by John Brooke
‘Not that our victim was out walking the beach with a team of body guards,’ added Regarri.
‘Still…’ All eyes turned to Aliette. Disconcerting, but to be expected — after all, this was her debut. ‘It’s not a gang thing. They go closer. At least in my experience.’ To the doctor. ‘You’re saying this was done by a real marksman. Well-paid, well-planned, long-range, one deadly round. A political assassination. Your Jackal… or Dallas?’
‘I’m not saying anything of the sort. I’m describing the weapon, the strategic purposes built into it.’ Annelise Duflot smiled. There was something stony about this woman.
‘Possible, but why?’ Judge Regarri was smoothly diplomatic. ‘Monsieur Guatto lost his bid to serve the public. Just a private citizen yesterday. Lost quite decisively, I should add. Though he’s definitely part of the wine community and they are having their troubles.’
‘But the style of it,’ Aliette responded. ‘This group planting bombs — CRAV? Would DST maybe share a file?’
A fringy, agrarian-styled movement, the Hunting & Fishing party had proclaimed a mandate to defend the traditional values of rural France. The party had welcomed the small but growing group of wine producers who said new Euro open-border rules were squeezing them out of business. Cheaper grapes and bastardized blends from Spain were destroying a way of life. CRAV, the Comité régional d’action viticole, was a clandestine group of militants with no more patience for political process. They had taken to planting bombs at sites where imported plonk was stored, processed and bottled. Wine terrorism? So far, the damage had been limited to property and product. DST is Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, internal national security. Think MI5, FBI: secretive, too often dangerously immune from normal processes when it comes to rights and disclosure.
A look passed between Magistrate Regarri and Chief Inspector Zidane. Zidane responded, ‘They’ll show you what they’ve got — but only on him, and the ones who fell in behind him during his campaign. They won’t say a word about CRAV. That’s their special project.’
What was DST but special projects? Aliette persisted — politely, ‘But if it’s political.’
‘They doubt it is. I tend to agree. How could it be? Less than one percent of the vote. Not exactly a threat.’ And indeed, DST was not present that morning.
‘Even so,’ Aliette pursued her notion, needing to know more clearly where her starting point might be, ‘maybe someone felt cheated. Punishment for less than one percent?’
Sergio Regarri smiled in defence of Nabi Zidane. ‘They’d be highly unrealistic.’
Aliette liked his smile. ‘A lot of these fringe types are exactly that, no?’ A girl who’d grown up in the city and worked in the city had never really paid attention to the Hunting & Fishing message. Too far right; ‘traditional values’ is code for all manner of nasty thinking. If nature ever became her soul’s abiding cause, she’d vote Green.
The judge crinkled his nose. ‘They scream and throw wine on the floor of the Préfecture, but they’re not fringe types. They’re farmers who believe they’ve been abandoned. Big difference. No bombs. No guns beyond what you need to bring down a boar. DST would know this.’
Point taken, the chief inspector asked, ‘And who’s our deputy again?’
‘B’eh, Roland of course,’ blurted Annelise Duflot. In a proprietary kind of voice.
‘Roland?’ Sorry — she really was new around here.
‘Roland Bousquet? …UMP.’ Union pour un Mouvement Populaire. A proprietary kind of voice confirmed the pathologist’s sense of the proper natural order.
‘Ah, that Roland.’ Aliette Nouvelle had been raised to have an automatic aversion to people farther right than she, especially politicians. Handily re-elected, right-leaning national deputy for the region and regional president Roland Bousquet also happened to be the mayor of Beziers. A very powerful man, a good — or bad, depending on how you saw it — example of how French democracy has no qualms about layering power in a single seat.
‘Roland would be a logical place to start,’ noted Zidane, audibly rueful, eyes wincing as they fixed on Dr. Duflot for the briefest instant. Her kind had an automatic aversion to people like him, and he knew it. People’s stripes were starting to show. Murder victims will tend to do that — they lie there while everyone else talks too much. ‘When I posed it to Doquès, I got five minutes of bullshit, then your name.’
Chief Inspectors Nouvelle and Zidane both reported to Divisional Commissaire Gael Doquès. Aliette had met him exactly once, for a half-hour welcome briefing in January, at his office in Montpellier. Not much fellow feeling there — he’d been a cop once too, but now he was a police mandarin. Politicians on the level of Roland Bousquet were his natural allies. It was logical that le divisionnaire and le député might even be friends. And friends look out for each other.
Was a less-than-likely political killing being fobbed off on a new girl who was less than up to speed on the fine points of local power? Aliette posed a logical question to her city counterpart. ‘Forgive me, but why not you? It is your beach.’
Zidane’s warm smile turned wan, like a tired priest’s. ‘But not really my type of people.’ Whether this meant wine growers wanting to preserve ‘traditions’ or de souche French who feared a mixing of cultures, he refrained from specifying.
Whatever. She gathered Nabi Zidane was more than happy to give her the Guatto file.
Magistrate Sergio Regarri nodded at the corpse of Joël Guatto. ‘Not his beach either, Chief Inspector.’ Division had made it clear. ‘He’s from the hills. Your hills. They want you.’
‘Fine.’ She would show him she could solve a murder.
· 2 ·
POSSIBILITY
The inspector followed her instructing judge out of the city and down to the beach. He turned at the same lane and stopped where she had done the day before. They got out of their cars and walked without speaking toward the sea. At the gateway through the dunes she paused to remove her shoes. He did not. With a change of wind the temperature had dropped and the sea had darkened; there were fewer people on the beach than yesterday. A couple, both very white, both reading. One fisherman had cast a single rod by the breakwater. ‘Which one’s that?’
‘Which what?’
‘Which wind?’
‘Oh…’ A look to align the shrouded midday sun and assess the low massing cloud bank, a sniff of the salty humid air; ‘that’ll be the Grec. It’ll rain.’
Aliette dipped a toe. The waves had gone elsewhere, the water was cooling. A shame after yesterday’s gloriously tepid bath. She had an urge to tell him of her solitary picnic, the strange coincidence of their murder victim passing by. She resisted. Everyone here was new to her; a certain kind of judge could find meaning in a coincidence like that. She did not want to complicate things. ‘Here? Exactly here?’
Sergio Regarri pointed to a stake in the sand behind them…and to another about ten paces westward. Both were tipped with painted yellow-blue chevrons, same tone as the basic Police ribbon. No one had bothered to rope off the spot, let alone the beach. With all that wind, why bother? It looked pretty much like the very spot where she had been. But then, it was a beach.
She asked, ‘Do we have any idea where he was headed?’
‘We think he’d already been. They found his car by the breakwater,’ gesturing west toward Port-Vendres. ‘He was walking that way when he went down.’ Loosening his tie and collar, Regarri stared out to sea. His tie flapped, the lapels of the summer-weight cotton suit coat rippled. His dark hair was long enough to blow some. He was good looking — the more so when striking a pose on the beach. ‘Quite a few people around when it happened. Around four.’ A popular time for locals leaving the office, school or the kitchen to take the sun for a couple of hours before evening. ‘No one heard it.’
‘Any sort of wind, you wouldn’t,’ observed the inspecto
r. ‘Plus that suppressor.’
He nodded his agreement. ‘The guy’s walking, suddenly his head bursts open. He falls. Dead. Some poor woman reading her book sees it all from about twenty steps away. Can you imagine? When she got her wits together, she’s the one who called on her cell phone.’
Aliette visualized the scene. ‘Good shooter.’
The judge said yes to that and walked back toward the dunes. A straight line.
She followed, looking over her shoulder. ‘It could have been from a boat.’
There was a single yacht pointing smoothly toward Agde, sails tight, the backs of four crew clumped in a row along the port-side deck. Regarri stopped. Looked. ‘True…I’ll call Annelise.’
‘You work with Annelise a lot?’
‘Not if I can help it. A bit too…’ He sniffed the air, searching for a word.
‘French?’
‘Voilà…or something like that.’ A brief flash of that good smile.
They trudged to the dunes. She was wishing Magistrate Sergio Regarri would remove his shoes. A detail, but it rankled. Might his enjoyable looks be wasted on a rigid mind?
‘Could’ve been here,’ said Regarri, standing for a moment, looking back toward the shore. He began following the crude path tracing the slatted windfence running up and down through the clumps of grasses and wind-hollowed nooks. She followed. He stopped. ‘Or here.’ He marched again, she followed, he stopped. ‘Or here. Anywhere along here would be perfectly feasible with a gun like that. They combed the entire length of it till dark. No shoe or boot prints.’ A futile shrug. ‘The wind. If there was a casing, he took it with him.’
‘No pervs in the dunes?’ Monitoring topless bathers. ‘No kids kissing?’ Someone who might have seen something?
‘Not when they got here. They canvassed pretty thoroughly. Zidane’s very patient when it comes to that. All the parking places. Over at the fish market in the harbour.’ Gesturing back at Vendres. ‘The beachfront places at Valras. I’ll give you all the reports. Thing is, without hearing anything, not seeing anything is pretty easy.’ He headed off again.
‘It was heavenly here yesterday.’
Sergio Regarri stopped abruptly and gazed at her — exactly like an instructing judge.
Oops. ‘The news said the place was filled. Someone saw him. Had to. Just doesn’t know it.’ Was that a smooth recovery? She had no idea.
They headed out of the dunes and across the scrubby field to their cars. Before parting, he lifted a cardboard box from the boot of his. She opened the boot of hers and he placed it there. ‘Happy reading.’
‘Sure.’ She shook his hand.
‘Nice…’ He lingered, admiring with wistful eyes as she turned the key and the ragtop roof lifted up, folded into itself, disappeared into the slot and the panel closed back down.
‘A gift from me to me after ten years chugging through the Alsace rain in broken heaps from the car pool. Didn’t even have one of my own.’ She did not mention its therapeutic value to a cop moved sideways because she could not control the vagaries of her searching heart.
‘Good for you.’ Leaning close, ostensibly to check the instrument layout around her cockpit.
She took advantage of the moment to sniff him gently. And ask, ‘You know these people?’
‘Which people?’
‘The Hunting & Fishing people.’
‘No.’ He saw her studying him. ‘I don’t understand why everyone has to create their own little political club. The debate becomes absurd, impossible, no chance of common cause.’
Was she meant to answer? She was not in the mood for political philosophy. What Sergio Regarri actually saw was Aliette Nouvelle wanting to tell him how much he looked like their victim — apart from his haircut, and deciding not to. Instead, she said, ‘They don’t run candidates where I was before. I was a city cop.’
To which he replied, ‘They will. If they were really as agrarian as they paint themselves, they’d be with the Greens. It’s the gun thing. You’ll see,’ he predicted.
‘Not a hunter, you?’
‘No.’
‘Rugby?’ The place was insane for it. She’d learned that much at least.
‘Used to. Question of the conversation level after the match.’ Wrong answer. He saw it: snobby? Tried to right the balance, pleading age. ‘And the old bones get fragile, you know?’
Aliette nodded sympathetically, made a silent promise to be gentle if she decided to jump them. At that moment, it felt like a real possibility. She fitted the baseball cap over her tresses, tucking in a stray. She did this for him. ‘I’ll get started. Let me know about the boat factor?’
Sergio Regarri assured her that he would, adding, ‘Actually, after I hung up my rugby boots, I got myself a bike. I enjoy a weekend cycle now and then.’
Alone? Was there an invitation there? This was to be explored. ‘Ciao, monsieur.’
She saw him in her rearview, waving.
· 3 ·
TRAGIC FAMILY
Saint-Brin was basic: Two bakers. Two butchers. A market on the place on Sunday morning.
The commissariat was three offices on the second floor of Hôtel de Ville. They shared the bathroom, pantry and secretary Mathilde Lahi with Public Records at the other end of the floor. The offices overlooked a public garden centred by the war cenotaph, lined with benches, surrounded by tall plane trees, small cedars, and one huge magnolia, just now blooming and magnificent. The town’s central place was across the street, the post office next door, library and community centre directly behind in the building annex.
It had felt empty in January, a lonely town for a lonely cop. Now nature and summery people rendered it charming. Mostly local, but each week more new arrivals were easily spotted. Her window was wide open to the warm transformation as she related what was known about the murder she’d brought back from the city.
Inspectors Magui Barthès and Henri Dardé had worked with Aliette’s predecessor Joseph Lopez. Neither had met Joël Guatto, but they knew him by sight. Wine producers who bought into the AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) marketing program showcased their products at the Maison des Vins at the far corner of the place. The Guatto brothers, Joël and Paul, were local fixtures, arriving to unload stock for the Maison shelves. ‘And there’s a sister,’ Magui added, ‘twins with one of them. Don’t see much of her.’ Nor the father. There’d been a tragic incident involving Marcelin Guatto. A hunting accident. A girl had been shot.
‘They mentioned that on the news.’ A tragic background to the current tragedy.
‘Turned him into a recluse, apparently. But before my time. Call Joseph,’ Magui advised.
Aliette picked up the phone. Joseph Lopez was now in Perpignan, leading a city-sized detachment. ‘Salut, Madame Chief Inspector! Enjoying the south? No bother at all. I was rather expecting your call.’ Obviously he’d heard the news.
But: ‘How did you know they gave it to me?’
‘Nabi.’
She could not resent his nosing in on the matter. Before moving on, Joseph Lopez had been generous in walking her through the ins and outs of the posting. To her question: ‘Yes, I know them. The father, mainly. Marcelin. Accused of shooting and mortally wounding a trespasser. About fifteen…no, twenty years ago now. Ruled accidental. A girl, adolescent, a group of them, city kids camping where they shouldn’t — in the forest at the back of Guatto’s land, up on the plateau. He comes through in the early hours looking for game and pots her by the stream. Very sad. He didn’t help the matter — totally stubborn: his land, not his fault at all. The fact he’s an excellent shot and it was nowhere near the season somehow got lost in all the legal reasoning.’
‘He murdered this girl in cold blood?’
‘Not exactly. It’s more that Marcelin Guatto shot with extreme prejudice at what he presumed was a trespasser, likely a poache
r. Half-right, but a gross overreaction. The girl’s boyfriend swore he’d heard no warning cry. Only a shot. Marcelin gave a different version and his friends backed him up. It was ruled a tragic accident.’ Aliette let memory’s silence sit for a moment. Then Joseph Lopez filled in the picture. ‘That case was hard for me, Inspector. You don’t want to ruin a man’s life, but he wouldn’t give an inch and it was hard to back off. I don’t know what I was hoping for. Maybe just a genuine expression of apology for a horrible mistake? But no. No remorse. Tragic accident, not my fault…’ Joseph breathed a veteran’s timeworn sigh. ‘It was the way he wouldn’t budge. Like he was the heroic defender fighting his famous wine wars all over again. Absurd. I mean, conflating kids trespassing on his hunting ground with Italians shipping in cheap wine? But he’s well-connected — great friends with Roland Bousquet — and he walked away. But it eventually destroyed him. Weight of guilt, is what I heard. Turned him into a recluse. The file would be in Montpellier if you find it might pertain. Or call me.’
She thanked him. But what were these wine wars?
‘Oh, I don’t know much about the history. Just the basics, and only because of that case. Ask Mathilde. She knows everything.’ Mathilde Lahi, the very efficient secretary they shared with Public Records. ‘I do know many of those families struggled for years trying to get a fair deal for their wine. Marcelin’s grandfather’s generation started the co-ops, which helped the region stay alive. If I understood right, Marcelin was named for a crusading grape grower who organized the mass protests that finally got them help from Paris. Big hero.’
Aliette mentioned that she was enjoying the local wine.
‘Yes,’ Lopez agreed. ‘Some excellent stuff being produced. Thirty years ago it was the worst kind of plonk. The Italians starting sending in their plonk, train-loads of it, at far better prices.’
‘Like the Spaniards now?’