‘Vincent, it’s me!’ he began screaming, before he had finished dialling. ‘Can you hear me? Vincent, it’s Hugo! Hugo is the guilty one! Do you hear me? Hugo! The words in the notebook, that was just a trick. He’s going to try and pin the blame on David. Do you understand what I’m saying?’ Vincent’s voice came through on the other end: ‘Hello? Hello? Is that you, Martin?’
They were driving in all three lanes at once, even swerving onto the hard shoulder.
‘Get hold of the judge! Hugo mustn’t be released! I don’t have time to tell you more!’
He hung up. This time, he had David’s full attention.
‘What did you do? What did you just do?’
‘That’s it, Hugo won’t be getting out. Pull over onto the verge. There’s no point! You have my word: they’ll take care of you! Who will go and see Hugo in prison if you’re not there to do it?’
Once again headlights were bearing down on them, slightly to their left. Four lights in a row. Ultra-powerful. High above the road. Another lorry. David had seen it, too. In a fluid movement that seemed almost choreographed, he slowly left the middle lane to slip gently into the one where the articulated vehicle was approaching.
‘No, no, no! Don’t do that! Don’t do that!’
New flashes of headlights. The roar of the horn. The metallic creaking of the juggernaut as it moved, trying to find a way out. This time there wouldn’t be one. The truck wouldn’t have time to swerve. The two vehicles were rushing towards each other. So this was where the road ended. It was written. The end of the story. A titanic crash and then nothing. The void.
On their left Servaz saw the exit to a rest area, coming down the hill towards them.
‘If you kill us, you’ll kill two innocent people! There’s no way out for Hugo! It’s all over for him! Who will go and see him in prison if you’re not there? Turn left! Turn leeeeft!’
He saw four round, blinding eyes bearing down on them; four daggers of light reflected on the surface of the road. He closed his eyes. Held his arms out in front of him and put his hands on the dashboard in an absurd reflex.
Waited for the terrible crash.
Felt they were swerving, suddenly, to the left. He opened his eyes.
They had left the motorway! They were heading up the exit at top speed, the wrong way.
Servaz saw the gigantic lorry go by beneath them on their right. Saved! Then he gave a start when he saw a car leaving the rest area above them. David yanked the wheel, and they went up onto the grass, bouncing roughly as they swerved past the car on its way down. They tore several branches from one of the low hedges and landed in an almost deserted car park. Servaz could see the neon lights of a café and service station at the far end. David rammed his foot on the brake. The car swerved sideways, the tyres squealed.
It came to a stop.
Servaz unfastened his belt, opened the door and rushed outside to vomit.
He knew that from now on death would always have a face. That of a huge lorry, with its four headlights in a row. He knew it the way he knew he would never forget that image. And that every time he got into a car with someone else behind the wheel he would be terrified.
He inhaled great lungfuls of the damp night air. His chest was rising and falling, his legs were trembling. His ears were buzzing as if a beehive had been opened and the bees let loose all around him. He walked slowly round the car and found David sitting on the ground, leaning against the rear wheel. His fingers were digging into his blond hair; he was trembling and sobbing, staring at the ground. Servaz knelt down in front of him and placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders.
‘I’ll keep my promise,’ he said. ‘We’ll help you. Just tell me one thing: did you put the Mahler CD in Claire Diemar’s stereo?’
The boy gave him a puzzled look, clearly failing to understand, so he shook his head, as if to say, ‘It doesn’t matter’, then he squeezed David’s shoulder and stood up. He took out his phone and walked away, aware of what a sight he must be, in his hospital gown, soaking in the pouring rain, his fingers covered with scratches, his face still bearing the traces of the bandage he had torn off.
‘Christ almighty, what was that phone call? And why didn’t you answer?’
It was Vincent. He seemed in a panic. Servaz realised that his phone must have rung several times, though he hadn’t heard a thing in the midst of the maelstrom. But it was good to hear his assistant’s voice.
‘I’ll explain. In the meantime, get the judge out of bed. You have to cancel Hugo’s release. And we need authorisation to interrogate him in prison this evening. Call Sartet.’
‘But you know he’ll never agree. It’s illegal. Hugo was indicted.’
‘Unless he’s interrogated about another case,’ said Servaz.
‘What?’
He explained what he had in mind.
‘Do as I say. I’ll join you as soon as I can.’
‘But you can’t see a thing!’
‘Oh yes I can. And believe me, there are times when it’s better not to see anything.’
There was a puzzled silence at the other end.
‘You’re not in hospital?’
‘No. I’m at a motorway service station.’
‘What? What on—’
‘Forget it. Hurry up. I’ll explain later.’
A door slammed behind him. Servaz turned round.
‘Hang on a minute,’ he said to his assistant.
He thought he could see a smile on David’s face as he sat behind the steering wheel. Their gazes met through the windscreen. Servaz felt something like an electric shock. He broke into a run as the Ford Fiesta started slowly backing up. As if in a dream, while he was running towards it, he saw the car make a gracious arabesque on the asphalt surface of the car park, turn towards the exit then take off.
Servaz told himself David wouldn’t get far. Then, in a fraction of a second, he understood.
He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, propelled by despair, fear, anger and the knowledge he would never forgive himself for having been so stupid. He ran uselessly in its wake as the car pulled away, already out of reach as it sped through the opening between the hedges and down the slope, then entered the motorway again.
And stopped in the middle of the lanes.
From where he stood Servaz could hear David switch off the engine. And heard almost immediately the hysterical blaring of a horn on his left. He turned his head just in time to see an articulated lorry in the wide bend at the bottom of the hill. He saw the juggernaut brake too late and too suddenly, swerving across the three lanes, losing control of his trailer which hurtled with all the rest of its cargo onto the tiny Ford, engulfing it in an explosion of crushed metal, pulverised plastic and flesh.
He saw all the rest as if through a fog, much later: the ambulances, the police cars, the flashing lights slicing through the darkness; he hardly heard the wailing of sirens, the messages crackling over the radios, the orders, the hissing of the extinguishers and the shrill buzzing of electric saws; he hardly paid any attention to the news vehicles that came to join the melee, the TV cameras, the popping of camera flashes, or even the face of the young reporter who stuck a microphone under his nose and whom he shoved away, roughly. He dreamt of them more than he actually saw them or heard them. He dragged himself to the café and a strange thought occurred to him when he saw people were rushing about like bees disoriented by smoke. He told himself that these people were out of their minds and didn’t even know it. That only madmen could want to live in a world like this and carry it with them, day after day, to its ruin. Then he ordered a coffee.
Interlude 4
In the tomb
In her mind there was a cry, nothing more.
A moan.
Which rose and devoured her thoughts.
A cry of despair, screaming with rage, pain, solitude. Everything which, for months on end, had deprived her of her humanity.
She was pleading, too.
Please, oh
please, have mercy, please … let me out of here, I beg you. In her mind, she was shouting and begging and weeping. But only in her mind: in fact not a sound came from her throat. She was gagged, the strap tightly knotted at the back of her neck. Her hands were behind her back, stuck together from palm to fingertips with superglue. It was a very uncomfortable position. It made her lean forward all the time, including when she slept. She had tried to tear the skin of her hands, but it was impossible.
She changed position in the darkness to relieve the tension of her muscles; she was sitting on the dirt floor leaning against the stone wall. Sometimes she lay down. Or went over to her shabby mattress. She spent most of her time drowsing, curled up in a foetal position. Sometimes she got up and took a few steps. Not much more. She didn’t feel like struggling any more. He only fed her once every other day now; he gave her just enough to keep her from dying of starvation. He no longer washed her. She had lost so much weight. She had a constant bad taste in her mouth, and there was a horrible pain gnawing away at the left side of her jaw and tongue: an abscess. Her dirty hair caused her scalp to itch. She felt weaker and weaker.
He had stopped taking her upstairs to the dining room. No more meals, no more music, no more rape in her sleep. That was the only relief. She wondered why he kept her alive.
Because she had a replacement, now. He had introduced them once. She was so weak she could hardly stand and he had had to support her while she climbed the stairs up to the ground floor. ‘God, you stink,’ he had said, wrinkling his nose. She saw the young woman sitting at the dinner table, in the chair that used to be hers. Her torso bound to the back of the chair, the way she had been bound. She recognised that look: it had been hers several months or several years earlier. At first she didn’t say anything, she no longer had the strength. She merely wobbled her head. But she read the horror in the eyes of the woman wearing her dress; she smelled her freshly washed hair, her perfumed body. Finally she managed to croak, ‘That’s my dress.’ He took her back down to the cellar. That was the last time she saw her, but from time to time she heard music up there and knew what was going on. She wondered where in the house he kept the other woman locked up.
She had struggled to retain her sanity for a long time, she had tried to cling to reality. Now she was letting go. The madness that lurked at the edge of her consciousness, like a predator certain of its prey, had begun to devour her lucidity, to feast on it. The only way to escape that madness was to think of what her life had been – the life of a different woman, who bore her name but no longer resembled her. A beautiful life, eventful, tragic – but never boring.
Her throat tightened with remorse when she thought of Hugo. She had been so proud of him. She knew all about his drug use, but who was she to throw the first stone? Her handsome son, so brilliant. Her greatest success. Where was he now? In prison, or out? The anxiety crushed her chest when she thought about him. And then sorrow threatened to break her when she imagined Mathieu, Hugo and herself together again, reunited, sailing across the lake on a fine morning, surrounded by friends during a barbecue on a spring afternoon. She could hear their laughter, their exclamations, again she saw her five-year-old son lifted up to the sun in his father’s arms, an expression of absolute happiness on his chubby face. Or father and son sitting at the head of the bed, Hugo with his thumb in his mouth, attentive, terribly serious, then gradually falling asleep while his father read to him. Mathieu had died in a car crash, and he had left them behind – her and Hugo – at the beginning of their life together. Sometimes she was very angry with him for that.
And she could see the house by the lake, the terrace where she liked to have breakfast when the weather was fine, a book in her hand, the smooth and placid mirror of the lake reflecting the trees on the opposite shore, the haven of peace she never tired of.
And then she thought about Martin. She often thought about him. Martin: her greatest love, her greatest failure. She remembered the classes when their gazes would meet twenty times an hour, their impatience to be together. Her anger, when he remained uninterested in the music she loved. She had nicknamed him her ‘Old Man’, or her ‘Dear Old Man’, although he was only one year older than her. By God she loved him.
She loved him, she admired him – and she had betrayed him. Now she crouched down in the darkness of her tomb, her mind empty, her body trembling. Suddenly a rush of despair took away all these fine sunny images, and the darkness, the cold, swooped down on her. The madness was back, and she felt it closing its sharp claws around her mind. In those moments, she clung with all her strength to a vision, the only one that still saved her.
She closed her eyes and began to run. All alone, along a beach left bare by the tide. A luminous dawn caused the waves and the damp sand to glitter, and the breeze stirred her hair. She was running, running, running, ever further. For hours, with her eyes closed. The cries of the seagulls, the regular sound of the sea, a few sails on the horizon and the dawn light. She could not stop running. On this endless beach. She knew she would never see the daylight again.
48
Finale
Searchlights lit up the outer wall of the prison. The car park was deserted. Servaz parked as close as possible to the entrance. His anger had not left him. A rage which replaced weariness and fatigue.
The director was waiting for them. He had received several calls during the night: from the prosecutor’s office, the crime squad. He didn’t understand why this case was such a big deal; he didn’t know that an MP from the ruling party – the hope of his party – had nearly been arrested, and had now been cleared, and that first thing tomorrow the party would hasten to inform the press that he had been exonerated once and for all, and would vehemently denounce ‘all the absolutely regrettable leaks’, and would show up in every news programme to protest that ‘in our country we have something known as presumption of innocence and in this case it was trampled on by members of the opposition’. In Paris they had felt the wind changing: one mustn’t appear to have dropped Paul Lacaze too quickly, now he’d turned out to be innocent. Time to close ranks.
As for the prison director, he was still extremely uncertain of the police commandant with his bloodshot eyes and dilated pupils and the young lieutenant in his silvery jacket, looking like an adolescent. The commandant had bruises and scratches all over his hands and face, and a bandage in his wild hair – as if he’d had his skull stitched back together. The director was about to close the door behind them when Servaz raised his voice:
‘We’re waiting for someone.’
‘The prosecutor’s office only mentioned two people.’
‘Two, three – what difference does it make?’
‘Listen, it is already well after midnight. Am I going to have to hang around here until you’ve finished? Because I would like to—’
‘Here she is.’
There was the sound of a motor and a gendarme’s car appeared. The door opened on the passenger side and a woman got out, a big bandage shaped like a cross over her nose and cheeks. She also had her left arm in a sling. Ziegler hunched down in the driving rain, and hurried to cover the last few metres to the entrance. She had been grilled for a good hour by a deputy public prosecutor from the prosecutor’s office in Auch as well as several officers from the gendarmerie crime investigation division, but she had still managed to get hold of Martin. In a few words she explained what had just happened, once again omitting to mention that she had hacked into his computer.
‘How did you find all this out?’ he said, puzzled.
He hadn’t seemed surprised to learn that Marianne had been spying on him. On the other hand, Irène noticed how immensely sad he was.
‘She’s with us,’ said Servaz now to the prison director.
Good God, thought the director, when he saw the dishevelled blonde approach. What sort of circus is this? But he had orders. From high up. ‘Do everything they ask, is that clear?’ the director of penitentiary administration had said on the phone. He shr
ugged, signalled to the guards to pay no attention when the three visitors set off the metal detector alarm, and he preceded them into the bowels of the prison, their steps resounding down the corridors. They went through three security doors and finally the director took out a key ring, and opened the door to the visiting room.
‘Go ahead. He’s waiting for you.’
He walked away quickly. He didn’t want to know what was going to happen in there.
‘Good evening, Hugo,’ said Servaz as he walked in.
The young man seated at the Formica table raised his head and looked at him, his hands crossed.
Then his gaze shifted to Espérandieu and Ziegler as they came in behind Servaz, and Servaz saw a momentary little gleam of surprise in his blue eyes when he saw the gendarme’s face.
‘What’s going on? The director got me out of bed and now here you are …’
Servaz made an effort to contain his anger. He sat down and waited for Vincent and Irène to do likewise. All three were on the opposite side of the table facing Hugo. From a strictly legal point of view, they no longer had the right to interview the kid regarding Claire’s death, since he had been indicted. But Servaz had obtained an authorisation from Sartet to talk to him about the investigation into Elvis’s murder – a separate case.
‘David is dead,’ he said quietly.
He saw the young man wince with pain.
‘How?’
‘He committed suicide. He went the wrong way up the motorway, and his car collided with an articulated lorry. He died on the spot.’
Servaz gave Hugo a piercing look. He could see the kid’s sorrow was sincere as he struggled not to cry, his lips twisted as if he had swallowed a box of nails.
‘Did you know he was suicidal?’
Hugo raised his chin. He stared at Servaz, his eyes shining, and nodded.
‘Yes.’
The Circle Page 48
