"It was taken a few days before she died. In Sarzac. She had short hair, we were…"
Karim looked up.
"That doesn't wash. This picture, her face, ought to tell me something. Act as a clue. All I can see is a pretty little girl."
"It's because this photograph is incomplete."
He started. The woman now handed him a second picture. "This is the last school photograph taken in Guernon, at Lamartine School, in CE2. Just before we left for Sarzac"
The cop examined the children's smiling faces. He spotted Judith, then grasped the unbelievable truth. He had been expecting this. It was the only possible explanation. But still he did not fully understand. He whispered:
"So Judith wasn't an only child?"
"Yes and no."
"Yes and no? What…what the hell's that supposed to mean? Explain yourself."
"I can't explain anything, young man. All I can do is tell you how something inexplicable destroyed my life."
PART XI
CHAPTER 54
The basement contained a veritable sea of paper. A tidal wave of bulging files tied up in bundles was splashed crazily all over the walls. On the floor, heaps of cardboard boxes blocked most of the aisles. Further on, the neon lighting revealed more shelves weighed down with documents, fading away into the distance.
Niémans clambered over the stacks and headed down the first corridor. The endless files were being held in place by long pieces of netting, of the sort used to stop cliffs from crumbling. As he wandered past these registers, he could not help thinking about Fanny, and the dream-like hour he had just spent with her. The young woman's smiling face in the half-light. Her wounded hand putting out the lamp. The contact of dark skin. Two tiny bluish flames gleaming in the shadows – Fanny's eyes. It had been an intimate, discreet tableau, with soft motion, gestures and murmurs, instants and eternities.
How long had he spent in her arms? Niémans had no idea. But, on his lips, on his bruised flesh, he still felt a sort of mark, a lingering presence that astonished him. Fanny had rearoused forgotten passions in him, ancient secrets whose reawakening he now found disturbing. Had he, in the midst of all that horror, at the end of his enquiries, sipped from a loving cup, been caressed by a flame?
He tried to concentrate. He knew where the pile of rediscovered papers had been placed – he had contacted the records clerk who, despite being half asleep, had given him a set of extremely precise directions. Niémans walked on, turned, and walked on again. At last, he came across a closed box, caged off behind some chicken wire and protected by a solid padlock. The hospital porter had given him the key. If these papers were really "so unimportant" why were they being so carefully looked after?
Niémans went inside the alcove and sat down on some old bundles which were lying on the floor. He opened the box, grabbed a handful of papers and started to read them. Names. Dates. Nurses' reports concerning new-born babies. The records contained the surname, weight, height and blood group of each child. The number of feeds and the names of what sounded like medicines, perhaps vitamins or something of that sort.
He flicked through the sheets – there were several hundred of them, covering more than fifty years. Not one name that meant anything to him. Not one date that seemed promising.
Niémans got to his feet and decided to compare these papers with the original files of newly-born babies, which had to be somewhere among the archives. He examined the shelves and picked out about fifty files. His face was dripping with sweat. He felt the heat from his arctic jacket radiate onto his flesh. Laying the files down on a metal table, he spread them out so as to be able to see the surnames on the covers. He started to open each file and compare the first page with the other sheets. They were fakes.
From a rapid examination it was obvious that the sheets contained in the official files had been falsified. Etienne Caillois had imitated the nurses' handwriting fairly convincingly, but not well enough to stand up against a direct comparison with the originals.
Why?
The policeman laid the two pages side by side. He compared each column and each line, but found nothing. They were identical copies. He tried other pages. Still he found no difference. He readjusted his glasses, wiped the rivulets of sweat off the lenses, then examined a few more with greater attention.
Then, at last, he saw what he was looking for.
One tiny detail differentiated the genuine papers from the fakes. THE DIFFERENCE. Niémans did not yet know what it meant, but he sensed that he had unearthed another key. His face was burning like a cauldron and yet – at the same time – an icy sensation ran through him. He checked others to see if they, too, were different in the same way, then stuffed all the documents, the official files plus the sheets Caillois had stolen, into a cardboard box.
He made off with his prize and left the records office.
He dumped the box into the boot of his new car – a gendarme's blue Peugeot – then went back inside the hospital, this time to the maternity clinic.
It was six in the morning and, despite the bright neons which glittered down onto the floor, the place seemed heavy with sleep and silence. He went down to the delivery rooms, passing by nurses and midwives, all dressed in pale coats, hats and little paper overshoes. Some of them tried to stop him, as he was not wearing the standard surgical outfit. But his tricolor card and fraught expression were a highly effective deterrent.
He finally managed to find an obstetrician, who was just emerging from an operating theater. His face seemed weighed down with all the fatigue of the world. Niémans rapidly introduced himself and asked his sole and unique question:
"Doctor, is there any logical reason why a newly-born baby should change weight during its first night of existence?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do babies commonly lose or gain several hundred grams shortly after being born?"
Staring at the policeman's balaclava and the clothes that were too short for him, the doctor replied:
"No. If a child loses a lot of weight, then we have to undertake detailed tests immediately, because there is obviously some problem and…"
"And what if he puts some on? What if he suddenly gains weight during the first night?"
In his paver hat, the obstetrician looked bewildered. `But that never happens. I don't understand."
Niémans smiled.
"Thank you, doctor."
He left, closing his eyes as he walked. Under his seething eyelids, he now at last glimpsed the motive for the Guernon murders. The incredible machination of the blood-red rivers.
There was just one more detail he had to check.
In the university library.
CHAPTER 55
"Out! Everybody out!"
The library reading-room was brightly lit. The police officers lifted their noses from their books. Six of them were still going through works more or less closely associated with evil and purity. Others were examining the lists of students who had used the library during the summer or early fall. They looked like forgotten soldiers, fighting a war that had, unbeknown to them, shifted onto a different front.
"Out!" Niémans repeated. "It's all over here!"
The policemen glanced warily at one another. They had presumably been told that Superintendent Niémans was no longer in charge of the case. They were certainly also surprised to see the famous detective with his head stuck in some sort of a sock, and with a damp brown cardboard box under his arm. But who could stand up to Niémans? Especially when he had that expression on his face.
They stood up and slipped on their jackets.
One of them, passing by the superintendent on his way to the door, called softly to him. The superintendent recognised the broad-backed lieutenant who had been studying Rémy Caillois's thesis.