The Frozen Dead (42 page)

‘Where are you?' he asked as soon as she picked up.

‘With the parents,' she said, lowering her voice, and he understood she was not alone.

‘Whereabouts?'

‘At the edge of town, why?'

In a few words, he summed up Perrault's call for help.

‘You're closer than I am,' he concluded. ‘Get there as quickly as you can! There's not a minute to lose. He's waiting for us up there.'

‘Why not alert the gendarmerie?'

‘There's no time. Hurry!'

Servaz hung up. He pulled down the sun visor stamped ‘Police,' and stuck the magnetic revolving light on the roof. He turned on the siren. How long would it take him to get up there? Gaspard Ferrand did not live in Saint-Martin but in a village five kilometres away. The streets were covered in snow. Servaz figured a good quarter of an hour to get to the car park that was right in the centre of town by the cable car station. How long would it take him to get up there? Fifteen, twenty minutes?

He took off like a shot, siren howling, before the eyes of an astonished Ferrand standing in his doorway. There was a traffic light at the end of the street. It was red. He had started to go through it when he saw an enormous lorry coming from the right. He slammed on the brakes and immediately felt the car skid out of control. The Jeep swerved sideways right in the middle of the crossroads; the steel juggernaut narrowly missed him, horns blaring. The roar seemed to burst his eardrums just as the fear struck him like a fist in his gut. It took his breath away. His knuckles went white on the wheel. He put the car into first and set off again. No time to think! Maybe it was better that way. It was not just thirty-eight tons of steel that had narrowly missed him; it was death in a tin can.

At the following crossroads he took a right and left the village. The white fields stretched away in the distance; the sky was just as threatening, but it had stopped snowing. He accelerated.

He entered Saint-Martin from the east. At the first roundabout he took the wrong exit. He turned back, swearing and hitting the steering wheel; other drivers stared at him incredulously. Fortunately there was not much traffic. Two more roundabouts. He went by a church and found himself on the avenue d'Étigny, the commercial and cultural heart of the town with hotels, chic boutiques, plane trees, a cinema and cafés. There were cars parked all along the avenue. On the sides and down the middle of the road the snow had been transformed into a dark slush by dozens of passing vehicles. Just before the cinema he turned right. An arrow indicated, ‘CABLE CARS.'

At the end of the street was a large car park, a vast esplanade in the looming shadow of the mountain. Opposite the car park its slopes rose to the sky, and a long white scar of the hanging gondolas sliced its way through the fir trees. He drove as fast as he dared past the rows of cars until he reached the lower station, where he braked abruptly, skidding again. A moment later he was outside, running up the steps to the building set on two huge concrete pillars. He hurried to the ticket window; a couple were buying tickets. Servaz flashed his card.

‘Police! How long does it take to get up there?'

The man behind the window gave him a disparaging look.

‘Nine minutes.'

‘Any way you can speed it up a bit?'

The man stared at him as if his request were completely insane.

‘To do what?' he asked.

Servaz tried to stay calm.

‘I don't have time to argue. Well?'

‘The maximum speed is five metres a second,' said the man with a scowl. ‘Eighteen kilometres an hour.'

‘Then move it, top speed!' said Servaz, jumping into one of the cabins, an egg-shaped shell with large Plexiglas windows and four tiny seats.

A pivoting arm closed the door behind him. Servaz swallowed his saliva. The car juddered on leaving the guiding rail, then dangled in space. Servaz decided it would be preferable to sit rather than stand in this unsteady shell; it rose quickly towards the first support tower, leaving the white roofs of Saint-Martin far below. He glanced briefly behind him and, as in the helicopter, he immediately regretted it. The cable was so steep that it struck him as one of those bold enterprises so common to men which are eloquent proof of their irresponsibility; and the cable was far too thin to reassure him. The roofs and streets were shrinking at an alarming rate. The gondolas ahead of him were separated from each other by thirty metres or so and swung to and fro in the wind.

He saw, down below, that the couple had decided not to go up and were headed back to their car. He was alone. No one was coming up; no one was going down. The gondolas were empty. Everything was silent, except for the wind moaning louder than ever.

Halfway up the slope they were suddenly surrounded by fog, and before he even knew what was happening, Servaz found himself in a surreal landscape of vague contours, his only company the fir trees standing in the mist like a ghostly army, and the blizzard that sent the snowflakes swirling round the gondola.

He had forgotten his weapon!
In his haste, he had left it in the car. What would happen if he found himself face to face with the killer up there? Not to mention the fact that if someone was waiting for him at the top of the gondolas and was armed, Servaz would be a sitting duck. There was nowhere to hide. This plastic shell wasn't about to stop any bullets.

He found himself praying that Ziegler had got there before him. She should be ahead of him.
She's not the sort who forgets her weapon.
How would Perrault react on seeing her? He had told Servaz to come alone.

He should have asked the know-it-all at the ticket window if he had seen her. Too late now. He was headed into the unknown at an exasperating rate of five metres a second. He took out his mobile and dialled Perrault's number; he got his voicemail.

Shit! Why had he switched off his phone?

He could make out two dark figures in a gondola on its way down, roughly two hundred metres uphill. It was the first human presence he had seen since leaving the station below. He dialled Ziegler's number.

‘Ziegler.'

‘Are you up there?' he asked.

‘No, I'm on my way.' She paused. ‘I'm sorry, Martin, my motorcycle skidded on the snow and I went flying. Nothing but scratches, but I had to borrow another car. Where are you?'

Shit!

‘Roughly halfway up.'

The cabin with the two occupants seemed to be going faster and faster, the closer it came.

‘You know there's a blizzard up there?'

‘No,' he said. ‘I didn't know. Perrault's not answering.'

‘Are you armed?'

Even from this distance, he could see that one of the people in the opposite car was staring at him, just as he was staring at them.

‘I forgot my weapon in the car.'

An oppressive silence followed.

‘Be care—'

Her words were cut off. He looked at his mobile. Nothing! He dialled the number again.
No network.
That's all he needed! He tried twice more, to no avail. Servaz could not believe his eyes. When he looked up again, the occupied gondola was even closer. One of the men was wearing a black balaclava. All he could see were his eyes and mouth. The other man was bareheaded, wearing glasses. Both of them were staring at Servaz through the glass and fog. The first one was glaring.

And the other one was terrified.

In a split second Servaz understood, and the full horror of the situation became clear.

Perrault – the tall thin fellow from the photograph, with the thick glasses.

Servaz's heart leapt in his chest. As if in a dream, the gondola was coming towards him, terrifyingly quickly now. Less than twenty metres away. In two seconds it would pass him. Another detail caught his attention: on the far side the windowpane was missing.

Perrault was staring at Servaz, his mouth gaping, his eyes wide with fear. He was screaming. Servaz could hear his screams even through the windows, in spite of the wind and the noise of the pulleys and cables. He had never seen anyone look so terrified. It was if the man was going to shatter into pieces, to split apart from one second to the next.

Servaz swallowed. The moment the gondola went by his own and moved away behind him, all the details became clear: Perrault had a rope round his neck, and the rope went through the open window and into a sort of hook on the outside, just above.
Perhaps the hook was used to rappel any injured passengers down to the ground when the gondola was at a standstill,
thought Servaz in a flash. The man in the balaclava was holding the other end of the rope. Servaz had tried to see his eyes, but he'd thrown himself behind his victim just as the two gondolas passed each other.

I must know him!
thought Servaz.
He's afraid I'll recognise him, even with a balaclava on!

He fiddled desperately with his mobile.
No network.
In a panic, he looked around the cabin for an alarm button, an interphone, something, but there was nothing. Fuck it! You could die in one of these gondolas at the speed of five metres a second! Servaz turned round to look at the retreating car. One last time his eyes met Perrault's terrified gaze. If he'd had a gun, he could at least have … Have what? What would he have done? He was a lousy shot, anyway. During the yearly tests they took, he never failed to arouse the inspector's disbelief with his dismal results. The gondola and the two men melted into the fog.

He choked back a nervous laugh. Then felt like screaming.

In a rage, he slammed his fist into one of the windows. The minutes that followed were among the longest in his life. It took five minutes more for the upper station to appear, five interminable minutes punctuated only by the ghostly parade of fir trees, erect as foot soldiers in the mist. The station was a squat little building, set on thick concrete pillars like the one below. Beyond it Servaz could see the deserted ski slopes, the stationary tow lifts and buildings buried in fog. There was a man on the platform watching him approach. The moment the door opened, Servaz leapt out. He nearly went flying onto the concrete. His card in his hand, he rushed over to the uniformed man.

‘Stop everything! Right away! Halt the cable cars!'

The cable operator shot him a stunned look from under his cap.

‘What?'

‘You can stop the gondolas, can't you?'

The wind was howling. Servaz had to shout even louder. His rage and impatience finally seemed to get through to the man.

‘Yes, but—'

‘Then stop everything! And call down below! Do you have a phone line?'

‘Yes, of course!'

‘Stop everything! Right away! And give me the telephone! Hurry!'

The operator rushed inside. He spoke feverishly into a microphone, gave Servaz a worried look, then pulled down the lever. The gondolas shuddered to a halt. Only afterwards did Servaz realise how terribly noisy it had been on the platform. He grabbed hold of the telephone and dialled the number for the gendarmerie. An orderly replied.

‘Get me Maillard! Commandant Servaz calling! Hurry!'

A minute later, Maillard was on the line.

‘I just passed the killer. He's on his way down, in one of the gondolas with his next victim. I've had them stop the cables. Take some men and get over to the gondola station! As soon as you've taken up position, we'll start them again.'

There was a moment of shock at the other end of the line.

‘Are you sure?' stammered Maillard.

‘Absolutely. The victim is Perrault. He called for help twenty-five minutes ago. He told me to meet him up there. I just passed him in a gondola that was on its way down – he had a rope round his neck, and next to him was a man wearing a balaclava!'

‘Good God! I'll give the alarm. As soon as we're ready we'll call you!'

‘Try to reach Captain Ziegler, too. My mobile isn't working.'

Maillard came back on the line after twelve minutes had passed, which Servaz had spent pacing back and forth on the platform, looking at his watch and smoking one cigarette after another.

‘We're ready,' said the gendarme on the telephone.

‘Good. I'll get the gondolas going again. Perrault and the assassin are in one of them! I'm coming!'

He motioned to the driver, then jumped into one of the gondolas. Just as it was pulling away, he could tell something was wrong. The killer had planned to push Perrault out into the void and watch him dangling from the end of a rope – and he certainly had no intention of reaching the bottom along with his victim. Servaz wondered if there was a place where the killer could jump from the moving gondola, and no sooner had he asked himself the question than he knew there must be.

Had Maillard and his men planned for such an eventuality? Were they checking all the paths leading up to the mountain?

He tried once again to dial Ziegler's number, but he got the same answer as before. As on the way up, he was moving through fog, unable to see anything but the shapes of the trees and the empty cars he met along the way. Suddenly he heard the
flap flap
of a helicopter's blades, but he could not see the aircraft. It did seem to him, however, that the noise was coming not from above but
from below.

What was going on down there? With his nose on the windowpane he tried to see through the fog. But he could see no further than twenty metres. Suddenly the gondolas came to a halt, so abruptly that he almost lost his balance. For Christ's sake! He banged his nose against the window and the pain brought tears to his eyes. What were they doing down there? He looked around. The gondolas were swinging gently on their cables, like lanterns at a village fair; the wind had dropped and the snow was falling almost vertically now. He tried once again to use his mobile, with no more luck than before.

In the three-quarters of an hour that followed he was prisoner of his plastic bubble, observing the circle of fir trees and fog. After half an hour had gone by the gondola suddenly swerved, moved three metres further along, then stopped again. Servaz swore. What were they up to? He stood up, sat back down, stood up again. There was not even room enough to stretch his legs. When at last the gondolas jerked forward, he'd been sitting down for a long time, resigned to wait.