The Frozen Dead (18 page)

Julian Alois Hirtmann had been detained for nearly sixteen months in Unit A of the Wargnier Institute, the unit reserved for the most dangerous social predators, with only seven inmates in all. But Hirtmann differed from the other six in more ways than one:

1. He was intelligent, in control, and the long series of suspected murders had never been proven.

2. He had once occupied – rare but not totally exceptional among serial criminals – an elevated social rank, since at the time of his arrest he had been a prosecutor at the Geneva High Court.

3. His arrest – following the unfortunate events Ziegler had mentioned – and trial had led to a political and criminal tangle unprecedented in Switzerland's legal history.

The combination of circumstances Ziegler had referred to was a story that beggared belief, one that might have seemed merely lurid had it not been incredibly sordid and, above all, tragic. On 21 June 2004, while a violent storm was raging over Lake Geneva, Julian Hirtmann, in a gesture of grandiose indulgence, invited his wife's lover to dinner at his lakeside estate. The purpose of his invitation: he wanted to ‘clarify things and conclude a gentlemanly arrangement for Alexia's departure'.

His ravishing wife had already informed him that she wished to leave him for her lover, like Hirtmann a magistrate at the Geneva Court. At the end of the meal, during which time they listened to Mahler's sublime
Kindertotenlieder
and discussed the terms and practicalities of the divorce (Servaz paused, dumbfounded for a moment on reading this information, wondering which zealous investigator had noted that ‘these “Songs for Dead Children” were one of his favourite pieces of music'), Hirtmann pulled out a gun and forced the couple to go down to the cellar. Hirtmann and his wife had transformed it into a ‘cavern of sadomasochistic delights' where they held orgies with friends from Geneva's high society. Hirtmann, it seemed, liked to see his very beautiful wife penetrated and beaten by several men at a time, and subjected to all sorts of refined torture – handcuffed, chained, whipped and attached to strange machines that were sold in specialist shops in Germany and the Netherlands. He had nevertheless gone mad with jealousy when he found out she wanted to leave him for someone else. One aggravating circumstance: he held his wife's lover to be a perfectly stupid and insipid individual.

One of the many articles Servaz looked at showed Hirtmann and his future victim pictured at the Geneva High Court.

The fellow seemed short next to Hirtmann, who was tall and thin. Judging by the photograph, Servaz would have said he was in his forties. The giant had laid a friendly hand on the lover-colleague's shoulder, and was gazing warmly at him the way a tiger gazes at its prey. With hindsight, Servaz wondered whether Hirtmann knew then that he was going to kill him. The caption said, ‘
Prosecutor Hirtmann with his future victim, the judge Adalbert Berger, posing in the hall in their magistrates' gowns.
'

On the night of 21 June Hirtmann forced his wife and her lover down into the cellar, then made them undress, lie down and drink champagne until they were both drunk. Then he ordered the lover to empty a magnum over Alexia's body where she lay trembling on the bed, while he in turn splattered champagne over her lover. Once these libations were finished, he handed the lover one of the gadgets that were lying around the place: the object resembled a big electric drill, with the drill bit replaced by a dildo. Such items, however strange they may seem to ordinary mortals, are not hard to find, and the guests at the Hirtmanns' lakeside parties occasionally made use of them. During the afternoon, Hirtmann had carefully fiddled with the instrument, so that if a suspicious expert examined the bare electric wires, it would look like a purely accidental defect. He had also replaced the perfectly functional circuit-breaker in his fuse box with a totally inefficient one. Once the wife's lover had placed the dripping dildo into his mistress's vagina, Hirtmann, wearing an insulating rubber glove, plugged it in. The effect was immediate, the champagne clearly a good conductor. And Hirtmann would no doubt have taken immense pleasure from the spectacle of the two bodies rattling with uncontrollable trembling, their hair standing on end like iron shavings on a magnet, had there not been at that moment the ‘combination of circumstances' that Ziegler had referred to.

Because of the defective circuit-breaker, cutting the power would not have saved the two lovers from electrocution, but the voltage surge nevertheless had a consequence that Hirtmann had not foreseen: it set off the house alarm system. By the time Hirtmann regained his self-control, the diligent Swiss police, alerted by the shrieking siren and by the neighbours, were at his door.

Still, the prosecutor did not completely lose his sangfroid for all that. As he had planned to do in any event, but somewhat later that evening, he stated his personal particulars and his position as a magistrate and, confused and distraught, informed the police that a tragic accident had just occurred in the cellar. Ashamed and overwhelmed, he invited the police officers to follow him downstairs. This is when the second circumstance came into play: in order to turn off the alarm, and make it look as if he had tried to help the lovers, Hirtmann had been obliged to switch off the power altogether; the gendarme Christian Gander, from the Geneva cantonal police, swore that when he and his colleague entered the gloomy cellar, one of the victims was still alive. Hirtmann's wife, Alexia. In the gleam of their torches, she suddenly came to, and had just time enough to point to her executioner with a terrified look before collapsing once and for all. The two gendarmes then trained their guns at Hirtmann and handcuffed him, heedless of his protests and threats. They made two phone calls, the first to the emergency services, the second to the Geneva crime unit. Reinforcements arrived on the premises fifteen minutes later and undertook a thorough search, which, fairly quickly, led to the discovery of an automatic pistol – loaded and with the safety catch off – thrust under a piece of furniture. Hirtmann was taken away and a CSI team was brought in. Analysis of the leftovers from dinner showed that the prosecutor-murderer had also drugged his victims.

It was the documents and newspaper cuttings found somewhat later in Hirtmann's office that established a link with the unsolved disappearances of twenty or more young women over the last fifteen years. Suddenly the case took on another dimension: a crime of passion pointing the way to a serial killer. A search through a safe deposit box revealed several binders filled with newspaper cuttings concerning other disappearances, spread over five countries: the French Alps, the Dolomites, Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland. Altogether forty or more cases in twenty-five years. None of these cases had ever been solved. Hirtmann claimed he was interested in them from a purely professional point of view, even showing a certain sense of humour when he declared that he suspected the young women must have all been the victims of a single killer. Nevertheless, no legal connection could be established between the disappearances and the murder of his wife, as they differed both in motive and in the nature of the crime.

At the hearing Hirtmann revealed his true nature at last. Far from seeking to play down his proclivities, he flaunted them with a self-satisfied smirk. A series of spectacular scandals erupted during the trial, for it turned out that several members of the court and of Genevan high society had attended his soirées. Hirtmann served up their names with relish, ruining untold reputations. The case became an unprecedented political and criminal cataclysm, mixing sex, drugs, money, justice and the media. A number of photographs had survived from the time, originally displayed in the world press with captions such as
The house of horror
(where you could see the big lakeside residence with its ivy-covered façade),
The monster leaving court
(where Hirtmann appeared wearing a bullet-proof jacket, a good head taller than the policemen who surrounded him),
Geneva in turmoil, So-and-so accused of taking part in Hirtmann's orgies
and so on.

In the course of his virtual wanderings Servaz noticed that there was a veritable cult around Hirtmann among some online denizens. There were numerous sites devoted to him, most of them portraying him not as an insane criminal, but rather as an emblem of sadomasochism or – all joking aside – of the
will to power,
like
an incandescent star of the Satanic galaxy
or even a
Nietzschean rock superman.
Forums were even worse. Even Servaz, a policeman, could never have imagined there were so many lunatics at large. Individuals with pseudonyms as grotesque as 6-Borg, Sympathy for the Devil or Goddess Kali expounded theories as woolly-minded as their counterfeit identities. All these alternative worlds depressed him, these forums and websites. He told himself that in the old days these crazies would have assumed they were the only ones of their kind, and kept well hidden. Nowadays, thanks to modern means of communication, which start by spreading idiocy and madness and – more rarely – knowledge, they were discovering they were not alone; they could get in touch and reinforce their madness. Servaz recalled what he had said to Marchand, and made a mental correction: insanity was indeed an epidemic, but its two preferred carriers were the media and the Internet.

He suddenly remembered the message from his daughter asking him if he could get Saturday off. He looked at his watch: 1.07 a.m. It was already Saturday. Servaz hesitated. Then he dialled the number to leave a message on her voicemail.

‘Hello?'

He made a face. She had picked up immediately, her voice so very different from normal, and he wondered if he had called the wrong number.

‘Margot?'

‘Is that you, Dad?' she exclaimed in a murmur. ‘Have you seen the time?'

He instantly guessed she had been expecting another call. She must leave her mobile on all night, taking her calls hidden under her duvet, unbeknown to her mother and stepfather. What sort of boyfriend would call at such a time? Then he remembered it was Friday, a night out for students.

‘Did I wake you up?'

‘What do you think?'

‘I just wanted to tell you that I got your message,' he said. ‘I'll try to get off this afternoon. Is five o'clock OK with you?'

‘Are you sure you're all right, Dad? You sound weird…'

‘I'm fine, sweetheart. It's just that … I have a lot of work at the moment.'

‘You always say that.'

‘Because it's true. You know, don't go thinking that it's only people who earn a lot of money who work a lot. Pack of lies.'

‘I know, Dad.'

‘Don't ever believe a politician either,' he said without thinking. ‘They're all liars.'

‘Dad, do you know what time it is? Can we talk about this some other time?'

‘You're right. Besides, parents shouldn't try and manipulate their children, even if they think what they're saying is true. They should try and teach them to think for themselves. Even if their children don't think the way they do…'

A long speech for such a late hour.

‘You're not manipulating me, Dad. It's called a conversation – and I'm quite capable of thinking for myself.'

Servaz suddenly felt ridiculous. But it made him smile.

‘I have a marvellous daughter,' he said.

She gave a quiet laugh.

‘You sound pretty good actually.'

‘I feel great and it's a quarter past one in the morning. Life is beautiful. And so is my daughter. Goodnight, kid. See you tomorrow.'

‘Goodnight, Dad.'

He went back out onto the balcony. The moon was shining above the steeple of Saint-Sernin. Students went by in the street, shoving one another. A cavalcade of shouts and sniggers, until the merry band melted into the night and their laughter lingered like a faraway echo from his youth. At around two o'clock, Servaz lay down on his bed and fell asleep at last.

*   *   *

The next morning, Saturday, 13 December, Servaz got part of his team together to go over the murder of the homeless man. Samira Cheung was wearing knee socks with horizontal red and white stripes, leather shorts as tight-fitting as they come, and boots with six-inch heels and a whole row of metal buckles down the back. Servaz reckoned she wouldn't even have to wear a disguise if she had to infiltrate a local prostitution ring, then thought that this was exactly the type of remark someone like Pujol or Simeoni would make, the two narrow-minded machos on the squad who had given his assistant such a hard time. As for Espérandieu, he was wearing a striped jersey that made him look even younger, not at all like a policeman. In a moment of sheer metaphysical anxiety, Servaz wondered whether he were in charge of an investigation or whether he had been teleported to a literature class at university. Both Samira and Vincent had taken out their laptops. As usual, the young woman had her MP3 player round her neck, and Espérandieu was swiping his finger over his iPhone as if he were turning the pages of a book. At Servaz's request, Samira again pointed out one of the weak points of the case: they had no proof that the three young boys were directly involved in the death of the homeless man. The autopsy had established that the victim died of drowning in fifty centimetres of water after losing consciousness, in all probability due to a series of blows, including one very violent one to the head. This ‘in all probability' made things extremely awkward. Because the homeless man also had a blood alcohol content of over 100 milligrams at the time of the incident, Servaz and Espérandieu were perfectly aware that the autopsy report would be used by the defence in an attempt to redefine the facts as ‘deliberate violence unintentionally leading to death', or even to cast doubt upon the fact that the blows were the cause of the drowning, which could be attributed to the victim's intoxication – but they had carefully avoided broaching the subject until now.