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.
Now, at the end of that interminable day, even though he was very tired, he wasn’t sure he would be able to sleep. He was afraid of the dreams that awaited him. He couldn’t take a sleeping pill because somebody had to keep protecting the house, the family. Although that was probably pointless, given that evil had found a way of getting in regardless. And then there was the unhoped-for eventuality that Anna Lou might come back or that the telephone might ring and free them from that evil spell.