The Circle (54 page)

‘Hold me,' she said, ‘tightly. I need it. Now.'

He did as she asked. He would have done it even if she hadn't asked him. He looked over her shoulder at the lake, the morning light. Now it was her turn to squeeze Servaz, and he felt submerged by her embrace, by the warmth that flooded him.

‘You've always been there, Martin. In my mind. Even when I was with Bokha, you were there. You've never left me. Do you remember “UDDUP”?'

Yes. He remembered. ‘Until death do us part.' They always said goodbye with these five letters. Her voice and her breath in his ear, her mouth so close. He wondered if it was true, if he could trust her. He decided he could. He was fed up with suspicion, a profession that rubbed off on every aspect of his life. This time it was simple and clear. How long had it been since he had loved in this way? He felt that it was the same for her: it had been a near thing, for both of them – and he understood that they wanted to travel at least some of the way together. To believe in a future.

On the lake, a heron gave a long lonely cry. Servaz turned his head just in time to see it take off into the stormy sky with a great beating of its wings.

The Lake 3

He dreamt he was dying. He was lying on the ground, in the sun, his head turned to the sky, and thousands of black birds were flying high overhead, while his blood drained from him. Then a shadow appeared and lowered its head to look at him. In spite of the grotesque wig and the huge glasses, he did not have the slightest doubt as to its identity. He woke up with a start, his head still full of the birds' cries. He heard a sound from downstairs, and he could smell coffee.

What time was it? He pounced on his telephone. Four missed calls. The same number. He had slept for more than an hour. He dialled the number.

‘For Christ's sake, what the fuck are you doing?' said Espérandieu.

‘I'm on my way,' he answered. ‘We're going straight to
La République de Marsac.
It's a local newspaper. Find their number and call them. Tell them we need everything they have on the coach accident at the Néouvielle lake on 17 June 2004.'

‘What's this business about a lake? Have you got something new?'

‘I'll explain.'

He rang off. Marianne came into the bedroom with a tray. He drank the orange juice and black coffee straight down, and gobbled a buttered slice of bread.

‘Will you come back?' she asked suddenly.

He looked at her as he wiped his lips.

‘You already know,' he said.

‘Yes. I think I do.'

She was smiling. Her eyes were, too. Her eyes so deep and so green.

‘Hugo will soon be free, and you'll be here … all the misunderstandings between us will be over. I haven't felt this good for a long time. I mean, this …
happy.
'

She had hesitated to say the word – as if to say it might cause the happiness to vanish.

‘Is that true?'

‘I've never been this close to it, at least,' she corrected.

He took a shower. For the first time since the beginning of the investigation, he felt a renewal of energy and a desire to rush ahead, to move mountains. He wondered whether this business about the accident was important, and instinctively he knew it was.

When he was ready to go, he took Marianne in his arms and she leaned against him. In spite of everything, he couldn't help but wonder if she had taken something since last night. As if reading his thoughts, she threw her head back, with her arms around his waist; she was almost as tall as him.

‘Martin …'

‘Yes?'

‘Will you help me?'

He looked at her.

‘Will you help me get rid of the monkey?'

‘Yes. I'll help you,' he said.

Bokha had managed to. Why shouldn't he? It was love she needed. The only thing that could fill the void … He remembered her words a few hours earlier: ‘You've always been there … You've never left me.'

‘Do you promise me?'

‘Yes. Yes, I promise you.'

La République de Marsac
had not yet digitalised all its archives. Only the last two years were on CD. All the rest – including the year 2004 – had been preserved in boxes of microfiches stacked in a wooden cupboard at the end of a corridor.

‘Oh, boy,' said Espérandieu, contemplating the work ahead.

‘2004, here it is,' said Servaz, pointing to a pile of three plastic boxes. ‘There's not that much. Where can we find a reader?' he asked the secretary.

The secretary led them into a windowless room in the basement. An anaemic neon light flickered and the microfiche reader appeared: a big cumbersome machine, which, judging from the layer of dust on it, was not used often. Servaz rolled up his sleeves and approached the monster.

They opened the boxes of microfiches and looked for the one for
1
8 June 2004, the day after the accident. Bingo. The moment they slotted it in the viewer, the title of the article leapt out at them:

Seventeen children and two adults lost their lives in a coach accident at Lake Néouvielle last night at approximately 23.15. According to initial reports, the vehicle is said to have gone off the road in a bend then fallen on its side, where it lay trapped on the slope between the road and the lake for several minutes. The rescue workers, who arrived on the scene very quickly, managed to save ten children and three adults before the vehicle continued its slide and sank into the lake before their eyes, leaving them helpless. The cause of the accident is not known. The victims were all students from a secondary school in Marsac. They were on their end-of-year class trip.

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 Servaz. Almighty God!