Bruno, Chief of Police

by Martin Walker

  “What will Montsouris be carrying?” Bruno asked. “We can’t have the red flag since there is no sign that Hamid had any politics at all, least of all communist.”

  “I think he’s planning an Algerian flag,” said the mayor, sounding tired of it all. “I’ve already had to do two interviews this morning, including a long one with France-Inter, and there’s a woman from Le Monde who wants to see me this afternoon. All this attention, of the worst possible kind. I don’t like it at all, Bruno. And now you say the magistrate seems convinced that young Richard is going to be formally charged with murder?”

  “Tavernier is his name, very modern, a go-getter, very determined,” said Bruno. “And very well connected.”

  “Yes, I think I knew his father from the Ecole Nationale.” Bruno was not much surprised; the mayor seemed to know everybody who mattered in Paris. “And his mother wrote one of those dreadful books about the New Woman when feminism was all the fashion. I’ll be interested to see how the boy turned out. You’d better go and make sure that everything is organized. We don’t want chaos in front of all these media types. Quiet and dignified, that’s the style.”

  Outside in the town square, two TV cameras were taking shots of the Mairie and the bridge, and a knot of what Bruno assumed were reporters had taken over two outdoor tables at Fauquet’s café, all interviewing each other. At the bar inside were some burly men drinking beer, probably Montsouris’s friends from the Confédération Générale du Travail. Bruno waved away a reporter who thrust a tape recorder toward him as he climbed into his van, and drove off to the school where the march was to begin, noting some buses parked in the lot in front of the bank. Montsouris must have organized a bigger turnout than expected.

  Rollo had half the school lined up in the courtyard already, some of them leaning on homemade placards that said NO TO RACISM and FRANCE BELONGS TO ALL OF US. Rollo wore a small button in his lapel that read TOUCHE PAS à MON POTE, HANDS OFF MY BUDDY, a slogan that Bruno vaguely recalled from some other anti-racist movement of twenty years before. Some of his tennis pupils called out “Bonjour, Bruno,” and he waved at them as they stood in line, chatting and looking reasonably well behaved and soberly dressed for a bunch of teenagers. Or perhaps they were intimidated by the presence of the entire St. Denis rugby squads, both the first and the A team, about thirty big men in uniform tracksuits who were there for Karim’s sake, and as a guarantee against trouble.

  Bruno looked around, but there was no sign of Montsouris, the man who had come up with the idea of the solidarity march. He would probably be in the bar with his friends from the union, but Montsouris’s dragon of a wife was in the school yard with Momu, along with Ahmed from the public-works department. Just about all the immigrant families in town had turned out, and to Bruno’s surprise, several of the women were wearing head scarves, something he had not seen before. He supposed it was a symbol of solidarity for the march. He hoped it was no more than that; St. Denis had so far been spared the arguments over Muslim identity that had been triggered by the government’s ban on head scarves in schools.

  “We’ll leave here at eleven-forty, and that’ll get us to the Mairie by midday,” said Rollo. “It’s all arranged. Ten or fifteen minutes for a couple of speeches and then we march to the war memorial with the town band, which gives us time to give the kids lunch before classes start again this afternoon.”

  “There may be more speeches than we expected,” said Bruno. “The Minister of the Interior is turning up, and with all these TV cameras he’ll certainly want to say a few words. And you’ll have to carry the Tricolor. Bachelot and Jean-Pierre have decided to boycott the event since they have apparently developed strong feelings about immigrants.”

  “The bastards,” snapped Madame Montsouris, who had somewhere found a small flag that Bruno assumed was the national emblem of Algeria. “And that bastard Minister of the Interior. He’s as bad as the Front National. What right does he have to be here? Who invited him?”

  “I think it was arranged with the mayor,” Bruno told her calmly. “But the program doesn’t change. We want an orderly commemoration of an old war hero, along with a show of solidarity with our neighbors against racism and violence. Quiet and dignified.”

  “We want a stronger statement than that,” Madame Montsouris said loudly enough for the teachers and schoolchildren to hear. “We have to stop this racist violence now, once and for all, and make it clear that there’s no place for fascist murderers around here.”

  “Save it for the speeches,” Bruno said. He turned to Momu. “Where’s Karim? He ought to be here by now.”

  “On his way,” said Momu. “He’s borrowing a Croix de Guerre from old Colonel Duclos so he can carry the medal on a cushion at the war memorial.”

  “Don’t worry, Bruno,” said Rollo. “We’re all here and everything’s under control. I can carry the Tricolor if you want to stop the traffic. We’ll start as soon as Karim arrives.”

  And no sooner had he said it than Karim’s Citroën turned into the parking lot in front of the school and he came out in his rugby club tracksuit, holding a velvet cushion in one hand and brandishing the small bronze medal in the other. Rollo formed them up, Momu and Karim and the family at the front with half a dozen of the rugby team, and then the school students in columns of three, each class led by a teacher and all flanked by the rest of the rugby team. Rollo shepherded a schoolboy with a small drum on a sash around his neck into the column beside him, and the boy started to beat out the cadence of a march with single taps of his drumstick.

  Bruno stood back to let them get started and then went out to the main road to stop traffic. It looked like it was going to be a brave and dignified parade, until Montsouris’s wife produced a bullhorn from a bag she was carrying and began chanting, “No to racism, no to fascism.” Fine sentiments, but not quite the tone that had been planned. He was about to intervene when he saw Momu step back to have a word with her. She stopped her chanting and put the bullhorn away.

  Two TV cameras were filming them as they marched along the Rue de la République, past the supermarket and the farmers’ co-op, past the Crédit Agricole branch and over the bridge, lined on both sides with townspeople, to the town square and the Mairie. There, the mayor and the other dignitaries stood waiting on the low platform that was normally used for the music festival. With irritation, Bruno noticed that the town’s small force of gendarmes was lined up with Captain Duroc in front of the podium. He had asked Duroc to post his men in twos at different spots around the square as a precaution. As the church bells began to ring out noon, the siren on top of the Mairie sounded, and the entire parade squeezed into the remaining space. There was already quite a crowd. The bar was empty and a third TV camera had joined the media group. The siren faded away and the mayor stepped forward.

  “Citizens of St. Denis, Monsieur le Ministre, mes généraux, friends and neighbors,” the mayor began, his practiced politician’s voice carrying easily over the square. “We are here to show our sympathy with the family of our local teacher Mohammed al-Bakr at the tragic death of his father, Hamid. We are here to salute Hamid as a fellow citizen, as a neighbor, and as a war hero who fought for our dear native land. We all know the brutal circumstances of his death, and the forces of order are working tirelessly to bring justice to his family, just as we in our community are here to show our revulsion against all forms of racism and hatred of others for their origin or their religion. And now I have the honor to present Monsieur le Ministre de llntérieur, who has joined us today to bring the condolences and support of our government.”

  “Send the Arab bastards back where they came from,” came a shout from somewhere at the back, and everybody turned to look as the minister stood uncertainly at the microphone. Bruno began to move through the crowd, looking for the idiot who had called out.

  “Send them back! Send them back! Send them back!” A chant had begun, and with a sinking heart Bruno saw three flags of the Front National lift from the crowd
and start to wave. Putain! Those buses he’d seen had not been full of Montsouris’s union friends after all. He felt a flurry in the crowd behind him and a knot of rugby men with Karim at their head began pushing their way through toward the flags.

  Then came a howl from a bullhorn and another amplified chant began of “Arabs go home! Arabs go home!” Montsouris’s wife joined in with her own bullhorn, calling, “No to racism!” and the first volley of rotten fruit, eggs and vegetables began sailing through the air toward the stage. This has been well organized, thought Bruno. He had seen three buses in the parking area, say thirty or forty men in each, so there were probably as many as a hundred of them here—and only thirty men from the rugby club and a handful of Montsouris’s union men to stop them. This could be very nasty, and all on national television. One of the Front National flags went down as the rugby men reached it, and groups of men began punching each other as women started to scream and run away.

  There was not much Bruno could do as a lone policeman, but he began pushing his way back toward the stage. His priority now was to get the schoolchildren clear. He’d leave the gendarmes to look after the dignitaries. A sudden charge by some burly men, Montsouris among them, nearly knocked him down, and as he scrambled for balance, a cabbage hit the back of his head and knocked his cap off. Quickly he bent to grab it, otherwise the schoolchildren might not know who he was. He found Rollo already trying to steer the children into the shelter of the covered market. A handful of the older boys slipped aside and joined in the charge against the groups of Front National supporters.

  Amplified howls of “Send them back! Send them back!” battled against bullhorn slogans of “No to racism! No to fascism!” as the dignitaries put their hands over their heads against the volleys of tomatoes and scampered into the Mairie past a protective gauntlet of otherwise useless gendarmes. Captain Duroc went into the Mairie with the mayor, the minister and the two generals, the gold braid of whose dress uniforms looked the worse for wear after the barrage of old fruit and smashed eggs.

  Bruno, Momu and Rollo managed to get the schoolchildren into the market. Shouting to make himself heard over the din of chanting protesters, Bruno told Rollo and Momu to get the youngest children into the café and tell Fauquet to make sure the door was locked and the shutters down; then to call the firemen and tell them on his behalf to get their fire engines into the square now, with their sirens going and their water hoses ready to send out some high-pressure jets to clear the area.

  Bruno took in the scene around him. In the confused mêlée in front of the hotel, flags and placards were being turned into clubs and lances. Another smaller fight was under way beside the steps that led to the old town, and a group of St. Denis women, Pamela and Christine among them, were trying to escape up the steps as some skinheads grabbed at them. The crowd was thinning and Bruno pushed his way through, seized the first of the thugs by the collar, kicked his feet from under him and shoved him into the legs of two of his cronies. That made enough space for Bruno to reach the foot of the steps and get between the thugs and the women.

  “Get out of here!” he shouted at the women as the thugs closed in, trying to grab him. Bruno was moving automatically into a fighting stance now, his eyes scanning the scene for threats and targets. He dropped his arms, ducked and rammed his head into the stomach of his nearest assailant, seized the leg of another and pulled him off balance, and then thumped his fist into the throat of the next, who sank to his knees, choking.

  That stopped the first rush, and he knew from his training that now was the time to attack, when they had lost their momentum. Bracing himself on the steps, he jumped at one youth who was brandishing a length of wood, with a Front National poster attached. He slammed the heel of one hand into the base of the youth’s nose, then spinned to ram a vicious elbow into the solar plexus of another. He used the turn to kick yet another on the side of his knee and he was back at the base of the steps, three men down before him.

  One of the women stepped down beside Bruno and deliberately kicked the choking skinhead in the testicles. It was Pamela, who was drawing back her foot to do it again. He stretched out his arms to hold her back and keep the thugs away from the rest of the women when he felt a thudding blow on the side of his face. Then he was punched hard in the kidneys and kicked in the knee and someone else was grabbing at his ankle. He knew that the first rule of brawling was to stay on your feet, but he was dazed and he felt himself start to go down. He tried to turn, to brace his arm against the stone wall, but someone was holding tight on to his leg and two more men were coming at him. He flailed at the first one and tried to kick the man holding his leg, then pulled hard on his hair, and the grip on his ankle slackened. But there were too many …

  And then there was Isabelle, leaping into the air, kicking out one lethal foot aimed straight at the belly of the man in front of Bruno. She dropped, pirouetted and launched a second high kick into the throat of another thug, and then landed and delivered two hard, short punches to the nose of the man holding Bruno’s ankle. Suddenly free to move, he turned to where the first blow to his head had come from and saw a middle-aged stranger backing away. Bruno grabbed an arm and twirled the man, seizing the back of his jacket and hauling it upward to imprison his arms, then tripped him and planted his boot hard on the back of his prisoner’s neck. The others retreated.

  “Thank you,” he said to Isabelle. She smiled and nodded and darted off to the brawl still under way in front of the hotel. Bruno released his foot from his prisoner. The man groaned, shook his head and began to crawl away. Bruno ignored him.

  He climbed the steps to get a clearer view, and saw what he had to do next. He trotted back to the small squad of gendarmes milling outside the Mairie. As he heard the sound of windows being smashed he shouted, “Follow me—and start blowing your whistles.”

  The Front National bullhorn seemed to be just in front of the hotel, and that was where he headed. Four or five men were down on the cobblestones. The rugby men knew what they were doing. They had organized themselves into pairs, and fought back-to-back. Karim picked up a heavy metal garbage can, which he raised over his head and threw into the knot of men guarding the Front National flags. The flag fell and the “Send them back!” bullhorn squealed in electronic pain and went silent. Then Bruno led the gendarmes into the resulting confusion and started handcuffing the ones on the ground. All of a sudden, it appeared to be over. Men were still running, but running away.

  Bruno shouted to the burliest of the gendarmes, a decent man he had known for years and who was his best friend among the local cops, “Jean-Luc! There are three buses in the bank parking lot. Go and immobilize them—that’s what these bastards came in and that’s how they’ll try to get out. Take a couple of your men with you and handcuff the drivers if you have to. Or get some cars to form a blockade to keep the buses from leaving.”

  Then the fire trucks arrived, two of them taking up most of the square, and the firemen climbed out and began to help. The first casualty they found was Ahmed. He was unconscious, his face bloodied from a smashed nose, and one of his front teeth was missing. A smaller red command truck then screeched to a halt beside Bruno, its siren wailing, and Morisot, the professional fireman who ran the local station, asked Bruno what his men could do.

  “Start with first aid for those who need it, then round up anyone you don’t recognize and lock them in your truck,” Bruno said. “We’ll sort it all out later at the gendarmerie.”

  Then he bent to check on young Roussel, a fast winger on the rugby team but too slim and small for this kind of fighting. He was dazed and winded and would have a magnificent black eye, but he was otherwise okay. Beside him, Lespinasse, short and squat and tough as they come, was on his knees and retching. “Bastards kicked me in the balls,” he grunted. Now a TV camera and a microphone were in Bruno’s face, and a concerned voice asked him what had happened.

  “We were attacked in our hometown by a bunch of outside extremists. That’s what happe
ned.” Bruno said angrily. He was composed enough to know you always get your side of the story out first because that would define the subsequent coverage.

  “We were holding a quiet and peaceful parade and a meeting to commemorate a dead war hero and some jerks began chanting racist taunts and throwing crap and beating people up,” he said. “Mainly schoolchildren were gathered here in our town square, but these extremists didn’t seem to care. They had organized this attack. They hired buses to get here and brought their banners and bullhorns and they came with one intention—to wreck our town and our parade. But they didn’t reckon with the people of St. Denis.”

  “What about casualties?”

  “We are still counting.”

  “What about your own injuries?” he was asked. “That blood all over your face?”

  He put his hand to his face and it did indeed come away bloody. “I hadn’t noticed,” he said.

  The camera then turned away as an ambulance blared its way into the square. In front of the smashed plate-glass window of the Hôtel St. Denis, Dr. Gelletreau was kneeling beside one of the prone bodies.

  “A couple of broken legs, a cracked collarbone and a few broken noses. Nothing much worse than a good rugby match,” Gelletreau said.

  Bruno looked around the town square. He saw fire engines and ambulances, broken windows, cobblestones littered with smashed fruit, eggs and vegetables, and frightened young faces peering from behind the stone pillars of the market. He glanced up to the windows of the Mairie and spotted some shadowed faces peering out from the banqueting chamber. So much for today’s lunch, he thought, and began organizing the transfer of those arrested over to the gendarmerie. That idiot Duroc, thought Bruno; this is his job.

  17

  Dougal, Bruno’s Scottish pal from the tennis club, almost never interfered in the official business of St. Denis, even though the mayor had twice asked him to join his list of candidates for election to the local council. After selling his own small construction company in Glasgow and taking an early retirement in St. Denis, Dougal had become bored and started a company called Delightful Dordogne that specialized in renting out houses angîtes to tourists in the high season. A lot of the foreign residents in the area had signed up with him, taking their own vacations elsewhere in July and August and showing a handsome profit from the tenants to whom Dougal rented their homes. With the handymen, cleaners, gardeners and swimming-pool maintenance staff that he hired to service the holiday homes, Dougal had become a significant local employer. Bruno thought it made sense, with so many foreigners moving into the district, to have one of them on the council to represent their views. Dougal had always declined, pleading that he was too busy and his French too flawed. But the day after the disturbances he was in the council chamber with the rest of the delegation of local businessmen. Speaking a serviceable French, he stated the obvious—how bad the TV news reports of the previous evening had been.