Fatal Pursuit

by Martin Walker

  “I’d better give the drivers their briefing,” said Bruno, looking at his watch. “It’s almost time to begin.”

  Thomas pulled out his cell phone to call Sylvestre as Ingrid turned to embrace Fabiola and Pamela, whom she had met at Bruno’s dinner the previous evening. Bruno took from his shoulder bag a sheaf of photocopies he’d made of the route the drivers would take through St. Denis and began handing them out. Each photocopy carried a number, indicating the order in which the cars would start.

  “If I could have your attention,” he began, using his parade-ground voice. “The route of our motorcade is clearly marked on your maps. Please set off in order of the number on your map. We’ll go through the main streets before turning onto the quayside, where we’ll park on the long stretch before the bridge. Please park as I do, facing the stone wall and with your back to the river. Leave enough space for people to walk all around the cars, and keep an eye on your vehicles in case kids try to climb in. I’ll lead the way, so nobody should get lost. The baron will bring up the rear in his Citroën DS. And I’d like you to keep at least two car lengths’ distance from the vehicle ahead.”

  As he finished, what looked like a furniture truck turned the corner, sounded its horn and pulled up on the street, too big to fit into the already crowded parking lot. Two young men in white overalls, white skullcaps and goggles jumped from the driving compartment, waved at the crowd and went to the rear of the truck. One opened the big double doors while the other pulled out a long ramp, lowered it to the ground and then clambered inside. Bruno heard the sound of a powerful engine being started, dying with a ragged cough and then starting again. A large cloud of exhaust smoke drifted from the rear of the truck, and then a bright blue, open-topped racing car from another era backed down the ramp.

  The windshield was no more than four inches in height and the hood took up two-thirds of the car’s length. The front wheels and axle were at the very front of the vehicle, ahead of the curved, flat radiator. Leading back from the driver’s seat, the sides of the car curved in to form a pointed rear that looked as sharp as an ax blade. There were no mudguards above the wheels, and a spare tire was attached to the car’s side with thick leather straps. The driver revved the engine and unleashed a harsh and potent roar before turning and driving slowly to face the crowd that had been stunned into silence. Bruno could read the red badge on the arch-shaped radiator: BUGATTI.

  “Sylvestre always likes to make an entrance,” Ingrid said drily once the throaty roar of the engine had quieted. “That’s the one he bought last year. He paid seven hundred thousand euros, and he says it’s worth a lot more now.”

  “A Type 35 from 1928, the car that made Bugatti’s name,” said Thomas, something close to reverence in his voice. “It was the only car of its day that could be driven both on the road and in Grand Prix races. And despite the name, it’s a French car, designed and built in Alsace.”

  “It won every race going,” said Young, Annette’s friend, in a worshipful tone. “It took the world championship in 1926 and the Targa Florio five years in a row.” He moved forward to help the driver from the cockpit and, as if suddenly released from bondage, the rest of the crowd surged forward to cluster around the small Bugatti.

  “Welcome,” said Bruno, introducing himself and handing the driver his photocopied map. “We’re honored to have your car here. You’re number nineteen, next to last in the parade. You’ll follow the traction-avant and be just ahead of the DS.”

  “Thank you, and please call me Sylvestre,” said the man in white, pushing his goggles back onto his brow. He looked to be in his thirties. He had bright blue eyes, a prominent nose and a firm jaw. The grip of his handshake was unnecessarily strong but his smile was affable.

  “This is my friend, Freddy, he’s from India,” Sylvestre said, beckoning forward his companion, also in white overalls. “We’re both glad to be here. My grandmother told me a lot about this place. She was born just outside St. Denis, and I thought this was a good opportunity to take a look at some property she left me.” His expression was arrogant, almost haughty, as he gazed around at the crowd, before raising his voice to ask, “And which of these charming ladies would like to ride in the Bugatti with me?”

  Sylvestre’s eyes settled briefly on Fabiola, standing alone. “How about you, mademoiselle?”

  “Thanks, but I’m driving my own car, the new Renault,” she replied coolly. “We have electric cars in the parade.”

  “Excellent,” said Sylvestre, and looked at Bruno. “In that case, would you have room for one more? I’ve got a Tesla in the back of the truck, and Freddy can drive it.”

  Suddenly he seemed aware of Félix, who had somehow pushed himself forward to stand at the side of the Bugatti and gaze reverently into the driving compartment.

  “What about you, young man. Would you like to take a spin?” Sylvestre asked. And with what Bruno thought was an understandable glance of triumph at him, Félix clambered inside and seemed to glow with pride as he took his seat. He looked up at Sylvestre in awe.

  Bruno had heard of the Tesla, an American-made electric sports car that ran on some revolutionary new battery, but he’d never seen one. Freddy clambered into the back of the big truck and backed out a sleek gray car. When Sylvestre turned off the Bugatti’s engine, Bruno realized that the Tesla was utterly, eerily silent.

  2

  Shortly after the motorcade had ended and the cars were parked along the quayside, the crowds that had been cheering were now thronging noisily down the steps to the riverbank, when Bruno felt his phone vibrate. He could barely make out that Dr. Gelletreau was reporting a death. Bruno found his way clear of the crowds so he could hear more clearly.

  The doctor told him that an elderly man in Savignac-de-Miremont had been found dead by his wife when she returned from visiting her sister. She had immediately called him. The doctor said the cause of death appeared to be a heart attack. The town wasn’t in the commune of St. Denis, but, as a courtesy, Bruno took care of birth and death registration for the small neighboring communes, hence the call. He went in search of the mayor to explain why he had to leave and found him admiring the Bugatti with the wide-eyed look of a little boy. Bruno entrusted his dog to Thomas and Ingrid and headed for the gendarmerie, where he had parked his official police van.

  The commune of Savignac was composed mostly of farms, woods and meadows, its village tiny. There were barely a hundred people in the whole commune, so at some point almost every adult had to take his or her turn in being a member of the local council. Henri-Pierre Hugon, the dead man, had been serving his third term. That was why Bruno found his house easily. In rural areas, friends and neighbors erect at the home of each new council member a tall pole, bedecked with French flags and laurel wreaths and a sign saying HONOR TO THOSE WE ELECT. Bruno followed Dr. Gelletreau’s directions until he saw the pole, its flags now somewhat faded, and turned in to see the doctor’s elderly Citroën. The plump old man came to the door as Bruno pulled in.

  “How goes the old-car parade?” Gelletreau asked, shaking hands. “I’m hoping I’ll be in time to see them all. Somebody at the clinic told me there’s one of those lovely E-type Jaguars. This shouldn’t take long. Madame Hugon is bearing up very well. In fact she’s making us some coffee. As soon as you’ve finished, I’ll call the undertakers.”

  “Has he been dead long?” Bruno asked.

  “He died in his study, and the light was on, so I think it was sometime yesterday evening,” the doctor replied. “The central heating was on, which means the body temperature doesn’t tell us much. I’ve been treating him for heart trouble for several years, since he was working in Périgueux. I’ve had him on beta-blockers, and he’d been very overweight as long as I’ve known him, even more than me. You knew him, didn’t you?”

  “Only to say hello to, mainly through SHAP, and I have a copy of his book at home,” Bruno said. “He made his living as a researcher. I don’t think I know his wife.”

  SHAP
was the Society for the History and Archaeology of the Périgord, a body of local enthusiasts and scholars who held monthly meetings and organized lectures in a splendid sixteenth-century townhouse in the heart of Périgueux. The mayor had been a member for years and had encouraged Bruno to join, for which he was grateful. He tried never to miss the sessions and remembered with pleasure lectures he’d heard on the diet of the prehistoric peoples of the region, the development of medieval castle design and on that brief period in the sixteenth century when Bergerac had been the capital of France, or at least of the Protestants rallying to King Henri IV. He’d also heard the dead man give a memorably dry lecture on Périgueux during World War II, during which few in the audience managed to stay awake. SHAP had helped Hugon publish his book, an encyclopedia of the members of the Resistance in the Périgord. Hugon had spent his life working as an archivist for the département and since his retirement had continued to visit the archives regularly in his new role as freelance historian and researcher. He was invariably neatly dressed, and Bruno had heard he was a meticulous worker with a good reputation among local lawyers and notaries.

  “How old was he?” Bruno asked.

  “He’d have been seventy-five next month. But he never exercised, always down in those gloomy archives. He lived a very sedentary life, and he was a smoker.”

  Once indoors, Bruno gave his condolences to Madame Hugon, accepted a cup of coffee and asked when she had found her husband.

  “About an hour ago, when I got back, maybe it was a bit more than that,” she said. Madame Hugon was dry eyed and composed, with no sign of shock or grief. Her hair was white, and she looked to be about the same age as her husband but in much-better health. Short and slim, she wore lace-up flat shoes, a dark skirt and a light blue blouse.

  “I’d been at my sister’s in Sarlat for a few days. She has a new grandchild. My nephew drove me back because he wanted to see the old-car parade, and Henri had needed the car while I was away. He was working on a big research job and needed to go back and forth to Périgueux and Bordeaux. I’d left meals in the freezer for him.”

  Her nephew had dropped her at the house, and she’d let herself in. The front door had not been locked. She’d called for her husband, gotten no reply and found him dead on the floor beside the desk in his study. She had touched his cheek, found it cold and called Dr. Gelletreau.

  “You didn’t call the urgences?” Bruno asked. The pompiers of the St. Denis fire brigade provided the local emergency service.

  “There was no point. He’d obviously been dead for hours. The doctor kept warning him this might happen, but Henri never listened.” She shrugged and then looked at Dr. Gelletreau. “He hadn’t touched those meals I’d left for him, and from the dishes he’d left in the sink it looks like he’d lived on steaks and fried potatoes, all those things you’d told him not to eat.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Bruno said. “I’d better take a look in the study. What was this big research job he was doing?”

  “He’d been at it for a couple of months, five days a week. But he never told me what it was, just something about the war and the Resistance. But he said he’d make enough from it for us to have a nice vacation in the sun this winter. He used to get a hundred and fifty euros a day for his research work. I’d always wanted to see Morocco, and I was looking forward to it.”

  “Do you know who hired him?” Bruno asked. She shook her head, and Bruno did the math as Gelletreau led the way into the study, where the desk lamp was still lit. If Hugon had been working on a research project for two months he’d have earned six thousand euros, a tidy sum.

  In the study, a chair had been overturned, and Hugon’s plump body lay sprawled beside it, one leg partly under the desk. His right hand was clutching at his shirtfront, and his face looked as though he’d died in pain, his lips drawn back from his teeth. On his desk was a lamp, an old-fashioned telephone, a blank message pad with a pencil lined up neatly beside it and a closed laptop computer. The printer was on a small side table, switched off, with no printouts in the out-tray.

  There was no sign of a diary or notebook that gave a clue to his research. The drawers of the two filing cabinets against the wall were closed. Bruno slipped on a set of evidence gloves and opened each drawer in turn. Most of the files were organized alphabetically and seemed to reflect the names of the people included in his encyclopedia. One file marked “Current Projects” was empty. His bank statements showed no unusual activity, just his pension payments, reimbursements from medical insurance and some modest bank transfers from lawyers, presumably research fees. There was no sign of the six thousand euros. So where was the account book he would have to keep for tax records?

  In the bookcase, filled with well-thumbed works of reference, there were two shelves filled with hardback notebooks, covered in black leather and much too big to fit into a pocket. Bruno leafed through them. Hugon’s handwriting was neat and precise, and every entry was dated. They were filed in order. The last one on the bookshelf ended with an entry for July 30 of that year. There was no sign of any current notebook, just two virgin notebooks, ready for use.

  The only item in the wastepaper basket was an empty envelope from France Télécom. It was postmarked two days earlier, so it had probably been delivered the previous day. Bruno found a file for phone bills. In the past two months there had been far more calls than usual, including daily calls to and from a mobile number that did not feature in earlier bills. Bruno took out his own phone and dialed the number, but an automated reply said the number was no longer available. That was odd. He called the security line for France Télécom and was told the number belonged to an unregistered pay-as-you-go phone.

  Bruno went back to Madame Hugon to ask if she knew the password for the laptop. She shook her head: nor did she recognize the phone number. She added that her husband had kept his diary and account books in his desk, unless he was going to the archives, when they’d be in his briefcase.

  “They aren’t there now,” said Bruno. “And there’s no sign of the briefcase.”

  “Maybe he left them in the car,” she said with a shrug, not seeming much concerned.

  The briefcase was in the car, but it contained only blank notepads, pens, a copy of the previous day’s Sud Ouest and a half-empty pack of Royale cigarettes. Bruno went back to the body and found a wallet in the hip pocket. Inside were the usual identity, health and credit cards, along with five crisp, new two-hundred-euro banknotes. Bruno asked where Hugon had kept his clothes and was shown to a wardrobe in the marital bedroom. He checked the pockets of the jackets and the bedside tables but found nothing.

  “Was there any sign that anybody else might have been in the house while you were away?” Bruno asked Madame Hugon.

  She shook her head. “Not that I noticed. We never had many visitors, except for my sister.”

  “Did you have any unusual visitors in recent days?” She shook her head. “Did he seem worried by anything?”

  “Far from it. He was pleased to have this new research project. Henri liked it when he was busy. He was never one to hang around the house, and he didn’t watch much television. There was nothing he liked more than poking around old archives, and getting paid for it was even better.”

  “Was he working very hard?” Gelletreau asked.

  “More than usual. He was in his study until all hours, night after night. But that wasn’t so unusual when he had his teeth into something. It was like when he was writing that book. But it didn’t seem like it was a strain. It was work, but the kind of work he liked. It always cheered him up to be on the trail of something.”

  “Did he always work on the laptop, or did he work with documents?”

  “Both. He had a big file of papers he’d collected, but he always had one of those black notebooks going as well.”

  “There’s a file marked ‘Current Projects’ in the filing cabinet, but it’s empty and the last entry in the latest black notebook was for sometime in July. So where
’s the one for August and September?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he left it at the archives in Périgueux. They’d always let him leave stuff in a desk.”

  Bruno went into the kitchen and looked at the dirty dishes in the sink and piled up on the draining board, as if Hugon planned to leave them for his wife to wash on her return. There were four or five dinner plates, smeared with grease, some wineglasses and bowls that might have held soup or breakfast cereal.

  “He used the good coffee cups; that’s not like him,” she said, sounding surprised for the first time since Bruno’s arrival. There were three dirty coffee cups beside the sink, all piled together as if they had been used at the same time.

  “Did he drink much?” Bruno asked, eyeing three empty bottles of Bergerac red wine, an undistinguished brand that Bruno recognized from the local supermarket.

  “He liked his glass of Ricard before dinner and red wine with his meals, just a glass or two. Dr. Gelletreau had told him to cut back on his drinking.”

  “How long were you away?” Bruno asked.

  “Just the three nights.”

  “So he got through three bottles in three days. That seems like quite a lot for a man on his own.”

  She frowned, something like distaste in her expression. “I think he usually drank more when I wasn’t here, just like he’d go back to his steaks rather than defrost those nice meals I made.”

  Gelletreau nodded sagely. “He was never what I’d call a good patient. You can give them all the advice in the world but if they don’t want to take it…”

  Bruno thanked Madame Hugon and asked her if she wanted him to call anybody, perhaps her sister or a priest? She shook her head, saying she’d already called her sister in Sarlat to tell her of the death, and her husband had never been a churchgoer. Once the undertaker had taken the body to the funeral home, she’d drive back to Sarlat and stay there.