A Taste for Vengeance

by Martin Walker

  “This is Sylvain, chess champion of the cheminots,” said Juliette. A young man with a goatee turned from the coffee machine, kissed Juliette on both cheeks and held out a hand to Bruno.

  “You must be Bruno. How do you like your coffee?” he asked.

  “Black, no sugar, thanks.”

  “So you’re the guy who lured Juliette off the rails?” said Sylvain, smiling before bending to take cups from a cupboard. “The railways aren’t the same without her.” He looked at Juliette. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m sure we’d all love to have you back on the service. At least our uniforms fit, which is more than I can say for the outfit you’ve got on.”

  He suddenly noticed Balzac and kneeled down to caress the dog. Then he reached into the cupboard, brought out a packet of cookies and told his guests to help themselves.

  “Is it okay if I give him one?” he asked Bruno. “I had an uncle who had a basset, a lovely dog. What’s his name?”

  “Balzac,” said Bruno, enjoying once again the way his dog made friends wherever he went. It made his job much easier. “And he’ll be your friend for life after you give him that cookie.”

  Sylvain poured out three coffees and then pulled a small computer from his official shoulder bag, which was hanging from a hook beside the bookshelves. Bruno recognized it as the digital system for checking rail tickets. Sylvain pressed two buttons, entered what seemed to be a password and then began scrolling through various screens.

  “Monika Felder bought her ticket by computer from England, paid with an English credit card and printed it out herself. She paid full price so she could have taken any train irrespective of peak or off-peak periods for the rest of this month.” Sylvain spoke clearly in a precise manner that would have made him an excellent witness in court, Bruno thought.

  Sylvain looked up. “We don’t take reservations on this line, so she wasn’t limited to any particular day. She took the daily 14:05 train from Bordeaux St. Jean the day before yesterday and I checked her ticket before Bergerac. Because it was a printout, I had to read it with my scanner, which is why we have all these details. She was the kind of woman you notice, well dressed, striking. She asked me about return trains next Sunday, saying she had an afternoon flight that afternoon. I recommended that she take the 9:05, getting into Bordeaux St. Jean at 11:55, in time for the airport shuttle at noon.”

  “Do you know at which station she got off?”

  “I’m sure it was Lalinde, even though her ticket went all the way to Le Buisson. As the conductor, I have to be on the platform at each stop so I can be sure everybody’s clear before I give the signal to the driver to start off again. So I remembered her, and the man she was with.”

  “What man? Was he on the train with her?”

  “Yes, they were chatting away in English when I checked her ticket. He didn’t have one, said in good French that he hadn’t had time to buy one at the station, so he paid in cash. But he had a Grand Voyageur card, which got him a small reduction.”

  Bruno knew about this frequent traveler card. He’d have bought one himself but his police identity card got him even better reductions. “So you have the number of this man’s card.”

  “More than that,” said Sylvain proudly. “Thanks to the card, we’ve got his name and address on file. His name is Patrick James McBride and he lives at Sainte Colombe, wherever that is. But the postcode starts with 24, so it’s in this département.”

  “I know it,” said Juliette, opening her phone and accessing the local phone book. “It’s north of Lalinde, on the way to St. Marcel. There’s a landline listed for him.”

  Bruno checked his watch as she began to dial. There wasn’t enough time to get there and back before the parade was scheduled. Juliette shook her head to say there was no answer. She left a message, asking McBride to call her back.

  “How did these two people seem to you?” Bruno asked. “You said they were chatting away. Like old friends? Or strangers striking up an acquaintance?”

  “I don’t think they were married—they seemed too interested in each other for that. She was being flirtatious and he was being appreciative, you know, like people looking forward to jumping into bed together.”

  “I never knew you were such a romantic, Sylvain,” said Juliette, rolling her eyes.

  “You bring out the best in me,” he replied with a sly grin. Bruno got the impression this wasn’t the first time he’d flirted with Juliette, and that she had no intention of responding.

  “Thanks for your help,” said Bruno as they finished their coffee.

  When they returned to St. Denis, Louis was still in the café, installed at a small table at the rear, drinking a petit blanc with two hunters, arguing happily about the merits of various guns pictured in the issue of Le Chasseur Français that lay open before them.

  Bruno told Juliette that he would briefly check his messages and install Balzac in his office and rejoin them in time for whatever sort of parade the mayor had arranged. But as he approached the mairie’s main door, the mayor’s secretary, Claire, emerged carrying a dog leash and a large suit carrier. Claire was a relentless flirt, especially around Bruno.

  “Bonjour, Bruno. The mayor wants Balzac to be there,” Claire said, waving the dog leash and batting her eyelashes. “I’ll take good care of him. And the mayor says you have to wear this, so take off your old jacket.”

  She handed him the suit carrier. Bruno unzipped it to find a new uniform jacket with the two broad white stripes of a chef de service principal on his epaulette. While Claire attached Balzac’s leash, Bruno ducked inside the mairie’s entrance to change. It was a kindly gesture, he thought, but they could simply have put the new epaulettes on the old jacket that he’d just had cleaned.

  At that point, a van full of gendarmes came up the rue de la République, followed by a familiar Citroën with its telltale double aerial of a police vehicle, plus another official-looking car. The van double-parked while the occupants descended. At that moment Bruno realized what a serious ceremony the mayor had planned. Yveline, commandante of the gendarmes of St. Denis, marshaled her troops into two ranks, stood them to attention and saluted as the prefect and the procureur of the département, each in uniform, emerged from the official car.

  Prunier, the commissaire de police for the whole department, was also in uniform. He and Jean-Jacques, the chief detective known to all as J-J, climbed out of J-J’s Citroën. Bruno counted each man as a friend. Years ago he had played rugby for the army against a police team that had included Prunier, an acquaintance that had led to an invitation to dine at Prunier’s home and meet his wife and children. Prunier had done a fine job in modernizing the force and raising its morale. Bruno had worked with him on a couple of sensitive cases and had come to trust his judgment and to admire the man’s finesse in navigating the complex politics of the region. In the ten years that Bruno had worked with J-J, the chief detective had become a valued colleague and a regular dining companion. Bruno suspected that his relationship with each man depended to a considerable extent upon his independence. As an employee of the mayor of St. Denis, Bruno was not in the usual police chain of command. Had he been their subordinate, neither Prunier nor J-J could have been nearly so cordial.

  The two top policemen of the département came up to shake his hand as the mayor, wearing his tricolor sash of office, stepped out from the mairie. He was followed by the mayors of Les Eyzies and Montignac, and then by the mayors of all the other communes whose populations were too small to justify their own policeman: Limeuil, Audrix, St. Cirq, Campagne, St. Chamassy, Thonac and Tursac. When had this been planned? Bruno wondered. And how had they organized this sizable assembly without his knowledge?

  After hands had been shaken all around, two of Bruno’s friends came out of the mairie. The baron was carrying the flag of les anciens combattants, the military veterans, and Xavier, the deputy mayor, was ca
rrying the red, white and blue flag of France.

  “You take your place behind the gendarmes,” the baron whispered to Bruno as he went past to the head of the parade. Then the school band appeared from behind the mairie, playing “La Marche Lorraine,” the marching tune of the French army.

  The two flag bearers led them all across the bridge to the parking lot, where a gendarme lifted the metal barrier that had closed it to the public and saluted as they marched past him. They drew up before the town war memorial, a statue of a French soldier of the Great War standing on guard with bayonet fixed over a fallen comrade. The bronze cockerel atop the obelisk that contained the names of the town’s war dead had been newly polished. A crowd had gathered, mainly employees from the mairie and their families. Some of the shopkeepers and local residents had joined them, along with Philippe Delaron, camera in hand. Beside him stood a local radio reporter with microphone outstretched. The mayor, the prefect and the procureur stepped onto a small dais that had been placed before the memorial and the band fell silent.

  “Benoît Courrèges, chief of police of St. Denis, come forward,” the mayor commanded. Bruno stepped forward smartly and saluted.

  “Do you solemnly swear to uphold the laws of the Republic as chef de service principal of the police municipale for the Vézère Valley?” the mayor asked.

  “I swear,” Bruno replied.

  “Do you swear to observe the discipline and regulations of the Police Nationale as an officier judiciaire with the rank of lieutenant?” This time it was the procureur who administered the oath as the chief judicial officer of the département; Bruno had not expected this.

  “I swear,” he repeated, wondering just how many people could now claim some authority over him.

  “Chef de Police Courrèges, step forward,” commanded the prefect. And as Bruno advanced to stand to attention before him, the prefect took from an aide the small silver medal with its red, white and blue ribbon and pinned it onto Bruno’s chest.

  “In the name of a grateful Republic and by decree of the Minister of the Interior, I hereby present you with the police Médaille d’Honneur, for distinguished service,” the prefect announced. He stepped back and he and Bruno exchanged salutes. The band began to play the “Marseillaise” and the flags rose, which meant Bruno had to maintain his salute until the national anthem ended. Then the small crowd applauded and the parade was over.

  It was a strange moment, with a touch of sadness about it as Bruno realized that his professional life was about to change. No longer would he be responsible solely for St. Denis, a town of just under two thousand souls, with another thousand scattered across the hills and valleys, the woodlands and plateaus of the vast commune that surrounded the town itself. He knew someone in every household, or at least every family in this commune, which was larger than the city of Paris. Most of them were friends and there were few homes where he was not welcome, where he had not shared a meal or a drink, or danced at a wedding, held the baby at a baptism or helped carry the coffin at a funeral. He was as much a part of the flow of the town’s life as the mayor, the priest and the Vézère River itself.

  Bruno could not even calculate how many people now lived in this new fiefdom of the whole valley that he had to police, but there had to be close to twenty thousand of them. He could never hope to develop among so many people the intimacy of his relationship with St. Denis. That personal knowledge, Bruno knew, had always been the key to his work as a country policeman. He would have to try to train his colleagues in his methods, he concluded as the parade ended, the gendarmes were ordered to fall out and the dignitaries stepped down from the dais.

  Bruno thanked them all, and then the various mayors came up and he shook each of their hands and kissed the mayoress of Thonac on both cheeks. In the back of his mind he was thinking that Louis had been born and raised in Montignac, and despite his grumpy moods, he was a well-known and familiar figure. Bruno could not expect to change him and did not intend to try. He would focus instead on picking and training Louis’s successor. Juliette, however, seemed far more promising; quick-witted and engaging, she came with her own useful network of contacts among the cheminots.

  He gave boilerplate replies to the two reporters, saying he was proud and honored to be given the new job and what a privilege it was to serve the people of the Vézère Valley. He was careful to call it la Vallée de l’Homme, the cradle of humankind, as the tourist board sought to label this region so rich in prehistoric sites and remains. Finally he escaped and strode quickly back across the bridge to the mairie.

  “You’re improperly dressed, Lieutenant” came a familiar voice, and J-J loomed up beside him. “Since you are now attached to the Police Nationale and our nation’s president has declared a state of emergency, you’re going to have to wear a weapon at all times on duty. You’ll have to give up that old blunderbuss you use and start carrying the approved firearm, a new SIG Sauer. I’ve got one ready for you at HQ and you’ll be given a familiarization course on the range. You’ll have to bring in your old PAMAS.”

  “Why do we keep changing the personal weapons like this?”

  “Because unlike the Americans we don’t have hundreds of millions of civilians with firearms,” J-J said as they reached the mairie. “The only way we keep the European arms industry going is by buying new ones, different weapons for the police and the army, the gendarmes and the navy.”

  Never one to forgo an opportunity of politicking among the other mayors and the state officials, the mayor had arranged a vin d’honneur to celebrate Bruno’s promotion, followed by a lunch to cement relations with them all. Standing outside the mairie, Bruno quickly called his colleague at Lalinde, an ex-serviceman named Quatremer, and asked if he knew a foreigner, McBride, in Sainte Colombe. No, came the reply, but did Bruno want him to check on the man? Bruno said he’d be grateful and gave the address. He then climbed the old and well-worn stone stairs to the council chamber, where the ancient wood table was laid for a formal lunch, the mayor holding court for his guests while Claire circled with a tray of glasses holding champagne.

  Bruno checked the menu card. They would be eating foie gras with a glass of sweet, golden Monbazillac wine, followed by fresh trout with toasted almonds, accompanied by a white wine from the town vineyard, then cheese and salad, tarte au citron and coffee. That meant four, maybe five speeches, Bruno calculated. The mayor would offer a few words of welcome. After the foie gras Bruno would doubtless be expected to speak, and Bossuet from the regional council would deliver his remarks after the fish, leaving the closing words to the prefect, as senior representative of the French state.

  “I had to check with the protocol department of the Ministry of Defense about your new medal and where you should wear the ribbon,” said the prefect as they ate their foie gras. “Apparently, your Croix de Guerre takes precedence, so that comes first on the breast, with the Médaille d’Honneur alongside.”

  “Thank you, monsieur,” said Bruno. “I wouldn’t have known.”

  “It’s quite a feather in our caps for this département to be chosen for the pilot program on police reform. I gather the justice minister insisted after the report from that young woman from Guadeloupe who did the survey. Apparently she’s the minister’s political protégée.”

  “Amélie Duplessis,” said Bruno. “She’s really impressive. Did you know she’s also a professional jazz singer? She’ll be coming down this summer to perform at our summer concerts.”

  So the lunch passed, with political gossip, political speeches, and Bruno’s own brief remarks, limited to his thanks to all present, his pleasure in his new colleagues and his good fortune in living in such a peerless part of France that his trips back and forth up the valley would make duty into a pleasure.

  The prefect had barely sat down after his own speech and the coffee been served when Bruno’s phone vibrated. It was Quatremer in Lalinde, to say that Bruno sho
uld come right away and bring Jean-Jacques. McBride’s home was now a crime scene.

  Chapter 3

  Prunier agreed to drive back to Périgueux with the prefect so J-J could use his own car. Bruno joined J-J to brief him on the way, Juliette following in Bruno’s van. It would be her first serious crime scene, Bruno thought, and without her knowledge of the rail ticket system, the murder could have gone unknown for some time.

  McBride’s home was charming, an old L-shaped stone farmhouse with a well-tended potager filled with the green tops of young carrots and radishes, beans, peas and a row of piled earth that promised asparagus. A mud-spattered Range Rover was parked beside a small tractor in the adjoining barn, which also contained a neat woodpile, the pump for the swimming pool and the oil-fueled furnace for central heating. At the far end of the barn stood a workbench with a fine collection of tools that included a circular saw and a lathe.

  In front of the house was a big courtyard with a large linden tree in the center, surrounded by a neat herb garden that circled the trunk. Pots of young geraniums added splashes of color, and against one stretch of stone wall a small raised garden had been built, from which roses climbed toward the windows of the upper floor. A crude wooden table surrounded by six chairs stood in the angle between the two wings of the farmhouse. Its main entrance seemed to be the open French windows where Quatremer was waiting for them.

  “The door was open when I got here,” said Quatremer. “I called out but there was no reply so I went in to look around, not touching anything. It all seemed normal and tidy until I looked in the bathroom. That’s when I called your office, J-J, and then I called Bruno since he’d asked me to check on the owner.”

  J-J nodded and told them all to put on evidence gloves and plastic bootees to cover their feet. Bruno always kept some in his car. J-J then led the way through a handsome sitting room at least six meters square. Several Persian rugs that looked expensive lay on the tiled floor. The remains of a wood fire in the cheminée had burned to ashes, although Bruno noticed radiators to each side of the entrance doors and more under each window. A small hand ax was propped against the bricks of the cheminée, as though used to chop kindling.