Blood-Red Rivers aka The Crimson Rivers Read online

  Champelaz forced himself to smile.

  "I meant to. But finally I didn't have time. You don't seem to grasp what these documents are. Just a few columns photocopied onto a loose sheet, giving the weight, height and blood group of the baby…

  "This information is then copied out the next day onto the child's personal medical records. They are just the first link in the chain."

  Niémans recalled how Joisneau had wanted to see the hospital archives. These papers might sound irrelevant, but he had clearly thought they would be of interest. The superintendent suddenly changed the subject:

  "What brought Edmond Chernecé into all this? Why did Joisneau go to see him immediately after leaving you?"

  At once, the director looked hunted again.

  "Edmond Chernecé was extremely interested in the children I just mentioned."

  "Why?"

  "Chernecé is…or, rather, was this home's official doctor. He knew all about our patients' genetic conditions. So he was well-placed to find it odd that other children, their first or second cousins, should be so different from the ones we treat. What is more, genetics fascinated him. He thought that a person's genetic history could be read in his irises. In some respects, he was a rather eccentric practitioner…"

  The superintendent pictured that man with his speckled forehead. "Eccentric" he certainly was. He also recalled Joisneau's body as it was being eaten up in the acid bath. He asked:

  "Did you ask his professional opinion?"

  Champelaz wriggled strangely, as though his cardigan were irritating his skin.

  "No. I…I didn't dare to. You don't know what this town is like. Chernecé belonged to the university elite, you understand? He was one of the region's most eminent ophthalmologists. A prestigious professor. As for me, I just look after this little place…"

  "Do you think Chernecé might have examined the same records as you did – the official notifications of birth?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you think he might have looked at them even before you did?"

  "That is possible, yes."

  The director lowered his eyes. His face was scarlet, running with sweat.

  Niémans pressed the point:

  "Do you think that he also found out that the records had been falsified?"

  "I…How do I know? What are you trying to suggest?"

  Niémans let it drop. He had just understood another part of the story: Champelaz had not been back to examine the papers Caillois had stolen because he was afraid of discovering something about the university lecturers. Those lecturers who lorded it over the town, and who controlled the destiny of people like him.

  The superintendent stood up.

  "What else did you tell Joisneau?"

  "Nothing. I told him exactly what I have just told you."

  "Think about it."

  "That's all. Honestly it is."

  Niémans stood in front of the doctor. "Does the name Judith Hérault mean anything to you?"

  "No."

  "And Philippe Sertys?"

  "The second victim?"

  "You had never heard of him before?"

  "No."

  "Does the term 'blood-red rivers' ring any bells?"

  "No, none. I…"

  "Thank you, doctor."

  Niémans saluted the terrified medic and turned on his heel. He was on his way through the door, when he looked back over his shoulder.

  "One last thing, doctor. I have neither heard nor seen any dogs. Aren't there any in the home?"

  Champelaz was wan.

  "D…dogs?"

  "Yes. Guide dogs for the blind." The penny dropped and he found the energy to reply:

  "Dogs are of use to blind people who live on their own, and who do not have any other assistance. Our home is equipped with the latest technology. The patients are guided and warned of the slightest obstacle, there's no need for dogs."

  Outside, Niémans turned back toward that bright building, which was glistening in the rain. Since yesterday morning, he had been avoiding this home because of some non-existent dogs. His phobia had made him send Joisneau there. Those phantoms baying in the darkness of his dreams. He opened his car door and spat on the ground.

  His ghosts had cost that young lieutenant his life.

  CHAPTER 48

  Niémans drove down the rolling slopes of Les Sept-Laux. The downpour doubled in intensity. Rising from the asphalt, a bright mist was shining in his headlamps. From time to time, a puddle of mud had formed which swished under his tires with the din of a waterfall. Niémans clutched his steering wheel and fought to control his car which was constantly skidding dangerously close to the edge of the precipice.

  Suddenly, his pager rang in his pocket. With one hand, he flicked on the screen. A message from Antoine Rheims in Paris. With the same hand, he grabbed his cell phone and picked Rheims's number from its memory. As soon as he heard Niémans's voice, his superior said:

  "The hooligan's dead, Pierre."

  Totally submerged in his case, Niémans struggled to concentrate on the possible consequences of this news. But he could not. His boss went on:

  "Where are you?"

  "Near Guernon."

  "You're under arrest. In theory, you should now give yourself up, hand over your gun and limit the damage."

  "In theory?"

  "I've spoken to Terpentes. He says that your enquiries haven't led anywhere and that things are starting to look nasty. The media have also turned up in the place. Tomorrow morning, Guernon's going to be the most famous town in France." Rheims paused. And everyone's looking for you."

  Niémans did not respond. He was keeping his eyes on the road, which continued to corkscrew through the sheets of rain that seemed to be spiraling in a reverse motion. Rheims continued:

  "Pierre, are you about to arrest the murderer?"

  "I don't know. But, I'll say it again, I'm definitely on the right track."

  "In that case, we'll sort the other business out later. I haven't spoken to you. No one can find you. No one can contact you. You've still got an hour or two left to stop this slaughter. After that, there's nothing more I can do for you. Except find you a good lawyer."

  Niémans grunted something in reply and hung up.

  At that moment, a car appeared in his headlamps and bounced toward his right. The superintendent reacted a second too late. The vehicle smashed straight into his right wing. The steering wheel flew out of his hands. His saloon hit the boulders at the foot of the rock face. He swore and tried to straighten up. In a flash, he was back in control and glancing in panic at the other car. A dark Range Rover, with its headlamps off, which was coming back for the kill.

  Niémans reversed. The bulky vehicle rebounded slightly and swerved to the left, forcing him to brake suddenly. He then accelerated forward again. The Range Rover was now in front of him and driving flat out, systematically stopping him from overtaking. Its number plate was covered with lumps of mud. His mind empty, the superintendent put his foot down once more and tried to pass the Range Rover on the outside curve. In vain. That black mass was eating up the slightest gap, shoving into the saloon's left wing as it approached and pushing it toward the edge of the precipice.

  What was this lunatic after? Niémans abruptly slowed down, giving the killer car a lead of a good fifty yards. The Range Rover immediately slowed down as well, closing the gap between them. The superintendent seized his chance. Slamming his foot right down, he managed to slip past it on the left. A close call.

  The superintendent was now giving it all he could, foot flat on the floor. In his rear-view mirror, he saw the four-wheel drive slowly vanish into the darkness. Without a moment's thought, he drove on at the same speed for a couple of miles.

  He was once again all alone on the road.

  Following the dark twisting trace of the asphalt, he sped forward through the dense rain, between the conifers. What had happened? Who had attacked him? And why? What had he found out which would now cost him his life?
It had all happened so quickly that he had not even had time to make out the figure behind the Range Rover's steering wheel.

  As he came out of a bend, Niémans could see the Jasse suspension bridge: three and a half miles of concrete, balanced on steel towers that were over three hundred feet tall. This meant that he was now only six miles away from Guernon, and safety.

  He accelerated once more.

  He was starting to cross the bridge when a white light blinded him, suddenly engulfing his rear windscreen. Headlamps full on, the Range Rover was back against his bumper. Niémans lowered his gaze from the dazzling rear-view mirror and stared at the concrete strip, hanging in the darkness. He said to himself: "I can't die. Not like this." Then he slammed his foot down once more.

  The headlamps were still behind him. Bent over his steering wheel, he kept his eyes on the safety railings, which glimmered in his own lights, surrounding the road in a sort of fiery embrace, a glittering halo, steaming as the rain poured down.

  Yards snatched from time.

  Seconds stolen from the earth.

  A strange idea crossed Niémans's mind, a sort of inexplicable conviction: while he was still driving on this bridge, still heading through this storm, nothing could happen to him. He was alive. He was light. He was invulnerable.

  The collision took his breath away.

  His head snapped forward into the windscreen. The rear-view mirror smashed into pieces. Its composite support ripped into Niémans's forehead like a hook. He groaned and rolled up, hands locked together over his head. He felt his car pulling over to the left, then to the right, wobbling on its axis…Blood poured down half of his face.

  Another jolt, then suddenly the icy slap of the rain. The cold reaches of the night.

  There was silence. Darkness. Seconds.

  When Niémans next opened his eyes, he could not believe what he was seeing: the sky and the stars, upside down. He was alone, flying through the wind and the rain.

  His car had hit the parapet, throwing him out, off the bridge, into the void. He was diving down, slowly, silently, aimlessly beating his arms and his legs, wondering absurdly what death was going to feel like.

  A varied succession of pain was the answer. The whipping of pine needles. Branches cracking. His flesh torn apart into a thousand shards of agony, through forests of spruce and larch.

  There were two almost simultaneous shocks.

  Firstly, he hit the ground, his fall broken by the countless boughs of the trees. Then an apocalyptic crash. An ear-splitting din. As though a massive lid had just been brought down onto his body. The moment exploded into a riot of contradictory sensations. Biting cold. Scalding steam. Water. Rock. Darkness.

  Time passed. An eclipse.

  Niémans opened his eyes again. In front of his eyelids, a second set welcomed him – the blackness of the forest. Little by little, like a glimmer of the living dead, light returned. His numbed brain slowly formed the following conclusion: he was alive, still alive.

  He had fallen down between the trees and, by pure chance, landed in a water drainage channel at the foot of one of the supporting pylons. Following exactly the same trajectory, his car had flown off the bridge and, like a huge army tank, had crashed down on top of him. But without touching him. The broad chassis of the saloon had been stopped by the banks of the drainage canal.

  A miracle.

  Niémans closed his eyes. Multiple wounds tortured his body, then a stronger, burning sensation – like a lance of fire – beat into his right temple. The superintendent guessed that the strut of the rear-view mirror had gouged its way into his flesh, just above his ear. On the other hand, he felt as if the rest of him had escaped relatively unscathed.

  His chin stuck down on his chest, he stared up at the steaming wreck of his car. He was imprisoned beneath a roof of red-hot metal, in a concrete coffin. He turned his head to the right, then to the left and noticed that a section of one of the bumpers was pinning him down into the canal.

  In desperation, he made a violent lateral movement. The various pains that were prickling across his body now turned out to be an advantage: they canceled one another out, leaving his flesh in a kind of agonised indifference.

  He managed to slide beneath the bumper and extricate himself from his death bed. Once his arms were free, his hand instinctively shot to his temple and felt a thick flow of blood oozing out from the torn flesh. He groaned as he felt it stream slowly between his aching fingers. It made him think of the beak of an oily bird, spewing out gasoline. Tears came to his eyes. He straightened up, leaning one arm on the edge of the canal, then rolling over onto the ground. Meanwhile, another thought crossed his addled brain.

  The killer was coming back. To finish him off.

  Grabbing hold of the bodywork, he managed to get to his feet.

  He punched at the dented boot; it flew open, allowing him to retrieve his pump-action shotgun, as well as a handful of cartridges which had spilled out inside. He stuck the weapon under his left arm – his left hand was still clamped on his wound – and succeeded in loading it with his right hand. The process was carried out by touch. He could scarcely see a thing. His glasses were broken and the night was still pitch black.

  His face splattered with blood and dirt, his body wracked with pain, the superintendent turned round, sweeping all before him with his gun. Not a sound. Not a movement. His head went dizzy. He slid down the side of his car and fell once more into the drainage canal. This time, he felt the chill of its waters and woke up. He was now bouncing against the concrete edges as they funneled him down toward the river.

  Why not, after all?

  He clutched his gun against his body and let himself float on the rainwater, like a pharaoh on his way down the river of the dead.

  CHAPTER 49

  Niémans floated for a long time. His eyes open, he could see the dark mass of the starless sky through the gaps in the trees. To his right and to his left, he made out landslides of red clay, heaps of branches and leaves, forming an inextricable mangrove swamp.

  Soon, the stream swelled, becoming stronger and louder. Head back, he let himself be borne away. The icy water caused a vasoconstriction in his temple, thus preventing him from losing too much blood. As he drifted onwards, he began to hope that the course of the water would take him back to Guernon and the university.

  Before long, he realised that his hopes were groundless. The stream was a dead end; it did not flow down in the direction of the campus. It meandered round in increasingly tight bends within the forest, once more losing its strength and speed.

  The current stopped.

  Niémans swam to the bank and, gasping for breath, pulled himself out of the water. The stream was so full of debris and loaded down with mud, that it gave off no reflection at all. He slumped down onto the damp earth, carpeted with dead leaves. His nostrils filled with the scent of mould, that characteristic, slightly smoky smell of the soil, mingled with fibers and shoots, humus and insects.

  He rolled onto his back and glanced up at the boughs of the forest. The wood was not twisted and overgrown, but instead formed a spacious airy grove, in which reigned an atmosphere of vegetative freedom. It was so dark, however, that he could not even see the black forms of the mountains that towered above him. And he did not know how long he had been drifting, nor in which direction.

  Despite the pain and the cold, he dragged himself over to a tree and leant against its trunk. Forcing himself to think, he tried to picture in his mind the map of the region on which he had marked the important places in the case. He remembered in particular that the University of Guernon lay to the north of Les Sept-Laux.

  The north.

  Since he had no idea where he was, how could he find the north? He had no compass, nor other magnetic device. During the day he could have used the sun as a guide, but during the night?

  He thought again. The blood started to seep back down his face and the cold was already numbing the extremities of his limbs. He realised that he
had only a few hours left.

  Suddenly, he had a flash of inspiration. Even at that time of the night, he could still work out the diurnal path of the sun. Thanks to the plant life. The superintendent knew nothing about flora, but he knew what everyone else knows: certain varieties of moss and lichen love damp climates, and avoid all contact with the sun. Such plants must then grow only at the foot of trees, facing north.

  Niémans knelt down and searched through his coat to find the shock-proof case in which he always kept a spare pair of glasses. They were intact. Thanks to these fresh lenses, he was now able to discern his immediate surroundings.

  He then started to search around the trunks of the conifers and the edges of the hillocks. A few minutes later, his fingers frozen and black with soil, he realised that he had been right. Near the roots, little emerald clumps of tiny fresh mosses always grew according to the same orientation. The superintendent fingered these minuscule canopies, stringy textures, soft surfaces – a miniature jungle that was now pointing him toward the north.

  Niémans eased himself to his feet and followed the moss trail.

  He staggered, stumbling over the clods, feeling his heart beating in his throat. Puddles, bark, boughs full of needles crashed past him. His feet slid over pebbles, flint sanctuaries, holes full of spines, mattings of light vegetation. He went on following the lichen. On other occasions he plunged into swamps of crackling ice, which dug out brackish furrows on the slopes of the hills. Despite the fatigue, despite his injuries, he was gaining speed, gasping in strength from the drifting scents on the air. He seemed to be walking in the very breath of the downpour, which had just stopped to draw in another breath.

  At last, he stumbled across a road.

  Gleaming tarmac. The road to freedom. Once again, he examined the snug growths along the side of the track in order to ascertain the correct direction. Then, suddenly, a gendarmerie van appeared round the bend, its headlamps full on.

  It braked immediately. Men leapt out to help Niémans who, still clutching his gun, slowly collapsed.