Night

by Bernard Minier

  ‘Jensen?’

  The arcade behind the colonnade was equally deserted. He went back out onto the vast esplanade, between two columns, and again scrutinised the shadows in the garden. Suddenly his gaze settled on one of them, roughly thirty metres away. It wasn’t a bush; it was a figure. Black. Motionless. At the edge of the public garden. He narrowed his eyes. Between the trees the figure was becoming clearer: a human shape.

  ‘Jensen!’

  He began crossing the esplanade in the shadow’s direction. That was when the figure moved. Not closer to him, but deeper into the garden. Servaz gave a start. For Christ’s sake, where was he going?

  ‘Hey!’

  He began running. The figure was walking very quickly now between the hedges in the public garden, turning around from time to time to gauge the distance separating them. As Servaz was gaining ground, the figure began to run. Servaz ran faster. All of a sudden, he saw the figure branch off to the right. He climbed up the sloping gravel path, which then became a hiking trail, and went deeper into the forest. Servaz ran behind him, and felt a stitch in his side as if a nail had suddenly been hammered in there. He slowed down when he saw the wall of black fir trees ahead of him.

  The wooded mountain rose above him, under a clear sky, and the moonlight illuminated the outline of the huge mass.

  He paused to catch his breath, his hands on his knees, and he realised he was in very poor physical condition. He thought for a moment. If he went into the forest, he would not be able to see. He had neither weapon nor torch on him. Anything could happen in there. What did Jensen want? What was the point of his little game? Suddenly it occurred to him that Jensen did have a good reason to shoot him a second time: hatred. Because Jensen must hold him responsible for what had happened to him: his face disfigured forever. No doubt Jensen was hiding there, waiting for him. But to do what?

  Servaz felt goosepimples on his forearms. Yet he kept moving. He followed the path that went deeper into the forest. It was pitch black in there. He went only a few metres into the woods and then stopped. He couldn’t see a thing. He realised then that his frantic breathing was due not only to the fact he’d been running, but also to the fact that the only other living person in there did not necessarily wish him well.

  ‘Jensen?’

  He didn’t like the sound of his own voice at all. He had tried to mask his fear, but was sure his voice had given him away, and that if he were hiding nearby, Jensen must be relishing the panic he was causing.

  Servaz stayed almost twenty minutes in the same spot without moving, mindful of every movement of the shadows when the wind blew through the foliage. Once he was convinced that he was finally alone, that Jensen had left a long time ago, he came back out of the forest, frustrated but relieved, and returned to his car. That was when he saw it, the note on the windscreen, stuck under the wiper:

  Were you afraid?

  Kasper Strand was waiting until midnight. He lived in a three-room flat with a balcony high above Bergen, not far from the funicular, with a view over the city and the port. That was the main advantage of his exorbitantly priced flat. Even when it rained – which, in Bergen, meant every other day – he never tired of seeing the city with its seven hills and seven fjords light up when evening fell. And God knows that evening fell quickly in Bergen in the winter.

  He knew he was betraying all the principles that had guided him thus far in his professional life, and that after this he wouldn’t be able to look at himself in the mirror. But he needed the money. And the information he was preparing to convert into cash was worth its weight in gold, to the right person. What Kirsten Nigaard had just told him was simply incredible. Now he had to see how much he could get for it.

  He gazed at the mess in the middle of the living room: one of those bloody DIY furniture flat packs that had made the fortune of a Swedish furniture salesman. After spending two hours on it he realised he had put the rails supporting the drawers on backwards. It wasn’t his fault: the instructions had been drawn by people who obviously never bought flat-pack furniture. As he threw the screwdriver off into the mess somewhere, he mused that this was what his life had come to since his wife died: a flat-pack existence delivered with incomprehensible instructions. He was not equipped to live alone. Even less so to raise a fourteen-year-old girl who was in her existential crisis phase. There were so many things he had been screwing up since his wife died.

  He checked his watch. Marit should have been home over an hour ago. As usual, she was late. She wouldn’t even apologise. He had tried everything: scolding, the threat of grounding, careful explanations, attempts at conciliation. Nothing worked. His daughter was impervious to his every argument. And yet it was for her sake that he wanted to keep this flat which she loved but which was way beyond their means – his late wife had earned much more than him and had paid the mortgage – and that he was getting ready to make this phone call. And to mop up a few gambling debts.

  He walked over to the glassed-in balcony, where he had put an armchair and a little table, and set down his whiskey glass. He took the telephone number he had found online from his pocket and scribbled on a piece of paper.

  He focused on the money. He needed it, urgently; he couldn’t allow himself to act like a squeamish schoolgirl, so he dialled the number, his stomach in knots.

  19

  Bang

  In the refuge, she was woken by their breathing and sighs.

  She had a headache, and the impression that everything was spinning crazily around her. Probably the brunette and that idiot guide. On second thoughts, the breathing was coming from one person: a man. The other person remained silent. And they were right nearby, only a few inches away from her.

  She was afraid she might scream. But what would they think if she woke up the entire refuge for nothing? Besides, the breathing had suddenly stopped. She couldn’t hear anything now, other than the blood pounding in her ears.

  Had she been dreaming?

  Later, Emmanuelle thought she heard another sound. Because of her fear she couldn’t get back to sleep. It was dark, but she was sure someone was moving over there by the kitchen. Someone was walking without making a sound, furtively, like a thief …

  She could feel her heart beating faster. There was something about the way the shadow was moving that paralysed her, glued her to her mattress. Something cunning, hidden, hostile … She thought about the sound they had heard earlier, in the evening, and how Corinne had been convinced she had seen someone outside. Emmanuelle snuggled deeper into her sleeping bag, telling herself that when she awoke her reaction would seem ridiculous, irrational, infantile – night-time fantasies. But she didn’t feel reassured. She would have liked to disappear, or wake the others. But she couldn’t make a sound. Because now she could see it clearly in the grey darkness – the shadow was coming towards her …

  A hand covered her mouth just as something sharp jabbed her in the neck.

  ‘Shush.’

  She could smell the metallic, acrid odour of the hand gagging her. She associated it, oddly, with the smell of a copper pipe: she had repaired all the plumbing in her house herself, and she knew that smell. Then she understood it was the smell of blood, and it was in her nostrils: as was often the case when she fell prey to violent emotions, she was having a nosebleed.

  The voice in her ear – even more hissing and sibilant than before – said, ‘If you cry out, if you try to struggle, I’ll kill you. And then I’ll kill all the others.’

  As if to convince her, the tip dug a little deeper into her neck and she could feel the bite of the blade in her skin. It felt like a huge slab of stone had been placed on her chest, preventing her from breathing. She could hear the zip of the sleeping bag being opened in the dark.

  ‘Now you get out of there and stand up, and not a sound.’

  She tried, she wanted to do what he told her, but her legs were trembling so violently that she stumbled and banged her knee against the wooden bench. She let out a little cry,
a whimper. He immediately grabbed her and his hand crushed her thin arm through her pyjamas.

  ‘Shut up!’ he growled in a low voice. ‘Or else.’

  Now she could see him fairly distinctly in the half-light; he was still wearing his hood. He must not even have got undressed, just waited until the others were asleep. She could hear snoring coming from the bunks. Under her bare feet the floor of the refuge was like ice. He was holding her by the arm.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  She knew they were going outside where he could rape her without fear of being disturbed. And would he kill her afterwards? Now was the time to do something. He must have felt her resistance, because the blade went deeper into the left side of her neck.

  ‘You make a move or a sound and I’ll cut your throat.’

  She knew what it must feel like, to be a gazelle or a baby elephant that a predator has cut off from the rest of the herd. Never leave the circle. The cold outside went straight through her winter pyjamas. Her toes curled when her feet hit the snow and she trembled even more violently. She had never felt more alone.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked.

  She could hear her plaintive, tearful tone. She needed to speak, to stop him; perhaps, if she could make him listen to reason …

  ‘Why? Why?’

  ‘Shut your gob!’

  Now that they were outside and the wind was whirling with snowflakes all around them, he no longer kept his voice down.

  ‘Don’t do this! Please! Please don’t! Don’t hurt me!’

  ‘Will you shut up!’

  ‘I’ll give you money, I won’t say anything. I’ll … you …’

  She no longer knew what she was saying, a flood of incoherent words in no order.

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’

  He gave her a punch in the stomach that took her breath away and she fell to her knees in the snow, her lungs empty. Bile rose in her throat then subsided; her belly was burning. Suddenly she felt she was being pulled by her feet and she fell backwards. Her skull hit the stone wall of the refuge and she saw stars. A moment later the man was on top of her. She could feel the snow against her buttocks as he feverishly sought to pull her pyjamas down her legs. She saw his eyes like those of a wild animal gleaming in the shadow of his hood; he had bad breath and she felt a wave of nausea. With one hand he was pressing the cold tip of the knife against her throat, almost stopping her breathing; with the other he began to undo his trousers.

  When she felt the man’s hands between her thighs she struggled and said, ‘No, no, no!’ but the tip of the blade went a bit deeper, stopping her words. She stayed with her mouth open, and the man was about to lean down to kiss her when something happened behind him. At first she couldn’t tell what it was, other than that it was even more frightening than the burned man himself. She glimpsed a dark shadow emerging from the woods and rushing at them, growing larger with incredible speed. Her aggressor could not see what was coming. The shadow that came from the woods threw itself on him and practically lay on his back – as if it too wanted to rape her – and she saw a hand wearing a black glove, and extending from that hand, a gun, its barrel now pressing against the burned man’s right temple.

  This was the first time she had ever seen a gun, other than in a film, but she knew exactly what she was seeing. Cinema and television have made us familiar with a world the majority of us do not know in real life: a world of violence, firearms and blood.

  ‘What the—?’ was all the burned face had time to say, when he felt the weight of another body on his back.

  One second afterwards a flame burst into the space between the barrel of the gun and the burned man’s hood, and there was a single, deafening detonation, which caused the night to tremble. She felt the pressure of it in her eardrums, which immediately began to ring. Her aggressor’s neck seemed to break, his head falling to one side like a dead chicken’s, and a dark cloud of particles – blood, bone, brains – splattered in the opposite direction from the hood like a black geyser, before his entire body collapsed onto the snow, dead, freeing her from its weight. She thought she heard herself scream. The shadow was already on its feet, the smoking gun dangling in its hand.

  For a split second she thought that the shadow looking down at her was going to kill her, too. Instead, it disappeared the way it had come.

  This time, she was certain: she screamed.

  The loud detonation and her hysterical screaming woke the entire refuge. One after the other the occupants sat up in their bunks, reached for their anoraks and rushed outside. First they called her, and when she did not reply they went around the refuge.

  ‘Fuck!’ exclaimed the guide, who was the first to find them: Emmanuelle in her pyjamas, and the corpse. He recoiled.

  The snow was absorbing the blood so that the puddle forming underneath the rapist’s skull was not that big: on the contrary, the hot blood and brain matter had formed a little hollow, an almost vertical funnel in the fresh snow.

  Emmanuelle was trembling violently, both from the cold and the shock; her mouth wide open, she gasped and sobbed. The guide knelt down next to her and took her by the shoulders.

  ‘It’s all over,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’

  But what was over? He hadn’t the slightest idea what had happened out here, for fuck’s sake. He pulled Emmanuelle to him and held her closer to comfort her and warm her up.

  ‘Did you do it?’ he asked quietly. ‘Did you do … this? Who shot him?’

  She shook her head vigorously in denial, still gasping and sobbing on his shoulder, unable to say a word. The others had surrounded them now. They looked from the corpse to Emmanuelle, and then to the woods, their eyes like frightened animals’.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ said Beltran suddenly. ‘We have to call the police.’

  He took out his mobile and looked at the screen.

  ‘Shit, no network. We’re too high up.’

  ‘Use the emergency phone in the refuge,’ said the guide, still on his knees, looking up at him, then he turned back to Emmanuelle.

  ‘Can you stand?’

  He helped Emmanuelle to her feet and supported her, because her legs were shaking and threatened to collapse beneath her. They went cautiously around the dead body, and he took her back inside, where the other two had already taken refuge.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Corinne as gently as possible.

  ‘You … you were … right: there really was … someone.’

  Emmanuelle’s teeth were chattering noisily.

  ‘Yes. He’s out there,’ said the guide with a shudder. ‘And what’s more, he’s armed.’

  20

  Gold Dot

  The first glow of day was tingeing the sky with pink between the clouds and the mountaintops when the forensic identification specialists from the national gendarmerie arrived at last, along with the crew from the Research Unit. Captain Saint-Germès was not sorry to see the headlights flashing through the trees: he had compiled his initial findings, and sealed the perimeter with his team, fear in his gut. The fear of messing up. It wasn’t every day that the gendarmerie from Saint-Martin-de-Comminges was entrusted with a case like this one.

  He watched the convoy coming his way, jolting along through the snow. Five vehicles, including a small truck with a raised roof, which he recognised as the itinerant laboratory of the Pau Research Unit. Saint-Germès had never seen a crew like this before. Like everyone around here, he had heard about the events of the winter 2008–9 – they belonged to local legend, and his senior colleagues enjoyed talking about them, particularly when winter set in – but back then he hadn’t yet started in this position. It was his predecessor, Captain Maillard, who had overseen the whole affair, with the Pau Research Unit and the Toulouse crime unit. Maillard had been transferred, as had a good number of the gendarmes who had been here at the time. This was the first violent death the force had been confronted with since. And what had actually happened last night? He didn’t have a clue, it was al
l extremely muddled. Total chaos in fact. The witness statements had merely added to the confusion. What they’d gleaned made no sense: a hiker had dragged one of the women in the group outside in the snow at three o’clock in the morning to rape her, and a shadow appeared out of nowhere to shoot him in the temple, then vanished. A complete cock-and-bull story.

  The vehicles pulled up outside the refuge, and several members of the Research Unit got out. In the lead was a man with glasses and a square jaw. Like the others he was wearing a thick jumper beneath his tactical vest. His light blue eyes examined Saint-Germès through his lenses as he walked towards him, and he conscientiously squeezed the captain’s hand in his own.

  ‘What have we got?’

  ‘Let’s see now. She says the victim dragged her outside to rape her, threatening her with a knife, and that some guy burst out of the woods and shot him in the head, is that right?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘I’ve never heard anything so absurd,’ concluded the man with the blue eyes, whose name was Morel.

  ‘But we did find the knife,’ protested Saint-Germès, who already hated the guy, with his superior attitude.

  ‘So what? She could very well have put it there herself. We’ll have to check whether this woman has any psychiatric history, whether she belongs to a shooting range, if she’s already had relationship issues with men, and whether she and the victim knew each other before the hike. The whole business seems dodgy.’