The Frozen Dead

by Bernard Minier

  ‘Is anyone there?’

  A man. A high, reedy voice, but it was a man’s.

  Diane felt as if her neck were swelling and deflating, so wildly was her terrified heart pumping the blood through her arteries. A minute went by.

  ‘Is someone there?’ shouted the man, even more loudly.

  There was something unusual about his voice. A touch of something menacing, but also a plaintive note, fragile and tormented. Inexplicably, Diane thought of the way a frightened cat will arch its back.

  It was not a voice she recognised, in any case.

  The silence seemed endless. The man didn’t move; nor did she. Somewhere nearby, water was dripping into a puddle. The slightest sound resonated ominously in the bubble of silence. A car passed by on the road, but she hardly noticed it. Then she gave a sudden start when the man let out a long, croaking wail which bounced against the walls like a squash ball.

  ‘Bastards, bastards, baaastards!’ she heard him sob. ‘Scum! Vermin! I hope you all die! That you’ll burn in hell!’

  This was followed by a terrible cry.

  Diane hardly dared breathe. She was covered in goosebumps. The man burst into tears. She could hear his cape rustling as he fell to his knees. He cried and moaned for a long time and she ventured another glance, but there was no way to see his face beneath the hood. Then suddenly he got up and left at a run. A moment later she heard the car door slam, the engine started, and the vehicle took off down the road. She came out of her hiding place and forced herself to breathe normally. She had no idea what she had just seen and heard. Did the man come here often? Had something happened in this place that might explain his behaviour? The sort of behaviour she would have expected to find at the Institute …

  In any event, he had scared her half to death. She decided to go home and cook something hot in the staff kitchenette. It would calm her nerves. Once she had left the buildings behind, the wind became even chillier and she began to shake uncontrollably. She knew it wasn’t only from the cold.

  * * *

  Servaz went straight to the town hall. It sat in a long rectangular square by the river, French and European Union flags hanging listlessly from its balcony. Servaz left his car in a little car park between the square and the river, which flowed wide and fast past the foot of a concrete embankment.

  He skirted the flowerbeds and threaded his way past the cars parked by the cafés before he entered the town hall. When he reached the first floor, he learned that the mayor was not in, and could probably be found at the mineral-water bottling plant he managed. The secretary gave him a hard time before agreeing to give Servaz the mayor’s mobile number, but when Servaz called, it went straight to voicemail. He suddenly felt hungry and looked at his watch. Twenty-nine minutes past three. They had spent more than five hours at the Institute.

  On leaving the town hall he sat down in the first café he found, facing the square. Nearby, teenagers were heading home from college, schoolbags on backs; others went by on mopeds with deafening exhaust pipes.

  The waiter came over. Servaz looked up. Tall, dark, just short of thirty, he must be popular with the women, with his stubble and dark eyes. Servaz ordered an omelette and a beer.

  ‘Have you lived around here for long?’ he asked the waiter.

  The waiter regarded him warily. An amused wariness. Servaz suddenly understood that the man was wondering if he was making a pass. It probably wouldn’t be the first time.

  ‘I was born twenty kilometres from here,’ he replied.

  ‘The suicides – does that mean anything to you?’

  This time, wariness won out over amusement.

  ‘What are you? A journalist?’

  Servaz showed him his warrant card.

  ‘Crime unit. I’m investigating the murder of the chemist, Grimm. You must have heard about it?’

  The waiter nodded cautiously.

  ‘So? The suicides – does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘Same thing as to everyone else round here.’

  His words made Servaz sit up straight.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘It’s an old story. I don’t know much about it.’

  ‘Tell me the not much you do know.’

  The waiter was looking more and more uncomfortable, casting a nervous glance around the terrace.

  ‘It happened a long time ago…’

  ‘When?’

  ‘About fifteen years ago.’

  ‘“It happened” … What happened?’

  ‘Well … the series of suicides.’

  Servaz looked at him, not understanding.

  ‘What series of suicides?’ he said, annoyed. ‘Make yourself clear, for God’s sake!’

  ‘There were several suicides … teenagers. Boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, I think.’

  ‘Here in Saint-Martin?’

  ‘Yes. And in the villages in the valley.’

  ‘There were several suicides? How many?’

  ‘How am I supposed to know? I was eleven at the time! Maybe five. Or six. Or seven. No more than ten, anyway.’

  ‘And did they all die at the same time?’ asked Servaz, stunned.

  ‘No. But close together. It lasted for several months.’

  ‘What do you mean by that? Two months? Three? Twelve?’

  ‘More like twelve. Yes. Maybe a year. I don’t know…’

  No Einstein, our Sunday playboy, thought Servaz. Or else he had no desire to cooperate.

  ‘And does anyone know why they did it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. No.’

  ‘They didn’t leave a note?’

  The waiter shrugged.

  ‘Listen, I was a kid. You’re bound to find older people who could tell you about it. That’s all I know. Sorry.’

  Servaz watched him walk away through the tables and disappear inside. He didn’t try to stop him. Through the glass he saw him speaking to a fat man who must be the proprietor. The man glanced darkly in Servaz’s direction, then shrugged and went back to his till.

  Servaz could have gone over and questioned him in turn, but he didn’t believe this was the place to get reliable information. A series of adolescent suicides fifteen years earlier … He thought furiously. What an unbelievable story! What could have driven several teens in the valley to kill themselves? And fifteen years later, a murder and a dead horse … Could there be any connection between the two series of events? Servaz narrowed his eyes at the peaks at the end of the valley.

  * * *

  When Espérandieu rushed into the department at 26, boulevard Embouchure, a stentorian voice could be heard shouting from one of the offices.

  ‘Hey, here comes the boss’s little sweetheart!’

  Espérandieu decided to ignore the insult. Pujol was a moron with a big mouth, two things that generally went together. A tall, sturdy man with greying hair, medieval views on life and a repertory of jokes that were funny only to his mate and alter ego, Ange Simeoni – the two inseparable ‘tenors of stupidity’, as the Aznavour song went. Martin had brought them in line, and they would never have dared come out with something like that in his presence. But Martin wasn’t there.

  Espérandieu went along the row of offices until he reached his own at the end of the corridor, next to the boss’s. He closed the door behind him. Samira had left a note on his desk: I entered the watchmen into the FPR the way you asked me to. The FPR was the missing persons record. He crumpled up the bit of paper, threw it in the basket, put TV on the Radio’s ‘Family Tree’ on his iPhone, then checked his messages. Martin had asked him to get as much information as he could about Éric Lombard, and Espérandieu knew where to go to get it. He had one advantage over most of his colleagues – with the exception of Samira – he was modern. He belonged to the generation of multimedia, cyberculture, social networks, forums. And provided you knew where to look, you often came across interesting people. But he did not particularly want Martin or anyone else to know just how he obtained his
information.

  * * *

  ‘Sorry, he hasn’t been in today.’

  The assistant manager of the bottling plant gave Servaz an impatient look.

  ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

  The big man shrugged.

  ‘No. I tried to reach him, but he hasn’t got his mobile on. Normally he should be in work by now. Did you try his home? Perhaps he’s ill.’

  Servaz thanked him and went back out of the little factory. It was surrounded by a high chain-link fence topped with a spiral of barbed wire. Servaz was lost in thought as he unlocked the Jeep. He had already called Chaperon at home, in vain: there was no answer. Servaz felt a knot of anxiety forming in his belly.

  He climbed back in the car and sat behind the wheel.

  Once again he recalled Chaperon’s terrified look when he saw Grimm’s body. What was it Hirtmann had said? Ask the mayor to tell you about the suicides. What did Hirtmann know that they didn’t? And how the devil did he know?

  Then another thought came to him. He grabbed his mobile and dialled a number he had jotted down in his notebook. A woman answered.

  ‘Servaz, crime unit,’ he said. ‘Did your husband have a private room – a study, a place where he kept his papers?’

  There was a brief silence, then the sound of someone exhaling cigarette smoke near the telephone.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you mind if I come and have a look?’

  ‘Do I really have any choice?’

  She had blurted out the question, but without any real acrimony.

  ‘You can refuse. In that case I will be obliged to ask for a warrant, and I will get it, and your refusal to cooperate will no doubt attract the attention of the magistrate in charge of the investigation.’

  ‘When do you want to come?’ she asked curtly.

  ‘Right away, if you don’t mind.’

  * * *

  The snowman was still there, but the children had disappeared. As had the cat’s carcass. Night was beginning to fall. The sky had filled with dark, threatening clouds, and only a single orange-pink streak remained above the mountains.

  As on the previous occasion, the widow Grimm was waiting at the front door with a cigarette in her hand, a mask of absolute indifference on her face. She stepped back to let him in.

  ‘At the end of the corridor, the door on the right. I haven’t touched a thing.’

  Servaz went down a corridor cluttered with furniture, paintings, chairs, knick-knacks and stuffed animals that seemed to be watching him go by. He opened the last door on the right just past a bookshelf. The shutters were closed; the room was bathed in darkness. It smelled stuffy. Servaz opened the window. A little office of nine square metres that looked out onto the woods at the back of the house. An indescribable mess. He had difficulty making his way to the middle of the room. Grimm must have spent most of his time in this study when he was at home. There was even a miniature television opposite an old sagging sofa piled high with binders, files, hunting and fishing magazines, a portable stereo and a microwave oven.

  For a few moments he stood in the middle of the room and gazed speechlessly at the chaos of cardboard boxes, furniture, binders, dust.

  A burrow, a den …

  A kennel.

  Servaz shuddered. Grimm had been living a dog’s life with his ice-cold wife.

  On the walls were postcards, a calendar and posters depicting mountain lakes and rivers. On top of the wardrobes there were more stuffed animals: a squirrel, several owls, a mallard and even a wild cat. In one corner, Servaz saw a pair of ankle boots. On one of the dressers there were several fishing reels. Had Grimm been a nature lover? An amateur taxidermist? Servaz tried for a moment to put himself in the shoes of the fat man who had locked himself away in this room, his only company a menagerie whose eyes stared glassily into the shadowy light. He could imagine him stuffing himself with leftovers in front of his little television before falling asleep on the sofa, banished to the end of the corridor by the dragon lady he had married thirty years earlier. Servaz began to open the drawers, methodically. In the first one he found pens, bills, lists of medicines, bank statements, credit-card receipts. In the next one there was a pair of binoculars, playing cards still in their original wrapping and several ordnance survey maps.

  Then his fingers closed around something at the bottom of the drawer: keys. He took them out into the light. There was one big key for a door lock and two smaller ones for padlocks. Servaz slipped them into his pocket.

  In the third drawer he found a collection of fishing flies, hooks and line – and a photograph.

  Servaz took it over to the window.

  Grimm, Chaperon and two other people.

  The photograph was old: Grimm was almost thin, and Chaperon looked fifteen years younger. The four men were sitting on rocks round a campfire, smiling into the lens. Behind them, on the left-hand side of the picture, were two tents, in a clearing surrounded by an autumnal forest; a gently sloping meadow, a lake and mountains were on the right. It was taken at dusk: long shadows stretched from the tall trees to the lake. The smoke from the campfire rose in a spiral in the evening light. A bucolic atmosphere.

  An impression of simple happiness and camaraderie. Men who enjoyed getting together to go camping in the mountains, one last time before winter.

  Servaz suddenly understood how Grimm had managed to put up with a reclusive life and a wife who despised him: thanks to these moments when he could escape into nature in the company of friends. He had been mistaken: this room was neither a prison nor a kennel; on the contrary, it was a tunnel that led to the outside world. The stuffed animals, the posters, the fishing gear, the magazines: everything was there to remind him of those moments of absolute freedom that must have formed the heart of his existence.

  In the photograph the four men were wearing the sort of checked shirts, cardigans and trousers that were in fashion in the 1990s. One of them was holding up a flask that might well contain something besides water; another was looking into the lens with a faint, absent smile, as if his mind were elsewhere, as if this little ceremony did not concern him.

  Servaz looked closely at the other two hikers. One was a bearded, jovial giant of a man, the other a tall, fairly thin fellow with a head of thick brown hair and large glasses.

  He compared the lake in the photo with the one on the poster on the wall, but could not decide whether it was the same lake from two different angles, or two different lakes.

  He turned the photograph over.

  Lake Oule, October 1993.

  Small, precise handwriting.

  He was right. It was fifteen years old. The men would have been roughly his age then. Approaching forty. Did they still have dreams then, or had they already taken stock of their lives? And were their conclusions positive or negative?

  They were smiling in the photo, their eyes shining in the soft light of an autumn evening, their faces lined with deep shadows.

  But which way lay the truth? Everyone, or almost everyone, smiles for pictures. Everyone plays a part, nowadays, thought Servaz; everyone is influenced by the banal conventions of the global media. There were even plenty of people who overacted, as if they were on stage. Appearances and kitsch had become the norm.

  Fascinated, Servaz scrutinised the photograph. Was it important? A vague yet familiar little sign told him it was.

  He hesitated, then slid the picture into his pocket.

  As he was doing this, he got the feeling he had missed something. A powerful feeling. The impression that his brain had unconsciously noticed something and was now ringing an alarm bell.

  He took the photograph back out. Studied each detail. The four smiling men. The tender evening light. The lake. The autumn colours. No, that wasn’t it. And yet the feeling was there – distinct, indisputable. Without realising it, he had seen something.

  And suddenly he understood.

  Their hands.

  The hands of three of the four men were visi
ble: each of them was wearing a large gold signet ring on his ring finger.

  The picture had been taken from too far away to be sure, but Servaz could have sworn that it was the same ring each time.

  The ring that should have been on Grimm’s severed finger.

  * * *

  He left the room. Music filled the house. Jazz. Servaz went back up the corridor towards the source of the music, and came out into an equally cluttered sitting room. The widow was sitting in an armchair, reading. She raised her head and gave him a supremely hostile look. Servaz dangled the keys before her.

  ‘Do you know what these open?’

  She hesitated for a moment, as if wondering what she risked if she said nothing.

  ‘We have a cabin in the Sospel valley,’ she said finally. ‘Ten kilometres from here. To the south of Saint-Martin … Not far from the Spanish border. But we only went there … rather, my husband only went there on weekends, starting in the spring.’

  ‘Your husband? And you?’

  ‘It’s a gloomy place. I never set foot there. My husband went there to be alone, to rest, meditate, go fishing.’

  To rest, thought Servaz. Since when do chemists need to rest? Don’t they have their assistants to do all the drudgery? Then he thought he was being mean-spirited: what did he know, in the end, about that profession? One thing was certain: he had to visit the chalet.

  * * *

  Espérandieu got an answer to his message thirty-eight minutes later. Fine rain was streaking the windowpanes. Night had fallen over Toulouse, and the blurry lights beyond the streaming window looked like a screensaver.

  Vincent had sent the following message:

  From vincent.esperandieu@hotmail.com to kleim162@lematin.fr, 16:33:54:

  Do you know anything about Éric Lombard?

  From kleim162@lematin.fr to vincent.esperandieu@hotmail.com, 17:12:44:

  What do you want to know?

  Espérandieu smiled and typed the following message:

  Whether there are any skeletons in the closet, scandals that have been hushed up, lawsuits pending against the Lombard Group in France or abroad. Any rumours about him. Any nasty old rumour.