Servaz had already found two connections: the S&M parties and the book. Were there others? Kirsten was asleep. For a moment he gazed at her profile. Like many adults, in her sleep she looked like a child, as if every night we return to our origins.
He reached for the binoculars and went to the window. Aurore Labarthe was standing at one of the first-floor windows, the only one where a light was still shining. She was wearing a very tight outfit in black leather – like a motorcyclist’s – and she was looking over at the hotel. Her armour was split down the middle, with a zip that went all the way to her crotch. Servaz saw her fingers move up to the top of the zip and slowly open it. He felt his throat go dry. He stepped back so he wouldn’t be seen.
A ritual, he thought. Someone is watching.
The manager?
Exhibitionism was clearly one of the other little pleasures Aurore Labarthe indulged in during her leisure time. Did her husband know? Probably. The two of them were on the same wavelength.
He’d seen enough, and he moved away from the window.
He looked at Kirsten still deep in the sleep of the innocent. As if she’d found refuge from her diurnal nightmares. He was oddly grateful to her for it.
He positioned himself in one corner of the Victor-Hugo market, standing behind a row of tall dustbins in a dark spot where his shadow melted into others. From where he stood he had a perfect view of the balcony, the illuminated picture windows of the living room and kitchen, and the area surrounding the building.
From time to time a car, a couple, or a solitary individual with a dog went by in the street, and he recoiled still further into the shadow. A while ago he’d noticed the bloke in the car, a dozen metres away. The bonnet was pointed towards the entrance to the building.
Apparently, in spite of Jensen’s death, they had not lifted the surveillance.
His headphones were playing the first movement of the Symphony No. 7: langsam – allegro risoluto, ma non troppo.
He thought of Martin in that hotel and smiled. Was he fucking the Norwegian woman? Hirtmann bet he wasn’t. In the meantime, Hirtmann was observing the balcony and the windows, and from time to time Margot’s silhouette passed in front of them. He had not yet decided how to proceed. To do what he’d done with Marianne seemed drearily repetitive. Besides, the surveillance made everything more complicated.
But he needed Martin. He was going to have to put pressure on him, one way or another. For Gustav’s sake.
Right, he thought. Off we go.
He left his hiding place and began walking quickly along the pavement, like someone who was late, a bottle of champagne in his hand. He walked past the car. He sensed that the cop at the wheel turned his head and looked at him as he went by.
There was a party on the top floor of the building, two floors above Servaz’s flat. You could hear the music from the street. Hirtmann stopped outside the glass door. Pretended to press the button for the intercom, then speak. In fact, he had memorised the door code long ago, the day an old lady had punched it in in front of him, while he stood there wearing an impeccable suit and tie and spoke into his mobile as loudly as possible, ‘Yes, it’s me, tell me the door code, please – the intercom isn’t working.’
He typed the code and the door buzzed. He went through. There were no cops in the entrance hall.
Julian Hirtmann walked over to the lift, pressed the call button but took the stairs that wound their way around the wire cage. There was another cop on the second floor, sitting on a chair in the corner of the landing by the door. He looked up from his paper. Hirtmann looked surprised: it’s not every day you come upon a bloke reading the newspaper on the landing.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Uh, where’s the party?’
The cop pointed wearily up the stairs with one finger, not speaking. How many times that evening had he made the same gesture? Nevertheless he narrowed his eyes to get a good look at Hirtmann.
‘Thank you,’ said Hirtmann, continuing to climb.
He did not stop outside the flat where the party was, but kept climbing up to the short little door that led into the attic. There he sat down on the last step, uncorked the champagne, put his headphones back on and raised the bottle to his lips. It was an excellent champagne. An Armand de Brignac brut blanc de blanc.
Two hours later, he had a sore arse and his knees ached when he stood back up. He dusted off his behind, then went back down to Servaz’s floor, tottering, leaning on the railing.
‘You still here?’ he said, his voice slurred. Now the cop was drinking a cup of coffee. ‘What you doing here? You live here?’
The cop shot him an irritated look. Hirtmann went closer, wobbling his head, his gait unsteady.
‘Why you out on the landing? Your wife chuck you out or something?’
He gave a silly laugh, raised one finger to his nose.
‘You really goin’ spend the night here? Don’t b’lieve it, thass crazy …’
‘Sir,’ said the cop, looking very annoyed, ‘please go away.’
Hirtmann frowned, and staggered even more.
‘Hey! Don’ you speak t’ me like that!’
The man flashed a red, white and blue card.
‘Get out of here, I said.’
‘Ah, okay, who th’ fuck lives here, anyway?’
‘Get out!’
Hirtmann pretended to stumble, and his hand knocked the coffee cup from the cop’s fingers; a brown spot appeared on his light blue shirt and grey jacket.
‘Shit!’ shouted the cop, shoving him violently. ‘I told you to get out of here, you pillock!’
Hirtmann fell backwards on his arse. Just then the door to the flat opened and Margot Servaz appeared in her pyjamas and dressing gown, barefoot, her hair dishevelled. Hirtmann thought she resembled her father, with that little bump on her nose.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, one hand on the door handle, looking first at Hirtmann and then at the cop.
He could see the cop’s nervousness increasing exponentially, his eyes darting from Hirtmann to Servaz’s daughter and back.
‘Get back inside! Get back inside! And lock the door!’
Now the cop was pointing his gun at him and speaking into his Bluetooth at the same time:
‘Get up here, I’ve got a problem!’
The second cop appeared a few seconds later. The one from the car. There were only two of them.
‘Take this drunk and get him out of here, for fuck’s sake!’
On Sunday morning, Servaz and Kirsten could see heightened activity and preparations under way at the chalet: skis and snowboard on the roof of the Volvo, clothing in the boot, picnic basket on the back seat. The Labarthes and Gustav climbed into the car and drove past the hotel.
They would be gone for the day.
Kirsten and Servaz exchanged a glance. ‘A very bad idea, going out there today,’ she said.
At around noon a thick fog settled, and the chalet was nothing but a blurry outline in the pea soup. Servaz and Kirsten were snowshoeing above the hamlet, near the col du Couret; the manager had assured them that the snowpack was stable.
Servaz stopped at the edge of the forest, out of breath, and looked down at the scarcely visible roofs below them, then at Kirsten.
‘With weather like this, they’re bound to come back,’ she added, to dissuade him, after interpreting his gaze.
‘Take the car,’ he said. ‘Go down to the valley. And let me know if you see them go by.’
He switched on his mobile and showed her the screen.
‘It’s okay. I have a signal.’
Then he vanished into the mist, taking great strides down the slope.
The dark mass of the chalet emerged slowly from the fog, even more imposing up close. He went around it, along the side away from the hotel. Seeing it at close quarters, Servaz realised it must originally have been a mountain farm which had been rebuilt: he could make out the stone foundations which would have accommodated the occupants and the livestock,
and the wooden structure above, where straw and grain had been stored.
Everything had been transformed, redesigned, with vast glass surfaces to let the light in, like something out of an interior design magazine, and with a great deal of money spent to achieve the desired effect. This was, in its way, the architectural equivalent of cosmetic surgery: all these rehabilitated facades ended up looking the same.
In some resorts in the Alps a house like this would have been worth millions of euros. But here, the darkened wood of the facing needed refreshing and the door and window frames, licked by the fog, seemed in a sorry condition. Even with a university professor’s salary, the purchase and upkeep of such a building must be astronomical. Did the Labarthes have delusions of grandeur? Or hidden resources? Were they hard-pressed, financially? Servaz made a note to call his mates at economic and financial affairs the very next day.
There was no sign of any alarm system or sensor.
Servaz looked all around: no one. As he had done outside Jensen’s house, he reached into his pocket for some bump keys. If things went on like this, he’d have to start thinking about a new career. He studied the lock. Unlike the door, it had been changed recently. So much the better. Rusty locks were trickier to deal with.
Seven minutes and thirty-five seconds later he was inside, in a little boiler room with a washer-dryer, where it was pleasantly warm and there was a nice smell of laundry. He walked past some metal shelving, down a corridor, and came out into a large cathedral-ceilinged living room. A pyramid chimney took centre stage, suspended above an open hearth. When the weather was clear the picture windows must command a breathtaking view. Eggshell leather sofas, stone, light wood, black-and-white photographs, spotlights: when it came to interior design, the Labarthes seemed to conform to mainstream taste.
Outside, whorls of fog rolled across the terrace as if it were the deck of a ghost ship.
Servaz took a few cautious steps forward. There was something unreal about the silence. He looked around for the little red eye of a movement sensor. Saw nothing. He began to search, avoiding the windows on the east side, which were visible from the hotel, even in this weather.
Sixteen minutes later he had to face facts: there was nothing to report in this main room, or in the kitchen.
Labarthe’s study was hardly any less disappointing. A room with windows on two of the four sides, wedged in a corner between the two wings of the chalet. Labarthe’s reading material was unsurprising, given his interests: Bataille, Sade, Guyotat – and also Deleuze, Foucault, Althusser … Labarthe’s own books had pride of place. On the desk were a Mac, an anglepoise lamp and a letter-opener with a leather handle. Also a pile of bills and indecipherable notes for classes or some future book, who knew.
Beyond the study was a little corridor. Servaz came upon a bathroom at the very end, as well as a sauna and a room that had been made into a gym, with an indoor rowing machine, weightlifting bench, punching bag, and rack of weights.
He went up the wide staircase. On the first floor there were three bedrooms, a bathroom and a separate toilet.
The first two bedrooms were obviously spare; the last one was Gustav’s – it said as much on the door in big blue letters. As Servaz pushed it open he felt a mixture of apprehension and excitement – there, in the nerve centre of the silent house.
It was decorated the way a little boy’s room is meant to be decorated. There were posters on the walls, picture books on a shelf, a duvet decorated with a multitude of Spider-Men swinging in all sorts of acrobatic positions, and soft toys, including a huge one a metre long that looked like an elk or a caribou. Servaz went closer and looked at the label: Made in Norway.
Don’t stay here.
He checked his watch. The time was speeding by. He went over to the bed, looked at it; did the same with the boy’s clothes in the dresser. He eventually found what he was looking for: a blond hair. His pulse began to race. He took a transparent Ziploc from his jacket and slipped the hair into it. He would have liked to search the room from top to bottom but he doubted he had much time, so he left and went up the stairs that led towards the roof. His legs were trembling. There was a small landing and beyond it an open door, the parents’ suite. He went in, walked across a thick carpet. Outside, through the French windows, he could see a misty white landscape and a tall fir tree, its branches stippled with snow. He thought of the view Hirtmann used to have from his cell.
Nearly the entire room was white: the panels of the sloping ceiling, the bed, the carpet. He recalled the off-white tunic Aurore Labarthe had been wearing the first time he saw her.
The bed was not made. It was piled with clothes, as was an adjacent chair. He went closer, sniffed the sheets on both sides: she slept on the right. Her perfume was the heady, overwhelming sort; it impregnated the sheets. He opened the drawers on the bedside tables. Magazines, earplugs, an eye mask, a tube of paracetamol and some reading glasses.
Nothing else.
The two adjacent walk-in wardrobes were the size of a student’s garret. Jeans, dresses and several outfits in white or black leather for the lady; jackets, shirts, jumpers and suits for the gentleman.
When he was sure he wouldn’t find anything there, either, he went back down to the kitchen. There was a door next to the huge freezer. He opened it. A spiral staircase, made of rough concrete. He switched on the light and started down it.
Perhaps he was on to something at last …
The stairs arrived at a metal door. He turned the handle. His pulse went up another gear.
The door resisted slightly, then gave way with a creaking sound. Yet another disappointment: the door opened into the big garage they could see from the hotel. The second vehicle was a small four-wheel drive. He walked quickly around the garage, then back up to the ground floor, his frustration and impatience increasing rapidly.
He looked outside: the day was fading. He thought quickly. Suddenly he had an idea.
Of course, why hadn’t he realised earlier?
He went back to the top floor, to the little landing before the parents’ suite. He looked up: there it was, the trap door to the loft.
He brought a chair from the next room, climbed onto it, reached up and grabbed the handle. The trap door creaked open – a dark, gaping mouth – and he pulled down the metal ladder and replaced the chair.
He climbed up the rungs, and pressed a switch next to the opening. A neon light flickered above him; he put his head through the hole.
Bingo.
The Labarthes’ secret lair, their ‘garden of delights’. No doubt about it. On the wall opposite him, in Gothic letters, was a framed notice:
ABANDON ALL PRIDE
OH YE WHO ENTER HERE
ENTER INTO THE TYRANNICAL CRYPT
DO NOT PITY US
SEEK KNOWLEDGE AND PLEASURE
MAKE EACH HOUR EXQUISITE
SUFFER AND CRY
TAKE YOUR PLEASURE
The sight of it filled him with gloom.
The immensity of the loops, twists and deviations of the human mind were enough to make him dizzy. In any other circumstances this jargon would have been laughable, but here, it was somehow sinister.
He pulled himself through the hole and stood on the floor, which was covered with a plastic coating. The place reminded him of a private dance club: there were benches, a dance floor, a bar, a sound system, and soundproofing of the kind found in recording studios. The heat was suffocating and there was a cloying smell of hot dust.
Then his attention was caught by the wall bars at the far end, the kind they had in gyms. He got the suspicion that they were not used for working on one’s abdominal muscles. He also saw a pulley and two hooks beneath the sloping ceiling, two other hooks on the wall, a camera on a tripod and video recording equipment at the back. A large old-fashioned oak armoire with bevelled mirrors stood out a bit further along, just before an opening without a door that gave on to another room.
He went in: translucent windowpanes, lockers
and a shower. He returned to the first room. Opened the armoire. And felt as if he himself was a voyeur, when he saw the sinister shine of whips, crops, ball gags, leather shackles, chains and snap hooks – all politely lined up like tools on a handyman’s rack. The Labarthes had enough to outfit a battalion in there. He thought back to Lhomeau’s reflections about Aurore Labarthe and felt a shiver run down his spine. How far did these little games in the attic go?
He checked his watch.
He had been there for nearly an hour and still had not found the slightest trace of Hirtmann.
You’ve got to get out of here, he thought.
He was walking over to the trap door when he heard the sound of an engine.
He stiffened. It was heading towards the chalet. No. It was already here. The engine had just been switched off. Shit! He heard doors slamming, and voices outside, muffled by the snow. He looked at his phone. Why hadn’t Kirsten warned him? No signal! The attic must be equipped with a frequency jammer.
He stopped at the edge of the trap door. Below him, the front door had just opened and he heard three voices, including Gustav’s clear, cheerful tones.
He was for it now.
With damp hands, he pulled the metal ladder and the trap door towards him, as quietly as possible. Just before closing it, he slid his hand outside and switched off the light.
In the dark, he tried very hard to breathe regularly. Not altogether successfully.
32
The Fair-Eyed Captive
Night had fallen a while ago. From the hotel, Kirsten had her eye on the illuminated chalet. From time to time she saw a figure walk by a window.
Martin, where the hell are you?
She had tried to call at least a dozen times since she’d seen the Volvo, at the foot of the winding road, and sent just as many messages. Every time, she got his voicemail.
Night Page 24