Mila noticed that Sarah Rosa kept her distance from her. She couldn’t help being pleased about that—even though the policewoman was keeping an eye on her, waiting to catch her out, she was sure of it.
A young lieutenant offered to walk them to the exact place. Trying to look confident, he was at pains to make it clear that nothing had been moved. But all the members of the unit knew very well that it was probably the first time he had faced a scene of this kind. In a career as a provincial policeman, you don’t often come across such a horrible crime.
Along the way, the lieutenant set out the facts with extreme precision. Perhaps he’d rehearsed the speech beforehand, so as not to get it wrong. So it came out like a written statement: “We have ascertained that yesterday morning Alexander Bermann arrived at a hotel in a village very far from here.”
“Four hundred miles away,” Stern specified.
“It would appear that he drove all night. The petrol tank was almost empty,” the lieutenant added.
“Did he meet anyone at the hotel?” asked Boris.
“Apparently he dined with clients. Then he retired to his room…that’s what the people who were with him say. But we’re still checking their versions.”
Rosa jotted this down in a notebook, and Mila glimpsed the note from over her shoulder: Collect hotel guest version re timetables.
Goran broke in: “Bermann hasn’t said anything yet, I suppose.”
“Suspect Alexander Bermann refuses to speak without a lawyer present.”
They reached the car park. Goran noted that white screens had been arranged around Bermann’s car to conceal the spectacle of death. But it was only one hypocritical precaution among many. Agitation is often a mask used to respond to terrible crimes. That was something that Goran Gavila had learned early on. Death, especially violent death, exerts a strange fascination on the living. Corpses always arouse our curiosity. Death is highly seductive.
Before reaching the scene of the crime, they put on plastic shoe covers and caps to hold their hair in, and the inevitable sterile gloves. Then they passed around a small container of camphor paste. Each of them took a little to rub under their nostrils to keep any kind of smell away.
It was a tried and tested ritual, which needed no words. But also a way of finding the right level of concentration. When she received the tub from Boris, Mila felt like a participant in that strange act of communion.
The traffic police lieutenant, having been invited to walk ahead of them, suddenly lost all his confidence and hesitated. Then he left.
Before crossing the boundaries of this new world, Mila caught Goran looking at her with concern. She nodded, and he seemed reassured.
The first step was always the hardest. Mila wouldn’t easily forget her own.
In those few square yards, where even the sunlight was altered by the cold and artificial glare of the halogen lamps, there was another universe, with physical rules and laws entirely unlike those of the known world. The three dimensions of height, width and depth were joined by a fourth: the void. Every criminologist knows that it is in the “voids” of a crime scene that you find the answers. By filling those spaces with the presence of the victim and the executioner you reconstruct the crime, you give a meaning to the violence, you cast light on the unknown. The first impression at a crime scene is always the most important.
Mila’s first impression was the smell.
In spite of the camphor, the smell was penetrating. The scent of death is both nauseating and sweet. It’s a contradiction in terms. First it hits you like a blow to the stomach, then you discover that there is something deep within it that you can’t help liking.
The team members quickly arranged themselves in a circle around Bermann’s car. Each of them occupied an observation point, their eyes creating a grid that covered every square inch.
Mila followed Goran to the rear of the car.
The boot was open, as it had been left by the officer who had found the body. Goran leaned into it and Mila did the same.
Inside the boot there was nothing but a big black plastic bag within which the outline of a body was just visible.
The bag had clung perfectly to its form, molding itself to the features of the face and assuming its shape. The mouth was wide in a mute cry. As if the air had been sucked out by the dark abyss.
Like a shroud of flesh.
Anneke, Debby, Sabine, Melissa, Caroline…Or was it number six?
The eye sockets could be seen, and the head, thrown backwards. The body had not given up its life without a struggle; on the contrary, the posture of the limbs was stiff, as if it had been struck by lightning midleap. In that statue of flesh, something was plainly absent. An arm was missing. The left one.
“Fine, let’s start the analysis,” said Goran.
The criminologist’s method consisted in asking questions, some of them simple and apparently insignificant; questions to which they would all try to find an answer. Even in this context, every opinion was accepted.
“First of all the orientation,” he began. “So, tell me: why are we here?”
“I’ll begin,” suggested Boris, who was standing on the driver’s side. “We’re here because of a missing logbook.”
“What do you think? Is that enough of an explanation?” Goran asked, looking around the group.
“The roadblock,” said Sarah Rosa. “Since the little girls went missing there have been dozens of them, scattered all over the place. It was a possibility, and it happened…it was luck.”
Goran shook his head: he didn’t believe in luck. “Why should he take the risk of driving around with this compromising cargo?”
“Perhaps he just wanted to get rid of it,” Stern suggested. “Or perhaps he was afraid that we were onto him, and he was trying to shift the clues as far as possible from himself.”
“I agree that it might be an attempt to throw us off the trail,” said Boris. “But it went wrong.”
Mila worked out that they had already made their minds up: Alexander Bermann was Albert. Only Goran seemed still to be slightly perplexed.
“We’ve still got to work out what his plan was. That’s why we’ve got a corpse in a boot. But the first question was a different one, and we still don’t have an answer to it: why are we here? What has brought us together around this car, looking at this body? Since the outset, we’ve taken it for granted that our man was clever. Perhaps even more intelligent than we are. He’s tricked us several times, managing to kidnap the little girls even when everyone was on full alert…Can you really imagine, then, that it was the lack of a stupid logbook that gave him away?”
Everyone considered this in silence.
The criminologist turned back to the traffic police lieutenant, who had stood apart in the meantime, silent and as pale as the shirt he wore under his uniform.
“Lieutenant, a short time ago you told us that Bermann requested the presence of a lawyer, is that right?”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe a duty lawyer would do, because for now I’d like to have a talk with the suspect, to let him refute the results of our analyses when we’ve finished here.”
“Do you want me to give instructions now?”
The man was waiting for Gavila to dismiss him. And Goran was about to do as he wished.
“Bermann has probably found a way to get a version of the facts ready. Better to take him by surprise and try to catch him out in a contradiction before he learns it off by heart,” Boris added.
“I hope he’s had time to examine his conscience while he’s been locked up in there.”
As the lieutenant spoke, the team members looked at one another in disbelief.
“You mean you’ve left him alone?” asked Goran.
The lieutenant was uncomfortable. “We put him in solitary, in line with police practice. Why, what—”
He didn’t have time to finish his sentence. Boris was the first to move—with a leap he found himself outside the enclosure, and he w
as followed in turn by Stern and Sarah Rosa who, as they left, quickly took off their shoe covers to keep from slipping when they ran.
Mila, like the young traffic lieutenant, appeared not to understand what was going on. Goran dashed after the others, shouting back, “He’s an at-risk subject: you should have kept an eye on him!”
At that moment both Mila and the lieutenant understood the risk the criminologist was talking about.
A few moments later they met up by the door of the cell where the man had been locked up. There was a surveillance officer who hurried to open up the spy hole when Boris showed him his card. Through that little chink, though, there was no sign of Alexander Bermann.
He’s chosen the blind corner of the cell, Mila thought.
As the guard opened the heavy locks, the lieutenant went on trying to calm everyone—but himself most of all—by stressing once again that the procedure had been followed to the letter. Bermann’s watch, his belt, his tie and even his shoelaces had been taken away. He had nothing that he could hurt himself with.
But the policeman was proved wrong as soon as the iron door was flung open.
The man was lying in a corner of the cell. The blind corner.
Back against the wall, his arms were abandoned in his lap and his legs spread wide. His mouth was drenched in blood. A black pool surrounded the body.
He had used the least traditional of ways to kill himself.
Alexander Bermann had torn away the flesh of his wrists with his teeth, and waited to bleed to death.
7.
They would take her home.
With that unvoiced promise, they had taken delivery of the little girl’s body.
They would do her justice.
After Bermann’s suicide it was hard to keep that commitment, but they would try anyway.
That was why the corpse was here, at the Institute of Legal Medicine.
Dr. Chang arranged the microphone hanging from the ceiling so that it was perpendicular to the steel morgue table. Then he turned on the tape recorder.
First of all he took a scalpel and rapidly slid it along the plastic bag, tracing a very precise straight line. He set down the surgical instrument and, with his fingers, delicately picked up the two flaps that he had made.
The only light in the room was the glare from the lamp above the operating table. All around, the chasm of darkness. And balanced on the edge of that abyss were Goran and Mila. None of the other members of the team had felt they had to take part in the ceremony.
The medical examiner and the two guests had put on sterile gowns, gloves and face masks so as not to contaminate the evidence.
With the help of a saline solution, Chang slowly began to spread out the edges of the bag, detaching the plastic from the body beneath, to which it had perfectly adhered. A little at a time, with great patience.
It gradually began to appear…Mila immediately saw the green corduroy skirt. The white blouse and the woolen waistcoat. Then she began to see the flannel of a blazer.
As Chang carried on, new details came to light. He reached the thoracic section, the arm of which was missing. The jacket wasn’t actually bloodstained there. It was simply cut off level with the left shoulder, from which a stump protruded.
“He didn’t kill her with these clothes on. He rearranged the corpse afterwards,” the pathologist said.
That “afterwards” was lost in the echo of the room, plunging into the chasm of darkness that surrounded them, like a stone bouncing off the walls of a bottomless pit.
Chang slipped the right arm out. On the wrist there was a bracelet with a key-shaped pendant.
Reaching the level of the neck, the doctor stopped for a moment to wipe his brow with a little towel. Only then did Mila notice that the pathologist was sweating. He had reached the most delicate point of the operation. The fear was that when the plastic was detached from the face the epidermis might also come away.
Mila had been present at other autopsies. Usually the medical examiners didn’t have such scruples about the way they treated the bodies under examination. They cut them apart and sewed them up quite carelessly. At that moment, however, she worked out that Chang wanted the parents to see their child one last time, in the best possible state. That was why he was so apprehensive. She felt a surge of respect for the man.
Finally, after a few interminable minutes, the doctor succeeded in completely removing the black bag from the little girl’s face. Mila recognized her straightaway.
Debby Gordon. Twelve years old. The first to go missing.
Her eyes were wide open. Her mouth was still gaping. As if she was desperately trying to say something.
She was wearing a clasp with a white lily. He’s combed her hair. How ludicrous, Mila thought suddenly. It had been easier to be compassionate with a corpse than with a living child! But then she deduced that there was another reason why he had taken such care of her.
He made her beautiful for us.
Her hunch made her furious. But she also understood that at that moment those emotions did not belong to her. They were meant for someone else. And soon she would have to go in there, overcome the profound sense of darkness and inform two parents, already destroyed, that their life was truly over.
Dr. Chang exchanged a glance with Goran. The moment had come to establish what kind of murderer they were dealing with. Whether his interest in this child had been generic, or horribly targeted. In other words, whether or not the little girl had been subjected to sexual violence.
Everyone in that room was torn between the desire that she had been spared that final torment, and the hope that she hadn’t. Because in the latter case there would be a greater chance of the murderer leaving organic traces that would enable them to identify him.
There was a precise procedure for cases of sexual violence. And Chang, having no reason to diverge from it, started the physical examination.
It usually began with the marking and identification of the clothing on the body. Then came the search for any suspicious stains on the clothes, any threads, hairs, leaves. Only then did the pathologist move on to subungual scraping, which consisted in collecting from the victim’s nails, with a kind of toothpick, possible residues of the murderer’s skin—if the victim had defended herself—or earth or various fibers to identify the location of the killing.
But the result was negative. The condition of the corpse—apart from the amputation of the limb—was perfect, her clothes were clean.
As if someone had taken the trouble of washing her before putting her in the bag.
The third phase was the most invasive and contained the gynecological examination.
After a few minutes, Chang lifted his head towards Goran and Mila, stating coldly, “He didn’t touch her.”
Mila nodded and, before leaving the room, bent over Debby’s corpse to slip from her wrist the bracelet with the little key dangling from it. That object, along with the information that the little girl had not been raped, would be the only gift that she could bring to the Gordons.
As soon as she said good-bye to Chang and Goran, Mila became aware of an urgent need to remove her clean gown. Because at that moment she felt dirty. Passing through the changing room, she stopped by the big ceramic basin. She turned on the hot water and slipped in her hands, beginning to rub them hard.
Still frantically washing, she looked up at the mirror in front of her. She imagined little Debby’s reflection as she came into the changing room, with her green skirt, her blue blazer and the clasp in her hair. And she imagined her supporting herself on her one remaining arm and going to sit on the bench by the wall. And beginning to look at her, her feet dangling. Debby opened her mouth wide and then closed it again, as if trying to communicate with her. But no words came out. And Mila so wanted to ask her about her blood sister. The one they all knew only as child number six.
Then she woke from her vision.
The water was pouring from the tap. Steam rose in wide swirls, and had covere
d almost the whole surface of the mirror.
It was only then that Mila became aware of the pain.
She looked down and instinctively pulled her hands from the jet of boiling water. The skin on the back of her hands was red, while blisters were already appearing on her fingers. Mila immediately wiped them with a towel, then went to the first-aid cupboard in search of bandages.
No one must ever know what had happened to her.
When she opened her eyes, the first thing she remembered was the burn on her hands. She sat bolt upright, abruptly becoming aware of the bedroom that surrounded her. The wardrobe in front of her, with its framed mirror, the cupboard on its left and the window with the lowered shutter that let in a few lines of bluish light. Mila had gone to sleep with her clothes on, because the sheets and blankets of that squalid motel room were stained and dirty.
Why had she woken up? Perhaps someone had knocked. Or perhaps she had only dreamed it.
There was another knock. She got up and walked over to the door, opening it a few centimeters.
“Who is it?” she asked pointlessly as she saw Boris’s smiling face.
“I’ve come to get you. They start searching Bermann’s house in an hour. The others are waiting for us there…and I thought I’d bring you breakfast.” He waved beneath her nose a paper bag that probably contained coffee and a croissant.
Mila quickly glanced at herself. She wasn’t actually presentable, but perhaps that was a good thing: it would discourage her colleague’s hormones. She invited him in.
Boris took a few steps inside the room, looked around, puzzled, as Mila walked over to the basin in a corner to splash her face but, more importantly, to hide her bandaged hands.
“This place is even worse than I remembered.” He sniffed the air. “And there’s always the same smell.”
“I think it’s an insect repellent.”
“When I joined the unit, I spent almost a month here before finding myself an apartment…you know every key here opens all the rooms? The customers have a habit of leaving without paying, and the owner got tired of constantly having to replace the locks. At night you’re best off blocking the door with the wardrobe.”
The Whisperer Page 7