The Circle (26 page)

‘You heard me.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘You know the usual question of an alibi,' he said.

‘You're not being serious?'

‘I am.'

‘I don't have to answer.'

‘That's true, but I would like you to all the same.'

‘Shouldn't you have consulted the judge before coming to bother my wife and me at such a late hour? I suppose you've heard of parliamentary immunity?'

‘The term is not unfamiliar.'

‘So, you're talking to me as a witness, is that it?'

‘Precisely. Just a little conversation between friends.'

‘A conversation I can put an end to at any time.'

Servaz nodded.

The MP stared at him, then threw himself back into his armchair with a sigh.

‘What time?'

‘Friday. Between 19.30 and 21.30.'

‘I was here.'

‘Alone?'

‘With Suzanne. We were watching a DVD. She likes American comedies from the fifties, you see. Lately, I've been doing everything I can to make her life more pleasant. Friday, let's see – it was
Roman Holiday
, I think, but you'll have to ask her. I'm not sure. She can testify to that if it comes to it … But it won't come to that, will it?'

‘For the time being, this conversation does not exist,' confirmed Servaz.

‘That's what I thought.'

Two boxers weighing in. Lacaze was gauging him. He liked his adversaries to be worthy.

‘Tell me about
her.
'

Servaz used the pronoun intentionally. He knew what a strange chemistry the word could trigger in the brain of a man in love. He knew from experience.

And indeed, he saw Lacaze's gaze falter. Touché. The boxer took the blow.

‘Oh … dear God … is it true what they say?'

Lacaze was struggling with the words.

‘That she died …
tied up … drowned . .
. Oh, shit … I think I'm going to be sick.'

Servaz saw him leap out of his chair and rush to the door. But before he reached it, he'd already turned round. He swayed for a few seconds in the middle of the room, as if he were lying against the ropes, groggy, before he returned to his chair and collapsed into it – and the analogy continued in Servaz's mind: all that was missing now was a bucket and a second in the corner of the ring. A faint film of sweat was pearling on the man's forehead, and all the colour had drained from his face.

‘Yes,' said Servaz gently, answering the question. ‘It's true.'

Servaz saw Lacaze lower his head until he was almost touching the blotter with his forehead. His elbows on the desk, he put his hands behind his skull, interlacing his fingers.

‘Claire … oh, fuck, Claire … Claire … Claire …'

Lacaze's voice was a long lament rising from the back of his throat. Servaz couldn't get over it. Either the man was madly in love with that woman, or he was the best actor on the planet. It was as if he didn't give a damn whether anyone saw him in this state.

Then he sat up. His red eyes looked daggers at Servaz. Servaz had rarely seen someone this upset.

‘Did that kid do it?'

‘Sorry. I can't answer that question.'

‘But you must have a lead, at least?'

He asked this almost imploringly. Servaz nodded. Did he have one? He was beginning to wonder.

‘I'll do everything I can to help you,' said Lacaze, gathering his wits. ‘I want you to catch the scum who did it.'

‘In that case, answer my questions.'

‘Go ahead.'

‘Tell me about her.'

Lacaze took a deep breath and, like the exhausted boxer back in the ring, he thrust himself forward.

‘She was a very intelligent girl. Magnificent. Gifted. Claire had everything going for her, she was blessed by the gods.'

Blessed by the gods until Friday evening
, thought Servaz.

‘How did you meet?'

Lacaze told him. In detail. With, noted Servaz, a certain complacency. Every year since he had become the deputy mayor of Marsac,
he had been invited to visit the lycée. He knew all the teachers, and every member of staff: the lycée was window dressing for the town, attracting the best students in the region. He had been introduced to the new classics teacher. Something had happened the moment they met, he explained. They had chatted, with their drinks in their hands. She had explained to him that she used to teach French and Latin in a secondary school, and that she had obtained her accreditation and taught in another lycée before she was offered this prestigious post. He had immediately sensed that she was on her own and that she needed someone by her side. It had been clear in his mind that they would not leave things as they stood. And that was exactly what had happened, not even two days later, when they ran into each other at a car wash. They went straight from the car wash to the hotel. That was how it had begun.

‘Was your wife already ill at that point?'

Lacaze jumped as if he'd been slapped.

‘No!'

‘And then?'

‘The usual thing. We fell in love. I was a public figure. We had to be discreet. The situation was weighing on us. We would have liked to declare our love to the whole world.'

‘She asked you to leave your wife and you didn't want to?'

‘No. You've got it all wrong, Commandant. I wanted to leave Suzanne. And it was Claire who was against the idea. She said she wasn't ready, that it would ruin my career, she refused to take that responsibility, since she didn't know whether she wanted to share my life.'

There was a hint of regret in his voice.

‘And then Suzanne fell ill and everything changed …' He gave Servaz a wounded look, his eyes infinitely sad. ‘My wife made it clear to me that I had a destiny, that Claire was too self-centred, too focused on herself to help me attain it. That she was the type of woman who never brings anything to others but drains them of their substance in order to nourish her own. She made me promise, if she were to die, not to give up my future for … for
her
…'

‘How did she find out about your affair?'

He saw the man's eyes cloud over.

‘She had found clues, and conducted her own little investigation. My wife used to be a journalist. She has a good nose.'

‘Do you smoke?'

Lacaze raised an eyebrow.

‘Yes.'

‘What brand?'

Lacaze gave him an intrigued look, but answered all the same.

‘So you had been to Claire's house?'

‘Yes. Of course.'

‘You weren't afraid that someone would see you?'

He saw Lacaze hesitate.

‘There is a passage … through the woods, which leads straight to her garden.' Servaz did not show any reaction. ‘On the far side, there is a little picnic area, in the forest, by the side of the road. I would park there and go the rest of the way on foot. The path is virtually impossible to find if you don't know it's there. The only people who could have seen me were the neighbours across the street: their windows overlook Claire's garden. But it was a risk I was willing to take. And I always wore a hood.' He smiled. ‘It was hard on us, but it was exciting too, to be honest. We felt like conspirators. Teenagers who have run away. You know, the “us against the world” syndrome.'

At the end his voice cracked: the best memories became crosses that were hard to bear under certain circumstances, thought Servaz. What about the passage through the woods: would Lacaze have mentioned it to him if he were the man who was spying on Claire, smoking in the hedge? Had he spied on her and discovered that she was seeing someone else? Hugo? … He always wore a hood – was it Lacaze he had seen on the video? The figure had seemed taller and thinner, but he could be wrong. Why had Lacaze felt he ought to mention it? Was the politician unconsciously challenging him to prove his guilt?

‘Well, do you have any other questions?'

‘Not for the time being.'

‘Good. As I told you, I will do everything in my power to help you; on the other hand, you must be aware of my position.'

Clearly Lacaze had his wits about him again. Servaz gave him a look that was deliberately confused.

‘My position as a public figure,' explained the politician, annoyed. ‘The political class in this country is dying. Moribund. We have no more faith in ourselves, we've been sharing power for so long that
we no longer have the slightest new idea, or the slightest hope of changing anything. Commandant, I'm not ashamed to say it: I am one of the party's rising stars. I believe in my destiny. Two years from now, when our president loses the election – because he will lose it – I will be in charge of the party, and I'll be the frontrunner in 2017. And the Left, too, will have to confront its poor showing. Europe, along with the rest of the world, will be nothing but an arena of rebellion. Men like me are the future. Do you understand what's at stake? It goes far beyond your investigation, the death of Mademoiselle Diemar, or the salvation of my marriage.'

Servaz could not believe what he was hearing: this man was consumed by ambition.

‘Which means?'

‘Which means I cannot allow the slightest shadow, the least suspicion, do you understand? Because this is what the public want: brand-new, immaculate people. Unsullied by corruption, strangers to the old ways of doing things, not implicated in affairs of any kind. You must conduct your investigation with absolute discretion. You know that even if I am innocent, if my name appears anywhere there will always be someone prepared to say that there is no smoke without fire, to feed the rumour, to tarnish my reputation … But why don't we speak about your career, instead of mine. I can help you, Commandant. I have powerful allies. At the national as well as the regional level. People in high places listen to me.' Lacaze took a deep breath. ‘I am counting on your diplomacy. And your loyalty. Don't get me wrong: I want the bastard who did this to be found as badly as you do – but I also want the investigation to be discreet.'

Well, well, what a surprise … Servaz felt a surge of rage. The ‘I'll do everything to help you' had already been forgotten. Lacaze was suggesting an exchange of services: you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Servaz got to his feet.

‘Don't bother yourself with that. I haven't voted in nearly twenty years. That doesn't make me very receptive to those kinds of arguments. I have one last question.'

Lacaze waited.

‘Other than the fact that you visit the lycée once a year, were you already familiar with the prep classes in Marsac?'

‘Of course; I was a student there myself. It's … how to explain it. A very special place. Very different from—'

‘No need to explain. I know it, too.'

Lacaze gave him a surprised look. Servaz left the room and went down the corridor.

When he turned into the lounge, he almost bumped into Lacaze's wife. She was standing ramrod straight in front of him and the look she gave Servaz was as cold as ice. She was looking at him, defying him, her lips white and pursed. He understood the implicit message:
she knew
– and she also hoped that he would be discreet. But for other reasons.

‘You have blood on your collar, at the back,' she said.

‘Forgive me,' he muttered, blushing. ‘I'm sorry to have disturbed you at this late hour.'

‘People who don't believe there is anything after life are wrong,' she said, looking at the bottom of her glass. ‘There's an eternity of silence. It isn't an easy thing to face.' She raised her eyes to his. ‘Get the fuck out of here.'

He left the corridor and crossed the lounge towards the picture window. She followed him with her gaze, saying nothing, as he went out onto the terrace. He felt crushed. Crushed by the weight of the darkness that reigned here. Crushed by his own past. Crushed by the aftermath of what he had been through on the roof of the bank. He stopped for a moment and looked at the black, hostile countryside. The pain was still throbbing at the back of his skull, as if to remind him of something –
but what?

He lifted his collar and went sadly into the night.

Nostalgia

She leaned over the toilet bowl to vomit. Rinsed out her mouth. Brushed her teeth. Rinsed again. Then she stood up straight and looked at the ghost staring at her from the mirror. She gave it a defiant glance as she had been doing for months. But she felt that the ghost was no longer afraid of her, and that it was getting stronger by the day.

Officially, the ghost had begun to grow ten months earlier, in her neck, but she knew that it had been there longer. In the form of a single little cell to start with, as solitary as it was lethal, biding its time until the moment it began to divide into thousands, millions, then billions of immortal cells. The irony of fate: the greater the number of immortal cells, the closer she would be to her own death. Another irony: the enemy was not outside her but within. She had given birth to it. Molecular mechanism, cellular division, mutagenic agents, secondary hosts … she had become a specialist. It was as if she could feel, physically, the proliferation of the cancer in her body, the armies of cancer moving about on the motorways of her circulatory system, spilling onto the slip roads, interchanges, secondary roads of her capillaries and her lymph glands, besieging her lungs, her spleen and her liver, sending metastases all the way to her groin and her brain. She opened the medicine cabinet, looking for the anti-emetic. She had nothing in her stomach besides alcohol, but she had no more appetite. She had started chemo again at the beginning of the week. She began humming ‘Feeling Good'. Muse's version or Nina Simone's. The more she died, the more she felt like singing. On leaving the bathroom, she heard the voice from the study. He had left the door ajar. Barefoot, she went closer. He was worried. He was speaking feverishly into the phone.