Blood-Red Rivers aka The Crimson Rivers

CHAPTER 1

"Ga-na-mos! Ga-na-mos!"

Pierre Niémans, fingers clenched round his VHF transmitter, stared down at the crowds streaming home across the concrete terraces of Paris's Parc des Princes. Thousands of fiery skulls, white hats, brightly colored scarfs, forming a variegated rippling ribbon. An explosion of confetti. Or a legion of demons seen in a haze of LSD. And those three notes, again and again, slow and ear-splitting: "Ga-na-mos!"

Standing on the roof of the nursery school across the road from the Parc des Princes, the officer was controlling the maneuvers of the third and fourth brigades of the CRS riot police. The men in dark blue were running below their black helmets, protected by their polycarbonate shields. Standard procedure. Two hundred men stationed at each set of gates and a "screen" of commandos whose job it was to stop the two teams' supporters from colliding, getting close, or even noticing each other's existence…

On that evening, for the Saragossa vs Arsenal clash, the only match all year that saw two non-French teams playing against each other in Paris, more than one thousand four hundred policemen and gendarmes had been mobilised. ID checks, body searches, and herding of the forty thousand supporters that had come from the two countries. Superintendent Niémans, his hair cropped, was one of the officers in charge of these maneuvers. It was not his usual line of business, but he enjoyed this sort of exercise. Pure and total surveillance and confrontation. With neither investigations nor procedures. He relished the absolute lack of accountability. And he loved the military look of this marching army.

The supporters had reached the first floor – they could be made out between the concrete fuselage of the construction, just above gates H and G. Niémans looked at his watch. In four minutes' time, they would be outside, spilling across the road. Then would begin the risks of contact, violence, broken ranks. He filled his lungs in one gasp. That October night was seething with tension.

Two minutes. Niémans instinctively turned round and, far away, could see Place de la Porte-de-Saint-Cloud. Completely deserted. Its three fountains soared up in the night, like worried totem poles. All along the avenue, the CRS vans had lined up. In front of them, the men were rolling their shoulder blades, their helmets clipped onto their belts and truncheons slapping against their thighs. The reserve brigades.

The din mounted. The crowd spread out between the iron gratings stuck with spikes. Niémans could not resist smiling. This was what he had come to see. The crowd surged forward. Trumpets broke through the fracas. A rumbling made every inch of the concrete shake. "Ga-na-mos! Ga-na-mos!" Niémans pressed the button on his transmitter and spoke to Joachim, the leader of the East Company. "Niémans here. They're coming out. Push them toward the vans, toward Boulevard Murat, the car parks and the métro."

From his vantage point, he weighed up the situation. There was practically no risk on this side. The Spanish supporters had won the match, and so were the less dangerous. The English were coming out from the far side, gates A to K, toward the Boulogne stand, the lair of the wild beasts. Niémans would go and see what was going on there, once operations had got well and truly under way.

Suddenly, in the gleam of the street-lights a beer bottle shot high above the crowd. The officer saw a truncheon crack downwards, the compact ranks withdraw, men falling. He screamed into his transmitter: "Joachim, for fuck's sake, control your men!"

Niémans rushed to the back stairs and ran down all eight flights. When he emerged onto the avenue, two lines of CRS were already pushing forward, set to bring the hooligans under control. Niémans dashed in front of the armed men and waved his arms in long circular motions. The truncheons were just a few feet from his face when Joachim, his head jammed in his helmet, appeared to his right. He raised his visor and glanced furiously at him:

"Jesus Christ, Niémans, are you crazy or what? You're not in uniform, you're going to get yourself…"

The officer did not deign to reply.

"What the hell's going on here? Control your men, Joachim! Or in three minutes' time we'll have a riot on our hands."

The chubby red-faced captain panted. His little fin-de-siècle moustache twitched in rhythm to his gasping breath. The radio juddered: "Ca…Calling all units…Calling all units…The Boulogne turning…Rue du Commandant-Guilbaud…I…We have a problem!" Niémans stared at Joachim as though he alone were responsible for this chaos. His fingers gripped the transmitter: "Niémans here. We're on our way." Then he calmly gave the captain his orders:

"I'll go. Send as many men there as you can. And sort out the situation here."

Without waiting for a response, the superintendent set off to look for the trainee who was acting as his driver. He crossed the square in long strides and, in the distance, noticed that the barmen of the Brasserie des Princes were lowering their iron shutters. The air was racked with tension. He finally spotted the little dark-haired guy in the leather jacket who was hanging around beside the black saloon car. Niémans thumped his fist down onto the bonnet and yelled:

"The Boulogne turning, quick!"

The two men leapt simultaneously into the car. Its tires smoked as it pulled away. The trainee shot round to the left of the stadium so as to reach Gate K as rapidly as possible along a route specially reserved for the security forces. Niémans had a hunch:

"No," he murmured. "Go round the other way. Then we'll bump straight into the action."

The car spun around one hundred and eighty degrees, skidding on the puddles made by the water cannons already set for the counter-attack. Then it sped away down Avenue du Parc des Princes through a narrow corridor formed by the gray vans of the flying squad. The men in helmets heading the same way made room for it without even glancing at it. The trainee swerved left by Lycée Claude-Bernard then took the roundabout so as to coast along the third side of the stadium. They had just passed by the Auteuil stand.

As soon as Niémans saw the first flurries of gas floating in the air, he knew he had been right: the fighting had already reached Place de l'Europe. The car swept through the white fog and had to brake hard to avoid the first victims, who were in full flight. Battle had been joined in front of the Presidential stand. Men in ties and ladies with jewelry were running, stumbling, tears pouring down their faces. Some of them were looking for a way out onto the streets, while others were climbing back up the steps toward the stadium gates.

Niémans leapt out of the car. On the square, a pitched battle was in progress. The bright colors of the English team and the dark forms of the CRS could just be made out. Some of the latter were crawling on the ground – like half-crushed slugs – while others, at a distance, were hesitating about whether or not to use their antiriot guns for fear of injuring their wounded fellow officers.

The superintendent put away his glasses and tied a scarf round his face. He picked the nearest CRS and snatched away his truncheon, at the same time showing his tricolor card. The man was stunned. His breath misted over the translucent visor of his helmet.

Pierre Niémans ran on toward the confrontation. The Arsenal supporters were attacking with their fists, iron bars and steel toecaps, while the CRS hit back and retreated, trying to defend those already laid out on the ground. Bodies gesticulated, faces creased, jawbones hit the asphalt. Batons went up then rained down, juddering under the force of the blows. The officer pushed his way into the scrum.

He struck with his fist, with his truncheon. He knocked down a big thug, then laid straight into him, hitting his ribs, his belly and face. He was suddenly kicked from the right. Screaming, he got to his feet. His baton wrapped itself round his aggressor's throat. His blood boiled in his head, a metallic taste numbed his mouth. His mind was empty. He felt nothing. He was at war and he knew it.

A strange scene suddenly met his eyes. A hundred yards farther off, an oldish man, who was already in a bad way, was struggling to get out of the clutches of two hooligans. Niémans looked at the supporter's blood-splattered face and the mechanical gestures of the two others, taut with hatred.

One second later and Niémans caught on: under their jackets, the aggressed and the aggressors wore the badges of rival clubs.

A settling of old scores.

By this time, the victim had already got away and had escaped down a side road – Rue Nungesser-et-Coli. The two attackers dived after him. Niémans dropped his truncheon, broke through the scrum and followed them.

The race was on.

Down that silent street, Niémans ran, breathing rhythmically, gaining on the two pursuers who were, in turn, gaining on their prey.

They turned right again and had soon reached the Molitor swimming pool, which was entirely walled off. The pair of bastards finally caught up with their victim. Niémans had got as far as Place de la Porte-Molitor, which overlooks the Paris ring road, and could not believe his eyes. One of the attackers had just produced a machete.

In the dim lights of the highway, Niémans could see the blade relentlessly slicing into the man on his knees, who was twitching under the blows. The attackers lifted up the body and hurled it over the railings.

"No!"

The officer yelled and drew his gun at the same instant. He leant on a car, propped his right fist onto his left palm, aimed and held his breath. First shot. Missed. The killer with the machete turned round amazed. Second shot.

Missed again.

Niémans set off again, his gun flat against his thigh in combat posture. He was furious. Without his glasses, he had missed his target twice. Now he, too, was up on the bridge. The man with the machete had already sprinted away into the undergrowth which bordered the ring road. His accomplice stood there, motionless, pale. The policeman rammed the butt of his gun into the man's throat, then dragged him by the hair as far as a road sign. With one hand, he handcuffed him. Only then did he lean down toward the traffic.

The body had fallen down onto the road and several cars had driven over it before a multiple pile-up had brought everything to a halt. A confused crush of vehicles, shattered bodywork…Then the jam broke out into a crazed wailing of horns. In the headlamps, Niémans could see one of the drivers, who was staggering around near his car, his head in his hands. The superintendent lifted his eyes to stare across the ring road. There was the murderer with his colorful arm band, making his way through the trees. Putting his gun away, Niémans set off again at once.

The killer was now glancing back at him through the branches. The policeman made no attempt to hide. The man must now have realised that he, Superintendent Pierre Niémans, was going to make mincemeat of him. Suddenly, the hooligan leapt over an embankment and vanished. The sound of feet running over gravel gave away the direction of his flight: the Auteuil gardens.

The officer followed, seeing the darkness reflected off the gray rocks of the garden. As he passed by some greenhouses, he spotted a figure climbing a wall. He shot after him and found himself looking down on the tennis courts of Roland-Garros.

The gates were not padlocked. The killer was easily able to move from one court to another. Niémans pulled open a gate, ran across the clay surface and leapt over the net. Fifty yards ahead, the man was already slowing, with obvious signs of fatigue. He managed to get over another net, then clamber up the steps between the stands. Niémans, hardly even tired, smoothly followed him up the stairs. He was just a few feet away from him when, from the top of the stand, a shadow jumped into the void. His prey was now on the roof of a private residence. Then he vanished over the farther side. The superintendent took a run up, then jumped after him. He landed on a platform of gravel. Below were lawns, trees, silence.

Not a trace of the killer.

The officer let himself down and rolled over the damp grass. There were just two possibilities: the house from whose roof he had just leapt down, or a massive wooden structure at the end of the garden. He drew his MR73 and leant his back against the door behind him. It put up no resistance.

The superintendent took a step or two, then stopped in amazement. He was in a hall of marble, overhung by a circular slab of stone engraved with strange letters. A gilded banister rail rose up through the shadows of the upper storeys. In the darkness could be seen imperial red velvet hangings, gleaming hieratic vases…Niémans realised that he was inside an Asian embassy.

A sudden noise came from outside. The killer was inside the other building. The policeman crossed the garden and reached the wooden structure. The door was still swinging on its hinges. A shadow among the shadows, he entered. And the magic grew a shade more tense. It was a stable, divided into carved boxes, occupied by little horses with brush-like manes.

The swishing of tails. Straw fluttering. With his gun in his hand, Pierre Niémans walked on. He passed one box, two, three…A dull thump to his right. He turned. Nothing but the stamp of a hoof. A snarl to his left. He turned once more. Too late. The blade shot down. Niémans got out of its way at the last moment. The machete slid past his shoulder and embedded itself in the rump of a horse. The kick was terrible. The horseshoe flew up into the killer's face. The officer grabbed his chance, threw himself onto the man, turned round his gun and used it as a hammer.

Again and again he hit him, then suddenly stopped and looked down at the hooligan's bloodied features. His bones were sticking up through the shreds of his skin. An eyeball dangled down on a mess of fibers. Still wearing his Arsenal supporter's hat, the murderer was now motionless. Niémans grabbed back hold of his gun, took its blood-stained grip in both hands and rammed its barrel into the man's split mouth. He took off the catch and closed his eyes. He was about to fire when a shrill noise interrupted him. In his pocket, his cell phone was ringing.

CHAPTER 2

Three hours later, amid the overly new and excessively symmetric streets that surround Nanterre's Prefecture, a lamp was shining in the building that housed the police headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior. A shard of light, at once diffuse and concentrated, gleamed softly across the surface of the desk belonging to Antoine Rheims, who was sitting in the shadows. In front of him, behind the halo, stood the tall figure of Pierre Niémans. He had just given a terse resumé of his report concerning the chase. Rheims asked him, skeptically:

"How's the man?"

"The Englishman? In a coma. Multiple facial fractures. I've just called the hospital. They're going to try to perform a skin graft on his face."

"And the victim?"

"Crushed by the cars, on the ring road, just by Porte-Molitor."

"Jesus Christ. What the fuck was going on?"

"Hooligans settling an old score. There were some Chelsea fans among the Arsenal supporters. When the fighting started, our two hooligans with the machete sliced up their victim."

Rheims nodded incredulously. After a moment's silence, he went on:

"And what about our friend here? Was it really a horse's hoof that put him in a state like that?"

Niémans did not answer, but turned toward the window. In the chalky moonlight, the strange pastel designs which covered the facades of the neighboring apartment blocks could be made out: clouds and rainbows drifting above the dark green hills of Nanterre's park. Rheims's voice rose once more:

"I just don't get it, Pierre. Why do you get yourself into messes like this? You were' watching the stadium, that's all, I really…" His voice faded out. Niémans remained silent.

"You're getting on," Rheims went on. "And out of your depth. The agreement we had was perfectly clear: no more action, no more violence…"

Niémans turned round and walked over toward his boss.

"Come on, out with it, Antoine. Why did you call me in here, in the middle of the night? You couldn't have known anything about this business when you rang me. So what's up?"

Rheims's shadowy figure did not budge. Broad shoulders, gray curly hair, head like a rock face. The build of a lighthouse keeper. For several years now, the chief superintendent had been running the Central Bureau for the Prevention of Trade in Humans – the CBPTH – a complicated name for what was, in fact, the head office of the vice squad. Niémans had first met him long before he had become installed behind this particular administrative desk, when they were two swift and efficient cops on the beat. The officer with the crew cut leant down and repeated:

"So, what's up?"

Rheims breathed in deeply:

"There's been a murder."

"In Paris?"

"No, in Guernon. A small university town in the Isère département, near Grenoble."

Niémans grabbed a chair and sat down opposite the chief superintendent.

"I'm listening."

"The body was discovered early yesterday evening. It had been stuck in between some rocks over a stream which runs along the edge of the campus. Everything points to a psychopath."

"What information do you have about the corpse? Is it a woman?"

"No, a man. A young guy. The university librarian, apparently. The body was naked. It bears marks of having been tortured: gashes, lacerations, burns…He seems also to have been strangled."

Niémans placed his elbow down on the desk. He fiddled with the ashtray.

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"Because I'm planning on sending you down there."

"What? Because of a murder? The boys in the local Grenoble brigade will rumble this killer within a week and…"

"Don't mess with me, Pierre. You know only too well that things are never as straightforward as they look. I've spoken to the magistrate. And he wants a specialist brought in."

"A specialist in what?"

"In murders. And in vice. He suspects a sexual motive. Or something along those lines."

Niémans stretched his neck toward the lamp and smelt the acrid burning of the halogen.

"You're holding something back, Antoine."

"The magistrate's Bernard Terpentes. An old buddy of mine. We're both from the Pyrenees. And, between you and me, he's in a total panic. Plus, he wants to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible. Stop any rumors, the media, all that bullshit. The new academic year starts in a few weeks and we've got to wind things up before then. Get the picture?"

The superintendent stood up and went back to the window. He stared down at the luminous pinpricks of the street-lights and the dark mounds of the park. The violence of the last few hours was still pounding in his temples: the hacking of the machete, the ring road, the chase across Roland-Garros. For the thousandth time, he thought how Rheims's phone call had certainly stopped him from killing someone. He thought about his uncontrollable fits of violence, which blinded his conscience, ripping apart time and space, causing him to commit outrageous acts.

"Well?" Rheims asked.

Niémans turned back and leant on the window frame.

"I haven't been on a case like this for four years now. Why me?"

"I need someone good. And you know that a central office can pick one of its own men and send him anywhere in France." His huge hands did five-finger exercises in the darkness. "I'm making the most of my little bit of power."

The officer smiled behind his iron-rimmed glasses.

"You're releasing the wolf from its cage?"

"Put it that way, if you want. It'll be a breath of fresh air for you. And I'll be doing an old friend a good turn. And, in the meantime, it'll stop you from beating up on people…"

Rheims picked up the gleaming pages of a fax that lay on his desk. "The gendarmes' first conclusions. So is it yes, or no?" Niémans went over to the desk and crumpled the roll of paper. "I'll phone you. To get the news from the hospital."

The superintendent immediately left Rue des Trois-Fontanot and returned home to Rue La-Bruyère in the ninth arrondissement. A huge, almost empty flat, with an old lady's immaculate polished floor. He had a shower, dressed his – superficial – wounds and examined himself in the mirror. A bony, wrinkled face. A gleaming gray crew cut. Glasses ringed with metal. Niémans smiled at his appearance. He wouldn't have liked to bump into himself down a dark alley.

He stuffed a few clothes into a sports bag, slid a 12-caliber Remington pump-action shotgun in between his shirts and socks, as well as some boxes of cartridges and speedloaders for his Manhurin. Finally, he grabbed his protective bag and folded two winter suits into it, along with a few brightly patterned ties.

On the way to Porte de la Chapelle, Niémans stopped at the all-night McDonald's on Boulevard de Clichy where he rapidly swallowed two quarter pounders with cheese, without taking his eyes off his car, which was double-parked. Three in the morning. In the ghastly neon light a few familiar ghosts were wandering. Blacks in over-ample clothes. Prostitutes with long dreadlocks. Druggies, bums, drunks. All of them were a part of his previous existence, on the beat. That world which Niémans had had to leave for a well-paid, respectable desk job. For any other cop, a post in a central office was a promotion. For him, it was being put out to grass – plush grass, admittedly, but the move had still mortified him. He took another look at the night hawks that surrounded him. These creatures had been the trees of his personal woodland, where he once roamed, in the skin of a hunter.

Niémans drove without stopping, headlights full on, ignoring speed traps and limits. At eight a.m., he took the Grenoble exit on the autoroute. He crossed Saint-Martin-d'Hères, Saint-Martin-d'Uriage and headed toward Guernon, at the foot of the Grand Pic de Belledonne. All along the winding road forests of conifers alternated with industrial zones. A slightly morbid atmosphere hung in the air, as always in the countryside when the beauty of the scenery is insufficient to hide its profound loneliness.

The superintendent drove past the first road signs indicating the university. In the distance, the mountain peaks rose up in the misty light of a stormy morning. Coming out of a bend, he glimpsed the university at the bottom of the valley: its large modern buildings, its fluted blocks of concrete, all ringed off by long lawns. It made Niémans think of a sanatorium the size of a town hall.

He turned off the main road and drove down into the valley. To the west, he could see vertical streams running into each other, their silvery current beating against the dark sides of the mountains. He slowed down, and shuddered at the sight of that icy water, plummeting down, obscured by clumps of brushwood, then reappearing again, white and dazzling, before vanishing once more…

Niémans decided to take a short detour. He forked off, drove under a vaulted ceiling of larches and firs, moist from the morning dew, then came across a long plain bordered by lofty black cliffs.

The officer stopped. He got out of his car and grabbed his binoculars. He took a long look at the scenery. The river had disappeared. Then he realised that when the torrent reached the bottom of the valley it ran on behind the rock face. Gaps in the rock even gave him occasional glimpses of it.

Suddenly he noticed another detail and focused his binoculars on it. No, his eyes had not deceived him. He went back to his car and shot off toward the ravine. In one of the faults in the rock face he had just spotted a fluorescent yellow cordon, of the type used by the gendarmerie:

NO ENTRY

CHAPTER 3

Niémans continued down the fault, which bordered a winding, narrow path. Soon, he had to stop, as it was no longer broad enough for his car. He got out, slipped under the yellow cordon and reached the river.

The flow here came to a halt against a natural dam. The torrent, which Niémans was expecting to see boiling over with foam, had turned into a small, limpid lake. As calm as a face from which every sign of anger had just vanished. Farther on, to his right, it set off once more and presumably flowed through the grayish town which could be seen in the pit of the valley.

But Niémans came to a sudden stop. To his left, a man was already there, crouched over the water. Instinctively, Niémans raised the velcro cover of his holster. This gesture made his handcuffs clink together slightly. The man turned round and his face broke into a smile immediately.

"What do you think you're doing here?" Niémans asked him point-blank.

Without answering, the stranger smiled again, got to his feet and dusted off his hands. He was young, with fragile features and fair, brush-like hair. A suede jacket and pleated trousers. In a clear voice, he riposted:

"And you?"

This insolence astonished Niémans. He gruffly declared:

"Police. Didn't you see the cordon? I hope for your sake you've got a good reason to be here, because…"

"Eric Joisneau, from the Grenoble brigade. I'm here as a scout. Three more officers will be arriving later today."

Niémans joined him on the narrow bank.

"Where are the orderlies?" he asked.

"I told them to take a break. For breakfast." He shrugged carelessly. "I had work to do here. And I wanted some peace and quiet…Superintendent Niémans."

The gray-haired officer twitched. The young man went on imperviously:

"I recognised you at once. Pierre Niémans. The ex-star of the anti-terrorist squad. The ex-head of the vice squad. The ex-hunter of killers and dealers. The ex of a lot of things, in fact…"

"Do inspectors always give so much lip these days?"

Joisneau bowed ironically:

"Sorry, superintendent. I was just trying to take the shine off the star. You know you're an idol, don't you? The 'supercop' all young inspectors dream of becoming. Are you here for the murder?"

"What do you reckon?"

The officer bowed once again.

"It'll be an honor to work with you."

Niémans looked down at the glittering surface of the smooth waters, which shimmered at his feet, as though crystallised in the morning light. A glow of jade seemed to rise up from the depths.

"So, tell me what you know about this business."

Joisneau glanced up toward the rock face.

"The body was wedged up there."

"Up there?" Niémans repeated, staring at the wall of rock, whose sharp contours cast jagged shadows.

"Yes, fifty feet up. The killer stuffed the body into one of the crevices in the rock face. Then maneuvered it into a weird position."

"What sort of position?"

Joisneau bent his legs, raised his knees and crossed his arms over his torso.

"The fetal position."

"Original."

"Everything's original about this case."

"I was told there were wounds and burns," Niémans went on. "I haven't seen the body yet. But I have heard that there are multiple traces of torture."

"Was the victim tortured to death?"

"Nothing is certain for the moment. There are also deep marks on his throat. Signs of strangulation."

Niémans turned back toward the little lake. In it, he clearly saw his own reflection – cropped head and blue coat.

"What about here? Have you found anything?"

"No. I've been hunting for a clue, a detail, for the last hour. Nothing doing. I reckon the victim wasn't killed here. The murderer just stuffed the body up there."

"Have you been up inside the crevice?"

"Yes. Nothing to report. The murderer must have climbed up onto the top of the rock face from the other side, then lowered the body down on a rope. He then went down on another rope and wedged his victim inside. It can't have been easy getting him into that dramatic posture. I can't figure it out."

Niémans looked once more at that ruggedly uneven cliff, stuck with ridges. From where he was standing, it was impossible to gauge the distances, but it looked as if the crevice where the body had been found was halfway up the face, as far from the ground as it was from the top. He spun round.

"Let's go."

"Where?"

"The hospital. I want to see the body."

The naked man, uncovered only down to his shoulders, lay on his side on a gleaming table. He was huddled up, as though frightened of being struck in the face by lightning. Shoulders hunched, head down, the body still had its two fists clenched under its chin, between its bent knees. The skin was white, muscles protruding, the epidermis dug with wounds which gave the corpse an almost unbearable reality. The neck bore long lacerations, as though someone had tried to rip open its throat. Puffed up veins stood out in its temples, like swollen streams.

Niémans glanced up at the other men present in the morgue. Bernard Terpentes, the investigating magistrate, spindly with a pencil moustache; Captain Roger Barnes, a colossus, swaying like a merchant ship, who was in charge of the Guernon gendarmerie; René Vermont, another gendarme captain on special mission, a small balding man with a wine-red complexion and bright beady eyes. Joisneau, who was standing back from the rest, looked every inch the zealous student.

"Do we know his ID?" Niémans asked no one in particular.

Barnes took a soldierly step forward and cleared his throat.

"The victim's name is Rémy Caillois, superintendent. He was twenty-five years of age. He had been chief librarian at the University of Guernon for the last three years. The body was officially identified by his wife, Sophie Caillois, this morning."

"Had she reported him missing?"

"Yes, yesterday at the end of the afternoon. Her husband had set out the day before on a trek in the mountains, in the direction of the Pointe du Muret. Alone, as he did every weekend. He would sometimes sleep out in one of the refuges. That's why she wasn't worried. Until yesterday afternoon…"

Barnes fell silent. Niémans had just uncovered the corpse.

There was a sort of unspoken horror, a silent scream that stuck in their throats. The victim's abdomen and thorax were riddled with dark wounds of various shapes and depths. Incisions with violet edges, rainbow-colored burns, black clouds of soot. There were also shallower lesions on the arms and wrists, as though the man had been strapped up with a cable.

"Who found the body?"

"A young woman…" Barnes peered down at his papers, then proceeded. "Fanny Ferreira. A lecturer at the university."

"In what circumstances did she find it?"

Barnes cleared his throat once more.

"She's a sportswoman who goes white-water rafting. You know, you descend the rapids on a board, wearing a wetsuit and flippers. It's a highly dangerous sport and…"

"And?"

"She wound up just beyond the natural dam in the river, at the foot of the rock face that borders the campus. When she climbed up onto the parapet, she spotted the body wedged into the cliff."

"And that's what she told you?"

Barnes looked uncertainly around the room.

"Well, yes, I…"

The superintendent completely uncovered the body. He paced around that livid, hunched-up creature, whose closely cropped scalp stuck out like a stone arrow.

Niémans grabbed the death certificate, which Barnes had handed him. He glanced over the typed text. It had been written by the head of the hospital in person. The doctor made no pronouncement concerning the time of death. He simply described the visible wounds and concluded that death had been caused by strangulation. For further information, it would be necessary to unfold the body and perform an autopsy.

"When will forensics be here?"

"Any minute now."

The superintendent approached the victim. He leant down and examined his facial features. He was young, rather handsome, his eyes closed and, most importantly, there was no sign of any blows to the face.

"Has anyone touched his face?"

"No one, superintendent."

"So his eyes were closed?"

Barnes nodded. With his thumb and index finger, Niémans gently opened one of the victim's eyelids. Then the impossible happened: a gleaming teardrop slowly fell from the right eye. The superintendent started up in disgust. The face was crying.

Niémans scrutinised the others. No one else had noticed this extraordinary detail. He kept his calm and, still out of sight of the others, looked again. What he saw proved that he had not gone mad and that this murder was what every policeman dreads or longs for throughout his career, according to his character. He stood back up and swiftly covered the body once more. Then he whispered to the magistrate:

"Tell us how the investigations are to proceed."

Bernard Terpentes rose to his full height.

"Well, gentlemen, you understand how this business may turn out to be difficult and…unusual. Which explains why the public prosecutor and I have decided to call in the local Grenoble brigade and also the gendarmerie rationale. I have also called in Superintendent Niémans, here present, from Paris. I am sure his name is not unknown to you. The superintendent is currently part of a high-ranking section of the Paris vice squad. For the moment, we know nothing about the motive for this murder, but it may well be a sexual one. And it is clearly the work of a maniac. Niémans's experience will be of great use to us. Which is why I should like him to lead this investigation…"

Barnes agreed with a swift nod of his head, Vermont likewise, but less enthusiastically. As for Joisneau, he answered:

"That's fine as far as I'm concerned. But my fellow officers will soon be here and…"

"I'll put them right," Terpentes cut in. He turned toward Niémans.

"Well, superintendent?"

The whole business was starting to get on Niémans's nerves. He longed to be out of there, getting on with the investigation and, above all, alone.

"How many men do you have, Captain Barnes?" he asked. "Eight. No…I mean, nine."

"Are they used to questioning witnesses, collecting evidence, organising road-blocks?"

"Um, well…that's not the sort of thing we…"

"What about you, Captain Vermont? How many men do you have?"

The gendarme's voice cracked out like a ten-gun salute: "Twenty. And experienced, all of them. They'll fine-toothcomb the area around where the body was found and…"

"Fine. I suggest that they also question everybody who lives near the roads leading to the river, that they call into service stations, railway stations, houses beside bus stops…Young Caillois sometimes slept in refuges when out trekking. Find them and search them. Maybe he was kidnapped in one."

Niémans turned toward Barnes.

"Captain, I want you to put out a request for information across the entire region. By noon, I want a complete list of all the area's prowlers, petty crooks, tramps and what have you. I want you to check who's just been released from prison in a two-hundred-mile radius. Thefts of cars and thefts of any kind. I want you to ask questions in hotels and restaurants. Fax them a questionnaire. I want to know the slightest strange occurrence, the slightest suspect arrival, the slightest indication. I also want a list of all the events that have occurred here in Guernon over at least the last twenty years which may or may not have something to do with this business."

Barnes noted each request on his pad. Niémans turned to Joisneau:

"Get hold of the Special Branch. Ask them for a list of the cults, gurus and other similar nut cases in this region."

Joisneau nodded. Terpentes too, in a sign of superior agreement, as though all these ideas were being plucked straight out of his head.

"That should keep you busy till we get the results of the autopsy," Niémans concluded. "I don't need to add that this has got to be kept hush-hush. Not a word to the local press. Not a word to a single soul."

They parted company on the steps of the University Hospital, striding off through the morning mist. In the shadow of that huge edifice, which looked at least two hundred years old, they got into their cars, heads down, shoulders hunched, without a word or a glance.

The hunt was on.

CHAPTER 4

Pierre Niémans and Eric Joisneau went straight to the university, which was on the edge of the town. The superintendent asked the inspector to wait for him in the library, in the main building, while he paid a call on the university vice-chancellor, whose office took up the top floor of the administrative block, a hundred yards away.

The officer entered a vast 1970s construction, which had already been renovated, with a lofty ceiling and walls of different pastel colors. On the top floor, in a sort of antechamber occupied by a secretary and her tiny desk, Niémans gave his name and asked to see Monsieur Vincent Luyse. While waiting, he looked at the photographs on the walls, showing triumphant students brandishing cups and medals, on ski slopes or in raging torrents.

A few minutes later, Pierre Niémans was standing in front of the vice-chancellor. A man with wiry hair, a flat nose, and skin the color of talc. Vincent Luyse's face was a strange mixture of Black African characteristics and anaemic pallor. A few sunbeams shone through the stormy gloom, slicing through the half-light. The vice-chancellor asked the policeman to take a seat, then started nervously massaging his wrists.

"So?" he asked in a dry voice.

"So what?"

"Have you discovered anything?"

Niémans stretched his legs.

"I've just got here, vice-chancellor. I need a little time to settle in.

Meanwhile, just answer my questions."

Luyse stiffened in his chair. His entire office was made of wood, dotted with metallic mobiles reminiscent of flower stalks on a steel planet.

"Have you had any other tricky incidents in your university?" Niémans asked calmly.

"Tricky? No, not at all."

"No drugs? No thefts? No fights?"

"No."

"There aren't any gangs, or cliques? No youngsters giving each other funny ideas?"

"I don't understand what you mean."

"I'm thinking about role-playing. You know, games full of ceremonies and rituals…"

"No. We don't have any of that sort of thing. Our students are a clearheaded crowd."

Niémans remained silent. The vice-chancellor sized him up: crew cut, big build, grip of an MR73 sticking out of his coat. Luyse wiped his face, then said, as though trying to convince himself:

"I've been told that you are an excellent policeman."

Niémans responded by staring back at the vice-chancellor. Luyse turned away his eyes and went on:

"Superintendent, all I want is for you to find the murderer in as short a time as possible. The new academic year is about to begin and…"

"So there are no students on the campus yet?"

"Only a few boarders. They live on the top floor of the main building over there. Then there are also a few lecturers who are preparing their courses."

"Can I have a list of them?"

"Why…" a hesitation, "of course…"

"What about Rémy Caillois? What was he like?"

"An extremely discreet librarian. A loner."

"Was he popular with the students?"

"Yes, yes of course he was."

"Where did he live? In Guernon?"

"No, here on the campus. With his wife, on the top floor of the main building. Alongside the boarders."

"Rémy Caillois was twenty-five. That's rather young to be married these days, isn't it?"

"Rémy and Sophie Caillois were both students here. Before that, I believe they met while at the campus school, which is reserved for our lecturers' children. They are…they were childhood sweethearts."

Niémans got briskly to his feet.

"Most helpful, vice-chancellor. Thank you."

The superintendent headed off at once, fleeing the smell of fear that pervaded the place.

Books.

Everywhere, in the large university library, numerous racks of books were piled up under the neon lights. Metal shelving holding up veritable walls of perfectly arranged paper. Dark spines. Gold or silver chasing. Labels, all of which bore the crest of the University of Guernon. In the middle of the deserted room stood formica-topped tables, divided into small glass carrels. As soon as Niémans had entered the room, he was reminded of a prison visiting-room.

The atmosphere was at once luminous and stuffy, spacious and cramped.

"The best lecturers teach at this university," Eric Joisneau explained. "The cream of the south-east of France. Law, economics, literature, psychology, sociology, physics…And especially medicine – all the top medics of Isère teach here and consult at the University Hospital, which is in fact where the old university used to be. The buildings have been entirely renovated. Half the people in the département go there when they're ill and all the mountain dwellers were born in its maternity clinic."

Niémans listened to him, arms crossed, leaning back onto one of the reading tables.

"Sounds like you know what you're talking about."

Joisneau picked up a book at random.

"I studied at this university. I started doing law…I wanted to be a lawyer."

"And you became a policeman?"

The lieutenant looked at Niémans. In the white neon light, his eyes were gleaming.

"When I took my degree, I was suddenly scared that I was going to get shit bored. So I enrolled in the police academy of Toulouse. I reckoned that the police meant an action-packed career, full of risks. A career that would have surprises in store for me…"

"And now you're disappointed?"

The lieutenant put the book back on the shelf. His slight smile faded.

"Not today, I'm not. Definitely not today." He stared at Niémans. "That body…How could anybody do that?"

Niémans ducked the question.

"What was the atmosphere like here? Anything special?"

"No. Lots of middle-class kids, full of clichés about life, about politics, about the ideas you were supposed to have…And the children of farmers and workers, too. Even more idealistic. And more aggressive. Anyway, we were all heading for Welfare, so…"

"There wasn't any funny business? No strange cliques?"

"No. Nothing. Except, that is, there was a sort of university elite. A microcosm made up of the children of the lecturers themselves. Some of them were real high fliers. They won all the prizes every year. Even the sports awards. We were completely left standing."

Niémans recalled the photographs of champions in the antechamber of Luyse's office. He asked:

"Did these students make up a real clan? Could they all be working together on some sick idea?"

Joisneau burst out laughing.

"What do you mean? A kind of…conspiracy?"

It was Niémans's turn to get up and wander along the bookshelves.

"A librarian is at the center of a university. An ideal target. Imagine a group of students dabbling in some sort of hocus pocus.

A sacrifice, a ritual…When choosing their victim, they could quite easily have thought of Caillois."

"Then forget about the whiz kids I just mentioned. They were too busy getting firsts in their exams to worry about anything else."

Niémans walked on between the rows of reddish brown books. Joisneau followed him.

"A librarian," he resumed, "is also the person who lends books…Who knows what everybody is reading, what everybody is studying…Maybe he knew something he shouldn't have."

"You don't kill someone like that for…And what sort of secret reading scheme do you imagine these students had?"

Niémans spun round.

"I don't know. But I mistrust intellectuals."

"Have you already got an idea? A suspicion?"

"None at all. Right now, anything is possible. A fight. Revenge. Intellectual weirdoes. Or homosexual ones. Or quite simply a prowler, a maniac, who stumbled onto Caillois quite by chance in the mountains."

The superintendent fingered the spines of the books.

"You see, I'm not biased. But here is where we're going to start. Dig out all the books that could have some bearing on the murder."

"What sort of bearing?"

Niémans went back down the rows of shelving and emerged into the main reading-room. He headed for the librarian's office, which was situated at the far end, on a raised platform, overlooking the carrels. A computer sat on the desk. Ring-binders lay in the drawers. Niémans patted the dark screen.

"In here there must be a list of all the books that are consulted, or borrowed, every day. I want you to put some of your men on the job. The most bookish ones you can find. Get the boarders to help as well. I want them to pick out all the books that deal with evil, violence, torture and religious sacrifices. Look through the ethnology titles, for example. I also want them to note down the names of all the students who have regularly consulted this sort of book. And dig me out Caillois's thesis."

"What about me?"

"You question the boarders. One at a time. They live here night and day, so they must know the university from top to bottom. The habits, the feel of the place, any weird kids…I want to know what the others thought of Caillois. I also want you to find out about his walks in the mountains. Find his fellow hikers. Discover who knew the routes he took. Who could have met him up there…"

Joisneau glanced skeptically at the superintendent. Niémans walked over to him: He was now speaking in whispers:

"I'll tell you what we have on our hands. We have an incredible murder, a pallid, smooth, hunched-up body bearing the traces of unspeakable suffering. The whole thing stinks of craziness. Right now, it's our little secret. We have a few hours, maybe a little longer, to solve this business. After that, the media will get involved, the pressure will build up, and emotions start to run wild. So concentrate. Dive into the nightmare. Give all you've got. That's how we'll unmask the face of evil."

The lieutenant looked terrified.

"You really think that, in a few hours, we can…"

"Do you want to work with me, or not?" Niémans butted in. "Look, this is the way I see things. When a murder has been committed, you have to look at every surrounding detail as though it was a mirror. The body of the victim, the people who knew him, the scene of the crime…Everything reflects the truth, some particular aspect of the murder, see what I mean?"

He tapped the computer screen.

"This screen, for instance. When it's been switched on, it will become the mirror of Rémy Caillois's daily existence. The mirror of his working life, of his thoughts. It will contain elements, reflections that may be of use to us. We have to dive in. Get through to the other side."

He stood up and opened his arms.

"We're in a hall of mirrors, Joisneau, a labyrinth of reflected images. So take a good look. At everything. Because, somewhere inside one of those mirrors, in a dead angle, the murderer is hiding."

Joisneau gaped.

"You seem a bit clever for a man of action…"

The superintendent slapped his chest with the back of his hand. "This isn't abstract theory, Joisneau. It's purely practical."

"And what about you? Who…who are you going to question?"

"Me? I'm going to question our witness, Fanny Ferreira. And then Sophie Caillois, the victim's wife."

Niémans winked.

"The ladies, Joisneau. That's what I call being purely practical."

CHAPTER 5

Under the dreary sky, the asphalt road snaked across the campus, leading to each of its gray buildings with their blue, rusting windows. Niémans drove slowly – he had obtained a map of the university – on the way to an isolated gymnasium. He reached another block of fluted concrete, which looked more like a bunker than a sports center. He got out of his car and breathed deeply. It was drizzling.

He examined the construction of the campus, situated at a few hundred yards' distance. His parents, too, had been teachers, but in small secondary schools in the suburbs of Lyons. He had practically no memories of them. Family ties had soon seemed to him to be a weakness, a lie. He had rapidly realised that he was going to have to fight alone and, accordingly, the sooner the better. From the age of thirteen, he had asked to be sent to a boarding school. They had not dared refuse this voluntary exile, but he could still remember his mother's sobs from the other side of his bedroom wall: it was a sound in his head and, at the same time, a physical sensation, something damp and warm on his skin. So, he had decamped.

Four years spent boarding. Four years of solitude and physical training, apart from his lessons. All his hopes were then pinned on one target: the army. At seventeen, Pierre Niémans, who had passed his exams with flying colors, went for his three days' induction and asked to join the officers' training school. When the military doctor told him that he had been discharged as unfit and explained the reasons for this decision, Niémans suddenly understood. His anxieties were so manifest that they had betrayed him, despite all his ambition. He realised that his destiny would always be that long, seamless corridor, plastered with blood, where, at the very end, dogs howled in the darkness…

Other adolescents would have given up and quietly listened to the psychiatrists' opinions. Not Pierre Niémans. He persisted, and he began training again, with a redoubled rage and determination. If Pierre could not be a soldier, then he would pick another battlefield: the streets, the anonymous struggle against everyday evil. He would devote all of his strength and his soul to a war with no flags and no glorious deaths. Niémans would become a policeman. With this in mind, he spent months practising the answers to psychiatric tests. He then enrolled in Cannes-Ecluse police academy. And the era of violence began: top marks at target practice. Niémans continued to improve, to grow stronger. He became an outstanding policeman. Tenacious, violent, vicious.

He started working in local police stations then became a sharpshooter in what was to become the Rapid Intervention Unit. Special operations began.

He killed his first man. At that instant, he made a pact with himself and, for the last time, contemplated his own fate. No, he would never be a proud warrior, a valiant army officer. But he would be a restless, obstinate street fighter, who would drown his own fears in the violence and the fury of the concrete jungle.

Niémans took a deep breath of mountain air. He thought about his mother, who had been dead for years. He thought about his past, which now seemed like an endless canyon, and his memories, which had splintered, then faded, making a last stand against oblivion.

As though lost in a dream, Niémans suddenly noticed a little dog. The creature was muscular, its short coat glistening in the mist. Its eyes, two drops of opaque lacquer, were staring at the policeman.

Waggling its behind, it was approaching. The officer froze. The dog drew ever nearer, just a few steps away. Its moist nose twitched. Then it abruptly started growling. Its eyes shone. It had smelt fear. The fear oozing out of this man.

Niémans was petrified.

His limbs felt as though they had been gripped by a mysterious force. His blood was being sucked away by an invisible siphon, somewhere in his guts. The dog barked, showing its teeth. Niémans understood the process. Fear produced an odor which the dog smelt and which provoked a reaction of dread and hostility. Fear feeding on fear. The dog barked then rolled its neck, grinding its teeth together. The cop drew his gun.

"Clarisse! Clarisse! Come back, Clarisse!"

Niémans re-emerged from his spell in the cooler. Through a red veil, he saw a gray man in a zip-up cardigan. He was approaching rapidly.

"You got a screw loose, or what?"

Niémans mumbled:

"Police. Get lost. And take your mutt with you."

The man was stunned.

"Jesus Christ, I don't believe this. Come on, Clarisse, come on, little darling…"

Master and hound moved off. Niémans tried to gulp back his saliva. His throat felt harsh, dry as an oven. He shook his head, put his gun away and paced round the building. As he turned left, he forced himself to remember: how long was it now since he had seen his shrink?

Around the second corner of the gymnasium, the superintendent came across the woman.

Fanny Ferreira was standing near an open door and sanding down a red-colored foam board. The officer imagined that it must be the raft she used to float downstream.

"Good morning," he said with a bow.

He was back among warmth and assurance.

Fanny raised her eyes. She must have been twenty, at most. Her skin was dark and her hair generously curly, with slight ringlets around her temples and a heavy cascade over her shoulders. Her face was somber and velvety, but her eyes had a penetrating, almost indecent, clarity.

"I'm Superintendent Pierre Niémans. I'm investigating the murder of Rémy Caillois"

"Pierre Niémans?" she repeated in astonishment. "But that's amazing!"

"Sorry?"

She nodded toward a small radio, lying on the ground.

"They were just talking about you on the news. Apparently, you arrested two murderers last night, just near the Parc des Princes. Which is rather good. But they also said that one of them was disfigured. Which is not so good. Are you omnipresent, or what?"

"No, I just drove all night."

"But why are you here? Aren't our own local cops up to it?"

"Let's just say I'm part of the reinforcements."

Fanny went back to work – she damped down the oblong surface of the board, then pressed a folded sheet of sandpaper onto it with both palms. Her body looked stocky and solid. She was dressed casually – neoprene diver's leggings, a sailor's jumper, light-colored leather boots, which were tightly laced. The veiled light cast a soft rainbow over the entire scene.

"You seem to have got over the shock quickly enough," Niémans observed.

"What shock?"

"You remember? You discovered a…"

"I'm trying not to think about it."

"So would you mind talking about it again?"

"That's why you're here, isn't it?"

She was not looking at the policeman. Her hands continued to run up and down the length of the board. Her movements were jerky and brutal.

"In what circumstances did you find the body?"

"Every weekend I go down the rapids…" She pointed at her upturned raft…"on one of these things. I'd just finished one of my little trips. Near the campus, there's a rock face, a natural dam, which blocks the current and lets you land easily. I was pulling out my raft when I noticed it…"

"In the rocks?"

"Yup, in the rocks."

"You're lying. I've been up there. I noticed that there's no room to move back. It's impossible to pick out something in the cliffs, fifty feet up…"

Fanny threw her sheet of sandpaper into a plastic cup, wiped her hands and lit a cigarette. These simple gestures provoked a feeling of violent desire in Niémans.

The young woman exhaled a long puff of blue smoke.

"The body was in the rock face. But I didn't see it in the rock face"

"Where, then?"

"I noticed it in the waters of the river. As a reflection. A white blotch on the surface of the lake."

Niémans's features relaxed.

"That's just what I thought."

"Is that really important as regards the investigations?"

"No. But I like everything to be clear."

Niémans paused for a moment, then went on:

"You're a rock climber, aren't you?"

"How did you guess?"

"I don't know…because of the region. And you do look extremely…sporty."

She turned round and opened her arms toward the mountains, which overlooked the valley. It was the first time she had smiled.

"This is my home turf, superintendent. I know these mountains like the back of my hand, from the Grand Pic de Belledonne to the Grandes Rousses. When I'm not shooting the rapids, I'm climbing the summits."

"In your opinion, could only a climber have positioned the body in the rock face?"

Fanny became serious once more. She observed the glowing tip of her cigarette.

"No, not necessarily. The rocks almost form a natural staircase. On the other hand, you'd have to be extremely strong to be able to carry the body without losing your balance."

"One of my inspectors thinks that the killer climbed up from the other side instead, where the slope is less steep, then lowered the body down on a rope."

"That would be one hell of a long way round." She hesitated, then went on. "In fact, there's a third possibility, quite simple, if you know a little about climbing."

"Which is?"

Fanny Ferreira stubbed her cigarette out on her heel and threw it away.

"Come with me," she commanded.

They went inside the gymnasium. In the half-light, Niémans made out a heap of mats, the straight shadows of parallel bars, poles, knotted ropes. As they approached the right-hand wall, Fanny remarked:

"This is my den. No one else comes here during the summer. So I keep my equipment here."

She lit a stormlight, which hung over a sort of workbench. On it were various instruments, metal parts with a variety of points and blades, casting silvery reflections or sharp glints. Fanny lit another cigarette.

Niémans asked her:

"What's all this?"

"Picks, snaphooks, triangles, safety catches. Climbing equipment"

"So?"

Fanny exhaled once more, with a sequence of simulated hiccups.

"And so, superintendent, a murderer in possession of this sort of equipment, and who knew how to use it, could quite easily have raised the body up from the river bank."

Niémans crossed his arms and leant back against the wall. While handling her tools, Fanny kept her cigarette in her mouth. This innocent gesture heightened the policeman's craving. He really did find her extremely attractive.

"As I told you," she began, "that part of the rock face has a sort of natural staircase. It would be child's play for someone who knew about climbing, or even trekking for that matter, to climb up first without the body."

"And then?"

Fanny grabbed a fluorescent green pulley, with a constellation of tiny openings.

"And then you stick that in the rock, just above the crevice."

"In the rock! But how? With a hammer? That would take ages, wouldn't it?"

Behind her screen of cigarette smoke, she replied:

"You seem to know practically nothing about rock climbing, superintendent." She seized some threaded pitons from the workbench. "Here are some spits. Now, with a rock drill like this one" – she indicated a sort of black, greasy drill – "you can stick several spits into any sort of rock in a matter of seconds. Then you fix your pulley and all you have to do is haul up the body. It's the technique we use for lifting bags up into difficult or narrow spaces."

Niémans pouted skeptically.

"I haven't been up there, but I reckon the crevice is extremely narrow. I don't see how the murderer could have crouched inside, then been able to pull up the body with just his arms, and with no pull from his legs. Which takes us back to the same portrait of our killer: a colossus."

"Who said anything about pulling it up? To raise his victim, all the climber had to do was lower himself down on the other side of the pulley, as a counterweight. The body would then have gone up all on its own."

The policeman suddenly caught on and smiled at such a simple idea.

"But then the killer would have to be heavier than his victim, wouldn't he?"

"Or the same weight. When you throw yourself down, your weight increases. Once the body had been raised, your murderer could have quickly climbed back up, still using the natural steps, then wedged his victim in that theatrical rock fault."

The superintendent took another look at the spits, screws and rings that were lying on the workbench. It reminded him of a burglar's set of tools, but a particular sort of burglar – someone who breaks through altitudes and gravity.

"How long would all that take?"

"I could do it in less than ten minutes."

Niémans nodded. The killer's profile was becoming clearer. The two of them went back outside. The sun was filtering through the clouds, shimmering on the mountain peaks. The policeman asked: "Do you teach at the university?"

"Geology."

"More exactly?"

"I teach several subjects: rock taxonomy, tectonic displacements and glaciology, too – the evolution of glaciers."

"You look very young."

"I got my PhD when I was twenty. By then, I was already a junior lecturer. I'm the youngest doctor in France. I'm now twenty-five and a tenured professor."

"A real university whiz kid."

"That's right. A whiz kid. Daughter and granddaughter of emeritus professors, here in Guernon."

"So you're part of the clan?"

"What clan?"

"One of my lieutenants studied at Guernon. He told me how the university has a separate elite, made up of the children of the university lecturers…"

Fanny shook her head maliciously.

"I'd prefer to call it a big family. The children you're talking about grow up in the university, amidst learning and culture. They then get excellent results. Nothing very surprising about that, is there?"

"Even in sporting competitions?"

She raised her eyebrows.

"That comes from the mountain air."

Niémans pressed on:

"I suppose you knew Rémy Caillois. What was he like?" Without any hesitation, Fanny replied:

"A loner. Introverted. Sullen, even. But extremely brilliant. Dazzlingly cultivated. There was a rumor going round…that he had read every book in the library."

"Do you think there was any truth in that?"

"I don't know. But he certainly knew the library well enough. It was his cave, his refuge, his earth."

"He was very young, too, wasn't he?"

"He grew up in the library. His father was head librarian before him." Niémans casually paced forward.

"I didn't know that. Were the Caillois also part of your `big family'?"

"Definitely not. Rémy was even hostile to us. Despite all his culture, he never got the results he was hoping for. I think…or rather, I suppose he was jealous of us."

"What was his subject?"

"Philosophy, I believe. He was trying to finish his thesis."

"What was it about?"

"I've no idea."

The superintendent paused. He looked up at the mountains. Under the increasing glare of the sun, they looked like dazzled giants. Another question:

"Is his father still alive?"

"No. He passed on a few years ago. A climbing accident."

"There was nothing suspicious about it?"

"What are you after? He died in an avalanche. The one on the Grande Lance of Allemond, in '93. You're every inch a cop."

"So we have two rock-climbing librarians. Father and son. Who both died in the mountains. That is a bit of a coincidence, isn't it?"

"Who said that Rémy was killed in the mountains?"

"True. But he set off on a hike on Saturday morning. He must have been attacked by the killer up there. Perhaps the murderer knew the route he was tatting and…"

"Rémy wasn't the sort of person who follows regular routes. Nor one who tells others where he's going. He was very…secretive."

Niémans nodded his head.

"Thank you, young lady. You know the form – if you think of anything that may be of importance, then phone me on one of these numbers."

Niémans jotted down the numbers of his mobile and of a room which the vice-chancellor had given him at the university – he had preferred to set up base inside the university rather than with the gendarmerie. He murmured:

"See you soon."

The young woman did not look up. The policeman was leaving when she said:

"Can I ask you a question?"

She stared at him with her eyes of crystal. Niémans felt decidedly uneasy. Her irises were too light. They were made of glass, white water, as chilling as frost.

"Fire away," he replied.

"On the radio, they said…Well, is it true that you were one of the team that killed Jacques Mesrine?"

"I was young then. But it's true. I was there."

"I was wondering…What does it feel like afterward?"

"After what?"

"After something like that"

Niémans moved toward the young woman. Instinctively, she flinched. But, with a touch of arrogance, she bravely looked back at him.

"It will always be a pleasure talking to you, Fanny. But you will never get a word out of me about that. Nor about what I lost that day."

The questioner lowered her eyes. Softly, she said:

"I see."

"No, you don't see. Which is just as well for you."

CHAPTER 6

The trickling water dripped onto his back. Niémans had borrowed a pair of hiking boots from the gendarmerie and was now ascending the natural staircase in the rock face, which was a reasonably easy climb. When he reached the height of the crevice, he took a careful look at the narrow opening where the body had been discovered. Then he examined the surrounding rock face. With his hands protected by Gore-Tex gloves he felt for possible traces of spits in the wall.

Holes in the stone.

The wind, laden with drops of icy water, beat against his face. It was a sensation Niémans liked. Despite the circumstances, he had experienced a strong feeling of fulfillment on reaching the lake. Maybe the killer had chosen this site for that very reason: it was a place of calm and serenity, pure and uncluttered. A place where jade waters soothed violent souls.

The superintendent found nothing. He continued his search around the niche: no trace of any spits. He knelt on the ledge and ran his hands over the inner walls of the cavity. Suddenly, his fingers came across an evident opening, right in the middle of the ceiling. He thought fleetingly of Fanny Ferreira. She had been right: the killer, equipped with spits and pulleys, must have hauled up the corpse by using his own body weight. He shoved his arms inside and located three notched, grooved cavities, about eight inches deep, and which formed a triangle – the three prints of the spits that had carried the pulleys. The circumstances of the murder were becoming clearer. Rémy Caillois had been set upon while out hiking. The murderer had strapped him up, tortured, mutilated then killed him in those lonely heights, and had then gone back down into the valley with his victim's body. How? Niémans glanced down forty feet below, there where the waters turned into a mirror of lacquer. On the stream. The killer must have descended the river in a canoe or something similar. But why had he gone to such lengths? Why had he not just left the body at the scene of the crime?

The policeman cautiously climbed back down. When on the bank, he removed his gloves, turned his back to the rocks and examined the shadow of the crevice on the perfectly smooth water. The reflection was as steady as a picture. He now felt sure that this place was a sanctuary. Calm and pure. And that was perhaps why the killer had chosen it. In any case, the investigator was now certain about one thing.

His killer was an experienced rock climber.

Niémans's saloon car was equipped with a VHF transmitter, but he never used it. No more than he used his cell phone when it came to confidential calls, it being even less secure. For the last few years, he had used a pager, varying from time to time its brand and model. No one else could intercept this form of communication, which necessitated a password. It was a trick he had learnt from Parisian drug dealers, who had immediately caught on to how discreet pagers were. The superintendent had given his number and password to Joisneau, Barnes and Vermont. As he got into his car he took it out of his pocket and switched it on. No messages.

He started his car and drove back to the university.

It was now eleven in the morning. Occasional figures crossed the green esplanade. A few students were running on the track in the stadium, which stood slightly away from the group of concrete blocks.

The officer turned at the crossroads and headed back toward the main building. This immense bunker was eight storeys high and six hundred yards long. He parked and consulted his map. Apart from the library, the huge construction contained the medicine and physics lecture halls. On the upper floors were the rooms set aside for practical work. And on the top floor there were the boarders' rooms. The campus janitor had marked, with a red felt-tip pen, the room occupied by Rémy Caillois and his young wife.

Pierre Niémans walked past the library doors, which were adjacent to the main entrance, and reached the hall: an open-plan construction lit by large bay windows. The walls were decorated with naïve frescoes, which shone in the morning sunlight, and the end of the hall, several hundred yards away, vanished into a sort of mineral haze. It was a place of Stalinist dimensions, utterly unlike the pale marble and brown wood of Parisian universities. Or, at least, that was what Niémans supposed. He had never before set foot in a university in Paris or anywhere else.

He climbed up a staircase of suspended marble steps, each block bent into a hairpin and separated by vertical strips. Something the architect had dreamt up, in the same overwhelming style as the rest. Every other neon light was broken, so Niémans crossed regions of utter darkness before emerging into zones of excessive brilliance.

He finally reached a narrow corridor, punctuated by small doors. He wandered down this black shaft – here, all the light bulbs had given up the ghost – looking for number 34, the Caillois's flat.

The door was ajar.

With two fingers, the policeman pushed the thin piece of plywood open. Silence and half-light welcomed him. Niémans found himself in a little hall. At the end, a stream of light crossed the narrow corridor. It was enough to enable him to make out the frames that hung on the walls. They contained black-and-white photographs, apparently dating from the 1930s or 1940s. Olympic athletes in full flight spiralled into the sky, or dug their heels into the ground, in postures of religious pride. Their faces, figures and positions gave off a sort of worrying perfection, the inhuman purity of statues. Niémans thought of the university architecture. It all fitted together in a rather uneasy way.

Beneath these images, he noticed a portrait of Rémy Caillois and took it down to get a better look. The victim had been a handsome, smiling youth with short hair and drawn features. His eyes shone with an extremely alert sparkle.

"Who are you?"

Niémans turned his head. A female form, draped in a raincoat, stood at the end of the corridor. Still a kid. She, too, could scarcely be twenty-five. Her shoulder-length fair hair framed a thin ravaged face, whose paleness brought out the dark rings around her eyes. Her features were bony, but delicate. This woman's beauty emerged only in moments of crisis, as though it were the echo of a first feeling of uneasiness.

"I'm Superintendent Pierre Niémans," he announced.

"And you come in like that without knocking?"

"I'm sorry. The door was open. You are Rémy Caillois's wife?"

Her reply was to snatch the portrait out of Niémans's hands and hang it back on the wall. Then, walking back into the room to the left, she took off her raincoat. Niémans had a surreptitious glimpse of a pale emaciated chest in the hanging folds of an ancient pullover. He shuddered.

"Come in," she said despite herself.

Niémans found himself in a cramped living-room, with a neat austere decor. Modern paintings hung on the walls. Symmetrical lines, distressing colors, incomprehensible stuff. The policeman took no notice. But one detail did strike him: there was a strong chemical smell in the room. A smell of paste. The Caillois must have just redecorated their flat. This detail cut him to the quick. For the first time he shivered at the thought of this couple's ruined hopes, the ashes of happiness that must still be glowing beneath that woman's grief. He adopted a serious tone:

"I've come from Paris, Madame. I was called in by the investigating magistrate to help in the enquiries into your husband's sad demise. I…"

"Do you have a lead?"

The superintendent stared at her, then suddenly felt like breaking something, a window, anything. This woman was full of grief, but her hatred of the police was even stronger.

"No, we don't. Not for the moment," he admitted. "But I'm optimistic that investigations will soon…"

"Ask your questions."

Niémans sat down on the sofa-bed, opposite the woman who had chosen a small chair in order to keep her distance from him. To save face, he seized a cushion and fiddled with it for a few seconds.

"I've read your statement," he began. "And I would just like to get a little additional information. Lots of people go hiking in this region I suppose?"

"What else do you think there is to do in Guernon? Everybody goes walking, or climbing."

"Did other hikers know the routes Rémy took?"

"No. He never talked about that. He used to go off on ways known only to him."

"Did he just go walking, or climbing as well?"

"It depended. On Saturday, Rémy set off on foot, at an altitude of less than six thousand feet. He didn't take any equipment with him." Niémans paused for a moment before getting to the heart of the matter.

"Did your husband have any enemies?"

"No."

The ambiguous tone of the answer led him to ask another question, which took even him by surprise:

"Did he have any friends?"

"No. Rémy was a loner."

"How did he get on with the students who used the library?"

"The only contact he had with them was to give them library tickets."

"Anything strange happen recently?"

The woman did not answer. Niémans pressed the point: "Your husband wasn't particularly nervy or tense?"

"No."

"Tell me about his father's death."

Sophie Caillois raised her eyes. Her pupils were dull, but her eyelashes and eyebrows were magnificent. She gave a slight shrug of the shoulders. "He died in an avalanche in _1993. We weren't married at the time. I don't know anything much about all that. What are you trying to get at?"

The police officer remained silent and looked round the little room, with its immaculately arranged furniture. He knew this sort of place off by heart. He realised that he was not alone with Sophie Caillois. Memories of the dead man lingered there, as though his soul were packing its bags somewhere, in the next room. The superintendent pointed at the pictures on the walls.

"Your husband didn't keep any books here?"

"Why would he have done that? He worked all day in the library."

"Is that where he worked on his thesis?"

The woman nodded curtly. Niémans could not take his eyes off that beautiful, hard face. He was surprised at meeting two such attractive women in less than one hour.

"What was his thesis about?"

"The Olympic games."

"Hardly an intellectual subject."

An expression of scorn crossed Sophie Caillois's face.

"His thesis was about the relationship between the sporting event and the sacred. Between the body and the mind. He was studying the myth of the athlon; the first man who made the earth fertile by his own strength, by transcending the limits of his own body."

"I'm sorry," Niémans huffed. "I don't know much about philosophy…Does that have something to do with the photographs in the corridor?"

"Yes and no. They're stills taken from a film by Leni Riefenstahl about the 1936 Berlin Olympic games."

"They're striking images."

"Rémy said that those Games had revived the profound nature of the Games of Olympus, which were based on the marriage of mind and body, of physical effort and philosophical expression."

"And in this case, of Nazi ideology, isn't that so?"

"The nature of the thought being expressed didn't matter to my husband. All he was interested in was that fusion of an idea and a force, of thought and action."

This sort of clap-trap meant nothing to Niémans. The woman leant forward then suddenly spat out:

"Why did they send you here? Why someone like you?"

He ignored the aggressive tone. When questioning, he always used the same cold, inhuman approach, based on intimidation. It is pointless for a policeman – and particularly for a policeman with his mug – to play at being understanding or at amateur psychology. In a commanding voice, he asked:

"In your opinion, was there any reason for anyone to have it in for your husband?"

"Are you crazy, or what?" she yelled. "Haven't you seen the body? Don't you realise that it was a maniac who killed my husband? That Rémy was picked up by a nut? A headcase who laid into him, beat him, mutilated him, tortured him to death?"

The policeman took a deep breath. He was thinking of that quiet, unworldly librarian, and his aggressive wife. A chilling couple. He asked:

"How was your home life?"

"Mind your own, fucking business."

"Answer the question, please."

"Am I a suspect?"

"You know damn well you're not. So just answer my question." The young woman looked daggers at him.

"You want to know how many times a week we fucked?" Goose-pimples rose over the nape of Niéman's neck.

"Would you co-operate, Madame? I'm only doing my job."

"Get lost, you fucking pig."

Her teeth were far from white, but the contours of her lips were ravishingly moving. Niémans stared at that mouth, her pointed cheek bones, her eyebrows, which shed rays across the pallor of her face. What did the tint of her skin, of her eyes matter? All those illusive plays of light and tone? Beauty lay in the lines. The shape. An incorruptible purity. The policeman stayed put.

"Fuck off!" the woman screamed.

"One last question. Rémy had always lived at the university. When did he do his military service?"

Sophie Caillois froze, taken aback by this unexpected question. She wrapped her arms around her chest, as though suddenly chilled from the inside.

"He didn't."

"He was declared unfit?"

The woman's eyes fixed themselves once more on the superintendent.

"What are you after?"

"For what reasons?"

"Psychiatric, I think."

"He had mental problems?"

"Are you off the last banana boat, or what? Everybody gets dismissed for psychiatric reasons. It doesn't mean a thing. You play up, come out with' a load of gibberish, then get dismissed."

Niémans did not utter a word, but his entire bearing must have expressed deep disapproval. The woman suddenly took in his crew cut, his rigid elegance and his lips arching in a grimace of disgust.

"Jesus Christ, just drop it!"

He got up and murmured:

"So, I'll be going then. But I'd just like you to remember one thing."

"What's that?" she spat.

"Whether you like it or not, it's people like me who catch murderers. It's people like me who will avenge your husband." The woman's features turned to stone for a couple of seconds, then her chin trembled. She collapsed in tears. Niémans turned on his heel. "I'll get him," he said.

In the doorway, he punched the wall and called back over his shoulder:

"By Christ, I swear it. I'll get the little flicker who killed your husband"

Outside, a silvery flash burst in front of his face. Black spots danced beneath his eyelids. Niémans swayed for a few seconds. Then he forced himself to walk calmly to his car, while the dark halos gradually turned into women's faces. Fanny Ferreira, the brunette. And Sophie Caillois, the blonde. Two strong, intelligent, aggressive women. The sort of women this policeman would probably never hold in his arms.

He aimed a violent kick at an ancient metal bin, riveted to a pylon, then instinctively looked at his pager.

The screen was flashing. The forensic pathologist had just finished the autopsy.