The Circle

by Bernard Minier

  ‘Do you have anyone in particular in mind?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘And the suspect who is not the right one, that’s Hugo?’

  ‘It hardly matters. But what’s interesting is that whoever tried to frame him knows Marsac very well – its local customs, what goes on behind the scenes. It’s also someone with a literary mind.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He left a note on Claire’s desk, in a brand-new notebook. A quote from Victor Hugo, talking about enemies … to make us believe that Claire herself wrote it. Only she didn’t. It’s not her handwriting – the graphologist is categorical.’

  ‘Interesting. So, you think it might be a teacher, a staff member or a student, is that it?’

  He looked Francis in the eyes.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Van Acker stood up. He went behind the counter and leaned over the sink to wash his cup, his back to Martin.

  ‘I know you, Martin. I know what it means when you speak like this. You used to speak like this in the old days when you were close to the solution. You have another suspect, I’m sure of that. Out with it.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Van Acker turned round to face him again and opened a drawer behind the counter. He seemed relaxed, calm.

  ‘Teacher, staff member or student?’

  ‘Teacher.’

  The lower half of his body hidden by the counter, Francis went on absently staring at him. Servaz wondered what he was doing. He stood up and went over to a wall where, in the middle, a solitary painting hung. It was a large canvas, representing an imperial eagle perched on the back of a red armchair. The bird was fascinating, its feathers glinting golden, cloaking it in a mantle of pride. Its sharp beak and piercing gaze, focused on Servaz, expressed power and the absence of any doubt. It was a very fine canvas of striking realism.

  ‘It’s someone who believes he looks like this eagle,’ he commented. ‘Proud, powerful, sure of his superiority and his strength.’

  Van Acker moved behind him. Servaz heard his steps coming around the counter. He felt the tension spreading through his back and shoulders.

  ‘Have you mentioned this to anyone?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  He knew it was now or never. The painting was covered with a thick layer of varnish, and Servaz could see Francis’s reflection moving in it above the eagle’s shimmering feathers. Not towards him, but sideways. The music slowed and stopped.

  ‘And why don’t you follow your reasoning through to the end, Martin?’

  ‘What were you doing with Sarah in the gorge? What were you talking about?’

  ‘You followed me?’

  ‘Answer my question, please.’

  ‘Are you really so lacking in imagination? Reread your classics, for Christ’s sake: The Red and the Black, The Devil in the Flesh, Lolita … the teacher and his student, the ultimate cliché.’

  ‘Don’t take me for a fool. You didn’t even kiss.’

  ‘Ah, you were that close? She came to tell me that it was over, that she was putting an end to it. That was the purpose of our little nocturnal rendezvous. What were you doing there, Martin?’

  ‘Why is she leaving you?’

  ‘That is none of your fucking business.’

  ‘You get your drugs from a dealer nicknamed “Heisenberg”,’ said Servaz. ‘Since when have you been taking drugs?’

  The silence weighed on his shoulders. And seemed to drag on.

  ‘That, too, is none of your fucking business.’

  ‘Except that on the night of the murder, Hugo was drugged. Drugged and taken to the scene by someone who, in all likelihood, was at the Dubliners at the same time he was. And who poured something in his glass. There was a bit of a crowd, that night, wasn’t there? It can’t have been terribly complicated. I called Aodhágán. You were at the pub on the night of the match.’

  ‘Like half the teachers and students in Marsac.’

  ‘I also found a photograph at Elvis Elmaz’s place – the guy who was fed to his dogs. You must have heard about it. A photograph where you’re butt naked and with a girl who, by the looks of it, is under age. And I’ll bet she’s a student at the lycée, too. What would happen if word got out to the other teachers and the parents?’

  He thought he heard Francis pick something up, saw his arm move in the reflection.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Claire knew, didn’t she? That you were sleeping with your students. She had threatened to denounce you.’

  ‘No. She didn’t know a thing. At least, she never said anything to me.’

  The reflection on the painting moved very slowly.

  ‘You knew that Claire was having an affair with Hugo. You figured he would make an ideal culprit. Young, brilliant, jealous, quick-tempered – and stoned.’

  ‘Like his mother,’ said Francis behind him.

  Servaz shuddered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed anything? Martin, Martin … Clearly, you haven’t changed. Still just as blind. Marianne has been hooked on certain substances since Bokha’s death. She has a monkey on her back, too. And not a little one. More like a chimpanzee.’

  Servaz saw Marianne again as she had been on the night they made love – her strange look, her erratic behaviour. He mustn’t let himself get distracted – that was just what the man behind him wanted.

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you,’ said Francis, his voice echoing, although Servaz could not tell exactly where it was coming from. ‘Did I try to insinuate that Hirtmann was the guilty one, or Hugo? Your … theory is not very clear.’

  ‘Elvis was blackmailing you, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He was.’

  A slight movement again behind his back.

  ‘I paid him. After that, he left me alone.’

  ‘You really expect me to believe that?’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘Elvis isn’t the type to let go of such a good source of cash when he’s onto one.’

  ‘Until the day he found his favourite fighting dog in its cage with its throat cut and the note, “Next time it will be you”.’

  Servaz gulped.

  ‘You did that?’

  ‘Did I say that? There are people who are very good at that sort of thing – even though their rates are somewhat … excessive. But I’m not the one who hired them. It was another of Elvis’s victims. You know as well as I do that Marsac is full of important people – and money’s no object. After that, Elvis gave up his blackmailing activities. Good God, Martin, the police: what a waste! You were so talented.’

  Servaz saw the reflection reappear and take a step towards him in the varnish of the painting, then stop. Adrenaline was coursing through his veins, a mixture of panic and excitement.

  ‘Do you remember that short story? The first one you ever had me read, called “The Egg”. It was … it was absolutely marvellous.’ A vibration, a genuine trembling in his voice. ‘A jewel. There was everything in those pages, everything. It was like something written by an author already at the peak of his art, and you weren’t even twenty! I kept those pages. But I’ve never had the courage to reread them. I remember how I wept when I read them, Martin. I swear: I wept in my bed, those sheets of paper trembling in my hand, and I screamed with jealousy, and I cursed God because it was you, a naïve, sentimental little fucker, that he had chosen. A bit like all that bullshit with Mozart and Salieri, know what I mean? And that way you had of always looking gently stunned: you had everything, you had talent and you had Marianne. God is a proper shit when he wants to be, don’t you think? He knows how to hit where it hurts. So, yes, I wouldn’t rest until I had taken Marianne from you, because I knew I could never have your talent. And I knew how to go about it with her. It was easy. You made it incredibly easy for someone to take her from you.’

  Servaz felt as if the room were spinning. As if a fist were pressing against his chest to cause it to explode. He had to stay in control at all cost
s – this was not the moment to give way to emotion. That was exactly what Francis was waiting for.

  ‘Martin … Martin,’ said Francis behind him, and his smooth, sad, resigned tone made Servaz shudder.

  In his pocket, his mobile vibrated. Not now! Behind him the reflection moved again. The vibration persisted … He plunged his hand into his jacket, took out the phone and answered, keeping an eye on the reflection.

  ‘Servaz!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Vincent worriedly. He had heard the tension in his boss’s voice.

  ‘Nothing. Go ahead.’

  ‘We’ve had the results from the graphological comparison.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘If those are his notes on Margot’s homework, then it wasn’t Francis Van Acker who wrote in Claire’s notebook.’

  Parked by the side of the road, Margot and Elias were peering at the narrow road down which Sarah, David and Virginie had disappeared. It veered off from the other side and immediately started to climb. A sign indicated, ‘NéOUVIELLE DAM, 7 KM’. Through the window Margot could hear the rush of a stream just nearby, in the shade below the road.

  ‘What do we do?’ she asked.

  ‘We wait.’

  ‘How long?’

  He checked his watch.

  ‘Five minutes.’

  ‘Is that road a cul-de-sac?’

  ‘No. It leads to another valley over a pass, 1,800 metres high. Before that, it goes past the Néouvielle dam and along the lake of the same name.’

  ‘We might lose them.’

  ‘It’s a risk we take.’

  ‘You thought it was me.’

  The statement was voiced without emotion. Servaz looked at the bottle and Francis’s hand. An amber liquid. Whisky. It was a fine glass decanter. Heavy … Did he intend to use it? In his other hand, Francis was holding a glass. He half filled it. His hand was trembling. Then his gaze enveloped Servaz, full of pain and scorn.

  ‘Get out of here.’

  Servaz did not move.

  ‘Get the fuck out, I said. Why am I surprised? After all, you’re just a cop.’

  Exactly, he thought. Exactly, I’m a cop. He headed towards the door with a heavy step. As he placed his hand on the doorknob, he turned round. Francis Van Acker was not looking at him. He was drinking his whisky and staring at something on the wall he alone could see. And he looked so very lonely.

  38

  The Lake

  A mirror. Reflecting clouds, the setting sun, jagged peaks. Margot thought she could hear something: a chime, a deep bell, glass breaking. The waves lapped against the steep shores in the half-light.

  Elias switched off the engine and they got out.

  Margot immediately felt dizziness drain all her strength: on the other side of the road, she had glimpsed the vertiginous drop that left them suspended between heaven and earth.

  ‘It’s called an arch dam,’ said Elias, oblivious to her fear. ‘This one is the biggest one in the Pyrenees. It’s 110 metres high and the lake next to you holds 67,000,000 cubic metres of water.’

  He lit a cigarette. She refrained from looking beyond him to the gaping void, and concentrated on the lake. On this side, its surface was less than four metres from the edge.

  ‘The pressure is colossal,’ said Elias, following her gaze. ‘It’s thrust back towards the shores by a flying-buttress effect; you know, like in cathedrals.’

  A light wind ruffled the surface of the lake and caused the pine needles all around to dance. Unwooded areas gave way to a succession of grassy plateaus scattered with streams and rock piles. Then came the steep slopes of the mountain.

  ‘Look. There.’

  He handed her his binoculars. She followed the road, which rose to go around the lake, overlooking it by a dozen metres or so. Towards the middle of the reservoir there was a car park. Several cars were parked there, and even a minivan. Margot recognised the Ford Fiesta.

  ‘What are they doing there?’

  ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ he said, climbing behind the wheel.

  ‘How can we get closer without them hearing us?’

  He pointed to the end of the dam.

  ‘We find a place to leave the car and do the rest on foot. Hopefully they won’t have finished before we get there. But I’d be surprised. They haven’t come all this way for nothing.’

  ‘How will we get to them? Do you know this place?’

  ‘No, but we have two good hours of daylight ahead of us.’

  He turned the ignition and they drove to the end of the dam. There was a car park with a map at the entrance, sheltered beneath a little roof made of fir planking, but there was nowhere to hide the car. They left it there, and went over to the map. There were different trails available to hikers: three of them left from the second car park where the Ford Fiesta was parked, and a footpath joined the two car parks, following the shore and the road most of the way. Elias put his finger on the footpath and Margot nodded. At this time of day, in this weather, they probably wouldn’t run into any tourists. Besides, apart from Elias’s Saab, this first car park was deserted.

  ‘Switch off your phone,’ said Elias, taking his own out of his pocket.

  The temperature was dropping rapidly. They began walking along the stony path. The evening air smelled of resin and the mountain flowers whose white forms dotted the twilight, and the slightly stagnant smell of the great reservoir.

  The rocky dirt path climbed, looking down on the road, which in turn looked down on the lake. She supposed that at some point it would go back down to reach the second car park. The sky was turning a violet grey. The mountain was no more than a black mass, and what Elias had referred to as ‘daylight’ was less and less luminous. For all that they tried to step lightly, their shoes crushed the stones noisily enough to worry Margot. Because everywhere else there was silence.

  They had gone what Margot guessed was roughly 500 metres when Elias stopped her with a raised hand and pointed to a spot slightly further along. Margot trained her gaze towards the steep shore 200 metres away.

  It formed a sheer slope that dropped down from the road to the surface of the water, roughly ten metres below that. The top part of the slope, however, next to the road, was almost horizontal, and the slope only sheared off a few metres after that, forming a rocky escarpment prickled with bushes, thickets and pine trees. That was when she saw them. The Circle . . . She should have thought of it sooner. So simple. Too simple. The answer was there, before their eyes. She and Elias looked at each other and crouched down by the edge of the path, amidst the grass and the heather, while he handed her the binoculars.

  They were holding hands, and their eyes were closed. Margot counted nine of them. One was sitting in a wheelchair. She saw another person standing, but in a strange twisted position, as if his legs were not quite on the same axis as his torso, as if he were one of those puzzle images made up of several different people, where each fragment is slightly out of joint. Then she noticed the shining poles on the ground at his feet: a pair of crutches.

  They had made the circle on the flattest part of the terrain between the road and the steep slope. Those who were on the side nearest the lake had their heels almost above the abyss, the dark mass of water just behind their backs.

  Margot looked at Elias in the encroaching darkness.

  ‘You knew,’ she said. ‘You left me that note, “I think I’ve found the Circle.” You knew about their existence …’

  He answered without taking his eyes from the binoculars.

  ‘I was bluffing. All I had was a map with this spot marked with a cross.’

  ‘A map? And where did you find a map?’

  ‘In David’s room.’

  ‘You got into David’s room?!’

  This time he didn’t answer.

  ‘So you knew all along where we were going.’

  He gave her an amused little smile and she felt a surge of anger. Then he stood up.

  ‘Come on. Let’s g
o.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Let’s try and get closer. To understand what’s going on.’

  Not a good idea, she thought. Not a good idea at all. But she had no choice. She followed him across the uneven terrain, while evening continued to descend.

  David felt the tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyelids closed. The evening breeze dried them as the minutes passed. He was holding hands with Virginie and Sarah. Alex had put his crutches at his feet, as had Sofiane. Maud was sitting in her folding wheelchair; they had had to push it along the road from the car park and then carry her for several metres, with her chair folded. They all held their arms out to their neighbours.

  The Circle had formed again. As it did every year, on the same date: 17 June. A day that was carved in their flesh. Ten. That was their number. A round number. Like the circle. Ten survivors and seventeen victims. 17 June. God, chance, or fate had wanted it that way.

  Their eyes closed, they let the memories invade, rise to the surface. They saw again that spring night when they had stopped being children and had become a family. They relived the enormous shock, the deafening sound of twisted metal, windows exploding in myriad shards of glass, seats torn from their fastenings, the roof and the sides crushed like a beer can in a giant’s fist. They saw the night and the earth suddenly slipping, and they were rolling over each other, and the fragile pine trees were torn up, beheaded as they fell, the jagged rocks tearing the metal, their bodies projected every which way like weightless spacewalkers. They saw the beam of the headlights gone mad, illuminating the whirlwind with improbable flashing, gleams of panic, an absurd pattern. They heard their comrades screaming, and the adults, too. Then sirens, shouts, calls. Helicopter blades above them. The firemen, who came after twenty minutes. At that moment, the coach was still hanging ten metres above the surface of the lake, only a short way from where they stood now, momentarily held mid-slope by a few ridiculous shrubs and paltry tree trunks.

  They saw again the moment when the last trees yielded in a sinister cracking and the coach slid with an agonising groan into the lake. And to the screams of those who were still trapped inside, it had foundered in the black water, illuminated by one of the headlamps, which continued to shine for hours at the bottom of the water.