The Chalk Circle Man

like. But he had been entirely taken up with the sensational effect he wanted to produce; he regularly stopped any heartfelt conversation by pretending to be a lucid and cynical thinker. No, Charles, he thought, you’re going the wrong way about things. All this palaver ends up with your being unable to say whether your brain’s still working or not.

And then there’s your habit of walking alongside people in the street just to frighten them, to exert some kind of silly power over them, or going up to someone at a traffic light with your white stick, and saying ‘Can I help you cross the road?’ What’s all that about? Just to embarrass other people, of course, and then to take full advantage of your untouchable status. Poor souls, they don’t dare say any thing, they just stand on the pavement, feeling bad. What you’re doing is you’re taking revenge on the rest of the world. You may be over six feet tall, but you’re just a mean little bastard really. And that woman, Queen Mathilde, she’s there, she’s real, and she even told me I was good-looking. And that made me feel pretty good, but of course I couldn’t bring myself to show it, or even say thank you for her kind word.

Feeling his way, Charles stopped at the edge of the pavement. Anyone standing alongside him would have been able to see those rolls of sacking that they put in the Paris gutters to channel the water, without realising how lucky they were to witness this sublime sight. Damn that bloody lioness. He felt like unfolding his white stick and asking ‘Shall I help you across the road?’ with a mean smile. Then he remembered Mathilde saying to him without any malice at all: ‘You’re very trying’, and he turned his back on whoever might be there.

IV

DANGLARD HAD TRIED TO RESIST. BUT THE NEXT DAY HE FELL eagerly on the newspapers, leaving aside the political, economic and social news, all the stuff that usually interested him.

No, nothing. Nothing about the chalk circle man. Not that there was anything about these incidents to merit the daily attentions of a journalist.

But now he was hooked.

The night before, his daughter, the elder of the second set of twins, the one who was most interested in what her father told her about his work – although she also said to him, ‘Dad, stop drinking, you’re already fat enough as it is’ – had remarked: ‘Your new boss has a funny name, doesn’t he? Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, Saint John the Baptist from Adam’s Mountain, if you work it out. Looks funny when you put it together. But if you like him, I expect I’ll like him. Will you take me to see him one day?’ And Danglard loved his four twins so much that he would have wished above all to show them to Adamsberg, so that his boss could say ‘They’re angelic.’ But he wasn’t sure whether Adamsberg would be interested in his kids. ‘My kids, my kids, my kids,’ Danglard said to himself. ‘My angels.’

From his office, he called all the district police stations to find out whether any officer on the beat had noticed a circle. ‘Just asking, since everyone’s got interested in it.’ His questions provoked astonishment. He explained that it was on behalf of a psychiatrist friend, a little favour he was doing him on the side. And yes, of course, his fellow cops knew all about the little favours one did for people on the side.

And last night, it turned out, Paris had acquired two new circles. The first was in the rue du Moulin-Vert, where a policeman from the 14th arrondissement had come across it on his rounds, to his great delight. The other was in the same district, on the corner of the rue Froidevaux, and it had been reported by a woman who had complained to the police that she thought this was getting a bit much.

Danglard, feeling on edge and impatient, went upstairs to see Conti, the police photographer. Conti was all set to go, laden with straps and containers, as if on campaign. Since the photographer suffered from various health problems, Danglard imagined that all this complicated and impressive technical stuff must provide him with some kind of reassurance, although he knew perfectly well that Conti wasn’t stupid. They went first to the rue du Moulin-Vert, and there was the large circle, drawn in blue chalk, with the same elegant writing round the edge. Lying slightly off-centre was part of a watch strap. Why draw such big circles for such small objects, Danglard wondered. Until now he hadn’t thought about this discrepancy.

‘Don’t touch!’ he shouted to Conti, who had stepped into the circle to take a closer look.

‘What are you fussing about?’ said Conti. ‘This strap hasn’t been murdered. Call the pathologist while you’re at it!’

The photographer shrugged and stepped back out of the circle.

‘Don’t ask questions,’ said Danglard. ‘He said to take pictures of it exactly as it is, so please just do that.’

While Conti was snapping away, Danglard reflected all the same that Adamsberg had put him in a slightly ridiculous situation. If any local policeman should come past, he’d be right to say that the 5th arrondissement station was going round the bend if it had taken to photographing watch straps. And Danglard did feel that the 5th was indeed heading round the bend, himself along with the rest. What was more, he still hadn’t tied up everything on the Patrice Vernoux case, which he ought to have done first thing. His colleague Castreau was probably wondering by now where he’d got to.

In the rue Froidevaux, at the junction with the rue Emile-Richard, the lugubrious and narrow passage running through the middle of the Montparnasse cemetery, Danglard understood why the woman had complained, and was almost relieved to discover the reason.

Yes, it had got bigger.

‘See that?’ he said to Conti.

In front of them, the blue circle surrounded the remains of a cat that had been run over. There was no blood: the cat had obviously been picked out of the gutter where it had been dead for hours. Now it just looked morbid, a bundle of dirty fur in this sinister street, with the circle and the inscription ‘Victor, woe’s in store, what are you out here for?’ It made him think of some kind of weird witches’ spell.

‘All finished,’ said Conti.

Stupid, perhaps, but Danglard sensed that Conti was a bit impressed.

‘I’ve finished too,’ said Danglard. ‘Come on, back to base before the locals find us on their patch.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Conti. ‘We’d look pretty silly.’

Adamsberg listened to Danglard’s report impassively, allowing his cigarette to droop from his lips, screwing up his eyes to keep the smoke out of them. The only movement he made throughout was to bite off a piece of fingernail. And as Danglard was beginning to get the measure of his character, he realised that Adamsberg had assessed the discovery in the rue Froidevaux at its true value.

But what was that, exactly? For the moment, Danglard had no idea. The way Adamsberg’s mind worked was still enigmatic and impressive to him. Sometimes, but only for a second, he thought: Keep your distance.

But he knew the moment the report went round the station that the boss was wasting his own and his inspectors’ time on the chalk circle man, Danglard would have to defend him. And he was trying to prepare his defence.

‘Yesterday a mouse,’ said Danglard, as if talking to himself, practising future explanations to his colleagues. ‘And now a cat. It’s a bit nasty, yes. But there was the watch strap as well. And as Conti rightly pointed out, the watch strap wasn’t dead.’

‘It was dead all right,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Of course it was! Same thing tomorrow morning, Danglard. I’m going to see this psychiatrist who’s taken up the affair, Vercors-Laury. I’d be interested to hear what he thinks. But don’t tell anyone. The later anyone asks what I’m up to, the better.’

Before leaving, Adamsberg wrote a note for Mathilde Forestier. It had taken him less than an hour to track down her Charles Reyer, after telephoning the main organisations that employed blind people in Paris: piano tuners, publishing houses, music schools. Reyer had been in the city several months, and was staying in a room near the Pantheon, at the Hotel des Grands Hommes. Adamsberg sent the information to Mathilde, and promptly forgot about it.

Well, Rene Vercors-Laury isn’t all that impressive, was Adamsberg’s first reaction. He was disappointed in the psychiatrist, since he always set out feeling hopeful and disillusion was invariably painful.

Not impressive at all, in fact. And exasperating with it. The psychiatrist kept interrupting himself with questions like: ‘See what I mean?’, ‘You follow me?’ or statements such as: ‘You’ll agree with me, won’t you, that the