Dr Xavier stopped right in the middle of the corridor and gave them a surprisingly grave look.
‘We are in the midst of an era of unprecedented political mendacity and institutionalised violence towards the weakest in society,’ he said ominously. ‘Our current governments and their minions are all pursuing a dual purpose: social control and the commodification of individuals.’
Servaz looked at the psychiatrist. His own conclusions were not that different. But he wondered, nevertheless, whether back in the days when they were all-powerful, psychiatrists had not pulled the rug from under their own feet by indulging in all sorts of experiments whose foundations were more ideological than scientific – often with destructive consequences, where human beings were used as guinea pigs.
As they went past, Servaz noticed two more orange-clad guards in their glass cubicle.
Then on the right was the cafeteria they had glimpsed on the screens.
‘The staff cafeteria,’ explained Xavier.
Tall picture windows looked out onto a snowy landscape, and the walls were painted with warm colours. A handful of people sat chatting and drinking coffee. They then went into a room with a high ceiling and salmon-coloured walls. Cheap, comfy armchairs were set about here and there, creating quiet, cosy nooks.
‘This is the visitors’ room,’ said the psychiatrist, ‘where families can speak in private with their relatives. Of course, this facility is only available to the least dangerous residents, which does not mean a great deal, here. There is constant camera surveillance, and the auxiliaries are never far away.’
‘And the others?’ asked Propp, opening his mouth for the first time.
Xavier looked closely and cautiously at the psychologist.
‘Most of them never receive any visits,’ he replied. ‘This is neither a psychiatric hospital nor your usual model prison. This is a pilot establishment, unique in Europe. We get patients from all over. And all of them are very violent individuals: abuse, rape, torture, murder. Committed on their families or on strangers. All repeat offenders. All on a knife’s edge. We have only the crème de la crème here,’ added Xavier with a curious smile. ‘Not many people care to remember that our patients exist. Perhaps that is why the establishment is located in such an isolated place. We are their final family.’
Servaz found this last sentence a touch melodramatic, like everything else about Dr Xavier, in fact.
‘How many security levels are there?’
‘Three. Depending on the dangerousness of the clientele: low, medium and high, which determines not only the intensity of the security systems and the number of guards, but also the nature of the treatment and the relationships between the staff and the residents.’
‘Who determines how dangerous a newcomer is?’
‘Our teams. We combine clinical interviews, questionnaires and the case files our colleagues send us with a revolutionary new method imported from my country. Actually, we have a newcomer who is being evaluated at this very moment. Follow me.’
He led them towards a stairway of wide concrete steps. Once they reached the first floor, they found themselves outside a door reinforced by fine metal mesh.
This time, in addition to the code he typed on a little keyboard, Xavier had to place his hand on a biometric sensor.
A sign above the door informed them: ‘Sector C: Low-level danger – Restricted to Personnel Categories C, B and A.’
‘Is this the only access to this zone?’ asked Ziegler.
‘No, there is a second security door at the end of the corridor that provides access from this zone to the next one – medium security – an area which, consequently, is reserved only for staff members authorised for levels B and A.’
He led them along another corridor. Then he stopped outside a door labelled ‘Evaluation’, and opened it.
Xavier stood back to let them go past.
A windowless room, so narrow that they had to squeeze together inside. Two people were seated in front of a computer screen, a man and a woman. The screen showed both an image from a video camera and several other windows where diagrams and lines of information were scrolling past. The camera was filming a young man sitting on a stool in another windowless room hardly bigger than a broom closet. Servaz saw that the man was wearing a virtual-reality helmet. Then his gaze was drawn further down and he gave a slight shudder: the man’s trousers were pulled down onto his thighs, and a strange tube connected to electric wires had been placed round his penis.
‘This new method for evaluating sexual deviancy is based on virtual reality, using a system of oculomotor observation and penile plethysmography,’ explained the psychiatrist. ‘That is the device you can see attached to his genitals: it allows us to measure the physiological proportion of excitement in response to various stimuli – his erection, in other words. In conjunction with the erectile response, the movements of the subject’s eye muscles are measured with the help of an infrared tracking device which determines how long the images coming from the virtual-reality mask are observed, as well as the exact spot in each scene where his attention is focused.’
The psychiatrist bent down and pointed at one of the windows on the screen. Servaz saw coloured lines going up and down. Beneath each line the category of stimulus was indicated: ‘male adult’, ‘female adult’, ‘male child’ and so on.
‘The stimuli that are sent into the mask alternate between an adult man, an adult woman, a nine-year-old girl, a little boy the same age and finally a control character that is sexless and neutral. Each short film lasts three minutes. Each time, we measure the physical response.’
He stood up straight.
‘It must be said that the majority of our clientele is made up of sex abusers. We have eighty-eight beds altogether: fifty-three in Sector C, twenty-eight in B and the seven residents in Unit A.’
Servaz leaned against the wall. He was sweating, and shivers were running through him. His throat was on fire. It was the vision of that man sitting in a position both humiliating and surreal while his deviant fantasies were aroused in order to be measured: it was making him feel physically unwell.
‘How many of them are murderers?’ he asked in an unsteady voice.
Xavier gave him an intense stare.
‘Thirty-five. The entire contingent of patients in Sectors B and A.’
* * *
Diane watched them cross the huge foyer and take the corridor to the service stairway. Three men and a woman. Xavier was talking to them, but he looked tense, on the defensive. The man and the woman who were on either side of him were bombarding him with questions. She waited until they were gone; then she went over to the glass doors. A 4x4 was parked in the snow a dozen metres from there.
The word ‘gendarmerie’ was painted on it.
Diane remembered the conversation she had had with Alex about the murdered chemist: apparently the police had also made the connection with the Institute.
Then something else occurred to her: the air vent in her office, the conversation she’d overheard between Lisa and Xavier. And that strange business with the horse. Even then, Lisa Ferney had mentioned the possibility the police might call. Could there be a connection between the two events? The police must be wondering the same thing. Then her thoughts returned to the air vent.
She turned away from the glass doors and hurried across the foyer.
* * *
‘Do you have something for a cold?’
The psychiatrist stared again at Servaz, then opened his desk drawer.
‘Of course.’ He handed him a yellow tube. ‘Here, take this: paracetamol with ephedrine. It works fairly well, as a rule. You are really very pale. You don’t want me to call a doctor?’
‘No, thank you. I’ll be all right.’
Xavier walked over to a small fridge in the corner of the room and came back with a bottle of mineral water and a glass. His office was unpretentious, with metal filing cabinets, the fridge, a little bookshelf filled with professi
onal titles, a few pot plants on the windowsill, and a table that was empty except for telephone, computer and lamp.
‘Just take one at a time. Four a day maximum. You can keep the tube.’
‘Thank you.’
For a moment Servaz lost himself in contemplation of the tablet dissolving in the glass. A headache was boring into his skull behind his eyes. The cold water felt good on his throat. He was soaked in sweat; beneath his jacket his shirt was sticking to his back. He must have a fever. It was cold, too – but it was an internal cold: the thermostat by the door indicated 23 degrees. Once again he saw the picture on the computer screen – the rapist being raped in turn by machines, probes, electronic instruments – and once again he felt the bile rising in his throat.
‘We’re going to have to visit Unit A,’ he said, after he put his glass down.
He had wanted his voice to sound firm, but the fire in his throat had reduced it to a scratchy croak. Across from him, the doctor’s cheery expression suddenly soured. Servaz imagined a cloud passing in front of the sun and transforming a spring-like landscape into something far more sinister.
‘Will that really be necessary?’
The psychiatrist cast a discreet yet imploring look at the judge sitting to the left of the two investigators.
‘Yes,’ said Confiant immediately, turning to them. ‘Do we really need to—’
‘I believe we do,’ interrupted Servaz. ‘I am going to tell you something that must stay between us,’ he said, leaning towards Xavier. ‘But perhaps you already know.’
He had turned to look at the young judge. For a brief moment the two men gauged each other in silence. Then Servaz looked from Confiant to Ziegler and he could clearly read the silent message she was sending him: go easy.
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Xavier.
Servaz cleared his throat. The medication would not begin to work for several minutes. His temples were squeezed in a vice.
‘We found the DNA of one of your residents … in the place where Éric Lombard’s horse was killed: at the top of the cable car. DNA belonging to Julian Hirtmann.’
Xavier opened his eyes wide.
‘Dear God! That’s impossible!’
‘Do you understand what this means?’
The psychiatrist gave Confiant a distraught look and lowered his head. His stupor was not feigned. He didn’t know.
‘What this means,’ continued Servaz implacably, ‘is that there are two possibilities. Either Hirtmann himself was up there that night, or someone who could get close enough to him to obtain his saliva was up there. Which means that, whether it was Hirtmann or not, someone in your establishment is mixed up in this business, Dr Xavier.’
15
‘My God, this is a nightmare,’ said Xavier.
He gave them a desperate look.
‘My predecessor, Dr Wargnier, fought very hard to found this place. There was no lack of opposition to the project, as you can imagine. And there still is, just waiting for a chance to re-emerge. There are people who think these criminals should be in prison. People who’ve never accepted their presence in the valley. If word of this gets out, the very existence of the Institute will be under threat.’
Xavier took off his extravagant red glasses. He took a small cloth from his pocket and began to wipe the lenses.
‘The people who end up here have nowhere else to go. We are their last refuge: after us, there’s nothing. Ordinary psychiatric hospitals and prisons won’t have them. There are only five facilities for difficult patients in France, and this institute is the only one of its kind. Every year we receive dozens of requests for admission. Either for the perpetrators of horrific crimes who have been judged mentally incapable or for convicts who have personality disorders so serious they can no longer be kept in prison, or psychotics who are so dangerous they cannot be treated in a traditional unit. Where will these people go if we close our doors?’
His fingers on the lenses were moving in ever quicker circles.
‘As I told you, for over thirty years now, in the name of ideology, profitability and budget priorities, psychiatric care in this country has been devastated. This establishment costs the taxpayers a great deal. Unlike ordinary units for difficult patients, this one is part of an experiment on a European level, financed in part by the EU. But only in part. And in Brussels, too, there are quite a few people who take a dim view of this experiment.’
‘We have no intention of letting this information get out,’ said Servaz.
The psychiatrist looked at him doubtfully.
‘It will get out, sooner or later. How will you conduct your investigation without word getting out?’
Servaz knew he was right.
‘There is only one solution,’ said Confiant. ‘We must get to the bottom of the matter as quickly as possible if we want to make sure the media don’t get hold of it and start spreading crazy rumours. If we manage to find out who was involved in this before the media hear about the DNA, at least we will have proven that no one could have got out of here.’
The psychiatrist agreed with a nod of his head.
‘I’ll conduct my own little investigation,’ he said. ‘And I will do everything I possibly can to help you.’
‘In the meantime, may we see Unit A?’ said Servaz.
Xavier stood up.
‘I’ll take you there.’
* * *
She was sitting at her desk. Motionless. Holding her breath.
She heard every sound, every word as clearly as if they were speaking in her own office. The cop’s voice, for example: he sounded both exhausted and under enormous stress. Far too much pressure. He was dealing with it, but for how long? Every word he said had been branded on Diane’s brain. She didn’t follow the business about a dead horse, but she had clearly understood that they’d found Hirtmann’s DNA at the scene of a crime. And that the police suspected someone in the Institute was mixed up in it.
A dead horse … A murdered chemist … The Institute under suspicion …
She was afraid, but now something else was taking shape: irrepressible curiosity. The memory of the shadow passing by her door at night was there again.
When she was a student, Diane had overheard a man intimidating and threatening the girl who slept in the room next door. He had come several nights in a row, just as Diane was about to fall asleep, and every time she had heard the same threats, in a low, growling voice, threats that he would kill her, mutilate her, make her life hell; then the door slammed and the footsteps faded along the corridor. After that, all that remained in the silence were her neighbour’s muffled sobs, like the sad echo of thousands of other solitudes, thousands of other sorrows locked away in the silence of cities.
She did not know who the man was – she didn’t recognise his voice – nor did she really know the girl next door; she’d only ever said hello and good evening to her, or shared vague, unimportant chitchat in passing. All she knew was that her name was Ottilie and she was studying for a Master’s in economics; she had been seen going out with a bearded, bespectacled student, but most of the time she was on her own. No group of friends, no phone calls to parents.
Diane shouldn’t have got involved, it was none of her business, but one night she couldn’t help following the man when he left the girl’s room. That is how she found out that he lived in a pretty little house, and through the window she saw a woman. She could have left it at that. But she’d gone on watching him when she had the free time. One thing led to another and she found out a lot about him: he was a manager at a supermarket, he had two children aged five and seven, he bet on the races, and quietly did his shopping at Globus, a rival chain. She eventually found out that he’d got to know her neighbour at a time when the girl was paying for her studies by working at the supermarket, and he’d got her pregnant. Which was why he was intimidating her, threatening her. He wanted her to have an abortion. He also had another mistress: a checkout assistant who wore too much make-up and stoo
d noisily chewing her gum while she looked the customers up and down. ‘I’m in love with the queen of the supermarket’, as Bruce Springsteen sang. One evening Diane wrote an anonymous letter on her computer and slipped it under her neighbour’s door. All the letter said was, ‘He will never leave his wife.’ One month later she found out that her neighbour had had an abortion in the twelfth week, only a few days before the legal limit in Switzerland.
Now she wondered once again if this need of hers to get involved in other people’s lives was due to the fact that she’d been raised in a family where silence, secrets and things left unsaid were far more common than moments of sharing. She also wondered whether her strict Calvinist father had ever been unfaithful to her mother. She knew very well that the opposite had occurred, that the discreet men who visited her mother included several who took advantage of her overactive imagination, in order to feed on her eternally disappointed hopes.
Diane squirmed on her chair. What was going on here? She felt increasingly uncomfortable as she tried to connect the few elements she had.
The worst was the business in Saint-Martin. A terrible crime; the fact that it might be connected in some way to the Institute only served to increase the unease she’d felt ever since she arrived. She was sorry she had no one to confide in, no one with whom she could share her doubts. A friend, or Pierre.
The Frozen Dead Page 22