The Chalk Circle Man

ball, in her damned section of the damned week.

‘Tell me the rest, Madame Forestier. Who was the letter from? Who are we talking about?’

‘Our beautiful traveller. Sweeter than me, more shy, less disreputable, less bohemian. My daughter Camille, my daughter. But you were right in one respect, Adamsberg. Richard III is dead.’

Afterwards, Adamsberg could not have said whether Mathilde left immediately or a little while later. Disconnected as he was at this moment, one thing had echoed round inside in his head. She was alive, Camille was alive. His petite cherie, never mind where, never mind who she was with, she was breathing, her obstinate forehead, her tender lips, her wisdom, her futility, her silhouette, they were all alive and well.

Only later, as he was walking home – having posted men for the night at the Saint-Georges and Pigalle metro stations, despite a feeling that it was pointless – did he realise what he had learned. Camille was Mathilde Forestier’s daughter. Well, of course. Even though Mathilde was a great mystifier, there was no point bothering to check it out. Profiles like that weren’t mass-produced.

There is no such thing as coincidence. His petite cherie, somewhere in the world, had read a French newspaper and learned about his posting, then had written to her mother. Perhaps she wrote to her often. Perhaps they even saw each other often. It was possible indeed that Mathilde managed to make the destinations of her scientific expeditions correspond to wherever her daughter was at the time. In fact, Adamsberg was certain of it. He would only have to find out which coasts Mathilde had been working from for the last few years to know where Camille had been. So he had been right. She had been travelling, lost and out of reach. Out of reach. He realised that. He never would manage to catch hold of her. But she had wanted to know what was happening to him. He hadn’t melted from her mind like wax. But then he had never had any doubt about that. Not that he thought himself unforgettable. All the same, he felt that a little piece of him had lodged like a tiny stone, somewhere in Camille, and that she too must be carrying him round inside her like a weight, infinitesimal though it might be. It was inevitable. It had to be. However vain human love appeared to him, and however dark his feeling today, he could not admit that some magnetised fragment of that love was not still lodged somewhere in Camille’s body. Just as he knew, although he rarely thought about it, that he had never allowed Camille’s existence to dissolve from inside himself, though he couldn’t have said why, because he had not consciously thought about it.

What bothered him, and even distracted him from the far country where his mood of indifference had taken him, was that now he would only have to ask Mathilde to find out. Just to find out. To find out, for instance, whether Camille loved someone else. But it was better not to know, and to keep on imagining the bellhop in the Cairo hotel where he had left off last time. The bellhop was good-looking, dark, with long eyelashes, and it was just for a couple of nights, since he had got rid of the cockroaches in the bathroom. And in any case, Mathilde wouldn’t tell him. They wouldn’t speak about it any more. Not a word about the girl who was taking both of them on journeys from Egypt to the Paris suburbs, and that was that. But what if she really was in the Paris suburbs? She was alive, that was all that Mathilde had wanted to tell him. So she had kept the promise she had made the other night at the Saint-Georges metro station. She had removed that death from his head.

Perhaps too, since Mathilde felt herself under threat from the police and their harassing questions, she had been setting out to make herself untouchable. To let him know that if he went on harassing the mother he would distress the daughter. No, that wasn’t Mathilde’s style. There was no future in talking about it any more; it was a closed subject, full stop. He had to leave Camille wherever she was, and carry on the inquiries surrounding Madame Forestier without deviating from his course. That was what the investigating magistrate had said earlier that afternoon. ‘No deviating from the course of the inquiry, Adamsberg.’ But what course? A course assumed a plan, some future laid out ahead, and in this case Adamsberg had less of a plan than ever before. He was waiting for the chalk circle man. This man didn’t seem to trouble many people. But for him, the man behind the circles was a creature who laughed at night and pulled cruel faces during the day. A man who was difficult to catch, disguised, putrid and feathery like moths of the night, and the thought of him was repulsive, giving Adamsberg the shivers. How could Mathilde possibly think the man was ‘harmless’ and take a ridiculous pleasure in following him around as he drew his deadly circles? That was an example, whatever he might say, of Mathilde’s fantastic recklessness. And how could Danglard, the learned and deep Danglard, also be certain this man was innocent, expelling him from his thoughts, whereas in Adamsberg’s mind he was crouching like a malevolent spider? But perhaps he, Adamsberg, was going desperately wrong? Too bad, if so. He had only ever been able to follow his own train of thought, wherever it took him. And whatever happened, he would keep on chasing this deadly man. And he would see him, he had to. Perhaps when he saw him he would change his mind. Perhaps. He would wait. He was sure that the chalk circle man would come to him. The day after tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, perhaps, there would be a new circle.

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 Chatelain 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 cherie. 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