Suddenly he heard a sound on the staircase and he hid behind the open door. There was a heavy thud. Kirsten.
‘Help me,’ said the man. ‘She can’t stand up.’
He took a peep, and saw them go by, heading towards the next floor, with Kirsten between them. She was half unconscious, allowing herself, more or less, to be dragged.
Servaz heard the noise of the trap door opening and the ladder being pulled down.
‘You’re beautiful, you know that,’ said Aurore.
‘Really?’ asked Kirsten, as if she appreciated the compliment.
‘You’ll have to help us now,’ said Labarthe, more coldly.
‘Of course,’ said Kirsten, ‘but I can’t feel my legs.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Aurore Labarthe, her tone soothing.
‘Go and make sure Gustav is asleep,’ ordered the man.
Servaz panicked. Aurore Labarthe’s steps were already hurrying down the stairs and echoing along the corridor. He hid behind the door again – which was then flung wide open. He pressed his back against the wall.
But the door went back to its initial position and the steps retreated. Gustav moaned softly in his sleep and changed position. He put his thumb in his mouth.
Servaz felt as if his brain were about to explode. He had been roasting ever since his stay up in the overheated attic. He needed more than anything to get out of there, to breathe some fresh air.
He walked resolutely towards the stairs. On the floor above, they were climbing up the ladder, and it creaked and groaned under their weight. He went back down to the ground floor, treading lightly, and headed towards the front door in the same way.
The frigid night air was like a slap in the face. It woke him up.
He took deep, thirsty breaths, his hands on his knees, as if he’d been running a hundred-metre sprint. And then he went down the steps, took a handful of snow and rubbed it all over his face.
Finally, he took out his mobile, to call for backup.
He stopped. How long would it take them to get there? What would happen up there in the meantime? And what if the gendarmes refused to get involved? It wouldn’t be the first time. And then their cover would be blown. Any chance that Hirtmann would ever show himself would be gone.
He thought for a moment, went back up the stairs, took another deep breath and rang the bell.
33
Poker Trick
The door only opened after the fifth time he had buzzed and held his finger down.
‘Good God!’ exclaimed Labarthe. ‘What on …?’
Servaz had taken out his red, white and blue badge and flashed it under the university professor’s nose. He instantly put it away, before the man in front of him began to wonder why it was a cop at his door and not a gendarme.
‘There has been a complaint from the hotel,’ he said. ‘Are you having a party here? People have complained about the noise. Have you seen the time?’
Labarthe stared at him, completely bewildered. Visibly he was trying to understand what was going on. Behind him, the house was perfectly silent and dark.
‘What? Noise? What noise?’ Incredulous, the professor gestured towards the interior. ‘You can see perfectly well they can’t mean here!’
He seemed to be in a hurry to curtail the discussion.
‘We were about to go to bed,’ he added, then narrowed his eyes. ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I? You’re the guy from the hotel, yesterday … You left your headlights on.’
‘You don’t mind if I just take a quick look?’ insisted Servaz, not answering.
He did mind. Quite obviously. And yet the professor smiled.
‘I don’t believe you have the right to do that,’ he said. ‘Good night.’
But before he could step back and close the door, Servaz had pushed past him and walked in.
‘Hey! Where the fuck do you think you’re going? You have no right! Come back here! We have a child sleeping upstairs!’
A child that you’ve drugged, you son of a bitch, thought Servaz, walking into the big cathedral-ceilinged living room. They had switched off all the lamps on the ground floor and the only light came from the snow beyond the windows; the dark shapes of the furniture were barely visible. Clearly, the Labarthes were ready for their very private little party. He resisted the temptation to turn around and kick the professor in his private parts, just so he wouldn’t feel like partying any more.
‘You cannot barge in here on the basis of a simple neighbourhood complaint; you can see there is nothing happening! Get the hell out of here!’
Labarthe seemed more worried than furious. Servaz heard a noise upstairs; perhaps it was the ladder being pulled up.
‘What’s that noise?’ he said.
He saw Labarthe stiffen.
‘What noise?’
‘I heard a noise.’
He made as if to start up the stairs. The professor stood between him and the staircase.
‘Stop! You have no right!’
‘What’s making you so nervous? What are you hiding up there?’
‘What? What are you talking about, for fuck’s sake? I told you, my son is asleep up there.’
‘Your son?’
‘Yes! My son!’
‘What do you have up there?’
‘What? Nothing! What do you think you’re doing? You have no right to—’
‘What are you hiding?’
‘You’re absolutely mad! Who are you, for God’s sake? You’re not a gendarme, and you were at the hotel yesterday. What do you want from us?’
Just then, Servaz’s phone began to ping in his pocket. He knew what it was: all the messages Kirsten had sent him while he was in the attic; all the times she’d rung him in vain. They had decided that now was the moment to remind him of their presence.
‘What’s …? Your phone’s ringing,’ said the man, his tone increasingly suspicious.
He mustn’t let the professor regain the upper hand.
‘Okay. I’ll take a look,’ said Servaz, walking around him and heading towards the stairs.
‘Wait! Wait!’
‘What?’
‘You need a warrant, you have no right to do this!’
‘A warrant? You’ve been watching too many films, mate.’
‘No, no. A letter of request … something like that … Whatever it’s called, I don’t give a damn. You know very well what I mean. You can’t just go marching into people’s houses like this. I don’t know who you are, but I’m going to call the gendarmes,’ he said, taking out his phone.
‘Okay,’ said Servaz, unflinching. ‘Be my guest.’
Labarthe switched it on, waited for a second, then put it away.
‘All right, fine – what do you want?’
‘Why aren’t you calling the gendarmes?’
‘Because …’
‘What is your problem? There’s something going on up there. Something not quite right. And I’m going to find out what it is. Get to the bottom of it. I’m going to go down to Saint-Martin, get a judge out of bed and come back here with a letter of request.’
He headed for the front door, and as he walked away towards the car Kirsten had left outside the hotel he felt Labarthe’s gaze at his back, in the cold night.
Labarthe was already in a sweat when he put his head through the trap door. He saw that the Norwegian woman was attached to the pulley by her wrists, her arms raised. Aurore was wiping her face, hair and neck with a damp flannel to wake her up. All her gestures were filled with great tenderness, until she gave her a slap that rang out like the cracking of a whip and left a mark on her left cheek.
‘We’ve got a really dodgy situation downstairs!’ exclaimed her husband as he burst into the attic. ‘She mustn’t stay here! We have to take her back to the hotel!’
The blonde turned around.
‘Who was it?’
Labarthe glanced cautiously at Kirsten, with her wobbling head and blinking eyes: she was compl
etely out of it.
‘A cop!’
He saw his wife stiffen.
‘What? What did he want?’
‘He claims that someone at the hotel made a noise complaint. It’s total bullshit!’
Labarthe was waving his arms. ‘I saw him at the hotel yesterday. What was he doing there? He told me he’s coming back. We’re in trouble!’
‘What are you on about?’ said Aurore Labarthe, unruffled.
But her husband seemed far more worried.
‘We’ve got to hurry and get her out of here! We have to take her back to the hotel! Right away! We’ll say she’s had too much to drink.’
Now it was her turn to glance over at Kirsten. She handed the Norwegian woman’s mobile to her husband. A message appeared on the screen:
Get out of here!
‘That’s what I keep telling you! We have to—’
‘Shut up,’ she interrupted. ‘Take a breath. Calm down. And tell me everything from the start.’
From his room, he watched the chalet. If nothing happened in the next three minutes he would go back. He had pretended to drive away with the car, had left it by the side of the road after the first bend, and then returned to the hotel on foot.
He checked his watch. Two more minutes. He wished he had his gun with him.
He froze.
A figure had just appeared at the top of the steps. Labarthe. He was looking towards the hotel, then Servaz saw him gesture to someone inside the chalet. Aurore Labarthe appeared, supporting Kirsten. They helped her down the steps, then began walking, one on either side, holding her up as if she were drunk. And that was indeed the impression she gave.
Servaz took a deep breath. Fourteen minutes had gone by since he’d left the chalet. They wouldn’t have had time to do her much harm.
34
Food
He wiped a cool, damp cloth across Kirsten’s sweat-soaked face. Then he sat up straight and went to the bathroom for another glass of water. He tried to make her drink, but on the second swallow, she gagged and pushed the glass to one side.
It was the manager who had brought her up to him.
The Labarthes had informed him that the Norwegian woman who was staying in his hotel was interested in architecture, and that they’d invited her to stay for a glass of wine, and now she was completely drunk. It was probably customary in her country, they said, to drink more than was reasonable.
Servaz did not know what the manager had replied, but as they headed back to the chalet, they’d turned around several times to look back at the hotel windows. Every time, he’d moved to one side.
His and Kirsten’s cover was blown. From now on, the Labarthes would be on the alert, more than ever.
They must already have informed Hirtmann of the incident.
How did they go about contacting him? He probably had a fake email account that was accessible only through the dark web, or through a chat on Telegram or ChatSecure. Encrypted messages that were rerouted: Vincent had demonstrated to him the numerous possibilities available on the Internet to those who liked to keep things confidential.
‘Fuck, I feel like absolute shit,’ Kirsten declared suddenly.
He turned around. She was lying on her bed, her neck and shoulders propped against three pillows, pale, her hair clinging with sweat to her brow and temples.
‘I must look awful.’
‘Atrocious,’ he confirmed.
‘That was a major cock-up,’ she said. Servaz had some trouble translating her words. ‘That sadistic little Labarthe bitch, she really screwed us over. She’s brought out all my murderous tendencies.’
You’re not the only one, he thought.
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she added.
Then she stood up and ran to the bathroom. He heard her vomit three times, taking deep breaths in between, then flush the toilet.
Zehetmayer was having breakfast at the Prague Sheraton, surrounded by Chinese tourists. He hated that. He had slept in room 429, after spending the evening walking around Malá Strana and the Old Town. Of course he had stopped off at the Jewish Cemetery, and as it did every time, there in the middle of the chaos of gravestones, in the gloom of silence and twilight, among the old facades preserving the memory of centuries, time had dissolved and he had been moved to tears.
He was momentarily ashamed to feel the tears on his cheeks, but he did nothing, leaving them to dampen his shirt collar as he tasted the salt on his lips. There was no reason for him to be ashamed: all his life he had seen brave men weep, and cowards with dry eyes. He had felt penetrated and purified by the light and silence, and the thought of all those souls and their past lives. He thought of Kafka, and the Golem – and of his daughter, violated and killed by a monster. Because there was purity in hatred, as there is purity in love.
The man he was waiting for that morning was called Jiri. He was Czech.
Zehetmayer saw him walking towards him, past the tables. Jiri had the face of a bearded wildcat, a face you could not easily forget, which could be something of a handicap in his profession: cheeks furrowed with deep wrinkles as if by the blade of a cutter, a powerful chest, and an incandescent gaze. He looked less like a killer than a poet, or a man of the theatre. He could have been an actor in a play by Chekhov, or an opera singer. For all that Zehetmayer knew, Jiri might be an artist, in his way.
Fine. Zehetmayer did not believe all that romantic bullshit about thieves and murderers. All that mythology for the bourgeois who dreamt of mixing with the riff-raff.
Jiri sat down across from him and motioned to the waiter.
‘Coffee,’ he said. ‘Black.’
He got up, walked over to the buffet, then came back with a plate full of sausages, scrambled eggs, bacon, pastries and fruit.
‘I love hotel breakfasts,’ said Jiri.
He began wolfing it down.
‘I have been told that you are a true professional,’ declared Zehetmayer by way of introduction.
‘Who told you that?’
‘Our mutual friend.’
‘He’s not a friend,’ corrected Jiri. ‘He’s a client. Do you like your work, Mr Zehetmayer?’
‘It’s more than work, it’s—’
‘Do you like your work?’
Zehetmayer frowned.
‘Yes, passionately.’
‘It’s important to love what one does. To love … There’s nothing more important in life.’
Zehetmayer frowned again. On an early morning in Prague he was sitting opposite a killer who was talking to him about love.
At a few minutes past nine on that Monday morning Roland Labarthe logged in to the Telegram app on his iPhone. The messaging service had recently become famous in the media as the preferred messaging service of terrorists. While the free publicity had attracted the ephemeral glare of the media spotlight, Telegram was anything but a confidential service. However, one of its features was the transmission of fully encrypted messages and their self-destruction after a time lapse set by the user.
It was the ‘secret chat’ feature that Labarthe activated that Monday morning. The recipient at the other end went by the name ‘Mary Shelley’, but Labarthe knew that it was not a woman. The only thing Julian Hirtmann and the author of Frankenstein had in common was Cologny, the village in the canton of Geneva where they had both lived. Hirtmann’s first message arrived almost immediately.
[I got an alert. What’s going on?]
[Something weird happened last night]
[Concerning Gustav?]
[No]
[Where?]
[At the chalet]
[Tell me. In detail. Be precise. Concise. The facts.]
Adding as few details as possible, Labarthe related the previous evening’s episode: the visit of the Norwegian woman, a so-called architect, then the cop whom he had already seen at the hotel the night before, and the way the guy had wanted to snoop everywhere.
He did, however, leave out the fact they had tried to take the woman up
to the attic. And above all, the fact they had drugged Gustav. The first time they did it, it had been Aurore’s idea. Labarthe didn’t approve. He dared not think of the consequences were Hirtmann to find out; just the thought of it made his blood run cold. But, as usual, Aurore got her way.
[Don’t panic. Nothing’s amiss]
[Nothing’s amiss? What if they begin to show an interest in Gustav?]
[That’s what they’re doing]
[In what way?]
[They’re there because of Gustav. And because of me.]
[How do you know?]
[I just do.]
Labarthe let out a silent oath. There were times when his Master got on his nerves.
[What should we do?]
[Stay on your guard.
Keep an eye on them, too.
Act normally]
[Until when?]
[They won’t do anything as long as I don’t show myself.]
[And do you intend to?]
[You’ll see]
[You know you can trust us completely]
It took a while for the answer to come.
[Because you think I would have entrusted you with Gustav if it had been otherwise? Carry on. Change nothing]
[Fine]
Roland Labarthe wanted to add something, but he saw that his interlocutor had gone offline. He did likewise. In a few seconds their conversation would self-destruct and there would be no trace of it anywhere.
Hirtmann switched off his phone and looked up. A few metres away from him Margot Servaz was walking down the aisles of the large Victor-Hugo covered market, with its abundance of sounds and smells. She lingered by the displays of fruit, fish and cheese, all incredibly tempting. She examined, weighed, evaluated and bought, then went on her way. Three metres behind her, lost in the crowd, a plain-clothes policeman did not take his eyes off her.
Mistake, thought Julian Hirtmann as he sipped his coffee at the little counter. He would have done better to show an interest in what was going on around her. Hirtmann put down his cup, paid and walked on. Margot had stopped by the Garcia charcuterie stand. Hirtmann went behind her, then around the counter that extended on three sides and over to where the master of the premises was slicing his exorbitant Iberian pata negra ham.
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