The Frozen Dead

by Bernard Minier

  Then there was that cop; she knew nothing about him except for the inflection and the tone of his voice. And one other thing, most definitely: that he was under stress. There was tension, worry. But at the same time strength and determination. And a lively curiosity. Someone who was rational and sure of himself: the policeman had displayed a character much like her own.

  * * *

  ‘Allow me to introduce Élisabeth Ferney, our head nurse.’

  Servaz saw a tall woman coming towards them, her heels clacking on the tiles in the corridor. She wore her hair loose to her shoulders, although it was not as long as Charlène Espérandieu’s. She greeted them with a nod, not saying a word, not smiling, either, and her gaze lingered a bit longer than necessary on Irène Ziegler.

  Servaz saw the young gendarme lower her eyes.

  Élisabeth Ferney had an abrupt, authoritarian air about her. Servaz thought she must be in her forties, but he also knew that she could as easily be thirty-five or fifty, because her lab coat and strict demeanour made it impossible to determine her age. He suspected she was highly energetic, with an iron will. And what if the second man were a woman? he suddenly wondered. Then he saw that this notion was proof of how distraught he was: if everyone became a suspect, it meant that no one was. They had no solid leads.

  ‘Lisa is the soul of our establishment,’ said Xavier. ‘She knows it better than anyone – and there’s not a single therapeutic or practical aspect with which she isn’t familiar. She’s also acquainted with every one of our eighty-eight residents. Even the psychiatrists have to submit their work to her.’

  No trace of a smile graced the head nurse’s face. She motioned to Xavier, who immediately interrupted what he was saying to listen to her. She murmured something in his ear. Servaz wondered whether he had just been introduced to the person who was really in charge. Xavier replied to her in similar fashion, while the others waited in silence for the end of their little private consultation. Finally she consented, acknowledged the visitors with a brief nod and left the room.

  ‘Let’s continue,’ said the psychiatrist.

  As they were heading off in the opposite direction, Servaz stopped and turned right round to watch Lisa Ferney walk away, her lab coat stretched tight over her broad shoulders, her high heels clicking. At the end of the corridor, before disappearing round the corner, she turned back too and their gazes met. Servaz thought he saw her smile.

  * * *

  ‘The important thing,’ said Xavier, ‘is to avoid any attitude that might cause conflict.’

  They were standing outside the last security door, the one that led to Unit A. No more glossy paint on the walls, only bare stone and the impression of being in a medieval fortress, were it not for the armoured steel doors, the pale neon lights and the concrete floors.

  Xavier raised his head to a camera above the door. An LED light went from red to green and locks clicked in the thick armour plating. He pulled open the heavy door and ushered them into the narrow space between the two armoured doors. They waited for the first one to shut slowly on its own and lock with a click, then for the locks of the second door to pull back in turn, making just as much noise. It was like being in the engine room of a ship, in an obscurity broken only by the light filtering through the portholes. The smell of metal. Xavier looked solemnly at each of them in turn and Servaz suspected he had a little catchphrase ready, something he must serve up to every visitor who went through this door:

  ‘Welcome to hell,’ he declared with a smile.

  * * *

  A glass cubicle. Inside, a guard. A corridor to one side. Servaz moved forward and saw a white hallway, thick blue pile carpets, a row of doors with small windows on the left and lights on the right.

  The guard put down the magazine he was reading and came out of the cubicle. Xavier shook his hand ceremoniously. He was a huge man, well over six foot tall.

  ‘I’d like to introduce Mr Atlas,’ said Xavier, ‘as our residents in Unit A have christened him.’

  Mr Atlas laughed. He shook their hands. A handshake as light as a feather, as if he were afraid he might break their bones.

  ‘How are they this morning?’

  ‘Calm,’ said Mr Atlas. ‘It will be a good day.’

  ‘It might not,’ said Xavier, eyeing the visitors.

  ‘The main thing is not to provoke them,’ explained Mr Atlas, echoing what the psychiatrist had said. ‘Keep your distance. There is a limit you have to respect. Go beyond and they might feel they’re being attacked and react violently.’

  ‘I’m afraid these people are here precisely to go beyond the limit,’ said Xavier. ‘They’re from the police.’

  Mr Atlas’s expression hardened. He shrugged his shoulders and went back into his cubicle.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Xavier.

  They went down the corridor, the sound of their footsteps absorbed by the thick blue carpet. The psychiatrist pointed to the first door.

  ‘Andreas came here from Germany. He killed his father and mother in their sleep with two shots from a rifle. Then because he was afraid to be alone, he cut off their heads and put them in the freezer. He took them out every night so he could watch television with them, placing the heads on decapitated dummies, which sat next to him on the sofa.’

  Servaz was listening attentively. He visualised the scene with a shudder: he had just thought of the horse’s head found behind the riding academy.

  ‘One day the family doctor showed up to ask after his parents, because he was surprised they hadn’t shown up at his surgery, and Andreas killed him with a hammer. Then he cut his head off, too. Wasn’t it wonderful, he said, that his parents had company now, because the doctor was such a nice man, such a good conversationalist. Of course, the police began to look into the doctor’s disappearance. When they came to question Andreas and his parents, who were on the list of the doctor’s patients, Andreas let the men in and said, “Here they are.” And indeed, there they were: the three heads, in the freezer, waiting to be taken out for the evening.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Confiant.

  ‘The problem,’ continued Xavier, ‘was that at the psychiatric hospital where he was interned, Andreas tried to decapitate one of the night nurses. The poor woman didn’t die, but she’ll never be able to speak properly again, and all her life she will have to wear scarves and polo necks to hide the terrible scar left by Andreas’s paper knife.’

  Servaz met Ziegler’s eyes. He saw the gendarme was thinking the same thing. Here was someone who, clearly, made a habit of cutting off heads. And his cell was not far from Hirtmann’s. Servaz looked through the small window. Andreas was a giant who must have weighed nearly 24 stone, with a 42-inch waist and a shoe size of 11 or 12; his enormous head was rammed into his shoulders as if he had no neck, and his face wore a scowl.

  Xavier then pointed to the second door.

  ‘Dr Jaime Esteban has come to us from Spain. He killed three couples over two summers on the other side of the border, in the national parks of Aigüestortes and Ordesa y Monte Perdido. Before that he had been a model citizen, a bachelor but very respectful of the women who came to his surgery; in his village he was a local councillor and he always had a kind word for everyone.’

  He went up to the small window, then stepped aside and motioned to the others to come near.

  ‘We still don’t know why he did it. He went after hikers. Always couples, always young. First he would crush the man’s skull with a stone or a stick; then he raped and strangled the women before throwing their bodies into a ravine. Oh, and he drank their blood. Nowadays he thinks he’s a vampire. In the Spanish hospital where he was held he bit two male nurses in the neck.’

  Servaz went up to the window. He saw a thin man with a neatly trimmed black beard sitting on a bed; he wore a short-sleeved white boiler suit, and his hair shone with brilliantine. Above the bed a television was switched on.

  * * *

  ‘And now, for our most famous resident,’ announced Xavie
r, like a collector presenting his finest piece.

  He typed a code on the box next to the door.

  ‘Good morning, Julian,’ said Xavier as he went in.

  No answer. Servaz followed him in.

  He was surprised by the size of the room. It seemed much larger than the previous cells. Other than that, the walls and floor were white, like the others. At the far side of the room was a bed, and against the wall were a small table and two chairs; two doors on the left looked as if they might lead to a shower and a cupboard, and a window looked out onto the mountains.

  Servaz was also surprised by how bare the room was. He wondered if this were by choice, or whether the situation had been imposed upon the Swiss inmate. According to his file, Hirtmann was a curious, intelligent, sociable man, and no doubt he had been a great reader and consumer of all sorts of culture in his former life as a free man and murderer. Here there was nothing, apart from a cheap CD player set on the table. However, unlike in the previous cells, the furniture was not fastened to the ground or sheathed in plastic. It was as if they did not consider Hirtmann to be a danger either to himself or to others.

  Servaz started when he recognised the music coming from the CD player. Gustav Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.

  Hirtmann had his eyes down. He was reading the newspaper. Servaz leaned slightly forward. He noticed that he had lost weight compared to the photographs in the file. His skin was milkier, almost transparent, in contrast with his short, dark, wiry hair, interspersed with a few grey strands. He hadn’t shaved, and black stubble shadowed his chin, but he had preserved a veneer of breeding – which he would have had even dressed like a tramp and living under a bridge in Paris – and that rather strict face with frowning brows, which must have intimidated people in court. He was wearing a boiler suit and a white T-shirt going grey from washing.

  He had aged somewhat too, in comparison with the photographs.

  ‘Allow me to introduce Commandant Servaz,’ said Xavier, ‘Monsieur Confiant, the judge, Captain Ziegler and Professor Propp.’

  In the back-light from the window, Hirtmann looked up and for the first time Servaz could see how bright his eyes were. They did not reflect the outside world; they were burning with an internal fire. The effect lasted only a second. Then it vanished and he became once again the former prosecutor from Geneva – urbane, polite and smiling.

  He pushed back his chair and unfolded his tall frame. He was even taller than in the photos. Nearly six foot three, Servaz guessed.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  He looked straight at Servaz. For a moment the two men observed each other in silence. Then Hirtmann did something strange: he abruptly held his hand out to Servaz, who nearly jumped and recoiled. He seized the cop’s hand with his own and shook it vigorously. Servaz could not help but give a shudder. The Swiss man’s hand was cold and slightly damp, like a fish – perhaps it was the effect of his medication.

  ‘Mahler,’ said the policeman, to give an impression of composure.

  Hirtmann looked up at him, astonished.

  ‘Do you like Mahler?’

  ‘Yes. The Fourth, first movement,’ added Servaz.

  ‘Bedächtig … nicht eilen … Recht gemächlich …’

  ‘Moderately, not rushed. Leisurely moving,’ translated Servaz.

  Hirtmann seemed surprised but delighted.

  ‘Adorno likened this movement to the “once upon a time” of a fairy tale.’

  Servaz fell silent, listening to the strings.

  ‘Mahler wrote it under very difficult circumstances,’ continued Hirtmann. ‘Did you know that?’

  I most certainly do.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Servaz.

  ‘He was on holiday. A nightmare of a holiday, terrible weather—’

  ‘Constantly disturbed by the sound of the village brass band.’

  Hirtmann smiled.

  ‘What a symbol, no? A musical genius being disturbed by a village brass band.’

  His voice was deep and poised. Pleasant. The voice of an actor, an orator. There was something feminine about his features, particularly his mouth, which was wide and thin, and his eyes. His nose, on the other hand, was fleshy, and he had a high forehead.

  ‘As you can see,’ said Xavier, walking over to the window, ‘it is impossible to escape from here unless your name is Superman. There are fourteen metres between the window and the ground. And the window is reinforced and sealed.’

  ‘Who has the combination to the door?’ asked Ziegler.

  ‘Well, I do, and Élisabeth Ferney, and the two Unit A guards.’

  ‘Does he get a lot of visits?’

  ‘Julian?’ said Xavier, turning to face him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you get a lot of visits?’

  Hirtmann smiled.

  ‘You, Doctor, and Mademoiselle Ferney, Mr Atlas, the barber, the chaplain, the therapy team, Dr Lepage…’

  ‘He’s our consultant physician,’ explained Xavier.

  ‘Does he ever leave this room?’

  ‘He’s left his room once in sixteen months. To have a cavity treated. We use a dentist from Saint-Martin, but we have all the necessary materials at our disposal here.’

  ‘And those two doors?’ asked Ziegler.

  Xavier opened them: a closet with a few piles of underwear and a supply of white boiler suits on hangers, and a small windowless bathroom.

  Servaz observed Hirtmann on the sly. Something indisputably charismatic emanated from him; he had never seen someone who looked so little like a serial killer. Hirtmann resembled the man he had been back in the days when he was free: an uncompromising prosecutor, a well-mannered man and also someone who enjoyed life to the fullest: you could tell from his mouth and chin. The only thing that was not quite right was his gaze. Dark. Staring. Irises that shone with a clever brilliance, his eyelids narrowed but not blinking. A gaze as electric as a Taser. Servaz had met other criminals with that sort of gaze. And yet he had never felt like this, that he was in the presence of a radiant, ambiguous personality. In another era, he thought, a man like Hirtmann would have been burned for sorcery. Nowadays he was studied; people tried to understand him. But Servaz was experienced enough to know that evil was in no way quantifiable, nor could it be reduced to a scientific principle or a psychological theory, or to biological considerations. So-called free-thinkers claimed that evil did not exist; they made it into a sort of superstition, an irrational belief for weak minds. But that was simply because they had never been tortured to death in the depths of a cellar; they had never watched videos on the Internet of children being abused; they had never been abducted from their family and been broken, drugged and raped by dozens of men for weeks at a time before they were made to walk the pavements of some major European city; nor had they ever been brainwashed into blowing themselves up in the middle of a crowd. And they had never, at the age of ten, heard their mother screaming on the other side of the door …

  Servaz shook himself. He felt the hair on his neck standing on end when he saw that Hirtmann was watching him.

  ‘Do you like it here?’ asked Propp.

  ‘I think so. I’m treated well.’

  ‘But you would rather be outside?’

  Hirtmann’s smile, indisputably, was meant to be sarcastic.

  ‘That’s a strange question,’ he replied.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ agreed Propp. ‘You don’t mind if we talk about it a bit?’

  ‘I see no objection,’ replied Hirtmann, looking out of the window.

  ‘How do you spend your days?’

  ‘How do you?’ he answered with a wink as he turned round.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘I read the newspaper, I listen to music, I chat with the staff, I look at the view, I sleep, I dream…’

  ‘What do you dream about?’

  ‘What do any of us dream about?’ he echoed, as if it were a philosophical question.

  For a good quarter of an hour Serv
az listened to Propp bombarding Hirtmann with questions. The patient answered quickly, calmly, with a smile. At the end, Propp thanked him and Hirtmann inclined his head as if to say, ‘Not at all.’ Then it was Confiant’s turn. Obviously he had prepared his questions in advance. The judge has done his homework, thought Servaz, who favoured more spontaneous methods. He hardly listened to the dialogue that followed.

  ‘Have you heard about what happened outside?’

  ‘I read the papers.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you have any idea what sort of person could have done a thing like that?’

  ‘Are you implying … that it could have been someone like me?’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘No, that’s what you think.’

  ‘And what do you think about it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think anything. It might be someone from here…’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘There are plenty of people who could do it, correct?’

  ‘People like you?’

  ‘People like me.’

  ‘And you think someone could have got out of here to commit the murder?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

  ‘Do you know Éric Lombard?’

  ‘He’s the owner of the horse that was killed.’

  ‘And Grimm, the chemist?’

  ‘Ah, I understand.’

  ‘What do you understand?’

  ‘You found something there that is connected to me.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘What is it? A message that says, “I’m the one who killed him,” signed Julian Alois Hirtmann?’

  ‘Why would someone want you to take the rap?’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘Would you care to expand on that?’

  ‘Any one of the residents in this establishment is the ideal culprit.’

  ‘Do you think so?’