The Empire Of The Wolves

by Jean-Christophe Grangé

  "Half an hour later. The boys called me up. I joined them at Gurdelik's place. With a unit of technical officers."

  "Was it you who found the girl?"

  "No, they'd already found her. She was soaking. You know how those girls work there, it's-"

  "Describe her to me."

  "Small. Brunette. As thin as a rake. Her teeth were chattering. She was mumbling incoherently. In Turkish."

  "Did she tell you what she'd seen?"

  "Not a thing. She couldn't even see we were there. The girl was completely traumatized." Beauvanier was not lying. His voice rang true.

  Schiffer was pacing up and down the room, constantly peering at him. "What do you reckon happened there?"

  "I dunno. Some racketeering, maybe. Some guys putting the scares on.

  "Racketeering at Gurdelik's place? No one would try that one on him."

  The officer adjusted his leather jacket, as though his neck was itching. "You never know with these Turks. There's maybe a new clan in the neighborhood. Or else it might be the Kurds. That's their business, man. Gurdelik didn't even want to press charges. So we just went through the motions…"

  Another thought struck Schiffer. Nobody at La Porte Bleue had mentioned the kidnapping of Zeynep or the Grey Wolves. So Beauvanier really believed in this business about racketeering. No one had ever established the link between this little "visit" and the discovery of the first body, two days later.

  "So what did you do with Sema Gokalp?"

  "At the station, we gave her a tracksuit and some blankets. She was trembling all over. We found her passport sewn into her skirt. She didn't have a visa or anything. So straight to Immigration. I faxed them a report. Then I sent another fax to headquarters, Place Beauvau, just to cover myself. So all I had to do then was wait."

  "And?"

  Beauvanier sighed, sliding his finger under his collar. "She just kept on trembling. It was getting worrisome. Her teeth were chattering. She couldn't eat or drink. At five AM, I decided to take her to Sainte-Anne's."

  "Why you and not a patrolman?"

  "Because they wanted to put her in a straitjacket. And then… dunno, there was something about her… So I filled out a 32-13 and took her along…"

  His voice was fading. He was now constantly scratching his neck. Schiffer noticed deep acne scars. A druggie, he thought to himself.

  "The next morning, I called up the boys at Immigration and told them to go to the hospital. At lunchtime, they phoned back. They hadn't found the girl."

  "She'd run away?"

  "No. Some policemen came and took her away at ten in the morning.”

  “What policemen?"

  "You're not going to believe this."

  "Try me."

  "According to the doctor on duty, they were from the DNAT.”

  “The antiterrorist division?"

  "I checked myself. They had a transfer order. Everything was aboveboard."

  For a return to his precinct, Schiffer could not have hoped for a better fireworks display. He sat on a corner of the desk. Every time he moved, he gave off a whiff of mint.

  "Did you contact them?"

  "I tried to. But they weren't very forthcoming. From what I understood, they'd picked up my report at Place Beauvau. Then Charlier issued his orders."

  "Philippe Charlier?"

  The captain nodded. The entire story seemed to be right under his nose. Charlier was one of the five commissioners of the antiterrorist division. An ambitious officer, whom Schiffer had known since joining the anti-gang squad in 1977. A real bastard. Maybe smarter than he was, but just as brutal.

  "And then?"

  "And then nothing. Not another word."

  "Don't bullshit me."

  Beauvanier hesitated. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. He lowered his eyes. "The next day Charlier called in person. lie asked me loads of questions about the case. Where we'd found her, in what circumstances, and so on."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "What I knew."

  In other words, nothing, dickhead, thought Schiffer.

  The baseball-capped cop concluded: "Charlier told me that he'd now be dealing with the case. Seeing the magistrate, going to Immigration Control, the usual procedure. He hinted that I'd do well to keep quiet about it."

  "Do you still have your report?"

  A smile slipped over that panicked face. "What do you think? They came and picked it up that very day"

  "What about the daybook?"

  The smile turned to laughter.

  "What daybook? Listen, man, they wiped out every trace. Even the recording of the radio message. They made the witness vanish. Just like that."

  "Why?"

  "How the hell should I know? That girl couldn't tell them anything. She was completely out to lunch."

  "And you, why didn't you say anything?"

  The cop lowered his voice. "Charlier's got a hold on me. An old story…"

  Schiffer punched him on the arm, in a friendly manner, then stood up. Pacing around the room once more, he digested this information. Amazing as it might seem, the removal of Sema Gokalp by the DNAT belonged to another affair, which had nothing to do with the series of murders committed by the Grey Wolves. But that did not reduce the importance of this witness in his case. He had to find her because she had seen it all happen.

  "Are you back on service?" Beauvanier hazarded.

  Schiffer adjusted his drenched clothes and ignored the question. He noticed one of Nerteaux's Identikit pictures on the desk. He picked it up, like a bounty hunter, and asked, "Do you remember the name of the doctor who took charge of Sema at Sainte-Anne?"

  "Of course. Jean-François Hirsch. We have a little arrangement about prescriptions and…"

  Schiffer was no longer listening. His stare came to rest on the portrait. It was a skillful synthesis of the three victims. Smooth, broad features, shyly beaming out from under red hair. A fragment of Turkish poetry suddenly crossed his mind: The padishah had a daughter / Like the moon of the fourteenth day…

  Beauvanier asked again, "Does that business at La Porte Bleue have anything to do with this girl?"

  Schiffer pocketed the picture. He grabbed the officer's cap and turned it around the right way.

  "If anyone asks, you can always give them some rap, man."

  45

  Sainte-Anne's Hospital. 21.00 hours.

  He knew the place well. The long wall of the enclosure, with its serried stones; the small doorway at 17 Rue Broussais, as discreet as an artists' entrance; then the vast, undulating, intricate mass of buildings mingling different centuries and styles of architecture. A fortress, enclosing a universe of madness.

  But that evening, the citadel did not seem as well guarded as all that. Banners hung up on the first façades announced the situation:

  SECURITY ON STRIKE!

  JOB CREATION OR DEATH!

  Farther on, others added:

  NO TO OVERTIME! MAKE-UP DAYS

  FIDDLE! BANK HOLIDAYS STOLEN!

  The idea of Paris 's largest psychiatric hospital being left to its own devices, with its patients running around in complete freedom, amused Schiffer. He could just picture such a bedlam, in which the lunatics had taken over the asylum and replaced the doctors on night duty. But as he entered, all he found was a completely deserted ghost town.

  He followed the red signposts directing him to neurosurgical and neurological emergency admissions, looking at the names of the various alleyways as he went. He had just taken Allée Guy de Maupassant and was now in Sentier Edgar Allan Poe. He wondered if this was a symptom of the hospital planners' sense of humor. Maupassant had lost his reason before dying, and the alcoholic author of "The Black Cat" could not have had all his wits about him by the end either. In Communist neighborhoods, the streets were named after Karl Marx or Pablo Neruda. Here they commemorated the great lunatics.

  Schiffer sniggered to himself, trying to keep up his usual appearance of a hard cop. But he already felt pan
ic biting into him. There were too many memories, too much agony behind these walls…

  It was in one of these buildings that he had ended up on returning from Algeria, when he was only just twenty. Traumatized by what he had seen and done. He had remained as an inpatient for several months, dogged by hallucinations and suicidal tendencies. Others, who had fought by his side in the Détachements Operationnels de Protection, did not hesitate. He remembered one youngster from Lille who had hanged himself as soon as he got home. And another from Brittany who had cut off his right hand with an axe on his father's farm-the hand he had used to plug in the electrodes and then to press heads down in bathtubs…

  Emergency admissions was deserted.

  It was a large, empty space, covered with scarlet tiles-the pulp of a blood orange. Schiffer pressed the bell, then saw a traditionally dressed nurse arrive, with her white coat done up at the waist with a belt, her hair in a bun, and bifocals on her nose.

  The woman looked ill at ease when she saw his gaunt appearance, but he quickly flashed his card at her and explained the reason for his visit. Without a word, she set off in search of Dr. Jean-François Hirsch.

  He sat down on one of the seats that were attached to the wall. The ceramic tiles seemed to be growing darker. Despite all his efforts, he just could not chase away the memories that were surging up from the depths of his skull.

  1960

  When he had arrived in Algeria, as an intelligence officer, he had not attempted to evade the brutality of his work or escape from it by using alcohol or pills from the infirmary. On the contrary, he had gone at it hammer and tongs, day and night, convinced that he was still master of his own destiny. War had forced him to make the big decision, the only choice that mattered: which side he was on. He could no longer change his mind or turn his coat. And he had to be in the right. It was that or blow your brains out.

  He tortured people twenty-four hours a day. He dragged confessions out of the local populace. First by using the traditional methods of beatings, electrocution and drowning. Then he had come up with his own techniques. He had organized fake executions, dragging hooded prisoners out of the town, watching them shit themselves as he pressed his gun against their heads. He had devised cocktails of acid, which he had forced them to drink, by pushing funnels down their throats. He had stolen medical instruments from hospitals in order to vary the treatment, for example, the stomach pump that he used to inject water into their nostrils.

  He shaped and sculpted fear, always giving it new forms. When he decided to bleed his prisoners, both to weaken them and give their blood to victims of terrorist attacks, he felt strangely light-headed. It was as if he were becoming a god. holding the right to give life or death to humankind. Sometimes, in the interrogation room, he would laugh out of context, blinded by his power, staring with wonder at the blood covering his fingers.

  A month later, he had become completely mute and had been repatriated. His jaw was paralyzed. He was incapable of pronouncing the slightest word. He had been admitted to Sainte-Anne, in a unit entirely devoted to traumatized combatants. The sort of place where the walls echoed with groans, where it was impossible to finish your breakfast before one of your neighbors had vomited over it.

  Enclosed in silence, Schiffer lived a life of pure terror. In the gardens, he lost his sense of direction, no longer knowing where he was, asking other patients if they were the detainees he had tortured. When he walked in the galleries of the main building, he inched along the walls so that his "victims wouldn't see him."

  When he slept, nightmares took over from his hallucinations. Naked men writhing on chairs, testicles sparking below the electrodes, jaws cracking against enamel sinks, bleeding nostrils blocked with syringes.. In fact, they were not visions but memories. Above all, he pictured the man hung upside down, whose skull he had smashed with a kick. Then he woke up, covered in sweat, feeling those brains splash out over him once more. He looked around the interior of his room and saw the smooth walls of a cellar, the bathtub that had been taken down there, and, on the table in the middle, the generator and ANGRC-9 radio..

  Doctors explained to him that it was impossible to repress such memories. Instead, they advised him to confront them, to allot a moment of close attention to them every day. Such a strategy fitted with his personality. He had not drawn back when out in the field, and he was not going to fall to pieces now, in these gardens full of ghosts.

  He had signed himself out and returned to civil existence.

  He applied to become a policeman, concealing his psychiatric problems, and emphasizing his rank of sergeant and his military decorations. The political context played in his favor. There were more and more terrorist attacks by the OAS (Organisation de l'Armée Secrète) in Paris. They needed more men to track down those responsible. They needed experienced field operatives… And there, he was in his element. His street savvy had astonished his superiors. His methods, too. He worked alone, without anyone's help. All that mattered to him were the results, no matter how they were obtained.

  His existence would henceforth be in this image. He would rely on himself and only on himself. He would be above the law, above human considerations. He would be a law unto himself, drawing from his own willpower the right to deliver justice. It was a sort of cosmic pact: his word against the shit heap of the world.

  ***

  "What can I do for you?"

  The voice made him jump. He stood up and took in the new arrival.

  Jean-François Hirsch was tall-over six feet-and slim. His long arms ended in massive hands. To Schiffer, they looked like two counter weights to balance his slender frame. His head also was large, rimmed with brown curly hair… another counterweight. He was wearing not a white coat but a heavy green one. Apparently, he was on his way home. Schiffer introduced himself without producing his card. "Chief Lieutenant Jean-Louis Schiffer. I have a few questions to ask you. It will only take a few minutes."

  "I was on my way out. And I'm late. Can't it wait till tomorrow?" The voice was yet another counterweight. Deep. Stable. Solid.

  "Sorry," Schiffer said. "It's important."

  The doctor looked him up and down. The smell of mint drifted between them like a barrier of freshness. Hirsch sighed and sat down on one of the bolted seats. "Okay, so what's the problem?"

  Schiffer remained standing. "It's about a young Turkish woman you examined on the morning of November 14, 2001. She had been brought in by Lieutenant Christophe Beauvanier."

  "What about her?"

  "It would seem that there were some procedural irregularities."

  "What department are you from?"

  The cop played double or nothing. "It's an internal inquiry. I'm from the Générale Inspection des Services."

  "I warn you right from the start that I'll tell you nothing about Beauvanier. Ever heard of professional ethics?" The quack had misunderstood the point of the inquiry. Obviously he must have helped Mr. Universe get over one of his drug problems.

  Schiffer got on his high horse. "My inquiry does not concern Christophe Beauvanier, even though you put him on a course of methadone."

  The doctor raised an eyebrow-Schiffer had guessed right-then adopted a lighter tone: "So what do you want to know exactly?"

  "What interests me about the Turkish girl are the policemen who took her in the next day"

  The psychiatrist crossed his legs and smoothed down his trousers.

  "They arrived about four hours after she had been admitted. They had a transfer order and an expulsion certificate. Everything was in order. Almost too much so, I'd say."

  "Why?"

  "The forms were stamped and signed. They had come directly from the Minister of the Interior. And this was only ten in the morning. It was the first time I'd seen so much red tape pulled over an anonymous asylum-seeker."

  "Tell me about her."

  Hirsch stared at the tips of his shoes. He was getting his thoughts together. "When she arrived, I thought she was suffering from hypothe
rmia. She was trembling and breathless. But when I examined her, I found that her temperature was normal. Nor had her respiratory system been damaged. Her symptoms were caused by hysteria."

  "What do you mean?"

  He smiled in superiority "I mean that she had the physical symptoms, but none of the physiological causes. It all came from here." He pointed a finger at his temple. "The head. That woman had received a psychological shock. And her body was reacting as a result."

  "What sort of shock do you think it was?"

  "Terrible fear. She had all the signs of exogenic anxiety. A blood test confirmed it. We detected traces of a high discharge of hormones. There was also a particularly sharp rise of cortisol. But all this is getting a little technical for you…" The smile widened.

  The man's superiority was starting to piss Schiffer off.

  The doctor seemed to sense this, adding in a more neutral tone, "That woman had suffered enormous stress. So much so, you could say she had been traumatized. She reminded me of soldiers you sometimes see after battles, on the front. Inexplicable paralysis, sudden asphyxia, stuttering, that kind of-"

  "I know Describe her to me. I mean physically."

  "Brown hair. Very pale. Very thin, almost anorexic. With a Cleopatra haircut. A very harsh look, but it didn't detract from her beauty. On the contrary. In that respect, she was rather… impressive."

  Schiffer was beginning to picture her. Instinctively, he sensed that she could not have been just a plain working girl.

  `And you treated her?"

  "I started by injecting a tranquilizer. Her muscles then relaxed. She began to laugh and chatter incoherently. It was a fit of delirium. What she said was meaningless."

  "But she was speaking in Turkish, wasn't she?"

  "No, in French, like you and me."

  A completely crazy idea crossed Schiffer's mind. But he decided to push it into the distance so as to keep a cool head. "Did she tell you what she'd seen? What had happened at the Turkish baths?"

  "No. She just came out with unfinished sentences, senseless words.”