The Crowded Grave

by Martin Walker

  Horst stepped down, and Teddy handed him a brush, a trowel and a plastic bag for the dirt. While Fabiola took more photos, Horst carefully exposed the top half of the skull. He handed the filled plastic bag to Teddy who handed him a fresh one. As Horst began to clear away more soil, Fabiola told him to stop and clambered down into the pit. She looked intently at the base of the skull, then took the brush and worked gently at the soil.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s a bullet hole,” she said, and looked up at Bruno. “At least he wasn’t buried alive, but it’s still murder.”

  Bruno thumbed the speed-dial number for his friend J-J, Jean-Jacques Jalipeau, chief of detectives for the Police Nationale in the region. While waiting for a response, Bruno wondered how he could explain to Horst and Clothilde that their precious dig was about to become a crime scene. Whatever the demands of scholarship, much of the area would soon be closed off to them as the forensic specialists began the search. Perhaps J-J could be persuaded to limit the restrictions on the dig, since the killing was hardly recent.

  J-J’s phone told him to leave a message after the beep. He did so, then hit 0 to reach the police switchboard. He reported the find and Fabiola’s certification of death and was asked to secure the site and to detain all possible witnesses until a murder team could reach the spot. Bruno asked how long it would take and was told it could be a couple of hours or more. He hung up and then called Sergeant Jules at the gendarmerie and asked him to send someone in uniform to hold the fort, since Bruno had appointments elsewhere.

  “I’ll need a list of names of all the students on this dig, along with their identity card numbers or passport numbers,” Bruno said, not sure whether he should address Horst or Clothilde. It was Horst’s dig, but Clothilde would be officially in charge of the site, since it was on French soil.

  “If you can come back with me to the museum, I have a list there,” said Horst. “And I found nothing like a wallet, but I didn’t want to disturb things too much.”

  Bruno shook his head. “I’m sorry but nobody can leave until the detectives get here from Périgueux and take over custody of the site. That’s the law. Even I can’t leave until a gendarme gets here to replace me.”

  “What’s your e-mail?” Clothilde asked, tapping at her phone. Bruno gave it. She tapped again and looked up at him with that cheeky grin. “I just e-mailed the list to your office, names, ages, passports and universities for all eighteen of them. Can I go now?”

  “Sorry, not quite yet. Can you tell me if any of the students are involved in the animal rights movement. We had another crime here last night. Someone ripped down a stretch of farm fences and let out a lot of ducks and geese. They left leaflets behind, and since your students are all strangers, I’ll have to ask about their movements last night.”

  “If they’re anything like students in my day, they’ll all be able to give each other alibis for the night,” said Clothilde, nodding toward Teddy and Kajte.

  3

  Sergeant Jules was as good as his word and arrived quickly to stand watch at the dig, so Bruno could leave in time to make his appointment at the Château de Campagne. The brigadier was not a man to be kept waiting. Even though he held no formal authority over St. Denis and its chief of police, Bruno and the mayor knew that the orders of this senior but shadowy figure in French intelligence were best obeyed. He had summoned Bruno to a meeting at the decayed gem of a castle whose pointed turrets and battlements the state had been promising to restore for as long as Bruno could remember. But as Bruno turned in through the tall iron gates, now gleaming with black paint, he was surprised to see its courtyard bustling with life. He could barely find a place to park. There were furniture trucks, vehicles of plumbers and electricians, a catering van and a large truck loaded down with fresh-cut turf for a lawn gardeners were laying below the broad balcony. There was a smell of fresh paint, the sound of electric drills, cheerful voices of decorators and the blare of tinny radios from the open windows. But there was no sign of the black limousine Bruno had expected; the brigadier had not yet arrived. As Bruno looked around at a building project that seemed almost complete, his phone rang, and J-J’s name appeared on the screen.

  “I’m on my way, be another thirty minutes.”

  “I won’t be at the site—I’m tied up with the brigadier,” Bruno replied. “But we’ve got no missing person on file that could fit the body, let alone explain the way he was executed.”

  “I know, it’s a forensics job. What does the brigadier want?”

  “Apart from a welcoming glass of Monbazillac and some foie gras he hasn’t told me.”

  “He can’t get that in Paris?”

  “Isabelle told him he had to try my pâté, so I have a cooler in the van with a bottle of Tirecul la Gravière, and a fresh baguette from Fauquet.”

  “What year for the Tirecul?”

  “The ’05.”

  “That should do it. Call me when you’re done. We can have lunch, and I can tell you about the new nightmare that’s coming into your life. Her name’s Annette Meraillon, and she finished at the top of her class at the magistrates’ school in Bordeaux last year. She’s right up your alley. She’s a vegetarian feminist, and she spent her last summer vacation in Paris working for some rights group for Muslim women. She’s just been assigned to the subprefecture at Sarlat, which means she’ll be your new magistrate.”

  “A vegetarian magistrate for St. Denis? They must be mad. What does she think about hunting?”

  “She’s against it. She wants all guns out of private hands. Unless they’re Muslim women, I suppose. Remember that young inspector of mine in Bergerac, Jofflin? He met her taking a course at law school and said she didn’t even drink. Not a glass. And she’s going to hate foie gras, even yours. You’re in for a fun time with her, Bruno.”

  As a municipal policeman employed by the mairie, Bruno seldom sought to bring prosecutions under criminal law. So he’d have a great deal less to do with the new magistrate than the gendarmes and the Police Nationale. But she could call on him to help her with local inquiries, take up his time and interfere endlessly in his business. Bruno had so far been lucky; for the past decade and more the main magistrate for St. Denis and the neighboring communes had been a genial fellow, a keen hunter and former chairman of the rugby federation for the Département of the Dordogne. He was also a prud’homme of the Jurade de St. Émilion, which since the twelfth century had defined when the grapes should be harvested and had kept jealous guard over the branding iron which marked each barrel of the renowned wines of St. Émilion. These days it was an honorary role for local worthies and the occasion for some spectacular dinners. But it meant that he took his wine and the pleasures of the table and local tradition very seriously. Bruno could hardly imagine a more appropriate principal judicial officer for the region that saw itself as the gastronomic heartland of France. This new woman sounded as if she’d be very much less accommodating.

  “There’s a chopper coming in, probably the brigadier,” said Bruno. “I’ll call you back if he’s finished with me in time for lunch.”

  Bruno hung up and walked out of the courtyard and into the park where the commune of Campagne held an open-air antiques market every summer. For the first time he saw the newly erected wind sock and the big whitewashed circle, marked for a helicopter to land. He put his hand on his hat against the sudden rush of air as the chopper swooped in to flare for its landing on the marked patch of grass. Two tough-looking men in dark suits were the first out, one carrying a FAMAS submachine gun and frowning as he scanned the nearby hillsides, the second with his hand casually inside his jacket. He nodded into the darkness of the helicopter, and two more men appeared in the doorway. Bruno recognized the brigadier and watched him invite the other man to precede him. Trust the brigadier never to turn his back, Bruno thought.

  Officially a senior officer in the gendarmes, but long attached to the shadowy Renseignements Généraux intelligence arm, the brigadier was now on the personal staff
of the minister of the interior. Bruno had known him to be involved in monitoring militant ecologists, the extreme right, Asian gangs and networks that smuggled illegal immigrants. He had wide powers, a very loosely defined job and access to a helicopter whenever he wanted. Since Bruno was employed by the commune of St. Denis, the brigadier had no formal authority over him. The brigadier overcame this technicality by bringing a formal request to the mayor from either the prefect of the département or from the interior minister himself for Bruno to be seconded on special duties. And if that failed to work, Bruno had few doubts that the brigadier would activate his army reserve status and have him conscripted.

  Bruno felt a wary respect for the man. He had also been in command of an operation in which Isabelle Perrault, a woman with whom Bruno had had a truncated love affair, had been seriously wounded. She had been a police inspector when Bruno had met her, before being lured away to the brigadier’s staff in Paris. The brigadier had informed Bruno that a similar job awaited him in Paris should he choose to take up the offer. Bruno noted that the brigadier now wore the small red button of the Légion d’Honneur in his lapel. That was new. He wondered if it had been awarded for the operation to intercept a shipload of illegal immigrants when Isabelle’s thigh had been shattered by a bullet from an AK-47.

  The man accompanying the brigadier was so tall that he had to stoop unusually low as they scuttled under the slowing rotor blades. As the stranger straightened up, Bruno saw a fit-looking man in his forties with thick and rather long glossy, deep-black hair and the kind of dark shadow on his chin that suggested he would have to shave twice a day. His mouth was thin, and his jaw thrust almost arrogantly forward. It would have been a cruel face, but for the alert way he looked around him and the easy smile he flashed when he saw Bruno.

  “Bonjour, Bruno,” said the brigadier. “Meet Carlos Gambara, deputy head of counterterrorism for the Spanish Ministry of the Interior. For this particular job, he’s my counterpart in Madrid, but he’s going to be here for a few days before attending the summit. Carlos, this is the man I told you about, Chief of Police Courrèges, but I think you can call him Bruno.”

  “Summit?” asked Bruno, sketching a hasty salute despite feeling a little odd doing so while holding a plastic bag in his left hand and very conscious of the silent bodyguard standing behind him with a submachine gun at the ready. They’d probably want to search his bag. “In St. Denis?”

  “A little summit,” said the brigadier, lowering his voice as the rotor blades coughed to a halt behind him. “The Spanish interior minister and our own will be signing a new cooperation agreement on Basque terrorism—intelligence sharing, joint staffing of a common office for cross-border liaison, joint firearms permits and rules of engagement. Now that they’ve killed one of our cops here in France, the gloves are off—”

  “Sir, I’d rather you all moved inside,” interrupted the bodyguard, whose hand was still inside his jacket, though his eyes were on the hills. “It’s a bit exposed here. Don’t want you falling into bad habits.”

  The brigadier nodded and gave a half smile to the man. A sign of a good unit, Bruno thought, when the bodyguard could tease the boss a little.

  “Welcome back to St. Denis,” Bruno said, handing the brigadier the bag. “Isabelle told me you were hoping to taste some foie gras, and there’s some Monbazillac to go with it.”

  “Very kind, Bruno. It’s been a long time since breakfast.” He handed the bag to one of the bodyguards. “Maybe we can introduce our Spanish friend to a real French casse-croûte, once we’ve done the inspection.”

  “The brigadier has told me a lot about your shared adventures,” said Gambara, stretching out a large hand for Bruno to shake as they walked into the shadow of the château walls. Bruno took that with a grain of salt; nobody could hear themselves speak inside a military helicopter. “In the name of my government, we thank you for your help.”

  “Welcome to the commune of St. Denis, or rather Campagne,” Bruno said. “When do the ministers plan to meet?” He scanned the wooded hills around them, seeing any number of places for a sniper to hide. Next week the trees would still be bare enough to give both cover and a decent field of fire. They’d need screens to cover the move from the helicopter to the château. But what kind of screens would stand up to a helicopter downdraft?

  “Next week, final restoration work permitting,” said the brigadier. “That’s why we’re here, a quick inspection, and I wanted to bring you into the picture early and get to know Carlos. He’ll be staying for a few days, getting the lay of the land and checking the secure communications setup. Bruno, I’d like you to draw up a patrol plan to secure the immediate perimeter and all roads and tracks within a reasonable radius. I can deploy a company of gendarmes and another of CRS, for roadblocks, and a platoon of special forces for patrols, probably from the treizième paras, your old unit. You know the drill and the terrain, so I’ll leave it to you.”

  Bruno pursed his lips at the mention of the CRS; the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité were riot police with a fearsome reputation. He sensed the Spaniard watching him as he cast his eyes around the hills. When he looked back he saw Carlos was grinning at him.

  “We think alike, senõr. A good place for a rifleman. But the ETA prefers its bombs. And we have good solid screens that don’t blow over. If we’re still worried, we can have the ministers take a limousine into the courtyard direct from the helicopters.” His French was accented but good.

  “Who picked this place?” asked Bruno, with a funny feeling that he already knew the answer.

  “Isabelle suggested it,” said the brigadier, with a half wink. “And of course she sends you her warmest regards. She’s taken a liking to this area, and when she heard the renovation of the château was almost finished, she thought the summit would be a good occasion for the formal opening. And maybe our minister owed the minister of tourism a favor.”

  “Why not hold the summit in our own Basque region, down by Biarritz?” Bruno asked. “If you want the symbolism of government cooperation …”

  “Security,” said Carlos. “This is as close as you can get to the Basque country without having any Basques.”

  “I wouldn’t say there aren’t any,” Bruno said. “There are some second and third generation …”

  “I know,” said Carlos. “The ones who came to France in 1939 as refugees after our civil war.”

  “Some of them made up the hard core of our Resistance,” said Bruno. “They hated Fascists and Nazis. Most of them moved back to the Basque district near the frontier when the war ended, but one or two married local girls and stayed.”

  “We know. Communists most of them, some anarchists. We kept an eye on them, and we’re not worried about them. They’re mostly dead,” said the brigadier. He opened his briefcase, took out an envelope and handed it to Bruno. “Here’s a letter to your mayor from the minister. As of now and until the conference ends, you’re attached to the joint security coordination committee, which Carlos and I run. You’ll treat his orders as my orders.”

  “What about my usual duties?” Bruno described the discovery of the body at the archaeological dig.

  “An execution? In St. Denis? How recent?”

  “From the state of the skeleton, at least ten years old,” Bruno said, and saw the brigadier relax his sudden tension. “But we have to find out who it is. J-J should be at the scene by now.”

  “I understand, but this takes priority,” said the brigadier briskly.

  “I imagine that keeping an eye out for strangers means doing your usual patrols and inquiries. You can probably combine some of the work, and I’m grateful for your help,” said Carlos. “I’m looking forward to spending some time in the district. I’ve seen our own prehistoric cave paintings at Altamira, so I’m hoping to see some of your famous ones while I’m here.”

  Bruno smiled to himself at the transparency of the old routine of hard cop, soft cop. But the Spaniard was playing it the wrong way around. It was
the brigadier with whom Bruno had already built a relationship, consisting of a grudging respect on his own part, along with the kind of conditional trust that soldiers give to officers who know what they’re doing. But Bruno was less sure what the brigadier thought of him, beyond being a useful local tool and on occasion a reluctant subordinate. Carlos was a new factor in the mix.

  “What’s your own background, monsieur, if I may ask?” he said, with the blend of forthrightness and deference that he knew officers liked.

  “I’ve something in common with you,” said Carlos, looking Bruno in the eye. “I believe you’re an orphan, like me. I went into the military early, like you. I was a combat engineer and served a year with the Eurocorps in Strasbourg. That’s where I learned my French. Then I was attached to military intelligence when I was with the Kosovo force back in ’99. So we both served in the Balkans, and I got to know your old commander, Colonel Beauchamp. I transferred into counterterrorism after we were pulled out of Iraq.”

  “It sounds as though the brigadier has shown you my file already. So they brought you in after the dirty war?” Bruno asked. There had been a series of scandals followed by a massive purge of Spanish intelligence after state-sponsored death squads had been exposed for assassinating a number of Basque militants. Bruno was vague on the details, but he knew a lot of heads had rolled and a former interior minister had been jailed. He wanted none of that in St. Denis. It was bad enough thinking of that gangland-style killing back at the archaeological dig without contemplating some shadowy state officials plotting unlawful executions.

  “Long after,” said Carlos coolly. “Those GAL killings were back in the 1980s, even though the scandal broke later. Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación—we’re not like that now.”

  “The terrorists haven’t changed. ETA has killed over eight hundred people, half of them civilians,” snapped the brigadier. “If those Basque murder squads think they could take out a French and a Spanish minister with one attack, they’d take it, even if they do claim to be observing a cease-fire. That’s why it’s going to be top security here.”