The Circle

by Bernard Minier

  ‘Then we move.’

  ‘Without back-up? Special forces?’

  ‘Hirtmann isn’t a terrorist or a gangster. He’s not prepared for that type of confrontation. He won’t put up any resistance.’

  ‘It seems to me he has plenty of resources,’ objected Stehlin.

  ‘For the time being, we don’t even know if this plan will work. We’ll decide when the time comes.’

  ‘Right, fine. But I want to be kept informed the minute anything happens, and you pass on everything you have, is that clear?’

  ‘I haven’t finished,’ said Servaz.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘You have to call the magistrate; I need authorisation to collect evidence. From an inmate at the prison in Seysses.’

  Stehlin nodded. He had understood. He turned around and reached for a newspaper, which he tossed in front of Servaz.

  ‘It didn’t work. No leak, this time.’

  Servaz looked at Stehlin. Could he have been mistaken? Either the journalist hadn’t found the information sufficiently important, or Pujol was not the leak.

  The sky beyond the classroom windows was pale. Everything was still. A white heat hung like a transparent film over the landscape. Short, hard shadows underneath the oaks, lindens and poplars made them all seemed petrified. Only a jet’s fluffy white vapour trail and a few birds provided some movement. And even the final-year students training on the rugby pitch seemed to be suffering, their game unfolding in slow motion, with no more enthusiasm or inspiration than that of the French national football team.

  Summer had settled in and as Margot looked out of the window she wondered how long this whole business would last. She was listening to the history class with only half an ear, and the words slid over her like water on plastic. She thought back to the handwritten note she had found taped to her locker an hour earlier. On reading it she had blushed with shame and anger, then, from the gazes she met all around her, she realised that everyone already knew about it. The note said:

  Hugo is innocent. Your father had better watch out. And you too. You’re not welcome any more, filthy whore.

  Her strategy was beginning to pay off …

  25

  Circles

  On Tuesday afternoon at 13.05 Meredith Jacobsen was waiting in the arrivals hall at Orly-Ouest for the Air France flight from Toulouse-Blagnac. It was ten minutes late, but she knew why: the flight had been delayed to allow her boss, Paul Lacaze, to board. He had got his seat at the last minute on a plane that was already packed.

  It was not his position as MP that had earned him such preferential treatment, but his membership of a very closed circle: the 2,000 Club. Unlike the usual frequent flyer programmes reserved for travellers who had clocked up tens of thousands of miles, membership of the 2,000 Club was granted only to a tightly restricted club of major economic movers and shakers, showbusiness personalities, and high-ranking civil servants and politicians. Originally the club had been limited to 2,000 members around the world, to delineate how exclusive and important it was, but it had gradually been enlarged and there were almost ten times the original number now. The 577 deputies of the National Assembly were not automatically granted access to the club, obviously; but Lacaze was a rising star, a media darling, and the airline pampered such high-profile personalities.

  At last the doors opened, and Meredith waved to her boss as he came towards her. He seemed to be in a bad mood. She kissed him on both cheeks, grabbed his bag and they headed to a waiting taxi.

  ‘We have to hurry,’ she said. ‘Devincourt is expecting you for lunch at the Cercle de l’Union interalliée.’

  Lacaze grumbled to himself: ‘the Whale’ could have chosen somewhere more discreet. Officially, Devincourt was just one senator among others. He wasn’t even a group president. But in reality, at the age of seventy-two, he was one of the big names in the party. He had been elected as an MP for the first time at the age of twenty-nine, in 1967, and he had served all the ministries of the realm one after the other for over forty years; he had known six presidents, eighteen prime ministers, thousands of parliamentarians, and he had been in on more successes and failures than anyone. Lacaze saw him as a dinosaur, a man of the past, a has-been – but no one could afford to ignore the Whale.

  Meredith tugged on her skirt as she settled into the back of the taxi and Lacaze thought, not for the first time, that she really did have nice legs. With an open file on her lap, Meredith went over his schedule for the day and he gazed out at the dreary fallow fields of Paris’s southern suburbs while listening to her with one ear. By and large, he’d rather have the slums of Buenos Aires or São Paulo any day. He had visited them during one of the extravagant official voyages organised by the Assembly’s friendship groups: those suburbs, at least, had some charm.

  When he entered the grand dining room, Lacaze saw that the Whale had not waited to be seated. He was presiding triumphantly in the middle of the Salle à Manger, the Cercle de l’Union interalliée’s restaurant on the first floor. The old senator preferred it to the terrace, which was always overcrowded in fine weather, or the cafeteria where the sporty thirtysomethings clustered whenever they visited the club’s sports facilities. The Whale did not do sport and he weighed easily twenty-five stone. He had been a regular at the Cercle before those snotty-nosed kids were even born. Founded in 1917, when the United States officially entered the war, the Cercle de l’Union interalliée had originally been designed to welcome the officers of the Alliance, but it had long ago lost its original function. It had two restaurants, a bar, a garden, a library with 15,000 volumes, private drawing rooms, a billiards room, a swimming pool, a Turkish bath, and a sporting complex in the basement. The admission fee was roughly €4,000; the annual membership fee €1,400. Of course, money was not enough to obtain admission – otherwise every spotty computer genius, drug trafficker from the banlieue or newly wealthy secondhand-clothes merchant from the other side of the Atlantic would come and sprawl in its drawing rooms and trample the carpets in their trainers. One had to have a sponsor – and patience – and for some people the wait would last an entire lifetime.

  Weaving his way between the tables, Lacaze observed that the senator had not noticed him yet. He could see the rolls of fat on his neck and the way his cushions of flesh stretched the fabric of his expensive suit.

  ‘My young friend,’ said Devincourt in his rasping voice when he saw the MP. ‘Do have a seat. I didn’t wait. My belly is more demanding than the most demanding of mistresses.’

  ‘Hello, Senator.’

  The maître d’ arrived and Lacaze ordered a rack of lamb with bolet mushrooms.

  ‘So, I hear tell that you stuck your nose in some pussy and she had the bad manners to snuff it? I hope she was worth it, at least.’

  Lacaze shuddered. He took a deep breath. An acid mixture of fury and despair twisted his bowels. To hear the Whale speak like that about Claire made him want to smash the fat bastard’s skull. But he had already broken down in front of that cop. He had to get a grip on himself.

  ‘Well, at least she wasn’t paid,’ he retorted, clenching his jaw.

  Everyone in Paris knew that the Whale resorted to the paid services of professionals. Girls from Eastern Europe whose pimps sent them to grand hotels that were not very particular. For a moment the senator stared at him, his gaze indecipherable – then he exploded with laughter, earning their table a few surprised looks.

  ‘Shit, what a bloody fool! In love on top of everything!’ Devincourt wiped his lips with the corner of his napkin and suddenly went serious. Coming from him, there was something obscene about the word love, and once again Paul Lacaze felt his stomach go into a knot. ‘I was in love myself once,’ said the Whale suddenly. ‘A long time ago. I was a student. She was magnificent. She was studying at the Beaux-Arts. She was talented – oh, yes. I think those were the most beautiful days of my life. I had every intention of marrying her; I dreamt of having children, a big family, with her by my side. We
would have had a sweet, long, peaceful life: we would have grown old together, watched our children grow up and have children themselves. And we would have been proud of them, of our friends, of ourselves. A schoolgirl’s daydreams – my head was full of them. Can you imagine? Me, Pierre Devincourt! And then I found her in bed with someone else. She hadn’t even bothered to lock her door. Did your girlfriend have someone else?’

  ‘No.’

  His answer was firm and immediate. Devincourt gave him a cautious look, a brief spark of cunning beneath his heavy eyelids.

  ‘People vote,’ said the Whale suddenly. ‘They may think they decide … but they have no power of decision. None whatsoever. Because all they do is re-elect the same caste, ad infinitum, from one term of office to the next. The same little group of people who decide everything for them. Us. And when I say “us”, I’m including our political opponents. Two parties who’ve been sharing power for fifty years. Who pretend they don’t agree on anything when in fact they do, on almost everything … For fifty years we have been the masters of this country and for fifty years we’ve been selling the good people this fraudulent notion of “change”. Coalition should have started them thinking: how can two ruling parties with such radically opposing views work together? But it didn’t: they have gone on swallowing the fraud whole, as if everything were fine and dandy. And we reap the benefits of their largesse.’

  He lifted a lobster’s claw to his mouth and sucked noisily.

  ‘But lately, some people have wanted to divide the pie up rather too quickly. They forget they have to put on an act. You can piss on the people – but only if they believe it’s rain.’

  The Whale wiped his mouth again.

  ‘You won’t get to be head of the party if there are any scandals, Paul. Not any more. Those days are over. So do what you have to do to keep yourself out of that murder case – understood? I’ll take care of the little commandant. We’ll keep an eye on him. But I want to know: do you have an alibi for the night of the murder?’

  Lacaze gave a start.

  ‘Good Lord, what are you thinking? That I killed her?’

  He saw the fat man’s eyes flare with anger. The Whale leaned over the table and his bass voice rumbled like thunder between the glasses.

  ‘Listen to me, you prat! Keep your wide-eyed innocent act for the courts, all right? I want to know what you were doing that night: were you screwing her, drinking with friends, snorting a line in the bog, was there someone with you, or no one – people who can testify, dammit! And stop putting on airs like you’re so wholesome, you’re pissing me off.’

  Lacaze felt as if he’d been slapped. The blood drained from his face. He looked around to make sure no one had overheard.

  ‘I was … I was with Suzanne. We were watching a DVD. Since her diagnosis, I’ve been trying to be at home as much as possible.’

  The senator sat up straight.

  ‘I’m very sorry about Suzanne. It’s awful, what’s happened to her. I am very fond of her.’

  The Whale said this with brutal sincerity, then plunged his nose back into his plate. End of discussion. Lacaze felt a wave of guilt wash over him. He wondered how the man seated opposite would have reacted if he had known the truth.

  26

  Quarters

  Sounds, to start with. Invasive, disturbing. They made a thick net of noise, unceasing, a relentless routine. Voices, doors, shouts, gates, locks, footsteps, key chains. Then came the smell. Not necessarily unpleasant, but typical. You would recognise it anywhere. All prisons have the same smell.

  Here most of the voices were female. The women’s wing of the prison of Seysses, near Toulouse.

  When the warden unlocked the door, Servaz stiffened. He had left his gun and his warrant card at the entrance, signed in, and gone through the multiple security doors. He followed in the guard’s footsteps, and he prepared himself mentally.

  The woman motioned to him to go in. He took a breath and crossed the threshold. Prisoner number 1614 was sitting with her elbows on the table, her hands crossed in front of her. The neon light fell on her chestnut hair, which was no longer thick and long and silky, but short, dry and dull. But her gaze had not changed. Élisabeth Ferney had lost none of her arrogance, nor her authority. Servaz was willing to bet that she had carved out her niche here, just as she had when she had been head nurse at the Wargnier Institute. Everyone did her bidding there. And she was the one who had helped Julian Alois Hirtmann to escape. Servaz had attended her trial. Her lawyer had tried to insist that Hirtmann had manipulated her, tried to portray her as a victim – but his client’s personality had worked against her. The members of the jury could see for themselves that the woman in the dock was anything but a victim.

  ‘Hello, Commandant.’

  Her voice was still just as firm. But there was a new weariness. Her intonation had a slight drawl to it now. Servaz wondered if Lisa Ferney was taking antidepressants. It was common practice here.

  ‘Hello, Élisabeth.’

  ‘Oh, first-name basis now, is it? Are we friends? News to me … Around here, it’s usually Ferney. Or 1614. That slut who brought you here, she calls me the “head bitch”. But that’s just for show. In fact, she comes to see me at night and she’s the one who gets down on her knees …’

  Servaz looked at her closely, trying to tell how much was true and how much was false, but it was a waste of time. Élisabeth Ferney was unfathomable – apart from the little sparks of malice that danced in her brown eyes. Servaz had known a prison director who, when referring to his female inmates, would say ‘that bitch’ or ‘those whores’. He insulted them systematically, harassed the youngest ones sexually, and went to the women’s wing every night for blow jobs. He’d been dismissed, but there had been no criminal charges, as the prosecutor considered his dismissal sufficient punishment. Servaz knew that in the prison world, anything was possible.

  ‘You know what I miss the most?’ she continued, apparently satisfied with the reaction she saw on his face. ‘The Internet. We all got hooked on that crap, it’s crazy. I’m sure that being deprived of Facebook will cause the number of prison suicides to skyrocket.’

  He pulled up a chair and sat down opposite her. He could hear sounds through the closed door. The echoes of voices, shouts, a cart being pushed – and then one particular noise: the clinking of metal on metal. Servaz knew what this meant. Exercise time. The guards used this time to go into the cells and make sure none of the bars had been sawn through by tapping on them with an iron bar. That sound … nothing could make the prisoners feel their solitude more than that permanent background noise.

  ‘Seventy per cent of the inmates here are drug addicts, did you know that? Fewer than ten per cent of them get any sort of treatment. Last week there was a girl who hanged herself. It was her seventh attempt and she had told them she would try again. And yet they left her alone, with no surveillance. So you see, if I wanted to, I could escape. One way or another.’

  He wondered what she was getting at. Had Élisabeth Ferney tried to commit suicide? He made a mental note to ask the medical staff.

  ‘But you’re not here just to see how I’m doing, are you?’

  Servaz knew she would ask this question. He thought again of his father’s advice. Sincerity … He wasn’t sure this was the best strategy, but he didn’t have any others in his arsenal.

  ‘Julian wrote to me. An e-mail. I think he’s here in Toulouse, or not far from here.’

  Was there something in the former head nurse’s gaze? Or was it just his imagination? She was staring at him, as impenetrable as ever.

  ‘“Julian”, “Élisabeth” … We’re all chums now, are we? And what did it say, that e-mail?’

  ‘That he was going to take action, that he was enjoying his freedom.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  The smile on her unpainted lips was like a scar.

  ‘Show me the e-mail, and perhaps I’ll tell you.�
��

  ‘No.’

  The smile vanished.

  ‘You look tired, Martin … You look like someone who doesn’t get a lot of sleep, or am I mistaken? It’s because of him, isn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t look too great either, Lisa.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question. Is Hirtmann bugging you? Are you afraid he’ll go after you? Do you have children?’

  Beneath the table he dug his nails into his palms. Then he placed his hands flat on his thighs, uncrossed his ankles and tried to relax. There was something about Élisabeth Ferney that chilled him to the bone.

  ‘And anyway, why you? If I’m not mistaken, you only met him once. I remember your visit to the Institute. With that little psychologist with a goatee and that female gendarme … such a pretty girl. What did you discuss for him to get so fixated on you? And you – you’re fixated on him too, aren’t you?’

  He told himself he mustn’t let her lead the conversation. Élisabeth Ferney belonged to the same race as Hirtmann: she was a narcissistic pervert, a manipulator who constantly tried to establish her hold over other people’s minds. He was about to say something but she didn’t give him the chance.

  ‘So, you figure he might have been in touch with his former accomplice, is that it? Even if I did know something, why should I tell you? You, of all people?’

  This question, too, he had foreseen. He confronted her gaze.

  ‘I spoke to the magistrate. Access to daily papers, and you’ll be enrolled in the micro-computing workshop. With Internet access once a week. I will personally make sure that the magistrate’s decision is properly enforced by the administration of this … establishment. You have my word.’

  ‘And what if I have nothing to tell you? What if Hirtmann hasn’t contacted me? Does your offer still hold?’

  She gave him a nasty smile. He didn’t answer.

  ‘And what guarantee do I have that you will keep your word?’

  ‘None.’

  She laughed. But it was a joyless laugh. He had hit the bull’s eye. He could see it in her gaze.