The Girl in the Fog Read online

  Obviously, Borghi had heard plenty of rumours about Vogel and his eccentricities. He and his cases were often featured on television, and he had been a guest on a number of crime-related programmes. He was in great demand for newspaper and TV interviews. He was at his ease in front of the cameras, always able to talk off the cuff, confident of success.

  Then there were the stories that were told in the police, which described him as a meticulous character, a control freak, concerned only with looking good on screen and making sure that attention was focused on him, never on anyone around him.

  Recently, though, things hadn’t gone so well for Special Agent Vogel. One case in particular had called his methods into question. That had pleased some in the police, but it still seemed to Borghi, naïvely perhaps, that there was a lot to learn from an officer like Vogel. After all, he himself was just at the beginning of his career, and this experience certainly wouldn’t do him any harm.

  Except that Vogel had always dealt with unusual crimes, especially gruesome murders that had a strong emotional impact. And it was said that he always chose his cases carefully.

  Which was why Borghi was now wondering what Vogel had seen that was so extraordinary in the disappearance of a young girl.

  Even though he found the fears of Anna Lou’s parents understandable, and suspected that something horrible might have happened to her, he couldn’t see it as a media sensation. And usually those were the only kinds of cases that interested Vogel.

  ‘We’ll be there shortly,’ he assured the officer at the other end, just to finish the call. As he did so, he spotted a black van parked at the end of the street.

  In it were two men, observing the Kastner house without exchanging a word.

  Borghi would have liked to get out of the car and check who the men were, but just then he saw Vogel come out of the house and walk along the drive in his direction. After a moment, though, Vogel slowed down and did something that made no sense.

  He started clapping.

  Softly at first, then increasingly loudly. As he did so, he looked around. The sound echoed, and faces started to appear at the windows of the neighbouring houses. An elderly woman, a married couple with their children, a fat man, a housewife with curlers in her hair. Gradually, others joined them. They all watched the scene uncomprehendingly.

  Vogel stopped clapping.

  He looked around one last time, still watched by the neighbours, then resumed walking as if nothing had happened and got in the car. Borghi would have liked to ask him the reasons for this strange behaviour, but once again it was Vogel who spoke first. ‘What did you notice in that house today, Officer Borghi?’

  The young man didn’t need to think about it. ‘The husband and the wife held hands the whole time, they seemed very united, yet she was the one who did all the talking.’

  Vogel nodded, looking through the windscreen. ‘The man’s dying to tell us something.’

  Borghi made no comment. He started the car, forgetting all about the clapping and the black van.

  The village police station was too small and cramped for what Vogel had in mind, and he had asked for a place more suited to the investigation. So the school gym had been placed at his disposal as an operations room.

  The mats and the gym equipment had been piled up along one of the walls. A big basket of volleyballs stood forgotten in a corner. Some desks had been brought in from the classrooms, and a few folding garden chairs had also been procured. There were two laptops and a desktop computer provided by the library, but only one telephone connected to an outside line. A blackboard had been placed under one of the baskets on the basketball area, and on it someone had written in chalk: Case findings. Underneath were stuck the only elements gathered so far: the photograph of Anna Lou that featured on the flyers printed by the family and a map of the valley.

  At that moment, the room echoed with the chatter of a small group of plain-clothes officers from Avechot, gathered around a coffee machine and a tray of pastries. They were talking with their mouths full and kept impatiently checking the time. It was impossible to make out what they were talking about in that clamour, but from their expressions it could be inferred that they were all complaining about the same thing.

  The dull thud produced by the fire door being thrown open made them all turn. Vogel entered the gym, followed by Borghi, and the chatter faded. The door closed with a bang behind Vogel. Now the only sound in the room was the distinct squeak of his leather shoes as he walked forward.

  Without saying hello or deigning to look at anybody, Vogel approached the blackboard beneath the basket. He looked for a moment at the ‘case findings’, as if studying them carefully. Then, with an abrupt gesture, he rubbed out the words with one hand and tore off the photograph and the map.

  With the chalk, he wrote a date: 23 December.

  He turned to the small audience. ‘Nearly two days have passed since the girl disappeared,’ he said. ‘In missing persons cases, time is our enemy, but it can also be an ally – it all depends on us. We have to take full advantage of it, which means we have to get moving.’ He paused. ‘I want roadblocks on the main road in and out of the valley. I don’t want anybody stopped, but we have to send a signal.’

  Those present listened in silence. Borghi had taken up a position against the wall and stood there watching them.

  ‘The security camera over the petrol pump and the speed camera on the main road,’ Vogel said. ‘Has anyone checked if they’re working?’

  After a few moments’ hesitation, one of the officers, a paunchy man in a check shirt and blue tie, raised the cup of coffee that was in his hand. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said self-consciously. ‘We’ve got hold of the videos for the time of the disappearance.’

  Vogel seemed pleased. ‘Good. Now trace all the male motorists who drove by at that time and check the reasons they entered or left the valley. Concentrate on those with a history of violence or a criminal record.’

  From his privileged vantage point, Borghi sensed the men’s displeasure.

  A second officer spoke up, an older man confident that he could allow himself a criticism. ‘Sir, there aren’t many of us, we don’t have many resources, plus there’s no money for overtime.’ There was a murmur of approval from the others.

  Vogel was unfazed. He looked at the desks arrayed in front of him. The shortage of resources was obvious, and made them all look ridiculous. He couldn’t blame these men for being sceptical and unmotivated. But nor could he allow there to be any excuses. So he continued in a calm tone: ‘I know you’d all like to be at home celebrating Christmas with your families right now, and that you see Officer Borghi and myself as two strangers who’ve come here to order you about. But when this business is over, the two of us, Borghi and I, will be able to go back where we came from. Whereas you …’ He looked briefly from one to the other of them. ‘You’ll have to keep meeting that girl’s parents on the street.’

  There followed a brief silence. Then the older officer intervened again, humbly this time. ‘Sir, forgive my question, but why are we looking for a man when it’s a girl who disappeared? Shouldn’t we be concentrating on her?’

  ‘Because someone took her.’

  As he’d intended, this statement had a powerful effect on the audience. For a moment, they didn’t know what to say. Vogel looked around at those present. Any police officer with common sense would have dismissed the statement as a procedural heresy. There was no evidence to support the hypothesis, not so much as a single clue. It came out of nowhere. But all Vogel had to do was plant in their minds the idea that it was possible. He just needed that seed of a possibility, and soon the certainty would grow. He knew that if he could convince these men, he’d be able to convince anybody. That was the challenge. Not in a real operations room equipped for a crisis, but in a school gym. Not with professionals with five years’ experience in the field, but with ill-equipped local officers who had no idea how to conduct a complex investigation. In these few minutes,
the fate of the case would be decided, and so perhaps would that of a sixteen-year-old girl. That was why Vogel started bringing out all the tricks he had learned over time, with the aim of selling his merchandise.

  ‘There’s no point beating about the bush,’ he continued. ‘We have to call a spade a spade. Because, as I’ve said, anything else is a waste of time. And that time belongs to Anna Lou, not to us.’ Then he took his black notebook from his coat pocket, opened it with a flick of the wrist and consulted his notes. ‘It’s about five o’clock on 23 December. Anna Lou Kastner leaves home to go to a church meeting, the church being about three hundred metres from her house.’ Vogel turned and drew two dots on the blackboard, some distance from each other. ‘As we know, she’ll never get there. But she isn’t the kind of girl who’d run away. That’s what those who know her say, and it’s confirmed by her lifestyle: no internet at home, no profile on social networks, and she only had five numbers in the memory on her mobile phone.’ He counted on his fingers: ‘Mummy, Daddy, home, grandparents’ house and church.’ He turned again to the blackboard and drew a line between the two points he had previously drawn. ‘The answers are all in those three hundred metres. Eleven other families live there: forty-six people in all, thirty-three of whom were at home at that hour. But nobody saw or heard anything. The security cameras point towards the houses, not at the street, so they’re useless. What is it they say? “Everyone cultivates his own garden.”’ He put the black notebook back in his pocket. ‘The kidnapper studied the habits of the neighbourhood, he knew how to pass unobserved. The fact that we’re only hypothesising his existence tells us that he prepared well before he went into action … and that he’s winning.’

  Vogel put down the chalk, clapped his hands to get the dust off them, then scrutinised the audience, trying to see if the concept he had just outlined had made any progress. Yes, he’d done it. He had instilled doubt in them. But he had done more than that: he had offered them a motivation. From that moment on, he would manoeuvre them easily and nobody would again question a single word of his orders.

  ‘Good, now remember: the question is no longer where Anna Lou is now. The question is: Who is she with? Now let’s get going.’

  Borghi, who hadn’t yet eaten anything, went back to the little hotel room he had reserved the previous afternoon, along with one for Special Agent Vogel. He’d been sure there wouldn’t be any vacancies on Christmas Day. But although it was among the last hotels still active in the valley, the Fiori delle Alpe was practically empty. All the other hotels and guest houses had closed down after the arrival of the fluorite mine. Borghi had wondered at first how come they hadn’t been converted to guest apartments for those working for the multinational that ran the mine, but the doorman had explained to him that the workers were almost all local, while the company’s executives came and went in their helicopters and never stayed very long.

  Barely three thousand people lived in Avechot, and half the male workforce was employed in the mine.

  The first thing Officer Borghi did when he got into his room was take off his leather shoes and his tie. He had been shivering in those clothes all day. Usually, he only wore a suit when he had to go and make a statement in court. He wasn’t used to having one on for such a long time. He waited for the temperature of his body to harmonise with that of the room, then took off his jacket and shirt. He would have to wash the shirt and hang it in the shower, hoping it would dry by the next day, because his wife had forgotten to put in a spare one when she had packed his suitcase. Caroline had been very distracted lately. They had been married for just over a year and she was seven months pregnant.

  It’s hard to explain to a young wife who’s expecting a baby why you can’t spend Christmas Day with her, even when the reason is something you can’t get out of, like your work as a police officer.

  Borghi called her as he was dropping his shirt in the bathroom sink. It was a fairly rapid call.

  ‘So what’s happening in Avechot?’ she asked curtly.

  ‘Actually, we don’t know yet.’

  ‘Then they might as well have given you the day off.’

  It was obvious that Caroline was looking for a quarrel. It was exasperating having to deal with her when she acted that way.

  ‘I told you, it’s important for me to be here, for my career.’ He was trying to be conciliatory, but it was difficult. Then he was distracted by the voices coming from the TV, which he had switched on. ‘Sorry, I have to go now, someone just knocked at the door,’ he lied. He hung up before Caroline could start her whining again and immediately focused on the news bulletin.

  On the evening of Christmas Day, when people had finished celebrating and were getting ready to bring a long day to its end, Anna Lou’s parents appeared on television.

  They were sitting side by side behind a large rectangular table set up on a low platform. They were wearing thick jackets that looked too big for them, as if the anxiety of the last few hours had eaten away at them from within. They looked shy and modest, and still held each other by the hand.

  The appeal had been filmed that afternoon by a local TV channel under Vogel’s supervision. Borghi had been there, too, but seeing it all again on a small screen gave him a strange sensation he couldn’t explain.

  Kastner held a framed photograph of his daughter up to the camera. It had been taken at the end of a religious ceremony and showed Anna Lou in a snow-white tunic with a wooden crucifix. His wife Maria, with that same crucifix around her neck, read a press release. ‘Anna Lou is one metre sixty-seven tall, and has long red hair which she usually wears in a ponytail. When she disappeared, Anna Lou had on a grey tracksuit, trainers and a white down jacket. She also had a brightly-coloured school satchel with her.’ Then, after catching her breath, she looked straight at the camera, as if directly addressing all the parents watching, as well, perhaps, as whoever might know the truth. ‘Our daughter Anna Lou is a kind girl, those who know her know that she has a good heart: she loves cats and she trusts people. That’s why we’re also appealing to those who’ve never known her in her first sixteen years of life: if you’ve seen her or have any idea where she is, help us to bring her home.’ Finally she spoke to her daughter, as if she could really hear her in some remote, unknown place. ‘Anna Lou … Mummy, Daddy and your brothers love you. Wherever you are, I hope that our voice and our love reach you. And when you come home, we’ll let you have the kitten you want so much, Anna Lou, I promise you … May the Lord protect you, my child.’

  She had repeated the name of her daughter several times, even though it wasn’t necessary, Borghi thought. Perhaps because she feared losing the last thing she still had of Anna Lou’s.

  Now, not only a simple, nondescript girl, who would never have imagined she might appear on television one day, but also a little village in the Alps named Avechot were both on their way to becoming sadly famous. Borghi understood the sensation he had felt a while earlier, when he had found himself watching an event he had already seen as if he didn’t know it.

  It was the effect of being on television. It was as if words and gestures took on a new consistency on the small screen.

  Once upon a time, television had limited itself to reproducing reality, now it instigated the process. It made reality tangible, something with texture and solidity.

  It created reality.

  Without knowing why, Borghi thought again of the words Vogel had used about Anna Lou’s father once he had got back in the car after that strange interval of clapping outside the Kastners’ house.

  ‘The man’s dying to tell us something.’

  He himself was about to become the father of a baby girl. For more than forty-eight hours now, the man over whom Vogel had cast a sinister shadow had been in the dark as to what had happened to his own daughter. Borghi was struck by a sudden anxiety. He was forced to wonder if the world awaiting his daughter was indeed that cruel.

  It was nearly midnight, and the Kastners’ house was silent. But there
was nothing peaceful about that silence, because it merely emphasised the emptiness that had grown in the house over the past forty-eight hours. Anna Lou’s absence was now palpable. Her father could no longer ignore it as he had done all day long, avoiding looking at the places usually occupied by his daughter, like her chair at the table, the armchair in which she loved to huddle in the evening to read a book or watch television, the door of her room. And he had filled the absence of her voice with other sounds. For example, when the pain of not hearing her speak, laugh or hum to herself became unbearable to him, Bruno Kastner would move an object, so that the noise would fill the emptiness left by Anna Lou and distract him from that terrible silence.

  Dr Flores had prescribed tranquillisers for Maria, to help her sleep. Bruno had made sure she took them and then had gone to tuck in the twins and had lingered in the doorway of their room, watching over their restless sleep. They were holding out, but it was clear that they, too, were disturbed. All day long, they had continued to ask questions in an almost casual way and had seemed content with the brief, evasive answers they were given. But their apparent indifference concealed a fear of knowing the truth. A truth you’re not prepared for at the age of seven.

  Bruno Kastner didn’t know what the truth was either, all he knew was that he was terrified.

  He sat down at the dining room table. He was once again wearing slippers and pyjamas. After the visit of the two police officers, he had dressed to go out, without knowing exactly where to go. He had found comfort in the routine of his work, and so had spent the succeeding hours in his lorry, driving aimlessly along the mountain roads. He was looking for a sign of Anna Lou, anything at all. In reality, he was also escaping his own anxieties, his own sense of powerlessness – the kind of powerlessness that only a father who knows he hasn’t looked after his nearest and dearest as he should have done can possibly feel.