Blood-Red Rivers aka The Crimson Rivers Read online

  "And what are you going to do now?"

  "Not a lot." He opened both of his large empty hands. "I've got nothing for my machines to work on any more."

  Karim promptly asked the scientist to help in his own investigation and undertake two missions on his behalf.

  "Two missions?" Astier repeated enthusiastically. "As many as you want!"

  "First, go and check the list of births in the Guernon University Hospital."

  "What are we after?"

  "For 23 May 1972, you should find the name of Judith Hérault. See whether she didn't have a twin brother or sister."

  "That's the girl with the fingerprints?"

  Karim nodded. Astier went on:

  "You're wondering if another kid might have exactly the same prints?"

  The cop smiled in embarrassment.

  "I know. It doesn't hold water. Just do it, anyway."

  "And the second mission?"

  "The girl's father was killed in a car accident."

  "Him too?"

  "Yeah, him too. Except that he was on a push-bike and he got run over. It was in August 1980. His name's Sylvain Hérault. Check it out, here in the police station. I'm sure there must be a record of it."

  "What are you looking for?"

  "The precise circumstances of the accident. He was knocked over by a hit-and-run driver. Go through every detail. There may be something odd about it."

  "Meaning…he was killed accidentally on purpose?"

  "Yeah, that sort of thing."

  Karim turned on his heel. Astier called him back:

  "And where are you going?"

  He spun round nimbly, looking almost jovial in the face of the coming terror.

  "I'm going back to square one."

  PART IX

  CHAPTER 47

  The home for the blind was a bright building. Not like the fake brightness of the houses in Guernon, but a splendid edifice standing in the pouring rain, at the foot of Les Sept-Laux. Niémans approached the main entrance.

  It was three o'clock in the morning. All the lights were out. Peering across the long sloping lawns that surrounded the structure, the superintendent rang the bell. He then noticed some photoelectric cells on the small posts around the perimeter. This invisible network was thus a system of alarms, presumably for warning the inmates when they had strayed too far from home, rather than for warning off potential burglars.

  Niémans rang once more.

  An astonished janitor finally opened the door and listened to his explanations without once batting an eyelid. He then showed the superintendent into a large room, before departing to wake up the director.

  Niémans waited. The room was lit solely by the lamp in the hall. Four white concrete walls, a bare floor, which was also white. A double staircase at the end, which rose up into a triangle, with banisters of pale, undressed timber. Lamps that were sunk into the ceiling of taut cloth. Bay windows, with no handles, through which the adjacent mountains could be seen. It felt like a new-age sanatorium, clean and invigorating, designed by some architect with rapidly changing moods.

  Niémans spotted some more photoelectric detectors. The partially sighted residents were thus constantly cordoned off. The rain poured endlessly down the panes, casting shadows across the partitions. A scent of wax and of cement hung in the air. The place was not quite dry yet and totally lacked any human warmth.

  He walked on. One detail puzzled him: the room was dotted with easels, with drawings made up of strange symbols. From a distance, they looked like a mathematician's equations. From closer up, he made out thin primitive bodies, topped by faces with haunted expressions. Astounded, Niémans realised that he was in an art studio in a home for unsighted children. But, most of all, he was feeling deeply relieved. So much so, that he could feel the fibers of his skin relaxing. Since his arrival, he had not heard a single bark or rustling of fur. Were there really no dogs in this home for the blind?

  Suddenly, footsteps echoed on the marble. The policeman then realised why the floors were all bare. The building had been made for people who used their ears to see. He turned round to discover a strapping man with a white beard. A sort of patriarch, with red cheeks, sleepy eyes, and a yellow cardigan. He immediately sensed that this was someone he could trust.

  "I'm Dr Champelaz. I run this home," the big man declared in a bass voice. "What the hell do you want at this time of night?" Niémans handed him his tricolor card.

  "Superintendent Pierre Niémans. I'm here in connection with the murders in Guernon."

  "Another visit?"

  "Yes, another one. The first visit you received, that of Lieutenant Eric Joisneau, is in fact precisely what I want to ask you about. I think that you must have given him some vital information."

  Champelaz looked worried. The reflected raindrops made tiny rivers across his immaculate white hair. He gazed down at the handcuffs and gun on Niémans's belt. Then he raised his head.

  "My God…all I did was answer his questions."

  "And your answers led him to Edmond Chernecé's residence."

  "Yes, of course they did. And?"

  "And, they're both now dead."

  "Dead? But, they can't be…That's…"

  "I'm sorry, I don't have time to explain it all now. What I'd like you to do is to repeat exactly what you told him. Without knowing it, you are in possession of some very important evidence."

  "But, I don't understand…"

  The man stopped in his tracks. He rubbed his hands together energetically, with a mingled feeling of cold and apprehension.

  "Well, in that case…I'd better wake myself up properly, hadn't I?"

  "I rather think so, yes."

  "Would you like some coffee?"

  Niémans nodded. He followed where the patriarch led, down a corridor of high windows. Flashes of lightning momentarily lit up the air, followed by renewed semi-darkness, broken only by the serpentine pathways of the rain. The superintendent felt as though he were walking through a forest of phosphorescent creepers. On the walls facing the windows, he noticed some more drawings. This time, of landscapes. Mountains with chaotic skylines. Streams sketched in with pastels. Huge animals, with coarse scales and overly numerous vertebrae, which seemed to come from an age of stone, an age of monsters when mankind was the size of a mouse.

  "I thought that your center was only for blind children."

  The director turned round and joined him.

  "Not only. We treat all sorts of different eye conditions."

  "For example?"

  "Pigmentary retinitis. Color blindness…"

  The man pointed a powerful finger at the pictures.

  "These images are peculiar. The children here do not see reality in the same way we do, nor even their own drawings, for that matter. The truth – their truth – lies neither in the real landscape, nor on the paper. It is in their minds. They alone know what they wanted to express, and we can get but a glimpse of it, through their artwork and through our normal vision. Rather disturbing, don't you think?"

  Niémans gestured vaguely. He could not take his eyes off those strange drawings. With their broken contours, as though crushed by some heavier matter. Their shrill, vivid colors. Like a battlefield of lines and shades, but which also gave off a feeling of gentleness, an echo of ancient nursery rhymes.

  The man slapped him on the back.

  "Come on. Some coffee will do you good. You look all in."

  They entered a large kitchen. The furnishings and utensils were all made of stainless steel. The gleaming walls reminded Niémans of a morgue or a death chamber.

  The director poured out two mugs of coffee from a round shiny pot, which was heated permanently. He handed one to the policeman then sat down at a stainless steel table. Once again, Niémans thought of bodies during an autopsy, the faces of Caillois and of Sertys. Their dark, empty eye-sockets, like black holes in space-time.

  Champelaz declared in astonishment:

  "I just cannot believe what y
ou told me…Those two men are both dead? But how?"

  Pierre Niémans ducked the question.

  "What did you tell Joisneau?"

  Stirring the coffee in his mug, the doctor shrugged.

  "He asked me about the conditions we treat here. I explained that they are generally hereditary diseases, and that most of my patients come from the families in Guernon."

  "Did he ask you anything in particular?"

  "Yes. He wanted to know how such diseases are contracted. I gave him a brief explanation of how recessive genes work."

  "Which is?"

  The director sighed, then calmly went on:

  "It's quite simple. Certain genes carry diseases. They are defects, spelling mistakes in the system. We all have them, but fortunately not in sufficient quantity to trigger off such a condition. But, if both parents have the same gene, then things can start to go wrong and their children can contract the affliction. The genes merge together and transmit the disease, rather like a plug and a socket which allow the current to flow through, you follow me? That is why we say that inbreeding weakens the blood. It's an expression which means that two closely related parents have a high chance of passing a latent disease, which they both carry, on to their children."

  Chernecé had already mentioned that fact. Niémans pressed on:

  "So the hereditary diseases in Guernon are down to inbreeding?"

  "Definitely. Many of the children we look after here, either as in-patients or out-patients, come from that town. And in particular from the families of lecturers and researchers at the university. It's an elite society, and hence extremely isolated."

  "Sorry, could you be more precise?"

  Champelaz crossed his arms and held forth.

  "There is an extremely ancient university tradition in Guernon. The college dates back to the eighteenth century, I believe, and was set up in conjunction with the Swiss. In the past, it was in what is now the hospital…Anyway, for almost three centuries, the university teachers and researchers have been living on the campus and marrying one another. They produced several lines of highly gifted thinkers, but now their inheritance is genetically exhausted. Guernon was already cut off, like all towns lost in the bottoms of valleys. But the university created a sort of isolation within that isolation, you follow me? A true microcosm."

  "And that isolation is enough to explain the outbreak of genetic diseases?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  Niémans failed to see how this information might be of importance. "What else did you tell Joisneau?"

  Champelaz tilted his head, then declared in his booming voice: "I also told him about a particular point of interest. Something rather odd."

  "What's that?"

  "Over the last generation, families with this weakened blood have been producing radically different children. They are intellectually brilliant, but they are also possessed of an inexplicable physical strength. Most of them win all the sports competitions while at the same time gaining the highest academic distinctions."

  Niémans remembered the portraits in the vice-chancellor's antechamber, young radiant champions carrying off all the cups and medals. He also recalled the photographs of the Berlin Olympics and Caillois's door-stopper about the good old days of Olympia. Could all of these elements really fit together into the overall design?

  Playing dumb, the 'policeman asked again:

  "You mean, all of those children should really be sick?"

  "It's not that straightforward, but it must be said that they should have weak constitutions and suffer from recursive conditions, like the children in this home. But they don't. On the contrary, it is as if these little supermen had made off with the entire community's genetic wealth and left all its genetic poverty to the others" Champelaz glanced awkwardly at Niémans. "You're not drinking your coffee."

  Niémans remembered that he had a mug in his hands. He took a scalding sip. He barely felt the heat. It was as if his entire being was tensed up, ready to pounce on the slightest sign, the slightest glimpse of the truth. He asked:

  "Have you made an in-depth study of this phenomenon?"

  "About two years ago I did look into it, yes. I started by checking to see if the champions really did come from the same families, and same blood-lines. I went to the local registry office and…All the children in question are of the same stock. After that, I took a closer look at their family trees. I checked their medical records at the maternity clinic. I even went through their parents' records and their grandparents', too, in the hope of digging out some sort of explanation. But I found nothing conclusive. Some of their ancestors were even carriers of the same hereditary diseases as the ones I now treat…It was all decidedly odd."

  Niémans drank in every detail. Without knowing why, he once again sensed that this information was going to be of vital importance.

  Champelaz was now pacing up and down the kitchen, making the stainless steel echo icily.

  "I questioned the doctors and obstetricians at the university hospital, who informed me of another fact which astounded me. Apparently, over the last fifty years, the families in the villages, up on the slopes of the mountains around the valley, have experienced an abnormally high rate of infant mortality. Cot deaths, immediately after delivery. But such children are, generally, extremely healthy. We seem to be witnessing a sort of inversion, you see? The children of the university families have magically become extremely strong, while the offspring of the country folk have become corrupted…So I examined the medical records of those farmers' and crystallers' children who had suddenly died. I discovered nothing of interest. I discussed the matter with the hospital staff and some of the medical researchers who specialised in genetics. Nobody could come up with a reasonable explanation. So I let the subject drop, but remain dissatisfied. How can I put it? It is as if the children of the university were robbing their little neighbors of their life force."

  "My God, what do you mean?"

  Champelaz immediately drew back from this dangerous territory.

  "Forget I said that. It's hardly scientific. And totally irrational."

  Irrational maybe, but Niémans now felt certain that the mystery of those highly gifted children was not a matter of chance. It was one of the links in the nightmare. He asked hoarsely:

  "Is that all?"

  The doctor hesitated. The superintendent's voice went up a tone: "Is that really all?"

  "No," Champelaz winced. "There is something else. Last summer, this story took a strange turn, which was at once trivial and disturbing…In the month of July, the Guernon hospital was totally refurbished, which also meant computerising its archives. Specialists went through the basement, which is brimming over with old dusty files, in order to estimate how long the job would take. Their task also led them to investigate the cellars of the original university building, and in particular the pre-1970s library." Niémans froze. Champelaz went on:

  "And the experts made a curious discovery during their investigations. They found some birth papers, that is to say the first pages of the newly-born babies' medical records, covering a period of about fifty years. But these pages were on their own, without the rest of the files, as though…as though they had been stolen."

  "Where were these papers found? I mean, where exactly?"

  Champelaz paced back across the kitchen. He was struggling to maintain a detached tone, but agitation was breaking into his voice.

  "That's the strangest part of all…They were all stacked together in files belonging to one man, a member of the library staff." Niémans felt the blood accelerating in his veins.

  "And his name was?"

  Champelaz glanced nervously at the superintendent. His lips were trembling.

  "Caillois. Etienne Caillois."

  "Rémy's father?"

  "Exactly."

  The policeman sat up.

  "And it's only now you tell me that? With the body we found yesterday?"

  The director bridled.

  "I
do not like your tone of voice, superintendent. Please do not mistake me for one of your suspects. In any case, this was a mere slip-up in the paperwork. What on earth could it have to do with the Guernon murders?"

  "I'm the one who'll decide that."

  "So be it. Anyway, I already told all of this to your lieutenant. So calm down. What is more, this whole story is certainly no secret. Everyone in town knows about it. It is public knowledge. It was even in the local press."

  At that precise moment, Niémans would not have liked to see his face in a mirror. He knew that his expression was so harsh, so tense, that the mirror itself would not have recognised him. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and said, more coolly:

  "I'm sorry. This case gives me the creeps. The killer has already struck three times and will again. Every minute, every scrap of information counts. Where are those old records now?"

  The director raised his eyebrows, relaxed slightly and leant once more on the stainless steel table.

  "They were put back in the hospital basement. The archives are to be kept together until they have been fully computerised."

  "And I suppose that those papers included records of our little supermen…?"

  "Not directly – they date back to before the 1970s. But some of them did include their parents or grandparents. That was what I found strange. Because I had already examined their records myself, during my research. And the official files were all complete, you follow me?"

  "Had Caillois simply made some copies?"

  Champelaz started shifting around again. The weirdness of his story seemed to electrify him.

  "Copies…or else the originals. Caillois had perhaps replaced the genuine notifications of birth in the records with false ones. Which is to say that the real ones were discovered in his files."

  "Nobody mentioned this to me. Did the gendarmes look into it?"

  "No. There was no big scandal. It was just an administrative slip-up. What is more, the only possible suspect, Etienne Caillois, had died three years before. In fact, I'm the only person who seems interested in all this."

  "Exactly. And did you try to consult these newly discovered records? To compare them with the official versions?"