The Circle

by Bernard Minier

  ‘Why are you telling me all this? So that I’ll tell my father to question Sarah?’

  He smiled. ‘Don’t you want to find out more?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like father, like daughter, no? I mean, who better than us to conduct a little investigation inside the lycée?’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  He stood up. He was a good head taller than her.

  ‘Oh, I certainly am.’

  ‘Shit, Elias!’

  ‘If we sum it up: we’ve got Hugo, who’s been accused of murder and was found at the scene of the crime; we’ve got David, who left the pub a few seconds after him; we have Sarah, who saw everything, but who’s keeping her mouth shut; and we have the top four second-year students – in other words the four most brilliant young minds for miles around – who make up an inseparable quartet. You have to admit that, put that way, things look far more interesting, right? There’s a hitch somewhere.’

  ‘And you want us to go sticking our noses in? Why?’

  ‘Think about it. Outside of those four, who are the smartest kids in the lycée?’

  She shook her head, incredulous.

  ‘And just supposing I go along with this, how do we do it?’

  A smile spread across Elias’s face.

  ‘If one of them has anything to do with what happened, he – or she – will be wary of your father, of the cops, of the teachers – of everyone except the other students. That’s our chance. We’ll share the job of watching them and we’ll wait and see what happens. Whoever did it is bound to slip up at some point or other.’

  ‘I’d never realised, but you are truly out of your mind.’

  ‘Think about it, Margot Servaz. Don’t you think it’s strange that a guy like Hugo got caught so easily?’

  ‘So why should I help you?’

  ‘Because I know that you like him,’ he answered, lowering his voice and looking at his feet. ‘And because no one who’s innocent deserves to rot in prison,’ he added with a gravity that was unusual for him.

  Touché … Uneasy, she looked at the maze around them. A flash of lightning broke the darkness above the hedges, and a thought flared in her mind, just as blinding.

  ‘Do you realise what this means?’ she said.

  He looked at her questioningly.

  ‘If it isn’t Hugo, then there’s someone really sick running around out there.’

  Sunday

  17

  Ubik Café

  ‘Caffeine,’ said Servaz.

  ‘Caffeine,’ said Pujol.

  ‘Caffeine,’ said Espérandieu.

  ‘I’ll have tea,’ announced Samira Cheung, going back out of the meeting room to help herself at the hot drinks dispenser next to the lift, while Vincent got up to start the coffee machine.

  It was nine o’clock in the morning on Sunday, 13 June. Servaz glanced at his colleagues. That morning, Espérandieu was wearing a close-fitting Kaporal T-shirt, which emphasised the fact that he kept in moderately good shape, and a pair of jeans full of pockets, with patches on the knees. Servaz had found it hard to get used to his deputy’s style in the beginning (and he wasn’t sure he ever really had). And then Samira Cheung had joined the force and Vincent had begun to seem almost … tame. Although on this June morning she was relatively sober: a sequined waistcoat over a T-shirt that proclaimed DO NOT DISTURB, I’M PLAYING VIDEO GAMES, a denim miniskirt with a large buckle, and a pair of brown cowboy boots. But Servaz was less interested in his investigators’ look than in what they had in their heads, and since Vincent and Samira had arrived, his investigation team had the highest rate for solving crimes in the entire regional crime squad – despite the official boasts about the city’s quality of life, cultural heritage and dynamic environment, the crime rate in Toulouse was well above the national average.

  Servaz liked to say that if you let a little old lady with a handbag loose on the streets of Toulouse at midnight, you would see half the scooters in town show up to snatch it off her. They would probably even kill each other for the privilege. The officers in the crime squad had to deal with a growing whirlwind of offences.

  To curb delinquency, the city had come up with a bright idea that only showed how much they were in denial where crime was concerned: the creation of an ‘Office of Tranquillity’. Why not an office of sexual freedom to combat rape, while they were at it? Or an office of healthy living to combat drug trafficking? They could have opened it on a square where the cops and customs officials regularly conducted raids that simply scattered the dealers and pushers of contraband cigarettes for a few hours. Then they drifted back, to exactly the same place – like ants momentarily deterred by the kick of a boot.

  It’s natural law, thought Servaz as he stood up. Survival of the fittest. He went down the corridor. In the men’s toilets, he went over to the row of sinks. He had shadows beneath his eyes, his eyelids were red, and he looked like death warmed up. He splashed his face with cold water. He had got very little sleep after the e-mail, and all the caffeine already speeding through his veins was making him nauseous. The sun was beaming in the skylights above the urinals, causing the dust to dance around him; the stuffy air smelled of industrial cleaner. The space behind him made him feel uncomfortable. The fear was there. He could recognise its electric caress on the back of his neck.

  When he got back to the meeting room he saw that Samira and Vincent had already opened their laptops, although Samira still had her headphones around her neck. Servaz wondered silently when she would start having hearing problems. He saw that even Pujol had bought a smartphone, and he sighed as he took out his notepad and a finely sharpened pencil.

  At forty-nine, Pujol was the oldest in the group. He was an old-school cop, hard-boiled, an advocate of ‘muscular’ methods. Physically, he was a sturdy bloke, intimidating, with a thick mane of greying hair in which he plunged his fingers when he was thinking – which he didn’t do often enough, in Servaz’s opinion. Given his experience, he was a useful tool, but there were certain aspects of his personality that Martin found hard to take: his racist jokes, his borderline behaviour with female recruits fresh out of the academy, his scarcely concealed homophobia. These attitudes had become only too apparent when Espérandieu and Samira Cheung arrived in the division. With a few other colleagues, Pujol had piled on the petty harassment – until the day Servaz decided to put a stop to it. He’d had to resort to methods he generally frowned upon, and he had made a few enemies as a result. But he had also earned his two young assistants’ eternal gratitude.

  The coffee finished brewing with a gurgle and Espérandieu filled the cups. The other two were absorbed in reading the e-mail.

  ‘Theodor Adorno,’ said Samira. ‘Does that name mean anything to you, boss?’

  ‘Theodor Adorno was a German philosopher and musicologist, a great specialist in Mahler’s work,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Julian Hirtmann’s favourite composer, but yours too,’ said Espérandieu.

  Servaz frowned. ‘There are millions of people who appreciate Mahler’s music.’

  ‘What’s to say it isn’t a hoax?’ asked Samira, looking up with her teacup in her hand. ‘We’ve had dozens of bogus calls since Hirtmann escaped, and a heap of e-mails every bit as fantastical.’

  ‘This one came to his personal e-mail address,’ Espérandieu pointed out.

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘Roughly six o’clock,’ said Servaz.

  ‘The time it was sent is written there,’ said Espérandieu, pointing to the top of the sheet with one hand and holding his coffee in the other.

  ‘So what does that prove?’ asked Samira. ‘Hirtmann had this address? Did you give it to him, boss?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t.’

  ‘So it proves nothing.’

  ‘Have they traced it?’ asked Pujol, sitting back in his chair to stretch and crack his knuckles.

  ‘The cyber unit is working on it,’ said Espérandieu.

  ‘
How long is it going to take?’ asked Servaz.

  ‘Dunno. For a start, it’s Sunday – though they have brought a technician back in. Secondly, he made a bit of a fuss and pointed out that they’d already told him to work on Claire Diemar’s hard disk. He wanted to know which he should do first. Thirdly, there’s another case that takes precedence. The gendarmerie are working on a paedophile network. Hundreds of e-mail addresses to check.’

  ‘And here I was thinking a serial killer who’s about to strike again might be a priority.’

  The comment cast a pall over the room. Samira took a long swallow of her tea and seemed to find it bitter.

  ‘It is,’ she said quietly. ‘But when it’s kids, you know, boss—’

  Servaz felt his cheeks flush.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said.

  ‘If it even is Hirtmann,’ said Pujol.

  Servaz felt his hackles rise.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I agree with Samira,’ said Pujol, to everyone’s surprise. ‘The e-mail proves absolutely nothing. There are bound to be people out there who know how to get hold of your e-mail address. Privacy on the Internet – everyone knows that’s a load of rubbish. My kid is thirteen years old and he knows ten times more than I do about it. I’ve heard there are quite a few little jokers among the hackers and computer whizzes.’

  ‘How many people would know what piece of music was playing in Hirtmann’s cell the day I went there, in your opinion?’

  ‘Are you one hundred per cent certain that no journalists got wind of it? That the information wasn’t published somewhere? They did a fair amount of digging at the time. Every single protagonist in that case was contacted by the press. Maybe someone talked. Have you really been through all the articles?’

  Of course not, he thought, furious. He had carefully avoided reading them. And Pujol knew it.

  ‘Pujol is right,’ said Samira approvingly. ‘It’s bound to be some arsehole. Ever since he escaped, Hirtmann has never given a single sign of life. It’s been eighteen months. Why would he do it now?’

  ‘Good question,’ said Vincent. ‘And I have another one: what has he been up to in the meantime?’

  His question made them shiver.

  ‘What does someone like him do once they’re free again, do you think?’ asked Servaz. ‘Okay, so how many of us think it’s him?’

  He raised his hand to set the example, saw Espérandieu hesitate but eventually keep his hand down.

  ‘And how many think the opposite?’

  Pujol and Samira, somewhat embarrassed, raised their hands.

  ‘No opinion,’ said Espérandieu when the others looked at him questioningly.

  Servaz felt anger welling up in him. They thought he was being paranoid. And what if he was?

  ‘There was a CD in Claire Diemar’s stereo. A Mahler CD,’ he began. ‘Naturally that information must not leave this room and above all must not find its way into the media.’

  He saw the other three stare at him, surprised.

  ‘And I’ve called the unit in Paris.’

  He related his conversation with Paris. Everyone was silent.

  ‘But the CD could very well be a coincidence,’ said Samira, not about to back down. ‘And this business about a biker filmed on the motorway, that just seems bogus. Those people in Paris have to justify the existence of their unit, after all.’

  He felt like exploding. They were behaving just like those researchers who analyse the results of their experiments depending on what they want to find. They didn’t want Hirtmann involved in this investigation. So before they even got started they were convinced that any information about him could only be fantastical or unreliable. It had to be said in their defence that they’d been flooded with messages and phone calls from people claiming to have seen him here or there, all of which had turned out to be false or unverifiable. Hirtmann seemed to have been wiped off the surface of the planet. The possibility of suicide had even been evoked, but Servaz didn’t believe it: the killer could easily have put an end to his days at the Wargnier Institute if he’d wanted to. In Servaz’s opinion, Hirtmann wanted only two things: to regain his freedom, and resume his activities.

  ‘I’m going to call Paris all the same and send them the e-mail,’ he said.

  He was about to add something when they heard a shout from the next room.

  ‘That’s it! We’ve got him!’

  Servaz looked up from his notebook. They had all recognised the voice of one of the computer specialists. A tall, thin young man, who looked like a cross between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, made a triumphant entry into the room, a paper in his hand.

  ‘Have I got news!’ he shouted, waving the paper. ‘I found out where the e-mail came from.’

  Servaz looked around him. All gazes were now focused on the newcomer. The nervousness and excitement were palpable.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It was sent from here. From a cybercafé. In Toulouse.’

  The Ubik Café, on the rue Saint-Rome, was squeezed in between a sandwich shop and a women’s clothing boutique. Servaz recalled there used to be a bookstore there when he was a student. An Aladdin’s cave that smelled of paper and ink and dust, and the inexhaustible mysteries of the written word. The only vestige of that era were the two semi-circular arcades in which the window of the cybercafé was set.

  The interior was divided by an invisible frontier: a café to the left, with a bar counter and tables, and the multimedia space to the right, not unlike a hairdresser’s with its row of armchairs. Two customers were sitting at computer monitors, talking into microphone-headsets. Servaz scrutinised them, as if Julian Hirtmann might be among them. The woman who stood behind the counter – her name was Fanny, according to the badge on her chest – had a faint smile and an ample bosom. Espérandieu showed her his card and asked her if she had been there the previous day at around six o’clock in the evening. She turned and called out to someone called Patrick. They heard Patrick grumbling from the back room. He took his time coming out. He was a big fellow in his thirties, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and black trousers. He gave them a wary look from behind his glasses and Servaz immediately filed him in the ‘not very cooperative’ category. He had pale little eyes, cold and stubborn.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

  Espérandieu stepped forward and showed his card once again. Servaz preferred to stand back. His assistant was a geek, far better acquainted with the whole world of computers than he was: the invasive influx of mobile phones, social networks and tablet computers was already enough to cause him to break out in a rash. Espérandieu also didn’t look like a cop.

  ‘Are you the boss here?’

  ‘I’m the manager,’ corrected the big man cautiously.

  ‘An e-mail was sent from here yesterday evening at around six o’clock. We’d like to know if you remember the man who sent it.’

  The manager raised his eyebrows above his glasses and shot them a look which implied, What do you think, mate?

  ‘There are roughly fifty people or more who come through here every evening. You think I stand over their shoulders to see what they’re doing?’

  Espérandieu and Servaz had a photo of Hirtmann on them, but they had decided not to show it: if the guy recognised the serial killer who had been on the front page of all the papers the previous year, he might go telling everyone what had happened, and the news that Hirtmann was in Toulouse sending e-mails to the police would make its way into the papers in less time than it took Usain Bolt to run 100 metres.

  ‘A very tall, thin guy,’ said Espérandieu. ‘In his forties. He might have been wearing a wig. He might have attracted attention because of his rather … strange behaviour. And he might have had a slight accent.’

  The manager’s gaze went back and forth between the two of them, like a spectator at the French Open; he seemed to think that they were perfect morons. He shrugged.

  ‘Is this some sort of joke? That’s
a lot of “might have”s, don’t you think? Really doesn’t ring a bell with me, no.’

  Then he seemed to remember something.

  ‘Wait a minute …’

  He saw them looking at him and broke off. His faded blue eyes sparkled behind his glasses and Servaz understood that the man was enjoying their interest and their impatience.

  ‘Someone did come in, yes, now that you mention it …’

  He smiled. Acted as if he were thinking. Waited for their reaction. Servaz was beginning to feel exasperated.

  ‘This is a nice place you have here,’ said Espérandieu, as if he couldn’t care less what came next. ‘Is your local network on WiFi?’

  The man seemed disconcerted by the visitor’s sudden loss of interest in him, but he was flattered by his interest in the café.

  ‘Uh … no, I’ve still got cable. With thirty computers, even if I had a top-end WiFi router, it couldn’t cope. Because of all the games on the network.’

  Espérandieu nodded his approval.

  ‘Hmm … Yes, of course. So, someone did come?’

  This time the manager of the Internet café felt a need to kindle the flames somewhat.

  ‘Yes, but not the guy you described. It was a woman.’

  The two cops’ interest was fading to zero.

  ‘So what’s that got to do with the man we’re looking for?’

  A smile returned to the manager’s face.

  ‘Because she told me you would come. She told me that some guys would come and see me and ask me questions about a message she had sent. But she didn’t tell me they’d be from the police.’

  Gotcha. They were riveted.

  ‘And that’s not all …’

  Stupid bastard, thought Servaz. One more minute like this and he would grab him by the collar.

  ‘She left this …’

  They watched as he bent down to open a drawer and take something out.

  An envelope.

  Servaz felt a chill down his spine.

  Patrick handed the brown envelope to Espérandieu, who had already pulled on a pair of gloves.

  ‘Who’s touched it, besides you?’