The Circle

by Bernard Minier

  ‘Show me,’ he said. ‘The shadow, during the night, where did you see it?’

  She followed him out and pointed to the foot of the slope, on the right, where the water met the lawn and the forest.

  ‘There.’

  He went back in, put on his shirt, and once he was on the ground floor he walked across the terrace on the lake side to go down the steps, then across the sloping garden. It was already hot. The sun had dried the vegetation and the lake sparkled like a metallic disc beneath its rays. A buzzing attracted his attention: a boat had just left its pontoon, and soon a water skier emerged from the water in its wake. It was a young boy, and judging from his intrepid zigzagging, he already had many hours of practice behind him. Claire Diemar’s murderer had shown a similar dexterity, a similar experience in his field. Servaz told himself yet again that it had not been his first outing.

  He looked all around him, but there was nothing. If someone had been watching, they hadn’t left any trace.

  Servaz went down to the water. He saw footprints, but they were old. He began walking along the shore. He reached the edge of the forest and went a few metres into the woods that spread down to the lake.

  A dog barked in the distance. In Marsac bells were ringing. The boat went on buzzing across the lake.

  A little stream ran through a bed of undergrowth and reeds. The morning light filtered through the foliage and sparkled on the water.

  The tree trunk was lying across the path, near the stream. Servaz mused that all the youngsters in the neighbourhood must come here to sit and kiss and flirt, sheltered from view. And sure enough, there were two letters etched into the bark.

  He bent closer and froze.

  J H

  He had sat down on another tree, a bit further along. The rapidly rising heat had left a film of sweat on his brow – or perhaps it was the discovery of the two letters. Insects were buzzing and for a moment he thought he was going to be sick. He shooed away the flies circling around him and dialled the number of the crime scene team to ask them to come and examine the place. As soon as he hung up, his telephone vibrated.

  ‘Jesus Christ, what the fuck have you done? And why was your phone switched off?’ roared a voice in his ear.

  Castaing, the prosecutor from Auch.

  ‘The battery was flat,’ he lied. ‘I didn’t notice right away.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you not to take any initiative without informing me first?’

  Lacaze hadn’t wasted his time, he thought.

  ‘Didn’t I say that, explicitly, Commandant?’

  ‘I was going to inform the judge,’ he lied, for the second time. ‘I was about to do it, but you got there before me.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ replied the magistrate. ‘Who do you think you are, Commandant – what do you take me for?’

  ‘We found dozens of e-mails between Paul Lacaze and Claire Diemar,’ he replied. ‘E-mails proving that they were having an affair. Which Paul Lacaze himself acknowledged last night. They were clearly very much in love. I interviewed him as a witness.’

  ‘And you showed up at his house, where his wife is dying of cancer, at eleven o’clock at night? I’ve just been told off by the Ministry of Justice. And believe me, I don’t like that one bit.’

  Servaz watched a water strider moving across the stream. With its long graceful legs, it skated over the surface; it didn’t want to get its feet wet – just like the man on the other end of the line.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Servaz. ‘I’ll take full responsibility.’

  ‘Responsibility, my arse,’ spat the prosecutor. ‘If you mess up, it’ll me on my head! The only thing that’s keeping me from asking Sartet to take you off the case is that Lacaze himself asked me not to.’ He’s afraid the story will get out, thought Servaz. ‘This is my last warning, Commandant. No further contact with Paul Lacaze without the judge’s authorisation, do you hear me?’

  ‘Loud and clear.’

  He ended the call and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  Before he even realised what was happening, he leaned over and threw up his coffee and his breakfast.

  Ziegler ran a finger between her neck and the stiff collar of her uniform shirt. It was incredibly hot and stuffy in her office, even though she had opened the barred window. Yet another thing that hadn’t changed during her holidays: no one had repaired the air-conditioning. Nor was there any money to replace the old computers, or install an additional Internet connection, let alone broadband. As a result, it took at least five minutes to download a photograph of a suspect. As for her men, one was on sick leave and another was mowing the lawn. Such was the reality of a country gendarme’s life.

  The atmosphere was typical – when the boss was away, they would all take advantage of the fact to slack off: they were behind on most of the cases and everybody was sulking. One month without her had reminded them all that their life was infinitely easier when she wasn’t there. Yet she knew that her men had good reason to complain: they were understaffed, had to work night shifts, weekends and holidays, and the number of hours was constantly on the rise. They had no family life, their salary didn’t keep pace with the cost of living, their accommodation was run-down, as were the facilities and the vehicles – and up there, all the way at the top, were the politicians who pranced around and claimed that the fight against crime was their number-one priority. At the regional section she had got used to going it alone, but now she would have to find a way to create a team.

  You’ll just have to get down off your high horse, girl. You can be a real pain when you want to. Remember to take some croissants tomorrow morning.

  The thought of it made her laugh. And maybe she should hold their cocks for them when they pissed, while she was at it. She frowned as she looked at the heap of files on her desk. Thefts from vehicles, traffic-related crime, burglaries, vandalism, destruction: no fewer than fifty-two acts of delinquency recorded in the vicinity and only five of them resolved. Brilliant. On the other hand, she was quite proud of her results where judicial crimes and offences were concerned – she had a clear-up rate of almost seventy per cent, a figure that was far superior to the national average. But the two cases that preoccupied her the most also had the biggest files. The first one was a rape case: the only information they had was the make and colour of the car, and a sticker on the rear windscreen which the victim had described in detail. She had known right from the start that this inquiry did not appeal to her men, and that they would be tempted to sit on it while waiting for new clues – in other words, a miracle – but Irène was determined to use her team, as long as they could be of service.

  The second case was to do with a gang specialising in bank card theft, who’d been active in the region for several months. Ziegler had noticed that the same cash machine had been targeted three times in the space of fourteen months and that each time there was an interval of five months, give or take a few days. The cash machine in question seemed to offer a certain number of advantages in the thieves’ eyes. At the top of the page she wrote:

  Set a trap at the cashpoint. Check all movements in that period.

  Through the half-open door, she heard one of her men come in at a brisk stride.

  ‘Listen to this, guys!’

  Everyone stopped what they were doing and Ziegler lent an ear, hoping that at last there was something new on one of the pending cases.

  ‘Apparently Domenech is going to keep Anelka in the starting line-up against Mexico.’

  ‘Shit, I don’t believe it!’ someone exclaimed.

  ‘And Sidney Govou, too …’

  A murmur of consternation arose from the other side of the door. Ziegler raised her eyes to the blades of the huge ceiling fan, which was stirring the hot air without making it any cooler. Her thoughts returned to the e-mail she had found in Martin’s computer. She told herself that the files on her desk had waited an entire month for her return; they could wait a little bit longer. She got up.

  Margot rolled
a cigarette, wedging the filter between her lips and spreading the tobacco flakes across the paper while keeping an eye on the far side of the courtyard. It was filling with a crowd of students, and she watched the spot where the second-year students gathered. She had waited impatiently for the end of Van Acker’s class. Ordinarily she enjoyed it, particularly when Van Acker was in a filthy mood, which was most of the time. Francis Van Acker was a sadistic despot, and he despised mediocrity. Along with cowardice, servility and yes-men. On a bad day, he absolutely had to find a scapegoat, and then the smell of blood would waft throughout the classroom. Margot took great delight in seeing how fear spread through the ranks of her fellow students. They had developed a real survival instinct, and the moment the literature professor came into the room, everyone could tell whether he was on the warpath that day. Margot and all her classmates were familiar with the way his blue eyes scanned them, and the grimace distorting the set of his thin mouth.

  The bootlickers despised Van Acker. And they were afraid of him. At the beginning of the school year they had made the mistake of believing they could tame him with their bowing and scraping, and they had discovered that not only was Van Acker impervious to any form of flattery, he would make them pay a heavy price for their error in judgment. His favourite prey were those who made up for their limited abilities (limited on the scale of the Marsac elite) with an excess of zeal. Margot was not one of them. She wondered if Van Acker liked her because she was her father’s daughter or whether it was because, on the rare occasions when he had put her to the test, she had answered right back. He liked it when others stood up to him.

  ‘Servaz,’ he had said that morning, while her thoughts were drifting back to what had happened during the night, ‘aren’t you interested in what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes … uh … of course …’

  ‘Well then, what was I saying?’

  ‘That a consensus exists regarding certain works; that if, over the centuries, a great many people have come together to agree that Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Victor Hugo are superior artists, then that means that the phrase to each his own is a sophism … And that not everything is equal, that the rubbish sold as art is not equivalent to the great creations of the human mind, and that the basic principles of democracy do not apply to art, where there is a ruthless dictatorship of the excellent over the mediocre.’

  ‘Did I say, “not everything is equal”?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then don’t put words in my mouth.’

  Giggling in the class. The same students who ordinarily served as lightning rods for Van Acker’s wrath had a field day when someone else was his victim. Margot discreetly raised her middle finger towards the courtiers seated at the bottom of the amphitheatre who had turned around to stare at her.

  Now she filled her young lungs with smoke and studied the David–Sarah–Virginie threesome. They gazed back at her one after the other, in spite of the distance and the clusters of students between them, and she returned their stares, never taking her eyes off them for a moment. During the night, she had decided to adopt a radically different strategy. A bolder one. Get the game moving. Instead of being more discreet, she would make herself obvious, she would reinforce their suspicions, she would make them think she knew something. If one of them was the culprit, then maybe they would begin to feel vulnerable and lose their grip.

  This strategy was not without risks.

  But an innocent boy was in prison, and time was passing.

  ‘Where was this photograph taken?’ asked Stehlin.

  ‘In Marsac. Near the lake … at the edge of the woods. Just next to Marianne Bokhanowsky’s garden – she’s Hugo’s mother.’

  ‘Is she the one who discovered the letters?’

  ‘No, I did.’

  The director’s eyes grew bigger.

  ‘What were you doing there? Were you looking for something?’

  Servaz had expected this question. His father had taught him one day that truth was nearly always the best strategy; most of the time it was more embarrassing to others than to oneself.

  ‘I spent the night there. I’ve known Hugo’s mother for a long time.’

  The director’s gaze lingered on him. Espérandieu and Samira were also looking at him now.

  ‘Fucking hell! She’s our prime suspect’s mother!’

  Servaz said nothing.

  ‘Who else knows about this?’

  ‘That I was there last night? At the moment, no one.’

  ‘And what if she decides to use it against you? What if she mentions it to her lawyer? If the judge finds out, he will take the entire department off the case and hand the investigation to the gendarmes!’

  Servaz recalled the lawyer with glasses who had shown up that night asking to see Hugo – but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘Shit, Martin,’ barked Stehlin. ‘In the space of a single evening, you interrogate an MP without letting anyone know and after that, you … you spend the night with … with the prime suspect’s mother! This could have serious consequences; it could invalidate the entire investigation, all the work the team has done!’

  Stehlin could have used much cruder language, but Servaz understood that he was furious.

  ‘Right,’ said the director, visibly struggling to keep his composure. ‘In the meantime, what does it change? We’re still at the same point: we have no proof that Julian Hirtmann carved those letters. I find it very hard to believe that he spends his time running after you and leaving clues all over the place. All because of some bullshit music and because you had a chit-chat once upon a time. Particularly as it all started after Claire Diemar’s murder.’

  ‘Not after, at the same time,’ Servaz corrected him. ‘Which changes everything. It began with the CD in the stereo. Let’s not forget that Claire has the same profile as Hirtmann’s other victims.’

  His words had the desired effect. They took the time to digest this information.

  ‘And then there’s another possibility,’ he said. ‘Maybe, in fact, Hirtmann never actually left the region. While Interpol and every police force in Europe have been watching trains, airports and borders, imagining that he’s thousands of kilometres away, maybe he’s been hiding out right nearby – and telling himself that the last place we would ever look is across the street.’

  He looked up and saw in their eyes that he had made his point, and they were beginning to have their doubts. The atmosphere suddenly felt heavier; just talking about the serial killer, his murders and his violence, even indirectly, was enough to poison the air. Servaz decided to drive his point home.

  ‘Whatever the case may be, too many things are pointing in the same direction for us to neglect the Hirtmann lead any longer. Even if it isn’t him, it means that someone out there is imitating him and is connected with Claire Diemar’s murder one way or the other – which throws Hugo’s guilt into doubt. I want Samira and Vincent to focus full time on this lead. They have to get in touch with the unit in Paris which has been tracking Hirtmann and try and confirm whether our man is in this region or not.’

  Stehlin nodded gravely.

  ‘Fine. But there is something else,’ he said.

  Servaz looked at him.

  ‘What about your security? Whether it’s Hirtmann or not, that lunatic out there seems to be following you wherever you go. It seems he’s never very far from you. And then there was that incident at the bank. Fuck, you nearly got thrown off the roof, Martin! I don’t like it. Our guy has a fixation on you – and he’s attacked you once already.’

  ‘If he wanted to get at me, he could easily have done it last night,’ Servaz objected.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The French windows in the bedroom were open. There aren’t even three metres between the garden and the balcony, with a drainpipe and a Virginia creeper right next to it. He could easily have climbed up. And we – I mean, I was asleep.’

  They were all looking at him. There was no longer any do
ubt that he had slept with the mistress of the house – with a person who was directly connected to the investigation in hand. An investigation that could be torn to shreds by any reasonably competent lawyer who cared to cite a conflict of interests. Stehlin collapsed in his chair, gazed at the ceiling and gave out a very long sigh.

  ‘If we work on the assumption that it is Hirtmann,’ said Servaz hastily, ‘I don’t think he is a threat to me personally. His victims are always the same type: young women with more or less the same physical characteristics. The only men he has ever killed, to our knowledge, were his wife’s lover – so in that case it was a crime of passion – and a Dutch man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s something else I want Vincent and Samira to do.’

  His two assistants gave him a questioning look.

  ‘I agree on one thing at least: it does seem that Hirtmann is fixated on me. But since his victims have always been young women, I want Vincent and Samira to ensure Margot’s protection at the lycée in Marsac. If Hirtmann wants to get at me, he knows that’s my weak spot.’

  Stehlin’s brow creased still further. He seemed very worried now. Then he looked over at Servaz’s assistants. Samira nodded.

  ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘Martin is right: if that arsehole has decided to go after him, and if he is as well informed as he seems to be, we can’t risk leaving Margot without protection.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Espérandieu with conviction.

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Stehlin.

  ‘Yes. If Hirtmann is still after me, there might be a way to catch him this time. Pujol could shadow me. From a distance, with a colleague. As discreetly as possible, with GPS or a chip. If Hirtmann really wants to keep an eye on me, he’ll have to show himself, he’ll have to take a risk, no matter how small. And we’ll be there when he does.’

  ‘An interesting idea. And what happens if he comes out of the woods?’