Fatal Pursuit

by Martin Walker

“Am I right to think you’re coming to visit an old schoolmate?” he asked, shaking the elderly hand through the open car window.

  “That’s right. Gilles called the maison de retraite and got him on the phone. I’ve brought an old school photo to see if he can pick me out. I’m pretty sure I recognized him, but it’s a lifetime since we were last together.”

  Gilles let Étienne out and went off to park. Bruno matched his pace to the elderly shuffle and steered Étienne to the right door, already open, with their host rising to greet them. His photo album was under his arm. It was crowded in the small room, but Bruno perched on the windowsill, and Gilles was offered the easy chair when he arrived but remained standing. The two old men sat side by side on the bed to look at the photos and reminisce.

  “Can I bring you gentlemen some coffee or some tea, maybe a glass of wine?” Gilles asked.

  They agreed that they would each like a petit blanc. Gesturing with his head for Bruno to follow, Gilles led the way out and across the road to pick up a bottle of chilled Bergerac Sec from the corner shop. They then borrowed some glasses from the kitchen of the maison de retraite.

  “I’m sure that Étienne knows something about this junk shop, but he’s not talking,” Gilles confided as they went. “He just said he wanted to see his old friend and talk to him. He thought it might trigger some memories.”

  “How much have you told him?” Bruno asked.

  “Everything about the car, nothing about Sylvestre.”

  “You know Sylvestre was found dead in his pool this morning.”

  “Yes, Fabiola sent me a text. Naturally, I told Young. He made some joke about giving a medal to whoever did it. What was it, heart attack or something?”

  “We won’t be sure until the autopsy,” Bruno said quickly. If Fabiola had not told Gilles of her suspicions, that meant Young would also not know. “I thought you and Young were going together to see Étienne in the E-type.”

  “He called to ask if we could go separately. He wanted to get back to Annette, feeling guilty about neglecting her on a Saturday, one of her days off.”

  They took in the wine and glasses, the two old men pausing in what had been animated conversation over the photo album. Bruno had the feeling they were up to something.

  “Funny how the old photos bring it all back,” said Gilles as Bruno opened the wine and poured out four glasses.

  “Maybe with young memories like yours,” said Étienne, raising his glass. “Santé.”

  “So were you two in the same class?”

  “Same school, different class. Étienne’s older, but we were on the same soccer team. And his big brother is in the photo with Henri.” Félix’s grandfather pointed to another of the young men with an armband and Sten gun. “They’d been at school together, too, chased the same girls.”

  “So what happened to the scrap merchant Bérégevoy?” Bruno asked.

  “He died sometime in the early seventies, but he’d run down his stock by then,” Étienne replied. “He had a place near the viaduct in Sarlat, and when they started cleaning the town up they changed the zoning and he was told to move. I don’t remember where he went, if I ever knew. He had a daughter, but she moved away when she got married.”

  “Her name was Célestine,” said Gilles. “I checked her out in Sarlat, where she worked at the mairie before getting married in 1961. I’m trying to trace her now. She might know what happened to the remaining stock.”

  “Sounds like a dead end to me,” said Étienne, with a quick, sideways glance at his old schoolmate.

  Bruno’s phone vibrated, and he saw it was Thomas calling from Alsace. He went outside to answer it, to learn that Thomas had tracked down Sylvestre’s lawyer, passed on the news of his death and asked about a will.

  “He hadn’t drawn one up, although the lawyer had advised Sylvestre to do so,” Thomas went on. “He said he might have used another lawyer, maybe in Paris because of the scale of the family holdings, but he’d check in the registry of wills and get back to me on Monday. Any more news?”

  “The autopsy has been done, and it was murder, but we’re not releasing that news yet. Somebody held his head underwater, but he was very drunk and also stoned.”

  “Putain, that’s going to cause a stir. Any suspects?”

  “That Indian partner of his took the first early morning flight from Bordeaux and cleared out Sylvestre’s bank accounts. He’s the obvious suspect and Europol is trying to track his movements after he landed in Amsterdam. If they lose his trail, the procureur will announce that it’s a murder inquiry, but that probably won’t be until Monday morning. I’ll let you know. Keep this to yourself, or it’s bound to leak.”

  They hung up, and Bruno turned on the record function on his phone, held it up to his ear as if still talking and went back to join the others. He said some words of farewell as if to end a conversation and then asked if anyone wanted more wine. Étienne held up his glass, so Bruno poured out some more, in the process leaving his phone discreetly behind a potted plant on the windowsill.

  “We’ll leave the wine with you. Gilles and I have a couple of errands to take care of,” he said and turned to Gilles. “Will you drive Étienne back?”

  Gilles nodded, saying he’d be back in an hour or so. Bruno and Gilles left the two old men together. Once outside, Bruno asked his friend to collect the phone when he picked up Étienne, saying Bruno had forgotten it.

  “My phone is recording because, now that they’re alone, I think we might learn something,” he said. “What are your plans for this evening?”

  “Nothing particular. Fabiola wants to exercise Victoria, which reminds me: you know Pamela and Fabiola are going fifty-fifty on the Andalusian horse? They also want to move all the horses, your Hector included, to the riding school. Pamela reckons that Victoria will be placid enough for the children when they move on from ponies. That would mean leaving Hector alone in our stables, which doesn’t seem like a good idea. And having Hector there would mean an extra adult horse for her customers.”

  Bruno raised his eyebrows. He had once thought of stabling Hector on his own property, but he didn’t like the thought of leaving him alone. And police work meant he could not always be back in time to exercise the horse. Until now, he could count on Fabiola to take Hector out behind her on a long rein. It made sense to leave all the horses at Pamela’s stables, but would it change his relationship with his horse if others were to ride Hector from time to time? He wouldn’t even have owned a horse if Pamela had not organized all his friends to band together and buy Hector for his birthday. He owed her too much to refuse.

  “It makes sense,” Bruno said. “Fabiola and I could ride Victoria and Hector over to Pamela’s place this evening while you drive Étienne back.”

  “Pamela is coming back here for dinner afterward,” Gilles added. “Why not join us? I bought oysters in the market this morning, and Fabiola is making her fondue. We all know how much you like it.”

  “That sounds good, and I’ll bring some wine,” said Bruno. “Just don’t forget to pick up my phone when you collect Étienne.”

  25

  That Sunday morning in St. Denis, the church bell was summoning the faithful to mass, Father Sentout was donning his vestments, and the less religious citizens were thronging to Fauquet’s to buy the special gâteaux, fit to grace a Sunday lunch en famille. Bruno, wearing civilian clothes, was sitting on the café terrace and feeding the heel of his croissant to Balzac. After checking on the chickens, they had taken Bruno’s morning run through the woods together and then, feeling the need for some more exercise, Bruno had cleaned out the ashes from his wood-burning stove while Balzac sat patiently watching. The dog had followed to observe Bruno empty the ashes onto that part of his vegetable garden that still lay fallow. Then he had turned over the soil to dig the ashes in, thinking that did not count as the kind of gardening forbidden by the lunar calendar. He had changed his sheets and towels, filled his washing machine, showered, shaved and headed i
nto town, singing along to Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose” on the radio.

  Once in town and alone on the terrace with his dog, Bruno turned on the playback feature of his phone and tried once again to make out the indistinct and mumbled words it had recorded between the two men in the retirement home once he and Gilles had left them. The previous evening, over Fabiola’s fondue, he and Gilles along with Fabiola and Pamela had tried with only occasional success to follow the conversation. But some words had come over clearly. One of them had been “Bugatti,” a second had been “millions,” a third had been “park,” and the fourth had been “Bérégevoy,” the name of the junkyard owner who had bought the contents of the barn at Perdigat.

  Bruno was almost sure of a few more phrases, but there were some loose ends to tie up first. He called Marcel, the owner of the garage where Annette had bought the Bugatti radiator. Marcel remembered the name of the junk shop where he had bought the radiator. It had been the closing-down sale of Bérégevoy’s place when the owner died. Had anyone else asked about that recently? Bruno asked. Yes, Marcel replied, two people: the Englishman who was supposed to be driving with Annette and then, in a separate visit, a reporter from Paris Match.

  Another of the recorded words that Bruno was sure of was “Félix.” The previous evening when they had been listening, Pamela had said that there had been a phone call for Félix at the stables that afternoon. The boy had then asked to use the computer in her office when he’d finished work.

  “I was checking e-mails before coming over here, and there was a window that he must have left open on the computer. I remember it had a photo of an old car, which didn’t interest me so I closed it,” Pamela had said. She said she would look up the history function on her browser; Gilles had written down the steps she should take.

  Bruno ordered a second cup of coffee and called her. Pamela reported that Félix had looked up websites about Bugatti, the Type 57 Atlantic, and the latest Concours d’Élégance at Villa d’Este in Italy, which had been won by Ralph Lauren’s car. Félix had then looked at a YouTube video of that same concours, which carried the headline in English “Ralph Lauren’s $40 million Bugatti Atlantic.”

  One did not need fluency in English to understand that, thought Bruno, thanking Pamela and then listening once again to the voices of the two men talking. But he heard only odd words or snatches of phrases. At one point Étienne had said “Rome,” which baffled Bruno. He listened to that section again, and shortly before the reference to the Italian capital he was almost sure he heard the words Naud qui l’a acheté. Who or what was “Naud” and what had he bought? Bruno gave up and put the phone down. Perhaps if he gave it to J-J’s forensics experts they could find a way to enhance the recording.

  “Bonjour, Bruno,” came a voice, and Bruno looked up, surprised to see his colleague Grégoire, Étienne’s son. He invited him to sit down, share a coffee and recommended the quality of the croissants. Then as Grégoire made friends with Balzac, Bruno asked what brought him to St. Denis.

  “My dad,” came the reply. “He’s always been religious and he said this morning he wanted to hear mass with his old school friend. He asked me to drive him over so here I am.”

  “Not religious yourself?” Bruno asked.

  “Not really, just marriages and funerals, but it’s a nice day for a drive, and it’s not a day for gardening, so I was happy to agree. My wife’s with them in the church now.”

  “Lunar calendar,” said Bruno, smiling. “We’re gardening by the same rules.”

  “They always worked for my dad, and his garden’s still a sight to behold,” Grégoire said. “Dad told me he’d often wanted to visit the amusement park here in St. Denis, so we’ll go there after church. Then I thought we might make a day of it, go out for lunch and then drive home the long way up the Dordogne Valley and back through Sarlat.”

  Grégoire’s coffee came, and then Balzac jumped to his feet and looked across the square giving a little yelp of welcome before trotting across to welcome Isabelle. She dropped to one knee to greet the basset hound, struggling to manage her shoulder bag, a plastic bag and a large manila envelope as Balzac tried to clamber onto her lap. Bruno called to Fauquet, standing in the door to enjoy the sun on his face, for another croissant and coffee.

  “Bonjour, Bruno,” said Isabelle, offering each cheek for his bise. He introduced Grégoire, told her that he was also a cop and that the coffee and croissant were on their way.

  “I remember you,” said Grégoire. “You used to work for J-J in Périgueux. I think you were Inspector Perrault back then.”

  “And you were the municipal cop in Terrasson,” she declared. “I remember you as well, that bank robbery that turned out to be an inside job. The guy went down for five years.”

  “A good case,” said Grégoire. “I haven’t seen you for ages, but J-J always said you’d be the one to succeed him.”

  Isabelle shook her head. “I transferred out. I’m with Eurojust these days, up in The Hague.”

  “So you’re here on holiday, visiting old haunts?”

  Bruno was sure Grégoire was simply making conversation, but Isabelle clammed up, saying simply, “Old haunts, old friends.” She fell silent and devoted her attention to her croissant. Grégoire took the hint and rose to his feet, muttering something about the sermon being over by now.

  “Mission complete?” Bruno asked Isabelle once Grégoire had gone.

  “Pretty much, but we have a lot of follow-up to do on the banks they used,” she said. “And there’s going to be a legal row over whether we can confiscate his cars and garage as proceeds of a criminal enterprise. That’s pretty much all that’s left. Sylvestre was running out of money. Most of his Alsace properties were mortgaged up to the hilt.”

  “What about Freddy?”

  “They lost him in Athens, found his phone dumped in a trash bin at the airport. The police showed his photo at all the check-in desks, and one of the attendants thought she checked him into a flight for Beirut, but she wasn’t sure. We’ve got the numbers of the credit cards he used to buy tickets, so we’re monitoring them, and we’re asking the Emirates police to seal off the Abu Dhabi showroom.

  “We’ve sworn out a murder warrant for him, but I’m not altogether sure Freddy was Sylvestre’s killer,” she went on. She finished the remainder of her coffee and handed Bruno the manila envelope and the plastic bag. “Your two cameras are in there, and I printed out some of the better stills from the data card.”

  She led Bruno through the photos. There was no sign of Freddy until he drove off in the middle of the night in his Range Rover. The timer on the print said he left at ten to four. But another car had come to the chartreuse after midnight. The image was too vague for the driver to be identifiable, but then the next print showed two people sitting by the pool. One of them was Sylvestre in a dark dressing gown. The other one had his back to the cameras. The image wasn’t helped by the flaring on the film from the open-air heaters that Bruno remembered. It could be Freddy, it could even be a woman with short hair and wearing slacks, or it could be someone else altogether.

  “It’s clear that this other person and Sylvestre were drinking and smoking for over two hours,” Isabelle said. She turned over the next still, which showed Sylvestre standing by the pool and the other person rising from a chair. The person was wearing what looked like jeans and a sweater. The next image showed Sylvestre being pushed into the pool, his unidentified companion following right behind.

  “I’ve never watched a murder in process before this,” said Bruno, shaken by what he was seeing but fascinated. “Could we enhance some of the images?”

  “I tried, and I’ve got very good enhancement software on my computer. This is as good as you’ll get.”

  The cameras couldn’t see into the pool, and the next movement that was triggered was of the second person climbing out, still fully dressed, still with his or her back to the cameras.

  “Here’s your killer, standing right beneath one of the
heaters and drying himself with a towel from the chair,” she said. “Because of the flare we can’t see the face, and then he covers his head with the towel and disappears. I say ‘he’ because his clothes are wet, and there’s no sign of female breasts. The next thing we see is Freddy leaving in his car and that’s all.”

  “I couldn’t identify anyone from that,” said Bruno.

  “You may not need to. And if you take my advice, you won’t use the prints in interrogation or when it comes to trial. Any decent lawyer would see through your little story about wildlife photography and argue the evidence was illegally obtained. If you have a suspect, don’t let him know that you have the prints but use what the images tell you. You know when the killer arrived, what he did, when he left, and you have a car. It’s a Peugeot, but it wasn’t driven far enough onto the property for us to pick up a license number. If you can’t leverage all that into a confession, you’re in the wrong business. Above all you have the towel. I made sure it was bagged, and the forensics guys should be able to get some of the murderer’s DNA from it.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. “Good-bye, Bruno. Good luck,” she said, giving Balzac a final caress. She headed back across the square to her rental car.

  Bruno watched her go, called for the bill and began looking again through the prints, hoping against hope that something in the stance or dress of the killer might trigger something. Bruno was almost certain it was a man, but could it be Martine? She was tall enough, but there was no way she could ever have concealed her lovely breasts. It could be Freddy, but the skin of the arms seemed too pale. Who else might it be? Bruno looked again at the photos, pondering.

  After a moment wrestling with his conscience, he called Fabiola and said, “I need you to do me a very big favor, but if you feel you can’t do it, just tell me. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important.”

  “Tell me what it is,” she said, and he explained. He could hear the reluctance in her voice when she replied that she’d think about it and call him back. Bruno put the photos back in their envelope and the envelope into the bag with the cameras and then glanced across the square where people were coming up the rue de Paris from the church.