The Circle

by Bernard Minier

  Margot admired the dexterity he displayed both in driving and in his knowledge of how to tail someone. At the beginning of the year, with his hair hiding half his face and his air of always being elsewhere, she had taken him for a gentle dreamer. But Elias was full of surprises. He had never been very forthcoming about his family, about his brothers and sisters, but she was beginning to wonder what it was that had made him so resourceful.

  Resourceful … Like the time he had taken a key out of his pocket and opened the door he was not supposed to open. Or the time he had left the note inside her locker.

  ‘I don’t know how you got my locker open, but don’t ever do it again,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Roger that.’

  But his purely diplomatic tone implied that he would try again at the first opportunity.

  ‘You know you’re a strange guy?’

  ‘I suppose coming from you that’s a compliment.’

  ‘How did you get the key to that door, the other night?’ she asked suddenly.

  For a moment he took his eyes from the road.

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘How long have you and I known each other? Six months? Something like that? And the more I know you, the less I feel I know about you …’

  He gave her a crooked smile, staring at the road and the evening light bursting from below the low ceiling of clouds.

  ‘I could return the compliment.’

  ‘What makes you tick? You act like a dreamer, like you’re completely spacey, buried in your books and your daydreams, but in the end you’re a real detective, some sort of fucking James Bond?’

  This time he burst out laughing.

  ‘Where did you learn this stuff, Elias?’

  His smile faded.

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I was nine years old,’ he said.

  Aware that he had suddenly become very serious, she held her breath, waiting for what was next.

  ‘I belonged to this group called “The Watchers”. It was my big brother who created it. I was the youngest in the gang; the others were all big kids, the same age as him. Our thing was to learn to manage on our own in any circumstances – to survive. We thought we were some sort of fucking Robinson Crusoes, you see. We’d go out into the country and build cabins, and we wandered all over. And during all that time, my big brother taught me loads of things, like how to use a compass, how to find out where I was, how to repair a moped, siphon off petrol, lay traps. He would say to me, “Elias, you have to learn how to get by all on your own, I won’t always be here to help you.” Sometimes we played football or rugby, or we went on treasure hunts, or scavenger hunts. On rainy days we would lock ourselves in a friend’s garage. His parents didn’t use it for their car, and there were all sorts of bits and pieces of old banged-up armchairs, greasy spare parts, broken odds and ends they were too lazy to throw out. They let us do whatever we wanted in there. So we’d spread all that stuff everywhere and pretend we were in a bomber flying over Europe during World War Two, or that we were at the bottom of the ocean in a submarine, that sort of thing. Of course my big brother was always the boss, he was the head pilot of the bomber, the captain of the submarine, the leader of the expedition into outer space: he loved giving orders, my brother.’

  Suddenly she saw herself as she had been at the age of eleven, in the room at her father’s where she slept every other weekend. She loved that room, because she could go to sleep later than at home, and because there was never any homework to do. It was late. Late, in any case, for an eleven-year-old girl. Her father had been reading her 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and when she closed her eyes, she was no longer in a tiny room of eight square metres but at the bottom of the ocean on board the Nautilus.

  ‘What was he like, your brother?’

  She saw him hesitate.

  ‘He was just like … a big brother: protective, nice, a pain, really smart …’

  ‘And what happened to him?’

  ‘He died.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The stupidest death on earth. A motorcycle accident, and an infection in hospital. He was twenty-two.’

  ‘So it happened recently, then?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘End of discussion.’

  ‘Drissa Kanté?’

  He turned around. For a moment he stared, transfixed, at the apparition facing him in the middle of the hall, sheathed in black leather. He thought absurdly about a science fiction film. The opaque visor reflected his own gaping image. Then the apparition stuck a badge beneath his nose that transformed his spinal column into a refrigerator circuit.

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ he answered in a voice that sounded horribly guilty to his ears.

  ‘Can I have a word?’

  The apparition removed its helmet and he saw a lovely face framed with blonde hair. But the stern look she gave him was not reassuring.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘At your place, if you don’t mind. Do you live alone? Which floor?’

  He swallowed.

  ‘Ninth.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Ziegler firmly, pointing to the doors to the lift.

  Inside the lift, which was as decrepit as the hallway, he looked straight ahead. Not saying a word, not looking at the woman next to him. The woman remained equally silent, but he could tell she wasn’t taking her eyes off him. Every passing second made him more nervous. He knew it must have something to do with that recent job. He should have refused. He had known right from the start that it was a bad idea.

  ‘What do you want with me?’ he said, getting bolder, as they came out of the lift. ‘I’m in a hurry. Friends are waiting for me, to watch the match.’

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough. You did something really stupid, Monsieur Kanté. Something unbelievably stupid. But maybe all is not lost. I’ve come to give you a chance to put things right. Your only chance.’

  He reflected on what she had said as he unlocked the door to his flat.

  A chance. The word resonated through his thoughts.

  Where the hell were they going? For a moment Elias and Margot had thought they were heading west, but suddenly they changed course, heading due south towards the central Pyrenees, at the limit of the two regions of the Haute-Garonne and the Hautes-Pyrenées. They had left the plain and the hills and were now entering a valley several kilometres wide, surrounded by already high mountains, although the most impressive summits of the range were ahead of them, strung with villages like the beads of a rosary. Margot was beginning to wonder whether they wouldn’t be spotted after all: they’d been following the Ford Fiesta for a good hundred kilometres or more.

  But the stormy weather, darker and darker as the evening advanced, was on their side: in a rear-view mirror, any car headlights would look the same. Heavy clouds hung above the valley like anvils, and the light was turning greenish, both unusual and unsettling.

  Margot found the landscape beautiful, immense, deep and hostile all at the same time. As for Elias, he was entirely absorbed by what was happening ahead of him. They went through a village of huddled houses, nestled in the confluence of two fast-moving streams, with two monumental bridges spanning them. She saw a few French flags hanging from the balconies, as well as a Portuguese flag. The steep peaks where they were headed, at the end of the valley, bit into the sky like a giant jaw. She was increasingly anxious to know just where they were going. If they ventured into the mountains, it would be hard to escape the vigilance of the Ford Fiesta’s occupants. There couldn’t be many cars driving up there in weather like this. The moment they hit the hairpin bends, David, Sarah and Virginie would see Elias’s Saab below them.

  ‘Fuck, where the hell are they going?’ he said, echoing her thoughts.

  ‘There are still a few cars on this road. But if they leave it for a smaller road, they’re bound to notice us if we follow them.’

  Elias gave her a reassuring wink.

  �
��All the roads that lead into this valley, or almost all of them, are cul-de-sacs. If they take one, we’ll let them get ahead and we’ll wait for a while before following. That way, they won’t get suspicious.’

  How did he manage to keep his cool? He’s bluffing, she thought. He’s as scared as I am, but he’s playing the tough guy. She was beginning to regret that she’d let herself be dragged into this. I don’t like the look of this, not one bit.

  Drissa Kanté’s flat was tiny but very colourful. Ziegler was almost dazzled by the bursts of colour – red, yellow, orange, blue – everywhere on the walls. Fabrics, paintings, drawings, objects … a joyful chaos reigned and she had some difficulty finding her way to the sofa.

  Drissa had clearly made an effort to revive something of his country in this tiny space. He sat down on a chair opposite her and didn’t move. He looked at her, and she read the fear in his look. He told her in great detail about his meetings with ‘the fat man with greasy hair’. She listened attentively and deduced that fat-ass was a detective. She wasn’t surprised; in recent years such agencies had proliferated: in a world where the economy was looking more and more like a war, even well-established groups did not hesitate to avail themselves of their services. Lawyers representing small shareholders who were being hounded in their private life; members of Greenpeace who were victims of computer espionage; political personalities whose apartments had been ‘visited’: recourse to detective agencies had become a common, widespread, established practice.

  Irène knew that in order to obtain sensitive information these agencies also resorted to the good offices of some of her colleagues who were not too scrupulous about supplementing their income: gendarmes, soldiers, former intelligence operatives. Drissa Kanté was simply one of their minions among hundreds of others. Truthfully, she couldn’t care less about the missions the man from Mali had carried out on behalf of this detective. What interested her was the man himself.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Drissa. ‘That’s all I know about him.’

  He handed her a drawing he had just done. He was a good artist – it was as good as any Photofit.

  She looked up at him. Drissa Kanté was sweating profusely. His eyes were shining with fear and expectation, his pupils dilated.

  ‘So you’ve got no surname, or first name, or pseudonym?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And the USB stick, have you still got it?’

  ‘No, I gave it back.’

  ‘Okay. Try and remember some other details. Six foot three, twenty stone, greasy brown hair, dark glasses. What else?’

  He hesitated.

  ‘He sweats a lot. He always has sweat rings under his armpits.’

  He looked at her, hoping for a sign of approval. She nodded her head to encourage him.

  ‘He drinks beer.’

  ‘What else?’

  He took out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his face.

  ‘An accent.’

  She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘What sort of accent?’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Sicilian or Italian …’

  She fixed her gaze on him.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He hesitated again.

  ‘Yes. He talks a bit like Mario, the pizza guy.’

  She couldn’t help but smile. She wrote in her notebook: Super Mario? Sicilian? Italian?

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Fear, once again, in his eyes.

  ‘It won’t be enough, will it?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Espérandieu could hear them now, two doors down. They were chatting, laughing and predicting the results. He could even hear the commentator’s voice announcing the line-up, shouting to make himself heard above the din of spectators in the stadium and the buzzing of the vuvuzelas. And the noise of beer bottles clinking together. For Christ’s sake!

  He closed the file. He’d finish the job tomorrow. It could wait a few hours, after all. He felt like a nice cold beer, and he wanted to hear the anthems. It was his favourite moment. He was about to get up when the phone on his desk rang.

  ‘We have the results from the handwriting comparison,’ said a voice.

  He sat back down. The notebook, on Claire’s desk. And the notes in the margin of Margot’s homework. He figured at least he wasn’t the only one working that evening.

  Servaz parked in the quiet street. All the windows in the house were dark. Hot air came in through the lowered car window, bringing an aroma of flowers. He lit a cigarette and waited. Two and a half hours later, the red Spider drove past him in silence. A light began to flash at the top of a stone column, casting an orange glow onto the pavement, and the gate opened slowly. The Alfa Romeo disappeared inside.

  Servaz waited for the lights to come on in the house before getting out of the car. He crossed the deserted street, taking his time, his shoes making almost no sound on the asphalt. There was a little door next to the gate on the other side of the pillar. He lowered the handle and the door opened silently. The only sound was the pounding of his blood in his chest when he walked up the flagstoned path that serpentined its way between the flowerbeds, the pine and the weeping willow. At this hour they were nothing more than masses of shadow blocking the light that came from the street lamp below the house. The enormous pine tree stood tall, like a totem, like the guardian of the place. Going up three concrete steps, Servaz reached a raised terrace surrounded by flowering bushes and again he could hear the distant sound of a television somewhere in a neighbouring house. Sports commentary and the clamour of an overexcited crowd. The match, he thought. He rang the bell. Heard the echo of the chime inside. Waited for a second. Then the door opened without him having heard any footsteps and he almost jumped out of his skin when Francis Van Acker’s voice said, ‘Martin?’

  ‘Am I disturbing you?’

  ‘No. Come in.’

  Francis led the way into the house. He was wearing a satin dressing gown tied at the waist. Servaz wondered if he was naked underneath.

  He looked all around him. The interior was nothing like the exterior; everything was modern. Minimalist. Empty. Grey walls almost devoid of any pictures, a light-coloured floor, chrome, steel and dark wood for the rare pieces of furniture. Rows of spotlights on the ceiling. Piles of books on the steps of the staircase. The picture windows on the veranda were open and the sounds of the neighbourhood came in – reassuring signs of normality, of ordinary lives, the echoes of children playing, dogs barking, and television. A summer evening. In contrast, the silence and emptiness that reigned inside the house seemed all the more heavy. They spoke the language of solitude. Of an existence turned entirely in on oneself. Servaz understood that no one had come here for a long time. Francis Van Acker must have realised how ill at ease Servaz felt because he switched on the television, with the volume off, and slotted a CD into the mini-stereo.

  ‘Would you like something to drink?’

  ‘A coffee. Strong and sweet. Thanks.’

  ‘Have a seat.’

  Servaz collapsed onto one of the sofas by the television. He recognised the piece that began to play a few seconds later: Nocturne No. 7 in C-sharp minor. There was a tension all through the music, where the bass notes predominated. Servaz felt a shiver go down his spine.

  Francis came back with a tray, pushed aside the art books on the coffee table, and set the cups down before them. He nudged the sugar bowl delicately over to Martin. Servaz noticed that he had a scratch between his neck and shoulder. On the TV screen, a series of adverts silently elapsed, then he saw the players of the French team come back onto the pitch for the second half.

  ‘To what do I owe the honour of your visit?’

  His host had raised his voice above the music.

  ‘Can’t you turn that thing down a little?’ Servaz blurted.

  ‘That thing, as you call it, is Chopin. No, I like it like that. Well?’

  ‘I need your opinion about something!’ shouted Se
rvaz.

  Perched on the wide armrest, Van Acker crossed his legs. He lifted the cup to his lips. Servaz diverted his gaze from his bare feet, his calves as smooth as a cyclist’s. Francis stared at him thoughtfully.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The investigation.’

  ‘How is it going?’

  ‘It’s going nowhere. Our prime suspect didn’t do it.’

  ‘It’s going to be difficult to help you if you don’t tell me more.’

  ‘Let’s say that I need your opinion on a more general, theoretical level, rather than a practical one.’

  ‘Hmm. I’m listening.’

  The image of the red Alfa Romeo Spider roaring out of Marianne’s garden at three in the morning crossed Servaz’s mind. He hastened to banish it. The notes of the piano rose and fell, hypnotically, in the room. He got a grip and forced himself to regain his lucidity. He breathed in.

  ‘What is your take on a murderer who tries to make us believe that another murderer, a serial killer, is in the region, and who tries to pin the blame for his own crimes on this serial killer? He sends e-mails to the police. He disguises himself as a biker and deliberately speaks with an accent to a petrol station attendant. He puts a CD in his victim’s stereo. He leaves little breadcrumbs wherever he goes, like Hansel and Gretel. He could also suggest there is a sort of … special relationship between the investigator and the murderer, even though there is a very precise motive behind his murders.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘The usual things: anger, revenge, or the necessity of silencing someone who’s blackmailing you and threatening to ruin your reputation, your career and your life.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I told you: to lead us in the wrong direction. So that we believe someone else is guilty.’

  He saw a spark in his friend’s eyes. The ghost of a smile. The tempo of the music picked up; now the notes were resounding across the room, as the pianist articulated and hammered frenetically on the keys.