Jean-Christophe Grangé: Blood-Red Rivers aka The Crimson Rivers

"Who are you?"

Niémans turned his head. A female form, draped in a raincoat, stood at the end of the corridor. Still a kid. She, too, could scarcely be twenty-five. Her shoulder-length fair hair framed a thin ravaged face, whose paleness brought out the dark rings around her eyes. Her features were bony, but delicate. This woman's beauty emerged only in moments of crisis, as though it were the echo of a first feeling of uneasiness.

"I'm Superintendent Pierre Niémans," he announced.

"And you come in like that without knocking?"

"I'm sorry. The door was open. You are Rémy Caillois's wife?"

Her reply was to snatch the portrait out of Niémans's hands and hang it back on the wall. Then, walking back into the room to the left, she took off her raincoat. Niémans had a surreptitious glimpse of a pale emaciated chest in the hanging folds of an ancient pullover. He shuddered.

"Come in," she said despite herself.

Niémans found himself in a cramped living-room, with a neat austere decor. Modern paintings hung on the walls. Symmetrical lines, distressing colors, incomprehensible stuff. The policeman took no notice. But one detail did strike him: there was a strong chemical smell in the room. A smell of paste. The Caillois must have just redecorated their flat. This detail cut him to the quick. For the first time he shivered at the thought of this couple's ruined hopes, the ashes of happiness that must still be glowing beneath that woman's grief. He adopted a serious tone:

"I've come from Paris, Madame. I was called in by the investigating magistrate to help in the enquiries into your husband's sad demise. I…"

"Do you have a lead?"

The superintendent stared at her, then suddenly felt like breaking something, a window, anything. This woman was full of grief, but her hatred of the police was even stronger.

"No, we don't. Not for the moment," he admitted. "But I'm optimistic that investigations will soon…"

"Ask your questions."

Niémans sat down on the sofa-bed, opposite the woman who had chosen a small chair in order to keep her distance from him. To save face, he seized a cushion and fiddled with it for a few seconds.

"I've read your statement," he began. "And I would just like to get a little additional information. Lots of people go hiking in this region I suppose?"

"What else do you think there is to do in Guernon? Everybody goes walking, or climbing."

"Did other hikers know the routes Rémy took?"

"No. He never talked about that. He used to go off on ways known only to him."

"Did he just go walking, or climbing as well?"

"It depended. On Saturday, Rémy set off on foot, at an altitude of less than six thousand feet. He didn't take any equipment with him." Niémans paused for a moment before getting to the heart of the matter.

"Did your husband have any enemies?"

"No."

The ambiguous tone of the answer led him to ask another question, which took even him by surprise:

"Did he have any friends?"

"No. Rémy was a loner."

"How did he get on with the students who used the library?"

"The only contact he had with them was to give them library tickets."

"Anything strange happen recently?"

The woman did not answer. Niémans pressed the point: "Your husband wasn't particularly nervy or tense?"

"No."

"Tell me about his father's death."

Sophie Caillois raised her eyes. Her pupils were dull, but her eyelashes and eyebrows were magnificent. She gave a slight shrug of the shoulders. "He died in an avalanche in 1993.We weren't married at the time. I don't know anything much about all that. What are you trying to get at?"

The police officer remained silent and looked round the little room, with its immaculately arranged furniture. He knew this sort of place off by heart. He realised that he was not alone with Sophie Caillois. Memories of the dead man lingered there, as though his soul were packing its bags somewhere, in the next room. The superintendent pointed at the pictures on the walls.

"Your husband didn't keep any books here?"

"Why would he have done that? He worked all day in the library."

"Is that where he worked on his thesis?"

The woman nodded curtly. Niémans could not take his eyes off that beautiful, hard face. He was surprised at meeting two such attractive women in less than one hour.

"What was his thesis about?"

"The Olympic games."

"Hardly an intellectual subject."

An expression of scorn crossed Sophie Caillois's face.

"His thesis was about the relationship between the sporting event and the sacred. Between the body and the mind. He was studying the myth of the athlon; the first man who made the earth fertile by his own strength, by transcending the limits of his own body."

"I'm sorry," Niémans huffed. "I don't know much about philosophy…Does that have something to do with the photographs in the corridor?"

"Yes and no. They're stills taken from a film by Leni Riefenstahl about the 1936 Berlin Olympic games."

"They're striking images."

"Rémy said that those Games had revived the profound nature of the Games of Olympus, which were based on the marriage of mind and body, of physical effort and philosophical expression."

"And in this case, of Nazi ideology, isn't that so?"

"The nature of the thought being expressed didn't matter to my husband. All he was interested in was that fusion of an idea and a force, of thought and action."

This sort of clap-trap meant nothing to Niémans. The woman leant forward then suddenly spat out:

"Why did they send you here? Why someone like you?"

He ignored the aggressive tone. When questioning, he always used the same cold, inhuman approach, based on intimidation. It is pointless for a policeman – and particularly for a policeman with his mug – to play at being understanding or at amateur psychology. In a commanding voice, he asked:

"In your opinion, was there any reason for anyone to have it in for your husband?"

"Are you crazy, or what?" she yelled. "Haven't you seen the body? Don't you realise that it was a maniac who killed my husband? That Rémy was picked up by a nut? A headcase who laid into him, beat him, mutilated him, tortured him to death?"

The policeman took a deep breath. He was thinking of that quiet, unworldly librarian, and his aggressive wife. A chilling couple. He asked:

"How was your home life?"

"Mind your own, fucking business."

"Answer the question, please."

"Am I a suspect?"

"You know damn well you're not. So just answer my question." The young woman looked daggers at him.

"You want to know how many times a week we fucked?" Goose-pimples rose over the nape of Niéman's neck.

"Would you co-operate, Madame? I'm only doing my job."

"Get lost, you fucking pig."

Her teeth were far from white, but the contours of her lips were ravishingly moving. Niémans stared at that mouth, her pointed cheek bones, her eyebrows, which shed rays across the pallor of her face. What did the tint of her skin, of her eyes matter? All those illusive plays of light and tone? Beauty lay in the lines. The shape. An incorruptible purity. The policeman stayed put.

"Fuck off!" the woman screamed.

"One last question. Rémy had always lived at the university. When did he do his military service?"

Sophie Caillois froze, taken aback by this unexpected question. She wrapped her arms around her chest, as though suddenly chilled from the inside.

"He didn't."

"He was declared unfit?"

The woman's eyes fixed themselves once more on the superintendent.

"What are you after?"

"For what reasons?"

"Psychiatric, I think."

"He had mental problems?"

"Are you off the last banana boat, or what? Everybody gets dismissed for psychiatric reasons. It doesn't mean a thing. You play up, come out with' a load of gibberish, then get dismissed."