The Circle

by Bernard Minier

  One evening, however, Julian came home alone. He declared, in tears, that he and his brother had made the acquaintance of a stranger named Sebald. They had met him at the beginning of the holidays and went every day to meet him in secret. This Sebald – an adult in his forties – taught them ‘lots of stuff’. That day he had been acting strangely and irritably. When Julian told him that Abel was hiding two Basler Läckerlis in his pocket, Sebald wanted to try one. But the little brother had obstinately refused to share his biscuits. ‘What shall we do?’ asked Sebald in a syrupy voice, and this had caused both of them to tremble. And when Abel, who was beginning to be afraid, had expressed his desire to go home, Sebald had ordered Julian to tie him to a tree. The young boy wanted to please the grown-up, even though he was afraid of him, so he had obeyed, in spite of his little brother’s pleading. Then the man had told him to put some earth and leaves in Abel’s mouth to punish him while they ate the biscuits in front of him. That was when Julian ran away, abandoning his little brother.

  Immediately after they heard the story, the grandparents and their neighbours rushed to the place, but there was no trace of Abel or Sebald anywhere. In the end, Abel’s body had washed up by the lake one week later. The autopsy revealed that his head had been held under water. As for the mysterious Sebald, despite an exhaustive search by the Swiss police, no trace of the man was ever found, or even any proof of his existence.

  Another journalist had matched his various trips to countries bordering Switzerland with the disappearance of a certain number of young women. Several articles mentioned the three years Hirtmann had spent at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where he had had to rule, among other crimes, on cases of rape, torture and murder committed by the armed forces – including the UN peacekeeping force.

  Ziegler had compiled a list, by no means exhaustive, of the former prosecutor’s ‘possible’ victims in Switzerland, but also in the Dolomites, the French Alps, Bavaria and Austria, and she had noted a number of suspicious disappearances in Holland during the period Hirtmann had been living there – including that of a man in his thirties, a ferreting little journalist who, it would seem, had been onto him before anyone else had. He was undoubtedly Hirtmann’s only male victim, apart from his wife’s lover. The disappearance of an American tourist in the Bermudas when he was on holiday a few miles from there was also taken into account, even though the authorities had put her death down to a shark attack. At the time of his arrest, the press and the police had attributed to him forty or more cases spread over twenty-five years. Ziegler’s calculations brought the figure closer to 100. Not a single one of the victims had ever been found … If there was one domain where Hirtmann was a master, it was in knowing how to make bodies disappear.

  Ziegler leaned back in her chair. For a moment she listened to the silence of the sleeping building. Eighteen months had gone by since the Swiss criminal had escaped from the Wargnier Institute. Had he killed anyone in all that time? She was willing to bet he had. How many victims should she add to the list? Would they ever know?

  The dark side of Julian Alois Hirtmann had been revealed after the double murder of his wife and her lover, the judge Adalbert Berger, a colleague from the Geneva public prosecutor’s office, in his house on Lake Geneva on the night of 21 June 2004. The investigation that followed led to the discovery of several binders filled with press cuttings regarding the disappearance of dozens of young women in five neighbouring countries. Hirtmann declared that he was interested in these cases for professional reasons. When this line of defence proved to be untenable, he began to manipulate the psychiatrists. Like most individuals of his ilk, he knew exactly the type of response the psychiatrists and psychologists expected from someone like him; a good number of hardened criminals are experts in the art of turning the system to their advantage. Hirtmann confessed to his jealousy on discovering that his parents loved his little brother more than they loved him, to his mother’s scorn, and his father’s violence and alcoholism, and even to sexually inappropriate gestures on the part of his mother.

  Julian Hirtmann had stayed in several different psychiatric hospitals in Switzerland before ending up at the Wargnier Institute. That was where Servaz and Irène had met him. That was where he had escaped from, two winters earlier.

  Ziegler went back to the two recent articles in the press, the one entitled ‘HIRTMANN WRITES TO POLICE’ and the one that mentioned Martin’s investigation in Marsac. Who was behind the leak? She thought about Martin, the state of mind he must be in. She was worried about him. They had spoken at length after the investigation in the winter of 2008, and he had eventually told her about the trauma that had been haunting him since childhood. She had seen it as a great sign of trust, because she was sure he hadn’t spoken to anyone about it in years. That day she had decided she would watch over him, in any way she could, even behind his back – like a sister, like a friend.

  She sighed. Over these past months she had refused to allow herself to go digging into Martin’s computer. The last time she had hacked into it was when the Council of Inquiry – the disciplinary board of the gendarmerie – had been handed her case by head office. In those days, she had shown an aptitude for computer hacking, which the Ministry of Defence would no doubt have found interesting, if they had known about it. So she had read the report Martin sent to the disciplinary board about her. It was very favourable, and emphasised her contribution to the investigation and the risks she had taken. The report recommended that the council act with clemency. As she was not meant to have read it, she had not been able to thank him.

  On more than one occasion she had been tempted to obtain news of Martin this way – she knew how to hack into both his computers, the one at the Criminal Division and the one he had at home – but every time, she had decided not to. Not only out of loyalty, but also because she didn’t want to stumble upon things that she might regret knowing later on.

  Everyone has their secrets, everyone has something to hide, and no one is exactly what they seem.

  Which held true for her as well. She wanted to preserve the image she had of Martin, the one that he had left her with: that of a man she might have found attractive if she’d been into men, a man who was caught up in his contradictions, haunted by his past, full of anger and tenderness at the same time, whose slightest gesture or word suggested that he knew that the weight of humanity is made up of all the combined acts of every man and woman on the planet. She had never known a more melancholy man. Or a fairer one. Sometimes Ziegler found herself hoping that Martin would find someone to bring peace and a little lightness to his life. But somehow, too, she knew this would never happen.

  Haunted – that was the word that sprang to mind whenever she thought about him.

  She typed something quickly on the keyboard, and this time she did not back out. It’s in your interest that I’m doing this. Once she was in, she found her way with the dexterity of a burglar in a dark flat. She scrolled through his inbox and there it was: the e-mail that the newspaper was referring to, the e-mail he had received recently. He had transferred it to Paris, to the unit in charge of the manhunt for the Swiss killer:

  From: theodor.adorno@hotmail.com

  To: martin.servaz@infomail.fr

  Date: 12 June

  Subject: Greetings

  Do you remember the first movement of the Fourth, Commandant? Bedächtig … Nicht eilen … Recht gemächlich … The piece that was playing when you came into my ‘room’ that famous day in December? I’ve been thinking about writing to you for quite some time. Are you surprised? I’m sure you’ll believe me if I tell you I’ve been very busy lately. You can only truly appreciate your freedom, like your health, when you’ve been deprived of it for a long time.

  But I won’t bother you any more, Martin. (Do you mind if I call you Martin?) Personally I hate being bothered. You’ll have news of me soon. I doubt you will like it very much – but I am sure you will find it interesting.

  Regards, JH. />
  She read it, and then read it again. Until she had absorbed the words. She closed her eyes, squeezed her eyelids, concentrated. Opened them again. Then she went through the e-mails Martin had exchanged with the unit in Paris, and she gave a start: Hirtmann may have been seen on the motorway between Paris and Toulouse, on a motorbike. There was an attachment, and she hurried to open it. The picture was slightly blurred, filmed by a surveillance camera at a tollbooth: a tall man with a helmet on a Suzuki motorbike. He was leaning over to pay, his gloved hand reaching out, his face invisible beneath the helmet. Another picture followed. A tall, blond man with a little beard and sunglasses at a supermarket till. The jacket was identical; there was an eagle on the back and a little American flag on the right sleeve. Ziegler felt goosebumps rising all along her skin. Was that Hirtmann or not? There was something familiar about the way he was walking, the shape of the face … But she was wary of her eagerness to identify him; she didn’t want to jump to any conclusions.

  Hirtmann in Toulouse …

  She saw herself again, with Martin, in that cell in unit A, the high-security unit where the most dangerous inmates of the Wargnier Institute were locked up. She had sat in on the interview, at least at the beginning, until Hirtmann asked to speak to Martin alone. Something happened that day. She had felt it. It happened without warning, but they had all felt it: between the serial killer and the cop, there had been some sort of connection; they were like two chess champions, sizing each other up, acknowledging each other. What had they said to each other, once they were alone? Martin had not been very talkative on the subject. What Irène remembered above all was that as soon as they went into the cell, the two men immediately struck up a conversation about the music on the CD player that day: it was Mahler – or at least according to Martin it was, because Ziegler couldn’t tell Mozart from Beethoven. It was like watching a heavyweight boxing match between two adversaries who respect each other.

  ‘You’ll have news of me soon. I doubt you will like it very much – but I am sure you will find it interesting.’

  She shivered. Something was going on. Something extremely unpleasant. Ziegler switched off the computer and stood up. She went into her room and got undressed, but the wheels in her mind went on turning.

  Interlude 2

  Resolution

  She’d had a childhood.

  She had had an eventful life, full of joy and sadness, a full life. A life like millions of others.

  Her memory was like all memories: an album full of yellowing photographs, or a series of jerky little Super 8 film clips, stored away in round plastic boxes.

  An adorable little blonde girl who made sandcastles on the beach. A preteen who was more beautiful than her peers, whose curls and soft gaze and precocious curves troubled some of her parents’ adult male friends, who had to struggle to ignore her. A mischievous, intelligent kid who was her father’s pride and joy. A student who had met the love of her life, a brilliant, melancholy young man with a big mouth and an irresistible smile, who would talk to her about the book he was writing – until she realised that he was carrying a burden that could not be prised from his grip, and even she could do nothing against the ghosts.

  Then she betrayed him.

  There was no other word. It made her want to weep. Betrayal. There was nothing more painful, more sinister, more despicable than that word. For the victim and the traitor. Or, in this case, the traitress … She curled up in a foetal position on the hard bare earth of her tomb. Was that what she was expiating? Was God punishing her through the pervert upstairs? These months of hell: was that what she was paying for, her betrayal? Did she deserve what was happening to her? Did anyone on earth deserve what she was going through? She would not have inflicted such a punishment on her worst enemy …

  She thought about the man who lived there, just over her head – who was living, unlike her; who came and went in the world of the living while keeping her in the antechamber of death. She suddenly went cold all over. What if he didn’t tire of this game? What if he never got tired of it? How long could it last? Months? Years? Decades? Until he died? And how much longer before she went completely insane? She could already see the beginnings of her madness. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, she began laughing uncontrollably. Or she would recite, hundreds of times, ‘Blue eyes go to the skies, grey eyes go to paradise, green eyes go to hell, and black in Purgatory dwell.’ There were times when her mind went completely astray, she had to admit. Where reality vanished behind a screen of fantasy. Welcome to Saturday’s special screening. Tears and emotion guaranteed. Get out your handkerchiefs. Next to me, Fellini and Spielberg are desperately lacking in imagination.

  She would end up crazy.

  It was so obvious it terrified her. That, and the thought that it would never end. And that she would get old in this tomb, while at the same time he was getting old up there. They were almost the same age … No! Anything but that. She felt as if she were going to pieces, as if she were going to fall into a dead faint. No no no no anything but that. And suddenly, she felt even colder. Because she had just caught a glimpse of the way out. She had no choice. She would never get out of there alive.

  So she would have to find a way to die.

  She picked at her thought, looked at it every which way. The way she might have examined a butterfly, or an insect.

  To die …

  Yes. She had no choice. Up to now she had refused to look at what was staring her in the face.

  She could have done it already: that time when she thought she’d escaped, when he’d just been pretending to be asleep, the better to play with her in the forest afterwards. No doubt she could have found a way to put an end to it if she’d been determined enough at the time. But back then all she could think of was running away, getting out of there alive.

  Had there been others before her? She had often wondered and she was sure that there had. She was only the latest in a long series: his system was too perfect, not a single detail was left to chance. It was a masterly piece of work.

  Suddenly, with icy clarity, she saw the solution.

  She had no way to commit suicide. So she had to drive him to kill her.

  It was as simple as that. She felt a sudden rush of enthusiasm, as incongruous as it was fleeting, like a mathematician who has found the solution to a particularly complicated equation. Then the difficulties became apparent, and her enthusiasm vanished.

  But she did have one advantage over him: she had time.

  Time to brood, to think, to go crazy, but also time to devote to her strategy.

  Slowly, she began to come up with what is conventionally known as a plan.

  Tuesday

  23

  Insomnia

  The moonlight filtered through the open French windows, spreading throughout the room. If he looked to his left, he would see it sparkling on the surface of the lake. He could hear the water lapping against the shore, a rustling as quiet as that of cloth crushed between fingers.

  He felt Marianne’s warm, soft body beside him. Yes, a body beside him, something that had not happened to him for months. Her thigh on his, her bare breasts against his torso, and her arm around him, trusting. A strand of fine blonde hair was tickling his chin. She was breathing regularly and he did not dare move for fear of waking her. The strangest thing of all was her breathing: there is nothing more intimate than someone sleeping and breathing so close to you.

  Through the window, he could see the dark mass of the Mountain. It had stopped raining. The forest beneath the starry sky was motionless.

  ‘You’re not asleep?’

  He turned his head. Marianne’s face in the moonlight, her big, light eyes, curious and gleaming.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Mmm. I think I was dreaming. A strange dream, neither pleasant nor unpleasant.’

  He looked at her. She did not seem to want to say any more about it. A thought occurred to him and vanished the moment he began to wonder whom she had be
en dreaming about: Hugo, Bokha, Francis – or himself?

  ‘Mathieu was in my dream,’ she said at last.

  Bokha … Before he could say anything, she stood up and went to the bathroom. Through the half-open door he could hear her urinating, then she opened a cabinet. He wondered if she was looking for another condom. What was he to make of the fact that she had a supply of them? It was the first time they had ever used one. The fact that he had shown up without one had, however, seemed to cheer her. He looked at the clock radio: 2.13.

  Back in the room she took a cigarette from the night table and lit it before lying down next to him. She inhaled twice then placed the cigarette between his lips.

  ‘Do you have any idea what we’re doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘It seems pretty obvious to me,’ he tried to joke.

  ‘I wasn’t talking about fucking.’

  ‘I know.’

  She caressed between his thighs.

  ‘What I mean is … that I don’t have the slightest idea,’ she added. ‘I don’t want to … to make you suffer all over again, Martin.’

  Servaz’s cock, in all honesty, was thinking neither of suffering nor of all the years it had taken him to forget her, to get her out of his life. It didn’t care about any of that and immediately went hard. She pulled back the sheet and lay on top of him. She rubbed his belly, from top to bottom, exerting a delicious pressure. She kissed him again, then resumed her intimate strokes, scrutinising him intensely; her pupils were dilated, there was a smile on her dry lips, and he wondered if she had taken something in the bathroom.

  She leaned closer and suddenly bit his lower lip until it bled; the pain made him shudder, and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. She squeezed his head, hard, crushing his ears between her palms, while he kneaded her lower back and sucked at her nipple, erect like a bud. He could feel the soft, wet back-and-forth against him. Finally she raised herself up, her fingers closed around him and she gave a strange guttural moan as she straddled him and brought him inside her. He remembered then that it had been her favourite position, in the old days, and for a fraction of a second, which almost spoiled everything, he felt a pang of sadness, devastating sadness.