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

Joisneau gaped.

"You seem a bit clever for a man of action…"

The superintendent slapped his chest with the back of his hand. "This isn't abstract theory, Joisneau. It's purely practical."

"And what about you? Who…who are you going to question?"

"Me? I'm going to question our witness, Fanny Ferreira. And then Sophie Caillois, the victim's wife."

Niémans winked.

"The ladies, Joisneau. That's what I call being purely practical."

Under the dreary sky, the asphalt road snaked across the campus, leading to each of its gray buildings with their blue, rusting windows. Niémans drove slowly – he had obtained a map of the university – on the way to an isolated gymnasium. He reached another block of fluted concrete, which looked more like a bunker than a sports center. He got out of his car and breathed deeply. It was drizzling.

He examined the construction of the campus, situated at a few hundred yards' distance. His parents, too, had been teachers, but in small secondary schools in the suburbs of Lyons. He had practically no memories of them. Family ties had soon seemed to him to be a weakness, a lie. He had rapidly realised that he was going to have to fight alone and, accordingly, the sooner the better. From the age of thirteen, he had asked to be sent to a boarding school. They had not dared refuse this voluntary exile, but he could still remember his mother's sobs from the other side of his bedroom wall: it was a sound in his head and, at the same time, a physical sensation, something damp and warm on his skin. So, he had decamped.

Four years spent boarding. Four years of solitude and physical training, apart from his lessons. All his hopes were then pinned on one target: the army. At seventeen, Pierre Niémans, who had passed his exams with flying colors, went for his three days' induction and asked to join the officers' training school. When the military doctor told him that he had been discharged as unfit and explained the reasons for this decision, Niémans suddenly understood. His anxieties were so manifest that they had betrayed him, despite all his ambition. He realised that his destiny would always be that long, seamless corridor, plastered with blood, where, at the very end, dogs howled in the darkness…

Other adolescents would have given up and quietly listened to the psychiatrists' opinions. Not Pierre Niémans. He persisted, and he began training again, with a redoubled rage and determination. If Pierre could not be a soldier, then he would pick another battlefield: the streets, the anonymous struggle against everyday evil. He would devote all of his strength and his soul to a war with no flags and no glorious deaths. Niémans would become a policeman. With this in mind, he spent months practising the answers to psychiatric tests. He then enrolled in Cannes-Ecluse police academy. And the era of violence began: top marks at target practice. Niémans continued to improve, to grow stronger. He became an outstanding policeman. Tenacious, violent, vicious.

He started working in local police stations then became a sharpshooter in what was to become the Rapid Intervention Unit. Special operations began.

He killed his first man. At that instant, he made a pact with himself and, for the last time, contemplated his own fate. No, he would never be a proud warrior, a valiant army officer. But he would be a restless, obstinate street fighter, who would drown his own fears in the violence and the fury of the concrete jungle.

Niémans took a deep breath of mountain air. He thought about his mother, who had been dead for years. He thought about his past, which now seemed like an endless canyon, and his memories, which had splintered, then faded, making a last stand against oblivion.

As though lost in a dream, Niémans suddenly noticed a little dog. The creature was muscular, its short coat glistening in the mist. Its eyes, two drops of opaque lacquer, were staring at the policeman.

Waggling its behind, it was approaching. The officer froze. The dog drew ever nearer, just a few steps away. Its moist nose twitched. Then it abruptly started growling. Its eyes shone. It had smelt fear. The fear oozing out of this man.

Niémans was petrified.

His limbs felt as though they had been gripped by a mysterious force. His blood was being sucked away by an invisible siphon, somewhere in his guts. The dog barked, showing its teeth. Niémans understood the process. Fear produced an odor which the dog smelt and which provoked a reaction of dread and hostility. Fear feeding on fear. The dog barked then rolled its neck, grinding its teeth together. The cop drew his gun.

"Clarisse! Clarisse! Come back, Clarisse!"

Niémans re-emerged from his spell in the cooler. Through a red veil, he saw a gray man in a zip-up cardigan. He was approaching rapidly.

"You got a screw loose, or what?"

Niémans mumbled:

"Police. Get lost. And take your mutt with you."

The man was stunned.

"Jesus Christ, I don't believe this. Come on, Clarisse, come on, little darling…"

Master and hound moved off. Niémans tried to gulp back his saliva. His throat felt harsh, dry as an oven. He shook his head, put his gun away and paced round the building. As he turned left, he forced himself to remember: how long was it now since he had seen his shrink?

Around the second corner of the gymnasium, the superintendent came across the woman.

Fanny Ferreira was standing near an open door and sanding down a red-colored foam board. The officer imagined that it must be the raft she used to float downstream.

"Good morning," he said with a bow.

He was back among warmth and assurance.

Fanny raised her eyes. She must have been twenty, at most. Her skin was dark and her hair generously curly, with slight ringlets around her temples and a heavy cascade over her shoulders. Her face was somber and velvety, but her eyes had a penetrating, almost indecent, clarity.

"I'm Superintendent Pierre Niémans. I'm investigating the murder of Rémy Caillois"

"Pierre Niémans?" she repeated in astonishment. "But that's amazing!"

"Sorry?"

She nodded toward a small radio, lying on the ground.

"They were just talking about you on the news. Apparently, you arrested two murderers last night, just near the Parc des Princes. Which is rather good. But they also said that one of them was disfigured. Which is not so good. Are you omnipresent, or what?"

"No, I just drove all night."

"But why are you here? Aren't our own local cops up to it?"

"Let's just say I'm part of the reinforcements."

Fanny went back to work – she damped down the oblong surface of the board, then pressed a folded sheet of sandpaper onto it with both palms. Her body looked stocky and solid. She was dressed casually – neoprene diver's leggings, a sailor's jumper, light-colored leather boots, which were tightly laced. The veiled light cast a soft rainbow over the entire scene.

"You seem to have got over the shock quickly enough," Niémans observed.

"What shock?"

"You remember? You discovered a…"

"I'm trying not to think about it."

"So would you mind talking about it again?"

"That's why you're here, isn't it?"

She was not looking at the policeman. Her hands continued to run up and down the length of the board. Her movements were jerky and brutal.

"In what circumstances did you find the body?"

"Every weekend I go down the rapids…" She pointed at her upturned raft…"on one of these things. I'd just finished one of my little trips. Near the campus, there's a rock face, a natural dam, which blocks the current and lets you land easily. I was pulling out my raft when I noticed it…"

"In the rocks?"

"Yup, in the rocks."

"You're lying. I've been up there. I noticed that there's no room to move back. It's impossible to pick out something in the cliffs, fifty feet up…"