The Frozen Dead (37 page)

‘“To cook one must have a light head, a generous spirit and a warm heart”: Paul Gauguin. I hope you don't mind if we skip the aperitif?'

‘Not at all,' replied Servaz. ‘I'm starving.'

Saint-Cyr came back with two plates and a bottle of wine, displaying the ease of a professional waiter.

‘
Feuilleté de ris de veau aux truffes,
' he announced, placing a large steaming plate before Servaz.

It smelled wonderful. Servaz stabbed his fork into the food and lifted a mouthful to his lips. It burned his tongue, but rarely had he eaten anything quite so delicious.

‘Well?'

‘If you were as good a judge as you are a chef, the courts in Saint-Martin have suffered a great loss.'

Saint-Cyr took the flattery for what it was. He was sufficiently aware of his talent as a chef to know that behind the exaggerated compliment there was sincere praise. He tilted a bottle of white wine towards Servaz's glass.

‘Have a taste of that.'

Servaz raised the glass to his eyes before drinking. In the light from the candles the wine was the colour of pale gold. Servaz was no great connoisseur, but from the very first sip he knew beyond a doubt that the wine he had just been served was truly exceptional.

‘It's wonderful. Really. Even if I'm no expert.'

Saint-Cyr nodded.

‘Bâtard-Montrachet 2001.'

He winked at Servaz and clicked his tongue.

By the second sip, Servaz felt his head begin to spin. He shouldn't have started on an empty stomach.

‘Are you hoping this will loosen my tongue?' he asked.

Saint-Cyr laughed.

‘It's a pleasure to see you relishing your food like that. You look as if you haven't eaten in ten days. What do you think of Confiant?' asked the judge, suddenly changing tack.

His question caught Servaz off guard. He hesitated.

‘I don't know. It's a bit too soon to say.'

Once again, the wily twinkle in the judge's eye.

‘Of course it's not. You already have an opinion. And it's negative. That's why you don't want to talk about him.'

Servaz was thrown by his comment. The judge was never at a loss for words.

‘Confiant's name doesn't suit him,' continued Saint-Cyr, without waiting for an answer. ‘He shows no confidence in anyone, and one shouldn't show him any, either. As you may already have noticed.'

Touché. Once again, Servaz thought that this man would prove useful. When they had finished, Saint-Cyr cleared the plates.

‘Rabbit in a mustard sauce,' he said when he came back. ‘Will that do you?'

He had brought another bottle. Red, this time. Half an hour later, after an apple dessert accompanied by a glass of Sauternes, they were sitting in the armchairs by the fireplace. Servaz felt well fed and slightly tipsy, suffused with a feeling of well-being he had not known for a long time. Saint-Cyr served him some cognac in a balloon glass and poured himself an Armagnac.

Then he shot him a keen look and Servaz understood that the time had come to get down to business.

‘You're also in charge of that incident with the dead horse,' declared the judge, after the first sip. ‘Do you think there is any connection with the chemist?'

‘Could be.'

‘Two dreadful crimes in the space of a few days and only a few miles apart.'

‘Yes.'

‘What did you think of Éric Lombard?'

‘Arrogant.'

‘Don't get on the wrong side of him. He has a long arm and he could be useful to you. But don't let him run the investigation for you either.'

Servaz smiled once again. The judge might be retired, but he hadn't lost his touch.

‘You were going to tell me about the suicides.'

Saint-Cyr raised his glass to his lips.

‘Why would anyone become a cop these days?' he asked, without answering Servaz's question. ‘Corruption is rife, and all anyone thinks about is filling their own pockets. How do you know what matters? Hasn't it become terribly complicated?'

‘Oh, no, the opposite: it's very simple,' said Servaz. ‘There are two sorts of people: bastards and everyone else. And everyone has to choose sides. If you haven't chosen, it means you're already on the side of the bastards.'

‘Do you really think so? Things are that simple: good guys and bad guys? You're very fortunate. What if, for example, you have the choice at an election between three candidates: the first one is half paralysed by polio, suffers from high blood pressure and anaemia and numerous other serious illnesses, has been known to lie, consults an astrologist, cheats on his wife, is a chain-smoker and drinks too many martinis; the second one is obese, has already lost three elections, is going through a depression and has had two heart attacks, smokes cigars and in the evening glugs champagne, port, brandy and whisky before taking two sleeping tablets; and the third one is a decorated war hero who respects women, loves animals, might drink a beer from time to time and doesn't smoke. Which one would you choose?'

Servaz grinned.

‘I suppose you expect me to say the third one?'

‘Well done, you've just rejected Roosevelt and Churchill and elected Adolf Hitler. You see, things are never what they seem.'

Servaz burst out laughing. He really did like this man. Very hard to catch him napping, and his mind was as clear as the stream that flowed past his mill.

‘And that's what's wrong with the media nowadays,' the judge continued. ‘They latch on to details that are totally unimportant and blow them out of all proportion. With the end result that if today's media had existed back then, Roosevelt and Churchill would probably not have been elected. Trust your intuition, Martin. Don't trust appearances.'

‘The suicides,' said Servaz again.

‘I'm getting there.'

The judge poured himself another Armagnac, then gave Servaz a hard look.

‘I was the examining magistrate on the case. The most difficult one of my entire career. It lasted for over a year. From May 1993 to July 1994, to be exact. Seven suicides. Teenagers between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. I remember it as if it were yesterday.'

Servaz held his breath. The judge's voice had changed, was filled now with infinite solemnity and sadness.

‘The first one to die was a child from a neighbouring village, Alice Ferrand, sixteen and a half. A brilliant kid, top marks at school. She came from an educated background: her father was a literature professor, her mother a schoolteacher. Alice was considered an easy child. She had friends her own age; she liked drawing and music; everyone thought highly of her. They found her hanging in a barn on the morning of 2 May 1993.'

Hanging
 … Servaz's throat tightened, but his attention grew sharper.

‘I know what you're thinking,' said Saint-Cyr, meeting Servaz's gaze, ‘but I can assure you that she hanged herself, there was no doubt. The pathologist was categorical. It was Delmas, you know him, he's a competent fellow. And they found a clue in the girl's desk drawer: a sketch she had made of the barn, which even included the exact length of the rope she needed to be sure that her little feet would not touch the ground.'

The judge choked on these last words. Servaz could see he was on the verge of tears.

‘A heartbreaking affair. She was such a sweet child. When a seventeen-year-old boy took his life five weeks later, on 7 June, everyone thought it was just a terrible coincidence. But by the third one, at the end of the month, people were beginning to wonder.'

He finished his Armagnac and put the glass down on the coffee table.

‘I remember that one, too, as if it were yesterday. That summer there was a heatwave in June and July, magnificent weather, endless warm evenings. People lingered in their gardens, by the river or in the outdoor cafés, just to find some cool air. It was too hot if you lived in a flat. They didn't have air-conditioning back in those days – or mobile phones, either. That evening, 29 June, I was in a café with Cathy d'Humières's predecessor and a deputy prosecutor. The café owner came looking for me. He pointed to the telephone on the counter. It was a call for me. The gendarmerie. “They've found another one,” they said. I immediately understood what that meant.'

Servaz was feeling colder and colder.

‘The boy hanged himself too. In a ruined barn at the end of a field of wheat. I remember every detail: the summer evening, the ripe wheat and the day that seemed to go on and on, the heat baking the stone even at ten o'clock in the evening, the flies, the body in the shadow of the barn. I came over faint. They had to take me to hospital. Then I went on with the case. As I said, I've never had a more difficult matter to deal with: a terrible ordeal. The grief of the families, the incomprehension, the fear it might happen again…'

‘Does anyone know why they did it? Did they leave any explanation?'

The judge looked at Servaz with an expression that, even now, was bewildered.

‘Not the slightest idea. We never found out what had been going through their heads. Not a single one left an explanation. Obviously everyone was traumatised. You would get up in the morning afraid you would find out about another suicide. No one ever understood why it happened here, in our part of the world. And of course parents were terrified. They tried as best they could to keep an eye on their children, without the kids knowing – or they simply didn't allow them to go out. It lasted for more than a year. Seven in all.
Seven!
And then, one fine day, it stopped.'

‘What an incredible story,' said Servaz.

‘Not really all that incredible. Since then, I've heard of similar events in other countries – Wales, Quebec, Japan. Suicide pacts among teenagers. Nowadays, it's worse: they can contact each other over the Internet; they send each other messages through forums: “My life has no meaning, seek partner to die with.” I'm not exaggerating. In the case of the suicides in Wales, they found other notes among the letters of condolence and the poems, messages that said, “I'll be with you soon” … Who could imagine such a thing was possible?'

‘I think that in the world we live in now, everything is possible,' said Servaz. ‘Particularly the worst.'

An image came to his mind: a boy walking through a wheatfield with a heavy step, the setting sun at his back and a rope in his hand. All around him the birds were singing, the long summer evening was bursting with life – but in his mind there was already nothing but darkness.

The judge looked gloomily at Servaz. ‘Yes, that's also my opinion. As regards our young people, they didn't leave any explanation for what they'd done, but we do have proof that they encouraged each other to go through with it.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The gendarmerie found batches of letters in the homes of several of the suicide victims. They'd all written to each other. In their letters they spoke about their plans, how they would go about it, even their eagerness for it. The problem was that the letters were not sent by post, and they all used pseudonyms. When they were found, we decided to take the fingerprints of all the adolescents in the area between the ages of thirteen and nineteen, and compare them with the prints found on the letters. We also used a graphologist. A long, painstaking job. An entire team of investigators were on it twenty-four hours a day. Some of the letters had been written by children who had already died. But we were able to identify three new candidates. Incredible, I know. We put them under constant surveillance and had them work with a team of psychologists. One of them still managed to electrocute himself in his bathtub with a hair dryer. He was the seventh victim … The other two never went through with it.'

‘And the letters?'

‘I kept them. Do you really think there could be any connection between this business and the chemist's murder and Lombard's horse?'

‘Grimm was found hanging…' suggested Servaz cautiously.

‘And the horse, too, after a fashion…'

Servaz felt a familiar tingling: the feeling that a decisive step had been taken. But towards what? The judge stood up. He left the room and then came back a few minutes later with a heavy box filled to overflowing with documents and binders.

‘It's all here. The letters, a copy of the case file, expert evaluations. Please, don't open it here.'

Servaz nodded as he looked at the box.

‘Did they have anything in common? Other than the suicides and the letters? Did they belong to a gang, a group?'

‘Oh, you can be sure we checked into that, followed up on every lead, moved heaven and earth. No luck. The youngest one was fifteen and a half years old, the oldest eighteen; they weren't in the same class, they didn't like the same things, and they didn't take part in the same activities. Some of them knew each other well, others hardly at all. The only thing they had in common was their social background, and even then … they all came from modest or middle-class families. None of them belonged to the wealthy bourgeoisie of Saint-Martin.'

Servaz could tell how frustrated the judge must be. He could imagine the hundreds of hours he had spent following the most insignificant leads, the tiniest clues, trying to understand something so incomprehensible. The case had mattered a great deal in the life of Gabriel Saint-Cyr. Perhaps it had even been the cause of his health problems and his premature retirement. He knew the judge would take his questions with him to the grave. He would never stop wondering.

‘Are there any theories that are not in this box but that you considered?' Servaz asked suddenly, now beginning to say
tu
to the judge as well, as if his story had brought them closer together. ‘A hunch you gave up on for lack of proof?'

The judge seemed to hesitate.

‘Of course we had a great number of theories,' he said cautiously. ‘But not one had even an inkling of proof. Not one was substantial. It is the greatest mystery of my entire career. I suppose that all examining magistrates and investigators have at least one such puzzle – the case they didn't solve. The one that will haunt them until the end of their days. A case that has left them with a permanent aftertaste of frustration – and which seems to cancel out all the successes.'