The Frozen Dead (51 page)

I used to keep a diary. I wrote about my little life the way it used to be, day after day. I tore it up and threw it away. What would be the point of keeping a diary after THIS? Not only have those vermin ruined my future, they've also soiled my past for ever.

He understood that Alice could not bring herself to throw out these notebooks: this was perhaps the only place where the truth could be found. But at the same time she wanted to be sure that her parents would not see them. So she found a hiding place. She probably knew that after her death her parents would not touch her room. Or at least so she must have hoped. As she must have hoped, secretly, that someday someone would find the notebooks. But she could not have imagined it would take all these years and that the man who would unearth them would be a perfect stranger. In any case, she had not chosen to ‘castrate the bastards'; she had not chosen revenge.
Someone else had done it for her … Who?
Was it her father, also mourning the death of her mother? Or another parent? Or a child who had been abused but did not commit suicide, who had gone on to become an adult full of rage, filled for ever with a thirst for vengeance?

*   *   *

Once he had finished his breakfast, he went back up to his room and took two of Xavier's tablets. He felt feverish and nauseous. Fine drops of sweat were pearling on his forehead. The coffee he had just drunk was sitting on his stomach. He took a long, scalding shower, got dressed, took his mobile and went out.

The Cherokee was parked a short distance away, outside a shop that sold spirits and souvenirs. A cold, heavy rain was falling, and the streets were invaded by the sound of water rushing down the gutters. He sat behind the wheel of the Jeep and called Ziegler.

*   *   *

That morning Espérandieu picked up his phone as soon as he got to work. He called a ten-storey semicircular building located at 122, rue du Château-des-Rentiers in the 13th arrondissement in Paris. A voice with a slight accent picked up.

‘How are you, Marissa?' he asked.

Commandant Marissa Pearl belong to the BRDE, the financial crime unit, a sub-directorate of the Ministry of Finance and the Economy. Her speciality was white-collar fraud. Marissa was unbeatable when it came to tax havens, money laundering, active or passive corruption, bogus invitations to tender, embezzlement, influence peddling, mafia-like networks and multinationals. She was also an excellent teacher, and Espérandieu had been enthralled by her course at the police academy. He had asked a lot of questions. After class they had a drink together and found they had other shared interests: Japan, graphic novels, indie rock. Espérandieu had added Marissa to his list of contacts and she had done likewise: in their job, a good network could help kickstart a flagging investigation. From time to time they would get in touch via a quick email or phone call, perhaps waiting for the day when one of them would need to ask the other for a favour.

‘I've been sharpening my teeth on a big boss from the CAC 40 stock market index,' she said. ‘First job I've had this big. No need to tell you they've been trying to put a spoke in my wheel. But keep it quiet!'

‘You'll be the terror of the CAC 40, Marissa,' he reassured her.

‘What can I do for you, Vincent?'

‘Do you have anything on Éric Lombard?'

Silence on the other end. Then, ‘Well, I never! Who tipped you off?'

‘About what?'

‘Don't tell me it's a coincidence: that's the very man I'm working on, Éric Lombard. How did you find out?'

He could hear the suspicion in her voice. The cops in the financial crime unit moved in a slightly paranoid world – in the shadow of giant transnational corporations. They were only too used to dealing with corrupt politicians and high-ranking civil servants who had been bought, not to mention crooked lawyers and cops.

‘Lombard's favourite horse was killed a week or so ago. Here, in the Pyrenees. While Lombard was on a business trip to the US. The crime was followed by two murders, locally. We're thinking there's a connection between the events. That it might be revenge. So we're trying to find out as much as we can about Éric Lombard. Above all whether he has any enemies.'

She sounded somewhat more relaxed when she started speaking again.

‘Well then, you know what? You're bloody lucky!' He could tell that she was smiling. ‘We've been stirring up all sorts of muck. Someone blew the whistle on him. You can't imagine all the stuff that's coming to the surface.'

‘I suppose it's strictly confidential?'

‘Indeed. But if I come across anything that might be connected with your case, I'll let you know, all right? Two murders and a horse? What a strange story! I'm afraid I've got to go now, though.'

‘Can I count on you?'

‘You can. As soon as I have something for you, I'll pass it on. If I can ask the same of you, of course. But let's get one thing straight: I didn't say anything to you, and you don't know what I'm working on. In the meantime, here's the best one yet: in 2008 Lombard paid less in taxes than the baker downstairs from me.'

‘How is that possible?'

‘It's very simple: he has brilliant lawyers. And they know every single one of the four hundred and eighty-six tax loopholes that exist in this wonderful country of ours, mostly in the form of tax credits. The main one, obviously, being overseas loopholes. Which means more or less that overseas investments allow a tax reduction of up to sixty per cent in the industrial sector and up to seventy per cent for the renovation of hotels and yachts. Moreover, there's no limit on the amount of the investment so there's no ceiling for the reductions. We're talking investments that favour short-term gain, and couldn't care less about the project's economic viability. So of course Lombard doesn't invest at a loss, he can pull out if he has to. Add to that the tax credits he gets as a result of the international agreements on double taxation, and the purchase of artwork, and a whole bag full of accounting tricks like taking out loans to buy shares in his own group, and he doesn't need to go and set up shop in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. So in the end Lombard pays less in taxes than the bloke who earns one-thousandth what he does. Not bad, is it, for one of the ten richest men in France?'

Espérandieu recalled what Kleim162 had told him one day: the watchword of governments and international financial institutions like the IMF was to ‘create a favourable environment for investment' – in other words, to shift the tax burden from the wealthy onto the middle classes. Or, as an American billionaire imprisoned for tax fraud had cynically put it, ‘Only little people pay taxes.' Perhaps he should introduce Marissa to his contact: they were made to get along.

‘Thank you, Marissa, you've just made my day.'

He sat for a moment gazing at his screen. A scandal was about to break involving Lombard and his group. Could it have anything to do with their investigation?

*   *   *

Ziegler, Propp, Maillard, Confiant and d'Humières listened to Servaz without moving. Before them they all had croissants and bread rolls which one of the gendarmes had brought from the nearest boulangerie. They had tea, coffee, soft drinks and glasses of water. And there was something else they were all sharing: fatigue, visible on every face.

‘Alice Ferrand's diary has opened up a new lead,' concluded Servaz. ‘Or, rather, it confirms one of our theories. That of revenge. According to Gabriel Saint-Cyr, one of the leads he had after the suicides was sexual abuse. He'd had to abandon it for lack of evidence. But if we are to believe this diary, there were teens at the Les Isards holiday camp who were raped and tortured on several occasions. Which led some of them to suicide.'

‘Although you are the only one who has read the diary up to now,' remarked Confiant.

Servaz turned to Maillard, who got up and walked round the table handing out piles of photocopies. A few had already eaten their croissants, leaving crumbs everywhere; others had not touched them.

‘Obviously. For the simple reason that the diary was never meant to be read. It was very well hidden. And I only discovered it last night, as I told you. Thanks to a combination of circumstances.'

‘And what if the girl made it all up?'

Servaz spread his hands.

‘I don't think so. You'll be able to judge for yourself. It's too real, too … specific. And if that were the case, why would she have gone to such trouble to hide it?'

‘Where is all this heading?' asked the judge. ‘To a child who has grown up and is taking revenge? One of the parents? In that case, what is Hirtmann's DNA doing at the crime scenes? And where does Lombard's horse fit in? I've never seen such a muddle of an investigation!'

‘It's not the investigation that is muddled,' said Ziegler in a sharp voice, ‘it's the facts.'

Cathy d'Humières stared at Servaz for a long time, her empty cup in her hands.

‘Gaspard Ferrand would have a very good motive for these murders,' she pointed out.

‘As would all the parents of the suicide victims,' answered Servaz. ‘And as would, obviously, the young people who were raped by the foursome and who are now adults.'

‘This is a very important discovery,' said the prosecutor at last. ‘What do you suggest, Martin?'

‘Nothing has changed; the most urgent thing is to find Chaperon. That's our priority. Before the killer or killers find him. But now we know that the men did their dirty work at Les Isards. So we have to concentrate our search there, and on the suicide victims. Since we now know that there is a connection between them and our two victims, and that the connection is the camp.'

‘Even if two of the young people never stayed there?' objected Confiant.

‘It seems to me that these notebooks leave no doubt as to what happened there. Perhaps the other two adolescents were raped elsewhere, not at the camp. And should we consider them to be paedophiles? I don't really know … There doesn't seem to be any indication that they went after young children; it was more like adolescents and young adults. Does that make a difference? It's not for me to say.'

‘Boys and girls equally, judging by the list of the suicides,' said Propp. ‘But you're right, these men don't really have the profile of paedophiles; more like sexual predators with an extreme penchant for sadism and the most perverse sort of games. And beyond a shadow of a doubt, they were drawn to the youth of their prey.'

‘Fucking depraved,' said Cathy d'Humières icily. ‘How do you plan to go about finding Chaperon?'

‘I don't know,' confessed Servaz.

‘We've never been up against a situation like this,' she said. ‘I wonder if we shouldn't ask for reinforcements.'

Servaz's response surprised everybody.

‘I'm not against it. We have to find all the children who stayed at the holiday camp who are now adults, and interview them. And all the parents who are still alive. Once we manage to put a list together. It will be a painstaking job, and it will take time and means. But we haven't got time. We'll have to move quickly. So that leaves the means. We can get extra staff on this.'

‘Fine,' said d'Humières. ‘My understanding is that the crime unit in Toulouse are already swamped with investigations, so I'll call in the gendarmerie,' she said, looking at Ziegler and Maillard. ‘Anything else?'

‘The straps that were used to hang Grimm from the bridge,' said Ziegler. ‘The factory that manufactures them contacted me. They were sold through a shop in Tarbes … several months ago.'

‘In other words, we can't hope for any videotapes,' said d'Humières. ‘Do they sell a lot of them?'

‘They're a hypermarket specialising in sporting goods. The checkout assistants see dozens of customers every day, especially on the weekends. So we can't expect anything at that end.'

‘Right. Anything else?'

‘The company that handles the security at the Institute,' continued the gendarme, ‘has provided us with a list of their staff there. I've started going through it: for the time being, nothing to report.'

‘Perrault's autopsy is this afternoon,' said d'Humières. ‘Who can be there?'

Servaz raised his hand.

‘And then I'll go and see Xavier at the Institute,' he added. ‘We need an exact list of everyone in contact with Hirtmann. And we have to ring the town hall in Saint-Martin. See if they can provide us with a list of all the children who went to the holiday camp. Apparently it was run and financed by the town. So these are our two main priorities, the Institute and the holiday camp. We've got to keep digging, find out if there's a connection between the two.'

‘What kind of connection?' asked Confiant.

‘Suppose we find out that one of the young people from the holiday camp – one of the victims – is now a staff member at the Institute?'

Cathy d'Humières gave him a sharp look.

‘It's an interesting idea,' she said.

‘I'll deal with the town hall,' said Ziegler.

Servaz gave her a surprised look. She had raised her voice. That wasn't like her. He nodded.

‘Good. But our priority is to find Chaperon, wherever he's hiding. We have to question his ex-wife: she may know something. Go through his papers. There might be something in his bills, rent receipts, to lead us to his hiding place. You already have an appointment with the former Madame Chaperon this morning, so go ahead. You can go to the town hall after that.'

‘Fine. Anything else?' said d'Humières.

‘The psychological profile,' said Propp. ‘I've begun to put together a fairly precise portrait, taking into account the elements we found at the crime scenes: the hanging, the boots, Grimm's nudity and so on. But the diaries change everything. I'll have to go back to the drawing board.'