Fred Vargas - The Chalk Circle Man

He had to wait another two days, long enough to make one think that the circle man was obeying some kind of rule and didn’t operate at weekends. Not until the Monday night did his quarry pick up the chalk again.

A patrolling officer discovered a blue chalk circle in the rue de La Croix-Nivert at six in the morning.

This time, Adamsberg accompanied Danglard and Conti.

The object on the ground was a plastic model of a swimmer, about the size of his thumb. This effigy of a baby, lost in the middle of a huge circle, produced a certain malaise. That’s deliberate, thought Adamsberg. Danglard must have thought the same thing at the same moment.

‘This lunatic’s winding us up,’ he said. ‘Putting a human figure in the circle after the murder the other day… He must have searched for ages to find this doll, or else he brought it along with him. Though that would be cheating.’

‘He’s no lunatic,’ Adamsberg said. ‘It’s just that his pride is getting piqued. So he’s starting to make conversation.’

‘Conversation?’

‘Well, communicating with us, if you like. He held out for several days after the murder, longer than I thought he would. He’s changed his haunts and he’s more elusive now. But he’s starting to talk. He’s saying: “I know there’s been a murder, but I’m not scared of anything, and to prove it, here we go again.” And it’ll carry on. No reason he should stop talking now. He’s on a slippery slope. The slope of language. Where he’s no longer sufficient unto himself.’

‘There’s something unusual about this circle,’ Danglard observed. ‘It’s not drawn the same way as the others. It’s the same writing, that’s for sure. But he’s gone about it differently, wouldn’t you say, Conti?’

Conti nodded.

‘The other times,’ said Danglard, ‘he drew the circle in one go, as if he was walking round and drawing at the same time, without stopping. Last night he drew two semicircles meeting up, as if he did one side first and then the other. Has he lost the knack in five days?’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ said Adamsberg, with a smile. ‘He’s getting careless. Vercors-Laury would find that interesting – and he’d be right.’

Next morning, Adamsberg called the office as soon as he was up. The man had been drawing circles again in the 5th arrondissement , in the rue Saint-Jacques, just a stone’s throw from the rue Pierre-et-Marie-Curie where Madeleine Châtelain had been killed.

Carrying on the conversation, thought Adamsberg. Something along the lines of ‘Nothing’s going to stop me drawing my circle near the murder scene.’ And if he didn’t actually draw it in the rue Pierre-et-Marie-Curie itself, it was simply out of consideration, a matter of taste if you like. This man is refined.

‘What’s inside the circle?’ he asked.

‘Some tangled cassette tape.’

While listening to Margellon’s report, Adamsberg was leafing through the mail from his letter box. He had in front of him a letter from Christiane, passionate in tone, repetitive in content. Leaving you. Egotistical. Don’t want to see you again. Have my pride. And so on for six pages.

All right, we’ll think about that tonight, he told himself, feeling sure that he was indeed egotistical, but having learned from experience that when people are really leaving you they don’t bother to warn you with six-page letters. They just go without a word, like the petite chérie . And people who walk about with the handle of a revolver sticking out of their pockets never kill themselves either, as some poet whose name he couldn’t remember had said, in more or less those words. So Christiane would probably be back, with plenty of demands. Complications ahead. Under the shower, Adamsberg resolved not to be too mean, and to think about her tonight, if he could remember to think about her.

He arranged to meet Danglard and Conti in the rue Saint-Jacques. The tangled cassette tape lay like spilled intestines in the morning sun, in the centre of the big circle, drawn with a single line this time. Danglard, a tall weary figure, his fair hair thrown back, was watching him approach. For some reason, perhaps because of his colleague’s apparent fatigue, or his air of being a defeated thinker who was still persevering in his enquiries into destiny, or because of the way he folded and unfolded his large, dissatisfied and resigned body, Adamsberg found Danglard touching that morning. He felt the urge to tell him again that he really liked him. At certain moments, Adamsberg had the unusual gift of making short sentimental declarations which embarrassed other people by their simplicity, of a kind not habitual between adults. He quite often told a colleague he was good-looking, even when it wasn’t true, and whatever the state of indifference he was undergoing at the time.

For the moment, Danglard, in his impeccable jacket, but preoccupied by some secret worry, was leaning against a car. He was jingling coins in his trouser pocket. He’s got money worries, Adamsberg thought. Danglard had owned up to having four children, but Adamsberg already knew from office gossip that he had five, that they all lived in three rooms with this providential father’s salary as their only income. But nobody felt pity for Danglard, nor did Adamsberg. It was unthinkable to feel pity for someone like him. Because his obvious intelligence generated a special zone around him, about two metres in radius, and you took care to think before speaking when you entered the zone. Danglard was more the object of discreet watchfulness than of gestures of help. Adamsberg wondered whether the ‘philosopher friend’ mentioned by Mathilde generated a zone like that, and how broad it was. The said philosopher friend seemed to know quite a bit about Mathilde. Perhaps he had been at the evening event at the Dodin Bouffant . Finding out his name and address and going to see him and question him would be a minor police task, to be carried out without broadcasting it. Not the sort of thing that tempted Adamsberg as a rule, but this time he thought he would take it on himself.

‘There’s a witness,’ said Danglard. ‘He was already at the station when I left. He’s waiting there for me now to make his statement.’

‘What did he see?’

‘At about ten to midnight a small thin man passed him, running. It was only when he heard the radio this morning that he made the connection. He described an elderly man, slight build, thinning hair, in a hurry and carrying a bag under his arm.’

‘That’s all?’

‘He left behind him, it seemed to this witness, a slight smell of vinegar.’

‘Vinegar? Not rotten apples?’

‘No. Vinegar.’

Danglard was in a better mood now.

‘A thousand witnesses, a thousand noses,’ he added, smiling and spreading wide his long arms. ‘A thousand noses, a thousand different interpretations. A thousand interpretations probably add up to a thousand childhood memories. One person thinks of rotten apples, another vinegar, and tomorrow we might have people talking about what? Nutmeg, furniture polish, strawberries, talcum powder, dusty curtains, cough mixture, gherkins… The circle man must have a smell that reminds people of their childhood.’

‘Or the smell of a cupboard,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Why a cupboard?’

‘I don’t know. But childhood smells come from cupboards, don’t they? All sorts of smells get mixed up together, it makes a sort of universal smell.’

‘We’re getting off the point,’ said Danglard.

‘Not that much.’

Danglard realised that Adamsberg was starting to float again, to disengage, or whatever he did; at any rate the already vague connections in his logic were being relaxed, so he proposed they should go back to the station.