The Circle

by Bernard Minier

  She stared at the ceiling and listened to her husband snoring next to her. He had come back an hour earlier, and although the cancer had weakened her sense of smell, she could still make out another woman’s perfume. He hadn’t even bothered to take a shower.

  He had been so attentive, so patient with her lately. So … kind. Why hadn’t he always been like this?

  Don’t go telling yourself stories, girl. He’s not acting out of love, just to ease his conscience. He didn’t even bother to shower: what further proof do you need?

  She wanted to die in peace. Suddenly she understood that ‘to die in peace’ meant revenge. Her revenge. With blinding clarity, she realised that first thing tomorrow she would call that cop and tell him the truth.

  Interlude 3

  Confrontation

  The needle. Before she lapsed into unconsciousness, she summoned her will.

  Be strong. Now is the time.

  She came to in the big old dining room. As she did every time. She was sitting in the high-backed armchair at the end of the long table, a wide leather strap around her waist, two more around her ankles.

  Plates, candlesticks, glasses, wine, music. Mahler, of course. That fucking stupid bastard Gustav Mahler … She wondered whether she would be able to speak loudly enough after all these months walled up in silence.

  She had no other weapons, only her voice.

  ‘Cheers!’ he said joyfully, raising his glass.

  Usually, she reciprocated. She liked the taste of the wine, the liberating intoxication. And she liked her freshly ironed dress, the smell of soap on her skin, the delicious food – after all those days spent in her cellar eating the same colourless gruel. Her stomach and her brain shouted at her to throw herself on the wine and the steaming plate of food. She stared at the plastic glass. Tempting. She wanted it, wanted it so badly … almost as much as the drugs she thought she had weaned herself off, in those early days, down in her cellar, but had wanted so much she thought she would go mad.

  She kept her hands flat on the table. She merely looked at him with an ironic little smile on her lips.

  She saw him frown, puzzled.

  ‘Aren’t you drinking?’ he said, still smiling. ‘What’s wrong? Aren’t you thirsty?’

  She was dying of thirst … Her throat was as dry as tinder.

  ‘Go on, you know it’s pointless,’ he said in his most cajoling voice. ‘Drink. You’ll see: the wine is exceptional.’

  She burst out laughing – her laughter loud, mocking, scornful – and this time, she saw a flicker of doubt in his eyes. Then he examined her the way a researcher does when he’s observed an unexpected reaction in a guinea pig.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘The idea is to provoke me.’

  He laughed, but nicely. Without animosity.

  ‘Your mother is sucking cocks in hell,’ she said in a cold, hoarse voice.

  He looked even more puzzled. He smoothed his dark little beard. His blond hair, cut short, shone in the candlelight. Then he managed to smile.

  ‘That sort of language doesn’t suit you,’ he said indulgently.

  She merely stared at him.

  ‘That sort of language doesn’t suit you,’ she repeated, imitating his accent, his snobbish tones and his nasal twang.

  There was a brief gleam of anger in his eyes, but his smile returned almost at once.

  ‘Fucking scumbag, son of a whore, pathetic impotent twat …’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘Your mother was a whore, wasn’t she?’

  He gave a joyful smile this time.

  ‘You are absolutely right.’

  His reaction threw her for a moment, but she pulled herself together. She gave a little snigger.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Your tiny cock: last time I wasn’t completely asleep, and I saw it.’

  She saw his gaze cloud over again at the far end of the table. She trembled; she knew what he was capable of.

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  A cloud of black ink passed one more time over his gaze then disappeared. He turned round and reached behind him to turn up the volume on the mini-stereo on the sideboard. The violins soared, the percussion rang out, the brass went wild. She began to imitate an orchestra conductor, with her arms in the air, her hands flailing. Smiling. She had neither knife nor fork – she had to eat with her hands. And the plate was made of paper. As she went on imitating a conductor, she grabbed the soup bowl and hurled it across the room before she began to sing, off key, above the music. The soup left a spot on the wall. Her voice had returned … She sang louder.

  ‘THAT’S ENOUGH!’

  He had stopped the music and was staring at her. Sternly. He wasn’t smiling any more.

  ‘You shouldn’t play this game with me.’

  This time the threat was explicit and for a fraction of a second she was overcome with icy fear. She could hear the anger in his voice. And like a well-trained dog, she was terrified by it. Get a hold of yourself … you’re on the right track … For the first time, she had the upper hand – and with it came a brief feeling of triumph.

  ‘Go eat your shit and die,’ she said.

  He pounded his fist on the table.

  ‘Stop that! I despise such language!’

  She giggled.

  ‘You really are just an impotent little wanker, isn’t that right, darling? You can’t get it up. And you can’t say “cock” or “cunt” or “balls” … I’ll bet your mother played with your willy when you were little.’

  She saw she was getting to him.

  ‘You stupid bitch,’ he growled. ‘You stupid filthy whore. You’re going to pay for that.’

  He stood up. She felt a wave of fear, then panic when she saw what he had in his hand. A fork … She sank down into her chair. If she lost her nerve now, he would win.

  When he was close enough, she spat at him. She missed his face, but managed to hit his shirt. He didn’t wipe it off, but simply stared at her, his gaze empty.

  Suddenly he grabbed her face and squeezed with all his might, his fingers crushing her jaw. He was hurting her. She struggled, tried to push him back with her hands, to scratch him, but he did not let go. An intense pain flashed through her. The fork was planted deep in her lips, biting into them like a rattlesnake. The blood spurted from her mouth, and she opened it to scream. The fork immediately struck a second time, landing in her gums. She thought she would go mad with pain. She sobbed, screamed, cried, and the fork struck again and again, on her cheeks, in her lips and her tongue.

  Then the madness stopped the way it had started. All of a sudden.

  Her heart felt as if it had trebled in size in her chest. Her mouth and face were burning, covered in blood. She was in agony. She tried to breathe normally. She could tell he was watching her, waiting for her reaction. Finally he went back to his chair, satisfied.

  ‘Queer, poof, little shit, worm …’

  She saw him stand stock still, his back to her now. She summoned all the strength she had left and tried to put the pain to one side.

  ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ she crowed. ‘What a ridiculous little man! Mediocre … ordinary, insignificant, pitiful … isn’t that right, Julian Hirtmann?’

  He turned around. He was smiling again.

  ‘You think I haven’t figured out what you’re up to? You think I don’t know where you’re trying to lead me? But you won’t get away from me. We still have many long years to spend together, you and I.’

  On hearing his words, she felt her courage wane. But she tried not to show it. She tossed her hair, then burst out laughing – a nasty laugh, a mocking gleam dancing in her eyes. Then she grabbed her dress and tore it, exposing her naked breasts.

  ‘Do you really feel like spending your evenings with a vulgar, unpleasant girl like me? For years? I’m sure you could find someone more accommodating, couldn’t you? A new one … Because as far as I’m concerned, it’s all over, love. You’ll never
have me the way you used to … you can forget about it.’

  With a violent gesture she sent the plastic wine glass flying, and pointed at his flies.

  ‘Get it out. Show it to me. I’ll bet it’s all soft. You only get hard when I’m asleep, isn’t that right? Don’t you think that’s a bit … odd? Do I frighten you? Prove that you’re a man, go on, get it out; show me your little worm. You can’t do it, can you? This is what our evenings will be like from now on, honey. You’d better get used to it.’

  She could see how disappointed he was. She would have liked him to get it over with quickly. But she knew he wouldn’t do her that favour. First he would make her pay. She prepared to suffer, she thought of all the harm she had done in her life, of the people she would have liked to say goodbye to … her son, her friends, the man she had loved so much and still betrayed … She sent her silent thoughts to all of them, words of love, while the tears streamed down her cheeks and he came closer, soundlessly.

  She knew that this time it would work.

  Wednesday

  30

  Revelations

  It was 5.30 in the morning, and the sky was growing pale as Drissa Kanté began to hoover office 2.84. No one aspires to do a job that consists of cleaning carpets and dusting desks and computers, yet to his great surprise, Drissa had eventually come to enjoy his job.

  Even though there was no time to be wasted from one office block to the next, even though he had to get up when everyone else was still asleep, he liked the routine simplicity of his tasks. While working he always found a way to escape, in his thoughts: back to his country or into ideas inspired by his reading. This morning it wasn’t nostalgia that burdened him, but the fear of losing a job which most of the inhabitants of his adopted country would have found unworthy. He couldn’t get the man’s words out of his head: ‘Do you really want to be without papers again?’ It was strange, he thought. Of all the thousands of words you say, and the thousands you hear every day, why does your memory have to pick a handful to haunt you with, incessantly?

  He took a duster and went to the office he’d been told to go to. He stopped to listen. Even if he was early, there were cops on duty at the other end of the corridor: he’d seen them on his way past. When the fat man with the dark glasses had given him the address, he knew his problems were not over.

  His hand was trembling when he took the little USB stick out of his uniform. There was only one computer in the office, he couldn’t go wrong. If he didn’t do it now, he knew he’d never have the courage. He glanced at the door.

  Now …

  The little USB stick fitted easily into the slot on the side. He hit the ‘on’ switch and something inside the machine rumbled faintly. He felt a rush of nervousness when the computer started up and the USB stick flashed. He knew computers well. The fat man was right: the stick had been programmed to bypass the computer’s start-up sequence. It was also designed to skip over the login and password stage, and to trick the antivirus – but Drissa knew it was relatively easy to find hackers on the Internet to do all that. The hardest thing was getting access to the actual computer – nothing could replace the human factor. Hurry up … He looked at his watch. The guy had told him that when the stick stopped flashing, it would be over. If someone came in now, they would immediately see that he had switched on the computer, which he was not supposed to do. Faster, for Christ’s sake!

  Suddenly he froze. The office door had just opened.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Petrified, he stared at the person who had come through the door. He could not say a single word. It was Aïcha, a co-worker from the cleaning team, a nervy young woman who spent her time making fun of him. He saw her shining gaze pause on the computer screen, then return to him. Hard and inquisitive.

  ‘Go away,’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing, Drissa?’

  ‘Go away!’

  She looked sternly at him, then closed the door. Never again! This was the last time. No matter the consequences, he would never agree to do anything illegal again. The USB stick stopped flashing. He took it out of the slot, slipped it into his pocket and switched off the computer.

  He went over to the window and pulled up the blinds, then pressed the trigger of the blue spray. Beyond the window, the sky was turning pink, grey and pale orange above the rooftops, ever more luminous to the east. That evening, he would give the USB stick to the man and it would be over. But he had his own precautions to implement, too, to make sure the man never came after him again. This time, he wouldn’t be so naïve.

  ‘Commandant Servaz?’

  He looked at his alarm clock. It must have rung and he hadn’t heard it. He hadn’t fallen asleep until four o’clock in the morning, and his sleep had been disturbed by nightmares he could not remember but which left him with an impression of unease as sticky as chewing gum.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Commissioner Santos, from the GI.’

  Servaz sat up straight. The National Police General Inspectorate. The man in the car park, he thought, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  ‘We’ve received a complaint about you,’ said Santos. ‘A certain Florent Mattera, residing at 2A, boulevard d’Arcole, has accused you of assaulting him last night. He alleges that this happened in the car park at the Capitole. A man matching your description beat him, then apologised and drove away in a Cherokee, whose number plate he wrote down. And it was yours. Do you deny these facts, Commandant?’

  Servaz thought for a split second.

  ‘No.’

  A sigh at the other end of the line.

  ‘You’ll have to come in for an interview.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘Look … I’m in the middle of an extremely important investigation.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ said the syrupy voice on the other end. ‘Commandant, do you realise what you have been accused of? This is deadly serious. The era when cops could behave like gangsters is over, and I—’

  ‘Okay, okay. I’m on my way.’

  ‘Hi, Servaz.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Morning, Martin.’

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘Morning, Servaz.’

  ‘Hi.’

  That morning, everyone seemed to want to show him their sympathy. It was as if he’d just been diagnosed with cancer. He got out of the lift and went down the corridor that led to the regional crime squad. It was 8.16 a.m. Taped to the brick walls were the same children’s faces as always, watching him go past. Above and below the photographs were the words ‘MISSING/DISPARUS’, in English and French.

  ‘Hi, Martin.’

  ‘Hi.’

  Ordinarily, he didn’t even see them any more, those faces; he’d passed them so many times. But this morning, he saw them anew. All those missing children, never found. And the dates: 1991 … 1995 … 1986 … Sweet Christ. How had the parents survived?

  ‘Good morning, Martin.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Everyone seemed to know. It was the sort of information that gets passed on more quickly than an unpinned grenade. He hurried into his office. There was a note on his desk.

  ‘The director wants to see you.’

  Pujol’s handwriting. Right. He didn’t even hang up his jacket, but headed for the director’s office. As he walked past the open doors, he could hear conversations come to a halt. He wanted only one thing: to avoid all those gazes. He went past the reception and the little waiting area with its leather sofas. He knocked on the door.

  ‘Come in!’

  On seeing him, the director stood up, his face a blank. Opposite him was a man who was considerably overweight, wearing a thickly knotted tie in spite of the heat, as well as the stubborn air of the civil servant who knows he’s in the right. The man did not stand up, but he turned round to look at Servaz with his little yellow eyes.

  ‘Morning, Santos,’ said Servaz.

  No answer.

  ‘Martin, is it
true, what Commissioner Santos has told me? Have you … confirmed the facts?’

  He nodded. Stehlin shook his head. Commissioner Santos looked at Stehlin and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, ‘Right, what happens now?’

  ‘I—’ began Servaz.

  Stehlin held up his hand.

  ‘I have spoken with Commissioner Santos. He has agreed to postpone your hearing until the investigation is over.’

  Something must have happened … it was impossible otherwise. Santos would never have agreed to a deal if it weren’t a matter of the utmost urgency. And Servaz was part of the equation. Margot! he thought, his stomach doing a triple flip.

  ‘Something has come up,’ said the director, confirming his hunch.

  Servaz waited for what was to come.

  ‘Do you remember Elvis Elmaz, the guy you interrogated at the hospital?’

  Servaz nodded.

  ‘Last night he was attacked. His life is hanging by a thread.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Apparently someone tied him to a chair along with some meat and gave him to his dogs for dinner.’

  Servaz looked at his boss, trying to grasp the meaning of his words, then to visualise the scene, but quickly changed his mind.

  ‘He’s in hospital,’ continued Stehlin. ‘Half his face has been torn off, his arms and torso have been chewed to the bone in several places, a number of organs are affected, and he has lost a great deal of blood. He’s so gravely injured that they took him to the severe burns unit. It’s not a pretty sight … and he’s unlikely to recover. He went into a coma during the night. If he does make it, it will be thanks to his neighbour, who saw a car go by in the middle of the night and heard the dogs barking in a frenzy. But before he completely lost consciousness in the ambulance, something happened …’