‘What are you talking about?’
‘We are going to apprehend someone.’
She turned back to the woman, whose eyes were wide with shock.
‘Take us there.’
This time, the woman hurried to comply, grabbing her waterproof from a peg. She had dropped all signs of hostility; clearly, she was frightened. They left her little office and went down a narrow corridor to a metal stairway as steep as all the others.
As they stepped out into the night, the roar of the wild ocean once again filled Kirsten’s ears.
The blonde woman took them through the rain-swept labyrinth. The downpour gleamed in the lamps against the opaque background of night. Kirsten turned up her collar. She could feel the icy rain against her neck, running down her back. Their steps vibrated on the footbridges, but the sound was drowned out by the din from the platform.
Huge pipes rose like organs above them, suspended in rows from the superstructure, each one taller than a house. The storm made them dance, sing and bang together like the tubes of a wind chime. They found themselves on a deck covered in greasy, oily slime and cluttered with machines and conduits. Kirsten could make out a vague form kneeling at the rear, lit intermittently. The adrenaline was spreading through her veins. Putting her hand discreetly on her lower back she made sure her gun was easily accessible. The welder’s opaque visor lit up every time the powerful white light burst from his arc; sparks and smoke rose all around. His helmet made her think of a medieval knight. Focused on his task, he didn’t hear them arrive.
‘Neveu!’ shouted the blonde woman.
Helmet and visor looked up, the sun went dark. For a brief moment, Kirsten thought she saw a smile through the visor.
‘Out of the way,’ she said calmly, pushing the woman to one side. ‘Philippe Neveu? Norwegian police!’ she shouted, in English.
The man stayed there, saying nothing, motionless, his welding torch in his gloved hand. Kirsten could not see his eyes or his face. Still on his knees, he placed the nozzle of his tool on the metal floor and slowly removed his thick gloves. Then he raised his pale hands towards his helmet. Kirsten followed his every gesture. She had her right hand behind her, near her lower back. At last his face appeared beneath the helmet. The man in the photograph.
There was a strange gleam in his eyes and all of Kirsten’s senses were instantly on the alert.
‘Slowly,’ she said.
She felt for the cable ties in her right pocket and couldn’t find them. Damn! She put her hand in her left pocket. They were there. She glanced at Kasper. He was as tense as she was, and didn’t take his eyes off the man; Kirsten saw his jaw muscles working under his cheeks.
Six metres.
She was going to have to cross that distance if she wanted to put the handcuffs on him. She looked around. Kasper had taken out his gun. The security agent had his hand on his holster, as if he were a cowboy in some Western. The blonde woman’s eyes were wide open and frightened.
‘Keep quiet!’ shouted Kirsten, taking out the handcuffs. ‘Understand?’
The man didn’t move. He still had that gleam in his eyes: the look of a hunted animal.
Shit, she didn’t like this. She brushed away a lock of wet hair that had fallen across her face.
‘Put your hands behind your head!’ she ordered.
He obeyed. Still with the same careful slowness. As if he were afraid he would trigger a police blunder. And yet he never stopped looking at her. At her, and no one else.
He really was very tall. She was going to have to be extremely cautious as she went closer.
‘Now turn around very slowly and get back on your knees. Keep your hands on your head, is that clear?’
He didn’t answer, but he did as she asked, slowly pivoting his body. A moment later he was gone. Out of their field of vision. As if he had performed a magic trick, he had vanished behind a huge cylindrical tank and an electric panel on the right.
‘Shit!’
Kirsten pulled out her gun, shoved a cartridge into the barrel and went after him. She went around the tank, the metal grating of the flooring vibrating as she ran. She saw him turn left then run down some steps a dozen metres further along. She rushed after him. At the bottom of the steps, a narrow footbridge spanned the furious waves to reach another part of the platform, not nearly as well lit.
‘Kirsten, come back!’ bellowed Kasper behind her. ‘Come back! He can’t get far!’
Too annoyed to think, she hurried down the steps and began in turn to cross the long footbridge, hurrying towards the part of the platform that was plunged in darkness.
‘Kirsten! Come back! For Christ’s sake!’
Through the floor grating she could see the giant waves beneath her, seething with foam. What the fuck are you playing at? She ran as fast as she could, her gun in her hand, towards the other side of the platform; it seemed unusually dark and deserted.
A labyrinth, that’s what it was. A maze of steel beams, stairways and barriers. Yes, she knew that she shouldn’t have gone there, but this guy with his stupid smile was wearing a boiler suit that must weigh a ton, after all, and he wasn’t armed, whereas she was. That is what she would tell them, should they ask why she had taken such a risk. That is what she would claim to have been thinking at that moment.
Just as she set foot on the other side (it made her think of the corner towers of a castle connected by a parapet walk), a huge wave struck one of the piles below and the icy spray stung her face. She looked for him – in vain. He could have been any of the shadows around her. All he had to do was stay still.
‘Neveu!’ she screamed. ‘Don’t be stupid! You can’t go anywhere!’
She heard only the wind in reply. She turned her head just in time to see him step out of the darkness and rush further back.
‘Hey! Hey! Come back, dammit!’
She ran towards him, but he had disappeared again, and she was alone. Alone with him. Neither Kasper nor the security guard had followed her. She continued to move forward. A mass of shadows and glinting lights around her; the veils of the night, floating back and forth. She moved with her legs slightly bent, her gun held out with both hands.
It was so dark she could hardly see. Fuck, this was madness! What was the point? She knew very well she was doing it to show off. Or was it just for the thrill?
Her foot met something soft and she looked down at the dark mass of a tarpaulin piled on the floor. She stepped over it cautiously, constantly looking around her. She had just put her foot firmly on the other side when she felt fingers closing around her ankle. Before she knew it, her leg was yanked backwards and she fell.
In boxing jargon that was called being floored.
Her back and elbow hit the metal floor, and her gun went flying with a clang. The tarpaulin was pushed back and a figure leapt to his feet with surprising agility, and then he pounced on her. She saw a grimacing face. She was preparing to kick him when the night sky exploded. Dozens of lamps were lit all at the same time, and Kasper’s voice cried out:
‘Get back! Get back! Hands on your head! Neveu! Don’t be foolish!’
Kirsten turned her head towards Kasper, then focused her attention on the Frenchman again.
The man was looking at her anxiously. He raised his hands, never taking his eyes off her.
3
Telephoto Lens
Kirsten and Kasper had been sitting across from the Frenchman for over three hours. She had chosen the most neutral location possible, a windowless room with no décor, so that nothing would distract their interlocutor’s attention and he would remain focused on her and her questions.
She had resorted to flattery, emphasising the unique nature of the mise en scène in the church, and questioning him on his profession as a welder. Then she made a complete U-turn and began to make fun of his ineptitude, jeering at the ease with which he’d allowed himself to be caught, and the clues he’d left behind.
All the while the man did not stop proclaimin
g his innocence.
‘The underwear belongs to my girlfriend,’ he groaned. ‘It reminds me of her and it, well, you know …’
She looked at him. His imploring, wet, snot-filled face made her want to slap him.
‘And the blood?’ said Kasper.
‘She had her period, dammit! With all your technology you ought to have a way of checking that!’
She pictured him sniffing the underwear in his bunk at night, and shuddered.
‘Okay. So why did you run away?’
‘I told you.’
‘Tell me again.’
‘I’ve told you ten times already!’
She shrugged.
‘Well, this will make eleven.’
He remained silent for so long that she felt like shaking him.
‘I bring back a bit of hash on the sly and slip it to my friends on board.’
‘Are you a dealer?’
‘No, I give it to them.’
‘Stop taking me for a fool.’
‘Yeah, okay. I sell a little bit: I do them favours. Life on board isn’t always easy. But I’m not a murderer, shit! I’ve never hurt anyone!’
He began sobbing again; his eyes were red. They left the room.
‘Could we be wrong?’ she said.
‘Are you kidding?’
‘No.’
She went down the corridor and climbed the steps towards the control room. She was beginning to know her way around the labyrinth. Christensen watched her come in.
‘Well?’
‘We have to search the cabins of the workers who aren’t back yet.’
‘What for?’
Kirsten didn’t answer.
‘Fine,’ he said reluctantly, sensing that this woman would be unyielding no matter the circumstances, and that he would be wasting his time trying to talk sense to her. ‘I’ll show you.’
In the fourth one, she found it.
Among the clothes: a brown A4 envelope. She opened it; inside were paper copies of photographs. The first was the portrait of a blond child, four or five years old. She turned the photograph over. The name ‘Gustav’ was written on the back. Behind him you could see a lake, a village and snowy mountains. She looked at the other pictures.
They had been taken with a telephoto lens.
A man. Always the same one. In his forties, brown hair.
Kirsten leafed through them. There must have been twenty or so. The target parking his car; the target getting out, locking it. Walking down the street, in the middle of a crowd. Sitting at the window of a café. Kirsten saw a plaque with the name of the street.
The photos had been taken in France.
In one of the last ones, the man was entering a tall building. A tricolour flag – the French flag – floated above the door, and underneath, the words ‘HÔTEL DE POLICE’. She didn’t speak French, but to understand the last word she didn’t need to.
Police: politiet.
In the close-ups the man had a pleasant face, but he seemed tired, preoccupied. Kirsten could see shadows under his eyes, and his mouth had a bitter set to it. Sometimes his face was clear, sometimes his entire form was blurry – or else there was a car, or foliage, or passers-by between him and the lens. The target was obviously completely unaware of the shadow that was following him everywhere, echoing each one of his footsteps.
Again she turned over the picture of the child.
GUSTAV.
The handwriting was the same as on the paper that had been found in Inger Paulsen’s pocket at the church.
The paper with her name on it.
MARTIN
4
Thunderstruck
It was raining in Toulouse, too, but there was no snow. In early October, the temperature was around fifteen degrees.
‘The House at the End of the Street,’ said Lieutenant Vincent Espérandieu.
‘Huh?’
‘Nothing. It’s the title of a horror film.’
Inside the car, Commandant Martin Servaz did not immediately look at the tall building near the railway embankment. It had a lugubrious air – two floors, slick roof and a tall tree projecting a sinister shadow on the facade. Night had fallen, and the curtains of rain sweeping across the strip of lawn leading to the house made them feel as if they had reached the end of the world.
What a strange place to live, Servaz thought: stuck between the railway line and the river, 100 metres from the last houses in this dingy neighbourhood; the only other buildings nearby were warehouses covered in graffiti. It was the river, in fact, that had brought them out here. Three women had been out jogging along the Garonne; the first two were assaulted and raped, the third was stabbed many times over. She had just succumbed to her injuries, at the intensive care unit at the University Hospital in Toulouse. The three attacks had taken place less than two kilometres from the house. And the man who lived there was in the police database of sexual offenders – had committed multiple offences, in fact. He had been released from prison 147 days earlier, after serving two-thirds of his sentence, upon the decision of the sentence enforcement judge.
‘Are you sure this is it?’
‘Florian Jensen, 29, chemin du Paradis,’ confirmed Espérandieu, his tablet open on his lap.
His forehead pressed against the rain-streaked window, Servaz turned to look at the vacant lot on the left – a dark plot of fallow land overrun by tall grasses and acacia. He had heard that a major company had plans to build eighty-five apartments, a children’s nursery and a residence for senior citizens. Except that this was a former industrial site, and the levels of lead and arsenic in the ground were twice the norm. According to certain local environmental protection associations, the pollution had reached even the groundwater. Which did not stop locals from using their well water to water their vegetable gardens.
‘He’s there,’ said Vincent.
‘How do you know?’
Espérandieu showed him his tablet.
‘The arsehole has logged on to Tinder.’
Servaz shot him a puzzled look.
‘It’s an app,’ said his assistant with a smile. If Espérandieu was a tech geek, his boss was the opposite, having apparently zero interest in the wonders of modern computing. ‘The man’s a rapist. So I figured there was a chance he might have downloaded Tinder. It’s a dating app – it locates all the women in a given radius who also have the app on their phone. Practical, no, for scum like him?’
‘A dating app?’ echoed Servas, as if he were being told about a planet at the far-flung end of the universe.
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘And I created a fake profile. I just got a match. Here, look.’
Servaz leaned over the screen and saw a picture of a young man. He recognised the suspect. Next to him was a picture of a pretty blonde no older than twenty.
‘Except now we have to get a move on. We’ve been spotted. Or rather, Joanna has.’
‘Joanna?’
‘My fake profile. Blonde, one metre seventy, eighteen years old, liberated. Fuck, I’ve already had over two hundred matches! In less than three days. This thing must be revolutionising dating.’
Servaz didn’t dare ask him what he was talking about. Vincent was barely ten years younger than him, but they could not have been more dissimilar. Whereas at the age of forty-six Servaz felt nothing but stupor and bewilderment when confronted with modern life – this unnatural marriage of technology, voyeurism, advertising and mass commerce – his assistant scoured forums and social networks and spent much more time on his computer than in front of his TV. As for Servaz, he knew he was a man of the past, and that the past was no longer relevant. He was like the character played by Burt Lancaster in Conversation Piece – an old professor who leads a reclusive life in his art-filled Roman palazzo until the day he has the misfortune of renting out the top floor to a modern family who are noisy and vulgar. Then he is confronted, unwillingly, with the sudden appearance of a world he doesn’t understand, but whic
h ends up fascinating him. Similarly, Servaz had to admit he was at a loss to understand this herd of people with their childish gadgets and infantile busyness.
‘He keeps sending one message after another,’ said Vincent. ‘He’s completely hooked.’
His assistant pulled the cover over his tablet and was about to shove it into the glove compartment when suddenly he paused.
‘Your gun is in there,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘You’re not taking it?’
‘What for? This guy always uses knives. And whenever we’ve arrested him, he’s never put up any resistance. Besides, you have your gun.’
On that note, Servaz got out. Espérandieu shrugged. He checked to make sure his gun was in its case, removed the safety catch and climbed out in turn.
‘You’re as stubborn as a mule, you know that?’ he said, walking into the downpour.
‘Cedant arma togae. Let arms yield to the toga.’
‘They should teach Latin at police school,’ said Espérandieu ironically.
‘The wisdom of the ancients,’ Servaz amended. ‘I know some people who could learn something from it.’
They crossed the muddy lawn towards a little patch of garden surrounded at the front of the house by a fence. The entire south wall, where the only window was, was almost completely covered by a gigantic tag. There were two windows on each floor at the front of the house on the garden side, but the shutters were closed.
The gate creaked with rust when Servaz opened it. He knew at once it must have been audible inside the house, in spite of the storm. He glanced at Vincent, who nodded.
They walked up the short drive past neglected plants overrun by weeds.
Suddenly Servaz froze. There was a dark shape over on the right. Near the house. A huge dog had come out of its kennel and was looking at them. Silently. Without moving.
‘A pit bull,’ said Espérandieu, his voice tense and quiet as he moved closer to Servaz. ‘There shouldn’t be any first-category dogs around any more, not since ’99.’
‘True,’ replied Servaz. ‘But there are still a hundred and fifty-odd in Toulouse – plus a thousand second-category dogs, apparently. People are obviously reluctant to give up their “protection”.’
Night Page 4