Blood-Red Rivers aka The Crimson Rivers Read online

  The superintendent grinned.

  "More than ever. And I'll give you exclusive rights to everything I know, for your rag."

  "I told you. I couldn't care less about that magazine. I'm incorruptible."

  "See you this evening," he said over his shoulder, as he turned on his heel.

  CHAPTER 27

  One hour later, the body of the second victim had still not been extracted from the ice.

  Niémans was furious. He had just listened to Philippe Sertys's old mother's laconic testimony, told in a thick local accent. The previous evening, her son had left home as usual at about nine o'clock in his car, a recently purchased second-hand Lada. Philippe worked nights at the Guernon University Hospital, and began his shift at ten o'clock. She had started to become worried only the next morning, when she found his car in the garage, but no Philippe in his bedroom. This meant that he had come home, then gone out again. But another surprise was in store for her. She contacted the hospital and was told that Sertys had taken the night off. So, he had gone somewhere else, had returned home, then left again on foot. What the hell did it all mean? The woman was frantic, and clutched at Niémans's arm. Where was her boy? According to her, this was extremely worrying. Her son did not have a girlfriend, never went out, and slept every day "at home".

  The superintendent unenthusiastically made a mental note of this information. All the same, if Sertys did turn out to be the prisoner in the ice, her testimony would help them to fix the possible time of the murder. The killer must have kidnapped the young man in the early hours of the morning, murdered him, probably mutilated him, then transported him to the amphitheater of Vallernes. It was the chill air of dawn that had sealed the ice wall over the victim. But this was all pure speculation.

  The superintendent took the old woman to speak to a gendarme, so that he could take down a detailed statement. As for him, he decided to return with his files to his little den in the university.

  Once there, he changed back into a suit then, alone in his office, laid out on his desk the various documents he had brought with him. His first step was to conduct a detailed comparative study of Rémy Caillois and Philippe Sertys, in an attempt to establish a link between the first victim and the probable second one.

  The two men did' not seem to have that much in common. They were both aged about twenty-five. They were both tall, slim, with regular and yet rather tormented features topped off by a crew cut. They had both lost their fathers: Philippe Sertys's had died two years before of liver cancer. But Rémy Caillois had also lost his mother, who had died when he was eight years old. Their final point in common was that they had both followed in their fathers' footsteps – as a librarian for Caillois, and as a nursing auxiliary for Sertys.

  Their differences, on the other hand, abounded. Caillois and Sertys had not gone to the same school. They had grown up in different parts of town and did not belong to the same social class. Rémy Caillois was middle-class and had grown up among the intellectuals of the university. Philippe Sertys had been born into the lower classes and had started work at the age of fifteen, in the hospital with his father. He was practically illiterate and still lived in the small family home on the outskirts of Guernon.

  Rémy Caillois was a bookworm and Philippe Sertys a night-owl at the hospital. The latter did not seem to have any hobbies, apart from hanging around in the aseptic corridors where he worked, and playing video games at the end of the afternoon in the bar across the road from the hospital. Caillois had been dismissed as unfit from the army. Sertys had served in the infantry. One was married; the other single. One was an enthusiastic mountain walker; the other apparently never went out. One was schizophrenic and undoubtedly violent; the other was, according to everybody, "as gentle as a lamb".

  Therefore, the only thing the two of them had in common was their looks. The sharp features they both had, the crew cut, and the slender build. As Barnes had said, the killer must be choosing his prey according to their physical appearance.

  The idea of a sex crime crossed Niémans's mind: the killer could be a closet homosexual who was attracted by this sort of young man. But the superintendent remained skeptical, and the forensic pathologist had been categoric: "It is clearly not his department?” In the wounds and mutilations of the first victim's body, the doctor had seen a cold cruelty, a dogged application that had nothing to do with a pervert's frenzied desires. What was more, no trace of sexual assault had been found on the corpse.

  So, what then?

  The killer's madness presumably ran along other lines. In any case, the resemblance between the two presumed victims and the beginnings of a series – two murders in two days – now made it likely that they were the work of a psychopath, in the throes of some demonic obsession, who would kill again. There were other factors to support this hypothesis: the presence of a clue in the first body which had led to the second one, the fetal position, the mutilation of the eyes and the positioning of the bodies in wild, dramatic locations: the cliff overlooking the river, the transparent prison of ice…

  And yet, Niémans still did not accept this thesis.

  In the first place, because of his daily experience as a police officer.

  While serial killers had been imported from America and now peopled the world's books and films, that terrible trend had never really taken off in France. During his twenty years of service, Niémans had arrested paedophiles, whose lusts had occasionally driven them to commit murder, rapists who had killed in a frenzy of violence, sadomasochists whose cruel games had gone too far, but never, in the strict sense of the term, a serial killer who had committed a long list of motiveless murders. It was not a French specialty. Whichever way you looked at it, the facts were there: the last French killers who had murdered repeatedly had been lower-middle-class men, like Landru or Dr Petiot, chasing after a small inheritance or stealing from their victims. But nothing in common with that American nightmare, those bloodthirsty monsters who haunted the United States.

  The superintendent looked again at the photographs of Philippe Sertys, then those of Rémy Caillois, spread out over the students' work-top. In the cardboard folder, there also lay the images of the first corpse. A red-hot iron burned his conscience: he could not just sit there, doing nothing. At that very moment, while he was examining these Polaroids, a third person might be undergoing unspeakable tortures. His eye-sockets were perhaps being cleaned out with a carpet cutter, his eyeballs torn out by rubber-gloved hands.

  It was seven o'clock. Night was falling. Niémans stood up and turned out the neon light. He decided to explore Philippe Sertys's life thoroughly. Perhaps he might find out something. A clue. A sign.

  Or, quite simply, another common factor linking the two victims.

  CHAPTER 28

  Philippe Sertys lived with his mother in a small detached house on the outskirts of town, near a housing estate of shabby buildings, down a deserted street. A brown polygonal roof, a dirty white facade, curtains of yellowed lace, which framed the interior darkness like a smiling set of rotten teeth. Niémans knew that the old woman was still going through her statement at the station and there was no light from inside. But he still rang the bell, as a precaution.

  No answer.

  Niémans walked around the house. A violent, icy wind was blowing, carrying a first hint of winter. A little garage stood next to it, to the left. He peered inside and found an ancient muddy Lada. He walked on. A few square feet of cropped grass lay behind the dwelling: the garden.

  The policeman glanced round again, on the look-out for nosy neighbors. Nobody. He went up the three steps and examined the lock. A standard, downmarket job. The policeman forced it open without any difficulty, wiped his feet on the mat and entered the presumed victim's home.

  After the hall, he reached a cramped living-room and switched on his torch. Its white beam revealed a green carpet, covered with small dark rugs, a sofa-bed stuck under some hunter's shotguns on the wall, some ill-assorted furniture and a collectio
n of hideous rustic knick-knacks. It smelt to him of airless comfort, a jealously guarded daily existence.

  He put on his latex gloves and went carefully through the drawers. He found nothing of interest. Silver-plated cutlery, embroidered handkerchiefs, personal papers – tax returns, prescriptions…He glanced over them, then made a rapid search for further information. Nothing. It was a dull, run-of-the-mill family sitting-room.

  Niémans went upstairs.

  He easily located Philippe Sertys's bedroom. Animal posters, color magazines heaped up in a chest, TV guides: it all gave off an impression of intellectual poverty which verged on the inane. Niémans searched more thoroughly. He found nothing, apart from a few details which revealed Sertys's totally nocturnal existence. A large collection of lamps, of varying voltages, took up an entire shelf – as though the man wanted to create a different light to go with each season. He also noticed the solid reinforced shutters, as a protection against daylight, or else to conceal his own night-time movements. Then Niémans came across some eye-masks, like those used in aeroplanes, to block out the slightest glimmer of light. Either Sertys found it hard to sleep. Or he had the nature of a vampire.

  Niémans turned over the blankets, sheets and mattress. He slid his fingers under the rugs and ran his hands over the wallpaper. He found nothing. And, above all, not the slightest trace of a girlfriend.

  The policeman looked hastily round the mother's bedroom. The atmosphere in that house was starting to get to him. He went back downstairs for a quick inspection of the kitchen, bathroom and cellar. Nothing doing.

  Outside, the wind was still raging, making the windows rattle slightly.

  He turned off his torch and experienced an unexpected agreeable sensation, the feeling of a secret intrusion, a hidden refuge.

  Niémans stopped to think. He could not have got it wrong. Not to that point. There had to be some sign lurking there, somewhere. He told himself that he had been mistaken after all, then immediately changed his mind. He had to dig out the truth, find the link between Caillois and Sertys.

  Another idea then occurred to him.

  The changing-room in the hospital was a vague bluish-gray color. Succeeding ranks of rusty metallic cupboards stood precariously to attention. The place was deserted. Niémans silently walked on. He read the names in the little iron frames until he found Philippe Sertys.

  He put his gloves back on and felt the padlock. Memories streamed through his mind: the time of nocturnal missions, dressed in black, with the boys of the Antigang Brigade. He did not feel particularly nostalgic about that period. What Niémans loved more than anything else was penetrating the mood of the night, mastering its vital hours, but only as a real intruder: on his own, in silence, and undercover.

  The lock clicked, and the door opened. White coats. Confectionery. Old magazines. And more lamps and eye-masks. Careful not to make the metal clang, Niémans felt round the interior partitions and searched into the corners. Nothing. He checked to see if the cupboard had a false bottom, or top.

  Swearing to himself, Niémans knelt down. He was clearly not on the right track. There was nothing to be learnt from this young man's existence. What was more, he did not even know if that deep-frozen body, up in the mountains, was really Philippe Sertys. Perhaps the auxiliary would reappear in a few days' time, coming back home after his first elopement, on the arm of a beautiful nurse.

  Niémans could not help smiling at his own stubbornness. He decided to get out of there before anybody noticed him. It was when he was standing up that he noticed a square of linoleum that had moved slightly out of place under the cupboard. He felt the roughness of the concrete below it, then an object. He heard a metallic sound, pushed his fingers further and closed his fist. When he opened it again, his hand was holding a key on a ring, which had been carefully concealed beneath the cabinet.

  Along its shaft, Niémans recognised the characteristic indentations for opening a reinforced metal door.

  If Sertys had a secret, then this was the key to it.

  At the town hall, he just managed to catch the land register clerk, who was about to go home. When he mentioned the name "Sertys", the man did not blink. Word of the murder had obviously not got out yet, nor the presumed identity of the second victim. The town clerk, who already had his coat on, grudgingly looked for the information the policeman required.

  While waiting, Niémans ran back over the hypothesis which had led him there, as though this would increase its chances of turning out right. Philippe Sertys had concealed the key to a reinforced lock under his cupboard in the changing-room. Now, the front door of the house had no armor-plating. This key could have been cut for any number of doors, cupboards or stockrooms, maybe in the hospital. But why hide it? A hunch had led Niémans to pay a call on the land register to see if Philippe Sertys might own another house, a shack, a barn, anything that might have a reinforced door concealing a second existence.

  The grumbling clerk placed a battered cardboard box onto the counter. On its top, in a thin brass frame, was a label which read: "Sertys". Holding back his excitement, Niémans opened it and leafed through the official documents, the solicitors' contracts, the title deeds. He read them carefully, looked at the numbers of the plots and located them on a map of the region which was included in the file. He stared at the address again and again.

  So, it was as simple as that.

  Philippe Sertys and his mother rented the house they lived in, but the young man also owned another property, which he had inherited from his father.

  CHAPTER 29

  It was not a dwelling, but an isolated warehouse near the foot of the Grand Doménon, encircled by arid conifers. On the walls of the building, pale paint was flaking off, like the scales of an iguana, presumably untouched for an untold number of years.

  Niémans approached it cautiously. The windows had metal bars and were blocked by sacks of concrete. There was a cumbersome gate and, to its right, a reinforced door. It was a place to store barrels, metal drums, or sacks of building material. Something to do with industry. But this warehouse belonged to a taciturn auxiliary nurse, who had presumably just been murdered in a high-altitude glacier.

  The policeman began by pacing round the building, then he went back to the reinforced door. He slid the key into the lock. He heard the mechanism give a slight click, then the sound of the bolt gliding out of its metal surround.

  The door swung open. Before going in, Niémans took a deep breath. Inside, the bluish gleam of the night filtered in softly through the few gaps left between the sacks of concrete stacked up against the metal bars. It was several hundred square yards in area, somber, run-down, lined by transversal shadows cast by the metallic structure of the roof. Tall pillars rose up toward the tip.

  Niémans advanced with his torch on. The place was completely empty. Or, rather, had recently been emptied. There were dust marks everywhere, furrows had been dug out in the concrete floor, presumably by some heavy furniture which had been pulled toward the door. It was filled with a strange atmosphere, an echo of panic, of a mad rush.

  The superintendent went on, peering, sniffing, feeling. It was, indeed, an industrial site, but it was extraordinarily clean. An antiseptic odor still hung there. But there was also the vague scent of a wild animal.

  Niémans continued. He was now walking on white dust, like crushed chalk. He knelt down and found some tiny wire meshes.

  Perhaps they came from some fencing, or were bits of an air filter: He slipped some of them into his plastic envelopes, then took samples of the dust and crushed matter, but without being able to identify their neutral drill odor. Yeast. Or plaster. Not drugs, in any case.

  His next discovery showed that the place had been well heated for many years. Electric sockets were situated in each corner of the room, undoubtedly used for heaters, the positions of which could still be made out from the black patches they had left on the walls.

  Niémans's mind raced with several contradictory hypotheses. The hi
gh temperature could mean that animals had been raised there. He also imagined that it could have been used as a laboratory for experiments, in sterile conditions. Hence the strong hospital smell. He did not know why, but the place gave him the creeps. A stronger, more violent fear than that which he had experienced in the glacier.

  He was now sure of two things. The first was that shy little Philippe Sertys had used this place for some occult practices. The second was that the young man had been forced to move everything out in a great hurry, just before he had been killed.

  The officer stood up and, playing his torch across the walls, examined them closely. There might be a hiding place there, a niche in which. Sertys may have left something. He brushed his palms over them, tapped them, listened to their resonance, watched for changes in their make-up. The walls were covered with thick paper, over a layer of compressed glass wool. Insulation, presumably.

  Niémans had now covered two entire sides. Then, at a height of nearly six feet, he felt a hollow which was out of line with the rest of that bulging surface. He ran his index finger along the edge of it and noticed that someone had plastered it over. He tore off the wallpaper and discovered some hinges. He squeezed his fingers into the central gap and managed to force this priest hole open. Shelves. Dust. Mould.

  The superintendent felt along the planks and, on one of them, encountered something flat, covered with a layer of dust. He grabbed the object. It was a small exercise book with ring-binding.

  His flesh blazing, he flicked through it at once. The pages were covered with tiny, incomprehensible figures. But one of them bore a large inscription at the top. The letters looked as though they had been written in blood, and with such violence that the pen had occasionally ripped through the paper. Niémans thought of a frenetic rage, a boiling geyser. As if the author of these scarlet lines had not been able to contain his madness. Niémans read: