Night Page 5

  Servaz checked the chain: it was long enough for the dog to reach them. Vincent had taken out his gun. Martin wondered if that would be enough to check the dog’s momentum, if it suddenly felt like tearing a couple of throats to bits.

  ‘We’d have had a better chance to stop it with two guns,’ his assistant remarked wisely.

  But the dog didn’t blink. It was as silent as a shadow; a shadow with two shining little eyes. Servaz went up the single rain-splattered step, keeping an eye on the dog, and pressed the metal door buzzer. Through the frosted glass he could hear the shrill sound spreading through the house. It was dark on the other side, like the inside of an oven.

  Then he heard footsteps, and the door opened.

  ‘What the fuck d’you want?’

  The man was shorter than him and very slender, almost thin. Younger, too – in his thirties. His head was completely shaved. Servaz took note of certain signs: hollow cheeks, deep-set eyes and pupils the size of pinheads, even though there was almost no light where they were standing.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said politely, taking out his badge. ‘Crime unit. May we come in?’

  He saw the shaved head hesitate.

  ‘We would just like to ask you a few questions about the three women who were attacked by the river,’ he hastened to add. ‘You must have read about it in the newspapers.’

  ‘I don’t read the papers.’

  ‘Well, on the Internet.’

  ‘Don’t do that either.’

  ‘Ah. We’ve been visiting all the houses in the radius of a kilometre,’ he lied. ‘A house-to-house, routine check.’

  The man’s pinhead eyes went from Servaz to Vincent and back again. Servaz mused that he must be thinking about the blonde woman he thought he had matched with on Tinder – a real miracle, surely, with a face like his? – and he was in a hurry for only one reason: to get them out of there so he could go back to his electronic pick-up job. What would he have done with her if she’d been real and had actually taken the bait? Servaz had read the man’s file …

  ‘Is there a problem, monsieur?’

  Servaz deliberately adopted a worried tone, raising his eyebrows as if he were puzzled.

  ‘Huh? No, no, no problem. Come in. But be quick, all right? I have to give my mum her medication.’

  Jensen stepped back and Servaz crossed the threshold. The hallway was as dark and narrow as the gallery of a mine, with a dimly lit area at the rear and a strip of grey light coming from a door 2 metres along on the left. It made him think of a network of caves fleetingly illuminated by speleologists’ lamps, smelling of cat piss, pizza, sweat and stale tobacco. And there was another smell, which he could identify for having sniffed it many times over in flats in the centre of town where they found the corpses of old ladies forgotten by God and man: the cloying smell of medication and old age. He took another step. On either side were walls of cardboard boxes piled up almost to shoulder level, collapsing under the weight of whatever they contained: old lampshades, piles of dusty magazines, wicker baskets full of useless things. Elsewhere, heavy, graceless furniture left scarcely any room to get past. It was more of a warehouse than a residence …

  He reached the door and glanced over to his left. Initially he saw only the dark shapes of the clutter of furniture with, in the middle, the little star of a bedside lamp on the night table. Then the picture became clearer and he could make out the creature in her bed. The ailing mother – it must be. He hadn’t been prepared for this – who would have been? – and inadvertently he gulped. The old woman was propped against an unbelievable number of pillows, which in turn were propped against a carved oak bedstead. Her threadbare nightgown gaped open to reveal a marked, bony chest. Her face, with its prominent cheekbones and deep-set cavernous eyes, and the sparse tufts of grey hair on her temples, clearly indicated the outline of the skull it would soon become; the whole scene was almost like a vanitas. Servaz noticed dozens of boxes of medication on the mat on the night table, and a tube connecting the old woman’s gnarled arm to a drip. There was a great deal more death in this bedroom than there was life. But the most shocking thing was her eyes – in spite of the fatigue, listlessness and illness, they shone with malice. When he thought again of the name of the cul-de-sac – chemin du Paradis – he wondered if he hadn’t taken the path to hell instead.

  The mummy had a yellowed cigarette butt pressed between her cracked lips and was smoking like a chimney. Startled by this vision, Servaz moved on to the living room, which was dimly lit by the flickering glow of a television and several computer screens. He could make out an entire network of rooms, a wooden stairway and a host of nooks and crannies. Something rubbed against his legs and he could see shapes going back and forth in the half-light, jumping from one piece of furniture to another. There were dozens of them, of varying sizes and colours. It was swarming with cats. Saucers were set here and there throughout the darkness, filled with drying and decaying food. Servaz was careful where he put his feet.

  The air was even heavier and harder to breathe than in the corridor; he thought he could make out a vague mustiness underneath the smell of decomposing cat food – he pinched his nostrils.

  ‘Can’t we put the lights on?’ he said. ‘It’s as dark as a furnace in here.’

  Their host reached out. The dim halo of an anglepoise lamp lit up the part of the desk that was cluttered with screens, leaving all the rest in shadow. Servaz did at least manage to glimpse a sofa and a sideboard in the gloom.

  ‘You going to ask me those questions or not?’

  Jensen had a faint lisp; Servaz suspected that underneath the confrontational attitude the man was pathologically shy.

  ‘Do you ever go for walks along the river?’ asked Espérandieu from behind Jensen, obliging him to turn around.

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘I told you, no,’ said Jensen, watching Servaz out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘You haven’t heard any rumours about what happened?’

  ‘Are you taking the piss or what? Don’t you see where we live, me and my mum? Who’d go bringing us rumours, in your opinion? The postman? No one ever comes here.’

  ‘Except the people who go running along the river,’ Servaz pointed out.

  ‘Yeah. Some of them park their cars down there, on that bloody wasteland, that’s true.’

  ‘Men? Women?’

  ‘Well, both. Some of the women even have dogs with them, and that makes Fantôme bark.’

  ‘And you see them go by your windows.’

  ‘Yeah, so what?’

  There was something, there, under the sideboard. Servaz had noticed it as soon as he walked into the room. It wasn’t moving, or only just. He took a step closer.

  ‘Hey! Where are you going? If this is a search, you—’

  ‘Three women were assaulted on the path less than two kilometres from here,’ interrupted Vincent. Jensen turned to look at him again. ‘They all gave the same description.’

  Servaz sensed that the young man was getting tense. He moved closer to the sideboard.

  ‘They described a man wearing a hoodie, height roughly one metre seventy, weight sixty kilos or so.’

  In fact, the three women had given three facial composites that varied considerably, as they often did. The only point they had in common was that the attacker was short and thin, but very strong.

  ‘What were you doing on the evenings of 20 September, 5 September and 5 October between five and six p.m.?’

  Jensen frowned, acting as if he were thinking very hard, digging intensely in his brain, and Servaz recalled the performance of the Japanese extras in Seven Samurai.

  ‘On the eleventh I was with my mates Angel and Roland. We were playing cards at Angel’s place. On the twenty-third, same thing. On 8 November Angel and me went to the cinema.’

  ‘What film did you see?’

  ‘Something with zombies and scouts in the title.’

  ‘Zombies and scouts?’ s
aid Vincent. ‘Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse,’ he confirmed. ‘I’ve seen that too.’

  Servaz looked at his assistant, eyebrows raised.

  ‘That’s odd,’ he said quietly, forcing Jensen to turn his head once more. ‘I generally have a good memory. But just now, like that, spontaneously, I’m not sure I recall what I was doing on 20 September in the evening, or on 30 September, do you follow me? I remember the fifth, because that’s the day a co-worker retired. That was a special day, so to speak … but going to the cinema or playing cards with mates, is that special?’

  ‘All you got to do is ask them, and you’ll see,’ said Jensen sullenly.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they’ll say yes,’ said Servaz. ‘Do you have their surnames?’

  Just as he expected, Jensen hurried to provide them.

  ‘Listen,’ he added. ‘I know why I remember so well.’

  ‘Oh? Really?’

  ‘Because when I saw in the newspaper that the girl had been raped, I immediately wrote down what I’d been doing that day.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t read the paper.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I lied.’

  ‘And why did you do that?’

  Jensen shrugged. His bald scalp shone in the darkness. He rubbed his hand full of rings over it, from forehead to neck, where he had a tattoo.

  ‘Because I didn’t feel like talking to you, that’s why. I just wanted you to clear out.’

  ‘Maybe you were busy?’

  ‘Maybe I was.’

  ‘So every time, you write down what you were doing, is that it?’

  ‘That’s it. And you know very well that we all do that.’

  ‘“We”? Who do you mean, “we”?’

  ‘Blokes like me, blokes who’ve done time for that stuff. We all know that the first thing little coppers like you are going to ask us is where we were at the time. If a bloke who’s already been convicted can’t remember what the fuck he was doing when a girl was raped nearby, well then, there’s a good chance that he’s the one, the nonce, you get me?’

  ‘And your two mates, Angel and Thingummy – have they ever been convicted?’

  They saw Jensen bristle.

  ‘Yeah. So what?’

  Servaz glanced under the sideboard. The shadow had moved. Two fearful eyes were watching him.

  ‘How old were you the first time?’ asked Espérandieu out of the blue.

  Thunder caused the windowpanes to rattle, and lightning briefly lit up the living room.

  ‘The first time?’

  ‘The first time you sexually assaulted a woman.’

  Servaz caught Jensen’s gaze. His expression had changed. It was literally glowing.

  ‘Fourteen,’ he said, his voice suddenly very cold and clear.

  Servaz leaned forward a little more. The little white cat under the sideboard raised its head and looked up at him from the shadow, torn between fear and a desire to come and rub against his legs.

  ‘I read your file. She was a classmate. You raped her behind the gym.’

  ‘She provoked me.’

  ‘You insulted her. Then you slapped her, hit her—’

  ‘She was a bitch; she was already sleeping with everyone. One more prick, what difference was it to her?’

  ‘Several times … On the head. Very violently. Cranial trauma … And then, after that, you raped her in the gym with a pump – a pump for blowing up balls … She’ll never be able to have children, do you know that?’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘And what did you feel at the time, do you remember?’

  Silence.

  ‘You can’t understand,’ suggested Jensen, his voice unpleasant and suddenly full of boastfulness.

  Servaz stiffened. That voice. Arrogance and selfishness of the purest kind. He put his hand out towards the underside of the sideboard. The little white cat slowly came out and went fearfully up to Servaz. He felt a tiny, coarse tongue at his fingertips. Other cats immediately joined him, but Servaz waved them away to concentrate on the little white ball.

  ‘Would you explain?’ said Espérandieu, and beneath his assistant’s patient tone Servaz could hear an echo of rage and disgust.

  ‘What for? You’re talking about things you know nothing about; you have no idea what people like us feel … the intensity of our emotions, the power of our experiences. The fantasies that people like you have – people who stick to order and morality, who live in fear of the law and what other people might think – will always be light years away from true freedom and true power.’

  Jensen was hissing now.

  ‘I’ve been to prison, I’ve done my time, you have nothing more on me. Nowadays I respect the law.’

  ‘Oh yeah? And how do you do that? Keep your impulses in check, I mean? Not go through with it? Do you masturbate? Do you go to prostitutes? Do you take medication?’

  ‘But I haven’t forgotten any of it,’ continued Jensen, disregarding the interruption. ‘I’m not sorry about any of it, I don’t disown any of it, I don’t feel any guilt. I’m not going to apologise for being the way God made me.’

  ‘Is that how you felt when you tried to rape those three women on the banks of the Garonne?’ asked Espérandieu patiently. ‘I say tried, because you didn’t even come. If you stabbed that girl with so much rage, it’s because you couldn’t even get hard – isn’t that it?’

  Servaz knew what his assistant was trying to do: to rankle Jensen, make him react, drive him to justify himself and boast. It won’t work.

  ‘I raped four women and I paid for it,’ Jensen answered coldly. ‘I sent three of them to hospital.’ He said it like a football player bragging about scoring goals. ‘Mind you, I’m not in the habit of doing things by halves.’ He gave a little squeal of a laugh, which made the hair on Servaz’s neck stand on end. ‘So you see it can’t possibly be me.’

  The scum was telling the truth. Right from the start, Servaz had been convinced it wasn’t him. Not this time, anyway. He looked at the white cat.

  It was missing an ear. In its place was a pink scar.

  A little white cat missing an ear: where had he already seen that?

  ‘Leave my cat alone,’ said Jensen.

  ‘Leave my cat alone …’

  Suddenly it came to him. The woman who’d been murdered in her country house near Montauban, in June. He’d read the report. She lived alone, she had been raped then strangled, after breakfast: the pathologist had found coffee, the remains of wholewheat bread, marmalade, and kiwi in her stomach. The weather had been hot. The windows were wide open to let in the cool morning air. All the attacker had to do was step over the windowsill. Seven o’clock in the morning and neighbours less than thirty metres away. But no one had seen or heard a thing, and the gendarmes had no leads. No clues. The only thing they noticed was that the woman’s cat had vanished.

  A white cat with one ear.

  ‘That’s not your cat,’ said Servaz quietly, pulling himself up straight.

  It felt as if the air was getting thicker. Servaz made a face. All his muscles were hardening from the toxins of tension. Jensen stopped moving. He was silent. Another flash of lightning lit up the living room; only the pinheads of the man’s eyes were moving in his chalky face as he looked from one policeman to the other.

  ‘Back up,’ he said suddenly.

  The hand covered in rings was holding a gun. My mistake, thought Servaz, quickly glancing at Vincent.

  ‘Back up.’

  They obeyed.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ said Espérandieu.

  Jensen rushed forward. Quick as a mouse he wove through the furniture, opened a door at the rear, and vanished, while wind and rain came blowing into the room. Servaz stood there stunned for a moment – then went running after him.

  ‘Where are you going?’ screamed Vincent behind him. ‘Martin! Where are you going? You don’t even have a gun!’

  The French window was banging in the wind. It opened onto the rai
lway embankment, which was blocked off by a chain-link fence. Instead of climbing it, Jensen had run along the side and was now dashing across the rain-swept patch of grass. Servaz emerged in turn at the rear. In the flash of lightning, he looked up at the electric railway lines at the top of the embankment, searching for Jensen, then he turned and saw him dashing towards the little tunnel through which he and Espérandieu had come, and which passed underneath other railway lines that went to join the main line.

  There was a gate to the right of the tunnel, above where the lines met. A cement ramp climbed up to a sort of concrete blockhouse, which might be a signal box. Neither the gate – where a large collection of signs warned of the danger of electrocution – nor the fence had dissuaded the taggers: every square inch of concrete was covered with big coloured letters. Drops of water glittered against the black backdrop of night, lit intermittently by lightning, while the thunder boomed: the storm was circling over Toulouse. Streams of water poured down the grassy embankment.

  Servaz began running through the torrents of water. Jensen was already climbing over the gate. Then he saw him run towards the top of the cement ramp, around the signal box at the top, and on towards the railway lines. Several steel pylons stood just there supporting a complex network of grids, primary and secondary electric lines, transformers and catenaries. It looked like a sub-station and Servaz immediately thought, high voltage. He thought, storm, thunder, lightning, rain, conductivity – and the thousands of volts, amperes, or whatever the hell circulated through those lines like a death-trap. Bloody fucking hell, where are you going? he thought. Jensen did not seem aware of the trap. What concerned him was the goods train rolling slowly ahead of him and blocking his way.

  Now Servaz reached the gate. His socks were squelching in his sodden shoes; his shirt collar was drenched, his hair sticking to his forehead.

  He felt duty-bound to climb over the gate and drop down to the other side. His jacket must have got caught somewhere, because he heard a tearing sound when he landed on the cement.

  Up there, Jensen was hesitating.