The Circle (27 page)

‘We've got a problem, I tell you. That cop won't just leave it. He's a tough one.'

She placed a hand on her scarf and her wig to check their position and felt another wave of nausea. Suddenly she propelled herself far away from there. Planets born and dying, stars far out in space that stopped shining, a baby about to emerge from a womb while another person passed away, a wave forming far out to sea which she rode on a surfboard aged fifteen, a Schubert sonata she played on the piano at nineteen, a hundred people applauding, monitor lizards in the jungle, a lagoon, a volcano, a backpack, a trip around the world when she was twenty-eight with a much older, married man whom she loved, then. She would have liked to rewind the film. To start from square one, start everything all over again …

Again the panicked voice coming through the door.

‘I know what time it is! Call him and ask him what's going on. No, not tomorrow, tonight, shit! He can get the prosecutor out of bed, for fuck's sake!'

Where were you on Friday evening and what were you doing?

She smiled. The media darling was afraid. Scared shitless. She had loved him, oh yes. More than anyone else. Before she began to despise him – more than anyone else as well. Her scorn was in proportion to the amount of love she'd once felt. Was it one of the side effects of the disease? It should have made her more understanding, shouldn't it? More …
empathetic
, as those people said. Her
friends –
journalists, politicians, doctors, company directors, petty bourgeois. She realised now the degree to which she was surrounded by priggish, pretentious pedants and posers, their lips spouting fine words, witty phrases and hollow platitudes, which they passed back and forth. How she missed the uncomplicated people of her childhood. Her father, her mother: simple craftsmen …

‘Right. Get back to me.'

She heard him hang up and she moved away quietly. She had heard him tell the cop that they had spent the evening together watching a DVD. That she loved American comedies from the fifties – the only bit of truth in a web of lies.
Roman Holiday
! She almost burst out laughing. She could picture him as Gregory Peck and herself as Audrey Hepburn on their Vespa, dashing through the streets of Rome. Ten years earlier, they had looked like that, it was true. The perfect couple. The one everyone admired, envied … At all the parties, everyone looked at them: she was the brilliant, attractive journalist, he was the young politician with a bright future ahead
of him. Their gazes had been full of wonder and envy. He was still a politician with a bright future ahead of him …

They hadn't watched a film together for a long time.

She'd heard him moaning like a wounded animal about the death of that slut. He didn't even give a damn that there was a cop sitting across from him. Had he loved her that much?

Where were you on Friday?

One thing was for sure: he hadn't been at home that night. Any more than on all the other nights.

She didn't want to know. There was enough darkness around her. He could roast in hell or languish in prison – once she was dead. Sadness, solitude and the fear of death tasted like chalk dust in her mouth. Or maybe it was the ghost, playing another trick. She wanted to die in peace.

Ziegler opened the wardrobe and took out several uniforms, one after the other, and lay them on the bed.

One jacket in navy and royal blue waterproof cloth, with two stripes marked GENDARMERIE on the back and the chest. A blue jacket with reinforcements at the elbows and shoulders. Several long-sleeved polo shirts, two pairs of trousers, three straight skirts, shirts, a black tie and a tie clip, several pairs of court shoes and two pairs of walking boots, gloves, a cap, and a hat that she found every bit as ridiculous as the last time she had worn it, just before the holidays.

Except that now she wasn't wearing these outfits just at certain ceremonies but on a daily basis. The uniform that most of her colleagues wore with pride was, in her eyes, a symbol of her loss of rank and her disgrace.

She had spent two years as an investigator with the gendarmerie's crime investigation division, wearing civvies. And now here she was back to square one.

She had dreamt of being promoted to a major city. A city full of lights, of sound and fury. Instead, she was back out in the country. The countryside might seem idyllic, and crime might be less visible, but it was everywhere all the same. New technologies had enabled crime to spread to the most remote of backwaters. There were the hardened urban criminals who no longer hesitated to move into places with less police presence; and even in a village with a few hundred inhabitants you could find one or two brainless cretins whose dreams
of grandeur consisted in committing acts as evil as those of their urban counterparts. It was plain to see that here, as elsewhere, there were two professions with no danger of obsolescence: the law, and the police.

But she also knew that the moment an important case came along, it would be immediately taken out of her hands and entrusted to a more competitive investigation squad than her modest one could ever hope to be.

She made sure all her outfits were clean and ironed, then hung them back up in the wardrobe and tried to forget them. Her holiday wasn't over until tomorrow morning. In the meantime she refused to succumb to negative thoughts.

Ziegler went out of the room, crossed the tiny lounge of her company flat and picked up the newspaper from the coffee table. Then she headed towards the little desk by the window, switched on her computer and sat down.

She found the article. There was no information on the newspaper's website other than what was already in the paper version. However, one link referred back to an older article that had appeared while she was in Greece. It was entitled: ‘YOUNG PROFESSOR MURDERED IN MARSAC.
Policeman who solved St-Martin case placed in charge of investigation
.' She felt a tingling.

‘Good God, do you have any idea of the time?'

The minister spluttered into the receiver, reaching with one hand for the bedside lamp. He glanced at his wife, sound asleep in the middle of the big bed: the ringing telephone had not even woken her up. The man at the other end of the line did not turn a hair. He was, after all, the president of the assembly parliamentary group and he was not in the habit of waking people up over trifles.

‘You must realise that if I'm calling you it's a matter of extreme importance.'

The minister sat straight up in bed.

‘What's going on? Has there been a terrorist attack? Did someone die?'

‘No, no,' said the voice. ‘Nothing like that. Still, in my opinion it could not wait until tomorrow.'

The minister felt like telling him that opinions were roughly as numerous and varied as what they both had between their legs, but he refrained.

‘So what is the matter?'

The head of the parliamentary group explained. The minister frowned and, swinging his legs out of bed, he shoved his feet into a pair of slippers. He left the room and went into the study.

‘You say he was the woman's lover? Is that rumour or fact?

‘He confessed to the policeman,' the other man replied.

‘Fuck! He's even stupider than I thought! And he didn't tell you, by any chance, whether he'd killed her?' said the minister, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

‘In my opinion, he didn't,' replied the man soberly. ‘I don't think Paul is capable of such a thing. To my mind, he's a weak man who wants to pass himself off as a strong one.'

The president of the parliamentary group was quite pleased with this witticism, which excused his rival while at the same time debasing him. He was well aware of Paul Lacaze's ambition. He knew that the young MP was after his post, and he despised the man. He was a mad dog posing as the white knight of politics. The problem with white, he mused, is that it gets dirty. He was not at all displeased by what had happened. But on the other end of the telephone line the minister sighed.

‘I advise you to erase the words “opinion” and “to my mind” from your vocabulary,' he said curtly. ‘Voters don't care for opinions, they want deeds and facts.'

The head of the parliamentary group felt like answering back, but he was savvy enough to know when to keep his mouth shut.

‘What do we know about the cop?'

‘He's the one who brought down Eric Lombard a year and a half ago,' he replied.

Silence on the other end of the line. The minister was thinking. He checked his watch. Twelve minutes past midnight.

‘I'll call the Minister of Justice,' he decided. ‘We must keep a lid on this story before it explodes in our face. You call Lacaze back. Tell him we want to see him. First thing tomorrow. I don't care what he's got on his agenda. He'll just have to figure it out.'

He hung up without waiting for an answer and looked for the number of the woman in charge of the Ministry of Justice. She would have to find out what she could, and very quickly, about the magistrates assigned to the case. For a moment, he felt nostalgic for the days when judges were subservient to those in power, where any
affair in the country could be hushed up, where the life of France's chief cop consisted of illegal phone-tapping, writing compromising reports on one's rivals and other dirty tricks. He would have loved to be around during that era, but it was no longer possible. Nowadays, the little judges went nosing into everything, and you had to be careful not to make the slightest faux pas.

Servaz looked at the clock on the dashboard. Twenty minutes past midnight. Maybe it wasn't too late. Did he have the right to show up like this, without warning? He decided he did. Instead of going back to Marsac, he left the residential neighbourhood behind him and continued on through the woods, then turned left at the next crossroads, amidst the fields. The road led directly to the lake. When he reached it, the first house along the north shore would be Marianne's. There was a light shining on the ground floor. She wasn't in bed yet. He drove up to the gate and got out.

‘It's me,' he said simply, after he'd pressed the button and heard the electric crackling in the intercom – and he realised that his heart was beating a bit too fast.

She didn't answer, but there was a click and the gate slowly opened as he got back behind the wheel. He drove over the gravel, his headlights carving out the low-hanging branches of the fir trees. At the top of the steps the front door was open.

He closed it behind him and let the sound of the television guide him. He found her sitting among the cushions on her sand-coloured sofa, her legs tucked beneath her, a glass of wine in her hand. She held it up.

‘Cannoneau de Sardegna,' she said. ‘Would you like some?'

She did not seem surprised by his late visit. He had never heard of the wine. She was wearing short satin pyjamas and the electric blue cloth emphasised her blonde hair, her light eyes and her suntanned legs, and he could not help but admire them.

‘I'd love some,' he said.

She rose from the sofa in a single supple movement and went to fetch a large stem glass from the bar, set it down on the coffee table and filled it one-third full. It was certainly a good wine, but slightly too full-bodied for his tastes. However, he had to admit he was no expert. She muted the TV, but left the picture on. The reflex of a person who lives alone, he thought. Even without
the sound, television was a presence. She looked exhausted and sad, with shadows under her eyes; she wore no make-up, but he found her even more attractive. Aodhágán was right. No one could touch her then and no one could touch her now. Even without make-up, her hair uncombed, wearing nothing but those pyjamas, she could have shown up at a party and she would have eclipsed all others, regardless of their jewellery, their designer gowns and their last-minute trips to the hairdresser's.

She sat back down. He collapsed on the sofa next to her.

‘What brings you here?' she asked.

Before he had time to answer, she gave a start.

‘Christ, Martin, you've got blood all over your collar. And in your hair!'

She leaned closer and he could feel her fingers delicately parting his hair.

‘You've got a very nasty wound … You have to see a doctor … How did you do that?'

He told her as he took another swallow of wine. He knew that one or two more gulps like that and his head would begin to spin. He glanced at the label on the bottle. Fourteen per cent, no less … He told her about the surveillance videos at the bank, the second figure, the sound, and the chase up to the roof.

‘Does this mean that … does this mean that the person caught on tape is the actual culprit, in your opinion?'

He could hear that her throat had tightened with hope. Immense, immoderate hope.

‘Maybe,' he said cautiously.

She didn't add anything, but he guessed that her mind was racing, while she went on mechanically parting his hair with her fingertips.

‘You can't stay like this … You need stitches.'

‘Marianne …'

She got up again and left the room, returning five minutes later with cotton, alcohol and a box of Steri-Strips.

‘It won't work,' he said. ‘You'll have to shave my head.'

‘It's worth a try.'

He realised it was doing her good to do something, to think about someone else besides Hugo for a while. He could feel the alcohol burning as she disinfected his scalp, and he trembled from the pain when she pressed a bit too hard. She took a Steri-Strip out of the
box, removed the protective strip and tried to apply the butterfly stitch. But she had to give up almost immediately.

‘You're right, I would have to shave you.'

‘No way.'

‘Wait. Let me have another look.'

She leaned over him again. Her fingers were still rummaging in his hair. She was close. Too close … He could see how thin the satin pyjamas were. He became aware of the warm, brown skin beneath. Her lips, like his, too big. It used to make them laugh, back in the old days. They used to say that
their mouths had found each other.
Marianne's fingers were caressing the back of his neck … He turned his head.