The Chalk Circle Man (12 page)

XI

T
HAT NIGHT
A
DAMSBERG HAD A DISTURBING DREAM, A
combination of pleasure and outlandishness. He saw Camille come into his room, wearing a bellhop’s uniform. Looking serious, she undressed and lay down alongside him. Although he realised he was dreaming, and that he was on a slippery slope, he had not resisted. Then the Cairo bellhop had appeared in person and burst out laughing, holding up ten fingers to indicate ‘I married her ten times.’ Next, Mathilde had arrived, saying, ‘He wants to arrest you’, and had dragged her daughter away from him. He had clung on to her. He would rather die than lose her to Mathilde. And he had realised that his dream was degenerating, and that the initial pleasure had vanished, so it would be best to put a stop to everything by waking up. It was four in the morning.

Adamsberg got out of bed, cursing.

He paced up and down in his flat. Yes, he was on a slippery slope. If only Mathilde had not told him that Camille was her daughter, she would not have come back into his life with a reality that he had kept at bay for years.

No. That wasn’t right. It had started with that sudden feeling she was dead. That was when Camille had re-emerged from the far-off horizons where he had imagined her, fondly but distantly. But he had already made the acquaintance of Mathilde by then, and her Egyptian profile must have suggested Camille to him more strongly than before. That was how it had begun. Yes, that had been the start of the dangerous series of sensations resounding inside his head, as his memories were being prised up like slates in a high wind, opening gaps in a roof which had previously been carefully maintained. The slippery slope, dammit. Adamsberg had always placed little hope or expectation in love, not that he was opposed to feelings, which would have been pointless, but they weren’t the central thing in his life. That was just how it was, a deficiency on his part, he sometimes thought, or an advantage, as he thought at other times. And he never questioned this absence of belief in them. Nor was he about to do so tonight, more than any other night. But as he paced round the flat, he realised that he would have liked to hold Camille in his arms, if only for an hour. Being unable to do so frustrated him; he closed his eyes to imagine it, which didn’t help. Where was Camille? Why wasn’t she here, to lie in his arms until morning? Realising that he was a prisoner of a desire that could never be fulfilled, not now, not ever, exasperated him. It wasn’t so much the desire itself, since Adamsberg never allowed himself to be the prisoner of pride. It was the impression he had of wasting his time and his dreams in a futile and recurrent fantasy, knowing that life would have become much easier long ago if he had been able to forget it. And that was exactly what he had been unable to do. What wretched bad luck it had been to run into Mathilde.

Unable to get back to sleep, he walked through the office door at five past six in the morning. So he was there to take the call ten minutes later from the police station in the 6th
arrondissement
. A circle had been spotted on the corner of the boulevard Saint-Michel and the long and deserted rue du Val-de-Grace. In its centre lay a pocket English-Spanish dictionary. Feeling out of sorts after his bad night, Adamsberg seized the opportunity to go back into the fresh air. A uniformed policeman was already there, guarding the blue chalk circle as if it were the holy shroud. The man was standing stiffly to attention beside the small dictionary. A ridiculous sight.

‘Am I going down some blind alley?’ Adamsberg wondered.

Twenty metres further down the boulevard, a café was already open. It was seven o’clock. He sat at an outside table and asked the waiter if the establishment stayed open late, and if so who was on duty between eleven-thirty and half past midnight. He thought that in order to get to the Luxembourg station the chalk circle man would have had to go past this café, that is if he was still using the metro. The proprietor came out to speak to him in person. His attitude was rather aggressive until Adamsberg showed him his card.

‘I recognise that name,’ the café owner said. ‘You’re a famous detective.’

Adamsberg let this pass without comment. It made it easier to talk informally.

‘Yes,’ the café owner said after hearing him out. ‘Yes, I did see someone a bit suspicious who could be the one you’re after. It would have been just after midnight, he went past here, trotting along rather fast, when I was moving the tables on the terrace and shutting up shop. See these plastic chairs? They’re awkward, they fall over, they catch on things. One of them fell on its side, and he tripped up on it. I went over to help him up, but he pushed me away without a word, and off he went fast as he came, with a sort of satchel under his arm, that he kept tight hold of.’

‘Sounds like him,’ said Adamsberg.

The sun was just reaching the terrace. He stirred his coffee. Things were looking up. Camille was returning to her place in the far distance.

‘Did he remind you of anything?’ he asked.

‘No. Yes … I did think, poor old sod, I say that because he was a skimpy little chap. I thought there goes some poor bloke who’s been out for a drink, and he’s scurrying home, because his wife’s going to tear him off a strip.’

‘Male solidarity,’ Adamsberg muttered to himself, with a sudden feeling of distaste for the man. ‘Why did you think he’d been drinking? Because he wasn’t too steady on his legs?’

‘No, that’s not it, because now I think about it he was quite nimble, not clumsy. Perhaps he smelled of drink, though again, I can’t say I noticed that at the time. It’s just coming back to me, now you mention it. Second nature to me, of course, the smell of drink, my work. You can show me anyone and I can tell you how many he’s had. But this little chap the other night, I’d say he’d had a few shorts. Yes, you could smell it all right.’

‘What? Whisky? Wine?’

‘N-no.’ The man hesitated. ‘Neither of those. Sweeter than that. Something like those little glasses of liqueur that you see old codgers knocking back over a game of cards. Just a nip at a time, doesn’t look much, but it hits the spot in the end.’

‘Calvados? Poire?’

‘Oh, now you’re asking, I’ll start making things up if you carry on like that. I didn’t have any reason to smell his breath, after all.’

‘So maybe it was some fruit liqueur …?’

‘Does that tell you anything?’

‘Yes, it does, a lot,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Would you be good enough to go round to the station sometime today, and get someone to take a statement from you? Here’s the address. And above all, don’t forget to tell my colleague about the fruity smell.’

‘I said drink, not fruit.’

‘As you like. Doesn’t matter.’

Adamsberg smiled, feeling satisfied. He thought once more of his
petite chérie
but now it was as if she were a bird flying past in the distance, nothing more. Relieved, he left the café. Today he would send Danglard round to Mathilde’s to try to winkle out of her the address of the restaurant where she had seen the sad man in the raincoat and with papers strewn on the table. You never know.

But he would prefer not to meet Mathilde himself today.

As for the blue circle man, he was still chalking away, not far from the rue Pierre-et-Marie-Curie. Still at it, still holding this one-sided conversation.

And he, Adamsberg, was waiting for him.

XII

D
ANGLARD HAD MANAGED TO EXTRACT THE ADDRESS OF THE
restaurant in Pigalle from Mathilde, but it had closed down two years earlier.

Throughout the day, Danglard kept a watchful eye on Adamsberg’s changing moods. Danglard felt that the investigation was dragging. But he recognised that there was not much to be done about it. He had devoted himself to going through Madeleine Châtelain’s life with a toothcomb, without finding the least irregularity anywhere. He had also been to see Charles Reyer, to ask him to explain why he had been so curious about the article in the newsletter. Reyer was both taken aback and put out, and above all vexed that his attempt to conceal anything from Adamsberg had been so ineffective. But Reyer was rather taken with Danglard, and the deep and languid tones of this weary man, whom he imagined to be tall, disturbed him less than the too-gentle voice of Adamsberg. His answer to Danglard was simple. As a student of animal anatomy, he had had occasion to attend some of Madame Forestier’s seminars in the past. That could be checked out. At the time, he had not had any grudge against anyone, and he had appreciated Madame Forestier for what she was: intelligent and attractive, and he had never forgotten a word of the lectures she had given. Afterwards, he had wanted to wipe this whole period out of his life. But when the client in the hotel foyer had mentioned ‘the lady who goes deep-sea diving’ the memory of those days had been pleasant rather than otherwise, so he had wondered if the article was about her, and if so what she was being accused of. Reyer gathered that Danglard was prepared to accept this version of events. Danglard nevertheless asked him why he hadn’t said all that to Adamsberg the day before, and why he hadn’t told Mathilde that he had already realised who she was, on the occasion of their ‘chance’ meeting in the rue Saint-Jacques. Reyer had replied to the first question that he didn’t want Adamsberg to complicate life for him, and to the second that he didn’t want Mathilde to think of him as one of those eternal students who as they get older are still acolytes of their professor. Which he had no desire to be.

So all in all, there wasn’t much to be gleaned from that, Danglard told himself. Just the usual bundle of half-truths that waste everyone’s time. The children would be disappointed. But he felt resentment towards Adamsberg for these dreary days, punctuated only on the mornings when the circles reappeared.

He had the unjustified impression that Adamsberg was exerting a malign influence on the passage of time. The police station itself seemed to be impregnated with the particular behaviour of the
commissaire
. Castreau was no longer fuming over trifles, and Margellon was making fewer stupid remarks – not that the former was becoming milder or the latter more intelligent, rather that it wasn’t worth their while to react so strongly all the time. On the whole – but perhaps it was just an impression generated by his own worries – there were fewer outbursts and the usual little rows about nothing were less in evidence, being replaced by a sort of nonchalant fatalism which seemed more dangerous to him. All the officers seemed to be handling the sails of the ship routinely, without showing the least concern if the vessel was momentarily becalmed when the wind dropped. Everyday police matters took their course – three muggings in the street yesterday, for instance. Adamsberg came and went, disappeared and reappeared, without this provoking either criticism or alarm.

Jean-Baptiste went to bed early that night. He even discouraged the young woman from downstairs, as gently as he could, without offending her. And yet that morning he had felt an urgent desire to see her, to distract his thoughts and help him dream of a different body. But when evening came, his only thought was to get to sleep as fast as he could, without a bedfellow, or a book, or a thought in his head.

When the telephone rang in the small hours, he knew immediately that it had come at last, the end of marking time, the crisis, and that someone had been killed. Margellon was on the line. A man had had his throat cut on the boulevard Raspail, in the quiet section leading to the Place Denfert. Margellon was on the spot with the team from the 14th
arrondissement
.

‘And the circle? What’s the circle like?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘Yes, there’s a circle,
commissaire
. Carefully drawn, as if the guy was taking his time. And the words round the edge are the same as always: “Victor, woe’s in store, what are you out here for?” That’s all I can tell you for now. I’ll wait for you here.’

‘I’m on my way. Call Danglard. Tell him to get there fast.’

‘Is it really necessary to get everyone out?’

‘Yes. That’s what I want. And stay there yourself as well.’

He had added that so as not to offend Margellon.

Adamsberg had pulled on the first pair of trousers and shirt that came to hand, as Danglard noticed, having arrived at the scene a few minutes before him. Adamsberg’s shirt buttons were done up awry, as he realised himself. While looking down at the corpse, the
commissaire
therefore unfastened all the buttons, then did them up again, without seeming the least troubled by the incongruous sight he offered to the local officers standing around on the boulevard Raspail. They watched him in silence. It was three-thirty a.m. As on every occasion when it looked likely that the
commissaire
would be the object of critical comment, Danglard had an urge to defend him against allcomers. But in this case, there was nothing he could do.

So Adamsberg calmly finished buttoning up his shirt, while looking at a body which appeared under the arc lamps even more mutilated than that of Madeleine Châtelain. The throat had been so deeply slashed that the man’s head was almost back to front.

Danglard, who was feeling as nauseated as when he had seen Madeleine Châtelain’s body, tried not to look. His own throat was his most sensitive spot. The idea of wearing a scarf upset him as if it might strangle him. He didn’t like shaving under his chin, either. So he looked the other way, towards the dead man’s feet, one of which was pointing to the word ‘Victor’ and the other towards the word ‘woe’. The shoes were classic and well-polished. Danglard’s gaze moved up the long body, examining the cut of the grey flannel suit and the ceremonial presence of a waistcoat. An elderly doctor, he guessed.

Adamsberg was scrutinising the corpse from the other side, looking at the old man’s throat. The
commissaire
‘s mouth was twisted in a grimace of disgust for the hand that had slashed that neck. He was thinking of the stupid drooling dog and nothing else. His colleague from the 14th
arrondissement
approached with outstretched hand.

‘
Commissaire
Louviers. We haven’t met before, Adamsberg. Nasty circumstances.’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought it best to alert your sector straight away,’ Louviers insisted.

‘Thank you. Who is this gentleman?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘I think he was probably a retired doctor. At any rate he was carrying a medical bag with him. Seventy-two years old. Gérard Pontieux, born in the Indre
département
, height 1 metre 79, and that’s all we can say at present, just what’s on his ID card.’

‘We couldn’t have prevented it,’ said Adamsberg, shaking his head. ‘We just couldn’t. A second murder was predictable, but not preventable. All the policemen in Paris wouldn’t have been enough to stop it.’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Louviers. ‘It’s your case after that Châtelain murder in your sector, and the killer hasn’t been caught yet. He’s struck again. Hard to take, isn’t it?’

It was true: that was more or less what Adamsberg had been thinking. He had known that this new murder would happen. But not for a moment had he hoped that he could do anything about it. There are stages in an investigation when all you can do is wait for the irreparable to happen if you are to make any progress. Adamsberg could not feel any guilt. But he felt sorry for this harmless well-dressed elderly man stretched out on the pavement, who had had to pay the price for his own powerlessness.

By dawn, the corpse had been taken away in a police van. Conti had come to take some photographs in the morning light, replacing the photographer from the 14th. Adamsberg, Danglard, Louviers and Margellon all met round a table in the Café Ruthène, which had just opened its shutters.

Adamsberg remained silent, disconcerting his bulky colleague from the 14th, who was still taking in the hooded eyes, the lop-sided mouth and the dishevelled hair.

‘No point asking the café owners this time,’ Danglard remarked. ‘This one and the Café des Arts close too early, before ten. The chalk circle man knows where to find a deserted spot. It wasn’t far from here that he put the dead cat in a circle in the rue Froidevaux, by the Montparnasse cemetery.’

‘That’s in our sector,’ Louviers reacted. ‘You didn’t tell us.’

‘There wasn’t a murder then, or even an incident,’ Danglard replied. ‘We just had a look out of curiosity. Actually, you’re not quite right, because it was one of your men who told us about it in the first place.’

‘Ah, that’s all right then,’ said Louviers, relieved not to have been kept out of the loop.

‘Like last time,’ Adamsberg was saying from the end of the table, ‘this victim is entirely inside the circle. You can’t tell whether the circle man was responsible or whether his circle’s just been used. Always this ambiguity. Very clever.’

‘So?’ asked Louviers.

‘So nothing. The doctor thinks it happened at about one a.m. A bit late, to my mind,’ he concluded after another pause.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Louviers, who wasn’t easily discouraged.

‘I mean that’s after the last metro.’

Louviers went on looking puzzled. Then Danglard read from his expression that he had given up trying to intervene in the conversation. Adamsberg asked what time it was.

‘Coming up to eight-thirty,’ said Margellon.

‘Go and phone Castreau. I asked him to do some checking at about four-thirty. He should have some results by now. Try and catch him before he goes to bed. Castreau takes sleeping seriously.’

When Margellon returned, he reported that the brief checks so far hadn’t produced much in the way of information.

‘No, I dare say not,’ said Adamsberg, ‘but let’s have them all the same.’

Margellon read from his notes.

‘Dr Pontieux has no record with us. We’ve already informed his sister, who still lives in the family home in the Indre. She’s apparently his only living relative. And she’s about eighty years old. The parents were ordinary peasant farmers and Dr Pontieux made good, with a career that seems to have absorbed all his energy. Well, that’s what Castreau says,’ Margellon remarked in an aside. ‘He never married, anyway, according to the concierge in his building. Castreau called her. There were no apparent relationships with women or indeed anything remarkable about him, or so Castreau says. He’d lived at that address for the last thirty years, with the surgery on the third floor and his private apartment on the second, and the concierge has known him all that time. She says he was a kind, considerate man, as good as gold, and she was in floods of tears. Verdict: no clouds on the horizon. A sober citizen. An uneventful and boring life. At least—’

‘Yes, that’s what Castreau says,’ Danglard interrupted.

‘Does the concierge know why the doctor was out last night?’

‘He was called out to a child with a high temperature. He wasn’t really practising any more, but some of his former patients still asked for his opinion. He liked going on foot, to get some exercise, obviously.’

‘Nothing very obvious about that,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Anything else?’ asked Danglard.

‘Nothing else.’ Margellon put his notes away.

‘A harmless local GP,’ Louviers concluded, ‘as blameless as your previous victim. Same scenario, it looks like.’

‘But there’s one big difference,’ Adamsberg remarked. ‘A colossal difference.’

The three men looked at him in silence. Adamsberg was scribbling with a burnt match on a corner of the paper tablecloth.

‘Don’t you see what I mean?’ he asked, looking up but without seeking to challenge them.

‘I can’t see what’s so obvious about it,’ said Margellon. ‘What’s the colossal difference?’

‘This time,’ said Adamsberg, ‘it’s a man that’s been killed.’

The pathologist submitted his full report by the end of the afternoon. He estimated the time of death at about one-thirty. Like Madeleine Châtelain, Dr Gérard Pontieux had been knocked unconscious before having his throat cut. The murderer had made a violent assault, slashing the throat at least six times, and cutting through to the vertebrae. Adamsberg winced. The day-long investigation had turned up no more helpful information than they already possessed. They now knew various things about the elderly doctor, but nothing marked him as out of the ordinary. His apartment, his surgery and his private papers had revealed a life without any apparently secret compartments. The doctor had been preparing to rent out his Paris flat and return to his roots in the Indre
département
where he had recently bought a small house, in perfectly normal circumstances. His will left a tidy but by no means extraordinary sum of money to his sister. Danglard returned at about five. He had been searching the crime scene with three of his men. Adamsberg could see that he was looking pleased, but also that he was in need of a glass of wine.

‘We found these in the gutter,’ Danglard said, holding out a plastic evidence bag. ‘Not far from the body, about twenty metres away. The killer didn’t even bother to hide them. He’s acting as if he’s untouchable, absolutely certain he can move about with impunity. First time I’ve seen anything like that.’

Adamsberg opened the bag. Inside were two pink rubber gloves, sticky with blood. The sight was repulsive.

‘This killer seems to see life quite straightforwardly, doesn’t he?’ said Danglard. ‘He kills his man, wearing these gloves, and then just chucks them into the gutter down the street, as if he was getting rid of waste paper. But there won’t be any prints: that’s the thing with rubber gloves, you can slip them off without touching them and you can pick them up anywhere. So what does this tell us, except that the murderer is pretty cocky? How many people is he going to kill at this rate?’