He grabbed a chair from behind his metal desk and started reading through it all thoroughly.
The idea of a prowler had led to nothing. The enquiries in prisons, police stations and law courts had all been inconclusive. As for thefts of cars during the previous forty-eight hours, not a single one could be directly associated with the killing. The hunt for murders and other crimes that had occurred during the last twenty years had also drawn a blank. Nobody could remember any other killing which had been so atrocious and so strange, or any other act similar to it. In the town itself, police records contained only a few mountain rescues, petty thefts, accidents, fires etc.
Niémans flicked through the next folder. The systematic questioning of all the hoteliers, via fax, had proved fruitless.
He went on to Vermont's contribution. His men were continuing their search along the banks of the river. For the moment, they had visited only five refuges and there were seventeen of them, according to the map, some of which were perched up on the mountain at an altitude of over nine thousand feet. Did it make any sense to kill someone at such a height? His men had also questioned the nearby country folk. Some of these interviews had already been typed up in the familiar jargon of the gendarmerie. Niémans glanced through them and smiled: if the spelling mistakes and turns of phrase were similar to those of policemen, other expressions were redolent of the army. The men had asked questions in service stations, railway stations and at bus stops. Nothing doing. But rumors were now starting to run rife in the streets and chalets. Why all these questions? Why all these gendarmes?
Niémans laid the file down on his desk. Through the window he saw a patrol that had just returned, their cheeks pink and their eyes glassy from the cold. He made a questioning gesture at Captain Vermont, who answered with a clear shake of his head. Nothing.
For a few seconds, the superintendent watched the uniforms as they went past, but his thoughts were already elsewhere. He was thinking about the two women. One of them was as tough as tree-bark. Her muscles must be full, her skin dark and velvety. A taste of resin and rubbed herbs. The other was frail and bitter. She oozed uneasiness, an aggressiveness mixed with fear, which Niémans found equally fascinating. What was the strange beauty of that bony face hiding? Had Rémy Caillois really beaten her? And how much grief did she really feel at the sight of her mutilated husband, whose body had such suffering written all over it?
Niémans got up and looked through one of the windows. Behind the clouds, above the mountains, the sun was shedding yellow beams, which resembled clear gashes dug out in the dark, swollen flesh of the storm. Below, the superintendent gazed at Guernon's identical gray houses. The polygonal roofs to prevent the snow from piling up. The dark windows, small and square like paintings drowned in shadows. The river which crossed the town and ran alongside the detachment of gendarmes.
The image of the two women filled his mind once again. In each enquiry, the same sensation gripped him. The investigations heightened his senses, giving him a feeling of a thrilling, vibrant courtship. He fell in love only when pursuing criminals: with witnesses, suspects, whores, barmaids…
The brunette or the blonde?
His cell phone rang. It was Antoine Rheims.
"I've just come back from Hôtel-Dieu Hospital."
Niémans had let the morning pass by without even calling Paris. That business at the Parc des Princes was now going to shoot back toward him like an explosive boomerang. The Chief continued:
"The medics are attempting a fifth skin graft to save his face. Because of this, he now has practically no flesh left on his thighs. But that's not all. Three skull fractures. The loss of one eye. And seven facial fractures. Seven, Niémans. His lower jaw has been pushed back into his larynx. Shards of bone have severed his vocal cords. He's in a coma but, come what may, he'll never talk again. The medics say that even a car accident could not have caused so much damage. So what am I supposed to tell them now? And what about the British Embassy? And the media? The two of us have known each other for a long time. And I think we're friends. But I also think that you're a violent maniac."
Niémans's hands started to tremble.
"That hooligan was a murderer," he replied.
"And what does that make you then?"
The cop did not answer. He passed the phone, which was gleaming with sweat, into his left hand. Rheims went on:
"How are your enquiries progressing?"
"Slowly. No leads. No witnesses. It's going to be much harder than we first thought."
"I told you so! When the press catches on that you're in Guernon, they're going to start buzzing about you like flies round shit. Why the hell did I send you there?"
Rheims slammed the phone down. Niémans sat there for a few minutes, his eyes staring into nothingness, his mouth dry. In blinding flashes, his mind played back the violence of the previous night.
His nerves had cracked. He had beaten that murderer in a fit of rage, which had drowned him, had totally wiped out any other idea than the desire to crush, there and then, what he was holding in his hands.
Pierre Niémans had always lived in a world of violence, a universe of depravity, with cruel and savage borders, and he did not fear to walk where danger lurked. On the contrary, he had always sought it out, flattering it, the better to affront and control it. But he was no longer capable of keeping that control. That violence had now invaded him, had entered his very marrow. He was now weak and under its command. And he had not even managed to master his own fears. In some corner of his head, dogs were still howling.
He suddenly jumped. His mobile was ringing again. It was Marc Costes, the forensic pathologist, his voice triumphant:
"Some good news, superintendent. We have a solid piece of evidence. It's about the water we found under the eyelids. I've just received the laboratory report"
"And?"
"And it doesn't come from the river. Incredible, isn't it? I'm working on the problem with Patrick Astier, a chemist from the specialist branch in Grenoble. He's a real whiz. According to him, the traces of pollution in the water found in the eye-sockets are not at all the same as those found in the river."
"Can you be more precise?"
"The liquid under the eyelids contains H2SO4 and HNO3, that is to say, sulphuric acid and nitric acid. It has a pH of 3. In other words, it's highly acidic. Almost like vinegar. Such a figure is a precious piece of information."
"I don't understand. What do you mean?"
"I don't want to get technical with you, but sulphuric acid and nitric acid are derivatives of S02, sulphur dioxide, and NO2, nitrogen dioxide. According to Astier, only one sort of industry produces such a mixture of dioxides: power stations which burn lignite. That is to say, an extremely old form of power station. Astier's conclusion is that the victim was killed or transported near just such a place. Find a lignite burner in the region, and you'll have located the scene of the crime."
Niémans stared up at the sky. Its dark scales were glittering in the persistent sunlight, like an immense silvery salmon. Maybe he was at last onto something. He ordered:
"Fax me the composition of that water on Barnes's number.". The superintendent was opening his office door when Eric Joisneau appeared.
"I've been looking for you everywhere. I think I've got some vital information."
Was the investigation at last beginning to take off? The two officers retreated into the room and Niémans closed the door. Joisneau was feverishly grasping his notebook.
"I've discovered that there's a home for young blind kids near Les Sept-Laux. A lot of them apparently come from Guernon. They suffer from a variety of complaints. Cataracts, pigmentary retinitis, color blindness. The number of cases in Guernon is way over the national average."