The Circle

by Bernard Minier

  She took her mobile and dialled the first number on the list.

  ‘Clean Service,’ answered a woman’s voice.

  ‘Good morning. I’m calling from human resources at the police station on the boulevard de l’Embouchure. We have … uh … a little problem.’

  ‘What sort of problem?’

  ‘Well, we haven’t been too pleased with your company’s performance, we find that the quality of the work has deteriorated of late, and we—’

  ‘The police station, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just a moment. I’ll put you through to someone.’

  Irène waited. Might she have landed on the right one on her first attempt? She waited for ages. Finally, a man’s voice replied, sounding annoyed.

  ‘There must be a mistake,’ he said curtly. ‘You did say the police station?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘I’m sorry, we don’t clean the offices at the police station. I’ve been checking through our client records for a good ten minutes. There’s nothing here about you. Where did you get your information?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure! And why are you calling us? Who are you, anyway?’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she said, and hung up.

  By the time she had made eighteen phone calls she was beginning to have doubts about her method. She dialled the nineteenth number and went through her little song and dance again. Once again, the person on the switchboard put her through to someone else. The same endless wait …

  ‘You say you’re not pleased with our work?’ came a forceful-sounding man’s voice down the line. ‘Could you tell me a little bit more about that? What is it exactly that you’re not pleased with?’

  She sat up in her seat.

  She hadn’t prepared herself for the question so she improvised, feeling very guilty about the cleaners working in that building, who would now be upbraided for some completely fictional negligence.

  ‘I’m making this call on behalf of some of my colleagues,’ she concluded soothingly. ‘But you know how it is: there are always some grumpy, dissatisfied people who need to criticise others in order to exist. I’m merely passing on their complaints. Personally, I’ve never had cause to complain about the state of my office.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said the man. ‘I will emphasise the points you’ve made. Whatever the case may be, you were right to call us. We set great store by our customer satisfaction.’

  The usual mercantile rhetoric – but which implied that the staff would be told off.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on your employees. It’s no big deal.’

  ‘No, no, I don’t agree with you. We strive to offer excellent service, we want our clients to be fully satisfied, and our employees must be up to the task. That’s the least anyone can expect.’

  Particularly with the salaries you pay them, she thought.

  ‘Thank you for your professional attitude. Goodbye.’

  As soon as she had rung off, she went onto a website that showed companies’ organisation charts, earnings and other key figures. She wrote down the name of the head of Clarion Cleaners on a Post-it. There was no telephone number, however. So she called the same switchboard, but this time from her landline at the gendarmerie, which would show her name and her employer.

  ‘Clarion,’ answered the same female voice as before.

  ‘May I speak to Xavier Lambert?’ she said, trying to change her own voice. ‘Tell him it’s for an inquiry for the gendarmerie, about one of his cleaners. It’s urgent.’

  Silence at the end of the line. Had the woman at the other end recognised her voice? Then a ringing tone.

  ‘Xavier Lambert,’ said a weary male voice.

  ‘Good morning, Monsieur Lambert, this is Captain Ziegler of the gendarmerie, we are presently conducting a criminal inquiry that may concern a member of your cleaning team. I need a list of your staff.’

  ‘A list of my staff? Who are you, did you say?’

  ‘Captain Irène Ziegler.’

  ‘Why do you need this list, Captain, if that’s not indiscreet?’

  ‘A crime has been committed in one of the offices cleaned by your company. The theft of sensitive documents. We found minute traces of industrial cleaner on the papers that were next to the stolen documents. But of course we shall keep this to ourselves.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the man, perfectly calm. ‘Do you have a warrant?’

  ‘No. But I can get one.’

  ‘Then why don’t you.’

  Shit! He was about to hang up!

  ‘Wait!’

  ‘Yes, Captain?’

  He seemed amused by her urgency. She felt herself getting angry.

  ‘Look, Monsieur Lambert, I can get this warrant in the space of a few hours. The only problem is, we’re working against the clock. The suspect may still have the documents in his possession, but for how much longer? We don’t know when he will pass them on, nor to whom. We want to place him under surveillance. So you must understand that every minute counts. And you surely don’t wish to be an accessory, even unintentionally, to a crime as serious as industrial espionage.’

  ‘Yes, I understand. Of course. I’m a responsible citizen and if I can do anything to help you within a legal framework … But you in turn must understand that I cannot divulge personal information about my staff without a good reason.’

  ‘I just gave you one.’

  ‘Well then, let’s just say that I will wait until this … excellent reason has been confirmed by the judge.’

  The man’s voice was full of arrogance. She felt the anger blaze through her now like wildfire. It was exactly what she needed.

  ‘Naturally I cannot accuse you of obstructing the inquiry; you have the law on your side,’ she declared coldly. ‘But we gendarmes tend to carry a grudge, you know. So, if you persist in your attitude, I will be obliged to call in the Health and Safety Inspectors, the Departmental Office for Labour and Employment, and the Unreported Employment Committee. And they will ferret everywhere until they find something, believe me.’

  ‘Captain, I suggest you change your tone, this is going too far,’ said the man, clearly annoyed now. ‘They will do no such thing. I will contact your superiors at once.’

  He was bluffing. She could tell from his voice.

  ‘Then if it’s not today, it will be tomorrow,’ she continued, adopting the same frosty tone. ‘Because we won’t let up, believe me. We will stick to your shoes like chewing gum. Because we gendarmes never forget a thing. I hope there is not the slightest irregularity in the management of your staff, Monsieur Lambert, I sincerely hope so, because if there is you can bid farewell to a number of your clients, starting with the police.’

  Silence at the other end.

  ‘I’ll send you the list.’

  ‘With all the information complete,’ she insisted, then hung up.

  Servaz was driving down the motorway. The air was still just as stifling and heavy, but a storm was clearly brewing. The wave of heat would soon give way to thunder and lightning. In the same way, he felt he was drawing close to a stormy conclusion, that they were closer than they realised. All the elements were there before their eyes. All they had to do now was bring them together and make them talk.

  He called Espérandieu and asked him to go back to Toulouse to dig around in Elvis’s past. At the lycée there were too many people about in the middle of the day, and Samira was not letting Margot out of her sight. Hirtmann would never strike under these conditions – assuming he did intend to strike, something Servaz was beginning to doubt. Once again, he wondered where Hirtmann might be. Any certainty he might have had regarding his whereabouts was beginning to falter. In his imagination Hirtmann was beginning to look more and more like a ghost, a myth. Servaz banished the thought. It made him nervous.

  He parked outside the restaurant on the way into Marsac, forty minutes late.

  ‘What the hell wer
e you doing?’

  Margot was wearing shorts, heavy shoes with steel toecaps, and a T-shirt of a pop group he hadn’t heard of. Her hair was red, the gel in it making it stick straight up in the air. Without answering, he gave her a kiss and led her out to the little wooden bridge covered with flower boxes which spanned a stream where a few ducks were gliding along elegantly. The doors to the restaurant were open wide. It was pleasantly cool inside, and buzzing with discreet conversation. A few diners paused to look at Margot as she came in, and she ignored them disdainfully, while the maître d’ led them to a little table.

  ‘Do they serve mojitos here?’ she asked once they were seated.

  ‘Since when do you drink alcohol?’

  ‘Since I turned thirteen.’

  He looked at her, wondering whether she was joking. Apparently not. Servaz ordered a calf’s head, Margot a burger. A television broadcast the images of players practising on the football pitch, the sound turned off.

  ‘It’s really giving me the creeps,’ she began, without waiting. ‘This whole business … this surveillance … do you really think he could …’

  She didn’t finish her sentence.

  ‘You have nothing to worry about,’ he hurried to reply. ‘It’s just a precaution. There’s virtually no risk of him going after you, or even showing his face. I just want to be one hundred per cent sure that you’re not in any danger.’

  ‘Is it really necessary?’

  ‘For the time being, yes.’

  ‘And what if you don’t catch him? Are you going to watch over me like this indefinitely?’ she asked, playing with the fake ruby in her eyebrow.

  Servaz felt his stomach contract. He didn’t tell her that this question was nagging away at him too. Obviously a time would come for the surveillance to be withdrawn, when the prosecutor would decide it had gone on long enough. Then what? How would he ensure his daughter’s safety? How would he sleep soundly?

  ‘What you have to do,’ he continued, not answering her question, ‘is keep an eye out for anything that seems abnormal. If you see someone lurking around the lycée. Or if you receive strange text messages. Don’t hesitate to go and see Vincent. You know him, and you get along well. You know he’ll listen to you.’

  She nodded, and thought about how she and Samira had been drinking, laughing and talking the night before.

  ‘But again, you have no reason to panic. It’s just a precaution,’ he insisted.

  It was like the dialogue from a movie, he thought. Like something he’d heard a thousand times. The dialogue from a very bad movie – one of those Z movies full of blood and guts. Once again he felt nervous. Or was it the approaching storm, putting his nerves on edge?

  ‘Do you have what I asked you for?’

  She put her hand into her khaki canvas satchel and brought out a bundle of dog-eared, handwritten papers.

  ‘I don’t understand why you asked me for this,’ she said, pushing the papers across the table to him. ‘You want to evaluate my work or what?’

  He knew that black look. He’d had to confront it plenty of times in the past. He smiled.

  ‘I won’t read anything you’ve written. You have my word, okay? It’s the notes in the margin that interest me. That’s all. I’ll explain,’ he added, in answer to her frown.

  Satisfied, he glanced at the pages marked with red ink, then folded them and put them in his jacket pocket.

  It was 13.30 that Thursday, and the Whale was eating snails with garlic puree when the minister walked into one of the two private dining rooms (the smallest one) at Tante Marguerite, the restaurant on the rue de Bourgogne only a minute away from the National Assembly. The senator took the time to wipe his lips before turning his attention to the minister.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Lacaze will be remanded in custody,’ said the minister. ‘The judge is going to ask for his immunity to be withdrawn.’

  ‘That, I knew,’ said Devincourt coldly. ‘The question is, why wasn’t that fucking arsehole of a prosecutor able to prevent this?’

  ‘There was nothing he could do. Given the elements of the case, there was no way the examining magistrate could act any differently … I can’t get over it: Suzanne told the police everything. That Paul had lied about his whereabouts. I wouldn’t have thought she could do such a thing.’

  The minister seemed crestfallen.

  ‘Oh, really?’ said the Whale. ‘What did you expect? The woman has terminal cancer, she’s been betrayed, scorned, humiliated. Personally, I think she ought to be congratulated. That little shit has only got what he deserves.’

  The minister felt his temper flaring. The Whale had been having it off with prostitutes for over forty years and now he thought he could pass judgment?

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk.’

  The senator raised his glass of white wine to his lips.

  ‘Might you be referring to my … appetite?’ said the fat man, unruffled. ‘There’s a great difference. And you know what it is? Love … I love Catherine every bit as much as I did on the first day I fell for her. I have the deepest admiration for my wife. The deepest devotion. The whores are for my health. And she knows that. Catherine and I have not shared a bed for over twenty years. How could that imbecile imagine that Suzanne would forgive him? A woman like her … so proud … a woman with character. A remarkable woman. Sleeping around is one thing. But to fall in love with that—’

  The minister curtailed the discussion: ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘Where was Lacaze that night? Did he tell you, at least?’

  ‘No. And he refused to tell the judge. It’s insanity! He won’t talk about it with anyone; he’s gone mad.’

  This time, the Whale looked up at the minister, clearly surprised.

  ‘Do you think he killed her?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think any more. But he is looking more and more guilty. Dear Lord, the press will go wild.’

  ‘Drop him,’ said the Whale.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Back off. While you still have time. Give the media the union minimum: presumption of innocence, independence of the judiciary … the usual patter. But say he is accountable before the law like anyone else. Everyone will understand. A scapegoat: we always need one, I’m not telling you anything new. Lacaze will be burned at the stake by the press, they will tear him apart and gorge themselves on him until they’ve had their fill. The virtuous pundits will do their usual bit on television, and the crowd will bay with the wolves. And when they’re done with him, it will be someone else’s turn. Who knows? Tomorrow, it could be you. Or me. Sacrifice him. Now.’

  ‘He had a brilliant future,’ said the minister, looking at his plate.

  ‘Rest in peace,’ replied the Whale, stabbing another snail. ‘Are you going to watch the match tonight? That’s the only thing that might save us – if we win the World Cup. But we may as well dream of winning the next elections.’

  At 15.15, Ziegler finally found what she was looking for. Or rather, she found two potential perpetrators. Most of the cleaners on Clarion’s teams were women who had come fairly recently from Africa. The industrial cleaning sector had always been a source of employment for immigrant women, as the success of these companies rested upon an underqualified workforce who were unlikely to stand up for themselves.

  There were only two men. Instinctively, Ziegler decided to start with them. First of all, because more men got in trouble with the law, even though the proportion of women was on the rise. And because all statistics showed that women were almost never involved in incidents regarding authority. Finally, men liked taking risks.

  The first one was a family man, with three grown-up children. Fifty-eight years old, he had been working for the cleaning company for ten years. Before that he had worked for nearly thirty years in the automobile industry. She moved on to the next one. Much younger, he had arrived in France only recently. He lived on his own. No wife, no children. His entire family had stayed behind in Mali. A solit
ary man, lost and vulnerable in a foreign country. Trying to adapt and to blend into the crowd without attracting attention. Trying to make a few friends. Probably in a job that was unworthy of his qualifications. A man who was also probably deathly afraid of being sent home. She hesitated between the two, her gaze going from one information sheet to the other, until her finger stopped on the second one. It must be him; he was an ideal target.

  His name was Drissa Kanté.

  Espérandieu was listening to ‘Use Somebody’ by the Kings of Leon on his iPhone while gazing at the battlefield spread out before him. He sang along, then sent a silent curse in Martin’s direction. He had come across the lads setting up a giant TV screen in the meeting room and filling the fridge with six-packs. He was sure that in an hour or so, all the offices would empty out, one after the other. He would have liked to join in the party, but he was stuck with tons of documents and faxes that he had divided into piles. There were dozens of them.

  His research into the past of Elvis Konstandin Elmaz – who was still in hospital in a coma – had already taken him all morning and half the afternoon. He had already contacted the tax people and consulted the files of Social Security in order to try and reconstruct Elmaz’s professional past. At the prefecture he had gone through the file with his insurance certificates and driving licences, had checked with the register office for any marital history and he had verified whether there were any offspring (not officially, in any case). He had also solicited the family benefits office and addressed a request to the Ministry of Defence to obtain any information regarding a possible military background.

  The result was that Espérandieu now had an abundant but disparate pile of material in front of him. The worst possible scenario.

  He sighed. There was something desperate and extremely unpleasant about having to reconstruct Elvis Konstandin Elmaz’s life story. Elvis had an almost perfect profile of a repeat offender. Drug trafficking, grievous bodily harm, theft, sexual harassment, holding of hostages and, finally, rape. As Samira had said, it was a miracle he hadn’t killed anyone yet. To which they now had to add the organisation of dogfights, if they were to believe what they had found on his property deep in the woods. During his spells of freedom, he had been the manager of a sex shop in Toulouse, rue Denfert-Rochereau; a bouncer at a private club on the rue Maynard a few hundred metres further along; a waiter in a café-restaurant on the rue Bayard a stone’s throw from there, and he hung out in nearly every seedy place in the neighbourhood. Espérandieu found no other traces of known professional activity, but one detail did intrigue him: officially, Elvis’s ‘career’ had started at the age of twenty-two, with a first conviction. Up until then he had been clever enough to fly under the radar, because Espérandieu had no doubts that with a CV like that he must have started much earlier. He looked down at the last document, opened it in desperation and skimmed wearily through the pages, hoping against hope that something in all these declarations would finally be worth his attention.