The Circle (46 page)

‘Is it really necessary?'

‘For the time being, yes.'

‘And what if you don't catch him? Are you going to watch over me like this indefinitely?' she asked, playing with the fake ruby in her eyebrow.

Servaz felt his stomach contract. He didn't tell her that this question was nagging away at him too. Obviously a time would come for the surveillance to be withdrawn, when the prosecutor would decide it had gone on long enough. Then what? How would he ensure his daughter's safety? How would he sleep soundly?

‘What you have to do,' he continued, not answering her question, ‘is keep an eye out for anything that seems abnormal. If you see someone lurking around the lycée. Or if you receive strange text messages. Don't hesitate to go and see Vincent. You know him, and you get along well. You know he'll listen to you.'

She nodded, and thought about how she and Samira had been drinking, laughing and talking the night before.

‘But again, you have no reason to panic. It's just a precaution,' he insisted.

It was like the dialogue from a movie, he thought. Like something he'd heard a thousand times. The dialogue from a very bad movie – one of those Z movies full of blood and guts. Once again he felt nervous. Or was it the approaching storm, putting his nerves on edge?

‘Do you have what I asked you for?'

She put her hand into her khaki canvas satchel and brought out a bundle of dog-eared, handwritten papers.

‘I don't understand why you asked me for this,' she said, pushing the papers across the table to him. ‘You want to evaluate my work or what?'

He knew that black look. He'd had to confront it plenty of times in the past. He smiled.

‘I won't read anything you've written. You have my word, okay? It's the notes in the margin that interest me. That's all. I'll explain,' he added, in answer to her frown.

Satisfied, he glanced at the pages marked with red ink, then folded them and put them in his jacket pocket.

It was 13.30 that Thursday, and the Whale was eating snails with garlic puree when the minister walked into one of the two private dining rooms (the smallest one) at Tante Marguerite, the restaurant on the rue de Bourgogne only a minute away from the National Assembly. The senator took the time to wipe his lips before turning his attention to the minister.

‘Well?'

‘Lacaze will be remanded in custody,' said the minister. ‘The judge is going to ask for his immunity to be withdrawn.'

‘That, I knew,' said Devincourt coldly. ‘The question is, why wasn't that fucking arsehole of a prosecutor able to prevent this?'

‘There was nothing he could do. Given the elements of the case, there was no way the examining magistrate could act any differently … I can't get over it: Suzanne told the police everything. That Paul had lied about his whereabouts. I wouldn't have thought she could do such a thing.'

The minister seemed crestfallen.

‘Oh, really?' said the Whale. ‘What did you expect? The woman has terminal cancer, she's been betrayed, scorned, humiliated. Personally, I think she ought to be congratulated. That little shit has only got what he deserves.'

The minister felt his temper flaring. The Whale had been having it off with prostitutes for over forty years and now he thought he could pass judgment?

‘You're a fine one to talk.'

The senator raised his glass of white wine to his lips.

‘Might you be referring to my …
appetite
?' said the fat man, unruffled. ‘There's a great difference. And you know what it is?
Love
… I love Catherine every bit as much as I did on the first day I fell for her. I have the deepest admiration for my wife. The deepest devotion. The whores are for my health. And she knows that. Catherine and I have not shared a bed for over twenty years. How could that imbecile imagine that Suzanne would forgive him? A woman like her … so proud … a woman with character. A remarkable woman. Sleeping around is one thing. But to fall in love with that—'

The minister curtailed the discussion: ‘What shall we do?'

‘Where
was
Lacaze that night? Did he tell you, at least?'

‘No. And he refused to tell the judge. It's insanity! He won't talk about it with anyone; he's gone mad.'

This time, the Whale looked up at the minister, clearly surprised.

‘Do you think he killed her?'

‘I don't know what to think any more. But he is looking more and more guilty. Dear Lord, the press will go wild.'

‘Drop him,' said the Whale.

‘What?'

‘Back off. While you still have time. Give the media the union minimum: presumption of innocence, independence of the judiciary … the usual patter. But say he is accountable before the law like anyone else. Everyone will understand. A scapegoat: we always need one, I'm not telling you anything new. Lacaze will be burned at the stake by the press, they will tear him apart and gorge themselves on him until they've had their fill. The virtuous pundits will do their usual bit on television, and the crowd will bay with the wolves. And when they're done with him, it will be someone else's turn. Who knows? Tomorrow, it could be you. Or me. Sacrifice him. Now.'

‘He had a brilliant future,' said the minister, looking at his plate.

‘Rest in peace,' replied the Whale, stabbing another snail. ‘Are you going to watch the match tonight? That's the only thing that
might save us – if we win the World Cup. But we may as well dream of winning the next elections.'

At 15.15, Ziegler finally found what she was looking for. Or rather, she found two potential perpetrators. Most of the cleaners on Clarion's teams were women who had come fairly recently from Africa. The industrial cleaning sector had always been a source of employment for immigrant women, as the success of these companies rested upon an underqualified workforce who were unlikely to stand up for themselves.

There were only two men. Instinctively, Ziegler decided to start with them. First of all, because more men got in trouble with the law, even though the proportion of women was on the rise. And because all statistics showed that women were almost never involved in incidents regarding authority. Finally, men liked taking risks.

The first one was a family man, with three grown-up children. Fifty-eight years old, he had been working for the cleaning company for ten years. Before that he had worked for nearly thirty years in the automobile industry. She moved on to the next one. Much younger, he had arrived in France only recently. He lived on his own. No wife, no children. His entire family had stayed behind in Mali. A solitary man, lost and vulnerable in a foreign country. Trying to adapt and to blend into the crowd without attracting attention. Trying to make a few friends. Probably in a job that was unworthy of his qualifications. A man who was also probably deathly afraid of being sent home. She hesitated between the two, her gaze going from one information sheet to the other, until her finger stopped on the second one. It must be him; he was an ideal target.

His name was Drissa Kanté.

Espérandieu was listening to ‘Use Somebody' by the Kings of Leon on his iPhone while gazing at the battlefield spread out before him. He sang along, then sent a silent curse in Martin's direction. He had come across the lads setting up a giant TV screen in the meeting room and filling the fridge with six-packs. He was sure that in an hour or so, all the offices would empty out, one after the other. He would have liked to join in the party, but he was stuck with tons of documents and faxes that he had divided into piles. There were dozens of them.

His research into the past of Elvis Konstandin Elmaz – who was still in hospital in a coma – had already taken him all morning and
half the afternoon. He had already contacted the tax people and consulted the files of Social Security in order to try and reconstruct Elmaz's professional past. At the prefecture he had gone through the file with his insurance certificates and driving licences, had checked with the register office for any marital history and he had verified whether there were any offspring (not officially, in any case). He had also solicited the family benefits office and addressed a request to the Ministry of Defence to obtain any information regarding a possible military background.

The result was that Espérandieu now had an abundant but disparate pile of material in front of him. The worst possible scenario.

He sighed. There was something desperate and extremely unpleasant about having to reconstruct Elvis Konstandin Elmaz's life story. Elvis had an almost perfect profile of a repeat offender. Drug trafficking, grievous bodily harm, theft, sexual harassment, holding of hostages and, finally, rape. As Samira had said, it was a miracle he hadn't killed anyone yet. To which they now had to add the organisation of dogfights, if they were to believe what they had found on his property deep in the woods. During his spells of freedom, he had been the manager of a sex shop in Toulouse, rue Denfert-Rochereau; a bouncer at a private club on the rue Maynard a few hundred metres further along; a waiter in a café-restaurant on the rue Bayard a stone's throw from there, and he hung out in nearly every seedy place in the neighbourhood. Espérandieu found no other traces of known professional activity, but one detail did intrigue him: officially, Elvis's ‘career' had started at the age of twenty-two, with a first conviction. Up until then he had been clever enough to fly under the radar, because Espérandieu had no doubts that with a CV like that he must have started much earlier. He looked down at the last document, opened it in desperation and skimmed wearily through the pages, hoping against hope that something in all these declarations would finally be worth his attention.

Well, this looks rather interesting
, he thought, with a typical itching sensation as he read the last page.

He picked up the phone to call Martin. The name was there, on the page. Marsac. Before beginning his sinister ‘career', Elvis Konstandin Elmaz had been a supervisor in a secondary school in Marsac.

The Rats

Servaz was driving through the hills. The warning signs of a storm were increasing: the countryside had changed to a grey metallic colour, the sky had darkened, and from time to time there were flashes of heat lightning. He stopped for a moment on a grassy verge deep in the forest to mentally prepare himself. Leaning against the car, he calmly smoked a cigarette. He watched as the flies and midges seemed to join in the general excitement. In the distance he could hear dogs yapping nervously. He swiped at a horsefly. And then he continued on his way. In five minutes he hadn't seen a single car go by.

Servaz's heart was pounding when he got out of the Cherokee at the end of the lane, at the edge of the clearing. Silence had reigned ever since the kennel had been emptied of its occupants. He tried not to think of their collective euthanasia. Under the stormy sky, the clearing seemed all the more sinister. He went up the creaky steps to the veranda, lifted the gendarmerie's tape, and unlocked the door with a skeleton key. Inside, he looked around as he pulled on a pair of gloves. The CSI team had searched every nook and cranny, but they hadn't been looking for anything in particular. Had they overlooked something? Servaz contemplated the pervasive chaos. The furniture, the floor, the kitchenette, the dirty dishes in the sink, the pizza and hamburger wrappings, the ashtrays full to overflowing and the empty beer bottles: everything had been left as it was, but now it was covered with multiple hues of powder. He wondered who would take charge of cleaning up all the mess.

He began exploring, slowly. The light that came in through the windows was a leaden grey. It was as if he were at the bottom of the ocean, and he switched on his torch.

It took him a good hour to get round the ground floor. The
bedroom was in the same repulsive mess as the living room: dirty underwear left on the unmade bed, empty video-game boxes. The same faint odour of cannabis and decay hung in the air. Everywhere, flies were buzzing noisily, overexcited by the approaching storm. He searched the bathroom in the same way, but didn't notice anything in particular, other than, on opening the medicine cabinet, what was an obvious addiction to all kinds of medication. The shower cubicle was green with mould; clearly, Elvis did not often flush the toilet, because a puddle of urine and toilet paper floated in the bottom of the bowl. Servaz went back down the narrow corridor that led to the living room–kitchen area. There was a trap door above his head. He went to fetch a chair, climbed up and reached for the handle.

The attic had a very low ceiling, and he had to bend over to move under the roof. It was vaguely lit by a skylight made of tiles and glass. Up here Elvis had shoved all the scrap from several years of his life: computers, printers, racks full of pilled clothing, boxes, folders, broken Hoovers, rolls of wallpaper, games consoles, VHS cassettes of porn films. On the dusty floorboards Servaz identified several tracks made by rats or mice. At the back of a wardrobe, behind some winter and après-ski clothing, Servaz found some metal boxes. He pulled them out onto the floor, sat down and lifted the lid on the first one. For a split second it was as if time had stood still. A child with his parents, playing on the beach with a bucket and spade … A little boy on his red plastic pedal car with a yellow steering wheel. A kid like any other. Not yet a bastard, not yet a monster. Servaz was sure this was Elvis. A few details hinted at the adult to come. But this child had the same sunny air, playful and innocent, as any other kid. Servaz told himself that lion cubs, too, looked like adorable cuddly toys.

He went on searching.

Pictures of Elvis as an adolescent, looking darker, more cunning. A furtive look at the camera lens. Was Servaz imagining something? There was a change. Something had happened. He no longer had the same person in front of him.

A woman, hugging Elvis. His wife? The one who had asked for a divorce? The one he had beaten and sent to hospital once she got that divorce? In the photo she looked happy, confident. She had her arms around her man, but while she was staring joyfully at the camera, he was looking elsewhere.