The Circle (24 page)

Where had they gone?

It was raining harder than ever, pounding on his skull, streaming down his face. Black clouds hovered above the town. The hills were pale in the lightning. He felt as if he were suspended in mid-air.

The wind in his ears.

A sound, over to the left
…

He turned his head, his gun pointed. At the same time his brain analysed the situation, and in flash he knew it was a trap. A pebble, an object … Something had been tossed that way to lure him in the wrong direction.

Too late he heard the footsteps running towards him, and he felt a brutal blow against his spine as he was rammed full on, seized by the waist and thrust forward. His legs arched. He let go of his gun, his hands flapping at the air.

He was hustled along, dragged. His aggressor had the advantage of the initial impulse and surprise. And before he even had time to react, he was being propelled at full speed towards the edge of the roof.

The void.

‘NOOOO!'

He heard himself scream, watched as the edge of the roof and the entire countryside leapt up to meet him, altogether too quickly, despite the soles of his feet desperately clinging to the gravel.

Ten storeys.

His vision grew larger and blurred, distorted by fear, rain, vertigo … He screamed again. He saw the entire square in the darkness, the row of balconies below him, the vertical, convergent lines of the rain, the toes of his shoes striking the concrete edge. His body plunging forward, hovering perilously.

For a split second he swung out over the edge of the abyss, and was only kept from falling by a hand at his back.

Then he felt a violent blow to his head. He fell into a black hole.

Irène Ziegler and Zuzka Smatanova landed at Toulouse-Blagnac airport from Santorini at 20.30 that night. They claimed their luggage and headed towards Hall D. From there a free shuttle would take them to the ‘budget' car park where their car had been waiting for a month. Altogether,
10
8 euros in parking fees. Ziegler had spent the entire trip calculating the amount in her head. Her girlfriend had paid for almost all of their holiday; Irène had paid only for her return ticket and two restaurants. No doubt about it, a stripper and nightclub manager earned more money than a gendarme. Irène had already wondered what her superiors would say if they ever found out that her partner was the manager of a strip joint, but she had decided once and for all that if she ever had to choose between her job and Zuzka, she would not hesitate for a second.

They were dragging their wheeled suitcases behind them, looking out of the window at the downpour, already nostalgic for the Greek sunshine, when they went past a newspaper stand. Irène stopped short.

‘What is it?' asked Zuzka.

‘Wait.'

Zuzka gave her a questioning look. Irène had put down her suitcase. She went up to the display: the photo was poor quality but the face was familiar. Martin Servaz was looking at her from the front page of the newspaper, his face white from the flashbulbs. The headline declared, HIRTMANN WRITES TO POLICE.

Clouds

Grey, bruised clouds, bulbous as mushrooms. Piled high in the sky like monuments. As he looked up at them, he felt a drop of rain hit his cornea. Hard as a marble. Then a second, and a third. He blinked. Rain was hitting him in the face. With his mouth open, he felt it on his tongue.

There was a terrible pain at the back of his skull, where his head was resting on the gravel. He raised his head; the pain grew worse, spread like tentacles around his neck and shoulders. Wincing, he rolled over to one side, to the left. He found himself staring out into the abyss, and a wave of nausea came over him. He was lying on the edge of the roof! Only a few centimetres from a fatal fall. Terrified, he rolled the other way, then crawled out of harm's way before getting up on his shaky legs.

He raised one hand to his skull and touched it cautiously. The pain immediately radiated throughout his head and he took his hand away. But he had had time to feel the enormous bump beneath his scalp. He looked at his fingers, and rain washed away the blood. It didn't necessarily mean anything: the scalp always bled abundantly.

He saw his gun a bit further away. He took two steps and bent down to pick it up. He dragged himself over to the metal door, which, on this side, was equipped with a handle. He tried to figure out what had happened.

And he knew at once.
The recording
…

He hurried unsteadily down the stairway from the roof, opened the door to the tenth floor and rushed over to the lifts. Once he was on the ground floor, he looked for the door to the staircase. He went through it and located the bank's emergency exit. The automatic door closer had shut it. He went back out of the building and over
to the glass doors of the bank. They were locked, and he could not get back in. He took out his telephone and called the manager.

‘Have you finished?'

‘No. But something happened.'

Five minutes later, a Japanese 4x4 pulled onto the square. The manager got out and came over, looking worried. He typed in a code and Servaz heard the buzzing of the electronic lock. He pushed open the door and hurried to the box room.

The little recorder had vanished. All that was left were the cables on the table.

This was what his attacker had wanted. To get hold of the recording.
He had taken a considerable risk. Without a doubt, that's who it was
…
the person in the hoodie.
He was the one who had killed Claire Diemar, who had drugged Hugo. Servaz no longer had any doubts. He had been there all that time, spying on him, following him. He had seen him go up to the surveillance camera and into the bank. He had realised what Servaz was about to do. He had no way of knowing whether someone would recognise him, so he had taken a crazy risk. He must have got into the bank with the other clients, then gone to the toilets and stayed there until closing time. Then he had lured Servaz away from the box room and he had stolen the hard drive and disappeared. Or something to that effect.

Servaz let out an oath.

‘Do you think he was on that recording … that he came into
my
bank … the man who killed that young woman?'

The manager's voice was almost trembling: he was beginning to realise what had happened. He had gone pale. Servaz was in such pain that it was as if someone were ramming a metal bar into his skull. He had to see a doctor. He called the CSI people and asked them to send a team over.

‘You can go home,' he said to the manager.

Then he left the room and went into the lobby. With every step his shoes squelched with water. From a big cardboard display, a pretty employee gave him a radiant smile. Around her neck she was wearing a scarf with the bank's colours. Servaz suddenly found himself cursing all those ad men who, with their psychological manipulation, polluted everyone's daily lives, everyone's minds, and practically every aspect of existence from birth to death. That evening he was angry with the entire world. He let the doors shut again
behind him, and in the shelter of an overhanging balcony he lit a cigarette. No matter how he analysed what had just happened, he always came to the same conclusion:
he had let the murderer slip through his fingers.

It was getting darker and darker. The shadows were lengthening beneath the trees on the square. He looked at his watch. Half past ten. The forensic team wouldn't get here for a good hour at least.

His stomach was churning with fear. He was aware that somewhere, not far away, lurked a murderer who did not hesitate to go after the police, acting with terrifying determination and sang-froid. Servaz felt the hair on his neck rise at the thought.

His mobile buzzed in his pocket. He looked at the number: Samira.

‘They've identified Thomas999,' she said. ‘His name isn't Thomas at all.'

Suddenly he was miles away from the bank.

‘You're not going to believe it,' she told him.

Someone knocked on the door. Margot looked over at her sleeping roommate, then at her laptop on the bed, and checked the time in the corner of the screen. 23.45. She got up and opened the door. It was Elias. His pale, moonlike face – or at least the half that wasn't hidden by his hair – stood out against the darkness of the corridor.

‘What the fuck are you doing in the girls' dormitory? Don't you know how to text?'

‘Come with me,' he said.

‘What?'

‘Get a move on.'

She was on the verge of slamming the door in his face, but his tone dissuaded her. She went back to her bed, grabbed a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and pulled them on. It was almost midnight, she had been in her bra and knickers, and Elias hadn't paid the slightest attention to her body, although she knew that in general boys liked it. There were two possibilities: either he really was a virgin, the way some girls said he was, or he was gay, which was what some of the boys said.

They headed towards the stairs. At the bottom of the steps, in the lobby, two marble busts watched as they opened the door leading out to the garden. Outside, there was a lull in the storm. Between the clouds the moon clawed at the night like a pale fingernail.

‘Where are we going?'

‘They've gone out.'

‘Who?'

He rolled his eyes.

‘Sarah, David and Virginie. I saw them go into the maze, one after the other. They must have agreed to meet there. We have to hurry.'

‘And what if we run into them? What will we say?'

‘We'll ask them what they're doing there.'

‘Great.'

They hurried into the shadow. They went past the statue beneath the tall cherry tree and entered the maze, slipping under the rusty chain. Elias stopped to listen. Margot did likewise. Silence. Everywhere the vegetation was shaking in the wind, dripping, anticipating the next shower. This made it difficult to identify any other sounds, but it also hid any that they might make.

She saw Elias hesitate then turn left. At every turn, she was afraid they would run into the threesome. The hedges had not been trimmed in a long time and now and again a branch scratched against her face in the dark. The cloud cover had returned. She couldn't hear anything but the sound of the wind, and she was beginning to wonder whether Elias was mistaken.

Until suddenly they heard their voices. Right nearby.

Ahead of her Elias stopped and raised his hand, like in war films where commandos lurk in enemy territory. She almost laughed. But deep down she was beginning to feel very uneasy. She held her breath. They were right there, around the next bend. They took two more steps and this time they heard David's voice, loud and clear.

‘It's scary, bloody horrible,' he was saying.

‘What else can we do?'

Margot immediately recognised Sarah's soft, veiled voice. ‘All we can do is wait …'

‘We can't just leave him,' protested David.

Margot felt an electric current go through the down on her arms. She had only one desire: to go back to her bedroom. David's voice was a toneless moan. His speech was approximate, tripping haltingly over certain syllables. As if he were drunk, or high.

‘I have a bad feeling about it. There's … surely there's something we can do … Shit, we can't just … We can't just abandon him.'

‘Shut up.'

Virginie's voice. Sharp as a whip.

‘You're not going to crack now, do you hear?'

But David didn't seem to hear. Through the hedge Margot detected a sobbing sound. Like a dull, prolonged moan. Or teeth grinding.

‘Oh, shit, shit, shit,' he groaned. ‘Fuck, fuck …'

‘You're strong, David. And we're here. We're your only family, don't forget that. Sarah, Hugo, me and the others … We're not going to abandon Hugo.'

A silence. Margot wondered what Virginie was talking about. David came from a well-known family: his father was the CEO of the Jimbot group. By greasing palms at every level, by making a fuss over the deputies and financing their electoral campaigns, he had landed the vast majority of contracts for motorways, public works and regional development in recent decades. David's older brother had studied in Paris and at Harvard and had gone on to run the family business with their father. David hated them, Hugo had told her one day.

‘We have to call an urgent meeting of the Circle,' said David suddenly.

Another silence.

‘We can't. The meeting will be held on the seventeenth, as planned. Not before.'

Virginie's voice again. Full of authority.

‘But Hugo is in prison!' moaned David.

‘We won't abandon Hugo. Ever. That cop will eventually get the picture and, if we have to, we'll help him …'

Margot felt the blood draining slowly from her face. The way Virginie had spoken about her father sent a chill down her spine; there was something shockingly brutal about the girl's voice.

‘That cop is Margot's father.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Exactly what?'

Silence. Virginie did not answer.

‘Don't worry, we'll keep an eye on him,' she said finally. ‘And his daughter, too.'

‘What you talking about?'

‘I'm simply saying that we have to make that cop understand that Hugo is innocent … one way or the other … and as for everything else, we have to be careful …'

‘Haven't you noticed lately that every time you turn your head she's there?' said Sarah. ‘Always hanging about wherever we happen to be …'

‘Who is?'

‘Margot.'

‘Are you implying that Margot is spying on us? That's absurd!'

That was David. Elias gave Margot a questioning look in the darkness. She blinked nervously.

‘What I mean is, we have to be careful. That's all.'

Sarah's voice, fluid as an icy stream. Margot suddenly felt it was time to get out of there.