The Girl in the Fog Read online

  Dead meat.

  There was no more pain now, only exhaustion. His mind surrendered before his body and he let himself go into a kind of torpor. Only his arms kept up a strenuous, futile resistance. Even though it was dark, his eyes clouded over. And when everything was about to vanish, a light came into his field of vision. It came from behind his back. He felt himself being forcefully grabbed and dragged away, beyond the doorway of the cell. He was safe, but he would never be safe again.

  Then he lost consciousness.

  He had gone to ground in the school’s box room, where the video recorders from the antiquated surveillance system were kept. The only light came from the monitor that cast its reflection on Vogel’s face, creating a mask of shadows.

  He inserted the video cassette into the appropriate compartment, which swallowed it after a slight pressure. There followed a series of sounds while the mechanism captured the tape and stretched it around the spools. Then the video started.

  First, there was the grey dust of static, which produced a loud, unpleasant rustling. Vogel adjusted the volume, because he wanted everything to stay in the room. Seconds went by, then the image abruptly changed.

  A narrow beam of light was moving over an opaque surface. Dirty, cracked tiles. On the soundtrack, a series of taps on the camera’s microphone. Whoever was filming was trying to adjust it as best he could. The camera moved along a wall and stopped in front of a mirror. The little light above the lens was sharply reflected. In the blinding glow, all that could be seen was the operator’s hand, in a black glove. Then he took a step to one side, so that his face could also be seen. He was wearing a balaclava. The only human thing was his eyes – distant, indecipherable. Empty.

  The man in the fog, Vogel told himself. He waited for him to say or do something, but all he did was stand there. Motionless. Only his breathing could be heard – calm, regular. It was lost in the echo of the small room in which he stood. A bathroom. What kind of place was this? And why had he wanted him to see it? Vogel went closer to the screen to get a better look and saw that behind the man a threadbare towel hung from a hook.

  On it, two small green matching triangles.

  Vogel was trying to figure out the meaning of this symbol when the man on the screen lifted his free hand from the camera and started a countdown on the fingers of his glove.

  Three … two … one …

  Then the camera suddenly moved to one side. The face with the balaclava disappeared from the mirror and in its place a bright patch appeared in the background. The camera took a while to focus.

  And then he saw her. And jumped back in his seat.

  Beyond the doorway of the bathroom was a bedroom – a bedroom in an abandoned hotel. Sitting in a corner at the foot of a filthy mattress, a thin figure. The light from the lamp above the camera made it look as if she was wrapped in a dazzling aura in the midst of the darkness that loomed threateningly around her. Her back stooped, her arms hanging loosely, a resigned posture. Her skin was very white. She was wearing only a pair of green knickers and a white bra that adhered almost completely to her chest. The underwear of a child. The camera moved in on her. Her red hair fell over her face in dishevelled strands. The only feature visible was her half-open mouth, a trickle of saliva emerging from one side of it. Every time she breathed, her thin shoulder blades rose and then slowly fell again. Outside her lips, the breath condensed because of the cold, but she wasn’t shivering. It was as if she didn’t feel anything.

  Anna Lou Kastner seemed almost unconscious, her mind perhaps blurred by drugs. Vogel recognised her only by the little circle drawn on her left forearm. O for Oliver, the boy from the summer when she had discovered love. The secret she had confided only to her diary.

  The camera lingered on her, pitilessly. Then the girl slowly raised her head, as if she wanted to say something. Vogel waited, but was afraid of hearing her voice. As she started to scream, the recording suddenly stopped.

  The first thing he did was destroy the videocassette. He threw it in the school’s gas boiler and waited until it had burned to a cinder. He couldn’t risk anyone finding it in his possession. By now, he was paranoid.

  He was about to get rid of Anna’s diary, too, but then thought better of it. Beatrice Leman could testify that she had given it to him, so it wasn’t a good idea to destroy it. And when it came down to it, it didn’t contain any information that could compromise him. So he decided to keep it, but hid it in one of the lockers in the changing room that still served as his office.

  Then he started to search on the internet. He had to track down the abandoned hotel where the footage had been shot. He was sure the video was an invitation. If he found Anna Lou’s body in that room, he could always manipulate the scene in such a way as to put the blame for the murder on Martini.

  That was what the man in the fog wanted, Vogel was now convinced of it.

  Otherwise why lead him to the discovery of the truth? Why show him the video of the girl? If he had simply wanted to claim responsibility for the kidnapping, he would have sent it to the media, not to him.

  Vogel searched through all the old hotels in Avechot, concentrating in particular on those that had closed down after the mine had opened and the tourists had deserted the area. In some cases, the websites still existed. He didn’t have many details at his disposal. The most important was the two matching green triangles. And it was thanks to them that he found the right hotel.

  The triangles were two stylised pines on an almost completely rusted sign.

  Vogel had reached the gates that led into the grounds surrounding the building. It was after seven, and there was nobody about, partly because the hotel was in an isolated area, some distance from Avechot.

  Vogel noted that the gates weren’t closed, so he pushed them open and drove in. Then he got out of the car to close them. He drove down the short drive with his lights off and parked under a portico, so that nobody should see the vehicle.

  The hotel had four floors. The windows of the rooms were covered with wooden planks that had been nailed on, but those on the front door had been partly removed. He slipped into a passage and only then switched on the torch he had brought with him.

  The sight that greeted him was depressing. Although it had ceased activity only five years earlier, the hotel looked as if it had been closed for at least fifty years. As if the world had ended here. The furnishings were almost non-existent. Skeletons of old sofas rusted in the shadows. Damp had attacked the walls, covering them with a greenish patina, and down them ran rivulets of dense yellow water. The floor was an expanse of rubble and pieces of mildewed wood. A smell of rottenness prevailed everywhere. Vogel walked past the reception desk, with the rack for the keys behind it, and found himself at the foot of a concrete staircase that had once been covered with an elegant burgundy moquette, scraps of which still clung to some of the steps.

  He started climbing.

  When he got to the first floor, he saw a plate indicating the numbers of the rooms in the corridors to his right and to his left – from 101 to 125, and from 126 to 150. Given that there were four floors, it struck Vogel that there were too many rooms to find the right one at first go. But he didn’t want to linger in this place any longer than was necessary. Then he remembered another detail of the video that he had neglected until now. Before showing him Anna Lou, the man in the fog had made a kind of countdown with his hand.

  Three … two … one …

  It hadn’t been a piece of theatre, a maniac’s umpteenth joke. He had been telling him where they were.

  Room 321 was on the third floor, towards the end of the left-hand corridor. Vogel stood in the doorway, pointing his torch inside. The beam of light explored the room and finally came to rest on the bottom corner of the filthy mattress on which Anna Lou had been sitting.

  But there was nobody in the room – not even the smell.

  And there were no signs that anyone else had been here. What’s happening? Vogel asked himself. Then h
e noticed that the bathroom door was shut. He went closer and placed his hand on the door frame, as if he could perceive something with that gesture, a force field of death or destruction. It was from beyond that doorway that the monster had shot his macabre footage.

  He wants you to open it, he told himself. In Vogel’s head, the monster was now in charge.

  So he grabbed the handle and slowly pushed it down until he felt the lock snap. Then he opened it wide.

  He was overcome by a blinding light.

  It was like an explosion, but without heat. A white shockwave that pushed him back.

  ‘Stay on him,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘Do you have him?’

  Someone replied, ‘Yes, I have him!’

  Vogel retreated, one arm raised to shield his eyes. Through the light, he saw a man with a TV camera and, behind him, a second figure who reached out an arm and placed something under his chin.

  A microphone.

  ‘Special Agent Vogel, how do you explain your presence here?’ Stella Honer asked without giving him time to think.

  Confused, Vogel continued to retreat.

  ‘Our network has received a video showing Anna Lou with her kidnapper,’ Stella went on. ‘Did you know that the girl had been in this hotel?’

  Vogel almost fell on the filthy mattress, but managed to keep his balance. ‘Leave me alone!’ he screamed.

  ‘How did you find out, and why did you keep silent about it?’

  ‘I … I …’ he stammered. He was prevaricating. But he couldn’t think of anything to say. It didn’t even occur to him to act as a police officer should and demand to know what they were doing here. ‘Leave me alone!’ he heard himself scream again, and he couldn’t believe it was his own voice – so shrill, so unsteady.

  That was the moment Vogel realised that his career was over.

  23 February

  Sixty-two days after the disappearance

  The night everything changed for ever, Flores watched as Vogel walked around the room, reviewing the stuffed fish on the walls.

  ‘You know something, Doctor? Your fish all look alike.’

  Flores smiled. ‘Actually, they’re the same fish.’

  Vogel turned to look at him, incredulous. ‘The same fish?’

  ‘Oncorhynchus mykiss. They’re all specimens of rainbow trout. There are only a few minor differences in colour and shape.’

  ‘You mean those are the only fish you collect?’

  ‘It’s strange, I know.’

  Vogel found the notion hard to accept. ‘Why?’

  ‘I could tell you it’s a fascinating species, one that’s not at all easy to catch. But that wouldn’t be the truth. I’ve already mentioned my heart attack. Well, I was alone on the shore of a mountain lake when it happened. Something had just taken the bait and I was pulling it up with all my might.’ Flores mimed the action. ‘I took the acute pain in my left arm for a cramp due to the effort, and didn’t let go. When the pain spread to my chest, then up to my sternum, I realised something was wrong. I fell back and almost passed out. All I remember is that next to me on the grass was that huge fish staring at me, gasping for air. We were both about to die.’ He laughed. ‘Stupid, don’t you think? I was young, barely thirty-two, but that fish was also in the prime of its life. With what little breath I had left in my body, I managed to call for help. Luckily, a gamekeeper was passing in the woods.’ He pointed to one of the specimens on the wall. ‘And that’s the trout.’

  ‘And the moral of this story?’

  ‘There isn’t one,’ Flores admitted. ‘But ever since then, every time I’ve caught an Oncorhynchus mykiss, the specimen has ended up on these walls. I stuff them myself. I have a little workshop at home, down in the basement.’

  Vogel seemed amused. ‘I should have stuffed Stella Honer. That harpy screwed me good and proper. It never even crossed my mind that I might not be the only person Anna Lou’s kidnapper had contacted.’

  Flores again turned serious. ‘I don’t think your presence in Avechot tonight is pure chance. The road accident is, though. When you drove off the road, you were escaping.’

  ‘That’s an interesting theory,’ Vogel admitted. ‘But what exactly was I escaping from?’

  Flores sat back in his armchair. ‘It isn’t true that you’re in a state of shock. It isn’t true that you’ve lost your memory. No, you remember everything. Am I right?’

  Vogel sat down again and passed a hand over his cashmere coat, caressing the material as if wanting to savour its softness. ‘I had to lose everything in order to think more clearly, more deeply. To think about something that, for once, wasn’t just for my own advantage.’

  ‘And what was this deeper thought that’s changed your way of feeling?’

  ‘A little O written in biro on a left arm.’ Vogel mimed the action. ‘The first time I read the passage in Anna Lou’s diary, I didn’t think about poor Oliver. I only remembered him later.’

  ‘Poor Oliver?’

  ‘Yes, that young man who couldn’t summon up the courage to kiss her during the summer. He lost something, just like all the others – her family, those who knew her. But, unlike them, he doesn’t know it, and never will … If Anna Lou is dead, then the children she won’t have also died with her, and the grandchildren: generations and generations that will never exist. All those souls imprisoned in nothingness deserved something better … Revenge.’

  Deep inside, Flores sensed that the moment of truth had arrived. ‘Whose blood is it on your clothes, Special Agent Vogel?’

  Vogel raised his head and smiled unequivocally. ‘I know who it is,’ he said, his eyes shining. ‘Tonight, I killed the monster.’

  31 January

  Thirty-nine days after the disappearance

  Martini hadn’t been released immediately.

  He had had to spend another ten days in prison after Stella Honer’s scoop. It had taken that long for the authorities to establish that Anna Lou Kastner’s kidnapper and probable murderer was a serial killer with a passion for red-headed girls, who had resumed his activities after an inexplicable interval of thirty years.

  The man in the fog.

  The name given him by Beatrice Leman had immediately appealed to the media, who had adopted it and focused their attention once again on the case. This turn of events had created a great stir, and the public couldn’t get enough of it.

  Martini had spent those ten days in a state of almost total indifference, in a bed in the infirmary. The official reason they hadn’t yet freed him was his state of health. In reality – as he knew perfectly well – the authorities were hoping that the marks of the beating he had received in prison would fade before he reappeared in public. He could understand them: Levi had already threatened in front of the TV cameras to denounce the prison governor and to involve even the minister in the scandal.

  When Martini was told to get his things ready because his family would be coming to fetch him, he could hardly believe it. He got up laboriously and slowly began putting everything in a big bag that lay open on the bed. He had a plaster cast on his right forearm, but it was his ribs that hurt most. They were tightly bandaged, and every now and again he found it hard to breathe and had to stop what he was doing. There was a purple bruise around his left eye that descended onto his cheek where it took on a yellow tinge. He had similar marks all over his body, but many of them were starting to fade. His upper lip was split and had required stitches. In the meantime, the cut on his left hand that went back to the day of Anna Lou’s disappearance had completely healed.

  About eleven, a warder told him that the governor had countersigned the order for his release issued by Prosecutor Mayer and that he was therefore free to go. Martini had to use a crutch to walk. The warder took his bag and led him along the corridors as far as the room where the prisoners met their relatives. The walk was interminable.

  When the door opened, Martini saw his wife and daughter, who had been waiting impatiently for him. On their faces, their smiles
of delight were immediately replaced by expressions of dismay. Attorney Levi, who was also present, had tried to warn them what to expect, but when they actually saw him it was different. Nothing could have prepared them for that. It wasn’t so much seeing him with the crutch and that livid mask-like face that extinguished their enthusiasm as the immediate awareness they had of being confronted with a man who was different from the one they had known. A man who had lost more than twenty kilos, his face hollowed out, the skin drooping under his chin despite his efforts to hide it by growing a bristly little beard. But above all, a man of forty-three who looked like an old man.

  Martini continued limping towards them, trying to put on his best smile. At last, Clea and Monica broke free of the shock and ran to him. The three of them embraced for a long time, and wept silently. As they sank their heads on his chest, he kissed both his women on the backs of their necks and stroked their hair. ‘It’s over,’ he said. It’s over, he told himself – because he didn’t yet believe it.

  Then Clea lifted her eyes to his, and it was as if they were recognising each other after so long apart. Martini knew the meaning of that look. She was begging forgiveness for leaving him on his own, for not being beside him at the worst time of his life, above all for doubting him. Martini returned her look with a nod of his head, and it was sufficient to make it clear to both of them that all had been forgiven.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said.

  They got in Levi’s Mercedes. The lawyer sat in front, next to the driver, and the Martini family in the back. They had used a side exit to avoid the reporters who had gathered in front of the prison. But when the car with its blackened windows got to the street where their house was, they encountered another assembly of microphones and TV cameras. There was also a small crowd of onlookers.

  Martini saw on Clea’s and Monica’s faces the fear that the siege was beginning again, preventing them from carrying on with their lives. But Levi turned towards the back seat and reassured them, ‘It’s going to be different. Look.’