Christopher Fowler - White Corridor

Bryant’s eyes lit up. “Then the police must have been tracking him ever since. Why haven’t they been able to catch him?”

“Who knows how efficient these people are?” May replied. “I don’t suppose the local police were notified properly. All kinds of communication breakdowns occur between the regions. It sounds like he’s been travelling through the southern provinces of France, adopting the identities of those he has assaulted and left for dead. Hang on, another positive ID coming in.” He played back the rest of the returned calls, listening intently. “There’s a Johann Bellocq registered as the owner of a villa in Eze-sur-Mer, which ties in with Madeline’s story. We can get the local gendarmes to go around there now.”

“It still doesn’t help us with the real identity of this maniac who’s out there in the snow, unless they can find a link which proves that Pascal Favier and Johann Bellocq are one and the same. I feel so hand-tied, stuck in here.” Bryant threw himself back in the passenger seat, frustrated.

May checked through his notes. “Madeline Gilby said Johann confessed his past to her. He said that his beloved grandfather had died, leaving him alone with his mother, and that he murdered her. He spent just five years in a church which operated as the local mental hospital, run by nuns-apparently there were mitigating circumstances surrounding the mother’s death-but the reprieve did him no good, as he became a member of something called Le Societe Du Diable, some kind of neo-Nazi organisation run from Jean-Marie Le Pen country. After leaving there, who knows where he went? Presumably this was the period in which he committed the crimes that landed him in the Marseilles jailhouse. After his escape he went off-radar again, living somewhere in the Alpes-Maritimes area, until killing this Bellocq chap.”

“So, somewhere in that history there must be records revealing his movements, and we can provide the identities he adopted. What’s the point of having satellite tracking systems if they can’t keep tabs on people like him? I mean, it’s little use knowing where he’s been. We need to know what’s making him strike now. If we understand what drives him, perhaps we can stop him. Luckily, we have an expert right here who may be able to help us.”

May saw how his partner’s mind was working. “Don’t tell me. Your white witch; she’ll know all about satanic groups.”

“Exactly. I have to go and talk with her.”

“No, let me do it,” said May. “You can’t take any more cold. Stay here in the warm with Madeline and the boy. Just tell me what you want to ask her.”

“He’s followed Mrs. Gilby here for two reasons: He wants what she took from him, and he’s developed an obsession with her. She says he believes that only she can redeem him. He can give the authorities the slip every time he changes identity, but if they get a fix on him he’s sunk. She has the passport of the last man he killed, and he needs it back. He might try to contact other branches of this Societe Du Diable, and use their members in some way. Ask Maggie if they also operate from somewhere in the UK. Find out if they’ve heard from him, and warn them that he’s dangerous. These groups are notoriously private. Contrary to what the newspapers would have us believe, they rarely try to recruit innocent members of the public. But they must be made to inform us if he gets in touch. It would be helpful to know exactly what it is they believe in, and if he’s operating in accordance with their doctrines.”

After May had plunged off into the diamond drifts once more, Bryant called the Plymouth Emergency Services and tracked down their Severe Weather supervisor, who informed him that they had abandoned the use of helicopters and were still working hard to clear the railway tracks. The first train was setting off in a few minutes, and would reach them in just over an hour.

Bryant was both pleased and dismayed by the news. He looked forward to being able to feel his extremities again, but knew that a train might bring those who would take the case away from him. He sat back and thought about Johann Bellocq’s missing passport, and the young woman who had hidden it. Bellocq needed his past identities in order to stay free, but he also saw a chance of salvation in Madeline. Why, though? What was he planning to do once he had found her again?

She feared him because she needed to protect her son, but there was some other reason why he had tracked her all the way to another country. Bryant understood from the few textbooks he had read on the subject that most serial murderers operated within a tight radius of their homes. Something wasn’t making sense.

The detective’s ears, nose, feet and brain were frozen. His neural impulses had slowed until they were as faint as fogbound harbour lights. Breathing on the windscreen, he drew lines in the condensation, as if trying to trace the connections in his mind. It was too easy not to think.

The two investigations, one far away, one close at hand, both immediate and pressing, overlapped each other in his head like architectural drawings on tracing paper. The icy air felt like the long-expected touch of death, destroying his cells and removing his senses. He considered the story of Johann’s childhood, recounted by the woman he hunted. Johann continued to brutalise because he had been able to kill his mother without remorse. He had even waited until his grandfather’s death to act.

He had been raised in a land of devout Catholics, but had finally chosen a far stranger path to God. Had his mother been so strict that she had drawn out a monster from within her child? In his experience, even those who renounced the confines of a constricting religion never truly forgot the primal fears they developed as children. How did Bellocq reconcile those terrors with his embrace of the darkness?

How could he find the permission to kill within himself?

Why would he track a young woman and her son all the way to another country, just to protect his last identity, when he could surely commit the same crime and gain a new persona, find a new redeemer? Was there any point in attempting to even understand what went on in his mind?

Yes, because if you understand it, thought Bryant, you understand the man. And then you own the key to catching him. An alarm bell rang in his head, faint and persistent. The driver of the van with whom he had hitched a ride still had his own passport tucked inside his jacket. Why had Johann not taken it and simply started again? Why did he need the one she had stolen from him?

Because that’s not why he followed her here, Bryant decided. The passport has nothing to do with it. Only Madeline Gilby thinks it does. In that case, he just wants the photographs back, even though by the sound of it they won’t directly incriminate him. They’re pieces of circumstantial evidence that might place him at the scenes of the crimes, but they also have personal significance to him; that’s why he took them, and why he needs to retain them.

Bryant turned to the rear of the van and saw that mother and son were curled in the shadowed storage compartment, asleep beneath the moulting goatskin rug he had set aside for the Eden scene.

When his mobile rang, he tried to stifle the sound, so as not to wake them.

“Arthur, this is weird,” said May. “I’m with Maggie right now, and she says that Le Societe Du Diable isn’t a meeting group at all. It’s a cybersite.”

“You mean it only exists on the interweb thingie?”

“That’s right. It’s just a forum used by teenaged Goths and lapsed Catholics to moan about their lives and discuss death-metal music; it’s not a proper Satanic site at all. She’s most disparaging about such organisations.”