Cold tears run down her cheeks. But the sounds start up again and she takes courage again.
A shadow detaches itself from the rocky wall and comes towards her.
She sees it, but goes on anyway. When the shadow is close enough, she notices its delicate hands, its little blue dress, the chestnut hair falling softly on its shoulders.
The shadow turns back towards her with a child’s voice.
“That’s enough now,” it says. “They’ll hear us.”
Then it rests a hand on hers. The contact is enough to make her stop.
“Please,” the shadow adds.
And its plea is so sad that she is convinced, and doesn’t start again. She doesn’t know why that child wants something so ridiculous as to stay in there. But she obeys anyway. She doesn’t know whether to start crying over her failed escape attempt, or to be happy to discover she’s no longer alone. She is so grateful that the first human presence she has been aware of is a little girl like herself, that she doesn’t want to disappoint her. So she forgets she wants to leave.
The voices and sounds on the floor above have stopped. This time the silence is complete.
The little girl slips her hand from hers.
“Stay…” she pleads now.
“Don’t worry, we’ll see each other again.”
And the girl returns to the darkness. And she lets her go. And she clutches at that small and insignificant promise to go on hoping.
28.
Alexander Bermann’s armchair.”
In the Thinking Room, the team were concentrating on Gavila’s words. They thought back to the ghetto district where the pedophile kept his lair, and the computer with which he went hunting on the Internet.
“Krepp found no prints on the old leather armchair in the basement!”
Goran suddenly saw this as a revelation.
“On everything else, hundreds, but not there. Why? Because someone took the trouble to wipe them off!”
The criminologist moved towards the wall where all the reports, photographs and documents about the orphanage case were pinned up with drawing pins. He took one down and started reading. It was the transcription of the recording in which Ronald Dermis, as a child, confessed to Father Rolf, found on the tape recorder in Billy Moore’s coffin.
“‘You know what happened to Billy, don’t you, Ron?’ ‘God took him away.’ ‘It wasn’t God, Ron. You know who it was?’ ‘He fell. He fell from the tower.’ ‘But you were with him…’ ‘…Yes.’ And then later the priest assures him: ‘No one will punish you if you tell us what happened. That is a promise,’ and you hear Ronald replying, ‘He told me to’…You understand? ‘He.’”
Goran inspected the faces that were looking at him in puzzlement.
“Now hear what Father Rolf asks: ‘Who’s he? Billy? Did Billy ask you to push him?’ ‘No,’ Ronald replies. ‘So was it one of the other boys?’ and Ronald says, ‘No.’ ‘Who then? Come on, answer me. This person you’re talking about doesn’t exist, does he? He’s just a figment of your imagination…’ and Ronald seems certain when he denies it again, but Father Rolf cuts in, ‘There’s no one else here. Just me and your companions,’ and finally Ronald replies, ‘He only comes for me.’”
Gradually, they were all getting there.
Goran, as excited as a little boy, ran to the pages on the wall and took down a copy of the letter that the adult Ronald had sent the investigators.
“There was one part that struck me on that note: ‘then HE came. HE understood me. HE taught me.’”
He showed them the letter, pointing to the passage.
“You see? Here the word ‘he’ is deliberately written in capitals…I’d already thought about that, but the conclusion I had reached was wrong. I thought it was a clear example of personality dissociation, in which the negative I always appears separate from the agent I. And that’s why it becomes He…‘It was ME, but it was HE who told me to do it, it’s HIS fault I’m what I am’…I was wrong! And I was making the same mistake that Father Rolf made thirty years before! When during Ronald’s confession he mentioned ‘Him,’ the priest thought he was referring to himself, and that he was just trying to externalize his own guilt. That’s typical of children. But the Ronald we knew was no longer a child…”
Mila saw some of the energy fading from Goran’s eyes. It happened every time he got an assessment wrong.
“This ‘He’ that Ronald is referring to is not a projection of his own psyche, a double to hold responsible for his own actions! It’s the same ‘He’ who made himself comfortable in Alexander Bermann’s armchair every time he went on the Internet hunting for children! Feldher leaves a myriad of clues in Yvonne Gress’s house, but takes care to repaint the room where the massacre happened because there on the wall is the only thing he urgently needs to hide…or highlight: the image, immortalized in blood, of the watching man! Because ‘He’ is Albert.”
“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work,” said Sarah Rosa with a calm and confidence that startled the others. “We’ve watched the films from the Capo Alto surveillance system and, apart from Feldher, no one went into that house.”
Goran turned towards her, pointing at her with a finger: “Exactly! Because every time he did, he blocked the cameras with a little blackout. If you think about it, you could get the same effect on the wall with a cardboard outline or a mannequin. And what does this teach us?”
“That he’s an excellent creator of illusions,” said Mila.
“Again, exactly! Since the start, this man has challenged us to understand his tricks. Take the abduction of Sabine from the merry-go-round, for example…brilliant! Dozens of people, dozens of pairs of eyes at the fair and no one notices a thing!”
Goran gave the impression of being really delighted by the ability of his challenger. Not because he didn’t feel pity for the victims. It wasn’t a demonstration of a lack of humanity on his part. Albert was his object of study. Understanding the devices that moved his mind was a fascinating challenge.
“But personally I believe Albert was really present in the room while Feldher was massacring his victims. I would rule out mannequins or tricks of that kind. And you know why?” For a moment the criminologist enjoyed the expression of uncertainty on their faces. “In the arrangement of the bloodstains on the wall around the outline, Krepp identified what he called ‘constant variations’—that’s what he called them. And it means that, whatever obstacle was placed between the blood and the wall, he wasn’t motionless, but moving!”
Sarah Rosa was open-mouthed. There wasn’t much to say.
“Let’s be practical about this,” Stern announced. “If Albert knew Ronald Dermis when he was a little boy, how old could he have been? Twenty, thirty? That would make him fifty or sixty now.”
“Correct,” said Boris. “And considering the dimensions of the shadow that formed on the wall in the massacre room, I would say he’s about five foot three.”
“Five foot two,” said Sarah Rosa, who had already taken the measurement.
“We have a partial description of the man we have to look for, that’s something in itself.”
Goran spoke again: “Bermann, Ronald, Feldher: they’re like wolves. And wolves often work in a pack. Every pack has a leader. And Albert is telling us this: he’s their leader. There was a moment in the lives of those three individuals when they met, separately or together. Ronald and Feldher knew each other, they’d grown up in the same orphanage. But we can assume that they didn’t know who Alexander Bermann was…The only common element is him, Albert. That’s why he’s left his mark on every crime scene.”
“And what’s going to happen now?” asked Sarah Rosa.
“You can imagine that yourselves. Two corpses of little girls are still missing and, consequently, two parts of the pack.”
“There’s also little girl number six,” Mila pointed out.
“Yes…but Albert’s keeping her for himself.”
She had lingered for about ha
lf an hour on the pavement outside, without having the courage to ring. She was trying to find the right words to explain her presence. By now she was so unused to interpersonal relationships that even the simplest approaches struck her as impossible. And meanwhile she was getting cold out there without being able to make her mind up.
The next blue car, I’ll move.
It was after nine and there wasn’t much traffic. Goran’s windows, on the third floor of the block, were lit. The slush-bathed street was a concert of metallic drips, spluttering gutters and gurgling drainpipes.
Fine: I’m going.
Mila moved from the cone of shadow that had protected her till then from the eyes of possible curious neighbors, and ran quickly to the door. It was an old building which must, in the mid-nineteenth century, have housed a factory, with its big windows, wide cornices and the chimney pots that still adorned the roof. There were several of them in the area. The whole district had probably been gentrified by the work of a few architects who had transformed the old industrial workshops into condominiums.
She rang on the entry phone, and waited for almost a minute before she heard Goran’s voice.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Mila. Sorry, Goran, but I needed to talk to you, and I didn’t want to do it on the phone. Before, at the Studio, you were very busy, and then I thought I’d—”
“Come up. Third floor.”
A brief electric tone sounded and the lock of the front door clicked open.
A goods carrier acted as a lift. To make it work you had to close the sliding doors by hand and move a lever. Mila rose slowly through the floors until she reached the third. On the landing she found a single door, half-open for her.
“Come in, sit down.”
Goran’s voice reached her from inside the apartment. Mila followed it. It was a wide loft, with various rooms coming off it. The floor was made of raw wood. The radiators were cast iron and ran around the pillars. A big lit fireplace filled the room with amber light. Mila closed the door behind her, wondering where Goran was. Then she saw him appearing fleetingly in the kitchen doorway.
“I’ll be with you in a second.”
“No rush.”
She looked round. Unlike the criminologist’s usual disheveled appearance, his house was very orderly. There wasn’t an inch of dust around, and everything seemed to reflect the care he took to bring a little harmony into his son’s life.
A moment later she saw him coming in with a glass of water.
“I’m sorry I’ve just turned up out of the blue.”
“That’s OK, I usually go to sleep late.” Then, pointing to the glass: “I was putting Tommy to bed. It won’t take long. Sit down, or fix yourself a drink: there’s a mobile bar down at the end there.”
Mila nodded and saw him heading towards one of the rooms. Partly to avoid any embarrassment, she went and made herself a vodka and ice. As she was drinking, standing by the fireside, she saw the criminologist through the half-open door of his son’s bedroom. He was sitting on the boy’s bed, telling him something, as he stroked his hip with one hand. In the half-darkness of that room, barely lit by a night-light in the shape of a clown, Tommy appeared as a shape under the blankets, formed by his father’s caresses.
In that family context, Goran looked like someone else.
For some reason she remembered the first time when, as a girl, she had gone to see her father in his office. The man who left the house every morning in his jacket and tie was transformed there. He became a hard, serious person, so different from her gentle dad. Mila remembered being terribly distressed.
The same applied to Goran. She felt a great wave of tenderness for him as she saw him pursuing his job as a father.
For Mila that dichotomy had never occurred. There was only one version of her. There was no break to the continuity in her life. She never stopped being the policewoman who tried to find missing people. Because she was always looking for them. On her free days, when she was on leave, while she was doing her shopping. Studying the faces of strangers had become a habit.
Minors who disappear have a story, like everyone else. But at some point the story is interrupted. Mila examined their little footsteps, lost in the dark. She never forgot their faces. Years might have passed, but she would always be able to recognize them.
Because the children are among us, she thought. Sometimes you just have to look for them in the adults they have become.
Goran was telling his son a fairy tale. Mila didn’t want to go on disturbing that scene with her gaze. It wasn’t a spectacle for her eyes. She turned round, but immediately saw Tommy’s smile in a picture frame. If she had met him, he would have made her uneasy, and she had turned up late in the hope of finding him already in bed.
Tommy was a part of Goran’s life that she wasn’t disposed to know.
A little while later he joined her and, with a smile, announced, “He’s gone to sleep.”
“I didn’t want to disturb anyone. But I thought it was important.”
“You’ve already apologized. But now come on, tell me what’s happening…”
He sat down on one of the sofas and invited her to sit down next to him. The fire cast dancing shadows on the wall.
“It’s happened again: I’ve been followed.”
Goran frowned.
“Are you sure?”
“The last time, no, this time yes.”
She told him what had happened, trying not to leave out any details. The car with its headlights turned off, the reflection of the moon on the bodywork, the fact that her pursuer had turned around and driven off once spotted.
“Why should anyone follow you, of all people?”
He had already asked her that question at the restaurant, when she had mentioned the sense of being tailed that she had felt in the yard at the motel. This time Goran seemed to be turning it on himself.
“I can’t think of a valid reason,” he admitted after thinking for a moment.
“There would be no point putting someone on my back at this point, trying to catch my pursuer…”
“He’s aware that you know now, so he won’t do it again.”
Mila nodded. “But that’s not the only reason I came.”
Goran turned to look at her. “Have you discovered something?”
“It’s more that I’ve worked something out. One of Albert’s conjuring tricks.”
“Which of the many?”
“How he managed to take the child from the merry-go-round without anyone noticing anything.”
Now Goran’s eyes were shining with interest.
“Go on, I’m listening…”
“We’ve always taken it for granted that Albert was the kidnapper. A man, then. But what if it was actually a woman?”
“Why do you think that?”
“It was actually Sabine’s mother who made me consider that hypothesis for the first time. Even though I didn’t ask her, she said that if there had been a strange man on that merry-go-round—someone who wasn’t a father—she would have noticed. Also adding that a mother has a kind of sixth sense for these things. And I believe her.”
“Why?”
“Because the police have viewed hundreds of pictures taken that evening, and home movies too, and no one has noticed a suspicious man. From this we too have deduced that our Albert looks entirely ordinary…Then it occurred to me that a woman would find it even easier to take the child away.”
“So you think he has an accomplice.” He quite liked the idea. “But we have no clues supporting a thesis of this kind.”
“I know. And that’s the problem.”
Goran got to his feet and started pacing around the room. He rubbed his untidy beard and thought.
“It wouldn’t be the first time…it’s happened in the past. In Gloucester, for example, with Fred and Rosemary West.”
The criminologist quickly ran through the case of the serial killer couple. He a bricklayer, she a housewife. Ten children. Together
they kidnapped and killed innocent girls after forcing them to take part in their erotic parties, before burying them in the back garden at number 25 Cromwell Street. One of the girls who had ended up under the paving stones was the couple’s sixteen-year-old daughter, who had probably dared to rebel. Two other victims were found in other places that could be connected to Fred. Twelve corpses in all. But the police stopped digging at the little gray house for fear that it would collapse.
“Perhaps the woman is looking after the sixth child.”
Goran seemed very intrigued. But he didn’t want to let himself get carried away with enthusiasm.
“Don’t misunderstand me, Mila: it’s an excellent hunch. But we’ve got to check it out.”
“Will you mention it to the others?”
“We’ll take it into consideration. Meanwhile I will ask one of our men to take a look at the pictures and films taken at the fair.”
“I could do that.”
“Fine.”
“There is one more thing…It’s something I’m curious about. I’ve tried to find the answer on my own, but I haven’t got there.”
“What is it?”
“In the decomposition process, a corpse’s eyes undergo a transformation, don’t they?”
“Well, usually the iris discolors over time…”
Goran stopped to stare at her, he couldn’t work out what she was getting at.
“Why are you asking me?”
Mila took out of her pocket the picture of Sabine that her mother had given her at the end of her visit. The same one that she had kept on the passenger seat all the time while she was driving back. The one that she had found herself staring at after she had got over her fear of being followed, and which had aroused her doubt.
There was something wrong.
The Whisperer Page 29