close to inhabited areas; they attacked the herds; they were even becoming a danger to humans. The only species that is dangerous to humans is other humans, thought Servaz. With each passing year he saw more and more corpses in the morgue in Toulouse. And they hadn’t been killed by bears. Sapiens nihil affirmat quod non probat. ‘A wise man asserts nothing he cannot prove,’ he mused. He slowed down as the road curved before leading back into the woods – no longer tall conifers, this time, more like a nondescript undergrowth full of thickets. He could hear the burbling mountain stream through the car window, slightly open despite the chill. Its clear song almost drowned the music from the CD player: Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, the allegro. A music full of anxiety and feverishness, which seemed appropriate for what lay ahead.

  Suddenly there before him were the revolving lights of the squad cars, and figures silhouetted against the road, waving their luminous batons.

  Those useless gendarmes … When the gendarmerie had no clue how to start an investigation, they set up roadblocks.

  He remembered what Antoine Canter had said to him that very morning, at the regional crime unit in Toulouse: ‘It happened last night, in the Pyrenees. A few kilometres from Saint-Martin-de-Comminges. Cathy d’Humières called it in. I think you’ve worked with her before, right?’

  Canter was a colossus of a man, with the rugged accent of the Southwest, a former rugby player with a vicious streak who liked to dominate his opponents in the scrum, a cop who’d worked his way up from the bottom to become deputy chief of the local crime unit. The skin on his cheeks was pockmarked with little craters, like sand pitted by rain; his huge iguana’s eyes watched Servaz closely.

  ‘It happened? What happened?’ Servaz asked.

  The corners of Canter’s mouth were sealed with a white deposit, and now he parted his lips: ‘No idea.’

  Servaz stared at him, taken aback.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She wouldn’t say on the phone, just that she was waiting for you, and she wants the utmost discretion in the matter.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Servaz looked at his boss, bewildered.

  ‘Saint-Martin, isn’t that where that asylum is?’

  ‘The Wargnier Institute,’ confirmed Canter, ‘a psychiatric establishment unique in France, even in Europe. That’s where they lock up murderers who’ve been judged insane.’

  Someone had escaped, committed a crime while on the run? That would explain the roadblocks. Servaz slowed down. He recognised the MAT 49 sub-machine guns and the Browning BPS-SP shotguns among the weapons the officers were carrying. He rolled down his window. Scores of snowflakes drifted on the cold air. He waved his card in the gendarme’s face.

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘You have to go to the hydroelectric station.’ The man raised his voice to talk over the messages spurting from the radios, his breath a cloud of white condensation. ‘A dozen kilometres or so from here, in the mountains. At the first roundabout on the way into Saint-Martin, you take a right. Then right again at the next roundabout. Follow the signs for Lac d’Astau. Then just keep going.’

  ‘Whose idea were these roadblocks?’

  ‘Public prosecutor. Routine procedure. We open the boot, check their papers. You never know.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Servaz doubtfully.

  He started the car again, turned up the volume on the CD player. The horns of the scherzo filled the small space. He took his eyes from the road for a moment to grab the cold coffee he had stashed in the drinks holder. The same ritual, every time: he always prepared himself in the same way. He knew from experience that the first day, the first hour of an investigation are decisive. That it’s when he must be awake, focused and open-minded. Coffee to wake up, music to focus – and to empty his mind. Caffeine and music … And today, fir trees and snow, he thought, looking at the side of the road with the first flutterings of a cramp in his stomach. Servaz was a city-dweller at heart. Mountains felt like hostile territory to him. He remembered that it had not always been like that, however; when he was a child, his father used to take him walking in these valleys every year. Like a good teacher, he explained all about the trees and rocks and clouds, and young Martin Servaz listened while his mother spread a blanket on the springtime grass and opened the picnic basket, calling her husband a pedant and a crushing bore. Halcyon days when innocence reigned over the world. As he stared at the road, Servaz wondered whether the real reason he had never come back here was because his memory of these valleys was inextricably connected to that of his parents.

  When will you get round to some spring-cleaning up there, for Christ’s sake?

  For a while he’d been seeing a shrink. After three years had gone by, however, the shrink himself had thrown in the towel: ‘I’m sorry, I wanted to help you but I can’t. I have never met such resistance.’ Servaz had smiled and answered that it didn’t matter. At the time he was thinking mostly of the positive impact the end of his treatment would have on his budget.

  He looked around him again. So much for the frame; only the painting was missing. Canter said he knew nothing. And Cathy d’Humières, the public prosecutor for Saint-Martin, had insisted he come alone. Why is that? He hadn’t told her, however, that it suited him; he led an investigation team of seven, and his men (in fact six men and one woman) had enough to deal with already. The day before,
they had wound up an investigation into the murder of a homeless man. His battered and half-drowned body had been found in a pond, not far from the motorway Servaz had just taken near the village of Noé. They hadn’t needed more than forty-eight hours to find the culprits: the tramp, who was sixty or more, had been spotted a few hours before his death in the company of three adolescents from the village. The eldest was seventeen, the youngest twelve. To begin with they had denied it, then, fairly quickly, confessed. No motive. And no remorse, either. The eldest just said, ‘He was a social reject, a bum…’ Not one of them had a file with the police or the social services. Kids from good families. Normal educations, none of them running with a bad crowd. Everyone taking part in the investigation said the boys’ indifference made their blood run cold. Servaz could still see their chubby faces, their large, pale, attentive eyes staring at him fearlessly, even defiantly. He had tried to work out which one was the ringleader – in this sort of thing there is always a leader – and he thought he had figured it out. It wasn’t the eldest boy, but the middle one. A boy whose name, ironically, was Clément …

  ‘Who told on us?’ the kid had asked in the presence of his lawyer, who was baffled because the boy had refused to talk to him, as was his right, under the pretext that the man was ‘a moron’.

  ‘I’m the one who asks the questions round here,’ said the policeman.

  ‘I’ll bet it’s that old cow Schmitz. She’s such a slag.’

  ‘Calm down and watch your language,’ said the lawyer; he’d been hired by the boy’s father.

  ‘You’re not in the playground,’ Servaz pointed out. ‘You know what you risk, you and your mates?’

  ‘This is premature,’ protested the lawyer feebly.

  ‘She’ll get her head bashed in, that bitch. Watch if she doesn’t get killed. I’m fucking mad.’

  ‘Stop swearing,’ shouted the lawyer, beside himself.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ said Servaz, getting annoyed. ‘You risk twenty years in prison. Do the maths: when you get out, you’ll be old.’