But Goran was far from peaceful. His mind was still running to that perfect organization. The officers in the special web-crime unit had unearthed a database containing more than three thousand children’s names, linked with addresses and photographs. The network used fake domains for children to lure victims into the trap…so like the ones in the cartoons that Goran and Tommy had watched together after dinner on a satellite channel. The blue tiger and the white lion. As his son had cuddled up against him, concentrating completely on the two jungle friends, Goran had watched him.
I have to protect him, he thought.
And the thought had given him a strange fear deep in his chest, a dark, sticky knot. The dread of not doing enough, of not being enough. Because a single parent can’t be enough. Even if Tommy and he basically managed. But what would have happened if, behind Bermann’s blank computer screen, rather than that unknown child, it had been his Tommy? Would he have been capable of noticing that someone was trying to enter his son’s mind, his son’s life?
As Tommy finished his homework, Goran had hidden himself away in his study. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock, so he had started flicking through Bermann’s file again, finding various bits of food for thought that might be useful to the investigation.
First of all, that leather armchair in the basement, the one on which Krepp had found no fingerprints.
On everything else, but not there…why?
He was sure there was a reason for that, too. And yet, every time he thought he had grasped a concept, his mind slipped elsewhere. To the dangers surrounding the life of his son.
Goran was a criminologist, he knew what evil was made of. But he had always observed it from a distance, as an academic. He had never been corrupted by the idea that the same evil might somehow stretch out its bony finger until it touched him. Now, though, he was thinking about it.
When do you become a “monster”?
That term, which he had officially banned, now returned to the deepest recess of his mind. Because he wanted to know how it happens. When you realize you have crossed that boundary.
Bermann belonged to a perfect organization, with a related hierarchy and status system. The sales representative had joined it while at university. In those days the Internet was not yet seen as a hunting ground, and it took a considerable effort to stay in the shadows and not arouse suspicion. That was why followers were advised to create a safe and exemplary life for themselves in which they could hide their own true nature and conceal their own impulses. Blend in, and disappear; those were the key words of the strategy.
Bermann had come back from university with a crystal clear idea of what he would do. First of all he had traced an old school friend that he hadn’t seen for years. Veronica, who had never been pretty enough for the boys—himself included—to take an interest in her. He had led her to believe that his was a love that he had nurtured for years and shyly concealed. And she, as predicted, had immediately agreed to marry him. The first years of marriage had passed as they do for all couples, with highs and lows. He frequently traveled for work. In reality he was often taking advantage of his travels to meet others like himself or to groom his young prey.
With the advent of the Internet things had got much easier. Pedophiles had immediately started making use of that incredible instrument that not only let them act under cover of anonymity, but also set up ingenious traps to manipulate their victims.
But Alexander Bermann couldn’t complete his perfectly planned disguise, because Veronica couldn’t give him an heir. That was the missing piece, the detail that would truly have put him beyond suspicion: because a father isn’t interested in other people’s children.
The criminologist brushed aside the fury that had risen up in his throat and closed the file that had been getting fatter and fatter over the last few hours. He didn’t want to read it anymore. In fact he wanted only to go to bed and dull himself with sleep.
Who could Albert be but Bermann? Even if they had yet to link him to the graveyard of arms and the disappearance of all six little girls, and find the missing corpses, no one more than he would deserve to wear the executioner’s garb.
But the more Goran thought about it the less convinced he was.
At eight o’clock Roche would officially announce the capture of the guilty man at a packed press conference. Goran realized that the idea tormenting him now had started buzzing around in his head soon after he had discovered Bermann’s secret. Lingering behind, foggily indistinct, the idea had squatted in a corner of his mind all afternoon. But in the shadows where it had taken refuge it went on pulsing, to show him it was there, and it was alive. Only now, in the peace of his room, Goran had decided to concentrate on it fully.
There’s something in this business that doesn’t add up…
You don’t think Bermann’s guilty?
Oh, of course I do: the man was a pedophile. But he didn’t kill the six little girls. He has nothing to do with it…
How can you be so sure?
Because if Alexander Bermann really was our Albert, we would have found the last little girl in his boot—number six—and not Debby, the first. She would already have been rotting for some time…
And just as he was becoming aware of this deduction, the criminologist looked at his watch: a few minutes till the press conference at eight.
He had to stop Roche.
The chief inspector had summoned the main newspapers as soon as information about developments in the Bermann case had started circulating. The official pretext was that he didn’t want the journalists to get hold of the information secondhand, perhaps badly filtered by some confidential source. In reality, he was worried that the story could trickle away in different directions, excluding him from the limelight.
Roche was good at handling events like this, he knew how to gauge the wait and he derived a certain pleasure from leaving the press dangling. That was why he started those meetings a few minutes late, letting it be known that as head of the team he was always delayed by last-minute developments.
The inspector enjoyed the murmur coming from the press room next to his office: it was like energy that fed on his ego. Meanwhile he sat there calmly, with his feet on the desk that he had inherited from his predecessor, whose vice inspector he had been for a long time—too long, he thought, and had had no compunction about firing eight years before.
The lines on his phone had gone on lighting up uninterruptedly. But he had no intention of replying: he wanted to let the tension mount.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” said Roche.
As soon as she entered, Mila noticed a smug grin on the chief inspector’s face. She had wondered why on earth he wanted to see her.
“Officer Vasquez, I wanted to thank you personally for the invaluable contribution that you have made to this investigation.”
Mila would have blushed if she hadn’t understood that this was only the calculated prelude to getting rid of her. “I don’t think I did much, sir.”
Roche picked up a letter opener and went on cleaning his nails with the tip. Then, distractedly, he went on: “No, it was extremely useful.”
“We don’t yet know the identity of the sixth girl.”
“It will come out, like everything else.”
“Sir, I would like to ask your permission to complete my work, at least for a few days. I’m sure I can get a result…”
Roche dropped the letter opener, took his feet off the desk and got up to walk towards Mila. With the most brilliant of smiles, he took her right hand, still bandaged, and shook it, without noticing that he was hurting her. “I’ve talked to your superior: Sergeant Morexu assured me that you will receive a commendation for this case.”
Then he walked her to the door.
“Safe home, officer. And think of us from time to time.”
Mila nodded, because there was nothing else to say. A few seconds later she found herself outside, watching the office door as it close
d.
She would have liked to discuss the question with Goran Gavila, because she was sure he knew nothing about her sudden dismissal. But he had already gone home. A few hours before she had heard him on the phone, agreeing to dinner. Judging by the tone he was using, the person on the other end couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old. They were going to order a pizza.
Mila had worked out that Goran had a son. Perhaps there was also a woman in his life, and she too would be sharing the pleasant evening that father and son were preparing. Mila had felt a twinge of envy, without knowing why.
She handed in her badge at the door and was given an envelope with a railway ticket to take her home. This time no one would take her to the station. She would have to call a taxi, in the hope that her own police headquarters would reimburse the expense, and drop by at the motel to pick up her things.
Once she was in the street, though, Mila discovered that she wasn’t in a hurry. She looked around, breathed in air that suddenly struck her as clear and peaceful. The city looked as if it was immersed in an unnatural bubble of cold, balanced on the edge of a meteorological event. One degree more or less and everything would change. The rarefied atmosphere contained the premature promise of a snowstorm. Or else everything would stay as it was now, motionless.
She took the ticket from the envelope. There were still three hours till her train. But she was thinking about something else. Would that be long enough to do what she had to do? There was no way of knowing, except having a go. Basically, if she drew a blank, no one would know. And she couldn’t leave with that doubt.
Three hours. They would have to do.
She had hired a car and had been traveling for around an hour. The mountain tops carved out the sky in front of her. Log cabins, with sloping roofs. Gray smoke, scented with resin, rose from the chimneys. Wood stacked up in the yards. From the windows, a comforting, ocher light.
Driving along Highway 115, Mila had taken exit 25. She was heading for the boarding school that Debby Gordon had attended. She wanted to see her room. She was sure she would find something there that would take her to child number six, to her name. Even if she was of practically no use to Chief Inspector Roche by now, Mila couldn’t leave that undiscovered identity behind her. It was a little gesture of pity. The news had not yet been broadcast that there had been more than five girls, because no one had yet had the opportunity to mourn the sixth victim. And they wouldn’t be able to do it without a name, Mila knew that. She would become the white mark on a tombstone, the silent pause at the end of a brief list of names, just one number to add to the cold accountancy of death. And she absolutely couldn’t allow that to happen.
In fact there was another idea that obsessed her, for which she had traveled so many miles. It was that tickle at the base of her neck…
The policewoman reached her destination just after nine. The boarding school was in a pretty village twelve hundred meters up the hill. The streets at that time of day were deserted. The school building was just outside the village, surrounded by a pretty park, with a riding school and tennis and netball courts. It was reached by a long drive on which students walked slowly back from their sports activities. The girls’ crystalline laughter violated the instructions that they walk in silence.
Mila passed them and parked in the area in front of the school. A little while later she turned up at the office to ask if she could visit Debby’s room, hoping that no one would cause any problems. After consulting with a superior, the assistant came back to her and told her she could go. Luckily, after their discussion, Debby’s mother had phoned to tell them Mila was on her way. The assistant gave her a pass with “visitor” on it, and showed her the way.
Mila walked down the corridors until she reached the wing where the pupils had their rooms. It wasn’t hard to find Debby’s. Her classmates had covered her door with colored ribbons and notes. They said they would never stop missing her, they would never forget her. And there was the inevitable “You will always stay in our hearts.”
She thought once more of Debby, of the phone calls she had made to her family desperate for them to take her home, the isolation that a child of her age, shy and self-conscious, can suffer at the hands of her schoolmates in a place like that. And that was why she found those notes in bad taste, the hypocritical manifestation of belated emotion. You could have noticed her when she was here, she thought. Or when someone took her away from under your noses.
Shrieks and delighted squawks reached her from the end of the corridor. Stepping over the stumps of the now extinguished candles that someone had arranged along the threshold as a sign of remembrance, Mila entered Debby’s refuge.
She closed the door behind her and everything was suddenly silent. She stretched a hand out towards a lamp and lit it. The room was small. Outside it there was a window that looked out directly over the park. Resting against the wall, a very tidy desk stood below shelves packed with books. Debby liked reading. On the right was the bathroom door, closed, and Mila decided she would leave it till last. On the bed were a few cuddly toys that scrutinized the policewoman with their cold, useless eyes, making her feel like an intruder. The room was entirely covered with posters and photographs showing Debby at home, with her classmates from her old school, her girlfriends and her dog Sting. All the things that had been taken from her so that she could attend that exclusive boarding school.
Debby was a girl with the potential to be a beautiful woman, Mila observed. Her contemporaries would have noticed the fact too late, sorry not to have glimpsed the swan hidden in that bewildered duckling sooner. But at that point she would have wisely ignored them.
She cast her mind back to the autopsy that she had witnessed, to when Chang had freed her face from the plastic, and the grip with the white lily had appeared in her hair. Her murderer had combed it and Mila remembered thinking that he had made her beautiful for them.
No, though, she was beautiful for Alexander Bermann…
Her eye was drawn to an area of wall that had remained strangely empty. She approached it and discovered that at various points the plaster had flaked away. As if something had been stuck to it that was no longer there. Other hands, other eyes had touched Debby’s world, her things, her memories. Perhaps it had been her mother who had taken the pictures off the wall; she would have to check.
She was still thinking about that when she was startled by a sound. It came from outside. Not from the corridor, but from behind the bathroom door.
She instinctively brought her hand to her belt, in search of her gun. When she had taken it out and leveled it, she rose and walked over to the bathroom door. Another sound. Clearer this time. Yes, there was someone in there. Someone who hadn’t noticed she was there. Someone who, like herself, had thought that this would be the best time to enter Debby’s room undisturbed and take something away…clues? Her heart was thumping madly. She wouldn’t go in, she would wait.
Suddenly the door opened. Mila moved her finger to the safety catch. Then, luckily, she froze. The little girl spread her arms wide with terror, dropping what she held in her hands.
“Who are you?” Mila asked her.
The girl stammered: “I’m a friend of Debby’s.”
She was lying. Mila was perfectly well aware of it. She put her gun back in her belt and looked at the ground, at the things the girl had dropped. They were a bottle of perfume, some bottles of shampoo and a wide-brimmed red hat.
“I came to get the things I lent her,” but it sounded more like an excuse. “The others came here before me…”
Mila recognized the red hat from one of the photographs on the wall. Debby was wearing it. And she realized that she was witness to an act of looting that had probably been going on for several days, the work of some of Debby’s schoolmates. It wouldn’t have been strange if one of them had taken the photographs from the wall.
“Fine,” she said crisply. “Now get out of here.”
The girl hesitated for a moment, then pi
cked up the things she had dropped and ran from the room. Mila let her go. Debby would have liked that. The things would have been no use to her mother, who would blame herself for the rest of her life for sending her there. Compared to the other parents, Mrs. Gordon was “lucky”—if you could talk of luck in such cases—to have her daughter’s body to mourn.
Mila started rummaging among the papers and books. She wanted a name and she would get one. Of course, it would have been easier to find Debby’s diary. She was sure she must have had something to confide her miseries in. And, like all twelve-year-olds, she would have kept it in a secret place. A place not too far from her heart, however. Where she could have gone and got it as soon as she needed it. And when do we have the greatest need to take refuge in what is dearest to us? At night. Mila knelt down beside the bed, reached under the mattress, and felt around until she found something.
It was a tin box decorated with little silver rabbits, closed with a miniature padlock.
She set it down on the bed and looked around in search of the place where the key might be hidden. Then she suddenly remembered the bracelet dangling from Debby’s right wrist at the autopsy. With a tiny key on it.
She had given it back to Debby’s mother and there was no time to get the key back. So Mila decided to force the box open. Using a ballpoint pen as a lever, she managed to dislodge the rings that held the padlock. Then she lifted the lid. Inside was a potpourri of spices, dried flowers and scented wood. A red-stained safety pin that must have been used for the blood-sisters ritual. An embroidered silk handkerchief. A rubber bear with chewed ears. Birthday candles. A teenager’s treasure trove of memories.
But no diary.
Strange, Mila said to herself. The size of the box and the meagerness of its remaining contents suggested the presence of something else. And also the fact that Debby felt the need to protect it all with a padlock. Or perhaps there really wasn’t a diary.
Disappointed to have drawn a blank, she looked at her watch: she’d missed the train. She might as well stay there and look for something that might lead her to Debby’s mysterious friend. Even before, as she was looking through the girl’s things, that sensation had floated back to the surface, the one that she had already felt several times without ever managing to grasp it.
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