Blood-Red Rivers aka The Crimson Rivers

CHAPTER 57

Eight o'clock in the morning. The landscape was black, shifting, unreal. The rain had started to pour down again, as though to give the mountain a final polish before daybreak. Translucent shafts broke through the shadows like funnels of glass.

Under the boughs of a huge conifer, Karim Abdouf and Pierre Niémans were standing face to face, one leaning on his Audi, the other against the tree. They were stock still, concentrated, as taut as wires. The Arab cop observed the superintendent, who was slowly recovering his strength, or rather his nerves, thanks to the effect of the amphetamine. He had just described the murderous attack of the Range Rover. But Abdouf was pressing him to tell the whole tale.

Through the din of the downpour, Pierre Niémans began: "Yesterday evening, I went to the home for the blind."

"On the trail of Eric Joisneau. Yes, I know. And what did you find out?"

"The director, Champelaz, told me that he looked after children who had contracted hereditary diseases. And that they always came from the same families, those of the university elite. Champelaz explained the phenomenon this way: it's an academic community which, through its isolation, has worn thin its blood and become genetically poor. The children born today are destined to be extremely brilliant and highly cultivated, but physically weak and impoverished. From one generation to the next, the blood of the university has become corrupted."

"But what's that got to do with the case?"

"At first sight, nothing. Joisneau had paid a call over there to find out about eye problems, which might have some link with the mutilation of the bodies. But that wasn't the point. Not at all. Champelaz also told me that this inbred community had also been producing extremely vigorous offspring over the last twenty years or so. Intelligent kids, who were also capable of walking off with all the sports prizes. Now, this fact doesn't fit in at all with the rest of the scenario. How can the same community produce a line of runts and also a batch of absolute supermen? Champelaz had looked into the origins of these remarkable kids. He consulted their medical records at the maternity clinic. He examined their backgrounds in the hospital archives. He even had a look at the birth papers of their parents and grandparents in the hope of finding some indication, some genetic clue. But he found nothing. Absolutely nothing."

"And then?"

"Then, last summer, something strange happened. In July, a routine investigation in the hospital archives turned up some old papers, which had been forgotten in the basement of the old library. What were they? The birth papers of those very parents and grandparents of our supermen."

"Which means?"

"That there were two copies of these sheets. Or, to be more precise, that the records Champelaz had looked at in the official files were forgeries, and that the genuine papers were the ones that had just been discovered in some boxes belonging to the university's chief librarian: Etienne Caillois, Rémy's father."

"Shit."

"Quite. Logically speaking, Champelaz should then have compared the records he'd already examined with the ones that had just turned up. But he didn't. He didn't have time. Or couldn't be bothered. Or, more like, was scared. Of finding out the horrible truth about the Guernon community. So, I compared them."

"And what did you find?"

"That the official records had been forged. Etienne Caillois had imitated the handwriting and, each time, changed one detail in comparison with the originals."

"Which was?"

"Always the same one – the baby's weight at birth. So that the figure would match the data in the rest of the file, when the nurses weighed the baby again during the next few days."

"I don't get it."

Niémans leant forward. His voice was expressionless.

"Listen to me carefully, Karim. Etienne Caillois forged the first pages in the file to conceal something inexplicable: in these records, the weight of the baby was never the same the next day. The infants lost or gained several hundred grams in one night. I went to the maternity clinic and asked an obstetrician. He told me that such rapid changes are impossible. So, I took the only explanation left: it wasn't the weight which had changed in one night, but the baby. That was the terrible truth which old man Caillois had been trying to conceal. He, or more likely, old man Sertys, a night auxiliary at the Guernon University Hospital, swapped over babies in the delivery room."

"But…why?"

Niémans grinned horribly. The rain, blown in on the wind, was slapping at his face like a flail. His voice was wearing thin on the rock of his conviction.

"To regenerate a worn-out community, to pump new, vigorous, healthy blood into the intellectual community. Caillois's and Sertys's technique was simple: they replaced certain babies born to university families with children from the mountain stock, who'd been selected according to their parents' physical profile. In that way, strapping, powerful bodies suddenly became part of Guernon's academic circle. New blood percolated into the old in the only place where the inaccessible university elite crossed the path of humble farmers – the maternity clinic. A clinic which handled all of the children of the region and which made these exchanges possible. I then guessed that Caillois and Sertys shared a common goal. Not only did they want to regenerate the professors' precious blood, they also wanted to engineer a breed of perfect beings. Supermen. People as beautiful as those in the photographs of the Berlin Olympics, which I'd noticed in Caillois's flat. And people as brilliant as Guernon's most distinguished academics. That's when I realised that those lunatics wanted to bring together the gray matter of Guernon and the bodily vigor of the outlying villages, to fuse together the academics' brain power and the natives' physical prowess. If I have understood correctly, they perfected their system to such an extent that they not only programed the births, but also the couples, by setting up marriages between selected youngsters"

Karim swallowed down these pieces of information one by one. He seemed to be silently, intently digesting them. Meanwhile, Niémans's feverish monologue went on:

"So how to make the right people meet? How to organise the marriages? I thought about the jobs Caillois and Sertys did, and the limited responsibilities they held. I was sure that it was precisely thanks to their obscure, humble positions that they had been able to carry out their scheme. You remember what was written in that exercise book? `We are the masters, we are the slaves. We are everywhere, we are nowhere.' This seemed to imply that despite their lowly jobs, or rather because of them, they were able to control the destinies of the inhabitants of an entire region. They were lackeys, but they were also in charge. Sertys was a mere auxiliary nurse, but he changed the fates of the area's babies by swapping them over in their cots. As for the Caillois family, they set about organising the next part of the program – the arranged marriages. But how? How did they go about it? I then remembered Caillois's personal files in the library. We had checked which books had been consulted. We had also gone through the names of the kids who had read them. There was just one thing we hadn't looked at: where the readers sat, those little carrels where the students work. So I hurried back to the library and compared the lists of seating positions with the falsified birth papers. They went back over thirty, forty, even fifty years, but the whole thing matched, down to the last name. The kids who had been swapped over were always placed in the reading-room facing the same members of the opposite sex – who were offspring coming from the most brilliant families on the campus. I then did some checking at the registry office. Things didn't fit precisely, but most of those couples who had met in the library, through the glass panels of their carrels, had subsequently got married. Which means I was right. The `masters' had first changed the kids' identities, then arranged who they would meet. They placed the swap-overs – mountain dwellers' children – in front of bright sparks who were the real offspring of the academic community. And so they gave birth to a superior cross-breed, bringing together the `body' blood and the `brain' blood. And it worked, Karim. Our university champions are none other than the children of those programed couples."

Abdouf remained silent. His thoughts were crystallising, as sharp and daggered as the needles from the larches as they mingled with the raindrops.

Niémans continued:

"I put the pieces together and, little by little, completed the jigsaw. I then realised that I was following the same path that the killer had taken, that the story about those old papers turning up in the library, which had been mentioned in the press, had tipped the murderer off. He must have compared the two sets of documents as well. I suppose he must already have had his doubts about the origins of Guernon's `champions' and is almost certainly one of the champions himself. One of those lunatics' creatures. He then worked out how the conspiracy functioned. He followed Rémy Caillois, the son of the man who'd stolen the birth papers, and discovered his secret relationship with Sertys and Chernecé…Who, I reckon, was only an extranumerary. A nutty doctor who had, while treating blind kids, stumbled on the truth and decided to join the genetic engineers rather than turn them in. So, our killer unearthed the three of them and went about wiping them out. He tortured the first victim, Rémy Caillois, in order to get the whole story.

He then simply mutilated and killed the other two."

Karim stiffened. His entire frame was trembling under his leather jacket.

"Just because they did a bit of baby swapping? And got couples together?"

"There's something you don't know. The villagers in the surrounding mountains suffer from an extremely high infant mortality rate. This fact is inexplicable, particularly as they are strong and healthy. But we can now guess the reason. Not only did the Sertys family swap babies over, but they also smothered the kids who were supposed to have been born to the villagers – but who were really the academics' runts. By depriving the mountain folk of their offspring, they were certain that they would try again and so provide even more fresh blood to be poured into the valley's academic families. They were fanatics, Karim. Madmen and murderers from father to son, ready to do anything in order to create their superior race"

Karim panted hoarsely:

"If these murders are revenge killings, why are the victims mutilated in such a precise way?"

"It's symbolic. The idea is to wipe out the victims' biological identities, to destroy the signs of their origin. Which also explains why the bodies were positioned in such a way that they were first discovered via their reflections, and not their actual forms. It was another means to dematerialise the victims, to disembody them. Caillois, Sertys and Chernecé robbed people of their identities. And they were made to pay in the same coin. As though it was an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

Abdouf got to his feet and went over to Niémans. The rain-laden wind beat against their ghostly faces. The condensation formed a pale mist around their heads, Niémans's bony crew cut, and Abdouf's long, soaking wet dreadlocks.

"You're one hell of a cop, Niémans."

"No, Karim, I'm not. Because even if I found out the killer's motive, I still don't know who it is."

The Arab sniffed icily.

"No, but I do."

"What?"

"It all fits together now. You remember my own investigation? Those demons who wanted to obliterate Judith's face because it was a piece of evidence, proof against them? Well, those demons were none other than the victims' fathers, Etienne Caillois and René Sertys, and I know why they had to wipe out Judith's face at any price. It was because that face was going to give the game away, to show up the nature of the blood-red rivers and this business of exchanging babies."

It was now Niémans's turn to be astonished.

"Because Judith Hérault had a twin sister, who had been swapped over."

CHAPTER 58

The rain seemed to be abating at the approach of dawn as Karim began his explanations. He spoke in a serious, neutral tone of voice, his dreadlocks hanging down like an octopus's tentacles in the early light.

"You said that the conspirators picked out the babies that interested them according to their parents' profile. They were obviously looking for the strongest, most agile kids the slopes had to offer. They were after mountain creatures, snow leopards. And so they must have noticed Fabienne and Sylvain Hérault, a young couple living in Taverlay, in the heights of the Pelvoux, at an altitude of over five thousand four hundred feet. She was six feet tall, a giantess and splendid with it. A dedicated primary school teacher. A virtuoso pianist. Silent, graceful, vigorous and lyrical. Believe me, Fabienne was already a bit of a strange breed herself.

"As for her husband, Sylvain, I don't have so much info about him. He spent his life on the tops of the mountains, digging precious crystals out of the rocks. A real giant, too, who made no bones about clambering up the highest, most inaccessible peaks.

"And, superintendent, if our conspirators were going to steal one baby from the entire region, then it was obviously going to be this extraordinary couple's kid, whose genes contained the strange secrets of those lofty heights.

"I'm sure that, like true genetic vampires, they waited impatiently for a babe to come along. Then, on 22 May, 1972, the long-awaited night finally arrived. The Héraults turn up at Guernon University Hospital. That enormous, beautiful woman was on the point of giving birth. But after a pregnancy of only seven months. The child is going to be premature.

"Still, the midwives reckon that there won't be any insoluble problems.

"But, things don't go as planned. The child is in the wrong position. They call in an obstetrician. The machines start beeping like crazy. It's two in the morning on 23 May. And the medic and the midwife end up sorting the chaos out. Fabienne Hérault is not about to have one child, but two – a pair of homozygous twins, who are wrapped up together in her uterus like two halves of a walnut.

"They anaesthetise Fabienne. The doctor carries out a caesarean and manages to extricate the babies. Two tiny little girls, as identical as peas in a pod. They've got breathing problems. So they're urgently given to a nurse who takes them away to an incubator. Niémans, I can see in my mind's eye those latex-gloved hands that picked up those girls, just like I was there. Jesus. Those hands belonged to René Sertys, Philippe's father.

"He's totally out of his depth. His job was to make off with the Hérault couple's kid, but now there are two of them. What is he supposed to do next? As he washes those premature twins down, he breaks out into a sweat – they are two perfect miniature specimens, two masterpieces for Guernon's new blood bank. In the end, he puts them in an incubator and decides to swap just one of them over. Nobody's had a good look at their faces yet. In all that gory panic in the theater, nobody's noticed if they really are alike. So Sertys risks it. He plucks one of the twins out of the incubator and exchanges her with a little girl who's been born to one of the academic families, and who more or less resembles the Hérault kids – same size, same blood group, approximately the same weight.

"He now realises that he's got to pluck up his courage and kill the other baby. He's got no choice. He can't let a so-called twin survive, who has nothing at all in common with her sister. So he smothers her, then calls out in fake panic to the doctors and nurses. He plays his part excellently. The remorse… My God, however did it happen? I just don't know… I just don't know… Neither the obstetrician nor the pediatricians have a clear opinion. It's another one of those sudden cot deaths that have been afflicting the mountain villagers for the last fifty-odd years. The hospital staff reconcile themselves to the fact that at least one of the girls has survived. Meanwhile, Sertys has a happy laugh to himself. The other Hérault is now part and parcel of the Guernon clan, via its adopted family.

"I worked all this out thanks to your discoveries, Niéman. Because the woman I spoke to earlier tonight, Fabienne Hérault, still knows nothing about this insane conspiracy. And on the night in question she saw nothing, and heard nothing. She was under the effects of the anesthetic.

"When she wakes up the next morning, she's told that she has given birth to twin girls, but only one of them has survived. Do we grieve for someone whose existence we hadn't even suspected? Fabienne accepts the news with resignation – but she and her husband feel totally confused. A week later, she's allowed to go home along with her little girl, who's now brimming with life.

"Somewhere inside that clinic, Rene Sertys watches the couple as they leave. In their arms, they are holding the double of a baby he's swapped over, but he knows that that wild couple live over thirty miles away and have no reason whatsoever to come back to Guernon. By letting that second child live, Sertys has taken a risk, but it's only a slight one. He supposes that the twin's face will never return to unmask the conspiracy.

But he was wrong about that.

"Eight years later, Taverlay School, where Fabienne teaches, closes down. She is then transferred – the only coincidence in this entire business – to Guernon's prestigious Lamartine School, the place where the children of the university's lecturers go.

"So it is that Fabienne discovers something weird, incredible. In the CE2 class which Judith attends, there is another Judith. A little girl who's the carbon copy of her daughter. When she's recovered from the shock – the school photographer meanwhile has time to take a class photo, in which both of them can be seen – Fabienne thinks things out. And there's only one possible explanation. That identical child, that double, must be Judith's twin sister, who has in fact survived and was, for some strange reason, given to another family.

"Off she goes to the maternity clinic and explains what's on her mind. She's greeted with icy suspicion. But Fabienne is a hard woman and not one to let herself be easily intimidated. She insults the doctors, she calls them baby snatchers and says she'll be back. Rene Sertys presumably witnesses this scene and senses danger. But Fabienne is already long gone. She's decided to go and see the university family who are supposed to be the second twin's parents. Her usurpers. She cycles off with Judith toward the campus.

"Then, suddenly, terror strikes. As night begins to fall, a car tries to run them down. Fabienne and her daughter roll down into a ditch on the side of the rock face. Hidden in the ravine, with her child in her arms, she sees the killers. Two men, holding guns, leap out of their car. Horrified, Fabienne wonders what is going on. Why this sudden outbreak of violence?

"The murderers finally give up their search and leave, presumably under the impression that mother and daughter have fallen to their deaths. That night, Fabienne goes and sees her husband, who still lodges in Taverlay during the week. She explains what has happened. She thinks they absolutely must tell the police. But Sylvain disagrees. He wants to get the bastards who tried to kill his wife and daughter himself.

"He takes a gun, gets on his bike and goes down into the valley, where he comes up against the killers much more quickly than he would have liked. They're still out on the prowl, spot him on the road and run him down. They drive over the body several times, then make their escape. Meanwhile, Fabienne has taken refuge in Taverlay church. She waits for Sylvain all night. The next morning, she learns that her husband has been killed by a hit-and-run driver. She immediately realises that her children have been victims of some sort of manipulation and that the men who eliminated her husband will also do away with her if she doesn't disappear at once.

"She and her daughter go into hiding.

"You know the rest. How the mother and daughter holed up in Sarzac, over one hundred and eighty miles away from Guernon. How they fled again when Etienne Caillois and René Sertys came looking for them. Fabienne's attempts to wipe out all trace of her child, convinced that she was the victim of a curse, then the car accident in which Judith finally died.

"Since that time, the mother has lived a life of prayer. Several possible explanations occurred to her. But her main hypothesis was that her second twin's adopted parents, a powerful and evil university family, had organised this whole plot in order to replace the daughter they had lost and that they were quite capable of murdering her and Judith so as to cover up their tracks. She never worked out the truth, the real reason for this exchange. Or the real reason why the two conspirators hunted her and her daughter down across the whole of France, for fear that she would reveal this terrifying scheme and that her child's face would be a vital piece of evidence.

"Our two investigations have now joined un like two rails leading to death, Niémans. Your hypothesis corroborates mine. Yes, the killer looked through the stolen papers this summer. Yes, the killer followed Caillois, then Sertys, then Chernecé. Yes, the killer uncovered the plot and decided to exact a terrible revenge. And that killer is none other than Judith's twin sister.

"A homozygous twin who acted just as Judith would have done, because she now knows the truth about her origins. That's why she uses a piano wire, as a reminder of her real mother's virtuoso talents. That's why she killed her victims in the rocky heights, there where her own father used to dig out crystals. That's why her own fingerprints could have been mistaken for Judith's…We're looking for her blood sister, Niémans."

"Who is she?" Niémans exploded. "What new name was she given?"

"I don't know. Her mother refused to tell me. But I've got her face."

"Her face?"

"A photograph of Judith, aged eleven. And so, since they are completely identical, of the murderer. I reckon that with this picture we can…"

Niémans was trembling spasmodically.

"Show it to me. Quick!"

Karim produced the photo and handed it to him.

"She's our killer, superintendent. She's avenging her dead sister. She's avenging her murdered father. She's avenging those smothered babies, those cheated families, all those messed up generations for the last fifty-odd years…What's up, Niémans?"

The photo was twitching up and down in the superintendent's hands as he stared at it, his teeth clenched fit to shatter. Suddenly, Karim caught on and leant over toward him. He clutched his shoulder.

"Jesus Christ, you know her, don't you, superintendent?"

Niémans let the photo drop into the mud. He looked as though he was about to lose his wits completely. His broken voice croaked:

"Alive. We've got to capture her alive."

CHAPTER 59

The two cops headed off through the rain. Gasping in shallow breaths, they did not exchange another word. They crossed several police road-blocks. The early dawn patrols glanced at them suspiciously. Neither of them suggested the idea of getting help. Niémans was off the case and Karim out of his patch. But still they both knew that this case was theirs, and nobody else's.

They reached the campus. They drove along its tarmac tracks, past its gleaming lawns, before parking and clambering up to the top floor of the main building. They strode on together down to the end of the corridor and, hidden either side of the frame, knocked on the door. No answer. They smashed open the lock and went inside.

Niémans brandished his Remington shotgun, loaded to the gills, which he had recovered from the police station. Karim was holding his Glock, pressed against his wrist by his torch. Two parallel beams of light and death.

Nobody.

They had just started a thorough search, when Niémans's pager bleeped. He was to call Marc Costes as soon as possible. He did so. His hands were still shaking and a terrible pain was gnawing at his innards. The young medic's voice was chirpy:

"Niémans? I'm with Barnes. Just to tell you that we've found Sophie Caillois."

"Alive?"

"Oh yes, very much alive. She was heading for Switzerland on the train."

"Has she said anything?"

"She says that she's the next victim. And that she knows who the killer is."

"Has she given you the name?"

"She'll only speak to you, superintendent."

"Keep her under close guard. Don't let anybody speak to her. Don't let anybody go near her. I'll be there in an hour's time."

"In an hour? You're…you're onto something?"

"Good-bye."

"Wait! Is Abdouf with you?"

Niémans chucked the cell phone to the young lieutenant and went back to his rapid explorations. Karim fixed his attention on the medic's voice:

"I've got the note of the piano wire for you," the pathologist said. "B flat?"

"How did you guess?"

Karim hung up without answering. He looked at Niémans, who was staring at him from behind his rain-splattered spectacles.

"We're not going to find anything here," he exclaimed, striding toward the door. "Let's head for the gym. It's her hide-out."

The door of the gymnasium, an isolated building standing away from the campus, put up no resistance. The two men burst inside and spread out in a semi-circle. Karim was still holding his Glock just above the beam of his torch. As for Niémans, he had turned on the spot fixed on the top of his gun, following the line of the barrel.

Nobody.

They clambered over the floor mats, scrambled under the parallel bars and stared up into the darkness, where rings and knotted ropes hung down from the ceiling. Silence, as of the grave. The smell of cold sweat and ageing rubber. Shadows, patterned over with symmetric shapes, wooden forms and metal struts. Niémans stumbled into a trampoline. Karim immediately spun round. A moment's tension. A brief look. Both of them could sense the other's nerves giving off sparks like flints. Niémans whispered:

"It's here. I'm sure it's here."

Karim peered around again, then focused on the pipes of the central heating system. He walked alongside them, listening to the constant pumping of the boiler. He straddled a set of dumbbells and punch balls and managed to reach a grille of greasy metal bars, which was positioned plumb with the foam matting covering the walls. Without bothering about making a noise, he pulled away the grille and tore down the foam. This barrier concealed the doorway to the boiler room.

He fired one bullet into the notched opening of the lock. With an explosion of shards and metal splinters, the door blew off its hinges. He finished off the job by crushing the panel down with his heel.

Inside, everything was dark.

He stuck his head through, then immediately pulled it back. He was ghastly white. The two men dived in together.

A pungent stench gripped their nostrils.

Blood.

Blood on the walls, on the cast-iron pipes, on the rings of bronze lying on the floor. Blood on the ground, mopped up by handfuls of talcum powder, lying in stagnant, lumpy pools. Blood on the bulging sides of the boiler.

The two men had no desire to be sick, it was as if their minds were detached from their bodies, suspended in terrified astonishment. They went further inside, flashing their torches around them. Piano wires glistened, twisted about the piping. Jerry-cans of gasoline lay on the ground, corked with stoppers of blood-stained cloth. The bars of the dumb-bells were stuck with scraps of dry flesh and dark blood clots. Rusty carpet cutters had been abandoned in puddles of solidified gore.

As they ventured further and further inside, the wobbling beams from their torches showed up the panic that was gripping their limbs. Niémans spotted some colored objects on a bench. He knelt down. Iceboxes. He pulled one of them over to him and opened it. Without saying a word, he shone his spotlight into it for Karim's benefit.

Eyes.

Pale and bulbous, glittering with dewy brightness on a bed of ice.

Niémans was already opening another icebox. This one contained the blue forms of frozen hands. Their nails were darkened with blood, their wrists marked with incisions. The superintendent drew back. Karim took him by the shoulders and groaned.

They both now realised that they were no longer in a mere boiler room. They had entered inside the murderer's mind. Within her secret lair, where she had decided to slay the baby-killers.

Karim's voice rang out, piercingly:

"She's long gone. Nowhere near Guernon."

"No," Niémans replied, getting to his feet. "She wants Sophie Caillois. The last name on her list. They've just brought Sophie into the station. And I'm sure she'll find out – or knows already – and is going to go looking for her."

"With all those road-blocks? She won't be able to make a single move without being spotted and…"

Karim fell silent. The two men looked at each other, their faces lit up by the rising beams of their torches. With one voice, they murmured:

"The river."

The obvious place was on the edge of the campus. There, where Caillois's body had been discovered. There, where the current fell away into a small lake, before resuming its course once more toward the town.

The two policemen drove down to this limit, skidding over the grass slopes, taking the one that led down to the river bank. Suddenly, as Karim was braking alongside the stone parapet, in the light of their headlamps they saw a figure dressed in a black, glimmering oilskin, and wearing a small rucksack. A face turned round and froze in the blinding beam of light. Karim recognised the helmet and the balaclava. The young woman was untying a long red inflatable dinghy, and pulling it toward her with the rope, as though mastering a frisky horse.

Niémans muttered:

"Don't shoot. And keep your distance. I'm arresting her on my own."

Before Karim had time to reply, the superintendent had leapt out of the car and dashed down the last few feet of the slope. The lieutenant brought the car to a standstill, turned off the engine and watched. In the ray of the headlights, he saw the superintendent running toward her and yelling:

"Fanny!"

The young woman was getting into the raft. Niémans grabbed her by the collar and yanked her back toward him. Karim sat there frozen, as though hypnotised by the strange ballet those two figures were performing. He saw them embrace – at least that was what it looked like. He saw the woman throw her head back, then bridle up in a savage movement. He saw Niémans stiffen, arch over, then draw his gun. Blood was spurting from his lips and Karim realised that she had just ripped his guts out with a stab from a carpet cutter. He heard the muffled sound of the shots, Niémans's MR73 finishing off its prey, while the two figures were still gripped together in a kiss of death.

"No!"

Karim's scream died in his throat. Gun in hand, he ran toward the couple who were now swaying by the edge of the lake. He tried to shout again. He wanted to run faster, to run back through time. But he was too late to stop the inevitable. Pierre Niémans and the woman tumbled down with a ghastly splash.

When he reached the bank, it was only to see the two bodies being carried away by the gentle current toward the outlet. The interlocked corpses floated gracefully and sweetly on past the rocks before vanishing into the river which ran down to the town.

The young cop remained motionless, staring fixedly at the current, listening to the rushing of the foam, which murmured on behind the rocks beyond the edge of the lake. But then, suddenly, as though in a never-ending nightmare, he felt the blade of the carpet cutter dig into his throat, piercing his flesh.

A swift hand passed under his arm and made off with his Glock, which he had put back into his holster.

"Nice to see you again, Karim."

The voice was soft. As soft as a ring of pebbles placed on top of a tombstone. Slowly, Karim turned round. In the gloomy light, he immediately recognised that oval face, that dark complexion, those bright eyes, misted over with tears.

He knew that he was standing in front of Judith Hérault, the doppelganger of the woman Niémans had called "Fanny". The little girl he had been looking for so long.

The little girl who had grown into a woman.

And who was very much alive.

CHAPTER 60

"There were two of us, Karim. There were always two of us"

It took the lieutenant a moment before he was able to pronounce a word. He finally murmured:

"Tell me, Judith. Tell me everything. If I have to die, I want to know the truth first."

Her hands clenched round the Glock, the young woman was still crying. She was wearing a black oil-skin, diver's leggings and a dark close-fitting fiber-glass helmet, which sat like a hand poised over her head of wild curly hair.

She suddenly started to speak:

"In Sarzac, when Maman realised that the demons were after us, she also worked out that we'd never be free of them…That the demons would always be on our trail, and that they'd end up killing me…And so she had a brilliant idea…She reckoned that the only place they'd never come looking for me would be in the shadow of my twin sister, Fanny Ferreira…In the very heart of her life…She reckoned that the two of us, my twin and me, should live one single life together, unbeknown to everyone else."

"And the other parents…Did they play along?"

Judith laughed fleetingly, between her sobs.

"No, you idiot…Fanny and I had got to know each other at Lamartine School…And we didn't want to be separated…So my sister agreed to the idea at once…That we'd both live one life as two people, in the greatest possible secrecy. But the first thing to do was to get rid of the killers, once and for all. We had to make them believe I was dead. Maman arranged the whole thing to make it look as though we were running away from Sarzac…Whereas, in fact, she was leading them toward our trap – that car accident…"

Karim had to admit that he, too, had fallen into the same trap fourteen years later. His opinion of himself as a brilliant cop suddenly collapsed. If he had been able to retrace Fabienne and Judith's trail in a few hours, then it was simply because he had been following the signposts which had been left. The same signs that had fooled old Caillois and Sertys in 1982.

As though reading his mind, Judith went on:

"Maman tricked the lot of you! She's never been a religious maniac…She never believed in demons…She never wanted to exorcise my face…If she chose a nun to get the photos back, then it was to make the whole thing memorable, you see? She was pretending to wipe out our trail, while in fact she was digging out a deep open track so that the killers would follow us until the final scene…That's also why she confided in Crozier, who's about as subtle as a bull in a china shop."

Once again, Karim ran through the various clues, each of the details which had allowed him to trace the two women. The doctor consumed by remorse, the bribed photographer, the drunken priest, the nun, the fire-eater, the old man on the autoroute…All of them had been Fabienne Hérault's "signposts". The pointers which were to lead Caillois and Sertys to the faked accident. And which had, in a few hours, guided Karim to the autoroute service station and Judith's last moments.

Karim tried to disagree.

"Caillois and Sertys didn't follow your trail. No one mentioned them to me while I was looking for you"

"They were more subtle about it than you! But they certainly did follow us. We had a few dicey moments, believe me…

Because, when we stage-managed the accident, Caillois and Sertys were onto us and about to kill us."

"But the accident…How did you fake it?"

"It took Maman more than a month to prepare. Especially the way she smashed the car against the wall and got out unhurt."

"But…what about the body? Who was it?"

Judith sniggered. Karim thought of the blood-stained iron bars, the gasoline cans, the pools of blood. He was now sure that Fanny had merely abetted her sister in her schemes of vengeance, and that the real torturer had been Judith. A mad woman. Fit for the sanatorium. And obviously it was she who had tried to kill Niémans on the bridge.

"Maman used to read all the local newspapers on the look-out for accidents and obituaries…She went through the hospitals and cemeteries. What we needed was a body of about the same age and size as me. The week before the accident, she exhumed a child who'd been buried over a hundred miles away from where we lived. A little boy. Just perfect. Maman had already decided to declare me officially dead under the name `Jude, as the final touch of her ruse. And, anyway, she was going to completely crush the body. The child would no longer be recognisable. Not even its sex."

She giggled strangely, choking on her tears, then went on:

"There's something you have to know, Karim…From Friday to Sunday, we lived with that corpse in the house. A little boy who'd been killed in a motor-bike accident, and whose body was already in a terrible state. We kept it in a bathtub full of ice. Then we waited."

A question crossed Karim's mind:

"Did Crozier help you?"

"During the entire set-up. It was as if he was hypnotised by Maman's beauty. And he felt that this whole horrible business was only for our good. So we waited. For two days, in our little stone house. Maman kept on playing the piano. On and on she played… That same Chopin sonata. As though she was trying to drown out that nightmare…As for me, that rotting body in the bathtub started to drive me crazy. The contact lenses were hurting my eyes. The notes of the sonata hammered into my brain like nails. My mind shattered, Karim…I was scared, so scared…"

"What about your fingerprints? How come your fingerprints were on the autoroute records?"

Judith, her curls flashing, smiled through her tears.

"That was child's play. Crozier took my fingerprints on a fresh card and swapped it over with the one kept in the service station. Maman didn't want to leave anything to chance, just in case the demons came back to check that it was really me."

Karim clenched his fists. It really had been child's play. He reproached himself for not having thought of that.

Suddenly, an image flashed into his mind. That bandaged hand, holding his Glock in the rain.

"So, that night, it was you?"

"Yes, sphinx eyes," she laughed. "I'd come to sacrifice Sophie Caillois, that little whore, who was so in love with her husband that she never dared tell on Rémy and the rest…I should have killed you…" Tears spilled out from her eyelids. "If I had done, then Fanny would still be alive. But I couldn't…I just couldn't."

Judith paused, her eyes blinking beneath her cyclist's helmet. Then she started speaking again in a rushed whisper:

"Immediately after the accident, I went to join Fanny in Guernon. She had asked her parents if she could live as a boarder on the top floor of Lamartine School…We were only eleven, but we managed to live as one immediately…I lived in the attic…I was already an excellent climber. I went down to see my sister over the joists and through the window…A real little spider girl…And nobody ever noticed me…

"The years went by…We took turns to be present in different situations, with the family, at school, with friends, with boys. We shared the same food, we swapped days. We lived exactly the same life, but one after the other. Fanny was the bright one, so she taught me everything about books, science and geology. And I taught her to climb mountains and navigate streams. The two of us made one incredible being…A sort of two-headed dragon.

"Sometimes, Maman would come and see us in the mountains and bring us some provisions. She never spoke to us about our origins, or those two years spent in Sarzac. She thought that this ruse was the only way for us to be happy…But I hadn't forgotten the past. I always carried with me a piano wire. And I continued to listen to the sonata in B flat. The sonata of the little corpse in the bathtub…Sometimes I flew into terrible rages…Just by gripping that piano wire, I cut deep weals into my fingers. Then everything came back to me. How frightened I had been in Sarzac, when pretending to be a little boy, those Sundays, near Sète, when I'd learnt to swallow fire, and that last evening, when I was waiting for Maman to leave with the little boy's body.

"Maman never agreed to tell me who the killers were, those bastards who'd pursued us and run over my father. I scared her, yes, I scared even her. I think she realised that, sooner or later, I was going to kill those murderers…My vengeance was awaiting a little spark…All I now regret is that those birth papers came to light so late, after old Sertys and Caillois were already dead."

Judith stopped speaking and took a firmer hold of the gun. Karim remained silent; and his silence was an interrogation in itself. Suddenly, the young woman started to yell:

"What else do you expect me to tell you? That Caillois admitted the whole thing and begged for our forgiveness? That this crazy business had been going on for generations? That they were continuing to swap over babies? That they were planning to marry us off, Fanny and me, to one of those decadent university runts? We were their creation, Karim…"

Judith leant forward.

"They were nuts…Total madmen who thought they were working for the good of humanity by creating perfect genetic mixes…Caillois reckoned he was God, with his people under him…As for Sertys, he raised rats by the thousand in his warehouse…The rats stood for the population of Guernon…

Each of them was named after one of the families, doesn't that remind you of anything? Do you realise just how warped those bastards were? And Chernecé rounded off the picture…He said that the irises of the superior race shone in a particular way, and that he would be a real fly on the wall, at the threshold of the world, brandishing his eye-shaped torches in the face of humanity…"

Judith knelt down on one knee, the Glock still aimed at Karim, and lowered her voice:

"Fanny and I really put the shits up them, believe me…The first day, we started off by sacrificing young Caillois. And our vengeance had to be at the same level as their conspiracy…The biological mutilations were Fanny's idea…She reckoned that we had to annihilate them totally, just as they had destroyed the identities of the children of Guernon…She also said that we ought to smash their bodies into a set of different reflections, like the shards of a broken mirror…I was the one who thought of the locations: water, ice and glass. And I was the one who did the dirty work…Who made the first of the flickers talk, with iron bars, fire and carpet cutters…

"Then we stuck his body up in the rock and went to smash up Sertys's warehouse…After that, we engraved a message into the librarian's wall…And signed it Judith, to scare the bastards really shitless, to show them that the ghost had risen from the grave…Fanny and I knew that the others in the plot would then rush back to Sarzac to check what they thought they had known since 1982 – that I was dead and buried in that lousy little tip…So we got there first and emptied my tomb…Then we filled it up with the rats' bones we'd found in the warehouse – Sertys used to label them, just like a real fucking nasty fetishist…"

Judith burst out laughing, then yelled once more:

"Just imagine their faces when they opened the coffin!" She then became serious again at once. "They just had to be taught a lesson, Karim…We just had to make them understand that the time for revenge had arrived…That they were going to die horribly…That they were going to pay for the harm they'd done to our town, our family, us, the two little sisters, and to me, me, me…"

Her voice grew softer. The daylight was glinting like mother-of-pearl.

Karim murmured:

"And what now? What are you going to do?"

"Go back to Maman."

The cop pictured that huge woman, surrounded by her sheets and brightly colored rags. He thought of Crozier, the loner, who must have gone to join her later the previous night. The two of them would be locked up, sooner or later.

"I'm going to have to arrest you, Judith."

The young woman sniggered.

"Arrest me? But I'm the one who's holding the gun, little sphinx! One move, and I'll kill you"

Forcing himself to smile, Karim approached her.

"It's all over now, Judith. We're going to take care of you, we'll…"

When she pressed the trigger, he had already drawn the Beretta he always carried strapped to his back, the Beretta which had allowed him to overcome the skinheads, his last card.

They fired their bullets and two gunshots rang out in the dawn. Karim was unscathed, but Judith fell back gracefully. As though borne away by the rhythm of a dance, she wobbled for a few seconds, her throat rapidly reddening with blood.

The young woman dropped the automatic, staggered slightly, then flopped down into the void. It seemed to Karim that a smile flickered across her face.

He suddenly screamed and leapt up over the rocks to look for Judith's body, the little girl whom he had loved – he knew that now – more than anything else in the world for the past twenty-four hours.

He spotted the bloody form as it floated off toward the river. He watched it draw away to rejoin the bodies of Fanny Ferreira and Pierre Niémans. In the distance, a brilliant dawn was rising, searing through the darkness of the mountains.

Karim took no notice.

He wondered how much sunlight would be needed to chase away the shadows that were folding around his heart.