Bruno frowned. That was usually only needed if there was to be a trial. “Are charges being brought against Sami?”
“Not yet, and not by us, but I suspect we’ll be getting an extradition request from Washington. Sami’s thumbprints are all over some of the unexploded IEDs they found in Afghanistan. It looks like your boy is the expert the Americans call the Engineer.”
Bruno’s jaw dropped. He recalled reading articles in the French press about this legendary bomb maker, his innovative designs and the meticulous craftsmanship of his work, never a centimeter of wire wasted nor a junction that wasn’t doubly soldered. A caption to a photo in Paris Match of one of the bombs that had been defused said it looked as professionally made as the interior of a mobile phone or a computer.
“Even if Sami is not the Engineer, at the very least he worked with him. So your young friend may be responsible for dozens of deaths. Under a whole shelf load of antiterrorism agreements we had no choice but to inform our allies that we’ve got him,” the brigadier said. “I wish to heaven that he’d never left Afghanistan.”
Bruno kept his face expressionless as he absorbed the news and the visceral shock of horror that it brought. Bruno had seen men he knew maimed and killed by roadside bombs and cleverly rigged artillery shells that could be timed to spew shrapnel into a passing column. Mon Dieu, if Sami had been guilty of that …
He took a deep breath and tried to reconcile the image of Sami putting together the intricate timing mechanisms of bombs and booby traps with the pathetic figure huddled in a ball on the airplane bringing him home to France. Bruno also recalled Sami smiling beatifically as Balzac lay in his arms. But recalling the careful artistry of Sami’s repairs at the tennis and rugby clubs in St. Denis and his work at Lespinasse’s garage, he knew that Sami could well be the Engineer.
Then the wider implications began to occur to him: of extradition hearings, court appearances, outraged American politicians demanding that the French hand the Engineer over so he could be brought to justice.
But if Sami was formally declared to be mentally unfit to stand trial, or had been acting under duress, what then? Like most policemen, Bruno thought that pleas of insanity were open to wide abuse. In the case of Sami, Bruno felt in his bones that the conventional legal rules of guilt and responsibility and medical evidence could hardly apply. Momu had phrased it best: Sami was put together differently. He was not like other people.
And how would the French state react? After terror attacks in Paris, France had been one of the strongest voices for international conventions against terrorism and the extradition of suspected terrorists to stand trial. Could Sami, could the massed ranks of the French psychiatric profession, stand against the overwhelming demand of realpolitik that Sami be surrendered?
Since French soldiers had been killed in roadside bombings in Afghanistan, it was unlikely that public opinion would stand up for Sami. The best that could happen was that Sami would be tried in France and condemned to a psychiatric prison hospital for the rest of his life. That possibility gave the men from the Toulouse mosque even more incentive to find Sami and to silence him. Now he understood just how desperate they must be to kill him before he might talk.
“I see you understand the implications of this,” the brigadier said. “As we speak, letters are going out to the legal attaché of the United States embassy in Paris, along with the proper representatives of our British, German, Dutch, Canadian and Australian friends, all of whom have lost men to IEDs. I have no doubt we’ll be getting formal applications for extradition. The British and Germans can simply send us European arrest warrants, and he’d be handed over to them almost automatically.”
“Well, it would be automatic unless we charge him first under French law,” the mayor said. “That would take precedence. We’d be in charge and could set up medical tribunals to assess competence and so on. I’ve been talking to the minister of the interior and he’s been talking to the Élysée, and this is the way we’re going to handle it.”
Bruno nodded slowly as he thought through the implications. “At what point does all this become public? The media will be all over this.”
“It becomes public when formal charges are made or if it leaks, and it had better not be leaked from here in St. Denis,” the brigadier said, menace in his voice.
“It won’t just be the media, Bruno,” the mayor said. “I can think of some of our own politicians who will want to make use of this. A young Algerian immigrant, now a naturalized French citizen, a bomb-making terrorist whose work has killed French soldiers … You know as well as I do what the anti-immigrant politicians will do with that. Then there’ll be Muslim hotheads trying to turn Sami into some jihadist martyr.”
“That’s why we’re going to move all this into the château, where we can secure the grounds and close the roads if we have to,” the brigadier said. “And if all this redounds badly on St. Denis, you two gentlemen have only yourselves to blame for arranging to bring Sami home.”
“Understood,” Bruno said. “But there might be one legal way to keep this area buttoned up. The doctor reminded me of her powers under the public health regulations. If necessary, we can get this whole area declared to be under quarantine and sealed off.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Bruno. That might be useful to bear in mind for the future, but it won’t be easy to persuade our medical tribunal to convene in the middle of a plague zone, or whatever you plan to call it. The immediate priority for you is to take a full set of Sami’s fingerprints and DNA samples, just so we can be absolutely clear whom we are dealing with.”
“Any word from Toulouse about those two guys who killed Rafiq?” Bruno asked.
“They’re still holed up in the mosque, as far as we know,” the brigadier replied. “Don’t worry, Bruno, we’ll get them when we’re ready. But in the meantime it would be helpful if the mayor could make clear to Sami’s family that this is likely to become an international incident.”
“In that case, sir, since we’re likely to be holed up in the château for some time, would it be okay if I took tonight off and join you at the château tomorrow? You have the extra security guards, you don’t really need me. And if you need an extra vehicle, the keys to my Land Rover are in the ignition. I’ll take my horse.”
The brigadier nodded and turned away. The mayor caught Bruno’s arm and asked, “Are you riding all the way home?”
“No, just to Pamela’s place; I know Fabiola’s on duty tonight, so I have to exercise the horses.”
“You and I need to talk about the Halévy bequest and the Desbordes farm,” the mayor said. “The Paris lawyer is coming down tomorrow. He’ll be here in time for lunch. He was very pleased that you’d tracked the place down. I’ve spoken to the brigadier, and he’s prepared to spare you for the day.”
“The Desbordes farm is in another commune. Do we yet know of any Desbordes link to St. Denis itself?”
The members of Florence’s computer club were helping the staff of the mairie, the mayor explained, hunting down the names of Desbordes family members, along with local scoutmasters and Protestant pastors.
“How do you think the Halévy family will react to this accusation of Sami as an Islamic militant? It can hardly make them feel better about St. Denis.”
“I think we’d better warn the lawyer what’s coming,” the mayor replied. “St. Denis gave refuge to Jewish children and also tries to deal honorably with its Muslims, whatever the consequences. There’s nothing else we can say.”
“And it happens to be true,” added Bruno.
11
Bruno felt a touch of nervousness as he guided his horse down the bridle path that led through the woods to the paddock behind Pamela’s house. His doubts about the future of their relationship had begun to intensify. She had once suggested, in a way she had evidently assumed he would find agreeable and even flattering, that they were affectionate friends who on occasion shared their pleasures in bed. Bruno’s immediate inst
inct had been to take offense, but he knew better than to surrender to instant reactions in dealing with the opposite sex.
Women, in Bruno’s experience, usually thought before they spoke, while men seldom did. Women were more fluent in the language of feelings, emotions and relationships and gave much more thought to them. Men lived and thought in two or at most three dimensions, while women were at home in a dozen or more. Bruno believed he could usually tell when a man was lying, but women were much harder to read, far more familiar with the many shades and nuances of truth.
So while he had taken Pamela’s words at face value, he had understood her to be saying something more subtle: that there were some clear limits to their relationship and that the intimacies they shared in her bedroom did not automatically transfer to the rest of her life. She had also made it clear that she had no intention of living with him or any man on a permanent basis, let alone of starting a family. She would let him know when he was welcome in her bed, and he should understand that to take her body or her loyalty for granted would be unforgivable.
This had been acceptable to him in the past, but two elements had changed. Since Pamela’s injury, she seemed less at ease with her life, less patient with him and with others. Perhaps that would change when she got back on horseback, as Fabiola kept reassuring him. Bruno was not so sure. Her mother’s death had left Pamela financially independent. She would no longer need to rent out her gîtes, nor to do all the cleaning and gardening herself. She was already planning a vacation in Venice with an old school friend and was musing about a trip to the sun in the winter, perhaps a safari in Africa. Pamela seemed to Bruno like a woman preparing to make some major changes in her life.
The other change had been in his own circumstances. The final breach with Isabelle had affected Bruno more powerfully than he had expected. He had always known their affair was doomed, however gloriously it had begun that summer when they had fallen so tumultuously in love. Once she had made the decision to move to Paris to pursue what was becoming a brilliant police career, Bruno knew there was no place in her baggage for a country policeman, even if he could have given up his home and garden, his horse and dog and his love of the Périgord to follow in her wake.
At first, the blow of parting had been cushioned by the righteous anger he felt at learning that she had aborted their child without even telling him she was pregnant. But while the anger faded, the sense of loss remained, somehow deepened now that Isabelle had moved from Paris to The Hague for her new job with Eurojust, the European Union’s judicial arm.
Before he could start to feel sorry for himself, Bruno saw the trees thinning and the familiar broad and grassy ridge began to appear. Soon he’d be able to canter and then to gallop, the wind of his passage sweeping away these gloomy, self-absorbed reflections. What simple creatures we are, he thought, that we feel so much better and more alive through the simple sensation of speed. A horse might gallop at a fraction of the speed of a car or train, but to him the ride felt infinitely faster and more thrilling.
He found Pamela in her garden wielding pruning shears and wearing an enormous straw hat. Tendrils of her reddish-bronze hair were loose around her neck, and she smelled pleasantly of herbs and feminine warmth when he ducked beneath the rim of the hat to kiss her.
“I hope you can stay to dinner,” she said. “I’m deluged with tomatoes, green peppers and zucchini, but I’m not sure how best to serve them. With pasta, do you think?”
He shook his head. “I’ll make soup. Do you have any of Stéphane’s aillou?” He was referring to a fine local dairyman. Bruno loved the mixture of crème fraîche and fromage blanc to which Stéphane added garlic and chives. He planned to smear it atop vegetables that had been grilled with the merest hint of walnut oil. “And if you have any of that farine de blé flour and some yeast, I’ll make some bread. And we have the pâté we canned last winter.”
“And I just picked some pears, so dessert is taken care of. We’re on our own this evening since Fabiola is on duty. I’ll finish in the garden, and you take care of Hector and then make the bread, and we can have a swim together before supper.” Bruno noticed a sparkle in Pamela’s eyes that suggested that a swim was not all she had in mind.
“Do we have the pool to ourselves?” he asked, knowing that two of her gîtes were currently being rented by British families.
“Yes, my guests have gone to Sarlat for dinner and a concert. They won’t be back until late.”
Taking off her hat, she came up to him and raised her lips to be kissed. She locked her hands behind his neck to hold him in place and kissed him very thoroughly indeed. Thinking that this woman always had the capacity to surprise him, and that this was not how he had been expecting the evening to begin, he responded with enthusiasm until she released him, murmuring, “I’ll go and pick the zucchini and you’d better take care of your horse.”
Once Hector was rubbed down and settled, Bruno washed his hands, took down the half-kilo bag of whole wheat flour and turned on the oven. He mixed the flour with a generous tablespoon of salt and put it into the oven to warm. Then he added a spoonful of brown sugar and a packet of dried yeast to about half a liter of hot water and put it to one side to work up its froth. He buttered a big baking tin and went off to take a quick shower.
By the time he returned in his swimming trunks, there were a good three centimeters of froth on the yeast liquid, but he stirred it well anyway. Then he brought out the warm flour, put it into a mixing bowl, and little by little he began adding the yeast liquid as he stirred and mixed the dough. Once it had become a smooth ball he scattered some more flour on a wooden board and began the final pounding of the dough with his hands. He stretched it and folded it back over itself and formed it into a rough cylindrical shape that would fit the baking dish. He pressed the dough down into the dish to leave no air pockets. He scattered more flour over the top, covered the dough with a cloth of moist muslin and left it by the oven to rise.
Bruno’s summer soup was quickly made. He chopped two green peppers, peeled and sliced a cucumber and put the vegetables into the blender with two cloves of garlic, two glasses of white wine and half a glass of olive oil. He poured boiling water over four tomatoes to loosen their skins, peeled them and squeezed out the seeds and added the tomato flesh to the blender. Once it was liquefied, he added salt and pepper, poured the soup into a large tureen with some ice cubes and put the mixture into the fridge.
When he reached the pool, Pamela was wearing a filmy dressing gown of white linen that seemed to float around her. She laid a large, soft blanket on the grass and tossed onto it a couple of cushions from the chairs by the pool. She turned to look at him, poised to dive in.
“I’m surprised at you, Bruno, wearing trunks. Why on earth would you think you’ll need them?” Pamela slid off the gown, the only garment she wore, and dived neatly into the water.
Wearing a towel around his waist, Bruno lifted the baked loaf out of its dish and tapped its underside to be sure it was properly done. He opened his nostrils to enjoy the heady scent of fresh bread. He left it on a wire rack to cool and began loading a tray with pâté and cheese, plates and glasses. He served his summer soup, now well chilled, in tall glasses, and opened a bottle of a new discovery, Château Briand, a charming dry Bergerac white wine made by the daughter of the wine merchant Hubert de Montignac, whose cave was one of the treasures of St. Denis. He carried the loaded tray out to the small table at the side of the pool, poured out a glass of wine and took it to Pamela. She was lying facedown on the blanket, her chin propped in her hands, smiling lazily as she watched him approach.
“I love it when you cook for me,” she said. “And in the nicest possible way you’ve given me quite an appetite. I can smell the bread from here.” She had draped the dressing gown around herself in a fashion that revealed almost as much as it concealed. Bruno kissed her shoulder, where the gown had slipped away.
In the pool house, he plugged in the electric grill, then washed and sliced
the zucchini she had picked. He used his finger to coat them thinly with walnut oil and began cooking. By the time he returned from the kitchen with a bottle of mineral water and the bread, the vegetables had started to sizzle, and he turned them.
Pamela had taken the cushions from the sun chairs and piled them into a heap so the two of them could sit up as they enjoyed their picnic. She pulled the fresh loaf apart, plunged her nose close to catch the scent, then dipped a crust into the bowl of aillou and washed it down with a mouthful of the chilled soup.
“It feels wonderfully decadent to feed so many appetites at once,” she said, and patted the cushions for Bruno to sit beside her. “It reminds me of all the fantasies I had when I decided to move to France.”
“I’m glad I could help you bring them to life,” he said, smiling as he sat.
“A good thing you happened to be around,” she replied, and kissed his chest. “For some reason I was feeling amazingly romantic this afternoon. If the postman had turned up, I might have leaped on him.”
“I know your postman,” he said. “He’s on the verge of retirement, and he’s only got three teeth.”
“That goes to show just how sexy I felt. But then Prince Charming arrived, just in the nick of time.”
He put down before her the plate of lightly charred zucchini, and Pamela proceeded to feed him, putting a small dab of aillou on each slice and then holding it to his lips before taking one in her turn. She handed him his wineglass and said, “Now that I’ve got your complete attention I want to talk about Fabiola.”
Bruno spluttered, and some of his soup went down the wrong way. When he had recovered, he raised his eyebrows and prepared to listen, knowing there was no escape.
“She finally told me what happened when she went to Paris. She likes Gilles a lot, really a lot, and went up to see him quite determined to take him to bed. But at the last moment she couldn’t. He was very sweet and patient, she said, and they cuddled and slept together. But there was no consummation.”
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