The Frozen Dead (41 page)

The first thing that struck him was the silence.

No doubt it was accentuated by the falling snow as it muffled all sound. But there was a special quality to this silence. The second thing he noticed was how cold it was. The heat had been turned off. He could not help but tremble in this room that was as silent and icy as a tomb. Because it was obvious someone had lived here once. A young girl, typical for her age.

Photos on the walls. A desk, shelves, a wardrobe. A dresser with a big mirror. The bed and two night tables. The furniture looked as if it had been found at a flea market, then repainted in bright colours, with orange and yellow dominating, in contrast to the purple walls and white carpet.

The shades on the little lamps were orange; the bed and desk were orange; the dresser and the frame around the mirror were yellow. On one of the walls was a large poster of a blond singer with ‘Kurt' written in large letters. A scarf, boots, magazines, books and CDs were scattered across the white carpet. For a long while, all he could do was soak in the chaos. Where was this impression of a rarefied atmosphere coming from? No doubt from the fact that everything was exactly as it had been, as if suspended in time. Everything except the dust. No one had bothered to put away even the tiniest object; it was as if her parents had wanted to stop time – they had turned the room into a museum, a mausoleum. Even after all these years, Alice's room gave the impression that she was about to come in at any moment and ask Servaz what he was doing there. How often over the years had Alice's father come in here and felt the same thing? Servaz thought that he would have gone mad in his shoes, knowing that this room remained untouched, confronting the daily temptation to go up the stairs and open the door once again – for the last time … He went over to the window and looked out. The street was turning white before his eyes. Then he took another breath, turned round and began his search.

Piled loose on the desk: schoolbooks, hairbands, a pair of scissors, several jars full of pencils, tissues, packets of sweets and a pink Post-it where Servaz read the following message: ‘
Library, 12.30
'; the ink had faded over time. A diary held closed with an elastic band, a calculator, a lamp. He opened the diary. On 25 April, one week before her death, Alice had written: ‘
Give Emma back her book.
' On the 29th, ‘
Charlotte.
' On the 30th, three days before hanging herself, ‘
Maths test.
' Neat round handwriting. Her hand did not tremble. Servaz turned the pages. For 11 August, she had written, ‘
Emma birthday.
' By then, Alice would have been dead for over three months. A date written long in advance … Where was Emma today? What had she become? He worked out that she would be in her thirties. Even after all these years, she must think back from time to time to that terrible year, 1993. All those deaths.

Above the desk, pinned to the wall, were a weekly timetable and a calendar. The school holidays had been highlighted with a yellow marker. Servaz's gaze paused on the fateful day: 2 May. Nothing to set it apart it from the other days. Still higher up was a wooden shelf with books, a cassette deck and judo trophies that showed that she had excelled at the sport.

He turned to the night tables. In addition to the two lamps, he saw an alarm clock, some more tissues, a Game Boy, a hair clip, nail varnish and a paperback novel with a bookmark. He opened the drawers. Fancy stationery, a little box with costume jewellery, a pack of chewing gum, a bottle of perfume, a stick of deodorant and batteries.

He groped underneath the bottom of the drawers.

Nothing.

In the desk there were binders, notebooks and schoolbooks, masses of pens, markers and paper clips. In the middle drawer, a spiral notebook full of sketches. Servaz opened it: he could see that Alice was genuinely talented. Her drawings in pencil or felt tip showed she had a sure hand and a sharp eye, even if most of them still suffered from a certain caution. In the bottom drawer, more elastic bands, a nail clipper, several lipsticks and a hairbrush to which a few blonde hairs still clung, but also a tube of aspirin, menthol cigarettes and a transparent cigarette lighter. Servaz opened the binders and notebooks from the top drawer: homework, essays, rough drafts. He put them to one side and went over to the little stereo on the floor in a corner. It was both a CD player and a radio, and was also covered in a thick layer of dust. Servaz blew on it, stirring up a grey cloud; then he opened the compartments one by one. Nothing. He went over to the big mirror and the wall of photographs. Some of them had been taken so close up that their subjects seemed to be sticking their nose into the camera lens. In others he could see landscapes behind the people in the photograph: mountains, a beach, even the columns of the Parthenon. Girls Alice's age, most of the time. Always the same faces. Occasionally one or two boys joined the group. But the photographer did not seem to have singled out any particular face. Were these school trips? Servaz took a long time studying the prints. They had all turned yellow and curled with age.

What exactly was he looking for? His gaze lingered on one of the photographs. A dozen or so young people, including Alice, standing next to a rusty sign. Les Isards Holiday Camp …
Alice was one of those who had stayed at the camp.
He also noticed that on the photographs where she appeared, Alice was always in the centre. The prettiest girl, the most luminous – the centre of attention.

The mirror.

It was cracked.

Someone had thrown something at it, and the projectile had left a crazed impact with a long crack. Was it Alice? Or her father, in a moment of despair?

There were yellowed postcards stuck between the frame and the mirror, sent from destinations like the Île de Ré, Venice, Greece or Barcelona. Over time, some had fallen onto the dresser or the carpet. One of them drew his attention. ‘
Rotten weather, I miss you.
' Signed Emma. A Palestinian scarf on the dresser, along with trinkets, round cotton make-up pads and a blue shoebox. Servaz opened it. Letters … A tremor went through him as he remembered the letters from the suicide victims that were in Saint-Cyr's box. He examined them one by one. Naive or funny letters written in purple or violet ink. Always the same signatures. He could not find the slightest reference to what was about to happen. He would have to compare the handwriting with that of the letters in the box; then he told himself it must have been done already. Now for the dresser drawers. He lifted up piles of T-shirts, underwear, sheets and blankets. Then he knelt on the carpet and looked under the bed. Huge dustballs, enough to stuff an entire quilt, and a guitar case.

He pulled the case out into the light and opened it. There were scratches on the finish of the instrument, and the B string was broken. Servaz glanced inside it: nothing. A quilt made of coloured lozenges covered the bed. He lingered over the CDs scattered on top: Guns N' Roses, Nirvana, U2. The room was like a museum devoted to the 1990s. No Internet, no computer, no mobile phone.
The world is changing too quickly now for a single lifespan,
he thought. He lifted the pillows, sheets and bedspread, and ran his hand under the mattress. No perfume, no particular scent emanated from the bed, other than the dust that covered it and drifted to the ceiling.

There was a little Voltaire chair next to the bed. Someone (Alice?) had painted it orange as well. An old military jacket lay over the back. He patted under the seat but did not manage to disturb anything other than a new cloud of dust; then he sat down and looked around him, trying to let his thoughts wander.

What did he see?

A young girl's bedroom; a young girl who was typical for her time but also mature for her age.

Among the books, Servaz had noticed
The Possessed
and
Crime and Punishment,
as well as Marcuse's
One-Dimensional Man.
Who had recommended these books to her? Surely not her little classmates with their chubby faces. Then he remembered that her father was a literature professor. Once again he looked around.

The dominant feature in this room,
he thought,
is the
texts,
the
words. The words in the books, on the postcards, in the letters … All written by other people. Where were Alice's words? Would a girl who expressed herself through her guitar and her drawings, who devoured books really never have felt the need to express herself in words as well? Alice's life had ended on 2 May, and there was no trace anywhere of the final days of her life.
It's impossible,
he thought. No diary, nothing: something didn't fit. How could a curious, intelligent girl that age, who must have had an almost inexhaustible reserve of profound questions, particularly if she were desperate enough to put an end to her life, not have kept some sort of journal? Surely she would have recorded her thoughts somewhere? These days teenagers had blogs, noticeboards and pages on social networks, but in the old days only paper and ink could provide a space for their questioning, their doubts and their secrets.

He stood up and went through all Alice's notebooks and drawers one by one. Nothing but schoolwork. He glanced at her essays. Nothing but the highest marks, 15–19 out of 20. The teachers' comments were as full of praise as the marks themselves.
But there were no personal words.

Had Alice's father gone through and cleaned up?

He had welcomed Servaz quite spontaneously, and told him that he was convinced the children had put an end to it all for a specific reason. Why would he hide anything that might have helped them to discover the truth? Servaz had found no mention of any diaries in the official papers, either. There was nothing to show that Alice had even kept one. But in spite of that, the impression was stronger than ever: something, in this room, was missing.

A hiding place
 … All young girls had one, didn't they? Where was Alice's?

Servaz got up and opened the wardrobe. On the hangers were coats, dresses, jackets, jeans and a white judo outfit with a brown belt. He spread them apart, one by one, and went through all the pockets. A row of shoes and boots along the bottom: Servaz checked inside with the beam of his little pocket torch. Above the hangers was a shelf with several suitcases and a backpack. He set them down on the carpet, freeing up a veritable tornado of dust, then searched them methodically.

Nothing. He paused to think.

The room must have been gone over by crack investigators – perhaps by Alice's parents themselves. Could it be they hadn't found a hiding place, if there was one? Had they even looked for one? Everyone had agreed, Alice was a brilliant girl. Had she devised the ultimate undetectable hiding place? Or was he headed down the wrong path?

What did he really know about the thoughts and dreams of a sixteen-year-old girl? His own daughter had turned seventeen a few months earlier, and he would have been at a loss to describe her room – for the simple reason that he had never set foot in it. The very thought made him feel queasy. At the edge of his brain something was tickling him, an itch. There was something he had missed while exploring the room. Or there was something that should have been here and wasn't.
Think!
It was there, so close, he could feel it. His instinct told him that something was missing. What? What? He looked all around the room again. He went over every single possibility. He had examined everything, including the skirting boards and the slats of the parquet floor underneath the white carpet. There was nothing. Yet his unconscious had sensed something, of that he was sure – even if he couldn't put his finger on it.

He sneezed from all the dust floating in the air, and pulled out a tissue.

Then Servaz remembered his mobile.

There had been no calls! An hour had gone by and not a single call. He felt his stomach form a knot. Damn it, what the fuck was the strange caller doing? Why hadn't he rung?

Servaz took his mobile out of his pocket and looked at it. He stifled a sense of panic: the stupid thing was switched off. He tried to turn it on: no battery! Shit!

He rushed out of the room and hurried noisily down the stairs. Gaspard Ferrand peered out of the kitchen as Servaz bolted past him in the corridor.

‘I'll be back!' he shouted, opening the front door without stopping.

Outside a blizzard was raging. The wind had picked up. The pavement was white and the snowflakes were whirling.

He hurried to unlock the Jeep, and rummaged in the glove compartment for the charger. Then he ran back to the house.

‘It's nothing!' he said to a stunned Ferrand.

He hunted for a socket, found one in the corridor and plugged in the charger.

He waited five seconds and switched on the phone. Four messages!

He was about to read the first one when the telephone rang.

‘Servaz!' he shouted.

‘Where have you been, for fuck's sake!'

A voice in a total panic, almost as panicked as his own. His ears were buzzing with the blood pounding in his temples. The man wasn't disguising his voice, this time – but he didn't recognise it.

‘Who is this?'

‘My name is Serge Perrault. I'm a friend of—'

Perrault!

‘I know who you are!' he interrupted.

There was a brief silence.

‘I have to speak to you right away!' shouted Perrault.

His voice was hysterical.

‘Where are you?' shouted Servaz. ‘Where?'

‘Meet me at the top of the cable cars in fifteen minutes. Hurry!'

Servaz felt another surge of panic.

‘Which cable cars?'

‘The ones up in Saint-Martin 2000, near the ski lifts! I'll be there. Get a move on, bloody hell! Don't you understand, it's my turn! Come alone!'

19

The sky was dark and the streets were white when Servaz turned the ignition. Outside the snow was coming down heavily. He started the windscreen wipers. Then he rang Ziegler.