Fred Vargas - The Chalk Circle Man

‘I won’t tell you that’s fantastic work, it sounds too much like police talk, but all the same, it is fantastic work.’

Adamsberg often used the word ‘fantastic’.

‘True,’ said Mathilde. ‘I did well there, better than with Charles Reyer, at any rate.’

‘You like him – Reyer?’

‘He’s a bad-tempered so-and-so, but that doesn’t bother me. He makes up for Clémence, the old woman you saw, who’s mind-numbingly good-natured. She seems to do it on purpose. Charles won’t get a rise out of her any more than with me. That’ll teach him, it’ll blunt his teeth.’

‘ Her teeth are a bit funny, Clémence’s.’

‘You noticed, yes, like Crocidura russula – more like animal’s teeth, aren’t they? It must put off the lonely-hearts men she tries to date. We ought to give Charles an eye makeover and Clémence a teeth makeover – we ought to give the world a makeover, really. Then of course it would be perfectly boring. If we get a move on, we could be at Saint-Georges metro station by ten, if that’s what you want. But I’ve already told you, Adamsberg, I really don’t think it’s him you should be chasing. I think someone else used his circle afterwards. Is that impossible?’

‘It would have to be someone who was remarkably familiar with his routine.’

‘Like me.’

‘Yes, and don’t say so too loudly or you’ll be suspected of following your chalk circle man that night and then dragging your victim, whom you’d previously knocked out, of course, over to the rue Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, before cutting her throat, on the spot, right in the middle of the circle, making sure she wasn’t outside the line. But that seems pretty far-fetched, doesn’t it?’

‘No. I think that would be quite possible if you wanted to incriminate somebody else. In fact, it’s very tempting, this madman who’s been offering himself on a plate to the police and drawing his blue chalk circles two metres wide, just big enough to contain a corpse. It could have given plenty of people the idea of committing murder, if you ask me.’

‘But how could any prosecutor prove a motive, if the victim turns out to be entirely unknown to the circle man?’

‘The prosecutor would think it was a motiveless crime by a lunatic.’

‘He doesn’t look like a lunatic at all, from all the classic signs. So how could the “real” murderer, according to you, be certain that the circle man would be found guilty in his place?’

‘Well, what do you think, Adamsberg?’

‘I don’t think anything yet, Madame, to tell you the truth. But I’ve just had a bad feeling about these circles from the beginning. I don’t know, just now, whether the man who draws them killed this woman. You could be perfectly right. Perhaps the chalk circle man is just a victim himself. You seem to be much better at working things out and reaching conclusions than I am, you’re a scientist. I don’t use the same methods, I don’t do deductive reasoning. But the feeling I’ve got at the moment, very strongly, is that this circle man isn’t nice at all – even if he is your protégé.’

‘But you haven’t got any evidence?’

‘No. But I’ve been trying to find out everything about him for weeks. He was already dangerous, in my view, when he was just drawing rings round cotton buds and hairpins. So he’s still dangerous now.’

‘But good heavens, Adamsberg, you’re working backwards! It’s as if you were to say that some food was toxic because you felt sick before eating it!’

‘Yes, I know.’

Adamsberg seemed irritated with himself: his eyes were heading for dreams and nightmares where Mathilde couldn’t follow him.

‘Come on, then,’ she said, ‘let’s go to Saint-Georges. If we get lucky and see him, you’ll find out why I’m defending him against you.’

‘And why’s that?’ asked Adamsberg, standing up, with a sad smile on his face. ‘Because a man who gives you a little wave of his hand can’t be all bad?’

He looked at her, his head on one side, his lips curled into a lopsided grin, and he looked so charming that Mathilde felt once more that with this man life was a little better. Charles needed new eyes, Clémence needed a new set of teeth, but this policeman needed a total face makeover. Because his face was crooked, or too small, or too big, or something. But Mathilde would not have let anyone touch it for the world.

‘Adamsberg,’ she said, ‘you’re just too cute. You’ve no business being a policeman, you should have been a streetwalker.’

‘Well, I am a streetwalker as well, Madame Forestier. Like you.’

‘That must be why I like you so much. But that won’t stop me proving to you that my intuition about the chalk circle man is as good as yours. And watch it, Adamsberg, you’re not going to lay a finger on him tonight, not in my company. Give me your word.’

‘I promise. I won’t lay a finger on anyone at all,’ said Adamsberg.

At the same time, he was thinking that he would try to keep his word on this in relation to Christiane, who was lying waiting for him, naked, in bed, back at his flat. And yet who would turn down an offer from a naked girl? As Clémence would say, perhaps the evening was jinxed. Clémence seemed to be a bit jinxed herself, in fact. As for Charles Reyer, it was worse than a jinx: he was teetering on the edge of an internal explosion, a major cataclysm.

When Adamsberg followed Mathilde back into the big room with the aquarium, Charles was still talking to Clémence, who was listening attentively and amiably, puffing at a cigarette as if she was new to smoking. Charles was saying:

‘My grandmother died one night, because she had eaten too many spice cakes. But the real sensation was next day, when they found my father at the table eating the rest of the cakes.’

‘Very interesting,’ said Clémence, ‘but now I’d like you to help me write my letter to my M., 66.’

‘Night-night, children,’ said Mathilde on the way out.

She was already in action, striding towards the stairs, in a hurry to be off to the Saint-Georges station. But Adamsberg had never been able to hurry.

‘Saint George,’ Mathilde called to him, as they scanned the street for a taxi. ‘Isn’t he the one who killed the dragon?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Adamsberg.

The taxi dropped them at the Saint-Georges metro station at five past ten.

‘It’s OK,’ said Mathilde. ‘We’re still in time.’

By half past eleven, the chalk circle man had still not shown up. There was a pile of cigarette ends around their feet.

‘Bad sign,’ said Mathilde. ‘He won’t come now.’

‘Perhaps his suspicions have been aroused,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Suspicions? What about? That he’d be accused of murder? Rubbish! We don’t know if he even listens to the radio. He might not even know about the murder. You already know he doesn’t go out every night, it’s as simple as that.’

‘It’s true, he might not have heard the news yet. Or else perhaps he did hear it, and it made him wary. Since he knows someone’s watching him, he may be changing his haunts. In fact, I’m sure he will. It’s going to be the devil’s own job to find him.’

‘Because he’s the murderer – is that what you mean, Adamsberg?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How many times a day do you say “I don’t know,” or “Maybe”?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I know about all your famous cases so far, and how successful you are. But all the same, when you’re here in the flesh, one wonders. Are you sure you’re suited to the police?’

‘Certain. And anyway, I do other things in life.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as drawing.’