Night

by Bernard Minier

  He left the Cordura holster on the passenger seat, and heard the sound of the motor struggling up the hill on the other side. He slotted a cartridge into the barrel, removed the safety catch and held his arm down at his side.

  The car was heading straight for him now. Each jolt caused the beam of the headlights to dance in his eyes like the luminous lashing of a whip. Blinded, he held up his free hand as a visor.

  He heard the accelerator as the driver stepped on the pedal.

  He raised his gun.

  The car was speeding towards him, but then it suddenly slowed. He blinked from the sweat dripping from his eyebrows into his eyes, and his vision blurred as if they were full of tears. He wasn’t even sure he could hit the vehicle if he fired: there was no worse marksman in the entire crime unit than Servaz. He wiped the sweat away with his cuff. Bloody coma, he thought.

  The sound of the motor faded abruptly as the driver shifted from third to second and the car slowed and stopped a dozen metres or so away, in a crunching of gravel and snow. He waited. Heard his own breathing, heavy and uneasy. He sensed the door opening, beyond the glare of headlights.

  He could see nothing but a figure sharply defined against the paler night.

  ‘Martin!’ shouted the figure. ‘Don’t shoot! Put your gun down, please!’

  He did as he was asked. The sudden drop of adrenaline made him feel dizzy and he had to lean on the bonnet of the car, his legs like jelly. It was Dr Xavier who walked towards him in the glare of the headlights.

  ‘Doc,’ breathed Martin. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’

  Xavier seemed out of breath, no doubt from the stress of having a gun pointed at him.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  Xavier came closer. He had something in his hand, but Servaz could not tell what it was.

  ‘I often come here.’

  Xavier’s voice: strange, tense, hesitant.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Very often … at the end of the day … I come to gaze at these ruins. The ruins of my former glory, the ruins of a shattered dream, gone … This place means a lot to me, you understand …’

  Xavier was still walking towards him. Servaz looked down at his arm dangling by his side, the hand holding a cylindrical object. He couldn’t see what it was. Xavier was only 3 metres away now.

  ‘When I saw there was already someone here, I almost turned back. And then … I saw it was you …’

  He lifted his hand; Servaz was on edge. He looked at the object at the same time: it was a torch.

  ‘Why don’t we take a tour?’ said Xavier, switching it on and shining it at the ruins. ‘Come on, I have something to tell you.’

  24

  The Tree

  A single light was burning on the top floor of the former imperial villa on Elsslergasse, in the Hietzing district of Vienna. In his study Bernhard Zehetmayer, in a damask dressing gown, silk pyjamas and slippers, was listening to Debussy’s Trois Nocturnes before going to bed.

  The little palace was very draughty, so the orchestra conductor had transformed the top floor into a luxury flat with two bathrooms, and closed off the other parts of the building. Marble fountains, tangled ivy on the facade, bow windows, and a garden that was more of a park conferred a somewhat dated nobility upon the ensemble.

  He was completely alone in his draughty palace: Maria had gone home two hours earlier, after preparing his dinner, drawing his bath, and turning down his bed. Tassilo, his chauffeur, would not be back until the following morning and Brigitta, the nurse – every time he saw her the sight of her legs stirred him and filled him with yearning – would not be coming again until the following evening. He knew that the night would be long and bring little sleep, purveying, rather, dark thoughts and sombre ruminations. At the heart of these thoughts there would – as always – be the memory of Anna. The iris of her eyes. His beloved child.

  Her light.

  All through her childhood and youth she had been light, and now she belonged to the darkness. Such a beautiful, gifted child. Born late of a mother who cultivated a unique ability: that of knowing how to tell men what they wanted to hear. The good fairies of beauty, intelligence and talent had all leaned over her cradle at her birth. She was meant for a future that would be the pride of her parents and the envy of their friends.

  When she turned three he discovered, in a moment of near ecstasy, that she had perfect pitch. Anna then displayed her incredibly precocious aptitude for the piano – playing, composing and improvising even when she was very young. At fifteen she enrolled in the Salzburg Servazeum. Salzburg … a city he had not visited for decades. Cursed, venal, criminal city. It was no doubt in the streets of Salzburg that Hirtmann first saw her. How did he go about approaching her? Probably through music: Zehetmayer was stunned to learn that Hirtmann was an admirer of Mahler’s music, as he was.

  No one knew what had happened after that, but the orchestra conductor had imagined it thousands of times: they had found a diary where Anna wrote about a ‘mysterious stranger’ with whom she had ‘a secret appointment, for the third time’. She wondered whether she was ‘falling in love’, whether it was madness, ‘because of our age difference’. She also wondered why he had not yet ‘touched or kissed’ her. She was seventeen … Her whole future ahead of her. She disappeared a few days later.

  They had found her naked body at the end of an interminable month, at the bottom of a ditch, not far from a hiking trail that overlooked the city. Zehetmayer had nearly gone mad when he heard of the number and nature of the violations she had suffered. He cursed God, Salzburg, humankind; he insulted policemen and journalists, punched one of them; he had been tempted to take his own life. Anna’s death had also come between him and his wife and destroyed their marriage – but what did that matter next to the loss of the creature who was more dear to him than anyone on earth? When he was informed of the identity of the perpetrator at last he had someone on whom he could focus his rage.

  He would never have thought it possible to hate so much. Or that hatred is an emotion purer than love: literature has not stopped filling us with the notion since Cain and Abel. Without music he would be lost, he thought, listening to the final bars of the third Nocturne. But even music had not managed to crush the madness that was blossoming in him like a poisoned flower. Zehetmayer was an arrogant man, stubborn and spiteful. After his wife had died of cancer, in the solitude of his ivory tower his madness had found fertile terrain. Until he met Wieser, however, he had never envisaged that it might find an outlet in action.

  And now hope had just been reborn, in the features of a child. He stood up, because the final notes were fading inside the two spherical white loudspeakers on either side of the room, the only futuristic element, which clashed with the rest of the furniture. As he was walking over to his cutting-edge French stereo system, he felt a violent pain in his belly. He stopped for a moment, his face contorted.

  That afternoon he had again found blood in his stools. He had not told the nurse. It was out of the question for him to spend weeks stuck in hospital like the last time. He switched off the stereo, then the lights, and headed down the long corridor to his room. Although in public he was always vigorous and full of energy, in the privacy of his palace he tended to drag his feet across the star-shaped parquet. As he slipped into bed he wondered if the same cancer that had killed his wife and had now come back for him would leave him the time to savour his revenge.

  Kirsten Nigaard was window-shopping in the centre of town to kill time when yet again she caught sight of the man in the reflection in the glass. A man with glasses … A childish lock of hair falling over his eyes. He had his back to her and pretended to be interested in another window but she was no fool: from time to time he turned around and glanced in her direction.

  Had Martin sent a cop to keep an eye on her? He would have told her. And the guy didn’t look like a cop. He did, however, look like a pervert. His li
ttle eyes kept darting around behind his thick lenses, and he looked like one of those Minion characters. She smiled. Yes, that was exactly what he reminded her of.

  Kirsten resumed her stroll along the cobblestoned shopping street.

  Night had fallen over Toulouse, but the streets in the centre were still packed with people. She felt an unpleasant frisson all the same. She knew from experience that a crowd was only a thin protection against rape or assault. Had he merely taken a shine to her by chance, or was there something more to it?

  A sexual predator? Pathologically shy? Or maybe … There was another hypothesis, but it couldn’t be, no.

  She came out onto the place Wilson and headed towards one of the pavement cafés. Sitting down at a table, she waved to a waiter. For a minute she looked all around for the man and thought he had gone. Then she spotted him, sitting on one of the benches in the middle of the square by the fountain. She could see only his head above the hedges that surrounded the square. An icy shiver went through her. She had first noticed him when she was having lunch on the place Saint-Georges. He was seated three tables over, biting into a huge cheeseburger and never taking his eyes off her.

  When the waiter brought her Coke Zero, for a moment she glanced away. She looked again immediately afterwards but he was gone. Her gaze swept the square. He had vanished into thin air. A sensation as unpleasant as a whiff of ammonia made her tense every muscle. She cursed Servaz for letting her down, for calling to tell her he wouldn’t be able to meet her for dinner that evening but that he’d be there the next morning to say goodbye. She would take a taxi back to her hotel and she would ask the driver to wait until he saw she was inside. She had no desire to walk on a night like this with that shadow behind her.

  Roxane Varin could not believe her eyes when she stared at the letter that lay on her desk. Against all expectations, the search for academic enrolment they had sent to the local school administration had triggered a response from one of the schools: L’Hospitalet-en-Comminges primary school, where the headmaster had confirmed that Gustav was enrolled. There was a telephone number. Roxane picked up the receiver …

  ‘Jean-Paul Rossignol,’ said the man who answered.

  ‘Roxane Varin, Child Protection in Toulouse. I’m calling with regards to this boy Gustav. Are you sure he’s enrolled in your school?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. What is the issue with this child?’

  ‘I can’t discuss it over the phone, but we will explain. Has anyone else seen the search for enrolment?’

  ‘Gustav’s teacher.’

  ‘Listen: don’t mention it to anyone else. And tell his teacher as well. It’s very important.’

  ‘Can’t you tell me a bit—’

  ‘Later,’ said Roxane, hanging up.

  She dialled another number but got only an answering machine. For Christ’s sake, where are you, Martin?

  ‘I’ve always dreamt of going to Norway,’ said the man, who had been sitting at her table for three minutes.

  Kirsten gave him a faint smile. In his forties, wearing a suit and tie, and married, according to his wedding ring. Initially he had spoken to her from the neighbouring table, then asked permission to bring his beer and sit with her.

  ‘The fjords, the Vikings, the triathlon … all that, you know.’

  Now she refrained from asking him if they really ate frogs and mouldy cheese in this country. And whether strikes really were a national sport. And were they really all useless at living languages. But beyond that, he had an interesting body – not ordinary, but interesting. Perhaps she could kill two birds with one stone: take him back to her hotel and dissuade Mr Minion from picking on her. Yes, but still … Looks were not everything, even just for one night. And besides, it was another Frenchman who had been occupying her thoughts for a while now.

  She was at a complete loss as to how to proceed when her telephone vibrated. She could see the Frenchie looked annoyed. Well well, apparently Mr King-of-clichés-about-Norway did not like competition or interruptions.

  ‘Kirsten,’ she said.

  ‘Kirsten, here is Roxane,’ said Roxane Varin in her broken English. ‘You know where is Martin? I found Gustav!’

  ‘What?’

  The moon, which had been casting its light upon the gutted building, now disappeared behind the clouds, and it was snowing again. As the minutes went by, the number of snowflakes falling and whirling among the walls of the former Wargnier Institute increased steadily. Broken-off stairways, charred metallic doorframes deformed by fire, former rooms now open to the four winds and buried under the snow … Clearly Xavier had not forgotten the layout of the place. He made his way around the labyrinth with ease.

  ‘I think I saw him,’ he said suddenly as they were walking between two high walls.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Hirtmann. I think I saw him one day.’

  Servaz stopped walking.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Vienna, almost two years ago. At the 23rd Congress of the European Psychiatry Association, which has over a thousand member delegates. The Association claims to have over seventy thousand members.’

  Vienna … Servaz had the photograph in his pocket, the one where Gustav appeared in one of the most famous landscapes in Austria.

  ‘I didn’t know there were so many psychiatrists in Europe,’ he said, while the snow-laden wind whistled ever louder among the ruins. It was stinging his neck; he lifted the collar of his coat.

  ‘It’s because there is madness everywhere, Martin. I would even go so far as to say that madness rules the world. In short, with over a thousand delegates from all over Europe, it’s not difficult to pass unnoticed.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because for a long time I believed I’d imagined it all. But the more I think about it, the more I believe it had to be him. And I think about it often.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  Xavier turned around and they retraced their footprints, climbing over a pile of rubble and metal beams that had fallen to the ground. The snowflakes clung like dandruff to their shoulders.

  ‘I was attending one of the lectures when a fellow asked if he could sit next to me. He introduced himself, said his name was Hasanovic. He was very friendly and we quickly exchanged a few pleasantries in English because the lecture was fairly boring and the speaker wasn’t good. Then he suggested we go for a coffee at the snack bar.’

  Xavier waited until they were on the other side of the pile of rubble to continue.

  ‘He told me he was a psychiatrist in Sarajevo. Twenty years after the end of the war in Bosnia, he was still treating very severe cases of post traumatic stress disorder.’

  ‘And you think this guy was Hirtmann? What did he look like?’

  ‘He was the right age and size. He was unrecognisable, naturally. His eye colour, the shape of his face, his nose, his hairline – even his voice. And he was wearing glasses.’

  Servaz paused. He was trying to control his feelings of anxiety.

  ‘Had he put on weight? Or got thinner?’

  ‘I’d say he was roughly the same build. That evening we met up again at a reception. He was with a very beautiful woman, very classy, wearing a dress that made heads turn. We went on talking about our profession and when I told him I’d been the director of the Wargnier Institute he became very interested: I have to say that with everything that happened, the Institute has become almost legendary among the psychiatric community … He told me he had long been fascinated by the subject and he had recognised my name, but he didn’t know if I would feel like talking about it, so he’d refrained from mentioning it …’

  Legendary … Not only among shrinks, thought Servaz. But he said nothing.

  ‘He asked me lots of questions. About the treatments, the inmates, the security, what happened at the end … And then we started on Hirtmann, naturally …’

  Xavier’s voice had grown thinner. They had almost reached the way out.

  ‘I real
ised he knew an awful lot about the subject, both what had happened here and about the Swiss killer himself. He didn’t merely ask questions. He had very clear opinions, and astonishing background knowledge. Certain details in particular caught my attention. I didn’t recall the press ever having talked about them.

  ‘For example, he described the view that Hirtmann had from the window in his cell at the Institute.’

  ‘That could have got out in the press …’

  ‘You think so? Where? And the information would have reached a Bosnian psychiatrist?’

  ‘Was that the only thing?’

  ‘No. He began to dwell on a tall fir tree – Hirtmann could see the treetop from his window – and on the symbolism of trees in general, “connecting the three levels of the cosmos: the subterranean, into which it plunges its roots, the surface, and the sky”, and about the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Bible, and the tree where Buddha attained enlightenment, as well as the tree of death in the Kabbalah. He was very well informed on the subject of all these symbols.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘That was when I realised that Hirtmann had spoken to me one day about all these things in practically the same terms.’

  Servaz stopped walking yet again. He shuddered; perhaps it was the cold.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘At the time I was absolutely sure, yes. It gave me quite a shock. And I could tell that Hasanovic was getting a kick out of seeing how unsettled I was. And then, you know how it is: I began to doubt what I had heard, exactly; to wonder if my memory hadn’t been playing tricks on me. The more time went by, the more unsure I became.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘Perhaps I should have, yes. But what would that have changed?’

  They emerged from the ruins. It was snowing heavily now and the cars were covered in white.

  ‘And now, what do you think?’ asked Servaz as he moved towards his vehicle through the snowstorm.