The Circle (32 page)

His words had the desired effect. They took the time to digest this information.

‘And then there's another possibility,' he said. ‘Maybe, in fact, Hirtmann never actually left the region. While Interpol and every police force in Europe have been watching trains, airports and borders, imagining that he's thousands of kilometres away, maybe he's been hiding out right nearby – and telling himself that the last place we would ever look is across the street.'

He looked up and saw in their eyes that he had made his point, and they were beginning to have their doubts. The atmosphere suddenly felt heavier; just talking about the serial killer, his murders and his violence, even indirectly, was enough to poison the air. Servaz decided to drive his point home.

‘Whatever the case may be, too many things are pointing in the same direction for us to neglect the Hirtmann lead any longer. Even if it isn't him, it means that someone out there is imitating him and is connected with Claire Diemar's murder one way or the other – which throws Hugo's guilt into doubt. I want Samira and Vincent to focus full time on this lead. They have to get in touch with the unit in Paris which has been tracking Hirtmann and try and confirm whether our man is in this region or not.'

Stehlin nodded gravely.

‘Fine. But there is something else,' he said.

Servaz looked at him.

‘What about your security? Whether it's Hirtmann or not, that lunatic out there seems to be following you wherever you go. It seems he's never very far from you. And then there was that incident at the bank. Fuck, you nearly got thrown off the roof, Martin! I don't like it. Our guy has a fixation on you – and he's attacked you once already.'

‘If he wanted to get at me, he could easily have done it last night,' Servaz objected.

‘What do you mean?'

‘The French windows in the bedroom were open. There aren't even three metres between the garden and the balcony, with a drainpipe and a Virginia creeper right next to it. He could easily have climbed up. And we – I mean, I was asleep.'

They were all looking at him. There was no longer any doubt that he had slept with the mistress of the house – with a person who
was directly connected to the investigation in hand. An investigation that could be torn to shreds by any reasonably competent lawyer who cared to cite a conflict of interests. Stehlin collapsed in his chair, gazed at the ceiling and gave out a very long sigh.

‘If we work on the assumption that it is Hirtmann,' said Servaz hastily, ‘I don't think he is a threat to me personally. His victims are always the same type: young women with more or less the same physical characteristics. The only men he has ever killed, to our knowledge, were his wife's lover – so in that case it was a crime of passion – and a Dutch man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's something else I want Vincent and Samira to do.'

His two assistants gave him a questioning look.

‘I agree on one thing at least: it does seem that Hirtmann is fixated on me. But since his victims have always been young women, I want Vincent and Samira to ensure Margot's protection at the lycée in Marsac. If Hirtmann wants to get at me, he knows that's my weak spot.'

Stehlin's brow creased still further. He seemed very worried now. Then he looked over at Servaz's assistants. Samira nodded.

‘No problem,' she said. ‘Martin is right: if that arsehole has decided to go after him, and if he is as well informed as he seems to be, we can't risk leaving Margot without protection.'

‘I agree,' said Espérandieu with conviction.

‘Anything else?' asked Stehlin.

‘Yes. If Hirtmann is still after me, there might be a way to catch him this time. Pujol could shadow me. From a distance, with a colleague. As discreetly as possible, with GPS or a chip. If Hirtmann really wants to keep an eye on me, he'll have to show himself, he'll have to take a risk, no matter how small. And we'll be there when he does.'

‘An interesting idea. And what happens if he comes out of the woods?'

‘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 …

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.'