The Girl in the Fog Read online

  The third room was a bathroom. Chipped tiles, newspapers stacked up. The toilet flush made a kind of muted sob, and obviously needed repair. The bathtub was small and encrusted with limescale.

  Given that this was the whole house, Vogel wondered where Mattia slept. Maybe on the sofa he had seen in the living room, or else in the same bed as his mother, but he wasn’t convinced. He was about to turn on his heels and make a closer inspection when he spotted a barely noticeable rectangle on the wooden wall of the corridor.

  A door.

  Vogel went to it and pushed it with the palm of his hand. It opened onto a bare brick staircase leading down between two walls of rock, presumably to the cellar.

  It was dark down there.

  Vogel took out his mobile phone and lit the screen to light his way, then started cautiously to descend. The stairs were steep and worn at the edges. There was a slightly musty odour, although there seemed to be no damp. Reaching the foot of the stairs, he moved the phone about to light the space.

  It wasn’t a cellar but a basement room. From the way it was furnished, he deduced that it was Mattia’s bedroom. Or rather, his den.

  There were no windows or ventilation. Down here, the noise of the rain was a single, distant sound. A forlorn sound, like a lament.

  On the right, against the wall, was a camp bed. It was unmade and there was a mountain of blankets on it. This room was much colder than the rest of the house, Vogel thought. But a teenager probably adapted well to it, just to have a little independence.

  In front of him, Vogel saw a table. And on the wall over the table hung photographs. They were enlarged frames taken from videos.

  Anna Lou was in all of them.

  Vogel approached to get a better look. There were about thirty of them, all close-ups. The girl had been captured at various moments, always with a spontaneous expression. She almost never smiled in these images. But they revealed a hidden beauty, Vogel thought. Something that wasn’t usually visible to the naked eye. It was as if, in his crazy photographic project, Mattia had been able to capture something that nobody else had ever been able to see. Not even Bruno Kastner, who didn’t consider his daughter pretty enough to interest a kidnapper.

  On the surface stood a no longer very modern PC. Next to it, a camcorder.

  Vogel lifted it to take a closer look. Apparently, in his hurry to escape, Mattia had left behind the one object he was inseparable from. Then Vogel noticed something else.

  A cuddly pink toy kitten on a shelf, probably the one the boy had taken away from the street outside the Kastners’ house the night they had spotted him. Vogel took it down and examined it. The boy had taken a souvenir, which would be enough to incriminate him in the eyes of the media. Vogel felt a shudder, and at that exact moment he heard a noise behind him. It hadn’t been just an impression, it was real.

  Something had moved on the bed.

  Vogel put down the kitten and turned slowly. He saw the mass of blankets shifting. A figure emerged from beneath them. Mattia was wearing his hooded top, the hood pulled down over his head, and it was impossible to make out his face.

  Vogel saw him get up slowly. He was much taller and stronger than he remembered. All at once, Vogel understood. The boy hadn’t run away at all, he had been hiding in his house all the time. The bugs placed outside would never have been able to record his presence down here, protected as the basement was by God alone knew how many metres of earth and rock.

  Vogel had both hands full, the camcorder in one and the phone he was using to light the place in the other. He wouldn’t have time to take the gun from his holster, because the boy was very near and in the seconds it would take Vogel to put the things down Mattia would have jumped him. So he tried to use another kind of weapon, one with which usually he was good at navigating his way. ‘So this is what you like to do, is it?’ he said, smiling conspiratorially and nodding towards the camcorder. ‘I bet you’re good.’

  The boy didn’t reply.

  Vogel could feel the intensity of his gaze beneath the hood. ‘I can make you famous, you know? Your videos could end up on TV, and you’d get all the attention you deserve. I have a lot of friends who are journalists, their papers would pay a lot for the stuff. They’d all be talking about you. Think of your mother: she’d never have to work again. She could have a real house and all the things she can’t afford now. And it would be you who gave her those things. It’s easy to do that, Mattia. We just have to get out of here. Then you can take me to where Anna Lou is. Or rather, we could go there with the TV crews. You’ll be the star, nobody will laugh at you, they’ll all respect you …’

  He didn’t know if Mattia was actually thinking this over. Long seconds went by during which nothing happened. Vogel hoped his words had struck home. Then the boy moved, taking a small step in his direction. Instinctively, Vogel retreated. Mattia stopped. Then he took a second step. Vogel’s side hit the edge of the table. Again, the boy stopped.

  Then Vogel understood. The boy wasn’t trying to scare him, or to attack him. He was simply asking him for permission to advance.

  No, not towards me, Vogel thought. Towards the computer.

  He shifted to allow Mattia to reach the table. The boy went to it and switched on the PC. It took a couple of minutes for the system to fire up. Once it was working, Mattia opened a file called simply She. A number of icons appeared on the screen, each linked to a different video. ‘She’ was Anna Lou.

  The boy searched with the mouse for what interested him and clicked on one of the icons.

  Standing behind him, Vogel stared at the screen, wondering what he would see.

  The video started. It showed Anna Lou walking along the street, carrying the same brightly coloured satchel with which she had disappeared and a bag with her ice skates. She was walking alone on a sunny day, without realising that she was being filmed. She passed an old white four-by-four. Then the image changed, and Vogel realised that Mattia had made a montage of different scenes. In this shot, Anna Lou was with her friend Priscilla. They were chatting outside school. Another change: Anna Lou was selling sweets for charity with other members of the brotherhood in the forecourt of the assembly hall. As he was wondering about the meaning of this montage, Vogel again saw the white four-by-four from the first scene. It might have been there in the second scene, too, although he hadn’t noticed it.

  The following sequences confirmed his suspicions.

  Anna Lou with her parents in a picnic in the mountains – the white four-by-four was there in the car park. Anna Lou coming out of the house together with her little brothers – the white four-by-four was visible a few metres away, parked at the kerb.

  The images continued. Vogel turned to look at Mattia. He was concentrating on the screen, which lit up his face. In following Anna Lou, the boy had noticed something.

  That he wasn’t the only one following her.

  In every case, the distance was too great to make it possible to see the driver’s face or read the licence plate. With the right software, of course, they’d be able to blow up the images. But Vogel was convinced it wouldn’t be necessary. ‘You know who he is, don’t you?’ he said.

  Mattia turned in the direction of the shelf on which stood the cuddly kitten. He indicated it with his eyes, then nodded weakly.

  Yes, he knew who he was.

  23 February

  Sixty-two days after the disappearance

  The night everything changed for ever, the snow was still falling outside the window, spreading a false innocence that was unable to completely deceive the darkness of the night.

  The radiator in Flores’s office emitted a kind of gurgle. A guttural sound, almost alive. It was like a human voice, a voice hidden in another dimension, trying in vain to communicate a message.

  Vogel had broken off his story and was staring at a point on the wall amid the photographs and the framed testimonials.

  Flores realised that the special agent’s attention had been drawn to one of the st
uffed fish, silver in colour and with a pink stripe on its back. ‘Oncorhynchus mykiss,’ he said. ‘Also known as rainbow trout. Originally from North America, but also from some Asian Pacific countries. Many years ago, it was introduced into Europe, and is found in small mountain lakes. To survive, it needs fresh oxygenated water.’ Flores had deliberately wandered off-topic. He didn’t want to force Vogel to continue. His main task was to be a mediator, to act as a conduit between the individual in front of him and his inner conflict. In Vogel’s case, instinct told Flores that the special agent was feeling remorse, and was trying desperately to hide from himself whatever had happened before the road accident, whatever it was that had stained his clothes with somebody else’s blood.

  Then Vogel lost interest in the fish and started talking again. ‘The media establish roles,’ he said. ‘The monster, the victim. The victim must be protected from any possible attack or suspicion. He or she has to be pure. Otherwise, there’s the risk of providing the person who has harmed them with a moral alibi. Sometimes, though – and it’s pointless denying it – some victims have played their part in what happened. There have been macroscopic faults, genuine provocations, or else stupid actions which eventually set off a reaction. I remember the case of an office manager who deliberately mispronounced the name of one of his employees. He did it in front of everyone, but meant it as a joke. One morning, the employee showed up for work at the usual time, but with an automatic pistol.’

  ‘Is that the case with Anna Lou Kastner?’ Flores asked.

  ‘No,’ Vogel said sadly.

  ‘Special Agent Vogel, why don’t we try to forget that business for a while and concentrate instead on what happened this evening?’

  ‘My bloodstained clothes. Right …’

  Flores couldn’t come straight out and ask him whose blood it was, he had to get there step by step. ‘It would be useful to know where you were before the accident and where you were going afterwards.’

  Vogel made an effort. ‘I was going to the Kastners’ house … Yes, I was going to their house to return a token.’ He lowered his eyes to the bracelet he had on his wrist.

  ‘But why so late?’

  Vogel thought about this, too. ‘I had to talk to them, tell them something …’ But then the memory seemed to fade in his mind.

  ‘Something?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  Flores waited for the memory to be unblocked. He wasn’t at all sure that Vogel was pretending. It seemed more likely that there was some kind of obstacle preventing the special agent from coming out with whatever he had inside him. What did he have to tell the Kastners that was so important? Flores had the impression that, whatever it was, it must have something to do with what had happened months before. That was why he now tried to make him start again from there. ‘Did you really search for Anna Lou, or else did the fact that you thought she was already dead lead you to search only for a corpse that would serve as evidence to nail a possible killer?’

  Vogel smiled weakly. It was a clear admission.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so straight away? Why nurture false hopes?’

  Vogel paused, apparently to reflect. ‘When asked in a recent survey what the purpose of a police investigation should be, most of those questioned said “to arrest the criminal”. Only a very small percentage said that the purpose of a police investigation should be “to establish the truth”.’ Vogel leaned forward in his armchair. ‘Did you understand what I just said? Nobody wants the truth.’

  ‘Why do you think that is?’

  Vogel thought this over for a moment. ‘Because arresting the criminal fools us into believing that we’re safe, and when it comes down to it that’s all we want. But there’s a better answer: because the truth involves us, makes us complicit. Have you noticed that the media and the public – in other words, all of us – think of the perpetrator of a crime as if he weren’t human? As if he belonged to an alien race, gifted with a special power to do evil? We don’t realise it, but we make him … a hero.’ He emphasised this last word. ‘In reality, the criminal is usually an ordinary man, devoid of creative impulses, incapable of distinguishing himself from the mass. But if we accept that he’s like that, then we have to admit that, deep down, he’s a bit like all of us.’

  Vogel was right. Flores’s eyes fell for a moment on the dog-eared corner of an old newspaper amid the mess on his desk. He knew exactly how long the paper had been there and the reason he hadn’t thrown it away.

  There was a name in the headline.

  The name of the monster in the Kastner case.

  In the course of the days, weeks and months, other papers and files had been heaped on top of that newspaper. It is the fate of news to be buried alive. Deep down, we all want to forget, Flores told himself. He would particularly have liked to forget Maria Kastner’s heartbreaking weeping, which, with the passage of time, had become a muted, almost imperceptible lament. Flores had counselled the family initially, trying to help them come to terms with their grief. He had fought Bruno Kastner’s silence and withdrawal, and tried to prevent Maria from gradually falling apart. He had done his job as best he could, as long as the brotherhood had allowed him. Then, little by little, he had distanced himself from the family.

  ‘Special Agent Vogel, you said just now that you were on your way to the Kastners’ this evening to tell them something, but can’t remember what it was.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Which means you’ve also forgotten that nobody lives in their house any more.’

  This seemed to strike Vogel like a punch in the face.

  ‘You couldn’t not have known that,’ Flores went on. ‘What happened, have you really forgotten?’

  Vogel was silent for a while, then said under his breath, like a warning, ‘There’s something evil here …’

  Flores felt a shudder go through him.

  ‘Something evil has insinuated itself into your lives,’ Vogel went on. ‘Anna Lou was just a portal, a way for it to get in. A pure, naive girl: the perfect sacrificial victim … But there was something much more perverse behind her disappearance.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s too late for salvation. That thing is here now and won’t go away.’

  Just then, a sudden violent blow made both men turn to the window. But what really terrified them was that nothing could be seen outside. It was as if their conversation had awakened a spectre in the fog, angered it so that it had intervened to silence them.

  Flores stood up and went to check, opening both parts of the window. He looked around uncomprehendingly, the icy fog caressing his face. Then he glimpsed a dark patch beside the gutter.

  It was a crow.

  It must have awoken in the dead of night, assumed the light of the street lamps reflected in the fog was daylight, and taken to flight. Then it must have lost its way and smashed into the window pane.

  Crows were the first victims of foggy nights. Dozens of them were found the morning after, in the fields and the streets.

  Flores saw that the bird was still moving, its beak trembling slightly. It was as if it wanted to speak. Then it stopped for ever.

  He closed the window and turned back to Vogel. For a second or two, neither man spoke.

  ‘As I’ve already told you,’ Flores said, ‘I didn’t think we’d ever see you up here again after what happened.’

  ‘Neither did I.’

  ‘The investigation was a disaster, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ Vogel admitted. ‘But it happens sometimes.’

  If he wanted to know what Vogel had come back to Avechot for on a cold foggy night, Flores was going to have to force him to confront his ghosts. ‘Don’t you think you were to blame for the failure of the investigation?’

  ‘I was only doing my job.’

  ‘And what would that be?’ Flores said provocatively.

  ‘It’s obvious: to make the public happy,’ Vogel replied with a deliberately false smile. Then he turned serious again. ‘We all need a
monster, Doctor. We all need to feel better than someone.’ The man in the white four-by-four, he remembered. ‘I just gave them what they wanted.’

  22 December

  The day before the disappearance

  ‘The first rule of every great novelist is to copy. Nobody admits it, but everyone is inspired by an existing book or another author.’ Loris Martini looked at the class, trying to see if at least most of the pupils were paying attention. Some were laughing or chatting, and as soon as he turned, a couple threw paper pellets at each other, convinced the teacher wouldn’t notice. But he liked to stay on his feet during his lessons, walking between the rows of desks. In his opinion, it stimulated concentration.

  In general, though, the atmosphere this morning was one of boredom. It was always like this on the last day before the Christmas break. The school would be closed for two weeks, and the students already felt as if they were on holiday. He had to think of something to encourage participation. ‘Another thing,’ he said. ‘It isn’t the heroes who determine the success of a work. Forget literature and think about your video games for one moment. What do you like to do in a video game?’

  The question reawakened the interest of the class. It was actually one of the boys who had been throwing paper pellets who was the first to answer. ‘Destroy things!’ he cried enthusiastically. They all laughed at the joke.

  ‘Good,’ Martini said encouragingly. ‘What else?’

  ‘Kill people,’ a second student said.

  ‘Excellent answer. But why do we like killing people virtually?’

  Priscilla, the prettiest girl in the class, raised her hand. Martini pointed to her.

  ‘Because in real life killing is forbidden.’