The Crowded Grave

by Martin Walker

  “Give me a gun,” Bruno shouted at the mobiles, but they just stared at him as if he were mad, each of them trying to key his radio to find out what their orders were. Shouting curses at them, his pitchfork still in his hand, Bruno ran to the stable and mounted Hector. A cold rage in his heart for the killing of his dog, Bruno kicked his startled horse into life and rode out into the courtyard, knocking one of the mobiles aside and racing into the lane after the Range Rover.

  As Hector accelerated into a fast canter Bruno called on his mental map of the Domaine and the lane that Carlos was taking. It led to the main vineyard, where a military jeep would block the path. He’d have to turn aside, but if he found the track the tractors used to collect the grapes, he might be able to get back toward the avenue and take the side route to the road.

  The Range Rover was nearly six hundred feet ahead, but it was slowing and skidding. Carlos must have seen the jeep blocking the road before him. He tried to turn the vehicle, but as Bruno galloped forward, closing the distance, he saw one wheel of the vehicle leave the ground as the sturdy vine stumps blocked Carlos’s way. The Range Rover heaved back as Carlos threw the four-wheel drive into reverse. He began roaring back down the track toward Bruno, who could just see the Spaniard’s head through the rear windshield, trying to keep a straight line as he reversed at high speed. Bruno could see the front wipers swinging back and forth, still trying to clear the smeared windshield of the manure he had thrown.

  Suddenly the brake lights flared. Carlos must have seen the entry to the tractor track. Wheels spinning, the Range Rover surged forward again and turned onto the track. Bruno slowed his horse, and Hector found his way between the vine stumps and began to race his way along a row of vines that was parallel to the track, matching the vehicle’s speed as Carlos fought the wheel through the bumps and deep ruts the tractors had left.

  Carlos suddenly slowed, and Bruno saw the gun aiming at him through a side window. He ducked as Carlos fired, and pulled on the reins to slow Hector. Carlos braked and fired again, his vehicle veering to one side and bouncing back from a row of vine stumps as he almost lost control. Bruno was just one row from him now, and the valiant Hector was still racing between the vines. In the distance Bruno saw one of the jeeps racing to block the end of the track.

  Carlos must have seen it too. He tried to accelerate to force his way through the vine stumps but bounced back hard, two wheels in the air and almost turning the vehicle onto its side. The engine stalled, and the Range Rover was now stuck sideways on the track as Carlos tried to start it again.

  Time suddenly slowed, and Bruno saw Carlos’s bloodied face staring grimly at him through the open side window. The gun, Bruno’s reliable gun that did not jam, was rising in his hand when Bruno rose in the stirrups, and with all the force in his body and a great roar from deep in his throat he unleashed the pitchfork.

  It flew like a javelin through the side window. And with a flooding sense of satisfaction and vengeance Bruno watched as one shit-smeared tine went through the spokes of the steering wheel and the other plunged deep into Carlos’s arm.

  Bruno heard a shriek of pain from inside the car. The wooden haft of the pitchfork poked from the window.

  Then the engine caught. Carlos must have jammed his foot onto the accelerator, and the Range Rover surged forward at accelerating speed, bouncing off the row of vines with its engine screaming in the lowest gear. But ahead of him was a parked military jeep, a machine gun mounted on its rear and pointing down the track toward Carlos. He must have spun the wheel, for the vehicle swerved, plowing into the vine stumps. For a moment it seemed Carlos had forced his way through. But then it reared up on two wheels and fell hard onto its side with a crash of glass and metal that overwhelmed and then silenced a human scream.

  A plume of steam jetted from the battered radiator. There was no other sound.

  Hector had slowed, but Bruno leaped off before the horse stopped and advanced at a careful crouch toward the stricken Range Rover, his elation at Carlos’s defeat mixing with the uncomfortable knowledge that he was now unarmed. He reached the wreck just before the military jeep arrived.

  “I need a weapon,” Bruno shouted. The soldiers looked at him blankly. He glanced behind to see Hector raise his head at the familiar sound of racing hooves. The paratroop major del’Sauvagnac was coming up fast on his exhausted mare.

  “Give me a goddamn gun,” Bruno shouted again, and this time one of the paratroopers in the jeep handed him a FAMAS submachine gun, a weapon he knew so well he could have stripped and reassembled it in his sleep. He released and reseated the magazine, cocked it and advanced on the Range Rover, the wheels in the air still spinning, and tried in vain to see in through the smeared windshield. The rear was jammed against vine stumps and the glass cracked and smeared with earth. He had no idea what he might find inside, if he could ever get in to see.

  “Corporal, all of you here on the double,” shouted the major. “Get to the side of this damn truck and push it back onto its wheels.”

  He and the major helping, they rocked it back and forth until with a final heave it toppled in a slow, dignified fall one side a few inches off the ground by the vine stumps. The wheels still spun. It bounced hard and then settled, and Bruno could finally see inside.

  Carlos was pinned into his seat by the splintered haft of the pitchfork, his head hanging limply. Its tines were stuck into the instrument panel, one tine pinning his arm and the other through the spokes of the steering wheel. The broken haft had penetrated his chest. One airbag had been punctured and drooped over Carlos’s waist, slick with his blood. The passenger bag and the side bag held him upright. He was either unconscious or dead. Bruno poked him hard in the cheek with the muzzle of the gun. There was no reaction. The place stank of gasoline. He backed away.

  “Get him out, fast as you can,” said Bruno, forcing himself to think above the raw, warrior delight in victory that still flooded him. “Before the fuel tank goes up.”

  Another jeep appeared, bringing a soldier wearing a Red Cross armband. The wheels of the Range Rover had finally stopped spinning. Then Carlos was on the ground, his head lolling, the medical orderly working on him. Bruno restrained himself from going over to stamp his foot into the face of the man who had killed his dog.

  The orderly looked up and shook his head. “He’s had it, sir,” he addressed the major. “The splintered shaft went through his ribs and into his heart.”

  Somewhere behind him, Bruno heard the clatter of an approaching helicopter. He shivered, the delayed shock of being shot at finally hitting him. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He’d never take Gigi hunting again, never watch him search the woods for truffles, never feel that familiar warm tongue lick his face when it was time to wake up. Beneath the stink of oil and manure and shattered metal he could almost taste the scent of the fresh-turned earth, the hesitant green buds of the vines and the smell of a hard-ridden horse. He felt a nudge at his shoulder, and he turned to see Hector gazing at him. He buried his face in Hector’s warm neck, feeling guilty that he’d forgotten this morning to put any apples in the pockets of his best uniform.

  “Here,” said the major, handing Bruno a carrot. He spoke loudly, above the sound of the choppers. “I think your horse deserves this. But you can stand down now, it’s over.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Bruno, moving along Hector’s side to mount him again as the two helicopters passed overhead. “There’s a missing professor to be found, a friend of mine. They kidnapped him to make his brother help them.”

  “Want a hand?”

  “Probably. I’ll let you know over the radio.”

  “Where’s that dog of yours?”

  “That bastard shot him,” said Bruno, jerking his head back to the wrecked Range Rover. “He’s paid for it now.”

  He turned Hector’s head back up the lane and settled into a steady trot that ate up the distance. He could see the helicopters flaring in for their landing, and he felt rather than heard h
is phone ringing. He answered it, wanting to put a hand to his other ear but needing to hold the reins.

  “Bruno, is that you?” he heard Pamela say.

  “It’s me,” he said. “But it’s also helicopters. Hold on, they’ve landed and the noise will stop.”

  “How’s Hector?” he heard her ask, after a pause.

  “Magnificent, a hero horse, I’m riding him now,” he said, as the rotor blades slowed and halted. The noise died away and men scurried out as others saluted. He was about to tell her of Gigi’s death, but with a great effort that Pamela would never know he forced himself to hold his tongue and to think of Pamela. She had enough to cope with. “How’s your mother?”

  “No change, well, there is some change for the worse. She’s still in a coma, but she’s had a brain scan and there’s some damage. It looks as though there’s not much hope of a recovery.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. The sound of her voice triggered a different memory, of Isabelle in his arms the previous night. He shook it off. “Do you want me to come?”

  “No, I want you to stay and look after the horses and take care of things for me there. Are you busy?”

  “A bit,” he said. “But it’s all right. You must be tired, you’ve probably sat up with her all night.”

  “There was no point,” she said. “But it’s not easy sleeping. And I miss you.” She paused. “I presume those helicopters involve something you have to attend to. I’ll call again, take care.”

  As she hung up, his phone buzzed again, and he heard the familiar voice of the retired veteran from the military archives, saying he’d faxed a copy of Captain Carlos Gambara’s file from his time at Eurocorps.

  “It’s an interesting file, more for what it doesn’t say than for what it does,” he said. “No names of parents, which is unusual even for orphans. His education is listed as a church-run orphanage in Tarragona, and he joined the military as a boy-soldier at the age of fifteen, just like you.”

  “Thank you,” Bruno said, remembering that Tarragona had been the orphanage where Teddy’s father had been raised. “We’re just clearing up a terrorist incident here in which Gambara has died. You may or may not read about this, that’s not my decision. But would you have any contacts with your opposite number in the Spanish archives?”

  “I’m afraid not. But I’ve got a contact in the NATO registry who deals with them all the time.”

  After asking for any more information that could be obtained from NATO, Bruno hung up and rode into the stable yard with the ambulance following him, Carlos’s body inside. At the top of the steps, the double doors to the salon were closed, and Isabelle sat on the balustrade outside, holding the small stone pineapple that Carlos’s Range Rover had knocked from its pedestal. She put it to one side and rose to her feet as Bruno dismounted and climbed up the steps toward her.

  She looked weary beyond exhaustion, her hair tousled and her face frighteningly pale. He dragged his eyes away to look through the doors to the salon where Gigi had died. It seemed to be full of security men and medics bending over prone figures, blood smeared on the floor. Men were shouting, radios crackled and from a distance he heard ambulance sirens. He had steeled himself to see the body of his dog, but it wasn’t there.

  “If it wasn’t for Gigi he could have shot us both,” said Isabelle.

  He saw the tears in her eyes as he took her in his arms. She seemed to slump against him and from deep inside himself came a spasm of grief that turned into a sob so heavy it almost choked him. It felt like a release, that at last he could acknowledge the sense of loss. And his own tears spilled down his cheeks at the memory of Gigi, shot in the back but refusing to relax the grip of his jaws on the man who had attacked his master. He took a long breath, and caught the familiar scent of her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her. “I never thought that swordstick was real.”

  “Nor did I,” she said into the hollow of his neck, “until it worked. The bomb was in the flower urn.” She paused. “I had Gigi’s body taken away to be wrapped. You don’t want to see him.”

  “We can bury him at home, just behind the chicken coop where he used to go into the woods. It’s a good place,” he said. The rage he had felt at Gigi’s death had become something sadder and forlorn, a hollowness in his chest.

  “I’ll get you a new hound,” she said.

  “You’d better talk to the mayor about a puppy from his next litter. That’s where Gigi came from.” He paused, still holding her close, remembering Gigi clambering onto their bed and squirming to try to make a place for himself between them. “Where’s Jan, the blacksmith?”

  “Dying, but he’s told us where to find his brother. And he told us about the dynamite theft and the bomb at the foie gras factory. That was apparently Carlos’s idea, to distract us, like the bomb in his car. He set it himself, and sent one of our own people to start his car and get blown up.”

  She let him go and sat again on the balustrade, wincing as she straightened her bad leg. She leaned her cane against the stone and Bruno had a sudden recall of another stone balustrade on another day when Carlos had eaten his foie gras on the day they had met. Bruno asked where they would find Horst.

  “In an empty house they were using in St. Chamassy where Jan had installed a wrought-iron circular staircase. He knew the owners were still in Holland. He told us that the kid is armed who’s watching him, Galder, so we’re bringing in the hostage specialists.”

  “Whatever he did with Baader-Meinhof all those years ago, Jan saved us both,” said Bruno. “And with luck he’ll help us save his brother too.”

  “I have orders to keep you here and not tell you where Horst is,” she said. “And if you try to go and find him anyway, I’ll stab you with my swordstick.”

  “Okay,” he said, thinking that the first thing he should do was rub down Hector and find him the finest bucket of oats in St. Denis. Then they could go home and bury Gigi together.

  “And the brigadier says thanks. I think he’s planning to get you a six-gun and a Stetson.”

  “What about my sheriff’s star?” he said, trying to match her banter. What he really needed was a glass of water.

  “I’ll take care of that,” she said, and then looked away. “Just as soon as I get back to Paris tonight.”

  “Tonight?” It came as a thud in his stomach. They had shared just one night together. It didn’t seem fair. “So soon?”

  “The minister wants me and the brigadier to return on the helicopter with him. Then I have to go to Madrid to debrief the Spaniards. They’ll need to work out just how Carlos managed to get away with it for so long. Then it’s back to the hospital for the plastic surgery.”

  “You shouldn’t be back on that kind of duty yet,” he said. “You aren’t fully recovered.”

  “I’ll have some leave when I get out of the hospital. I want to be there to give you the new dog.” She turned to look at him, some life in her eyes at last. “Maybe you can take some time off from St. Denis.”

  He smiled at her, thinking how little she knew of life in the country. It was springtime. There was his vegetable garden to be planted, ducks and geese to be fed and horses to care for. But no Gigi. And then the tourist season would start again. There’d be no leave for Bruno until the autumn. A hunting season with no dog, an empty house without Gigi.

  “Can we slip away for lunch?”

  She shook her head. “Right now I have to draft a joint statement with the Spaniards on how Carlos Gambara died bravely while helping to frustrate a Basque ETA terrorist plot. But I’ll get Gigi’s name in there as a hero if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Acknowledgments

  Sometimes I get twinges of guilt when I think of the fictional murders and mayhem my tales of Bruno bring to the tranquil valleys of France’s Vézère and Dordogne rivers, where life is sweet and crime is rare. It must be stressed that like all the Bruno novels, this is a work of invention. The town of St. Denis does not exist. A few of the charac
ters may have originally been inspired by some of my friends and neighbors in the Périgord, but the people in my books and the plots are all dreamed up in my head.

  The archaeological details in The Crowded Grave are as correct as I can make them, in view of our still limited knowledge of the transition from the Neanderthal to the Cro-Magnon type of human beings some thirty thousand years ago. And while the genetic evidence seems clear that there was some interbreeding, I have invented my archaeologists and the discovery of such a family. The details in the text of the dirty war waged by some elements of the Spanish state against the Basque ETA terrorists are also historically correct. This book was completed before the latest ETA cease-fire brought the promise of a peaceful resolution of this conflict that has been under way for some forty years and more. Long may the cease-fire endure.

  As always, I am grateful to my friends in the various arms of the French police, to the people of the Périgord, and to the various tennis and rugby and hunting clubs who have brought much pleasure and bonhomie and magnificent food and drink to my life. The St. Exupéry family and their staff at the great vineyard of Château de Tiregand have my special gratitude for the splendid wines they make and for their welcome to me and thirsty crew of international journalists exploring Bruno country. Special thanks, as always, to Jane and Caroline Wood, who are probably getting tired of my saying they whip these books into shape when their touch is far more delicate; along with my U.S. editor, Jonathan Segal, they sculpt them into shape.

  Many friends and meals and restuarants inspire the cooking in the Bruno books, but each recipe must pass the expert eye of my wife, Julia Watson. Her expertise on food can be verified on her captivating blog eatwashington.com. I am also very grateful indeed for our daughter, Kate, who writes on motor sports for girlracer.com. She has taken over and invigorated and transformed the brunochiefofpolice.com Web site, which is becoming an ever more useful resource for the attractions, the food, the wine, and the history of the Périgord, and for the life and activities of Bruno and his friends. I recommend it to all Bruno fans.