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.