Fred Vargas - The Chalk Circle Man

‘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?’

‘It’s Friday today. It’s a safe bet there won’t be anything over the weekend. I get the impression that the circle man doesn’t venture out on Saturdays or Sundays. He keeps to regular habits. And if the murderer is someone different, he’ll have to wait as well, until there’s another circle. Just out of interest, does Reyer have an alibi for last night?’

‘Same as ever. He was in bed asleep. No witness. Everyone in that house was asleep. And there’s no concierge to spot them coming and going. There are fewer and fewer concierges every day in Paris – bad news for us.’

‘Mathilde Forestier called me just now. She’d heard about the murder on the radio and sounded shocked.’

‘So she says,’ muttered Danglard.

THEN NOTHING HAPPENED FOR SEVERAL DAYS. ADAMSBERG started inviting his downstairs neighbour into his bed again. Danglard lapsed into his usual procedures for lazy June afternoons. Only the press was agitating. A dozen or so journalists were working shifts to keep up a presence outside the station.

On the Wednesday, Danglard was the first to crack.

‘He’s got us where he wants us,’ he burst out angrily. ‘We can’t do anything, there’s nothing to find, no evidence. We’re hanging about like zombies, waiting for him to invent a new trick for us. Nothing to be done until there’s another circle. It’s enough to drive you mad. It’s enough to drive me mad, anyway,’ he corrected himself, after glancing over at Adamsberg.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Tomorrow what?’

‘Tomorrow morning, there’ll be another circle, Danglard.’

‘You’re a fortune-teller now, are you?’

‘We won’t go over this again, we’ve already talked about it. The chalk circle man has a programme. And, as Vercors-Laury says, he needs to exhibit his thoughts. He won’t let a whole week go by without showing up somewhere. Especially since the press is full of stories about him. But if he draws a circle tonight, Danglard, we’d better be afraid that there’ll be another murder in the night between Thursday and Friday. This time, we must have as many men out on patrol as possible, at least in the 5th, 6th and 14th arrondissements .’

‘But why? The killer’s under no pressure to hurry. And so far he hasn’t shown any sign of it.’

‘It’s different now. Trust me, Danglard. If the circle man is the murderer, and he starts drawing circles again, that’s because he means to kill again. But he knows he has to move more quickly now. Three witnesses have already described him, not counting Mathilde Forestier. We’ll soon be able to construct an identikit picture. He’s following what we’re doing by reading the newspapers. He knows he hasn’t got much longer. So he wants to finish what he’s started, and he can’t hang about any more.’

‘And what if the killer isn’t the chalk circle man?’