"Half an hour later. The boys called me up. I joined them at Gurdelik's place. With a unit of technical officers."
"Was it you who found the girl?"
"No, they'd already found her. She was soaking. You know how those girls work there, it's-"
"Describe her to me."
"Small. Brunette. As thin as a rake. Her teeth were chattering. She was mumbling incoherently. In Turkish."
"Did she tell you what she'd seen?"
"Not a thing. She couldn't even see we were there. The girl was completely traumatized." Beauvanier was not lying. His voice rang true.
Schiffer was pacing up and down the room, constantly peering at him. "What do you reckon happened there?"
"I dunno. Some racketeering, maybe. Some guys putting the scares on.
"Racketeering at Gurdelik's place? No one would try that one on him."
The officer adjusted his leather jacket, as though his neck was itching. "You never know with these Turks. There's maybe a new clan in the neighborhood. Or else it might be the Kurds. That's their business, man. Gurdelik didn't even want to press charges. So we just went through the motions…"
Another thought struck Schiffer. Nobody at La Porte Bleue had mentioned the kidnapping of Zeynep or the Grey Wolves. So Beauvanier really believed in this business about racketeering. No one had ever established the link between this little "visit" and the discovery of the first body, two days later.
"So what did you do with Sema Gokalp?"
"At the station, we gave her a tracksuit and some blankets. She was trembling all over. We found her passport sewn into her skirt. She didn't have a visa or anything. So straight to Immigration. I faxed them a report. Then I sent another fax to headquarters, Place Beauvau, just to cover myself. So all I had to do then was wait."
"And?"
Beauvanier sighed, sliding his finger under his collar. "She just kept on trembling. It was getting worrisome. Her teeth were chattering. She couldn't eat or drink. At five AM, I decided to take her to Sainte-Anne's."
"Why you and not a patrolman?"
"Because they wanted to put her in a straitjacket. And then… dunno, there was something about her… So I filled out a 32-13 and took her along…"
His voice was fading. He was now constantly scratching his neck. Schiffer noticed deep acne scars. A druggie, he thought to himself.
"The next morning, I called up the boys at Immigration and told them to go to the hospital. At lunchtime, they phoned back. They hadn't found the girl."
"She'd run away?"
"No. Some policemen came and took her away at ten in the morning.”
“What policemen?"
"You're not going to believe this."
"Try me."
"According to the doctor on duty, they were from the DNAT.”
“The antiterrorist division?"
"I checked myself. They had a transfer order. Everything was aboveboard."
For a return to his precinct, Schiffer could not have hoped for a better fireworks display. He sat on a corner of the desk. Every time he moved, he gave off a whiff of mint.
"Did you contact them?"
"I tried to. But they weren't very forthcoming. From what I understood, they'd picked up my report at Place Beauvau. Then Charlier issued his orders."
"Philippe Charlier?"
The captain nodded. The entire story seemed to be right under his nose. Charlier was one of the five commissioners of the antiterrorist division. An ambitious officer, whom Schiffer had known since joining the anti-gang squad in 1977. A real bastard. Maybe smarter than he was, but just as brutal.
"And then?"
"And then nothing. Not another word."
"Don't bullshit me."
Beauvanier hesitated. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. He lowered his eyes. "The next day Charlier called in person. lie asked me loads of questions about the case. Where we'd found her, in what circumstances, and so on."
"What did you tell him?"
"What I knew."
In other words, nothing, dickhead, thought Schiffer.
The baseball-capped cop concluded: "Charlier told me that he'd now be dealing with the case. Seeing the magistrate, going to Immigration Control, the usual procedure. He hinted that I'd do well to keep quiet about it."
"Do you still have your report?"
A smile slipped over that panicked face. "What do you think? They came and picked it up that very day"
"What about the daybook?"
The smile turned to laughter.
"What daybook? Listen, man, they wiped out every trace. Even the recording of the radio message. They made the witness vanish. Just like that."
"Why?"
"How the hell should I know? That girl couldn't tell them anything. She was completely out to lunch."
"And you, why didn't you say anything?"
The cop lowered his voice. "Charlier's got a hold on me. An old story…"
Schiffer punched him on the arm, in a friendly manner, then stood up. Pacing around the room once more, he digested this information. Amazing as it might seem, the removal of Sema Gokalp by the DNAT belonged to another affair, which had nothing to do with the series of murders committed by the Grey Wolves. But that did not reduce the importance of this witness in his case. He had to find her because she had seen it all happen.
"Are you back on service?" Beauvanier hazarded.
Schiffer adjusted his drenched clothes and ignored the question. He noticed one of Nerteaux's Identikit pictures on the desk. He picked it up, like a bounty hunter, and asked, "Do you remember the name of the doctor who took charge of Sema at Sainte-Anne?"
"Of course. Jean-François Hirsch. We have a little arrangement about prescriptions and…"
Schiffer was no longer listening. His stare came to rest on the portrait. It was a skillful synthesis of the three victims. Smooth, broad features, shyly beaming out from under red hair. A fragment of Turkish poetry suddenly crossed his mind: The padishah had a daughter / Like the moon of the fourteenth day…
Beauvanier asked again, "Does that business at La Porte Bleue have anything to do with this girl?"
Schiffer pocketed the picture. He grabbed the officer's cap and turned it around the right way.
"If anyone asks, you can always give them some rap, man."
45
Sainte-Anne's Hospital. 21.00 hours.
He knew the place well. The long wall of the enclosure, with its serried stones; the small doorway at 17 Rue Broussais, as discreet as an artists' entrance; then the vast, undulating, intricate mass of buildings mingling different centuries and styles of architecture. A fortress, enclosing a universe of madness.
But that evening, the citadel did not seem as well guarded as all that. Banners hung up on the first façades announced the situation:
SECURITY ON STRIKE!
JOB CREATION OR DEATH!
Farther on, others added:
NO TO OVERTIME! MAKE-UP DAYS
FIDDLE! BANK HOLIDAYS STOLEN!
The idea of Paris 's largest psychiatric hospital being left to its own devices, with its patients running around in complete freedom, amused Schiffer. He could just picture such a bedlam, in which the lunatics had taken over the asylum and replaced the doctors on night duty. But as he entered, all he found was a completely deserted ghost town.
He followed the red signposts directing him to neurosurgical and neurological emergency admissions, looking at the names of the various alleyways as he went. He had just taken Allée Guy de Maupassant and was now in Sentier Edgar Allan Poe. He wondered if this was a symptom of the hospital planners' sense of humor. Maupassant had lost his reason before dying, and the alcoholic author of "The Black Cat" could not have had all his wits about him by the end either. In Communist neighborhoods, the streets were named after Karl Marx or Pablo Neruda. Here they commemorated the great lunatics.
Schiffer sniggered to himself, trying to keep up his usual appearance of a hard cop. But he already felt panic biting into him. There were too many memories, too much agony behind these walls…