Free The Circle by Bernard Minier Page A

professional agitation. Judging by the presence of a van fitted with a satellite dish, football commentary was not the only subject about to occupy the day’s news. But Servaz felt sure that the murder of the classics professor would be relegated to a spot long after the pitiful showing of the national team.
    He pulled up the collar of his jacket, which had more or less been reduced to a dishrag, and crossed the slippery cobblestones, masking his face with his hands when the cameras flashed.
    Inside the house only a narrow passage, marked off by the forensic team’s tape, had been preserved between the front door and the French windows leading to the garden. Servaz spotted the stereo, but some men were already working on it. He decided to go over the garden in the meantime. The dolls had vanished. Technicianswere planting numbered signs in the grass, among the trees, wherever there were hypothetical clues. The pool house was open and brilliantly lit. Servaz went up to it. Two technicians in white boiler suits were crouched down inside. He saw a sink, folded deck chairs, shrimping nets, games, and big bottles of products for treating the swimming pool.
    â€˜Have you found anything?’
    One of them looked at him, his gaze enlarged by the lenses of his thick orange glasses, and shook his head.
    Servaz walked around the swimming pool. Slowly. Then he crossed the waterlogged lawn towards the forest. It formed a compact wall of greenery where the lawn came to an end. There was no fence, but the vegetation was thick enough to serve as a natural barrier. He did notice two small gaps, however, and went closer. It was dark in there, and the rain splashed noisily on the foliage overhead without reaching him. The first gap led to a dead end within a few metres. He made his way back, then tried the second gap. This one seemed to lead further. It was no more than an almost indiscernible breach between the trunks and the hedges, and he had to lean this way and that to make his way through, but the breach led stubbornly on into the darkness like a seam of silver in rock. The trees almost completely blocked the rain and Servaz’s torch grazed the branches, which seemed to want to hold him back. He stumbled over a bed of leaves and dead wood, and he went for a dozen metres or so without the passage ever getting any wider. Eventually he turned round and promised himself he would come back in daylight. He had nearly reached the way out when in almost total darkness he saw something white on the ground, and he aimed the beam of his torch in that direction.
    A little pile of light cylinders, on the leaves and the dark ground.
    Cigarettes.
    He leaned closer. Cigarette butts. At least half a dozen.
    Someone had stayed here smoking for quite a while. Servaz raised his head. From where he was standing, he could clearly see the side of the house that gave on to the garden – the French windows and even inside the living room, lit by the projectors. Through one upstairs window he could see furniture. An ideal lookout post …
    The fine hairs on his neck rose. Whoever had waited here was familiar with the place. He tried to convince himself that it must bea gardener. Or even Claire Diemar herself. But that didn’t make sense; he could see no valid reason to lurk in the undergrowth smoking one cigarette after another, if it were not to spy on what the young woman was doing.
    Hugo had entered through the front door and left his car on the street. Why would he have spied on Claire from the woods? He had admitted coming here several times: would he have felt the need to play the voyeur on other occasions?
    Servaz suddenly got the unpleasant impression that he was watching a magic trick, where the entertainer draws your attention one way while what is actually significant is happening elsewhere. One hand in the light for the spectators, the other hand acting in the shadow.
Someone wanted to make them look in the wrong place
…