The Frozen Dead (29 page)

She turned away from the glass doors and hurried across the foyer.

*   *   *

‘Do you have something for a cold?'

The psychiatrist stared again at Servaz, then opened his desk drawer.

‘Of course.' He handed him a yellow tube. ‘Here, take this: paracetamol with ephedrine. It works fairly well, as a rule. You are really very pale. You don't want me to call a doctor?'

‘No, thank you. I'll be all right.'

Xavier walked over to a small fridge in the corner of the room and came back with a bottle of mineral water and a glass. His office was unpretentious, with metal filing cabinets, the fridge, a little bookshelf filled with professional titles, a few pot plants on the windowsill, and a table that was empty except for telephone, computer and lamp.

‘Just take one at a time. Four a day maximum. You can keep the tube.'

‘Thank you.'

For a moment Servaz lost himself in contemplation of the tablet dissolving in the glass. A headache was boring into his skull behind his eyes. The cold water felt good on his throat. He was soaked in sweat; beneath his jacket his shirt was sticking to his back. He must have a fever. It was cold, too – but it was an internal cold: the thermostat by the door indicated 23 degrees. Once again he saw the picture on the computer screen – the rapist being raped in turn by machines, probes, electronic instruments – and once again he felt the bile rising in his throat.

‘We're going to have to visit Unit A,' he said, after he put his glass down.

He had wanted his voice to sound firm, but the fire in his throat had reduced it to a scratchy croak. Across from him, the doctor's cheery expression suddenly soured. Servaz imagined a cloud passing in front of the sun and transforming a spring-like landscape into something far more sinister.

‘Will that really be necessary?'

The psychiatrist cast a discreet yet imploring look at the judge sitting to the left of the two investigators.

‘Yes,' said Confiant immediately, turning to them. ‘Do we really need to—'

‘I believe we do,' interrupted Servaz. ‘I am going to tell you something that must stay between us,' he said, leaning towards Xavier. ‘But perhaps you already know.'

He had turned to look at the young judge. For a brief moment the two men gauged each other in silence. Then Servaz looked from Confiant to Ziegler and he could clearly read the silent message she was sending him:
go easy.

‘What are you talking about?' asked Xavier.

Servaz cleared his throat. The medication would not begin to work for several minutes. His temples were squeezed in a vice.

‘We found the DNA of one of your residents … in the place where Éric Lombard's horse was killed: at the top of the cable car. DNA belonging to Julian Hirtmann.'

Xavier opened his eyes wide.

‘Dear God! That's impossible!'

‘Do you understand what this means?'

The psychiatrist gave Confiant a distraught look and lowered his head. His stupor was not feigned.
He didn't know.

‘What this means,' continued Servaz implacably, ‘is that there are two possibilities. Either Hirtmann himself was up there that night, or someone who could get close enough to him to obtain his saliva was up there. Which means that, whether it was Hirtmann or not, someone in your establishment is mixed up in this business, Dr Xavier.'

15

‘My God, this is a nightmare,' said Xavier.

He gave them a desperate look.

‘My predecessor, Dr Wargnier, fought very hard to found this place. There was no lack of opposition to the project, as you can imagine. And there still is, just waiting for a chance to re-emerge. There are people who think these criminals should be in prison. People who've never accepted their presence in the valley. If word of this gets out, the very existence of the Institute will be under threat.'

Xavier took off his extravagant red glasses. He took a small cloth from his pocket and began to wipe the lenses.

‘The people who end up here have nowhere else to go. We are their last refuge: after us, there's nothing. Ordinary psychiatric hospitals and prisons won't have them. There are only five facilities for difficult patients in France, and this institute is the only one of its kind. Every year we receive dozens of requests for admission. Either for the perpetrators of horrific crimes who have been judged mentally incapable or for convicts who have personality disorders so serious they can no longer be kept in prison, or psychotics who are so dangerous they cannot be treated in a traditional unit. Where will these people go if we close our doors?'

His fingers on the lenses were moving in ever quicker circles.

‘As I told you, for over thirty years now, in the name of ideology, profitability and budget priorities, psychiatric care in this country has been devastated. This establishment costs the taxpayers a great deal. Unlike ordinary units for difficult patients, this one is part of an experiment on a European level, financed in part by the EU. But only in part. And in Brussels, too, there are quite a few people who take a dim view of this experiment.'

‘We have no intention of letting this information get out,' said Servaz.

The psychiatrist looked at him doubtfully.

‘It will get out, sooner or later. How will you conduct your investigation without word getting out?'

Servaz knew he was right.

‘There is only one solution,' said Confiant. ‘We must get to the bottom of the matter as quickly as possible if we want to make sure the media don't get hold of it and start spreading crazy rumours. If we manage to find out who was involved in this before the media hear about the DNA, at least we will have proven that no one could have got out of here.'

The psychiatrist agreed with a nod of his head.

‘I'll conduct my own little investigation,' he said. ‘And I will do everything I possibly can to help you.'

‘In the meantime, may we see Unit A?' said Servaz.

Xavier stood up.

‘I'll take you there.'

*   *   *

She was sitting at her desk. Motionless. Holding her breath.

She heard every sound, every word as clearly as if they were speaking in her own office. The cop's voice, for example: he sounded both exhausted and under enormous stress. Far too much pressure. He was dealing with it, but for how long? Every word he said had been branded on Diane's brain. She didn't follow the business about a dead horse, but she had clearly understood that they'd found Hirtmann's DNA at the scene of a crime. And that the police suspected someone in the Institute was mixed up in it.

A dead horse … A murdered chemist … The Institute under suspicion …

She was afraid, but now something else was taking shape: irrepressible curiosity. The memory of the shadow passing by her door at night was there again.

When she was a student, Diane had overheard a man intimidating and threatening the girl who slept in the room next door. He had come several nights in a row, just as Diane was about to fall asleep, and every time she had heard the same threats, in a low, growling voice, threats that he would kill her, mutilate her, make her life hell; then the door slammed and the footsteps faded along the corridor. After that, all that remained in the silence were her neighbour's muffled sobs, like the sad echo of thousands of other solitudes, thousands of other sorrows locked away in the silence of cities.

She did not know who the man was – she didn't recognise his voice – nor did she really know the girl next door; she'd only ever said hello and good evening to her, or shared vague, unimportant chitchat in passing. All she knew was that her name was Ottilie and she was studying for a Master's in economics; she had been seen going out with a bearded, bespectacled student, but most of the time she was on her own. No group of friends, no phone calls to parents.

Diane shouldn't have got involved, it was none of her business, but one night she couldn't help following the man when he left the girl's room. That is how she found out that he lived in a pretty little house, and through the window she saw a woman. She could have left it at that. But she'd gone on watching him when she had the free time. One thing led to another and she found out a lot about him: he was a manager at a supermarket, he had two children aged five and seven, he bet on the races, and quietly did his shopping at Globus, a rival chain. She eventually found out that he'd got to know her neighbour at a time when the girl was paying for her studies by working at the supermarket, and he'd got her pregnant. Which was why he was intimidating her, threatening her. He wanted her to have an abortion. He also had another mistress: a checkout assistant who wore too much make-up and stood noisily chewing her gum while she looked the customers up and down.
‘I'm in love with the queen of the supermarket',
as Bruce Springsteen sang. One evening Diane wrote an anonymous letter on her computer and slipped it under her neighbour's door. All the letter said was, ‘He will never leave his wife.' One month later she found out that her neighbour had had an abortion in the twelfth week, only a few days before the legal limit in Switzerland.

Now she wondered once again if this need of hers to get involved in other people's lives was due to the fact that she'd been raised in a family where silence, secrets and things left unsaid were far more common than moments of sharing. She also wondered whether her strict Calvinist father had ever been unfaithful to her mother. She knew very well that the opposite had occurred, that the discreet men who visited her mother included several who took advantage of her overactive imagination, in order to feed on her eternally disappointed hopes.

Diane squirmed on her chair. What was going on here? She felt increasingly uncomfortable as she tried to connect the few elements she had.

The worst was the business in Saint-Martin. A terrible crime; the fact that it might be connected in some way to the Institute only served to increase the unease she'd felt ever since she arrived. She was sorry she had no one to confide in, no one with whom she could share her doubts. A friend, or Pierre.

Then there was that cop; she knew nothing about him except for the inflection and the tone of his voice. And one other thing, most definitely: that he was under stress. There was tension, worry. But at the same time strength and determination. And a lively curiosity. Someone who was rational and sure of himself: the policeman had displayed a character much like her own.

*   *   *

‘Allow me to introduce Élisabeth Ferney, our head nurse.'

Servaz saw a tall woman coming towards them, her heels clacking on the tiles in the corridor. She wore her hair loose to her shoulders, although it was not as long as Charlène Espérandieu's. She greeted them with a nod, not saying a word, not smiling, either, and her gaze lingered a bit longer than necessary on Irène Ziegler.

Servaz saw the young gendarme lower her eyes.

Élisabeth Ferney had an abrupt, authoritarian air about her. Servaz thought she must be in her forties, but he also knew that she could as easily be thirty-five or fifty, because her lab coat and strict demeanour made it impossible to determine her age. He suspected she was highly energetic, with an iron will.
And what if the second man were a woman?
he suddenly wondered. Then he saw that this notion was proof of how distraught he was: if everyone became a suspect, it meant that no one was. They had no solid leads.

‘Lisa is the soul of our establishment,' said Xavier. ‘She knows it better than anyone – and there's not a single therapeutic or practical aspect with which she isn't familiar. She's also acquainted with every one of our eighty-eight residents. Even the psychiatrists have to submit their work to her.'

No trace of a smile graced the head nurse's face. She motioned to Xavier, who immediately interrupted what he was saying to listen to her. She murmured something in his ear. Servaz wondered whether he had just been introduced to the person who was really in charge. Xavier replied to her in similar fashion, while the others waited in silence for the end of their little private consultation. Finally she consented, acknowledged the visitors with a brief nod and left the room.

‘Let's continue,' said the psychiatrist.

As they were heading off in the opposite direction, Servaz stopped and turned right round to watch Lisa Ferney walk away, her lab coat stretched tight over her broad shoulders, her high heels clicking. At the end of the corridor, before disappearing round the corner, she turned back too and their gazes met. Servaz thought he saw her smile.

*   *   *

‘The important thing,' said Xavier, ‘is to avoid any attitude that might cause conflict.'

They were standing outside the last security door, the one that led to Unit A. No more glossy paint on the walls, only bare stone and the impression of being in a medieval fortress, were it not for the armoured steel doors, the pale neon lights and the concrete floors.

Xavier raised his head to a camera above the door. An LED light went from red to green and locks clicked in the thick armour plating. He pulled open the heavy door and ushered them into the narrow space between the two armoured doors. They waited for the first one to shut slowly on its own and lock with a click, then for the locks of the second door to pull back in turn, making just as much noise. It was like being in the engine room of a ship, in an obscurity broken only by the light filtering through the portholes. The smell of metal. Xavier looked solemnly at each of them in turn and Servaz suspected he had a little catchphrase ready, something he must serve up to every visitor who went through this door:

‘
Welcome to hell,
' he declared with a smile.

*   *   *

A glass cubicle. Inside, a guard. A corridor to one side. Servaz moved forward and saw a white hallway, thick blue pile carpets, a row of doors with small windows on the left and lights on the right.