A few hours later, after he had passed Nîmes and Orange, he was heading up the Rhone Valley, where a violent mistral was blowing. He stopped to have a tuna and mayonnaise sandwich and a double espresso at a motorway rest stop not far from Bourgoin-Jallieu, then continued towards the Alps, Annecy and Geneva, which he reached as night was falling.
He drove along the northeast shore of Lake Geneva, leaving it after Morges to set a northward course towards Lake Neuchâtel, then turned towards the immaculate whiteness of the Bernese Alps. The mountains stood out against a cloudless night like meringues against a black curtain, and after Zurich he left Switzerland and crossed the Austrian border at Lustenau at around nine o’clock, then the German border near Lindau, driving around the southern edge of Lake Constance before heading due east to Munich, where he arrived at ten o’clock.
It was after eleven o’clock when he crossed the Austrian border once again, near Salzburg, and drove in among the imposing summits of the Salzkammergut. And it was after midnight when he finally reached Hallstatt, that 3D postcard of Austria nestled on the edge of a lake, obscured for now by fog and darkness. Little cobblestone streets, chalets with Tyrolean facades, fountains and panoramas: it was all straight out of a film – Heidi, or The Sound of Music.
He found the hotel Hirtmann had told him to go to – the Pension Göschlberger – and twenty minutes later he was out like a light, in a high bed piled with eiderdowns like something out of a fairy tale.
‘He used his Visa card at a car hire agency in Blagnac yesterday morning,’ said a cop called Quintard. ‘And a few hours later at a service station near Bourgoin-Jallieu, and for the last time at the tollbooth at Annemasse-Saint-Julien just before the Swiss border.’
‘Bloody hell,’ exclaimed Rimbaud.
‘The car, a Peugeot 308, was hired in the name of Émile Cazzaniga.’
‘Great,’ said the inspector. ‘He could be anywhere in Europe.’
‘Or he may even have come back to France,’ suggested another officer from the Inspectorate. ‘He would be clever enough to do that.’
Stehlin was following the conversation gravely, without getting involved. It was a nightmare.
‘Does anyone have any idea where he might have gone?’ asked Rimbaud, walking around the table, his attitude scathing.
Neither Samira nor Espérandieu said a thing, but when the inspector focused his attention elsewhere, they exchanged a glance.
‘You need a special sticker to use the Swiss motorways,’ said Rimbaud. ‘Who knows, he might have been stopped by the Swiss police if he didn’t have one. Can someone get in touch with them?’
An end-of-an-era atmosphere had settled over the table: the death of a department, to whom henceforth no magistrate would ever entrust any important investigations. Espérandieu mused that he could ask for a transfer. But Martin, what would become of him? Did he really kill Jensen? He still found the idea hard to believe. He looked over at Samira for support, and the young Franco-Sino-Moroccan woman laid her hand discreetly on his knee for a second. He felt infinitely sad. What had gone wrong since the gunshot? He had seen broken cops before. But Martin was his best friend – or at least he had been, before the coma.
‘And what about that Norwegian policewoman, does anyone know where she is?’ asked Rimbaud, looking at the director of the crime unit.
Stehlin shook his head, as slowly as a condemned man who has just been asked whether he has any last wishes.
‘Great,’ said the inspector. ‘We’ll contact Interpol to send out a Red Notice regarding Commandant Servaz.’
Is that all? thought Espérandieu. The media mistakenly referred to Red Notices as ‘international arrest warrants’. In fact, they were not arrest warrants, as a policeman from one country could not arrest an individual solely upon the decision of a national judicial system; they were alerts to locate a person and request his arrest by local authorities.
‘I want a detailed description – a photograph, fingerprints, the whole shebang.’
He turned to Vincent and Samira.
‘Can you take care of that?’ he asked them, his tone poisonous.
There was a moment of silence. Then Samira’s right middle finger – bearing a skull ring – was raised elegantly above the table. She shoved back her chair and walked out.
‘Same here,’ said Espérandieu, getting up in turn.
Martin spent the morning wandering through the narrow streets of the picture-postcard village and along the lake, wearing sunglasses, a thick woollen scarf and a cheap cap he had bought in a local souvenir shop with his last euros. He lingered at pavement cafés, drinking so much coffee that he eventually shoved the last cup away, disgusted.
He ran no risk of attracting attention: there were many more tourists than residents. Around him he heard every language imaginable and very little German.
In spite of everything, he could not help but be impressed with the panorama: all these white roofs piled one on top of the other, the neat, almost cheerful facades, the wooden piers and, just opposite, the hostile, crushing presence of the ice-covered rock face. It loomed, white with horizontal streaks, like a drawing made by a trembling hand, dropping like a tombstone into the icy and slightly misty waters of the Hallstättersee.
At five minutes before noon he began walking towards the Marktplatz. There, too, a mass of tourists with cameras and smartphones was snapping away at virtually anything.
He waited several minutes almost without moving, pretending to be observing the fountain and the surrounding area. He wondered where Kirsten was. She had not shown herself and he was beginning to feel worried. Then he said to himself that it was only logical: someone else might be watching him and Kirsten didn’t want to take any risks.
‘Mahler came here, did you know that?’ one of the tourists next to him said suddenly, still snapping away.
Servaz looked at him. The man was wearing a strange yellow cap with a pompom. He was blond, suntanned, and looked healthy and sporty.
‘Have you packed your bag?’ said the man, putting the lens cap back on his camera.
Servaz nodded.
‘Good, let’s go and get it.’
They left the town a few minutes later in an ageless Range Rover, spewing black exhaust fumes over a little road that followed the western shore of the lake.
Samira Cheung looked at Vincent. That day she had put so much black pencil around her eyes that she looked like a ghost from a haunted house.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘What Quintard said at the meeting: Martin’s route, across the border into Switzerland. Switzerland isn’t far from—’
‘Austria, I know,’ he said. ‘Hallstatt …’
‘Do you really think he could be there?’
‘It seems absurd, don’t you think?’
‘But that is the way he went,’ she pointed out.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘that is the way. It’s also the way to Geneva, where Hirtmann is from. And what about the Norwegian woman: do you think she’s with him?’
Samira didn’t answer. She was already typing on her keyboard.
‘Look.’
He went over and saw an ordinary homepage, and then he read: ‘Polizei Hallstatt, Seelände 30’. There was an email address that ended with ‘polizei.gv.at’, and even a website. Samira clicked on it and despite the gravity of the situation they smiled: two Barbie and Ken lookalike models in police uniforms standing next to a squad car, about as credible as Steven Seagal playing the President of the United States.
‘Do you speak German?’ she asked.
He shook his head.
‘Neither do I.’
‘But I speak English,’ he said, picking up his telephone. ‘Austrians must speak the Queen’s English, don’t you think?’
She let go of the curtain. From her window in the Hotel Grüner Baum, Kirsten had seen Martin speaking with a man in a yellow cap. Now they had set off toge
ther. She rushed out of her room on the first floor, down the steps, and out onto the square, just in time to see them leaving the square and heading down a side street. Instead of following them, she went in the opposite direction.
Espérandieu put the phone down. The Austrian cop – a man named Reger – had turned out to be surprisingly cooperative. He seemed to be delighted to collaborate with the French police, even if their request had drawn a blank at the other end of the line. Espérandieu figured that it must be a change of routine for him. How many murders did they have in Hallstatt? A Chinese tourist killed with a pickaxe by a Sinophobic mountain climber? A jealous husband tying a flowerpot to his wife’s ankles before sending her to the bottom of the lake? Reger had a strong Austrian accent, but his English was impeccable.
Espérandieu motioned to Samira, who keyed in the email address they’d found on the Austrian website and added a photograph of Martin to the text in English.
Martin and his guide with the yellow cap came back to Hallstatt at around two in the afternoon. They went through a tunnel in the mountain and parked in the P1 car park, then walked back to the centre of town along the lake. It was cold. There were snow flurries above the lake and the light seemed as leaden as if it were late afternoon.
‘Why did we take that detour?’ asked Servaz, once again dragging his suitcase behind him.
‘I wanted to make sure no one is following us.’
‘And now what will we do?’
‘You will go back to your hotel, and don’t go out: wait there for someone to come for you. Don’t call anyone, do you understand? No alcohol, no cigarettes. And no coffee either. Drink plenty of water, get some rest, and sleep.’
Neither Servaz nor the man with the yellow cap saw the green Lada Niva pull into the same car park a few minutes later. Zehetmayer got out first. He was wearing his usual coat with the otter’s fur collar and, on his bald head, a battered felt hat. Jiri was wearing a simple anorak, jeans and fur-lined boots, and looked like any ordinary tourist. They left the car and hurried straight to the centre of the village.
An odd couple, fox and wolf, they sat down in a café and watched the tourists go by.
After three hours shut in his room, Servaz was beginning to get restless. He could not stop thinking about Margot. How tired and drained she looked. He had left without saying goodbye and she must be worried sick. He had to speak to her.
Would they already have permission from the judge to tap his phone? It was possible, given the circumstances. But not certain. The French police and justice system did not operate like they did on TV.
He had to take the risk. He took out the little prepaid mobile he had bought in the centre of Toulouse before rushing to the airport, and dialled the number.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me,’ he said.
‘Dad? Where are you?’
Her voice was full of concern.
‘I can’t tell you,’ he replied.
There was a pause.
‘You what?’
Anger, again, in his daughter’s voice. Through the window, he could see a white boat coming closer across the grey water, through the fog; it was bringing tourists from the railway station on the other side of the lake.
‘Listen. They’re going to question you about me. The police. They’re going to talk to you about me as if I were a … criminal …’
‘The police? But you’re the police. I don’t understand.’
‘It’s complicated. I had to leave.’
‘Leave? Leave where? Can’t you be a bit more—’
‘Let me finish. I’ve been framed. I’ve been accused of something I didn’t do. I had to run away. But I’ll … I’ll come back.’
More silence.
‘You’re frightening me, Dad,’ she said suddenly.
‘I know. I’m sorry, sweetheart.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, don’t worry.’
‘Of course I worry,’ she replied. ‘How do you expect me—’
‘There’s something else I want to tell you.’
She was silent. He hesitated.
‘You have a little brother. His name is Gustav. He’s five years old.’
Another silence.
‘A … little brother? Called Gustav?’
He could picture the disbelief on her features.
‘Who is his mother?’ she immediately asked.
‘It’s a long story.’
He swallowed a glass of mineral water from the minibar.
‘I have time,’ she replied, her voice cold again.
‘It’s a woman I knew a long time ago, and who was kidnapped.’
‘Kidnapped? Marianne? Is it Marianne?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good Lord. He’s back, isn’t he?’
‘Who?’
‘You know who.’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, fuck, Dad, I don’t believe it. Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me this bloody nightmare isn’t going to start all over again!’
‘Margot, I—’
‘This child, where is he?’
He remembered what Espérandieu said: ‘Ask her straight out.’
‘Never mind where he is,’ he said. ‘What’s done is done. It’s my turn, now, to ask you a question: what exactly is the matter with you, Margot? Answer me, this time. I want the truth.’
This time, there was a longer silence on the line.
‘Well, it would seem that you don’t just have a second child, you’re also about to become a grandfather.’
‘What?’
‘I’m nearly three months now,’ she added.
He thought about all the little physical and psychological changes, how she’d felt sick in the morning, her sensitivity, her mood swings, the fridge full of healthy things, the weight she had put on.
He must have been blind.
Even Hirtmann, just watching Margot from the car park across the street, had understood.
‘The father …’ he said. ‘Do I know him?’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘It’s Élias.’
At first, he didn’t know who she was talking about. Then it came to him. He saw again the tall, silent young man, his long hair covering half his face, his resemblance to a beanpole that’s sprouted too quickly. Élias had been with Margot when she’d come to find him in that Spanish village where he had taken refuge after Marianne disappeared and was spending his days and nights drinking. Servaz recalled that Élias was not exactly talkative, but when he did speak he always had something to say.
‘I didn’t know you were still seeing him,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t. He showed up in Montreal last year, supposedly just for a visit. We hadn’t seen each other for three years, but we’d stayed in touch. He went back to Paris after four weeks, and we went on writing to each other. And then he came back again. For good, this time.’
Margot had always had a gift for summing up complicated situations in a few sentences.
‘And are you going to …?’
‘No, Dad, no: that’s not on the agenda, at all.’
‘But are you … living together?’
‘Does it matter? Dad, whatever’s happened, you have to come back. You can’t run away like a criminal.’
‘I can’t come back,’ he said. ‘Not right away. Listen, I—’
There was a sound on the line, perhaps a door closing, and then a voice: ‘Margot? Sweetie, it’s me!’ Alexandra, his ex-wife.
‘Don’t say anything to your mother,’ he said.
He hung up.
A vision came to him suddenly, of a happy moment a very long time ago: that same young woman who was now pregnant babbling and chirping in a language only she understood, climbing onto her parents’ bed. She nearly always came onto the bed when her mother was asleep. Her own personal Kilimanjaro. Climbing, conquering, making her niche, then nestling her little body between theirs. Her baby smell. Her fine hair. He could not remember anything more delightful than bur
ying his nose in his little girl’s sweet-smelling round tummy. Her infant’s smell mingled with the acidity of the milk in the bottle, and eau de Cologne. That was the perfume of early morning. His daughter … who would soon have a round tummy again.
He hoped she would be a good mother, that she would cope well with motherhood. And that her relationship would not go to pieces the way her parents’ had. That she would be happier as a mother than she had been as a daughter. That the child would grow up in a close family. He was trying to think but it was all spinning … He felt as if another Margot had taken his daughter’s place.
He went over to the window and saw his ghostly face juxtaposed on the image of the white boat and the grey water.
My daughter, he thought, a lump in his throat. I know you will be a good, an excellent mother. And that your child will be happy. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I … I hope you will think about me from time to time, and that you will understand.
Kirsten’s telephone rang as she was resuming her surveillance, along with a pastry and a coffee.
‘Hey, Kasper,’ she said.
There was a moment’s silence on the line. She thought that even there she could hear the inexhaustible rain of Bergen.
‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘Having a pastry and coffee.’
‘Still at the hotel?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Pardon?’
‘Why do you want to know where I am?’
‘I don’t understand your question.’
‘Why are you so interested in where someone is and what they’re doing?’
Silence.
‘What’s all this bullshit?’ he said. ‘I want to know how things are going, that’s all.’
‘Kasper, I called Oslo yesterday. Apparently, they don’t know anything. No one had told them that we’ve picked up the little boy’s trail. And yet I told you. Why didn’t you mention it to your superiors?’
Nothing but the sound of rain on the line.
‘I don’t know,’ he said finally. ‘I wanted to give you time to do it yourself, I suppose. You didn’t mention it to anyone either, apparently.’
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