The Circle

by Bernard Minier

  ‘For a long time?’

  The young man shrugged as if to say, ‘What the fuck does it matter, now?’

  ‘For as long as I’ve known David he’s been depressive,’ he said, his voice flat and mechanical. ‘Even when we were kids, he was always … strange. He would have these sort of black moods … and that sad smile. When he was twelve years old he was already smiling like that.’

  Servaz saw him take a sort of deep breath, as if he were preparing to hold his head under water.

  ‘Sometimes he had unpredictable reactions – he could go from joy to despair in a second. When he was like that, his mates avoided him – but not me. His mother sent him to shrinks for years, until finally he told her to fuck off. It was all the fault of his dirty bastard of a father.’ Hugo’s words were flowing like lava. ‘And that wanker of a brother. They’re the ones who screwed him up. I remember one time when David was fourteen he brought a girl home, a nice girl. His brother got such a kick out of humiliating him in front of her that she never wanted to go to their place ever again or even speak to him. His father wouldn’t allow him to read or even have books in his room: he said that reading made you effeminate. His father would brag about how he got where he was without reading a single book in his entire life, even at school.’

  ‘Had he ever made other suicide attempts?’

  ‘Yes, several. Once he even tried to stab himself in the stomach with a knife. Like samurais, you know what I mean? That was just after the episode with the girl.’

  Servaz remembered the scar beneath his fingers. His throat tightened and he swallowed. Hugo looked at them in turn.

  ‘Is this why you came to wake me up in the middle of the night? Why all three of you came? To tell me that David was dead?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘They’re letting me out tomorrow morning, right?’

  Servaz could hear the concern in his voice. He didn’t answer.

  ‘Fuck, David, my brother …’ moaned Hugo suddenly. ‘What a shit life you had, my friend …’

  ‘He did it for you,’ said Servaz softly but clearly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was with him in the car. David confessed to the murders of Claire Diemar and Elvis Elmaz. And of Bertrand Christiaens and Joachim Campos.’

  ‘Who?’

  Good acting, thought Servaz. You didn’t fall into the trap.

  ‘Those two names don’t mean anything to you?’

  Hugo shook his head.

  ‘Should they?’

  ‘Those are the names of the fire chief who came to your rescue at Néouvielle lake, and the coach driver.’

  ‘Oh, right. Now that you mention it—’

  ‘And Claire Diemar was in the coach that night, too, wasn’t she?’

  Hugo gave Servaz a strange look. A clap of thunder boomed beyond the window.

  ‘That’s right. She was. You think there’s a connection between the accident and her death. You say that David confessed to Claire’s murder? Before he killed himself?’

  Hugo seemed to be sincerely stunned. The kid was an incredibly good actor.

  ‘If he committed suicide by crashing into a truck, and you were in the car, how come you’re here right now?’

  He was staring suspiciously at Servaz. It was all Servaz could do not to lunge at him across the table.

  ‘Enough now,’ said Ziegler calmly.

  Hugo swung his gaze around to her.

  ‘Well done about the notebook idea. It was risky, but clever. First it accused you. Then it made you innocent.’

  No answer.

  ‘I suppose that if the policemen in charge of the investigation hadn’t dug further in their search, if they hadn’t shown, shall we say, sufficient curiosity and professional conscience, you yourself might have asked for a handwriting examination.’

  For a fraction of a second, it was there. The spark. The sign they were waiting for. But it vanished at once.

  ‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! It’s not my handwriting in that notebook.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Servaz. ‘Since it’s David’s.’

  ‘So, is it true? He’s the one who killed her?’

  ‘You fucking filthy little bastard,’ said Ziegler. ‘Are you the one who asked him to write those words in the notebook, Hugo? Or did he do it on his own initiative?’

  ‘What? What are you talking about!’

  Another flash. Closer. Deep in the prison, someone shouted. A long, painful cry, which ended as soon as it had begun. A guard’s footsteps in the corridor. Then silence, once again. But it was never silent for long in prison.

  ‘Claire slept around quite a bit, didn’t she?’ said Servaz.

  ‘Were you jealous?’ asked Ziegler.

  ‘How many did you kill, you and your little friends?’ asked Espérandieu.

  ‘The fire chief, that was you,’ said Servaz. ‘Sarah, Virginie, David and you: four people threw him in the water.’

  ‘And in Joachim Campos’s car, a witness saw two men with him. Was it you and David?’ suggested Ziegler.

  ‘Were there two of you there, that night, to kill Claire Diemar?’ continued Vincent. ‘The camera filmed two people leaving the pub. Was it you and David then as well? Or did David merely stand guard?’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you stayed there,’ added Servaz. ‘Why take the risk? Why not do what you’d done with the others? Why didn’t you disguise her death as an accident or a disappearance? Why did you sit next to her swimming pool? Why?’

  Hugo’s gaze flickered to each of them in turn in the neon light. Servaz saw doubt, anger and fear in his face. Servaz’s phone gave a double beep in his pocket. A message. Not now … He did not take his eyes off Hugo.

  ‘You have to stop this!’ said Hugo finally. ‘Call the director, I want to speak to him! I have nothing to say to you. Get out of here!’

  ‘Did you kill her all by yourself, Hugo? Or were there several of you? Did David take part?’

  Silence.

  ‘No, I was alone.’

  Hugo looked up at them, his eyes thin shining slits. They said nothing. Servaz felt his heart pounding. He knew the others felt the same.

  ‘I went there to warn her of the danger she was in. I’d been doing lines at the pub, and I’d drunk too much. I knew the others were about to put their plan into action. It was June. And I knew it was her turn, this time. We had talked about it, amongst ourselves.’

  He made a little gesture with his hand, just like his mother.

  ‘I knew she’d been a coward, that night, six years ago. That she left us to our fate, me and the others. But I also knew that she’d been haunted by it ever since. She had told me so. She thought about it all the time, she was obsessed by it. The fact that she’d behaved so badly. “I was afraid, I panicked that night. I was a coward. You should hate me, Hugo.” She said it all the time. “Why are you so kind, so nice to me?” Or else, “Stop loving me, I don’t deserve it, I don’t deserve all this love, I’m not a good person.” And the tears would stream down her cheeks. And then there were other times when she was the happiest, funniest, most surprising, most marvellous person I’ve ever met. She could turn every moment into a miracle. I loved her, do you understand?’ He paused for a moment, and his voice changed, as if there were two actors sharing a role. ‘I was drunk and completely stoned that night when I left the pub. I went to see her while everyone else was watching the match. I told her about the Circle. In the beginning, she could hardly believe it, she thought I was making it up, that I was drunk; and then when I told her in detail about the death of the driver, she suddenly realised I was telling the truth.’

  Servaz looked at Hugo’s eyes. The gleam deep inside. Like embers poked and kindled beneath the ash, like a fire burning for a long time.

  ‘And then I saw her change. It was as if someone else had taken

  her place. She wasn’t the Claire I knew … the Claire I knew encouraged me to write and swore to me
she had never seen such a talented student. She sent me twenty texts a day to tell me she loved me and that nothing would ever keep us apart, that we would grow old together and still be as much in love as we had been on the first day. And she would quote authors and poets who spoke about love, and she’d make up songs about us, or she’d find a name for every part of my body as if it were the map of a country that belonged to her. And she wasn’t afraid to say, “I love you” again and again, a hundred times a day … Suddenly that Claire ceased to exist. She was … gone. And the one who replaced her looked at me as if I were a monster, an enemy. She was afraid of me.’

  Hugo’s words hung suspended. Every one of them seemed to find an echo in Servaz’s heavy heart.

  ‘She wanted to call the police. I did everything I could to dissuade her; I couldn’t stand the idea that my brothers and sisters might go to prison. Or the thought that they’d have to pay all over again, what with everything they had already been through. I didn’t know what to do. I told her I would convince them to stop, that it was all over, there would be no more victims, but she didn’t have the right to do that to them after what she had already done. She didn’t want to listen, it was as if she’d gone mad, she was deaf to all my arguments. We started to quarrel; I pleaded with her. And then suddenly she came out with it: she told me she didn’t love me any more anyway, it was all over between us, she loved someone else. She’d been meaning to tell me, soon. She spoke to me about this guy, the MP: she said she was madly in love with him, she was sure of him. I wanted to protect her and all she could think of was to send us to prison and get rid of me! I couldn’t let her do that. I was furious, I was drunk with anger. I told myself: what kind of woman can swear to a man on everything she holds dearest that she will love him until the end of time, then the next day she loves someone else? What kind of woman can be so wonderful and then suddenly as ugly as can be? What kind of woman can play with people like that? And I thought: the kind who leaves children to die because she’s a coward. She was young and beautiful and carefree, and only thought about herself. All the remorse eating away at her, her guilt, it was all show. As was her love. A lie. She lied to herself the way she lied to others. That night I understood that Claire Diemar was nothing but selfishness and pretence. That she would always be poison for anyone who crossed paths with her.’

  ‘So you hit her,’ said Servaz. ‘You found a rope and tied her up before you put her in the bath. And you turned on the tap.’

  ‘I wanted her to understand before she died what the children had been through because of her. For once in her life she would know all the harm she had done.’

  ‘Well, she got the picture, that’s for sure,’ said Servaz. ‘And then you threw the dolls into the swimming pool and sat there by the water. Why the dolls? Was it because they symbolised your drowned schoolmates floating to the surface?’

  ‘Whenever I went to her place, that collection of dolls gave me the creeps.’

  ‘And then?’

  Hugo raised his head and looked at them.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘You were in a state of shock, paralysed by what you’d done, still under the effect of alcohol and drugs: who came that night to take Claire’s laptop and empty her mailbox and make it look as if someone else was trying to cover their tracks? Who put Mahler on the stereo, who was there?’

  ‘David.’

  Servaz slammed his fist on the table so hard that he made the others in the room jump. He stood up and leaned over the table.

  ‘You’re lying! David just committed suicide trying to save you – you, his brother, his best friend, and you’re already defiling his memory? That night, David left the pub after you did, he was on the bank’s video surveillance cameras on the other side of the square. He even attacked me so that he could steal the recordings! But the CD, that wasn’t him. When I asked him about it, right before he died, he just stared at me: he didn’t know what I was talking about!’

  Hugo remained silent. He seemed shaken.

  ‘All right,’ he said finally in a dead voice, a voice filled with self-disgust. ‘David just came out of the pub that night. He wanted to stop me from telling Claire everything. I sent him packing and he went back inside. He only stole the recordings to make sure no one could find out about the Circle, and because it reinforced the theory that someone else was guilty.’

  A chill went through Servaz’s veins.

  ‘And the cigarette butts they found at Claire’s place, in the woods?’ he said. ‘Before he died he told me that it was his DNA on them.’

  ‘He disapproved of my affair with Claire. He despised her. Or maybe he was jealous, I don’t know. But what I do know is that he was there, sometimes, spying on us from the woods and smoking one cigarette after the other. David could be like that.’

  ‘Who was it, then?’ insisted Servaz, even if he was more and more afraid to hear the answer. ‘Who came to clear up after you? Who put the CD in that fucking stereo?’

  Another beep in his pocket. He took out his mobile. There were two messages. At this time of night? What could be so urgent? He opened the inbox. The number was not one he recognised. He opened the first message. And fear rushed through him again.

  ‘Margot!’ he shouted, leaping up from his chair.

  The SMS was signed, ‘J H’.

  And it said:

  Take care of your loved one.

  He hunted feverishly for Samira’s number, then pressed the call button.

  ‘Boss?’ said Samira, surprised.

  ‘Go and find Margot! Run! Hurry!’

  He could hear her trotting across the grass, then running on the gravel. He heard her race up the steps to the dormitory, pound on the door and say: ‘It’s Samira!’ He heard the door open and a familiar voice answer, a sleepy voice, a voice that felt like balm on a wound. Then Samira’s voice on the phone again, breathless.

  ‘She’s fine, boss. She was asleep.’

  He took a deep breath, looked at the others who were staring wide-eyed at him.

  ‘Please, do me a favour. Stay with her tonight, take the other bed. You understand?’

  ‘Copy,’ said Samira. ‘I’ll sleep in her room.’

  ‘Lock the door.’

  He closed his mobile, puzzled and relieved at the same time. He looked again at the text message.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Ziegler, who was on her feet now, too.

  Servaz showed her the message.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ said Servaz. ‘What is it?’

  ‘He’s going to go after Marianne.’

  ‘What’s this about my mother?’ said Hugo suddenly from the other side of the table.

  They looked at him.

  ‘She’s the one who put on the CD, isn’t she?’ said Servaz in a flat voice.

  ‘Tell me what the fuck is going on!’

  Servaz showed him the screen of his mobile and saw Hugo go pale.

  ‘Fuck, this time it’s really him!’ shouted Marianne’s son. ‘He’s going to punish her for taking his place. Yes, she’s the one who put on the CD, before she rang you. I called her for help, that night. I told her it was too late, because they had seen me from across the street. She knew the gendarmes would show up any minute. So she had this idea. She remembered your investigation, all those articles she’d read in the paper at the time: Hirtmann, the Institute, your shared love of Mahler. So she came as quickly as she could, and she put the CD in the stereo and left again right away. She was crying. She told me over the phone to try and empty Claire’s mailbox. I didn’t see the point, I was in a daze, but I did it and then I wiped the keyboard. If the gendarmes had found her there, she would simply have told them the truth: that I had called her for help. But they took a while to get there. They didn’t know they were going to find a corpse … and they’d probably all been watching the football. That’s what saved us. They showed up right after she left. Then she called you. She figured that if they gave the investigatio
n to you, and you found the CD, she might be in with a chance to make you doubt my guilt. And then she sent you that e-mail from a cybercafé.’

  Everything that had happened that week, everything Servaz had been through was coming to the surface. The manager of the Internet café had told him it was a woman who came in. Hugo and Margot had hung out together. Hugo must have told his mother what Margot’s favourite music was. And who else would have had the chance to fiddle with his mobile, enter a fake contact, while he was asleep? Who had been careful to avoid aiming straight at him with the rifle? Who had calmly carved the letters on the tree trunk during the night? He thought back to what he had said to Espérandieu over the phone in the car park: ‘The Mahler CD was in the stereo before the investigation was even assigned to us.’ And for good reason.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ screamed Hugo, shoving back his chair, which fell noisily to the floor. ‘Don’t you get it? Don’t you see what’s happening? He’s going to kill her!’

  There was a crack of thunder, then lightning; there were lights, flashing and glowing and swirling. The rain was pouring down the windscreen, messages crackled on radios, there were sirens and speed, and the road rushing by as if it were a fast-running river; the night spreading all around. Various sounds in his head, fear, his muddled conscience. The terrifying certainty that they would get there too late.

  Driving through Marsac in a fog … The lake … With Ziegler and Espérandieu, driving along the east shore, then the north shore, Vincent at the wheel. The vehicles from the gendarmerie were already there. Half a dozen of them. They went in through the wide open gates. In the house all the lights were on, both downstairs and up. Light was streaming from every window, illuminating the garden. There were gendarmes everywhere; Servaz had called them from the prison, almost an hour earlier. He leapt out of the car and hurried towards the entrance, running up the steps. The front door, too, was wide open.

  ‘Marianne!’ he called.

  He rushed into the deserted rooms.

  He came upon Bécker, the captain who had been at Claire’s house at the very beginning, speaking earnestly with other officers he didn’t know.

  ‘Well?’