The Frozen Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

caressed his cheeks, but it was nothing like down in the valley. It was very cold. He should have put on warmer clothes. The reporters and the cameras and microphones turned to look at him – but no one recognised him and their curiosity faded at once. He headed for the building, climbed three steps and showed his card.
    â€˜Servaz!’
    A voice rolling through the foyer like a snow cannon. Servaz turned towards the figure heading in his direction. A tall, slender woman in her fifties, elegantly dressed. Hair dyed blonde, a scarf tossed over an alpaca coat. Catherine d’Humières had come in person, instead of sending one of her deputies: Servaz felt a sudden rush of adrenaline.
    Her profile, her sparkling eyes, like a raptor’s. People who did not know her were intimidated. As were those who did know her. Someone told Servaz one day that she made incredible spaghetti alla puttanesca. Servaz wondered what she put in it. Human blood? She took his hand briefly, a firm handshake as powerful as a man’s.
    â€˜Remind me – what sign are you, Martin?’
    Servaz smiled. At their very first meeting, when he had just started at the Toulouse crime unit and she was still only one deputy public prosecutor among others, she had asked him that same question.
    â€˜Capricorn.’
    She acted as if she hadn’t noticed his smile.
    â€˜Well, that explains your cautious, controlled and phlegmatic side, doesn’t it?’ She gave him an intense, searching look. ‘So much the better. We’ll find out whether you’ll still be controlled and calm after this.’
    â€˜After what?’
    â€˜Follow me, I’ll introduce you.’
    She led him across the foyer, their steps ringing out in the vast space. For whom had all these buildings in the mountain been constructed? Some imminent race of supermen? Everything about them seemed to proclaim confidence in a radiant, colossal industrial future; an era of faith that had disappeared long ago, he mused. They headed towards a glassed-in cubicle. Inside there were filing cabinets and a dozen or so desks. They wove their way past them to join a little group in the middle. D’Humières made the introductions: Captain Rémi Maillard, head of the gendarmerie in Saint-Martin; Captain Irène Ziegler, from the research unit in Pau; the mayor of Saint-Martin – a short, broad-shouldered fellow with a lion’s mane and a burnished face – and the manager of the power plant, an engineer who looked like an engineer: short hair, glasses and a sporty air in his rollneck jumper and lined parka.
    â€˜I’ve asked Commandant Servaz to give us a hand. When I was a deputy public prosecutor in Toulouse, I often had reason to call on his services. His team assisted us in getting to the bottom of several sticky cases.’
    â€˜Assisted us in getting to the bottom of…’ That was d’Humières all over. It was just like her to want to get right in the middle of the photograph. But he immediately told himself that it wasn’t really fair to think like that: he knew she was a woman who loved her job – and who did not keep track of either her time or her sweat. That was something he appreciated. Servaz liked conscientious people. He thought that he too belonged to this category: conscientious, tough, probably boring.
    â€˜Commandant Servaz and Captain Ziegler will be handling the investigation jointly.’
    Servaz saw Captain Ziegler’s fine face crumple. Once again he told himself that this must be a major incident. An investigation that was handled jointly by the police and the gendarmerie was an inexhaustible source of quarrels, rivalry and withholding of evidence – but that too was a sign of the times. And Cathy d’Humières was sufficiently ambitious never to lose sight of the political angle. She had climbed up all the rungs: assistant public prosecutor, deputy public prosecutor … She had