Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

by Martin Walker

  “Thanks, Dominique. Can you alert Petitbon at the research station? He needs to know about this. And tell him I’ll be there soon. Will you go too? It could be useful if we have to calm things down.”

  Dominique agreed, and Bruno closed his phone and opened it again. He shrugged an apology to the baron, waved away Ivan bringing the cheese course and called the mayor to explain the situation. The baron signaled Ivan to come back and helped himself. Bruno suggested the mayor call the prefect and ask for some extra gendarmes to be sent from Périgueux. And perhaps the mayor might also call Alphonse to see if he knew about the demonstration.

  “Any other suggestions, Bruno?” the mayor asked.

  “Well, you know people at a demonstration want some kind of result, and you might think about giving them one by announcing that you are bringing charges against the research station over the nonpayment of taxes. It would make the demonstrators think they’d achieved something, and it would get Alphonse on our side. I think he might be the key to this.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. I’ll get the paperwork moving and see you at the research station a bit before five.”

  Next Bruno called the gendarmerie, where Jules reported the welcome news that Captain Duroc had the day off and had gone to the movies in Sarlat. That made things much easier. Bruno explained the situation to Jules, and asked for a patrol on the main road from Périgueux and Bordeaux to check all buses and order those going to the demonstration to park in the square by the gendarmerie. That would ease the traffic problem. The remaining gendarmes should gather at the research station. As he folded his phone, it trilled again. It was the brigadier.

  “Something’s up,” he said.

  “You mean the demonstration at the research station?” Bruno asked.

  “How did you know about that? My computer guys just picked it up from their Web site.”

  “Dominique Suchet, one of your suspects. She called to let me know. As I told you, she’s a responsible young woman.”

  “How do you want to handle it?”

  “The mayor’s asking the prefect for more gendarmes. And we’ll show restraint. People have a right to demonstrate peacefully.”

  “If it turns out to be peaceful; but I doubt it. From the cell phone traffic, some of the militants who trashed the McDonald’s in Millau are going to be turning up. Leave them to me. That’s an order. One more thing, we traced the phone card. It was one of a batch of five-euro cards sold in the tabac here in Saint-Denis and hasn’t been used for any other calls so far.” He ended the call, leaving Bruno staring worriedly at his phone.

  “Sounds like trouble. Anything I can do?” asked the baron, nonetheless relishing his cheese. Bruno found a steaming coffee in front of him and he sipped it gratefully. “Maybe call some of the members in from the rugby teams. Get them chanting ‘Save our research station.’ Just in case there’s trouble from any outsiders. And since you’re the big shareholder in that building yard, maybe some of your heavy trucks could cruise up and down slowly past the station, make sure the demonstrators stay off the road.”

  The baron nodded, an amused glint in his eye. “It’s our town; we’ll make them play by our rules,” he said.

  Bruno watched as the demonstrators straggled in on foot after the long walk from the square where their buses had been parked. He was not altogether confident, but he was calm. His objectives were clear. He had rallied his forces and organized a reserve. He had prepared the ground and made his dispositions, and he had a plan. All the tactical requirements the army had taught him had been met.

  He stood before the closed iron gates of the research station, five gendarmes alongside him and the mayor at his elbow. Another dozen gendarmes from Périgueux were inside the gates with Petitbon and some of his employees, and four more were directing traffic. Across the road, the baron and a small knot of rugby players were grinning and waving some hastily inked signs that said SAVE OUR RESEARCH STATION and HANDS OFF SCIENCE. Heavy trucks loaded with sand and building supplies ground slowly by, forcing the marching demonstrators into a single file along the grass. Bruno looked down. The bullhorn stood ready behind the folding steps he had placed in front of the gates, and the mayor had a file of papers under his arm. The forces of order of Saint-Denis were as prepared as Bruno could make them.

  “You knew we were coming,” said Alphonse as he approached at the head of the marchers, the matronly Céline from his commune at his side. They both wore T-shirts that said STOP GMO. Alphonse carried a sign that bore the same slogan. There was resignation and perhaps a touch of relief rather than accusation in his voice.

  “You’re a town council member. You don’t want trouble here any more than I do,” said Bruno. “Let’s keep this calm and dignified. The mayor thought you might like to say a few words, tell your demonstrators why they’re here. And then the mayor has something to say.”

  Alphonse went back to confer with two of the older men who led the group of marchers. Well-groomed and wearing polished shoes, they did not look to Bruno like troublemakers. He eyed the rest of the demonstrators, noting that Max and Jacqueline were among them, Max waving cheerfully at his rugby friends across the road. There was no sign yet of Dominique. Bruno counted maybe one hundred fifty people, at least a third of them women, and perhaps twenty of them kids he knew from the Saint-Denis collège, in addition to the local Greens. The only ones who worried him were shouldering their way from the long straggle of marchers to the front, all young and carrying signs, some of them wearing heavy boots and hooded sweatshirts and carrying suspiciously heavy bags over their shoulders. Bruno turned to Jules, the senior gendarme present, and quietly pointed them out. Jules nodded, then passed the word to his men.

  Bruno strolled over to where Alphonse was talking urgently to the two men. One of the young toughs with heavy bags joined them. Bruno casually turned so his arm jostled the bag. It seemed to squash like liquid rather than anything solid. At least it wasn’t bricks.

  “Ready, councilman?” he asked Alphonse, who nodded, handed his sign to one of the two men and began to turn toward the gates.

  “Perhaps you’ll introduce me to your friends. I presume they’re from Aquitaine Vert,” Bruno said pleasantly.

  “Well, perhaps …,” Alphonse began.

  Bruno was already shaking the hand of the first man and introducing himself as the municipal policeman, welcoming them to Saint-Denis and wishing them a pleasant and peaceful stay. They mumbled polite replies, and Bruno made a mental note of their names. One, he learned, was an elected member of the conseil régional, the other a parliamentary candidate. The young tough hastily backed away into the crowd. Alphonse began squeezing his way through to the gates, and Bruno walked slowly across the road to the rugby team members.

  “Any trouble, grab those guys in the hoods and keep them out of action, as peacefully as you can,” he told the baron quietly, then he strolled back to stand beside the small stepladder where Alphonse and the mayor had their backs to the crowd, talking with animation. Bruno didn’t bother with the bullhorn; he ascended the steps and began in the parade-ground voice he had learned on the barracks square.

  “Welcome to Saint-Denis, where we take very seriously the right of every citizen to demonstrate peacefully on matters of public concern. I repeat, peacefully. We’re proud of the scientists and technicians at our research station, whose work we believe will help feed a hungry world and keep Périgord the agricultural heartland of France. Our respected town council member Alphonse Vannes of the Green Party, who is known to most of you, will now say a few words on the issue that brings you here. He will be followed by our mayor, who has some news of great interest.”

  Bruno stepped down, gave Alphonse the bullhorn and helped him up the steps. At the back of the crowd, he saw Dominique on a bicycle overtake one of the slowly grinding trucks. She turned off to leave her bike with the rugby boys, most of whom had been in school with her.

  Alphonse began. He was not a born speaker and had trouble with t
he bullhorn, which squeaked and burped whenever he became animated. This was not often. Bruno had ensured that Alphonse would be the main speaker, knowing that he wouldn’t be an incendiary one. Alphonse began citing some vague statistics about the dangers of genetically modified crops and the charm of organic foods, and what little energy had been in the demonstration began to leak away. Sensing this, Alphonse changed his tune and began condemning the research station for illegal plantings and operating without a permit. This seemed to stir up some of the militants, who began chanting, “Stop the GMOs.” Feeling drowned out, Alphonse joined in the chanting, and so did the crowd, the young toughs turning to the crowd and waving their arms to get everyone chanting and a rhythm going.

  Bruno tugged at Alphonse’s sleeve. “Calm them down,” he said with some urgency. Alphonse nodded and stopped chanting, but a momentum had built among the crowd and they were moving forward, their faces red and their voices climbing in pitch. Bruno tugged at Alphonse once more and he began to speak again, but somehow the bullhorn had been turned off and he was drowned out. Bruno kept his eyes on the young men in hoods who were now pushing others forward. He clambered up the steps alongside Alphonse and waved across their heads to the baron, and the rugby team began to move in.

  From the middle of the crowd something black was hurled into the air. Then another one. Bruno whirled to see. It seemed to have a tail and to be heading off to one side, way over the heads of the gendarmes and toward the long row of greenhouses that flanked the research station. Were they trying to break the glass? He pushed Alphonse down the steps, grabbed the bullhorn, turned it on and shouted for calm. Three, four, five more projectiles were in the air when the first one landed with a great splash of red paint across the glass panes. Another bag seemed to open in midair, scattering splashes of paint over the gendarmes and the research staff inside the gates.

  Bruno located the paint throwers—now he knew what had been in that shoulder bag—and handed the bullhorn to the mayor. He turned to Jules and the gendarmes, shouting, “Get them!” and pushed his way through the crowd. He reached the one he had jostled, who was taking his arm back for another throw. Bruno grabbed the arm and pulled the man backward so he fell, the paint in the bag splashing over the marchers behind him. Bruno grabbed the shoulder bag, pulled out a bag of paint and upended its contents over the face of the man he’d felled. He turned and threw a second bag at another of the young paint-throwers, half of it catching a gendarme who was trying to collar the man.

  Jules had one hooded youth in a bear hug and another was ducking away from two gendarmes. The rugby players had moved in to grab some of the others. Red paint was splashing everywhere. The chanting had stopped, and most of the marchers were scuttling away from the mess of paint. One young tough ran at Bruno, his sign held out ahead of him like a lance, and Bruno stepped quickly to one side, pulling on the stick so the youth lurched forward and Bruno pushed him sprawling to the ground.

  Suddenly it seemed to be over. The mayor was standing on the steps, speaking calmly into the bullhorn about his lawsuit and waving the legal papers he had brought. Nobody was listening, so he asked the crowd to disperse. Max, his arm protectively around her, was escorting Jacqueline back toward town. Dominique was helping a middle-aged man who was holding his head and sitting on the ground. All of the paint-throwers were pinioned by either a gendarme or a rugby player.

  Bruno almost lost his footing on the lake of fresh paint that seemed to cover the ground, and camera flashes went off. Of course the marchers had tipped off the media. Bruno began steering the captives through the gates, where the remaining gendarmes could handcuff them.

  A braying siren sounded, and with a squeal of brakes a large dark blue bus with darkened glass windows came to a halt on the road. When the door opened, Bruno saw the brigadier, standing by the driver and clutching a handrail to keep his balance. Two by two, the squadron of thirty black-clad figures wearing helmets and leg guards and carrying shields and clubs jumped out and formed a disciplined line. The Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité were France’s feared riot police, tough and trained and ruthless.

  The crowd retreated hastily back toward town and their parked buses. Abandoned paint bombs lay leaking on the road behind them. Alphonse’s two well-groomed friends, their hair and clothing splashed with red paint, stood staring at the immobile ranks of riot police and at the brigadier, who now descended the steps from the coach and eyed the scene, nodding affably at Bruno.

  “You seem to have handled this without our reinforcements, but I thought it best to be on hand if needed,” he said, eyeing the lake of red paint. “Let’s hope nobody tries to claim that the riot police left a sea of blood on the road.”

  “We had the research station security cameras running the whole time,” said Bruno. “They’d look silly if they tried.”

  The brigadier nodded. “I’ll take over the arrests. How many have you got? It looks like eight or nine. Criminal damage and inciting a public disturbance; they could get two or three years. And I get to interrogate them all, search their homes and confiscate their cell phones and computers. Lots of address lists. Many thanks, Bruno, for a gratifying haul. All this, and your little town stays remarkably calm, considering.”

  “I hope you note that your suspects Alphonse and Dominique were not part of this.”

  The brigadier raised his eyebrows and turned to wave the riot police into the research station compound. They trotted dutifully forward to take custody. The brigadier turned back to Bruno. “And now perhaps you’ll introduce me to your mayor.”

  15

  Almost any French village can boast a weekly market, but Bruno was very proud that his venerable town of Saint-Denis had two. He was usually too busy to enjoy the justly famous market of the royal charter, which had been held every Tuesday since 1347. He preferred what Saint-Denis called the new market, held on Saturdays since the relatively recent year of 1807, when one of Emperor Napoléon’s prefects had a bright idea. He was running out of money to complete the new stone bridge, and his wife’s cousin was running out of customers for the output of his textile mill. So the prospect of a second market, which would double the income from tolls on the bridge and provide twice as many buyers for the wool, made eminent commercial sense. That was the theory. In practice, the Saturday market had never lived up to the prefect’s hopes, failing to attract as many stalls and merchants as expected.

  The Saturday market did survive, however, as an agreeable and useful addition to the amenities of Saint-Denis. Bruno admired the stubborn patience of the citizens in keeping it going. While the grand Tuesday market could comprise more than a hundred stalls and stretch from the main square in front of the mairie all along the rue de Paris to the parade ground in front of the gendarmerie, the Saturday market was a more intimate affair. Bruno seldom saw more than a dozen stalls, all manned by locals, and they never overlapped the small square that was on other days the parking lot for the mayor and his staff. In winter, the entire Saturday market could be accommodated under the arches of the mairie, benefiting from the warmth of the brazier that Bruno lit, his own small effort to ensure that the tradition did not die out.

  For Bruno, it was a gathering of friends. Stéphane was there with his milk and cheeses and yogurts with Dominique to help out at the stall, alongside Raoul the wine merchant and Yves with his fruit and vegetables. The fishmonger and charcutier were squabbling over which of them got the prime location at the corner of the bridge. Marie with her ducks and eggs and magrets was in her usual place under the arches and close to the café, the dubiously legal fat goose livers tucked discreetly out of sight in a cool box. Jeanne, plumper than ever and with her leather cash bag dangling from her shoulder, passed through the stalls exchanging kisses and gossip as she took the modest fees the town charged the merchants.

  The air was fresh and the sun warm but not oppressive. Fauquet had not bothered to open the sun umbrellas over his outdoor tables, where people were lingering over their croissants a
nd newspapers. Light glinted on the ripples where the river shallows danced over the pebbles on the near shore. Far downstream, a group of pony-trekkers waited patiently as their steeds drank their fill while a flotilla of ducks paddled by. The golden stone of the old bridge and the local buildings glowed warmly in the mid-morning light. The clock on the mairie read 10 a.m., and the bells of the church in the rue de Paris began to strike.

  Bruno, still feeling a glow of satisfaction from the way his town had emerged unscathed from the demonstration, surveyed the familiar scene from the steps of the mairie. He enjoyed the familiar rhythms of the town that had become his home, where he knew all the stallholders, most of their customers and some of their secrets. How much of this would survive the changes that the Bondino enterprise would bring? There would be more jobs and money and probably more American tourists and a handsome stall in pride of place selling Bondino wines. All that would be good. Raoul’s modest little wine stall, selling his choices of the local Bergerac wines, would face stiff competition, but that was not much of a price to pay. So why did Bruno have so many doubts about this project? Why did it feel like an oversized and alien intrusion that would change the way of life in Saint-Denis?

  He was surprised to notice that one of the shoppers pausing at the stalls was Bondino. Bruno wondered if he had seen the previous day’s Sud Ouest, with its front-page report headlined “Riot in Saint-Denis” and a photo of the riot police pushing men in handcuffs into the police bus. Bondino was wearing jeans and a polo shirt, with a camera around his neck, looking like just another tourist rather than the sleek global businessman Bruno had disliked on sight. He was buying honey and beeswax candles from Margot, the housekeeper at the home for retired priests in Saint-Belvédère, who was almost as old as her charges. Then he stopped to purchase some of the small crottins of goat cheese from Alphonse, walked quickly by the man selling mussels and oysters from the bay and came up to Bruno.