The Chalk Circle Man (3 page)

An indistinct photo was attached.

The third article was less detailed and very short, but reported that the previous night another circle had been found in the rue Caulaincourt in northern Paris, this time around a dead mouse, with the same legend:
‘Victor, woe’s in store, what are you out here for?’

Adamsberg pulled a face. It was just as he had feared.

He slipped the articles under his desk lamp and decided he was hungry, although he had no idea of the time. He went out, took a long walk along the still-unfamiliar streets, absent-mindedly ordered a sandwich and drink, bought a packet of cigarettes, and made his way slowly back to the station. In his trouser pocket he could feel at every step the crumpled letter from Christiane which had arrived that morning. She wrote on thick expensive notepaper, which was awkward to stuff into your pocket. Adamsberg disliked the paper.

He would have to give her his new address. She wouldn’t find it difficult to come and see him often, since she worked in Orleans. But her letter suggested she was looking for a job in Paris. Because of him. He shook his head. He’d think about that later. Since he had met her, six months ago now, it was always the same, he’d think about it later. She wasn’t a stupid woman, quite bright in fact, though she did tend to have predictable opinions. A pity, but not too serious, since that was a minor failing and after all nobody’s perfect. Ah, but perfection, the impossible, the unpredictable, the softest skin, the perpetual movement between gravity and grace, had come to him only once, eight years earlier, with Camille and her ridiculous pet monkey, a marmoset called Richard III. She used to let the monkey relieve itself in the street, telling any passers-by who objected, ‘But you see, Richard III has to go outside to pee.’

The little monkey, who smelled of oranges for some reason, although it never ate them, would sometimes jump onto their arms and make a great show of looking for fleas on their wrists, with a concentrated expression and neat little movements. Camille and Jean-Baptiste joined in the game, scratching at the invisible prey on their forearms. But she had run away, his
petite chérie
. And he, the policeman, had never been able to trace her, despite all the time he had spent searching: a whole year, such a long year, and afterwards his youngest sister had said, ‘Come on, you don’t have any right to do this, leave her in peace!’ ‘
Ma petite chérie
,’ Adamsberg had said. ‘You want to see her again?’ his sister had asked. Only the youngest of his five sisters dared talk to him about his
petite chérie
. And he had smiled and said, ‘With all my heart, yes, even if it’s just for an hour before I die.’

Adrien Danglard was waiting for him in the office, a plastic cup of white wine in his hand and a combination of mixed emotions on his face.

‘The Vernoux boy’s boots were missing,’ he said. ‘Ankle boots with buckles.’

Adamsberg stood silently for a moment. He was trying to respect Danglard’s irritation.

‘I didn’t mean to give you a demonstration this morning,’ he said. ‘I can’t help it if the Vernoux boy’s the killer. Did you look for the boots?’

Danglard produced a plastic bag and put it on the table.

‘Here they are,’ he sighed. ‘The lab’s started doing tests, but you can see at a glance it’s the mud from that building site on the soles, so sticky that the water in the drain didn’t wash it off. Pity. Nice shoes.’

‘They were in the drain then?’

‘Yes, twenty-five metres down from the nearest grating to his house.’

‘You’re a fast worker, Danglard.’

Silence fell between the two men. Adamsberg was biting his lip. He had picked up a cigarette, taken a pencil stub out his pocket, and flattened a bit of paper over his knee. He was thinking: He’s going to give me a lecture now, he’s angry and shocked, I should never have told him the story of the dog that drooled, or told him that Patrice Vernoux oozed cruelty like the little kid in the mountains.

But no. Adamsberg looked at his colleague. Danglard’s long shambling body, which took the shape of a melted bottle when he sat on a chair, was looking relaxed. He had plunged his large hands deep in the pockets of his elegant suit, and put the wine on the floor. He was staring into space, but even like that Adamsberg could see that he was formidably intelligent. Danglard said:

‘Congratulations,
commissaire
.’

Then he got up, as he had done earlier, first bending the top half of his body forward, then lifting his backside off the chair and finally standing up straight.

‘I have to tell you,’ he added, with his back half-turned to Adamsberg, ‘that after four in the afternoon I’m not good for much – best you should know that. So if you want to ask me to do anything, mornings are best. And if you want people for a manhunt, shooting, any of that kind of rubbish, forget it, my hand shakes and my knees give way. Apart from that, my legs and head are usable. I think the head works reasonably well, even if it works very differently from yours. A supercilious colleague told me one day that if I was still in my job as inspector, with the amount of white wine I drink, it’s because my bosses have turned a blind eye to it, and because I have two sets of twins at home, which makes four children to bring up as a single parent, on account of my wife having run off with her lover to study the statues on Easter Island. When I was young, twenty-five that is, I wanted to write either a masterpiece or nothing: something as good as Chateaubriand’s memoirs. You won’t be surprised to learn that that didn’t work out. OK. Now I’m taking the boots, and I’m going to interview Patrice Vernoux and his girlfriend who are waiting next door.’

‘Danglard, I like you,’ said Adamsberg, still doodling.

‘I think I’d gathered that,’ said Danglard, picking up the plastic cup.

‘Ask the photographer to make sure he’s free tomorrow morning and go along with him. I want a description and some clear pictures of the blue chalk circle that may be drawn somewhere in Paris tonight.’

‘A circle? You mean this nutter who draws rings round bottle tops?
“Victor, woe’s in store, what are you out here for?”‘

‘That’s exactly what I mean, Danglard.’

‘But it’s stupid. What …’

Adamsberg shook his head impatiently.

‘I know, Danglard, I know. Just do it. Please. And don’t tell anyone for the time being.’

After that, Adamsberg finished the sketch that he had been resting on his knee. He could hear raised voices from the next room. Vernoux’s girlfriend was cracking. It was obvious that she had had nothing to do with the murder of the elderly businessman. Her only error of judgement, but it had been a serious one, was to have been sufficiently in love with Vernoux, or sufficiently obedient to him, to back up his false alibi. The worst thing for her wouldn’t be the court appearance: it was what was happening right now, as she discovered her lover’s cruelty.

What on earth had he eaten at midday to give him such a stomach-ache? He couldn’t remember. He picked up the telephone to arrange an interview with the psychiatrist, René Vercors-Laury. Tomorrow at eleven, the receptionist suggested. He had given her his name, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, and it had opened doors. He was not yet accustomed to this kind of celebrity, although it had been attached to him for some time. But Adamsberg had the feeling that he had no contact with his public image: it was as if there were two of him. Still, since childhood he had always felt there were two people inside him: Jean-Baptiste on the one hand and Adamsberg on the other – both watching what Jean-Baptiste got up to, following his movements with amusement. And now there were three: Jean-Baptiste, Adamsberg, and the public figure with the same name. A holy but shattered trinity. He got up to fetch a coffee from the machine next door, where he would often find Margellon helping himself. But it so happened that just then everyone was there, with a woman who seemed to be causing a loud disturbance. Castreau kept repeating patiently, ‘Madame, I think you should leave.’

Adamsberg served himself a coffee and looked round. The woman was speaking in a husky voice; she was both angry and sad. Clearly she was exasperated with the cops. She was dressed in black. Adamsberg decided that she had an Egyptian profile, or perhaps she had other origins that had produced one of those dark aquiline faces you never forget but carry round in your head ever after – not unlike his
petite chérie
, in fact.

Castreau was now saying:

‘This isn’t a lost-property department, madame. Please be reasonable, and leave now.’

The woman was no longer young. Adamsberg put her somewhere between forty-five and sixty. Her hands were tanned and energetic, with short nails, the hands of a woman who had spent her life somewhere else, using them to search for something.

‘So what’s the point of the police, then?’ the woman was saying, shaking back her dark shoulder-length hair. ‘You could make a bit of an effort. It wouldn’t kill you, would it, to give me some idea where to look? It might take me ten years to find him, but you could do it in a day!’

This time Castreau lost his cool.

‘Look, I don’t give a damn about your private life!’ he shouted. ‘He’s not listed as a missing person, is he? So please just go away and leave me in peace – we don’t do lonely hearts here. If you go on making a fuss I’ll call the boss.’

Adamsberg was leaning against the wall at the back of the room.

‘I
am
the boss,’ he said, without moving.

Mathilde turned round. She saw a man with hooded eyes looking at her with uncommon gentleness, she registered his shirt, stuffed into one side of his trousers, loose on the other, she saw that his thin face didn’t match his hands which seemed to have come from a Rodin statue, and she immediately understood that things would now improve.

Detaching himself from the wall, Adamsberg pushed the door of his office and beckoned her in.

‘It’s true, of course,’ Mathilde said, seating herself, ‘this isn’t the lost-property office. It’s been a bad day. And not much better yesterday, or the day before either … A whole section of the week gone to pot. I hope you’ve had a better section than I have.’

‘A section?’

‘Well, the way I see it, Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday, that’s section number one of the week. What happens in section number one is different from what happens in section number two.’

‘And that’s Thursday-Friday-Saturday?’

‘Of course. If you pay attention, you’ll see there are more serious surprises in section one as a rule – note that I’m saying as a
rule
– and more fun and distractions in section two. It’s a question of rhythm. It never switches over like the parking in the street, where you have to park one side one week and the other the next. Why do they do that, anyway? To give the street a rest? Let it lie fallow? No idea. Anyway, sections of the week don’t change. First section: you’re alert, you believe all sorts of stuff, you get things done. It’s a miracle of human activity. Second section: you don’t find anything you’re looking for, you learn nothing new, it’s pretty much a waste of time. In the second section there’s a lot of this and that, and you drink quite a bit, whereas the first section is more important, obviously. In practice, a section number two can’t go far wrong, because it doesn’t really matter, so to speak. But when a section number one goes haywire, like this week, it’s really horrible. And another thing: the special today in the café was beef and lentils. Beef and lentils is a dish that really depresses me to the point of despair. Right at the end of a section one. Just no luck at all, a wretched plate of lentils.’

‘What about Sundays?’

‘Oh, Sundays, that’s section three. Just that one day takes up a whole section – see how important that is? And section three is the pits. If you get beef and lentils combined with a section three, you might as well go hang yourself.’

‘Where were we?’ asked Adamsberg, having the sudden, not unpleasant impression that his thoughts could wander even further talking to this woman than when talking to himself.

‘We hadn’t got anywhere.’

‘Right, OK, we’ve got nowhere.’

‘It’s coming back to me,’ said Mathilde. ‘Since my section one was practically a write-off, as I was passing your police station I thought I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, so I’d give it a go. But you see, it doesn’t work – trying to rescue a section one might be tempting, but it gets you nowhere. What about you, anyway?’

‘Oh, it’s not been a bad week so far,’ Adamsberg admitted.

‘Now if you’d seen my section one last week, that was terrific.’

‘What happened?’

‘I can’t just tell you like that, I’d have to look it up in my notebook. Still, tomorrow we start a section two, so we can relax a bit.’

‘Tomorrow I’m going to see a psychiatrist. Is that a good start for a section two?’

‘Good Lord! On your own account?’ asked Mathilde in surprise. ‘No, of course not, stupid of me. I get the feeling that even if the spirit moved you to piss against all the lamp-posts down one side of the road, you’d say to yourself, “That’s the way it is, and God help the lamp-posts,” but you wouldn’t go and consult a psychiatrist. Sorry, I know I’m talking too much, I’m fed up. I’m getting on my own nerves.’

Mathilde took a cigarette from Adamsberg, saying ‘May I?’ and pulled off the filter.

‘Perhaps you’re going to see the psychiatrist about the chalk circle man,’ she went on. ‘Don’t look at me like that – I haven’t been snooping. It’s just that you’ve got those newspaper cuttings about him tucked under the base of your lamp, so naturally I wondered.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ Adamsberg admitted, ‘it is about him. Why did you come into the station?’

‘I’m looking for this man I don’t know.’

‘Why are you looking for him, then?’

‘Because I don’t know him! What a question!’

‘Touché,’ said Adamsberg.

‘I was following this woman in the street, and I lost her. So I ended up in a café, and that’s how I met my beautiful blind man. There are an amazing number of people walking round on the pavements. You just can’t imagine it, you would have to follow everyone to do any good. So we chatted for a few minutes, the blind man and I, about something or other which I’ve now forgotten – I’d have to check in my notebook – but I liked him. Generally, if I like someone, I don’t worry, I’m sure to bump into them again. But in this case, no, nothing. Last month, I followed twenty-eight people and got close to nine of them. I filled two and a half notebooks. So I’ve covered a lot of ground, OK? But not a whisker of my beautiful blind man. That was disappointing. He’s called Charles Reyer, and that’s all I know about him. Tell me something: do you keep doodling all the time like that?’