‘So, to sum up: all you know of him is the name Max,’ said J-J. ‘That he was from Alsace, a student at Strasbourg university and a good dancer. He was with another young guy called Henri from Alsace and they’d been making money in the strawberry fields in Vergt. Did you ever learn what subject they were studying, or their hometowns? You never exchanged addresses or phone numbers?’
Dominique shook her head, but slowly, as if careful of her hairstyle. ‘Henri, the guy I hooked up with, was studying something to do with wine. He told me he’d spent some time in the Alsace vineyards as part of his studies.’
‘Had they done their military service yet?’ Bruno asked.
‘I don’t know. It never came up.’ She shrugged.
J-J jumped in with another question. ‘How did you learn they’d gone?’
‘We were going to meet at a café in the square for croissants and coffee and they didn’t show up. We waited and then went back to the campsite and thought they’d have left a message in our tent but there was nothing. We went up to where they’d been camping and they were gone. Not a sign they’d even been there. Your mum was distraught, looked all around the festival, sure they’d be there. I just thought it was time to move on and put it down to experience. Your mum wasn’t like that, Sabine. She took it to heart.’
‘Do you have any photos you kept of that trip, anything that might show the faces of these two men?’ J-J asked.
Dominique laughed. ‘No mobile phones back then, we’d never even heard the word selfie so we weren’t taking photos of everything all the time like they do these days. Your mum had a little camera but I don’t know that she used it much.’
‘These two men, Max and Henri, how would you describe their relationship?’ asked Bruno. ‘Were they close friends, real buddies, or was there any kind of tension between them?’
‘They were just friends spending the summer together, making some money and chasing girls. We didn’t spend a lot of time talking and they seemed to get on just fine. It wasn’t like the guys were jealous of each other. They both seemed pretty happy at what they’d found, and so were we.’
‘What contraception were you using?’ Yveline asked, the first time she’d spoken since entering the room.
‘I was on the pill but she wasn’t. She wanted to start having babies as soon as she was married, the whole motherhood and nesting thing. I made sure she had some condoms.’
‘Do you know if she used them?’
Dominique shrugged. ‘She said so but if she did, they didn’t work.’
‘If you saw either of these guys again, would you recognize them?’ Yveline asked.
Dominique gave a mocking laugh. ‘You mean even though they’ll be going bald and running to fat? Even if I did recognize them I probably wouldn’t want to. But yes, I suppose I might know their faces if they hadn’t changed too much.’
‘I’d like you to do a photofit, work with a police artist to recreate their faces as best you can,’ J-J said. ‘And if we can find any photos of the félibrée we’d want you to look through them. We might also want your help in staging a reconstruction.’
‘I’ve got a business to run here,’ Dominique almost snapped. ‘I can’t just drop everything for some ancient case.’
‘Madame, let us understand one another,’ J-J said. To Bruno’s ears his voice sounded dangerously calm. J-J leaned forward and turned off the recording system on his phone before he spoke again.
‘You are a material witness in a murder case, probably the only one. From what you have said already, you may be the last person to have seen the dead man alive. Inevitably, that makes you a suspect and that gives me grounds to detain you. If you want me to arrest you and make you do as I ask, that’s up to you. One way or another, I will require you to cooperate with my investigation. And if I’m forced to arrest you, I will have this house and this business torn apart by a bunch of cops to make sure we miss nothing. I will also be sure to alert the local newspapers and TV stations to send cameras and photographers. You will briefly be famous, or perhaps infamous. And after that, you might not have much of a business to come back to when we let you out. Your choice.’
Dominique stared at him coldly before shrugging again. In a bitter voice, she said, ‘For this I pay my taxes.’
‘You know our motto, Dominique,’ J-J replied calmly. ‘Honoured to serve.’
J-J and Dominique glared silently at each other for a long moment before they were interrupted.
‘Please, Tante-Do, we really need your help with this,’ Sabine said.
Dominique shifted her gaze and her expression changed. She looked fondly at her old friend’s daughter and replied, ‘For you, sweetheart, anything.’
Mon Dieu, thought Bruno. That was astutely done, one of the most perfectly timed good cop–bad cop routines that he’d ever seen, except that it seemed natural rather than deliberate. It certainly had not been planned.
‘By the way,’ said Bruno to J-J in a low voice as they all returned to the car for the drive back to Périgueux, ‘that young woman, Virginie, working on the skull – she was in the lab alone when we saw her. Can you keep a paternal eye on her? You know what cops can be like.’
As he said this, Bruno suddenly recalled the big guy in uniform who’d made that nasty remark about country cops and sheep shaggers in the police canteen.
9
Back at the commissariat de police in Périgueux early that evening, Bruno collected a fat file of photocopies of J-J’s original inquiry into Oscar’s death and took a lift back to St Denis in Yveline’s car. He turned down Yveline’s offer to join her and Sabine for dinner, thinking it would be better to let the two women establish their own rapport. It was too late to join the evening ride at Pamela’s but he went there to collect Balzac and then drove home. He took Balzac for a long walk along the ridge as dusk deepened. He made himself an omelette and a salad from the garden and called Pamela to say he’d see her the next morning to exercise the horses and he’d bring croissants. After a less than illuminating hour or so with J-J’s files, Bruno made a final check of the chicken coop, drank a last glass of red wine from the town vineyard and went to bed for an early night.
He woke just before six after a solid eight hours’ sleep and took Balzac for a long run through the woods. In St Denis by seven, he picked up a bag of warm croissants and two baguettes from Café Fauquet just as it opened. Soon afterwards, he was at Pamela’s riding school, where he collected a hatful of fresh eggs. He let himself into the kitchen and heard the shower running upstairs. He put the kettle on for coffee, set out cups and plates and began halving and squeezing oranges. The kettle boiled so he made coffee. After a moment he heard her voice from upstairs, ‘Is that you, Bruno? I can see Balzac at the stables and I can smell coffee.’
‘It’s me and breakfast is ready unless you want a boiled egg.’
‘I’d love one and I can see Gilles and Fabiola coming up the lane. Better put two more eggs on.’
He put four eggs into a pan he filled with boiling water and set the alarm for five minutes. He took butter and a jar of Pamela’s home-made apricot jam from the fridge, added two more cups, plates and egg cups and began squeezing more oranges.
‘There’s nothing like a breakfast someone else has made for you,’ she said, kissing him lightly. ‘It feels like being in a hotel.’ She sat down and began pouring out orange juice as Gilles and Fabiola arrived. Bruno put the kettle on for more coffee.
‘I have news,’ he announced. ‘Balzac’s a father: nine pups, four boys, five girls, all doing well. I went up to the kennels yesterday to see them. I’m going to ask Florence if she’d like one for the twins.’
‘Don’t mention it in front of them or they’ll give her no rest until she gives in,’ said Fabiola. ‘Gilles and I were saying the other day that we’d be interested but we can’t agree whether we want a boy basset or a girl.’
/> ‘There’s no hurry,’ Bruno said. ‘Apparently Balzac is a much grander pedigree than I thought and he’s been such a success that the kennels want him back again to father another litter in a few months. If you can’t agree this time, you’ll have another chance.’
They ate quickly and within ten minutes they were trotting past the paddock, each with an unsaddled horse on a leading rein. Pamela took them along one of the shorter routes since each of the horses would be working later in the day. She restricted them to a canter, a pace so measured that even Balzac could very nearly keep up. But it was also a pace too slow for Bruno to lose himself in the thrill of Hector’s speed and the insistent rhythm of his hooves. He found himself thinking of the way Sabine had stood at the door of her father’s nursing home, sobbing quietly with her back to them; the way J-J had told Tante-Do that she had no choice but to surrender to his determination to pursue a case that had never lost its grip on him. At what point, Bruno asked himself, does long-delayed justice, inflicting so much pain as it grinds through the innocent lives of others, start to become absurd?
‘What is it, Bruno?’ Pamela asked when they were back at the stables, after Fabiola and Gilles had departed. ‘You’re miles away, distracted. I thought you said all the puppies were fine.’
‘It’s not that,’ he said, looking out through the stable door, barely aware of her behind him. ‘It’s this case that’s been on J-J’s mind for the last thirty years. There’s been a small breakthrough and he’s determined to see it through but I fear it’s not going to lead anywhere. And it’s my fault, really. I had this idea when I saw the exhibition at Les Eyzies of faces rebuilt from the original skull. I got his hopes up and the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether we should have just left it alone. This damn investigation has already started eating away at people.’
He let out a long sigh. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said all that. Shouldn’t offload it all onto you.’
‘We’re not just friends, Bruno,’ she said. He heard a jangling as the bridles dropped to the floor and she came up behind him, wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. He could hardly hear her, had to strain to catch the muffled words.
‘We have a history, you and I, so you can share stuff with me all you want. Lord knows I dumped more than enough on you, about my mother, and about that sad mistake of a husband I had.’ She squeezed him hard. ‘Let’s go and make some more coffee.’
She took his hand and pulled him along behind her, the pair of them clomping over the courtyard, still in their riding boots. There was the sound of a car, and then a cheerful toot-toot of a car horn as Miranda, waving cheerfully, drove her kids off to school.
‘I ought to be there, seeing the kids across the street,’ he said.
‘You know you’re probably the last cop in France who still sees children across the road, but you don’t have to do it today. Come and have some coffee, and you can just guess what Miranda’s thinking we’re up to, seeing me haul you across the yard like this.’
In spite of his sombre mood, he laughed and hugged her tightly.
‘You’re a very fine woman, Pamela. And thank you. But no coffee. Duty calls.’ He turned back to the stables, pulled off his riding boots, sluiced his face with water and headed off to see Joe, his predecessor as the town policeman of St Denis, and the man who had called in a very young J-J thirty years ago when a body had been found buried in the woods.
Joe kept goats, geese, chickens and bred pigeons. He fed his large extended family from a vegetable garden that was fenced more securely than some prisons to stop the goats from invading it. He also made the worst wine Bruno had drunk since his days in the army. But he had taught Bruno how to be a neighbourhood cop and he still knew everybody in the town and around it. He lived in a small hamlet a couple of kilometres outside St Denis and Bruno found him in his garden, installing taller sticks to support his tomato plants. He turned at Bruno’s call and came to the fence, opened the gate and then secured it, shook hands with Bruno and gave Balzac an affectionate pat.
‘What can I do for you, Bruno?’
‘Not sure it’ll help,’ Bruno began, ‘but could you take me to that spot where you found the body all those years ago? That cold case has warmed up.’
‘I can probably find it if you tell me what this is about,’ Joe said, steering Bruno to a chair in the courtyard and then going into the kitchen to bring out two glasses and a murky bottle of his own eau de vie. At least it was better than his wine. He poured out two slugs and Bruno explained about the DNA, the dead soldier in Mali, his half-sister and their mother’s best friend.
‘I want to get a feel for the place where the killing happened, try and bring it into focus in my mind,’ Bruno said. ‘And then I’d be grateful if you would come with me and talk to the people who ran the campsite at the time. I know their son who runs it now, but the older ones are just acquaintances. Maybe they might recall something.’
‘Do you have any photos of these two girls who stayed at the campsite?’
‘I can get them.’ He pulled out his mobile, called J-J, and asked him to email the wedding photos of Sabine’s parents to his phone.
‘They aren’t very good, a wedding photo of one of the girls, with her demoiselle d’honneur.’
‘Maybe you should talk to Philippe Delaron, see if his father left any copies of the photos he took of the félibrée. It was a big affair for St Denis and the Mairie paid old Delaron to take photos of the entire event, for local press and for the town records. The Mairie made an exhibition of the photos that was very popular and Philippe’s dad made a small fortune selling prints of people. Find those old photos and you might find the girls and their boyfriends.’
Bruno sat up, excited to hear this. ‘That would be terrific, if they still exist. But when Philippe closed the camera shop I think he cleared out a lot of old stuff so he could rent the place out. Still, it’s worth a try.’
His phone gave a double buzz, the sign of incoming email. He opened the attachment and saw the wedding photo. He zoomed in with his fingers to get a close-up of the bride and her maid of honour and showed it to Joe, who first went inside for his reading glasses.
‘Pretty girls,’ he said, squinting. ‘You would think I’d remember them but it’s been thirty years and there were a lot of people at that félibrée. I can’t say they ring any bells but let’s go down to the campsite and into the woods.’
They took Bruno’s van, Balzac grumbling at his usual place on the passenger seat being usurped, parked at the busy campsite and Bruno went into the office to greet Hilaire, the owner, explain his mission and to ask if Hilaire’s parents were around. He was told they’d be at home. Hilaire promised to call them and say Bruno would be coming to see them.
Joe led the way to the back of the campsite which looked full at this time in the holiday season, to be confronted by a sturdy fence and thick hedge. That was new, he observed. In his day it had been more of a token boundary of wooden posts with two planks nailed between each post, easy to climb in or out. They walked back to the entrance and around the side and then up the wooded hillside, Joe moving like a man thirty years younger despite the undergrowth.
‘Ten euros a night per person these days, even with a tiny tent, so I imagine there’ll still be people camping sauvage and finding a way to sneak into the dances,’ he said when he paused for breath and looked around, as if hoping to see landmarks.
‘We were up here often enough at the time, you’d think I’d remember . . .’ he said, and then his eye caught an outcrop of rock and headed for it and paused at the small and soggy hollow below it. ‘The stream trickled through there, that’s why the ground is damp. But I don’t see where it goes out. It just seems to disappear into the ground.’
‘It’s a hot summer,’ said Bruno, wiping his brow and the back of his neck.
‘Worse than hot,’ Joe said. ‘It reminds m
e of the canicule, that heatwave back in ’03 when so many old people died in the cities. But I can’t think when I last saw a stream just disappear, and this little bog is about the only damp spot I’ve seen. Look, tiny footprints in the mud, voles and mice looking for water. And the undergrowth is all dry as a bone.’
They clambered up another slope beside the rock, hauling themselves on young trees that wouldn’t even have been saplings thirty years ago, and came to an overgrown bank. A large scoop had been taken, or perhaps dug out of it, a place that was now filled with dry bracken. That was another sign of drought, thought Bruno. Bracken normally didn’t die off until the autumn.
‘That dip in the ground is where we found the body,’ Joe said, pointing. They walked along the face of the bank for perhaps twenty metres and came to a sheltered, flat stretch of grass, maybe six or seven metres square. Against the bank was a small ring of stones enclosing charred earth and ashes. Bruno noticed that the ashes were dry but there had been no rain for weeks.
‘Looks like that fireplace is still being used,’ he said. ‘It’s a good job they sheltered the fire. It wouldn’t take much to set all this dry stuff alight.’
Joe nodded and pointed to a square patch where the grass was paler. ‘Somebody had a tent there very recently. Nice to know the old traditions don’t change. I remember J-J going all over this area with metal detectors. All he found was an old tin opener and a camping spoon.’
Bruno went back to the spot where the body had been found, clambered up onto the top of the bank and looked around, trying to imprint the scene on his memory, to allow for the increased girth of the nearest big trees and mentally to erase the new growth around the scene. He knew it was hopeless but he kept trying to force his imagination to see the place as it had been. It was a calm but brooding spot, only a few scattered rays of sunlight coming through the thick and multi-layered canopy of the trees.
The Coldest Case Page 9