Niémans interrupted. He put his files and registers back into the box, and then spat out:
"Then you should be over the moon. Because these people are going to make your university a household name."
The vice-chancellor looked at him quizzically. Niémans opened his mouth, but he suddenly froze. There was a look of terror on the vice-chancellor's face as he murmured:
"But what's wrong? You're…you're bleeding!"
Niémans looked down and saw a dark puddle gleaming on the surface of the desk. The fever that had been burning his skull was in fact the blood from the wound, which had reopened. He staggered, stared at his own face in the shiny, flat mirror and suddenly wondered if he was not looking at the reflection of the last murder in the series.
He did not have time to answer. One second later, he was kneeling unconscious on the floor, his face pressed against the desk, down in the sticky looking-glass of his own blood.
CHAPTER 56
Light. Humming. Warmth.
Pierre Niémans did not immediately realise where he was. Then he made out a paper hat. A white coat. Strip lights. The hospital. How long had he been there, unconscious? And why did his body feel so weak, as though his limbs, muscles and bones had been replaced by some liquid substance? He tried to speak, but the attempt died in his throat. His fatigue was pinning him down onto the rustling plastic cover of his bed.
"He's losing a lot of blood. We'll have to perform a temporal haemostasia."
A door opened. Wheels squeaked. White lights passed above his eyes. A blinding explosion. A burst of energy that dilated his pupils. Another voice resonated:
"Begin the transfusion."
The superintendent heard a clicking sound and felt something cold move across his body. He turned his head and saw some tubes connected to a fat suspended pouch, that seemed to be breathing, as it moved in and out, prompted by an automatic air-pressurised system.
Was he going to stay there, wandering through unconsciousness, in that antiseptic stench? Fade away in that light when he knew the motive of the murders? When he at last understood the secret that lay behind that series of slaughters? His face twisted up into a sardonic grin. Suddenly, a voice said:
"Inject the Diprivan."
Niémans grasped what was meant and sat up. He seized the doctor's wrist, which was already clutching an electronic lancet, and panted:
"I don't want an anesthetic!"
The doctor looked was taken aback.
"No anesthetic? But…you've been cut almost in half, my friend. I'm going to have to stitch you back up."
Niémans found the strength to mumble:
"A local one…Give me a local anesthetic…"
The man sighed, shifted his chair back in a shriek of castors and said to the anesthetist:
"All right. Then give him some Xylocaine. The maximum dose. A full two hundred milligrams."
Niémans relaxed. They moved him under the multi-faceted lamps. The nape of his neck was propped on a head-rest, so that his skull was raised as high as possible toward the light. They turned his face, and then his view became obstructed by a curtain of paper.
The superintendent closed his eyes. As the doctor and nurses started to busy themselves on his temple, his mind began to drift off. His heartbeat slowed, his head no longer tormented him. A delicious feeling seemed about to engulf him.
The secret…Caillois's secret…Sertys's secret. Even that was becoming vague, strange and distant…Fanny's face occupied his every thought…Her body that was so dark, muscular and curvaceous, as soft as volcanic rock that had been bronzed in a furnace, by the waters and the wind…Fanny…The visions filling his skull were like murmurs, the rustling of cloth, the whispering of elves.
"Stop!"
The order echoed across the operating theater. Everything came to a halt. A hand tore away the curtain and, in the wave of light, Niémans saw a devil with long locks, waving a tricolor police card under the noses of the astonished doctor and nurses.
Karim Abdouf.
Niémans glanced round to his right: the tubes were already gushing into his skin, into his veins. The elixir of life. The sap of arteries. The doctor was brandishing his scissors.
"Hands off the superintendent," Karim panted.
The medic froze once again. Abdouf approached and examined Niémans's wound, now sewn up like an oven-ready roast. The doctor shrugged.
"I'm going to have to cut the thread."
Karim peered distrustfully around.
"How is he?"
"Solid. He's lost a lot of blood, but we've given him a hefty transfusion. We've stitched up his wound. The operation is not quite over yet and…"
"Have you given him any junk?"
"Any junk?"
"To knock him out."
"Just a local anesthetic and…"
"Get me some speed. Some stimulants. I need him back on his feet." Karim's eyes were fixed on Niémans, but his words were meant for the doctor. He added:
"It's a matter of life and death."
The doctor stood up and searched through a chest of narrow drawers for a blister pack of tablets. Karim grinned fleetingly at Niémans.
"Here," said the doctor. "With this, he'll be up and about in half an hour's time, but…"
"Good. Now, move along."
The Arab yelled at the little group of white coats:
"Fuck off, the lot of you! I need to talk to the superintendent." The doctor and nurses vanished.
Niémans felt the needles from the drip being pulled out of his arm and heard the paper sheeting being pulled away. Then Karim was handing him his blood-stained coat. In the other hand he was weighing the batch of little colored tablets.
"Your speed, superintendent." A grin. "Just for this special occasion."
But Niémans was in no laughing mood. He grabbed Karim's leather jacket and, his face ashen, murmured:
"Karim…I've…I've worked out the conspiracy."
"What conspiracy?"
"The conspiracy of Sertys, Caillois and Chernecé. The conspiracy of the blood-red rivers."
"WHAT?"
"They…they were swapping babies."
PART XII
CHAPTER 57
Eight o'clock in the morning. The landscape was black, shifting, unreal. The rain had started to pour down again, as though to give the mountain a final polish before daybreak. Translucent shafts broke through the shadows like funnels of glass.
Under the boughs of a huge conifer, Karim Abdouf and Pierre Niémans were standing face to face, one leaning on his Audi, the other against the tree. They were stock still, concentrated, as taut as wires. The Arab cop observed the superintendent, who was slowly recovering his strength, or rather his nerves, thanks to the effect of the amphetamine. He had just described the murderous attack of the Range Rover. But Abdouf was pressing him to tell the whole tale.
Through the din of the downpour, Pierre Niémans began: "Yesterday evening, I went to the home for the blind."
"On the trail of Eric Joisneau. Yes, I know. And what did you find out?"
"The director, Champelaz, told me that he looked after children who had contracted hereditary diseases. And that they always came from the same families, those of the university elite. Champelaz explained the phenomenon this way: it's an academic community which, through its isolation, has worn thin its blood and become genetically poor. The children born today are destined to be extremely brilliant and highly cultivated, but physically weak and impoverished. From one generation to the next, the blood of the university has become corrupted."
"But what's that got to do with the case?"
"At first sight, nothing. Joisneau had paid a call over there to find out about eye problems, which might have some link with the mutilation of the bodies. But that wasn't the point. Not at all. Champelaz also told me that this inbred community had also been producing extremely vigorous offspring over the last twenty years or so. Intelligent kids, who were also capable of walking off with all the sports prizes. Now, this fact doesn't fit in at all with the rest of the scenario. How can the same community produce a line of runts and also a batch of absolute supermen? Champelaz had looked into the origins of these remarkable kids. He consulted their medical records at the maternity clinic. He examined their backgrounds in the hospital archives. He even had a look at the birth papers of their parents and grandparents in the hope of finding some indication, some genetic clue. But he found nothing. Absolutely nothing."