The Circle

by Bernard Minier

  The boy still said nothing.

  ‘Your mobile phone indicates that you called the victim no fewer than eighteen times in the last two weeks alone.’

  Silence.

  ‘What did you talk about? We know she was your teacher. Did you like her?’

  No answer.

  Shit, we’re not going to get anything out of him.

  He had a fleeting thought for Marianne: her son was behaving in every way as if he were guilty. For a moment he thought of asking her to get him to cooperate.

  ‘What were you doing at Claire Diemar’s house?’

  No answer.

  ‘Fuck, are you deaf or what? Don’t you know you’re in deep shit?’

  Samira’s voice. She had burst in, as sharp and shrill as a saw. Hugo jumped. He deigned to look up and for a split second he seemed slightly disconcerted on seeing the large mouth, protruding eyes and little nose of the French-Chinese-Moroccan woman. But his reaction lasted only a fraction of a second before his gaze returned to his knees.

  A storm outside, and silence within. No one seemed prepared to break it.

  Servaz and Samira exchanged glances.

  ‘I’m not here to torment you,’ he said at last. ‘We just want to get at the truth. Amicus Plato sed major amicus veritas.’

  I love Plato, but I love the truth even more.

  Was that the Latin formula?

  This time, there was a reaction.

  Hugo was looking at him.

  His eyes were extremely blue. His mother’s eyes, thought Servaz, although her eyes were green. He could see Marianne in the shape of her son’s face. Their physical resemblance was disturbing.

  ‘I have spoken with your mother,’ he said suddenly, without thinking. ‘We used to be friends, years ago. Very good friends.’

  Hugo said nothing.

  ‘It was before she met your father—’

  ‘She never mentioned you.’

  The first words out of Hugo Bokhanowsky’s mouth fell like a blade. Servaz felt as if he’d had a fist in his stomach.

  He knew that Hugo was telling the truth.

  He cleared his throat.

  ‘I studied in Marsac, too,’ he said. ‘Like you. And now my daughter is studying there. Margot Servaz. She’s in the first year.’

  Now he had the young man’s attention.

  ‘Margot is your daughter?’

  ‘Do you know her?’

  The young man shrugged.

  ‘Everyone knows Margot. She doesn’t exactly go unnoticed at Marsac … She’s a great girl. She didn’t tell us her father was a cop.’

  Hugo’s blue gaze was on him now and didn’t let go. Servaz realised he’d been mistaken: the boy wasn’t afraid, he had simply decided not to speak. And even if he was only seventeen, he seemed much more mature. Servaz continued, gently.

  ‘Why won’t you speak? You know you’ll only make your case worse if you behave like this. Would you like us to call a lawyer? You can speak with the lawyer and then we’ll talk.’

  ‘What’s the use? I was on the premises when she died, or not long afterwards … I have no alibi … Everything points to me … So I’m guilty, aren’t I?’

  ‘Are you?’

  Those blue eyes, staring right at him. Servaz could read neither guilt nor innocence in them. There was nothing to be deciphered from such a gaze, only patience.

  ‘In any case, that’s what you think … so what the fuck difference does it make whether it’s true or not?’

  ‘It makes a huge difference,’ said Servaz.

  But that was a lie, and he knew it. French prisons were full of innocent people, and the streets were full of guilty ones. Judges and lawyers pretended to cloak themselves in their robes and their virtue as they doled out their speeches about morality and the law, but for all that they tolerated a system they knew was producing judicial errors by the shovelful.

  ‘You called your mother to tell her you woke up in the house and that there was a dead woman there, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where were you when you woke up?’

  ‘Downstairs in the living room.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘On the sofa. Sitting.’

  Hugo looked at Bécker.

  ‘I already told them.’

  ‘And then what did you do?’

  ‘I called out for Mademoiselle Diemar.’

  ‘Did you go on sitting there?’

  ‘No. The French windows were open, and the rain was coming in. I went out that way.’

  ‘Didn’t you wonder where you were?’

  ‘I recognised the house.’

  ‘You had already been there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you recognised the place. Did you go there often?’

  ‘Often enough.’

  ‘What do you mean by “enough”? How many times?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Try to remember.’

  ‘I don’t know … maybe ten … or twenty …’

  ‘Why did you go to see her so often? And why did you call her all the time? Did Mademoiselle Diemar receive all the students from Marsac in this way?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘So, why you? What did you talk about?’

  ‘About my writing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m writing a novel. I had mentioned it to Clai— to Mademoiselle Diemar. She was very interested in it; she asked if she could read what I had written. We spoke about it regularly. On the phone, too.’

  Servaz looked at Hugo. A tremor. He too had started writing a novel when he was a student at Marsac. The great modern novel … The glorious dream of every apprentice writer … The one that would make publishers and readers say, ‘A masterpiece!’ The story of a quadriplegic man who lived for his thoughts alone, whose inner life was as luxuriant and intense as a tropical jungle, and far richer than that of the majority of people. He had stopped the day after his father committed suicide.

  ‘You called her Claire?’ he asked.

  A hesitation.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was the nature of your relationship?’

  ‘I just told you. She was interested in my writing.’

  ‘Did she give you advice?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She thought it was good?’

  Hugo’s gaze. A gleam of pride in his pupils.

  ‘She said … she said she hadn’t read anything like it for a long time.’

  ‘Will you tell me the title?’

  He saw Hugo hesitate. Servaz put himself in his shoes. No doubt the young author did not feel like sharing this sort of thing with a stranger.

  ‘It’s called The Circle.’

  Servaz would have liked to ask what it was about, but he didn’t. He felt the stirrings of a deep bewilderment, and at the same time a surge of empathy for the young man. He was no fool: he knew it was because Hugo reminded him of himself, twenty-three years earlier. And perhaps, too, because he was Marianne’s son. But for all that Servaz still wondered if it was possible that Hugo could have killed someone who understood and appreciated his work.

  ‘Let’s go back to what you did after that, after the garden.’

  ‘I went back into the house. I called out to her. I searched everywhere.’

  ‘You didn’t think of calling the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I went upstairs, I searched all the rooms, one by one … until I reached the bathroom … and then … I saw her.’

  His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

  ‘I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to get her head out of the water, I slapped her to wake her up, I shouted, I tried to untie the knots. But there were too many, and they were too tight, and I couldn’t do it: the water had made them swell up. And before long I realised it was too late.’

  ‘You say you tried to revive her?’

  ‘Yes, that’s wh
at I did.’

  ‘And the torch?’

  Servaz saw Hugo’s eyelids flutter almost imperceptibly.

  ‘You did see the torch in her mouth, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, obviously …’

  ‘So why didn’t you try to pull it out?’

  Hugo hesitated.

  ‘I don’t know. Probably because …’

  He paused, and Servaz prompted him with his gaze.

  ‘Because I couldn’t put my fingers in her mouth …’

  ‘You mean, in a dead woman’s mouth?’

  Servaz saw Hugo’s shoulders slump.

  ‘Yes. No. Not just that. In Claire’s mouth …’

  ‘And before that? What happened? You said you woke up in Claire Diemar’s house – what did you mean by that?’

  ‘Just that. I regained consciousness in the living room.’

  ‘You mean you had lost consciousness?’

  ‘Yes … well, I suppose … I already explained all this to your colleagues.’

  ‘Explain it to me: what were you doing when you lost consciousness, do you remember?’

  ‘No … not really … I’m not sure. It’s like, as if there were a blank …’

  ‘A blank in time, in the chain of events?’

  Servaz saw that Bécker was staring at him and not Hugo. The gendarme’s gaze was eloquent. He also saw that the blow had struck home. Hugo was intelligent enough to understand that this blank was not good news.

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted reluctantly.

  ‘What’s the last thing you remember?’

  ‘I was with friends at the Dubliners, earlier that evening.’

  Servaz was taking notes, in shorthand. He didn’t trust the webcam any more than he trusted gadgets in general.

  ‘The Dubliners?’

  He knew the place. The pub had been there in his day. Servaz and his friends had made it their headquarters back then.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were you doing there? What time was it?’

  ‘We were watching the World Cup, the opening match, and we were waiting for the one with France.’

  ‘“Waiting”? You mean you don’t remember seeing Uruguay-France?’

  ‘No … maybe … I don’t know any more about what I did during the evening. It may seem strange, but I don’t know how long it lasted … or exactly when I passed out.’

  ‘Do you think someone knocked you out, is that it? Did someone hit you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, I checked. I don’t have a bump. And I don’t have a headache, either. But when I came round I was all fuzzy, as if my head were full of fog …’

  He slumped further into his chair, as if realising that the more he talked, the more everything pointed to him.

  ‘Do you think someone drugged you?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘We’ll check that. Where were you sitting in the pub?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  Servaz exchanged looks with Bécker. The gendarme’s gaze said, unequivocally: guilty.

  ‘I see. Maybe it will come back to you. If it does, let me know, it’s important.’

  Hugo shook his head bitterly.

  ‘I’m not stupid.’

  ‘I have one last question: do you like football?’

  A glow of surprise in his blue eyes.

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Your coffee’s going to get cold,’ said Servaz. ‘Drink it. It could be a long night.’

  ‘A woman alone in an unlocked house,’ said Samira.

  ‘And no sign that it was broken into,’ said Espérandieu.

  ‘She must have let him in. He’s her student, after all; she had no reason to be wary. And he said so himself: he had already been there. And he called her eighteen times over the last two weeks … to talk about books? A likely story!’

  ‘He did it,’ decreed Vincent.

  Servaz turned to Samira, and she nodded her head in agreement.

  ‘I think so too. He was arrested at the victim’s. And there are no traces of any other individuals. Nothing. Anywhere. Not the slightest proof that a third person was there. But his traces are everywhere. The breath test came up with 0.85 grams of alcohol in his blood; the analysis will tell us whether he had also taken drugs – which is probable, given the state we found him in – and the amount. The gendarmes said that when they caught him his pupils were dilated and he was completely out of it.’

  ‘He said someone drugged him,’ said Servaz.

  ‘Oh, come on … Who? We found his car parked nearby. So someone else drove it? And even if we suppose it was someone else, he said he woke up in the house: that means the actual murderer would have had to have run the risk of taking Hugo out of the car and dragging him all the way to Claire’s house. And no one saw a thing? It doesn’t add up. Several houses overlook the street, and there are three terraced houses right across from the victim’s—’

  ‘Everyone was watching the football,’ protested Servaz. ‘Even we were.’

  ‘Not everyone: the old man across the street saw him all right.’

  ‘But he didn’t see him arrive, that’s just it. No one saw him go in. Why would he sit there waiting for someone to come and get him if he did it?’

  ‘You know the statistics as well as I do,’ answered Samira. ‘In fifteen per cent of cases, the perpetrator of a crime hands himself in to the police, in five per cent he informs a third party who tells the police, and in thirty-eight per cent of cases he waits calmly at the crime scene for the police to arrive, fully aware that a witness must have contacted them. That’s what this kid did. In fact, nearly two-thirds of cases are solved within the first few hours because of the perp’s attitude.’

  Servaz did indeed know the figures.

  ‘Yes, but they don’t go on to claim they are innocent.’

  ‘He was stoned. Once he started to come back down, he realised what he had done and what he was in for,’ said Espérandieu. ‘He’s simply trying to save his skin.’

  ‘The only question worth asking right now,’ said Samira, ‘is whether the assault was premeditated.’

  His two assistants were staring at him, waiting for him to react.

  ‘The crime was staged and it’s a pretty unusual way to kill someone, isn’t it?’ he replied. ‘The ropes, the torch, the dolls … none of it is anything like an ordinary crime. We should be careful not to jump to conclusions.’

  ‘The kid was high,’ said Samira with a shrug. ‘He probably had some sort of spell of delirium. It wouldn’t be the first time a junkie does something completely crazy. I don’t trust this kid. And anyway, everything points to him, doesn’t it? Shit, boss … In any other circumstances, you would come to the same conclusion.’

  He started. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You said it yourself: you were well acquainted with his mother. And she’s the one who called for help, if I’m not mistaken.’

  Servaz arched his back, stung by her insinuation. There were still a number of details that didn’t fit. The way it was staged, the torch, the dolls … he thought. And the timing as well … There was something about the timing that was bugging him. If the kid had lost it, why was it on that very night, when everyone was glued to the television?

  Was it chance, coincidence? In sixteen years on the job, Servaz had learned to scratch such words from his vocabulary. Hugo liked football. Would someone who liked watching the World Cup choose that evening to kill someone? Only if he wanted to be sure no one would notice … But Hugo had stayed on the spot and let himself be caught; he hadn’t tried to hide.

  ‘This investigation is over before it’s even begun,’ concluded Samira, cracking her knuckles.

  He stopped her with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Not quite. Go back there and check whether the technicians had a good look at Hugo’s car, and ask them to go over it with cyanoacrylate.’

  He wished he had a shed available to go over the interior and exterior of the car with a fine
-toothed comb. A painting shed like the ones that body shops used, equipped so that cyanoacrylate – a sort of superglue – could evaporate by being heated. Upon contact with the oily traces that fingers left, cyanoacrylate vapours made the fingerprints appear in white. Unfortunately there were no sheds like that available within a radius of over 500 kilometres: consequently, the technicians had to make do with ‘cyano shots’ – portable diffusers. In any event, the violent downpour had probably washed the bodywork clean.

  ‘And then question the neighbours. Do all the houses on the street, one by one.’

  ‘A house-to-house – at this hour? It’s two o’clock in the morning!’

  ‘Well then, get them out of bed. I want answers before we go back to Toulouse. I want to know whether anyone saw anything, heard anything, noticed anything, tonight or on any day leading up to today, anything unusual, anything at all – even if it has no connection with what happened this evening.’

  He met their incredulous gazes.

  ‘Get to work!’

  7

  Margot

  They’d been driving through the hills. It was September, and it was still warm; summer was all around them, and since the air-conditioning wasn’t working, Servaz had rolled down the windows. He had slotted a Mahler CD in the player and he was in an excellent mood. Not only was the weather fine and he had his daughter for company, but he was taking her to a place he knew well, even though he hadn’t been back there in a long time.

  As he drove, he thought about how Margot had been an average pupil in primary school. Then there had been the adolescent crisis. Even now, with her piercings, her strange hair colour and her leather jackets, his daughter didn’t look at all like she’d be at the top of her class. But despite her punky look she had earned very good marks. And Marsac was the most demanding prep school in the region. You had to prove you were good to be admitted. As he drove through the summer landscape that morning, he felt himself swelling with pride like a soap bubble.

  ‘It’s so beautiful here,’ said Margot, removing her headphones from her ears.

  Servaz glanced quickly around him. The road wound its way through green hills, sunny forests and silky blond fields of wheat. As he slowed down to go around a bend, they could hear the birds singing and the chirring of insects.

  ‘It’s a bit dead, no?’ said Servaz.