‘I should call the Brigadier but I don’t want to interrupt the meal again,’ she said. ‘I can call him in the morning. Louis XIV, Black Mass, an aristocratic porn star dead in mysterious circumstances … he’ll love it. And the media will go crazy.’
Bruno was just finishing a superb selection of cheese when his phone vibrated again. It was a message from Gilles with an attachment. He opened it and found himself looking at the cropped photo of Athénaïs, her neck and shoulders bare, her eyes open. He passed the phone to Isabelle. ‘That’s her, one of the more presentable shots.’
‘A strange expression, somehow forced.’
‘She’s having simulated sex. Perhaps she’d look different if it were the real thing.’
Isabelle closed the phone and handed it back. ‘I already chose the dessert,’ she said. ‘I know it’s one of your favourites. Panna cotta with truffles.’
‘I’ll need to start running marathons to work off meals like this.’
‘You and J-J both told me to put some weight on, so I’m just following your advice. Besides, I’ll be back in Paris tomorrow night and then it’s pizza and pot noodles and frozen dinners for one. I’ll miss this and I’ll miss your cooking.’
‘And I’ll miss you,’ he said. ‘Life always speeds up when you’re here.’
‘Will you send me regular texts about Balzac and start taking photos and sending them to me? Tell him I expect him to find me lots of truffles so you can make me this panna cotta next time I’m here.’
‘What time’s your train?’
‘Eleven from Le Buisson to Libourne, and then the TGV to Paris. I get in just before four, so I’ll have time to do the laundry and clean the apartment before sinking into bed with pot noodles. And then it’s back into hospital next week for plastic surgery on my thigh.’
‘I’ve become fond of that scar.’
‘I know,’ she said, smiling at the memory of the afternoon. ‘But it’s not a scar, it’s a hole I can put my fist into. And then four weeks’ paid convalescence leave, since the wound was inflicted in the line of duty.’
‘Do you want to come here for it? You’d be very welcome.’
‘No, but thank you. It would disrupt your life down here and for me it would feel like moving in, which I don’t want.’ She leaned across the table and took his hand and gave him her impish smile. ‘You’re more of an occasional treat, a sort of human panna cotta with truffles. Anyway, I’ve already booked a cruise around the Greek islands. I’ll sit in a deckchair with my bandaged leg, flirt with handsome sailors and read stories about the Trojan wars and ancient Athens. I have it all planned and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.’
He wanted to ask if she would be going alone, but held back. The waitress arrived with petits fours and chocolate truffles. Reluctantly, he released Isabelle’s hand.
‘I’ll miss the exorcism, or whatever it is the priest is going to perform, but you must let me know how all this works out. And if I find out any more about this cast of characters you’ve assembled down here, I’ll let you know. Who knows, now we’ve got half of French history involved the Brigadier might take an interest.’
‘There’ll be a burst of publicity and then it will all die away,’ he said, and began looking around for the waitress.
‘Don’t even think of asking,’ she said. ‘I already paid the bill.’
Balzac in his arms, Bruno waved goodbye as the train pulled out from the station at Le Buisson, heading towards Bordeaux and threading its way through the great vineyards of Pomerol and St Emilion. It had been a sweet morning, waking and taking her a tray with coffee and orange juice and the snuffling of a basset hound to wake her, before some gentle love-making. When they rose, they made a tour of the garden and the chicken coop, where she insisted that the hens remembered her as she gathered the eggs. They had taken a slow stroll through the woods with Balzac and then driven down to St Denis for coffee and croissants at Fauquet’s, with France-Dimanche for her and the Sunday edition of Sud-Ouest for him. He bought her a baguette to go with the duck sausage and a jar of his own foie gras and one of Stephane’s tommes that he had put into a bag along with a bottle of mineral water for the journey. No true Périgourdin thought it safe to travel with anything less, he assured her, as he kissed her goodbye on the station platform.
The Mayor greeted him with a tall glass of his own vin de noix, topped up with ice and tonic water, and they sat in the shade of the willow trees by the river as Bruno recounted his researches. The Mayor played with Balzac as he listened to the long tale from Thivion to Wall Street and Lebanon, from hedge funds to insider trading and the political connections that went with being an Enarque and a friend of the President’s son.
‘Could the son be part of this fund that’s investing in our holiday village?’ the Mayor asked. ‘They wouldn’t dare try any funny business with us then.’
The shareholdings were a mystery, locked in Luxembourg, Bruno explained. The only safe way to do business with them was with cast-iron legal guarantees, backed up by penalty clauses and good collateral.
‘You mean we should insist on holding some shares in his investment company to guarantee us against loss?’
‘Yes, but the problem with an investment company is that its assets are the brains of its people, who can leave quickly,’ Bruno said. He explained that the Count did possess an asset that St Denis could require as collateral, the hotel at St Philippon. The Count was not going to stop bringing in his defence clients, because he’d want to take the place over again once the holiday village was built and the collateral returned. ‘It’s the only way I can think of to ensure we don’t lose on the deal.’
‘What if he refuses to go ahead on that basis? It seems a bit harsh, after they’re clearly serious about building us this sports hall. We could lose the whole project.’
‘Better that than ending up like Thivion,’ Bruno said.
The Mayor was silent, caressing the puppy asleep in his lap. ‘I spoke to the Mayor in Thivion. He made it sound even worse than your own account of it. That’s not the kind of legacy I want to leave. Mind you, I’m not sure about this Satanist business. Look what came in yesterday’s post.’
He handed across an envelope addressed to the Mayor of St Denis-le-Diable. Bruno rolled his eyes.
‘It’s a joke of course, from one of my colleagues on the Conseil-Général, but it’s one with a bitter taste.’
‘One more thing you should know,’ Bruno said, and told him of the tentative identification by Paris-Match of the woman in the boat, and his promise to keep it confidential.
‘The granddaughter of the Red Countess in a porn film? That’ll make a stir.’ The Mayor shook his head. ‘It’s a sad end to what must have been a tragic life.’
Bruno’s phone began to vibrate and he saw it was Albert. He was one of the two professionals who ran the town’s volunteer fire brigade, which also served as the medical emergency service.
‘We’ve got a bad accident reported on the ridge road to Les Eyzies,’ Albert said. ‘If you’re in town we can go out together while the siren gets my lads in.’
‘With you in two minutes,’ he replied, and explained to the Mayor. ‘Can I leave the dog with you until I get back?’
‘I was hoping you would,’ the Mayor replied. As Bruno left, the town siren began its eerie, penetrating whine that swooped and fell, a sound that still carried memories of war and dive bombers and even today meant emergency and death. Half-drone, half-shriek, it carried way down the valley. Bruno knew that farmers and shop clerks, accountants and waiters would be heading for the fire station to don their equipment and roll out the big emergency vehicle.
They took Albert’s command car, with Lespinasse’s son Edouard from the garage as the first-aid volunteer on duty. Ahmed would bring the emergency vehicle once the full crew of volunteers had assembled. As they roared up to the roundabout, Bruno saw Fabiola running from the medical centre and waving them down. Albert braked and she climbed in.
‘I just heard the siren,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘Accident, could be a death,’ Albert said. ‘Father Sentout called it in, on his way back from a big Palm Sunday service. There were skid marks and glass on the road and the barrier was broken. He’s waiting there to give the last rites.’
As the road hugged the cliff to climb the steep hill they saw the priest’s little blue Peugeot first, then Father Sentout himself, a shawl around his neck and a small case in his hand. ‘I can’t get down, it’s too steep, but I can see smoke,’ he shouted as they pulled up.
Albert handed Bruno and Edouard a harness each, fixed a rope to the belt buckle and then tied the other end around the towing bracket of his command van. Two of the supports of the protective wooden fence had been uprooted and the sturdy logs splintered and broken. It looked as though a heavy truck had gone through it and over the almost sheer cliff that led down to the river below. Trees and branches were smashed, but over a narrower span than the breach in the barrier. Half sliding, half scrambling and clutching at broken tree stumps, they went down about twenty metres before seeing wisps of smoke rising from the tyres attached to some burned-out machinery.
‘It’s a motorbike,’ Edouard said into the small radio affixed to his yellow jacket. Bruno could not decipher the jumble of static and voice that responded from the road above but he heard the siren as the emergency vehicle arrived. It took another few minutes to find the driver. He had been thrown to one side and lay impaled on a jagged tree branch. The stump poked bloodily from just above his hip. His helmet was still in place but his neck was visibly broken. At least the rider had been spared the fire that had consumed his bike.
‘There must be another vehicle down here,’ Edouard said, kneeling over the body and checking for any sign of life. ‘That gap’s much too wide for just a bike.’
There was a scrambling above them and Fabiola appeared with Ahmed beside her. She went straight to the body and after a moment pronounced the rider dead. But Bruno and the other two were staring down at the unbroken woods below them and trying to think where another vehicle might possibly be.
‘The damage to the trees stops here, at his bike,’ said Ahmed. ‘There’s no other vehicle down here.’
Bruno and Edouard fixed the harness to the body, eased it off the stump, and Ahmed used his radio to tell the team above to start the winch. Fabiola stepped back from where she’d been working on the body, sealing a small phial she’d taken from her belt-pack that she’d filled with some of the blood that had pooled in the rider’s lap.
‘Whoever he was, he was as drunk as a lord,’ said Edouard. ‘You can smell the booze from here. Bloody fool.’
Bruno and Edouard scrambled to keep up as the winch began hauling. It was only when they got to the road and Father Sentout removed the helmet to apply some oil to the forehead that the head rolled towards him and Bruno realized he knew the dead man.
‘It’s Louis Junot,’ he exclaimed, thinking that the scene with his daughter must have destroyed Junot’s good intentions and driven him back to the bottle. ‘Poor old Louis.’
‘Drunk in life, drunk in death,’ said Edouard against the sound of the priest’s muttered prayers as he knelt beside the body.
Bruno began looking closely at the broken fence and at the skid marks, trying to visualize what had taken place. But he couldn’t make the pieces fit. The skid marks might have come from another vehicle that hit and crushed the fence, and Junot had then gone over the edge as he tried to avoid the car. But if that were the case, Junot must have been coming from the other direction. His momentum would have taken him through the fence and to the right. But he and his bike seemed to have gone straight down the hill. And there must have been a second vehicle: the skid marks showed two sets of wheels. Bruno checked the splintered fencing, looking for flecks of paint from whatever vehicle had struck it. What he found instead were threads of what looked like waxed cloth attached to the splinters, perhaps from a tarpaulin.
Once the Gendarmes learned that Junot had been drunk, they weren’t going to expend much time or effort trying to work out how it had happened or whether another car had been involved. Bruno called Fabiola over and showed her the threads before he broke off a splinter with a thread attached and put it in an evidence bag.
‘Junot wasn’t wearing anything like that,’ she said.
‘What do you make of it, Ahmed?’ he asked the veteran fireman, who had climbed back up to the road and was now supervising the winching up of the burnt-out wreck that had been Junot’s bike.
Ahmed studied the scene, looked at the broken glass and the shattered fence and shrugged. ‘Maybe he comes round the corner, sees the car, swerves but hits it and breaks the headlights, bounces off and over the edge just as the car smashed the fence down.’
‘So why didn’t the car go over as well? And if he hit the car, he’d be on the road, not going over the cliff with his bike.’
‘You could be right; it’s a tough one. Can we leave you to notify next-of-kin and arrange for the Mairie to get that fence fixed? We’ll take the body straight to the funeral home.’
‘I can’t work it out, either,’ said Albert as they drove off. ‘There’s no way a motorbike could have caused that much damage to the fence. That accident doesn’t make sense.’
‘In that case, I’m going to ask for an autopsy,’ said Fabiola. ‘There’s something odd about that corpse. If I didn’t know the neck was broken I’d have said he died of a massive cerebrovascular accident, a stroke.’
‘An autopsy for a drunk driver?’ said Albert. ‘They won’t like that. Not over a weekend.’
‘You don’t like the way the accident looked and I don’t like the way the corpse smelled and Bruno doesn’t like the strange threads where the fence was broken,’ Fabiola said firmly. ‘That’s enough for me. So don’t take the body to the funeral home, take it directly to the lab in Bergerac, on my responsibility.’
23
Bruno had to admire Béatrice. Here he was for the third time in as many days, with each visit so far starting with her being friendly and concluding in tension, and she was still smiling at him and saying ‘Welcome’ as if she meant it.
‘Civilian clothes,’ she said, her eyes twinkling. ‘So at last is this your long-promised social call?’
‘I wish it were, Madame. I need to see Francette and to take her away on urgent compassionate grounds. There has been a road accident and her father is dead. I thought she’d want to go and comfort her mother, who has not yet been told.’
‘The poor girl, of course she must have some time off to see to her mother,’ said Béatrice, looking suddenly maternal. She told the black-suited receptionist to find Francette and bring her down to the office. The girl on duty was not Cécile but might have been; they looked so much alike they were almost interchangeable.
Francette’s face was impassive as she heard the news, but her lip and cheek were swollen as if she had fallen badly, or perhaps it was toothache. Her eyes were red and lacked their usual liveliness. Had she somehow heard of his death already?
‘Was he drunk?’ was her only question when Bruno described the crash. Hoping to give her some comfort, he said her father had died at once of a broken neck.
‘I don’t know if he had been drinking. Certainly he was sober when I last saw him,’ Bruno said. ‘I thought I’d come and tell you myself, and then if you’re willing I’ll drive you back to the farm. Your mother hasn’t yet been told the news and I think she’d want to have you there.’
Francette looked at Béatrice, who nodded and moved to embrace her, but Francette stiffened and said she’d need to pack an overnight bag. She left quickly, her head held determinedly high and her shoulders stiff.
‘She seemed down even before I told her the news,’ Bruno said to Béatrice.
‘One of the guests was rude to her last night, blamed her for tripping and spilling something as she waited on his table. It was his own fault. He pushed his chair back s
uddenly and she fell. It can become tiresome, having to accept that the customer is always right, even when he isn’t. Can I offer you a coffee or a drink while you wait?’
He shook his head and Béatrice excused herself. The car park had been almost empty and he noticed that all the room keys were hanging in their pigeonholes, as if there were no guests. Bruno didn’t know much about the corporate entertaining business, but the economics of this auberge seemed odd. Maybe Sunday afternoon was a quiet time, the weekend clients gone and next week’s not yet arrived.
Francette had changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, but she still wore stylish shoes. She carried what looked like a fashionable handbag which she put into the back of Bruno’s van along with a Louis Vuitton overnight case. She climbed into the front seat amid a cloud of Shalimar, which Bruno recognized because it was one of Pamela’s favourite perfumes.
‘I know you didn’t get on, but he loved you a great deal in his own strange way,’ he said.
‘I knew that, which is why I never hated him even when I despised him,’ she replied. ‘You don’t need to say anything else, Bruno. I’m not a child any more and you’re not trying to get me to follow through on my backhand. I’ve even worked out that it was you who paid for my tennis shoes when my mum couldn’t afford them.’
‘There was a special fund we had …’ he said vaguely, a touch embarrassed.
‘And you never asked my parents to pay their share of the petrol money when you drove us to matches with other clubs.’
‘Let’s get back to the present,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to make a decision with your mum about staying on in the farm or selling it. At least you seem to have a good job now, and your mum’s not far away.’
‘Neither of us can drive and we have no car,’ she said. ‘And my own future is a bit vague.’ She lapsed into silence and remained unresponsive to Bruno’s attempts at conversation, except when they drove through St Denis and he asked if she wanted to call at the funeral home to see her father’s body.
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