“You’re that sure that these guys are involved?”
“More than sure. I can feel this kind of thing.”
“All right then. But maybe they’re somewhere out back, and they just can’t hear us.”
The profiler fumed.
“Are you kidding me? That damned bell, I’m sure you can hear it everywhere on the mountain. I’d like to know what kind of person is paranoid enough to have that kind of system installed in the first place.”
Vauvert let out a groan. As far as he was concerned, it did not prove much. His guess was that most of the roughnecks in the area had that kind of equipment, some probably even more outrageous alarms. He knew for a fact that some of the locals even had wolf traps for any hunters or mushroom pickers who might cross onto their property. But it was their land, after all. They had every right to protect it, and he figured that the folks out here did not harm anyone by living the way they chose to, protecting themselves from tourists and other intruders. Svarta was from the city. She did not understand.
“Either way, there’s no getting away from procedure,” he reminded her. “And so far, we have no evidence. You’re never going to get a warrant without something solid. Maybe first we should try to…”
“It’s them,” she snapped.
Vauvert shrugged, giving up.
“Okay, I’m listening.”
He knew that there was no arguing with the woman, and he did not have the heart for it. Let her do it the way she wanted. He knew how to spot real cops. Eva Svarta was one of them. A predator hunting predators. You could not reason with such a person. He knew that firsthand. He was the same way himself.
He went over what little information they had. Eloise Lombard had disappeared the day before in the early evening, a little more than fifteen hours ago. It was Inspector Svarta who made the connection between this abduction and the other missing-persons cases she’d been working for some weeks already. Five young women in all, ages seventeen to twenty-three, who had gone missing in three southern regions-Aveyron, Ariege, and Tarn. All in the past eight months.
Before she had been handed the cases, the various local police departments had done little more than shelve the reports. They had found no evidence indicating actual kidnapping, even though all the girls had similar profiles. SUV tracks had been found in front of the homes of three of the girls, who lived alone, but that did not prove anything. Four-wheel-drive vehicles were more than common in rural areas.
One detail had caught Svarta’s attention. It was an inscription found in the apartment of a young female student who had just moved to the suburbs of Espalion in northern Aveyron. Hers was the second reported disappearance. While everything else appeared tidy in her home, the bathroom mirror had been smashed. On a tile wall of the shower, someone had used lipstick to write:
The local police had paid little attention to it. For them, the scribbling was meaningless and a trivial detail. They completed their investigation as usual, making sure to take photos of all the walls and to list the broken mirror. Their report made its way to the stack of unsolved missing-persons files.
For the Parisian homicide inspector, though, it was nothing to be taken lightly. Those were the names of demonic deities. And they were found in the home of a missing person. There was just no way she could ignore this. She demanded to be kept informed of any other disappearances in that part of the country.
It did not take long. When Amandine Munoz, who lived in Pamiers, over a hundred miles from the other girl, also went missing, no trace of forcible entry was detected. Yet the mirror hanging in her living room was broken.
This time, a permanent marker had been used. The inscription was spread across the bedroom wallpaper:
Eva Svarta did not have the slightest doubt anymore. Something was happening. Something extremely unsettling. In less than a week, she had identified five disappearances under similar circumstances. She asked to be transferred immediately to the Southern Headquarters, to Vauvert’s unit, which was already investigating two of the cases.
This was intuition only, a series of abstract cross checks, based on a purely theoretical behavioral analysis.
But Vauvert had to admit it all made sense. At this point in the game, it was a lead.
He glanced at the large dust-covered SUV parked a bit farther on. The farm’s gate was padlocked, and there was a fence to discourage any visitors. This could possibly be it. To him, it would be a flat-out stroke of luck if her suspicions turned out to be correct, but there was a chance.
One thing was certain. If one of the Salavilles was involved in the case, he had just made a fatal mistake. He had abducted Eloise Lombard too hastily. Both brothers had records. Both had a history of violence and psychosis, punctuated with stays in mental institutions. Which didn’t necessarily prove anything. Still…
“No matter what, we have to wait for the others,” Vauvert reminded her. “They should be here soon.”
Eva Svarta spun around, swirling her white hair. She punched the doorbell. The horn blasted again.
All the while, Vauvert looked around, surveying his surroundings.
The Pyrenees mountain range, covered with verdant fir trees, rose in the background.
He had to admit that this farm, surrounded by forest, was giving him the creeps. Inspector Svarta was not the only one to have instincts. He knew they were in an ideal spot to hold girls captive without anyone ever noticing. They could scream all they wanted. There were no neighbors to hear them.
And all those shutters shut tight in the middle of the day. That was pretty weird.
Vauvert checked his phone, but there was no signal. The mountains had to be messing up reception. It was impossible to find out where the rest of the unit was. They were probably still a few miles away, winding up the narrow forest road. No one had ever bothered to pave this access road, which looked more like a hiking trail.
From the corner of his eye, he spotted a shadow gliding along the path.
He tensed, his hand sliding to his gun. But no, it must have been his imagination. He carefully scanned the trees lining the road, all of them tall and dark. Beyond them rose the vast forests of the Ariege Mountains. For some reason, he wondered whether there were still wolves around here.
The very thought sent a shiver down his spine.
He shook himself. Wolves? There were no wolves in this area anymore. There hadn’t been for a very long time.
Why did the thought suddenly cross his mind?
“We won’t get anywhere like this,” Svarta said, letting go of the doorbell.
An almost palpable silence fell on the farm.
“Don’t you think that’s weird?” he asked. “Listen.”
Svarta looked at him.
“To what?”
“Well, that’s precisely my point. We can’t hear anything.” He gestured at the trees surrounding them. Indeed, there was no sound. No birds singing, nothing at all. “I don’t know much about the countryside, but still… It’s incredibly quiet around here, don’t you think?”
“You said it.”
Vauvert shrugged.
“I know what you have in mind, Eva, but we should wait for the rest of the unit. If you’re right…”
The woman grinned. Her teeth looked like pearls.
“I’m always right. The girl is here. I know it. Every minute that we spend waiting lowers our chances of finding her alive.”
Vauvert mumbled. This woman was a pain in the ass. But she wasn’t totally wrong. And the rest of the unit still wasn’t here.
He saw that she had stopped grinning. Chin raised, nostrils dilated, she looked like a wild animal that had sensed something.
“Eva? What is it?”
The woman turned her sunglasses toward him.