Fred Vargas - The Chalk Circle Man

‘But what’s the point of our worrying about the circles if he isn’t the killer?’ said Danglard, getting up and pacing awkwardly round the room. ‘The chalk circle man! Again! But surely we don’t give a damn about the poor sod! It’s whoever’s using him that we’re after!’

‘Not me,’ said Adamsberg. ‘So we carry on looking for the circle man.’

Danglard stood up again, wearily. It would take time to get accustomed to Adamsberg.

Charles could sense all the confusion in the room. He perceived Danglard’s vague discomfiture and Adamsberg’s indecision.

‘Which one of us is going into this blind, you or me, commissaire ?’ asked Charles.

Adamsberg smiled.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘After the anonymous phone call, I suppose you’ll be wanting me to “help you with your inquiries”,’ Charles went on.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Adamsberg. ‘But anyway there’s nothing to stop you going to work as usual. Don’t worry.’

‘It’s not my work that worries me, commissaire .’

‘I know. It was just an expression.’

Charles heard the sound of pencil on paper. He imagined that the commissaire must be drawing while he was talking.

‘I don’t know how a blind man could manage to kill someone. But I’m a suspect now, aren’t I?’

Adamsberg made an evasive gesture.

‘Let’s say you picked the wrong moment to go and live at Mathilde Forestier’s house. Let’s say that, for whatever reason, we’ve recently become interested in her and what she knows, that is if she’s told us everything, which may not be the case. Danglard can explain all that to you. Danglard’s incredibly intelligent, you’ll see. It’s a great comfort to work with him. Let’s also say that you seem to be a rather awkward customer, which doesn’t help.’

‘What makes you think that?’ asked Charles, with a smile – a nasty smile, Adamsberg thought.

‘Madame Forestier says so.’

For the first time, Charles felt worried.

‘Yes, that’s what she says,’ Adamsberg repeated. ‘“He’s a bad-tempered so-and-so, but that doesn’t bother me” is what she said. And you like her too. Because being in touch with Mathilde, Monsieur Reyer, would do you a power of good, it would bring back shining black eyes, like patent leather. She’d do plenty of people good. Danglard doesn’t like her, though – no, Danglard, you don’t. He’s taken against her, for reasons that he’ll tell you about. He’s even tempted to cast doubts on her good faith. He’s already finding it odd that our Mathilde turned up at the police station to talk to me about the chalk circle man with or without a smell of apples, long before the murder. And he’s quite right. It is odd. But then, everything’s odd about this case. Even the rotten apples. Anyway, the only thing we can do now is wait.’

Adamsberg started doodling again.

‘All right,’ said Danglard. ‘We’ll wait.’

He was not in a good mood. He saw Charles to the street.

Returning to the corridor, he was still pressing a finger to his forehead. Yes, it was true: because he had this long body in the shape of a skittle he resented Mathilde, who was the kind of woman who’d never go to bed with someone whose body was that shape. So, yes, he would have liked her to be guilty of something. And this business with the newspaper article certainly landed her in it. That would interest the kids, for sure. But he had sworn, since his mistake about the girl in the jeweller’s shop, never to proceed unless he had evidence and hard facts, not some half-baked hunch that wormed its way into your head. So he would have to tread carefully with Mathilde.

Charles remained on edge all morning. His fingers trembled a little as they ran over the Braille perforations.

Mathilde was on edge too. She had just lost sight of the sunflower man. Stupid, really – he had jumped into a taxi. She had found herself standing on the Place de l’Opéra, disappointed and disoriented. If it had been in the first half of the week, she would have sat down immediately and ordered a glass of beer. But since it was the second half, there was no point getting too upset. Should she pick someone at random to follow? Why not? On the other hand, it was almost midday and she wasn’t far from Charles’s office. She could call and take him out to lunch. She had been a bit brusque with him that morning, with the excuse that during a section two you could say what you liked, and she felt rather bad about that now.

She caught Charles by the shoulder just as he came out of the building in the rue Saint-Marc.

‘I’m hungry,’ said Mathilde.

‘Good thing you found me,’ said Charles. ‘All the cops in the world are thinking about you now. You were the subject of a minor denunciation this morning.’

Mathilde had settled herself on a banquette at the back of the restaurant, and nothing in her voice indicated to Charles that this item of news disturbed her.

‘All the same,’ Charles insisted, ‘it wouldn’t take much for the police to start thinking you’re the person best placed to help the murderer. You’re probably the only one who could have told him the time and place to find a circle that would suit his plan to kill someone. Worse still, you could even become a murder suspect yourself. With your bad habits, Mathilde, you’re going to be in deep trouble.’

Mathilde laughed. She ordered several dishes. She really was hungry.

‘Well, that’s just fine,’ said Mathilde. ‘Strange things happen to me all the time. It’s my fate. So one more or less isn’t going to make any difference. The night of the Dodin Bouffant was surely in a section two of the week, and I must have had too much to drink and talked a lot of nonsense. I don’t remember a lot about that evening, to be honest. You’ll see – Adamsberg will understand, he won’t go chasing the impossible all over the world.’

‘I think you’re underestimating him, Mathilde.’

‘I don’t think I am.’

‘Yes, you are. Plenty of people underestimate him, though probably not Danglard, and certainly not me. I know, Mathilde, Adamsberg has this voice that lulls you to sleep, it charms you and makes you drop your guard, but he never relaxes at all. His voice has distant pictures and vague thoughts in it, but it’s leading inexorably to some conclusion, although he may be the last to suspect that himself.’

‘Have you finished? Is it all right if I eat my lunch?’

‘Of course. But listen to what I’m saying: Adamsberg doesn’t attack, but he transforms you, he weaves his way round you, he comes at you from behind, he leads you on, and in the end he disarms you. He can’t be caught out and tracked down, not even by you, Queen Mathilde. He’ll always get away, because of his gentleness and his sudden indifference. So to you or me or anyone else, he can be a good thing or a bad thing, like the sun in spring. It all depends how you expose yourself to it. And for a murderer he’d be a formidable enemy – you ought to realise that. If I’d killed someone I’d prefer to have a cop chasing me whose reactions I could predict, not one who’s as hard to grasp as water, then suddenly turns to stone. He flows like a stream, he resists like a rock, he’s on his way to his destination, the estuary. And a murderer could easily drown in that.’

‘A destination? An estuary? Don’t be silly, that’s ridiculous,’ said Mathilde.

‘Maybe his destination is the lever that lifts up the whole blasted world. Or the blasted eye of the blasted cyclone – another eye for you, Mathilde. Or some outpost of the universe where knowledge exists, in the mists of eternity. Ever thought of that, Mathilde?’