The Crowded Grave bop-4

by Martin Walker

Bruno nodded. The mayor had sent him an SMS message telling him to be sure to buy a copy of the paper.

  “You can fix this, Bruno, the mayor listens to you. And once she recuses herself from the case, you’ve won. What more do you want?”

  “He listens, but he makes up his own mind, and he has to get reelected. So he’ll be thinking about the voters, which means the farmers and the people who work in the foie gras trade and the shops and the restaurants, and the accountants and businesspeople who depend on them-it’s most of the electorate.”

  “So what do you think we should do?”

  “In her shoes, I’d apply for a transfer to another district, somewhere urban where she can make a fresh start. I’m sorry, Fabiola, but short of her agreeing to eat foie gras on TV and say she likes it I’m not sure there’s an alternative.”

  26

  Strapped in tight, with his feet hard against the floor and his arms braced on the dashboard, Bruno was certain the car was going to hit the tree. But Annette twitched the steering wheel and seemed to be braking and accelerating at the same time as the small Peugeot went into a brief skid and then rocketed forward to the next turn. Over the howl of the engine he could hear the stones from beneath the trees being exploded against the untouched tree trunk. He was glad to be wearing the helmet that Annette gave him because his head slammed into the roof every time she flew over a bump. His neck muscles tired from resisting the constant g-forces. He was impressed by the obvious strength in Annette’s forearms as she kept the car under control at what seemed like insane speeds.

  “God, that makes me feel so much better,” Annette said as the car rocked backed and forth after a hand-brake turn that left Bruno dizzy. “Would you like to try another circuit or shall we head back?”

  “I think I have to get to work,” he said. “But thank you, it’s been a revelation. Where did you learn to drive so fast?” He was delaying the moment he’d have to get out of the car, not sure whether he was too disoriented to stand up straight.

  “In Madagascar. Most of the roads are like this, and there’s a lively culture in rallying.”

  “Do you kill many people-pedestrians, I mean?”

  “None yet.” Her face was flushed, animated. She still looked as if she were in her teens, but there was a self-confidence in her eyes from the display of her driving skills.

  “You love this, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” she said, grinning. “For once in my life, it’s me that’s in charge, with everything depending on me and my own abilities and on the training I’ve done. And of course it depends on the car, but I’m responsible for that too.” She turned out of the motor-cross circuit and onto the lane that led back to the road and then to Pamela’s house, where Bruno had left his car. “Do you mind if we stop in town to pick up a copy of Libe? They called me yesterday for an interview on this foie gras business. They were pretty hostile, which surprised me. I thought they’d have been sympathetic.”

  “I’d like a copy, so pick up two, and I’ll buy some croissants and we can have breakfast with Fabiola,” he said.

  Annette was tight-lipped and her face white when Bruno came back to the car with his bag of Fauquet’s croissants and baguettes. He was feeling rocked himself after looking at a message on his phone that had landed after he’d gone to sleep. From Isabelle, it had said she had dropped by his house after her dinner with the brigadier and Carlos, but was surprised to find it empty and no Gigi. She hoped he had a good night. What had she meant by that, he was asking himself when Annette, silent, passed him a copy of the newspaper and drove away fast before he could even fasten his seat belt.

  Fat Jeanne’s surprised face whished past as Annette’s tires squealed on the roundabout. Now the whole town would learn within the hour that Bruno had been seen in a car with St. Denis’s public enemy number one and was buying her breakfast before presumably racing back to the love nest where they had spent a night of passion.

  “Merde,” he said, but not about Fat Jeanne. He was looking at the front page. It was all about Annette.

  It showed a picture of her taken the previous day as she spoke to the TV reporter, looking cool and professional with not a hair out of place, and a screaming headline that read “Poor Little Rich Girl.”

  Beneath the photo was a copy of a caterer’s bill for thirty-two thousand euros for a luncheon for forty people. It was made out to a Monsieur Meraillon with an address in Neuilly, the plush inner suburb of Paris. One of the items on the bill, costing twenty-eight hundred euros, was a course of foie gras aux truffes. The newspaper had circled it in red ink. Just below it was an even higher charge for caviar.

  “Billionaire’s daughter and magistrate Annette Meraillon has declared war on ‘barbaric foie gras,’ but hedge-fund king Papa spends more than the average French annual income on a single lunch, with 2,800 euros for foie gras alone,” read the caption at the bottom of the page.

  Page 2 was dominated by a big photo of Maurice and Sophie at the door of their farmhouse. “It takes three months for the foie gras farmer she is hounding to earn as much as Papa spends on the stuff for a single course to treat his fat cat friends.”

  “And rich Papa wants YOU to pay for his foie gras fun” was page 3’s massive headline. It was all about Papa and his hedge fund, and the tax dispute that had put his lunch bill into the public domain as one item in the evidence. Apparently he had declared it as a business expense.

  “I don’t think I’ll join you for breakfast,” said Annette, as he turned to page 4’s headline, “War Against Foie Gras,” and its long article about PETA’s campaign, with a photo of Gravelle’s demolished showroom.

  “I’m sorry. This is… it’s unbelievable,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you. It’s guilt by association.”

  “I hardly ever talk to my father,” she said. “I only go home at Christmas and birthdays because of my mother, and he’s usually away in New York or London or somewhere.”

  Page 5 had photos of Papa’s other houses-one in the Caribbean, his penthouse in London, his chalet in Gstaad and his chateau in Compiegne, just north of Paris. Each of the photos carried a price tag. The sums added up to over twenty million euros.

  Page 6 had a large photo, which must have been taken by Philippe Delaron just after the hose was turned off, of Annette standing on the steps of the gendarmerie, doused in manure. Below it was Papa’s lunch bill in full. More than half the total was for wine. Bruno could not take his eyes off it. He had paid over ten thousand euros for a case of champagne, Krug Clos du Mesnil 1985, followed by a 2006 Puligny-Montrachet Chevalier at over three hundred euros a bottle, and twelve thousand euros for a case of the 1992 Cheval Blanc. Bruno had always assumed that some people lived like that, but he’d never seen it spelled out in black and white. And Papa wanted a tax deduction for it! He felt the kind of anger at the ways of rich financiers that was probably being felt all across France as people read their paper in disbelief.

  “Papa will not be pleased,” said Bruno.

  “On the contrary, he’ll probably be delighted,” she said as they turned into Pamela’s courtyard. She braked hard and sat with her hands clasped on the wheel, staring straight ahead, much as she had done on the day Bruno had first seen her.

  “It’s good publicity,” she went on. “A hedge-fund magnate has to show how successful he is. And he’ll be just as pleased at my humiliation. He never wanted me to go to Africa, nor to be a magistrate, nor to have any kind of job except working for him. I suppose he wanted a son to inherit the business and he got me instead. He even hates my being a rally driver.”

  She closed her eyes and let her head sink forward to rest on the steering wheel, as if the contact with her car gave her comfort.

  “And now I suppose I can never have a life of my own after this. People will never forget it.”

  “They will,” he said, patting her shoulder. “It doesn’t seem like it now, but people have short memories. And it doesn’t matter what they think. It ma
tters what you do, what you achieve, what you think. It also matters how you bounce back from this.”

  He persuaded her to go into Fabiola’s house, where she had coffee ready. She hadn’t seen the paper but knew all about it from the daily press review on France Inter’s morning news show. But instead of the sympathy that Bruno had expected, Fabiola stood with a wide grin on her face and a glass of champagne in each hand.

  “Well, that’ll teach you to call the neighbors barbaric,” she said. “Come on, cheer up and join in a toast to the most notorious woman in France for the next fifteen minutes-and you didn’t even have to sleep with a politician to get the title.”

  Annette froze, then shook her head, clenched her fists above her head and laughed. She took a glass from Fabiola and downed it fast.

  “Thank the Lord for you, Fabiola,” she said. “You’re right. There’s nothing to be done about it now so we might as well drink champagne.”

  “I pinched it from Pamela’s cellar,” Fabiola said. “I thought it probably counted as an emergency.”

  “I think she’d approve,” said Bruno. “If not, I’ll buy the replacement bottle.”

  Bruno downed his champagne and his coffee and wolfed his croissant before heading to his car to get to the chateau for the morning security meeting. After Isabelle’s late-night message, he planned to corner her to explain before the committee gathered. But as he slowed for the turn at Campagne, his phone rang and he answered automatically without looking at the screen. As soon as he heard the note of vengeful triumph in the mayor’s voice, he responded with a single word.

  “Overkill,” he said. “I’m worried it’s the kind of demolition that can do more harm than good. Hell, even I’m feeling sorry for her now.”

  “Is that why you were having breakfast with her?” the mayor asked, his voice grumpy at Bruno’s reaction.

  “No, I had breakfast with Fabiola,” Bruno said patiently, silently cursing Fat Jeanne, a woman he usually adored for her endlessly cheerful nature. “I’m staying at Pamela’s to look after the horses. Pamela’s mother had a stroke so she flew back to Scotland. Annette happened to be staying with her new friend Fabiola. She wanted to buy the papers, I wanted to buy the croissants.”

  “You think the Libe story was over the top? Everyone else thinks it’s wonderful, particularly after France Inter picked it up this morning.”

  “We wanted to isolate her, not destroy the woman. Anyway, I think she might have been ready to withdraw from the case even before this. If you get asked about this, you might consider taking the high ground, no visiting the sins of the father on the daughter. We’ve made our point. Leave the door open for a reconciliation. She’d certainly appreciate it just now.”

  The mayor was silent, but Bruno could hear him chewing on the stem of his pipe. “Interesting,” he said finally. “I’ll have to think about that. Meanwhile, am I meant to give a formal welcome to these two ministers tomorrow?”

  “I think they’re too worried about security for that, and with good reason. I can’t say any more.”

  “Tell me what you can, when you can,” said the mayor, and hung up.

  27

  Bruno made the 9:00 a.m. meeting by the skin of his teeth, having to park far from the chateau because of the military and gendarme vehicles filling its parking lot. There was no time to speak to Isabelle. And she was already distracted by the firearms report. Ballistics analysis had confirmed that the nine-millimeter automatic pistol that Bruno had found beneath the blacksmith’s coke pile was the gun that had killed Teddy’s father more than twenty years earlier.

  The British police had reported that Teddy’s mother had heard nothing from him since they had spoken the day after Horst’s lecture. She knew nothing of the discovery of the skeleton of Teddy’s father and had seemed truly stunned by the news. She was trying to help a British police artist create an Identi-Kit sketch of the only contact she had with Todor’s family, a cousin named Fernando who visited occasionally with gifts for Teddy. What she had been able to provide was the news that the authorities in Madrid had not yet been able to deliver-the date and place of birth for her Basque lover.

  “We’d better check that thoroughly,” said Carlos. “It’s always possible that he didn’t give her the right date. I’m sorry, but it seems we’re having trouble back in Madrid tracking anything about this guy.”

  “False dates of birth are standard procedure for these people,” said the brigadier, diplomatically trying to spare Carlos embarrassment. The minister must have insisted the Spaniards be treated with every consideration, Bruno thought.

  The brigadier ran through the arrangement for the security cordons and mobile patrols, giving brief credit to Bruno although the committee had now been joined by a tough-looking young paratrooper major. He’d have been a junior lieutenant when Bruno had served with them, but there was no look of recognition. With a final pep talk on the need for the Basques to be found before the scheduled summit the next day, the brigadier closed the meeting having said nothing of the backup plan he had arranged at the Domaine.

  “Could the reason why Madrid can’t trace this man be linked to the desparicedos from Franco’s time?” Isabelle asked Carlos as they headed out the door. Bruno had heard of the “disappeared ones” in Argentina, when people were rounded up and arrested, never to be seen again. But he’d never come across the term in the context of Spain.

  “I was wondering that myself,” said Carlos, nodding solemnly. He turned aside and asked one of the security guards to bring his car around from the hotel. Then he seemed to notice Bruno’s raised eyebrows and stopped to explain. It had happened earlier in the Franco period, after the civil war and the world war, when the Spanish dictator was still terrified of the left. Women militants would have their babies in prison, who would then be taken away to church orphanages or to be adopted by reliable Spanish families. This had been standard treatment for Communist militants but also for the Basques.

  “If it did happen that way, the boy would never have been given the name ‘Todor’ in an orphanage,” Carlos added. “The Basque children were always given Spanish names to break the link with the real parents. They were usually dead anyway.”

  Isabelle nodded and turned to Bruno. “I saw what the newspapers did to that magistrate of yours this morning. Ugly. Remind me never to take on St. Denis.”

  “I’m not proud of it.”

  “Were you involved? It didn’t seem like your kind of strategy, even if she did try to get you fired.”

  “It wasn’t, but there’s no point making excuses. I suppose we’re all responsible.”

  Carlos shrugged and walked on to the communications center. Bruno and Isabelle were left alone.

  “Sorry I missed you last night,” he said. “I was staying at Pamela’s, looking after the horses. I told you, she had to go back to Scotland to look after her mother.”

  “I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I was depressed and lonely. It was Gigi I wanted to see as much as you.” She gave a half smile, but her eyes were fond. “Brigadier permitting, shall we have dinner tonight?”

  “Of course,” he said. His heart gave a lurch. “Home or restaurant?”

  “Home, with Gigi,” she said. “But it’ll have to be quick. This chaos here will get worse all day and later tonight, and probably stay that way until the deal is signed and the ministers have gone.”

  If she thought this was chaos, wait until the brigadier announced the move to the backup plan tomorrow morning, Bruno said to himself. A voice was calling for Isabelle from down the hall. It sounded like the brigadier. She headed along the corridor, trying not to limp and aware of his eyes following her, at one point putting out her cane as if about to stumble. Bruno forced himself to turn away, thinking she’d hate him to see her like this.

  Suddenly there came an explosion and the sound of breaking glass and car horns. Isabelle tottered and half fell against the wall as confused shouting came from the stairway. Bruno ran to her, but she pus
hed him away, telling him to find out what was happening. He leaped down the stairs to the front entrance to find the door blocked by a knot of gendarmes and black-garbed security men. They were looking across the chateau’s park and its railings to the hotel parking lot across the road, where a plume of black smoke rose from a fireball in which Bruno could see the skeleton of Carlos’s Range Rover.

  “Get the fire extinguishers,” Bruno shouted, grabbing the only one he could see. “Somebody call an ambulance and the pompiers.”

  He forced his way through the throng of confused men and down the steps and ran up the long drive to the main gates of the chateau. He heard steps pounding behind him and saw Carlos, the only other man who seemed to have found an extinguisher, and they ran on together. The sentry box at the open gates was unmanned, its two guards tumbling from the hotel, each carrying a small hand-sized fire extinguisher in one hand and holding a soaked washcloth against his face with the other. As Bruno approached the searing heat from the burning vehicle, he understood their precaution even as he wondered how they were hoping to use the extinguishers with only one hand.

  “Was anyone inside?” Bruno shouted.

  One of the guards gestured wildly. Behind the neighboring cars, its windshield cracked by the explosion, the innkeeper had covered a heap on the ground with an overcoat and was reaching to turn on the tap of a garden hose. The water sputtered and then spurted out, and he pointed it at the overcoat and then lifted the coat to play it on the smoldering form beneath. The form moved, turned over and tried to get to its feet as Carlos turned his extinguisher on the car that sheltered the innkeeper and the charred security guard. The chorus of a dozen car horns played on.

  Suddenly a throng of people seemed to be around them, foam erupting over the wreck of Carlos’s vehicle, the security guard who had been covered by an overcoat retching but evidently alive as he was helped to his feet.

  Bruno looked at Carlos, arms on his hips and his back hunched, staring grimly at the glowing shell of his car, the emptied fire extinguisher between his feet.