Night

by Bernard Minier

  ‘The mayor told me you would be coming. You’re from the police, is that right?’

  ‘Regional crime unit, Toulouse,’ Servaz replied, going up to the woman and showing her his badge. ‘And this is Kirsten Nigaard, from the Norwegian police.’

  The headmistress frowned, then held out her hand.

  ‘May I have a look?’

  Servaz gave her his badge.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, looking at it. ‘That’s what the mayor told me. You have the same name as Gustave. Is he your son?’

  ‘A coincidence,’ answered Servaz, but he could see she didn’t believe him.

  ‘Hmm. What do you want with the boy?’

  ‘He has disappeared. He may be in danger.’

  ‘Ah. Could you be a little more precise?’

  ‘No.’

  He saw her scowl.

  ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Couldn’t we go inside? It’s cold out here.’

  One hour later, they knew a bit more about Gustave. The headmistress had given them a fairly detailed portrait. A very bright boy, occasionally subject to strange mood swings. Melancholy, too, and fairly solitary; he didn’t have many friends to play with during break and, consequently, for a time he had served as the others’ whipping boy. Rousseau be damned, thought Servaz; children don’t need anyone to be cruel and nasty and hypocritical: they have it in them, just like the rest of humankind. Rather than society making us brutal, contact with others sometimes teaches us to be better and, with a bit of luck, we can stay that way our entire life. Or not. Servaz had learned integrity at the age of ten, or so he believed, reading Bob Morane and following the adventures of Jules Verne’s exemplary heroes.

  It was Gustave’s grandparents who had been appointed to take care of him. Like the mayor, the headmistress had found this out through the pupil database.

  She called up his file for them and they could see that only the fields with his name were filled in: there was no address.

  ‘Monsieur and Madame Mahler,’ read Servaz.

  It was as if the blood had frozen in his veins. He exchanged glances with Kirsten and he was sure his eyes reflected the stupefaction he could see in hers. For the fields marked ‘relationship to the child,’ ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandmother’ had been ticked.

  That was all.

  ‘Did you ever speak to his grandparents?’ he asked, his voice so hoarse it grated like a saw. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Only to his grandfather,’ she answered, frowning to see how unsettled Servaz clearly was. ‘I was concerned. As I told you, Gustave had been bullied in the playground by his classmates and no matter how often I separated them it would start again the next day. But he didn’t say a word, didn’t cry.’ She shot them a pained look. ‘He was a puny child, too, sickly. He looked a good year younger than the others. He often missed school – flu, a cold, an upset stomach … His grandfather always had an explanation. And the boy looked sad. He never smiled. It broke your heart to see him in the playground during break. Can you imagine it, a child who never smiles? Anyway, you could tell something wasn’t right. And I needed to find out what it was. So I mentioned it to the grandfather …’

  ‘How did he strike you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What sort of man was he?’

  She hesitated. Servaz could clearly see a precise thought surface in her gaze.

  ‘The nice old granddad type, of course. The boy always jumped into his arms, they seemed very close and affectionate, it was obvious. But …’ Again they saw her hesitate. ‘I don’t know … there was something else about him, the way he would look at you. He was clearly very fond of the boy, but whenever I tried to dig a bit deeper … how can I put it? … his attitude would change. I even wondered what he used to do before he retired.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t the kind of person you would want to cross, do you know what I mean? He must have been nearly eighty but, I don’t know why, I thought that if ever any burglars broke into his house, they’d better watch out …’

  Servaz could see how puzzled she was. He realised he was sweating profusely under his jacket and coat. Was this an after-effect of the coma?

  ‘And did he enlighten you in any way about Gustave’s situation?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes. He told me his son was often away, and for long stretches, because of his work. And that this upset the boy, who was always asking for him. But he also told me that the father would be coming soon, because he got plenty of leave, and that meant he could be with his son.’

  ‘Did he tell you what Gustave’s father’s profession was?’ Servaz was speaking hurriedly, his words spilling out.

  ‘Yes, I was about to get to that. He worked on an oil platform. In the North Sea, I think it was.’

  Servaz and Kirsten looked at each other again, and the headmistress noticed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

  ‘This corroborates certain findings of our own.’

  ‘And, naturally, you can’t tell me what they are,’ she said, annoyed.

  ‘Exactly.’

  The headmistress flushed.

  ‘Might you have the grandparents’ address somewhere else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you never saw the grandmother?’

  ‘No, never. Just her husband.’

  Servaz nodded. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to come to Toulouse, to the regional crime unit, to help construct a facial composite and answer a few other questions. Ask for Captain Roxane Varin, from Child Protection.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as possible. Take a day off. And the mother – did you ask Gustave’s grandfather about the mother?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  The headmistress gave them a dark look.

  ‘Nothing. That was one of those instances I mentioned, where you could tell you couldn’t get anything more out of him.’

  ‘And you didn’t insist?’ he asked, astonished.

  Servaz’s tone made her sit up straight in her chair.

  ‘Um, no.’

  He saw her cheeks go red.

  ‘Has something happened to Gustave?’ she said. ‘Have they found—?’

  ‘No, no. You would have seen it in the papers. He has disappeared, that’s all. Thank you for your help.’

  They stood up and shook her hand.

  ‘Commandant,’ she said, ‘I have one more question.’

  They were already on the threshold, and he turned around.

  ‘What is your tie to this boy?’

  He looked at her, taken aback. Gripped by a sudden, terrifying foreboding.

  They went back to the car along the avenue of cartoon plane trees. Oddly, the snowman had been decapitated – or could the wind have toppled the big head, which was now lying on the ground? – and even more oddly, it made him think of the propaganda images of Islamic State which had managed, with the passive or active complicity of the media, to infect the Western imagination. In another era, not that long ago, such images would never have seen the light of day, let alone reached the general public. Was it a blessing or a curse that everyone had access to them now?

  ‘So he lived here,’ said Kirsten, once Servaz had translated everything that had been said in the headmistress’s office.

  Her voice was tense.

  ‘Servaz, Mahler … he staged the whole thing. He knew that one day you would trace him back to this place. How can that be?’

  He turned the ignition without replying. Reversed cautiously onto the wet road, with its patches of black ice. He was about to shift into first gear when he turned to her:

  ‘How,’ he said, ‘did you come up with the idea of joining his first name to my last name?’

  16

  Return

  He drove in silence along the A61 motorway, the ‘Pyrénéenne’, and couldn’t stop thinking about Kirs
ten’s reply. ‘A hunch.’ It was like slow poison – ricin, or amatoxins – spreading through all his thoughts, contaminating them. Was it a hunch that in any way resembled the one he’d had when the headmistress asked him what his tie with Gustav was?

  What if … what if Marianne was already pregnant before Hirtmann kidnapped her? At the thought a wave of terror went through him – he felt nauseous. He opened his mouth as if to gulp for air. No: it mustn’t, it couldn’t have happened. It was out of the question. He could not go there, the shrink had said as much: he was too fragile, too vulnerable.

  He let his gaze drift over some huge goods vehicles as he overtook them. One thing was certain: Hirtmann had left these clues for them. So he had stayed here, according to what the grandfather had told the headmistress: he had come regularly to see his son when he had leave – and platform workers had plenty of leave. Thus he had probably altered his face to be able to go around unnoticed in Saint-Martin. Unless he merely used some form of disguise. And Marianne. Was she even still alive? When he had found out that the heart in the insulated box was not hers, he had thought she was, but now he was beginning to have his doubts. Why would Hirtmann have kept her alive for so long? That was not the way he worked. And from a practical point of view it would be very complicated. At the same time, wouldn’t Hirtmann have let him know one way or another if she was dead? He would certainly not have let pass without comment an event that was so important to his policeman ‘friend’.

  His fingers tensed around the steering wheel, and he felt as if his head was about to explode.

  ‘Hey! Watch out!’ said Kirsten next to him. ‘Slow down!’

  He looked at the speedometer. Good Lord! One hundred and eighty kilometres an hour. He lifted his foot from the pedal and the roar of the motor abated.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ she asked.

  He nodded, his throat tight. He glanced over at her. She was observing him, calmly, coldly. Her skirt had ridden up above her knees but her dark coat cinched her waist and was carefully buttoned all the way up. There was a sharp parting in her blonde hair with its dark roots, and her shiny nails were impeccable. He wondered what was hidden beneath that cold exterior. Was it typical of Norwegians, such a strict, spartan temperament? Or was it just Kirsten? Something buried in her childhood, in her upbringing?

  She did not offer much in the way of opportunity for human warmth or contact. She had told him she had six days here. What could the Norwegian police hope to accomplish in such a short time? It was no doubt a question of budget, as it would be here. Well, it was all to the good: he didn’t feel he had the stamina to put up with her Jansenist presence for much longer, even if he himself was hardly a chatterbox or a live wire. He felt as if she were constantly watching him, sizing him up, and he didn’t like it. Was it just her nature, or was she adapting her behaviour to the situation? Either way, the sooner she went back to Norway, the better.

  ‘It’s really kind of sickening,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘What? What’s sickening?’

  ‘If that kid is his son … It’s really sickening.’

  He thought about her words. Yes, it was sickening – but there could be even worse to come.

  17

  Footprints

  Night was falling by the time the skiers reached the refuge. It was almost six o’clock and the temperature was one degree above zero. The sun had already been hidden behind the mountains for several hours, and they had been following the white trail through the forest for even longer. They advanced in single file through the trees: five figures bundled up in down parkas gliding on their skis. It had been a very long day and they had stopped talking. They were too tired. They merely concentrated on breathing faster and faster, their breath forming an origami of white vapour before their lips.

  They were invigorated by the sight of the refuge. Its dark shape huddled in the snowy clearing gave them a final boost.

  Logs, slate, stone, fir trees all around: a postcard of Canada coming closer to them, even if they were the ones who were moving through the early darkness. Gilbert Beltran thought of White Fang and The Call of the Wild, all his childhood reading filled with adventure, wide-open spaces and freedom. When he was ten he’d thought that this was what life was about: adventure and freedom. And instead, he had found out that once you were headed in a certain direction it was almost impossible to change, and that it was all much less exciting than it had seemed at the start. He was now over fifty and he had just broken up with his twenty-six-year-old girlfriend (rather, she was the one who had left him). Now he was close to exhaustion and his muscles were aching, like his oxygen-starved lungs. He was breathing, and breathing.

  Like all the participants on the trek he was following a treatment for depression and insomnia at the spa in Saint-Martin-de-Comminges, and he was not yet in peak physical form – far from it.

  The voice of the woman behind him roused him from his thoughts.

  ‘I’m knackered.’

  He turned around. It was the blonde. A pretty specimen, healthy and unpretentious, in her mid-thirties. He mused that he would have liked to have heard her say that in his bed. He would try to get closer to her this evening. On the condition, of course, that there was sufficient privacy in the refuge.

  Their guide, a young blond man who was about the same age as Beltran’s ex-girlfriend, unlocked the door and hit a switch. A yellow puddle of light immediately spilled out of the door onto the patch of snow where they had been walking. It lit up their footprints – but also others; recent, deeper ones, from snowshoes and feet.

  Fresh footprints.

  Gilbert looked around him. His gaze lingered on the other man, the strange one who always wore his hood up, who had a kind of crazed look in his eyes, and burn marks around his mouth and on his left cheek. Beltran had heard at the spa that the burns were from being electrocuted by a catenary. People said he had spent weeks in a severe burns unit to start with, then in a rehabilitation centre, before ending up here. Normally he would have felt compassion for someone whose face was partially disfigured, but there was something about this particular man that made your blood run cold. Maybe it was the way his demented gaze moved slowly from one person to the next, with what struck Beltran as pure evil. Or maybe it was because he would stare at the arse and breasts of the two girls in the group, the blonde and the brunette, whenever he got the chance. Or was it the way he licked his hand-rolled cigarettes just a touch obscenely, staring you straight in the eyes as he did so?

  Beltran noticed that the guy was watching him from under his hood and he shuddered. He was the first one to go in. He felt uneasy, in the middle of the forest, with night falling; he was little Gilbert again, curled up in his bed reading Jack London. You’re completely regressing, you pathetic man …

  Emmanuelle Vengud smiled at the young guide and took a packet of cigarettes out of her anorak. To smoke one in this pure air suddenly seemed like the appropriate thing to do. A deliciously transgressive act. The oxygen that had filled her lungs during the climb had made her tipsy, as had the altitude. Suddenly a lugubrious cry, high-pitched and grating like the scraping of a saw, tore through the falling darkness.

  ‘What was that?’

  Matthieu, their guide, looked at the forest and gave a shrug.

  ‘No idea. I know nothing about birds.’

  ‘It was a bird?’

  ‘What else could it be?’ He held his gloved fingers out towards the packet of cigarettes. ‘May I?’

  ‘A healthy, sporty young man like you?’

  Was it a bit too obvious, the way she had already said tu to him? If so, too bad.

  ‘That’s not my only vice,’ he answered, looking at her.

  She looked back at him. Was this a veiled come-on? Or just an innocent game? If it had been her husband, she would have known immediately. In her husband’s mental Scrabble, the word innocent did not earn you a single point – unlike adultery, cheating, fucking, pussy, pornography and above all betraya
l. When your best girlfriend sleeps with your husband, who do you turn to? Your household pet? Your sister-in-law? She inhaled the smoke, drawing it as deeply into her lungs as she could.

  ‘Does your husband not like cross-country skiing?’

  She shivered – he was behind her, and he said the words very close to her ear.

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘What about you, do you like it?’

  She shivered again, but for a different reason. Because of the voice. It wasn’t the same as before. It wasn’t the guide’s voice; this voice hissed, like … She gave a start. The burned face. The one who had a strange way of looking at you, and scars around his mouth and on his left cheek. Only then did she notice they were alone. The guide had just left her there and gone inside. It was cold and damp, but suddenly she felt a warmth that had nothing pleasant about it. A rush of adrenaline that made her feel dizzy. She avoided moving her eyes, so she wouldn’t be tempted to look at his scars.

  ‘Your husband – why didn’t he come?’

  She was surprised, both by the fact he now said tu to her, and by the implicit indiscretion of his question. It was her turn to shrug.

  ‘He likes his creature comforts. Spending the night in a sleeping bag in the middle of a shared room with people snoring – that’s not his thing. And besides, as I said, he doesn’t like cross-country skiing. He prefers Alpine.’ (And being slapped, she thought.)

  ‘What is he doing all this time you’re away?’

  She stiffened. Now he was going too far. (He’s sleeping with my best girlfriend, she thought. Maybe that would shut him up.) And besides, she had noticed the way the burned man had stared at her breasts and her arse during the climb. She turned around to look at him, and to stop him brushing against her from behind.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’