Bruno, Chief of Police

by Martin Walker

  • • •

  Once back in St. Denis, Bruno drove immediately to the mayor’s house by the river on the outskirts of town and explained why he now believed Hamid, their dead Arab war hero, had been in the Force Mobile. Shocked but convinced, the mayor agreed that the chain of evidence had to be made solid. They sat down and, from memory, composed a partial list of all the families they knew in St. Denis or the surrounding region who had been part of the Resistance. They could flesh out the list the next day from the records of the Compagnons de la Libération in Paris.

  “So the police are now going to start investigating half the families of St. Denis to see which of them might have known that Hamid had been in the Force Mobile. My God, Bruno.”

  “They will question the old ones first, those who might have recognized Hamid. It could take weeks, a lot of detectives, and the media and the politicians will get involved. We could have a national scandal on our hands. There can be no winners in this, nothing but a political nightmare when the Right-wingers make hay about French families being burned out and terrorized by Arabs in German pay. It’s awful. But I’ve got to go and brief the investigation team.”

  “You haven’t told them yet?” the mayor looked off into the distance. “So we have some time to think how much to tell them.”

  “No time at all, sir,” Bruno said sharply. Whatever thoughts might be stirring in the mayor’s mind, he wanted to squash them. “They know I’m working on this, and Isabelle has already been looking into Hamid’s mysterious war record. They are on the trail, and I have to go.”

  Bruno left the mayor sitting hunched and looking slightly shrunken in the overdecorated sitting room that was his wife’s great pride. Bruno walked out to his van to call Isabelle. They met in his office at the Mairie where he laid out the evidence for her. Together they rang J-J and agreed to meet in Bordeaux the next morning. He phoned Christine at her hotel, got from her the phone number of the curator of the Jean Moulin archives, and arranged for the next morning’s visit. He decided it was not his job to alert Tavernier. J-J could do that.

  More depressed than he had ever felt, except for those last days in Bosnia, Bruno could not think of food. But Isabelle insisted that they go to the nearest pizzeria, where he ate mechanically and drank too much wine. She drove him home and put him to bed. She fed the chickens, gave Gigi dinner in his kennel, and then went back inside, undressed and climbed into bed beside him. He awoke in the early hours and headed for the shower, where she joined him under the steaming water and they made urgent love amid the soapsuds. They returned to bed. There, he turned more gently to her, and they were still engrossed in each other’s bodies when the cockerel crowed to signal the dawn, which made them both laugh and Bruno knew that he was better. They showered again, and Bruno watered his garden and fed Gigi, then made coffee while Isabelle went back to her hotel to dress. She returned with a bag of fresh croissants from Fauquet’s and they took her car to Périgueux. Bruno kept his hand resting lightly on her thigh for the entire journey.

  “You’re a very remarkable woman,” he told her as they reached the new motorway at Niversac. “Twice now you’ve rescued me.”

  “You’re worth it,” she said, taking his hand, putting it between her thighs and squeezing it.

  “I’m not looking forward to when we have to make an arrest.”

  “The law’s the law, Bruno. Whatever Hamid was or whatever he did, he was unlawfully murdered.”

  “I know,” he said. “But if it had been your family, your farm, your mother, you would have killed him yourself. That’s justice.”

  “It may be justice, but it’s not the law,” she said. “You were in Bosnia, so you know what that leads to better than I do.”

  “Was that what Bosnia was about?” he asked. “I suppose it was, in a way. People making their own rules, taking their own revenge. No authority but the gun.”

  And sometimes justice was inflicted even without guns, he thought, and the memory came back of the day they had found the battered old motel that the Serbs had used as a brothel. He and his troops had disarmed three Serbian soldiers, left one man guarding them and gone on to clear the perimeter. When they came back, the Serbs were dead, their heads crushed into pulp. The Bosnian women they had used were standing over the bodies, some fierce and some sobbing, stones still bloody in their hands. One of them was Katarina. The trooper they had left to guard the prisoners just shrugged and said, “I thought they were entitled.”

  In his report, Bruno had written that the Serbian troops were already dead when they arrived at the motel. The lie had come easily. It seemed like justice then. It still did.

  • • •

  Bruno and Isabelle met J-J and a liaison officer from the Bordeaux police on the steps of the Centre Jean Moulin at nine a.m. Christine was already inside with the elderly French historian who ran the archives. The center was named after one of the most famous of France’s Resistance leaders, who had sought to unify communists, Gaullists and patriots into a common command, and had been betrayed to the Gestapo. It stood in the city center, an elegant neoclassical building of white stone. Best known to the public as a museum of the Resistance, it contained showcases of domestic objects from the Occupation: wooden shoes, wedding dresses made of flour sacks, ration cards and other realities of daily life in wartime. Also on show were bicycle-driven dynamos that produced electricity for clandestine radios, and cars with giant bags on the roof that contained carbon gas made from charcoal, to use in the absence of gasoline. There were displays of the different contents of the weapons containers, Sten guns and bazookas, grenades and sticky bombs, dropped by British aircraft for use by the Resistance. Underground newspapers were laid out to read. And playing in the background was a quiet but continuous soundtrack of the songs they sang, from the love songs of Charles Aznavour to the defiant heroics of the Resistance anthem, “Le Chant des Partisans.”

  But as Bruno discovered, the real heart of the Centre Jean Moulin was to be found on its upper floors, which contained the written and oral archives and the research staff who worked there, focusing on this tortured period of French history.

  Christine and J-J sifted through the fragmentary records of the Force Mobile. They established that Hussein Boudiaf and Massili Barakine had been recruited to a special unit of the Milice in Marseilles in December 1942. After two months of basic training, they were assigned to the Force Mobile, a unit of 120 men commanded by Captain Villanova, which specialized in what were described as “counterterrorist operations” in the Marseilles region. In November 1943, after the British and Americans had invaded Italy and knocked Mussolini out of the war, the Germans had spread their occupation into the previous “autonomous” zone run by the Vichy government, and the Force Mobile came under Gestapo rule. The outfit was expanded, and Villanova’s unit was assigned to Périgueux in February 1944, charged with taking “punitive measures against terrorist supporters.”

  They found pay slips with Boudiaf’s name, movement orders for Villanova’s unit, payroll listings that included Boudiaf and Barakine, and requisitions for special equipment that included explosives and extra fuel to destroy “terrorist support bases.” The curator, cross-checking with the records of the Force Mobile’s pay office, found a record of Boudiaf’s promotion to squad leader in May, after one of Villanova’s trucks was destroyed in a Resistance ambush. The promotion listing included a new Milice pay book and identity card, complete with photograph, that had never been collected by Boudiaf. The Milice records stopped in June 1944, with the Allied invasion of Normandy and the collapse of the Vichy regime.

  Bruno and Isabelle went through the Force Mobile mission reports, the punitive sweeps, staged from the Périgueux base, north into the Limousin region, west to the wine country of St. Emilion and Pomerol, east toward Brive and south into the valleys of the Vézère and the Dordogne. The Force reached the region around St. Denis in late March 1944, raiding farms where the sons had failed to appear for forced labor service. The
y hit again in early May based on intelligence from interrogations of Resistance prisoners after a Wehrmacht anti-partisan force, the Bohmer division, had surprised and destroyed a Maquis base in the hills above Sarlat. Bruno noted the names of the interrogated prisoners, who had all been shot; the names of the families listed as having sons who failed to appear for the Service du Travail Obligatoire, and the names of the towns and hamlets where the Force Mobile had been deployed. St. Denis was not among them, but the surrounding hamlets of St. Félix, Bastignac, Melissou, Ponsac, St. Chamassy and Tillier had all been raided.

  Bruno, J-J and Isabelle spread out the photographs on the curator’s desk and compared them. There was no doubt that Hussein Boudiaf the soccer player was also Hussein Boudiaf the newly promoted squad leader of the Force Mobile. And if he was not also Hamid al-Bakr then he was his double. But all bureaucracies tend to operate in the same way, Bruno thought. He looked at the French Army pay book, which contained two thumbprints of al-Bakr. The Milice pay book had been designed in precisely the same format and contained two thumbprints of Boudiaf. They were identical. The dates and place of birth were also identical, 14 July 1923, in Oran. Only the addresses were different. Boudiaf’s address was given as the police barracks in Périgueux, al-Bakr’s as Rue des Poissonniers, Marseilles.

  “So that’s our murder victim,” said J-J. “Cochon.”

  “Wait a moment,” said the curator, making his way to a large bookshelf where he removed a fat volume. He began leafing through the index, and then looked up with satisfaction. “Yes, I thought I remembered that. Rue des Poissonniers was part of the Vieux Port of Marseilles that was destroyed in the bombing before the invasion, which makes it a useful address for someone who wanted to hide his true identity.”

  They went back to the Force Mobile mission reports, signed by Villanova. The raids around St. Denis on 8 May 1944 had included Squad Leader Boudiaf’s unit. They claimed to have destroyed fourteen “terrorist supply bases,” which meant farms. May 8, thought Bruno, the day that France celebrated her part in the victory that came exactly a year after the Force Mobile raided the outlying hamlets of the commune of St. Denis. He would never think of the annual May parade at the town war memorial in quite the same way again.

  Suddenly, a memory of this year’s parade came to him in a series of distinct but clear images, almost like the frames of a film in slow motion. It had been just two days before Hamid’s murder, and Bruno conjured up the image of Hamid in the crowd with his family, proudly watching Karim carry the flag to the war memorial. Hamid, who had been a recluse, never seen in the town, never going to the shops or sitting in the café to gossip or playing pétanque with the other old men. Hamid, who had mixed only with his own family and kept himself carefully out of sight. And then Bruno remembered Jean-Pierre from the bicycle shop and Bachelot the shoemaker, the two Resistance veterans who never spoke but who carried the flags side by side at each May 8 parade. He saw the two rivals of so many years staring intently at one another in unspoken communication. He saw the Englishman’s grandson playing “The Last Post,” remembered the tears it brought to his eyes. He had assumed that Jean-Pierre and Bachelot had connected through the music and the memory. But that was not what had triggered their sudden transformation.

  Bruno played each scene back carefully in his mind, then he went to the interrogation reports that came from the prisoners taken by the Bohmer division. He examined the list of captured men who were to be shot. The third name was Philippe Bachelot, age nineteen, of St. Félix. Jean-Pierre’s family name was Courrailler, but he found no Courrailler in the list of prisoners. There was still a branch of the Courrailler family, though, in Ponsac, where they kept a farm, and a daughter who bred Labradors. He knew the farm. Bruno excused himself and walked down the stairs, through the museum and into the open air of the square. There he took out his phone to call the mayor.

  “It’s him all right, sir,” Bruno said. “Photograph and thumbprint. Hamid al-Bakr was also Hussein Boudiaf of the Force Mobile, a squad leader who did a lot of damage in our commune in May 1944. There’s no question about it, the evidence is solid. But it gets worse. One of the farms that was hit was that of Bachelot’s family, after his elder brother had been interrogated. Another was in Ponsac, and I think it was the Courrailler farm, but could you get someone to check the compensation records in the Mairie archives? I remember that the families all got some kind of compensation after the war.”

  “That’s right,” said the mayor. “There was a lawsuit in the Courailler family about who got what after the Germans paid a lot of money in war damages. And of course half the family still doesn’t speak to the other half because of the lawsuit. I’ll get hold of the full list and call you back. Is this leading where I think it is, to Bachelot and Jean-Pierre?”

  “It’s too soon to say. I’m outside, but when I go back into the archives I assume we’ll just collate all the evidence, make copies and get them certified by the curator. And of course we’ll collect the names of families who were victimized by the Force Mobile. We could end up with a long list of possible suspects and it could take some time. A lot of potential witnesses have died and memories aren’t what they were.”

  “I understand, Bruno. Will you be back in time for tomorrow’s parade?”

  The next day was June 18, the anniversary of the Resistance, of de Gaulle’s message from London in 1940 for France to fight on. Bachelot and Jean-Pierre would carry the flags, just like always.

  “I’ll be there. And everything is in order for the fireworks display tomorrow night.”

  “Let’s hope those are the only fireworks we get,” said the mayor. With a heaviness in his step but a sense of justice in his heart, Bruno went back into the building.

  25

  Bruno drove back with J-J to police headquarters in Périgueux, Isabelle following behind with thick files of photocopies in the back of her car. He would have driven with Isabelle but J-J held open the passenger door of his big Renault and said, “Get in.”

  J-J waited until they were out of Bordeaux and on the autoroute before saying, “If you screw me around on this, Bruno, I’ll never forgive you. I think you already know who killed the bastard, and you are pretty sure that nobody else will ever find out. You and your local knowledge. Am I right?”

  “I may have some suspicions, but I have no evidence. And I don’t see anybody confessing. Some of these old Resistance types went through a Gestapo interrogation without talking. They won’t confess to you. If this case goes public and we charge someone, can you imagine the lawyers who’ll be standing in line to represent them for free, out of patriotism? It will be an honor to stand up and defend these old heroes. Any ambitious and clever young lawyer can build a career on a case like this. If this ever comes to trial, a guy like Tavernier would fight tooth and nail for the privilege of representing them.”

  J-J grunted a kind of agreement and they drove on in silence.

  “Dammit, Bruno,” J-J finally said. “Is that what you want? An unsolved murder? Dark suspicions of racial killing? It will poison St. Denis for years to come.”

  “J-J, this is not going to be decided by you or me. This is going to be decided in Paris. They’re not going to want a trial of some old Resistance heroes who executed an Arab war criminal sixty years after he burned their farms, raped their mothers and killed their brothers. The Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Defense and the prime minister will all have to troop into the Elysée Palace and explain to the president of the republic how the TV news and the headlines for the next few weeks are going to be about gangs of armed Arabs collaborating with the Nazis to terrorize patriotic French families. Arabs who evaded justice by hiding out undiscovered in the French Army, war criminals awarded the Croix de Guerre. Can you imagine how that will play out in the opinion polls, on the streets, in the next election? Tell me, what would the Front National do with that?”

  “As you said, Bruno, those are not our decisions. We do o
ur work, collect the evidence. It’s up to the law, not us.”

  “J-J, you know as well as I do it’s up to Tavernier, and he’ll do nothing without considering every possible political angle and checking with every minister he can reach. When we explain all this to him, he will understand instantly that this case is political dynamite. He’ll probably take one look at all this and decide to take a prolonged leave of absence for reasons of health. Either that or resign from the bench to become their defense lawyer.”

  “I’m not as sure about things as you are,” said J-J.

  “I don’t know. Right now I just want to go with you into Tavernier’s conference room and lay out the evidence, and then I want to drive to St. Denis with Richard Gelletreau and bring him back to his parents with no charges against him. You have your drug conviction with the girl, and you’ll get points for cooperation with the Dutch police when Jacqueline’s evidence convicts those guys. You have Jacqueline’s Front National pals on narcotics charges. You and Isabelle come out smelling of roses no matter what happens.”

  “That will be a nice farewell present for her,” J-J said. “You know she’s being transferred back to Paris? The order came in last night and I haven’t even told her yet.”

  “That’s great,” Bruno said automatically, not allowing himself to display any emotion. “The mayor predicted that she would be assigned to the minister’s staff.”

  “She’ll probably end up as my boss in a year or two,” said J-J.

  Tavernier knew all about the promotion. He strode into the conference room with a cheerful smile and a comradely handshake. “Let me be the first to congratulate you, Inspector Perrault,” he said. J-J handed her the transfer order and Bruno watched her smile radiantly until she looked in his direction. He made himself smile back.