The Girl in the Fog Read online

Vogel took a pair of handcuffs from the pocket of his cashmere coat. ‘Now we really must go.’

  23 February

  Sixty-two days after the disappearance

  The night everything changed for ever, the mine was the only thing visible from the window of Dr Flores’s office. Red lights flashed on and off at the top of the ventilation towers like little eyes, sentinels in the fog.

  ‘Do you have family, Special Agent Vogel?’

  For some reason, Vogel was looking at the nails of his right hand. He had been silent and withdrawn again for a while now, so he didn’t immediately catch Flores’s question. ‘Family?’ he echoed after a moment. ‘Never had the time.’

  ‘I’ve been married for forty years,’ Flores said, although he hadn’t been asked. ‘Sophia has brought up our three beautiful children, and now she’s totally devoted to our grandchildren. She’s a wonderful woman, I don’t know what I’d do without her.’

  ‘What’s a psychiatrist doing in Avechot?’ Vogel asked, genuinely curious. ‘In a small place like this, you’re the last person I’d expect to find.’

  ‘Suicides,’ Flores said gravely. ‘In this area there’s the highest percentage of suicides in the country in proportion to the number of inhabitants. Every family has a story to tell. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters. Sometimes a son.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Hard to say. Those who come here from outside envy us. They think that in a quiet place like this, snug and safe in the middle of the mountains, life is always serene. But maybe it’s the excess of serenity that’s the real disease. It’s not enough to be happy – on the contrary, it becomes a prison. To escape it, they take their own lives, and they always choose the most violent methods. It’s not enough for them to swallow a few pills or cut their wrists, they tend to do themselves enormous harm, as if they wanted to punish themselves.’

  ‘And have you saved a lot of them?’

  Flores gave a brief laugh. ‘I think what my patients need more than drugs is someone to unburden themselves to.’

  ‘I bet you know all the right words to get them to talk. You’ve known them for so long, they find it easy to open up to you.’

  He was right. Flores was good at probing people, because he knew how to listen and never imposed himself. He never lost patience, never raised his voice in an argument, not even to reproach his own children. He liked the fact that he was considered a well-balanced man. He thought of himself as a mountain medic, like those old-time doctors who were concerned as much with their patients’ souls as their bodies and for that very reason were so good at curing disease.

  ‘Maybe they aren’t simply unhappy,’ Vogel went on. ‘Maybe the excess of serenity takes away their fear of dying, have you thought of that?’

  ‘That may be the case,’ Flores admitted. ‘Have you ever been afraid of death, Special Agent Vogel?’ The question was deliberately provocative. He wanted to get him back to the reality of his bloodstained clothes and the reason he had returned to Avechot.

  ‘When you’re surrounded by other people’s deaths, you don’t have time to think about your own,’ Vogel said bitterly. ‘What about you? Do you often think about death?’

  ‘Every day for the last thirty years.’ He pointed to his chest. ‘Triple bypass.’

  ‘A heart attack? At such a young age?’

  ‘I already had children then. Youth doesn’t count for much when you have responsibilities. Thank heavens, I survived a difficult twelve-hour operation, and now I just have to remember to take my pills and have a check-up every now and again.’ Flores always tended to downplay that episode, perhaps because he didn’t want to admit how deeply marked by it he had been. But the night everything changed for ever would push everything in his previous life into the background, even that.

  There was a knock at the door. Flores didn’t tell whoever it was to come in. Instead, he stood up and left the room. It was an agreed signal. But Vogel didn’t seem to give it any weight.

  In the corridor, Prosecutor Mayer was pacing back and forth impatiently. ‘Well?’ she asked as soon as she saw Flores.

  ‘He has moments of lucidity and others when he seems absent.’

  ‘But is he pretending or not?’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that. He’s started talking at great length about the Anna Lou Kastner case, and I’m letting him talk because I think we’ll eventually get to last night’s accident.’

  What Vogel had been coming out with was more like a confession. But Flores kept that to himself.

  ‘Be careful,’ Mayer said. ‘Vogel’s a manipulator.’

  ‘He doesn’t need to manipulate me if he’s telling the truth. And so far, I don’t think he’s been lying.’

  Mayer, though, wasn’t convinced. ‘Is Vogel aware that Maria Kastner killed herself three days ago?’

  ‘He hasn’t mentioned it. I don’t know if he knows.’

  ‘You should confront him with it. After all, it’s basically his fault it happened.’

  Flores had immediately realised that Maria wouldn’t be able to take the strain. But he had been prevented from doing anything. Since the suicide, the brotherhood had distanced themselves from Maria, condemning her for her sacrilegious act. They had even refused her a religious funeral. ‘I don’t think it’d serve any purpose bringing that up right now. In fact, it might be counter-productive.’

  Mayer came and stood a few centimetres from Flores and looked him in the eyes. ‘Please don’t let him charm you. I made that mistake just once, and I still can’t forgive myself.’

  ‘Don’t worry. If it’s all an act, we’ll find out.’

  When he went back into the room with two cups of steaming coffee, Vogel was no longer sitting in the armchair. Instead, he was on his feet, looking closely at the stuffed rainbow trout that had aroused his curiosity earlier.

  ‘I brought us some refreshment,’ Flores said with a smile, placing one of the cups on the table.

  Vogel didn’t turn. ‘Do you know why we never remember the names of the victims?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Flores said as he sat down.

  ‘Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Andrei Chikatilo … We all remember the names of the monsters, but nobody ever remembers those of the victims. Have you ever wondered why? And yet it ought to be the opposite. We say we feel pity, compassion, but then we forget them. It serves our purpose.’

  ‘Do you know the reason?’

  ‘People will tell you it’s because we’re constantly bombarded with the name of the monster until we’re tired of it. The media are bad, didn’t you know that?’ he said with a hint of sarcasm. ‘But they’re harmless, too. We can neutralise their effects by pressing a button on the remote. Except that nobody does it. We’re all too curious.’

  ‘Maybe what we care most about isn’t the monsters, it’s justice.’

  ‘Naah,’ Vogel replied, dismissing the idea with a gesture of his hand, as if it were obvious naïvety. ‘Justice doesn’t build an audience. Justice doesn’t interest anyone.’

  ‘Not even you?’

  Vogel fell silent, nailed by the question. ‘I knew Martini was guilty. There are things a police officer can’t explain. Instinct, for example.’

  ‘Is that why you pursued him, made his life impossible?’ Flores felt that they had reached something of a turning point.

  ‘When I saw Anna Lou’s satchel on the autopsy table, something broke inside me. Prosecutor Mayer would have dropped the charges.’ He fell silent again. Then, in a low voice: ‘I couldn’t allow that.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me, Special Agent Vogel?’

  Vogel looked up at him. ‘It wasn’t going to be another Derg case. In the end, the Mutilator got away with it, everybody apologised to him, and he even pocketed millions camouflaged as compensation for unfair detention.’

  Flores sat there as if paralysed, but he didn’t want to force Vogel’s hand.

  ‘The evening we met properly for the first time, in that roadside rest
aurant, Martini had a bandage on his hand. The idiot hadn’t even gone to have the injury stitched up, and it was still bleeding.’ Vogel clearly remembered the moment when, as he was putting the photograph back in the folder, he had noticed the red bloodstain on the blue Formica table.

  ‘The blood on the satchel,’ Flores said, incredulously. ‘So it’s true. You falsified the evidence.’

  17 January

  Twenty-five days after the disappearance

  It was just after midnight. A dark unmarked car drove in through the prison’s security gates and came to a halt in a hexagonal courtyard surrounded by high grey walls that made it look like a well.

  Two plain-clothes officers got out through the rear doors, then helped Martini out of the car. His movements were hampered by the handcuffs. It was only when he set foot on the asphalt that he finally looked up.

  The starry sky was enclosed within a narrow, claustrophobic space.

  Borghi was sitting in front. For once, he hadn’t been driving. He was carrying a folder with the arrest warrant signed by Mayer and the transcript of the interrogation Martini had undergone that afternoon in the prosecutor’s office. Martini had continued to deny the charges, but the evidence against him was significant.

  Borghi preceded the two other officers and Martini into Block C. Then he handed the documents to the head warder as part of the handover process. ‘Loris Martini,’ he said, introducing him. ‘The charge is abduction and homicide of a minor, with the aggravating circumstance of concealing a body.’

  Obviously, the head warder knew who Martini was and why he was here, but it was the way things were done. So he merely asked Borghi to sign the admittance forms.

  Once these formalities had been dealt with, Borghi turned one last time towards Martini, who seemed confused and disoriented and looked at the young officer with the imploring expression of someone who is trying to understand what is going to happen. Borghi didn’t say a word to him, but turned instead to the other officers. ‘Let’s go,’ he said simply.

  Martini watched as they walked off. Then two hands grabbed him by the elbows and pulled him away. The two warders led him into a cramped little room, its walls encrusted with damp. There was a low iron stool and a drain cover in the middle of the sloping floor.

  They removed his handcuffs. ‘Strip off,’ they ordered.

  He did as he was told. When he was completely naked, they told him to sit down on the stool, then turned on the shower directly above him – he hadn’t noticed it – and passed him a bar of soap. When Martini tried to stand so that he could wash himself more easily, they stopped him. It was against regulations. The water was lukewarm and smelled of chlorine. Finally, they gave him a white towel that was too small and almost immediately got soaked.

  ‘Stand up and place both your hands on the wall, then lean forward as far as possible,’ one of the warders said.

  Martini was shivering with cold, but also with fear. He couldn’t see what was happening behind him, but he could imagine it when he recognised the smack of a rubber glove. The bodily inspection lasted a few seconds, during which Martini closed his eyes as if to erase the humiliation. Having checked that he wasn’t hiding anything in his rectum, they told him to sit back down on the stool.

  Minutes passed in total silence. Nobody said anything and Martini was obliged to wait. Then footsteps were heard, and a doctor in a white coat came in, carrying a small folder. ‘Do you have any chronic illnesses?’ he asked without even introducing himself.

  ‘No,’ Martini replied in a thin voice.

  ‘Are you on any medication?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you suffering, or have you suffered in the past, from venereal disease?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you use drugs?’

  ‘No.’

  The doctor noted down this last reply, then left without another word. The warders again grabbed Martini by the arms and forced him to stand. One of them gave him his prison uniform, which was of rough canvas, a washed-out blue in colour, as well as a pair of plastic shoes that were two sizes too small for him. ‘Get dressed,’ they told him. Then they led him in handcuffs along a corridor that seemed endless. They went through a series of doors that opened then closed behind them.

  Although it was night time, the prison never slept.

  From one of the cells there came a low, rhythmic, metallic noise that soon spread to the others. The sound accompanied his passage with the warders, like a fanfare preceding a condemned man. Behind the barred doors, sinister whispers could be heard.

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘Count the days, we’ll get you.’

  ‘Welcome to hell.’

  This was the welcome reserved for those guilty of terrible crimes against minors. According to the prisoners’ code of honour, their offence made them unworthy even of being behind bars. For them, there was an added sentence: they were marked out as dead meat.

  Martini walked with his head bowed. His uniform was too big for him and kept falling down, but with his wrists handcuffed it was difficult to hold it up.

  They came to a heavy iron door. One of the guards opened it and pushed him inside. The room was too cramped for one person, let alone for three. There was a camp bed, a steel toilet bowl in a corner and a wash basin on the wall. Through the small window, way up high, the moonlight filtered in, along with an icy draught.

  A fourth person came in. He was a sturdy man of about fifty, the material of his uniform bulging with his biceps. ‘I’m Chief Alvis,’ he said. ‘I’m in charge of solitary.’

  Martini assumed Alvis would give him a speech about how things worked here. Instead, he handed him a brown woollen blanket, as well as a mess tin and a spoon – both of silicon, so that he couldn’t use them to harm himself or anyone else.

  ‘These objects, like the mattress on the bed, are the property of the prison,’ he said, as if reciting. ‘They are given to you intact. Any loss or damage will be your responsibility. Now sign here.’

  He handed him a clipboard and Martini put his own name at the bottom of the brief list, wondering what value these objects could ever have to require such concern. It was only now that he realised the worst aspect of prison: the obsession with bureaucracy. Every aspect of life behind bars, down to the most insignificant, was regulated by forms and codicils. Every decision had already been made by someone else. To limit personal initiative to a minimum, every act was translated into a pre-ordained standard. And dehumanised. In this way, there was no space for emotion, compassion or empathy.

  You were alone with yourself and your own guilt.

  As the warders and Chief Alvis left the cell, Martini stood there holding the brown blanket, the mess tin and the spoon. The heavy iron door closed and the key turned in the lock.

  Dead meat, Martini repeated to himself as silence fell in the cell.

  Vogel had waited twenty-four hours before issuing a statement. He had wanted the clamour about the previous day’s arrest to die down first, so as to have the limelight just for himself.

  The police officer who had succeeded in getting a man charged with murder even in the absence of the victim’s body.

  Now he stood in front of a forest of microphones and TV cameras in the school gym which would still function for a while as an operations room, and was savouring the attention of the media. He had chosen a new outfit to present himself to the journalists. A dark jacket of smooth velvet, grey trousers, a regimental tie, a white shirt, a pair of star-shaped white gold cufflinks. He was still wearing Anna Lou’s bead bracelet, intending to show it off like a trophy.

  ‘The quiet, meticulous work carried out by the police has finally led to the result we were all hoping for. As you see, determination and patience always pay off. We haven’t been thrown off course by pressure from the media and the public. We’ve worked in secret, out of the spotlight, in order to reach the objective we set ourselves from the start: to find out the truth about the disappearance of Anna Lou Kastner.’
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  It was paradoxical how he could twist the facts without feeling any embarrassment, Officer Borghi thought, standing to one side watching the scene. And although the truth Vogel spoke of didn’t include any answer as to what had happened to the girl with the red hair and the freckles, he was still good at convincing everybody of the things he was saying. Because, deep down, he himself was convinced.

  ‘At this point, our work in Avechot is over and we yield to the justice system, sure that Prosecutor Mayer will be able to make good use of the incontrovertible evidence revealed by the investigation.’

  Mayer, who was beside him, looked away slightly from the cameras aimed at her. It was a small gesture, but to Borghi an eloquent one. Unlike Vogel, she couldn’t lie to herself.

  ‘How have the Kastners greeted the news of the arrest?’ a reporter asked.

  ‘I think they learned about it from television,’ Vogel replied. ‘I prefer not to interfere with the understandable grief they must be feeling right now. But I’ll go and see them as soon as possible, to explain what happened and what will happen now.’

  ‘Will you stop looking for Anna Lou?’ The question came from Stella Honer.

  Vogel, who had been expecting it, avoided replying directly to her. ‘Of course not,’ he immediately reassured everybody. ‘We won’t be satisfied until we’ve found the last missing piece of the puzzle. What happened to the poor girl has always been our priority.’

  But those words – ‘poor girl’ – were also an official admission that he had given up hope of finding her, Borghi thought. It was the kind of dialectical trick employed to get them off the hook if they failed. On top of that, the funds to continue the search would immediately be reduced sharply once the floodlights had been turned off. No more forensic teams, dog units or frogmen. No helicopter flying between the mountains. The volunteers would gradually return home. But the first people to abandon Avechot would be the reporters. Within days, the circus would lower its tents, leaving behind a barren stretch of ground filled with waste paper. The TV crews would decamp, and the valley and its inhabitants would sink once again into their usual inexorable lethargy. Their old life would restart, disparities would re-emerge between those who had been lucky enough to possess land with fluorite beneath it and those who, on the contrary, had been impoverished by the mine. The hotels and restaurants that had temporarily reopened would gradually lose their customers, and the ‘horror tourists’ would choose other destinations, other gruesome crimes for their Sunday excursions with their families. Maybe the roadside restaurant would postpone closure for another year, but in the end even the owner of that would resign himself and realise that the best option was to shut up shop.