The Circle

by Bernard Minier

  ‘What?’

  ‘Paul La—’

  ‘I know who Paul Lacaze is, sweetheart. Are you serious? You think a guy like him would risk getting his drugs from me? Shit, are you joking?’

  ‘Who are your clients, students?’

  ‘Not just them. Little middle-class people from Marsac, posh women you’d just love to slap in the face but who have tons of dosh, even labourers – these days, drugs are like golf: it’s gone democratic.’

  ‘You must have good marks in sociology,’ said Espérandieu sarcastically.

  She didn’t even bother to look at him.

  ‘How does it work?’ asked Servaz. ‘Where do you hide your supply?’

  She explained. She made use of a ‘childminder’ – in police jargon, a person who agreed to look after the supply, generally an addict who agreed to do it in exchange for the odd hit now and then. But Heisenberg’s childminder was not an addict: she was an old lady of eighty-three who lived all alone in a private home; Heisenberg spent one afternoon there a week, keeping her company and chit-chatting.

  ‘Do you keep a list of your clients?’ asked Servaz.

  She looked at him, her eyes round.

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘Do you know the lycée in Marsac?’

  She gave him a wary look.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Do you have any clients from there?’

  She nodded, a gleam of defiance in her eyes.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘What? I didn’t hear.’

  ‘Not just students.’

  Servaz felt a familiar tingle at the base of his spine.

  ‘A teacher?’

  She gave him a triumphant smile.

  ‘Yup, a teacher. From Marsac. That elite lycée. That’s shut you up, hasn’t it?’

  Servaz looked into her faded green eyes, wondering if she was bluffing.

  ‘Their name?’ he said.

  ‘Sorry. You’ll get bugger all from me. I don’t inform on people.’

  ‘Really? So how do the narcs go about it?’

  ‘Not like that,’ she said, stubbornly, as if he had offended her.

  ‘The name Hugo Bokhanowsky, does that mean anything to you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And David Jimbot?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘The name of the teacher,’ he insisted.

  ‘No can do, mate.’

  ‘Listen, I’m getting fed up. You’re wasting my time. The narcs have a file on you as thick as the phone book. And this time, the judge won’t show any mercy. He’s ready to send you down on a single phone call from us. You’ll be behind bars for quite a—’

  ‘Oh all right, for fuck’s sake! Van Acker.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Francis Van Acker. That’s his name. He teaches I don’t know what at the lycée in Marsac. A guy with a little beard who thinks he’s the bee’s knees.’

  Servaz looked at her. Francis … of course. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier?

  There are four of them in the car. They’re driving fast. Too fast. At night. Windows down, on the road that winds its way through the woods. The rush of air makes their hair dance, and Marianne is leaning against him in the back seat, so her hair mingles with his and he inhales the strawberry smell of her shampoo. On the radio Freddie Mercury is asking who wants to live forever and Sting whether the Russians love their children too. Francis is driving.

  The fourth member of their party must have been Jimmy, or maybe it was Louis: Servaz doesn’t remember. He and Francis are in the front seat, talking endlessly, mindless banter, laughing. They each have a beer in their hands; they look joyful, immortal and somewhat tipsy. Francis is driving too fast. As always, but it’s his car. And suddenly in his free hand there is a joint, and he holds it out to Jimmy, who laughs stupidly before taking a drag. Servaz feels Marianne tense up next to him. She has the sparkly fingerless mittens that she wears all year round except in summer; her warm fingers emerge from the wool and mingle with his, their two hands joined like the links of a chain that no one can break. Martin revels in these moments, sitting in the semi-darkness in the back of the car, where they have become one person. The headlights cut through the tree trunks, the road speeds by, it smells like weed in the car, in spite of the night air blowing through the windows. On the radio, Peter Gabriel is singing ‘Sledgehammer’. And suddenly, Martin feels Marianne’s warm breath against his ear and her voice murmurs, ‘If we die tonight, I want you to know that I’ve never been this happy.’

  And he is thinking exactly the same thing, that their two hearts are beating in unison; he too is certain that he will never be as happy as he is at that moment, knowing the fulfilment of her love, and the friendship that fills the car, the carefree grace of their youth, until suddenly he sees Francis looking at them through the rearview mirror. The smoke from the joint is rising before his eyes in a thin spiral. Any trace of humour has vanished. It is a look of covetousness, of jealousy, of pure hatred. A moment later, Francis winks at him and smiles, and Servaz is certain he must have been dreaming.

  Servaz parked in the centre of town. He had spent all afternoon thinking. He couldn’t help remembering what Marianne had said about Francis the night before. About his lack of talent, and how he had always been jealous of Servaz’s gifts. He pictured the literature professor they’d had back then, an elegant man who wore cravats beneath his striped shirt collars, and pocket handkerchiefs in his suits. He would spend a long while chatting with Servaz between or after classes and now he remembered how this used to make Francis sneer; he was perpetually denigrating the older man, and suspected him of seeking out Martin’s company for reasons that were not purely intellectual.

  Servaz had never suspected that Van Acker’s sarcastic remarks might be due to jealousy: Francis was the centre of attention in Marsac, he had his little court of admirers –if anyone should have been jealous, it was Martin.

  Marianne’s words drummed incessantly in his mind: ‘Your best friend. Your alter ego, your brother … There was only one thing he wanted: to take what you loved most in the world.’ Even if he had subsequently hated Francis for having stolen the woman he loved, at the time he had believed that their friendship had something sacred about it. Hadn’t Francis felt that way, too? He remembered his words in Marsac, only five days earlier: ‘You were my big brother, you were my Seymour – and for me, in a way, that big brother committed suicide the day you joined the police force.’ Was that a complete lie? Was Francis Van Acker the sort of person who sought revenge on those who were more talented or more handsome than he was? Did his sarcastic wit conceal a deep inferiority complex? Had he manipulated and seduced Marianne to make up for it – and because at the time she was easy prey? A possible answer was beginning to dawn in his mind. But it was simply too ridiculous, too absurd to be taken seriously.

  Marianne. Why had she still not called? Was she waiting for him to call her? Was she afraid he might interpret a call as an attempt to manipulate the person who could get her son out of prison? Or was there something else? He was filled with anxiety. He wanted to see her again as soon as possible; he was already feeling that empty yearning he had had such difficulty getting rid of. He’d thought of dialling her number ten times since yesterday. And ten times he had decided not to. Why? And Elvis – what did he have to do with it all? He had narrowly escaped what looked like attempted murder, his life was hanging by a thread, and he had summoned his last remaining strength to tell Servaz to go digging in his past. Finally, there was Lacaze. Lacaze who refused to say where he had been on Friday evening. Lacaze who had a motive, and no alibi. Lacaze who at that very moment was in the judge’s office, being heard as a target witness: the hearing had begun four hours earlier, but the MP was maintaining his suicidal silence. Elvis, Lacaze, Francis, Hirtmann: players doing a circle dance around him in a game of blind man’s buff. He was the central player, the one whose eyes were blindfolded, hands outspread, and he had to grope his way towards
the murderer.

  Servaz climbed out of the Jeep, locked it, and set off. The little street away from the centre was lined with tall private houses surrounded by gardens. A great many cars were parked along the pavement. He spotted a parking space, but there was a lamppost nearby; it was not yet lit, although night was beginning to fall.

  He went by without stopping, then back to the centre of town, where he found a shop about to close that sold DIY supplies and fishing gear. The old man gave him a puzzled look when he explained that he was looking for a fishing rod with or without a reel, but it had to be sturdy, and a certain length. Finally, he came out with a telescoping rod in fibreglass and carbon fibre which when fully opened could extend to four metres.

  Servaz went back to the quiet little street, his fishing pole on his shoulder. He walked along the pavement, looking discreetly to the right and to the left, then he stopped beneath the lamppost and gave it two quick powerful blows with the end of the fishing rod. The second blow was enough to smash the bulb. It hadn’t taken more than three seconds. He left again immediately, just as nonchalant.

  Five minutes later he parked the Jeep in the space, praying that no one had noticed his little act of vandalism. A few dark facades now had light in their windows, and twilight was descending slowly over the street.

  Francis Van Acker lived in a big T-shaped house that dated from the beginning of the previous century, one house down from the parking space. Servaz could discern its outline through the branches of a pine tree and the foliage of a weeping willow. As it was set on a little bank, rising out of a dark mass of bushes and hedges, it seemed to overshadow all the surrounding houses. There was light in the triple bay window on the first floor, on the right-hand side of the house.

  He mused that the villa suited its owner: it had the same haughtiness, the same pride. Apart from the light on the right-hand side, the house was shrouded in darkness. Servaz took out his cigarettes. He wondered what he was expecting from this surveillance. He wasn’t about to come back here every evening. He thought about Vincent and Samira, and a tremor went down his spine. He trusted his two assistants: Vincent would take his mission seriously because he knew Margot well. And Samira was one of his best agents. Except that the adversary they were dealing with was nothing like those who ordinarily graced the police station or the courtrooms with their presence.

  He spent the next two hours observing the house and the rare traffic in the street: for the most part he just saw neighbours coming home late from work, or taking out the dog or the dustbins. And gradually the glow of televisions began flickering in living rooms, and lights came on in upstairs windows. He wondered where he had read this sentence: ‘Wherever there is a television glowing there is someone staying up who does not read.’ He would have liked to be at home listening to Mahler with the volume on low, a book open on his lap.

  That night, Ziegler got home late. At the last minute she had had to deal with a drunken brawl in a bar in Auch: two men who didn’t even have the strength to fight, they were so pissed, but capable enough to pull out a blade. They had felt so pathetically sorry for themselves by the time the law arrived that she wished there was a category of crime called ‘first-degree stupidity’ so she could lock them away. She removed her uniform and stepped into the shower. When she came back out, she saw she had three texts from Zuzka. She winced. She didn’t feel up to calling her girlfriend after such a god-awful, irritating day. She had nothing to tell her. And besides, another task was waiting.

  Thank you, Martin. I can tell it won’t be long before I start having major problems with my girlfriend. Consultant – yeah, right!

  She opened the windows to let in the evening air, though it was hardly any cooler outside. A quiet atmosphere reigned in the building. She put the television on low, popped a pizza in the microwave, then crossed the living room in her pyjamas and sat down at her Mac.

  She blew on the pizza to cool down the burning cheese, took a swallow of gin and tonic, and started typing.

  Espérandieu had sent her a photograph of the letters ‘JH’ which Martin had found carved into the tree trunk. She opened a second window, typed Marsac into Google maps, switched to satellite view and zoomed in on the north shore of the lake until she reached maximum enlargement. It was blurry, so she backtracked until three centimetres equalled fifty metres. She moved the cursor along the shore. Seen from above, some of the houses were veritable little castles: tennis courts, swimming pools and bathhouses, outbuildings, wooded parks, jetties on the lake for dinghies or motorboats, even greenhouses and children’s playgrounds. There were only a dozen houses: the inhabited area of the lake was no longer than two kilometres. Marianne Bokhanowsky’s house was the last one before the woods expanded into a forest that stretched for miles.

  She moved the cursor until she found a road running through the forest, roughly 200 metres from the western edge of Marianne’s garden. It was shaped like the letter J: the upper edge pointed north and the descending loop faced west. There was a parking area, with something that looked like two picnic tables, in the middle of the loop. She was willing to bet that Hirtmann had set off from there. Because the image was poorly defined and the foliage was dense she could not see whether there was a path. She decided to go and take a look the next day, if the usual troublemakers stayed calm despite the heat. The CSIs had explored the area around the stream: according to Espérandieu they hadn’t found anything, but she doubted they had gone any further than that. She felt her excitement growing: there was a fresh lead. No need, now, to consult the information and files that others before her had pored over, data that had been sleeping in computers or gathering dust at the bottom of drawers for months: Martin had promised he would forward information to her as it came in. With the investigation in Marsac, he didn’t have time to take care of it himself. And his two assistants were stuck with keeping watch over Margot.

  This is your chance, my dear. It’s up to you not to mess it up. You don’t have a lot of time.

  The cell in Paris hadn’t sent anyone down there for the moment. One e-mail and two letters carved with a penknife into a tree trunk: that was a bit lightweight for them. But sooner or later Martin would stop having Margot watched, he’d wind up his investigation, and the police would take control again. If she could make a decisive breakthrough before that, Martin was not the type to claim others’ findings as his own. Her superiors would be angry that they hadn’t been kept informed, but no one would be able to take away the fact that she’d made headway in a case where other investigators, dozens of them, had been working themselves into the ground for months.

  What makes you think you’re going to do it? She spent the next two hours preparing her hack of the computer network at the prison where Lisa Ferney was interned. It took her a while, but in the end, she found herself with a made-to-measure variant of the famous Zeus software, the king of the Trojan horse programs (The ancient world is never far away, she mused). Zeus had already infected and besieged millions of computers the world over, including those of the Bank of America and NASA. The second manoeuvre consisted of finding a breach in the prison’s computer network. But she had the e-mail address of the director himself. She had asked him for it before leaving. She incorporated the botnet into a PDF document, invisible to the Ministry of Justice’s multiple firewalls and antivirus software, and then she moved on to phase three: social engineering, which consisted – here too, as in the famous scene from antiquity – in convincing the victim to activate the trap she had set. She sent the file to the director in an e-mail explaining that in the attachment there was some urgent information regarding an inmate. The only weakness in her method was having to use her own e-mail address. It was a calculated risk. If someone realised it was an attack, she could claim she too had been infected. When the director opened the document, Zeus would lodge itself in his hard drive system files without him realising a thing. He would open the file, see an error message, and he would either delete the e-mail or call her for an ex
planation. Too late. The program would already have made its nest.

  Once it was installed, her personal version of Zeus would chart a map of the prison’s computer system and she would receive it the moment the director went online. Ziegler could then read the map and target the files that interested her. She would place her order on the server, Zeus would read it, and at the next connection, Zeus would send her the files she had requested. And so on, until she had all the information she needed. Then she would send Zeus the order to self-destruct, and the software would vanish. There was no way anyone would ever know there had been an attack. No way to trace anything back to her.

  When she had completed this task, she moved onto the next one. She felt a fleeting pang of guilt as she logged on to Martin’s computer, but she consoled herself with the fact that she was acting on behalf of all of them, and that by getting her information directly from the source rather than waiting for him to pass it on she was saving time for everyone. Besides, it was his work computer. She supposed that if he had anything to hide, he would keep it for his computer at home. She went through his e-mail, then continued to the hard drive. Pouring the last drops of gin and tonic down her throat, she quickly scrolled through a number of files contained in C:Windows, then frowned. That software wasn’t there last time … Ziegler had an extraordinary memory for that sort of thing. Maybe it was nothing. She dug further and again raised an eyebrow: another suspicious file. She launched a scan of the hard drive and went to pour another gin and tonic. When she came back to her computer, she was puzzled by what she found. The Ministry of the Interior’s security would not have let malicious software get through, and Martin wasn’t the type to neglect security directives. If he had received a suspicious e-mail, or one coming from someone he didn’t know, he would certainly not have opened it. So the only possibility was that the malware had been directly introduced by someone who was physically on-site.

  She wondered how to proceed. She should warn Martin – but how could she do that without revealing how she had obtained the information? How would he react if he found out? She ran her fingers through her hair, pensively, her eyes riveted to the screen. First of all, she had to find out who had downloaded the software. She reached for a pad and pen and began to make a list of possibilities, but there weren’t many: