Bruno, Chief of Police

by Martin Walker

  “Er, no.”

  “Let me get this clear, monsieur,” said Bruno coldly. “Your car was allegedly damaged by a person or persons unknown on Tuesday, and it is not yet established that any damage was inflicted by the potato rather than by other causes. And now because you find a boy holding a potato, in a vegetable market, somewhere near your unharmed car of today—a day when you are not on duty and thus I presume not empowered to enforce the hygiene rules that you tried to deploy against the kindly Madame Vignier—you are now proposing to take the very serious step of arresting and bringing charges against a minor?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Bruno drew himself up to his full height, frowned and continued in his most formal tone of voice.

  “I suggest that while I telephone the boy’s parents to inform them of the forcible detention of their son for being in suspicious possession of a potato”—he paused to let the absurdity of this sink in—“I am also bound as an officer of the law to inform the parents of their right to file a formal complaint against persons responsible for what may be the wrongful arrest of a minor. So, at this time I would advise that you might want to contact your own superiors in order to establish what exactly is your personal authority and responsibility in such matters, and whether your department will defray any legal expenses that you are likely to incur. This will include any liability that you may have unfortunately brought upon the gendarmes if unlawful arrest is indeed established. I’m sure that you would not want to implicate Captain Duroc and his men, who clearly acted in the finest and most efficient traditions of the gendarmerie, if such is the case.”

  Somebody in the crowd let out a long, appreciative whistle for the speech. Then Bruno solemnly opened his shirt pocket and drew out the pencil and notepad on which he had written his morning shopping list.

  “I had better make a formal record of this notification,” he said. “So, gentlemen, might I see your identity cards, please, along with any documents that testify to your lawful authority? And Captain Duroc,” he went on, “we shall obviously need a camera to take photographs of that young boy’s arm and shoulder which you have been gripping so tightly. Just a formality, you understand, to protect you personally against any malicious charges of ill-treatment as a result of your being suborned into what seems very likely to be a case of wrongful arrest.”

  There was a long silence, and then the captain let go of the boy’s arm. The boy burst into tears, scurried over to Bruno and buried his face in the policeman’s freshly laundered shirt.

  “Well, we may have been a little hasty,” began one of the inspectors. “But the damage to our car is a serious matter.”

  “Indeed it is, sir, which is why we should proceed according to the letter of the law,” said Bruno. “We will all go to the gendarmerie where you will file your complaint, and I will bring the boy’s parents, and probably their legal representative, and there will be no need for further witnesses since the mayor and I saw the arrest and forcible seizure of this young boy from the window of the mayor’s office.”

  “My chief of police is absolutely right,” said the mayor from behind Bruno’s shoulder. “We saw the whole thing, and I must say that I am deeply disturbed that an underage member of our community can be seized in this way on what seems like the flimsiest of evidence. As mayor of St. Denis and a senator of the republic, I reserve the right to bring this matter to the attention of your superiors.”

  “But unless we file charges, we’ll be liable for the damage to the car,” bleated the younger inspector.

  “Shut up, you fool,” hissed his partner, and the two inspectors turned away to whisper to each other and then the elder of them spoke.

  “Monsieur le Maire, Monsieur le Chef de Police, mon Capitaine, allow me to congratulate you on the efficiency and good sense you have brought to ease this little misunderstanding. I think it might be advisable for all of us to let this matter rest, and we shall get on with our duties elsewhere in the region.”

  He bowed slightly, and the two inspectors then turned and marched toward their car, leaving Duroc nonplussed.

  “Bloody Gestapo,” said the mayor, and Duroc’s eyes widened.

  Bruno leaned down and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Where did you learn that trick with the potato?” he asked.

  “From my great-grandpa. He told me it was what they used to do to the German trucks in the Resistance.”

  12

  Bruno’s garden had been planned for the long term. The first time the mayor had shown him the small stone cottage, with its roof just beginning to collapse, Bruno had looked at the sheltering trees on the hill above and the great sweep of the view to the south across the plateau, and known that this place would suit him well. The old shepherd who had lived here had died almost a decade earlier. His heirs, who had long since moved to Paris, had neglected to pay the modest taxes, so it had fallen into the hands of the commune, which meant into the disposition of the mayor. He and Bruno had walked over the wide stretch of rough turf that would become Bruno’s lawn and his terrace, poked around the overgrown vegetable garden and a collapsed henhouse, and carefully lifted the rotting wooden cover from the well. The stonework was still sound and the water fresh. The beams of the old barn behind the cottage were solid chestnut and would last forever, and the cart track leading up from the road, although rutted and overgrown, was easily passable. They had paced out the dimensions of the house, twelve meters long and eight deep. Inside, there was one large room and two small, and the remains of a ladder that went up to the attic beneath the roof.

  “It comes with four hectares but it will take a lot of work,” the mayor had said.

  “I’ll have the time,” Bruno had replied, already imagining how it could be and wondering whether his mustering-out pay from the Army would be sufficient to buy this home of his own.

  “The land stretches to the brow of the hill behind, in those woods, about a hundred meters to the right and down to the stream below us,” the mayor explained. “We cannot legally sell the place unless it is habitable, which means that the commune will have to install electricity, but you would have to fix the roof and put in some windows before we can make a contract. That’s your risk. If I’m voted out of office in the elections, you might have done the work for nothing. I cannot promise that my successor would honor the deal, but we might be able to reach a long leasehold agreement, tied to the post of chief of police.”

  Bruno, just a few months into the job as the municipal policeman of St. Denis, was confident that the mayor would be reelected in St. Denis as long as he was breathing, and probably even if he was not, so they shook hands on the bargain and he set to work. It was springtime, so Bruno gave up the small apartment he had been renting and moved into the barn with a cot, a sleeping bag and a camping stove. The briskness of his morning shower, a bucket of water from the well poured over his head, a quick soaping and then another bucket to rinse himself off, was nothing new to him. It was the way he had kept clean on Army exercises. He spent his first days off and all his evenings clearing the old vegetable garden and building a new fence of chicken wire to keep out the rabbits. Then, with a happy sense of mission, he began planting potatoes, zucchini, onions, lettuce, tomatoes and herbs.

  Bruno explored the copse of trees behind the vegetable garden and found wild garlic. Later, in the autumn, he discovered big brown cèpe mushrooms, and under one of the white oaks he saw the darting movement of the tiny fly that signaled the presence of truffles on his land. Below the turf that stretched out generously to the front of his new home were hedges of raspberries and black currants, and three old and distinguished walnut trees.

  By the time the electricity was connected, he had put new tiles on the cottage roof and installed insulation. He had bought ready-made windows from Bricomarché, making them fit by building his own wooden frames. The doorway was of an unusual size, so he built his own door of planks and beams, and to fulfill an idea he had harbored ever since he had first seen a horse staring curio
usly over a half door in the cavalry stables at Saumur, he made the door so that the top half could open separately, and he could lean on the half door inside the cottage and gaze out at his property. Michel had brought up a mechanical digger from the public-works depot to repair the old car track, dig a hole for the septic tank and lay trenches for the pipes. He stayed to help install the electricity and run cables to the barn. René from the tennis club had put in the plumbing, and someone else had brought a cement mixer up the newly leveled track to help him lay a new floor, and then showed him how to make foundations for the additions that Bruno was planning, a large bedroom and bathroom. Without really thinking about it, Bruno assumed that someday there would be a wife here and a family to house.

  By the end of the summer, the foundations of the new wing were laid and Bruno had moved out of the barn and into the big room of the house with its view over the plateau. He could take a hot shower in his own bathroom with water from the gas heater, fueled by the big blue containers that Jean-Louis sold at the garage. He had a gas cooker, a refrigerator, a sink with hot and cold running water, wooden floors and a very large bill at the Bricomarché that he would be paying off with one-fifth of his monthly paycheck for the following two years.

  He signed the contract of sale in the mayor’s office, the town notary on hand to ensure that all was legal. There was enough of his Army mustering-out pay left to cover the first year of property taxes and to buy a wood-burning stove and a hundred liters of good Bergerac wine and throw himself a housewarming party. He dug the pit for the fire to roast the lamb and made his couscous in a giant fait-tout enamel pot he borrowed from the tennis club and served the meal on trestle tables and benches loaned by the rugby club. In one glorious evening, he feasted all his new friends, showed off his house and became an established man of property.

  He had not expected so many gifts. His colleagues at the Mairie had chipped in to buy him a washing machine. Joe, his predecessor as chief of police, brought him a cockerel and half a dozen hens. It seemed that every housewife in St. Denis had prepared him jars of homemade pâté or preserved vegetables and jams, salamis and rillettes. Not a pig had been killed in St. Denis over the past year without some of it reaching Bruno’s larder. The tennis club brought him a set of cutlery and the rugby club brought him crockery. The staff of the medical clinic gave him a mirror for his bathroom and a cupboard with a first-aid kit that could have equipped a small hospital. Fat Jeanne from the market gave him a mixed set of wine and water glasses that she had picked up at the last vide-grenier jumble sale, and the staff at the Bricomarché had donated a set of cooking pots. Michel and the others from the public-works depot gave him some old spades and garden tools that they had managed to replace by juggling the following year’s budget. The gendarmes bought him a big radio, and the fire department gave him a shotgun and a hunting license. The children in the tennis and rugby clubs whom he taught to play had put together their centimes and bought him a young apple tree, and everyone who came to his housewarming brought him a bottle of good wine to lay down in the cellar that he and Joe had built under the new wing.

  As the night wore on, Bruno had drunk a small toast with virtually every one of his guests. Finally, when wine and good fellowship overcame him sometime toward dawn, he fell asleep with his head on one of the outdoor tables. The friends who had stayed the course carried him into his house, took off his shoes, laid him on the big new bed that René had built and covered him with the quilt that the firemen’s wives had sewn.

  But Bruno had one more gift. It was curled up peacefully asleep on an expanse of old newspaper, and as Bruno rose with an aching head, it woke up and came across to lick his feet and then scrambled up into his lap to burrow into the warmth and gaze at its new master with intelligent and adoring eyes. This was the mayor’s gift, a basset hound from a litter of his own renowned hunting dog, and Bruno decided to name him Gitan, or Gypsy. But by the end of the day, when Bruno had already come to delight in his puppy’s long, velvet ears, outsized feet and seductive ways, it had been shortened to Gigi. For Bruno it had been the most memorable evening of his life—his formal baptism into the fraternity of the Commune of St. Denis.

  Dressed in shorts and sandals, Bruno was staking his young tomato plants when he heard a car coming up the road. Its driver was one of the celebrants from that first happy night years ago. But there was no cheer this day in Dr. Gelletreau as he levered himself from the elderly Mercedes, patted the welcoming Gigi and lumbered up the path to the terrace. Bruno rinsed his hands under the garden tap and went to welcome his unexpected guest.

  “I drove to your house earlier, but there was no one there,” Bruno told him.

  “Yes, thanks, Bruno. I found your note on the door. We were in Périgueux, with the lawyer and then at the police station.” The doctor had taped Bruno’s broken ribs after a rugby game, tended his influenza and signed his annual certificates of health after a casual glance up and down the policeman’s healthy frame. But he was not a regular visitor to Bruno’s home and he looked in even worse shape than usual.

  Gelletreau was overweight and far too red in the face for comfort, a man who ignored the sound advice he gave to his patients. With his white hair and heavy mustache, he looked almost too old to have a teenage son, but there was a daughter even younger.

  “Any news?” Bruno asked.

  “No. My son is being held pending drug charges. But it’s the murder they are interested in,” Gelletreau said.

  “I can’t talk about that, Doctor, not with you,” said Bruno, as Gigi came to nuzzle his leg. Automatically, he reached down to scratch behind his dog’s ears.

  “Yes, yes, I understand that. I just wanted you to know that I’m strongly convinced he’s innocent of that crime. He’s my son, and I’m bound to say that, but I believe it in my bones. There’s no cruelty in the boy, Bruno, you know that. You’ve known him long enough.”

  Bruno nodded. He had known young Richard since he was little more than a toddler, had taught him to hold a tennis racket, and then how to serve and hit a ball with topspin. Richard was a careful player rather than an aggressive one. Bruno doubted the boy had anything of the killer in him. But who knew what people could do under the sway of drugs or passion or political fervor?

  “Have you seen Richard?” Bruno asked.

  “They gave us ten minutes with him, just us and our lawyer. The mayor recommended some bright young fellow named Dumesnier from Périgueux, so we hired him. Apparently they didn’t even have to let us see him, but the lawyer fixed it. They let us give him a change of clothes, after they searched every seam. My son is terrified and ashamed and confused. You can imagine. But he says he knows nothing of the killing. And he keeps on asking after that damn Jacqueline. He’s besotted with her.”

  “His first girlfriend?” asked Bruno.

  “She’s his first lover, I think, and she’s a pretty little thing. Pure poison, but certainly pretty. He’s seventeen this week. You remember how we were at that age, all those hormones raging. She’s all he can think about. He’s infatuated.”

  “I understand.”

  “Can you tell them that?” Gelletreau asked eagerly. “Can you speak for him, just to explain that? I know you aren’t running this business, Bruno, but they’ll listen to you.”

  “Doctor, sit down, and let me get you a glass. It’s hot and I need a beer and you can join me.” He steered Gelletreau to one of the green plastic chairs on his terrace and went inside to get two cans from the refrigerator and two glasses. When he emerged he was surprised to see the doctor drawing on a yellow Gitane.

  “You made me give those things up,” Bruno said, pouring the beers.

  “I know, I know. I haven’t smoked in years, but you know how it is.”

  They raised their glasses to one another and drank in silence.

  “You’ve done a great job with this place, Bruno.”

  “You said that when you were here last year for the barbecue, Doctor. I think you’re changi
ng the subject. Let me try to answer what you said before.” Bruno put his glass down and leaned forward, his elbows on the green table.

  “I’m not really part of the case,” he began. “It’s a matter for the Police Nationale, but they consult me whenever they want some local knowledge. I haven’t seen all the evidence. I haven’t seen the full forensic report on the murder, or on the house where Richard was arrested, and they probably won’t show them to me. But I can tell you that the detective running the investigation is a decent man and he’ll go with the evidence. In a case like this, he’ll want to be sure that the evidence is very clear before he makes any recommendation to the magistrate. I wouldn’t be surprised if they send some ambitious hotshot down from Paris because of the politics that are mixed up in all this. This is the sort of case that can make or break a career, and the magistrate will want to be very certain before he makes formal charges. If Richard is innocent, I’m confident he’ll be cleared.”

  “The mayor just told me the same thing,” said the doctor.

  “Well, he’s right. And you have to concentrate on being a support for your wife and family, and for Richard. You’ve got a good lawyer, which is very important at this stage. Other than that, what you have to focus on is telling Richard you love him and believe in him. He needs that right now.”

  Gelletreau nodded. “We’ll give him all the support we can, you know that. But the question I keep asking myself is whether I really know my son as I thought I did. We had no idea he was getting involved with the Front National. He never showed any interest in politics.”

  “It may have been the girl who drew him in. That’s one of the things the detectives are looking at. They’ll get to the bottom of it. And I don’t know about you, but at that age if my first lover had been a raging communist I’d have carried a red flag and marched wherever she asked me to.” Bruno emptied his glass. “Another beer?”

  “No thanks. I haven’t finished this one. And you don’t want to have a second after being out in this sun.” Gelletreau managed a smile. “That’s your doctor speaking.”