The Frozen Dead

by Bernard Minier

  ‘You did it,’ murmured Ferrand in a flat voice. ‘You did it where we all failed … It’s incredible … How – how did you guess?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Servaz to calm him. ‘It’s too soon.’

  22

  It was eight o’clock in the morning and the sky was growing pale above the mountains when he finished reading. He closed the last notebook and went out onto the balcony to breathe in the cold, sharp dawn air. Exhausted. Physically sick. Near breaking point. First the boy called Clément, and now this.

  It had stopped snowing. The temperature had even risen slightly, but heaped layers of clouds drifted above the town. The roofs and streets shone with a silvery brilliance, and Servaz could feel the first raindrops on his face. They pitted the snow that had settled in a corner of the balcony, and he went back inside. He wasn’t hungry, but he had to have at least a hot coffee. He went down to the large veranda that overlooked a town blurred with rain. The waitress brought him fresh bread, coffee, a glass of orange juice, butter and jam. To his surprise, he devoured everything. Eating felt like an exorcism; eating meant that he was alive, that the hell he had found in the pages of those notebooks did not concern him. Or that he could keep it at a distance at least a moment longer.

  My name is Alice. I’m fifteen years old. I don’t know what I’m going to do with these pages, or whether someone will read them someday. Maybe I’ll tear them up or burn them as soon as I’ve written them. Or maybe I won’t. But if I don’t write them now, fuck, I’ll go crazy. I’ve been raped. It wasn’t just one bastard, either, but several disgusting pigs. On a summer night. Raped.

  Alice’s diary was one of the most difficult things he had ever had to read. It was chilling. The intimate diary of a teenage girl, consisting of drawings, poems, cryptic phrases. During the night, as dawn approached like a fearful animal, he had been tempted to throw it into the waste paper basket. And yet there was not much in the way of concrete information in the notebooks – it consisted, rather, of allusions and insinuations. A few facts, however, did appear clearly. In the summer of 1992, Alice Ferrand had gone to stay at Les Isards. The very same one Servaz had seen on his way to the Wargnier Institute, the one that Saint-Cyr had mentioned, the one visible in a photograph pinned in her room. At the time, Les Isards took in children from Saint-Martin and the surrounding valleys for the summer, from families too poor to send their children on holiday. It was a local tradition. Several of Alice’s best friends would be there that summer, and she had asked her parents for permission to go with them. At first, they had hesitated, then finally agreed. Alice pointed out that their decision had not been made solely to please her but also because, in the end, it was in keeping with their ideals of social equality. She added that on that day they had taken ‘the most tragic decision of their lives’. Alice did not blame her parents. Or herself. She blamed the swines, the bastards, the Nazis (written in capital letters with red ink) who had destroyed her life. She would have liked to castrate them, emasculate them, slice off their cocks with a rusty knife and force them to eat them – and then kill them.

  It occurred to Servaz that Alice had several things in common with the boy named Clément: both of them were intelligent and precocious for their age. Both of them had also shown they were capable of incredible verbal violence. And physical, too, thought Servaz. Except that the boy had turned against a homeless man, and the girl against herself.

  Fortunately for Servaz, Alice’s diary did not describe what she had suffered in detail. It was not a diary in the strictest sense of the word: she did not record her life on a day-by-day basis. It was, rather, an indictment. A cry of pain. Still, because Alice was an intelligent child with a penetrating mind, her words were terribly distressing. The drawings were even worse. Some of them would have been extraordinary if their subject had not been so gruesome. Servaz immediately noticed the one of four men in capes and boots. Alice was talented. She had drawn in detail the folds of their black capes and the men’s faces, obscured by the sinister shadow of their hoods. Other drawings showed the four men on their backs, naked, their eyes and mouths wide open, dead. A fantasy, thought Servaz.

  On looking closer, he was disappointed to see that while the capes were faithfully reproduced and the naked bodies realistic, the faces, on the other hand, did not resemble any of the men he knew. Not Grimm, nor Perrault, nor Chaperon. They were swollen, monstrous faces, caricatures of vice and cruelty that evoked the grimacing gargoyles from cathedrals. Had Alice intentionally disfigured them? Or did he have to accept that she and her friends had never seen their torturers’ faces, that the men had never removed their hoods? He could, however, infer several things. First of all, there were always four men in the drawings: it was clear that the rapists belonged to the same foursome. And then the diary did answer another question that had arisen from Grimm’s death: the boots. Until now, their presence on the chemist’s feet had been an enigma, but now Servaz had found an explanation:

  They always come on a stormy night, the scum, when it’s raining. No doubt to be sure that no one will come to the camp while they’re here. Because who would ever think of coming to this valley after midnight when it’s pouring down?

  They splash about on the path in their loathsome boots and leave their muddy tracks along the corridors and soil everything they touch, the foul pigs.

  They have loud voices and coarse laughs: I’ve recognised at least one of those voices.

  Servaz shuddered on reading this last sentence. He had gone through the notebooks in every direction, feverishly turning the pages, but nowhere had he found any other reference to the torturers’ identity. At one point he also read, ‘They each took their turn.’ Words that left him paralysed, incapable of reading any further. He had slept for a few hours, then resumed. After going over certain passages, he concluded that Alice had been raped only once – or rather, on one single night – but that she was not the only one affected, and that the men had come to the camp half a dozen times or so over that summer. Why hadn’t she said anything? Why had none of the children sounded the alarm? There was a vague reference to a child who had died, who had fallen down a ravine. Was he an example, a warning to the others? Is that why they remained silent? Because they had been threatened with death? Or was it because they were ashamed and thought no one would believe them? In those days, denunciations were very rare. Alice’s diary did not provide any answers to these questions.

  There were also poems that displayed the same precocious talent as her drawings, even if her aim was not so much to imbue her text with literary qualities as to express the horror of what she had been through:

  Was I that little BODY full of TEARS?

  This Filthy Thing, this spot on the ground, this bruise: that was Me? – and I

  Looked at the ground so close to my face, the shadow

  Of the torturer lying there;

  It doesn’t matter what they did, what they said

  They cannot reach the hard seed, the kernel of me.

  ‘Papa, what does it mean, WHORE?’

  Those words when I was six. This is their answer:

  PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS.

  One detail – the most sinister of all – had caught Servaz’s attention: in her description of the events, Alice spoke several times of the sound of the capes, the rustling of the black waterproof fabric when her aggressors moved. ‘That noise,’ she wrote, ‘I’ll never forget it. For ever, it will always mean the same thing: evil exists, and it has a sound.’

  These words left Servaz lost deep in thought. As he went on reading, he understood why he had not found any diaries in Alice’s room, or any sort of writing at all:

  I used to keep a diary. I wrote about my little life the way it used to be, day after day. I tore it up and threw it away. What would be the point of keeping a diary after THIS? Not only have those vermin ruined my future, they’ve also soiled my past for ever.

  He understood that Alice could not bring herself to throw out these notebooks: thi
s was perhaps the only place where the truth could be found. But at the same time she wanted to be sure that her parents would not see them. So she found a hiding place. She probably knew that after her death her parents would not touch her room. Or at least so she must have hoped. As she must have hoped, secretly, that someday someone would find the notebooks. But she could not have imagined it would take all these years and that the man who would unearth them would be a perfect stranger. In any case, she had not chosen to ‘castrate the bastards’; she had not chosen revenge. Someone else had done it for her … Who? Was it her father, also mourning the death of her mother? Or another parent? Or a child who had been abused but did not commit suicide, who had gone on to become an adult full of rage, filled for ever with a thirst for vengeance?

  * * *

  Once he had finished his breakfast, he went back up to his room and took two of Xavier’s tablets. He felt feverish and nauseous. Fine drops of sweat were pearling on his forehead. The coffee he had just drunk was sitting on his stomach. He took a long, scalding shower, got dressed, took his mobile and went out.

  The Cherokee was parked a short distance away, outside a shop that sold spirits and souvenirs. A cold, heavy rain was falling, and the streets were invaded by the sound of water rushing down the gutters. He sat behind the wheel of the Jeep and called Ziegler.

  * * *

  That morning Espérandieu picked up his phone as soon as he got to work. He called a ten-storey semicircular building located at 122, rue du Château-des-Rentiers in the 13th arrondissement in Paris. A voice with a slight accent picked up.

  ‘How are you, Marissa?’ he asked.

  Commandant Marissa Pearl belong to the BRDE, the financial crime unit, a sub-directorate of the Ministry of Finance and the Economy. Her speciality was white-collar fraud. Marissa was unbeatable when it came to tax havens, money laundering, active or passive corruption, bogus invitations to tender, embezzlement, influence peddling, mafia-like networks and multinationals. She was also an excellent teacher, and Espérandieu had been enthralled by her course at the police academy. He had asked a lot of questions. After class they had a drink together and found they had other shared interests: Japan, graphic novels, indie rock. Espérandieu had added Marissa to his list of contacts and she had done likewise: in their job, a good network could help kickstart a flagging investigation. From time to time they would get in touch via a quick email or phone call, perhaps waiting for the day when one of them would need to ask the other for a favour.

  ‘I’ve been sharpening my teeth on a big boss from the CAC 40 stock market index,’ she said. ‘First job I’ve had this big. No need to tell you they’ve been trying to put a spoke in my wheel. But keep it quiet!’

  ‘You’ll be the terror of the CAC 40, Marissa,’ he reassured her.

  ‘What can I do for you, Vincent?’

  ‘Do you have anything on Éric Lombard?’

  Silence on the other end. Then, ‘Well, I never! Who tipped you off?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Don’t tell me it’s a coincidence: that’s the very man I’m working on, Éric Lombard. How did you find out?’

  He could hear the suspicion in her voice. The cops in the financial crime unit moved in a slightly paranoid world – in the shadow of giant transnational corporations. They were only too used to dealing with corrupt politicians and high-ranking civil servants who had been bought, not to mention crooked lawyers and cops.

  ‘Lombard’s favourite horse was killed a week or so ago. Here, in the Pyrenees. While Lombard was on a business trip to the US. The crime was followed by two murders, locally. We’re thinking there’s a connection between the events. That it might be revenge. So we’re trying to find out as much as we can about Éric Lombard. Above all whether he has any enemies.’

  She sounded somewhat more relaxed when she started speaking again.

  ‘Well then, you know what? You’re bloody lucky!’ He could tell that she was smiling. ‘We’ve been stirring up all sorts of muck. Someone blew the whistle on him. You can’t imagine all the stuff that’s coming to the surface.’

  ‘I suppose it’s strictly confidential?’

  ‘Indeed. But if I come across anything that might be connected with your case, I’ll let you know, all right? Two murders and a horse? What a strange story! I’m afraid I’ve got to go now, though.’

  ‘Can I count on you?’

  ‘You can. As soon as I have something for you, I’ll pass it on. If I can ask the same of you, of course. But let’s get one thing straight: I didn’t say anything to you, and you don’t know what I’m working on. In the meantime, here’s the best one yet: in 2008 Lombard paid less in taxes than the baker downstairs from me.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘It’s very simple: he has brilliant lawyers. And they know every single one of the four hundred and eighty-six tax loopholes that exist in this wonderful country of ours, mostly in the form of tax credits. The main one, obviously, being overseas loopholes. Which means more or less that overseas investments allow a tax reduction of up to sixty per cent in the industrial sector and up to seventy per cent for the renovation of hotels and yachts. Moreover, there’s no limit on the amount of the investment so there’s no ceiling for the reductions. We’re talking investments that favour short-term gain, and couldn’t care less about the project’s economic viability. So of course Lombard doesn’t invest at a loss, he can pull out if he has to. Add to that the tax credits he gets as a result of the international agreements on double taxation, and the purchase of artwork, and a whole bag full of accounting tricks like taking out loans to buy shares in his own group, and he doesn’t need to go and set up shop in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. So in the end Lombard pays less in taxes than the bloke who earns one-thousandth what he does. Not bad, is it, for one of the ten richest men in France?’

  Espérandieu recalled what Kleim162 had told him one day: the watchword of governments and international financial institutions like the IMF was to ‘create a favourable environment for investment’ – in other words, to shift the tax burden from the wealthy onto the middle classes. Or, as an American billionaire imprisoned for tax fraud had cynically put it, ‘Only little people pay taxes.’ Perhaps he should introduce Marissa to his contact: they were made to get along.

  ‘Thank you, Marissa, you’ve just made my day.’

  He sat for a moment gazing at his screen. A scandal was about to break involving Lombard and his group. Could it have anything to do with their investigation?

  * * *

  Ziegler, Propp, Maillard, Confiant and d’Humières listened to Servaz without moving. Before them they all had croissants and bread rolls which one of the gendarmes had brought from the nearest boulangerie. They had tea, coffee, soft drinks and glasses of water. And there was something else they were all sharing: fatigue, visible on every face.

  ‘Alice Ferrand’s diary has opened up a new lead,’ concluded Servaz. ‘Or, rather, it confirms one of our theories. That of revenge. According to Gabriel Saint-Cyr, one of the leads he had after the suicides was sexual abuse. He’d had to abandon it for lack of evidence. But if we are to believe this diary, there were teens at the Les Isards holiday camp who were raped and tortured on several occasions. Which led some of them to suicide.’

  ‘Although you are the only one who has read the diary up to now,’ remarked Confiant.

  Servaz turned to Maillard, who got up and walked round the table handing out piles of photocopies. A few had already eaten their croissants, leaving crumbs everywhere; others had not touched them.

  ‘Obviously. For the simple reason that the diary was never meant to be read. It was very well hidden. And I only discovered it last night, as I told you. Thanks to a combination of circumstances.’

  ‘And what if the girl made it all up?’

  Servaz spread his hands.

  ‘I don’t think so. You’ll be able to judge for yourself. It’s too real, too … specific. And if that were the case
, why would she have gone to such trouble to hide it?’

  ‘Where is all this heading?’ asked the judge. ‘To a child who has grown up and is taking revenge? One of the parents? In that case, what is Hirtmann’s DNA doing at the crime scenes? And where does Lombard’s horse fit in? I’ve never seen such a muddle of an investigation!’

  ‘It’s not the investigation that is muddled,’ said Ziegler in a sharp voice, ‘it’s the facts.’

  Cathy d’Humières stared at Servaz for a long time, her empty cup in her hands.

  ‘Gaspard Ferrand would have a very good motive for these murders,’ she pointed out.

  ‘As would all the parents of the suicide victims,’ answered Servaz. ‘And as would, obviously, the young people who were raped by the foursome and who are now adults.’

  ‘This is a very important discovery,’ said the prosecutor at last. ‘What do you suggest, Martin?’

  ‘Nothing has changed; the most urgent thing is to find Chaperon. That’s our priority. Before the killer or killers find him. But now we know that the men did their dirty work at Les Isards. So we have to concentrate our search there, and on the suicide victims. Since we now know that there is a connection between them and our two victims, and that the connection is the camp.’

  ‘Even if two of the young people never stayed there?’ objected Confiant.

  ‘It seems to me that these notebooks leave no doubt as to what happened there. Perhaps the other two adolescents were raped elsewhere, not at the camp. And should we consider them to be paedophiles? I don’t really know … There doesn’t seem to be any indication that they went after young children; it was more like adolescents and young adults. Does that make a difference? It’s not for me to say.’

  ‘Boys and girls equally, judging by the list of the suicides,’ said Propp. ‘But you’re right, these men don’t really have the profile of paedophiles; more like sexual predators with an extreme penchant for sadism and the most perverse sort of games. And beyond a shadow of a doubt, they were drawn to the youth of their prey.’