“Well, it may be nothing, but since we have so few leads, we have to follow them all. So I had better get back to work, but I want to stroll up to those woods and see whatever’s to be seen before I go.”
It was perhaps a kilometer to the first thin trees. Another three hundred meters through the woods and over the ridgeline, and there was Hamid’s cottage, fifteen hundred meters or so away and the only building in sight. He walked along the fringe of the woods and found a small clearing of soft turf, sheltered and private but with a glorious view over the plateau. It was a perfect place for a romantic rendezvous in the open air, thought Bruno. He looked carefully around and found some old cigarette stubs and a broken wineglass under a bush. He would have to send the forensics team up here.
He walked briskly back to Pamela’s house, where the Baron had drunk what was left of the Champagne. As Bruno approached, he rose, and they thanked the women for the game and strolled back to the Baron’s car. They made no plans to play together again, but Bruno felt that they would. Now would not be a good time, Bruno thought, not with the knowledge that the suspects had visited Pamela, enjoyed her hospitality and played on the same tennis court where they had spent such an agreeable morning.
15
The magistrate, a dapper and visibly ambitious young Parisian named Lucien Tavernier, who might just have reached the age of thirty, had arrived on an early morning flight down to Périgueux. Bruno took an instant dislike to him when he noticed the predatory way he looked at Isabelle at the first meeting of the investigative team. It was just after eight a.m. and Isabelle had woken him with a phone call at midnight to say his presence would be required. Bruno had not wanted to go; he had a parade to organize for midday and he was not a member of the investigative team, but J-J had specially asked him to be there to explain the new evidence that put Richard and Jacqueline in the vicinity of Hamid’s cottage. Without Bruno’s phone call to J-J on the previous day, Richard would already have been released.
“What he said is that he used to go to the woods to have sex, and he hadn’t even noticed Hamid’s house since he had other matters on his mind,” said J-J. With his hair awry and his shirt collar undone, he looked as if he’d barely slept as he gulped at the dreadful coffee they served at the police station. After one sip, Bruno had abandoned his plastic cup and was drinking bottled water instead. There was a bottle, a notepad, a pencil and a report on J-J’s last interrogation sessions in front of each person at the conference table.
“Neither Richard nor Jacqueline have any alibi for the afternoon of the killing except one another, and they claim to have been in bed at her house in Lalinde,” J-J went on. “But we know that she used her credit card to fill her car at a garage just outside St. Denis at eleven-forty in the morning. So they’re both lying, and she at least could have been at the murder scene. This strengthens the evidence from the tire tracks on the way to Hamid’s place, and we’re awaiting the forensic report on the cigarette butts and wineglass and the used condoms found in the woods. But there’s still no clear evidence from the house itself to demonstrate that they ever went into the place. So far, it’s only circumstantial evidence, but in my view it points clearly to them. They were in the vicinity, if not necessarily at the murder scene. I should add that we have no traces of blood on their clothes or in her car. But I think we have enough cause to continue to detain them.”
“I agree,” said Tavernier briskly. “We have a clear political motive, and the opportunity, and they are lying—quite apart from the drugs.” Tavernier studied them all through his chic black eyeglasses. His suit was black and clearly expensive, as was his knitted silk tie, and he wore a shirt with thick purple and white stripes. Lined up neatly on the conference table before him were a black leather-bound notebook and a matching Montblanc pen, the slimmest cell phone that Bruno had ever seen and a computer small enough to fit into his shirt pocket that seemed to deliver his e-mails. Phone and computer had come from black leather pouches on his belt. To Bruno, Tavernier looked like an emissary from an advanced and probably hostile civilization.
“That’s quite a strong case,” Tavernier continued. “We have no other suspects at all, and my minister says it is clearly in the national interest that we resolve this case quickly. So if the forensic evidence from the woods places them there, I think we might be able to file formal charges—unless there are any objections.”
He looked severely around the table, as if daring any of those present to challenge him. J-J was pouring more coffee, Isabelle was quietly studying her notes. A police secretary was taking minutes. Another bright young thing from the prefecture was nodding sagely, and the media specialist from police headquarters in Paris, a smart woman with blond streaks in her hair and sunglasses pushed back above her brow, raised a hand.
“I can schedule a press conference to announce the charges, but we’d better fix the timing to catch the eight p.m. news. Then we have the anti-racism demonstration in St. Denis at noon. You’ll want to be there, Lucien. No?”
“Have you confirmed that the minister will be there?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Just the prefect and a couple of deputies from the National Assembly, so far. The Minister of Justice is stuck with meetings in Paris, but I’m waiting for a call from the interior ministry. The minister has a speech in Bordeaux in the evening, so there’s a suggestion he might fly here first.”
“He will,” said Tavernier, obviously pleased at being first with the news. “I just received an e-mail from a colleague in the minister’s office. He’s flying into Bergerac and plans to be at the mayor’s office in St. Denis at eleven-thirty I’d better be there.” He looked at J-J. “You have a car and driver ready for me?” He turned to Isabelle with a smile. “Perhaps the inspector?”
“An unmarked police car and a specialist gendarme driver are at your disposal for the length of your stay. Inspector Perrault will be engaged in other duties,” J-J replied, his tone studiously neutral. J-J had been bitter when he called Bruno on his cell phone earlier in the morning, as Bruno was driving to Périgueux from St. Denis. The young hotshot, as J-J called him, had been magistrate for only three months. The son of a senior Airbus executive who had been at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration at the same time as the new Minister of the Interior, Tavernier had gone straight from law school to work on the minister’s private staff for two years and was already on the executive committee of the youth wing of the minister’s political party. A glittering career evidently loomed. He would want this case prosecuted, tried and convicted with maximum dispatch and to his minister’s entire satisfaction.
“I’m heading back to St. Denis after this meeting, so I could give you a lift,” said Bruno.
Tavernier looked at Bruno, the only person there wearing a uniform, as if not sure what this ordinary policeman was doing in his presence.
“And you are?”
“Benoît Courrèges, chief of police of St. Denis. I’m attached to the inquiry at the request of the Police Nationale,” he replied.
“Ah yes, our worthy garde champêtre,” Tavernier said, using the old term for the Police Municipale, dating back to the days when country constables had patrolled rural France on horseback.
“It might help your inquiries if I briefed you on the local background, and on some of the odd features about this case.”
“It looks very straightforward to me,” said Tavernier, picking up his little computer and flicking his thumb on a small knob as he studied the screen.
Bruno had learned from similar situations to ignore the arrogance and stick to his point. “Well, there’s the question of the missing items, the military medal and the photograph of Hamid’s old soccer team,” he said. “They disappeared from the wall of the cottage where they’d always been kept. It might be important to find out where they went or who took them.”
“Ah yes, the Croix de Guerre,” Tavernier said, still studying his screen. He looked up and focused on Bruno and, adopting a patient and kindly
tone as if he were addressing someone of limited intelligence, said, “It’s the Croix de Guerre that persuades me that we have the right suspects. These young fascists from the Front National would detest the idea of an Arab being a hero of France. They probably threw it away in a river somewhere.”
“But why take the photo of the old soccer team?”
“Who knows how these little Nazis think,” Tavernier said airily. “A souvenir, perhaps, or just something else they wanted to destroy.”
“If it were a souvenir, they’d have kept it and we’d have found it by now,” said J-J.
“I’m sure you would,” said Tavernier. “Now, when do we get the forensic report on that little love nest in the woods?”
“They promise to have it by the end of today,” said Isabelle.
“Ah yes, Inspector Perrault,” said Tavernier, turning to give her a wide smile. “How do you feel about our two prime suspects? Any doubts?”
“Well, I haven’t attended all the questioning, but they look like very strong candidates to me,” Isabelle said firmly, looking directly at Tavernier. Bruno felt a small bud of jealousy begin to uncurl inside him. Isabelle would not have a difficult choice to make between a lowly country cop and a glittering scion of the Parisian establishment.
“Naturally I’d like some firm evidence, or a confession,” she went on. “I’m sure we all would. They both come from backgrounds that can afford them good lawyers, so the more evidence we have, the better. And maybe we should also be looking harder at those thugs from the Service d’Ordre, the security squad of the Front National. They are no strangers to violence. But again, we need evidence.”
“Quite right,” said Tavernier with enthusiasm. “That’s why I’d like the forensics people to take a second look at the murder scene and at the clothes and belongings of our two suspects. Could you arrange that please, mademoiselle? Now that they know what they are looking for, the forensics experts might come up with something that puts them at the killing ground. Wouldn’t that calm your doubts about circumstantial evidence, Superintendent? Or would you like me to call down some experts from Paris?”
J-J nodded. “Some of my doubts, yes, it would. But our forensics team is very competent. I doubt that they’ll have missed anything.”
“You have other doubts?” Tavernier’s question was silkily put, but there was irritation behind it.
“I don’t quite get the motive,” J-J said. “I see the obvious political motive, but why kill this Arab, at this particular time, in this particular way, tying up and butchering the old man as if he were a pig?”
“Why kill this one? Because he was there,” said Tavernier. “Because he was alone and isolated and too old to put up much resistance and it was a remote and safe place to commit this murder. Then they took his medal to demonstrate that their victim was not really French at all. Yes, I think I have their measure. Now it’s time for me to question these two young fascists myself. I’ll have two hours with them before I have to leave for this little town called—what is it?—ah yes, St. Denis.”
J-J’s office was in spartan contrast to the man. J-J was overweight and looked scruffy inside his crumpled suit, but his desk was clean, his books and documents all neatly filed, and his newspaper precisely aligned with the edges of the low table where he sat, drinking some decent coffee that Isabelle had made in her own adjoining room. J-J had kicked off his shoes and smoothed his hair, and was riffling through a slim file that Isabelle had brought him. She was with him, looking cool and very efficient in a dark trouser suit with a red scarf at her neck, and what looked like expensive and surprisingly elegant black flats with laces. She looked at Bruno, who was also there, with a disinterested smile, and he felt a touch of embarrassment at the fantasies of her he had conjured up after she left his home.
“There’s something odd about this military record of the victim,” said J-J. “He first appears on the payroll of our First Army on 28 August 1944, listed as a member of the Commandos d’Afrique. That unit was part of something called Romeo Force, which had taken part in the initial landings in southern France on 14 August 1944, and they seized a place called Cap Nègre. Our man is not, apparently, listed as a member of the original assault force for the invasion. He just appears suddenly on 28 August at a place called Brignoles.”
“I spoke with someone at the military archives,” Isabelle said. “He told me that it wasn’t uncommon for members of Resistance groups to join up with the French forces and stay with them throughout the war. The Commandos d’Afrique were a Colonial Army unit, originally from Algeria, and most of the rank and file were Algerians. We had taken heavy casualties at a place called Draguignan and took on local Resistance volunteers to fill our ranks. Since Hamid was Algerian, he was signed up and stayed with them for the rest of the war. In the fighting in the Vosges mountains in the winter, he was wounded and spent two months in the hospital and was promoted to corporal. And then, when they got into Germany, he was promoted to sergeant in April 1945, just before the German surrender.”
“And he stayed in the Army after the war?” Bruno asked.
“He did,” said J-J, reading from the file. “He transferred to the twelfth regiment of the Chasseurs d’Afrique, with whom he served in Vietnam, where he won his Croix de Guerre in a failed attempt to rescue the garrison at Dien Bien Phu. His unit was then posted to Algeria until the war ended in 1962 and the Chasseurs d’Afrique were formally retired from the French Army. But before that, along with some of the other long-serving sergeants, he was transferred to the training battalion of the regular Chasseurs, where he remained until he retired in 1979 after thirty-five years’ service. He was hired as a caretaker at the military college at Soissons after one of his old officers became the commander.”
“What’s so strange about all of this, J-J?” Bruno asked.
“What’s strange is that we can’t find any trace of him in the Resistance groups around Toulon, where he was supposed to have been before joining the Commandos. Isabelle checked with the Resistance records. Since it was useful after the war to be able to claim a fighting record in the Resistance, most of the unit lists were pretty thorough. And there’s no Hamid al-Bakr.”
“It might not mean much,” Isabelle said. “There aren’t many Arab names in any of the Resistance groups and not many Spanish names either, although Spanish refugees from their civil war played a big part in the Resistance. But the records for the two main groups, the Armée Secrète and the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, tend to be fairly reliable. He could have been in another group or he might have slipped through the net. He might even have used another name in the Resistance—it wasn’t uncommon.”
“It just nags at me a bit, like a loose tooth,” said J-J. “Once Hamid was in the Army, the records are impeccable, but we can’t track him before that. It’s as if he just turned up out of nowhere.”
“Wartime,” Bruno said. “An invasion, bombing, records get lost or destroyed. And I can tell you one thing from my own military service: The official records may all look very neat and complete because that’s how they have to be and how the company clerks file them. But a lot of the paperwork is pure invention, or just making sure the books balance and the numbers add up. What we know is that he served for thirty-five years and fought in three wars, his officers respected him enough to take care of him and he was a good soldier.”
“Yes, all that is true,” said J-J. “Which is why I had Isabelle look back a bit further.”
“We asked the Marseilles and Toulon police to run a check, but there’s not much left of the files before 1944 and they had nothing,” Isabelle said. “The date and place of birth that he listed in Army records was Oran in Algeria on 14 July 1923. The guy at the archives said a lot of the Algerian troops listed Bastille Day as a birth date because they didn’t know their real birthday and that was the easiest date to remember. Birth registers for Algerians were pretty hit and miss in those days, even if we could get access to the Algerian records. And we don’t
have a date for his arrival in France. As far as we can tell, he had no official existence until he turned up with the Commandos d’Afrique.”
“I’ve been pushing this, Bruno, because I’m not sure about our two suspects,” said J-J. “I talked with each of them separately for a long time, and I just don’t feel confident that they did it. So I had Isabelle check back into Hamid’s history to see if there were any clues there that might open other possibilities.”
“Our friend Tavernier seems happy to go ahead and press charges,” Bruno said.
“Yes, and I’m certainly not comfortable with that, not with the evidence we have so far,” said J-J.
“Me neither,” said Bruno, “but there doesn’t seem to be much other evidence of any kind, either to incriminate them or to steer us anywhere else.”
“See if you can get anything more on our mystery man from his family. He must have told them something about his childhood and growing up,” said J-J. “Otherwise, we’re stuck.”
16
The mayor was quietly furious. Less than an hour remained before the parade was to begin and two of his most reliable standard-bearers had decided they would boycott it. It was the first time in living memory that they had turned him down. To reject a mayoral request in St. Denis was unheard of, and to decline his invitation when a minister of the republic and two generals were to grace the town’s proceedings was close to revolution.
“Unless you can find somebody else you’ll have to carry the flag of France, Bruno,” the mayor said testily. “Old Bachelot and Jean-Pierre refuse to take part. They made it quite clear that they don’t approve of Muslims, Algerians or immigrants in general and do not intend to honor them.”
Bruno, Chief of Police Page 13