His contact was waiting at a table in a corner between the front of the pub and the room at the back. A discreet spot, away from the other tables.
‘Hey,’ said Kasper.
‘Hey,’ said the journalist.
He was a young man, hardly over thirty, with ginger hair, resembling a weasel or a fox. He had slightly protruding, very light blue eyes that never left his interlocutor, like the smile that never left his face.
‘Are you sure that Hirtmann has resurfaced?’ the journalist asked, straight out.
‘Yes,’ he lied, but he remembered Kirsten’s voice on the telephone and her silences, and he was convinced it must be true.
‘Fuck, this will make incredible copy,’ said the hack. ‘And you say he’s been bringing up this kid, Gustav, as his own son?’
‘Correct.’
‘And where are they now?’
‘Well … in France,’ he said. ‘In the southwest.’
‘The kid, Hirtmann – and your colleague, who’s on their trail. Is that it?’
The guy was taking notes.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘Crikey, a serial killer saving a kid from death. And being hunted by one of our very own female cops. We can’t put it off any longer. This will come out tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow. An entire feature.’
Kasper swallowed his saliva.
‘And my money?’
The young man looked around, took an envelope from his coat and handed it to him.
‘It’s all there. Twenty-five thousand crowns.’
Kasper looked at the snotty-nosed guy who didn’t even bother to hide his disdain for him. For a split second Kasper was tempted to shove the envelope away, to redeem his behaviour. It’s a lie, he thought. He tried to kid himself. But he had forfeited any dignity long ago.
He looked at the envelope. The price of betrayal. Of having leaked his information to the Norwegian media. Of having systematically conveyed everything Kirsten Nigaard had told him over the telephone to a journalist. He shoved the money into the pocket of his damp jacket, and went back out into the rain.
In Toulouse, Stehlin couldn’t sleep.
Now, at five o’clock in the morning, going down to the kitchen in his house in Balma for a glass of water, he thought back to the phone call he had received shortly before seven that evening.
‘Norwegian police on the line,’ announced his assistant, with that voice that reminded him of his mother. ‘Have a good evening. That’s my day over.’
A voice that said: It’s late, I’m still here, I’m sacrificing my family life to make myself available; I hope you are aware of that.
He had thanked her and wished her a ‘Nice evening to you, too,’ and he took the call. In fact it wasn’t the Kripos, but a department that – if he’d understood correctly – was the equivalent of the French National Police Inspectorate. In short, the man on the line, with his rasping voice, was a sort of Norwegian Rimbaud.
‘Kirsten Nigaard,’ he said. ‘Does that name ring a bell?’
‘Of course.’
‘We’ve been trying to reach her since yesterday. Do you know where she is?’
Stehlin sighed.
‘No.’
‘That’s unfortunate. We need her back in Norway as soon as possible.’
‘May I ask why?’
There was a moment’s hesitation on the line.
‘She has been accused of having … of attacking a passenger on a train.’
‘What?’
‘A woman called Helga Gunnerud, on the Oslo–Bergen night train.’
‘Attacking? What do you mean?’ asked Stehlin, increasingly puzzled.
‘She beat her black and blue, apparently. The victim had to be taken to hospital. It took her a while to agree to file a complaint because her aggressor had told her she was with the police, and she was afraid of the consequences. The victim told us she boarded the train at Finse, and that she and Kirsten Nigaard initially had a friendly rapport, but then Nigaard suddenly turned nasty. So the victim lost her temper – she admits she is quick to fly off the handle – and they started calling each other names. After that, Kirsten Nigaard threw herself on the woman and hit her, over and over.’
Stehlin could not believe his ears. That lovely Norwegian woman, so cool and distant, who had been sitting in his office: that she would hit another woman so hard as to leave her unconscious … It was absurd.
‘Are you sure the woman isn’t making it up?’ he asked.
He could sense the Norwegian man’s annoyance on the line.
‘Well, we did conduct an investigation. There are too many incriminating elements against Nigaard, I’m afraid. Believe me, this saddens me greatly. It’s a right old mess, and it will soon be in all the papers – the victim is far too talkative to hold her tongue. So you really have no idea where she could be at the moment?’ he asked again. ‘We’ve been trying to reach her since yesterday, but she’s not picking up.’
With a heavy heart, Stehlin had to confess that he knew nothing, that she had vanished into thin air, and that they had also had their share of problems, there in Toulouse.
‘It’s as if the world has gone mad,’ concluded his Norwegian counterpart, when they had finished.
Yes, he thought, drinking his glass of water, his back pressed against the kitchen worktop. Martin on the run, suspected of murder, and the Norwegian policewoman turning out to be some sort of apparent psychopath … Yes, it was enough to make you think the world had gone mad.
Espérandieu crossed the Austrian border two hours ahead of schedule. He had driven fast, with no thought for the speed cameras or police checks. He’d sped across Switzerland and Germany and now he was heading through the Salzkammergut at full tilt towards Hallstatt. He was feeling more and more nervous. He didn’t know what to expect in Hallstatt. He was going to have to persuade Martin to turn himself in. It was the only reasonable option. They had reached the end of the line. But would Martin listen? He also had the nagging suspicion that he would get there too late. But too late for what?
44
The Bait
It was a cock-up right from the start. Thick snow was falling, fluffy and wet, when Jiri set off. He left the Lada and inched his way into the unquiet dawn. A regiment of snow-laden clouds floated above the clinic.
It was ten past eight in the morning. The nurses had brought the cop and the boy back from surgery. Jiri knew this because before they lowered the blinds he had seen the cop being wheeled on a gurney to his bed.
He walked past the low wall, and went carefully down the short icy slope between the road and the car park, then threaded his way between the cars towards the entrance. An icy wind was making the tree branches sway like semaphores.
He went briskly up the steps and into the clinic. He already knew the layout of the premises having gone in twice already, the first time with a bouquet of flowers, the second time empty-handed: as in most hospitals, to staff ‘civilians’ were invisible, as long as they did not enter any unauthorised areas.
He walked around reception, went through the double doors with the air of someone who knows where they’re going, and turned right. He put his hand on the gun in his pocket. Small calibre, small bulk. But sufficient. He turned left: this was the corridor.
He came to a halt.
There was someone there, at the end of the corridor. Sitting on a chair outside the door. A woman. Wearing a police uniform.
Shit.
This was not part of the plan. Jiri spun around before the woman could see him. He leaned against the wall, out of sight, and thought. He was a good chess player. When he had been studying the windows of the clinic through his binoculars, he had gone over a certain number of eventualities, the moves he could make and the possible responses of his adversary.
He went off again in the opposite direction, opened the door leading to the service stairs, went up two flights and came out on the first floor. At this time
of day the nurses were busy; there were carts everywhere you looked. He would have to be quick.
He went down the corridor at a brisk pace, past several doors – some of them open, others closed – counting as he went.
This one.
The door was closed; he listened carefully but could hear nothing inside. He opened the door and went in. He recognised the woman wrapped in bandages whom he had spotted through his binoculars.
There was no one else in the room; the floor nurses had not yet got this far.
Her only visible features through the bandages were her eyes, nostrils and mouth. She looked at him in surprise. Jiri walked resolutely towards her, saw the astonishment in her eyes, reached for a pillow from beneath her head and slammed it down on her face. And pressed. Cries escaped through the pillow; her legs shook beneath the blanket like the needle of a seismograph.
He waited. The cries and shaking lessened and eventually stopped. He let go.
There was no time to lose.
He wedged the back of a chair under the doorknob, returned to the bed, pulled back the blanket and sheet, and took the woman’s body in his arms. She was as light as a feather. Jiri set her down below the window and then opened it. The wind blew into the room, bringing the snow with it, and the cold from outside and the heat in the room mingled like sea and river in an estuary.
He grabbed the cords of the blinds and wrapped them around the woman’s neck – once, twice, three times.
Then he tore the sheet from the bed, went back to the window, made one knot around the handle and a second one around the woman’s neck. When he had finished, he lifted the body and swung it out of the open window into the grey, snowy dawn.
After that he removed his coat.
Underneath he was wearing the uniform of an Austrian policeman, bought on the dark web. He took the chair from the door and dragged it to the middle of the room where the fire alarm was mounted on the ceiling, and he climbed onto the chair.
Then he took out his lighter.
Hirtmann came to a halt at the end of the corridor. Outside Martin’s door a woman had replaced the tall guy. Hallstatt police, like the previous officer, judging by the uniform. He had to find a way to get rid of her. Otherwise his trap would not work. These bloody cops were going to scare the quarry away. Following the operation he had put Gustav in a safe place. Locked behind a steel door, and Hirtmann was the only one who had the key. Zehetmayer and his acolyte must be thinking he was in the other room, the one where he had opened and closed the blinds several times. Martin’s room. Where he was waiting for them. But if they found a cop outside the door, they would turn around. Unless … Surely some simple local policeman would not be enough to stop them.
He had got that far in his musing when the fire alarm went off. Shit, what the hell was that? Gustav, he thought. And hurried away.
Jiri headed for the room where the boy and the French cop were. The door was open. The woman guarding the door watched him coming towards her. She glanced quickly at his uniform.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Someone set off the alarm,’ he said. ‘A woman has hanged herself out of her window. I was told she was here.’
He saw the policewoman frown. Suddenly a cry came from the room through the open door. A nurse rushed out.
‘There is someone hanging from the window!’ she cried, and set off down the corridor at a run.
The policewoman watched her, then turned to give Jiri a suspicious look.
‘Who are you?’ she said again. ‘I don’t know you. And what sort of uniform is that?’
He brought the butt of his weapon down on her skull.
Sounds, penetrating the mist of his consciousness. Shrill sounds. Shredding the fog in his skull. His eyelids are trembling but won’t open. Through them he can sense the light – and when he breathes in, the antiseptic smell of the room.
He blinks several times. Each time aware of the pain to his optic nerves from the brightness of the snow. And that shrill, exasperating, constantly recurring sound. He had thought he was at home and his alarm clock was ringing, but it’s not that, no. It’s much louder, harsher.
He opens his eyes.
He looks at the white ceiling, the white walls. There is something swinging on the wall – a shadow – swinging like the pendulum of a clock, superimposed upon the white and grey stripes made by the blinds.
Suddenly he knows where he is. And why.
His right hand slowly lifts the blanket, then his hospital gown, cautiously. The bandages around his abdomen … He can feel a certain tautness. They have opened his belly, removed half his liver, closed it again and stitched it all up.
He is alive.
Still that strident noise. He can hear people running in the corridor. Doors slamming. Voices.
He turns his head.
There’s something over there … behind the blinds, beyond the window – a shape barring the grey, nascent dawn, slowly swinging: like a clock pendulum. A body. There is a body hanging at the window.
In a sudden panic, he checks the other bed – Gustav’s. The boy is there. He can make out his motionless form beneath the sheet and blanket. He would like to wake him up, ask him how he feels, but he knows that the boy stayed longer under the surgeon’s knife than he did. He has to give him time.
And that big shadow over there … that body … whose is it?
It’s swinging more and more slowly.
Maybe it’s just tree branches moving with the weight of the snow? Or the medication still in his bloodstream, playing tricks on him?
No, no: it really is a body.
Through the bandage he feels his wound, and presses gently. And then he pulls the sheet and blanket aside and begins to move. He shouldn’t; he knows it’s a very bad idea. He swings his feet to the edge of the bed, raises his torso very slowly, and sits up. He sets his feet on the cold floor. For a second he lowers his chin onto his chest and closes his eyes. He only just came round, for Christ’s sake. He’s afraid of moving too quickly, of damaging something inside, but he needs to get to the bottom of this, to find out what it is, that shadow at the window.
He breathes in. Opens his eyes, raises his head and begins to stand.
He removes the clip from the end of his index finger. Another alarm sounds.
Leaning cautiously against the night table, he stands up slowly.
His legs seem do not seem very trustworthy, but they support him. He knows that if he falls, he will cause irreparable damage. But he starts walking all the same. Towards the window. He gets the impression that the big shadow, which is now almost motionless, is filling the entire room, finding its way inside him, occupying all the available space in his still fuddled brain.
He recalls a shadow not unlike this one, a sort of big, evil, black butterfly, hanging from the top of a cable car.
A twinge in his abdomen: he begins to feel slightly dizzy. A wave of nausea. But he keeps on walking. He wants to raise those bloody blinds, to see the body behind them.
When at last he reaches the window, he hears the door open behind him and a woman’s voice cries, ‘What are you doing? Come here! You mustn’t move! We are going to evacuate you! We have to evacuate everyone!’
He pulls the cord and slowly the slats of the blinds rise.
The form appears.
He wonders if he is dreaming, still unconscious on the operating table. Because what he sees is a body floating miraculously in the air. A woman. Levitating. Her head a mummy’s head, wrapped in bandages, and around her neck he sees the sheet, which is hanging from the floor above.
Behind him, the nurse is screaming.
He turns around. A man has come in and is closing the door behind him.
He is wearing an Austrian policeman’s uniform, but his face is that of a bearded wild animal, with a piercing gaze. Servaz doesn’t like the way he looks. The man is very obviously looking for someone.
He stares at Gustav’s bed and Martin grows even more war
y. He walks towards the intruder. Too quickly. His head is spinning; his legs start to give away. He avoids falling in the nick of time, catching himself on the wall. He’s too hot, then cold, then hot again. He opens his mouth and gasps for air. He sees the man heading towards Gustav’s bed. He reaches out his arm to stop him, but the man shoves him and this time he falls backwards. A flash of pain rips through his belly.
He looks up at the man; he has taken his gun out of his holster, and he glances at the door again before he pulls back the blanket and the sheet.
Servaz is about to scream but the moment he sees the look in the man’s eyes he understands.
He does not need to see Gustav’s bed, which the bearded wild animal is staring at with disbelief. Then he turns to Servaz. He sees the man place his gun on the bed, and he seizes him by the collar of his hospital gown and lifts him up. An excruciating pain wrenches his guts. The man brings his face up to his and shakes him. A tiger is digging its claws into his belly.
‘Where are they?’ screams the man. ‘Where is the kid? Where is Hirtmann? Where are they?’
Now the door is opening.
45
Dead or Alive
He saw the door open behind the man’s back. Kirsten! He saw her reach behind her, pull out her weapon, and aim it in their direction.
‘Let him go!’ she screamed.
The man obeyed and Servaz fell again, his belly burning. He would die of internal bleeding, there on the floor in this clinic. Sweat was pouring from his brows into his eyes like water. Chernobyl was exploding in his guts.
‘I’m with the police,’ said the man. ‘A woman has hanged herself outside the window.’
‘Turn around,’ ordered Kirsten. ‘Put your hands behind your head.’
‘I said that—’
‘Shut up. Raise your hands.’
The bearded man did as he was told, calmly, and Kirsten moved towards him. The gun was on the bed only a few inches from the man, but he had his hands on the back of his neck.
Night Page 37