Bruno and le Pere Noel
Page 3
“Look what papa gave me,” he cried, holding up his rod as she reached him.
“Give your dad his jacket,” Bruno said. “It’s alright, you’ll see him later.”
They put the bike in Sergeant Jules’s van and he drove Miriam and the boy home. Bonneval helped Bruno and Antoine load the canoe onto the trailer, and Bruno drove back to the campsite. Bruno unhitched the trailer and the three men restored the canoe to its rack. Bruno thanked Antoine and, with Bonneval huddled beside him trying to warm up, set off for his home.
“What now?” Bonneval asked.
“You need a long, hot shower and a change of clothes. Then we’re going to call Hélène, your probation officer. And if that works out, we’ll be able to make some plans. But tell me, where did you spend the night?”
“At the supermarket. They have big refrigeration units, so I thought there’d be some warmth on top of them.”
“Was there?” Bruno was impressed. He’d never have thought of that.
“A little. Enough.” He paused. “That’s what I was, a heating engineer. I’d installed some of those units back in Paris, so I knew.” From the pocket of his jacket he pulled the Red Cross tin.
“I owe you thirty-five euros for the rod and bait.” He put the can on the ledge above the glove box and tucked the receipt beneath it. “I had to get him something for Christmas. Somehow or other, I’ll pay you back.”
Back at home, Bruno watched as Gigi greeted Bonneval. The man went down on one knee, smiled for the first time and offered a hand to be sniffed, and then played with Gigi’s floppy ears as the dog clambered up his knee to nuzzle at his chin. That was enough for Bruno, who reckoned that dogs were more reliable judges of character than most humans.
He found a spare towel and a change of clothes, showed Bonneval to the bathroom and gave him a disposable razor. He put the kettle on for some coffee and made a fire. Maybe coffee would not be enough. He took the Thermos flasks from the van and began to reheat the mulled wine as he set a place at the low table by the fire and prepared eggs and cheese and lardons for an omelette. Then he called Hélène’s mobile.
“He’s here at my place. He’s taking a shower and I’ll give him something to eat.”
“Is he prepared to come back to Paris with me?” she asked. “I talked to my boss and he says we can fix this if I’m prepared to try.”
“Are you?”
“Yes, but only if you agree. I don’t know what sort of shape he’s in.”
“I think it will be okay. He just wanted to see the boy. I’ll call you back when he’s eaten and is ready to talk.”
Clean and showered, with the omelette and baguette and two glasses of mulled wine inside him, Bonneval sat close to the fire with Bruno’s dog. As if by instinct, he found the spot just under the ribs where Gigi liked to be tickled. Bruno called Hélène again and handed him the phone.
“She wants to speak to you,” Bonneval said, when Bruno returned from clearing the dishes.
“He’s coming back with me the day after Christmas,” she said. “Can you keep him there until then? I’ll pick him up at St. Denis in my mother’s car and we can take the lunchtime train together from Brive.”
They agreed to meet at ten at Fauquet’s café. He went into the kitchen, closed the door, called Miriam’s number and told her his plan. When she hesitated, he said, “It’s Christmas, Miriam.”
He opened the door when the call ended and told Bonneval, “Time to work.” The big six-kilo goose sat waiting on the kitchen counter. A saucepan filled with vermouth was steaming on the stove. Bruno turned on his oven, setting it to 220 degrees.
“You’re making the stuffing,” said Bruno. He pointed to a bowl of hot water filled with the fat black pruneaux d’Agen. “Simmer those in the vermouth for about ten minutes until they’re softened. Then we’re going to stuff each of them with a teaspoon of foie gras, so slit them open very carefully when you take out the stones.”
He handed Bonneval a small knife and said, “When the goose is done, you’re coming to Christmas dinner with some friends of mine.”
“What then? Do I spend the night in jail?”
“Can you drive?”
Bonneval nodded. “Of course.”
“Then you’re the designated driver, which means I can drink but you can’t. You’ll spend the night here in my spare room. Tomorrow morning we go to church, where I’m Father Christmas and you dress up as my wicked companion, Père Fouettard. It’s alright, the kids are used to it and know it’s just a game. You have to pretend to frighten them a bit. They love it much more than when it’s only Father Christmas. Something about the good cop–bad cop routine appeals to them.”
He explained the tradition and the duties while Bonneval stirred the prunes. Bruno began to chop shallots and garlic and to mince a whole goose liver. When he was done, he cooked the liver and shallots together in a frying pan, placed the result in a bowl, poured a large glass of his vin de noix into the pan and reduced it. He added thyme, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper to the liver, then poured in the thickened wine and began to blend it, adding chunks of pâté de foie gras until he thought there was enough.
Bruno showed Bonneval how to stuff the first two prunes and then left him to do the rest. He salted the cavity of the goose, loosened the skin and slid slivers of foie gras beneath it, and then went out to feed his chickens while Bonneval worked on.
“What happens after church?” Bonneval asked when Bruno returned. The prunes were all stuffed, and he was pleased to see that Bonneval had washed the bowls and cleaned the sink. Bruno packed the prunes inside the goose, sewed it closed and then began tying the legs, wings and neck close to the body with string.
“After church, there’ll be a light lunch at the priest’s house and then we take my dog for a walk in the snow. You sleep here again, and on the day after Christmas we meet Hélène in the café where you saw me count the money. She takes you to Brive, where you board the train for Paris. You go back to your hostel and your job for three more months. You grit your teeth and stick it out until you’re a free man again.”
“My boss won’t take me back. He’d have to pay the wages he owes me.”
“Hélène says she can arrange it, and I believe her.” Bruno put the goose into the oven. “Now we brown it for fifteen minutes, then I’ll turn down the heat and put it back in to roast. After we walk the dog, we’ll take the goose over to my friend’s house and enjoy our dinner. She’s called Pamela. You met her when you pinched the collection box outside the bank.”
“Christ,” said Bonneval, putting his hands over his face.
“You did a good job stuffing the prunes. Richard will enjoy them,” Bruno said. “Do you know if he likes oysters?”
“Oysters? Richard? I doubt he’s ever had them.”
“We’ll soon find out. Miriam and your son are coming to dinner at Pamela’s this evening, and he’ll be in church tomorrow to see you play Père Fouettard. Just so you know what’s at stake in these next three months, Miriam knows you’ll be there and she’s agreed.”
Bruno finished putting the bowls and dishes away and turned to look at Bonneval. He was standing at the sink, seeing nothing as he gazed through the window at the afternoon sky and the falling snow. Tears were trickling down his cheeks, and his hands gripped the edge of the sink tightly.
“I think three hours should be enough for the goose,” Bruno said, almost as if talking to himself. “Do you know how we can tell it’s ready? You waggle the legs a bit to see if they’re loose in the sockets. Then you put a skewer into the fleshy part and if the juice runs out a clear pale yellow, it’s done.”
“Why are you doing this?” Bonneval asked, not turning round.
“I’ve got some bars of very nice soap that I usually take as a hostess gift, and some Christmas paper,” said Bruno. “Maybe you could wrap one of them for Pamela, and another
for Miriam. Richard already has his fishing rod. He’s a fine boy.”
“Why?” Bonneval repeated. This time he turned to face Bruno.
“A boy should have a father,” said Bruno. “I never had one. And besides, it’s Christmas.”
The End
Turn the page for an excerpt from Martin Walker’s Bruno, Chief of Police, the first book in the award-winning, internationally beloved Bruno mystery series.
AN EXCERPT FROM BRUNO, CHIEF OF POLICE
On a bright May morning, so early that the last of the mist was still lingering low over the great bend in the river, a white van drew to a halt on the ridge over the small French town. A man emerged, strode to the edge of the road and stretched mightily as he admired the familiar view. He was still young, and evidently fit enough to be dapper and brisk in his movements, but as he relaxed he was sufficiently concerned about his love of food to tap his waist, gingerly probing for any sign of plumpness, always a threat in this springtime period between the end of the rugby season and the start of serious hunting. He wore what appeared to be half a uniform—a neatly ironed blue shirt with epaulettes, no tie, navy blue trousers and black boots. His thick, dark hair was crisply cut, his warm brown eyes had a twinkle and his generous mouth seemed always ready to break into a smile. On a badge on his chest, and on the side of his van, were the words Police Municipale. A rather dusty peaked cap lay on the passenger seat.
In the back of the van were a crowbar, a tangle of battery cables, one basket containing new-laid eggs, and another with his first spring peas of the season. Two tennis racquets, a pair of rugby boots, training shoes, and a large bag with various kinds of sports attire added to the jumble which tangled itself in a spare line from a fishing rod. Somewhere underneath all this were a first-aid kit, a small tool chest, a blanket, and a picnic hamper with plates and glasses, salt and pepper, a head of garlic and a Laguiole pocket knife with a horn handle and corkscrew. Tucked under the front seat was a bottle of not-quite-legal eau de vie from a friendly farmer. He would use this to make his private stock of vin de noix when the green walnuts were ready on the feast of St. Catherine. Benoît Courrèges, Chief of Police for the small Commune of St. Denis and its 2,900 souls, and universally known as Bruno, was always prepared for every eventuality.
Or almost always. He wore no heavy belt with its attachments of holster and pistol, handcuffs and flashlight, keys and notebook, and all the other burdens that generally weigh down every policeman in France. There would doubtless be a pair of ancient handcuffs somewhere in the jumble of his van, but Bruno had long forgotten where he had put the key. He did have a flashlight, and constantly reminded himself that one of these days he ought to buy some new batteries. The van’s glove compartment held a notebook and some pens, but the notebook was currently full of various recipes, the minutes of the last tennis club meeting (which he had yet to type up on the temperamental old office computer that he distrusted) and a list of the names and phone numbers of the minimes, the young boys who had signed up for his rugby training class.
Bruno’s gun, a rather elderly MAB 9mm semi-automatic, was locked in his safe in his office in the Mairie, and taken out once a year for his annual refresher course at the gendarmerie range in Périgueux. He had worn it on duty on three occasions in his eight years in the Police Municipale. The first was when a rabid dog had been sighted in a neighbouring Commune, and the police were put on alert. The second was when the President of France had driven through the Commune of St. Denis on his way to see the celebrated cave paintings of Lascaux. He had stopped to visit an old friend, Gérard Mangin, who was the Mayor of St. Denis and Bruno’s employer. Bruno had saluted his nation’s leader and proudly stood armed guard outside the Mairie, exchanging gossip with the far more thoroughly armed presidential bodyguard, one of whom turned out to be a former comrade from Bruno’s army days. The third time was when the boxing kangaroo escaped from a local circus, but that was another story. On no occasion had Bruno’s gun ever been used on duty, a fact of which he was extremely but privately proud. Of course, like most of the other men (and not a few women) of the Commune of St. Denis, he shot almost daily in the hunting season and usually bagged his target, unless he was stalking the notoriously elusive bécasse, a bird whose taste he preferred above all others.
Bruno gazed contentedly down upon his town, which looked in the freshness of the early morning as if le bon Dieu had miraculously created it overnight. His eyes lingered on the way the early sunlight bounced and flickered off the eddies where the Vézère river ran under the arches of the old stone bridge. The place seemed alive with light, flashes of gold and red, as the sun magically concocted prisms in the grass beneath the willows, and danced along the honey-coloured façades of the ancient buildings along the river. There were glints from the weathercock on the church spire, from the eagle atop the town’s war memorial where he had to attend that day’s ceremony on the stroke of noon, from the windscreens and chrome of the cars and caravans parked behind the medical centre.
All looked peaceful as the business of the day began, with the first customers heading into Fauquet’s café. Even from this high above the town he could hear the grating sound of the metal grille being raised to open Lespinasse’s tabac, which sold fishing rods, guns and ammunition alongside the cigarettes. Very logical, thought Bruno, to group such lethal products together. He knew without looking that, while Madame Lespinasse was opening the shop, her husband would be heading to the café for the first of many little glasses of white wine that would keep him pleasantly plastered all day.
The staff of the Mairie would also be at Fauquet’s, nibbling their croissants and taking their coffee and scanning the headlines of that morning’s Sud-Ouest. Alongside them would be a knot of old men studying the racing form and enjoying their first petit blanc of the day. Bachelot the shoemender would take his morning glass at Fauquet’s, while his neighbour and mortal enemy Jean-Pierre, who ran the bicycle shop, would start his day at Ivan’s Café de la Libération. Their enmity went back to the days of the Resistance, when one of them had been in a Communist group and the other had joined de Gaulle’s Armée Secrète, but Bruno could never remember which. He only knew that they had never spoken to one another since the war, had never allowed their families to speak beyond the frostiest “bonjour,” and each man was said to have devoted many of the years since to discreet but determined efforts to seduce the other man’s wife. The Mayor had once, over a convivial glass, told Bruno that he was convinced that each had attained his objective. But Bruno had been a policeman long enough to question most rumours of adulterous passion and, as a careful guardian of his own privacy in such tender matters, was content to allow others similar latitude.
These morning movements were rituals to be respected—rituals such as the devotion with which each family bought its daily bread only at a particular one of the town’s four bakeries, except on those weeks of holidays when they were forced to patronise another, each time lamenting the change in taste and texture. These little ways of St. Denis were as familiar to Bruno as his own morning routine on rising: his exercises while listening to Radio Périgord, his shower with his special shampoo to protect against the threat of baldness, the soap with the scent of green apples. Then he would feed his chickens while the coffee brewed and share the toasted slices of yesterday’s baguette with his dog, Gigi.
Across the small stream that flowed into the main river, the caves in the limestone cliffs drew his eye. Dark but strangely inviting, the caves with their ancient engravings and paintings drew scholars and tourists to this valley. The tourist office called it “The Cradle of Mankind.” It was, they said, the part of Europe that could claim the longest period of continual human habitation. Through ice ages and warming periods, floods and wars and famine, people had lived here for forty thousand years. Bruno, who reminded himself that there were still many caves and paintings that he really ought to visit, felt deep in his heart that he understood why.
“Any sign of them, Marie?” he asked. “They hit the market at St. Alvère yesterday so they are in the region.”
“Not last night, Bruno. Just the usual guys staying from the museum project and a Spanish truck driver,” replied Marie, who ran the small hotel by the station. “But remember, after last time they were here and found nothing, I heard them talking about renting a car in Périgueux to put you off the scent. Bloody Gestapo!”
Bruno, whose loyalty was to his local community and its mayor rather than to the nominal laws of France, particularly when they were really laws of Brussels, played a constant cat-and-mouse game with the inspectors from the European Union who were charged with enforcing EU hygiene rules on the markets of France. Hygiene was all very well, but the locals of the Commune of St. Denis had been making their cheeses and their pâté de foie gras and their rillettes de porc for centuries before the EU was even heard of, and did not take kindly to foreign bureaucrats telling them what they could and could not sell. Along with other members of the Police Municipale in the region, Bruno had established a complex early warning scheme to alert the market vendors to their visits.