They went over the following pages. More articles, black-and-white pictures of the disaster. They could see the long outline of the coach lying halfway down the slope before it slid into the lake. Human forms stood out against the harsh glow of headlights. Firefighters walked by. Then another photograph … the lake. Lit up, from deep below … Servaz shuddered. He looked at Espérandieu. His assistant seemed paralysed.
Servaz removed the microfiche from the reader and reached for another one in the box. The articles published the next day and the following days added more details:
The funerals of the 17 children and two adults who died in a tragic coach accident two days ago at the Néouvielle lake will be held tomorrow. The 17 victims, who were aged between 11 and 13, were all pupils at the same secondary school in Marsac. Of the two adult victims, one was a firefighter trying to help the children trapped in the vehicle, the other was a teacher from the school. Ten other children survived thanks to the efforts of this teacher and the firefighters. The adults who were rescued include the coach driver, a school supervisor and another teacher. For the time being the investigators have ruled out excessive speed, and the analysis carried out on the driver showed he had no alcohol in his blood.
The articles that followed described the funerals and evoked the parents’ sorrow, tugging at the readers’ heartstrings. There were more photographs, taken with a telephoto lens, of the families gathered around the coffins and then at the cemetery.
Emotion and a time for contemplation yesterday in Marsac for the funerals of the 19 victims of the coach accident, held in the presence of the ministers for transport and national education.
Many rescue workers are traumatised after the terrible night they experienced at the Néouvielle lake. According to one of the workers, ‘The worst thing was hearing the children’s screams. ’
Then, once the emotion had passed, the tone of the articles began to change. No need to be an expert to understand that the journalists had smelled blood.
Two articles questioned the role of the driver.
FATAL ACCIDENT AT LAKE NÉOUVIELLE:DRIVER QUESTIONED
And then:
FATAL COACH ACCIDENT: WAS THE DRIVER RESPONSIBLE?
According to the prosecutor in Tarbes, there are two theories regarding the coach accident that cost the lives of 17 children and two adults on the night of 17 June at Lake Néouvielle: the poor condition of the vehicle, or human error. According to the testimony of several children, the coach driver, Joachim Campos, 31, lost control of the vehicle during a moment of inattention while he was deep in conversation with one of the teachers, just at the moment when the narrow, winding lakeside road required constant vigilance. However, the prosecutor has refuted this report, explaining that there are several leads, ‘including human error’, but that statements would first have to be verified.
‘Why did you do it, Suzanne?’
Paul Lacaze was stuffing his belongings into an open suitcase on his bed. She was watching him from the doorway. He turned to face her and the look she gave him, her eyes sunken with illness, made him sway as if she had punched him. As if all the energy she had left was concentrated in that tiny burst of pure hatred.
‘You bastard,’ she hissed.
‘Suzanne …’
‘Shut up!’
He gazed sorrowfully at her, with her hollow cheeks, grey skin and synthetic wig. Her teeth were protruding, skull-like, beneath her bloodless lips.
‘I was going to leave her,’ he said. ‘I was going to end our relationship. I had already told her—’
‘Liar.’
‘You don’t have to believe me, but it’s the truth.’
‘So why won’t you tell me where you were on Friday night?’
He guessed that she wanted to believe in it for just a little bit longer … He would have liked to convince her that he loved her, that what they had had together was something he had never shared with anyone else. So that she could take that certainty with her, at least. He would have liked to remind her of the good times, all those years when they had been the perfect couple.
‘I can’t tell you,’ he answered regretfully. ‘Not any more. You’ve already betrayed me once. I can no longer trust you. How could I?’
He saw her sway in turn, the gleam flickering deep in her eyes. For a split second he was tempted to take her in his arms, then the temptation passed. Like two boxers in a ring, they were each giving as good as they got. He wondered how they had reached this point.
‘Oh my God!’ exclaimed Espérandieu.
Servaz’s eyesight was not as good as his assistant’s, and he wasn’t as quick at reading the tiny, somewhat blurry characters on the microfiche, but on hearing the excitement in Vincent’s voice his heart began to race. He rubbed his eyes, leaned closer to the luminous screen and read:
The cause of the accident has not yet been determined, but the theory of human error would seem to have been confirmed. The testimonies of the surviving children all seem to point in the same direction: Joachim Campos, the coach driver, 31, was in the midst of a deep discussion with one of their teachers, Claire Diemar, at the time of the incident, and he took his eyes off the road on several occasions to speak to her. Claire Diemar, along with the coach driver and a 21-year-old supervisor named Elvis Konstandin Elmaz, is one of the three adults who survived the tragedy. A fourth adult, also accompanying the children, was killed while trying to save them.
‘What a business, huh?’ said a voice behind them.
Servaz turned and saw a man in his fifties standing in the doorway – a mass of dishevelled hair, a four-day beard, his glasses stuck in his hair – gazing at them with a smile. Even if they hadn’t been in the basement of a newspaper office, Servaz could have stuck a fluorescent Post-it marked ‘journalist’ on the man’s forehead.
‘Were you the one who reported on the accident?’
‘I was.’ The man stepped closer. ‘And believe me, it’s the only time in my professional life I would have preferred to give someone else the scoop.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘By the time I got there, the coach was already at the bottom of the lake. I’ve seen quite a few things in my life, but that … The firefighters from the valley were there. There was even a helicopter on site. Those poor guys were devastated. They had done everything they could to get as many children out as possible before the coach went into the lake, but they didn’t manage to save all of them, and one of their own men was stuck on the bottom too. Two other firefighters were in the coach when it crashed into the lake, but they managed to swim to the surface. They dived down again, even though their bastard of a captain forbade it, and they managed to save one more, but the others were already dead. And for the entire duration of the operation, or as near as dammit, that fucking headlight went on shining. In spite of the absolute battering the coach had taken, can you imagine? It was like … I don’t know, a luminous eye. That’s it: the eye of some fucking animal, like the Loch Ness Monster, know what I mean? With those children in its belly, at the bottom of the lake. You could make out the shape of the coach. I even thought I could see … Ah, shit!’
He was choking up as he spoke.
Servaz thought of Claire in her bath, with the torch rammed down her throat, the strangely twisted position her murderer had left her in. He found it very difficult to conceal his emotions. The journalist came closer, and shifted his heavy-framed glasses onto his nose as he leaned over to read what was on the screen.
‘But the worst of it was when some of the kids’ bodies began to float to the surface,’ he continued. ‘The windows were broken and the coach was lying on its side. Over half the children were stuck down below but the others, after a few hours, eventually got free of whatever had been holding them there, and they did what all victims of drowning do when they don’t have 200 pounds of concrete attached to their feet. They floated to the surface, like fucking balloons, like puppets.’
Like dolls in a swimming pool, thought Se
rvaz. Almighty God!
The man seemed to extricate himself from his memories and suddenly looked like a dog who has sniffed a bone.
‘Tell me, why does this old business interest the cops all of a sudden?’
Servaz saw the journalist’s gaze go back and forth between Vincent and him. ‘Holy shit! Claire Diemar! The teacher who was murdered … she was in the coach, too!’
Shit, indeed she was, thought Servaz. He could see the wheels begin to spin wildly in the reporter’s mind.
‘Bloody hell! She drowned in her bath! You think it was one of the kids who did it? Or a parent? But why six years later?’
‘Time to go,’ said Servaz.
‘What?’
‘Get out.’
The journalist bristled. ‘I warn you, there will be an article in La République first thing tomorrow. Are you sure you have nothing to say?’
‘Out!’
‘We’re in for it now,’ said Espérandieu, once he had gone.
‘Let’s go on looking.’
The following articles reported that the driver was released due to lack of proof. As time went by, the articles became less and less frequent, today’s news effacing yesterday’s. From time to time, when something new came to light, a short article mentioned the tragedy, increasingly briefly. As it did in this piece:
SAD IRONY OF FATE: FIRE CHIEF FROM COACH TRAGEDY
DROWNS IN THE GARONNE
‘Looks like the Grim Reaper has been keeping his accounts up to date,’ remarked Espérandieu philosophically.
But Servaz felt all his alarm bells go off when he skimmed through the article:
Last night one of the participants in the Néouvielle tragedy lost his life in circumstances strangely reminiscent of the death he helped others to escape last year. It would seem – although the investigation has only just begun – that, for reasons that are as yet unclear, the former fire chief came to blows with a group of homeless people who were loitering on the Pont-Neuf in Toulouse. A witness who saw the scene from a distance declared that things rapidly became heated, then ‘it all happened so quickly’. After a brutal beating, the fire chief was thrown from the bridge. His body was recovered after the witness alerted the police, but it was too late. A search is under way for the culprits.
‘Shit!’ exclaimed Servaz, leaping up out of his chair. ‘Call the division! I want everyone on it. Find a list of all the people who had anything to do with the tragedy even remotely and go through every single record! Tell them it’s urgent. Tell them we’ve got the press on our tail.’
Once she had logged into her office computer, it took Irène Ziegler less than three minutes to find the owner of the vehicle with the number plate Drissa Kanté had given her. And hardly more than two minutes to find his profession.
‘Zlatan Jovanovic, Private Detectives. Shadowing/Surveillance/Investigations. At your disposal 24/7. Registered with the prefecture.’
With an address in Marsac …
Irène flung herself back in her seat and stared at the computer screen. Marsac … What if her initial theory had been wrong? What if it wasn’t Hirtmann who had been paying someone to spy on Martin? A detective in Marsac. Martin’s investigation was focused on the town. She checked her watch. She had an appointment at the courts in Auch for a domestic violence case, then she was expected at the office of her unit commander. Two wasted hours at least. Probably more. After that she would hurry to Marsac to find this Zlatan individual.
She didn’t have a warrant, but she’d think of something.
She got up and put her cap on, and wiped a few specks of dandruff off her uniform shirt. A poster on the wall featured a pair of gendarmes posing for the great glory of the gendarmerie. They looked like Barbie and Ken. Ziegler inspected her uniform with a sigh.
‘That was fast,’ said Pujol on the other end of the line. ‘The coach driver, Joachim Campos, is in the missing persons database.’
Servaz felt a rush of adrenaline.
‘Why?’
‘Suspicious disappearance. 19 June 2008.’
His heartbeat accelerated. The fire chief had been tossed in the water in June 2005, one year after the tragedy. The coach driver had disappeared in 2008. Claire Diemar had drowned in her bath in June 2010. How many more victims – one per year? Always in the month of June? There was one detail that didn’t square with the others: Elvis. His death didn’t follow the pattern. He had been the victim of what had to be called attempted murder only a few days after Claire.
Had the perpetrator decided to speed things up? Why? Was it because of the police investigation? Maybe he had been frightened. Maybe he had realised that Elvis, one way or another, could lead the police to him.
‘Ring the hospital,’ said Servaz. ‘Ask them if there is any chance Elvis will come out of his coma, so we can question him.’
‘No chance,’ Pujol said. ‘The hospital phoned a few minutes ago. He just died from his injuries.’
Servaz swore. Rotten luck. And yet they were close, he was sure of it.
‘Regarding the incident on the bridge, and the fire chief the homeless people tossed in the Garonne: find me the name of the witness,’ he said to Pujol.
He put down the phone and turned to Espérandieu, who was behind the wheel.
‘Back to Toulouse. I want a thorough investigation into that Campos guy’s file.’
‘I can’t take it any more.’
Sarah looked at David. He seemed about to choke, his voice fragile and trembling. She wondered if he was already high or if something else was going on. She knew the extent of his depression. She often thought that while the accident may have been the trigger that had enabled the black angel camped out in David’s psyche to spread his wings, it had already been there. Hiding somewhere. She knew about the little brother who drowned in the swimming pool, the one they had entrusted to him though he wasn’t even nine years old. She also knew what his bastard father and brother had done to him. She and Hugo talked about it often. Hugo said that David was like a headless duck. Hugo was very fond of David. But David liked Hugo even more. There was a bond between them that was greater than just fraternal. A bond she could not explain. A bond that was even stronger and deeper than the one that united all of them.
Sarah had been one of the first children out of the coach, through the window, when the vehicle was still lying on the slope, held in place by a few trees. It was the young teacher who had died who helped her out; she still remembered how embarrassed he had been, his muttered apologies as he put his hands on Sarah’s bottom to shove her out, before he turned round to try and save one of her little schoolmates stuck beneath a seat. Oddly enough, she could remember the young professor’s round face perfectly, and his glasses that were just as round (they all made fun of him in class because he had no authority; he was a laughing stock, and Hugo excelled at impersonating him), but she couldn’t remember his name. And yet she owed him her life, as did David, as did several members of the Circle. He had ended up at the bottom of the lake with the other victims. On the other hand, she had never forgotten the name of the pretty new teacher who all the pupils adored. That pretty bitch of a teacher had got out first, crawling on all fours, screaming hysterically and leaving the children to their fate. Deaf to their calls for help. Claire Diemar. Not one of them had ever forgotten her. Imagine their astonishment when there she was at the prep school in Marsac. They remembered how distraught she had seemed when she read the roll call and recognised their names.
All these years, too, Sarah had not forgotten the supervisor with the funny name: Elvis Elmaz. Elvis, who would encourage them to smoke on the sly even though they were only twelve; Elvis, who lent them his Walkman and let them listen to rock music; Elvis who told the boys how to get it on with girls, and who felt her up on the quiet because at the age of twelve she looked sixteen. They admired him and feared him at the same time. They would have liked to be like him. Until the night they discovered that their demi-god was a coward.
No
r had they forgotten the fire chief. He wouldn’t allow his men to go in the coach, on the grounds that it could tip into the lake at any moment – but almost all of them had disobeyed his instructions and one of them had lost his life. It was thanks to those disobedient firefighters that there were ten of them in the Circle, and not just two or three. And then there was the driver: not only had he lost control of his vehicle because he was paying more attention to Claire Diemar than he was to the road, but he had also been one of the first to escape. The only person he had helped had been that filthy bitch. No doubt because she was pretty, and because they had flirted on and off, discreetly, during the trip.
‘What was the name of that teacher?’ asked Sarah, before placing her lips on the bong and breathing in.
David gave her a glassy look. He seemed completely stoned.
‘The one with the glasses?’ said Virginie. ‘The one who saved us? The Frog.’
‘That was his nickname. Doesn’t anyone remember his first name?’
‘Maxime,’ said David in a thick voice, taking the bong when Sarah handed it to him. ‘His name was Maxime Dubreuil.’
Yes. Now she remembered. Maxime, who pretended not to hear the farts, whistles and laughter behind his back. Maxime, who was constantly pushing his glasses up his nose when he spoke. Maxime Dubreuil. A hero. His body had been fished out the next day along with the others, when the crane lifted the coach out of the water. Sarah remembered how his mother had wept at the funeral, a fragile little woman with a mane of white hair like a cloud of candyfloss.
Would Maxime have approved of what they had done? Surely not. Why did she get the feeling, more and more often, that they had lost their way? Why did she have the impression they were becoming worse than those who had abandoned them?
The Circle Page 42
