Blood-Red Rivers aka The Crimson Rivers

CHAPTER 36

The German photographer's pictures had taken on flesh.

Athletes with shaven heads were running in the pre-war Berlin stadium. Nimble. Powerful. The race had fallen into the rhythm of an old flickering movie, with grainy images, colored like the covering of a tomb. He watched the men run. He heard their heels on the track. He sensed their hoarse breathing, beating in counterpoint to their strides.

But soon other confusing details appeared. Their faces were too somber, too rigid. Their brows were too strong, too prominent. What lay behind their staring eyes? As a deep, hysterical cheering started up among the spectators, the athlete's eyes suddenly seemed to have been ripped out, their sockets were empty, but this did not stop them from seeing, or from running on. Instead, within those gaping wounds, things were apparently swarming around…tongues clicked…scales gleamed…

Niémans woke up covered in icy sweat. He was immediately dazzled by the white light from the computer, as though it was playing at interrogating him. He quietly pulled himself together and looked round: nobody had noticed that he had nodded off and that terror had ripped into his dreams in the form of those photos he had noticed in Sophie Caillois's flat. The pictures taken by that Nazi film director, whose name he had now forgotten.

Half past nine.

He had slept for only forty-five minutes. After his visit to the warehouse, Niémans had immediately sent everything he had found (the exercise book, the wire meshes, the packets of white powder) to Patrick Astier, the scientist in Grenoble, by way of Marc Costes, who was still awaiting the arrival of the frozen corpse in the hospital.

Then Niémans had come here, to the library, to start a word search using the terms "blood-red" and "rivers” His first thought had been to check the maps of the area to see if there was not a network of waterways that bore this name. After that, he had consulted the computer index in search of a book, a catalog or a document which contained this expression. But he had found nothing and, while reading, had suddenly dozed off. Almost forty hours without sleep and his nerves had abruptly dumped him, like a puppet with its strings cut.

The superintendent glanced round the main reading-room again. Around the tables and carrels, ten policemen were continuing their research, picking their way through books which contained references to evil, purity or eyes…Two of them were drawing up a list of those students who had regularly consulted some of these, supposedly suspect, titles. Another one was still reading Rémy Caillois's thesis.

But Niémans no longer believed in a literary connection. And neither did those police officers, who were waiting to be relieved. For the last two hours, everybody knew that, because of the lack of results of the Niémans/Barnes/Vermont team, the Grenoble regional crime squad was going to take over the investigation.

It was true: their enquiries had not progressed one inch, despite all of the means put at their disposal. Three hundred soldiers had been requisitioned from the Romans military base to help Captain Vermont's units search the area around the Pointe du Muret, then the western slopes of the Belledonne. They had arrived by truck at about seven o'clock and had at once begun their nocturnal explorations. Apart from these soldiers, the captain had also called in two companies of CRS riot police, based in Valence. Over three hundred hectares had now been examined. For the moment, this close search had revealed nothing and, Niémans was convinced, would reveal nothing. If the killer had left any clues behind, then they would already have been discovered. And yet, the superintendent remained in radio contact with Vermont and had personally traced out, on an ordnance survey map, the crucial points of the investigation: the places where the first and second bodies had been found, the position of the university, Sertys's warehouse, the location of the various refuges, and so on.

The roads were also being more and more closely watched. The number of road-blocks had risen from eight to twenty-four. They now covered a large circumference around Guernon. All the towns and villages, the autoroute exits and entrances, and the A- and B-roads were all sealed off. The paperwork was piling up, too. Under the responsibility of Captain Barnes, the general requests for information continued. Faxes poured into his office: statements, answers to questionnaires, commentaries…Other forms were then dispatched to the nearby ski resorts. Messages and circulars were sent off. The brigade's switchboard had been equipped with four extra fax machines.

That afternoon, they had also begun to question everybody who had been in contact with the first victim over the previous few weeks. One team was still questioning the region's top mountain climbers, in particular those who had already gone up the Vallernes glacier. Wild men, who did not live in Guernon, but in the villages high up the slopes, on the rocky flanks that overlooked the university. The gendarmerie station was constantly crammed with people.

A further team, made up of Vermont's men, was slowly piecing together the probable itinerary Rémy Caillois took during his last expedition, while others still were already beginning to work on the second victim's journey, as well as that of the murderer, up to the summit of the glacier. Their paths were entered into the computer, memorised and compared. In the midst of this tumult, of these rumors of war, Niémans obstinately clung to the personal angle. More than ever, he was convinced that if he could discover the motive, then he would find the murderer. And the motive was, perhaps, revenge. But he was going to have to be very careful about this hypothesis. Neither the authorities nor the general public approved of paradoxes when it came to murder. Officially, a murderer killed innocent people. But Niémans was now trying to show that the victims, too, had been guilty.

But where could he look? Caillois and Sertys had both died with their secrets intact. Sophie Caillois was not going to say a word, and having her followed had not, for the moment, produced anything of interest. As for Sertys's mother, or his colleagues at work, they had been questioned and clearly knew only the public face of Philippe Sertys. His mother had not even been aware of the warehouse's existence, despite the fact of its having belonged to her husband, René Sertys.

So?

So, Niémans's mind was now locked on another mystery, which had begun to swamp all of the others. He switched on his phone and called Barnes:

"Any news of Joisneau?"

The young lieutenant, that enthusiastic officer who was dying to acquire the "master's" art, had still not reappeared.

"Yeah," Barnes growled. "I sent one of my boys to the home for the blind, to find out where he went next."

"And?"

The captain's voice sounded tired and strained.

"And, Joisneau left the home at about five o'clock. Apparently, he was on his way to Annecy, to see an oculist there. A professor at the University of Guernon, who looks after the patients in the home"

"Have you called him?"

"Of course. We've tried his business and personal lines. No answer."

"Have you got his address?"

Barnes dictated the name of one street: the doctor lived in a house which also contained his surgery.

"I'll drop in and see," Niémans said.

"Why? Sooner or later, Joisneau's bound to…"

"I feel responsible."

"Responsible?"

"If the kid's done anything crazy, if he's taken any unnecessary risks, then I'm sure that it was to impress me. See what I mean?" The gendarme adopted a soothing tone.

"Joisneau will turn up. He's young. He's probably set off on some wild goose chase."

"Yes, probably. But he might also be in danger. Without knowing it.

"In…danger?"

Niémans did not reply. A few seconds of silence ensued. Barnes seemed not to grasp the meaning of the superintendent's words. Then he suddenly added:

"Oh yes, I was forgetting. Joisneau also phoned the hospital. He wanted to take a look at the archives."

"The archives?"

"Those huge underground galleries beneath the university hospital. They contain the entire history of the region, in terms of its births, illnesses and deaths."

The policeman felt his chest go tight: so, the kid was off following up a lead on his own. A lead which had started at the blind home, continued to that oculist and then to the hospital archives. He concluded:

"But he hasn't been seen at the hospital?"

Barnes replied that he had not. Niémans hung up. Then his phone immediately rang again. This was no time for pagers, secret codes and precautions. All the investigators were now working flat out. Costes's voice was quavering:

"I've just been given the body."

"Is it Sertys?"

"Yes, it is. No doubt about it."

The superintendent whistled. So, all the pieces of information he had picked up during the last three hours did fit into the frame. And now he was going to be able to send a special team to conduct a systematic search of the warehouse. Costes went on:

"There's one very important difference from the first set of mutilations."

"What's that?"

"The murderer removed the eyes, but also the hands. He cut them off at the wrists. You didn't notice this because of the fetal position of the body. The stumps were stuck between his knees."

The eyes. The hands. Niémans glimpsed an occult link between those parts of the anatomy. But he was incapable of deciphering the infernal logic which lay behind these mutilations.

"Is that all?" he asked.

"Yes, that's all for now. I'm just beginning the autopsy."

"How long will it take?"

"Two hours, at least."

"Start with the eye-sockets and call me as soon as you find anything. I'm sure there's going to be a clue for us."

"I feel like I'm a messenger from hell, superintendent."

Niémans crossed the reading-room. Near the door, he noticed the officer hunched over Rémy Caillois's thesis. He allowed himself a little detour and sat down in front of him, in one of the carrels.

"How's it going?"

The officer looked up.

"I'm sinking fast."

The superintendent smiled and pointed at the wad of paper. "Anything of interest?"

The man shrugged.

"We're still in ancient Greece and the Olympiads, sports events and all that sort of thing: running races, the javelin, wrestling…Caillois goes on about the sacred nature of physical competition, of breaking records…" The officer curled up his lips in disbelief. "As a kind of…of communion with higher forces. According to him, a broken record was, at that time, considered to be a real way of communicating with the gods…For example, the athlon, the ideal athlete, could unleash the hidden powers of the earth by surpassing his own physical limitations. Mind you, when you see the hysteria at some football matches, it really does seem as though sport sets off strange forces…"

"What else have you picked up?"

"Caillois says that, in ancient times, athletes were also poets, musicians and philosophers. Our little librarian was very insistent about that point. He seems to miss the days when the mind and the body were bound together within one single human being. Which also explains the title: `Nostalgia for Olympia'. It's nostalgia for a time of supermen, who were at once cerebral and muscular, intellectuals and sportsmen. Caillois sets that rigorous period against our own century, in which the brainy ones can't lift a pea and the athletes are pea-brains. He considers it to be a sign of decadence, of a separation between the mind and the body."

Niémans glimpsed once more the athletes in his nightmare. Those blind men in their stony reality. Sophie Caillois had explained how her husband believed that those sportsmen in Berlin had re-established that profound communion between the physical and the intellectual.

The policeman also thought of this university's champions: the lecturers' children who, in the words of Joisneau, won all the prizes, including the sporting ones. In a way, these gifted youngsters were also acting out the part of the ideal athlete. When Niémans had looked at those photographs of medal winners in the antechamber to the vice-chancellor's office, he had noticed a terrible youthful vitality in their faces. As though it were the incarnation of some physical force, but also of a separate way of thinking. Of some philosophy, perhaps? He smiled at the young officer, who was now staring at him with a worried expression.

"Well, you seem to have grasped the essential," he concluded. "I'm completely out of my depth. I understand about every other sentence." He tapped his index finger against the tip of his nose. "But I'm relying on my flair. I can smell out a fascist from miles away."

"You reckon Caillois was a Nazi?"

"I wouldn't put it that way…It seems more complicated than that…But, his myth of the superman, the athlete with the pure spirit, does sound like the usual claptrap about racial superiority and all that bullshit."

In his mind's eye, Niémans saw those pictures of the Berlin Olympics again, in the corridor of the Caillois's flat. A secret lay behind those images, and behind the sporting records at Guernon. They were perhaps connected. But how?

"He doesn't mention any rivers?" he asked at last. "Blood-red rivers?"

"What?"

Pierre Niémans stood up.

"Forget it."

The officer watched the tall man in the blue coat as he started to leave.

"Really, superintendent, you could have got a student on this job, someone more qualified than me to…"

"I wanted a professional opinion. An interpretation which would fit into our frame of reference."

The officer pursed his lips once more.

"And you really think that all this crap has something to do with the murders?"

Niémans put his hand on the glass partition and leant over.

"In this sort of business, every element is important. Coincidences don't exist. And neither do irrelevancies. It all works like an atomic structure, do you see that? So, keep reading."

Niémans left the officer, who was looking decidedly dubious. Outside, on the campus, he noticed distant flashes coming from the projectors of television crews. He screwed up his eyes and distinguished the far-away figure of Vincent Luyse, the vice-chancellor, who was stammering out some reassuring declaration on the steps of the main building. He also made out the distinctive logos of the local, national and even Swiss television channels…A seething crowd of journalists, questions from all directions. The process had started. The lenses of the media were now focused on Guernon. News of the murders was about to spread across France, and panic had gripped the little town.

And it was just the beginning.

CHAPTER 37

As he walked on, Niémans phoned Antoine Rheims.

"Any news of our Englishman?"

"I'm at Hôtel-Dieu now. He still hasn't regained consciousness and the medics are sounding pessimistic. The British Ambassador has just let loose a pack of lawyers. They've come straight over from London. The journalists are here, too. Imagine the worst, then double it."

The satellite connection was perfect; Rheims's voice crystal clear.

Niémans pictured his boss on the Ile de la Cité, then saw himself once more in those hospitals, questioning prostitutes who had been beaten up by their pimps – their faces swollen, flesh torn by signet rings. He could also see the bloodied features of suspects he himself had shaken up a bit. Their hands cuffed to the bed, with a whole array of flashing lights and other gadgets, in the ghostly pallor of the room.

He saw the square outside Notre Dame, when he used to leave Hôtel-Dieu at three o'clock in the morning, weary, his mind in a whirl, in the bright silence of the night. Pierre Niémans was a warrior. And his memories had a metallic gleam, of ammunition belts, of the fires of combat. He felt a strong pang of regret for that strange existence, which few people would have wanted, but which was his sole reason for carrying on.

"How are your enquiries going?" Rheims asked.

His voice sounded less aggressive than it had during the last phone call. Solidarity between colleagues, their shared experiences and old intimacy were beginning to take control once again.

"We now have two murders. And not the slightest lead. But I'm keeping at it. And I know that I'm on the right track."

Rheims added nothing, but Niémans sensed that his silence indicated trust. He asked:

"And what about me?"

"What about you?"

"I mean, in the service. Is anyone looking into this hooligan business?"

Rheims laughed sardonically.

"You mean the disciplinary board? They've been waiting for this moment for ages. And they can wait a while longer."

"For what?"

"For the Brit to die. So they can do you for murder."

Niémans reached Annecy at about eleven o'clock. He drove down the town's large clear avenues, under the boughs of the trees. The leaves, lit up by the streetlamps, gleamed like pieces of gold. At the end of each street, Niémans encountered some small constructions that seemed to rise up from a well of light: newsstands, fountains and statues. At a distance of several hundred yards, these tiny objects looked like figurines in music boxes, or Christmas cribs. As though the town were hiding its treasures in cases of stone, marble or wood, along its squares and crossroads.

He went alongside the canals of Annecy, with their fake Amsterdam look, opening out in the distance onto the lake. The policeman could hardly believe that he was only a few miles away from Guernon, from his corpses, from his savage killer. He reached the town's residential area. Avenue des Ormes. Boulevard Vauvert. Impasse des Hautes-Brises. Names which, to the inhabitants of Annecy, were presumably impregnated with dreams of white stone, with symbols of power.

He parked his saloon at the end of the cul-de-sac, which sloped downwards. The tall houses were crammed in, one against the other, at once affected and overpowering, divided by gardens concealed behind verdigris walls. The number he was looking for corresponded to a large town house in cut stone, with an oblong glass porch. The policeman pressed twice on the diamond-shaped doorbell, the button of which was made to look like an eye. Beneath it, the plaque of black marble indicated: "Dr Edmond Chernecé. Ophthalmology. Eye Surgery".

No answer. Niémans looked down. The lock presented no difficulties and one more break-in would not now make any difference. He skillfully forced open the latch, and found himself in a marble-tiled corridor. Arrows indicated the direction of the waiting-room, down the corridor on the left, but the policeman was more interested in a leather-covered door to the right. The surgery itself. He turned the handle and discovered a long room, which was in fact a large veranda, its roof and two of its walls being entirely made of panes of glass. In the darkness, water could be heard trickling. It took Niémans a few seconds to distinguish a human form at the end of the room, standing in front of a sink.

"Doctor Chernecé?"

The man stared round at him. Niémans approached. The first detail he noticed with any precision were the doctor's hands, tanned and shining in the flowing water. Old roots, mottled with brown stains, the veins reaching up in a tangle toward the powerful wrists.

"Who are you?"

The voice was deep, and calm. The man was short, but extremely stocky, and he looked over sixty. White hair flowed out in luxuriant waves from his high sunburned forehead, which was mottled with liver spots, too. A profile like a rock face, the build of a dolmen. The man looked like a monolith. A mysterious block of stone, made all the stranger because the doctor was wearing only a white tee-shirt and boxer shorts.

"Superintendent Pierre Niémans. I rang the bell, but nobody answered."

"How did you get in?"

Niémans flicked his fingers, like a circus conjurer.

"I improvised."

Without seeming at all put out by the policeman's lack of decorum, the doctor smiled elegantly. With his elbow, he turned off the long arm of the tap and walked across the transparent room, his forearms raised, in search of a towel. Oculist's instruments, microscopes, anatomical plates illustrating eyeballs, entire and cut open, appeared in the half-light. In a neutral tone of voice, Chernecé declared:

"I've already had one visit from a police officer this afternoon. What do you want?"

Niémans was now only a few feet away from him. And he realised that he had not yet noticed the man's main distinguishing mark, the one that set him apart from thousands of other people: his eyes. Chernecé's stare was colorless. Gray irises which gave him a look of snake-like vigilance. Pupils which resembled miniature aquariums, containing killer fish, protected by scales of steel. Niémans said:

"I'm here to ask you a few questions about him."

The man smiled indulgently.

"How original. Are the police now investigating one another?"

"What time did he come here?"

"About six this evening, I should think."

"That late? Do you remember what he asked you?"

"Of course I do. He questioned me about the inmates of a home near Guernon. A home for children suffering from eye problems, whom I regularly treat."

"What did he want to know?"

Chernecé opened a cupboard with mahogany doors. He picked out a light-colored shirt, with baggy sleeves, and rapidly slipped it on.

"He wanted to know the reasons for the children's conditions. I told him that they were hereditary diseases. He also asked if there might be another explanation for such problems, such as poisoning, or a wrongly administered drug."

"And what was your answer?"

"That the idea was preposterous. These genetic conditions arise from the town's isolation, and from interbreeding. Marriages between closely related people mean that the diseases are passed on, in the blood. This sort of phenomenon is well attested in communities that are cut off from the outside world. The region around the Lac Saint-Jean in Quebec, for instance, or the groups of Amish in the USA. And it also applies to Guernon. People from that valley do not mix with outsiders…Why look for another explanation to the phenomenon?"

Without the slightest sign of embarrassment at Niémans's presence, the doctor was now pulling on some navy blue trousers, made of a slightly moiré material. Chernecé was clearly quite a snappy dresser. The policeman went on:

"Did he ask you anything else?"

"Yes. About grafts."

"What about grafts?"

He was buttoning up his shirt.

"Eye grafts. I had no idea what he was on about."

"He didn't tell you the reason for his enquiries?"

"No. But I answered as best I could. He wanted to know if there was any point removing people's eyes, with a view to performing a graft of the cornea, for example."

So, Joisneau had thought of the surgery angle.

"And?"

Chernecé went stock still, and wiped the back of his hand over his chin, as though testing the harshness of his stubble. The shadows of trees were dancing outside the panes of glass.

"I told him that such practices were now unnecessary. It is very easy to find substitute corneas these days. And much progress has been made in the production of artificial ones. As for the retinas, we still do not know how to preserve them, so grafts are out of the question…" The doctor gave a slight chuckle. "You know, all those stories about the smuggling of organs are just urban myths."

"Did he ask you anything else?"

"No. And he looked disappointed."

"Did you advise him to go anywhere? Did you give him another address?"

Chernecé laughed affably.

"Goodness me. It rather sounds as though you have lost your fellow officer."

"Answer my question. Do you have any idea where he went after leaving here? Did he mention anything?"

"No. Absolutely not." His face hardened. "Now, would you mind telling me what all this is about?"'

Niémans took the Polaroids of Caillois's corpse out of his coat pocket and laid them down on the desk.

"That's what it's about."

Chernecé put on his glasses, lit a small desk lamp and examined the photographs. The gaping eyelids. The empty sockets. "Good Lord…" he murmured.

He seemed horrified and at the same time fascinated by the images. Niémans spotted a collection of chrome-plated probes in a Chinese pencil-case at the end of the desk. He decided to adopt a different line of approach. He had a specialist in front of him, so why not ask specialist questions?

"I now have two victims in this state. Do you think that it was a professional who mutilated them in this way?"

Chernecé looked up. His face was beaded with drops of sweat. He remained silent for some time, then asked:

"My God, what the hell do you mean?"

"I'm talking about the excision of the eyes. I've got some close-ups." Niémans handed him the photographs of the sockets. "Does it at all look like the work of a professional surgeon? Are there any specific signs? The killer carefully avoided cutting the eyelids. Is that easily done? Or does it require any special anatomical knowledge?"

Chernecé stared again at the images.

"Who could have done such a thing? What sort of…monster? Where did this happen?"

"Near Guernon. Doctor, would you answer my question? Do you think that this operation was carried out by a professional?" The oculist stood up.

"I'm sorry. I…I don't know."

"What technique do you suppose he used?"

The doctor took another look.

"I think he slid a blade under the eyeballs…that he managed to slice through the optical nerves and oculomotor muscles thanks to the suppleness of the eyelid. I think that he then rotated the eye, using the flat of the blade as leverage. Rather as if with a coin, do you follow me?"

Niémans pocketed his Polaroids. The sunburned medic watched his every move, as if he could still see the images through the material of the coat. On the bulwark of his chest, his shirt was stained with sweat.'

"I'd like to ask you a general question," Niémans said. "Think carefully before answering it."

The doctor pulled back. The veranda seemed haunted by the dancing reflections of the trees. He gestured to the policeman to go on.

"What do you think eyes and hands have in common? What connection could there be between those two parts of the body?"

The oculist paced up and down for a moment. He had recovered his calm, the coolness of the man of science.

"The connection is obvious," he said at last. "Our eyes and our hands are the only two unique parts of our anatomy."

Niémans shivered. Since hearing the news from Costes, he had sensed this, but had been incapable of putting his finger on the reason. Now it was his turn to sweat.

"What do you mean?"

"Our irises are unique. They are made of thousands of fibrillae, which form a pattern which is distinct to each of us. A biological marker, created by our genes. The iris is as good a distinguishing mark as our fingerprints. So that is what our eyes and hands have in common. They are the only parts of our bodies to have a biological, or biometric signature, as the specialists put it. Deprive a body of its eyes and hands, and you take away its external markers. Now, what is a man who dies without such markers? Nobody. An anonymous corpse, which has lost its personal identity. Even its soul, perhaps. Who knows? In some ways, it is the worst possible end. An unmarked, common grave of dead flesh."

The panes of glass were setting off reflected glints in Chernecé's colorless eyes, making them look even more translucent. The entire room now resembled a glass iris. The anatomical plates, the figure in the shadows, the claws of the trees – everything was dancing as though in the deepest reaches of a mirror.

An idea flashed into the superintendent's mind. Caillois's hands, which had lost their fingerprints, and which the killer had not removed. The murderer had clearly let them alone because they were already anonymous.

The killer was stealing his victims' biological signatures.

"In fact," the doctor went on, "I would say that the irises are a more certain means of identification than the fingerprints. Your specialists ought to look into the matter."

"Why do you say that?"

In the half-light, Chernecé smiled. He had recovered his professorial poise.

"Some scientists believe that it is possible to read in the irises not only a person's state of health, but also his entire history. Those little circles which glimmer around our pupils carry our very genesis…Have you never heard of iridology?"

For some inexplicable reason, Niémans felt sure that this information was casting a new, transversal beam of light across the case. He did not yet know where it might lead, but he sensed that the killer shared the oculist's point of view. Chernecé went on:

"It is a study which was first started at the end of the nineteenth century. A German eagle-trainer noticed a curious phenomenon. One of his birds broke its foot. The man then observed that a new mark, like a golden scratch, had appeared in its iris. As though the accident had had an effect on the bird's eye. Such physical echoes exist, superintendent. I am sure about that. So, who knows? Maybe your killer removed his victims' eyes so as to wipe out the trace of some past event, which could be read in their irises."

Niémans backed off, letting the doctor's shadow fill up the space he left. He asked one final question:

"Why didn't you answer the phone this afternoon?"

"Because I unplugged it," he smiled. "I don't consult on Mondays. I wanted to spend my afternoon and evening tidying up my surgery."

Chernecé went back to the wardrobe and removed a jacket. He put it on with a broad, exact gesture. It was dark blue, airy and square-cut. As though finally grasping the reason for Niémans's visit, he said:

"So you tried to contact me this afternoon? I am sorry. I could have told you all this by telephone. Please forgive me for having you waste your precious time."

The words rang false. The man oozed egoism and indifference from every pore of his sun-tanned forehead. He had probably even forgotten about Rémy Caillois's stolen eyes by then.

Niémans gazed at the engravings of sliced-up eyeballs, the blood vessels dancing across the whites, as though mimicking the shadows of the trees through the thick panes of the ceiling and walls.

"I haven't wasted my time," he murmured.

Outside, Superintendent Niémans was in for another surprise. A man was apparently waiting for him, with his back to the light from the streetlamp, leaning on his saloon. He was as tall as Niémans, looked North African, with long dreadlocks, a colored woolly hat and a devil's beard. An experienced policeman can always spot a dangerous man when he sees one. And, despite his nonchalant pose, this bean-pole was certainly in that category. He reminded him of the drug pushers he had so often hunted down through the shadows of the Parisian nights. Niémans also reckoned that he probably had a gun hidden somewhere on his person. His hand clutching his MR73, he approached him and could not believe his eyes. The Arab was smiling at him.

"Superintendent Niémans?" he asked, when the policeman was just a few yards away from him.

The North African slid one hand into his jacket. Niémans immediately drew and aimed his gun.

"Don't move!"

The man with the sphinx face grinned, with a mixture of self-assurance and irony that was blown up to a degree that Niémans had rarely encountered before, even on the faces of the hardest suspects.

The Arab said, calmly:

"Easy does it, superintendent. My name's Karim Abdouf. I'm a police lieutenant. Captain Barnes told me that I would find you here."

He then rapidly completed his hand movement, waving his tricolor police card in front of him. Niémans cautiously put his gun away. He drank in the young Arab's extraordinary appearance. He could now make out the glinting of assorted ear-rings amid the dreadlocks.

"You're not from the Annecy brigade?" he asked incredulously. "No. I'm here from Sarzac. In the Lot."

"Never heard of it."

Karim pocketed his card.

"We keep ourselves pretty much to ourselves."

Niémans smiled and peered once more at this apparition. "So, what sort of a cop are you?"

The sphinx slapped his hand on the bonnet of the saloon. "The sort of cop you need."

CHAPTER 38

The two officers drank a coffee in a small lorry drivers' café on the way back. In the distance could be seen the lights from a roadblock and the glittering of cars braking in front of the barriers.

Niémans listened attentively to Abdouf's hastily told story, this cop who had sprung out of nowhere and whose investigations had quite suddenly become linked to the murders in Guernon. But his tale seemed incomprehensible. He told of a mysterious mother and her life on the run, of a little girl transformed into a little boy, of demons trying to destroy the child's face, because they considered it to be a piece of incriminating evidence…It would all have sounded like the ravings of a madman, had the lieutenant from Sarzac not produced, amidst this deluge of information, formal proof that Philippe Sertys had desecrated a grave in a small town in the Lot, on Sunday night.

And this was vital evidence.

Philippe Sertys 'was, clearly, the desecrator of the tomb. Of course, it would still be necessary to compare the scraps of rubber found near the cemetery of Sarzac with the tires on his Lada. But, if this did check out, then it would mean that Niémans now had proof of the guilt of his second victim.

On the other hand, the superintendent could not see how to fit the other elements Karim Abdouf produced into his own investigations. All that nonsense about a mother and her little girl being pursued by "demons".

Niémans asked Karim:

"What's your conclusion?"

The young Arab fiddled nervously with a lump of sugar.

"I think that the demons were reawoken last night, for a reason that is unknown to me, and that Sertys went to the school and the cemetery in Sarzac to check something. Something to do with what happened in 1982."

"So, Sertys was one of your demons?"

"Exactly."

"But that's ridiculous," Niémans riposted. "In 1982, Philippe Sertys was only twelve. Do you really reckon a little kid like that terrified some mother and then chased her halfway across France?"

Karim Abdouf frowned.

"Yeah, I know. It doesn't all quite fit together yet."

Niémans smiled and ordered another coffee. He was not yet sure whether or not to believe everything Karim Abdouf had told him. Nor was he sure whether or not to trust an Arab who measured six foot two, had dreadlocks, carried an unauthorised automatic weapon, and was driving what was clearly a stolen Audi. But this tale was no crazier than his own hypothesis: the guilt of the victims. And the gutsy enthusiasm of this young Arab was highly contagious.

He finally decided to trust him. He gave him the key to his personal office, in the university, where Karim could take a look at the entire case and explain its arcane sides to him.

In hushed tones, the superintendent revealed his own deeply rooted convictions: the victims were guilty; the murderer was revenging one, or several criminal acts. He summed up the flimsy evidence at his disposal. Rémy Caillois's schizophrenia and brutality. Philippe Sertys's isolated warehouse and exercise book. Niémans also spoke of the "blood-red rivers'; but without being able to explain this curious expression. Then he filled him in concerning the current situation: they were waiting for the results of the autopsy. Perhaps the body contained another message.

There was also the vague hope that all the enquiries being conducted in the region might produce something concrete. Finally, his voice dropped a tone. He mentioned Eric Joisneau, and how worried he was.

Abdouf asked several precise questions about the lieutenant's disappearance, which he seemed to find extremely interesting. So, Niémans asked him:

"What's your opinion about all this?"

The young cop smiled wearily.

"The same as yours, superintendent. I think your kid's in trouble. He must have turned up something important, then tried to go it alone so as to prove himself to you. I reckon he discovered something vital, then that vital something exploded on him. I hope I'm wrong, but your Joisneau may well have unmasked the murderer and this may well have cost him his life."

There was a pause. Niémans observed the lights from the distant road-block. He had not wanted to admit it to himself but, since waking up in the library, that was precisely what he had suspected. Karim went on:

"Don't think I'm a cynic, or anything, superintendent. Since this morning, I've been going from one nightmare to another. Now here I am in Guernon, up against a killer who rips his victims' eyes out. And sitting in front of you, Pierre Niémans, one of the stars of the French police force, who seems about as lost as I am in this dump of a town…So, I'm not going to be surprised by anything any more. I reckon these murders are directly related to my own investigations and I'm ready to see it all through to the end."

The two policemen left.

It was midnight. A slight drizzle was filling the air. In the distance, the gendarmerie road-blocks lingered there in the rain. The drivers were waiting patiently to go through. Some of them were looking out through their wound-down windows, staring cautiously at the officers' machine-guns, which glistened in the damp air.

The superintendent instinctively glanced at his pager. There was a message from Costes. He called him at once.

"What is it? Have you finished the autopsy?"

"Not quite. But there's something I'd like to show you. Here at the hospital."

"Can't you tell me on the phone?"

"No, not really. Also, I'm waiting for the results of some tests. They should be here any minute. I'll be ready by the time you get here."

Niémans hung up.

"Anything new?" Karim asked him.

"Maybe. I've got to go and see the forensic pathologist. What about you?"

"I came here to question Philippe Sertys. Sertys is dead. So, I'll go on to the next stage."

"Which is?"

"To find out the circumstances of Judith's father's death. He died here in Guernon, and I'm pretty sure that my demons had a hand in it."

"What? You think they murdered him?"

"Yes, maybe."

Niémans shook his head.

"I've been all through the records in the gendarmerie and all the local police stations covering the last twenty-five years. There's no trace of anything like that happening…And, as I just said, Philippe Sertys was only a kid at the time."

"We'll see. Anyway, I'm certain I'll find a link between that death and the name of one or other of your victims."

"Where are you going to start?"

"In the cemetery." Karim smiled. "It's becoming my specialty. A second nature. I want to be sure that Sylvain Hérault was really buried in Guernon. I've already contacted Taverlay and traced Judith Hérault's birth certificate. The only child of Fabienne and Sylvain Hérault, born in 1972, here in the University Hospital of Guernon. Now what I need is the father's death certificate."

Niémans handed him the numbers of his cell phone and pager.

"For confidential messages, use the pager."

Karim Abdouf pocketed the scrap of paper and declared, in a semi-professorial, semi-ironic tone:

"'In an investigation, each fact, each witness is a mirror, in which part of the truth behind a crime is reflected'…"

"What?"

"I attended one of your lectures, superintendent, while I was at the police academy."

"And?"

Karim turned up the collar of his jacket.

"And, as far as mirrors are concerned, our two investigations go together like this."

He put out his two palms and pointed them slowly toward each other.

"They're mirror reflections, get me? And in one of the dead angles, Jesus, I'll bet on it, the murderer is lurking."

"And how can I get in touch with you?"

"I'll call you. I asked for a cell phone, but the 1997 Sarzac budget wouldn't run to that."

The cop bowed an Arabian farewell and disappeared into the night. Niémans, too, went back to his car. He took a last look at the brand-new Audi as it pulled off into the drizzle. He suddenly felt older, wearier, as though oppressed by the night, the years, the uncertainty. A taste of oblivion rose up in his throat. But he also felt stronger. He now had an ally.

One hell of an ally.

CHAPTER 39

The crystals glittered with a rainbow profusion of pinks, blues, greens and yellows. Multi-colored prisms. Shattered light, kaleidoscopic, under the transparent slides. Niémans raised his eye from the microscope and asked Costes:

"What are they?"

The doctor replied incredulously:

"It's glass, superintendent. This time, the killer left behind some pieces of glass."

"In which part of the body?"

"In the eye-sockets again. Just under the lids. They were stuck there, like little petrified tears."

The two men were in the hospital morgue. The doctor was wearing a blood-stained white coat. It was the first time that Niémans had seen him dressed like that, standing stock still like a porcelain statue. The clothes and the place gave him a sort of icy authority. Behind his glasses, the forensic pathologist was smiling.

"Water, ice, glass. There's an obvious link between these substances."

"I can still spot the obvious, thank you," Niémans grumbled, as he went over to the body, which was laid out under a sheet in the center of the room. "But what does it mean? Or rather, where does it point us next? Is there anything special about this glass?"

"I'm still waiting for Astier's results. He rushed off back to his lab to carry out an in-depth study of the glass and try to work out where it comes from. He should also be bringing the results of the tests on the wire meshes and white powder you found in the warehouse. He's already analysed the ink in the exercise book, and his findings are disappointing. It's just common-or-garden stuff. Nothing more. As for the pages of figures, we can do nothing until we have something more to go on. But we did check the handwriting, and it certainly belongs to Sertys."

Niémans ran his hand through his brush of hair; he had almost forgotten about the evidence found in the warehouse. Silence descended. The policeman glanced up and noticed how Costes's face was sparkling with intelligence, as if a solved mathematical equation was gleaming in the pupils of his eyes. Irritated, the superintendent asked:

"What's up?"

"Nothing…It's just…Water, ice, glass. Each time, it's a crystal."

"As I just told you, that much is obvious, but…"

…but one that corresponds to a different temperature."

"I'm sorry?"

Costes slapped his hands together.

The structures of these substances exist at different levels of temperature, superintendent. The coldness of ice, the room temperature of water, and the burning of sand at an extreme heat to turn it into glass."

Niémans dismissed the idea with an angry gesture.

"So what? What can that tell us about the murders?"

Costes hunched his shoulders, as though drawing back into his shell.

"Nothing. I was just thinking aloud…"

"I'd rather you told me about the mutilations on the body." 'Apart from the fact that the hands have been amputated, the body is identical to Caillois's. Minus the signs of torture."

"Sertys wasn't tortured?"

"No. I suppose the killer already knew what he wanted to know. And so got straight down to business. Mutilation of the eyes and hands. Then strangulation. But the pain must still have been intolerable. Because it looks as if he started with the mutilations. He cut off the hands, extracted the eyes and only then finished off his prey."

"How was he strangled?"

"In the same way. The killer used a metal wire. First he strapped him up with it, just like last time. The weals on the limbs are identical."

"What about the hands? How were they amputated?"

"Hard to say. It looks to me as if the same cable was used. Something like a cheese wire, which the killer must have tied round the wrists, then tightened with extraordinary force. We're looking for a monster, superintendent. Someone with almost superhuman strength."

Niémans thought for a moment. Despite these new details, he just could not picture the murderer. Not even his physique. Something was holding him back. All he could see was an entity, a force, a field of energy.

"And the time of death?" he asked.

"Forget it. He was frozen into the ice. There's absolutely no chance of drawing even the vaguest conclusion about that."

The door of the morgue flew open. A bean-pole with an anemic face, squashed nose and a bright stare burst through it. His eyes were like saucers. Costes took care of the introductions. Patrick Astier, Pierre Niémans. The chemist put down a small plastic bag onto the bench, and went straight to the heart of the matter:

"I've got the composition of the glass. Fontainebleau sand, soda, lead, potassium and borax. The exact composition allows us to deduce where it comes from. It is the sort used for sculpted blocks of glass. You know, like in swimming pools, or in houses from the 1930s. The killer must be pointing us toward some place of that sort, covered with thick panes of glass…"

Niémans turned on his heels. An image had flashed into his mind of the walls and ceiling in that oculist's surgery. He swore to himself. This could not just be a coincidence. Edmond Chernecé must be the third victim.

Marc Costes called him back when he was already half out of the door.

"Where are you going?"

Niémans answered over his shoulder:

"I might have worked out where the killer's going to strike next. If it's not already too late."

The policeman set off down the corridor. Astier ran after him and grabbed him by the sleeve.

"Superintendent, I also have the composition of that white dust in the warehouse…"

Pierre Niémans peered at the chemist through his glasses, which were beaded with sweat.

"What?"

"You know, the samples you picked up in that warehouse."

"And?"

"They're bones, superintendent. Animal bones."

"What sort of animal?"

"Probably rats. I know it sounds crazy, but Sertys must have been breeding rats and…"

Another shiver. More pinpricks.

"Later," Niémans panted. "Later. I'll be back."

Niémans wrenched convulsively at his steering wheel. He was driving at more than ninety miles per hour.

If Dr Edmond Chernecé was the third victim, then he was also a culprit.

After Rémy Caillois.

After Philippe Sertys.

And if Chernecé was guilty, then it also meant that he had murdered young Eric Joisneau.

Jesus fucking Christ. The superintendent bit his lips to stop himself from screaming out loud. He ran through all the mistakes he had made since the outset. And drew up a report of his own incompetence. He had not wanted to go to that home for the blind because of all that crap about dogs. And so he had missed out on the first real lead.

After that, he had gone right off the rails.

While he had been inching forward in his investigations, playing the apprentice mountaineer in the glaciers, or questioning Sertys's mother, Eric Joisneau had gone straight to the home for the blind and found out something important. Something which had then led him to Dr Chernecé. But the young lieutenant was now over-extending himself. He had been incapable of evaluating the gravity of his own discoveries. The kid had not been sufficiently wary of the doctor, had questioned him about some vital aspect of the case, some element of the truth which personally threatened the oculist. So, Chernecé must have killed him.

In Niémans's mind, another terrifying certainty began to crystallise itself, even though he had not a scrap of supporting evidence, apart from his own instinct: Caillois, Sertys and Chernecé had committed some crime together. They shared a common responsibility.

A deadly one.

WE ARE THE MASTERS, WE ARE THE SLAVES.

WE ARE EVERYWHERE, WE ARE NOWHERE.

WE ARE THE SURVEYORS.

WE CONTROL THE BLOOD-RED RIVERS.

Could that we refer to those three men? Was it possible that Caillois, Sertys and Chernecé controlled the "blood-red rivers"? That they had been behind some plot against the entire town, and that this conspiracy was the motive for the murders?

CHAPTER 40

This time, the front door was ajar. Niémans forked straight off to his right and entered the glass veranda. Shadows. Silence. Optical instruments glinting arrogantly. The policeman drew his revolver and walked round the room, gun in hand. Nobody. Only the patterns of the trees, still dancing on the floor, filtered through the thick panes of glass.

He went back into the house. He glanced round the darkened waiting-room then paced across the marble hall, where walking sticks with ivory or horn handles stood in an umbrella rack. He found a sitting-room crammed with cumbersome furnishings and hung with tapestries, then some old-fashioned bedrooms with large beds made of varnished wood. Nobody. No trace of a struggle. No trace of a sudden departure.

Still holding his MR73, Niémans went up the staircase to the first floor. He entered a small office, which smelt of bees' wax and cigars. He found some luggage made of fine leather, with gold-plated locks, laid out on a worn Turkish rug.

He explored further. The entire place stank of danger. Of death. Through an oval window he saw the high tips of the trees, still being shaken by the wind. After a second's thought, he realised that this window looked down over the glass ceiling of the veranda. He shoved it open and gazed down at that transparent covering.

His blood froze in his veins. In the panes, splattered with rain, could be seen the reflection of Chernecé's body, rippling in the sculpted glass. Arms open, feet together, he had been crucified. A martyr reflected in a lake of greenish waters.

Swallowing back a scream of rage, Niémans looked again at this mirror image and worked out the exact position of the real body. He pushed the window fully open and leant out, gazing up at the top of the facade. The body was suspended just above his head.

In the blustering rain, Edmond Chernecé had been fixed up against the outer wall, like a ghastly figurehead.

The superintendent pulled himself back inside, rushed out of that tiny office and leapt up a second staircase of narrow wooden steps, stumbling as he went, until he had reached the attic.

Another window, another sill, and he was now perched on the gutter, with the closest possible view of the corpse of Dr Edmond Chernecé, deceased. The eyes had gone from the face. The empty sockets were exposed to the rain and the wind. Both arms were wide open and finished in bloody stumps. The body was being maintained in this position by a network of gleaming, twisted wires, which sliced into the chubby sunburned flesh. Beaten by the deluge, Niémans took stock.

Rémy Caillois.

Philippe Sertys.

Edmond Chernecé.

All the things he was certain about ran through his mind. No: the murders had not been committed by a sexual pervert attracted to some particular type Of face, or anatomy. No: this was not a serial killer, massacring innocent victims according to his crazy whims. This was a rational murderer, someone who stole his victim's biological identity, and who had a precise motive: revenge.

Niémans let himself drop back down into the attic. The only sound in that house of death was the beating of his heart. He knew that his mission was not over. He realised what the last episode of this nightmare would be. Eric Joisneau's body was somewhere, hidden in that building.

A few hours before being a victim, Chernecé had been a killer.

Niémans went through each room, each piece of furniture, each recess. He tore apart the kitchen, the living-room, the bedrooms. He dug up the garden, emptied out a shed that stood under the trees. Then, on the ground floor, he discovered a door that had been covered over with wallpaper. He frantically yanked.it off its hinges. The cellar.

As he rushed down the stairs, he thought over the sequence of events. If, at eleven o'clock, he had found the doctor in a tee-shirt and shorts, then he must just have finished his ghastly operation – Joisneau's murder. That was why he had unplugged his phone. That was why he had so neatly tidied up his surgery, after having stabbed the young lieutenant, probably with one of those chrome-plated probes which Niémans had spotted in the Chinese pencil-case. That was also why he had put on a clean suit and packed his bags.

Stupidly, blindly, Niémans had questioned a murderer who was just fresh from his bloody crime.

In the cellar, the superintendent discovered a set of metal racks, swamped over with cobwebs, containing hundreds of bottles of wine. Dark glass, red wax, yellow labels. He examined every nook and cranny in the cellar, moving aside the barrels, pulling at the metal racks, and sending the bottles crashing onto the floor. The pools of wine started to give off a heady stench.

Bathed in sweat, screaming and spitting, Niémans at last found a trench, concealed by two iron flaps. He broke open the lock.

Under these trap doors lay the body of Eric Joisneau, half submerged in some dark corrosive liquid. Around him floated various bottles of acid for unblocking drains. The chemicals had already started their terrible work, soaking up the gases of the body, eating into its flesh, transforming it into flurries of steam, gradually annihilating the biological entity that had once been Eric Joisneau, a lieutenant with the Grenoble brigade. The kid's open eyes seemed to be staring up at the superintendent from the bottom of that terrifying grave.

Niémans backed off and screamed crazily. He felt his ribs rising up, opening like the struts of an umbrella. He spewed up his guts, his fury, his remorse, grabbing hold of the bottle racks, in a shower of broken glass and rivers of wine.

He did not know exactly how long he stayed like that. In the fumes of the alcohol. In the rising smoke from the acid bath. But, little by little, the last part of the truth began to form in his mind, like a dark stagnant pond. It had nothing to do with the death of Eric Joisneau. But it cast new light on the murders in Guernon.

Marc Costes had mentioned the link between the substances associated with each murder: water, ice and glass. Niémans now realised that this was not relevant. What was relevant was how each body had been discovered.

Rémy Caillois had been found thanks to a reflection in the river.

Philippe Sertys to' a reflection in the glacier.

Edmond Chernecé to a reflection in the glass roof.

The killer had so arranged his victims that their mirror-images were discovered before the real bodies.

What did that mean?

Why did the killer put himself out so as to set up this multiplication of appearances?

Niémans did not know what lay behind this strategy, but he sensed there was a connection between these reflections and the thefts of the eyes and hands, which robbed the bodies of their unique, biological identities. He sensed that all this was part of the same sentence, proclaimed by an implacable judge: the destruction of the entire BEING of the condemned. What, then, had these men done to deserve being reduced to mirror-images, to being deprived of their biological signatures?