Blood-Red Rivers aka The Crimson Rivers Read online

  "Fanny!"

  She turned round and Niémans realised that he was not going crazy. Her face was no longer disfigured by the shadows from the lamp. A brilliant light, so intense that its source was unfathomable, was raining down on her features. Fanny's beaming, majestic beauty had returned. Niémans peered around. The wall was now afire with light. And a torrent was pouring down the walls, in a ghostly flood.

  No, he was not going crazy. On the contrary, he had noticed something which Fanny had been too busy with her ropes to see. The sun. Up on the surface, the storm clouds must have scattered and the sun had come out. Hence the diffuse light which had crept in through the cracks in the glacier. Hence the gleams and the laughter from the niches. The temperature was rising. The glacier was beginning to melt.

  "Shit," muttered Fanny, who had just caught on.

  She immediately examined the nearest spit. The thread of the screw was standing out from the wall, which was disappearing in long drips. The two of them were going to become unhooked. Fall straight down into the bottom of the pit. Fanny barked:

  "Step back!"

  Niémans tried to move backward, then to his left. His foot slipped, he stood upright, his back over the void and pulled violently on the rope to recover his balance. He heard it all at the same instant: the sound of the spit coming out, his crampons scratching along the wall, the shock of Fanny's hand grabbing him by the nape of the neck at the last moment. She pinned him against the wall.

  Icy water gnawed into his face. Fanny whispered into his ear: "Don't move."

  Hunched up, panting, Niémans froze. Fanny straddled him. He felt her breath, the softness of her curls, smelt her sweat. She roped him up again and stuck two more spits into the wall at lightning speed. By the time she had done so, the whispering from the gulf had turned into groans, the rivulets a waterfall. All around them, the flow beat thunderously against the walls. Entire sections of the ice fell away, breaking into pieces on the gallery. Niémans closed his eyes. He felt himself drift away, slip, faint into that hall of mirrors in which angles, distance and perspective had vanished.

  It was Fanny's scream which brought him back to reality.

  He turned his head and saw her bent on the rope, trying to distance herself from the wall. Niémans made a superhuman effort, got to his feet and, through the sheets of water which were pouring down with the force of a cataract, approached her. His fingers clasped round the rope, he let himself swing out like a hanged man and passed through the vertical stream. Why was she trying to get away from the wall, even when the crevasse was swallowing them up? Fanny pointed at the wall of ice.

  "There," she panted. "It's there."

  Niémans maneuvered himself into the young climber's line of vision.

  Then he drank in the impossible.

  In the transparent wall, a veritable mirror of white water, the shape of a body imprisoned in the ice suddenly surged out. In the fetal position. Its mouth was voicing a silent scream. The incessant shallow torrent that passed over the image distorted that vision of a bruised and battered corpse.

  Despite his astonishment, despite the cold that was freezing them both to the bone, the superintendent immediately grasped that what they were looking at was a mere mirror image of reality. He checked his balance on the gallery, then swung round, describing a perfect arc to get a look at the other ice face, just opposite.

  "No," he murmured. "There."

  He could now no longer take his eyes off the real body, stuck in the facing wall of ice, its bloody contours mingling with its own reflection.

  CHAPTER 25

  Niémans put the file back down on the desk and asked Captain Barnes:

  "Why are you so sure that this man's our new victim?" The gendarme shrugged and opened his arms.

  "His mother's just been in to see us. She says that he disappeared last night…"

  The superintendent was once again in a gendarmerie office, on the first floor. Dressed in a tight woolen pullover, with a roll-neck collar, he was only just starting to warm up. One hour before, Fanny had managed to get the two of them out of that gulf, just about in one piece. Luck had been on their side: the helicopter had reappeared above their position at that very instant.

  Since then, mountain rescue teams had been working on extracting the body from its icy mausoleum, while the superintendent and Fanny Ferreira had returned to the town and undergone a routine medical check-up.

  Barnes had then immediately mentioned another missing person, whose identity could well match that of the body they had discovered: Philippe Sertys, aged twenty-six, single, a nursing auxiliary at Guernon Hospital. While sipping at his scalding coffee, Niémans repeated his question:

  "How can you be so certain that this is our man, before we've even established the victim's identity?"

  Barnes fumbled through his papers, then stammered: "It's…it's because of the resemblance?”

  "What resemblance?"

  The captain handed Niémans a photograph of a young man, with narrow features and a crew cut. He was smiling keenly, the darkness of his eyes was tainted with gentleness. His face made him look youthful, almost boyish, but also tense. The superintendent saw where Barnes was coming from: he looked just like Rémy Caillois, the first victim. Same age. Same pointed features. Same hair cut. Two slim, handsome young men whose expressions seemed to conceal some hidden anxieties.

  "This is a series, superintendent?”

  Niémans drank some coffee. It felt as if his still-frozen throat was going to crack from the contact of such violent heat. He raised his eyes.

  "Sorry?"

  Barnes was swaying from one foot to the other. His shoes could be heard creaking, like the bridge of a ship.

  "I lack your experience, of course, but…Look, if the second victim does turn out to be Philippe Sertys, then this is obviously a series. The work of a serial killer, I mean. Who chooses his victims according to their appearance. This sort of face must remind him of some traumatic experience, or…"

  The captain stopped dead under Niémans's furious stare. The superintendent smiled broadly in an attempt to wipe out his irritation.

  "Captain, we are not going to turn this resemblance into some big theory. Least of all when we have not yet identified the second victim?”

  "I…You're right, superintendent?”

  The gendarme fidgeted nervously with his file, which seemed to contain the existence of the entire town. He looked embarrassed and, at the same time, jumpy. Niémans could read his mind. In it, "Serial Killer in Guernon" was written up in flashing letters. This gendarme was going to remain traumatised until his retirement, and even beyond it. The policeman asked:

  "How are the rescue teams doing?"

  "They're on the point of bringing the victim to the surface. The…the ice had frozen over the body. My colleagues think that the man was placed up there last night. The temperature must have been very low for the ice to harden so much."

  "When are we likely to be able to see it?"

  "We'll have to wait about another hour, superintendent. Sorry?” Niémans got up and opened the window. Cold air billowed into the room. Six o'clock.

  Night was already falling over the town. Thick darkness that was slowly absorbing the slate roofs and the wooden façades. The river slid between the shadows, like a snake between two rocks.

  The superintendent shivered in his sweater. Provincial life was definitely not for him. And particularly not this variety: stuck at the foot of the mountains, beaten by the cold and the storms, divided between the black sludge of the snow and the incessant dripping of stalactites. A secret, hostile, sullen world, locked up in its silence like the kernel of an iced fruit.

  Turning toward Barnes, he asked:

  "Where do we stand now, twelve hours into our enquiries?"

  "Nowhere. All our checking has produced nothing. No prowlers. No recently released prisoners whose profile might match that of the killer. Nothing from the hotels, bus or railway stations. And our road-blocks
have also failed to produce."

  "What about the library?"

  "The library?"

  Now that there was a second corpse, the book angle was starting to look secondary. But Niémans wanted to see each part of the investigation through to its conclusion. He explained:

  "The regional boys are checking through the books consulted by the students."

  The captain shrugged.

  "Oh, that…That's not our business. You'll have to ask Joisneau…"

  "Where is he?"

  "I've no idea."

  Niémans then tried to call the young lieutenant on his cell phone. No answer. Switched off. Annoyed, he asked again:

  "And Vermont?"

  "Still up on the heights with his brigade. They're searching the refuges and the sides of the mountain. Now even more so…"

  Niémans sighed.

  "Ask Grenoble for some more men. I want another fifty. At least. I want the search to be concentrated around the amphitheater of Vallernes and the cable car that runs up there. I want the entire mountain to be fine-toothcombed up to its tip."

  "I'll get onto it."

  "How many road-blocks are there?"

  "Eight. The toll booth on the autoroute. Two on the A-roads and five on the B-roads. Guernon is under close watch. But, as I just told you, it…"

  The policeman stared straight into Barnes's eyes.

  "Captain, we are sure of only one thing: the killer is an experienced mountain climber. Question everybody in Guernon, and in the environs, who's capable of crossing a glacier?”

  "There'll be quite a crowd. Climbing is the local sport and…"

  "I'm talking about an expert, Barnes. A man who is able to descend a hundred feet under the ice and transport a dead body there. I've already asked Joisneau to check that out. Find him and ask him what he's found"

  Barnes nodded.

  "Very well. But I must repeat that we are mountain folk. You'll find experienced climbers in every village, inside every house, on the sides of every summit. It's a tradition with us. Some of our locals are still crystal makers, or shepherds…But all of us still have a passion for the heights. It's only really in Guernon, in the university town, that these traditions are dying out."

  "What are you getting at?"

  "All I mean is that we'll have to extend the radius of our search. To the upper villages. And that it will take us days."

  "Ask for extra reinforcements. Set up a post in each hamlet. Check people's movements, their equipment, their expeditions. And, for Christ's sake, find me some suspects?”

  The superintendent opened the door and concluded:

  "Get the mother in for me"

  "The mother?"

  "Philippe Sertys's mother. I want to speak to her."

  CHAPTER 26

  Niémans went down to the ground floor. The gendarmerie offices looked like any other police station in France or, probably, in the world. Through the windows in the partitions, Niémans could see metal filing cabinets, an assortment of formica-topped desks, and filthy lino stained with cigarette burns. He liked such monochrome, neon-filled places. Because they were a reminder of the police's real vocation – the streets, the outside world. These grim buildings were merely the antechamber of the policeman's life, his dark warren, from which he emerged, sirens blaring.

  That was when he noticed her, sitting in the corridor, wrapped up in a heavy blanket and dressed in a gendarme's royal blue sweater. He shivered and found himself back under the ice, beside her, and he felt her warm breath against the nape of his neck. Half anxious, half flirtatiously, he readjusted his glasses.

  "Haven't you gone home yet?"

  Fanny Ferreira's clear eyes looked up at him.

  "I have to sign my statement. I'm getting used to it now. But don't count on me to discover the third one.”

  "The third one?"

  "The third corpse?”

  "So you think there will be more murders?"

  "Don't you?"

  The young woman must have noticed a pained expression flicker across Niémans's face. She murmured:

  "Sorry. I was being sarcastic. It helps me to handle the situation."

  As she spoke, she patted the place next to her on the bench, as though inviting a child to sit with her. Niémans did so. His head down, hands together, feet twitching slightly.

  "I didn't thank you," he mumbled between his teeth. "If it hadn't been for you, in the ice…"

  "I just did my job as a guide."

  "True. Not only did you save my life, but you also took me exactly where I wanted to go."

  Fanny's expression became serious. Gendarmes marched up and down the corridor. Boots thumping and oil-skins creaking. She asked:

  "Where are you? I mean, in your investigations? Why this terrible violence? Why such…weird killings?"

  Niémans tried to smile, but failed.

  "We're getting nowhere. All I know is what my nose tells me."

  "Meaning?"

  "My nose tells me that this is a series. But not in the usual sense of the term. This isn't a killer who strikes at the whim of his obsessions. This series has a motive. A precise, established, rational motive?”

  "What sort of motive?"

  The policeman gazed at Fanny. The shadows of the passing guards flickered across her face, like the wings of a bird.

  "I don't know. Yet."

  Silence descended. Fanny lit a cigarette, then abruptly asked: "How long have you been in the force?"

  "About twenty years."

  "What made you join? The idea of putting the bad guys in prison?"

  Niémans smiled, spontaneously this time. From the corner of his eye, he saw another squad arriving, with rain pearling from their capes. A glance at them was enough to tell him that they had found nothing. He looked back toward Fanny, who was inhaling a long drag.

  "That sort of idea gets quickly lost along the way, you know. Anyway, justice and all that bullshit never interested me very much."

  "So why? Power? Job security?"

  Niémans was astonished.

  "You really do have funny ideas. No, I think I joined for the sensations."

  "Sensations? Like the one we've just had?"

  "For example?”

  "I see," she nodded ironically, exhaling the pale smoke. "Action Man. Who only feels alive when he risks his life every day…"

  "And what's wrong with that?"

  Fanny aped Niémans's posture – shoulders hunched and hands linked, as though in prayer. She had stopped laughing. She seemed to guess that Niémans, behind these generalisations, was revealing a part of himself. Cigarette in her mouth, she murmured:

  "Nothing. Nothing whatsoever…"

  The policeman lowered his eyes and, through the curved lenses of his glasses, observed the young woman's hands. No ring. Only dressings, marks and cracked skin. As though she was married to the mountain, the elements, violent emotions.

  "Nobody understands cops," he went on, gloomily. "And so nobody can judge them. Our world is closed, brutal, incoherent. A dangerous universe with well-established frontiers. If you are on the outside, you are incapable of understanding. And on the inside, you lose your objectivity. That's the life of a cop. A sealed existence. A crater of barbed wire. Incomprehensible. It's the very nature of the thing. But one point at least is clear: we have nothing to learn from a load of bureaucrats who wouldn't even risk getting their fingers caught in their car doors."

  Fanny stretched, ran her hands through her curls and pushed them back. The gesture made Niémans think of roots, mixed with the earth. Roots of a heady sensual nature. The policeman trembled. Icy pinpricks were battling against the warmth of his blood.

  The young woman quietly asked:

  "What are you going to do? What's your next step?"

  "Keep looking. And waiting."

  "For what?" she picked him up aggressively. "Another victim?" Ignoring this provocation, Niémans got to his feet.

  "I'm waiting for the body to be brought d
own from the mountain. The killer made an appointment with us up there. He placed a pointer in the first corpse which led me to that glacier. I think he will have put a fresh clue in the second body, which will lead us to the third…and so on. It's a sort of game, which we are supposed to lose?”

  Fanny stood up as well and grabbed her parka, which was drying on the end of the bench.

  "You must agree to give me an interview?”

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I'm the chief editor of Tempo, the university magazine?” Niémans felt his nerves tightening under his skin.

  "Don't tell me that you…"

  "Don't panic. I couldn't care less about the magazine. Anyway, like it or not, at the rate your investigations are going, the whole of the national press is going to be here soon. You'll then have a load of journalists on your trail who are far more tenacious than I am.” The superintendent waved away this possibility.

  "Where do you live?" he suddenly asked.

  "At the university."

  "Where, exactly?"

  "On the top floor of the main building. I have a flat, near the boarders' rooms."

  "Where the Caillois live?"

  "Precisely."

  "What's your opinion of Sophie Caillois?"

  Fanny smiled in admiration.

  "She's a strange girl. Silent. But extremely pretty. The two of them were as thick as thieves. Almost as if…as if they had a secret?” Niémans nodded.

  "That's what I think, too. And the motive for the murders perhaps lies in that secret. I'll call round to see you later this evening, if that's all right?”

  "Are you still trying to pick me up?"