ALSO BY MARTIN WALKER
FICTION
The Resistance Man
The Devil’s Cave
The Crowded Grave
Black Diamond
The Dark Vineyard
Bruno, Chief of Police
The Caves of Périgord
NONFICTION
The Iraq War
Europe in the Twenty-first Century (coauthor)
America Reborn
The President They Deserve
The Cold War: A History
Martin Walker’s Russia
The Waking Giant: Gorbachev and Perestroika
Powers of the Press
The National Front
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2015 by Walker and Watson, Ltd.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House company. Originally published in Great Britain by Quercus Publishing PLC, London, in 2014.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walker, Martin, [date]
The Children Return : a Bruno, Chief of Police novel / Martin Walker. — First United States edition.
pages ; cm
“This is a Borzoi Book.”
ISBN 978-0-385-35415-8 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-385-35416-5 (eBook) 1. Police—France—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6073.A413C47 2015
823′.914—dc23
2014019013
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Map copyright © 2012 by Jamie Whyte
Jacket photograph © Chris Archinet
Jacket design by Mark Abrams
v3.1
For my fellow members of the ancient and honorable
Confrérie du Pâté de Périgueux
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
1
Benoît Courrèges, chief of police of the small French town of St. Denis and known to everyone as Bruno, had witnessed too much violent death. After twelve years in the French army and eleven as a policeman, he had seen the gruesome effects of artillery shells and machine guns and then of the metal and glass of automobile crashes on the human body. And while he often hoped to forget the impact of a bullet on his own flesh, the sullen ache in his hip with the coming of each winter’s damp would remind him of the shot that had sent him tumbling into the snow in the hills above Sarajevo. He’d never forget the brightness of the French tricolore on the sleeve of the medic who worked on him until the helicopter came. Any sight of his country’s flag now always brought back to Bruno the red of his blood against the white of the snow and the blue helmet he’d been wearing as a United Nations peacekeeper.
But Bruno had never seen anything quite as grim as the sight of the dead man now lying trussed and half-naked before him. Rain trickled down the corpse’s chest and stomach, gleaming on the fresh burn marks where the stubs of his nipples had been. The body was lit by the headlights of Bruno’s own van and the large fire engine of St. Denis. Flickering flames on the tires of the car defied the steady rain and the white foam the firemen had used to douse the fire. Breathing through his mouth to avoid the stench of both charred flesh and burning rubber, Bruno checked his watch. Dawn was still an hour away.
It was not only the smell that turned his stomach. He felt sickened by a personal sense of outrage. Even though the dead man was a stranger, Bruno felt the manner of this man’s death had been a kind of pollution of these woods that he loved and knew so well. He’d never be able to bring his horse or his dog this way without thinking of it. And this atrocity had been carried out by people skilled in the blackest arts of death, professionals who were notoriously hard to bring to justice. But he’d find them.
“He’s certainly dead and it’s obviously murder. Did you see the wound under the chin?” asked Fabiola, whose presence as a doctor was legally required to certify death. Bruno nodded. A stiletto up through the soft skin of the mouth and straight into the brain killed quickly and with very little blood. It was one of the assassin’s tricks taught to troops in special forces.
“I can’t even give you an approximate time of death,” she went on. Bruno’s good friend Fabiola wore no hat, and rain had plastered streaks of her dark hair across her face, covering the scar on her right cheek. Without makeup her face was pale in the headlights and her eyes enormous. Bruno was suddenly struck by how beautiful Fabiola could be.
“Normally I’d use an anal thermometer for body temperature, but he’s been badly sodomized and then the fire …”
“The ground is dry beneath his hips,” said Bruno. “The storm broke just after two this morning, so presumably the killers chained him to the tree before then.”
“You were awake for the storm?” she asked. He nodded. The lightning had not disturbed him but the quick scuttle of Balzac, his basset hound, into his bed had jolted him awake just as the thunder came. Usually barred from his master’s bed, the dog was still young enough to be granted a dispensation during the tempests that occasionally gave this valley of the River Vézère a brief taste of an Indian monsoon. Bruno had risen, gone to the window and looked out to see if the rain was hard enough to damage the vineyards now that the harvest was due.
After a lapse into a steady drizzle, the rain was coming harder again, the tail end of a storm front that had swept in from the Atlantic. Once Fabiola had finished her examination, Bruno tried to cover the body with a plastic sheet. It protected the charred bones of the feet and lower legs but didn’t stretch as far as the man’s wrists, still handcuffed around the trunk of a young chestnut tree. The poor devil would have to stay that way, arms stretched out behind his head, his legs staked apart and his back arched like some medieval torture victim, until the forensics team arrived from Périgueux with its cameras and checklists.
“Do you think he was killed before the fire burned his feet away?” Fabiola’s voice sounded forced as she tried to control it.
Bruno shrugged, a gesture that turned into a shudder as he thought about it. “That’s more your expertise than mine. I don’t know how you’d tell.”
“The autopsy will confirm it. After death the heart stops pumping blood.”
Bruno suspected the feet had been burned deliberately before the car was set on fire. The blaze might have scorched the legs but it could hardly have devoured them. He guessed the killers had poured gasoline onto his feet.
“No identification?” Fabiola asked. “I’d say North African heritage with that hair and the olive skin.”
“He has nothing on him, and the registration plates were removed from the car.” Bruno had taken the vehicle identification number from the engine block, but he didn’t expect any feedback until much later in the day. Fabiola was staring at him, expecting him to say more. “All we know is that Serge was getting up for the cows and saw the explosion in the woods. He called the pompiers just after four. You might as well go back to bed, since I’m stuck here until the forensics team arrives.”
Bruno yawned and stretched. It had been a broken night, his phone ringing with its special emergency tone waking him before midnight. Then he had dozed, expecting to be called again, until the storm had woken his dog. He’d dozed again, Balzac tucked in against his shoulder, until Albert had called him to report the fire in the woods. At least the storm had stopped it from spreading. Like most of the rest of southern France, the département had recently issued a forest fire alert after the dry summer.
“It’s too late to go back to bed, and I wouldn’t sleep, not thinking about this.” Fabiola gestured with her chin at the plastic-covered corpse. “I’ll go back and shower and put some coffee on. Feel free to come and have a cup once you can get away.”
“Thanks, but it won’t be for a while. I might have to leave the horses to you this morning.”
“Poor Bruno. Nobody should have to see scenes like this. If you need something to help you sleep …”
He smiled his thanks but shook his head. It was thoughts about women and his confused love life that kept him awake some nights, not memories of war and corpses. Fabiola quickly kissed his cheek and then briefly took shelter with the pompiers in the cab of the fire engine to sign the certificate of death before heading home.
The burned-out car was on a rough gravel path about a hundred meters from a minor road, just at the entrance to the commune’s old garbage dump. It had been closed since the building of the modern déchetterie, where all refuse had to be sorted into different containers. The dead man lay a few meters from his charred vehicle. The car had been stopped just beyond the entrance to the dump, beside a pile of logs. Bruno raised one end of the topmost log to assess its weight; it was at least fifty kilos. He could lift it, but he couldn’t carry it far.
Four charred logs lay on the gravel path behind and beneath the burned-out car. Bruno guessed the driver had been lured onto this side road and then found himself unable to reverse because somebody pretty strong had been waiting to toss thick logs behind his wheels. But why had the driver stopped? Bruno walked on up the slope and around a sharp bend, and his flashlight picked out some broken twigs and crushed grass. He saw tire tracks; a second car had been parked here, blocking the way. It could have been waiting, its driver then switching on the headlights to force the oncoming car to stop. Then an accomplice could have used the logs to immobilize it. He’d be looking for at least two men, and forensics might get something from the tracks.
The spread between those marks looked too wide for a car. He went back to his vehicle for a metallic tape measure and recorded a width of one meter thirty in his notebook. He’d have to check this against the width of various types of truck when he got back to his office.
He loosened the hood of his anorak to make room by his ear for his phone and punched in the speed-dial number for the brigadier, an important official from the Ministry of the Interior who had given him the phone during a previous case. It was supposed to be secure from wiretaps and it rang with a special tone when someone else on the brigadier’s private network was calling. That had been the tone that had woken him before midnight. The caller had identified himself only as Rafiq and said he was coming onto Bruno’s territory and might need support. He’d said he would call again, but hadn’t.
“Duty officer,” came the voice in Bruno’s ear. Bruno identified himself, described the call from Rafiq and reported the death and the evidence of ambush and torture. “It may be Rafiq,” he said, stooping to protect his notebook from the rain and read out the vehicle identification number. “If that’s Rafiq’s car there’s no sign of his phone. It could be compromised.”
“We’ll check and call you back.”
Bruno began to give his location and was interrupted.
“We know where you are. With that phone your GPS coordinates come up on my screen. Have any other police officers been alerted?”
“Commissaire Jalipeau, chief detective for the département,” Bruno said. He had pondered calling the gendarmes, but J-J’s team had the expertise and the forensics lab. And the call from Rafiq on the special line had made him cautious. Bruno, employed by the town of St. Denis, got on well with the local gendarmes, but J-J, like many detectives of the Police Nationale, tended to see them mainly as traffic cops.
“Good, keep it that way.” The duty officer ended the call.
Bruno trudged back through sodden leaves toward the fire engine. Fabiola’s car was already gone, but the pompiers were happy to stay, warm and dry in their cab and drinking coffee from a thermos. Bruno was just finishing the cup they gave him when his phone rang again.
“It’s me,” came the voice of J-J. “We’re just coming into St. Denis. Can you guide us to the place? I can’t make this damn GPS work and I don’t want to have to ask the gendarmes.”
Bruno gave directions and told him to watch for the lights of the fire engine. He went to tell the pompiers they could go home soon, that the police were on their way. Would French policing be any more efficient if they were all one service, he wondered, or at least if they could overcome the traditional rivalries and learn to work together? His phone buzzed again with the special tone, and this time it was the brigadier.
“The vehicle number fits. It’s Rafiq’s car. Are you with the body?” Bruno confirmed that he was. “Check the upper left arm for a tattoo.”
He went back to the corpse, lifted the plastic sheet and loosened the remains of a leather jacket and shirt from the left shoulder and saw a tattoo that brought back memories.
“Yes, there’s a tattoo, looks pretty old, two digits, one and three.”
“That’s him,” the brigadier replied. “He was a good man. I’ll come down for the autopsy.”
“J-J is on his way here,” Bruno said. “Should I tell him about Rafiq?” The Thirteenth was a regiment of paratroopers, an elite unit that was part of the French brigade of special forces. Bruno had served alongside some of them in Bosnia. The Thirteenth specialized in discreet reconnaissance in hostile territory. They thought of themselves as the French version of Britain’s SAS. Rafiq would not have been easily subdued, even by two or three men.
“I’ll call J-J now and fill him in,” the brigadier said. “Expect me later today, probably early afternoon. I’ll fax a letter to your mayor to say you’re being seconded to my team. And keep an eye out: Rafiq was working undercover on jihadists.”
“Better call J-J right away,” said Bruno. “I can see the lights of his car.” He hung up and stood in front of the fire engine headlights where J-J could see him.
“Can we head off now?” asked Albert, calling down from the cab. “We’ll have fresh coffee and croissants at the fire station if you want to join us.”
“Thanks,” Bruno said, but with the stench of charred flesh still in his nostrils, he knew he would not feel like eating for some time.
2
By the time Bruno left the crime scene, the sun was up and a bris
k, warm breeze was sweeping away what was left of the storm clouds. At Pamela’s house, tree branches were swaying, and as he stepped out of his police van he heard the stable door banging in the wind. He went to secure it and saw that the stables were empty. Pamela’s car was gone. She was probably out shopping. She was allowed to drive again, but Fabiola hadn’t yet given her permission to resume riding after breaking her collarbone in a bad fall. Fabiola must have taken the horses out. Coffee, orange juice and yogurt with a jar of honey were waiting for him on Pamela’s kitchen table. He drank the juice and coffee and took a shower. He shaved with the razor he kept in Pamela’s bathroom for those occasions, not as frequent as he would like, when he was invited to spend the night.
Rather than offend Pamela, he ate the yogurt and left a note of thanks. Then he headed for the Domaine to ask Julien if the grapes had suffered in the storm. Most of Bruno’s savings were invested in the town’s vineyard. As he turned into the lane that led to the small château the sun was already high enough in the sky to shine directly through the windshield into his eyes. He pulled down the visor to see knots of grape pickers at work amid the vines that were nearest the river. He stopped the car, enjoying the calm familiarity of the scene that pushed back the memories of Rafiq’s body and reminded him why he loved this land so much. Feeling refreshed if not restored, he drove on and found Julien in the chai, checking the grapes before they went into the press.
“You’re the third worried investor I’ve seen this morning,” Julien said, greeting Bruno cheerfully. “The mayor was here first, then the bank manager. The grapes are fine. We always trim the higher bunches so the lower ones get protection from the leaves.”
Bruno nodded, reassured but still a little confused. He’d been reading up on winemaking, and while one source referred to mildew as the winemaker’s great enemy, another had waxed lyrical about Botrytis, the noble rot that produces such dense sweetness in the Sauternes and Monbazillacs of the region.
“No problems with mildew?” he asked, hoping it sounded as if he knew what he was talking about.
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