23 February
Sixty-two days after the disappearance
The night everything changed for ever began with a phone call.
It came at 10.20 on a Monday evening. Outside, it was minus eight Celsius, and the countryside was shrouded in an icy fog. At that hour, Flores was snug and warm in bed beside his wife, enjoying an old black-and-white gangster film on TV. Actually, Sophia had dozed off a while earlier, and the ringing of the telephone didn’t disturb her sleep. She even appeared oblivious of her husband getting out of bed and dressing.
Flores put on a pair of baggy trousers, a polo neck sweater and his heavy winter jacket to face that damned fog, which seemed to have wiped out all of creation, and got ready to go to Avechot’s little hospital, where he had worked as a psychiatrist for more than forty of his sixty-two years. In all that time, he had seldom been dragged out of bed for an emergency, let alone by the police. In this Alpine village, where he had been born and had always lived, almost nothing happened after sunset. It was as if in such a place even criminals chose to lead a sober existence, regularly spending their evenings at home. That was why Flores wondered what could necessitate his presence at such an unusual hour.
All the police had told him over the phone was that a man had been arrested following a road accident. Nothing else.
The snow had stopped falling in the afternoon, but it had got colder during the evening. Flores left the house to be greeted by an unearthly silence. Everything was still, motionless, as if time had stopped. He felt a shudder that had nothing to do with the outside temperature – it came from inside. He started his old Citroën, and had to wait a few seconds for the diesel engine to warm up properly before he set off. He needed that sound to wipe out the monotony of the menacing quiet.
The road surface was icy, but it was the snow more than anything that forced him to keep his speed below twenty kilometres an hour, both his hands firmly gripping the wheel, his back stooped forward and his face a few centimetres from the windscreen so that he could make out the sides of the road. Luckily, he knew the route so well, his mind told him where to go before his eyes could.
Coming to a crossroads, he chose the direction that led towards the centre of the village, and at last saw something through the milky blanket. As he advanced, he had the sensation that everything had slowed down, as if in a dream. From the depths of the white mantle, intermittent flashes of light appeared. They seemed to be coming towards him, even though it was he who was approaching them. A figure emerged out of the fog, making strange, broad arm movements. As he drew nearer, Flores realised it was a police officer warning passing motorists to be careful. Flores passed him and they exchanged a fleeting wave. Behind the officer, the intermittent flashes resolved themselves into the flashing lights of a patrol car and the rear lights of a dark saloon car that had ended up in a ditch.
Before long, Flores reached the centre of the village. It was deserted.
The faded yellow street lamps looked like mirages amid the fog. He drove through the whole of the built-up area and out the other side before he reached his destination.
Avechot’s little hospital was unusually animated. As soon as Flores walked in through the front door, a local police lieutenant came up to him, accompanied by Rebecca Mayer, a young prosecutor who had been making a name for herself lately. She looked worried. As Flores took off his heavy jacket, she updated him on the identity of tonight’s unexpected guest. ‘Vogel,’ was all she said.
Hearing the name, Flores understood the reason for all this concern. It was the night everything changed forever, but he didn’t know that yet. That was why he hadn’t yet quite grasped his own role in this business. ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’ he asked.
‘The doctors in Emergency say he’s fine. But he seems in a confused state, maybe due to the shock of the accident.’
‘But you’re not sure, right?’ Flores’s question had hit the target, and Mayer didn’t need to reply. ‘Is he catatonic?’
‘No, he reacts when stimulated. But he has mood swings.’
‘And he doesn’t remember any of what happened,’ Flores said, completing the case history for himself.
‘He remembers the accident. But we’re interested in what happened before. We need to know what happened this evening.’
‘You think he’s pretending.’
‘I’m very much afraid he is. And that’s where you come in, Doctor.’
‘What are you expecting of me?’
‘We have enough to charge him, and he knows it. That’s why you have to tell me if he’s fully aware of his actions.’
‘And if he is, what’ll happen to him?’
‘I’ll be able to charge him and proceed with a formal interrogation, without fearing that some lawyer will later contest it in court on a stupid technicality.’
‘But it’s my understanding that nobody died or was injured in the accident, is that right? So what would you charge him with?’
Mayer was silent for a moment. ‘You’ll understand when you see him.’
They had left him waiting in Flores’s office. When Flores opened the door, he immediately saw Vogel sitting in one of the two small armchairs positioned in front of the cluttered desk. He was wearing a dark cashmere coat. His head was bowed, and he gave no sign of noticing that someone had come in.
Flores hung his jacket on the coat rack and massaged his hands, which were still numb with cold. ‘Good evening,’ he said, going to the heater to make sure it was on. In reality, this was only a pretext to take up a position facing the man, to get an idea of his condition but, above all, to understand what Mayer had meant.
Beneath the coat, Vogel was elegantly dressed. A dark blue suit, a powder-blue silk tie with a floral design, a yellow handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket, a white shirt and oval cufflinks of rose gold. Everything looked creased, though, as if he had been wearing these clothes for weeks.
Without replying to the greeting, Vogel raised his eyes to him for a moment. Then he looked back down at his hands lying in his lap.
Flores wondered what bizarre trick of fate had brought them together. ‘Have you been here long?’ he began.
‘What about you?’
Flores laughed at the joke, but Vogel remained grim-faced. ‘More or less forty years,’ Flores replied. During that time, the office had filled with objects and furniture until it was cluttered. To an outside observer, he knew, the whole effect must seem chaotic. ‘You see that old couch? I inherited it from my predecessor. The desk I chose myself.’ On the desk were framed photographs of his family.
Vogel took one and studied it. There was Flores surrounded by his numerous progeny, having a barbecue in the garden on a summer’s day. ‘Nice family,’ he commented with vague interest.
‘Three children and eleven grandchildren.’ Flores was very fond of that picture.
Vogel put the photograph back where he had found it and looked around. On the walls, along with his degree, the various testimonials he had received and the drawings given to him by his grandchildren were the trophies Flores was proudest of.
He was an enthusiastic angler, and the walls displayed a large number of stuffed fish.
‘Whenever I can, I drop everything and set off for a lake or a mountain stream,’ Flores said. ‘It’s my way of getting back in touch with nature.’ In a corner was a cupboard with fishing rods and a drawer containing hooks, baits, lines and other equipment. Over time, the room had ended up looking nothing like a psychiatrist’s office. It had become his den, a place of his own, and he was dreading his retirement, due in a matter of months, when he would have to clear everything out.