The Coldest Case

by Martin Walker

  ‘You mean your mother is dead?’ J-J asked, in a voice that carried his disappointment at learning that his key witness was no longer available. This was news to him, to Prunier and to Bruno.

  ‘Yes, sir. Last year. Cancer. At least she didn’t get to know that Louis had been killed in Mali.’

  ‘Did you have any idea that your mother had this – er – extramarital liaison that produced your brother?’ Prunier asked, trying to use a gentle voice.

  ‘No, sir. I don’t think anybody did. Except maybe Tante-Do, I mean Dominique. That’s what I always called her. They lived in the next street so we were always in and out of each other’s homes. If anybody can help you, she can. She and Mum were as close as sisters except they never seemed to have a row. They used to go on holiday together. I know they came to these parts for a final girls’ fling just before the wedding. I was thinking on the train and I reckon that could have been the time that Mum had her little – I don’t know what to call it – accident? Adventure?’

  ‘I think the term “girls’ final fling” should cover it,’ said Bruno, and then caught himself, wishing he’d remained silent. He was relieved to see Sabine smile.

  ‘I suppose it would,’ she said, glancing at him and still smiling, but more to herself than to him. ‘Funny how you never think of your mum that way, young and silly and having fun, getting drunk and making mistakes. I suppose we all have to be young once. Even you, messieurs.’

  Sabine glanced at J-J, a man approaching retirement, and then at the middle-aged Prunier and at Bruno without the least embarrassment at the clear implication that she saw them all as verging on the prehistoric. Behind her, Bruno noticed, Yveline was trying to suppress a grin. He gave her a discreet wink and then leaned forward to get Sabine’s attention.

  ‘When you said your mother and her best friend came to these parts for that last fling before the wedding itself, do you mean they came here to Périgueux or somewhere near here?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure where it was but it was some kind of local folk festival called a félibrée where there was lots of music and dancing. It was Tante-Do’s idea to go camping but I forget where it was exactly. Tante-Do would know. It was like a private joke between her and Mum. They’d say to one another, “Do you remember the félibrée?” Or sometimes they’d refer to the “Bois de la Vézère”, which I think was the name of the campsite. And then they’d both giggle like a pair of schoolgirls and tease me about being far too young for it.’

  ‘The wedding was in July, 1989, and your brother was born, when – in March the following year?’

  ‘Yes, April third, he was a Pisces. I’m a Scorpio. My brother really was a Pisces, always loved the water, swam like a fish.’

  The room fell silent for a moment as everyone mentally counted the months of gestation and tried to work out when it was that the unknown Oscar had impregnated Sabine’s mother, and just how long that might have been before he had met his own death.

  ‘In the first week of July, 1989, the annual félibrée to celebrate the Occitan language and culture was held in St Denis,’ Bruno said, knowing that he did not have to explain the event to J-J and Prunier. The city of Périgueux had recently been the location for the hundredth anniversary of the festivity.

  ‘It was long before my time and we haven’t had one in St Denis since,’ Bruno continued. ‘But that’s where Oscar’s body was buried. Sorry, I should explain that Oscar was the name J-J gave to the unknown murder victim. It’s reasonable to suppose that the St Denis félibrée was where and when your brother was conceived.’

  ‘It’s time we went to your home in Bordeaux to get the family photos, talk to your father and interview this Tante-Do,’ said J-J, lumbering to his feet. ‘If anyone can tell us what happened at St Denis it will be her.’

  ‘I’d rather go alone, at least to talk to my father,’ Sabine said, her chin thrusting even more forward. ‘It’s just him and me now and he knows nothing of all this. Coming after Louis’s death, it will be quite a blow for him and he’s not in good health.’

  ‘No, it’s not just you and him. There’s also the issue of an unsolved murder and you’re a cop,’ J-J said bluntly. ‘He may be your father but he’s the only one I can see at this stage with a motive for murder. He’s my lead suspect.’

  ‘You’ll have trouble getting much out of him,’ Sabine replied coldly. ‘He’s got early onset Alzheimer’s so he’s been in a home since Mum went into hospital for the last time. We’ll be lucky if he recognizes me or understands what we’re asking him.’

  8

  J-J was sufficiently sensitive to wait with the car while Sabine went in to the nursing home where her father lived, close to the university on the western fringes of Bordeaux and the vineyards of Haut-Brion and Pape Clément. Bruno, who had been in the rear seat between Yveline and Sabine, got out to stretch his legs. J-J, in the front passenger seat beside his aide and usual driver, Josette, clambered out to lean against the bonnet and light a cigarette. He must have craved one, never allowing himself to smoke when others were in the car.

  ‘We might get something from the photo albums even if Sabine’s father can’t tell us anything useful,’ Bruno said.

  ‘I’m pinning my hopes on this Tante-Do, and maybe on that facial reconstruction,’ J-J replied. ‘It’s hard, running into this setback after getting my hopes up with the DNA findings. I was wondering if there’s anything to be learned in St Denis. Maybe you can pick something up from the campsite the two girls visited.’

  ‘It’s still there, in the same family, and the grandparents who used to run it are still around. I’m sure they’ll help if they can but it’s a long time ago.’

  ‘You think I’m on a wild goose chase, don’t you?’ J-J turned to face him.

  ‘No,’ Bruno replied firmly. ‘I got this started again with the facial reconstruction theory. I know it’s a long shot, but this is a murder. We have a duty to press on. And maybe we can at least get a photo or a reconstructed face, enough to help find out who he was.’

  Sabine came to the door and gestured for J-J to join her. In the car, they had agreed that squeezing all of them into the old man’s room wouldn’t be a good idea. Bruno looked at the handsome old mansion that had been recently converted into a nursing home and research centre into senile dementia. It was a fine house, eighteenth century perhaps, with tall windows and surrounded by pleasant gardens. Some patients sat in wheelchairs in the shade beneath a few large lime trees that looked almost as old as the house. Some of the old people had small dogs on their laps. Bruno had read that such pets helped to connect the inmates to the real world and improved their health as well as their moods. That made sense to him.

  ‘Heaven spare us from ending up in a place like this,’ said Yveline. ‘It seems a sick joke on the part of the Almighty, to grant us longevity but take our brains away.’

  ‘I don’t think the Almighty had anything to do with it. Modern medicine, better diets, and maybe doctors are better at diagnosing it, even if they can’t cure it,’ Bruno said. He recalled what his aunt’s doctor at the hospital had said about one in seven in the region being over the age of seventy-five and repeated the statistic to Yveline.

  ‘Putain, what’s that going to do to our taxes?’ she asked. ‘Maybe J-J has a point in smoking. That’ll probably kill him before he goes gaga.’ She looked across the car at Bruno. ‘Tell me, do you ever think about euthanasia?’

  ‘Not really.’ He was surprised by her question. ‘There’s no simple answer. I can think of circumstances where it makes sense, but I can also see it opening the way to a great deal of abuse. And it would put a heavy burden on the medics we’d expect to do it.’

  ‘So we stick with the law as it stands, even though we know the law is sometimes an ass?’

  ‘So long as the laws are made by deputies we elect, we stick by those laws. As cops we swore to uphold them. It’s not th
e laws that are an ass, it’s us, the people and the deputies who make the laws. The laws change along with us. When we were born, Yveline, both abortion and homosexuality were illegal. Even slavery used to be legal. Maybe we change too slowly, but at least we change.’

  The main door opened, J-J holding it for Sabine who was carrying a stack of photo albums. Once she stepped out, J-J offered her a clean handkerchief, took the books from her and came to the car, leaving Sabine standing by the door, her face turned away, her shoulders shaking. Yveline walked past J-J and stood beside Sabine, putting an arm around her shoulder. Bruno heard Sabine tell Yveline that she ought to be accustomed by now to her father’s condition but each time it depressed her anew.

  ‘He didn’t even recognize his own daughter,’ J-J said, his voice solemn. He stood by the back of the car while Bruno opened it so he could put the photo albums beside Sabine’s luggage. ‘The poor devil is in a different world altogether. He couldn’t stop reciting something like a shopping list or an inventory of groceries, over and over. Sabine said he used to be deputy manager of a supermarket. That’s where he met her mother who worked on the checkout. I don’t think the poor old guy ever knew we were there, not me, not his daughter.’

  J-J let out a long breath. ‘Putain, this job. Sometimes it gets to you. It’s never the obvious things, the decomposed bodies, not even the women and kids beaten up, those little bloodied faces that break your heart. It’s something you just don’t expect, like trying to make contact with this old . . . this human vegetable.’

  He lit another cigarette, breathed in deeply, coughed hard and spat. ‘Right, on to Tante-Do at the beauty parlour.’

  Her place was larger than Bruno had expected, filling both sides of a double-fronted modern building on a busy street. The beauty parlour and a hairdresser shared the same entrance and seemed to be two parts of a single business. The hairdresser’s premises went back about twenty metres and looked two-thirds full. The beauty parlour smelled of scent and was smaller than the hairdresser’s place, little more than a receptionist’s desk and a counter where two women were having their nails done. They turned to stare as the receptionist gave a professional smile of greeting that stayed fixed on her face even as the police uniforms piled in behind J-J. Behind her were two doors, one marked Salon and the other Spa.

  ‘Madame Dominique?’ asked Sabine. The receptionist stared briefly at the uniforms and then pointed them to the stairs between the two businesses, saying they’d find her in the office on the next floor.

  ‘Sabine, what a pleasure!’ exclaimed the elegant, carefully coiffed woman. She was extremely thin with a complexion that looked as white and smooth as porcelain. She rose from behind a modern desk covered with sheaves of papers. She was wearing a pleated white blouse with a high collar and a neck scarf. She must have kicked off her shoes beneath the desk because she shuffled her feet a little and suddenly seemed five or six centimetres taller when she stood. Bruno had worked out that she must be in her early fifties but to his eye she looked no more than forty, until he looked at her hands. Beside her desk was an old-fashioned wooden hat stand on which hung a medical-style white coat.

  ‘And are these your colleagues?’ she went on, as she came from behind the desk to embrace Sabine. She spoke brightly, although she could not have missed the uniforms that meant this was no friendly visit. ‘Please, all of you, come into my room at the back. I assume you’re here on business.’

  Sabine returned her embrace before introducing J-J, who showed his police ID, allowed Bruno’s and Yveline’s uniforms to speak for themselves and followed Dominique into a comfortable sitting room. A half-open door revealed a kitchen, and some carpeted stairs led presumably to bedrooms. Bruno assumed that she lived here, above the shop.

  ‘Madame, we are investigating a murder that we believe took place during the St Denis félibrée that you and Sabine’s mother attended some thirty years ago on the eve of her wedding,’ J-J began, and went on to explain Oscar’s discovery at St Denis and the new DNA evidence. ‘It seems very likely to us that you were with Sabine’s mother when she had her liaison with the man who was then murdered. We are hoping you can help us discover who exactly he was.’

  Tante-Do sat back looking stunned as she stared at J-J, then at Bruno and Yveline before her gaze came to rest on Sabine. Slowly her features relaxed into a sad smile.

  ‘So the family secret finally comes out,’ she said, addressing Sabine as if the others weren’t present. ‘I’m sorry it had to come out like this, Sabine. Your mum never wanted you or your dad or poor little Louis to find out. Not that she ever regretted her brief adventure, and believe me, nor did I.’

  Tante-Do gave a grin which made her look much younger and then chuckled with what Bruno assumed was a happy memory. ‘I only knew him as Max and he came from somewhere in Alsace,’ she said, lighting a cigarette. After her initial shock she appeared unfazed by the police visit and the questions.

  ‘Max was a good-looking guy, a bit of a blond beast, and I might have been interested but I had my own mec, his friend Henri. In fact it was Henri who picked me up first and then your mum and Max really took to each other. He was a great dancer. We had a very happy weekend together, the four of us, and then on the Sunday morning they vanished, just disappeared.’ She paused, as if suddenly recalling the social niceties. ‘Can I offer you some coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said J-J, putting his phone on the coffee table between them. ‘I’ll take a formal statement later but for the moment I’m recording, if you have no objection. It has no legal status but it will help to jog my memory – and perhaps yours – when you give the formal statement that I’m afraid we are legally obliged to take.’

  Tante-Do shrugged and J-J said, ‘The witness has signalled her agreement to the recording.’

  ‘I was against the marriage from the start,’ she began and then glanced up at Sabine. ‘Sorry, Sabine, but your dad was too old and too boring for your mum. I think he represented stability, reliability if you like, and that was what she craved. You may not know this but your grandfather, your mother’s dad, walked out on his family when your mum was little. He just disappeared and she never heard from him again. That would have been in 1972, maybe ’73. Your grandmother had a hard time raising your mum alone.’

  Dominique went on to explain that she understood her friend’s need for stability but could never understand her choice of husband. She had tried talking her out of the marriage and it had been her idea to have a last fling before the wedding. Dominique had originally thought of a rock festival but chose the félibrée as a suitably wholesome event. She found and booked the campsite, bought the bus tickets and announced it as a surprise pre-wedding gift.

  ‘Which days were you there, exactly?’ J-J asked.

  Dominique looked irritated and almost snapped out the words, ‘Give me a break. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Please, Tante-Do,’ said Sabine, gently.

  Dominique nodded, closing her eyes in an effort to remember. ‘We got there on the Thursday and spent that evening, the Friday and Saturday and a bit of Sunday at the félibrée. Then we caught the bus back to Bordeaux after a late lunch on the Sunday.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said J-J. ‘Please proceed.’

  ‘My real motive was to give your mum some fun,’ she said, looking directly at Sabine. ‘That maybe she’d meet another guy, or realize she was too young for this wedding crap. At least I could help her have a really good time for a day or two. And she did. She and Max really hit it off, very passionate, could hardly keep their hands off each other, kept slipping away into the woods for another quickie. Mind you, I wasn’t much different with Henri. I really thought it was working. On that last night in our tent she was thinking of cancelling the wedding, but then the next morning the guys had gone. That was the Sunday. Just disappeared, leaving no trace. Your mum had been abandoned all over again so I wasn’t surprised when she squ
ared her jaw and went ahead with the wedding. But she regretted it ever after.’

  Dominique paused, looking abashed as Sabine gave something like a sob that she tried to cover by clearing her throat.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ Dominique said to her. ‘But I suppose it all has to come out now.’

  ‘What were the surnames of these two young men?’ J-J asked.

  ‘No idea. I’ve forgotten, if I ever knew them. A family name was hardly important to us.’ She stubbed out her cigarette fiercely, as if erasing a memory. ‘A lot of guys have flowed under the bridge since then.’

  ‘Can you tell us anything else about them?’

  ‘They were both tall, fair-haired, well-muscled and very fit, bronzed from the sun. Real golden boys. They’d been working in the strawberry fields around Vergt to make some money and were planning to go down to the vineyards to pick grapes before heading back to university in Strasbourg. We were in a proper campsite but they wanted to save their money so they were camping sauvage up in the woods. They had a small tent, a sleeping bag each, an army surplus water canteen each and lots of wine they drank from the bottle. They’d sneak into our campsite for a shower.’

  ‘And that was where you – er, connected? Up in their tent?’

  ‘What, in their shared tent? We weren’t into orgies.’ She laughed. ‘Weren’t you ever twenty? We did it in the woods, up against trees, in the river, on the bank, in their tent, in ours, everywhere.’ She glanced up at Sabine. ‘Your mum looked dazed with happiness, Sabine. It might have been the happiest time of her life, at least until she had you and Louis. Just a couple of glorious days, but some people don’t even have that to remember.’

  ‘Do you think that was when she became pregnant?’ Sabine asked, speaking over J-J who had been about to ask something else.

  ‘We both thought that, but by the time she knew, she was married. And she took that seriously. She was determined to make that marriage work, and she did – after a fashion. She was devoted to you and your brother. But he never looked a bit like your dad, and when he was growing up I kept seeing bits of Max in him, in his eyes and his build. She tried to deny it to herself but we both knew who his father was.’