Bruno, Chief of Police

by Martin Walker

  The other woman came to join them, said “Bonjour” and shook Bruno’s hand. Another English accent, another attractive woman, with that clear English skin that Bruno had been told came from having to live in the perpetual damp of their foggy island. No wonder they came to the Périgord.

  “A serious crime? Here, in St. Denis? Excuse me, I’m forgetting my manners. I’m Pamela Nelson and this is Mademoiselle Christine Wyatt. Christine, this is our Chef de Police Courrèges.”

  Bruno nodded a greeting. “It’s about the old Arab gentleman, Monsieur Bakr, who lives in that small house up the turnoff from Yannick’s place. Have you seen him today, or recently, or seen any visitors?”

  “Hamid, you mean? That sweet old man who sometimes comes by to tell me I’m pruning my roses all wrong? No, I haven’t seen him for a couple of days, but that’s not unusual. He strolls by perhaps once a week and pays me compliments about the property except for the way I prune the roses. I last saw him earlier this week. What’s happened? A burglary?”

  Bruno deliberately ignored her question. “Were you here all day today? Did you see or hear anything?”

  “We were here through lunch and then Christine went into town to do some shopping while I cleaned the barn for some guests who arrive tomorrow. When Christine came back we had tea and then played some tennis for an hour or so until you arrived. We’ve had no visitors except for the postman, who came at the usual time, about ten or so.”

  “So you haven’t left the property all day?” Bruno was pressing because he wondered why they were still just volleying after an hour rather than playing a game.

  “No, except for my usual morning ride. But that takes me toward the river, away from Hamid’s cottage. I went as far as the bridge, and then picked up some bread and the newspaper and some vegetables and a roast chicken for lunch. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. But do tell me, is Hamid all right? Can I do anything to help?”

  “Forgive me, madame, but there is nothing you can do,” Bruno said. “And you, Mademoiselle Wyatt? What time did you do your shopping?”

  “I can’t say exactly. I left after lunch, probably sometime after two, and was back here soon after four.” She spoke perfectly grammatical French, but with that rather stiff accent the English had, as if they could not open their mouths properly. “We had tea, and then came out to play tennis.”

  “And you are one of the paying guests?” She had very fine dark eyes and carefully plucked eyebrows but wore no makeup. Her hands and nails, he noticed, were well cared for. She wore no rings, and the only jewelry was a thin gold chain at her neck.

  “Not really, not like the people coming tomorrow,” said Christine. “Pamela and I were at school together and we’ve been friends ever since, so I’m not renting, but I do the shopping and buy the wine. I went to the supermarket and to that big wine cave at the bottom of the road. Then I stopped at the filling station and came back here.”

  “So you’re here on vacation, mademoiselle?”

  “Not exactly. I teach history at a university in England but I’m working on a book here. I worked on it all morning until lunchtime. I don’t think I’ve met your Arab gentleman and I don’t recall seeing another car, or anybody on the way to the supermarket and back.”

  “Please tell me what’s happened, Monsieur Courrèges,” said Pamela. “Is it a burglary? Has Hamid been hurt?”

  “I’m sorry but I can’t say anything at this stage, I’m sure you understand.” He was feeling slightly ridiculous as he usually did when required to play the formal role of policeman. He tried to make up for it. “Please call me Bruno. Everyone does. When I hear someone say Monsieur Courrèges I look around for an old man.”

  “Okay, Bruno, and you must call me Pamela. Are you sure I can’t offer you a drink? Some mineral water, perhaps, or a fruit juice? It’s been a warm day.”

  Bruno accepted, and while Pamela made for the kitchen he gathered three white metal chairs by the swimming pool. Pamela emerged with a refreshing jug of freshly made citron pressé, and they all sat down to enjoy it. This was infinitely preferable, Bruno thought to himself, to what would now be a madhouse of squabbling gendarmes and detectives and forensic specialists at Hamid’s cottage. That brought the sobering thought that his duty was not over. As a Harki, the old man had probably been a Muslim. Wasn’t there something special about Muslim burial rites? He’d have to check.

  “I didn’t know you had your own tennis court here,” he said. “Is that why we never see you at the tennis club?” Bruno was proud of the club, with its three hard courts and its single covered court where they could play in winter, and the roomy clubhouse with its bar and big kitchen. The mayor had used his political connections in Paris to get a government grant to pay for it.

  “No, it’s the concrete courts,” Pamela explained. “I hurt my knee skiing some time ago and the hard court is bad for it.”

  “But we have a covered court with a rubber surface. You could play there.”

  “I get quite busy here in the summer when the guests start to come. Once I have all three of the gîtes filled, it takes most of my time. That’s why it’s such a treat to have Christine here and play some tennis with her. It’s not a great court, hardly Wimbledon, but if you ever want to try a grass court just give me a call. My phone number is in the book under Nelson.”

  “Like your famous Admiral Nelson of Trafalgar?”

  “No relation, I’m afraid. It’s quite a common name in England.”

  “Well, Pamela, I shall certainly call you and see about a game on grass. Perhaps you’d like me to bring a friend and we could play mixed doubles.” He looked at Christine. “Will you be here for long?”

  “Till the middle of June, when Pamela has a full house. So I’ve got five more weeks here, then I go back to Bordeaux to do some research in the archives.”

  “It’s the best time, before the tourists come for the school holidays and block the roads and markets,” said Pamela.

  “I thought the national archives were in Paris,” Bruno said.

  “They are. These are the regional archives and there’s a specialist archive at the Centre Jean Moulin.”

  “Jean Moulin, the Resistance chief? The one who was killed by the Germans?” Bruno asked.

  “Yes, it has one of the best archives on the Resistance and my book is about life in France under the Vichy regime.”

  “Ah, that’s why you speak such good French,” said Bruno. “But a painful period to study, I think. Painful for France, and very controversial. There are still families here who never speak to each other because they were on opposite sides during the war—and I don’t mean just the collaborators. You know Jean-Pierre, who runs the bicycle shop in town? He was in the Communist Resistance, the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans. Just across the road is Bachelot the shoemaker, who was in the Armée Secrète, the Gaullist Resistance. Or maybe it was the other way around. But they were rivals then and they’re rivals now. They march in the same parades, side by side, even on the eighteenth of June, yet they never speak. And it’s been decades since it happened. Memories are long here.”

  “What’s so special about the eighteenth of June?” Pamela asked. “I don’t know why that’s escaped me.”

  “It was the day in 1940 that de Gaulle appealed to France to fight on. He was speaking over the BBC,” said Christine. “It’s celebrated as the great day of the Resistance, when France recovered her honor and Free France declared that it would fight on.”

  “‘ France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war,’” Bruno quoted from the de Gaulle speech. “We all learn that in school.”

  “Do they tell you that it’s also the anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat at the battle of Waterloo?” Christine asked, winking at Pamela.

  “Napoleon defeated? I can’t believe it,” Bruno said, entering the spirit of things. “Nobody who built the magnificent stone bridge in St. Denis could ever be defeated, least of all by the English.” He grinned widely. “Did
we not drive you out of France in the Hundred Years’ War, starting here in the Dordogne under the great leadership of Joan of Arc?”

  “But the English are back!” Christine said, grinning at him. “That was a temporary reverse, but it looks as if the English are retaking France, house by house and village by village.”

  “Well, we’re all Europeans now,” said Bruno, laughing. “And a lot of us are quite glad the English come here and restore the ruined old farms and houses. The mayor talks about it all the time. He says the whole Department of the Dordogne would be in deep depression had it not been for the English and their tourism and the money they pour in to restore the places they buy. We lost the wine trade in the nineteenth century, and now we’re losing the tobacco that replaced it, and our small farmers can’t compete with the big places up north. So you’re welcome, Pamela, and I congratulate you on this property. You’ve made it very beautiful.”

  Bruno rose to go and the three of them started walking toward Bruno’s van. As they reached it, Pamela said, “You must come again. I’ll expect your call for that mixed-doubles game. And if there’s anything I can do for Hamid, perhaps take him something to eat, please let me know.”

  “I will. And thank you for your thoughtfulness. But I think the authorities have matters in hand.” He realized he was sounding formal again.

  “If there has been a burglary, should I take extra precautions?” she asked, not looking in the least concerned but obviously probing.

  “No, there’s no reason to think you’re in any danger,” Bruno said. But he knew she would soon hear of the murder, so he had better say something reassuring.

  “Here’s my card with my cell-phone number. Feel free to call me at any time, day or night. And thank you for that refreshing drink. It’s been a pleasure, mesdames.”

  7

  Momu lived in a small modern house down by the river. It looked as if it had been built from one of the mass-produced kits that were springing up to provide cheap homes for locals who had been priced out of the market for older houses by the English with their strong currency. Like all the kit homes, it had two bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen and a bathroom side by side to share the plumbing, and all built on a concrete slab. The vaguely Mediterranean roof of rounded red tiles and white stucco walls looked quite wrong in the Périgord. But Bruno had spent some convivial evenings in that house, and he braced himself for the place of grief it had now become. He sighed at the tangle of illegally parked cars that almost blocked the road. One of the most obstructive belonged to the mayor, which was very unlike him. Bruno drove on for a hundred meters and then parked.

  Inside the house all the lights were blazing and Bruno could hear the sound of a woman crying as he entered. He took off his hat and saw Momu slumped on the sofa, the mayor’s hand on his shoulder. Momu was a burly man, not as large as his son but barrel-chested and broad in the shoulders. His hands were big, and his wrists thick like a laborer’s. At first, just the look of him was enough to keep order among his pupils, but they soon kept quiet from respect. He was a good teacher, they said. Bruno had heard he made every class work out the combined weight of the local rugby team, and then of all the inhabitants of St. Denis, and then of all the people in France, and then of the whole world. He had a deep, hearty voice, always heard at rugby matches on Sunday afternoons, cheering on his son. Momu rose to greet Bruno and they touched cheeks.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss, Momu. The police won’t rest until we find who did this, believe me,” Bruno said. He shook hands with the mayor and the other men in the room, all Arabs except for Momu’s boss, Rollo, the headmaster. Rollo held up a bottle of Cognac and offered Bruno a glass, but he looked around to see what others were drinking and took an apple juice like the Arabs. This was their home, their time of grief, so he would abide by their rules.

  “I just came from the cottage,” he said. “We’re still waiting for the detectives and forensic men from Périgueux. Nothing more will happen until they arrive, and the police doctor releases the body. The gendarmes have sealed the place off, but when the detectives are done, I’ll have to ask you to go up there and take a good look around to see if you notice anything missing or stolen. When the police are through, they’ll take the body to the funeral home, but I need to know what you want to do then, Momu. I don’t know if you have any religious rules or special customs.”

  “My father gave up religion a long time ago,” Momu said solemnly. “We’ll bury him here in the town cemetery in the usual way as soon as we can. What about Karim? Is he still up there?”

  Bruno nodded. “Don’t worry. It’s routine. The detectives have to talk to the person who found the body but they probably won’t keep him long. I just wanted to come and pay my condolences here and find out about the funeral and I’ll go right back up there and keep an eye on Karim. He’s had a very bad shock.”

  When he had called back at Hamid’s cottage earlier, Duroc had been busy placing angry phone calls to demand why the Police Nationale were taking so long to get there, and still he insisted on keeping Karim at the scene. That was about all Duroc had done. It was left to Bruno to call the public works and arrange for a portable generator and lights to be taken up to the cottage, which had only basic electricity and no outdoor light. He also arranged for the local pizzeria to deliver some food and drink for the gendarmes.

  The sound of crying had stopped, and Bruno noticed Momu’s wife peering around the door. Bruno had always seen her in Western dress, but today she wore a black scarf on her head which she held across her mouth as though it were a veil. Perhaps it was her mourning dress, he thought.

  “What can you tell us?” Momu asked. “All I know for sure is that the old man has been killed, but I still can’t believe it.”

  “That’s all we know at this stage, until the forensics team do their work,” Bruno said.

  “That’s not what I heard at the fire station,” said Ahmed, one of the drivers for the public-works department, who also volunteered as a fireman. There were two professionals at the small fire station and the rest were local volunteers, summoned as needed by the howl of the old wartime siren they kept on top of the Mairie. And since the firemen were also the emergency medical team and the first people called out to any sudden death or crisis, it was impossible to keep anything quiet. The volunteers talked to their wives and the wives talked to each other and the whole town knew of fires or deaths or road accidents within hours.

  “It was a brutal killing, a stabbing. That’s all we really know so far,” said Bruno cautiously. He had a good idea of what Ahmed must have heard from the other firemen, but he wanted to find out precisely.

  “It was racists, fascists,” Ahmed said angrily. “I heard what was carved on old Hamid’s chest. It was those Front National swine, taking on a helpless old man.”

  Putain. This bit of news had become public even faster than Bruno had feared, and it would spread more poison as it traveled.

  “I don’t know what you heard, Ahmed, but I know what I saw, and I couldn’t tell if it was meant to be some kind of pattern or if they were wounds he received when he put up a fight,” he said levelly, looking Ahmed in the eye. “Rumor has a way of exaggerating things. Let’s stick with the facts for the moment.”

  “Bruno is right,” said the mayor quietly. A small, slim man whose mild-mannered looks were deceptive, he had a way of making himself heard. Gérard Mangin had been mayor of St. Denis long before Bruno had taken up his job a decade earlier. Mangin had been born in the town, into a family that had been there as long as anyone could remember. He had won scholarships and competitive examinations and gone off to one of the grandes écoles in Paris where France educates its élite. He worked in the Finance Ministry while allying himself with a rising young star of the Gaullist party named Jacques Chirac and launching his own political career. He had been one of Chirac’s political secretaries, and was then sent to Brussels as Chirac’s eyes and ears in the European Commission, where he had learned t
he complex art of securing grants. Elected mayor of St. Denis in the 1970s, Mangin had run the party for Chirac in the Dordogne, and was rewarded with an appointment to the Senate to serve out the term of a man who had died in office. Thanks to his connections in Paris and Brussels, St. Denis had thrived. The restored Mairie and the tennis club, the retirement home and the small industrial zone, the swimming pool and the agricultural research center had all been built with grants the mayor had secured. His mastery of the planning and zoning codes had eased the construction of the commercial center with its new supermarket. Without the mayor and his political connections, St. Denis might well have died, like so many other small market towns of the Périgord.

  “My friends, our Momu has suffered a great loss and we grieve with him. But we must not let that loss turn into anger before we know the facts,” the mayor said in his precise way. He gripped Momu’s hand and pulled him to his side before looking round at Ahmed and Momu’s other friends. “We who are gathered here to share our friend’s grief are all leaders of our community. And we all know that we have a responsibility here to ensure that the law takes its course, that we all give whatever help we can to the magistrates and the police, and that we stand guard together over the solidarity of our town. I know I can count on you all in the days ahead. We have to face this together.”

  He went first to Ahmed, and then shook hands with each of the others and gestured to Bruno to leave with him. Then, gently gripping Bruno’s arm, he propelled him into the night, along the driveway and out of earshot of the house.

  “What is this about a swastika?” he asked.

  “It isn’t clear, but that’s what the gendarmes and the firemen thought was carved into Hamid’s chest. They’re probably right, but I told the truth in there. I can’t be sure, not until the corpse is cleaned up. He was stabbed in the belly and then eviscerated. There could have been the Mona Lisa painted on that chest and I couldn’t swear to it.” The mayor’s grip tightened on his arm.