The Frozen Dead Read Free

while.’
    â€˜I’ll bear that in mind.’
    â€˜And another thing: I won’t be here to help you get settled. My successor, Dr Xavier from Montreal, will have that honour. He’s a practitioner with a very good reputation, very enthusiastic. He’s due to arrive here next week. As you know, they’re ahead of us over there with regard to the treatment of aggressive patients. I think it will be very interesting for you to compare your points of view.’
    â€˜I agree.’
    â€˜In any case, we’ve needed an assistant to the director of the establishment for quite a while now. I didn’t delegate enough.’
    Diane was once again driving under a canopy of trees. The road continued to climb until it reached a narrow wooded valley that seemed to be enveloped in a stifling, noxious intimacy. She cracked her window open and a penetrating fragrance of leaves, moss, needles and wet snow tickled her nostrils. The sound of a nearby torrent almost drowned the purr of the engine.
    â€˜A lonely place,’ she said out loud, to give herself courage.
    She drove cautiously through the gloom of the winter morning. Her headlights grazed the trunks of fir and beech trees. An electricity cable followed the road; branches leaned against it as if they no longer had the strength to support themselves. From time to time the forest opened out to reveal a barn with a moss-covered slate roof – closed, abandoned.
    She glimpsed some buildings further along, past a bend in the road. They reappeared as she came out of the bend – several houses of concrete and wood with large picture windows, backed up against a forest. To reach them, a drive led down from the road, over a metal bridge above the water then across a snowy meadow. Obviously deserted, run down. She did not know why, but those empty buildings, lost deep in this valley, caused her to shiver.
    Then a rusting sign at the entrance to the drive: ‘LES ISARDS HOLIDAY CAMP.’
    Still no hint of the Institute. Not even a signpost. It looked as if the Wargnier was not exactly looking for publicity. Diane began to wonder if she had taken the wrong road. The National Geographical Institute map, scale 1/25,000, lay open on the passenger seat next to her. One kilometre and a dozen bends further along she spotted a lay-by bordered by a stone parapet. She slowed down and turned the wheel. The Lancia bounced over the potholes, churning up splatters of mud. She grabbed the map and got out of the car. The damp air enveloped her like a clammy sheet.
    Heedless of the falling snow, she unfolded the map. The buildings of the holiday camp were designated by three little rectangles. She gauged the approximate distance she had come, following the winding thread of the départementale road. Two more rectangles appeared slightly further along; they met in the shape of a T, and although there were no indications as to the nature of the buildings, it could hardly be anything else, for the road came to an end at that point, and there were no other symbols on the map.
    She was almost there …
    She turned round, walked as far as the parapet – and saw them.
    Further upstream, on the opposite shore, higher up on the slope: two long stone buildings. In spite of the distance she could tell how huge they were. A giant’s architecture. The same Cyclopean style that was everywhere in the mountains, be it power plants or dams or hotels from an earlier century. That’s what it was: the lair of a Cyclops. Except that there is not just one Polyphemus deep inside that cave – there are several.
    Diane wasn’t the type to be easily daunted; she had often travelled to places where tourists were warned not to go; since adolescence she had taken up sports that entailed a certain amount of risk. As a child and then an adult she had always had a taste for adventure. But something about the view there before her made her stomach lurch. It wasn’t a