The Circle (37 page)

‘Let's go,' said Virginie, handing David the T-shirt he had tossed into the grass. ‘Put this on. You'll come with us, right? No one must see you in that state.'

It was getting darker and darker in the clearing. David nodded silently. Margot saw him pull his T-shirt on over his thin torso and the four wounds, now more black than red in the fading light. She watched as Sarah and Virginie led him away from the clearing towards the path to the lycée and she withdrew deeper still into the shadow, her blood pounding in her temples. She waited for a long time among the bushes, until there was nothing left but the silence of the forest, a silence disturbed by various noises she could not identify.

She had the vague and paranoid impression that she was not alone.
That someone was there
… She trembled. The moon had risen above the trees. But the night was deceiving.

How long did she stay there without moving? She had no idea.

There was something
enchanted –
in the malevolent sense of the word – about the scene she had just witnessed. A strange atmosphere she could not define. What she had seen had upset her deeply. She sensed that they were beyond all salvation. She had a confused understanding that they had crossed a line, a boundary, and that they could no longer go back. Suddenly, she didn't feel like digging any more. She wanted to move on to something else. She would tell Elias to manage on his own.

She waited a little longer, then she began to move. And froze immediately.

A branch had just cracked, right nearby. As if someone had stepped on it. She stood stock still and listened carefully, but all she could hear was the pounding of her heart in her ears and the rustling of foliage overhead.

What was it? Like an animal on the alert, she swung her head from left to right. But the forest was getting darker and darker. Only the sky above was still a lighter grey.
What was it?

She took another step towards the path, when she was brutally shoved forward and thrown to the ground. She felt an enormous weight come down on her back. She landed hard. She could smell
marijuana on someone's breath, a warm exhalation against her chin, while a hand crushed her head into the earth and leaves.

‘You were spying on us, bitch, weren't you?'

She wriggled, but David was crushing her. His cheek against hers. His coarse beard scratching her skin.

‘You know I've always fancied you, Margot. I've always had a thing about your piercings and your tattoos, I've always wanted your tight arse. But of course you only had eyes for Hugo – like all of you sluts!'

‘David, let me go!'

With horror she felt a warm, damp hand groping its way under her T-shirt, fingers reaching for one of her breasts.

‘What are you doing, for Christ's sake? Stop it! Shit, stop it!'

‘You know what we do to girls like you? Seriously, do you know what we do?'

His voice like a murmur in her ear. Suddenly his fingers twisted her nipple, and she cried out in pain. Another hand was already sliding into her shorts from behind. ‘What's your problem? Doesn't the idea of a nice little quickie turn you on? Don't tell me you'd rather do it with that idiot?'

He was going to rape her. The prospect was so inconceivable, so unreal, that her brain would not allow it. Here, only a few dozen metres from the lycée … She was overwhelmed by a blinding terror. She struggled with all her might and he had to remove his hands to grab her wrists and pin her to the ground. He was strong. Too strong for her.

‘Granted, granted, I am a scoundrel, but she is a woman of a noble heart, full of sentiments, refined by education. And yet … oh, if only she felt for me!
'

His hand returned to its assault on her shorts, this time at the front, beneath her belly, while he was reciting. Inquisitive fingers in the space between her clothes and her skin. She gasped again. She felt David press up against her buttocks. He was hard.

‘
But Katerina Ivanovna, though she is magnanimous, she is unjust …
'

‘Tolstoy!' she guessed, to distract his attention, still wriggling vigorously.

‘Ah-hah, nice try! Wrong! It's Dostoyevsky:
Crime and Punishment.
What a pity that idiot Van Acker isn't here. Especially as he's got a soft spot for you.'

A finger had found its way into her pants.

‘Stop! Let me go! David, don't do this!
Don't do this!
'

‘Shut up,' he murmured in her ear. ‘Shut your mouth right now.'

Words uttered in a quiet voice. Quiet, but changed. Heavy with threat. He was no longer acting. He was elsewhere; he had become someone else.

He had slapped his other hand over her mouth to prevent her from screaming, and Margot tried to bite him. In vain. With absolute horror, she felt David's finger slide deeper into her pants. Incapable of reacting, her mind detached itself from her body. This was not her, either, it was someone else.

What was happening did not concern her.

He was going to take off her shorts, then he would rape her, there, on the ground …

It doesn't concern you …

Suddenly, David's hand withdrew from her pants and she heard him swear. There was a blow, then he gave a cry of pain, and before she could even get to her feet, she saw his face crushed on the ground next to hers.

‘You're hurting me!'

‘Shut up, fucking shitface!'

She recognised that voice. She rolled over and found herself looking at her father's assistant – the one with the strange face, but super-cool clothes – and she was putting handcuffs on David, her knee on his back.

‘Are you all right?' asked Samira Cheung, looking at her.

She nodded, and wiped the earth and blades of grass from her knees.

‘I wasn't going to do it,' moaned David, his cheek against the ground. ‘I swear to you, fuck, I wasn't going to do it! It was just for fun!'

‘What weren't you going to do?' Samira's voice was as sharp and threatening as a razor blade. ‘
Rape her
, right? You already did, you wanker. What you did is called rape, you stupid fuck.'

She saw David's shoulders shake with a sob.

‘Leave him alone,' said Margot.

‘What?'

‘Leave him … he just wanted to frighten me. He didn't mean to rape me, it's true.'

‘Oh, really? And how do you know that?'

‘Let him go.'

‘Margot …'

‘I won't file a complaint, anyway. You can't make me.'

‘Margot, it's because of this sort of—'

‘Leave him alone! Let him go!'

She met David's gaze. There was a mixture of incomprehension and gratitude in his golden eyes.

‘Whatever you say – but you can be sure I'll tell your father.'

She nodded, shameful, as the woman gave her a furious gaze. There was the clicking sound of the handcuffs being removed. Margot saw Samira pull David to his feet and stick her face not two inches from his, her eyes as black as tar.

‘Are you scared? Because you should be. You were that close to messing up your entire life, and hers, and I'll have my eye on you from now on. Do me a favour: do something stupid. Just one thing. Anything. And I'll be there.'

David glanced at Margot.

‘Thank you.'

In his eyes she saw an expression that was hard to decipher. Was it shame? Gratitude? Fear? Then he walked away. Samira turned to Margot, who was still sitting on the ground.

‘You can find your own way home,' she said, coldly.

She left, taking the same path as David. Margot heard her go back up the lane past the tennis courts with a hurried step. She took several deep breaths, wondering why her father's assistant had turned up so miraculously. Was he having her watched? She waited for the silence to return, for the night to take possession of the forest. Only then did she roll over and stretch out on her back in the grass, her eyes to the sky, which was a deep grey, even darker through the black canopy. She rammed her earphones into her ears, asked Marilyn Manson to sing ‘Sweet Dreams' – and then she began to sob.

Unaware that someone was watching her.

He heard the music and the sound of the motor to start with.
They were coming through the woods – and fast
… Elvis Elmaz switched off the telly, turned his head and looked over to the window. He could make out a glow in the forest. It was almost dark.
Headlights
… He leapt up off the sofa and towards the gun hanging on the
wall. His heart began pounding. No one ever came to visit at this hour.

The dogs began growling, then barking, shaking their cages with their claws.

He made sure the gun was loaded, then went over to the window, when suddenly a shower of white light exploded in the room, blinding.

The car had its headlights on full beam. He had to turn his head away from the assault of the dazzling brightness. And then there was the music playing full blast, the bass causing the walls to vibrate.

Elvis hurried to the door, his gun pointed. He flung it open.

‘Fuck, I know who you are, you bunch of faggots!' he screamed, bursting out onto the veranda. ‘The first one who comes close, I'll blow his brains out.'

He felt the cold pressure of a rifle against his temple.

‘This is Samira,' said the voice on the telephone.

Servaz turned down the stereo, and outside a siren was wailing. Once again he was disappointed. Once again, he had hoped it would be Marianne.
Why don't you call her?
he wondered.
Why wait for her?

‘What's up?'

‘It's Margot … something happened this evening. Something not at all cool. But she's fine,' she hastened to reassure him.

He stiffened. Margot. Not at all cool. He waited for her to go on. Samira recounted the scene she had just witnessed: she'd been watching the back of the buildings, Vincent the front. She had seen two girls leave the building and walk towards the woods, then, just afterwards, Margot appeared, following in their footsteps; so she had trailed her, had found Margot watching the two girls and a boy named David in a clearing. She was too far away to hear what they were saying, but the young man called David seemed completely stoned. Then Samira saw the trio leave again while Margot was still hiding in the thicket. David reappeared several minutes later. Samira saw him make his way into the undergrowth then lost him again until he threw himself on Margot. Samira had rushed over, but she had been a good thirty metres away, the bloody forest was full of brambles, and she had stumbled on a root, and it had hurt like hell when she stood back up. It must have taken her roughly a minute and a half to intervene,
no more than that, boss, I swear.

‘At least this way he was caught in the act,' she said. ‘And I'll say it again, boss: Margot is fine.'

‘I don't get it! Caught in the act of doing what?' he shouted. Samira told him.

‘You're saying that David tried to rape my daughter?'

‘Margot says he didn't. That it wasn't his intention. But he managed to … um … put his hand in … um … her pants …'

‘I'm on my way.'

‘Fuck, don't do that, don't do that, shit!'

He struggled. For appearances' sake. His wrists were tied behind his back and his legs were fastened to the chair legs with thick brown tape. His chest was tied to the chair back the same way. He even had some around his neck. Every time he struggled, the tape tugged at his skin and hair. He was sweating like a pig. ‘Bunch of fucking bastards! Motherfuckers! Fuck the lot of you!'

The insults were helping him to resist. He knew they were going to kill him. And he knew it wouldn't be a pleasant death. He had only to think of what had happened to the teacher … He had never been very kind to women. He had beaten them, raped them, but what that teacher had been through was beyond comprehension – even for someone like him. A tremor went through him.

He inhaled the smell of the dogs and his own strong smell, then the more complex odours of the forest: they had tied him up outside on the veranda. Dust particles and insects danced in the harsh glow of the headlights burning into his eyes. Everything was coming to life around him with sharper intensity; everything was taking on a definitive value.

‘I'm not afraid,' he said. ‘Kill me, I don't care anyway.'

‘Is that so?' said one of the figures, acting interested. ‘Well, how nice for you!'

Like the others, his face was hidden in the shadow of the hood.

‘You're going to be afraid, believe me,' said someone else, calmly.

Something about that voice made him tremble. It was so confident. And calm. And cold. He watched as they unwound a roll of cling film on the floor of the veranda. He felt dizzy. His heart was fluttering in his chest like a bird in a cage trying to find the way out.

‘What the fuck are you doing?'

‘Oh! All of a sudden you're interested?'

They got back up and began to wind the cling film around his torso and the back of the chair. He forced himself to smile.

‘What is this?'

‘This?' They laughed. ‘This means:
yum yum time for doggies
…'

They disappeared from his sight. He could hear them in the house, opening and closing the fridge, then they came hurrying back. Suddenly gloved hands were sliding hunks of fresh, bloody meat between the cling film and his belly, and he trembled. When he had several steaks on his stomach, they went round the chair again, winding the film ever higher towards his throat then slipping new pieces of fresh meat – the cheap stuff that he used to feed the dogs – between the cling film, his chest and his neck.

‘Fuck, what are you playing at?'

A sudden blow slashed his cheek. Warm blood began to spurt onto his chin.

‘Ow! Fuck, you're sick!'

‘Did you know that cling film is made up of fifty-six per cent salt and forty-four per cent petrol?'