Fatal Pursuit

by Martin Walker

  “In that case, do you mind if I look around for anything that might establish a link that could connect Hugon with Sylvestre and Freddy, perhaps papers or letters?” He wondered if he should tell her to pull herself together and act like the efficient, purposeful Isabelle he knew.

  “Be my guest,” she said. “You’ll wear gloves, of course. Anything to do with finance or Dubai or Abu Dhabi, put it to one side.”

  She sighed deeply and looked at him. “This was the operation that was going to make my name and really put Eurojust on the map, penetrating the finance network, turning Sylvestre so he worked for me.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out as you hoped. But then you never want things to be too easy. And it’s not as though you failed. You’ve mapped the network, traced some of the payment routes in Europe and the paymasters in the Gulf. And you’ve still got a shot at picking up Freddy.”

  “Dear Bruno, always looking for the positive in every disaster.” She gave him a fond look and then braced herself. “And you’re right. Time to gather what we can from the wreckage and start all over again.”

  23

  The whole panoply of a murder investigation began to build around Bruno, forensics teams and photographers, uniformed police searching the grounds and detectives sifting through Sylvestre’s Range Rover and all the contents of the houses. Bruno sat by the pool with his notebook out, skimming through it as he tried to work out what motive Freddy might have had to kill his partner and flee. Did he suspect that they were under surveillance and that Sylvestre might agree to work for the authorities to gain immunity from prosecution? Had Freddy learned that Sylvestre was taking money meant for the cause? Had he simply become too much of a risk? Might it have been personal, Freddy trying to take over Sylvestre’s business? But in that case, would he not have prepared matters better? From the look of Freddy’s place, he’d left in a hurry if not in a panic. And how could he take over Sylvestre’s business ventures, unless Freddy was certain he could thumb his nose at a French extradition request?

  Bruno could see no explanation that satisfied him. And Freddy had left all the books and journals behind that dealt with the lost Bugatti. Perhaps he had no interest in it, but it had been to Freddy that Hugon had mailed his research report or whatever it was. That reminded Bruno; he should ask J-J if his team had been able to break into Hugon’s computer. The research report should be in there. And had Freddy and Sylvestre together killed Hugon or just one of them? There had been three coffee cups, Bruno remembered. And what was Sylvestre’s second deal with the notaire? At least he could check that. He was about to ring Brosseil’s office when he remembered there was someone who would need to know about the death. He called his friend Thomas in Alsace instead.

  “I’ve got unpleasant news. Sylvestre was found dead this morning in his swimming pool.”

  “Mon Dieu. Was it an accident?” asked Thomas.

  “We’re not sure yet.” Bruno explained the circumstances, said that the family feud had been settled and that two of Sylvestre’s land deals were almost completed. “There’s an autopsy later today, and I’ll keep you informed.”

  “Thanks, I’d better tell the mayor. That’s our richest citizen gone and the last of his line.”

  “Can you let me have the name of his lawyer, and find out if there’s a will?” Bruno said, and then stopped. “Last of his line?”

  “He was an only child and had no direct heirs. His father and grandfather were only sons.”

  “So who are the nearest relatives?” Bruno asked.

  “None around here. I imagine it will be the ones he was having the feud with. They’ll inherit a fortune.”

  “Mon Dieu,” said Bruno, his mind racing. “That’s quite a motive. And it was his cousin Oudinot’s daughter who found the body.”

  Martine had left him not long before eleven, he recalled. Fabiola was putting Sylvestre’s death at somewhere between midnight and four in the morning; Sylvestre’s immersion in the heated pool had made the usual body temperature tests meaningless. But did she and her father know there were no other heirs to Sylvestre’s estate?

  “I’ll call the lawyer and find out about a will, just as soon as I’ve seen the mayor. He’ll probably want the body brought back here for a big funeral. It’s quite an event in a town like this.”

  “I understand, and thanks, Thomas, and my love to Ingrid.”

  Rocked by the prospect that the woman he was sleeping with might be a murder suspect, Bruno tried to remember every meeting he’d had with Martine and Sylvestre, including that first time when the two cousins had been together at this very spot by the pool. There was nothing that suggested that Martine was anything but what she said, keen to help resolve the family feud, and a bit embarrassed by her father’s hostility. Surely he now knew Martine well enough…

  No, he didn’t, he told himself. There had been only a few meetings, a lunch, some meals, two glorious evenings making love, a sense of mounting excitement that went beyond his attraction to her looks and brains and talent, the enjoyment he took in her presence, the pleasure he felt at the prospect of seeing her again. He liked her a lot, no, he more than liked her, and Bruno knew himself well enough to suspect that he was falling for her more and more deeply. And that would skew his judgment. Duty as well as decency required that he hand this over to J-J to investigate.

  In the meantime, he had work to do. He called the notaire’s office, and after a short pause Brosseil came on the line.

  “Bad news,” he began. “Your new client, Sylvestre Wémy, is dead. Drowned in his pool last night. I’m at his place now. Those deals of his won’t go through now, and I need to find out what they are. I know about Oudinot; it’s the other one.”

  Brosseil stuttered something, dropped the phone and then said, “Sorry, it’s a bit of a shock. At least the deposits are paid. He did bank transfers for each of them from my office, so I’ll get my fee, or some of it. The second deal was with Jérôme at the amusement park. Monsieur Wémy was planning to buy it, enlarge it and build it up. He said something about adding a car museum.”

  “The mayor will be sorry to hear that’s fallen through,” Bruno replied, recovering quickly from the surprise. “How much of a deposit did he put down? The usual ten percent?”

  “No, fifty thousand to Oudinot, half the final price, and two hundred thousand to Jérôme, twenty percent. He paid extra because he wanted the deals wrapped up quickly before he went to China. I’d better get onto Oudinot and Jérôme.”

  “Oudinot already knows,” Bruno said. “His daughter found the body, but don’t pass that news around yet.”

  As he closed his phone, he wondered if someone other than Freddy had been involved in Sylvestre’s death. The Oudinot family had a motive to loathe him in the past, but surely not once the land deal was agreed. Oudinot had been very pleased with the sale when Bruno had seen him. But then, he might expect to inherit. And Jérôme was looking at a million-euro payday if the sale of the amusement park had been completed. Could the lost Bugatti have been sufficient motive, perhaps for someone equally obsessed, like George Young? Certainly with all his books and hiring a researcher, Sylvestre had been far better organized in his search than Young’s dependence on some old family memoir that hadn’t taken him far. But that was hardly a motive for murder. And Young was aware of the legal complications of the vehicle’s ownership if it was ever found. However much it might be worth, the finder would get only a fraction of an eventual sale price.

  “I wish I could sit around a pool all day while others slave away,” came J-J’s booming voice.

  “I’m thinking,” said Bruno. “I’m trying to work out if anyone but Freddy might have had a motive.”

  “Start by asking yourself who else has fled the scene. That van you mentioned with Sylvestre’s cars in it, did you find the key?”

  “I found a key case in the kitchen with a lot of keys on it. I left it there in an evidence bag to be fingerprinted.”
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  “That’s done. Can you go down to wherever the van is parked with a forensics team, let them in and give them a hand? They’ve just arrived from Bergerac with Inspector Jofflin. You’ve worked with him before, and you’ve at least seen inside the van and know the cars.”

  “Okay, any interesting papers turned up yet?”

  “Isabelle’s handling that with her two guys, and she knows to keep a special eye out for anything that might have come from Hugon.”

  “What about Hugon’s computer?”

  “Yves can’t get into it. We may have to send it to Bordeaux, maybe to Paris; they have machines that can run through millions of possible passwords in a few minutes. Given time, they’ll break it.”

  “There’s something you need to know,” said Bruno. “The young woman who found the body, his cousin Martine. I’m involved with her, so I can’t follow this up myself. But I’ve just learned from a friend in Alsace that Sylvestre has no other heirs. That means his estate will go to Martine and her parents, and there’s been a long-standing and bitter family feud that I thought had been settled. Given Sylvestre’s wealth, that’s quite a motive, and I think you ought to pursue it, even though I’ve known the family for years, and I really don’t think they are killers, least of all Martine. It would break my heart if I’m wrong.”

  J-J studied him in silence for a long moment. “Okay, Bruno, I’ll look into it myself.” His voice was quiet and sympathetic. “And thanks for telling me.”

  Bruno rose, went to get the keys, joined the team from Bergerac and headed for the truck garage at Le Buisson. Bruno did not know the security man on duty, but at the sight of Bruno’s uniform and the police van that carried the forensic specialists, the guard opened the electronic gates to let them in. One of the keys opened the door. They pulled out the ramps, and Inspector Jofflin and Bruno donned their snowman suits and bootees and climbed in. From their van, two members of Jofflin’s crew unloaded a portable generator, fired it up and connected two flood lamps to illuminate the two cars, ancient and modern, that dominated the van’s interior. But that was not where Jofflin began his search. He looked at the racks of oils, lubricants and chemicals that lined one side of the van, each of them secured for travel with bungee cords. Then he looked at the workbench and the tools above it on their sturdy hooks. Beneath the workbench were several pieces of equipment. One by one, Jofflin pointed to a welding kit, a generator and something else that Bruno did not recognize.

  “Three-dimensional printer, industrial size,” said Jofflin. “All the race-car teams use them these days. They can design a new component or piece of bodywork over dinner, print it overnight and have it ready to test the next day. This one has DMLS, direct metal laser sintering.”

  “You mean they can print metal, not just plastics?” Bruno asked, thinking that Jofflin relished showing off his knowledge.

  “Absolutely, that’s the point. But this system can print both. Whoever designed this van really knew what they were doing. It’s better equipped than most garages.” He pointed to the van roof, where six curved steel girders, each anchored to the floor, rose up the walls and then curved in to meet at a fixture that held a hook and chain. “That’s a heavy-duty engine hoist. They can lift out engines, print new parts and even electroplate them. Let me see…”

  He looked along the cans of chemicals, muttering something about permits. On a bookshelf above the workbench, Bruno saw a book-sized file marked “Permits” and asked Jofflin, “Is this what you’re looking for?”

  “That’s it,” said Jofflin and began leafing through. “Acids, hydroxides, metallic oxides, halogens, diisocyanates, it looks like all the approvals are here, even cyanide. That’s for the electroplating.”

  Bruno’s eyes widened. “You know J-J already has a cyanide-poisoning case, another murder. Could a specialist lab tell us whether the cyanide that was used in that killing came from the stuff they have here?”

  “I don’t know, but if the guys who drove this truck are possible suspects, you’d better tell J-J right away,” Jofflin replied. “Meanwhile we’ll inventory all this and check for fingerprints.”

  When Bruno called J-J to inform him of what had been found, J-J suggested that Jofflin call the Bordeaux lab directly to see if the batch of cyanide could be identified.

  “In the meantime, Isabelle has come up with some papers from Sylvestre’s house that look as if they’re related to Hugon,” J-J told Bruno, adding that it seemed to be a research report on the Bugatti. Even more interesting was a handwritten note of a phone conversation with Hugon, attached to it with a paper clip.

  “I think Hugon was trying to blackmail Sylvestre,” J-J said.

  “How do you mean? What could he have on Sylvestre?”

  “Information,” said J-J. “At least, that’s how I interpret the note.”

  It contained just a handful of words and figures: “Hugon,” “Bugatti,” “new lead,” and then “bonus.” Finally came the figure 5 followed by four zeros. After the figures had been scrawled, an exclamation point had been made so hard the pen had ripped the paper.

  “Whoever wrote it was angry or maybe just excited,” said J-J. “Maybe you should come back here and take a look.”

  “Sylvestre was rich,” said Bruno. “Fifty thousand was like pocket change to him, but I suppose it could be a motive for murder. And we found no trace of fifty grand in Hugon’s bank accounts.”

  “It certainly meant Sylvestre could no longer trust Hugon, and maybe Sylvestre wanted him silenced anyway,” J-J replied. “Isabelle has people looking at Sylvestre’s bank accounts as we speak. By the way, I went to the farm and talked to the Oudinots, and while they have only each other as alibis, they seemed genuinely stunned by his death. I think they’re in the clear. Of course, I may be biased by the brioches Oudinot’s wife served with the coffee. And that daughter of theirs is really something; you’re a lucky man.”

  “Let’s hope I’m still lucky after she’s been grilled by you. I’ll leave Jofflin and his guys to go over the truck, and I’ll head back.”

  “One more thing—Isabelle has started to track Freddy. He took an early morning flight to Amsterdam from Bordeaux. It left just after six, so he must have set off from the house by four this morning at the latest. They’re trying all the outbound flights from Amsterdam now but suspect he’s using other ID.”

  “How did he buy the ticket?”

  “At the airport with a platinum credit card, but he paid for a business-class return so was waved right through. He must have known they do extra checks on one-way tickets bought at the last minute.”

  When Bruno returned to the chartreuse, he found Philippe Delaron in the driveway, trying to take pictures of the house despite the two gendarmes standing stolidly in the way. Bruno brushed aside Philippe’s questions and went looking for J-J. He was out of reach, closeted in Sylvestre’s kitchen with Isabelle and the procureur, who had driven down from Périgueux to take charge of the inquiry. While Bruno had been at the truck garage, the forensic pathologist confirmed Fabiola’s suspicion that Sylvestre had been held underwater until he drowned. That meant they were now dealing with two related murders. As he waited for J-J to be free, Bruno called Fabiola to tell her it looked like she’d been right about the cyanide.

  She quickly changed the subject. “Gilles texted me to say he’d be back late. He’s out at Rastignac again, seeing some local policeman who’s a friend of yours,” Fabiola told him. “He’s gone with George Young in the E-type. They seem to be interested in junkyards all of a sudden.”

  “Have you told him about Sylvestre’s death?” Bruno asked.

  “Yes, I texted him back. Why, is it a secret? I assume he told Young, since they seem to be working together.”

  “Not a secret, it’s just that we may need to talk to Young about his whereabouts last night. Since he knew Sylvestre, and they were rivals for the Bugatti, he’s on the list of potential suspects.”

  “Annette won’t like that.”

 
; “It’s just routine; he’s not a serious suspect. Anyway, since I assume they’re sleeping together, she’s his alibi.”

  “I’m not sure they are. She called me last night to complain about him being so obsessed with that old car he’s hunting for,” Fabiola said. “I told her I sympathized, since Gilles was also getting caught up in the thrill of the chase.” Her voice dripped sarcasm, then became matter-of-fact. “I have a waiting room full of patients, so I may see you later with the horses. Bye, Bruno.”

  As Bruno put his phone away, Isabelle, J-J and the procureur came out of Sylvestre’s house, and J-J waved him across to join them.

  “It’s me who wants to speak with you,” said the procureur. “It’s about this young man who nearly blinded a little girl. I’ve seen your recommendation, and I spoke to the mayor this morning on the drive down. I’ll go along with the plan, but only on the condition that the parents sign a guarantee to enforce it. After all the fuss in the media about the case, I’m going to be criticized for being too soft, so the regimen is going to have to be really strict. And I don’t want this kid to think he’s getting away with something, so that means no phone for him and no computer. I’ll e-mail you the text to print out, and I want it signed by both parents.”

  The procureur left, Isabelle had disappeared, and J-J led him into the kitchen and showed him the research report and the attached note. Bruno glanced at it and agreed; it was hard to put any other interpretation on it. Hugon was demanding more money for his new lead.

  “Take a look at that document underneath,” J-J said. “You know more about this business than I do. Let me know what you think, and then you’d better take care of whatever the procureur asked you to do. We’ve got more than enough manpower here.”

  The report was mainly a list of negatives. No Bugatti had been registered in the Dordogne or any neighboring département between 1939 and 1946, except for the Gironde, where most of the stock in the Alsace factory at Molsheim, which the German military had requisitioned, had been moved to a replacement factory on rue Alfred Danat in Bordeaux. There was nothing in the Vichy archives that suggested the car had been authorized to enter the Vichy zone. And there was no indication of any insurance policy being taken out on a car with the relevant chassis number after 1940.